St. Joseph Fall Supper - October 15, 2006

The fall supper so good, you'll do anything to get there - even hitchhike!
Yes, Jeff managed to fit in a bus-tour school field trip in the Pembina Valley and a fall supper 120 kilometres away. I think it was the sign that made that wonderful couple from Altona pick him up... (Whoever you are, thank you for taking pity upon my husband!) The food.

For me, this supper is all about the pies. Well, the pies and the roast beef. The entire menu listed above also mentions salads, hominy corn (a little bland and kind of cold) and a pork ragout (kind of a bland gravy with a few pieces of meat).

My favourite St. Joe treat will always be the tourtiere, delicately flavoured with cloves and garlic, topped with the flakiest crust ever. Not to mention the meltingly tender slices of medium-rare roast beef, rubbed lovingly with lots of pepper and spices.This beef was perfect! And this is how they did it - Rotisserie style on a trailer beside the community hall. (Please note the look of gleeful concentration on the gentleman with the roast.)
Last but certainly not least, are the (dessert) pies of St. Joe.

Most suppers have a set banquet menu with donated homemade desserts, but at this supper the pies are part of the set menu. Every year the pies are the same, and they're heavenly. Pumpkin pie, saskatoon pie, cherry pie, lemon meringue pie, chocolate cream pie and French Canadian sugar pie.

Pictured above is my favourite - Bean Pie. Pinto beans are grown locally in the area, and this pie is here every year. The flavour is similar to a sugar pie, but the texture is dense and almost a little chewy. Not too sweet. And the pecan is a nice touch.

Carnitas!

I was gifted with 8 pounds of Manitoba Berkshire pork a few weeks ago, and I was looking to find a recipe that would show off this pork to its fullest potential. I slow roasted the first roast, but I thought I'd try somthing more interesting and complicated for the second roast. I got the inspiration to make carnitas from Chowhound.com. I found pages and pages of endless debates on the Chowhound boards over the best way to make this dish, so it seemed like a fun challenge!

It's a strange feeling to try to make an authentic version of a food you've never eaten. The most 'authentic' recipes involved slowly simmering an entire roast in freshly rendered lard. Most of the other recipes involved slowly boiling the meat in water with spices and then browning it later. I always like to try for authentic preparation, but unfortunately I don't have large vats of freshly rendered lard on hand. So I did a little experiment - I'd render the lard from the roast, and try the 'authentic' method for as much meat as the lard would cover. The rest of the meat, I'd try out the other way.

Step one: Rendering lard.
This took a few hours on its own. I had about 3/4 pound backfat with skin that I cut into 1-inch cubes and boiled it down until the skin were crispy bits of crackly goodness. Funny, I always hated crackles when I was a kid, and now I went out of my way to produce them. I salted them and ate them hot - the first two were delicious, but the next one became lard overload. Jeff ate the rest.

Step 2 - The next day: Time to start boiling hog!
The roast got cut up into large chunks - about 1.5 x2.5 inches. I had about a 1 1/4 cup of lard from the night before, which got placed in a small saucepan. I was able to cover about 5 large pieces of pork with the melted lard. This I simmered slowly for an hour, then added the juice and rind from 1/2 an orange, and about 1/2 a can of Coke. I don't know how authentic the Coke was, but since I saw it in a few places, I thought I'd run with it. It simmered for about 2 hours longer, until the meat broke apart easily.
The other meat went into the stock pot with a cut up orange, a chili pepper, mexican oregano, cumin, lots of garlic and water. This simmered down for about three 1/2 hours until it looked like the picture above. Most recipes said to boil it down until there was no liquid left, but since I cut up the meat instead of leaving it as an intact roast, it was breaking apart at this point. I strained the meat and went shopping for corn tortillas.

Step three: Time to eat!
The water-boiled carnitas still needed to be crisped up. They were a little mushy and fatty, but 10 minutes in the oven at 425 degrees got them nice and carmelized. The lard-boiled carnitas were pretty perfect and just needed to be warmed up.
A little bit of avocado, fresh salsa and sour cream on a warm tortilla, and we got the final product pictured at the beginning of this post.

Final verdict? The flavour of both preparations was really similar. The taste of the oranges really came through in both of them, and the extra spices and garlic in the water boiled version weren't too noticable. I like the consistency of the lard-boiled ones better though. Strangely enough, they seemed leaner to me - less mushy fat still attached. Maybe next time I will boil them a little longer for that fat to render out, and maybe add a few dried chipotles to the boiling pot.

I called my pork farmers today to order some more of this stuff. I think I may be hooked!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Yeah, we had Roast Chicken for lunch, and the pumpkin pie and stuffing, etc... But isn't this picture of our supper more interesting? Let's all give three cheers for vareneki and schmon faht.

Distinguishing between the Ukrainian perogy and the Mennonite vareneki is a little tricky. Ultimately, they come from the same tradition with the main difference that Mennonites fill their dumplings with cottage cheese and Ukrainians fill them with potato. (Although my Oma used to sometimes make fruit vareneki filled with cherries or apricots...)
Here in Winnipeg, the typical perogy is a pan-fried potato and cheese filled dumpling served with sour cream on the side. They are strangely ubiquitous in this part of the country - you can find them in diners, in mom n' pop family places, chain restaurants as a regional add-on, fried chicken places... They've become the ultimate starchy side dish for Winnipeg.

However, the perogies I've had at all the Ukrainian fall suppers are never pan-fried - always boiled, served with a cream gravy, sometimes on the side. I grew up thinking that only the Mennonites put cream gravy on their vareneki but I'm starting to realize that it is more of a restaurant vs. home-cooking thing instead. There are only a handful of actual restaurants that I know of that make good Mennonite-style vareneki, and they are all in Steinbach. Seek them out, and you shall be satisfied.

Ste. Agathe Fall Supper - October 1, 2006

24 degrees Celcius at the beginning of October! A good day to spend an hour waiting in line for a fall supper!
Apparently, the good weather brings out the crowds, because the community hall in Ste. Agathe (just south of Winnipeg) had a line-up about two blocks long by the time we got there. As the line moved ever-so-slowly towards the lovely aromas inside, we had a chance to do some chatting with some charming Franco-Manitobain Hommes. We asked these men about the local specialties at the supper, who responded with the opinion that Fall Suppers were not about the food - they were about community and getting together with your friends. (Not about the food?!) We did get some hot tips on Suppers to watch for in the future, though. La Broquerie is their traditional kick-off supper every year. Something to remember for next year, I guess.
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This was the first 'fowl' supper that I had been to. Roast Turkey, meatballs, ham, mashed potatoes, corn, stuffing, coleslaw was the fare. The supper itself was a bit lackluster, but the pie table more than made up for it. There was a huge selection of homemade pies and dainties, including creamy Sugar pie, strawberry, apple crumble pie, and a very intriguing coconut custard pie. Not too sweet, really eggy with lots of real coconut. Very yummy.

The spiky apple? Simply the most creative toothpick holder I've ever seen.

Pansy Fall Supper - September 24, 2006

After much debate, the decision to start the 2006 season was settled on Pansy, in South-Eastern Manitoba. Now, the great thing about Pansy it that it's not really a town at all. It's this community center, a church, and a mailbox. (Plus it's called Pansy! How great is that?) Oh, and they have an awesome Pet Cemetary. I have no idea what the story is behind the pet cemetary, but it's a few miles out of 'town', has a well-maintained parking lot, brand new sign, and picturesque paths winding around the bush. No markers as far as we could see, but fascinating nonetheless.
But I digress. The Pansy fall supper was noteworthy for its four-line system (no line-ups despite a packed house) and its fantastic variety of food, not surprising since it was advertised as a Ukrainian Smorg. Here, off the top of my head are some of the treats offered: Fried chicken, two kinds of meatballs, two kinds of cabbage rolls, perogies with a creamy dill sauce (great flavour, but a little gummy), yummy peppery mashed potatoes, amazing sauerkraut with big pieces of ham (so mild, tender and hammy), pickled beets (heavy on the cloves, which is a good thing), sweet Ukrainian crepes stuffed with cottage cheese (Nalysnyky) and piles of other preserves, salads, and jello. There was actually enough non-meat options here for the vegetarian among us to eat her fill too (not always that common on this circuit...)
The dessert table was also impressive - lots of homemade pies, dainties and squares to choose from. A big pitcher of thick cream straight from the dairy accompanied the coffee.
Sounds like heaven, right? The best in the East?

No, sir. Not the best. Although the results are unofficial, the moniker of best in the East may still have to go to Gardenton.

You see, part of the dilemma whilst choosing the supper this weekend was to decide if we wanted to branch away from Gardenton this year. As you have read in the 2005 recap, G. is the traditional kick-off to the supper season for this gang. But we thought we should try to branch out, to experience what else the world of suppers had to offer us. So we went to Pansy.

The gravitational force of Gardenton's perogies sucked us in, though. Yes, friends, we did TWO suppers in ONE afternoon. Disgusting. Over the top. Gluttonous. But we all can categorically now state that we can assert with confidence that Gardenton does have the best perogies ever consumed by any of us, plus it has pumpkin pie that will make you weep. Well, it made Jenny weep, anyway - (seen here in a 2004 photo...)

Even though it was the tail end of the supper and half the food had been taken off the tables already, the perogies maintained their amazing, light texture. No gumminess! Beautiful, thin cream sauce with tiny bits of fried onion. Intense cheddar flavour with the potato filling.

They. Are. Perfect.

Fall Suppers 2005 Recap!

The Ukrainian Village is the site of the Gardenton Fall Supper in South-Eastern Manitoba. It has kind of become tradition to kick off the fall supper season with this supper - the leaves on all the oak trees have just begun to change, the day is always sunny and warm, and you just know that you're going to have the best Ukrainian food in the province. The hall is small - seats about 100 - and a sweet guy named Mike is always there to greet you as you come in. The food is typical Ukrainian buffet - perogies, holubchi, potatoes, meatballs, fried chicken - but everything is prepared so delicately it's hard to think of this as a mass-produced meal. Highlights of this supper are the beautiful boiled cheese and potato perogies, the potatoes in cream and fresh dill, and the light pumpkin pie with real whipped cream. Sometimes you can buy some shredded Horseradish beets - Yum!

Silver, Manitoba is a Ukrainian town in the interlake area of Manitoba. Their fall supper is more of a dinner and dance than a come-and-go supper. The food was a little lackluster compared to the glory of Gardenton (Praise Gardenton!) but from what I can remember, it was a perfectly fine Ukrainian buffet with two kinds of holubchi, perogies, meatballs and homemade headcheese. The best part about this supper, though, was chatting with the locals about the best places to hunt for wild mushrooms - not that anybody gave up any real secrets - and dancing The Butterfly to a live band.

http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k2/froddard/thepiesofst.jpg (click on the link for a collage of St. Joseph... for some reason I can't upload these pictures properly...)

St. Joseph is a little French town south of Winnipeg. The feel of this supper is a little more razzle-dazzle than the down-home flavour of some of the other suppers. Don't get me wrong, there is still some damn fine home cooking here, it's just that St. Joe is so....organized! When you complete the buffet line (filled with crazy jello salads, hominy corn, beautifully tender roast beef and melt-in-your-mouth Tourtiere), there is a volunteer waiting to find your party a place to seat. There are at least another dozen volunteers scattered throughout the large hall that gesture with hand signals the availability of seating arrangements in the crowd. They run this place like clockwork! http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k2/froddard/Stjoseph004BW.jpg It can be a little tricky getting your pie after supper because those volunteers fill up any empty spaces so quickly. The pies are probably the highlight of this exemplary supper. Every year there is the same selection: Bean pie (kind of like a pumpkin pie consistency that tastes like caramel - Yum!), Sugar pie (much creamier than you might think), raisin, chocolate cream, apple, saskatoon, turtle, lemon and Cherry pie. St Joseph is pie heaven.

So there we have it - the highlights of the 2005 season.

This next weekend might be a little crazy - there are at least 8 suppers that I know of happening this Sunday alone. Please wish me and my cholesterol levels luck.

my first post...

What can I say - I'm a fan of good food.
Lord knows, I'd hate to work in the food industry, but food just seems to be more interesting than anything else.
So here's to food as celebration, food as sacrament, food as politics and food for sustenance!