David

Dining on the Autumnal Equinox

September 25, 2014September 27, 2014 David1 Comment

This Monday marks the last day of Summer. With Fall on the way our thoughts have been turning to warm clothes and of course stews. I always find there are certain foods we associate with different times of year or weather. With things getting cooler, for some reason we always think of Indian food. For tonight our trio has invited Jennifer to join us.

To start, since it is still officially summer, and we still have fresh tomatoes, from the garden, we made an Indian Cream of Tomato Soup, with yellow tomatoes from the garden. read more

California Dreamin’

September 17, 2014 David8 Comments

Eggplant and wine

We are back in season and tonight celebrates a special event in the life of a dear friend. Jared is moving to California, to live as a monk! And teach, and compose and basically show everyone that he is as impressive as we all think he is. We go into Monday night dinner with mixed feelings (being proud and happy for a friend, while knowing we will miss his talent, intelligence and friendship), we still look forward to breaking bread with friends and singing wonderful music.

Tonight for dinner, we have our trio, Jared and Amy. We started with and Eggplant Parmigiana, with local eggplant, and tomatoes and herbs grown in our garden .The eggplant is breaded and fried, then layered with tomato sauce, béchamel sauce, parmesan and mozzarella, then baked. read more

Prelude to a New Season

September 9, 2014April 6, 2015 David6 Comments

Jamie Oliver Rotolo

This Monday marks our return to rehearsals for Pax Christi Chorale, which changes the dynamics and especially the timing of our dinners. This is also the first “in season” dinner since we started blogging. I was thinking that we should go with something simple and tasty, to get us back into the groove of the shortened dinner schedule. Shawn spent a good deal of time on the weekend perusing cookbooks and recipes online. At one point he pointed to Jamie Oliver’s Italy book and said “I want to make Rotolo.” Ro-what? Then he told me I could get out the pasta machine, so I’m in. This week is just our trio, to ease us back into the music season. read more

Moorish Delights and Hawaiian Nights

September 3, 2014September 3, 2014 David7 Comments

Morroccon Tagine

When planning meals, sometimes we have a theme ingredient, sometimes a region in mind, or sometimes there is a recipe that we have been wanting to try. This week many of these things combined. I have had M’Hanncha on the brain lately (stop laughing). The other weekend we were at the Farmer’s market in Orillia and wandered across the street to Bank’s Antiques. They had a beautiful Moroccan Tagine, with a beautiful patina, but they didn’t have it for long…. This was starting to sound like a theme, if only we could get a Moroccan Octopus to cook. Oh yeah, there is one in the freezer. So the theme this week is Moroccan. We have not cooked Moroccan for at least 10 years and the cookbooks were getting dusty. We left the guest list to Steph, who recently had to take a little day trip and met up with friends up north. As many conversations do, at Weber’s Burgers, the conversation turned to Ukuleles. It turns out that everyone seems to own one these days. This was starting to sound like a jam session for sure, so the guest list included our trio, Julia, Anne, Tom, and a last-minute addition, the stranded NMJ. read more

A Musical Moveable Feast

August 22, 2014August 22, 2014 David7 Comments

This week we had to move Monday night dining to Tuesday and we had a slightly expanded guest list. Nine for dinner and interestingly divided up nicely by voice part. Our guest of honour tonight is Jared (more about why later). To fill out our numbers we had Dan, Gabrielle, Lois, Catharin, Paul and our intrepid trio. We started with some sparkling wine and brought out the appetizers. Empanadas stuffed with Ground Beef, Currants, and Olives. We accompanied this with Tiropitakia, stuffed with goat cheese. Oh and not to forget the humus made from white beans and garlic. A lovely start, on the upper deck and a big announcement involving monks in California… That’s all I can say. read more

Harvest Time

August 12, 2014August 13, 2014 David5 Comments

Table

After a wonderful time in Worcester, we are back to reality and having our regular Monday Night Dining nights. Tonight gave us a chance to deprogram and reminisce about our time away, as well as connect with old friends. The garden is yielding up some wonderful produce, so this week we wanted to use that bounty. This week we have our trio, Mary and Bruce, as guests. For a starter, we had fresh made Grissini wrapped in Prosciutto, with cheese, grapes and crisps.

Grissini wrapped in Prosciutto

For the main course, we had chicken skewered on fresh rosemary skewers, potatoes and stuffed peppers and tomatoes (all from our garden). We accompanied this with an amazing charred tomato risotto, with cherry tomatoes from out garden. We also had our best collaboration of the night, Caprese Salad, with yellow tomatoes from Mom’s garden, red tomatoes, from the cottage garden and pesto, made from basil from Steph’s garden. Freshness at its best. read more

An Ode to Barolo

August 6, 2014 David4 Comments

Table and Cathedral

Something that we noticed while in Worcester, is that the wine here is much cheaper than at home. I do realize that my Cask Ale addiction would normally diminish my wine consumption, but they just would not give us our own cask of ale for Diglis Cottage. Our dear friend Brian found a wonderful bottle of Barolo at the local Tesco. They did try to sell him the newer, fresher Barolo, but he was having none of it. What to do with a nice Barolo??? Plan a meal around it of course! Barolo is a special wine, that needs to age, to come to its maturity, this is much like friendships. So here we are in our beautiful but temporary home, with friends old and new, to share in some Barolo and more importantly friendship, camaraderie and family. read more

Greetings from Worcester!!!

July 30, 2014August 1, 2014 David3 Comments

Diglis Lock Cottage

We are happily ensconced at Diglis Lock Cottage, on an island in the Severn River, in Worcester England. We have a good Canadian contingent here at the Three Choirs Festival, which after 300 years, is the oldest music festival in the world. With all the shows and events that we have been attending, it was hard to schedule a Monday night dinner, but we managed it on Tuesday for a luncheon. We have a cute little English kitchen, with most of the basics supplied, and discovered a barbecue in the back, with a supply of charcoal. The oven is a bit strange to us, so we decided to leave that for another time. Carting supplies from town was a bit of an issue without a car (and considering the cabbies have no idea where we are staying), but after hiking in the Malvern Hills, we went to the local ASDA and the Marks and Spencer and carted everything home on our backs. read more

Cottage Life

July 22, 2014July 22, 2014 DavidLeave a Comment

This Monday we are on vacation at the cottage, so Monday night dinner looked like leftovers from the weekend, for Shawn, Dave and NMJ. Leave it to Shawn to dress up leftovers into something special…

Constructed Salad

We had a constructed salad of Grilled Chicken, Hard boiled Eggs, Grilled Portobello Mushrooms, Potatoes, Grilled Corn off the Cob and the first French Green Beans from the garden, with an oil, Dijon, Lemon Juice and Fresh Tarragon dressing. This was accompanied with a Caesar Salad. Nice work on the leftovers. read more

Bon Voyage

July 19, 2014July 19, 2014 David1 Comment

For our last Monday Night Dining experience, before Steph whisks off to Europe, we decided to keep it simple…. Then again what fun is that? So with just our trio for dinner, we could discuss the upcoming trip. We have had an octopus in the freezer just waiting for the right occasion to make an appearance and this was his chance. Having never cooked octopus before, we consulted some experts. One of the most important tricks we learned was, after braising the octopus, to let it cool in the braising liquid, so it does not toughen up. We did taste test a bit on Sunday just to be sure. So for our first course Grilled Octopus and peaches, with arugula and Balsamic Reduction. read more