Monthly Archives: January 2009

Tagine — You’re It!

For Christmas, I received one of these:

tagine-thepot

It’s an Emile
Henry Flame Top Tagine
Tagine is a North
African pot for producing slow-cooked delicacies, such as one might
experience in Morocco.  “Flame top” is Emile Henry’s special
material — a clay vessel that works on the cooktop, in the oven, in
the fridge etc.  Deeee-lightful.

tagine-thefood

Oh, and it is perfect tableware, too — bring this to the table!

salmon-tagine

“This” is the salmon
tagine
I made tonight.  It was perfectly cooked, and very
flavourful.  I regretted I could not get preserved lemons in time
— I have resolved to preserve some myself for a future effort.

Teleconferencing — Grand Manan Style

We share an office here, so the rule is that someone who has a
teleconference has to wander off to some other part of the house to
have it.  It’s not all bad — the views are pleasant, and watching
the waves (“~~~~~”) is fun:

voip teleconf

Sometimes, there are added distractions — the teleconferencee is not
necessarily the only one getting harried:

harried

In particular, in this case, there’s a bald eagle being pursued by
crows (ravens?):

bald eagle -- cms
(Photo by CMS)

I perhaps didn’t catch all the
detail on that particular teleconf…

Truly Fowl Holidays

It started innocently enough, with the duck
thing
, and slid right along with the roast turkey
challenge.

Then there was the choux done
proper-like:

choux

to accompany the rock cornish hens (stand ins for perdrix this year):

cornish

(There is cabbage in there, between the hen-halves & the toast
points:  trust me!).
 
Finally, for good measure, some coq
au vin
to round things out.  This was done a
la Alton Brown (Good Eats)
.  I had to hold it over a day, so I
brought the components out of the fridge:

componentns

and mixed them together, to heat:

purple chicken!

Mmm!  Purple chicken!  Doesn’t get much better than that 😉
.  Really, the chicken is cooked in that picture; the 2 bottles of
Pinot Noir (Trapiche) had something to say about the colour, though.

Heated up and served, it was perhaps more appealing:

served

And, that’s that! 

What?  What other thing?  Oh, that.

cake

A little spot of  Doris Greenspan’s “Dressy
Chocolate Loaf Cake”
never went amiss.

Happy 2009!

Best wishes, from Grand Manan.

beach

(Stanley Beach; -12C (-23C with windchill)).