Lunch with pop stars

Until that record deal comes through, this is as close to eating with Beyoncé and JT as any of us are going to get.

St. Patrick's Day with Many Tasty Returns

Special guest blogger: my wife, and the baker of the Franklin household,  Xanklin73

If the way to someone's heart is through their stomach, wouldn't a sample of its special dishes tell you something about the country that it comes from? That was the question that Team Franklin decided to explore in our latest set of informal cooking challenges. Since we're not jetting off on any international culinary expeditions right now, we decided to use our kitchen as a backdrop and source all of our recipes on the Internet. Thinking less about making something "authentic" than making something that's just "fun", we launched into this with gusto last week.

Home cooking -- and especially baking -- have become huge stress-relievers for me lately. As a perfectionist-modern-feminist-turned-web-freelancer-slash-mommy-on-leave-from-her-office-job (you get the idea), there can be too much happening and too little time in which to handle everything. And spare time? Not a chance.  That said, home cooking has offered me an unexpectedly still oasis to creatively problem-solve while getting food on the plate for the people I care most about. It's the very ultimate in mutli-tasking, so I will call that a win. Spending time in my "oasis",  I've loved rediscovering vintage cookbooks that help me learn terms and techniques that used to be considered basic decades ago. And I love the challenge that comes from moving from one project to another and making the tools I have work for me.

Buoyed by such great programming like "Chopped" and "Top Chef", my husband and I have both discovered that we both really like expressing our creativity through cooking. We've discovered that it is infinitely more satisfying to try or improvise a new dish until we can do it well and make it our own than simply selecting the dish from a menu somewhere. And what better incentive to excel than to cook for people that you love?

Last week, I experimented with an eggless recipe for Parkin (a ginger cake or gingerbread from Northern England). My biggest discovery? Team Franklin really, really hates molasses. Though the recipe wasn't a favorite, I really loved the weight of history behind it -- origins of this dessert possibly stretching back into England's "Gunpowder Plot" of 1605 or even earlier into Viking times. A pretty impressive feat for what's essentially a one-bowl dessert. Here's a great Parkin recipe that serves up both the history and the "how-to" , similar to recipe I tried, this version includes one egg.  

In honour of St. Patrick's Day, we've tackled one Irish dish in the morning and planned another for supper. Irish Soda bread was bumped till next year in favour of something with a bit of sweetness. I found a wonderfully understated Irish tea cake recipe  that I baked that morning. I have no idea if it's authentically Irish but I still loved it. It's basically a simple butter cake sprinkled with confectioners sugar. We ate it while it was still warm from the oven, slightly more warm than our breakfast drinks .  What I liked most was that this recipe was not too sweet and presented with a nice delicate crumb. Once this cake made it to the plate, I found it difficult to stop eating -- especially after whipped cream and strawberries were added. 

With many tasty returns,

Mrs. Franklin

Top of the morning to you

"Kiss me I'm drunk...or Irish...or whatever"
Seen on a T-shirt

Ahhh, St. Patrick's Day - the day where everyone is a little bit Irish, and uses the day to get as drunk as an Irish lord. In the midst of all the parades, and shamrocks, and the wearing of green, I've heard that some people even manage to head to church services to honour Saint Patrick and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland. A lot of people, however, head to their local tavern. Back when I had the time for that sort of thing, I went to the Irish Village in the Market as soon as it opened one St. Paddy's Day. I had to see what all the fuss was about after hearing someone had been pulled over for drunk driving before nine that morning. Is it better to enjoy St. Patrick’s Day with an early morning buzz?

I remember slowly itching my way through the packed to capacity Heart and Crown, finally managing to score a seat at the bar at the Snug Pug. As it was the busiest day in the drinking calendar, it took some time before I got the stout I ordered; it was a bit too early for a shot of whiskey. People were shoulder-to-shoulder enjoying the live bands playing various Irish shanties, but as my tastes in Irish music is limited to U2 and House of Pain, I just sipped my beer. Maybe it was because I was by myself at the time, but I didn't see the big deal about drinking that early while listening to "Danny Boy" - it was barely tolerable in the evening, as far as I'm concerned. Even when I hooked up with some friends later in the evening, our drinking was far from the epic proportions that St. Patrick's Day is known for. It reminded me of a lot of the build-up and letdown that surrounds New Year's Eve. This year, I'm going to take it easy and spend the day with my wife and our little leprechaun, and some homemade Irish stew.

This recipe is based on the one on allrecipes.com, with a few personal changes.

Ingredients

410 g thickly sliced bacon, diced
1.6 kg boneless lamb shoulder, cut into bite-sized chunks
2 g salt
0.6 g ground black pepper
40 g all-purpose flour
1-3/4 cloves garlic, minced
5/8 large onion, chopped
70 ml water
285 ml beef stock
1 can Guinness stout
5 g white sugar
305 g diced carrots
1-1/4 large onions, cut into bite-size pieces
1-3/4 potatoes
0.9 g dried thyme
1-1/4 bay leaves
140 ml white wine

1. Place bacon in a large, deep skillet. Cook over medium high heat until evenly brown. Drain, crumble, and set aside.
2. Put lamb, salt, pepper, and flour in large mixing bowl. Toss to coat meat evenly. Brown meat in frying pan with bacon fat.
3. Place meat into stock pot (leave 1/4 cup of fat in frying pan). Add the garlic and yellow onion and saute till onion begins to become golden. Deglaze frying pan with the water and add the garlic-onion mixture to the stock pot with the bacon pieces, beef stock, all of the Guinness, and sugar. Cover and simmer for 1 1/2 hours.
4. Add carrots, onions, potatoes, thyme, bay leaves, and the wine to the pot. Reduce heat, and simmer covered for 20 minutes until vegetables are tender.

The Courthouse's Roasted Cauliflower and Garlic Soup

I've been wanting to make a soup for some time now, and when I came across this recipe on the Courtyard Restaurant's website, I figured this past weekend was as good a time as any. I was pleased with the results, I made a very creamy and flavourful soup. Because the recipe made more than what my family and I were willing to eat, I've pared down the recipe, all measurements are assumptions or approximations.

Ingredients
1 bulb garlic, roasted
1.25 heads cauliflower, roasted
2 onions roughly chopped
1.5 stalks celery roughly chopped
1.5 cloves of garlic roughly chopped
0.25 cup butter
salt and pepper to taste
1 bay leaf
4 cups water
1/4 L heavy cream

1. Add cauliflower and half of the onions to a large bowl.  Season with salt and pepper and toss with vegetable oil.  Spread evenly on parchment lined baking sheet and roast in a 450 degree oven until golden brown.  Rotate/toss cauliflower as necessary to prevent uneven browning and burning.
2. Place a head of garlic with its top cut off on a baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil.  Cover with tinfoil, roast in 450 degree oven for approximately 40 minutes.
3. In a large pot add butter, celery, garlic, and the remaining onions until they become translucent.  Add the roasted cauliflower, onions and garlic to the pot, add water, cream and bay leaf.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer.  Cook until the vegetables are very tender. 
4. Use an immersion blender to puree, then pass through a sieve, or use a blender and blend in small batches.  Return the soup to the large pot and heat to desired temperature. 

Here's how it turned out:

Feel free to leave comments, as it's the only way I'll learn.