Tuesday 23 August 2011

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.

Saturday 13 August 2011

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.

Sunday 7 August 2011

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.