Adventures in Christmas dinner

I cooked elk for Christmas day.

This is certainly not a traditional Christmas dinner, that would be turkey or glazed ham. But I am ambivalent about turkey, and the photographer is not really fond of it, unless it is hidden in a stew or stir fry of some kind. So why would I expend all that effort for that?

Christmas was very tradition driven in his family. Fish soup and then fried fish and homemade pasta on Christmas eve. Wine-and-egg-yolk soup and then roast suckling pig with roast potatoes and green salad on Christmas day. His mother started baking in late November, and produced regularly 20 to 25 different varieties of tiny cookies, poppy seed and walnut roll, and about a dozen mini Christmas breads ("stollen"). Wonderful Austro-Hungarian inspired stuff. These sweets were served for dessert and when company came over. Buying suckling pig for Christmas involved purchasing a whole pig usually with other people, and then still freezing significant amounts of meat for later occasions. And the problem is, I am just not fond of it.Far too greasy, and lacking in flavour aside from the crispy skin.

In my family, my father, the occasional hobby chef, planned and cooked the Christmas meals, and it was highly unlikely that we would be eating any dish that he'd made before. Over the years we ate deer, boar, lamb, hare, and a bunch of others I've forgotten. Once we relocated to this continent, goose and turkey were also tried. He made pâté and always tripled the amount of garlic the recipe called for. And he used to marinate game meat to within an inch of its life, making it invariably very tender but also a little dry. Dessert always played a very minor role in the meal, and was followed by a cheese, nuts and grapes course.  Dinner was long, buttons were undone!

I've cooked turkey in the past, and we've also had duck, leg of lamb, roast beef and Cornish hen. Last year I cooked Beef Wellington, and the result was pretty good. I was in a more adventurous mood this year. A few years ago I looked at Bearbrook Farm for boar meat, but the price scared me off. A small roast, six by four inches big cost $80. I bought a pheasant instead, and changed the menu.

This year I decided to check out the Elk Ranch. I spent some time looking at the website, reading the information on the meat and how to cook it. I chose a tenderloin recipe for the main meal (with yukon gold hash, the first recipe I looked at seemed the tastiest.) I did not find any prices on the website, so I was prepared to make last minute changes, but I was pleasantly surprised. While the meat was certainly more expensive than beef, it was reasonably priced, and there was a good selection of (frozen) pieces, so I was able to get the approximate weight I wanted.

This was my first real adventure cooking "serious" game. The meat definitely had a different colour and texture when handling it, and when I seared an then roasted it, the fats and juices had a distinct (unfamiliar but not unpleasant) smell. A friend would now tell me that this is likely due to the animal eating some cedar and herbs in the summer and fall. My sauce refused to thicken, but lacked nothing in flavour.  The meat was tender, moist and delicious, and the potato hash went very well with it.

We had picked out a bottle of Zenato Ripassa Valpolicella to go with this. We heard a salesperson in the liquor store refer to it as his go-to wine to recommend with game meats, and it was indeed a very good combination. To start it off I made a curried beet soup, served warm with sour cream and chives. Those winter vegetables still got a spot at the table I guess.

Now we just have to worry if Santa will stop here again next year. Elk (wapiti) is awfully close to caribou (reindeer).  We may be blacklisted!

Oh well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Cooking for Christmas eve

I have a weakness for books in general, and these days there is always at least one cookbook on my wish list. I manage to resist purchasing the books most of the time. Since seeing "Julie and Julia" I keep noticing Julia Child's books in the store, but I haven't bought them. (Uhm.....yet?)  But from time to time I do get "conquered".

This summer I kept looking at "A Taste of Canada" in my local bookstore. Each time I walked into that particular section of the store, it was sitting there, placed with the front facing out (rather than the spine, the art of  merchandising ...) and it seemed as if it said: "pick me, pick, me!" I then had to look one more time, secretly hoping to find a defect that would let me decide I really didn't want it. Eventually I realised there was no defect, and bought the book.

I didn't use to like to cook very much before. I spent a decade with tiny impractical apartment kitchens. My first place had a real life enamel slop sink in the kitchen, and no actual counter!  When we moved to a place with a more practical (if very ugly) kitchen, there was still the long and intense workdays that killed any motivation to go beyond the "ready in 20 minutes or less" options. 

Work and life are in better balance these days, and now I have time and motivation to try some other recipes. I still look for meals that can be ready relatively quickly on weekdays, but I do try a lot of new recipes now, even during the week.

Of course I had to do some of the holiday cooking from my new acquisition. I wanted to be semi-traditional on Christmas eve, and incorporate winter vegetables, while at the same time give it a "new" twist.  The result was tourtiere turnovers and a rutabaga casserole.

A nice Jackson-Triggs Merlot to accompany the food.

The casserole consists primarily of mashed rutabaga with a few carrots and four pears, seasoned with ground ginger and then baked with a lemon parsley breadcrumb crust. The usually bitter-ish taste of the rutabaga (bane of most small children) is nicely balanced with the other flavours without disappearing. The turnovers are made with puff pastry and traditional tourtiere filling, and served with cranberry sauce for those who want it.

I decided to leave desert to the local catering and pastry shop, Sucre-Sale. I ordered a log there last year as well, and they do a fantastic job.

You almost feel guilty cutting it!

As far as Christmas day is concerned......I am going to cook an elk tenderloin.  We'll see how that turns out. Stay tuned...........

Mother nature's little hissy fit - pretty!

Tuesday last week the weather forecast called for 35 to 45 cm of snow on Sunday. Most of us didn't know if we should take it serious or not, the forecast was still for 5 days away. In any case, lately the weather forecast seems to be done by the guy from that old Tylenol commercial. He admits the tablets work, and his girlfriend says: "I like a man who can admit he is wrong." He replies: "Well, I'm wrong a lot!"  Meteorologist, for sure!

By Thursday it was only going to be only 10 to 15 cm of snow, and on Friday they changed it to freezing rain. I lived in Montreal during the ice storm of '98, so whenever I hear freezing rain, automatically have to worry a little about how far out of hand this could get. I do know that weather conditions were very unusual at the time, but I guess I am just a tiny bit traumatised..............

Sure enough Sunday mid morning it started to rain. It was about one degree below zero, and as we watched the two crab apples across the street slowly took on a shiny silvery hue. The temperature was expected to rise, and the freezing rain turn to regular rain later. Because it was only -1, the streets were very drivable, and I convinced the photographer that we just had to go get some pictures of this treacherous and temporary beauty.


Just around the corner is a tamarisk shrub that I usually admire in summer for it's explosion of fluffy antique-pink flowers. The smallest branches and twigs were now coated in a fine layer of ice, revealing detail  that we don't normally see in winter. All of this shows well against the background of cedars.

There is a bus stop a few streets away from us. At some point a birdhouse got put up on the other side of the sign. No one was at the bus stop, and I am pretty sure the bird house is vacant too. Brrrr.

Scotch pine with every needle on this branch coated in a thin layer of ice. A drop is about to fall.

A row of smaller trees (crab apples?) under power lines. The lines are definitely coated in ice, but they do not look weighed down very much.

There are three little berries left on this branch. The birds must have missed them somehow.  The rain continues to come down.

This spectacular picture is fit to be a Christmas card. I just need five pounds of fine glitter and we can compete with Hallmark. Can you imagine this little stream is called Mud Creek? It clearly was not named under these kinds of weather conditions.

Birch trees are often tall and thin, and then tend to get very weighed down by the ice. We have similar trees in the front yard, and when this happens I always worry that  they will snap. One year the top actually froze to the ground, and only thawed a day or two later. It took a long time to straighten again.

On Nichol Island Road there is an abandoned house. I never understand that, surely someone must have wanted this property, even if only to rent, at least before it caught fire, and was left to decay? Fixer upper? It is far beyond repair now I think. Sad! By the time we drove by it, a comb of icicles had formed on the roof edge, and a larger icicle was forming in the corer.

 A row of shrubs in a parking lot, completely evenly coated, and contrasting with the tail lights of parked cars.

Only an hour later the temperature had gone above freezing and most of this beauty disappeared quickly, and with it the risk of accidents and power outages. Freezing rain is very pretty, preferably for a very short time.

My mission to find more beauty in winter continues.......

Christmas lights across the Capital

This year we decided to attend the Christmas lights across Canada ceremony on Parliament Hill. This ceremony has taken place for the last 26 years, always on the first Thursday in December at 6 pm. Over the years it has grown to include lighting ceremonies in each provincial and territorial capital, at the same (local) time.

We usually drive by "the hill" (as people in Ottawa refer to the Parliament buildings) at some point in December to see the lights all lit up, but we had never actually attended the ceremony before. At the end of the workday we first stopped for some pizza (for the photographer) and pasta (for me) at Johnny Farina, easily our favourite restaurant in down town. Then we made our way up Metcalfe street to the hill, the center block already lit up from it's base in a fuchsia colour, which was changed to yellow and then to blue. A good size crowd had gathered before the steps to center block at about 10 minutes to six. We set up the camera a bit further back on the left lawn, to be able to shoot pictures over people's head while still being able to use the tripod, needed for the long exposures in the dark.

The peace tower's carillon was playing "White Christmas". I'd like to be kind, but we need a better carillon player. I've heard the carillon played before (lunchtime in the summer) and I can only call this person's style plodding and hesitant, and characterised by some kind of fear of using the smaller (higher note) bells. After it finished the person was introduced over the speakers as Dr. so and so, proving once again that a PhD does not quality make.

 

Purple peace tower with it's prominent gargoyles.

Directly to our left was a wood fire where you could obtain marshmallow and sticks to roast them on. There was a Beaver Tails stand set up on the other lawn, and an energy company provided free coffee. Somewhere the organisers were handing out candles (with collars to keep the flame from going out) but we were afraid to lose the great spot (or each other) so we passed on that.

At six o'clock they opened the ceremony and introduced a children's choir. They were amazing! Well practiced, clear, completely in perfect harmony. As a nice understated touch they were not dressed all the same, but instead had matching hats and scarves. At the same time a group of people emerged from the main doors in center block and waited behind the podium.

The choir in front of the provincial and territorial flags. The big button in the bottom right corner was later used to start the fireworks and light the lights,

As this year is the United Nations International Year of  Youth, the organisers had chosen two seventeen year old high school students  to be master of ceremony. A girl from the Gatineau side of the National Capital region, and a guy from the Ottawa side. Each of them had a list of accomplishments far more extensive than the average middle aged person.

The dignitaries were introduced and descended the stairs to take their places at the front of the podium. The choir then sang "Oh Canada", during which they projected the maple leaf fluttering on the wind onto each side of center block.

Maple leaf projected on center block.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper then gave a speech about the year that had just passed.  He highlighted among other things the Olympics games in Vancouver, hosting the G8 and G20 (well, he is a politician) the damage done by hurricane Igor in Newfoundland, and the earthquake in Haiti, and the effort of the Canadian Armed Forces in response to these events, and in general. He then introduced a series of Christmas message from the provincial and territorial premiers, which were projected onto each side of the center block. 

If you look carefully you can make out Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty doing his Jacob Marly impression, just not so gloomy.

Then a countdown, and with fireworks from the front of the lawns they lit up the lights on the hill and along Confederation Boulevard. Once the smoke from the fireworks settled, and people began to leave, we moved further off to one side to take some more pictures of the building. Unfortunately we can't capture the fact that the ice crystals projected on the building are moving. 

All the lights lit up. Click on the image to see the larger version.

After that we made our way west along Wellington back to the car. We were pretty frozen by then, so the photographer was not in the mood to set up again to take a picture of the Supreme Court building, and we went back for that the next day. I think he regrets it now, because they managed to haul in construction equipment in the mean time. Oh well. It looks absolutely gorgeous lit up from the inside.

We picked up a hot chocolate at Bridgehead Coffee, Ottawa's home grown answer to Starbucks (in your dreams....) and made our way home. It was definitely worth seeing once, and it's a nice way to kick off the Christmas season. After all if we take our cue from retailers Christmas is the day after Halloween, and that's just a bit too much for me.