I can’t wait to try this some time.

Update July 5, 2020: link replaced with Internet Archive, and then I gave it a more permanent home on AllTheBest.Recipes.

The neck was via Big Lou’s Butcher from Sloping Hills, and the cheeks were some of the last pork from Cutter Ranch that we prepped at Pete’s Meats. I grilled some neck in the summer and it was delicious.

Apparently, according to Roland, I came close to doing adobo.

The marinade was roughly as follows:

• 2 Tbsp minced fresh ginger
• 1 clove minced garlic
• ½ finely chopped onion
• ½ cup chopped cilantro
• 1 Tbsp sesame oil
• 1 Tbsp miso in ¼ cup water
• 1 Tbsp soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp spicy vinegar
• salt & pepper

Served over rice.

J.P.’s Big Daddy Biscuits Recipe - Allrecipes.com

I made this biscuit recipe for the second time tonight (again as an accompaniment to tomato soup). I need to remember to not roll them out so thin, because they actually steam from the inside and puff up nicely when thicker.

Home-style chicken curry recipe - Recipes - BBC Good Food.

Modified with tomato paste + carrots + celery instead of canned tomato.

Having made this salad twice now, I wanted to make sure to keep track of the recipe.

The salad is just shredded red & green cabbage. The dressing is tahini lemon garlic, the recipe for which I found over on ohsheglows.com »

You can skip the nutritional yeast, and whipping everything with a fork is just fine, it doesn’t need to go through the blender.

Using the tahini made me think of Na’ama, who gave it to me. She swears that Israeli tahini is the best, and it’s hard to find here in Vancouver.

Modified from a recipe for Hong Kong-style ketchup prawns. Except I don’t keep ketchup in the house, so it’s a chili sauce + tomato paste + agave.

Peanut oil in a wok, with 3 cloves garlic + some large chunks of ginger and a couple of kaffir lime leaves.

A bunch of green onions, and a bunch of basil. These went in after the chili sauce.

I brought back some arbol chilis from Mexico. Used a couple of tablespoons of it, then added a teaspoon of tomato paste plus a teaspon or so of agave syrup. After the prawns went into the hot oil, then I added this sauce. A couple of tablespoons of soy sauce were added at the same time as the greens went in.

Prawns cooking.

Finished product on the table. First time I’ve eaten a lot of shells, plus eaten the insides of the head. Next time, I should’ve used less peanut oil and gotten the shells even crispier before adding more sauce and greens.

This is the pickled ginger recipe I used the other day (and that lots of people have asked about). I used organic turbinado sugar instead of white, and also added some slices of meyer lemons, but otherwise stuck with the recipe / quantities.

8 ounces fresh young ginger root, peeled

1 ½ teaspoons sea salt

1 cup rice vinegar

1/3 cup white sugar

After pulling off this risotto recipe, I'm confident that I'll be cooking risotto more often.

The recipe was mainly an inspiration to caramelize the carrots - I didn't purée any of them, or really follow the rest of the recipe. The flavour of the caramelized carrots really spread through the dish - rosemary was the other note that came through.

Make sure you caramelize the carrots - I had put in a bit too much butter & oil and the carrots sweated out some liquid, so I had to spoon some of it out to get the carrots to brown. Reserve that liquid and add it later, it was deliciously sweet & carrot-y.

The pancetta was very mild in flavour. The more pronounced smokiness of guanciale could have worked, but it would also have competed with the carrots. What was excellent from the pancetta was the fat, which added to the creamy consistency, as well as adding some nice toothsome texture.

I used Better Than Bouillon vegetable stock paste, which worked well (and in general is my favourite prepared stock base).

I briefly considered working in some of the other cheeses we had (eg a mild and creamy blue cheese) but was glad I stuck with 'just' a cup or so of grated Parmesan.

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Weekends are time for me to do more elaborate / longer cooking. I'm the primary cook-er in the household, so I do cook most every day, but cooking is also relaxing downtime for me, especially when I get to try new things, or things that I don't cook very often.

Yesterday was an errand day in general. We bought 10lbs of peaches and apricots coming back from the Okanagan (at the Mariposa fruit stand in Keremeos, to be exact -- recommended by Chris Rich amongst the sea of fruit stands there). By now, it was time to process them in bulk in some way. So I made peach jam and apricot jam.

I've never made peach jam before. I used this Farmstand Peach Jam recipe, although as always, not exactly. I don't like using pectin, and I don't like to put in too much sugar. I ended up taking out a cup of cut up peaches at the last minute since I wanted to stick them in the freezer, and I think that was the error. Or, just that peaches are quite sweet to start with, and without pectin you can't skimp on the sugar. I had originally intended to also make some spicy peach chutney of some kind - I still have those peaches in the freezer, or I could even just use some of the jam and mix it with savoury ingredients to make it.

Next I made apricot jam. My mom makes this all the time, so I was reasonably sure the no-pectin method would work, and it certainly did. It turned out nice and tart. It was a pleasant surprise to find and use Jens Alfke's apricot recipe - a long time blogger whose feed fell from my reader at some point. So, score 1 for a great recipe (since it uses a formula for fruit-to-sugar) and for re-finding a great writer.

This morning I poached a couple of eggs for breakfast. Rachael is a fan of poached eggs, but I usually just find them too fiddly. I took it upon myself to actually look up some egg poaching instructions and they turned out nicely. In short: the water shouldn't be boiling, turn it off as soon as you put the eggs in, put a lid on it, and 3 minutes is about the right time length.

Wandering up Commercial Drive, I decided today would be a seafood day. So, I've got some Qualicum Beach scallop and side stripe shrimp ceviche marinating in the fridge. Recipe in short:

• 10 prawns, remove the shell and chop
• 4 large scallops, chopped
• 1/2 avocado, chopped
• 1/3 cup red onion, minced
• 1/3 cup fresh basil, chopped
• 3 tomatillos, chopped
• juice of 3 limes
• fresh cracked pepper
• small red chile, minced
• 1/3 cup cucumber, chopped

It's marinating now, it may end up gaining some other bits and pieces as I adjust seasonings when it comes out of the fridge.

I'm always on the lookout for regional / unique / church basement cookbooks. I found this Come 'n Get It - Cowboys and Chuckwagons at the "Share Shack" at the Deka Lake dump … sorry, I mean "land fill".

The image below is the first page of the book. The quote says:

"Bacon in the pan,
Coffee in the pot;
Get up an' get it
Get it while it's hot."

The recipes contain a lot of lard, flour, sugar, and beans. Here's the original recipe for Charlie's Doughnuts:

Two tea cups sugar, 3 eggs, 1-1/2 tea cups buttermilk, 2 teaspoons saleratus, 1 teaspoon salt, 6 tablespoons melted lard, flour enough to roll nicely. Boil or fry in lard.

To make things a little easier, I'll let you know that saleratus is baking soda. I never have buttermilk in the house, but apparently putting vinegar in regular milk gets you close.

I'm going to leave the book here for my dad's cabin cookbook collection.

Captured for posterity, although no picture.

Chop 2 shallots and sauté in a bit of olive oil over medium-high heat.

Grate half an apple and add to shallots.

Cut tough stems from chard and roughly chop. Add to shallot apple mixture in pan and stir to mix.

Juice half a Meyer lemon and add to pan. If using a regular lemon, reduce juice used and/or add a pinch of sugar.

Stir to mix well and reduce heat. Simmer for 5 minutes or until chard is tender, stirring occasionally.

Salt to taste.

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These were bought too soon and languished in the fridge for some time, hence the wilted look.

Filling was ricotta, crushed garlic clove, fresh black pepper, salt, minced & sauted onion and some of the zucchinis.

Had the leftover stuffing just stirred into linguini the next day.

I have watched my mom prepare rouladen many times, and I'm sure I've even helped in the past. But, this is the first time I made them on my own (aside from Rachael's thread wrapping help).

Rouladen as I know it is made from beef. You can usually ask the butcher for rouladen cuts, and many butchers will already have it pre-cut (especially the Freybe Outlet Store on Hastings just off Victoria Drive). You don't pound it flat or anything - it comes cut as thin as you need it to be.

The quantities I mention here are for 16 rouladen. You want to figure about 2 per person and/or to have lots of leftovers, because they are delicious. Aside from the 16 strips of beef for the rouladen, you'll also need:

• 1 lb of bacon (get something nice, like double smoked European style, but any bacon will do)
• 4 - 6 large dill pickles (or many smaller baby dills / gherkins)
• 2 - 3 onions
• ~8 Tbsp of Dijon or other hot mustard (about a quarter of a jar)
• something to hold the rouladen together (butcher's string, toothpicks, or random thread from the bottom of your sewing kit)

Mince the bacon and cook it over medium heat (or stick it in the oven) until it's nice and crispy. You'll want to drain the fat / juices as you go (save them!) to make sure it gets crispy. Mince the onions and saute them (perhaps with some of that delicious bacon juice) on low until translucent / tender. Mince the pickles. Once the bacon & onions are done, drain the fat / pat them to soak up some of the fat and let them cool. Once everything is no longer piping hot you can mix all of these things together.

Lay out the rouladen on a counter / workspace and spread with mustard. Do a twist of cracked pepper and salt over each piece of meat as well. Spoon on 2 Tbsp or soon onto one end of the piece of meat. Roll up the meat and secure it. If you're using thread, it's easiest if you do all the rolls, and then have someone help you wrap and tie each bundle.

Remember the bacon juice you saved? Put it in a pan and heat. Brown the rouladen on each side, doing them in batches until they are all browned. Place them in a dutch oven or casserole dish, sprinkling a little flour on them as you layer them in.

Deglaze the pan with water (or beer or wine) and pour over the dish of rouladen. Stir in a Tbsp or so of mustard for a bit more "tang" to the sauce as well as any leftover minced bacon / onion / pickle bits. Add water / liquor as needed so that the rouladen are mostly submerged. Cover and cook at 350°F for 45 minutes or so.

I made this for Lauren's birthday party. We ended up serving it as a "meatatizer" - it was lukewarm and we prepped it by cutting all the thread off and cutting it into slices. The cross section of the rolled meat with the stuffing looks nice on a plate.

Traditionally, you'd have this with potatoes or spätzle, plus some sort of highly cooked vegetable like red cabbage or perhaps some sauerkraut.

The key part of German potato salad for me is the lack of mayonnaise and eggs. I make this up from scratch whenever I make it, but my version always includes two essential ingredients: Dijon mustard as part of the vinaigrette (I like the flavour and tang that it adds) and finely chopped dill pickles (a satisfying crunch and burst of vinegary / salty goodness).

I also usually put in bacon / guanciale / schinken speck, but this time around, knew that there were going to be a number of vegetarians present and skipped the meat products. Hence, I (*gasp*!) accidentally made a vegan potato salad - which I didn't even realize until someone asked what was in it, and it dawned on me that yes, it was indeed a vegan potato salad :P

The full recipe is on Foodista:

Vegan German Potato Salad

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More on the magic of guanciale in the previous post.

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Trying for something vaguely like Anthony's ragout. I remember it had carrots and pork, and the nutmeg seemed a good direction to go.

Ground Pork Ragout

I was going for the Banana Leaf's Rendang Beef curry - which is a completely different dish, but I think I got the coconut right, as well as the sweet + tang + spice.

Spicy Coconut Tumeric Beef