Cooking on the Boyle

I guess it's weird that ole AC would go on a cooking spree on a Friday afternoon, but that's just what I did — for part of the afternoon anyway. First, I made the French Canadian Tourtiere that I had meaning to try for months but hadn't gotten around to. I dunno why, except that I have a French Canadian SIL and have tasted his mother's tourtiere a few times, so I wanted to give it a shot.

As I prepared the recipe, I played our recently purchased Susan Boyle album (blast the changes in terminology as they'll always be records to me) CD, I Dreamed A Dream and listened in my usual distracted way. The woman has a great voice, which supports my notion that the best singers are probably doing their thing well out of the limelight. Otherwise, we make do with the supposedly marketable types where the first rule is that you have to look good.

Boyle, of course, is unique because of her story. She came onstage at Britain's Got Talent in all her bizarre frumpiness and promptly "rocked this joint" (her words, I believe). She does have a great voice, but we all fell in love with her story because that's the way it works. It fits with what Cuppa has been telling me about her latest read,
A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel H Pink who believes that having a story and telling it will be key to success. Well, Susan Boyle is a story, and she is being quite successful these days. She made it onto Queen Oprah's show for goodness sakes.

After getting the tourtiere in the oven (are you following my thought shifts alright?), I prepared my own meat loaf. It's the only recipe that I can only lay claim to creating rather than simply following, and even then I only tweaked an old recipe from the Red Roses cookbook. My mother had this book and gave Cuppa and updated version when we wed, and I think Cuppa passed an even more updated version onto the kids, but I may be mistaken, and since she's out at the hair salon becoming even more stunningly beautiful, I can hardly confirm it.

Shifting back to the CD .... although it's not my usual thing, I enjoyed Susan's fine voice and gentle delivery. It's a good, relaxing background mix in my opinion, but the songs are older classics, so if you're into contemporary top 40, it ain't for you. Oddly, there are two religious songs in there, which I don't mind but some might, as well as (and I find this really odd, but again, I don't mind) Silent Night. While I probably wouldn't play the album a lot (which is not an indictment as such because I don't play any album a lot), I will probably put at least two songs in some playlist or other: her BGT original, I Dreamed A Dream and Up To The Mountain and perhaps even a few others. Other thoughts: although I wouldn't recognize perfect pitch even if it was thrown by Sandy Koufax, Cuppa says that Boyle has it, and we both think that, at least in spots, she sounds Barbara Streisand-ish, which can't be all bad. Or can it?

Another shift ... my meat loaf is really is quite good (considering that it's meat loaf, if you take my meaning), so just in case ...

For the Mix

• 1 egg beaten
• 1 medium onion chopped
• about a half packet of onion soup mix
• about 2 tbsp of relish (be generous)
  
• several tbsp of plum sauce (or more)
  
• a little salt and pepper
• some beef seasoning

Meat Mix

• 2 lbs ground beef
• 1/2 cup or slightly more of oats

Topping

• 1/4 cup or more of plum sauce
• 1 or 2 tbsp of brown sugar
• 1/4 to 1/2 tsp of dry mustard

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350F (180C)
2. Combine mix ingredients in a bowl
3. Mix beef and oats together
   
4. Combine the two mixes
   
5. Pack into loaf pan (about 9" x 15" or 13cm x 23cm)
6. Spread the topping
   
7. Bake 1 1/2 hours or until meat is cooked

Cooking 101

When I retired from the daily grind of honest labour, Cuppa more or less retired from cooking, and we mutually agreed that I should take up that task. I say that she more or less retired from the chore because it wasn't a complete repudiation. She still cooks the occasional meal,for example, and almost always rounds up what is to be had for lunch. But if a meal is to be cooked from scratch, I am usually the one to do it — with mixed results I must confess. Unfortunately.

On the whole, I manage, but I do stumble at times, and something that I recently read in another blog reminded me of a faux pas from one of my early attempts.

Fortunately, many fine, instructive cookbooks exist, but as careful as some might be, they can still take certain things for granted. Exhibit A: I give you the lowly onion. How is an unkitchened man supposed to know that a green onion is not an ordinary onion of the kind that we always have about and regularly consume? They always looked kind of green to me. It took one recipe and one wife to teach me the difference.

I believe it was a linguine recipe, but whatever it was, I distinctly remember that it called for me to chop up six green onions. Which I thought were ordinary, yellow, cooking onions. So ... I commenced to chop ... and chop ...

As the mountain of onion grew, I began to grow rebellious. I was chopping my fifth onion, and the bowl was already overflowing. so when Cuppa entered the room, I cast my gaze from the onion hill to her and petulantly declared, "I don't care what the recipe calls for, I've chopped enough onions!"

It was then that my dear wife gently explained through tears of laughter the difference between green onions and yellow onions. Education is a wonderful thing.

About the Chicken ...

Hmmm, I guess ole AC confused a few of y'all when he wrote about purchasing a rotisserie chicken for lasagna. Actually, I'm quite glad of the confusion because it's nice to see someone other than me confused ... for a change. lol

It's very simple, really. I mostly do light cooking and have come across three recipes for lasagna, only one of which calls for the usual ground beef. And, no kidding, that one doesn't even use lasagna noodles. Really! For that recipe, I slice up three or four zucchinis which I use in place of the noodles. It's a very yummy dish actually, probably the best of the three lasagnas that I do. It's from Dr Phil's diet cookbook by the way.

The other two versions, including yesterday's, are from Crazy Plates by Janet and Greta Podleski. One is a vegetable dish, where I roast a combination of veggies as the main ingredient. Yesterday's lasagna simply calls for chicken as a variant. Just as they do for several other recipes, including Butter Chicken and Chicken Corn Chowder, the authors recommend using a rotisserie chicken from the supermarket because they are quite moist, tasty and pre-cooked.

Anyway, company came, and the lasagna was good. We chatted and laughed. One odd thing did happen though. A coffee shop featuring fair trade coffee has opened in the town that is the nearest neighbour to ours, so we decided give it a try. We trooped in, looked around, turned around, and left. You see, there were only three little tables, and they were each for two — and we were a group of four. Weird!

But that's okay! Canada's favourite coffee stop, Tim Hortons, was just around the corner. You can always rely on Tim's!