Brie and Roasted Garlic Toasted Sandwich

Barb and I took a trip to Boston two years ago, where her sister was spending a week or two at Harvard, to complete workshops to accompany a distance program she was enrolled in. She kindly invited us to stay in her hotel room with her, and a road trip was born. Not only did we want to go see her sister, and Boston, but it was an opportunity for Barb to add to her Wordstock photography repertoire. We drove down through New York, where I wanted to take Barb to a winery I had visited once in Hammondsport, but it was not open. Wanting to stop for dinner one night, we checked our GPS and saw "Garlic Bob's", and well, we both love garlic so we decided to check it out. Like the Velvet Hammer in North Carolina though, (mentioned in this post) it was nowhere to be found, and in fact seemed to be a derelict mechanic's shop. So we settled for a pub in the basement of a fancy looking place, and I couldn't tell you what I had. But, I've always wondered what Garlic Bob's might have yielded, so I decided to write about one of my all-time favourite garlicky foods

Many years ago, (I'm going in a completely different direction now), Steve and I were visiting our friends Dan and Tammy in Toronto, and they presented us with one of the most delicious snacks I've ever had, which I sometimes just make for lunch. It was roasted garlic served with slices of baguette, melted brie, and raspberry puree (they even strained out the seeds for us). It is that simple. And delicious. I just crush the raspberry myself, I like the seeds too, and I also thinly slice a Granny Smith apple as an alternative flavour. The method is to spread a clove of roasted garlic, sweet and fragrant and soft, on your piece of baguette, smear a bit of melted brie on that, and drizzle with raspberry (or top with apple).  I wanted to change it up just a bit, and turn these ingredients into it a fancy grilled cheese sandwich, so here is what I did.

Chicken with Grapes (Volaille Veronique)

I dug out my French Recipe Cookbook last night, sadly it seems to no longer be in print, but you can buy it used at amazon.ca/French Recipe Cookbook, (if you can get one) and mine was printed in 1995, and so it was brand new when Steve bought for me for Christmas. While I mostly make the pepper pepper steak from  it, and the Boeuf Bourguignon, this is a recipe I have always wanted to try. There are so many amazing recipes to try. I don't want to do the Julie and Julia thing, but French cuisine is magnifique, n'est-ce pas? They don't overwhelm with truckoads of ingredients, and let a few ingredients shine and work their magic.

Books 2 Eat (Part 2; our recipes)

While Barb and I spent many hours preparing pretzels and dips for Books 2 Eat on the weekend it took place, it was really the tip of the iceberg, as there was a lot of practice before hand, and ideas tossed around. Much pretzel-eating was enjoyed by our husbands and kids. (And for us it was usually dinner as well on our practice days). The pretzel recipe I used can be found here: soft pretzels. Since there are a lot of recipes, which I found online, that were used for this event, I am just going to provide the online links, since it will make this post super-long otherwise.

Adding a melted butter and egg wash to make the pretzels
super golden

Books 2 Eat (Part 1)

Barb and I heard about Books 2 Eat (Midland Library - Books 2 Eat) a few months ago, from our friend Nicole DiPinto, who owns Grounded Coffee Co.with her husband Scott Campbell. Nicole organized this event with Scott Cooper, a great local musician who also works at the library. And loving books AND food, we decided to enter. I had almost forgotten all about it, but Barb had not, and she came up with the idea to make Golden Rings of Power, from the Lord of the Rings. We were going to make doughnuts at first, but during a cooking session at my place, making pretzels, decided to make pretzels instead which could be made into ring shapes, and made individually for the 200 people who bought tickets to the event, in aid of our local library.

So we spent a lot of time practicing and getting our technique down, and deciding what sauces we would make. I worked mostly on sauces and made a few batches of pretzel dough, but Barb quickly got the knack of twisting the pretzels into cute round braided-like rings, where mine ended up mangled and misshapen. Barb drew some great maps of  Middle Earth, and I got place cards ready (with cool Hobbit Paintbrush font) and a bunch of quotes from the book to scatter along our table. We placed one ring of power on the display. We had made quite a few practice models of really huge braided pretzel rings, but when it came to our actual display it didn't really work out as well as we'd hoped, and we knew that with 150 pretzel rings of power, there would be enough rings for mortal men....Unfortunately, no elf kings or dwarf lords were present. I spent a lot of time organizing
the text and photos in this post, and no matter what I do, when I publish it, it all changes and
it does not look as nice :( I'm not sure why, but this will have to do.