Tidings Magazine

Continuing on the Russian theme, this is a dish we’ve all eaten at least once, probably years ago. The name alone — where it came from, no-one seems to know — makes any home cook feel important. And the taste, no matter what cut of beef you may choose to use (recipes call for everything from yesterday’s prime rib, to filet, to skirt steak — your choice), offers pure rib-sticking comfort.

Beef tenderloin is an expensive cut, but instead of treating your friends to a fancy restaurant, make dinner at home. It will cost less than dining at a high-end steak joint.

A mixed bag of boiled meats infused with tons of Italian flavours.

An easy-to-make beef braised in Barolo.

Skip takeout and start making easy-breezy sandwiches at home. This steak wrap couldn’t be simpler and comes with way less attitude than the teenager rolling up your sub sandwich at the strip mall.

I love this cut of meat. It’s nutrient-dense with a high level of B vitamins plus phosphorous, zinc, magnesium and selenium. Because pork tenderloin is lean, it’s best prepared with a marinade or sauce. Experts now say you can cook pork just until the center is pink, but I prefer to give it a full 40 minutes in the oven or until it reaches 170˚F on a meat thermometer. This recipe includes the twenty-first-century champion of the culinary world — the ubiquitous chipotle. It remains to be seen what hot new darling will replace chipotle in ’08, but let’s hope pork tenderloin holds its own well into the next millennium.

A chocolate sauce for meat may seem out of place, but so do most things bordering on the divine. A bit of the bittersweet adds wonderful depth to this sauce. It also makes great dinner conversation. If you’re involved in a game of culinary one-upmanship with your friends or siblings, serving this unique combination of flavours will vault you to first place. I found out it also works well with beef tenderloin and with cayenne added to the sauce for those who like heat.

Vancouver-based Iron Chef Rob Feenie combines French cuisine with Canadian influences. To say he does it successfully is an understatement. His restaurants, Lumière and Feenie’s, are internationally recognized and hugely popular with West Coast locals. This is his recipe.

Growing up, I never experienced lamb. As an adult, I was reluctant to taste it. At first, I piled on the mint jelly. But eventually the seductive succulence of a well-cooked cut of lamb got to me. Now I’m a believer.

A delicious Old World dish. There is some preparation upfront, but most of the work is done by your oven. This is a great dish for potluck dinners.

There is a restaurant near me that serves a delicious rosemary-flavoured steak. I tried making it several times at home — it wasn’t until I marinated the steak after grilling it, that I finally hit on the yummy secret.

A Portuguese-inspired dish from Goa, Vindaloo is one of my favourite curries. Not only is it flexible, versatile and easy to prepare but it delivers precisely the sort of soul-searing heat I crave. Though traditionally hotter than the ninth ring of hell, feel free to accommodate or challenge your own personal threshold. This is an adaptation of Madhur Jaffrey’s Pork Vindaloo (ironically from a book called Quick and Easy Indian Cuisine). Her trick of using grainy mustard rather than mustard seeds and vinegar saves both time and fuss. Like the mulligatawny, this is the sort of recipe wherein once you’ve got it going, you can walk away and do as you please for an hour or so. I’ve used pork shoulder or lamb and both have been delicious. This would, however, work equally well with duck, chicken, beef, venison … anything you can kill really. So long as you’ve got two pounds of it. You’ll definitely want to serve this with mountains of rice so if you don’t have a rice cooker, I’m afraid you’ll just have to make some the old-fashioned way.