It’s back to work this morning. We had decided, before Christmas, to close the office Monday December 27, Friday December 31, Monday January 3. The first stage of the blizzard arrived on December 30 and the city was largely shut down. The city kept major streets and bus routes plowed but there wasn’t much happening on December 31. Stores opened and retail employees seemed to show up for work. The liquor stores did a brisk trade and people were stocking up on groceries, shovels and snowblowers.
Category: Fighting Dharma
Sambal Beans
This is another dish I made for my family’s pot-luck Christmas dinner. I had also made it for company in October. It’s basically green beans, but with a nice spicy bite. The spice may not please some guests. This recipe made enough to serve a good helping to most of about 25 guests.
I used frozen French cut beans, about two-thirds of a one kilogram bag. If you are cooking for a smaller party, or for family, there will left overs. If you make a half recipe, you may want to find another use for part of a can of diced tomatoes and half an onion.
Erik Dalmijn, my cousin from Holland and his wife Rite had given us a couple recipes which called for some herb and spice packets that I couldn’t find at the Dutch specialty store in East Kildonan. I searched the Web for options. There is a recipe on the Web – actually three or four versions of the same basic recipe under the name of Sambal Boontjes or Sambal Goreng Boontjes or Sambal Goreng Buncis. (Boontjes would a correct Dutch usage – a diminutive of beans). They all call for a one liter can of French cut beans. That’s not a common item in a Canadian grocery store; frozen beans worked fine. There are other some other versions, but this one is simple and fast, and it does not call for more than a couple of specialty ingredients.
A few ingredients may be obscure, but I think they are available in larger supermarkets. Some of the Westfair Superstores in Winnipeg are pretty good with ingredients for Oriental, Indonesian and Philippine cooking. You can use Laos powder, also called Galangal powder. That’s basically an aromatic ginger; regular powdered ginger will do. You need Sambal Oelek which is a wet paste made of crushed chili peppers. It’s essentially an Indonesian version, and there there are equivalents in Chinese and Indochinese cuisine. It’s wet and it’s crushed rather than pureed or ground. The recipe also calls for Kecap Manis (also sold as Kecap Sambal Manis) which is a sweet soy sauce. Regular soy will do.
Start with onion and garlic. One medium onion for the full recipe, diced. Two or three cloves of garlic, crushed. Fry the onion and garlic in cooking oil of choice in a skillet or wok. Use about 2 tablespoons of oil. I would turn the heat down after the oil is hot and sauté slowly. Turn the heat down before the next step.
Add 1 teaspoon of Laos or ginger, 1 teaspoon of sugar, and one tablespoon of Sambal Oelek to the onions and garlic in the skillet. The sugar will carmelize and things will burn if you aren’t careful. This only needs to be fried for about a minute. Then add a can (14 oz) of diced tomatoes, stir to blend and bring mixture to a boil. If you are not keen on hot spice, cut down on the Sambal.
After the sauce is boiling, add 3 tablespoons of Kecap Manis, and add beans. The sauce will flavour anywhere from half a kilogram to three quarters of kilogram of beans. Heat the beans thoroughly, and it’s ready to serve.
Buttered Leeks
This is tasty. I made it for my family’s pot luck Christmas dinner. Leeks are a popular ingredient in many Dutch and Dutch-Indonesian dishes and apparently in some Scots dishes, but they don’t seem to be called for in too many recipes. The name also provides endless amusement for plumbers and beer drinkers.
Cooking leeks means a trip to a store with a big produce section, because the local Safeway may not have them. I have also noticed that the size of leeks varies. I found some monsters when I was cooking for company in October. I think the typical recipe assumes a more modest leek.
Camel Stew
This is a crockpot recipe, adapted from a recipe for Mongolian mixed meat stew. I made it a few weeks ago. It’s tasty, meaty, but not greasy. Once again, Claire suggested the title. She asked me if Mongolian stew had camel. I’m not sure what makes this recipe Mongolian.
Special Green
Christmas morning, 2004. My first time on skis since March. The temperature was -20 C when I started but it actually got cooler. It was -22 when I got home. Special green wax (I have used Swix waxes since I started skiing and I know their system from the polar up through special green, green, the blues, and freezing point waxes) worked fine. I drove out to Beaudry Park on the faith of Manitoba Parks reporting that there was a set trail. On the half hour drive out, I noticed that the conditions in the fields were not good. Sunshine, warm temperature, and freezing rain, followed by a freeze-up have left everything icy. The field by the parking lot was like that too, but the trails themselves were fine. The snow within the shelter of the trees was powder and it was deep enough, barely, to provide a passable set track. I settled for about 5 and half K in about 45 minutes. I had spent time finding all my clothes, waxes, accessories and it was 10:30 before I left home. I had things to do for Christmas dinner. Step one – pour wine.
Winter Solstice
It has been a month since my last bike ride of the fall. I have skated a few times in public arenas. Last week, the outdoor rink at the local community center seemed to be ready, but we had temperatures above freezing this past weekend, followed by several days of very cold weather with high wind chills. It was -31 this morning. I haven’t sallied forth to skate outdoors or to ski. The forecast is for better weather on the weekend with sunny skies and daytime temperatures in the range of -8 to -15. I should be able to ski and skate several times over the Christmas break, to fight off the holiday food and the eggnog.
Sunday Skate
With icy roads, short days, cold temperatures and wind chill, I have hung up my bikes and stripped the electronics and given up on cycling for this year. Last week I became restless, realizing that we may not have good snow for cross-country skiing until Christmas or later. I started to walk to the local community club and watched the man making ice on the outdoor skating rinks. He has only been making ice for the last week or 10 days, and the rinks probably won’t be ready for another week or two, if the temperature stays consistently below -5 C. Then I received and browsed through City Parks Recreation Guide and discovered that all of the City’s indoor arenas have a few hours a week dedicated to public skating, around the time devoted to skating classes and hockey and ringette leagues. They have been open since the beginning of October.
Cajun Recipes
In the course of making a crockpot jambalaya, I wondered if I should add file powder. I searched gumbo file and jambalaya and found the basic definitions and several recipe sites. Both dishes are classified as cajun or creole recipes within Southern US and Caribbean recipe classifications.
Dalmation Chili, v. 1.0, Crockpot
No dogs are harmed in making this chili. It uses pork, and it’s based on a recipe in one of Mable Hoffman’s books, called Black and White chili because it uses black and white beans. The basic recipe is kind of bland and I have adapted it. Claire asked about Dalmations when I mentioned it. It has a bit of heat, but is basically mild. Very tasty though.
It’s a crockpot recipe and would have to be adapted for stovetop cooking. It uses canned beans, which is simpler than soaking and cooking dried beans. There is some processing at the beginning, and then it cooks at the low heat setting for 6 hours.
Snowfall
Yesterday Mike and I rode through Assiniboine Park and St. Charles. The ground was dry, except for a few places where condensation had formed ice on the road. The temperature was around zero (C) and the wind was about 20, gusting to 30 kph. Not too cold. We had numb toes by the end, but otherwise our gear held up to the conditions.