2012/07/05

• 
  Tour de l'horloge - Clock Tower - 2012.07.01
  Scènes de Montréal - Montreal Scenes
  

  All this for that?

  Downstairs neighbors left a few days ago and won't be back until Monday. Upstairs neighbors left today for about ten days. So for three of four days I'm all alone in the building. They have asked and I agreed to mind a few things for them. So, this is what living almost sixty-two years is all about: ending up feeding plants and a shrimp.

  

  Da food section

  Today's topic: Using capers.

  I didn't know what to do for supper last evening but I had a leftover of that pink sauce I had used with tortellinis so I went on the net looking for ideas by searching for images of said sauce. Popped up this one which had shrimps and mushrooms in it. What a good idea this guy thought to himself, easy to make, just what I needed. What I also needed were shrimps. I don't really care for those large shrimps which come from some land of the Thais or whatever place above Australia. As per "gusto fino" goes, nothing beats those small nordic shrimps from the Gulf of St-Lawrence. By gusto fino, I mean it's a delicate taste but which marries well with commercial seafood cocktail sauces (Heinz preferably), in small quantities.

  So off I went to the other supermarket close to my pad, this one larger than the corner one near the metro which incidentally is from a chain called Metro but which has nothing to do with the underground metro except this particular one is located right on top of a metro station. Still following me? Good. So that other supermarket had some nordic shrimps left, shelled and prepackaged in small portions of about 200 grams. It was too late in the day to get a specific quantity, the whatever-they-are-called-butchers-for-fish having closed shop and gone to whatever festival was their fancy of the day. Unfortunately, those shrimps were selling for over 26$ a kilo. For a pound that amounts to about 55$. Now, I have lived 10 years in Sept-Iles where we went on the wharf in summer to eat freshly-bought nordic shrimps in the shell and which we paid 5$ a pound, or roughly 2,25$ a kilo. I understand there has been inflation, I understand that there is labor involved in shelling them, I understand they had to be brought to Montreal, but I also understand that I'm no candidate for exploitation, by principle and whatever the size of the package, so the shrimps were thrown out of the shopping list, leaving only on it a 500ml jar of Grey-Poupon white wine Dijon mustard which had nothing to do with my recipe but of which my current jar was dangerously nearing its armageddon. Still following me? Good.

  However, next to the shrimps, they had small packages of Atlantic salmon cut in cubes of about 2 cm, around an inch, or a finger as it is called in French (pouce). About ten cubes per pack. That was more than I needed (about five to be cut in half for my recipe which suddenly took a whole new career ) but I thought that maybe I could resort again to the Net and find some easy to do salmon brochette recipe for the following day with the remaining ones. So salmon cubes and Grey-Poupon which they had (not available everywhere, like the Maille is) landed in front of the cashier who let me go with them because I gave her money in exchange. These people really think only about business.

  On my way there, and back, I heard some caserolers, not many. They should do like everybody else and take a break. Summer here is so short, it is generally understood by most that it's a period of truce, especially as per political matters go.

  On my way back only, it occured to me that capers go well with salmon, if my memory serves me well. I did have capers in the fridge. And then it also occured to me that I have basil growing in my own yard, which is not really a yard, it's a balcony, but let's not make a big fuss about this and settle on the concept that I had fresh basil leaves available on hand and what better addition to a recipe of linguine in a salmon, capers and mushrooms pink sauce than pieces of colorful and oh so aromatic basil leaves. Tadam, a new recipe was born.

  I mentioned elsewhere that I am a sauce man. That is not necessarily a quality. It means that I put more sauce than needed at times, and every pasta aficionado knows that pasta must not drown in its own sauce. But I had about 250 ml of the sauce left, and with the other stuff, it became like a little too much for the amount of linguine. I also had forgotten a little addition I had put in that sauce which went well with the tortellinis but not so well with the salmon: the serrano chili. It kind of overwhelmed the salmon. I did the cooking and mixing outside in my er... summer kitchen. Ideally I should have added the sauce to the pan-fried salmon/mushrooms until correct consistency (there would have been less pink sauce) but it would have implied too many pots and pans so I just threw them in the pink sauce instead, and that's that.

  Still following me? Well that's a shame, because you won't be able to taste any of that kinky dish stemming out of my twisted mind because there is simply none left. I can't say the same of the second bottle of Mouton-Cadet Bordeaux rosé which I'm getting terribly anxious to finish so I can finally move on to something else. Like another type of rosé.

  The end product.
  

  The manufacturing facilities.
  

  

  Wal who?

  I just saw an ad for Walmart on tv. I was sure it was spelled Wal-Mart, with an hyphen. I probably thought this because a) I don't shop at Walmart and stay clear of their stores and b) there was this satire here a few years ago where they called it Wal-Marde (Wal-Shit), with the hyphen. That satire spurred from them closing a store that wanted to unionize, in Jonquière. I checked the pic I had posted at the time and the company ran under the name Wal-Mart, in fact it would rather be Wal*Mart but on the employees' costumes it was an hyphen. It changed in 2008 according to Wikipedia. So many important things happen on this planet and they just pass under the radar for some reason.

  

  • 16:49
  • 6 Comments