Regrettable Foods Christmas Potluck 2006

...Or shall we call it the Family Circle Christmas potluck?

The origins of this potluck go back to a lovely day at the beach this past summer when Jodi presented various cookbooks from The Family Circle Illustrated Library of Cooking to those present. This past weekend, we were all called upon to utilise these books to conjure up the magic of cooking in 1972. The consensus at the party was that it was painfully difficult for us to follow these recipes to the letter; the abundance of pre-processed ingredients, the lack of spices or seasoning, the insistence on hard-boiled egg garnishes, and the enthusiasm for molding perfectly good food with gelatin made this potluck prep an almost arduous task . However, we persevered and these are the results.

Ladies, if I get any of the details wrong, please say so in the comments below!

The Feast!

My own contribution to the feast was Scotch Eggs. Pretty simple - hard boiled eggs encased in spiced hamburger, rolled in crushed Corn Flakes, then deep fried. Not too much technique there - although I'd love to make these sometime with really little eggs covered in homemade turkey sausage. These beasts were a little overwhelming and kind of difficult to cook because of their hugeness. But oh, so tasty. (Next time, I'll spice 'em up! The Scotch won't know what hit 'em!)

Next, we have a casserole with pineapple, yams and ham with Marshmellow topping courtesy of Sharon (one of my favourites of the evening, actually...) and an eggplant salad. The ham was cooked in a sauce of canned pineapple juice and brown sugar. I think this is kind of a take-off on the whole candied yams American Thanksgiving thing. Yummy.

The eggplant salad was from the 'Foods from Afar' heading - this was a supposedly Israeli salad of cooked eggplant, cucumber, celery and green olives covered in sour cream. No spices apart from salt, sugar and garlic. The method for making the radishes into rosettes was also in the cookbook. Those 70s housewives sure loved their garnishes.

These two treats above were courtesy of Kreesta and John. The sandwiches were a corrupted Reuben sandwich with spam instead of corned beef - and the lovely tuna ramekins were concocted completely of preprocessed and canned foods. Even the biscuit topping was Pillsbury. A lovely little Tuna Pot Pie, if you will.

My vote goes to Jenny, however for the most ornate food of the night.

These little candied oranges were astonishingly beautiful. I want to decorate my Christmas tree with them. Jenny, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is how they were created. First, the orange was sliced at the top and all the insides were gently scooped out. Then the hollow peels were candied. I'm not sure of the process, but I think it involved cooking them in a sugar syrup over a long period of time. Then the candied orange peels were filled with Christmas cake and steamed.

In a way, these oranges reminded me of the beautiful molded Marzipan treats that I first saw in the Netherlands when I was a kid. Breathtakingly lovely, but you were a little afraid to eat them.

It was almost surprising that there was only one molded salad at the potluck - I would venture a guess and say that almost a quarter of all the recipes in these Family Circle books involved mixing gelatin with otherwise acceptable food and conforming it to a imposing, quivering tower of food.

Melanie took on the molded salad challenge with this little number composed of rice, cream, melted candy hearts, and canned pears. Garishly festive!

Alas, there were many other dishes that were enjoyed but not photographed - the quiche, the ambrosia salad, the cheesecake, the salmon spread, the molasses roll-ups... All truly wonderful, and all enjoyed.

Huzzah for Regrettable Food!

Sometimes the best food is the food someone cooks for you!

There hasn't been much interesting going on in my kitchen lately. It's busy at work and busy at home and its the time of year when I revert simple, easy, boring food. But thank God for ambitious friends!
Everyone needs a friend like Coral. Coral has found some interesting recipes lately. Coral wants to try them out. Coral calls me up like I would be doing her a favour by coming over and letting her try out some new recipes. Like the martyr I am, I say yes, Yes, YES! Green Coconut Curry soup with scallops and shrimp makes up the first course.
I go a little cuckoo for scallops - the succulent little pillowy morsels of rich sweet flesh make me groan with pleasure.

I remember once, long ago, coaching Coral for her first trip to the east coast of Canada. Like lots of people growing up on the prairie, she was a little nervous about eating seafood because the only thing we ever had growing up was frozen fish sticks and nasty canned or frozen shrimp. I had only discovered the joys of fresh seafood the year before on my first trip out east, so I passed along my newly found passion for Digby scallops and made her promise to at least try them when she was down there. As far as I can tell, she's never looked back since!

Oh, yeah - and the soup was damn tasty too. Not too spicy, with a hint of lemongrass. Veggies still crunchy. Yum.

Main course - Chicken breast stuffed with prosciutto and cheese, scalloped potatoes, and green salad with walnuts and blue cheese.
The chicken was coated in a tortilla chip breading, which made a lovely crunchy crust which contrasted nicely with the molten cheese and tender prosciutto within.

On an aside - I'm finding corn flour makes mighty tasty breading. My personal favourite lately has been corn flour with crushed pepitas with Mexican oregano as a breading for pan-fried fish. But I digress....

Dessert - Molten Chocolate and Espresso Fondants

These little lava cakes were OUT OF CONTROL. I don't know if any of you have ever had this experience, but this dessert reached out and punched me right in the face with the crazy flavour and texture! Then, just as I was trying to recover - another sucker punch to my taste buds! This dessert made me YELP right at the table!

Seriously. I'm not the hugest chocolate freak out there, but this was incredibly decadent. The almost-bitterness of the dark chocolate and espresso were offset so nicely by the cappucino ice cream. I couldn't finish the whole thing because it was so deliciously rich.

MMMMmmm. Molten.

This meal will give me the strength to make it through the craziness of December. And any spare moments will probably be consumed with thinking about how I can repay this meal!

Thanks, Chris and Coral, for a fantastic feast and good times!

I hate baking!

Now... in my younger years, I loved baking.
I loved finding new recipes that required precision and attention to detail. Complicated torte recipes, cheesecakes, florentines drizzled with chocolate - I even made fruitcake one year when I was 19. Even though I never had much of a sweet tooth, I would visit friends and bring them treats and generally just bake for the sheer joy of baking.

I don't know exactly when it happened, but the thrill is now gone. Or maybe yesterday night I just lacked inspiration or patience. Or maybe I just need a bigger kitchen for baking. Or maybe I just needed to know that my new oven really means 430 degrees when it says 400. Regardless of my new ennui towards the sugar and spice arts - I persevered. And I managed to get three batches of treats of the (too hot) oven.
Batch one: Vital Geback.
These came from a recipe that my mom got from a German friend. They kind of taste like sesame snaps, but with sunflower seeds and almonds too. However, I burnt many of the almonds when I was attempting to toast them, so I threw in some pepitas to make up for the lack of almonds. Then I overbaked the whole batch.
The recipe said to bake them for about 15 minutes. I checked them at 13 and they were starting to overbrown. Then I waited too long to cut them into slices (you have to cut them while they're still quite warm) so some of the pieces shattered. But they are still edible, especially if you suscribe to the notion that burnt sugar is an exotic and delicious flavour.

Batch two: Lime and Pepita Sugar Cookies.

This recipe came to me from the Rebar cookbook, by way of lovely Kreesta Doucette. They are kind of like a sugar cookie with lime zest and pumpkin seeds. Thankfully, they are hard to screw up, and so they actually turned out quite well. I should have taken them out of the oven sooner to keep them a little softer, but the hot oven foiled me again.

Batch Three: Chocolate Chip cookies

This was the batch that nearly killed me. This recipe was nominated the best chewy chocolate chip recipe ever by the folks at Chowhound ( I think it's originally from Cooks Illustrated) but by this time I had lost all patience for careful measuring and delicate mixing. I should also mention a large part of the frustration of the day was due to the fact that my sugar was mostly comprised of huge, hard lumps that I had to crush down to be able to use for these recipes. I keep big bags of sugar and flour in the pantry in the basement and I guess it's too damp for the sugar.

Those lumps of sugar broke my spirit. At one point I was literally yelling out my frustration and was throwing stuff around the kitchen until Jeff came downstairs to see what the hell was going on... Even though I had read that you really needed to follow all instructions down to the letter for them to turn out just right, I just wanted to be done with the horrible things!
So I don't know if it was the hasty mixing/measuring or the hot oven, but they turned out very average and not-chewy.

Sigh... I think I will just have to leave baking to others more dedicated to the craft. Or at least stick to one recipe at a time - mixing up a new batch of dough when you have to pay close attention to the batch currently in the oven is probably not a great idea.

I shall endeavour to learn from these mistakes. I promise.