The week started off well with yet another trip to Granville Island for the week's fruit and veges and a few cuts of meat. I was very organised this week and had an entire week's menu planned out. There was going to be an stuffed artichoke salad, loosely based on a Waldorf salad, a curried broccoli soup, an avocado orange and fennel salad, swordfish with roast fennel, and a pork tenderloin stuffed with pork sausage meat and apricot. As it turned out I only had half of those dishes and had the pork tenderloin twice after discovering that I rather liked it.
After returning home I made myself a quick and easy salad with avocado orange and fennel. The fennel was shaved from the fennel bulb with a vege peeler then soaked in balsamic vinegar. Unfortunately the avocado was not the best with lots of brown pathes through it so the presentation did not look too flash hence the absence of a photo, sorry about that.
Monday was the first night that I had the pork tenderloin. I was in a bit of a rush that night as I only had 1 1/4 hours to cook and eat before heading out to my bible study. I did however find enough time to take a quick snapshot of the dish. I had some roasted pear and roasted fennel bulb as an accompaniment. The pear was particularly tasty, it was simply brushed with a little melted butter and sprinkled with cinnamon then roasted for 25 minutes. The roast fennel however was not a winning side dish, it was definitely better in the salad on Sunday.
Tuesday was originally going to be the artichoke day, but in the end I was out at Roz and Reuben's for dinner so the artichoke day was missed. Reuben cooked a lovely pasta dish with eggplant, tomato, cheese and I'm sure some other ingredients that I forget at the moment.
Wednesday was soup day. The recipe book didn't have any photo of this recipe, and after making it I understand why. It looked kind of like sick. The soup was a curried broccoli soup with a cucumber-mint raita, which is a yogurt based dip sort of thing. It went very well with the spicy soup, adding a nice cooling element to thd dish.
Thursday I had Roz and Reuben over for dinner so decided to try the pork tenderloin again seeing I enjoyed it so much on Monday. This time I left out the roasted fennel and replaced it with roast broccoli and some 'steamed' asparagus. My Tyler Florence cookbook had this interesting looking way of cooking asparagus by throwing it in a paper bag with some salt, lemon slices and a drizzle of olive oil then putting it in the oven for 20 minutes. I guess my lemon must have had more juice than his one though, because when I pulled them out of the oven they were kind of soggy. I very nearly threw them away I was so disappointed, but after tasting one found it was not too bad after all.
I had a leftover pork tenderloin as I wasn't sure if Andrew my flatmate was going to be home on Thursday. So on Friday I decided to make a Thai style pork and coconut salad. The basic ingredients were pork, toasted coconut, coconut milk, Thai bird chili, coriander (cilantro for any North Americans reading this), mint, tomato and red onion. This is another recipe that I will have to put on my must make again list, it was scrummy.
On Saturday I finally went up Grouse mountain with Roz and Reuben for a day of snowboarding and skiing. There had been a good 50 cm of new snow in the 3 days prior, with 8 cm overnight. I guess that we were not the only people who thought that it would be a good time to head up the mountain as we spent far longer waiting in queues for the chairlifts than we did snowboarding. The snow was pretty good most of the day though, so it was an enjoyable day. There are far more runs you can do during the day as apposed to the runs open for night skiing, so it was fun finding areas I had not been on yet. I managed to land a couple of jumps, and also didn't manage to land a few jumps too. I think it was the first time that my helmet has saved me from a headache.
After snowboarding we went back to Roz and Reuben's apartment for a soak in the hot tub. A very nice way of relaxing after a day on the slopes. Later on we went out for dinner at a very nice restaurant. Each year a number of restaurants in Vancouver participate in the Dine Out Vancouver program, where you get a 3 course meal at significantly reduced prices, either $15, $25 or $35 depending on the class of restaurant. We went to a place called Joe Fortes, a seafood and chophouse. For starters I had four oysters on the half shell. Now in the past I have never really been a big oyster fan finding them a little slimy and generally just not very nice. These were fantastic though and the sauce that they came with was superb. For the main (or entree as they call it over here) I had grilled sockeye salmon with truffle risotto. The salmon was cooked just right and the risotto was very tasty indeed. If truffles weren't so expensive I would try and make it at home some time. Dessert was a New York cheesecake, yet again a very nice dish. All in all I think it was exceptional value. To give you some idea what their regular prices are, a 1/2 dozen oysters sell for $20 at Joe Fortes so $35 was a steal.
1 comment:
Hi Paul. Can see you are going to have the relatives lining up to come for dinner once you get home - all looks yummy. Have a good week, S.
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