Christmas - Part 2 - Enoki Mushroom Soup with Black Truffles

Enoki mushrooms are long thin white mushrooms that you'll find at most Asian grocers.  Generally used in soups, they're primarily a garnish or a textural element in light dishes.  Flavour?  Oh, it's there, but it's very subtle.  Subtle is good for truffles.  Very good.  In order to even get a hint of these delightful mushrooms, however, you have to use a lot of them.

Making the Chicken Stock

We all know how to make stock right?  Simmer some chicken carcasses with your mirepoix (carrot, celery, onions), toss in a satchet d'epices (black pepper, thyme, bay leaf, parsley stems).  Never fully cover the chicken.  You're not boiling them either, you're simmering them with the water about halfway up.  You 

The recipe for an Asian-style stock uses the same formula, but takes some green onion ends and a sizable chunk of peeled and bruised (bang it with the side of your knife) ginger.  If you've got them, toss in a whack of those cheap dried shitake mushrooms that come in large sacks at the Asian markets.

My Chicken stock went something like this:

7 chicken carcasses
1 carrot
2 stalks celery
1 fresh bay leaf
1 tbsp black pepper
6 sprigs thyme
10 green onion tops
2 inch piece of bruised ginger
3 star anise

Water to partially cover the chicken
Simmered for 3 hours, but never to a boil


Enoki Mushroom Soup

800 grams of Enoki
8 cups of stock
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp shoju (or chinese cooking wine)
1 tbsp mirin
1 large sprig of thyme (to be removed at the end)
1 cup cream
Truffle - more is better, obviously - a substitute might be a dash of truffle oil, but I'm not a huge fan of the truffle oil

First, I clean my enoki mushrooms, by chopping off the dirt-blackened bottoms removing any soggy bits, and then giving them a good rinse.  I toss them in the blender with the stock, and then toss them in a pot with the other ingredients. Heat the soup and simmer for 5 mins prior to serving.  Serve with shaved truffle on top.

Christmas - Part 1 - Chopping myself to bits with Global Knives

Happy Christmas dear reader.

Christmas is a special time for us here on the Ste-Marie. It is a time that we split between two (and sometimes more) families.  It is a time of celebration and feasting. As it is for many others, it is a time for gift giving and gift receiving. For folks of my persuasion, friends, it is also and always a time for celebratory cooking. This year I thanked my family quite sincerely for offering me the opportunity of cooking them an 8 course meal. Sincere because the two happiest folk that night, I can assure you, were my sister and I, who spent the day cooking for the family. 

My darling wife had bought me fresh black truffles.

My darling parents bought me a new global knife.

You see my friends, they knew that even though I would be using these gifts to prepare food for them, that these were, in fact, the best gifts to give me.  For men of my persuasion, rather for those who are alimentary-inclined in general, the greatest gift to us is to give us the gift of giving back to you.  Of course, we're showing off when we cook for you.  Of course, if you didn't ooh and aah, we'd maybe never want to cook for you again.  We cook because we love to share our passion for food with you. So, our whole endeavour is already always in the holiday spirit.  So, you can understand why I love it right?  And this is also what makes my wife so special to me, because she really gets it.  I mean, she gets me.  She gets that even though the truffles won't last until Saturday, I am going to love them.  She also gets that I would never buy them for myself and that their purchase must must must coincide with my opportunity to cook for a large group of people.

That, my readers, is why she is amazing.

My parents are also amazing.  However, I nearly lost a few limbs preparing my holiday meal, because of this amazing knife: a Global 8" chef's knife that they got me.

My parents got me this knife because I completely obliterated my previous chef's knife while butchering a lamb with a fever of 104F.  And, that, I think is what makes me amazing.  At least I think it's pretty amazingly ridiculous to be hammering a Lagostina chef's knife through the spine of an unbutchered (but dead) lamb with that now shattered blade and an old rolling pin, covered in sweat and in the middle of a 4-day stint in bed with the flu.

Global knives, however, they don't shatter so easily.  This chef's knife is my second knife from Global; my first being a single-edged sushi knife that still handily carves ultra-thin pieces of fresh fish with incredible precision , 4 years and 3 sharpenings later.  There are 3 things I adore about the knives from Global:

1) They are all metal and I have bashed the hell out of too many (almost) equally priced plastic-handled knives to care to get another.

2) With a good steel to put the edge back on they stay sharp a lot longer than your typical kitchen knife.  I'm told this is because a lot of the knives coming out of Japan are made of a harder steel.  I'm not sure this is true for the Global knives compared to other Japanese knives, since I managed to somehow put a pretty good dent in my sushi knife on a fishing excursion.  To be fair to the knife, I don't quite know *how* I knicked it, but it was my bachelor party so the possibilities are endless. Anyhow, it's still pretty damn tough as far as knives go and that sushi knife has not rusted a whit, in spite of terribly horrible abuse.  To justify my experience, you may read about it how it is corroborated in this more technical review.

3) The factory-sharpening on these knives is unparalleled.  Sure, I know, it only lasts a couple of weeks.  But I'll be damned if they don't slice the thinnest slices, cutting through tomatoes, foil, squash, truffles, and sluice through my own digits to the bone, all as though they were hot butter. 

In fact, if my fingers weren't so disfigured from the last experience, I'd be inclined to post a picture of the gory blood-bespattered and terrible scars that my factory-sharpened Global knife has worked on me.  

Marked with blood, my Global knife and I made this awesome holiday meal on Thursday the 22nd this year, which was Leggo Christmas in Montreal:

1. A Vancouver Crab BLT Canape with Shiso Miso Mayonnaise
2. Cream of Enoki Mushroom with Black Truffle Garnish (Chicken Demi-Glace base)
3. Vancouver Crab Ravioli with Black Truffle Beurre Blanc with Poached Pear Carpaccio
4. Macerated Oranges
5. Butter Chicken and Hand-Made Cashew Butter Candy
6. Red Beer Caramelized Onion Thin-Crust Pizza with Organic Gruyere
7. Roast Leg of Lamb with Fresh Herbs, Lemon, Olive Oil
8. Basil/Mint Ice Cream, Banana Rum Raisin Gelato topped with a Peanut Butter stuffed Truffle

Green Beans and Hard-Tack Cod Fish Balls

Mediterranean appetizers in the Gaspé?  When your mom asks you to clear out some leftover cod and your father is prancing about with a sack of Purity hard-tack that he hauled all the way back from Newfoundland, what's a boy to do?

Best made with salt-cod, these delicious fritters are served up as "Bolas" in Spain, Bolinhos in the Portugese world, and Palle di Bacalao in Italy. They're done a hundred different ways in the old country.  I like to serve these up Italian-style, but with local ingredients (i.e. I had no parsley, so I tossed in some celery leaves, oh yeah, and the bacon, good old delicious bacon).

Bolas and Beans

Photo: Maria Giuliani

Green Beans

1 lb green beans, halved

1/2 onion

1/2 tomato

3 cloves garlic

2 tbsp olive oil

sea salt

Oil and salt your pan and get it heated to where the salt is sizzling. Finely chop your onions and fry them up on a high-heat in a covered pan.  Toss in the tomato and the garlic and cook off until the liquid has evaporated.  Drop in the halved green beans until they're tender, but not soft.

Cod Fish Balls

Balls

4 green onions, finely chopped

2 medium waxy potatoes, baked, cooled, chopped

1 bulb roasted garlic, mashed

1 egg

1 lb cod

2 shallots, finely sliced

2 tsps whole grain mustard

2 pieces bacon, chopped

1/4 c celery leaves, finely chopped

1/3 cup parmesan

Breading

3 hard-tack biscuits, crushed

2 eggs

2 cups flour

Oil for frying

This is one easy: chop and toss.  

Roll the balls up.  The yield should be around 24 small balls.

Dip the balls in flour, then in egg, then in the crushed hard-tack.  Salt them and serve them in a sauce.  I served them in a tomato sauce, but they will happily marry with garlic mayonnaise, dill sour cream, or any other dipping sauce.  Be creative, have fun.

Paparadelle con Ragu

I love my cooking sojourns in the Gaspé.  Down home the ingredients are limited, the stores are so far away that the inconvenience sets a stage that necessitates the mothering of much innovation.  For some nights I'd been dreaming about the Rigatoni Genovese recipe that I posted earlier, but I knew I wasn't going to find veal tail, rigatoni, and possibly not even fresh tomatoes.  Turns out the larder had round steak, flour + eggs, and Ti-Nou brought in a load of unripe and moldy tomatoes.

The answer to the evening's menu was founded thus: hand-rolled paparadelle and round-roast ragu.

Paparadelle and Ragu

Photo: Maria Giuliani

Ingredients

3 onions 

4 cloves garlic

1 carrot, chopped

500 grams round roast

1 tsp dried thyme

1.5 tsps black pepper

2 red peppers

2 cups red wine

3 celery

3 cups tomato sauce (preferably home-made with 12 tomatoes)

2 tbsps tomato paste

Olive Oil

Finely chop 2.5 onions and fry them in a small amount of olive oil. After a couple of minutes, add in the chopped carrots and celery and cover.  Once the onions, carrots, and celery have softened add in the garlic and re-cover for a couple of minutes.  Remove from the heat and puree to make the flavour base.  

Save the other 1/2 an onion for cooking up your tomato sauce.  I tossed my 12 barely ripe tomatoes in the with onion and 1/2 tbsp of butter and pureed the mess (sans onion) when it was soft.  The sauce was alright, but lacked flavour due to the quality of the tomatoes, hence the tomato paste.  Frankly, before the tomato paste, my ragu was still brown from the meat.  

Slice up the roast and brown off in a pan a few pieces at a time.  My parent's have this awesome antique copper pan that conducts the heat and I used it to brown off the meat in batches at  a high-heat.  Normally I probably would have down this using an oil with a high smoking point - like clarified butter or safflower oil -- but in this case  I just used regular butter.  Once finished I de-glazed with a bit (1/4 cup) of beef stock we had kicking around, but you can just use the red wine.  

Combine the beef with the flavour base and the other ingredients and cook down until thickened, preferably at a low heat over 2-3 hours. Like most ragus and stews, this sauce will really rock the next day, when the flavours have had a chance to come together.

Hand-Rolled Paparadelle

Hand-rolling pasta is a real pain, but it's worth it if you can get it right. I won't bog this article down with the best recipe for pasta, any basic pasta recipe will do.  Once the dough has been kneaded and has sat for 20 minutes, begin rolling it out.  Rolling a fresh batch of pasta involves a lot of stretching and pulling, which makes for a lot of minor tears that will help the sauce stick to it later. 

Service

This pasta is heavy, rich, and meaty.  For my meat-and-potato-loving guests it was a sure win.  Toss the pasta with the sauce in a separate bowl or cooking the pasta into the sauce, as you wish.  Save 1/4 - 1/2 of the sauce for service and top it off the pasta on the plates.  Sprinkle it with some cheese or some hot pepper pickles or however you think will best go over with the guests.

Rigatoni Genovese (Veal Tail Rigatoni)

We set out from Napoli on the ferry to Sorrento around 8 a.m.  Jawed it up with some French tourists in la belle langue, on our way across the bay to Sorrento.  Sorrento’s looming cliffs yawning out at us, we dismissed the tourist guides on the ferry that suggested a cab and we hiked it up.  It was hot in Sorrento, really hot, nigh half-way to boiling at 45C.  When we finally found our secluded hotel, nestled in a secret kind of garden, round the back way, we switched for beach gear and tore down towards the beach, juggling ice cream cones between bites of arancini.  It was sweltering on the truckload of gravel that was the public beach.  We laid out our towels over the blanket of cigarette butts and I made my way through the haze of tobacco smoke to my 2 hour sunburn in the water, where the heat was finally bearable. 

The first night’s repast of lemon leaf fish and fettucini a la vongole – tourist-fare crap at tourist-fare prices – was rendered pleasant only because we chanced to pick a frothy lambrusco (a sparkling red wine we later learned is best served with pizza), bursting in flavour and refreshment.  The service was awful, the waiter grimacing out a smile as he abandoned the charming impolitesse of Mediterranean service for poorly-effected, saccharine North American-style service. 

That night the AC in our room broke and the ragged party crowds of tourists raged deep outside our open window, into the sauna of the night. 

The next day, beaten and tired, we found 2 reasons to go to Sorrento.  The first was our day trip to Capri, where the beaches are cleaner and the salad was, perhaps not surprisingly, the best Caprese I’ve had to date.  The second was in Sorrento. 

Determined that the locals must have some food they can stomach, where the service is comfortably cold and the pasta piping hot, we set out past the typical tourist area and found a little cantina.  All the locals were eating this rich meaty pasta whose aromas filled the back corner of the little square in which it sat with a heady smell.  The service was counter-only, the beefy pasta was not on menu, and the server looked angry.  This was definitely the place for us.  We snagged 2 plates of the pasta, smothered in ragu, by stammering something that, to be generous, may have sounded like: “voglio mangiare la pasta che lui magiare … !?” To be generous…  To be fair, it was probably a hammed up series of grunts and some wild finger pointing.  But we got our pasta.  This pasta.  It was the best god-damned pasta I’ve ever eaten: simple, rich, and meaty.  I practically skipped back to the hotel with gelato in hand. 

That night was worse than the night before.  1 a.m. I decided to join the Yahoos and got a bit licked on Moretti, as some Australian chick yammered on about how fantastic Sorrento was.  I may have slouched like a rough beast towards the train station the next day; I may have been cantankerous and asleep for the next 15 hours.  But by God do I remember that pasta, and now I’ll pass it on to you.

Ingredients

1 tbsp olive oil on a medium heat

8 shallots to the pan

2 ribs of celery

1 carrot, brunoised, finely diced

2 roasted red peppers, chopped

5 cloves of garlic

1.5 lbs of veal tail

2 fresh bay leaves

2 cups of red wine

1/2 cup of passata (fresh tomato sauce)

Directions 

Fire the shallots until they start to go transluscent and toss in the garlic, cooking until they both go a bit golden.  Fry in the other veggies and the meat, stirring for a few minutes.  Add the wine and bring to a simmer.  Reduce, uncovered on a low heat. The veggies will dissolve after a good 45-60 minutes, into the sauce, thickening it.  Finish with the passata, keep warm.

2 cups rigatoni (I think I really used 225 grams of rigatoni)

Cook your pasta separately, removing it from the heat when it’s still a bit tough (al dente).  There are different philosophies on how to mix the sauce with the pasta.  You can cook the pasta in the sauce and incorporate the flavours.  I mix the sauce and the pasta in a separate bowl, which ensures the pasta’s texture is preserved and that you can taste the pasta as a separate element of the dish, rather than having all of the flavours blended.  Dress with a good sea salt and a nice drizzle of olive oil.

Fresh parmesan curls on top, fresh parsley, crushed black pepper.

Carrot Pickles with Onion Seed and Sesame

Carrots.  Before we figured out how to pickle them they were just insipid root vegetables boiled to make stock. I dread them in boiled dinners, I abhor them in stews, I hate their pretty orange flesh and I hate that I cannot rend it from bones.  The orange carrot; another Dutch conspiracy.

But pickled carrots!

Crunchy and with a sourness offset by the umami flavour provided by the onion seeds and the nuttiness of the sesame seeds, these pickles are a perfect match to many meat and pasta dishes.  I often bring their vibrant orange colour along with a towering sandwich to work.  If you can’t find kalonji or black sesame, because you live in a remote region, you can just use toasted white sesame seeds or maybe a small dash of roasted, ground cumin for a similarly rich flavour.

While the water’s going, you can toss in a “water’s bylin’, nobody’s home” to your audience, to impress them with your firm grasp of Gaspesian idioms -- they’ll be impressed, even though someone is obviously home, because it will become a self-deprecating comment on how you’re here but not all there. Gaspesians love a bit of the sarcasm.

Bylin’ bits

4 cups carrots

2 cups white vinegar

2 cups water

Toppins

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1/4 c olive oil

2 tsps kalonji (onion seed), toasted

3 tsps black sesame toasted

Slap the water and vinegar in a pot on the stove and crank it up to high. Quarter the carrots and dice them large.  When the water is boiling, toss in the carrots. I won’t tell you how long it will take, since that will depend on the carrot.  However, you’ll want to remove them while they still have a bit of crunch to them.  It usually doesn’t take 10 minutes, unless you’re using the monster carrots from a Chinese grocer or have purchased particularly tough or stringy carrots.  Bang down a skillet on a burner at high heat, while you’re at it , and get it real hot (you can skip this step if you’re using a gas stove).

While the carrots are on the boil, smash up your garlic with the end of a knife, chop off the hard end, whisk off the skin and chop it up quick A garlic press is equally as effective as the quick-chopping, but a bit slower if you have the proper knife skills.  Toss the seeds in the hot skillet and shake or stir them quickly for a minute or two, until you can smell them roasting.  

Remove the carrots, strain'em, and mix'em up with the garlic, oil, and seeds.

Yum.

Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Soup

The auspicious beginnings to my cooking career began as a New Year's Eve feast with a dozen good friends and a few visitors from abroad.  Everyone chipped in a bit of cash and we had the most fantastic feast, with wines paired by my friend Jean-Michel Gauthier and with Tristan Brand capturing the event for posterity, on camera, as is his wont.  The first course that night is one that I've made often since.  It was a deliciously fresh soup of roasted red pepper and tomato.  Best off, it's fast to make.

Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato; served with a homemade organic goat yogurt with fine herbs and cream
Photo: Tristan Brand

Ingredients


4 large red peppers
8 cups chopped Roma tomatoes
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion
3 cloves of garlic
salt to taste


The Red Peppers 

Crank your oven to 375F and put the red peppers in a pan. When the sides are blackened, let them cool on the counter or in a closed container.  The closed container works best, since the steam will help with your later removal of the skin.  When they are cool, remove the skin, stem, and seeds.  Puree them in a blender with the olive oil and set aside.

The Tomatoes

While your peppers are roasting, core and chop your tomatoes.  Toss them in a pan on a medium heat with the onion, butter, and garlic.  When the onion is tender, remove it and the garlic from the tomatoes and toss them all.  So your tomatoes are soft and now you're ready to get on with things.  You'll need to puree the tomatoes.  I prefer to run them through a food mill, so that I can remove the seeds and skins.

If you do not have a food mill and you want a beautiful soup, then you will need to process the tomatoes before cooking them: boil water, dunk the tomatoes in the water for 30 seconds and then remove the skins.  Quarter the tomatoes and remove the seeds.

If you do not want a beautiful soup then just run them through a food processor or blender.  You can achieve some redemption by then straining them through a sieve.  Don't worry though, either way it will still taste great.

The Finale


Mix the two purees together and season with salt.


The Alternate Endings

Add 1 tsp of pomegranate molasses to the tomatoes as they cook, for a sweeter and fruitier finish.  If you do so, add the juice of one lemon at the very end to take the edge off the sweetness.  A soup prepared in this manner should sit overnight to allow the flavours to fully blend.  This variation might enjoy a hint of cumin as a finisher.

The original finish was with a homemade organic goat yogurt, both plain and flavoured with herbs.  Try not to hit it with heavy herbs like sage, you already know how well basil goes with tomato, right?

If you only swirl the two soups together in the bowl itself, you will achieve a lovely swirl of the two shades of red.

Scallops in Clarified Butter

Searing Scallops

Pan-Searing a scallop is the easiest thing, I'm gob-smacked every single time I go to a restaurant and they look sickly grey, dripply wet, or the sort of watery brown that makes them look as though they've been dredged from the bottom of a puddle.

Pan Seared Scallop with Birch Syrup and Zucchini Pickle

Photo: Maria Giuliani

Take a frying pan and lay down some clarified butter and be a bit heavy-handed, like 2 tbsps, and you'll need to keep replenishing it.  That clarified butter will have a higher smoking point than regular butter, so it'll get pretty damn hot by the time you see wispy of fumes coming from it.  You must strike while the butter is hot!  (I lost the censorship battle with myself on that bit of cheese).  Flick a large pinch of coarse sea salt into the pan.  As you admire the intense sizzle from the salt, begin placing the scallops into the pan.  Place one, with your fingers or (more prudently) with tongs, and swirl it around in the butter until you're confident it's not going to stick before placing the next one.  Let them sit.  You should be able to visually verify when a crust has formed, although it may take some practice.  The brown should be visibly climbing up the sides.  Do not disturb the scallops while they cook. While they're cooking, you can impress your friends by using a spoon to shell sizzling butter over the top of the scallops, thereby lessening the time it takes for you to cook the top-side, starting a crust that will make them less likely to stick on the flip, and generally make you look like a pro food network star.

When you approach your scallop for the flip, do not be cocky.  You have probably screwed this up and they have stuck to the pan.  Please use a metal spatula or some thin metal implement to gingerly lift them before flipping.  If they have stuck, get down low and hard on the crust and try to save it from the bottom of the pan.  If they have not stuck then you have probably put too many in a pan that was not hot enough and they're steaming instead of frying.  Do not noob out on your scallops, they are more delicate than a fragile ego.  Do not season them heavily.  Do not plate them with strong flavours.

The perfect specimen will have a lovely brown crust and remain slightly translucent in the middle (see above).  

My Spanish Inspiration: Stealin' Cod from the Newfies

A bit late this week on my posting, due to the death of my electronic recorder, on which this week's posting had been recorded, I decided to post a recently hashed together introduction to my in progress cookbook:

My Spanish Inspiration

The RENFE train bolted us northward for 11 hours from windy shores of Tarifa at 270 big ones an hour. Freed from the shackles of Andalusian Tapas, we parachuted into San Sebastián and bust out into Basque country, leaving the Madrid myths of Ferran Adria-trained chefs behind us.  

Within our first hour there, like a mad bull, I had already lowered my head and charged the pension owner of Bellas Artas and got jammed to the shoulders as I strained to get through the narrow doorway to her office and see Puyol’s game-winning header in the Spanish World Cup Semi-Final.  As cries of joy burst out from every room in the pension and hugs and kisses flew around the world, my wife and Leire were in tears, laughing at me, still struggling in the doorway, craning my neck to look at the small black and white television under the counter in her office. 

The fire and excitement of that hour set the tone for our first night’s trip to Fuego Negro, San Sebastián’s pinnacle of Pintxos.  Pintxos: the Basque answer to the Spanish Tapas.  We watched the sun set over the Atlantic to the verdict:  Basque 1 Spain 0.

The Winner

I gorged myself every evening on guindillas fritas that are only in season for 3 weeks, txangurro (crab) crackers, Kobe beef sliders, the carrillera de ternera (braised veal cheek) and foie gras at San Telmo, and all the Rioja wine that we could find.  And a special shoutout to the cafe with the excellent grilled brioche a la marmelada, you really made my morning.

 


The Loser

Madrid:  The stodgy old French cuisine of an Adria disciple was drenched in overbearing, if well-executed, sauces that wouldn’t make the news.  Mind, they did adorn the plates with beautiful presentations, even if they oft ruined them with the sauces splashed all over everything by the server at service.  Still, I thank you for the complex and playful desserts like “bubblegum,” they were unexpected and appreciated.  Madrid, he was outdone by a clam dish in the Mercado San Miguel, but he was the only one who brought you close.  I have 5 lbs of a most delicious prosciutto and home, but I had so much ham and cheese with you that I still can’t bring myself to crack it.

This was my Spanish inspiration: gaining 7.5 pounds a week, packed on in 10 inch high sandwiches of fried bread, beef tenderloin (lomo) and cheese; affectionately called “zapatilla” or “slippers.”  Heaps upon piles of variously cured pigs; rice thickened stews; potato stuffed omelets that were practically deep-fried in olive oil; a boondoggle of badass sandwiches; pyramids of wine bottles left in my wake, all delicious, none memorable.  Everything was eminently local and fresh; all local except for all that bacalau (cod) that they obviously poached off the coasts of Newfoundland, right?

Squished Zapatilla Decimated by my Millstones

Eddie F. Setser and Troy Harold Seals, they knew


      There were seven Spanish trawlers,
      They were fishing in the sun;
      The Spanish they caught all the fish,The Newfies they got none.
      Then the clouds appeared, and the fog rolled in,
      The sun no longer shone;
      And seven Spanish trawlers took all the codfish home.

And this summarizes the dilemma I faced when I set out to write a cookbook.  I grew up in a climax of Gaspesian culture, at a turning point between two times.  My parent’s generation saw the advent of electrical refrigeration on the coast, computers, and we had the unique excitement of exploding an egg in one of the first microwaves on the coast.  With the increase in the availability of goods from away, we saw our local resources wane – the closing of the mine in Murdochville, the crushing collapse of the fisheries, the end of the forestries industry. 

I grew up in a world where I ate lobster every week in the early summer, fried cod tongues in Gaspe butter, cod head stew, cod livers, salt cod, herring, mackerel, all of the Chacuteries de la Mer: lobster butters, taramosalatas, smoked fishes.  And I left that world, on a tear, running from all the mac’n’cheeses a-mash with wieners, cream of corn and ketchup, ramen noodle packs that were eaten raw and whose wrappings lay a-littering college dorm room floors, fried chicken, ”Lebanese sandwiches” that were really pepperoni submarines wrapped in pita bread, as McDo and Timmy Ho muscled their way into the local food scene.  As I sprinted towards the exit, our local cookbooks were sporting 2 dozen recipes for meat loaf with soup mixes and a what-to-do with a variety of canned goods and not a one for fish. 

I tripped my way into Montreal, fell on my face as they rolled me out the college doors, and tumbled through a series of adventures.  I was voracious.  I burnt the candle at both ends, consuming every cultural experience or cuisine that I could find.  I left the white bread at the door and learned to cook Ethiopian from a girlfriend’s family friends, I shacked up with chef roommates, hung around in Indian markets, asking unsuspecting Tamils for tips, plied Korean depanneur owners with beer and lobster for their Kim Chi craft, traded canned roast peppers for green chili chutneys from South America and the Mexican chocolate dropped off at my door, straight from the uncle’s shop, was bartered for curried lamb chops and biryani.  I spent 6 years as a vegetarian, with frightening pantries full of fermenting grains and produce that terrified my roommates.  I sought out and trained in every cooking style I could find.  I never wanted to eat canned green beans with garlic powder ever again. 

I wanted to eat local, cooked foreign.  I burned to get back to that critical point of foreign invasion.  Spain inspired me.  Spain, with all their stolen cod.

Lemon Meringue Pie

According to my friend over in Turriff Hall, this is the year of the pie. Since his ardent blogging on pies inspired me to begin my own blog, I have decided to pay tribute with a lemon meringue pie.

Now I've been dreaming about making one of these suckers for a while, ever since I made myself hurt on a personal-sized one at M:BRGR, right downtown, here in Montreal.  That was a few years ago now and I've had some fun making meringues, pastries, and lemon curds for other sundry applications, but I surprisingly hadn't put them all together.

This recipe is for a relatively tart and sweet lemon meringue pie, which is best served with an espresso or strong cup of tea, whose bitterness will cut the flavour and refresh the palate.  An excellent pie will have a crust that remain flaky beneath all the curd, it will have a firm curd, and a meringue that is light but well-constructed.

Lemon Meringue Pie

Photo: Maria Giuliani

Step 1: Crust

The key to any excellent pie is its crust.  It should be flaky, not crumbly, and meaty (umami-y).  The key to your meat flavour is an excellent lard or suet.  Yes, suet and lard, and not the kind you get in the store, if you can help it.  Go out and buy yourself a nice chunk of pork from the butcher, render the fat from the skin and keep the chicharones for your tacos.  I guarantee that you won't regret it.

The following crust recipe is for 1 pie crust, I saved the other for a sugar pie rainy day.  It's not worth making 1 crust at a time.

Makes 2 crusts

2 1/2 cups flour (preferably low gluten or cake flour)

1/2 tsp salt

1 tbsp sugar optional

1/4 cup ice water + a bit more

3/4 cup lard or suet

1 tbsp vinegar optional

Before you begin anything, fill up a cup of water with tons of ice cubes to get it super cold, this will help your hard from getting soft and melting later on.  Sift together the flour, salt, and sugar.  Using a knife or a pastry cutter, cut in the lard, be patient and take the extra time to really cut it in and not smush it in.  When the flour is chunky, chocolate chip sized, stop cutting it in.  Combine the vinegar and the water.  This vinegar, by the way, is used to inhibit gluten formation, but if you've used a low gluten flour you don't really need it.  Sprinkle the water on top, while lightly tossing the chunks, so that you incorporate the liquid without continuing to work the lard into the flour.  I've deliberately set this recipe to have too little liquid.  I want you to slowly add a bit more water (1-3 tbsps), until you've got enough to form the dough into a ball without it being sticky.  Humidity really affects flour, so you will never need the same amount.

Once you've formed the dough into 2 balls, place them in the fridge for an hour before rolling them out to line your pie plate.

Cook the crust at 400F until lightly browned

Step 2: The Curd

The curd!  This is the easy part.  Indeed, the hardest part about making the curd is choosing the best lemons in the grocery.  I like to pick big hard ones that are fresh and ripe, with a knobby skin that I know will have a a thick zest.  I also use an aged clarified butter - the Indian brand "Desi Ghee" will do the trick or any cultured butter, clarified or not.

4 eggs

2 cups sugar

4 big lemons or 3/4 cup lemon zest; 1 cup lemon juice

1 cup butter

Toss the eggs and sugar into a non-reactive sauce pan on a medium heat (stainless steel will do; aluminum will not) and whisk them up.  Add in the lemon zest, juice, and butter, whisk them up as well.  Bring to a boil.  Reduce the heat to a simmer and stir for about a minute, until the eggs begin to thicken.  Strain and store in the fridge immediately.  When you're putting the curd into the crust, it should be quite thick and it will be close to the consistency you can expect in your final pie.  So, if it's thin and runny you will have a soggy crust and it will be best, old boy, to put it back on the burner.

Step 3: The Meringue

Oh meringue.  There are so many different kinds of you and I've had so much fun with you in so many different and titillating ways.  Friends, if you really want to impress your guests, hunt down a meringue recipe for Italian Meringue and serve your pies in individual portions topped with freshly made meringue.  It should be a cooked and stable meringue.  It will be pillowy and soft and it you will feel sweetly melancholic as your fork thrashes at the end of your fingers as you desperately and frantically try to paw as much into your mouth as fast as you can.

Today I used a French Meringue, the traditional, if you will.  Now, you don't want a meringue that sweats and is grainy because the sugar isn't well incorporated, or that shrinks and bleed beads of moisture because it was overcooked, or that is flat from under or overbeating.  So cooking it is an art in itself and requires a careful eye.   The fun thing about meringue is that you can have tons of family fun licking beaters and artfully swirling designs onto the top of your pie

4 egg whites (1/2 cup of egg white)

3/4 cup sugar (superfine, like caster sugar is best, for better incorporation)

1/8 tsp lemon juice

Blast the egg whites away in your mixer until they're a thick foam and have tripled or so in volume.  Then begin to add the sugar with a tablespoon until stiff peaks form.  This exercise of incorporating the sugar should take about 3 minutes all told.  DO NOT OVER BEAT YOUR MERINGUE.

Use to coat your curd filled crust immediately.

Remember, cold whites separate better, but warm whites foam better. Separate them cold and then warm them to room temperature.

If your meringue doesn't foam, you probably got a speck of egg yolk in it didn't you?  Even the tiniest drop of oil will cause the foam to flop. This is why it's always best to use a metal bowl -- no residues.

Looking to play with your meringue?  Experiment with different amounts of sugar for different levels of firmness (more sugar) and softness (less sugar).  I've seen recipes call for a few tablespoons of sugar for 3 egg whites, but I find it results in a poorly structured and too airy product.  I like a denser meringue.  If I wanted a soft meringue then I'd be going soft and dense with an Italian meringue and I'd blow your socks off.

Step 4: The Bake

All ovens are different.  I cooked mine at 375F (350F convection, really) for 20 minutes.  The meringue had a lovely colour and had just barely finished cooking through -- a poke test with a toothpick found dampness only near the very bottom.

Step 5: Cool it down bud

If you cut your pie before it is cooled, you will be faced with a lake of soupy curd and will be terribly shamed and lose much face.

In Memoriam: Gaspe Salt Cod -- Bacalao Stew

In Memoriam: Gaspe Salt Cod -- Bacalao Stew

Although one of Spain's oldest cities, and with a multi-cultural heritage, Seville's food scene was hardly impressive.  Dozens of restaurants dot Seville’s narrowly winding streets, they ring the Alcazar and speckle the marketplace, and every last one of them is serving up greasy rustic deep-fried fruits of the sea and heaps of microwaved paella.  I mean, literally, all of them.  It's a fast food heaven and the novelty wears off real quick.

  

Now across the river in tourist-free neighborhoods of Triana, that’s where you’ll find the most delightful tapas:  the succulent shrimp aswim in heavily garlicked oil of camarones al ajillo or succulent tenderloin, solo mio, in pepper sauces with french fries.  But the best meal I had was watching Spain trounce Portugal in their race to the world cup, chowing down on an over-priced but delicious cod stew.  

It took me straight back to my childhood; the Spanish used to love chowing down on the delicious sun-dried cod fish freshly salted from Quebec, back when there was cod to catch.  In the summers the heart-warming stench of the sea filled our coastal region, with endless flakes all covered with little wooden teepees, sheltering the salt-laden cod underneath from the rain and dew.  So, in memory of the Gaspesian fishing industry and to my wonderful vacation in Spain.

My ancestor, Rupert Leggo, standing outside 

the old salt-house in L'Anse a Brillant, holding a fish as big as himself

3 medium onions

1/4 cup of quality olive oil
3 cloves garlic
1lb (about 2 1/2 cups reconstituted) salt cod, cubed
1 cup passata (tomato sauce)
1 cup Chardonnay
3 sprigs fresh thyme
1 sprig fresh oregano
1 sprig fresh sage
1 fresh bay leaf
1 cup of gnocchi (optional, substitute diced potato)
1 tsp crushed black pepper


Garnish: 8 olives; 2 hard boiled eggs
Serves: 2 but scales well to 6-8, after which the sauce will boil too long in its reduction

Slice your onions thinly, so they cook faster.  Toss them in a large pan or pot, bring to a sizzle, cover and set to low.  Slice the garlic or smash and chop it fine. Check those onions and they should be sweating out.  When they hit translucence and the outer edges are browning on them, toss in the garlic.

When the onions are golden and/or the garlic (preferably both, but be careful not to over cook the garlic or it will overpower the dish), add the cod and cook over a low heat for 10 minutes.  Toss in the liquids and the herbs.  Reduce until thick and pulpy like an oatmeal after it’s been sitting for a few minutes.  Try to keep the fish in sizable (1 inch chunks), by not over stirring.

Now, a lot of fish stews have potatoes in them and I’d like this one to be no exception to the rule.  And, I’m the sort of guy that would make fresh gnocchi just to have their pillowy deliciousness in my stew and deal with the 5 leftover servings later.  So, I'll usually make this dish after a night of gnocchi to use up leftovers, or the night before a night of gnocchi, just to get a good taste of what's to come.

Salt this recipe to taste only after you've finished cooking.  If it's undersalted, and it rarely is, I prefer to add more olives to add the salt rather than salt the stew itself.

Garnish with fresh chopped fresh herbs, fresh green olives, and quarters of boiled egg and serve with crusty bread and the rest of that Chardonnay

Looking to impress a date?

For the fry, add extra butter or swap in pork fat or suet, and fry up the fish until it is golden before you add the onions and it'll develop a richer and meatier flavour. For the garnish, grab some quail eggs and high-quality, bright-green, Spanish olives. A little Hungarian bacon (the garlic paprika slathered one that you're not supposed to cook) as a garnish, if they swing that way, will really sexy it up.

Salt Cod drying on Flakes in Point Saint Peter

Reconstituting Salt Cod 

Bone the cod while dry, that's how my grammy always did it and that's how i do it still.  If you don't know how to bone a fish, however, you can sort through the flesh for the bones when you chunk it up.  Be a dear, though, and don't completely mash the fish?

Most salt cod these days comes from Europe.  Well, I mean it comes from Newfoundland, obviously, but the Spanish trawlers are hauling the loads back to Europe, salting them and sending them back here.  So, there's a reason the Spanish loved our Gaspesian salt cod -- we didn't oversalt it.  Your typical salt cod is bleached white from salt and it comes through in the flavour. It's burnt and that's why it's so fishy. Like freezer-burn, but with salt.  That stuff, it'll last for years.  It ain't right that food should last that long.

So, it's understandable, I think, that prepping salt-burned cod should take a while. Here's how you go about it:  Fill a pot or bowl with enough water to cover the cod, cutting the cod into smaller pieces if necessary. Soak the cod for about a day, changing the water every 4 hours or so. Let it sit overnight.  Just before using, boil for about an hour to rid it of any excess salt that’s still hanging around.

Gaspesian salt cod, god bless it, is lightly salted and sun-cured.  If you prep it the way I told you to prep the pilfered cod fish just above, you'll absolutely ruin it. Soak it for 4-5 hours and boil it for 20 minutes. It'll still be a bit tough, but it'll finish cooking in the tomato sauce, suffusing the sauce with its remaining salt.

Sustainability
I love cod, but I eat it very rarely, feeling guilty about every delicious morsel of its delicate flesh.  Honestly, I feel this way about a lot of the fisheries and I would urge you to eat more sustainable stocks until there is a sustainable aquaculture on which we can properly rely.  I include this recipe for nostalgia, a bit of history, and because it is so damn delicious that you should never make it.

Fresh Summer Fruit Gelati: Ontario Peaches, Wild Blueberries, Quebec Strawberries

Peach gelato and Blueberry sorbet

The end of July is a blessèd time in our little corridor.  The peaches are trucking in from the Niagara region and the brambles of raspberries and bushes of blueberries are abundantly available.  In les regions, down-home in the Gaspé, shy wild strawberries are hiding down low where even my father's overzealous lawn-mowing can't reach them.

A trip to Gaspé and then to market find me packed to the gills with all of this fresh local produce: those perfectly ripe peaches, the intoxicating wild blueberries from St-Jean, the heady wild Gaspesian strawberries.  It's a glorious moment, sitting there, popping those berries into my mouth.  It's just a moment you want to freeze in time.

And that's when it goes downhill.  I get glum.  Really,  I do.  Glumly, I sit and stare and those lovely berries, like a teenager thinking about the end of time, just sort of sad that things won't last forever.  Just sad that those berries won't be around when the seasons turn.  What's a forlorn chef to do?  Frozen berries will lose their lustre and canned jams are sickly sweet, but ice cream?  Ice cream lasts forever.



Wild Strawberry Custard Gelato


500 grams of strawberries
1 cup of sugar
3/4 cup of cream
1 1/4 cups of milk
4 egg yolks
1/2 tsp vanilla (ideally you would use 1 vanilla bean)
1/2 lemon juiced (1 tbsp lemon juice)

2 important points before we begin: first, if you can't find wild strawberries, then feel free to use any other fresh strawberry (preferably Quebec strawberries), second, this recipe is scalable - the important part is that there is an equal weight ratio between the milk+cream and the strawberries.

Place the strawberries, 2/3s of the sugar, and cream in a blender.  Blend at a high speed until the strawberries are fully incorporated into the liquid.  Heat the milk and vanilla in a pan until hot.  If you're prone to burning milk when you heat it, then use a double-boiler.  While the milk is heating, separate out 4 egg yolks into a mixing bowl with the rest of the sugar.  Whip the sugar and yolks until the yolks turn light yellow and makes thin ribbons.

Temper the eggs with the hot milk.  Whisk the eggs rapidly, while adding in the milk bit by bit.  If you add the milk too quickly, you will cook the egg yolks and ruin the texture.  Mix the blended cream and fruit into the custard and then whip in the lemon juice to finish.

Once the mixture has cooled, process the mixture in an ice cream maker.



Ontario Peach Custard Gelato


2 cups diced Ontario peaches
1 cup sugar
1 tbsp Orange Liqueur
3/4 cup of cream
1 1/4 cups of milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
4 egg yolks

This recipe is almost identical to the strawberry recipe above.  It produces a lovely mild, peach scented, ice cream.

First, macerate the peaches by placing them in a non-reactive bowl with 1/2 cup of sugar and 1 tbsp of the Orange Liqueur.  Place them in the fridge for 2 hours or overnight.  Remove them from the fridge and blend them with the cream, until fully incorporated.

Heat the milk on the stove with vanilla.  Whip the egg yolks and the remaining sugar until the yolks turn a pale yellow and forms thin ribbons.  Temper the eggs, by very slowly adding the hot milk while steadily whisking.  Once incorporated, add in the creamed fruit from the blender.

Once the mixture has cooled, process the mixture in an ice cream maker.



Lac St-Jean Wild Blueberry Sorbet

500 grams of wild blueberries (2 1/2 - 3 cups)
3/4 cup of thick simple syrup
1/4 cup water
1/2 lemon juiced (1 tbsp lemon juice)

Add all ingredients in a pot on the stove (preferably a nofn-reactive pot).  Heat slowly to a boil, drop to low and hold at a simmer for 5-7 minutes (until the berries burst).  Remove from the heat and let cool.  Process the cooled mixture in a blender and strain through a mesh strainer to remove the solids.

Process the mixture in an ice cream maker.



Thick Simple Syrup


2 parts sugar
1 part water

Boil until sugar is dissolved.  Store in fridge.