Life in Cowtown

Whatchoo want?

I know I’m horrifically behind on posting, and I even have nifty things to post about but it’s been a heck of a busy week again! Between playing with and feeding up my foundling – who has now found a forever home and will be leaving us soon, (so so bittersweet to let him go!) – and hopping along at work, and shoveling snow to the horror of my unused back muscles, I’ve simply been terribly busy. And writing a decent post takes a decent amount of time. I guess I’m not the world’s fastest typer, maybe I should look into that dictaphone software.

That's the life

Nightstand nap

Comfy nap

Fat comfort

Anytime anyplace

When I wasn’t cooking I managed to head out to a new gastropub that just opened up in Calgary for a drink and a bite to eat. I hate the word gastropub, it sounds pretentious and harsh and also like a snail with a case of indigestion.  Besides, if you have good food, the word will spread and people will eat. But that pet peeve aside, I wasn’t going to hold it against them, since they’re clearly aiming to advertise that the food there is worth eating.

My girlfriend and I arrived as they were opening, and we were the first ones of the night ushered in to the clean, modern space, not overly lit up nor too dark.  Grabbing a booth across from the lit up block of the bar we browsed the menu for something… pub-like. We were rather hungry and cold since guess what? it’s already snowing here.  Going for pseudo-comfort food we went with an order of mixed wings (spicy hot and lemon and lime), and a burger with fries. Simple yes, but sometimes you just need simple.

The wings arrived in cute oval bowls with a ranch-type sauce and were great. Perfectly hot, crispy and delicious they hit the spot like only wings can. Way better than the generic hot sauce swimming wings that arrive tasting like Tabasco and oil, these were tangy and spicy and great.

The burger was also very good. A thick, juicy patty that was well seasoned with salt and tasting of good quality beef, it came with all the fixings and a bun that fell apart a bit as you ate. The fries were rather mediocre. They were on the dry and mealy side and didn’t have that crispy exterior and creamy interior that great double fried fries have. They could have also used a tiny bit more salt, a bit of a miss in my books since potatoes and salt go hand in hand.

But it’s the drinks that I really want to talk about.  That’s the one area where for once, I lucked out, and ordered some excellent choices. (To explain that remark, I am not a born menu whisperer, and often my dining companions choices look and taste better than mine. But not always…)  To start with I had a ‘dirty vegas’ caesar. (Canadian national cocktail for all you’s south of the border).   Now, I’ve had me my share of caesars, and even when they’re bad they’re drinkable, which makes them a safe bet when booze is called for. I’ve had some pretty good caesars too, the kind that you really enjoy while they’re there, at least until you get to the end and end up with mostly melted ice water and Tabasco. But this was an epic caesar. It was a perfect blend of sweet, salty, savoury and spicy with a delicious shrimp and olive garnish to gild the lily. I am normally a slow drinker, and this one was gone before the appetizer arrived. 

I really really wanted another one, but my girlfriend was looking at the cocktail menu and persuaded me that trying something sweet now would only be prudent. Since I was going to blog about this I agreed in the spirit of investigative ‘journalism’. And as I waffled between two choices I did what I often do, and asked the waitress to decide for me. Her eyes lit up when she mentioned the ‘spurito’ and people, when waitstaff’s eyes light up – order the dang drink.  This was hands down the single best cocktail I’ve had since 2005 when my best friend masterminded a summery concoction in a dark bar one night. But that’s another story. You know the expression ‘better than the sum of its parts?’ Well this cocktail would be in the dictionary beside that entry. It’s hard to explain flavor, but it was a smooth creamy tasting blend of strawberries with the faintest trace of mint. It was not thick at all, but lightly bubbly from the soda, fragrant and perfectly refreshing. It’s my new favorite drink of the year.   In fact I am now counting the days until I go back for a much needed post work libation and have at least two.

Spurito

My deepest fear of the moment is that spur loses its momentum of newness and greatness. I’ve seen it happen before with restaurants and bars – they start out new and innovative and fresh with a great menu and awesome value, and slowly slide into a decline over the next few months. Spur, if you mess with the spurito, you’ll have me to answer to.

Spur Gastropub

351 – 4th Avenue SW, Calgary
(403) 262-2888

Food: 4/5
Drinks: 5/5

Our October weather went to pot, and I got bit by a cooking bug. It’s something I take advantage of when it strikes, since it does not strike that often. But something about the first chill in the air, the first snowflakes on the ground and yard chore avoidance collided in a perfect symphony of cooking up a storm. Some recipes I made were old favorites, like the aromatic and garlicky adobo from the Philippines, and others required no recipe, like a basic steak. But variety is the spice of life, so every so often I take down one of the many cookbooks littering my shelves and browse for inspiration. Like many cooks I keep a running list in my head of recipes I’d like to actually make, not just read about.  A good third of them are Jeffrey Steingarten’s. I browse through both of his books regularly and even though many recipes involve heroic shopping efforts and epic cooking sessions, something about his writing style implies success before you even begin.

Much of his recipe seduction comes from meticulous instructions. The details of each step are so well explained that one feels like he’s hovering over your shoulder, pre-empting any shortcuts you may attempt and explaining how he’d really like things done.  There is no ambiguity in the explanations of each step, which is very nice given that many recipes he provides are so time consuming that you would cry if they met with failure. But not every recipe he published has been a culinary Everest (like the home made Turducken, or boudin noir), and there are a few that are not only feasible to try at home, but actually look simple. One of them was potatoes au gratin.

After a wonderful discourse on the merits of potatoes au gratin and the plebeian tendencies of many recipes to smother the potatoes with cheese, he goes on to provide his own recipe which he accidentally stumbled upon all by himself. The recipe requires few ingredients, namely butter, milk, potatoes and cream, and does not take much more than a mandoline and an oven, so I bravely ventured forth to try it out. What appealed to me in the recipe is the lack of cheese. I live with a guy ready to smother breakfast cereal with cheese, while I like to use a smaller amount of sharp cheese, and find a large melting blanket of cheese oily and gross.

I heated the milk with garlic, salt, pepper and nutmeg:

I sliced the potatoes without killing myself:

I poured cream on the potatoes, dotted with butter (forgive me treadmill), and baked the gratin:

And the result – utterly delicious. The cream cooks down into a rich clotty sauce, faintly scented with garlic  and nutmeg, (next time I’m tripling the garlic), and they were universally proclaimed by the cheese eater and his father an excellent recipe. So if you’re willing to take the caloric hit, but have a stellar side dish, then embrace the fall and make these potatoes. And contrary to Jeffrey’s instructions, they taste fantastic lukewarm out of the pan an hour after dinner. Not that I would know anything about that.

Recipe here.