After reading Croque-Camille’s post about Chicken Pot Pie, the light went on. Literally. There’s nothing more frustrating than reading a new recipe and encountering all kinds of food-related terminology that baffles you. It’s a sure way for the cookbook to collect dust on my shelf. At least CC explains them: CLEARLY.

A while back, I was looking at a Marchand de vin sauce and was baffled by the term mirepoix. I didn’t know what it meant at the time, but later found out that it’s the same thing my grandma, my mom, and I always did to prepare a stock, soup, or stew. It’s your basic aromatics of celery, onion, & carrot used for a base, except that’s what WE always called it: la base. The same goes with a lot of specialized food terms used by chefs. Many of the terms, I’ve realized, refer to methods that my grandma always used in the kitchen and with which I am familiar.

There are many other food-related terms, that over time I learned was terminology used by professional chefs or wanna-bes. But I also find it amusing how, when people want to sound sophisticated, they really, really like French words. And then, even I have a hard time pronouncing French terms the English way (like hors d’oeuvres), but that’s for another post.

Now I think I’ll go and prepare brochettes au saumon as an hors d’oeuvres before serving Duck à l’orange for dinner. I thinkCrème brûlée would be perfect for dessert.

Boy, do I need a good pastis as an apéritif before I get started.

For the last week, I’ve been trying to find creative ways to get rid of foodstuff before it’s too late. “Never buy groceries on an empty stomach, my mother always warned me. I usually try to heed her advice, but for my last trip to the store, I must of had a brain fart, so I ended up with almost every fruit and vegetable under the sun.

Trying to get rid of way too many kiwifruit resulted in a tasty sauce that’s delicious over vanilla ice cream. Something has to balance out all those fruits and vegetables! Here’s what I did:

• peel the kiwifruit – use a teaspoon and scoop the fruit out (I had about 10)
• put in a food processor
• add 1 cup white sugar
• add 2 teaspoons of lemon or lime juice mixed with zest (adds a nice tang to the syrup/sauce)
• simmer for about an hour

I poured the sauce into an empty bottle and keep it in the refrigerator. Deeee-lish!

The number of power outages in the Yukon boggles the mind. If nothing else, they certainly make us aware of how much we rely on electricity. I had just finished pouring the batter on top of berries for an upside-down cake when we experienced a black-out in my area. Since I had just bragged on Kara’s blog, the banana bread baking goddess, about having baked a banana bread in a barbecue once, I decided I’d try it again with this cake:

Barbecued Cake

Heat the BBQ on high for a few minutes. Then turn one side off, and reduce the other setting to medium. Place cake on upper level opposite the side that’s turned on for indirect heat.

Nicely done!

Upside-Down Cake

This was supposed to be an upside-down blueberry cake, but I didn’t have enough blueberries, so I added strawberries to make up the rest. The cake was delicious.

Scrabble & Cake

We played a game of Scrabble (I won – yeah!), ate some cake, and the power returned. Here’s the recipe for anyone interested. It’s from a eighty-something woman I knew many years ago:

Blueberry Upside-Down Cake (or any other berry)

1. Melt 1/4 cup of the butter in 9″x9″x2″ pan.
2. Sprinkle with brown sugar.
3. Mix berries with lemon rind; put in pan, distributing evenly.
4. Cream rest of butter (1/2 cup) with granulated sugar, and beat until light. Add egg and beat well.
5. Sift dry ingredients together.
6. Add dry ingredients alternately with milk to butter/sugar mixture, beating until smooth.
7. Spread on top of berries.
8. Bake in 375° oven for 30 minutes. (I do the toothpick check.)
9. Let stand 10 minutes, then turn out onto plate.

P.S. You can use more berries.

When driving along Second Ave. on Thursday afternoons, you can always spot the peaks of white tents in Shipyards Park. This is where locals set up their wares at the Fireweed Community Market. Aside from the ol’ faithfuls that are there every week, there are always little surprises tucked in here and there. I love farmers’ markets.

My friend Deb got me into going to markets when I would visit her at her cottage at Sauble Beach. Before moving to Whitehorse, I never imagined that there would be a farmer’s market, let alone any farming here. We do live north of the 60th, after all. How naive. It’s almost as bad as people down south thinking we live in igloos and travel with sled dogs in the Yukon.

At our little market, you can get elk burgers, bison burgers, freshly-squeezed orange juice, fireweed jelly, fresh vegetables, plants, and the list goes on. This past week, I indulged in two local specialty items: morel mushrooms and wild rose syrup.

The rose syrup I tried in a spinach salad with strawberries, pine nuts, green onion, and bacon (the spinach and green onion also courtesy of the market). It was a little on the sweet side, so I’ll have to adjust my dressing recipe for next time. I’ll also have to whip up a cool drink of rose syrup and gin on our next hot day, if it ever comes. That and a little drizzled on ice cream sounds like a nice afternoon with my feet up in the yard. Come on sun!

As for the morel mushrooms (which were at a really good price), I finally tried my friend’s cream of mushroom soup recipe. It was delicious! I mixed them with a couple of portabellos and button mushrooms.

For those of you who don’t know what morels are:

• look like brains fried on drugs
• usually found in areas where burns occurred the previous year
• hollow
• They’re used in French gourmet cuisine (very expensive mushroom)
• May cause poisoning symptoms for some people when consumed raw and/or with alcohol, though I’ve had them (cooked) along with a glass of wine in the past without any reaction

You can go to Wikipedia or Shroom Boom if you want more info on morels.

Aaahhhh!!! The mushroom soup soothed me, comforted me, and helped me forget the rain.

When you have something good, share it. That’s my philosophy.

Call these cinnamon buns or rolls, sticky buns, or whatever you want; they’re all the same.

So, here goes another delicious recipe that’s a hit with everyone who tastes it. The nice thing about making your own sticky buns, is you make them the way YOU like them. If you like raisins, add them. If you don’t like cinnamon, leave it out. If you’re allergic to nuts, leave those out too. Maple syrup fanatics like me can use it instead of corn syrup. You can even make these in the breadmaker; at least the mixing and kneading part.

Sticky Buns

12 Tbsp. butter (works out to almost ½ lb)
1 pkg active dry yeast (2 ¾ tsp)
¼ cup sugar
¾ tsp salt
3 egg yolks
½ cup milk
3 to 3 ½ cup flour
¾ + ¹/₃ cup light brown sugar
2 Tbsp. corn syrup
¾ cup pecan halves
½ tsp cinnamon

1. Melt 6 Tbsp of the butter and let cool. Dissolve yeast in ¼ cup lukewarm water. Stir in sugar, salt, yolks, milk, 4 Tbsp. of the cooled butter and 2 ½ cups of the flour.
2. Turn out onto a lightly floured work surface. Knead until dough is smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes, working in enough of the remaining flour so that the dough is no longer sticky.
3. Put in a buttered bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled in bulk, about 45 minutes. To test, press dough with your fingertips. If an imprint remains, the dough has doubled.
4. Butter a 9” baking pan. In a sauce pan, combine 6 Tbsp. butter, ¾ cup brown sugar and the corn syrup. Stir over low heat until smooth. Pour into prepared pan and strew ½ cup of the pecan halves on top.
5. Combine the ¹/₃ cup brown sugar with the cinnamon. Chop remaining ¼ cup pecans.
6. Punch dough down. On a lightly floured work surface, shape into an approximately 18” x 9” rectangle. Brush with the remaining 2 Tbsp. melted butter. Sprinkle with the brown sugar and cinnamon and the chopped pecans. Roll up dough starting with a long side.
7. Cut into 9 slices and put in the prepared pan. Cover and let rise until doubled, about 40 minutes.
8. Heat oven to 350°. Bake until browned and bubbly, approx. 20 -30 minutes (I check it with a toothpick). Let cool in the pan 5 minutes. Invert onto a serving plate and let stand about 30 seconds before removing pan. Cool slightly before serving.

Be sure to watch baking as sometimes the syrup bubbles over the sides and may cause a fire. I usually put an old rectangular cookie sheet underneath to catch the drippings. PLEASE BE CAREFUL!!!

Make your favourite cream cheese frosting to serve with the sticky buns:

Cream Cheese Frosting

½ pkg cream cheese
¹/₈ cup butter
1 ¼ cup icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Beat all ingredients until smooth. Store in refrigerator and slightly heat small portions to pour over heated sticky buns.

You can double these ingredients to spread over carrot cake, spice cake, or pumpkin cake. Thanks to my friend Deb in Mississauga for the frosting recipe.

Okay, so you’ve heard my raves and rants about service in Whitehorse. It’s often hit and miss. Last Friday night, Dave and I went out for a celebratory dinner. I just finished my four year long studies, and we were also celebrating six months of marriage. A nice dinner was in order. We decided to try Chief’s Steakhouse, partly on the recommendation of Michael’s Meanderings.

Like Michael, I like my steak medium, so I generally order medium-rare, as most restaurants tend to overcook steak. Well, I got what I ordered, and I didn’t send it back to the kitchen. My filet mignon was like butter melting in my mouth. When Dave began to cut into his T-bone, the meat came apart with his fork, so tender it was.

The side of vegetables was perfect. Freshly cut broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots cut into large pieces and steamed to perfection. These and the pan-fried potatoes brought me back to my mother’s cooking. Nothing better than a home-cooked meal.

The food was simply delicious, and I plan on returning to try other things on the menu. We had smoked salmon as a starter, and a wonderful merlot called NK’NIP (pronounced in-ka-meep), named after the Osoyoos Indian Band that makes it.

The service was everything I could’ve asked for, and then some. The waitress (whose husband is part owner of the restaurant) was friendly, smiled – somewhat hard to come by in Whitehorse restaurants – and made us laugh more than once. She was definitely on top of her game, and we certainly appreciated it. The restaurant was very busy also, another good sign.

Like Michael, I strongly recommend you try this restaurant if you haven’t already. And if you like it, blog about it. Good service deserves the word to be passed on. The food and service at Chief’s added to our special occasion.

Photo taken in Northern Ontario

Sugar shacks and maple syrup make up some of my fondest childhood memories. Every Easter, my family would make the four-hour drive from Timmins to Astorville, ON (near North Bay) to my grandmother’s farm, where sugar maples had been tapped and sap was being collected for maple syrup. Now, the farm belongs to my uncle, and he and his brothers occasionally get together to make syrup. So on my last visit to my father’s, I wheedled a small container of the stuff out of him. This was a quite a feat as he’s very protective of his syrup and doesn’t easily part with it.

Interestingly, he went into a story about how “good maple syrup” doesn’t harden in the freezer. You can pour it as easily as if it had been sitting on the shelf. My father prides himself in being able to make good maple syrup. The secret, apparently, is boiling it long enough to get rid of all the water contained in the sap. He told me a story about a man who was selling the stuff at a local mall, and he was telling customers that they could store it in the freezer but that the syrup would have to be scooped out like ice cream, unless left to thaw in the refrigerator. Because the man was unconvinced that “good quality” maple syrup won’t harden in the freezer, my father invited him to come to his house so he could prove it. The guy didn’t take him up on the offer.

I personally don’t know all the workings behind making even bad maple syrup, but I thought I’d test out his theory, as I found it hard to believe that maple syrup doesn’t freeze. As soon as I got home, I plunked my new treasure on a freezer shelf and left it there for a few days. The next time I made pancakes, I took it out, and, sure enough, the syrup flowed very easily. You’d never have known that it came from the freezer. Okay, so my dad’s theory was proven.

The problem? Today I used up the last drop of my maple syrup. I always have maple syrup in the house, though I usually buy it at the grocery store. When I brought my dad’s syrup home, I had forgotten how tasty the real home-made stuff is. I don’t know why the store bought stuff tastes different, but it does. Maybe my dad’s syrup really is of better quality than what’s on store shelves, or maybe, just maybe, it’s the nostalgia for the trees on my grandmother’s farm.

Next weekend it’s house-sitting time at Robinson Subdivision, between Carcross and Whitehorse. What a spot! House-sitting for our friends there is like a vacation for us. They own a beautiful two-storey log home which they built themselves. The best part is the view! I’ve posted some pictures to show you what the view is like from the back door, as well as the red sky at sunset in December 2005.

When house-sitting, I enjoy spending a bit more time preparing some of my favourite recipes that require extra time. My mother-in-law gave me a delicious East Indian recipe for Mughlai Lamb Biryani from Madhur Jaffrey’s Illustrated Indian Cookery, which is currently unavailable to buy. It is a lamb and rice casserole drizzled with saffron milk and mixed with raisins. It’s hard to describe the flavour, though the saffron comes through nicely. The taste of this dish is unlike anything I had ever tasted before. I thought of writing out the recipe here, but it’s very, very long, and I did find another blogger who went through the trouble. So here it is, if you’re interested, thanks to Ruth Daniels in Toronto.

P.S. Actually, Ruth Daniels has such interesting recipes on her site that I’ve added her to my blogroll.

Yesterday, Valentine’s Day, I was doing my daily web reading when I came across a fellow Urban Yukon contributor’s post, Yukon Jen. It was a warning about not buying a ham as a Valentine’s Day gift as it can spell disaster. Well, I hadn’t exactly bought a ham as a gift, but it was what I planned on serving for dinner. And, so far so good, it wasn’t disastrous.

In fact, I found an recipe for a sauce in my Joy of Cooking cookbook that looked interesting. It’s called Marchand de Vin sauce, which I had never heard of; it’s a butter and wine sauce. The only problem was that the cookbook’s recipe (on p.327) referred me to p.326 for Brown Sauce, and this recipe referred me to p.541 for Mirepoix, whatever that is. Why make it so complicated? I was ready to pull my hair out, so I gave up and went to the Internet to see what I could find.

My first hit was a hit, literally. I ended up finding a straightforward recipe that was absolutely delicious. You can find the recipe here at About.com, and you can also use it for steak and roasts. The flavour is out of this world!

Thank goodness for the Internet!