Matante Sue's Baked Macaroni

This recipe is an example of what I consider homefood. It's nothing magical, just long macaroni with loads of ground beef, garlic and onion powder, chopped tomatoes, tomato sauce and covered and baked with a crust of shredded cheddar cheese. It's something my aunt used to make that we all enjoyed with a good piece of bakery fresh white bread with butter. Not low-cal but a recipe that's nice and comforting. Sort of like shepherd's pie or the left over fricasse's my aunt used to make or even the cabage rolls of my other aunt. It's not food that you'ld be wowed over unless you grew up on it. Even my aunt can't understand why I love her cabbage rolls so much. She appreciates my enthousiasm but she still doesn't understand it. How do you tell someone that that simple dish she's now pulling out of the oven for the millionth time is part of the pattern of your youth and something that bring memories of home rushing back. Plus I love that my the women in my family make the same dishes over and over again and nobody ever gets bored. As for me, I don't often make the same dish twice unless I was overwhelmed the first time or trust that tweaking it is worthwhile.

They say that sent is the sense that is most closely tied to memory so it follows that food would be a very important constituent of memories. So does a rich childhood or even a rich life come from loads of good food? I think so. Ergo, food lovers have a happier life. Pleasantly plump.

Deer Stew

I exchanged a pot of dulce de leche with deer meat from a girl at work. Actually, she gave me deer meat sausages and a mason-jarred deer meat stew. I’m finding canning more and more intriguing these days. I mean, you can grow anything and can it. You can hunt for your own meat and can it. You can basically be self-sufficient with the art of canning. Unfortunately I know nothing about canning and I’m kind of scarred of killing someone with botulism or something.

We like our stew to be hearty. Taking the mason jarred meat as our base (basically cubed deer meat with loads of onions in water and a bit of spices...supposedly keeps forever...hmm) we then build with what I consider to be traditional stew ingredients. Rutabaga cubes, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, onion, and finished off with sweet peas. Now I know I shouldn’t admit to this but we used a pre-made stew St-Hubert spice mix to flavour the stew. In my defence, I’m not the one who was cooking that night.

Anyways, the stew turned out to be delicious. It’s more or less these kind of things that push me towards building my own pantry and relying less on the always disappointing supermarket products. Have you ever tried canned stew from the grocery store? It’s gross. Like those canned potatoes. Pure yuck.

Hot Chicken Sandwich

My girlfriend had a craving for something which is traditional in our neck of the woods; a hot chicken sandwich with fresh fries and sweat peas. All this is, for those unfamiliar with the dish, I'm not too sure how "international" this fatty meal is, is shredded and usually leftover chicken or turkey on a slice of bread, smothered in gravy, topped with another slice of bread and covered in even more gravy. It goes without saying that the fresher the bread and the better the gravy, the better the sandwich. And this is one of the only things I'll eat fries with. When I was a kid my dad would make me go on my bike to the nearest chip stand - that's what we call the fry and burger serving seasonal trailers in Northern Ontario - to get fries. We'd enjoy them with a tonne of ketchup and the essential side of sweat peas...it's the healthy side of this meal...to balance things off, you know...

If available in your area - i.e. if you're in Canada - I suggest you use St. Hubert brand canned gravy if you're not making your own. They're the masters of roasted chicken. Masters I tell you!

Pâté au saumon with Funky Salad

I was sitting at my desk at work and suddenly I had a craving for pâté au saumon, a Québécois expat food I grew up on. What this meal is is basically just a meat pie whose protein is salmon. The only salmon that might be found in the middle of the Boreal forest where I'm from are those who are hopelessly lost or cans of this rich pink fish. So it's a Pacific sockeye salmon meat pie in a Québec recipe, made by a guy from Northern Ontario whose presently residing in New Brunswick. How's that for an all-Canadian meal?! (Sorry prairies...)

To offset things, I made a recipe from the best known British chef, Jamie Oliver. When it comes to greens, I would like to consider myself an amature. Truth be told, I think most of us cringe at the thought of paying for and eating something called "dandelion greens".

"Isn't that the crap that grows in my front yard that's full of ants I just can't seem to get rid of?" you ask.

"Why yes," answers the celebrity chef. "Would you like to pay me a ridiculous price to eat them?"

"I think I do Mr. Celebrity Chef. I think I do. Your popularity persuades me."

Ridicule aside, the salad was a bit too expensive for my tastes. Many of the ingredients in this salad recipe aren't readilly available unless you live in a metropolis. These ingredients include fennel, arugula, dandelion leaves, watercress, baby chard, asparagus, and fresh chervil. I found everything except the chard and watercress. They were out of chard so the only thing really not found was the watercress. And the only reason I found any of the other ingredients is because they opened a new grocery store in town and are making an effort to be cutting edge. After a while they'll have wasted so much produce that it'll be back to iceberg and romaine lettuce.

Pat's pâté au saumon

Dough...super flaky and rich...the best ever!!!

200ml shortening

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp vinegar

1 egg

200ml water

1. Cut shortening into flour.

2. Add salt, vinegar, the egg and water. Mix well. The dough should be pretty sticky. Refrigerate till ready to use.

Filling

1/4 cup carrot, brunoise (cut julienne and then cut into small cubes)

1/4 cup celery, brunoise

1/3 cup onion, brunoise

1 tbsp olive oil

450g canned sockeye salmon (I just used two 213ml cans)

1 cup cooked and mashed potato flesh (it's good to use leftover baked potatoes)

2 tbsp sour cream

1 egg

1/2 tbsp lemon zest

1/2 tbsp fennel greens and chervil (or dill or parsley...I just happened to have these herbs on hand)

salt and pepper

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Sweat the carrot, celery and onion in olive oil till soft. It's best to keep the lid on for this since the goal is to keep the humidity in the pot with the vegetables.

2. Mix together the salmon, mashed potato flesh, sour cream and egg. Fold in sweated vegetables, lemon zest and herbs. Season to taste.

3. Take dough out of fridge, roll out and layer into a greased 8 1/2 inch (or 22cm) wide pie dish. Dump salmon mixture into the prepared pie bottom.

4. Place another sheet of dough on top of the pie and crimp edges. Poke or cut holes in top of pie.

5. Cook pie in 425 degree oven for 10 minutes then bring temperature down to 350 degrees and cook for 30 minutes.

6. Serve hot.

Sorry that my measurement systems are all over the place. That's what happens when you live in a non-metric system country beside the largest metric system country in the world. Maybe it's time for the US to join the rest of the world and convert.

Home Food

There's comfort food and then there's food from home. Whether it's your grandmothers chicken noodle soup, the neighbourhood pizzeria that has never been beat (in your mind) in all of your travels, or just that small restaurant that doesn't serve anything particularly special but every time you step in it your reminded of all of those times your parents treated you to supper or brunch there. For me, Kapuskasing, Ontario is the place of my HomeFood - check it up if you want to know how isolated a place it is.

There's Thong La's, a Chinese restaurant that is unparalleled (it helps that my father knew the owners which meant that we were eating some real Chinese food instead of the simple deep-fry and stir-fried Chinese Canadian food). There's Great Northern Pizza that makes massively loaded pizzas (such as the Wango Tango...mmmm) and panzorati's to rival any Italian mama. But the place in my mind that is more closely linked to the blue-collar, lumber town atmosphere of Kap is the Coffee Bar.

Consisting of no more than 10 benches arranged around a bar which looks upon the griddle and very minimalistic kitchen supplies, the whole being no larger than a medium sized bedroom, the coffee bar was primarily a place where people could go buy some milk from the Community Dairy that operated in the same building. Growing up, the coffee bar would be full (yes all 10 benches were occupied) of construction men or factory workers gearing up for a days work. Coming from a construction family myself, the Coffee Bar was a frequent meal spot.

Most famous of all in my mind are the westerns they make at the bar. It's nothing overly sophisticated. It doesn't cost $50 for every item. It doesn't come with a wine suggestion...just chocolate milk. All the western is is a thick stack of ham and onion omelet between two pieces of bread and the optional processed cheese slice or ketchup. They would wrap it in wax paper and hand it over to you in a brown paper bag if you were taking it to go. You could then sit on the job site and drip omelet and ketchup all over the place.

Like I said, HomeFood is more often than not very simple. It's linked to memory like no five course meal can be. It's comfort food at the ultimate level. Best of all, it's replicable.