A Life, Lived

Creamy Polenta

I posted the other day about the short ribs I made recently. I served them with creamy polenta instead of the more traditional mashed potatoes.

It's been some time since I made polenta on the stove. My go-to method is this baked polenta. Now I remember why - my goodness, polenta becomes like molten lava when it is cooking. That hot, viscous mixture bubbling up and exploding out of the pot is lethal! Happily the burns I sustained were minor.

Now I know that you really want to try this one out don't you?

Never heard of polenta?

Polenta is a porridge type dish popular in Northern Italy. In Italy it is often made with various ingredients, including cornmeal, ground rice, buckwheat, and chestnut flour. Here in North America, it is generally made exclusively with coarsely ground cornmeal. Think of polenta as an Italian version of grits.

Now about the lethal part - the secret is to cook slowly. My stove was too hot. If you cook at a low temperature you can avoid the spatters of hot polenta over the kitchen (and yourself . . . more the issue to be honest).

Honest, I tried it again to see if was always so mean a dish to prepare and it turns out at a lower temperature it is quite manageable. Lesson learned.

This recipe is flexible - you can sub broth for the water. You can also sub goat cheese for the cream cheese. I had some left over from Christmas that i wanted to use up so this is what I did.

Enjoy!

Creamy Polenta

4 cups water
1 1/2 teaspoons salt (or 1 teaspoon if using salted butter)
1 cup yellow polenta or coarsely ground cornmeal
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 cup cream cheese

Heat salted water (1 1/2 teaspoons of salt for 1 quart of water) to a boil over high heat in a thick-bottomed 2 or 3 quart pan. Slowly add the polenta into the boiling water, whisking while you add it to prevent any lumps from forming.

Lower the heat to a very low simmer and add the butter. Continue to whisk the polenta until it starts to thicken. Then cover the pan and let the polenta cook for 25 minutes. Stir occasionally with a wooden spoon so that the polenta doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan. The polenta should be soft and tender when done. If not, let it cook a little longer.

Add the cream cheese and stir it into the polenta. Taste and add more salt if necessary. (You can also add more cream cheese if you want it to be even creamier.)

Instant Pot Red Wine Short Ribs

I mentioned in this post Beef and Porcini Mushroom Stew that it was a time for comfort food. I'm continuing that trend with this post.

Before Christmas Paul and I made a trip to Ontario's Mennonite country to visit the farmers' market and a few area producers. Happily the government recognizes this as essential travel.

One of the butchers we visited had these gorgeous looking short ribs. I didn't need short rib. I had no plan on using short ribs. However, you know how this works - if you see something amazing you snap it up immediately. It is a rule I learned the hard way (Jerry still bitter about missing out on an amazing pair of red leather shoes in Rome, but I digress . . .)

Anyways - back to the thread. In need of comfort and had beautiful short ribs.

Using google I found this recipe for short ribs made in the Instant Pot. It meant a dish that normally would take half a day to cook took just over an hour (slightly misleading because the recipe doesn't include the time required for the Instant Pot to come up to pressure).

This was excellent. . . a really rich, filling recipe, that is perfect on the coldest of winter days. These short ribs came out just as fall-off-the-bone tender as if they were simmered all day on the stove top.

I served them with creamy stove top polenta.

Enjoy

Instant Pot Red Wine Short Ribs

3 tbsp olive oil, divided
3 lbs bone-in, individual-cut short ribs
Kosher salt and pepper
1 small yellow onion, chopped
2 carrots, peeled and diced
4 cloves, garlic minced
1 ¼ cups dry red wine
2 cups beef stock
1 ½ tbsp tomato paste
2 stalks fresh rosemary, leaves plucked from stems and chopped
1 bay leaf
¼ cup cornstarch
¼ cup cold beef stock

Turn your Instant Pot to saute mode. Once hot, add 2 tbsp of olive oil.

Season the short ribs on both sides with salt and pepper, and saute them in the Instant Pot until they no longer stick to the bottom, then flip and brown the other side. Remove to a plate.

Add the remaining olive oil, and saute the onion, carrots and garlic until soft and the onions are slightly translucent.

Add ¼ cup of the red wine, scraping the bottom of the pot with a spatula or wooden spoon to release the bits stuck to the bottom.

Add the remaining wine, beef stock, tomato paste, rosemary leaves, and bay leaf. Add the short ribs back into the Instant Pot, submerging as much as possible in the liquid.

Place the lid on the Instant Pot, turn the valve to "sealing" and set it to pressure cook for 45 minutes.

Let the pressure release naturally for 10 minutes, then carefully move the valve to "venting" to release remaining pressure.

Use tongs to remove the short ribs to a plate. In a small bowl, mix together the cornstarch and beef stock.

Turn the Instant Pot to saute mode, and bring the sauce to a boil. While stirring, slowly drizzle the cornstarch mixture into the Instant Pot. Continue stirring until the mixture thickens. Boil the mixture for 1 minute to cook out the starch taste.

Place one or two short ribs on a plate, and ladle some of the gravy over top.

 

Travel Tuesdays - Stavanger, Norway

My goodness, it is amazing how much our world has changed in a short period of time.

Two years ago I was in the Norwegian city of Stavanger for a conference. We were talking about strategies to strengthen public education and improving student outcomes around the world. Flash forward to 2021, no one is traveling, conferences are all virtual, and the things we were talking about then pale in comparison to the challenges facing a post-COVID world.

Anyway. Back to the happier time. When the conference was finished for the day I made sure to get into the city to explore. There was also a lovely park near the conference centre that was a great spot for morning walks.

Baked Blueberry Oatmeal

OK. I have to admit that I am late to the baked oatmeal party.

It likely comes from my aversion to the bowl of oatmeal I'd be served as a child. Hot, tasteless and with a consistency more appropriate for putting up wallpaper than eating. In short, gross.

NOTE - as with all 50 + year old memories it likely wasn't bad at all but it wasn't one of those things that turned my crank as a wee lad.

Anyway, in my mind oatmeal = gross.

Paul likes oatmeal and will often make a bowl of instant oatmeal on a cold morning before he walks to work. He'd often offer to make me some but my preference was to reach for the Cheerios.

Anyway. Saw this on a blog. It looked delicious. I made it this morning. Now I am an oatmeal convert.

I followed the recipe as printed with one exception - the original blog post was sponsored by a commercial jam making company so it calls for a specific brand. I make my own jam so I used a jar of wild blueberry jam that I had in the cellar.

Baked Blueberry Oatmeal

1 (8.2-ounce) jar Blueberry jam
3 cups rolled oats
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 large eggs
1 cup milk
6 tablespoons melted unsalted butter
¼ cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon salt 
¾ cup chopped nuts (I used pecans)
1/2 cup fresh blueberries

Preheat the oven to 350 F, and place a rack in the center of the oven.  Prepare an 8x8 OR 9x13 baking dish by greasing the inside with softened butter or oil. (Either size works, I’ve made it in both!)

Combine the rolled oats, cinnamon, and baking powder in a large bowl.

Whisk together the following ingredients in a separate bowl: 2 eggs, milk, melted butter, brown sugar, vanilla extract, and salt.

Pour the liquid ingredients over the oats and mix well. 

Stir in the nuts and fresh blueberries.

Pour the jam on top, and fold to streak throughout the casserole.

Spread the casserole in an even layer in the greased baking dish. Bake at 350 F until the aroma of warm berries and oats fills your kitchen, and the edges look dry and are starting to brown, about 35 minutes.

Remove from the oven and serve. 

Comforting Beef and Porcini Mushroom Stew

Good lord, if there ever was a time for comfort food it is now.

I had stewing meat in the freezer and a big container of dried mushrooms in the pantry. Google pulled me to this recipe that looked pretty amazing.

One of the issues of stews made in the Instant Pot is that they can be too liquidy because all of the liquid stays in the pot rather than be boiled off during a long slow cooking process. By placing the dried mushrooms on top you ensure that some of this liquid is absorbed. You also ensure that the stew has that umami that comes from the mushroom soaking liquid (in this case the actual stew).

I made two changes to the recipe - I added a small canned of cherry tomatoes (any chopped tomatoes without added flavouring would work well) because I like the interplay that comes with tomato in a beef stew. I also did not thicken with flour and butter because I don't care for the taste flour leaves in the stew. Instead I thickened it with corn starch added to some beef broth.

This stew hit all the right notes. We enjoyed it on a mound of mashed potatoes with some bread pulled from the oven just before dinner.

Much needed comfort here . . .

Beef and Porcini Mushroom Stew

1 tablespoon olive oil
2 pounds beef chuck, cut into 1-inch cubes
1 sprig of rosemary, de-stemmed and finely chopped (about 1 teaspoon)
1 medium red onion, roughly diced
1 celery stalk, cut into 1/2-inch slices
1/2 cup red wine (any tart, non-sweet red, like Chianti or Sangiovese)
1 cup salt-free beef stock
1 teaspoon salt (reduce if using salted stock and butter)
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 ounce (30 grams) dried porcini mushrooms, rinsed
2 large carrots, sliced into 1/2-inch rounds
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Preheat the pressure cooker (by pressing brown/sauté mode).

Add the olive oil and sear the beef cubes on one side (about 5 minutes). Add rosemary, onions, celery, red wine, stock, salt, and pepper. Mix the contents of the pressure cooker well. Sprinkle the mushrooms and carrots on top of the stew mixture.

Close the lid and pressure-cook for 15 minutes at high pressure. When time is up, open the pressure cooker with natural release (turn off the pressure cooker and wait for pressure to come down naturally, about 15 to 20 minutes).

In the meantime, in a small pan melt the butter and drizzle with flour. Mix into a paste and let it cook until the butter begins to make bubbles in the flour.

Remove the lid, tilting it away from you. Add about 6 tablespoons of the cooking liquid from the pressure cooker into the little pan with the flour paste and mix well to loosen the paste. Then, pour the mixture back into the pressure cooker base and mix well.

Bring the contents of the pressure cooker to a boil (by pressing brown/sauté mode) and let it simmer until thickened (about 5 minutes).

Travel Tuesdays - Amsterdam

So far retirement is grand. The one thing that would make it more grand would be the ability to travel again. LOL

That will come.

This morning I was lazing about the house - retirement is GREAT for that. When I finally got into the den to post my Travel Tuesday post the internet was down. Imagine how great that was for all the parents, students, and educators doing online learning today!

Anyway. 6 years ago I was traveling. My friend Nancy and I were exploring Amsterdam.

Sunday Funday

I'm not going to lie - today feels a bit confused for me.

It's the first Sunday of my retirement.

It is the first Sunday where I am not making a list in my mind of all of the things I need to do at work in the coming week.

For most of my life Sunday has meant work. As a student it was when I would do my homework and prepare for the week ahead. As a teacher it meant planning, marking, reading student journals. . . in short working my way through the piles of stuff I had brought home from school on the previous Friday. After I left the classroom it was focused on drafting correspondence for my assistant to format, reviewing materials, responding to 100s of emails, and preparing for the meetings scheduled in the upcoming week.

Sundays were not relaxing for me. IN fact, they were quite the opposite.

Generally I was awake in the night thinking of all of the things I needed to do during the upcoming day. I tried to keep the morning free but not long after lunch the stress of ignoring my list would generally prove too much and I'd find myself in front of the computer. Where I'd usually sit for anywhere from 3 - 8 hours.

I wonder how long it will take to turn that off?

I did wake in the night but when there were no jobs that needed to be prioritized on a mental list I rolled over and fell back asleep.

I still feel some pressure to sit at my computer and to do something (so I am doing this. :-))

Trust me - I am not complaining about this. It is just a disconcerting feeling right now but in the grand scheme of things . . . I'll take it!

Happy New Year

At midnight we celebrated two things - the end of a truly horrific year and the end of work for me.

Needless to say we popped the cork on a really good bottle of champagne!

A lot of people go into the new year making a list of things that they want to fix about themselves or their existence.

I refuse to do that this year.

Not for this reason though . . .

LOL

I know that I am far from perfect. I know there are plenty of things that I should try and change. I also know that if they were so easy to change it would have happened already and I wouldn't need to wait until some arbitrary calendar page flip to do so.

The real reason is that this is bound to be a year of transition. I've had a job of some sort or another since I was 11. Learning to live without work is going to be a transition. I have some vague plans of things I might like to do but I will leave them as vague mists in my mind until we see what comes together.

To anyone who stumbles upon this blather . . . all the best for a safe, healthy 2021 and may it have less of the drama and excitement that 2020 tossed our way.

Travel Tuesdays - A Roman Sick Day

I went back to see what I was doing on December 29, 2012 (the year we spent Much of December in Italy) and I note that I was sick so I had a quiet day wandering 'our' neighbourhood. This was our fourth visit to Rome. We were staying on we're staying on via bianchi nuvoi which is part of a string of streets which runs from the Piazza Navona to the Ponte Sant'Angelo. I don't believe that we had ever been in this area much before that trip.

The street our apartment was located on was a beautiful street of Renaissance and Baroque pallazi (what is the plural of pallazzo anyway?) turned into apartments, shops, and restaurants. Our huge apartment was located in a 16th century palazzo with some of the original wooden ceilings and frescoes still exposed. Just thinking of it, and the coffee outside the courtyard where they quickly came to know my order and had it ready as soon as I walked in, has me yearning for a return visit.

Here are some of the shots I took on my Roman 'sick' day.

 

A COVID-19 Christmas

I hope that those who recognize Christmas had a great holiday. There is no doubt that things were a bit different in the pandemic world we find ourselves in . . . there is a part of me that thinks that COVID has reinforced for us the things that really matter.

Just before the holiday, in the face of out of control cases, the government announced new lock down restrictions that were to come into effect on December 26th. Even though it wasn't required they suggested that we try to follow the guidelines before the 26th.

If course we did (which further fuels our rage at those who did not. LOL).

We were allowed to socialize with our own household. We could also socialize with single people who live alone and who don't actively interact with other groups of people. This is exactly what we did. Paul, myself, m mom, and a family friend made up the big gathering. :-)

We decided to try and support local restaurants and bakeries as much as possible, particularly as they are headed into a full lock down. If I could I ordered prepared food and picked it up in the 24th. There was a happy offshoot of this support for struggling local businesses -  there was a little as possible for me to do on Christmas day!

Mom stayed over for three days. We used to go to her house for Christmas Eve and then have Christmas Day at our house but it just became too much for all of us. Now we pick her up on the 24th and she puts dinner together with our help. Then she is at our house for a relaxing Christmas.

When we woke on Christmas morning there was a layer of fluffy white snow. It was the perfect white Christmas - enough to layer the ground with a clean and pure layer of white but not enough to make shoveling an onerous chore and driving a hazard. We shoveled quickly, took the obligatory pics and waited for mom to wake up.

We were getting a bit antsy and thought about slipping 'bad' Jake into her room to wake her when we finally heard some stirring from the spare room. FINALLY!

When mom got up we opened our stockings (apparently the 'let's cut back on the candy and chocolate' rule was forgotten by all). I served assorted pastries and a lemon cranberry loaf cake for the stocking opening.

After we had dug through our stockings an cleaned up a bit it was time for brunch.

Quiche,  fruit, peameal bacon (AKA Canadian bacon for my American readers who won't recognize it based upon when we have seen passed off as Canadian bacon and sold in American grocery stores), fried potatoes, and sparkling wine with pomegranate juice.

Delicious and filling.

I didn't have to cook a thing!

Once we had everything cleaned up it was time to open presents!

YEAH

It was weird trying to shop and stuff this year. Normally we buy things all year and tuck them away for the big day. It was hard this year because we weren't out wandering, visiting craft shows, or going into stores. Instead, almost everything under the tree was purchased online. Luckily many of the craft shows we'd normally visit and the artisans we usually buy from created online shopping portals.

By now we were tired so it was time for a nap!

We had a zoom call with my sister and her family at 2:00.

I'll admit that as much as zoom tires me out for work it is nice to have it available to connect with family this way. It was great to talk to and to see everyone down east.

Our friend Leslie was arriving at 4:00.

Before she got there we tidied up and set the table.

When Leslie arrived we set appetizers (leftover from Christmas Eve - shh, don't tell anyone we served leftovers on Christmas Day LOL) while I heated dinner up.

Dinner was all prepared by a restaurant. We started with an amazing winter salad (no pic) followed by lamb, potatoes, and roast carrots. For dessert we had Buche de Noel, cookie platter (about half of which we had baked), Christmas cake, and mincemeat tarts.

Even in the midst of the pandemic we managed to enjoy an amazing Christmas. We are lucky - none of us had lost work, been ill, or been seriously negatively impacted by COVID (knock on wood) beyond the regular inconveniences of restrictions and lock downs. We appreciate that this affords us with considerable privilege. I was happy that we could use that privilege to support small local businesses that are struggling.

I think the theme for Christmas 2020 was finding joy and happiness amongst the chaos of the pandemic!