Ever since I became interested in food, street vendors have held a special allure for me. There’s something magical about warm, delicious, unhealthy food served to you as you stagger home drunk. I don’t believe any kind of food is more satisfying. It’s also a distinct. Every city tends to have its own take on street food.

Edmonton isn’t much for night life or street food, but we have managed to pick up a specialty which we imported from the other side of the country: the donair. Donairs are actually native to Halifax, but managed to skip over most of the county and settled in Alberta as well. I hear they’re best in Halifax, but hey, I go with what I know.

What makes a donair a donair?

• Donairs are generally made with beef instead of lamb. That said, lamb isn’t a sin or anything. But if you buy a donair, you usually get beef.
• Toppings are usually just tomatoes and onions. Lettuce and cheese may be found.
• The sauce has nothing to do with tzatziki or yogourt. It’s made out of evaporated milk, sugar, and vinegar.

I love donairs, and since moving to Athabasca, I can’t get them here. The only place in Athabasca which claims to serve donairs serves a pita full of sadness and dashed dreams. My only recourse was to make them at home. I’ve now made donairs a couple of times, and have now abandoned my old meatloaf technique and now roll out the meat thin over a cookie sheet.

Donair (yields 4-5 donairs with a pita or two left over)

Required Hardware

• 2 cookie sheets
• A big bowl
• Aluminum foil

Optional Hardware

• Pizza stone or cast iron pan (replaces one of the cookie sheets)
• Squeeze bottle
• Stand mixer
• Wax paper
• Pizza cutter

Pita Bread

• 3 cups flour
• 2 ½ tsp instant yeast, or one package
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 ½  cup warm water

Donair meat

• 1 pound double-ground beef or lamb (either get your butcher to run the meat through the grinder a few times, pulse it in a food processor, or just wail on it with a knife until the meat is very fine)
• ¼ cup fine bread crumbs
• 1 tsp each of black pepper, cayenne, oregano, garlic powder, onion powder
• 3 tsp paprika
• Good pinch of kosher salt

Donair sauce

• 1 can evaporated milk
• ¾ cup sugar
• ¼ cup vinegar
• 1 tsp garlic powder

Toppings

• Onions, sliced
• Tomatoes, sliced
• You can also add cheese or shredded lettuce. Donair shops typically use processed white cheese or the like. I think havarti works great.

To make the pita

Sift or whisk together the dry ingredients. Add the wet ingredients, knead into a dough by hand, or 10 minutes in the stand mixer. Once the dough has risen, preheat your oven to 400 with a pizza stone in the oven. No stone? Flip over a cast iron pan or a cookie sheet. Divide the dough into 8 equal parts, and roll into balls. Let rest for 20 minutes. Roll the balls out into ¼ inch thick circles. Bake as many as will fit for 3 to 4 minutes.

To make the meat

Mix all ingredients in a bowl until well-combined. Lay out your cookie sheet upside-down, and cover with a lot of aluminum foil. You want a couple inches sticking out on all sides. Smear some oil or cooking spray on the foil. Plop the meat down, and then cover with wax paper. Using a rolling pin, roll the meat so that it’s even and thin over the sheet. Trim it, and then crimp up the edges to catch the juices.

Bake in a 400 degree oven for around 10 minutes. If you like your meat crunchy, bake longer. Once done, cut the meat into long strips with a pizza cutter.

To make the sauce

In a large bowl, vigorously mix the evaporated milk, sugar, and garlic powder together until the sugar is absorbed. Pour in the vinegar, and very gently stir until the sauce thickens. Store in a squeeze bottle.

Assembly

Lay out a rectangle of aluminum foil and place in the pita. Place on as many strips of meat as you like, add your toppings, and douse in sauce. Make sure the side of the pita faces a corner of the foil. Lift the corner, pass it over the pita, tuck under, and then roll, making sure to tuck the bottom of the foil in. Tear down the top, and you’re ready to go!

Serve with a lot of beer.

You’re probably making your hamburgers wrong. I know, the recipe may have been handed down by your mother and you have fond memories of her hamburgers. They were also probably shaped like bowling balls and had the flavour of sad meatloaf, with family and friends turning bland food into something delicious. Honestly, I’ve had my share of sad meatloaf burgers and they’re perfectly okay. But you can make something far tastier in a quarter of the time. Sad meatloaf burgers are time consuming and mediocre. A good hamburger has three ingredients and will take ten minutes from start to finish.

I too once made sad meatloaf burgers. I bound them with eggs and breadcrumbs in a foolish attempt to make them stick together better. Verily, I would slap them down on a cold pan, and cook them at medium heat for something like fifteen minutes before smearing them with ketchup and eating them on a wonderbread bun.

But I have been saved! Rather than going up on a mountain to have a chat with God, I just read a lot of recipes and listened to people who have been doing this cooking thing longer than I have. From their wisdom, I’ve gleaned a few basic rules for making a hamburger. In honour of the rapture that wasn’t, here’s the 10 best of them.

The Ten Commandments of The Burger

1. Thou shalt not put eggs in the burger.

Eggs are not necessary to bind the burger, and they kill the juiciness.

2. Thou shalt not put bread crumbs in the burger.

Bread crumbs change the texture to a meatloafy texture and kill the  juiciness.

3. Thou shalt not cook the burger at medium or low heat.

High heat means caramelization, which means a tasty crust. A burger cooked at too low a heat will be mushy.

4. Thou shalt preheat all cooking implements.

Grill or pan should be very hot before the burger touches it.

5. Thou shalt not press on the burger while it cooks.

Leave. It. The. Fuck. Alone. Pressing on the burger squeezes out juice and we want juice. You flip it once. That’s it. The only time that PSSSHHHT noise is welcome is when the burger first hits the searing hot grill.

6. Thou shalt let the burger rest for five minutes after cooking.

Leave. It. The. Fuck. Alone. All meat has to rest after cooking. If you bite into your burger immediately you will have a dry burger and a soggy bun. If you cut into a steak immediately, I will drive to your house with a bat.

7. Thou shalt season the surface of the burger immediately before cooking.

Lots of good kosher salt on the patties two seconds before they go on the grill. Let it sit in the salt, you’re drawing out juice. A wet surface means a crappy crust.

8. Thou shalt not make the burger with lean beef.

The ‘juice’ in hamburgers is fat. Fat is delicious. If you don’t want fat in your hamburgers, you don’t want hamburgers. Use a mix of regular and lean for best results.

9. Thou shalt grind beef at home whenever possible.

Supermarket ground beef can’t be cooked below well done, and is never at the right fat content. A mix of chuck and sirloin makes a divine burger.

10. Thou shalt eat the burger medium rare.

This is only an option if you home grind beef, or buy it from a good butcher. Supermarket ground beef does have a higher chance of e coli contamination, so cook those to well done. A medium rare burger is a thing of beauty, though.

The Burger:

Hardware:

• A cast iron pan or a grill.

Software:

• Ground beef (a mix of half lean, half regular or home-ground)
• Salt (kosher or coarse ideally)
• Pepper (fresh ground)

Instructions:

If you want to grind your own meat, use a mix of half sirloin, which is lean and flavourful, and half chuck, which is chewy and fatty. Replace the chuck with pork shoulder if you feel sassy. Either use a grinder, or blitz small batches of 1/2 inch cubes in a food processor. Blitz for 10 short bursts. No matter what meat you use, it should be room temperature before you cook with it.

Preheat grill to high or a cast iron pan to medium-high. If you are working wth a grill open it during preheating, scrape it down, and apply oil to the grill with either a silicon brush or some paper towel and tongs. Close it up and then let it come to full heat.

Form the ground beef into 5oz patties. To do this, weigh or or guess 5 ounces worth of meat and start gently slapping it from palm to palm. Keep doing this and the patty will take shape. Once your patty is formed, press a divot in the top with your thumb. This will prevent ‘bowling ball burgers’ as it’ll compensate for the burger’s tendency to constrict.

Once the grill/pan is crazy hot (you want the grill at 500 degrees), season the burgers liberally with kosher salt and pepper. Place them down on your surface. Do not touch them. When it comes time to flip, get the flipper beneath, place your fingers on the top of the burger, and gently flip over. If the burger is sticking, let it cook a little more. But a hot, oiled surface should not cause this problem.

For medium rare, cook at four minutes a side. Only cook home-ground beef, or beef from the butcherto medium rare.

For well done, cook at six minutes a side.

If you want a cheese burger, toss your cheese on in the last thirty seconds, and put down a lid over the burger.

Once off the heat, let the burgers sit for five minutes on a rack if possible. Take this time to toast the burger buns (top rack of the grill for a minute works great). Resting is crucial for all dry-cooked meat as it lets the juices redistribute. Don’t believe me? Cut into one burger immediately, then let another rest five minutse before cutting. Look at the amount of juice on the plate and compare. Then give the dry burger you cut to someone else.

And that’s it! I like my burgers with lettuce, tomato, onion, pickle, and some homemade mayonnaise but you can dress your burger as you wish. So long as the patty is good, the toppings are up to you.

Since the last post was all about exploring weird new areas in food and science, I thought I’d share my take on a classic dish. This is really a dead simple recipe, and most of the steps are even optional. The trick is to roast a dry, well-seasoned chicken at 450 for around 50 minutes. You do that, it’s gonna taste good.

You know you want it.

Roast Chicken

Preparation time: 20 minutes + 12 hours in brine + 1 hour of tempering
Cooking time: 50 minutes
Yield: 2-4 depending on how hungry people are

Ingredients:

• 1 whole chicken, ideally free range
• Salt and pepper
• Thyme (optional)
• Root vegetables (optional)

Hardware:

• 1 ovenproof pan
  1 cutting board that can handle some chicken juice

Short Directions:

Brine. Preheat to 450. Pat Dry. Cut out the wishbone. Bring to room temperature. Truss. Season. Toss the root veggies in the pan. Roast on top of the root veggies for 50 minutes. Rest. Carve. Snack.

See? Super easy, one-pot recipe. Here’s a breakdown of each step and why I do it the way I do for those of you with questions and patience.

Brine (optional)

What?

A brine is a salt and sugar bath which is used, for example, to make pickles. Think of it as a marinade, except with salt instead of acid.

Why?

Through the magic of science (diffusion and osmosis) the bird will become juicier and more flavourful. This is optional, but highly recommended. The brine should be kept cold, either in a cooler with ice, or in the fridge.

How?

A brine is 16 parts water, 1 part salt, ½ part sugar. So a gallon of water would have a cup of salt and half a cup of sugar. A litre would have 1/4 cup salt, 1/8 cup sugar. Mix these up, add any other flavours you like, and immerse the chicken. I use a ziptop freezer bag in the fridge, but use whatever you have handy. It’s important to keep the chicken cold.

Preheat your oven to 450

Why?

Crispy skin is your friend with chicken. If you cook at a lower temperature, you’re not going to get the desired crispiness. Low and slow until ‘falling off the bone’ gets you dry, mealy chicken. Save low and slow for your pot roasts or a great chicken stew.

Pat dry

Why?

When dry cooking, steam is your enemy. Steam creates rubbery, rather than crispy skin. The only moisture when roasting a chicken should be in the meat itself.

How?

Use paper towels or a tea towel you don’t mind washing. Completely pat the chicken dry inside and out. If you’re hardcore and have a clean fridge, put it uncovered in the fridge for a few hours.

Cut out the wishbone

Why?

If you’ve ever tried to carve a chicken, the dratted wishbone is what gets in the way of cutting off the breast perfectly. If you remove the wishbone before the chicken is cooked, you won’t have any problems with tasty juices escaping.

How?

Scrape at the top and sides of the back cavity of the chicken with a paring knife until you see the wishbone. Then, run the knife along the sides, wiggle your fingers in, and yank it free.

Bring to room temperature

Why?

By tempering (slowly bringing to desired state) your meat, you ensure that the cooking is even and that your recipes’ advice actually works. If you start with cold meat, you immediately drop the oven temperature and create uneven, and unreliable cooking.  Trust me, this is safe. We’re cooking it all the way through.

Truss

Why?

By tying the legs tightly to the chicken, you’re ensuring even cooking by increasing the density. Not doing this will result in different doneness for your white and dark meat.

How?

Season the inside with some salt and pepper, and then watch this video.

Season

Why?

To season means to coat with salt and pepper. Everything you cook of any kind needs seasoning of some sort. Meat especially. Season from higher up because the salt will disperse and get you a more even coating.

How?

Pinch kosher or fine sea salt between thumb and forefinger, and then sprinkle from around a foot above the chicken. Cover the entire bird, and repeat with pepper. If you have it, sprinkle some fresh thyme leaves overtop.

Roast

How?

If you have some root vegetables, chop ‘em up and put them beneath the chicken. Tasty! Anyways, stick it in the oven for 50-60 minutes. For a ‘normal’ chicken, which is around three pounds, go for 50. An oven thermometer should read no less than 161 in the thigh. It will continue to cook for a bit once out of the oven. Ignore those lying fucks who tell you that chicken should be served at 180.

Rest

Why?

ALWAYS REST MEAT AFTER COOKING. When meat cooks, the juices inside become active and rush to the surface. Think of a fist tightening in the water. Letting the meat rest is like relaxing the fist, which allows the juices to redistribute. Rest for minimum ten minutes, but twenty or even half an hour is good too.

Carve

How?

By removing the wishbone you have made life very easy. With a long, sharp knife slice along the top of the breast, and then down. Gently pull the knife back along the entire length of the chicken until you hit the bottom, making sure you’re outside, not inside of the ribs. You’ll hit the thigh and wing joints, and may have to wiggle that free. You should end up a leg & thigh piece, and a wing & breast piece.

Snack

Grab the little oysters from the small of the back, and the crispy pope’s nose. You’ve earned it!

Serve

Your nicely cut half chicken can be served on top of your roasted root veggies. Pour over the pan juices and then sprinkle with a bit of finishing salt if you have it. Share, and enjoy!

But since I started cooking, I’ve had an obsession with making a good ragu bolognese. Normally served over spaghetti (traditionally tagliatelle) it’s the Italian sauce that everybody knows and loves. I’ve never made pasta from scratch, though I intend to learn, but I have learned how to make the next best thing.

Gnocchi.

Gnocchi (pronounced nyo-kee, I got this wrong for years) are wonderful little potato dumplings which are as versatile as pasta, much easier to make, and something which most cooks don’t really bother with. I’ve made them several times now, and have generally been quite satisfied with the results. This, with the ragu, are two things I know I can make well, and know I can impress people with.

So today I present the dish which I feel is the signature Dave dish – Gnocchi Di Patate Con Ragu Di Agnello. Or boiled potatoes dumplings in a lamb meat sauce. It should be noted that I usually make my ragus with ground pork, but thought I’d give lamb a whirl.

Ragu With Lamb:

1 pound ground lamb
1/3 cup of diced red wine salami (this can be substituted with proscuitto, parma ham, pancetta, good bacon, etc…)
2 small onions
2 stalks of celery
2 medium sized carrots
Good extra virgin olive oil
1 tin of tomato paste
1/2 cup of whole milk
1/2 cup of chicken broth (you should really use white wine for this, which I didn’t have at the time of writing)
A good handful of fresh basil or oreagno. Rosemary also might work since we’ve got lamb here.

Most of what I’ve learned here comes from reading the fantastic website http://fxcuisine.com, a food blog by a French speaking Swiss home cook who has done several ragu recipes, as well as variety of different research from cookbooks and other web sites. This is a blend of various recipes and techniques I’ve read, and certainly not that traditional. Oh well!

As I was quite intent on making this properly, I started with meticulously dicing my vegetables. Small tiny cubes, all the same size… which I fail at achieving, but this is about as close as I can hope to without serious, regular practice.

After that I put my mitts on this beautiful salami we picked up from the Mediterranean market in town, and diced a good chunk of it up. A little easier to work with than the vegetables since it’s one consistent shape.

Meanwhile I had thrown a big pot on the stove with several turns of olive oil in the bottom to heat up at medium-low heat. Once ready, all those little veggies cubes go in to build a soffrito; the base for the sauce. After I’ve given the onions plenty to sweat about, the salami goes in as well to add its fatty goodness. This all merrily sizzled away for a while until it was time for the second phase of my insane plan.

Now came  a trick. I grabbed my ground lamb, and switch burners on the stove – moving my large pot to a small burner. Shoving all the vegetables to one side, I turned the burner to medium high, and on the empty pot, slowly added the lamb, which I roughed up with a metal flipper as it browned. As each batch got browned, that got stirred in with veggies and shoved to the side.

Describing this as tedious doesn’t do it justice – the lamb seemed much harder to break up than other ground meats, and I ended up with a few meatballs in the pot. They broken down during the cooking process, so no harm done! Step two was sauce reduction! This obviously required a higher heat, so back on the main burner, it got cranked up to medium high, and I quickly added my chicken broth. This reduced in no time to a very thick consistency. After that, the milk.

Since whole milk is best for this, I tossed in a bit of cream as well. This all merrily reduced down around everything. Without the tomato, this would still be just delicious. But we’re adding tomato anyways. Now I’m always faced of the choice between canned whole plum tomatoes or tomato paste. Whole plum tomatoes give a consistency of millions of vegetables chunks in an extremely thin sauce. Tomato paste makes everything extremely thick and has a wonderful, velvety texture. Going with paste for the gnocchi.

Now, for the more patient, you can repeat the same step I did with browning the meat – scraping away a spot on high heat for you to caramelize the tomato paste in small batches. I didn’t do that this time, and just stirred the can in willy nilly, but it’s definitely worth the time.

Now everything looks a good deal like a proper ragu, and it’s time to let the flavours marry. This got thrown down to a low heat, lidded, with a pitcher of filtered water nearby in case it gets dry. I’d recommend letting a sauce like this cook for at least two hours, but I went hardcore and it cooked for at least four by the end of it. We tried a few pictures here, but there was too much steam to really get a good shot, so you can imagine the previous photos but uh, red.

Either way, this gave me time to play some Civilization and destroy the Carthaginians!

Gnocchi:

Four medium sized potatoes
At least a cup and a half of flour
One egg
Salt and pepper
Lots and lots of boiling waterfall
Couple tablespoons of butterfly
A generous helping of high quality parmesan (I used grana padano, but parmiagno reggiano is what you want)
A potato ricer or mill

Whereas the ragu really just involves chopping things up, fiddling with meat in a pan, and waiting for half a day, the gnocchi is a little easier to get wrong. The idea is to make a dough with mashed potatoes, roll it out, chop it into little dumplings, shape the dumplings, and boil them for a few minutes. I added the extra step of briefly frying them in butter, because I’m not going to pretend this is health food and butter is delicious.

Water is an absolute no-no in gnocchi dough, and so skinning and chopping up the potatoes to boil them conventionally isn’t an option. Usually, I bake them, but I don’t want to wait an hour – and so they just went into the water with skins on! Much more wholesome than having the little layabouts go skinny dipping.

Forty-five minutes in, the potatoes were done – during this time I also diced up some basil and oregano and threw it in the ragu. Reason I waited is that after a certain point I find fresh herbs go bitter. At this time, I had to fish out the spuds and peel the bastards.

This little step was about as much fun as getting locked in a closet with fourteen rabid cats and Hitler  – simply because the potatoes were REALLY hot. I couldn’t really wait though – if the potatoes cool, it screws up the texture of the gnocchi as they get all starchy. So I mangle a couple with a spoon before I give up and burn my fingers removing the skins. Now, it’s time to mash.

A potato masher, in this case, will not do. Gnocchi can’t have ANY lumps, and you want an airy texture. An invention my mother got me hooked on, the potato ricer, is perfect. If you like mashed potatoes – buy a potato ricer. Nothing gives them a nicer texture. Here’s a shot of the potato ricer in action.

Oh yeah.

Now it’s the fun part! The riced potato got ten minutes to cool down as forming dough whilst screaming in agony isn’t really worth it. The technique here is (I think) the same one used to make paste dough. Form a little well in your potatoes, and then drop in an egg.

Once that’s done, I beat the egg within the potatoes, seasoned with some salt and pepper, and started caving in the sides of the well.

As I did this, flour got liberally sprinkled over everything. This continued until the well had completely caved in, and enough flour was added to lose the stickiness. At this point, it got treated like a normal dough and was quickly kneaded into a ball. Gnocchi dough should be airy – a minimum of work to make it just right. Also, for any of you who bake, nothing quite feels as nice as potato dough. So smooth and silky. Almost… sensual.

*cough*

Now comes the tedious part. Ripping off a handful of dough from the dough ball, I quickly rolled it out into a long dowel-shaped… stick a little wider than my thumb.

Using a fork, I chopped off 1/2 inch bits, and dusted those with flour. Now, these can be boiled like gnocchi and will be fine. But they’re not fun to look at, and won’t hold sauce. Time for shaping!

This was the hardest thing for me to learn, and frankly, I think this recipe is the first time I got most of them just right. The trick is to take a fork, hold it at a 45 degree angle, press down the dumpling, and roll it off. The undersides will curl up, and the top will be creased. Like so:

I vainly tried to get Tracy to help/join in the fun, but she knew tedious work when she saw it, and was also battling Gandhi for control of the known world. C’est la vie. It should also be noted that consistency when doing this is EXTREMELY hard. To get every gnocchi to be of a perfect size and shape take either hours of work or years of practice. I don’t have either to spare. Still, they turned out alright.

So now it’s setup time. While forming the gnocchi I’d tossed out the potato skin water (ewww) and set on a fresh pot with plenty of salt. A plate was set up for the gnocchi, and finally a pan with some butter in it to quickly sauté the little buggers.

Cooking them, luckily, is the easiest part. Going with around nine at a time (I had a big pot) I tossed the gnocchi in, and simply waited for them to float. Once they floated, they were done – into the pan and another batch into the water. I used a small sieve to lift them out of the water. They can’t be poured out or they’ll break up and all the hard work will have been for naught.

Either way, once they were out of the pan and hit the plate – they were done! Onto the gnocchi went a hearty ladle of ragu, and finally a generous helping of grana padano!

The Verdict:

Well thank GOD these turned out. If this was going to be my “I’ll try to cook something I know I’m good at” blog post I’d look a right ass if they didn’t. Either way, the gnocchi were light and delicious, and words cannot describe how good the ragu was. Lamb was a great choice for the ragu and added an incredible depth of flavour to the rich, velvety sauce. Perfection is a poor word, so I’ll say that everything here was as good as I could have ever hoped and may be one of my best meals ever. Yay me!

In the history of mankind, perhaps the universe, I don’t believe that there is any more substance that has evolved on our planet more irritating than corn silk. Don’t try to lead me astray with your lies, either. Removing it under running water, slicing around the bottom, just removing the stuff by hand, even using (gasp) a microwave. I’ve tried them all, and they are LIES. The stuff can never be completely removed.

With that out of the way, I present my triumphant return to food blogging! Both of my readers have missed my sporadic updates terribly, and I do enjoy writing about my attempts to cook. Today, I present a grilled chicken sandwich with aioli, along with a grilled corn salad!

Grilled chicken sandwich:

Some soft buns
Chicken breasts
Whatever marinade strikes your fancy (I was lazy and used some bottled salad dressing)
A delightful plethora of whatever vegetables you have on hand (tomatoes, button mushrooms, iceberg lettuce)
Garlic aioli (recipe below)
Sammich cheese (I used edam, but whatever pulls your goalie)
And some sort of sauce for the chicken I should have used, but didn’t

I am of a strong opinion that chicken breasts are the most overrated cut of meat on earth. They are usually cooked until bone dry, have very little flavour, and are twice as expensive as the rest of the bird. Give me thighs to work with any day. However, I accede that breasts are ideal for sandwiches, and I found five of them for nine bucks.

Sandwichy Aioli:

One Egg yolk
Three cloves of garlic
Small handful of parsley
Oil (I used corn oil since I didn’t want to exhaust Judy’s supply of olive oil, but I would have preferred to use the olive oil)
Around three tablespoons lemon juice

Aioli is something I’ve never actually had, so this is a new adventure for me. Chicken sandwiches love mayo, so an aioli seems a logical way to add some flavour to the dish. Parsley is not a typical ingredient in aioli, but I had a bunch of it on hand. Why not?

Corn salad:

Four cobs of corn
Chili powder
One yellow pepper
One red pepper
An avocado
A couple of limes
Olive oil
Couple teaspoons of honey
Handful of parsley

I roughly ripped off a recipe from Rob Rainford. It seems like a great summer salad, and a welcome departure from the usual three salads that feature at Tracy’s place. (Although Judy makes a kick ass potato salad, I will admit).

Here’s a shot of a bunch of the ingredients I’m using:

The theme for tonight’s dinner is NOT USING THE OVEN. Why? Because when I showed up it was around 38 degree Celsius. For my imaginary American readers, that’s around 100 Fahrenheit. Luckily, as the day went on it got a little cooler. So we arrive, armed with an ass-load of groceries (for loading into a very LARGE ass, bearing in mind) and after a while of chatting with everyone, I get fidgety and decide to work on the aioli.

For the uninitiated, aioli is effectively a garlic mayonnaise, although I tend to see it used more as a sauce than as a sandwich spread in what I’ve read. I’ve also never actually eaten the stuff, I just know it looks good, and have successfully created mayonnaise at least once before.

So the trick with mayonnaise, and thus aioli is to start with an egg yolk (whole eggs work as well), and while beating it like I do jokes into the ground, followed by adding oil drop by drop by drop until your arm hurts and you have finally gone mad. This is known as emulsifying – combining two ingredients which do not normally mix. A true cook; being one of talent, consistency, and a desire to execute every recipe with utmost perfection would be using a hand whisk in order to get the luxurious, almost fluffy texture from good mayonnaise.

I used a food processor, which will produce a tasty paste.

Here’s me looking attractive and, I think, trying to exorcize the food processor.

In go the egg yolk and the tasty bits, being the raw garlic and parsley. I get the processor going, plant my feet, and geeeently lean the bottle of oil towards the processor. At home I use a squeeze bottle for this so I can actually do drop by drop. Here, I manage a thin stream. This goes on for God knows how long, with the entire ordeal turning a pleasing shade of green. Lemon juice is introduced midway through, and finally I get a texture that’s a LITTLE runnier than typical mayo, but it’ll serve as a sandwich spread.

It should be noted that it should not be consumed by the spoonful. Being a dutiful cook, I took a big taste, and nearly killed everyone around me. LOTS of garlic.

Moving swiftly along, I then set to prepping the grill with some advice from Gary, sage grill master. Apparently grills left on high heat will explode! I didn’t need a high heat anyway, and as it was heating up, I set to the corn. First, I mixed up my dressing of olive oil and lime juice for the salad, pulled down the corn husks, spent EIGHTY BILLION YEARS getting rid of the silk, and then brushed the corn with the dressing before sprinkling it with chili powder and pulling back up the husks.

So dressed, the corn went off to the grill. Six minutes or so a side, and half that for the chicken. Pretty easy to time. The corn went on, and I proceeded to dice up my peppers, growing progressively lazy. First half of a yellow pepper was perfect little cubes, second half was a little worse. By the time I was on the avocado every slice was a beautiful, unique snowflake with a distinct personality. I then sloppily diced up the parsley, threw that in, bolted out to flip the corn, ran back in, and madly chopped up veggies for the sandwich.

Here’s the grilling corn:

Grabbing the chicken and wiping off what marinade I could, I ran out, took the corn off the grill, put the chicken on, and then back in to finish everything up!

There was still some damn corn silk, even after being on the grill, but apparently the shit is healthy for you. Cures syphilis or something. Corn gets diced, thrown in the salad along with the dressing, and salad is DONE!

Here’s a shot of me dicing corn:

And here’s a shot of the completed product.

My time spent at an Irish pub as a line cook had me cook a zillion chicken breasts, so I have a good idea of when they’re done, whisk them off of the grill to protect their tasty juices. Gary wanted his breast cooked a little more, so I did that while I toasted the buns. The chicken was done perfectly by the end of it, maximum juiciness and not a hint of pink. Go me!

Finally back in, I slice the chicken breasts halfway through to ‘butterfly them before building the sadnwiches. The sandwiches are assembled with some margarine and aioli, stacks of veggies, and a big helping of corn salad.

Finito! Please don’t judge the poorly cut cheese.

The Verdict:

Chicken Sammich:

The portions of vegetables, flavour of the aioli, and texture of the chicken breast were all perfect. Unfortunately, the marinade made little dent into the flavour of the chicken, and the vegetables were extremely bland. My fault for using the blandest forms of lettuce and mushroom, but even the tomatoes were flavourless! It could have used just a little more flavour – so next time I’m adding a sauce to the chicken on top of the aioli. This wasn’t bad so much as failed my expectations, but I’d make this again with a switch in the ingredients.

Corn Salad:

This was a massive hit with everyone who tried it, and I was extremely pleased. The corn could have been done longer, but it was still sweet, crunchy, and juicy – with the lime dressing adding an extra dimension of awesome. I may skip on the avocados, and provided I can ever get Tracy to like the stuff, add some cilantro or arugula. Unlikely on both fronts, but I can hope!

With the cats hungrily waiting for anything to drop, I chop up the roast and pile it neatly on the cutting board. The cats, thwarted, walk away sadly and perch in the living room window. I toss some flour on a plate and mix in some kosher salt and some freshly ground pepper, then get to the messy job of rolling the meat in the flour mixture. It coats my fingers. I shake my fist at Dave, who suggested the flour in the first place.

As I’m frying the meat, I remember asking my mom what she did for stew, since I couldn’t remember her ever using beef broth. Mom’s trick was to fry the meat and add some water to what was left afterward, then use that for the base. I didn’t get any meat drippings, which I’m going to assume is the fault of the flour. No worries, we have plenty of beef broth in the fridge.

After the first round of beef is fried, I take a moment to sample some. Maybe Dave is on to something with this coat-meat-with-flour-then-fry stuff. After I finish frying all of the beef, I toss it in the slow cooker and add the beef broth.

I’m sure if anyone who knew what they were doing watched my crude, almost prehistoric, method to chopping vegetables, they’d probably have a coronary. I’m not as bad as I once was – Dave has been able to teach me a thing or two. Regardless, I believe my favourite part of this whole endeavour is chopping the onions and smashing the garlic. And once it’s all in the pan, it’s probably my favourite smell too.

I get the onions and garlic in the pot with the beef and tackle the next step: potatoes. Dave has a peeler he uses. It’s faster than using a knife, but I’m not as comfortable with it. I decide to use the peeler anyway. There must be some progress. The last time I used it, I flung no less than three-quarters of the potatoes into the sink trying to peel them. This time, only one of the five hit the sink.

If you study the chopped potatoes closely, you’ll see the sizes vary. I got halfway though and decided I was cutting them too small. I’m sure they’ll all taste fine when we sit down to eat.

After chopping up three stalks of celery, I realised I should have put them in with the garlic and onions. So back to the frying pan, heat ‘em up a bit so they’re not as crunchy, and into the pot. Next up, the carrots. Chop one, eat one. Cooking is fun!

I let everything sit in the beef broth for a while before adding some more water, on the off-chance it might give it some more flavour. About 45 minutes later, I add water. Planning on adding barley to the stew, I throw in a little extra. After the water, I toss in some fresh thyme from Dave’s window herbs.

I rifle through the fridge to see what else we can throw in. Zucchini! After that, there’s barley, and now the entire thing is stewing away, waiting for Dave to get home from work.

How does cooking fit into this?

I’m all alone at my parents’ place. They have a nice kitchen with some nice tools. And there was some leftover pumpkin in the fridge. So armed with Mom’s recipe and a fresh stack of paper muffin cups, I decided to do a little baking. Unlike cooking, I’m not too bad at baking. I make a killer peanut butter cookie too. Also, I am very much in love with Mom’s big ol’ KitchenAid mixer.

And then there’s the fact that this blog has been horribly neglected. I apologise for this.

Pumpkin Muffins.

It may sound a little strange, but these are a long-time favourite. Mom’s been making them for as long as I can remember. No idea where she got the recipe though. A co-worker once told me how he hated pumpkins. He ate the muffin though.

Start with mixing the eggs and sugar – four eggs, two cups of sugar. I doubled everything, which gave me about four dozen muffins when all the baking was done.

Next throw in and mix up a cup and a quarter of oil and two cups of pumpkin. I’m pretty sure you have to use more if you use fresh pumpkin, but I’d need confirmation on that one. I just used the stuff from the can. Tracy and grater is rarely a good idea. Plus, where do you find pumpkins in April?

In a separate bowl, toss in the dry ingredients. Three cups of flour, two teaspoons of baking soda, three teaspoons of cinnamon, two of baking powder, and one teaspoon of salt. And don’t tell me you don’t put salt in your baking. I don’t want to hear that. One teaspoon of salt is not going to give you high blood pressure. It’s there to react with the baking soda.

After the dry stuff is mixed, throw in the egg and pumpkin mixture. Fold in chocolate chips (butterscotch chips work nicely too, if you can keep your butterscotch-chip-loving children out of your baking cupboard).

Oven should be at 350 degrees. The temperature in this oven and what the dial says are two different things, so I cooked the muffins for about 17 minutes, checking at around 14 to see how close to done the were.

And really, that’s it. Four dozen muffins in a short amount of time.

Anyway! While washing clothes this afternoon, I decided that I would like mashed potatoes for lunch. Then I got to thinking that within two hours of lunch, Dave would be home. And Dave would want to cook dinner. So why don’t I boil up a lot of potatoes, mash some of them, and turn the rest into cream of potato soup? We have milk, we have chicken broth, we have a billion pounds of potatoes, what could go wrong?

I peel the potatoes using Dave’s nifty peeler, rather than a paring knife. I like the paring knife. I’m good with the paring knife. When it comes to peelers, I have nightmares about peeling the skin off my fingers. I have no idea how many potatoes I peeled, but using the peeler was slightly faster than a knife. Yes Dave, you did tell me so.

However, the problem I had with the peeler was that while trying to peel the second half of the potato, the already-peeled part I was holding on to became slippery. About half of the potatoes went flying into the sink at some point. At this point, I decide I hate peeling potatoes. I can’t wait to finish. But the pot doesn’t look like there’s enough in it, so I peel up probably eight more poor-excuse-for-spuds.

Around Christmas, Dave bought a potato ricer. I admit, I scoffed at first. I like my potatoes whipped so I can eat them with a straw. But after several rounds of garlic mashed potatoes, I conceded defeat. This is the coolest invention ever.

I load up the ricer and attempt to smash my own spuds. Magic! I load it up a second time. By now, I figure I’m doing something wrong. My hands hurt. I give up. So part of the potatoes are mashed. I eat these for lunch.

The recipe for the soup I was looking at said using mashed potatoes is good. But my hands hurt, so I pack it in. I’ll follow a different recipe that says to just mash the potatoes as the soup cooks. I like this idea better. I also get this brilliant idea to take pictures and chronicle the rest of the event.

Dave likes to watch YouTube videos of Gordon Ramsay doing his thing. There are several good reasons for this – like giving Dave a good idea what each step will look like. Personally, I don’t have the kind of dedication he does, and I end up watching this:

Cars and building things are more interesting to me than cooking. It’s just how I am. And these guys are hilarious.

Next up! Frying bacon, garlic, and onions. So, do I fry the bacon first, then throw in the onions and garlic? Or do I do the garlic and onions first, then try to get the bacon in there? Or should I just use separate pans? I decide on frying the bacon first. I hit the fridge and grab the package of bacon. Bacon Shadow, it’s called. I still don’t know what a bacon shadow would be, or what this is supposed to mean, but I open it up and try to take out a piece of bacon. It falls apart. I try again. It falls apart. Again. I take half of the bacon at once, thinking I’ll break it up and fry it in smaller pieces.

Now, I didn’t take the top half of the bacon stack, or the bottom half. I took the left half of the bacon. It just fell apart that way. I’m losing faith in the Bacon Shadow. So I chop up the left half, throw the right half back in the fridge for Dave to be surprised later, and fry it up.

As the bacon is frying, I chop up about six cloves of garlic and two onions. They’re small. When the bacon looks like it needs it, I try to flip the bits over, but the grease is splattering. If there’s one thing that scares me as much as bees and spiders, it’s spitting bacon grease. I move it over to a cold burner and wait a couple seconds. There sure is a lot of grease. I panic. I don’t want all that grease in my onions and garlic and soup. I try to drain the grease into a cup, but the bacon keeps falling in. To fix this, I move all the bacon into a different bowl and then dump, then I move the bacon back to the pan, throw in the onions and garlic, and turn the burner back on. Now there isn’t enough grease. There is, however, a big bottle of garlic-flavoured olive oil. Since I don’t think I have enough garlic anyway, I use this. Everything fries happily. The smell makes me hungry.

The Pan Mixture is almost done frying – then I remember there’s celery in the fridge. The celery is sad and tired. And there are only four stalks. I feel kind of bad for it, but I chop it up and throw it in the pan. Now I’ve over-done the onions. I stare at it and hope Dave doesn’t notice.

Meanwhile, there’s a pot full of potatoes. Some are mashed, some are not. I decide not to mash the rest – partially because I like chunks of potato in my soup and partially because I’m worried I’ll end up wrecking Dave’s potato ricer and that will be the end of those lovely garlic mashed potatoes. So I dump in the chicken broth. There’s just over two cups of it. I give it a quick stir and decide that when I add the milk, it’ll be too runny. Throw in two handfuls of flour (I don’t measure things most of the time), whisk, dump in. This is now looking not too bad.

At this point, I get a very important phone call about a possible job in India. I wander around, talking on the phone, occasionally stirring the pot. I get off the phone and realise I haven’t added any spices.

Dave loves spices. He has a pretty decent collection of them. There’s only one problem. We procrastinate. And that means we haven’t labelled the spice jars yet. Dave knows his spices. I can’t tell the difference between mustard powder and curry powder until I stick my nose in and inhale deeply. Please, don’t try that at home. Anyway! I added a liberal dose of thyme – again, no idea because I never measure my ingredients. I think it was about four tablespoons though. Then there was some salt, some pepper, and bay leaves.

Side note: I love bay leaves. Not so much for their taste, as for fishing them out of a pot and screaming foliage! at Dave. And I tell him about how when I was a child, after my dad finished raking the leaves up, I’d jump in them. And Dad would pull me out and beat out the flames. (This, of course, is an Emo Phillips joke.)

And the soup does it’s thing. It thickens nicely, it looks delicious, and I have absolutely no bread to go with it. A nice loaf of sourdough would have been perfect. Alas.

I let the soup do it’s thing for a while longer, until Dave gets home. Naturally, he is surprised that I have cooked dinner. I recount to him everything that I’ve done and insist he add whatever extra spices he thinks are important. For future pots of soup, I now know to add a bit of lemon juice, white pepper, and more thyme.

I didn’t bother taking a picture of what the soup looked like when it was put into a bowl, because it looked exactly the same as it did in the pot.

Also, missing from this feature: I didn’t review any beer. I think I had a can of Coke.

Verdict: Delicious! I even love my potato soup! Potato soup is fool proof, any idiot can make it!