Trophy H Dish of the Day, August 31, 2010.

The Trophy H Lisa Peach Layer.

MrM and MsL, MrD’s and my own long time acquaintances from Texas came to visit on Sunday. This seasonal peach and salmon appetizer was an easy no fuss no muss and tasty way to start the dining. I have named this simple show stopper after the Lovely MsL. My menu featured two contrasting terrines. The Marvellous MrM’s version got layered roasted peaches with ham and pecorino cheese.

Here’s how.
Inside a metal ring form settle some sliced uncooked peaches with thin slices of the best wild smoked salmon you can source and some fresh goat cheese.

Trophy H kitchen tip #???. Make your own ring form rather than buying one of those 30 dollar rings with a fancy label on it from a kitchen store.

I built this terrine up inside a ring form I made from cutting both ends out of an empty tin can. Tuna fish cans are great. If you make your own tin can version, my silent reader, make sure you bend back the sharp lid edges inside the can so you don’t get injured. Save one of the ends of the can to help release the contents when you are ready to plate.

Start with a layer of the fresh peaches. I skinned the peaches for this version but normally I would leave the skins on for a bit of colour and texture. Add salmon. I used sliced salmon because that is what I had but you, my silent reader, could use salmon ends which I imagine would be cheaper but just as suitable for this dish. After the first layer of salmon add some crumpled goat cheese. I used a plain local cheese, a bit on the soft side, but with no herbs or cute hippy extras. Next I added another layer of salmon and a last few slices of the peaches.
The beauty of this appetizer is it can be made a few hours in advance, so when your own MrD or your guests arrive and its time to plate, you just grab it out of the refrigerator. Remove the terrine by using the tin can lid or a spatula to press out the food onto a cutting board. Slice into wedges like a pie and plate on a bit of micro greens. Throw on a tiny heirloom tomato or three. Splash a tear or two of your really good olive oil over the whole dish. Our guests brought us the best olive oil in Texas but more on that next time.
Then all you need to do is eat enjoy and sit back while the crowd roars your name.

Romer's Burger Bar

Last month’s burger at the Gathering Place Community Center where I was doing community service in the kitchen was a tasty deal for $2.75 and worth every subsidised penny. This month found me at Romer’s Burger Bar in Kitsalano on West 4th Ave. in Vancouver. I’d read a promising revue in some travel magazine and you, silent reader, knows the Trophy H is always open for suggestions as to where to find good meat. I ordered the customer’s choice called the “Man’s Man Burger”. Sounds like one for the Trophy H I thought. Simple ingredients like apple wood smoked bacon, local cheddar and onion strings sound promising but they all arrive on a brioche bun a bit too large for the size of the patty. The server did not ask me how I like my burger cooked and it was a little too cooked for my liking. There was no pink there to savour. The deep fried onion slivers were not greasy nor were they warm. The tomato slice was thin enough to go unnoticed on my chew meter and the cheddar was fairly nondescript. I guess the bacon was fine but I don’t remember much of it. I think there was a slice of pickle lost somewhere in the shuffle. There was some garlic mayo on the well toasted bun but either there was no kick to it or just not enough to notice. I was left wondering why it was there in the first place on this $11.00 quite regular burger. The $3.00 side of double cooked fries with sea salt were double cooked well enough but over salted with sea salt that was ground so fine it might have just been the regular salt out of the shaker.
Sadly, my silent reader, for this Trophy H, when my next month’s burger craving comes around I won’t be heading to Romer’s. Romer’s three star burger with a side of salty fries clocked in at $15.68 not including tip. Take your Dad but not your date.

Back in Manila

So sorry it has been ages since I have updated this blog. MrD and I recently returned to Manila for another stay at our tropical palace. It has been a long couple of months since we have been back so it is good to be home and chewing on some decent mangoes again. I packed a whole suitcase of food stuffs in Vancouver because I planned to cook a dinner for our staff here at home. Our office here in Manila is located on the ground floor of the condo unit where we live. My birthday was coming up, more on that sacred event in a moment. Every year around this time if we are in town, we usually take our staff to the Manila Shangri-La Hotel to enjoy their world class five star buffet but this year MrD requested that I cook at home and invite the staff upstairs. We had several new staff that had never been to visit and it was time to bring them all home. So I filled my check in bag with a 5 kilo ham and veggies you can’t find in the tropics like parsnips, turnips and sweet potatoes. I gathered a dozen or so of my favourite local artisan cheeses, three different varieties of pesto and other treats I knew were not available here on this island paradise. I knew from past experience that check in bags travel down in the hold where it is quite cold enough to keep everything fresh enough until we got here and there is no customs control like most countries here in the Philippines. You could bring in panda steaks and humming bird pate if you had the notion. I did not need the space in my luggage for regular things like clothing and toiletries because I already have all that here at home in Manila.
Dinner was a success but our staff is very easy to please when it comes to eating. They just require lots and lots of food and then just stand back and let them go at it until it all disappears.
The day after the dinner party MrD and I flew off to our island getaway of Boracay. You my silent reader may remember my last trip there when I met the dreaded black banded sea krait and lived to write about it. This time a typhoon just to the north was ongoing. The island storms were very dramatic with the palm trees doing their Gilligan’s Island impersonations. The famous white sand beach totally disappeared under the waves. The water was right up to the tree line. The whole side of the island exposed to the winds had been barricaded with plastic and bamboo screens to keep all those tacky coconut souvenirs from blowing off to our Chinese neighbours to the north.
I love the island when it’s stormy like this but some of the hordes of tourists, mostly from Korea, did not seem quite as excited. It rained a lot but a warm tropical rain and there was no lightning so I went swimming in the torrential downpours. I noticed one tourist standing waist deep in our hotel pool in the rain holding an umbrella over her head. Nice image but a bit confusing.
Alas we only had 3 nights of peace away before we needed to return to Manila. But it was good to be back and say hello to my Filipino home away from home.
Back in the city I needed to go to the National Bureau of Investigation, the Filipino version of the FBI to obtain police clearance documentation so I can apply for a new class of visa. Every year since we moved here I have had to get a working visa which I can because together with MrD we own companies here and hire enough locals to fit the requirements but it is a long involved process requiring lawyers and endless documents. Now because I am …of a certain age…I can apply for a retirement visa which in the beginning is just as tiresome to apply for but will eventually allow me more freedom to enter and exit the country.
I won’t go into the traumatic events of the long endless lineups only to be told we had to go to another office with even longer lineups on the fifth floor of the worst fire trap mall in all of Asia. Long story short. I got my clearance after three excursions into bureaucratic hell and all I need now is to deposit a king’s ransom of American cash into a Filipino bank and they will eventually, after a million more documents, allow me a retirement visa.
On a lighter note, your Trophy H has turned another year older and wiser. We invited MrD’s family for lunch. I refused to cook. I have cooked for that crowd very often but I insisted that this year I wanted the day off. We went to the weekend market early on the Saturday morning and bought Filipino prepared foods like chicken empatido, pork barbecue, seafood rice, roasted corn and other local favourites. I had ordered the giant flour less chocolate cake from the Manila Shangri-La that I have raved about in previous blogs. This beauty weighed in at about 5 kilos. Just think giant chocolate ganache truffle and you get the idea. I served up all the guests each a tiny slice and kept lots for me to enjoy later.
The in-laws loved the food, ate as much as they could and brought the rest of it home. I kept my eye on the leftover cake though so they couldn’t make off with that beauty. MrD left the next morning and is back home in Vancouver where I will fly off to join him again this coming Saturday. In the mean time I am getting much needed massage therapy, eating as many mangoes as I can stuff into me and working my way through all the rest of that delicious cake.

Frozen Fruit Yogurt Desert

Summer time and the living is easy. My Canadian friends are complaining about the heat. I just feel like MrD and I are back home in Manila. Of course it is more humid there but the heat is similar.
The best thing about the heat is cooling off with some home made frozen deserts and here are a couple of ideas for super fast and always easy frozen fruit and yogurt recipes. I keep several kinds of fruit in the freezer compartment of my refrigerator so I have some handy ingredients when I need a fast desert or a cool down snack.
Just add a couple of scoops of frozen fruit in a food processor or blender and add enough low fat yogurt and a little fruit juice so the mixture blends evenly. I often use frozen bananas which are very sweet so you don’t need extra sweetener but sometimes a splash or two of maple syrup is added to bring out the sweetness of the berries and add a dimension of flavour. This kind of frozen desert works best made on demand and eaten right away but in a time crunch you can do it before your guests arrive and leave it sit in the freezer until you need to serve it.
The two examples in the photos are frozen blueberries with cherry yogurt and the other is frozen mango, banana and fresh cranberries blended with lemon yogurt. Remember these fruits are frozen, not fresh so the desert comes out frozen.
Next time I want to try frozen banana and peanut butter with a spoon of nutella and plain yogurt.

Granville Island Public Market

I had thought I would be updating this week from Moncton, New Brunswick but MrD and I have postponed our eastern excursion until September. So, it’s Vancouver this week. I think it’s time for a tourist report from my favourite local market.
Having a bountiful market is a true gift I value, having lived and traveled in so many lands where food is not only scarce but definitely not of the best quality. We Canadians are blessed and fortunate. No one actually needs twenty eight varieties of organic wild game salami and twelve varieties of potatoes, but I ain’t complaining.
Granville Island Market, Vancouver’s perfect place for fresh local ingredients, is a source of many of my Trophy H dinners. Here is where I go to find wild mushrooms, game meats and spectacular sea food. Once a week I take a water taxi across to the island and do my shopping to stock up the pantry. I usually also buy an armload of flowers and a gooey cinnamon bun for MrD who stays home to run the empire while I do the marketing.
My Trophy H tips for visiting Granville Island Public Market is to go in the morning so you can be there when it opens at 9 am. I go on Thursdays. All the produce coming in for the weekend has arrived so you are getting first choice of the finest wares. The market just gets too crowded for actual shopping later when the tourists flock in to ogle our super salmon, salivate at our fat sausages and try to sneak photos of me in one of my stunning, get out of my road, outfits. Avoid the weekends and the inevitable crowds. If its not the food you are shopping for, but all that other artsy stuff, then you need to know that most galleries open at 11am.
Granville Island Public Market is a must for both the serious cook and tourists with their digital cameras and all that holiday vacationer cash to spend. It is the place for me to meet other chefs from around town. We compare notes on what is fresh and in season. We share tips and ideas. The dealers often grill us on what we plan to make with their ingredients. Sometimes we bring them tastes and recipes with our thanks.
The market has ample place to sit and relax with a cup of java and a new found pastry friend. You can eat well in the noisy packed food court or brown bag it with your finds and go outside, sit down and enjoy one of the best views of Vancouver. Mind not to feed those pesky birds.
Have a great week, my silent reader, of shopping, cooking and sharing food with friends.

Last week’s guests have gone home and MrD and I are adjusting to scaffolding set up in our great room. About 3 months ago the workers renovating our upstairs neighbour’s condo damaged a major water pipe that created a trail of disaster for 18 floors. I was back home in Manila when all that happened but fortunately MrD was here to handle the immediate mess. Because the flooding affected so many units a disaster team was called in to do the whole job for all the units. The results are such that three months later workmen are finally here on site fixing up the dry wall. The ceiling in that room is 21 feet high so they had to install scaffolding. I am told the industrial monkey bars will in all likelihood be set up for about two weeks while they dry wall and then paint and texture. This weekend I took advantage of the equipment and had a ceiling fan installed to circulate some of this rare hot air summer has brought us.
In spite of the chaos I keep putting meals on the table for MrD. Here are this week’s three easy to prepare dishes that even you, my silent reader can make on your own.
The heat of summer always seems to keep my hunger level down. The higher the temperature the less time I want to spend chewing food. Salads, sandwiches and nibbles are perfect summer choices.
At this time of year so many of the local tomatoes are being featured at the markets. I found some perfect tiny yellow miniatures that are packed full of flavour. I sliced these babies up, added some fresh herbs, salt and pepper, tossed them with capers in a light vinaigrette and served them as both a salad and a topping for a puffed pastry tart. Puff pastry is not a difficult thing to work with. You buy it frozen in your grocery store and let it thaw out a couple of hours before you roll it out. Don’t have a rolling pin? Use a wine bottle.
In this heat I like to serve chicken drummettes as nibble finger foods. This version I divided the wings into 4 groups and mixed different rubs for each pile. Then, I just baked them all in the same oven at 350 F or 175 C for 45 to 50 minutes. The baby drums are perfect hot or cold. You can use your favourite marinades for the chicken. I used pesto for one of the marinades, spicy hot curry for another, maple syrup and ancho chili powder with lots of black pepper for the third variety and some sun dried tomato paste with balsamic vinegar and mustard for the fourth flavour. Go wild with the combinations but don’t use too many ingredients or the taste gets lost.
I hope this summer weather holds for a bit. Canadians are an entirely different race of people in the warmer season than they are in those colder darker wet months.

Happy Canada Day Eh?

Every patriot loves his home land. I lived abroad for 20 years and every July 1st a bell would go off in my mental files. Bling. Canada. This year MrD and I are celebrating the big day in Vancouver with guests. My much older and wiser brother, MrR and his charming wife, MsA, are visiting for 5 days from their frontier homeland estate back east in the northern wilds of Ontario.
Local artisan cheeses and breads served us as our breakfast celebration. Then we were off to the docks on Hornby Street to catch a ferry to Grandville Island for a quick shop before the crush of tourists arrives. It is perfect July 1 weather, too cold for a mass of tourists. It doesn’t take me long to get what I need from the market. I have a mental list of what I want and where to get it and the crowds tend to part and give me room. Today I was shopping for the last of the fresh wild morels in season. I imagine you are tired, my silent reader, of my morels as much as you might be tired of my morals. MrD will not be sorry when I stop feeding him these tasty fungus treats. But MrR and MsA love morels as much as I do, so they are getting them at every meal.
Tonight I am serving wild cold smoked salmon rolled up with goat cheese and morel puree for the appetizer. MrD is a teeny bit tired of salmon, goat cheese or morels so he is getting wild boar pancetta with some pecorino cheese. MrR and MsA don’t eat pork so things all work out balance wise. To go with my Trophy H Canadian theme menu for tonight’s meal the main course will be braised Alberta beef short ribs in a maple syrup adobo sauce. The sides to serve nestled beside my ribs will be snow peas, smashed fireworks red potatoes and of course morels. Desert will be some of my Trophy H hand baked fig and maple baklava. Then we all head down to the sea shore to watch the fireworks.
We all have an early flight to the Yukon in the morning to continue the festivities. I will update next time with news of our northern journey but in the mean time here are today’s recipes.
Smoked Salmon Rolls.
Layer 8 - 10 smoked salmon slices on plastic wrap.
Spread an even mixture of goat cheese and morel mushroom pate over the salmon layer leaving a half inch of salmon on the long side. Roll up the salmon into a tight roll and refrigerate for at least 4 hours before slicing.
Beef Short Ribs.
Coat generous sized cuts of beef short ribs with a morel BBQ sauce and put them in a slow cooker. Cover with a splash each of Soy sauce, Worcestershire, apple cider vinegar and about ¼ cup of maple syrup. Cook on low for 4 hours.
Cut small stars on opposite sides of some small new red potatoes and boil until fork tender. Cool and then gently smash into flattened ovals with the stars on each of the flat sides. Fry these in hot olive oil or duck fat until brown and crispy.
Saute some sliced morel mushrooms in a little butter with salt and pepper.
Steam snow peas in their shell. Serve the potatoes, mushrooms and peas as the sides for the ribs.
I made my Trophy H secret recipe fig and maple baklava for desert because I am the Trophy H. You, my silent reader, don’t have to go to all that much work.