Harvest Time

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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

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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!!!

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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

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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

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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

Herby Goodness

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Grilled Oysters with Rose Sauce

We are hoping that the menus for Monday Night Dining will  be predicted by the bounty of our garden : We have fresh herbs, rainbow carrots and Swiss chard, Roma and Heirloom tomatoes, cute stuff peppers, yellow and green beans as well as mesclun salad, red leaf lettuce and Red Romaine lettuce to guide us on our culinary journey. Steph has also planted an assortment of herbs and fresh vegetables that should make our Monday Night Dinners explode with freshness. Since we are still quite early in the growing season we only have spring salad and fresh herbs to help plan the menu, this week. But then again, we are in the heart of strawberry season in Ontario, so what else do you need. Along with our usual trio, we have invited Jen B and Lisa W. The clouds were looking a bit ominous for the barbeque, but it all cleared up in the end, and although it was 29 degrees, we had a lovely breeze and were able to enjoy the evening outside. read more

It’s still all Greek….

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After Shawn mentioned, in our “It’s All Greek to Me” post, the sweet Greek lady who helped him to appreciate what cooking from the heart is about.  I realized while scanning family pictures that we have a picture of this lovely lady and I wanted to share it with you…

 

This is the face of inspiration. When you do something with passion and love, that’s what real life is about.

 

It’s all Greek to me.

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As some of our followers already know this blog is dedicated to the memory of Bruce Kirkpatrick Hill, whose passing away over two years ago, became the unlikely catalyst of Monday Night Dining and now this blog. As Bruce was a major influence in my musical pedagogy and  development,  I had another influence in my culinary and gastronomic journey. Over twenty years ago I worked in a family run Greek restaurant, which was the genesis of my fascination with food and its preparation. I witnessed first hand the importance of quality ingredients and the respectful ritual of turning them into a simple and delicious meal. read more

The Soul of Tuscany

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As you may know this blog is dedicated to the memory of Bruce Kirkpatrick Hill, who inspired so many people and mentored many more. One such is our guest this week, Kathy H, so it is only fitting that this Monday Night dinner, the theme was Italian, in honour of Bruce who loved Italian food, music, wine, and its culture and made several trips to Italy with his wife, Stephanie.We were dining at Steph’s and it looks like the weather will not cooperate again this Monday, but Dave is undeterred and the main meal will be cooked on the BBQ while Shawn cooks the side dishes indoors. read more

It was a dark and stormy night…..

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So after a brief sabbatical, while Steph was off out west, plotting with the Elgar Society, we are all back together for Monday Night Dining….  But it’s Tuesday???  Like the dates in the paschal cycle, Monday night dining is a moveable feast.  So let’s get moving.

We were up north, while planning dinner and what do we find in the freezer? A beautiful filet of grouper that we purchased a few weeks ago. I do love my Foodsaver vacuum sealer.  One of our favorite ways to cook grouper is mexican style, so we had a theme. As it turns out our friend Tina was going to be in town, so we also had the guest list.  The day was one of those on again off again days, weather-wise.  I did get a message from Steph saying that things had cleared up and we would be dining outside. By the time our prep was done, it was a whole different story.  Low green sky and huge wind gusts.  As I got the barbecue lit, the sky opened up.  What’s a little rain compared with Monday Night Dining though?  We’ve cooked in worse (one day I will regale you with the tale of the turkey). We found out later that the town of Angus was hit with a tornado that night. So maybe this is the worst weather we have cooked in…. read more