The Chocolate Bunny

Daring Bakers' January Challenge - Scones

2012-01-27T10:41:00.004-05:00

Audax Artifex was our January 2012 Daring Bakers’ host.. Aud worked tirelessly to master light and fluffy scones (a/k/a biscuits) to help us create delicious and perfect batches in our own kitchens!

I had a dual reaction when I saw this month’s DB challenge. The first was “Yaaaay, easy challenge!” The second was “Nooooo, more biscuits!”

Don’t get me wrong, I love scones/biscuits. So much so that I’ve made quite a lot of them in recent months. I made big, cheddar-and-chives scones for a party. I made tiny biscuits for Christmas. I made a cheese-and-bacon version of those same tiny biscuits for New Year’s – and, since we were supposed to join a large crowd for the occasion, I made close to 150 of them. Except we ended up not going, because I was sick. I gave a third of the biscuits to my in-laws, and forced another third onto some friends who innocently passed by a few days later. Part of the remaining third is still in our freezer. So I was understandably not too jazzed about making more of these things.

But a challenge is a challenge! And our host, Audax, put so much work into this deceptively simple one that I would’ve felt bad playing hooky. Scones are one of the easiest baked goods out there: there are few ingredients, no beating eggs, no creaming butter, and minimal kneading. In fact, the less you handle the dough, the better. So it’s the little things that make the difference between an acceptable biscuit, and a great one. And Audax did a great job at reuniting all the tips that can help.

Another cool thing about scones is that they are very versatile. We actually don’t eat a lot of breakfast or tea pastries, so I usually make savoury scones. On the day I decided to do the challenge, I had planned to make a spicy Thai soup for dinner. So, in order to end up with a somewhat coherent meal (as opposed to the weird Italian-Indian-Thai combos I sometimes wind up with), I experimented with shiitake scones.

I really wasn’t sure whether it would work. I followed the basic recipe, adding 1/2 cup of finely chopped rehydrated shiitake mushrooms and 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda. I kept the dough wetter than I usually do, too. When I was making huge batches of biscuits, I would use the food processor, but given that this was a fairly small load (8-9 medium scones), I mixed it by hand, using my fingers to incorporate the butter.

I did kind of a bad job rolling out the dough, so I got an uneven rise on some of the scones. But rise they did, and the crumb was light and fluffy. The flavour itself was decent, although it could have used more salt. I had actually contemplated putting soy sauce into the dough, but had decided against it; although I’m still very curious as to what would have happened. Overall, though, I doubt shiitake scones will be the next big Asian side dish... They were okay, but I would prefer a bowl of rice or some noodles any day.

The scone below was made from my last scraps, which I stacked. It looks freaky, but it was practically as good as the others.

Thanks, Audax, for a cool challenge! Please check out the challenge recipes at the Daring Kitchen (link to be updated as soon as the recipes go up), and take a look at the Daring Bakers’ blog roll to see what everyone else whipped up!

Happy Chinese New Year / Têt / Oshogatsu / insert other appellations everyone!

2012-01-24T12:44:00.004-05:00

Happy Year of the Dragon to everyone!

I've been trying to figure out if I know any dragons, but apart from a distant cousin or two, I can't think of one. The only dragons I regularly encounter are the ones I slay in Skyrim these days (some of which are, incomprehensibly, easier to kill than frost trolls, and even some types of bandits).

I can hear you: "Why are you rambling about a video game, this is a food blog! Where's the food?!" Well, I did make food. Because, as much as I generally dislike regular New Year (I don't know why, I can never completely get in the spirit of it, maybe because Christmas is so much better), I love Têt. Not that we ever celebrated it in a huge way. I actually have a fairly large number of Vietnamese and half-Vietnamese relatives, but they're scattered all over the world, so I've never gathered around a food-laden table with them. I can't recall my mother ever making traditional dishes for the occasion, although I'm sure she made a special effort on that day. Regardless, I just like it.

Of course, with just the two of us, making a whole array of dishes isn't really an option, and Têt crept up on me this year, so there was no time to put a crowd together. So, last night, I just made Vietnamese caramelized ribs, and Japanese shiruko (sweet azuki bean soup).

"What, no pictures? No recipe?" Sorry, not this time. I'd made the ribs before, but this time they came out too salty and very unphotogenic, albeit still good. The shiruko was fine, but desperately needs some fine-tuning, and looked too watery. So, call me picky, but they were not blog-worthy.

I'll be back with a real post later. I just wanted to highlight the New Year and wish a lot of happiness and joy to all of you!

The Honeymoon, pt.2 - Prune

2012-01-18T13:27:00.006-05:00

And now we come back to our not-so-recent-anymore trip to New York. As mentioned previously, I didn't have a lot of restaurants on my list of destinations, so a lot of the time we just drifted along and stepped in whatever place looked good; after all, there is no shortage of restaurants in NY. But there was one place, apart from Momofuku, that I absolutely wanted to visit: Prune.

It started, as it often does for me, with a book. Having read stratospheric praise for Gabrielle Hamilton's memoir Blood, Bones, & Butter, I bought it soon after if came out. I’ll review it in my next post, but for now, suffice it to say that I absolutely loved it. I was dying to know what kind of food was made by the woman who had written this book. So, the day after we arrived in NYC, I dragged Laurent to the East Village for lunch, where we got lost and wandered around for a while before finally locating the tiny restaurant. As we examined the bright room, with its fuschia barstools and old mirrors, I couldn’t help but think of Hamilton’s description of the place when she first saw it: abandoned, cockroach-infested, covered in rat droppings, and packed with rotting food. I promptly put the passage out of my mind, as the place bore no remaining trace of its former filth, and who wants to be thinking about rat poop right before a meal?

I want to take a minute here to describe my state of mind on that first visit. It was a warm, sunny October day. There was a light breeze. I was wearing my favourite black polka dot skirt, the one that swishes around my legs in a way that makes me feel like a girl. And I was just married, and honeymooning in one of my favourite cities in the world. Most likely all these wonderful things influenced how I perceived my meal. But I’m thinking the food had something to do with it, too.

I confess, I didn’t even take pictures that first time. I didn’t feel like being a food blogger, I just wanted to enjoy myself. Descriptions of the dishes probably won’t do them justice, because they were so very simple. For starters, we split a half-avocado filled with olive oil and sprinkled with Maldon salt. Was it something anyone could have whipped up at home? Sure. But the avocado was perfectly ripe, and the olive oil was fragrant. Next, I had a shaved celery salad with a thick slice of blue cheese on the side, while Laurent had a coddled egg with wild mushrooms. Again, nothing fancy. But everything was just right, from my salad’s vinaigrette to the texture of Laurent’s egg. I could feel the love in the food, and that’s not something that happens very often.

We ended up coming back for lunch again a few days later. This time, we took pictures. Also, we were hungrier, so we ordered more food. We started with a chicken noodle soup with cracklings and matzo balls, which was fragrant and warming.

Next, I couldn’t resist ordering something which is mentioned in Hamilton’s book: an egg-on-a-roll. Apparently, she lived on these during her early years in the city, and I myself have eaten my share of these classic deli sandwiches. With crispy bacon, runny yolks, and a side of cold noodles, it was pure comfort food.

Laurent had a burger and fries. The meat was cooked rare, as requested, and was satisfyingly juicy.

Finally, we splurged on dessert: a poached peach with caramelized pecans and crème anglaise for Laurent, and fresh figs with lemon cream for me. Both were light and nicely cleansed our palates, but Laurent’s choice won, I have to admit.

Was this a pure act of fangirlism? Probably. Then again, so was our trip to Momofuku. But in both cases, the quality of the food spoke for itself, despite the absence of frills. Sometimes, you have to put cynicism aside and just recognize that there are cases where a good reputation is well deserved.

Daring Cooks' January Challenge - Tamales

2012-01-14T13:24:00.003-05:00

Maranda of Jolts & Jollies was our January 2012 Daring Cooks hostess with the mostess! Maranda challenged us to make traditional Mexican Tamales as our first challenge of the year!

You may have noticed I skipped out on the last couple of Daring Kitchen challenges. Up until then, I had only skipped one challenge (the croquembouche one, which I still intend to make someday). But toward the end of 2011, there was just too much going on, and I was barely cooking at all. However, with the new year, I was ready to get back on track and get back to the kitchen.

I’ll just announce is right now so that you won’t be shocked when you get to the end of this post: it was a disaster.

I love Mexican food, but had never eaten, let alone made tamales. I wasn’t even sure what they were. Basically, they consist of a filling wrapped inside a corn flour dough, which is itself wrapped inside a rehydrated corn husk, then steamed. Sounded easy enough.

Up until two weeks ago, I had a pack of corn husks in my pantry, purchased on a whim at a Mexican grocery store, in one of those “Oooh, I wonder what I could do with this?” moments. They had lingered there for months, until I was seized by a rabid need to clean up the clutter that had seemingly taken over every shelf, cupboard, and drawer of the apartment, and began moving stuff around and clearing out spaces. In my enthusiasm, I chucked out the corn husks, in one of those “The hell with it, I’m never going to use this” moments. It figures that this month’s challenge called for corn husks.

Too lazy to go out and buy a new package, I decided to use parchment paper instead. In that same spirit of laziness, I opted for the proposed vegan filling, even though I made the very non-vegan lard-infused dough. Assembling the tamales was easy enough, and I used my Asian bamboo baskets for the steaming.

But when the tamales were cooked, I tasted a tiny piece of the dough, and decided I didn’t care for it much. Something about the texture, the way it came apart, and also something about the flavour... Keep in mind that I had never had tamales before, and therefore had no reference. I only knew that I wasn’t wild about what I had made. While doing some research (even when I’m lazy, I still do research, because I am a flaming geek), I found that some people liked to reheat their tamales by frying them. In my book, frying makes everything better, and crispy seemed like a better option than the crumbly, wet-yet-dry texture I had obtained. Into the oiled skillet they went.

Having lovingly stacked and photographed the tamales, Laurent and I dug in. Then stopped. Then looked at each other.

“I’ll make us something else,” I said matter-of-factly, and got up to look for those homemade gyoza I knew were in the freezer.

I now knew what the problem was. It wasn’t the recipe, it wasn’t even my technique. My masa (corn) mix had gone bad. It gave off that horrible stale, bitter, rancid aftertaste. It’s strange, because I made corn tortillas not that long ago, and they were fine; it’s hard to imagine the mix could have gone so bad so quickly. I should have noticed it while making the dough, the smell should have tipped me off. For some reason, it hadn’t. At the very least, I should have noticed it when tasting the dough right out of the steamer, but maybe the steam had temporarily masked the taste. Or maybe I was just distracted.

While I was cooking the gyoza, Laurent had fun salvaging the filling by picking it out of the tamales. He even took pictures.

So, not a particularly glorious start to the year. Obviously, this was completely my fault. But I think I’m going to order tamales from a restaurant before attempting to make them again. And, obviously, I’m going to buy a new bag of masa mix.

My thanks to Maranda for a great challenge idea, and my apologies for screwing it up so badly. If you want to look at real tamales, please look at the Daring Cooks’ blog roll. And if you want to make your own, check out the challenge recipes. Just make sure your masa mix is fresh.

Happy New Year - Schmaltz, Gribenes, and Almost Kosher Chowder

2012-01-05T14:44:00.003-05:00

Happy New Year to you all! I hope you celebrated to your heart's content! Me, well... We were supposed to go out into the countryside, like last year, but I got sick. Nothing serious, but I was not up to frolicking in the snow, or even driving over to the chalet. So we just stayed in, and Laurent made us cacio e pepe spaghetti for dinner - not quite typical for a New Year's feast, but it was exactly the comfort food I needed.

My cold took a long time to heal, but yesterday I was finally up to cooking. Again, I veered toward comfort food, and made chowder. However, once again, it wasn't quite traditional.

I call this chowder "almost kosher" because it contains no pork. It does, however, contain dairy and chicken, so the title of fully kosher is out the window. But that doesn't really matter, since there is not an ounce of Jewish blood in me. So why did I substitute the pork? Simply because I had a lot of schmaltz to use.

(One needs to be very careful when opening what looks like a jar of jam in our house, because they usually contain something else.)

Why did I have schmaltz on hand? Well, it all started several month's ago, when I read David Sax's Save the Deli. I'll post more extensively about this book later, but suffice it to say the author went on a North American tour of Jewish delis, ate a heck of a lot of pastrami and chicken soup, and schmaltz is inevitably mentioned on every other page. Schmaltz, you're probably aware, is rendered chicken fat, and can replace most oils and fats in cooking. I was intrigued by how this influenced the taste of preparations; duck fat makes a big difference, so what of schmaltz?

Unfortunately, I had no idea where to find schmaltz. But since we were already regularly buying whole chickens, boning them, and saving the carcasses to make stock, I took it one step further, and started putting aside all the chicken skin and fat, and saving it in a Ziploc bag in the freezer. Then, when the bag was full, and I had over three pounds of fatty scraps, I rendered it, using the method indicated in Jennifer MacLagan's Fat. Thus, I ended up with two full cups of beautiful schmaltz, and a cup full of gribenes, which are basically chicken cracklings: the crispy bits of skin left over from the rendering process. I usually don't eat the skin off roast chicken, but this was something else: so crispy and delicious! We put them in soups, salads, and even just nibbled on them.

So, the gribenes were easy to dispose of, but for some reason we've been slow to use the schmaltz. Like I said, it can replace butter in most recipes, but we were so overloaded with leftovers (ours and other people's) that we didn't cook for several days. And when we did, they weren't really the kind of recipes where the substitution would be made.

So when I decided to make chowder, I was determined to use the stuff. I drew inspiration from a recipe by Jamie Oliver, but used schmaltz instead of pork fat, and the remaining gribenes instead of bacon. I also adapted the broth-to-dairy ratio. Obviously fresh corn would have been best, but in this season, canned corn had to do. And I used Nordic shrimp, for a local touch.

There was definitely a subtle difference in flavour: less smoky than if I had used bacon, but still more gamey than if I had used butter. I wouldn't say any version is flat-out better than the others, but it's nice to have options. Either way, this soup is a very flavourful and easy meal for a lazy weekday.

Schmaltz and Gribenes

450 g (1 pound) or more of chicken fat and skin

Cut the chicken skin in small pieces. Place them in a heavy-bottomed pan over low heat, and let the fat melt, stirring occasionally, until the skin begins to grow crispy. This can take several hours (between two and four).

Alternately, if you are rendering a large amount of fat, put the chicken skin in a Dutch oven and place in an oven preheated to 120ºC (250ºF). Bake until skin begins to grow crispy, which will take several hours.

In both cases, when the skin is just getting crispy and brown, drain out the rendered fat and strain it through a cheesecloth into a heatproof container. Return the skin to the pan and cook over medium low heat until it is very crispy golden brown. Strain the remaining fat through the cheesecloth, and place the skin on paper towels to absorb the fat.

Store the schmaltz in a clean airtight container in the fridge for up to two weeks. Store the gribenes similarly, and consume them within a couple of days. You should obtain approximately 1 cup of schmaltz for every pound (450g) of chicken skin.

Almost Kosher Chowder
Adapted from Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

Serves 4-6

2 tbsp schmaltz
One leek, cut in half lengthwise and sliced crosswise
450g (1 pound) of potatoes (approximately 3 large), peeled and cubed
500 ml (2 cups) chicken or vegetable broth
500 ml (2 cups) milk
375 ml (1 1/2 cup) canned or frozen corn
225 g (1/2 pound) Nordic shrimp, fresh or frozen and thawed
250 ml (1 cup) heavy cream

For garnish:
Gribenes
Fresh dill
Fresh red chili pepper, seeded and chopped

In a large saucepan, melt the schmaltz over medium heat. Add the leek and potatoes, and cook, stirring often, until leek is soft. Add the broth and milk, along with the shrimp and corn, and simmer for 10 minutes, until potatoes are tender and soup is somewhat thickened. Reduce heat, stir in the cream, and continue cooking until heated through.

Divide in bowls and top with garnish just before serving.

Merry Christmas! - Orange Lard Cookies

2011-12-24T15:58:00.005-05:00

Whoosh! Christmas rather caught me by surprise this year. Maybe it's the lack of snow, but it took me longer than usual to get into the spirit of things. And yet, with just a few hours to go till Christmas Eve officially starts, everything seems to be on track: the tree is trimmed, the gifts are wrapped, and I've got bread baking in the oven.

As usual when we stay in Montreal, we're spending Christmas Eve with Laurent's parents. They always invite quite a crowd over, and there's always a mountain of food, prepared by Laurent's father. This year, however, I wanted to contribute in some way. I thought about something I can make that no one else around me does; and it had to be something appropriate for an Italian Christmas, so Asian food was out. So I settled on bread. Bread isn't an essential part of supper, but I find homemade bread always adds a nice touch.

So I spent part of today making two kinds of bread from my favourite Marcy Goldman book: pull-apart buttery rolls, which I have made before, and buttermilk biscuits. They're almost ready, so perhaps I'll snap a picture and add it to the end of this post.

I haven't done much holiday baking this year. I did make gingerbread men, for the very first time, and am quite pleased with the flavour, although I may have overbaked them a bit. And I made lard cookies.

I'm quite into Jennifer McLagan's cookbooks at the moment. As you may know, she's been specializing in unpopular foods for several years: Bones (or rather, cooking on the bone), Fat, and, most recently, Odd Bits (not just offal, but generally all the parts of the animal people tend to not use anymore). While flipping through Fat, I came upon a recipe for Spanish-style lard cookies, and decided to give it a try. I'd never cooked with lard before, and was even very surprised to discover how available it is, found in the pastry aisle at most supermarkets - too bad, I was already having visions of rendering pork fat.

The cookies were as simple to make as cookies can be. I substituted orange liqueur for brandy, as I don't keep the latter in the house. Honestly, I'd be prepared to be that no one, save an expert baker, would ever guess that these cookies were lard-based: you can't taste it at all. But it apparently gives a unique texture, and while I would have to make a butter version to compare and really determine the difference, I'd describe the ones I made as crispy, but not brittle or hard, and not sandy either. Not sure this description is very useful, but I would definitely make these again.

Oooh, look at that, my bread is ready! The biscuits taste good, but to be honest they're rather unattractive. Oh well. The pull-apart rolls, on the other hand, look fabulous. (Sorry for the saturated pics, I'm in a hurry.)

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone!

Orange-flavoured Lard Cookies

Slightly adapted from Jennifer McLagan's Fat

Yields around 20 cookies

125g (4.2 oz, 6/8 cup) all-purpose flour

60g (2 oz, 1/2 cup) almond flour

100g (3.5 oz 1/2 cup) granulated sugar

2 tsp ground cinnamon

Pinch of salt

100g (1/2 cup, 3.5 oz) lard, diced, at room temperature

1 whole egg

Zest of one orange, finely grated

1 tbsp orange liqueur (Cointreau or Triple Sec)

Icing sugar, for dusting

Preheat oven to 180ºC (350ºF). Line baking sheets with parchment paper.

Mix the flour and almond flour together in a mixing bowl, then spread them on a baking sheet in an even layer. Roast them in the over, stirring occasionally, until they are fragrant and just beginning to brown. Remove from the oven and let cool completely.

Lower the oven to 150ºF (300ºF).

Put the cooled flour and almond mixture in a large mixing bowl, stir in the sugar, cinnamon, and salt. Add the lard and work it into the flour mixture with a wooden spoon or dough whisk, to obtain a homogenous mixture.

In a smaller bowl, whisk together the egg, orange zest, and liqueur. Incorporate this mixture into the flour and lard mixture, and stir to obtain a soft dough.

Take tablespoonfuls of dough, form them into balls, and place them on the prepared baking sheets, about 4 cm (1 1/2 inches) apart, and slightly flatten them with the palm of your hand. Bake until firm to the tough and slightly browned on the bottom, about 30 minutes.

Transfer the cookies to a wire rack and cool completely. Dust with icing sugar and store in an airtight container for up to one week.

The Honeymoon, pt 1 - Momofuku

2011-12-06T16:59:00.006-05:00

Okay, boys and girls, let's get back on track! It's been an emotional and disorienting couple of weeks, as I have been without a computer: my laptop got stolen. I was at a café with my friends and took out my computer to show them my wedding pictures, which I had finally received. Then I put it back in my bag, which was on the floor right next to me. When I got up to leave, my bag was open and the laptop was gone. The amazing thing is that one of my friends was sitting right opposite me, and she didn't see a thing. Apparently this sort of thing happens a lot in the neighbourhood, with professional thieves preying on students. The worst part is, I practically never bring my laptop to work in cafés, there's too much noise and I'm always scared I'm going to spill something on it. It really was rotten luck...

Anyways, after the first twenty minutes of hyperventilating and being paralyzed by the sheer effort of wrapping my mind around what had happened, while my awesome friends took action on my part and talked to the staff and surrounding customers, after a weepy call to Laurent and a trip to the police station to report the theft, after a couple of days of feeling blue, and finally after taking advantage of Black Friday sales to order a new laptop (a fine piece of hardware which I'm typing this on), I started putting the incident behind me. Fortunately, I had backed up most of my important documents (including the wedding pics and my thesis), so there was no big personal loss. The thought of someone going through my data made me feel sick, but I knew the thieves would most likely be interested in the hardware, not my vacations photos or articles on Japanese pop culture...

And then, a few days ago, I got a call from the police informing me my laptop had been found! I'm picking it up tomorrow. Apparently, it's still in one piece, but they haven't tried to open it, so I don't know if the hard drive has already been wiped or not. Fingers crossed... But honestly, given that less than one in ten stolen laptops is recovered, I wasn't expecting mine to ever be found, so I'm happy either way. The good luck has balanced out the bad!

The moral of the story: always report stolen items, you never know.

So, on with our regular programming. Well, not that regular, as today's post is the first part of the Honeymoon Chronicles. Laurent and I couldn't get away for very long, so we decided to just spend a few days in New York. I grew up there, and Laurent has never really visited the city, so I was looking forward to showing him around. We had a wonderful time. I showed him the classics (the view from the Staten Island Ferry, Time Square, etc.), and also some places which were more personal to me (my old school, specific spots in Central Park). Over the course of five days, we pretty much covered the list of places I had compiled in my head.

My list of restaurants, however, was comparatively shorter. I was just a kid when I lived in NY, and fresh from Europe. At the age of five, I was impressed by things like grape juice, deli sandwiches, pizza, hot dogs, and frozen yogurt, most of which I had never tasted. Then we discovered ethnic takeout, especially Indian and Mexican food, which was not really available in Belgium at the time. My parents took me to a few restaurants, but I can't say I recall whether they really were good, or just conveniently close; and anyway, they've probably been closed for years. My parents lived in New York again several years ago, but none of us, myself included, really kept track of the food scene. No particular place stood out in my memory.

Our hotel was conveniently located near a Pain Quotidien, a chain I was familiar with, so Laurent and I often had lunch or breakfast there. It's ironic, because Le Pain Quotidien is actually a Belgian concept, so it kind of felt like eating, say, McDonald's in Tokyo. Except that Le Pain Quotidien is a million times tastier and healthier than McDonald's (and more expensive, unfortunately, but hey, we were on our honeymoon), and the setting is a billion times more attractive, with its wooden hues and cute little spreads. Besides, I have to admit I never feel bad about eating "foreign" food in North America, probably because immigrant cultures are such a huge part of this continent, and hence the concept of "local cuisine" has always seemed a lot looser here than it does in other regions.

Even though I don't really know much about the current New York restaurant scene, there was one place I knew we had to visit: Momofuku Noodle Bar. Back when I was making David Chang's ramen a few months ago, I took the time to read the non-recipe parts of the book, specifically how the restaurant came to be. I liked how things apparently really kicked off when the chefs decided to stop trying to be "authentic" and just started to make whatever they wanted, according to the seasons and their own whims. And the ramen I had whipped up in my kitchen had been really very good, so I could only imagine how great the real thing would be.

If we could get in, that is... I knew the place was hugely popular but not correspondingly huge, and fully expected to find people lined up in front. Which we did. I asked the hostess how long the wait would be for two people, prepared to wait for over an hour if need be (I've done it for Kazu on more than one occasion), and nearly fell over when she answered that she could seat us right away. And smack in the middle of the counter, no less! Luck of the newlyweds!

We started off with some shiitake buns. They were great, with very salty mushrooms, soft steamed buns, and crunch pickles.

But the real treat was watching the cooks prepping bowl after bowl of ramen. These guys were maintaining a serious rhythm!

I ordered the shoyu (soy) ramen, while Laurent ordered a miso version. I knew Chang had recently changed his broth recipe, to make it more environmentally and economically friendly, which I can only applaud; he now makes the broth with only chicken bones, no more pork bones. The result was still very good, with strong umami and smokiness compensating for the lack of meatiness. The noodles were awesome, firm bordering on chewy, as far from limp, sissy noodles as you can get. The pork was tender and deliciously seasoned. But... I have to say this: how I wish I could have tasted the original version! I get that it uses a lot of meat and generates a lot of waste, but I was honestly blown away by what I managed to make myself with the old recipe, and have no doubt the served far superior bowls at Momofuku back then. This new version is definitely great, but the difference is nonetheless felt...

Laurent's miso ramen, however, was spectacular. Neither of us had anything bad to say about it: it was simply perfection, with ideally balanced flavours. It's right up there with the burnt miso ramen we had in Tokyo and have been fantasizing about ever since. Maybe we just have a special weakness for miso... But Jesus, it was good.

So, that was one of the high culinary points of our trip. More to come!

My kind of bachelorette event - A bread baking class at Mezza Luna

2011-11-20T14:25:00.005-05:00

I’m back from the honeymoon! Ok, I’ve actually been back for quite a while now… Getting back into real cooking, after a month of predictable standards and eating out (wedding preparations take up SO much time!), has taken some time, and I’ve been pretty busy with my thesis as well. I’ve even been taking a break from the Daring Kitchen, although I plan to get back into it next month.

Then I realized I have a lot of food-related stuff to write about that doesn’t involve cooking and recipes. I’ve never been an event blogger, and I very, very rarely write reviews about anything, but desperate times call for desperate measures! So let’s try something different for a few posts, to give me some time to build up my stock of recipes and photographs.

If you’re eager to see wedding pictures, you’ll have to wait a bit. We have quite a few pics taken by our guests, but the official photographs will take a little longer to arrive. Besides, before we get to the wedding, we have the bachelorette party to deal with!

My two bridesmaids and I have been friends since we were fifteen. Ironically, I was the one who had moved around the most at the time, and I ended up being the only one to stay in Montreal all this time: both of the others ended up moving out of the country at different times. But we always kept in touch, and one of them eventually came back, while the other visits every now and then, and flew all the way from London just for the wedding.

One thing these longtime friends of mine have probably figured out about me by now, is that I am not really a party girl. I’ve had my clubbing period, but I was never completely comfortable with it, and was mainly tagging along with the other. I’ve always had a lot more fun at house parties, and now that I’m more in the dinner party years (probably a little prematurely, but it suits me just fine), I’m completely in my element.

So I was pretty happy when my friends suggested a daytime bachelorette party. However, I was a little taken aback when they told me to meet them at Jean-Talon Market at nine o’clock in the morning on a Sunday. What on earth were they going to make me do? Give me a grocery list and make me cook them breakfast? Then they told me to bring a bathing suit, so I thought maybe we would be going to a spa.

Well, it turned out the bathing suit was just a red herring, and I wasn’t that far off the mark with my first guess. They didn’t exactly make me cook for them, but the activity involved cooking, more precisely baking: they took me to the Mezza Luna cooking school, run by local chef Elena Faita (mother of cookbook author Stefano Faita), for a bread baking class.

My apologies in advance for the uneven pics, but since I thought we were going to a spa, I hadn’t brought my camera, and the lighting wasn’t good enough for the point-and-shooter my friends had brought.

The class was led by "baker on the go" Marc-André Cyr (sous-chef at Olive + Gourmando), and we covered three kinds of bread: basic white, English muffins, and cranberry-ginger scones. Now, longtime readers might be thinking: “But don’t you already know how to make bread?”. Indeed, but so did most of the other people attending. It’s one thing to read up on bread, and I do believe that bread is one of those things you can only perfect by rolling up your sleeves and just going for it as often as you can. But there are benefits to taking the occasional class, even if it’s only a demonstration. I definitely learned a few things.

My friends pulled some strings (ok, one of them just got up and talked to Elena) and got me an authorization to get up there and touch the dough. I was amazed at how much stickier Marc-André’s dough was compared to the kind I usually end up with (with the exception of Chad Robertson’s bread, where the dough is so wet you can’t properly knead it on a surface and have to keep it in a container). I was also surprised by how gently he handled the dough: I’ve always instinctively put my whole weight into kneading, whereas he just seemed to flip it around. It wasn’t easy, either: when I tried it myself, the dough kept sticking to the counter and tearing. It was mildly humbling, but I left with a pretty good idea of how to improve my breads. I also left with the recipes...

The class included coffee and breakfast. My friends had thoughtfully brought along a bottle of prosecco, which we downed in celebration; after all, nothing says “bachelorette” like getting tipsy before noon. As for the meal itself, it was good to be reminded how crazy good homemade bread still warm from the oven can taste – even better when it’s served with homemade jam and quality capicollo!

I’m actually glad to be posting about this so much later after the event: it gives me a chance to feel grateful all over again for the wonderful day my bridesmaids put together! The fun didn’t end there, but the food-related part does, so… I’ll leave you on that note!

Daring Bakers' September Challenge - Croissants

2011-09-28T15:39:00.003-04:00

The Daring Bakers go retro this month! Thanks to one of our very talented non-blogging members, Sarah, the Daring Bakers were challenged to make Croissants using a recipe from the Queen of French Cooking, none other than Julia Child!

This is probably going to be the shortest post I’ve ever written. And my last post as a single gal!

I was excited that the Daring Bakers chose to re-visit an old challenge this month, especially because it was the croissant challenge. I had time to do the challenge, but now, between practicing the waltz, finalizing the seating arrangements, folding and assembling seat markers, and wrapping party favours for the guests – not to mention having an awesome bachelorette event, which actually revolved around baking, and which I will be sure to tell you all about – I have no time to blog about it.

Croissants were made. They were not bad for a first try, but there is definitely room for improvement (for example, they didn’t rise nearly as much as I would have liked). But the next try will have to wait.

My thanks to Sarah for the challenge and the very detailed instructions. Please visit the Daring Kitchen for the challenge recipes, and check out the Daring Bakers’ blog roll to look at all the super-flaky croissants that came out of ovens all over the world this month.

See you all after the wedding!

Daring Cooks' September Challenge - Stock to Soup to Consommé

2011-09-16T15:44:00.004-04:00

Peta, of the blog Peta Eats, was our lovely hostess for the Daring Cook‟s September 2011 challenge, “Stock to Soup to Consommé”. We were taught the meaning between the three dishes, how to make a crystal clear Consommé if we so chose to do so, and encouraged to share our own delicious soup recipes!

Sorry for posting late… I actually remembered the deadline on time, but I’d had a long day, and just wanted to rest. Then I got busy again. The wedding is in just over two weeks, and it’s starting to take its toll: we have wedding-related meetings and tasks nearly every day! Also, I’ve finally gotten serious about writing my thesis, so I’m filling up my typing quota as it is.

However, I was able to sneak in this month’s Daring Cooks’ challenge, and I’m glad I did, because it was an intriguing one. I liked that our hostess allowed us to keep things as simple or make them as finicky as we wanted. The core requisite was to make a beef, chicken, or vegetable stock. Then, we could turn it into a soup (simple), or a consommé (finicky). You know me: I shy away from layered desserts, extravagant cakes and pastry bags in general, but when it comes to savoury cooking, I’m always up for horribly complicated, time-consuming processes that lead to not necessarily impressive results (because, really, most people have no idea how much work and balancing of flavours goes into some of the simplest-looking, cleanest-tasting dishes). Plus, I make stock and soup all the time, so trying my hand at consommé was the logical choice.

I decided to make a beef and onion consommé, as I love French onion soup. I kind of knew it wouldn’t be perfect from the get-go, especially when the only bones I could find were marrow bones: the fatty marrow usually prevents one from obtaining a crystal clear stock, even when you try roasting them and extracting the marrow, as I did. On the other hand, as Peta, our hostess, pointed out, marrow also gives a lot of flavour.

Having made my stock the way I usually do (cold water, no stirring, minimal simmering for hours), I made French onion beef soup, with caramelized onions and red wine (I was out of port and cognac).

Finally came the unknown part: making consommé. I used the traditional “raft” method. It consists in using a protein mixture, in this case whipped egg white and cooked ground beef, and using it to attract all the impurities to the surface of the soup. Then, you poke a hole into the raft, and carefully ladle out the liquid.

I didn’t fare so well with this part. I can’t say whether it’s because my raft broke imperceptibly, or whether my stock was too cloudy to be saved, but my consommé was nowhere near crystal clear. But I was still very happy to sit down to a hot bowl of savoury liquid, regardless of its texture or appearance: it was late, I was hungry, and the liquid, whatever it was, tasted damn good.

I enjoyed learning about consommé, even if mine wasn’t a runaway success. My thanks to Peta for this challenge! Please check out the challenge recipes here, and go through the Daring Cooks’ blog roll to see the beautiful soups that were made this month.

When ingredients dictate the recipe - Jerk Chicken

2011-09-05T14:07:00.002-04:00

Have you ever bought an ingredient on impulse, just because it caught your eye, without any specific idea of what you’re going to do with them? I did that a couple of weeks ago, with a basket of habanero chilis.

After staring at them for a while, then safely storing them in a cupboard, out of reach from my ever-curious cat, I launched an appeal on Facebook: what to do with way too many of the hottest chilis in the world? I was honestly expecting mostly suggestions for salsa, or maybe jellies, but instead got requests for beef jerky, preserves, and jerk chicken. Way to think out the box, people!

I opted to make jerk chicken, as suggested by Ken of A Food Year. I then planned to air dry the remaining chilis to preserve them, as suggested by Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, then crush them and use them to make jerky, as suggested by a non-blogging friend of mine who loves food so much and has such a great imagination that he really should be blogging.

Unfortunately, the air drying process went terribly wrong. Now I know: next time I want to dry chilis, make sure they’re not touching each other. As for the jerk chicken… It was good, but definitely not the epic meal I was hoping for – although it turns out that was my fault.

I’d never made jerk chicken, and had eaten it maybe once in my life, too long ago for me to recall the flavour. I did some browsing, then opted for this recipe, because it seemed straightforward. I made a couple of alterations, such as using chicken pieces instead of halves, and honey instead of molasses. Also, following Ken’s warnings, I did NOT use a blender to make the entire marinade: it stands to reason that the habanero heat would be impossible to clean out, and would linger and taint any blended food for months.

I’ve had my share of chili burns, so I asked Laurent to bring me some latex gloves from his lab (sometimes, a fiancé who works in a lab is a cook’s dream come true). It’s funny how, despite having only ever been on the receiving end of surgery (and only wisdom teeth removal at that), wearing those gloves made me instinctively hold my paring knife the way a surgeon holds a scalpel. I guess all those medical TV dramas end up making an impression.

Everything went well, and the chicken tasted fine, but there’s no way I would rank it in my Top 5 Hottest Dishes ever. The latter, by the way, would probably include most of what I’ve eaten at Cuisine Szechuan (particularly the pork tongue with pickled chilis), chicken vindaloo from an otherwise unremarkable Indian restaurant, an eggplant dish at a Thai restaurant in Vienna, and the time I doused my enchilada with homemade salsa verde. This jerk chicken didn’t even come close to any of those. But then… I realized I had seeded the peppers, which explained everything. Next time, I’m leaving the seeds in.

It was also a tad too sweet for my taste, but it’s hard to say whether this was sweetness from the honey and dark rum, or if it was just an impression of sweetness, from the allspice and cinnamon (unlike most people, I’ve never been a huge fan of cinnamon). Hard to say, and since my remaining habanero chilis have sadly been destroyed, I can’t try the recipe again until I get my hands on some more, provided they’re still available somewhere. Just in case though, I’d reduce the cinnamon next time, from personal preference.

Nevertheless, it was still a very tasty meal, so here’s the recipe. I served it with plain white rice, cooked the Persian way. I’m guessing it’s not the way jerk chicken is served traditionally, but I wanted to try it. Gotta love that crust that forms on the bottom of the pan! But that recipe is for another post.

Jerk Chicken

Slightly adapted from Simply Recipes

For the marinade:

120 ml (1/2 cup) white vinegar

2 tbsp dark rum

2 habanero chilis, finely minced, with seeds (remove seeds for a milder version)

1 red onion, chopped

4 scallion tops, chopped

2 tbsp fresh thyme leaves, chopped

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tsp salt

2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

4 tsp ground allspice

2 tsp ground cinnamon

4 tsp ground nutmeg

4 tsp ground ginger

2 tsp honey

1 whole chicken, cut into 10 pieces, skin on

120 ml (1/2 cup) lemon juice

Salt and pepper, to taste

NOTE: It is important to wear gloves whenever handling habanero chilis, or anything containing chilis, such as the marinade. Avoid touching your eyes or any sensitive areas. Also, wash your hands after manipulating the chilis, and thoroughly wash your knife, cutting board, and utensils.

Put all the marinage ingredients, except the habanero chilis, in a blender and pulse until smooth. Transfer to a bowl and stir in the minced chilis.

Wearing latex gloves to protect your hands, rub the chicken pieces with the marinade Place in a non-reactive bowl or baking dish and cover (or put in a Ziploc bag and seal), and refrigerate overnight.

Preheat oven to 180ºC (350ºF). Place the chicken pieces skin side up on a baking sheet, and bake for 40 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through (the breasts will typically cook faster than the thighs). For a crispy skin, broil for a few minutes, keeping a close eye on the chicken to prevent burning.

Serve with plain white rice.

Daring Bakers' August Challenge - Candy

2011-08-27T12:06:00.004-04:00

The August 2011 Daring Bakers’ Challenge was hosted by Lisa of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drive and Mandy of What the Fruitcake?!. These two sugar mavens challenged us to make sinfully delicious candies! This was a special challenge for the Daring Bakers because the good folks at http://www.chocoley.com offered an amazing prize for the winner of the most creative and delicious candy!

Oh, boy. This month’s Daring Bakers’ challenge was a doozie. Candies, including one mandatory chocolate candy. Everyone knows working with chocolate is a bitch on any given day, but working with chocolate on a humid summer day? Really? Not to mention boiling sugar and the like…

Ok, I’m done with the complaining… at least for now. The truth is, even though there were many reasons to skip this challenge, there were also plenty of reasons to go for it. One of them being the amount of work our hostesses put into it: the instructions were so detailed and they left us so many recipes and options, I would’ve felt bad wimping out just because “chocolate is hard.” And another reason was… well, precisely that chocolate is hard. It’s a challenge, one that I was supposed to tackle a long time ago.

A few years back, Laurent’s dad was preparing a conference on chocolate, and we all got dragged into the research and trivia. We were all kind of obsessed with it, really. That’s how I got to be fairly well informed about the tempering process. Tempering consists in melting chocolate, cooling it down to a certain temperature, then heating it back up slightly. The aim is to obtain a specific type of crystallisation, which leads to a finished chocolate that is smoother, snappier, and shinier. Yup, I knew all about tempering… but I’d never actually done it. This was because I also knew how difficult it is to control the temperature of chocolate.

So, with that in mind, I started off with a non-chocolate candy: pâte de fruits. I’ve always liked these chewy squares of fruit paste, and the recipe looked pretty simple. I made a citrus grapefruit version, although the pink coloring I used makes it look more like strawberry. Unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed by my result. Maybe I didn’t use enough pectin, but my pâte de pamplemousse never solidified as much as I would have liked. I had to store it in the fridge, and it didn’t have that satisfying chewiness I love. Also, the humidity made it absorb too much sugar, making it too sweet.

With that, I decided to man up and tackle the chocolate. Truffles would have been an easy way out, as Laurent and I often make truffles in the winter. But if I was doing this, I was doing it right. I decided to make bonbons with a caramel filling: they would highlight the tempered chocolate, and allow me to use those cute little moulds we’d bought during our chocolate obsession. With a good supply of Alto El Sol chocolate disks of the Barry brand and a marble slab which was graciously given to us a while back, I was ready.

As predicted, it was difficult and frustrating. I waited until all the chocolate had melted in the double boiler to test the temperature, only to find that it was already past the recommended limit. I then transferred most of the chocolate to the marble slab, and started spreading it and flipping it around. But the temperature simply refused to drop lower than 28.5ºC, even going back up at times, never anywhere near the required 27 ºC. Finally, I got bored and decided that this would have to do. I put the chocolate back over barely simmering water, and this time the temperature shot back up and was past its limit before I could do anything. That’s when I stopped using the thermometer, as it was seriously screwing with my mind.

Moulding the bonbons was an exercise in frustration as well. Despite being apparently too hot, the chocolate was thick, and didn’t spread very well. Next time, I’m definitely using a pastry brush to fill the moulds individually, rather than trying to ladle chocolate over all the cavities: it’ll be slower, but definitely less messy. I’m sure professionals can pull it off, but I’m just not there yet.

Prior to this, I had made a filling of salted caramel (the original recipe was passion fruit, but I didn’t have any on hand). I have a habit of burning caramel, so I was careful this time, and the result was light and liquid – maybe a little too liquid, thus making the moulding even more difficult.

As I waited for the bonbons to set in the fridge, I cleaned up the kitchen, wiping melted chocolate off the counter, floor, walls, stovetop, and fridge handle. I was rather despondent at that point, as I was certain the result was going to be a huge fail. So when I banged the mould on the counter and a perfect, shiny chocolate candy popped out, I cursed in delight – which very rarely happens.

Of course, they didn’t all come out perfect. I’d say about half were edible, the others were either crushed or permanently stuck in the mould. Not great for a pound of chocolate, and I felt saddened by all the wastage. But I vow to be more careful next time, now that I have a better idea of how this works.

My tempering was most definitely not perfect, but it still seemed to have an effect: the chocolate had a distinctive texture as it snapped between my teeth. It remains to be seen whether the nice sheen of the bonbons will last over the days. But still, it’s nice to know all that trouble wasn’t a complete waste of time.

Lisa and Mandy, thank you so much for this challenge. Despite all my complaining, I really am glad that you pushed me to do this. Even though it didn’t go perfectly, tempering chocolate no longer seems like an impossible task.

Please check out the challenge recipes here at the Daring Kitchen, and take a look at the blog roll to see all the cute candies made this month.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake - Lemon Pound Cake

2011-08-22T15:16:00.004-04:00

As mentioned before, I’ve been reading a lot of food books lately: chef memoirs, books about specific foodstuffs, but also fiction about food. I’ve decided to add a new partial focus to this blog: commenting on these books (I don’t want to say “reviewing,” because I don’t plan on being nearly that systematic or authoritative) and including a recipe taken from or inspired from the book in question. Basically what I did with Devil’s Food Cake Murder last month. This way, I get the best of both worlds I love: cooking and reading.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake was one of those books that I came upon accidentally at the store. The greenish-blue cover, quirky title font, and, of course, the title and the striking slice of triple-layer cake caught my eye as I was skimming the shelves, looking for Kate Atkinson’s latest novel. I had never heard of Aimee Bender, but after reading her book’s synopsis, I was too intrigued to leave it behind.

The narrator, Rose, is a happy, carefree nine-year-old girl at the beginning of the novel. The first scene is the kind of childhood memory everyone either cherishes or would like to have: she comes home from school to her smiling mother, who is just about to start baking her a birthday cake. But after one bite, Rose realizes something is very wrong: although the cake is objectively delicious and made from quality ingredients, she can taste something else in it, too. Hollowness, emptiness. Her mother’s mal-de-vivre.

Rose soon discovers, much to her despair, that, no matter what she eats, she can now taste the emotions of the person who prepared the food – even in something as basic as a sandwich. Imagine eating a bakery cookie and tasting the boredom and frustration of the person who made it. Or, even worse, finding out your mother’s deep, dark secrets by way of her roast beef.

The novel follows Rose through the years, as she deals with this gift/curse. The focus is also on her family, which appears fairly average, in that dysfunctional way that is so frequent in contemporary novels: her father, a pragmatic lawyer who seems to have achieved most of his personal ambitions, and who remains a distant figure most of the time; her mother, who struggles to discover what she wants in life and hides her inner void as best as she can; and her older brother, Joseph, a reclusive teen genius who grows up to be an even more reclusive young adult, with, as it turns out, a gift of his own.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, despite its title and premise, is much less about food than it is about human relations. Descriptions of food revolve more around feelings than flavours, which may disappoint foodies looking for mouth-watering depictions, but which also makes the mind wander to interesting places: what would depression, joy, infatuation, or excitement taste like?

Ultimately, the novel is about how people navigate around and with each other – a fairly common theme, but a seemingly infinite one. Rose’s problem is that, no matter how much she would like to shut the world out, she can’t: she has to eat, and although she relies as much as possible on vending machine snacks and factory-made food, she can’t forever avoid tasting other people’s feelings and having to deal with them. Her circumstances are unique, but she remains a relatable protagonist in that way. It also helps that, although her chipper personality takes a sarcastic turn after she discovers her gift, she never resorts to whining about her condition, and remains stoic, almost wise at times. I also very much liked her father, despite his complacency: he too, in his own way, is at heart someone trying to find his place. The character of Joseph was harder for me to enjoy (although you’d think I’d relate to an anti-social nerd who insists on reading at the dinner table), in part because of what his gift turns out to be: I won’t spoil it, but I thought it was a bit far-fetched, and not very useful to the story (or in the real world, for that matter).

Despite the book’s qualities, I closed it with a feeling of emptiness – maybe like the one Rose tasted in that fateful birthday cake. It had started out strong, a real page-turner, but I felt the book fizzled out in the end, with much potential left untapped. This is probably because the story ends just as Rose is starting to discover something her gift might be good for. I would have liked to see that part be more explored. In fact, I would have liked more development in general: the ingredients were there for a great story, and there are little gems scattered throughout, but somehow the richness was lacking to bring them all together.

Although the title lemon cake is explicitly a round cake, iced with chocolate, I took this as an opportunity to revisit an old favourite: lemon pound cake. My father-in-law gave me this recipe, and, although it is a classic, it’s still delectable. The syrup at the end is all-important, as it gives the cake its lovely moisture and terrific lemon flavour. I’m told it works best with margarine, but I refused to try this, as margarine make me shudder.

Lemon Pound Cake

From my father-in-law’s kitchen (possibly taken from somewhere else)

Yields one 22 by 11 cm (8.5 by 4.5 inch) cake

250g (2 1/2 sticks, 9 oz) unsalted butter, softened

250g (1 1/3 cup, 9 oz) granulated sugar

5 whole eggs, beaten

The zest of two lemons, grated

250g (1 3/4 cuo, 9 oz) flour

2 tsp baking soda

Pinch of salt

For the syrup:

The juice of 4 lemons

100g (3/4 cup, 3.5 oz) confectioner’s sugar

Preheat oven to 180ºC (350ºF).

In a large mixing bowl, cream the soft butter with the sugar, until pale yellow in colour. Gradually beat in the eggs and lemon zest. Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl, and gradually stir the dry ingredients into the butter and egg mixture.

Butter a 22 by 11 cm (8.5 by 4.5 inch) cake mould. Pour the batter into the mould, place it on a baking sheet, and bake for 60 to 65 minutes. The cake is ready when a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.

Meanwhile, make the syrup: gradually stir the confectioner’s sugar into the lemon juice, until all the sugar is dissolved.

When the cake is baked, unmould it and prick its top and sides with a fork while it is still very warm, and brush with syrup, until most or all of the syrup is absorbed. Let cool on a rack. Store at room temperature, wrapped in plastic wrap.

Food, Culture, and Friends - Matsuri Japon

2011-08-18T13:12:00.004-04:00

Okay, Evelyne has put me to shame by posting about this days ago, so… I really need to write this now.

Last weekend, I hung out with two lovely gals and fellow food bloggers: Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, whom I’ve seen on several occasions, and Mary of Mary Mary Culinary, who was in town for a few days, and whom I was meeting for the first time. Incidentally, Mary was hosting the August Daring Cooks’ Challenge, the deadline of which was only a day away. Fortunately, I’d completed the challenge the day before, so I could confront her guilt-free. :-)

It turns out there were quite a few things to do in Montreal that day, including Gay Pride-related activities, and Otakuthon, which I actually didn’t remember about until Monday. Not that I would’ve forced my two friends to attend an anime convention… But in the end, we settled for another Japan-themed event: the annual Montreal Matsuri Japon festival.

Every year for the past ten years, Matsuri Japon (a masturi is a traditional Japanese festival) has been celebrating Japanese culture. Despite my interest in the latter, I had never attended the event, and was looking forward to finally seeing it for myself.

Finding the location was easy enough: we just followed the throng of yukata-clad girls. You could actually borrow a yukata on site, and wear it around the festival (sadly, I didn’t have a good pic of people wearing the traditional garment, but you can see some in Evelyne’s post). Japanese dyed fabric, jewellery, stationery, toys, and other trinkets were on sale at various stalls.

Of course, being food bloggers, we were (not solely, but mostly) in it for the food. There was quite a bit to choose from, including prepared bento, curry, and noodles. Mary and Evelyne went for the okonomiyaki.

I never understand why the okonomiyaki is so often described as a “Japanese pizza.” “Japanese pancake” is a comparatively better fit, but anyone looking for the fluffy texture of a pancake will be sorely disappointed. The only way I can really accurately describe okonomiyaki is: pan-fried batter with stuff in it, topped with katsuoboshi (dried bonito shavings), aonori (nori sprinkles), special brown sauce, and mayo (and, ideally, pickled red ginger, or beni shoga). The “stuff” you put in it can vary, but usually includes cabbage and shrimp.

The girls had some trouble eating their okonomiyaki with chopsticks (normally, it should be pre-cut into wedges). Meanwhile, I was happily slurping refreshing hiyashi udon, chilled noodles served in a cold light sauce.

I also splurged on a couple of takoyaki, or octopus balls.

It seems to take quite a bit of time to make takoyaki, and they need to be frequently turned over. I really want that apparatus, though.

All of this was happening against a background of entertainment, including traditional dancing and taiko drums. The latter were really impressive, and the players looked like they were having a real blast.

How cool would it be to have one of these in your living room? I can think of a lot of uses for those mallets, too.

There was also the traditional carrying of the shrine. I kind of like that they didn’t even try to make it look like a real, ancient shrine, and just went for a simple design.

The kids had their own shrine (as happens in real matsuri), and they also performed on the drums (I have pics, but they’re sub-par).

I don’t think all matsuri have a dragon, but it never hurts to have one.

It was a very fun event, and it was even better sharing it with my foodie friends. Thanks for a great afternoon, girls!

Daring Cooks' August Challenge - Appams and Curry

2011-08-14T15:02:00.002-04:00

Mary, who writes the delicious blog, Mary Mary Culinary was our August Daring Cooks’ host. Mary chose to show us how delicious South Indian cuisine is! She challenged us to make Appam and another South Indian/Sri Lankan dish to go with the warm flat bread.

This month’s hostess’ blog is one of my regular and favourite hang-outs, so I couldn’t wait to find out what she had planned for us. Mary didn’t disappoint.

I’ve made naan bread many times, and I’ve also had the unleavened bread chapatti in Indian restaurants, but appams were entirely new to me. They are basically yeasted pancakes, except that they are egg-free. And made from ground rice instead of wheat flour. And shaped more like a crêpe.

There was a lot of resting time, but overall the preparation was mostly similar to pancakes or crêpes. And, since I can almost never manage to make perfectly round crêpes, there’s no reason why I should have expected to be able to make perfectly round appams.

The appams tasted very mild, and I loved their light, slightly spongy texture.

As a main dish, I chose the chemeen pappas, or shrimp in coconut milk. I thought I had all the necessary ingredients on hand, but then realized I had no curry leaves. I searched and searched my (admittedly very cluttered) pantry, but couldn’t find any. I ended up using dried basil instead – not a substitute by any means, but the result was surprisingly palatable.

The shrimp were great, spicy with just the right amount of heat, and a great sauce that was just begging to be mopped up with the appams – and naturally, we obliged.

Thank you, Mary, for this instructive challenge! The rest of you, please check out the challenge recipes at the Daring Kitchen, and click through the Daring Cooks’ blog roll to see the tasty dishes served this month!

Totally Worth It - Momofuku Ramen (or close enough)

2011-08-03T13:54:00.012-04:00

I promised you a post about ramen. This is it.

It all started when I found out about a Food Film Festival at Cinéma du Parc. I immediately bought tickets for a few select films. Among them was Delicatessen, about which I seriously wonder why it was included in this festival: it’s barely about food at all, although I suppose cannibalism is a type of gastronomy (and no, there was nothing about cannibalism in the synopsis, which makes the movie sound like a cutesie rom com - which, I assure you, it is not). We also saw Kings of Pastry, a documentary about pastry chefs taking the Meilleur Ouvrier de France exam. We witnessed some spectacular displays of sugar-pulling and sculpting skills – and some really nerve-racking brushes with catastrophe. It really makes you marvel at what people will put themselves through for their passion. There were also films I’d already seen, such as Chocolat and the exquisite Babette's Feast.

But my favourite discovery was Tampopo. I’d heard of it, and jumped at the chance to see it. It’s mainly about a woman who owns a ramen shop and is on a quest to make the best bowl of noodles ever. She enlists the help of a gruff trucker who really knows his way around a ramen kitchen, and other experts join along the way. But more than a film about ramen, Tampopo is a film about food and people who love food. There are various, seemingly random scenes inserted in the film focusing on anonymous characters and their relationship with food. Many of these scenes are absolute gold. This is one of my personal favourites. It's in Japanese, but basically the women are trying to learn how to eat pasta the "Western" way, without making any slurping noises, and... Well, see for yourself.

Ramen are still a major part of this film, though. The secret ingredients in the broth, the ideal resting time for the noodle dough, the ideal thickness of pork slices: everything is important. Even the way you eat your ramen is important. And here, I can’t resist linking to one of the film’s opening scenes, which addresses just this very question (and this one has subtitles).

I walked out of there with not much more than a vague idea of how to actually make good ramen (except that one must never let the soup boil – which I already knew from making pho), but a very strong desire to tackle this seemingly monumental task. So, I did some research. I came across a lot of recipes about how to make good broth and cook pork, but all of them used either dried noodles, or homemade egg noodles – and from what I understood, ramen noodles are supposed to be egg free (more on that in a minute). I read some good advice on the Chowhound forums, and some great posts on the blog No Recipes. And then, I discovered that David Chang’s Momofuku cookbook includes everything you need to know to make ramen from scratch. I found the book, flipped through it, drooled at nearly all the recipes, and took it home.

I lived in New York from 1988 to 1994, and my parents lived there again from 2003 to 2006. I visited them a lot during the latter period, but even though Momofuku Noodle Bar was already well known at the time, I never went there (I wasn’t nearly as interested in food as I am today). Having read the cookbook, this place is now on my list of musts for my next trip to NYC. The recipes seem full of bold flavours and unusual combinations, without a hint of pretension.

But my first concern was the ramen. The process was even more daunting than I’d expected. The first task was to make taré, which is described as “Japanese barbecue sauce.” Upon reading the ingredients, I realized this was basically what I and most people I know refer to as teriyaki sauce, only more complex: in addition to soy sauce, sugar, and mirin, this reduction had to include fond de volaille, made from roasting chicken bones. Ever since I learned to bone chickens, I’ve been buying whole birds and saving the carcasses to make stock, and I just happened to have one in the freezer. I’d never made fond before, and wasn’t too happy with the small quantity I ended up with. I’m not sure it made much of a difference in my taré.

The broth was next, an elaborate process of simmering chicken, dried and fresh vegetables, bacon, and pork bones for a combined total length of over eight – yes, eight – hours. I wasn’t sure I would be able to find pork bones: I was told most butchers probably wouldn’t have them on hand, because Western cooking usually revolves around stocks made with chicken and beef bones, and fond made from veal bones. Thank heavens for Asian supermarkets! I went to Marché Fu Tai and got some awesome-looking pork bones (leg and neck, from the looks of it), which the butcher sawed into segments for me. After the full eight hours, the stock was truly a thing of beauty: rich and fragrant, and as it cooled it turned into a gelatinous marvel. I seasoned it with the taré, following David Chang’s advice to keep flavouring until it’s “not quite too salty but almost.”

Chang uses two kinds of pork in his ramen, but I decided to skip the shredded shoulder and stuck to classic sliced pork belly. When I asked for pork belly at a butcher shop at Jean-Talon Market, the woman behind the counter apologetically said she only had a big, 4-pound slab, which was vacuum-packed and therefore couldn’t be divided. I lit up and told her that was perfect. The pork was rubbed with salt and sugar, then baked at high, then low temperatures (Chang writes that this method was born out of a mistake, but the result was so good he decided to keep doing it). It was mouth-wateringly tender and flavourful, and the leftovers were used for banh mi sandwiches.

And finally, there were the noodles. That was the part that had me most worried. I’d done research, and had learned that ramen noodles, contrary to what one may think, don’t contain eggs: they get their yellow colour from kansui, or alkaline water. Kansui also speeds up the production of gluten, and makes the noodles firmer. I found a comment on Chowhound that someone had managed to locate some of this hard-to-find liquid near Jean-Talon. I looked around and found some at Thai Hour. (On a side note, I was reminded never to judge a store by appearances: my first instinct was to check Marché Oriental, which is also in that neighbourhood. It’s the larger and better-lit of the two stores, so I thought I had a better chance. But no, I found the kansui across the street, at the much more modest-looking Thai Hour.)

I was tempted to hand-pull the noodles, as I had seen it done in the Oishinbo volume on ramen and gyoza (Oishinbo is an amazing manga about Japanese cuisine, which I have previously mentioned). The process just looks so bad-ass and impressive (this is unflipped manga, so read the panels right-to-left):

But I decided to save that experiment for another time, and just used the pasta roller, which is how Chang does it anyway. Incidentally, he commented on his own recipe by saying that the home cook didn’t really need to go to the trouble of looking for kansui, or even making noodles from scratch. But when people give me leeway in a recipe, I take it as a challenge to refuse said leeway. :-)

Okay, with all that done (it took about two days and a half), all that was left to prepare were the other toppings. Traditionally, ramen is topped with pork belly, half a hard-boiled egg, squares of nori, menma (softened bamboo shoots), scallions, and naruto (sliced fish cake). Naruto is usually storebought, and I knew where to buy some, but I could only get it in a relatively large chunk. Since I would only need a little bit, and have no use for this ingredient outside of ramen, the rest would have gone to waste. Besides, naruto doesn’t taste like much (although it does give ramen their distinctive “look”), so I had no qualms about skipping it. I also skipped the menma, mostly because I was tired of cooking and just wanted to eat the damn soup already.

I had to be reminded of how to boil an egg while avoiding that ugly grey ring around the yolk: put the egg in cold water, bring to a boil, turn off the heat, and let sit for 10 minutes, 8 minutes if you want the yolk to be ever so slightly creamy. (Chang tops his ramen with slow-poached eggs, which I also know how to make, but as I explained, I was kind of in a hurry to eat.)

It’s important for the broth to be hot when you ladle it, and the bowls should ideally be warmed in a low-temperature oven. The water for cooking the noodles should be simmering, not rolling: a full boil can strip away some of the flavour (Mind you, I haven’t tested this theory for myself, but that’s what Oishinbo says… Seriously, there’s a whole chapter about this). The cooking time varies depending on the noodles.

So, was it worth it? Oh hell, yes! It tasted out of this world. No, actually, it tasted like Japan, and took us right back to those narrow little ramen shops in Tokyo. The broth was amazing, the pork melted in our mouths… The noodles could have been more toothsome, but I’d had to improvise on them: the recipe called for alkaline salts, and all I had was alkaline water, so I had to guess the amount, and probably should have added a tiny bit more. But you can bet I’m going to keep tweaking this until I get it right.

So, that was my first foray into homemade ramen. I can’t wait to make more, and try other kinds of broths, especially miso. I faithfully followed the recipe for my first attempt, but now that I have a pretty food idea of the process, I want to come up with my own recipe, my own ideal ramen. Yummy days ahead!

Daring Bakers' July Challenge - Fraisier

2011-07-27T14:04:00.002-04:00

Jana of Cherry Tea Cakes was our July Daring Bakers’ host and she challenges us to make Fresh Frasiers inspired by recipes written by Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson in the beautiful cookbook Tartine.

This month’s Daring Bakers’ challenge, fraisier, looked too pretty to be easy – but it was actually fairly straightforward: solidified pastry cream and fresh fruit, sandwiched between two layers of chiffon cake. I loved that this dessert featured fruit, as the season is booming right now.

I really liked the chiffon cake, which came out moist and extremely light. I wanted to make a lemon-flavoured version, but found out halfway through the mixing that I was out of lemons (which almost never happens). So, to add at least one personal touch, I made a chocolate filling.

I know, I know: I’m incredibly predictable. I put chocolate in everything. Even in the dead of summer, when chocolate is one of the least appropriate of all the flavours out there, I have to use it. I simply can’t help myself. Sure, I thought about using cardamom, or orange blossom – but no, it was chocolate that won out. In my defence, the resulting pastry cream was still quite light, and not too sweet.

I bought some beautiful strawberries from Île d’Orléans, as well as some wild blueberries, and raspberries. I had to use a slightly smaller mould than indicated in the recipe, so my cake was rather too high to be cut into two layers. So I cut out three layers, used two for the fraisier, then cut out smaller rounds out of the third layer, to make an individual-sized version with raspberries – I guess you could call it a “framboisier”?

I imbibed the cake layers with diluted maple syrup, instead of simple syrup. Finally, I iced the top of the larger fraisier with dark chocolate ganache, left over from making the chocolate pastry cream.

I have to say, this was a pretty ideal summer dessert: light, refreshing, and pretty as a picture (or, at least, it could have been, if my plastic wrap hadn’t left marks all over the filling). My thanks to Jana for challenging us to make this classic treat!

Please check out the Daring Kitchen to look at the challenge recipes, and don’t forget to look through the blog roll, to see some lovely fraisiers!

Inspiration from Pop! - Goat Cheese Tart with Olives

2011-07-23T20:57:00.004-04:00

I don’t blog much about restaurants here, mostly because I simply don’t consider myself enough of an authority to give an edifying review. Also, all things considered, Laurent and I don’t eat out all that much, just the two of us. We splurge every now and then to celebrate something big: a publication, a successful milestone (although, even for anniversaries, we tend to stay in and cook up our own feast). The rest of the time, when we eat out, it’s usually circumstantial. Sometimes it’s because we’ve both been too busy to cook that day, in which case we step out to one of the many casual places in our area. Most often, it’s because we have to be somewhere right after or before dinner (a movie, or a show), and it’s more convenient to eat in the neighbourhood.

Even then, we tend to return to the same places. And since today’s recipe is inspired by a restaurant, I thought I might as well mention the places we like to go. Around our place, we’ll go for sushi at Atami, a burger or onion soup at McCarold’s, or lemongrass chicken at Le Camélia. If it’s a nice day and we’re in the mood for really good Vietnamese food, we’ll walk all the way to Hoai Huong.

If we have to be downtown (for a movie or an opera), then it’s often Kazu. Yes, we’re part of those crazy people who wait in line on the sidewalk for thirty minutes to an hour (if we can, we try to show up half an hour before they open, since we know we’re going to have to wait at least that long anyway). And yes, we can feel the contempt in passers-by’s eyes, and we hear them whisper “What the hell, that’s just nuts!”, and on some days, when it’s cold or raining, we even start to feel a little ridiculous. But after we finally get a seat at the counter and take that first bite of okonomiyaki or 48-hour-pork, our faith is re-established, and we know without a doubt that this place is worth it. On days when time is too much of a factor, we’ll turn to Ba Le (they’re often out of their delicious homemade bread for their bahn mi sandwiches, but their pho is one of the best I’ve had) or the spiciness of Cuisine Szechuan.

When we have to be near the Plateau, usually to see a play at the Théâtre de Quat’ Sous, we experiment a bit more. Sometimes, out of nostalgia (I used to live in that area), we’ll grab a Portuguese chicken sandwich at Rôtisserie Coco Rico. We’ve tried out Big In Japan, but were disappointed. Recently, we’ve been going to Pop!, the wine bar affiliated with Laloux. We started going there because they used to offer a post-show menu deal, making it the ideal post-show destination (and for nights when we go to Espace Go, Leméac still offers a late night two-course meal at $25 – a real steal!). The deal is now gone, but we keep going back, because the food remains very affordable… and very good. Not to mention, we discovered a few very good wines.

The last time we were there, I had one of their “tartes salées” (savoury tarts), which are basically pizzas (in fact, I just saw that, amusingly, their online menu now refers to them as pizzas). The Marrakesh tart really blew my mind. Topped with goat cheese, olives, honey, and mint, it was both refreshing and hearty. It was so good I took the time to discern every ingredient (which wasn’t too difficult), and jotted them down when I got home, so I could try to recreate the dish. And I did.

I hesitated before posting this, wondering if it was ethically acceptable to copy a restaurant dish (just like I never post someone else’s published recipe if I haven’t adapted it). Normally, I would have tweaked it, but it seemed so perfect as it was, I didn’t feel the need to change anything. But it’s not like I asked for the recipe, and my result is certainly not exactly the same as the original: I’m pretty sure I used too many olives (we were really hungry when I made this), I may have missed a “secret ingredient” or two, and the crust is definitely not as good. But it’s still a decent effort, and I really wanted to share it with you. So, in homage to Pop!, here’s my version of their Marrakesh tart.

You can use any kind of pizza dough you like, although a thicker crust is preferable. I used Marcy Goldman’s Best Pizza Dough Ever, but was pressed for time, so I cut a few corners. It’s a good dough for thicker-crust pizzas. It yields enough dough to make 6 small tarts, but you can freeze any excess dough for future use.

Goat Cheese Tart with Olives

Inspired by the kitchen of Pop! Bar à vin

Yields two individual tarts

Pizza dough (adapted from Marcy Goldman’s A Passion for Baking)

1 3/4 cups warm water

2 tsp instant yeast

2 tsp sea salt

1 tbsp sugar

3 tbsp olive oil

2 cups olive oil

5 to 6 cups bread flour

Garnish

150g (5 oz) soft, fresh goat cheese

1/2 cup green olives, pitted and sliced (preferrably spicy)

1/2 cup Kalamata olives, pitted and sliced

1 tbsp coriander seeds

One handful of fresh mint leaves, coarsely chopped

1/2 tsp dried thyme

Honey, for drizzling

Cracked black pepper, to taste

In a large bowl, whisk together the water and flour. Stir in the salt, sugar, olive oil, and half the flour. Switch to kneading by hand (or use a stand mixer with a dough hook) and gradually add the rest of the flour, until you obtain a smooth, soft, elastic dough (about 15 minutes of kneading by hand). Spray the bowl and dough with oil, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise for 60 minutes.

Gently deflate the dough and cut off one third. Wrap the remaining two-thirds of dough tightly in plastic and freeze for future use. Divide the rest of your dough in two. Take one portion, place it on a lightly floured surface, pat it down with your fingers, and stretch it into a 23 cm (9 inch) disk. Fold the edges under, to make a thicker crust. Repeat with the second portion. Place a few pie weights (or dried beans) over the centers of the tarts, to prevent them from rising too much (Marcy suggests putting the toppings at this point, but I fear this could lead to a soggy dough; and in this case, the toppings really need to be added post-baking). Cover lightly with plastic wrap and let rise for another 45 to 60 minutes, until puffy.

Preheat oven to 240ºC (475ºF). Remove the weights from the dough. If the tarts have risen too much in the center, press them down lightly with your fingers. Place on baking sheets or pizza rounds, and bake for 15-20 minutes, until well browned.

While the tarts are baking, place the coriander seeds in a skillet over high heat, and toast, stirring constantly, until they are fragrant, about 1 minute or 2.

Whisk the goat cheese until smooth and creamy.

When the tarts are baked, garnish them with dollops of cheese, then sprinkle them with sliced olives, coriander seeds, mint leaves, and thyme. Drizzle with honey and season with pepper to taste. Cut into wedges and serve immediately.

Daring Cooks' July Challenge - Homemade Noodles

2011-07-14T14:01:00.005-04:00

Steph from Stephfood was our Daring Cooks‟ July hostess. Steph challenged us to make homemade noodles without the help of a motorized pasta machine. She provided us with recipes for Spätzle and Fresh Egg Pasta as well as a few delicious sauces to pair our noodles with!

This month’s Daring Cooks challenge couldn’t have come at a better time. I had been wanting to make pasta from scratch for a while now, and had already borrowed my father-in-law’s pasta machine even before the challenge was revealed (it also came in handy for the Daring Bakers’ baklava challenge).

I started off simple, by following the egg fettuccine recipe provided. The dough was very easy to work with. When cutting the pasta, the strands initially stuck together, and I had to finish separating them by hand. But I floured the next batches more thoroughly, and there were no other problems. I prepared the fettuccine very simply as well, a variation on aglio e olio: some garlic-infused oil, a crack of pepper, and some baby spinach thrown in with the pasta at the last minute. I would have liked the noodles themselves to be a little slicker, but I guess making pasta takes practice.

After that, I just had to make stuffed pasta: so many possibilities! My father-in-law had lent me a nifty little gadget to help with making ravioli.

Once the pasta is rolled, you place it over the cutters and stuff the pockets.

Cover with another sheet, run a rolling pin over, then turn over and press down.

And voilà! Just cut out the ravioli, and you’re done!

For the filling, I sautéed some finely chopped pancetta and portobello mushrooms, then mixed in some parsley, bread crumbs, and an egg. It wound up being a little too dry, and the sage-infused butter I used as a sauce did little to balance it. Normally, I guess one would have added ricotta, but nobody likes ricotta around here…

Ok, they’re not the most photogenic little morsels, either. Again, practice makes perfect.

I finished off this challenge with the dish I am proudest of: homemade ramen. Actually, I didn’t really think of this as part of the challenge: circumstances last week conspired to fill me with an irresistible urge to make ramen, and I spent four days running around looking for recipes and ingredients (when I get the urge to make something in particular, I tend to get a little obsessed). I didn’t think I would get this done before the deadline, but it turns out I was able to serve it for dinner last night.

I’m actually going to make a separate post about the making of this dish, so I won’t go into details here. I’ll just specify that I didn’t go so far as to pull the noodles by hand, which is the traditional way to make these. Instead, I used the pasta machine. So making the noodles themselves wasn’t much different from making pasta, except that the ramen dough was egg-free, and included a hard-to-find ingredient called kansui, or alkaline water.

This was definitely one of the most productive and inspiring challenges I’ve taken part in. Thank you, Steph! The rest of you can look at the challenge recipes here at the Daring Kitchen, and also go through the Daring Cooks’ blog roll to see what other kind of noodles were cooked up this month.

Joanne Fluke's Devil's Food Cake Murder - Raspberry Vinegar Cookies

2011-07-02T15:16:00.002-04:00

I don’t browse in bookstores much these days. When I visit Renaud-Bray, or Indigo, I usually have a pretty good idea of what I’m looking for. The truth is, my to-read pile is towering high enough as it is, no need to add serendipity to the mix!

The exception is cookbooks, because browsing is just part of the process of discovering good recipes – and also because it’s hard for me to resist the cookbook aisle. But there’s another context in which I allow myself to browse through books: the airport.

I always pack a book when I leave on a trip. Because iPods can malfunction, and Nintendo DS consoles can run out of juice, but it’s pretty hard to get into a situation where you can’t crack open a good novel (although I do remember a nocturnal transatlantic flight where neither the TV screens nor the reading lights were working, and they wouldn’t leave the main lights on because some people wanted to sleep – that was a long nine hours). But I’m always afraid of running out of reading material, and there’s not a whole lot to do in airports, so I always wind up spending a lot of time at the bookstore. They don’t have a lot of choices, and most of their books are either trendy or lowbrow, but it gets me to look at books that I normally don’t even glance at.

Another recent trend in my reading habits is that I am irresistibly attracted to any book that has to do with food. I’m not talking about factual books: I do pick some of those up on occasion (why wouldn’t I want to learn all about the history of salt?), but I know a lifetime wouldn’t be enough to read everything that’s out there. No, I’m talking about fiction that revolves around food. It’s gotten to the point where I snatch up anything that has a food-related word in the title. In The Kitchen, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Le cuisinier – it’s all good. Sometimes, the book ends up not being much about food after all, but it's always interesting to see where food does factor in.

It’s not always great literature, of course. But I’m a versatile reader, and I like a little bit of everything in small doses, so I’m usually content, even if I have yet to have my mind blown. Recently, however, I read a food novel that reassured me that I still have standards: Joanne Fluke’s Devil’s Food Cake Murder.

I picked this one up at, you guessed it, the airport. At first glance, it looked right up my alley: a young female baker who solves crime on the side, how could I go wrong? The main character even has a mischievous and demanding cat, something I can definitely relate to. But in the end, I was disappointed.

Of course, one needs to keep in mind that this is part of a long-running series, with recurring characters and themes. So, not having read any of the previous books, it’s understandable that I had a little difficulty relating to the giant cast of characters, most of whom were introduced without any major description or development, with the assumption that the reader was already familiar with them. Fair enough, but a good book should be able work around this problem, and involve new readers even in the middle of a series.

Worse than any format-related issues, however, was the fact that the style was mostly flat, the vocabulary unimaginative. See for example the heroine’s account of an awkward scene with her beau: “He left a couple of messages, but he sounded… […] cold. He sounded cold like he was talking to a stranger. And when he came back he was cold, too. He gave me a hug and thanked me for keeping [his cat], but… he was cold. I don’t know any other way to describe it.” Evidently not. Of course, I’m aware that this is a light series, not a Virginia Woolf novel: it’s meant to be read casually, not dissected. But fun books can be well-written, too – or at least use synonyms.

The crime story itself was decently entertaining, albeit not without its plot holes – but I’ll give that a pass, as I’m pretty sure the sleuth aspect is not supposed to be the main focus of this series. But there were some seriously awkward moments in the dialogue, which, along with the stylistic problems, made me keep a sceptical distance from everything – and I’m usually a pretty immersed reader. Some conversations felt like filler, more than anything else. I think the worst moment, for me, was a character’s reaction to a murder by shooting: “He was shot? […] Oh, dear! That’s just awful! I wish he’d been stabbed, or bludgeoned, or smothered, or something.” This insensitive response is followed by a page-and-a-half long rant where the character expresses her fears that politicians will use this incident to enforce gun control in their state, and goes on to enthusiastically explain why guns are both fun and useful. Regardless of anyone’s personal stance on the issue, that just came out of nowhere, and was in poor taste to say the least.

Okay, but what about the food? After all, it was the food theme that initially drew me to this book. Well, the good news is, there’s a lot of it in this book, and not just sweet stuff: in addition to the devil’s food cake mentioned in the title, you’ll find cookies, bars, soup, brisket, and even a special cake for cats (which looks so incredibly rich that I would never dream of giving even a teaspoon of the stuff to my kitty Paprika). People eat so much in this book, it’s amazing they don’t all have waistlines a yard wide (maybe they do, but with the lack of description, how am I to know?). But there isn’t much in the way of food description: dishes are succinctly described as “wonderful,” absolutely perfect,” or “delicious.” Not quite enough to get my mouth watering.

There are, however, recipes included for nearly all the treats and dishes mentioned in the book, which gives us a little more insight into how all these “delicious” morsels actually taste. Most are intended for novice bakers and cooks, with very detailed instructions and easy-to-find ingredients. One recipe in particular caught my eye, but more because of the title ingredient than because of the characters’ reaction to it: raspberry vinegar cookies. I was curious as to how these could possibly taste good, so of course I had to try making them.

In the end, the vinegar wasn’t a flavour factor at all: its role was just to interact with the baking soda and create a chemical reaction, leading to a particularly light, aerated cookie. Maybe I was heavy-handed with it, because my cookies came out especially brittle, whereas they were supposed to be more similar to shortbread in texture. Regardless, I really liked these cookies (infinitely more than I liked the book), and they seemed to please people when I brought them to a meeting. The only downside to their brittleness was that everyone ended up with crumbs on their shirts…

I haven’t changed much to the original recipe, just added more pecans, and made the cookies a little bigger.

Raspberry Vinegar Cookies
Slightly adapted from Johanne Fluke’s Devil’s Food Cake Murder

Yields 3 dozen

200g (1 cup) butter, softened
190g (1 cup) sugar
1 tsp raspberry vinegar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp rum extract
210g (1 1/2 cup) flour
375 ml (1 1/2 cup) chopped toasted pecans

Preheat oven to 160ºC (325ºF).

Cream the butter with the sugar. Mix in the vinegar and the baking soda, then the rum extract. Add the flour, and stir until well incorporated.

Line four baking sheets with parchment paper. Drop tablespoonfuls of cookie dough onto the sheets, spacing them out (about 9 cookies per sheet).

Bake the cookies in batches for around 20 minutes, until golden around the edges and on top. Let cool on sheets for two minutes, then transfer the cookies to a wire rack and cool completely.

Store in an airtight container.

Daring Bakers' June Challenge - Phyllo and Baklava

2011-06-27T13:53:00.003-04:00

Erica of Erica’s Edibles was our host for the Daring Baker’s June challenge. Erica challenged us to be truly DARING by making homemade phyllo dough and then to use that homemade dough to make Baklava.

When I first read about this month’s Daring Bakers’ challenge, I thought: “Oh, baklava. Cool. I know where to buy some nice phyllo dough, and – Wait, it has to be homemade phyllo? … Now that’s a challenge!”

It feels like it’s been a while since there’s been a truly hardcore DB challenge. I think the last one that had me quaking in my boots was the January one, the entremets. Not that any of the challenges since have been boring or too easy. Some were whimsical and creative, such as the edible containers challenge, others revolved around something not particularly difficult, but that I was glad to have the opportunity to make, such as the panna cotta challenge. But making your own phyllo? That’s on another plane altogether.

My father-in-law got all excited when I told him about it. He offered to lend me his pasta machine, to help get the dough paper thin. Since I’d been meaning to borrow the machine anyway, I gratefully accepted, and promised a full report and a share of the resulting dessert in exchange. I know I’ve said this before, but having in-laws who live just down the street and have an over-equipped kitchen is just wonderful for completing these challenges.

As it turns out, though, the pasta machine really wasn’t necessary, or even ideal. I made the dough and kneaded it by hand. It was soft and supple, and reminded me of the strudel dough I made for my second ever DB challenge. The pasta machine could certainly get the dough to super-thinness, but it was an obstacle to getting wide sheets. So I ended up running the dough a couple of times through the machine, to a moderate thinness, then stretching manually to finish the job.

It really wasn’t as difficult as I’d expected, just time consuming. To tell the truth, I was pretty tired by the end, but that was mostly because I’d been cooking all day: it was a holiday (Saint-Jean-Baptiste), and I went a little overboard with the cooking projects. In addition to the baklava, I made bread, ribs, and barbecue sauce. Fortunately Laurent pitched in and took care of the chicken stock, coleslaw, and oven fries.

One unexpected problem was that I ran out of dough before I could get enough sheets. And the sheets I did have were, for the most part, barely big enough to cover my 9x9 baking dish. So, I settled for using a 9x5 loaf pan, and using only three sheets per layer, as opposed to five.

Honestly, once the phyllo dough is ready, baklava is a cinch to make. The filling consists of nuts, spices, and sugar, and can be made in seconds with a food processor. Assemblage is just layering buttered phyllo and alternating with the filling. Anyone can do it. There’s also a quick syrup to cook up and pour over the baked baklava. And that’s all there is to it.

The filling tasted great. The phyllo, to be honest, could have been crispier. I suspected I put too much syrup, even though I had halved it to fit the size of my baklava. But I’m glad to have given homemade phyllo a try, if only for the bragging rights.

My thanks to Erica for a true blue challenge. Please check out the challenge recipes here, and go through the Daring Bakers’ blog roll to see how everyone else has risen to the occasion!

Oops! - Cranberry-Pistachio Cornmeal Biscotti

2011-06-21T13:09:00.003-04:00

I made these cookies for Christmas and forgot to post about them!

Shame on me, I know. But I figured they wouldn’t be completely out of season: after all, cranberries and pistachios aren’t reserved for the holidays, and cookies are good all year round, as far as I’m concerned. Furthermore, these biscotti are made with cornmeal, which keeps them crumbly and not too hard: you can easily eat them without having to dunk them into a cup of hot coffee, and can savour them alongside an iced mocha instead.

Made from a recipe by Martha Stewart, these biscotti were my first attempt at this type of cookie. It was quite easy, with my only problem (as far as I can recall) being keeping the fruit and nuts from popping out of the dough as I shaped it. They also kept beautifully.

You can find the recipe here. Enjoy!

Daring Cooks' June Challenge - Potato Salad

2011-06-16T14:12:00.002-04:00

Jami Sorrento was our June Daring Cooks hostess and she chose to challenge us to celebrate the humble spud by making a delicious and healthy potato salad. The Daring Cooks Potato Salad Challenge was sponsored by the nice people at the United States Potato Board, who awarded prizes to the top 3 most creative and healthy potato salads. A medium-size (5.3 ounce) potato has 110 calories, no fat, no cholesterol, no sodium and includes nearly half your daily value of vitamin C and has more potassium than a banana!

Bet you thought I was gone for good, huh? Actually, I’ve been away on holiday for the past two weeks. We visited my parents in Strasbourg, then drove up to Belgium to visit other relatives. Overall, it was a pleasant stay, except for all the concern about the E coli outburst in Germany. My mother was especially worried about it, so we had to steer clear of cucumbers and tomatoes until the source of the bacteria was found. The culprit, as you know, turned out to be organic sprouts – and, ironically enough, we did have bean sprouts once, at a Vietnamese restaurant. Fortunately, there were no consequences.

Anyways, when we got home last night, the first thing I did was make a gazpacho. Oh, delicious glutamatey tomatoes, how I missed you! And you too, cucumber, salt’s best friend!

Now, believe it or not, I did plan ahead for this trip, and had a few posts already typed up, with photographs pre-selected and uploaded onto my travel netbook: I was all prepared for posting on the road. However, as I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been having some problems with Blogger. At first, I thought it was just because of Internet Explorer 9, but then there turned out to be other problems, which affected my ability to comment on other blogs, among other things. So, if you haven’t received a comment from me in weeks, it’s not just because I’ve been travelling, it’s also because Blogger wouldn’t let me! So, rather than tear my hair out in front of my low-capacity netbook during my vacation, I decided to just steer clear of the blog until I got home, for sanity’s sake.

But enough about that. Let’s talk about this month’s Daring Cooks challenge. You’ve probably figured out that the reason I’m posting late is that I only got home yesterday evening.

I admit I was underwhelmed when I first found out about the challenge: “exciting” isn’t exactly the word that most readily comes to mind when you think about potato salad. On the other hand, I was grateful for the challenge’s simplicity, as I had precious little time to get it done before leaving. Laurent’s father pitched in, as he often does, by giving me a bag of small potatoes, which he himself had received from someone.

I have no idea what kind of potatoes these were. But they were firm, like fingerlings, and perfect for salads.

I rather felt like improvising, for once, instead of following the challenge recipes. Potato salad isn’t a staple on our table, but we have made different versions at different times. And, although potatoes have a bad rap for being starchy, carb-y, and figure-unfriendly, our hostess was quite right to insist that the potato is an essentially healthy and nutritious ingredient, provided it’s prepared right. You can literally live on boiled potatoes, which you can’t do on bread or rice alone.

Anyways, I flipped through my potato-themed cookbook (because of course I have a potato-themed cookbook), and came upon a recipe which called for smoked salmon (of which I had a slab in the fridge that was in need of being eaten) and tarragon (one of my favourite herbs). The light, oily dressing also appealed to me: I’ve never been a huge fan of mayo-based dressings – Caesar salads excluded.

The potatoes were roasted for this salad, not boiled, which made for an interesting texture. Other than that, the capers, cornichons, and vinegar gave it plenty of acidity, which I also liked. I changed a few things from the original recipe, adding more tarragon and cutting back on the oil. All in all, it was a good meal, and a salad I’m glad to have tested.

I may be late, but it’s never too late to check out the challenge recipes, as well as the other Daring Cooks’ deeds! See you all soon!

Smoked Salmon Potato Salad
Adapted from Paul Gayler's Tout un plat – Patates

Serves two as a meal, four as a first course

400g potatoes
2 tsbp olive oil
Salt, to taste

For the dressing:
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp xeres vinegar
Freshly ground pepper, to taste

For garnish:
2 scallions, finely sliced crosswise
10 cornichons, finely chopped
2 tbsp capers, rinsed
2 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
2 tbsp tarragon, chopped
200g smoked salmon, sliced and cut into bite-sized pieces

Preheat oven to 190ºC (375ºF) Scrub the potatoes clean and cut them into bite-sized pieces. Drizzle them with oil and toss until they are evenly coated. Place on a baking sheet or roasting pan, and roast for 30 minutes, or until the potatoes are cooked through, turning the potatoes over two or three times in the process. Sprinkle with salt and let cool until just warm. Transfer to a salad bowl.

Combine all the ingredients for the dressing, drizzle over the potatoes, and toss. Add the scallions, cornichons, capers, eggs, and tarragon, and toss to combine. Divide among plates, and garnish with smoked salmon.

Daring Bakers' May Challenge - Chocolate Marquise on Meringue

2011-05-28T15:13:00.007-04:00

Finally, I can post again! I've been having some tech issues, and it turns out Internet Explorer 9 was to blame. "Compatibility view" were the magic words, this time.

So, without further ado:

The May 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Emma of CookCraftGrow and Jenny of Purple House Dirt. They chose to challenge everyone to make a Chocolate Marquise. The inspiration for this recipe comes from a dessert they prepared at a restaurant in Seattle.

This challenge was pretty intimidating at first glance: lots of components, some of which appeared to require many, many steps. A semi-frozen chocolate concoction served atop a pillow of torched meringue, drizzled with flavoured caramel and served with spiced caramelized nuts. All of it homemade.

Not only that, but the recipe looked absolutely huge. Eleven egg yolks plus four whole eggs just for the marquise part? I was reluctant to try a new recipe when so many ingredients were at stake: what a waste if it were to fail! But the incredible Audax was kind enough to do the math for everyone and provide us all with half and quarter recipes. The quarter version was just right for me.

I think I was most excited about using a blowtorch for the first time. I didn't have one, but I knew where to borrow one. Predictably, the meringue browned almost instantly, so I didn't get to play for very long, but it was fun while it lasted. I felt a bit guilty enjoying it so much, as I had just finished reading Gabrielle Hamilton's memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter. When she mentions the years she spent working in the catering business, cooking trendy (read: pretentious) morsels from which she resolutely steered away when she opened her own restaurant, she cites using a blowtorch as one of the symbols of the kind of cooking she never wanted to do again.

But, as Laurent wisely reminded me, neither of us are Gabrielle Hamilton, nor have we been cooking as long or as intensively. So, I will continue to gleefully shriek "Burn, baby, burn!" the next few times I use a blowtorch.

Right, so, on with the other components. The most uncertain one, for me, was the marquise itself. Having never made nor tasted one, I had no idea how it was supposed to look before being frozen. Was my mixture too thick, too runny? Was my syrup hot enough, were the eggs sufficiently fluffy? Then, when I cut squares out of the frozen chocolaty block a couple of days later, I wondered if it would thaw properly, or if it would just melt like ice cream and end up in a puddle on top of my meringue.

I needen't have worried: the marquise was silky smooth on the tongue, and, honestly, worth the effort. I spiked it with Triple Sec (orange liqueur) instead of the suggested tequila, and added some lemon zest as well. I will never get tired of chocolate and citrus.

The salty caramel and the sweet, slightly spicy nuts were also great additions to this dessert. This is something I would make again when I need to impress people. And, while it's quite a bit of work, you can spread it out over a few days, even make the marquise weeks ahead and freeze it.

You can find the challenge recipes here. Don't forget to look at the other Daring Bakers' blogs, to be amazed and inspired!

Daring Cooks' May Challenge - Gumbo

2011-05-14T16:42:00.002-04:00

Our May hostess, Denise of There’s a Newf in My Soup!, challenged The Daring Cooks to make Gumbo! She provided us with all the recipes we’d need from creole spices, homemade stock and Louisiana white rice, to Drew’s Chicken & Smoked Sausage Gumbo and Seafood Gumbo from My New Orleans: The Cookbook, by John Besh.

My first thought when discovering this month’s Daring Cooks’ challenge was: “Oh, good, I finally get to find out what gumbo is!” Because, despite a family vacation in Louisiana when I was a child, and despite being (obviously) very much into food of all cultures, I have never been sure what gumbo is. I have vivid memories of eating jambalaya, fritters, and stewed alligator in New Orleans, but no gumbo. For the longest time, I thought it was a vegetable – then I realized no, I was thinking of okra (which actually is used in gumbo). Then, while watching The Princess and the Frog on a flight to somewhere, I realized, after this scene, that gumbo was some sort of stew. But what made it different from other stews, and how it was supposed to taste, I still had no idea.

Well, now I do – and I love it!

At first, I thought I might not learn much from this challenge, apart from the composition of gumbo, because it is, basically, a stew, and I’ve made a lot of stews over the years. But I was wrong. For one thing, I learned that I had everything in my pantry to make Creole spices – and I learned that they smell and taste amazing. It was the first time in a while I’d used celery salt (even though it’s a staple appetizer seasoning in Belgium, sprinkled over cubed cheese), and I remembered how much I love its aroma.

I also learned how to make a true, proper roux. A roux is a combination of flour and fat cooked together, but you can cook it to various degrees. I’ve frequently made white roux with butter, as a base for béchamel sauce, but this recipe required a dark roux, cooked longer. I used duck fat, on a hunch, and was very glad I did. After fifteen minutes of constant stirring, the mixture had turned a lovely, chocolate brown, and a wonderful fragrance was rising from it, so amazing that I could hardly believe it had been created from only flour and fat. Of course, adding onions kicked it up a notch further, and by the time the spice-seasoned chicken was tossed into the mix, I could hardly wait to eat this meal.

When it was finally time to serve it, it did not disappoint: the flavours were out of this world, almost too salty, but still getting away with all that celery salt. My only quibble is that I overcooked the okra (a newcomer in my kitchen), and that I didn’t use the right kind of sausage: I looked and looked for smoked sausage that would slice neatly and hold its shape in the pot, but I had to settle for spicy Italian sausage, which would have better served in the form of meatballs. Also, I couldn’t find file powder, but since I have no idea what it tastes like, I didn’t miss it.

I made Louisiana rice, using the recipe provided. Made with butter and chicken stock, I thought it was overkill with this dish, which was already not only salty, but also very rich (despite the fact that I had skimmed about two whole cups of fat from the top of the stew). Plain steamed white rice would have been a better choice for me.

Well, that’s all for this challenge! Thank you, Denise, it was delicious! The rest of you, check out the challenge recipes here at the Daring Kitchen, and go through the blogroll to see what the other Daring Cooks made – there are some cool variations out there!

Fun with fusion - Nori Parmesan Sablés

2011-05-06T14:46:00.002-04:00

I’ve mentioned in the past that I’m wary of fusion cooking. I’m a bit of a purist when it comes to national cuisines: when I try a new ethnic dish for the first time, or even a classic European or North American recipe, I want to do it right, and to me that means making it the traditional, “official” way. After that, I’ll tweak the recipe and make variations (for example, I will always put cream in a gratin dauphinois, even though by definition it shouldn’t contain any – because it just tastes so much better that way). But I’ll rarely get to the point where I start playing with cultures, probably because there are still so many traditional recipes out there for me to try. Indian croquembouche and Vietnamese osso bucco actually sound pretty good – but how about I master the originals first? (Although I think I’ve got osso bucco down pat… might be time to mix it up.)

For some reason, Japanese cuisine is an exception: I am much more open to fusing Japanese ingredients, techniques, and flavours into other types of dishes. Maybe it’s because this is one of most common types of fusion in restaurants: just look at all the yuzu and matcha green tea on the average gourmet menu. And maybe it’s because Japanese flavours tend to be clean and subtle, and therefore lend themselves to being combined with other aromas and tastes (unlike Chinese flavours, for example, which are a powerhouse that would take over most dishes). Or maybe it’s because I have a special place in my heart (and my belly) for Japanese food.

Then again, it could be simply because I have a particularly good fusion book in my personal library: Laure Kié’s Ma petite cuisine japonaise. Born of a French mother and a Japanese father, and married to a Southern Frenchman, Kié creatively blends flavours and concepts from both cultures. I initially purchased her book because the recipes were varied and seemed doable, but also because I was intrigued by them, almost to the point of being sceptical. Pizza margherita with nori? Savoury cake with miso and olives? Substituting pastis for sake? And what was with all the olive oil?

I still have many recipes from this book to test, but my scepticism evaporated after the first couple of tries. Nori, it turns out, goes amazingly well with tomatoes (thanks to the high levels of umami in both ingredients). Salmon teriyaki seized with olive oil tastes just fine, richer than when canola oil is used. And, as I found out this week, nori and parmesan can be great together.

I was making a traditional Japanese dish for dinner (cod marinated in miso), and wanted to make something fun as an appetizer. These little sablés jumped out at me. They are very quick to make, and I love the metallic aftertaste of the nori. As expected of a Mediterranean-influenced recipe, olive oil is used instead of butter, making for a stronger tasting, albeit less crumbly dough. I also added a couple of teaspoonfuls of shichimi togarashi, or Japanese seven spice powder, to add some zing – although Espelette chili pepper would also have been good.

Nori Parmesan Sablés
Adapted from Laure Kié’s Ma petite cuisine japonaise

Yields 45 small cookies

50g (1 cup, loosely packed) parmesan, grated
1/2 cups nori, cut into strips
180g (1 cup + 2 tbsp) all-purpose flour
1 tsp sea salt
1-2 tsp shichimi togarashi (optional)
80ml (1/3 cup) olive oil
1 egg
2 tbsp water
Preheat oven to 180ºC (350ºF).

In a large bowl, combine the parmesan, flour, nori, salt, and shichimi togarashi, if using. In another smaller bowl, whisk together the oil, water, and the egg. Mix the liquid ingredients into the dry ones (by hand or in a food processor), to obtain a homogenous, soft dough.

Roll the dough out on a pastry board, to a 5 mm (1/4 inch) thickness. Chill in the refrigerator for 15 minutes.

Using a 3,5 cm (1 1/2 inch) cookie cutter, cut out the sablés and lay them out over baking sheets lined with parchment paper (I used two sheets). Gather the scraps, re-roll the dough, and cut our more sablés. Repeat until all the dough is used.

Chill the sablés for 15 minutes, then bake for 15-20 minutes, until lightly browned around the edges. Let cool on the baking sheets.

Daring Bakers' April Challenge - Maple Mousse in an Edible Container

2011-04-27T14:30:00.002-04:00

The April 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Evelyne of the blog Cheap Ethnic Eatz. Evelyne chose to challenge everyone to make a maple mousse in an edible container. Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favorite from April 27th to May 27th at http://thedaringkitchen.com!

I really wish I had something better to show for this month’s Daring Bakers’ challenge – not least because it was hosted by fellow Montrealer and friend Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz. Several months ago, as we were freezing our asses off with other food bloggers in front of Le Boucan, Evelyne hinted that her challenge idea was pretty unusual, and that I probably wouldn’t guess it. Indeed, she was right: maple mousse in a bacon cup was not something that crossed my mind!

Actually, the official challenge was to make edible containers for the mousse. But how could I resist the bacon option? Incorporating bacon into sweet desserts (particularly chocolate ones) has been a trend for a long time now, so long that it’s probably not technically a trend anymore. And as any brunch lover knows, maple and bacon are a match made in heaven.

Strangely enough for a resident of Quebec, I rarely use maple syrup. The bottle I keep in the fridge has been there for a long time. And yet, as I began to heat the syrup (from a new can I purchased for the occasion) for the mousse, I was seriously puzzled at my neglect of this spring staple: it smelled so divine, I literally swooned!

So, if anything, this challenge will have reconnected me with maple syrup. However, as I stated at the beginning of this post, I am not quite happy with my results. And unfortunately, I didn’t have time to try again, because I was very last-minute – not because I was busy, but just lazy and disorganized.

For starters, I chose to work with ingredients which are not especially cooperative, but in different ways: bacon and chocolate.

Chocolate is a notorious prima donna. Controlling its temperature is tricky when using small quantities, which leads to all kinds of drama. Fortunately, it didn’t go too badly this time. I wanted to make chocolate cups, following instructions I found on The Global Gourmet. It’s really quite simple: you melt the chocolate, spread it across a cupcake liner, chill, and peel the paper off. I was worried about not having found foil-lined cupcake cups, which probably would have facilitated the peeling. But it worked anyway.

Bacon, in my book, is difficult to work with for a different reason: it shrinks like hell, making it a less than ideal material for sculpting or moulding. I had actually tried making bacon cups for the last Daring Cooks’ challenge (also on edible containers), but I had ended up with bacon saucers instead. This time, I used more bacon per cup, allowing for shrinkage. I obtained an approximate cup shape, but still ended up with holes in my container. Which wouldn’t have been too big a deal… if my mousse had come out right.

I’m not sure what happened with the mousse. It was a pretty straightforward recipe, but I guess the stars weren’t aligned. The preparation simply refused to solidify, and so I ended up with something that was closer to a maple crème anglaise. Which, of course, leaked through the holes in my bacon cup. But it still tasted great, and we ate it up without any complaints.

I had other ideas for this challenge, of course: tuile cups, crepe bowls, cannoli (which, however, would also have required a solid mousse)… I’m still glad I went for the bacon, though. It’s official: bacon really does make everything (and I mean everything) better!

You can look at the challenge recipes here, and don’t forget to look at the blog roll to see all the awesome sweet containers (and mousses worthy of that name) the other Daring Bakers have made. Also, there’s going to be a contest for the best creation, so don’t forget to vote!

Easter comes early - Braised Leg of Lamb

2011-04-23T13:25:00.007-04:00

Laurent will be away this weekend, on a work-related trip (because somebody forgot that it was Easter weekend, and booked the trip for everyone months ago, and nobody realized this until it was too late). As a result, we celebrated Easter a little early.

I’m not sure I’ve ever had lamb for Easter before. Easter has always been one of the lesser holidays in my family: we’d go to church, I’d get a chocolate egg and/or bunny, and that was mostly that. If we ever did have lamb, it was probably lamb chops: it wasn’t in my mother’s habit to cook up large pieces of meat, so leg of lamb or shoulder roast were not staples in her kitchen.

And now that I’m usually celebrating Easter with Laurent’s family, my chances of being served lamb are even smaller: Laurent’s father dislikes red meat, so he tends to choose the non-traditional route (see last year’s cold salmon platter). But since I’m celebrating Easter twice this year (once on Thursday, once on Sunday – where, in an even more defiant break with tradition, Laurent’s parents are taking me to lunch at a Chinese restaurant), I decided that one of the meals had to be leg of lamb.

Since we were ahead of schedule, there was still plenty of frozen lamb at the market. I hesitated on the cooking method; finally, rather than dry-roasting it to the requisite pinkish hue, I braised it for four hours. Regular basting ensured that it was flavoured and moist all over.

I realize it looks monstrous. It was also hell to carve, which explains the sub-par plating. But rest assured, it tasted great!

Overall, it all went smoothly, and we were both pleased with the result. It certainly wasn’t raw-pink on the inside, but it wasn’t dry, either. If we’d had the time, I would’ve like to braise it even longer, and see what would happen – but we were starving, and also I wasn’t feeling brave enough to experiment with a giant, 30-dollar cut of meat. The basting liquid, in addition to keeping the meat interesting as it cooked, also turned out to make a great sauce, thanks to the garlic, tomatoes, and fresh herbs. And I tried a new technique for roasting potatoes, which was also a hit: definitely the crispiest non-fried potatoes I’ve ever made! Just let me tweak it a little to make it more interesting, and I’ll be sure to post it.

So, even though I wish Laurent didn’t have to go on that trip, it was still fun to have an opportunity to try out a traditional Easter meal – without all the relatives and pressure to shine!

Braised Leg of Lamb
Adapted from Christophe Felder’s Les meilleurs plats mijotés

Serves 6

One 2,5 kg (5 pound) leg of lamb
Two heads of garlic
4 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp butter, cut into small cubes
240 ml (1 cup) dry white wine
240 ml (1 cup) chicken stock
One 400 ml (1 2/3 cup) can of diced tomatoes
2 bay leaves
One bunch of fresh thyme
One bunch of fresh rosemary
3 French shallots, peeled
1 carrot, peeled and cut into four segments
Salt and pepper

Pre-heat oven to 150ºC (300ºF).

Cut three cloves of garlic lengthwise into segments, make incisions into the lamb and insert the pieces of garlic. Rub the lamb all over with olive oil, and season with salt and pepper. Place the meat in a large roasting pan, and sprinkle with the butter.

Pour the wine, stock, and tomatoes into the pan. Add the shallots, the carrot, and the remaining heads of garlic (don’t bother with separating and peeling the garlic, just lightly separate the cloves and put them in as they are). Season with salt and pepper all over, and toss in the bay leaves, thyme, and rosemary.

Bake for 4 hours, basting the lamb with the braising liquid every 45 minutes.

Daring Cooks' April Challenge - Edible Containers

2011-04-14T20:27:00.005-04:00

Renata of Testado, Provado & Aprovado! was our Daring Cooks’ April 2011 hostess. Renata challenged us to think “outside the plate” and create our own edible containers! Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favorite from April 17th to May 16th at http://thedaringkitchen.com!

This month’s Daring Cooks’ challenge was definitely one of my favourites ever. It was tons of fun, and so inspiring. There’s something about edible containers that brings out the kid in me – and judging from the funky dishes I’ve seen on the Daring Kitchen forums, I’m not the only one!

But since I have a tendency to overthink everything (staying in school forever will do that to you), it wasn’t long before I started wondering: “What exactly qualifies as a container?” I mean, if a container is considered to be anything that holds your food together, then doesn’t the rice paper in spring rolls qualify as an edible container? What about the crust in a tartlet? But those didn’t seem like particularly creative options, and creativity is what this challenge was all about.

Anyways, after a few days of pondering, I decided to forget about solving the problem, and just have fun. A few things I’ve already posted on this blog featured edible containers, such as my baked eggs in a bread ramekin, and Laurent’s parmesan salad bowls. But I wanted to make something new.

The first thing I tried was a recipe from the beautiful blog La Tartine Gourmande: smoked salmon potato nests. They were very easy to make, and tasted so delicious, with such lovely contrasts of textures and temperatures. And don’t they just look adorable?

I then tried one of the challenge recipes: a noodle salad bowl. Noodle bowls in Chinese restaurants are usually fried, but this one was baked. It was a little tricky weaving the noodles together, and I was afraid they wouldn’t crisp up properly, but they did. Served with a cool salad of baby greens, grated carrot and cucumbers, with a sesame oil dressing, this bowl was a wonderful nibble.

Finally, I experimented with choux pastry. It’s definitely not the ideal dough for this kind of challenge, as it rises a lot in the oven. I wanted to make choux pastry cups, so I lined ramekins with dough, and had to keep pushing the dough down during the baking process. The cups took a long time to bake, too. But the result was worth it: they were crisp, and their rich taste made them the perfect container for a creamy filling. I would recommend these as a substitute for puff pastry shells in vols-aux-vent (which we’ve already made for the Daring Bakers).

The filling was also an experiment, but a less successful one. I made a béchamel with shallots and lemon, and poached pieces of white fish and Nordic shrimp in it, adding a spoonful of chopped tarragon at the end. But somehow, the whole thing was rather bland, and the wonderful flavour of the Nordic shrimp had disappeared. It needs work.

Below are the recipes for the potato nests and the choux pastry bowls. I want to thank Renata for this amazing challenge! I encourage you to take a look at the other Daring Cooks’ edible containers, because people have really outdone themselves this month. And if you get inspired and want to give it a try, the challenge recipes are here. Also, we’re having a contest this month, so please vote for your favourite dishes over at the Daring Kitchen!

Smoked Salmon Potato Nests

Adapted from a recipe from La Tartine Gourmande

Yields 12 units

3 medium russet potatoes, peeled
1 egg
1 tbsp flour
Salt and pepper
3 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
60 ml (1/4 cup) crème fraîche
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp pink peppercorns, crushed
4-6 slices of smoked salmon
Dill sprigs, for garnish
Fleur de sel, for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 180ºC (350ºF). Rinse the potatoes to remove part of the starch. Grate them in a food processor. Lightly beat the egg and mix it into the potatoes. Season the flour with salt and pepper and incorporate it into the potatoes. Brush a mini muffin tin with melted butter. Divide the potato mixture among the muffin tins, shaping them into little nests. Brush the inside of the nests with butter. Bake for approximately 30 minutes, or until crisp and golden brown. Let cool until just warm.

Combine the crème fraîche with the lemon juice. Divide the salmon among the potato nests, and add a dollop of crème fraîche into each. Garnish with pink peppercorns and dill, sprinkle with fleur de sel, and serve.

Choux Pastry Cups

Yields 5 cups

4 whole eggs 100g (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, diced
Pinch of salt
125g (7/8 cup) flour
240ml (1 cup) water

Preheat oven to 180ºC (350ºF). Heat the water with the butter and the salt in a saucepan over medium heat, until the butter is melted. Remove from heat and add the flour, all at once. Return to heat and cook, stirring constantly and making sure to hydrate all of the flour, until you obtain a smooth, shiny dough that does not stick to the pan. Remove from heat and stir in the eggs, one by one.

Butter five small ramekins. Divide the choux pastry among them, pressing to line the ramekins with the dough. Bake for at least 40 minutes. During the baking process, check on your cups regularly, pressing down on the dough whenever it rises in the bottom, so as to preserve the shape of the cups. The finished cups should be crisp and dry. Let cool in the turned off oven, to finish drying completely. Serve with the savoury filling of your choice.

The Chocolate Bunny turns 2! - Rosemary Cashews

2011-04-07T19:37:00.005-04:00

I’m very proud and happy to celebrate my blog’s second anniversary today!

Like the previous one, this year just flew by. Although there have been periods when I haven’t posted much, I find that this was always due to lack of time, not lack of inspiration. I still enjoy writing about food as much as I did when I started this blog. In fact, I would say I enjoy it even more, being more comfortable with it.

As with last year, I failed to come up with a gorgeous, jaw-dropping dish for today. Instead, I have something very simple, but extremely tasty: rosemary cashews.

The original recipe by Ina Garten was printed in The Gazette a while back. I made these nuts for the first time that very same day. Flavoured roasted nuts are a favourite appetizer of mine, and we regularly treat ourselves to lime-and-pepper macadamias, or lemon-and-sea-salt almonds from Sunsource (and they are a treat in every sense of the word, as they are not particularly cheap – damn good, though). But I had never tried making them at home.

I can’t describe how delicious these rosemary cashews are. They are rich, salty, lightly sweet, a little spicy, and simply perfect. I’ve served them to guests on a few occasions, and they were a huge hit. They are now my go-to appetizer whenever I need to impress my guests at little effort.

I haven’t changed much to the recipe, just added more butter, as the coating mixture appeared to require more moisture. And I don’t have kosher salt in my pantry, so I adapted the quantity to suit sea salt.

Rosemary Cashews
Adapted from a recipe by Ina Garten

500g (1 pound) unsalted roasted cashews
2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
2 tbsp fresh rosemary, chopped
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tsp brown sugar
2 tsp sea salt

Preheat oven to 180ºC (350ºF). Spread the cashews on a baking pan, in a single layer. Toast for about 5 minutes, until nuts are warm and fragrant.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the butter, salt, sugar, cayenne pepper, and rosemary. Add the nuts and toss, until the nuts are evenly coated. Let cool and serve warm, or at room temperature. Store in an airtight container.

Cauliflower Soup with Scallops

2011-04-03T21:19:00.007-04:00

I’ve just gotten through a pretty intense couple of weeks. My apologies for the lack of posting here, as well as my lack of commenting on anyone’s blogs. But I finally got a proper night’s sleep on Friday, and woke up not feeling terrified of everything I needed to do – instead, I woke up feeling like it’s the weekend, which hasn’t happened in a long time (weekends have just been slightly more mellow work days, recently).

In other words, I’m back.

I admit Laurent has been picking up the slack, and doing most of the cooking recently (so I’ve at least been eating well, if not sleeping well). But I haven’t been completely absent from the kitchen, and so I have a soup to share with you today. It’s adapted from a recipe by Louis-François Marcotte.

Cauliflower and scallops are not something I would have thought to combine, yet once the idea was popped into my head, it seemed to make sense. This soup confirms that they actually work very, very well together. Marcotte’s original recipe uses light cream, but milk works as well, although you inevitably lose richness. He also adds a few mushrooms pickled in vinegar, but I personally think this overwhelms the delicate flavours of the main ingredients.

Serve this as an elegant first course, or a light main course (in which case you might consider adding more scallops).

Cauliflower soup with scallops
Adapted from Sexy: Cuisiner pour Deux, by Louis-François Marcotte

Serves 6 as a first course

1 leek, white part only, washed, sliced lengthwise, and chopped
1 head of cauliflower, washed and cut into florets
1 1/2 litre (6 cups) chicken stock
360 ml (1 1/2 cup) whole milk
18 raw scallops
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
Chopped dill, for garnish
Salt and pepper, to taste
6 dollops crème fraîche (optional)

In a large saucepan, melt 1 tbsp butter over medium-low heat. Toss in the leeks, salt lightly, and cook, stirring frequently, until leeks are tender. Add the stock and cauliflower, bring to a boil, and simmer until the cauliflower is very tender, about 30 minutes. Let cool and purée in a blender, or with a hand mixer. Return to saucepan and stir in the milk. Warm over medium-low heat, until soup is heated through. Keep warm until ready to serve.

Pat the scallops dry and season with salt. Melt the remaining tbsp of butter with the tbsp of olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Sear the scallops under browned, about 1 minute on each side. Remove from the pan.

To serve: Divide the soup among heated bowls. Put 3 scallops into each bowl, spoon the crème fraîche in if using, sprinkle with chopped dill, season with freshly ground black pepper, and serve immediately.

Daring Bakers' March Challenge - Yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake

2011-03-28T13:22:00.003-04:00

The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.

Sometimes, my behaviour doesn’t make any sense. I’ve been very busy these past couple of weeks, among other things preparing for my predoctoral exam (which I passed, yay!) – hence the lack of posting. I took my exam on Thursday, crashed and rested on Friday, motivated myself to do this month’s Daring Bakers’ challenge on Saturday… and just completely forgot to post about it on Sunday. Actually, I remembered at some point during the day, then just forgot all about it again. Anyways, I’ve posted later than this before, so I’m sure you’ll forgive me.

This yeasted, meringue-filled coffee cake looked intimidating when I first skimmed the recipe, but it turned out to be pretty easy in practice. The rich bread-like dough (almost like a light brioche) was a dream to work with, so smooth and flexible. I love that the recipe used the word “sexy” to describe it, it’s pretty accurate! After rising, the dough was rolled flat, smeared with meringue and sprinkled with a sweet filling. Out of two filling options, I chose the cashew-based one, with garam masala. I was very curious about how garam masala would taste in a sweet bread – I’d only ever used it in curries. I was afraid it might be too strong, but it was actually really subtle, and went well with the dark chocolate and nuts.

The cake came out looking pretty good, but I could have baked it a tad less, as the crumb was a tiny bit dry. As I mentioned, I loved the filling, but I’m puzzled by what happened to the meringue. You can see it in through the decorative cuts all around the edges of the cake, but I was expecting to see a swirl on the inside of each slice. Where did the meringue go? Laurent and I both liked the fact that this cake wasn’t too sweet. In fact, Laurent, who usually dislikes having pastry for breakfast other than the occasional weekend croissant (muffins and scones are banned from the breakfast table, much to my dismay), volunteered to eat it every morning!

Thank you, Ria and Jamie, for hosting a pleasant, original challenge! Please check out the Daring Kitchen for the challenge recipes, and the Daring Bakers’ blogroll to see what all the other bakers concocted this month!

Daring Cooks' March Challenge - Ceviche and Papas Rellenas

2011-03-14T17:41:00.002-04:00

Kathlyn of Bake Like a Ninja was our Daring Cooks’ March 2011 hostess. Kathlyn challenged us to make two classic Peruvian dishes: Ceviche de Pescado from “Peruvian Cooking – Basic Recipes” by Annik Franco Barreau. And Papas Rellenas adapted from a home recipe by Kathlyn’s Spanish teacher, Mayra.

My mouth started watering when I found out about this month’s Daring Cooks challenge. Although I’ve never knowingly had Peruvian cuisine, I have had ceviche and, like pretty much any dish featuring raw fish, I adore it. It was also very easy to make: just cut up fresh fish (tilapia, in my case) to your liking, add seasonings and lemon juice, and let the citrus do its job. Indeed, lemon juice cooks fish, which is one of the reasons it’s recommended to avoid using it in tartare. It was refreshing and delicate, served with a salad of corn, red pepper, and goat cheese (it was supposed to be queso fresco, but I couldn’t find any).

The mere concept of papas rellenas made me hungry: meal-sized mashed potato “croquettes,” stuffed with a meat filling. Croquettes are always welcome on my table, but I particularly loved the filling in this recipe: with ground beef, black olives, raisins, and cumin, it was a lovely combination of flavours. I made a large batch of the pappas and froze the excess ones (prior to frying), for a busy night.

What I loved about this month’s challenge is that both dishes are something I had never made at home, and am now seriously considering adding to my regular recipe roaster. Not that this hasn’t happened before with the Daring Cooks, but this month’s recipes were just very fun and accessible. Thank you, Kathlyn!

Please check out the Daring Kitchen to look at both challenge recipes. And take a look at the Daring Cooks’ blogroll to see if they’ve had as much fun as I have this month!

Flammekueche, and a new friend

2011-03-08T15:37:00.003-05:00

My parents moved to Strasbourg last month. They’ve been sampling the local Alsatian cuisine, which they tell me is on the decadent side: lots of sausages, crème fraîche, cheese, and lardons.

Lardons are something that I’ve been missing here. They’re basically cubed bacon, but they’re salt-cured, cook up less crispy, and substitutes such as bacon or pancetta just don’t quite cut it. Lardons are used in such dishes as quiche lorraine, and also in salads. They’re not impossible to find in Montreal (quality butcher’s shops carry them), but they are nowhere near as available here as in France and Belgium, where you can find ten different kinds of lardons in every supermarket.

But we recently visited a nearby French butcher’s shop and saw some lardons for sale. We weren’t sure what we would do with them yet, but we didn’t want to pass them up. When we got home, we decided to try our hand at making an Alsatian specialty: flammekueche, or tarte flambée.

This dish is not entirely unknown in Montreal. The wine bar POP! serves it, and the popular restaurant and microbrewery chain Les 3 Brasseurs specializes in flammekueches. Basically, the tarte flambée is like a very thin pizza. Toppings can be adapted every which way, but the traditional recipe includes lardons, crème fraîche and/or fromage blanc, and onions.

I found a lot of flammekueche recipes online, and they were all different. So I combined some of them, and added some steps of my own. It was very rich, but very satisfying, with the salty lardons, luscious crème fraîche, and slightly sweet onions. Give it a try!

Laurent’s parents are coming over for dinner tomorrow, and I should be doing prep work for the meal. But I can’t. Because of this critter:

Meet our new cat, Paprika. She’s eight months old, and we brought her home from the shelter yesterday. One year after the death of my beloved bunny Q-Tip, I decided the apartment felt very empty, especially on days when I’m working from home. So we talked about it, and decided on a kitty, because they’re a little more independent than rabbits. And no, the title of this blog will not be changed to "The Chocolate Kitty." :-)

So far, Paprika has proven to be extremely affectionate and sweet. She loves to cuddle and sleep next to us. She’s still quite young, so she likes to play a lot, and it doesn’t take much to get her excited: a piece of ribbon, a blanket… my hair…

There’s just one problem: she keeps jumping on the kitchen counter. Especially when I’m cooking. Last night, when I opened the pot of crème fraîche, she went nuts: clearly, fatty dairy ranks very high on her list of desirable treats. Laurent had to take her away so that I could finish making dinner.

I often take cooking breaks from work during the day, but right now I’m just scared that Paprika will pounce while I’m chopping stuff, or while I’m elbow-deep in ground meat. I’d rather wait for Laurent to hold the fort.

Ah well, I’m sure we’ll work it out eventually. At least I know it’s still possible to make tarte flambée.

Traditional Tarte Flambée
Serves 3-4

For the dough:
250g (9 oz, 1 3/4 cup) flour
160 – 200 ml ( 2/3 - 3/4 cup) water
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp oil

Toppings:
1 onion, thinly sliced
250g (9 oz) lardons
120 ml (1/2 cup) crème fraîche (or substitute with sour cream)
1 tbsp fromage blanc (or substitute with plain yogurt)
120 ml (1/2 cup) shredded gruyere cheese (optional)
Pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 260ºC (500ºF).

In a mixing bowl, or with a food processor, combine the flour, salt, and oil. Mix in the water gradually, adding just enough to form a soft dough that isn’t sticky. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to use.

Cover the onions in cold water, stir in 1 tsp of salt and 2 tbsp of white vinegar, and let soak for 30 minutes.

In a skillet over medium high heat, sauté the lardons, stirring often, until they are browned and crispy. Remove the lardons from the pan, leaving the fat in the skillet. Reduce heat to medium. Drain and rinse the onions, then add them to the pan. Sauté them until they are soft and translucent (do not let them brown or caramelize). Remove from heat and reserve.

In a small bowl, combine the crème fraîche and fromage blanc. Season with pepper. Reserve.

Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface, until it is about 5 mm (1/4 inch) thick. Place it on a holed pizza baking sheet. Spread the crème fraîche mixture over the dough, leaving a margin around the border. Sprinkle the onions, lardons, and gruyere (if using) over the mixture.

Bake for about 15 minutes, or until the dough is crispy and the surface of the tarte is golden brown. Cut into wedges and serve immediately alongside a tossed green salad.

Daring Bakers' February Challenge - Panna Cotta and Florentine Cookies

2011-02-27T21:45:00.006-05:00

The February 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mallory from A Sofa in the Kitchen. She chose to challenge everyone to make Panna Cotta from a Giada De Laurentiis recipe and Nestle Florentine Cookies.

We had dinner with a Tuscan friend two evenings ago. He served us an exquisite traditional Italian meal of homemade fettucine with onions and pancetta, followed by braised chicken with rosemary and garlic (both dishes have names, but I can’t remember them for the life of me, so I’ll just keep quiet). Simple dishes, but made with enough care and attention to flavour to make them truly delectable.

During the conversation, I mentioned half of this month’s DB challenge: Florentine cookies. To my surprise, our friend had no idea what I was talking about. He took out his Tuscan cookbook and found a pastry with the same name, but which had nothing else in common with what I had in mind: it looked like cocoa-flavoured quenelles of almond paste, not flat, thin cookies. Then Laurent’s father intervened and suggested that Florentine cookies are actually French, not Italian. Meanwhile, Anita Chu’s Field Guide to Cookies states that Florentines may in fact have been invented in Austria.

So, the jury’s still out on where Florentine cookies actually hail from. But that shouldn’t stop us from enjoying them, and it didn’t stop me from completing the challenge.

But first, the other half of the challenge, the one I was most looking forward to: panna cotta. I’ve had this creamy dessert a few times, and was glad to have the opportunity to make it myself. In order to make it a little more interesting, I garnished it with two kinds of gelée: pomegranate and mango. Although I have to admit I cheated a little: instead of using fresh fruit, which isn’t all that easy at this time of year, I used bottled juice.

Making the gelée and panna cotta was very easy, and the most trying part was actually assembling the desserts: making layers, then waiting for them to solidify in the fridge before adding another layer on top. It wasn’t difficult, just time consuming. I made a few variations, including two unmouldable versions: one plain (which was easy enough to unmould), and one with a layer of gelée (which stuck a bit more). I drizzled both with caramel (bottled, not homemade – more of a last minute impulse).

We enjoyed the dessert, although I felt it was just a tad too gelatinous. I know that Josée di Stasio and Patrice Demers both use yogurt in their panna cotta, which gives and allows them to use less gelatine and create a creamier result. I would definitely like to try that option in the near future.

As for the Florentines, everything started out great – well, more or less. I had to push everything back a day when I realized I had absent-mindedly bought oat flour, instead of rolled oats. And when I finally did make the challenge, I initially put too many cookies per baking sheet, and they merged together as they spread. But no biggie, I just cut them up into relatively circular shapes after they had cooled, and then I adjusted the cookie/sheet ratio for the next batches. The cooled Florentines were shiny and crispy, and reminded me of dentelles de Bruges, another lacy cookie I’ve made before.

But this went wrong when I least expected them: during the filling process. I wanted to sandwich my Florentines, as is usually done. But instead of pure chocolate, I used some ganache I had left over from another recent baking project. This turned out to be a mistake, as the cookies absorbed the moisture and became soft and mushy.

They look pretty, don’t they? Alas, ‘tis all an illusion. However, the “naked” cookies I nibbled at before garnishing – and ruining – the rest were really good, so I wouldn’t call my attempt a complete failure. Just an ultimate one.

Mallory, thank you for hosting this challenge, I learned a lot (such as: you can’t always substitute ganache for chocolate). I’m including the basic recipe for fruit gelée, and you can find the challenge recipes at the Daring Kitchen. Don’t forget to look at the DB blogroll to see what all the other bakers have accomplished this month!

Fruit Gelée
Yields 240 ml, or 1 cup

240 ml (1 cup) fruit juice of your choice
1 1/2 tsp unflavoured powdered gelatine
1 tbsp granulated sugar

Pour the juice in a saucepan, sprinkle the gelatine over it in a fine layer, and let rest for 5 minutes. Stir in the sugar, and heat over medium-low until hot but not boiling, and all the sugar and gelatine have dissolved. Remove from heat and let cool before use. The gelée will reach the right texture after about 30 minutes in the fridge (depending on how you choose to use it).

Tartine Bread, Take Two

2011-02-24T19:58:00.002-05:00

So, because I’m stubborn, I tried making Chad Robertson’s Tartine country bread again. But I only re-attempted it after I’d eaten all of Attempt No. 1, which I had sliced up and frozen – even though it really wasn’t a very good bread at all. But I felt bad wasting all that flour, so I used it for sandwiches.

Attempt No. 2 was much, much more successful. Being able to compare it to the first time, I could tell right from the beginning that everything just seemed to be more “right:” my starter was lighter, my dough was more supple, the gluten was more developed.

I think I figured out a few things that went wrong before:

1) My starter wasn’t mature enough;
2) I hadn’t incorporated the salt well enough, which means my dough never had a chance to develop properly, as it wasn’t properly holding together in the first place;
3) My kitchen was a tad too cold; this time, I turned my oven into a proofbox, by turning it on for 1 minute and turning it off again before putting my dough in it.

My clumsy slashing skills aside, the crust was nearly perfect: thick, crisp, and golden. It didn’t quite make that lovely crinckling sound as it cooled, but it was still a beauty. As for the crumb, although it still wasn’t as light and aired as what I was going for, it was still miles above my previous result.

So, how does this bread, which requires an entire day of preparation and care (you have to stretch and fold it every half hour during the bulk rise, so you can’t really leave it alone for too long), measure up to Jim Lahey’s easy-peasy no-knead bread? Honestly, it’s a very close call so far. The no-knead recipe is foolproof and yields amazing loaves. Chad Robertson’s bread, on the other hand, requires serious skill and experience to obtain similar results. But there is one thing that gives this bread the potential to outshine its laid-back competition: flavour. The no-knead bread has an impressive flavour, born from its overnight rise; but the Tartine bread has even more aromas and a hint of acidity, thanks to the starter. This was evident even in my less-than-perfect second loaf. Just for that, I’m going to keep trying to master this bread.

And, well, there are bragging rights, of course: “I made this bread with yeast I cultivated myself!” It just proves how big of a food geek I’ve become that I find this incredibly cool. So, in the spirit of pride and experimentation, bring on the Tartine bread!

I stand corrected - Jim Lahey's No-Knead Bread

2011-02-19T15:21:00.003-05:00

I admit I’ve always been a little sceptical about no-knead bread. I figured there had to be a reason why bakers continue to put elbow grease into the process. And I’ve always rather liked the experience of kneading: it’s an effective way to work out stress and frustration.

But when I read this article praising the virtues of no-knead bread, and saw that it was written by a fellow sceptic, I decided I needed to try it for myself. After all, it really did look ridiculously easy, judging from Jim Lahey's included recipe: just mix the ingredients, let rise overnight, shape, and bake.

It was my first time using my Dutch oven for baking, and it only makes me love my big cast iron monster even more. So many delicious things come out of that thing: stews, braises, and now this incredible bread.

There, I’ve said it: this bread is incredible. It is by far the best bread I’ve ever baked. The crust is unbelievably crisp, thanks to the baking process: sealing the bread inside the Dutch oven produces enough steam to obtain a beautiful, blistery crust that crinkles as it cools down. As for the crumb, it’s airy and cool, just the way I like it. The bread also packed a lot of flavour, thanks to the slow fermentation process.

I’ve tried making this with half whole wheat flour, and the results were still good, although the crumb was inevitably heavier. I’ll need to experiment some more to find a balance. But overall, this recipe is as close to foolproof as I’ve ever come across.

I cannot, however, say the same for Chad Robertson’s country bread. I purchased his book Tartine Bread a while ago, and have been trying to work with it. I’d never created a starter before, and spent a couple of weeks feeding and nurturing my new yeast colony, fascinated by the idea that I was raising organisms in a jar (Laurent, as a biochemist, is more used to the situation). The starter seemed to be doing well: it was bubbly, it rose and fell in a pattern, and it smelled nice.

But when I finally tried to make the bread, which, like the no-knead bread, relies very much on slow fermentation (although some light kneading is required), I was very disappointed: my loaf was way too heavy, its crumb dense and flavourless. There were a few large holes here and there, but nothing remotely approaching the gorgeous, light crumb that was featured in the book (which, incidentally, is beautifully made and full of step-by-step pictures). And the crust was just dull.

I’m thinking my starter wasn’t mature enough. But I know I’m not the only one to have had initial trouble making this bread (I’ve actually seen a picture of a failed loaf just like the one I ended up with), so I’m going to keep trying. In the meantime, there’s still fabulous no-knead bread!

Daring Cooks February Challenge - Hiyashi Soba and Tempura

2011-02-14T21:21:00.003-05:00

The February 2011 Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by Lisa of Blueberry Girl. She challenged Daring Cooks to make Hiyashi Soba and Tempura. She has various sources for her challenge including japanesefood.about.com, pinkbites.com, and itsybitsyfoodies.com

Lord knows I’m always up for making Japanese food. We had a big sushi party here, a couple of weeks ago. The guests pitched in and took a shot at rolling their own maki, while I looked over their shoulder and pretended to be an expert. It was fun!

So I was pleased to discover this month’s DC challenge: cold soba and tempura. Laurent and I have made tempura before, but it had been a while. And it had been even longer since we’d had soba at home. We usually prefer udon or ramen, which are less healthy, but milder tasting. And we usually serve them in hot soups, rather than cold. But I had hiyashi soba several times last summer in Japan, and they were a refreshing delight on a hot, muggy day.

I don’t have much to report this month. I mistakenly thought I had a pack of soba left in the pantry, and had to run out and substitute what I could find. Technically, I used buckwheat lomein, but I’m fairly sure they only differ from soba by their shape. I probably should have rinsed the cooked noodles a little more, as they stuck together a bit. But a little bit of spicy dipping sauce (very zippy, by the way!) did the trick and made them slurp-a-licious!

For the tempura, I was pleased to learn a couple of tricks to improve results, such as keeping everything cold prior to frying, and putting the fried pieces of food on a rack to drip their excess oil, instead of blotting them on paper towels. This was definitely the crispiest, lightest tempura we ever made! It was also our first time using shiitake and eggplants for this dish (we usually stick to shrimp), and we enjoyed both, especially the mushrooms.

Thanks, Lisa, for this challenge and for all the info!

Please check out the Daring Cooks’ blogroll to see what everyone else cooked up this week. And visit The Daring Kitchen to look at this month’s challenge recipes.

My Interpretation - Smoky Beef Chili Stew

2011-02-07T11:35:00.005-05:00

So, I’m told there was this Super Bowl thing yesterday? I’m not much of a sports fan (except for snooker, which is barely a sport), so I would have been pretty much oblivious to the whole event, if it hadn’t been for a handful of bloggers and journalists who wrote about their ideal Super Bowl snacks.

Seeing all those chicken wings, guacamole, and nachos made me crave Southern flavours. Specifically, it made me crave chili – even though I’d never made chili in my life, and wasn’t even sure if I’d actually ever had real chili. It’s always seemed to me that the term “chili” is way too broad, applying to stews, dips, sauces, powders… Really, what is the essence of chili?

My craving – and my confusion – may also have been linked to an article in this weekend’s Gazette, where chefs Chuck Hughes and Nick Hodge had a chili face-off. It seems that Canadians chili and Texan chili are not the same thing at all, with Texan chili being apparently bean-free… even though I have a printed recipe for “Texas-style beef chili” which calls for beans. I give up.

Anyway, to be more specific: I was craving stewed meat, beans, and spices. I really wanted to make Chuck Hughes’ chili (with bison and ground duck, no wonder he won the face-off), but I was short a few spices. So instead, I improvised something. I would have used reconstituted dried beans if I’d had time, but I did my shopping too late.

I have to give a shout-out to another Valerie from Canada, the terrific author of A Canadian Foodie: a few days ago, she posted about a delicious-looking Smoky Chili Soup (because it’s apparently a soup, too, on top of everything else), which immediately caught my eye. I made a lot of alterations to suit my pantry and my inclinations of the moment, but this soup was definitely an inspiration for my stew, right down to the lime garnish (I omitted the yogurt, as there was already a clear tanginess from the chipotle chiles and the tomatillos).

I was overall really pleased with my first venture into Chili Land. The many spices gave a sweet-smoky depth to the flavour, and the heat was slow-burning and tingly, never overwhelming or aggressive. Definitely what I was craving.

Smoky Beef Chili Stew
Serves 10-12

2 tbsp olive oil
450g (1 pound) extra-lean ground beef
700g (1 1/2 pound) chuck, cut into bite-sized cubes
2 onions, thinly sliced
8 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
One 330ml (approx. 1 1/2 cup) bottle dark beer, such as brown Leffe
2 tbsp ground cumin
2 tbsp ancho chile powder
2 tbsp smoky paprika
1 tbsp hot Hungarian paprika
1 tbsp chili powder
1 tbsp tomato paste
3 chipotle chiles en adobo, chopped
Two 540ml (19 fl. oz, approx. 2 1/8 cups) can diced tomatoes (with juices)
One 700ml (24 fl oz, approx. 3 cups) can whole tomatillos, drained
One 540ml (19 fl. oz, approx. 2 1/8 cups) can black turtle beans, drained and rinsed
One 540ml (19 fl. oz, approx. 2 1/8 cups) can red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
One 540ml (19 fl. oz, approx. 2 1/8 cups) can romano beans, drained and rinsed
240ml (1 cup) beef broth
2 bay leaves
1 dried guajillo chile pepper, stem removed
Salt, to taste
Lime wedges, for garnish
Fresh cilantro, chopped, for garnish
Scallions, chopped, for garnish

Preheat oven to 160ºC (325ºF).

Lightly season the meat with salt. In a Dutch oven, heat 1 tbsp olive oil over medium high heat. Brown the ground beef, breaking up any clumps. Remove from pot. Brown the cubed chuck on all sides, working in batches. Remove from pot and reserve.

Reduce heat to medium. Add the remaining tbsp of oil and cook the onions and garlic, stirring often, until softened. Pour in the beer to deglaze, using a wooden spoon or spatula to scrape any browned bits off the bottom of the pot. Return all the meat to the pot. Raise heat and boil until the liquid is reduced by half.

Add the cumin, ancho chile powder, both paprikas, chili powder, tomato paste, and chipotle chiles, and stir to combine until all the meat is well coated. Stir in the tomatoes, tomatillos, and beans. Finally, stir in the broth, and add the bay leaves and guajillo chile pepper.

Bring to a boil, then cover and bake in the oven for about 2 hours, until meat is tender. Taste for seasoning, and salt if necessary. Spoon into bowls or deep plates, and garnish with lime wedges, cilantro, and scallions. Serve with crusty bread, cornbread, or biscuits.

A knife skills class at Appetite for Books

2011-01-30T16:05:00.006-05:00

Last Monday, Laurent and I took a knife skills class at Appetite for Books. Most Montreal foodies are probably familiar with this Westmount bookstore, which is a true haven for people who love all things culinary:

1. They sell nothing but cookbooks and food-themed non-fiction.
2. There is a working kitchen inside the store (literally in the same room as the books).
3. The owner, Jonathan Cheung, is a trained chef, and regularly hosts classes, as well as demonstrations with personalities of the food world.

You can check out their classes and events on their website. It’s worth a look, although you usually have to register pretty early in the season to nab a spot – a sign that the food scene is getting pretty crowded around here.

We had already followed the Level 1 Knife class last fall. I can say without any exaggeration that that class completely changed my behaviour in the kitchen. I used to absolutely loathe chopping things, and usually delegated that task to Laurent. But after two hours of learning how to properly hold a knife and use it on a variety of fruit and vegetables (from onions to grapefruit), and after bringing home my brand-new chef’s knife (included in the cost of the class), I now actually enjoy cutting up ingredients into little tiny pieces. And I’m at least twice as fast as I used to be (keeping in mind that I really had no technique before that).

The Level 2 class, which we took last week, was a little more down-and-dirty: we learnt how to debone a whole chicken. Each student had to bring in two whole chickens – so Laurent and I had four birds between us. We were each given a boning knife, and got to work. (And, yes, I forgot to bring my camera that day – not that I could have taken a lot of shots, being wrist-deep in raw chicken.)

For some reason, I’d been under the impression that we would be using big-ass butcher knives, and I have to admit that the cheesy action flick fan in me was a little disappointed that I wouldn’t get to bring home a small hatchet. However, the knife we did use was probably more practical and versatile, albeit less visually impressive.

It turns out deboning a chicken is more about knowing the anatomy of the bird and following the bone than it is about brute strength and chopping stuff off. It takes a bit of practice before you can get to the point where you can cleanly scrape everything off the carcass and not waste anything. We also filletted some small fish, which is also definitely an acquired skill. However, I haven’t really had a chance to practice at home, because… we took our four now-boneless chickens home with us – with the carcasses on the side. So, no buying poultry for a while.

This is what our freezer looked like on Monday night:

Maybe it’s just me, but I am not in the habit of keeping that much raw meat in my freezer. My freezer is usually filled with homemade soups, bread, veggies, ice cream, and the occasional leftover stew (this month’s Daring Cooks’ cassoulet is in there somewhere). And, ok, some harder-to-find meats like shabu-shabu lamb. And, apparently, way too many frozen shrimp, because Laurent spotted a bargain a few of weeks ago. But I am not used to opening the freezer door and thinking an entire family was slaughtered and hidden away in there.

Since then, the carcasses gave birth to an amazing stock, and one chicken was cooked alla cacciatore. Tomorrow, there will be a giant curry, and that should take care of that. And then I can finally practice!

Daring Bakers' January Challenge - Biscuit Joconde Imprimé / Entremets

2011-01-27T13:29:00.005-05:00

The January 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Astheroshe of the blog accro. She chose to challenge everyone to make a Biscuit Joconde Imprime to wrap around an Entremets dessert.

I was not looking forward to making this month’s Daring Bakers’ challenge. In fact, I put it off until the last possible minute. Why? Because it looked freaking hard.

To me, an entremets was something you serve between courses in a meal, to cleanse the palate, like a sorbet, or a shot of liquor. But the kind of entremets we were required to make this month was actually a dessert. The core of the challenge was to make a decorated biscuit Joconde, to wrap around a mould and then fill with whatever kind of sweet filling we chose.

It was the decorating part that had me scared. Making desserts look fancy and pretty has never been my forte, and I’d never worked with décor paste. In fact, I did have some trouble with that part. I wanted to make a simple striped pattern, but somehow my stripes all but disappeared during the baking process. Oh well, at least my Joconde is a cool, funky pink!

Once the tricky Joconde part was done with (and it really wasn’t all that difficult to make, apart from the disappearing stripes), I had some fun with the filling. I made three separate layers: lemon curd, raspberry mousse, and chocolate mousse – three of my favourite flavours. They half detached from the Joconde wrapping when I cut out pieces, but other than that I was quite pleased with the combination.

So, Asteroshe, thank you for pushing me to make more of a presentation effort with this challenge – even if I didn’t quite succeed in reproducing the picture I had in my head, it was still a great learning experience.

Don’t forget to check out the challenge recipes at the Daring Kitchen, along with the Daring Bakers’ blogroll!

I’ve decided to include the recipes for filling components, since they were initially components of different desserts. This filling would actually make a great dessert on its own, without the Joconde wrapping: just pour the layers in individual ramekins or glasses. The recipes were somewhat adapted for the purpose of this particular project. Namely, I slightly overcooked the lemon curd, and purposefully made the chocolate mousse drier than if it had been a standalone dessert, so that the entremets would hold together.

Lemon curd
Adapted from Tout un chef! Patrice Demers

The juice of 3 lemons
3 eggs
100g (3.5 oz, 1/2 cup) granulated sugar
100g (3.5 oz, 1/2 cup) butter, cut into pieces
1 sheet of gelatine

Soak the gelatine in cold water until softened (about one minute), then drain and reserve.

Combine the lemon juice, eggs, sugar, and butter in a saucepan, and whisk over medium heat until butter is melted. Whisking constantly, bring to a boil and cook until thickened (you should be able to make visible, lasting traces with your whisk). Remove from heat and stir in the gelatine. Strain, pour into mould, and chill.

Raspberry mousse
From José Maréchal’s Macarons

125g (4.5 oz) frozen raspberries, thawed
4 sheets of gelatine
240 ml (1 cup) heavy cream
2 egg whites
60g (1/3 cup) granulated sugar

Soak the gelatine in cold water until softened (about one minute), then drain and reserve.

Purée the raspberries with a blender or hand mixer. Transfer to a saucepan, cook over low heat, and stir in the gelatine until dissolved. Remove from heat, let cool, and reserve.

Whisk the egg whites into stiff peaks, adding the sugar gradually.

Beat the cream into stiff peaks.

Using a flexible spatula, gently fold the raspberry coulis into the whipped cream. Fold in the egg whites. Pour into mould, and chill.

Chocolate mousse
From Patrice Demers’ La carte des desserts

500 ml (2 cups) heavy cream
125 ml (1/2 cup) whole milk
125 ml (1/2 cup) heavy cream
2 tbsp granulated sugar
3 egg yolks
350g (12 oz) dark chocolate discs or chips

Beat the 500 ml of cream into stiff peaks. Reserve.

In a small bowl, whisk the egg yolks together with 1 tbsp sugar. In a saucepan, bring the remaining cream, the milk, and the remaining sugar to a boil. Pour the boiling liquid gradually over the egg yolks, whisking constantly. Return to the saucepan and cook, stirring constantly, until thick enough to cover the back of a wooden spoon. Pour the mixture through a strainer onto the chocolate, and let sit for one minute. Whisk the chocolate and cream mixture together, until smooth.

With a flexible spatula, fold the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture. Pour into mould and chill.

Daring Cooks' January Challenge - Confit and Cassoulet

2011-01-16T19:42:00.003-05:00

Yes, yes, I'm late posting the first challenge of the year. Good thing I didn't make any New Year's resolutions regarding punctuality, huh?

Our January 2011 Challenge comes from Jenni of The Gingered Whisk and Lisa from Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. They have challenged the Daring Cooks to learn how to make a confit and use it within the traditional French dish of Cassoulet. They have chosen a traditional recipe from Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman.

I actually made my first traditional cassoulet a couple of months ago, based on this recipe I came across in The Gazette. Before that, I'd tried out a quicker, lighter, modified version, but when I tasted the slow-cooked version, the difference was obvious. Cassoulet is a time-consuming dish, but it's time well spent.

Making confit, however, was new to me. I've prepared slow-baked duck legs that pretty much taste like confit if you eat them immediately, but I had never attempted true-blue, preserved-in-fat, keeps-forever duck confit. It doesn't help that, around here, duck confit is actually easier to find in grocery stores than raw duck thighs. But all duck products are rather commonplace here in Montreal, so I had no trouble getting my hands on some beautiful (and cheap!) duck legs, and a liter of duck fat.

The confit was easy enough to prepare. I baked it for twice as long as suggested, because it just didn't seem tender enough, and it was just about right after that time. Sealing the whole thing in fat was... oddly satisfying, I have to admit. I prepared a couple of extra legs and sealed them separately for later use – two weeks later, and they still looked great. We had them for dinner tonight, just reheated with a side of vegetables.

The next step, apart from soaking the beans, consisted in simmering and/or sautéing the different cuts of meat that were involved in the preparation: pork belly, sausages, and bacon (which I substituted for pork rind, on the advice of both our hostesses). It all took a while, because I was making the full recipe (and I had some extra sausages, which I used in another dish), and by the time it was over, I was kind of sick of smelling, touching, and looking at greasy meat. I decided it was a good thing that I wasn't going to be eating the cassoulet until the following day.

Assembling the dish was an exercise in decadence. I lined my Dutch oven with thick-cut bacon, then stacked the ingredients as indicated. I used my biggest pot, and Lord knows I've cooked up some big stews in that thing, but this was a record. As you can see, the beans nearly overflowed!

Not much else to report on this. It's hard to screw up the cooking phase on this kind of dish. My only quibble is that some of my beans broke, which also happened last time. But other than that, this recipe, while slightly different than the first one I tried, was every bit as delicious. I'd be hard pressed to choose between them, although this one included ingredients which were easier to find.

Anyways, thank you, Lisa and Jenni! I learned a lot, and I now have a freezer full of delicious cassoulet! To make your own cassoulet, check out the challenge recipes at the Daring Kitchen. And even though I'm posting late, you can still look at the Daring Cooks' blog roll to look at all the beautiful dishes that were made this month!

New Year's Feast - Seafood Spoons

2011-01-09T17:34:00.004-05:00

A belated Happy New Year to everyone!

For me, the year is starting out with a tenacious cold and a massive computer crash. But I'm not too down about it: at least the cold isn't an all-out flu, and at least I didn't lose any important data.

We spent New Year's Eve in a chalet, with friends of Laurent's family. There were about twenty people expected for supper, so our hosts kept the main meal relatively simple: raclette and Asian hot-pot. Most of the preparation consisted in making dipping sauces and laying out platter after platter of cheeses, cured and raw meats, seafood, and vegetables.

However, as for Christmas, there were tons of appetizers and tapas to give the evening that fancy, glitzy vibe.

Pear and blue cheese bites (also featured at Christmas)

Egg-topped croutons with sauce

Seafood spoons

Salmon tartare

I helped out with the seafood spoons (recipe below) and the salmon tartare verrines, as well as a vodka-citrus granité (not pictured). There were also tons of dessert, including two which revealed to me that jello can actually be fancy:

Jello rainbow

Maple jello verrine

Other desserts included two kinds of chocolate tarts (courtesy of yours truly), a yule log, cardamom cookies, and a hardcore Death By Chocolate (which we photographed during the day, while it was chilling outside – we were afraid removing the plastic wrap would smudge the whipped cream topping).

Now that's the way to kick off the new year!

Seafood Spoons

Yields 20 appetizer servings

10 fresh tiger prawns (or frozen and thawed)
10 fresh scallops (or frozen and thawed)
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp olive oil
One bunch of fresh flat-leaf parsley
One 1 cm (1/2 inch) slice of lemon, peeled
Salt and pepper to taste
Olive oil

Pat the scallops and prawns dry with a clean paper towel. Heat 1 tbsp of butter and 1 tbsp of oil in a skillet over medium high heat, and sear the scallops, 1-2 minutes per side, until browned and just cooked through. Transfer the scallops to a plate, wash the skillet (or use another one), heat the remaining oil and butter, and sear the shrimp in the same manner, until pink and cooked through. Transfer to a plate and reserve.

Put the parsley, lemon, salt and pepper in a food processor, and pulse until parsley is shredded. Gradually pour in the olive oil and continue to pulse, until your obtain a smooth, liquid texture.

Put a couple of tsp of parsley sauce into twenty china spoons, and divide the seafood amongst the spoons (one scallop or one prawn per spoon). Serve at room temperature.

How the Chef Aced Christmas

2010-12-30T11:32:00.005-05:00

So, how was your Christmas?

Mine was pretty great. I did miss my parents, but the cheery atmosphere at my in-laws’ on Christmas Eve was strong enough to lift my spirits. With good food and cool gifts, it was a good time.

But let’s focus on the food. As usual, my father-in-law, a.k.a. Super Chef, had made a thousand different kinds of appetizers.

Puff pastry straws

Parmesan crisp and pesto "lollipops"

Gougères

There were a lot more, like blue-cheese-and-pear-chutney bites, mushroom duxelle tarts, red pepper croutons, creamy asparagus-and-ham rolls, stuffed cherry tomatoes, and more that I’m forgetting, but the photographs didn’t turn out too well due to lighting conditions. Just use your imagination.

Dinner was *comparatively* simpler. Super Chef not being a fan of turkey, he chose a non-traditional route: meatloaf. However, we’re talking three different kinds of meatloaf: cranberry, kirsch, and truffled foie gras, all served with the best gravy I’ve had all year. And, of course, there were side dishes: potatoes à la dauphine, and broccoli au gratin.

And finally, the bûche (which, as you can tell, was photographed in a completely different environment. So much for visual harmony in this post...). Usually, he makes a cassis-flavoured one, but this year he went for orange liqueur. And when he realized that the bûche was kind of boot-shaped, he decorated it with an Italian theme. I wonder where he got all the tiny Italian flags…

But there’s more to come. Right now, I’m baking for the New Year’s Eve party, using one of my Christmas presents: Nick Malgieri’s Bake! Essential Techniques for Perfect Baking. Gotta love the holidays!

Daring Bakers' December Challenge - Christmas Stollen

2010-12-28T17:09:00.003-05:00

Sorry about posting this a day late… You know how the holidays get.

The 2010 December Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Penny of Sweet Sadie’s Baking. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make Stollen. She adapted a friend’s family recipe and combined it with information from friends, techniques from Peter Reinhart’s book.........and Martha Stewart’s demonstration.

I was curious about what the Holiday-themed December Daring Bakers’ challenge would be. Last year’s gingerbread house challenge was a blast, albeit a lot of work. However, when I caught my first glimpse of this month’s challenge, before properly reading the recipe and ingredients list, my initial reaction was: “Oh no, it looks like fruitcake.” Fruitcake, you may have guessed, is not m favourite holiday treat.

Thankfully, upon closer inspection, the challenge was revealed to not be fruitcake, but stollen, a German bread served for Christmas. Technically, I suppose it is pretty close to fruitcake in spirit, with its dried fruit and nuts. But it’s also crustier, with a less dense dough, closer to bread than to pound cake. At any rate, after reading the full recipe, I was feeling pretty enthusiastic about the whole thing.

I kept close to the recipe we were given, only substituting dried cranberries for raisins. The recipe also called for candied citrus peel, which presented a special kind of dilemma for me. Candied orange peel is one of those things I know how to make, but don’t enjoy making. It’s a hassle to me. In fact, anything to do with cooking or stewing fruit tends to bore me, including making jam. Fortunately, my father-in-law, an expert in the matter, was nice enough to make a batch for me. Lucky me!

After letting the dough rise overnight in the fridge, rolling it to the required thickness turned out to be somewhat a challenge. Rolling the whole thing into a log shape, and then moulding it in a wreath was also a little tricky for me, as the seams refused to fuse together. But all in all, there weren’t too many problems with this challenge.

With its hefty dose of cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, the stollen smelled divine in the oven, and it was hard to resist not slicing into it immediately after it was done. But I coated it in melted butter and icing sugar, as required, and waited patiently.

It was good. The dough was very rich, with a lot of butter and eggs, but it didn’t feel too heavy. Despite all the sugar and dried fruit, it was far from cloying. The stollen also toasted beautifully, and made for a delicious, filling breakfast. I ended up freezing half of it, for mornings when I need a little warmth and sweetness.

Happy holidays and happy new year to all the Daring Bakers out there! Thanks to this month’s hostess, Penny, and please take a look at the Daring Kitchen to see the challenge recipe and, and the Daring Bakers' blogroll to admire all the festive stollen that were made this month. Until next time!

Seasonal Cheer - Buttered Rum Meltaways

2010-12-22T13:40:00.004-05:00

Only two days until Christmas celebrations begin! As usual, December flew by. However, I’m reasonably on top of things, this year. For one thing, I’m neither travelling, nor having relatives visiting. On the one hand, it's rather sad, as it’s the first Christmas I’ll be spending without my parents: usually, I fly over, and they flew in a couple of years ago. But this year, no one seemed to be able to get away. On the other hand, when I looked at how chaotic the airport situation is in Europe right now, I think we’re all a little relieved that none of us had to go through that this year. Having known my share of delayed flights and missed connections, my heart goes out to all the people who are stranded at the airport.

For the rest, the tree is trimmed, and the gifts are bought, wrapped, and labelled. The big Christmas dinner will be hosted by Laurent’s parents, so all I have to take care of is baking or cooking for the odd pot luck or pre-Christmas party.

These little beauties are destined to a party tonight. Martha Stewart’s buttered rum meltaways. Just the name radiates Chrismas. With cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and a strong dose of dark rum (which, I discovered, is great for baking, but not for drinking), it’s the kind of cookie which I believe can only be appreciated around this time of year. Between the richness of the dough and the thick coating of confectioner’s sugar, these cookies really do melt in your mouth. I hope the people at tonight’s party will agree.

You can find the recipe here. A word to the wise: when the cookies are baking and you open the oven door to rotate the sheets, beware of the cloud of evaporated rum that will float out. I accidentally caught a good whiff – not something I was prepared for at ten in the morning!

Happy holidays, everyone!

Taking on the Double Down - Sicilian Sandwich

2010-12-16T14:40:00.003-05:00

Today, my friend and fellow blogger Victor of Random Cuisine celebrates his blog’s second anniversary. Happy blogaversary, Victor, keep up the good work and the good cooking!

For this occasion, Victor asked some of us to take part in a very unique challenge: to make our own version of KFC’s infamous Double Down. This much talked-about breadless sandwich consists in two fried chicken filets, surrounding a filling of bacon, two kinds of cheeses, and “secret sauce.” While not quite as humongous as Friendly’s Grilled Cheese Burger Melt (a burger in which the bun has been replaced by two grilled cheese sandwiches), the Double Down is still an impressive piece of decadence.

My first thought after agreeing to take on Victor’s challenge was “How on Earth am I going to make this nutritionally acceptable?” I love me some fried food, but something about eating two stacked fried filets makes my stomach quiver in fear (oddly enough, this does not apply to burgers, as I’ve eaten my share of Bic Macs). So, I tried to think of something that could be stacked, and that wasn’t bread – because, of course, that would just result in a sandwich, and would defeat the purpose.

I finally stumbled on an idea while flipping through Stefano Faita’s Entre Cuisine et Quincaillerie: the Sicilian sandwich. Two thick slices of eggplant, breaded and grilled (or fried), and sandwiched around a slice of prosciutto and melted cheese. It sounded like a worthy Double Down substitute.

I followed the principle of the Double Down and used two different kinds of cheese: parmesan and smoked cacciocavallo. I replaced the bacon with crispy pancetta, and my “secret sauce” was a basil coulis. It was a pretty good combination, and very satisfying.

Thanks for the challenge, Victor, and congrats!

Sicilian Sandwich
Adapted from Stefano Faita’s Entre Cuisine et Quincaillerie
Serves 2

One large eggplant
6 slices of pancetta
Two slices of smoked cacciocavallo cheese
A few shards of parmesan cheese
A big handful of fresh basil leaves
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
Bread crumbs

Preheat oven to 180ºC (350ºF).

Make the coulis: Put the basil, salt and pepper in a food processor. Pulse until finely shredded. Gradually pour in olive oil, until you obtain a smooth, liquid sauce. Set aside.

Cut four 1 cm (1/2 inch) slices into the eggplant. Brush both sides of each slice with olive oil, then coat them in bread crumbs. Heat some more oil in a pan over high heat, and fry the eggplant slices until cooked through and browned on both sides. Remove from heat and reserve.

Fry the pancetta in a pan over high heat, until crispy. Remove from heat and reserve.

Divide the parmesan, cacciocavallo and pancetta in two and place them over two eggplant slices. Drizzle with basil coulis, and complete the sandwiches with the remaining eggplant slices. Place on a baking sheet and bake in the oven until cheese is melted. Drizzle more basil coulis, and serve immediately.

Daring Cooks December Challenge - Poached Eggs

2010-12-14T21:53:00.004-05:00

Jenn and Jill have challenged The Daring Cooks to learn to perfect the technique of poaching an egg. They chose Eggs Benedict recipe from Alton Brown, Oeufs en Meurette from Cooking with Wine by Anne Willan, and Homemade Sundried Tomato & Pine Nut Seitan Sausages (poached) courtesy of Trudy of Veggie num num.

I absolutely loved this month’s Daring Cooks challenge. Poaching is one of my favourite ways of preparing eggs. Often, I serve them for weekend brunch, on top of smoked salmon- or goat cheese-topped English muffins. Sometimes, I make them for dinner. I just love the texture of the firm white, and runny yolk – and it’s just about the healthiest cooking method you can think of.

It took me a really long time to master the poaching technique, but it’s been a while since I’ve had a real failure. The secret really does lie in adding vinegar to the water, which prevents the whites from spreading all over the place. For the rest, it’s really just a question of practicing and getting a feel for it.

However, this challenge still had a lot to teach me, as one of the challenge recipes was eggs Benedict, which I’d never made per se. Somehow, just knowing what hollandaise sauce consists of (mainly egg yolks and a whole lot of butter) made me shy away from making it, even though I’ve had it in restaurants. But part of me has always wanted to give it a shot, and this challenge gave me that extra bit of incentive I needed.

Hollandaise is basically a hot mayonnaise, with butter instead of oil. I’ve always been lucky with homemade mayonnaise, in that it has rarely ever failed on me. Apparently, this luck applied to hollandaise sauce as well: the emulsion thickened and held together without any trouble. I also made English muffins for the first time, and, while they were a bit too heavy, they had the right taste and texture. I made the so-called Scandinavian version of eggs Benedict, with smoked salmon instead of Canadian bacon. It was really delicious, and the sauce was rich and creamy. I added a side of asparagus, which also go well with hollandaise.

Since I completed the challenge early, I had time left to experiment at bit. I tried something I’d been wanting to attempt for a long time, even though it’s not technically poaching: onsen tamago, or hot-spring eggs. In Japan, these eggs are left to cook, in their shell, for a long time in natural hot spring water, which is below boiling point. As a result, the eggs cook more evenly than when they are soft-boiled: the white is still quite soft, almost slimy, while the yolk is runny, but firm enough not to break when you crack the egg.

Since I (sadly) do not have access to a hot spring, I cooked the egs following these instructions. Onsen tamago are often served in soups, or sometimes just on their own. I served mine on rice, with stir-fried shiitake mushrooms. The egg mixed in with the rice for, giving it a rich flavour.

Finally, I tried poaching something other than eggs: salmon. I used this recipe, in which salmon is poached in a mixture of white beer and cream. It was pretty good, although next time I would alter the cream/beer ratio, as the beer flavour wasn’t all that obvious. Also, I had some issues with my camera that day, so the picture is a little icky.

This was definitely one of my favourite challenges. Thanks, Jenn and Jill!

Please check out the challenge recipes at the Daring Kitchen, and go through the Daring Cooks’ blogroll, to see what the other cooks have been up to this month.

Green with delight - Matcha Sablés

2010-12-08T16:35:00.004-05:00

I have a tendency to want to put green tea in everything. Fortunately, with matcha powder, a little goes a long way. Also, it doesn’t come cheap, so I usually end up refraining myself. However, making matcha sablés was something I’d wanted to do for a long time.

We were having friends over for what you could call a “fancy pot luck.” Everyone had to bring something, and it had to be relatively gourmet. Amongst the tasty morsels were foie gras served on toasted pain d’épices, roasted peppers and chorizo, stuffed zucchini, and duck confit. For dessert, someone had brought homemade truffles, which Laurent and I complemented with homemade berry sorbet and green tea sablés.

I’d recently rediscovered the berry-and-green-tea combination at POP!, a Montreal wine bar. I’d indulged in a “Japanese-style” raspberry cheesecake, with a matcha-flavoured shortbread, and I just had to try to recreate the effect – at least the main flavours, if not the textures.

When I was a child, I used to find sablés quite boring, and too heavy. It took me a while to appreciate the rich, buttery taste, and the crumbly texture. As for these treats being heavy, I’ve reached an age where I don’t eat cookies by the handful anymore (except on a really, really bad day), so one of these babies is usually enough. And while I’ve learnt from experience that matcha powder doesn’t make everything better, it still manages to improve most baked goods.

Matcha Sablés
Adapted from Anita Chu’s Field Guide to Cookies

Yields around 25 cookies

200g (1 cup) butter, softened
140g (3/4 cup) granulated sugar
1/2 tsp salt
The zest of 1 lemon
2 egg yolks, room temperature
280g (2 cups) all-purpose flour
2 tsp matcha green tea powder

In a medium bowl, combine the flour and matcha green tea.

In a mixing bowl, beat butter until smooth. Add sugar, salt, and lemon zest, and beat until combined. Beat in the egg yolks.

Gradually stir in the flour and matcha mixture, until you obtain a smooth dough. Do not overwork the dough.

Divide the dough in two, and roll each half into a log that measures around 20 cm (8 inches) long and 5 cm (2 inches) wide. Wrap each log in waxed paper or plastic wrap, and refrigerate overnight.

Preheat oven to 180ºC (350ºF). Stack two baking sheets on top of two other sheets, and line them with parchment paper.

Remove dough from fridge, cut the logs into 1 cm (1/2 inch) slices with a sharp knife, and set them on the prepared baking sheets.

Bake for around 15 minutes, or until the edges of the cookies begin to turn golden, rotating sheets halfway through. Let the cookies cool on the sheets for 5 minutes, then transfer them to a cooling rack. Store in a airtight container.

Daring Bakers November Challenge - Crostata

2010-11-27T13:46:00.004-05:00

The 2010 November Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Simona of briciole. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make pasta frolla for a crostata. She used her own experience as a source, as well as information from Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well.

I love pies and tarts. I really do. I think, in most cases, I’ll choose them over cake. So this month’s Daring Bakers’ Challenge, crostata, was good news for me! Crostata is a traditional Italian tart, made with short crust pastry. I’ve been wondering what the difference is between short crust pastry and short pastry (or pâte brisée) Apparently, the main difference is that short pastry contains water. And then, you have pâté sablée, which is closer to short crust pastry, but has a higher butter content. So many doughs, so little time.

I made my first ever crostata a few months ago, to bring to a dinner party; while I obviously didn't make it as part of this challenge, I thought I might as well included it here, since I haven't posted about it yet. I used pâte brisée, and made an apple filling. I quite like the rustic look of free-form crostate, and they’re so easy to make. But, although the dough was perfect, I found that the apples were undercooked to my taste.

The challenge required us to make pasta frolla (short crust pastry), which was easy enough to make. It was very crumbly, and I had trouble rolling it out evenly, but it was also quite forgiving, in that it allowed me to patch up any holes or tears very easily.

We were giving free range for the filling. Our hostess, Simona, suggested filling the tart with jam, or pastry cream, before baking it. But I wasn’t in the mood for a jam tart. As for pastry cream, I already knew how to make it, and I tend to prefer it unbaked. There was the possibility of blind baking the crust entirely and then filling it with fresh pastry cream and fresh fruit. That last option was most appealing to me, but it also had the inconvenience of not keeping very long. What to do, what to do?

In the end, I used a recipe from Marcy Goldman’s A Passion for Baking, a variation on the traditional French chocolate silk pie. Traditionally, silk pies require no baking – but since they contain eggs, they are considered a little risky that way. I’m not too afraid of raw eggs (coming from a country where people have regularly freaked out about mad cow disease and dioxin-contaminated chicken, I think I’ve grown a little blasé about food poisoning in general), but I did want my crostata to keep for at least a few days. Marcy’s version features slightly non traditional ingredients, such as sweetened condensed milk, and is baked long enough to ensure safety. “Sounds good to me,” I decided.

Having never used sweetened condensed milk before, I didn’t know what to expect. The thick, gloopy mixture that poured out of the can wasn’t particularly appetizing, but then I’ve learned not to judge an ingredient based on first impressions. And I was right, because this was one of the best tarts I’ve ever made. There was a distinctive malty taste from the condensed milk, but it wasn’t too invasive, and the chocolate was still definitely the star. The crostata was sweet, but not cloying (although I was glad I’d cut out some of the sugar in the crust), and the filling was creamy and almost fudge-like. Fudge in a crust – who wouldn’t love that?

Speaking of the crust, I’d blind baked it for 15 minutes before filling it, as I often have trouble with underbaked pie bottoms. I had rolled it out quite thinly, and it was evenly baked, with a nice, sandy texture that nonetheless held together. I did try to decorate the top with the traditional lattice pattern of dough strips, but because my filling was so liquid before baking, the strips looked like they were sinking into it. It just seemed like a bad idea, so I removed them.

This was a very pleasant challenge, and the pasta frolla recipe is a keeper. Also, the Untraditional French Chocolate Silk Crostata will from now on be one of my go-to recipes for dinner parties. Thank you, Simona, for these discoveries!

Don’t forget to check out the challenge recipes, and to go through the Daring Bakers’ blogroll!

Product Review - Dried Chanterelle Powder from O Gourmet

2010-11-14T22:59:00.006-05:00

I was recently asked to do a product review for O Gourmet, an online food store physically located in Montreal. As their name indicates, they specialize in fine products. They have quite a selection, and their site is also very informative, even offering detailed guides about berries, plants, vinegars, mushrooms, and pâtés. They also offer a variety of local foods, which of course deserves a thumbs up.

Because I mentioned that I love cooking with mushrooms, they offered to send me some dried chanterelle mushroom powder. (By the way, these pictures were taken after I’d used up more than half of the powder for my test recipes – sorry about that.)

Although I’ve cooked with dehydrated mushrooms before, I had never used them in this form. I did some pondering before deciding what kind of dish to incorporate the powder in. Chanterelles aren’t all that easy to find in my neighbourhood (although you can find them in season at open-air markets), so I haven’t had the good fortune of tasting them very often, but I did know they had a fairly delicate flavour (especially when compared to shiitake or porcini), so I wanted something that wouldn’t overwhelm it. In the end, I created two recipes.

The first was a mushroom bread. I’ve been taking up bread baking more or less seriously again, after a lengthy break, and have been indulging in sandwiches made with homemade whole wheat bread on a nearly daily basis (I bake two large loaves every two weeks, slice them and freeze them for future use). Mushroom bread has always been on my list of things to make, and this seemed like a perfect opportunity. It was also the first time I attempted to create an original bread recipe: until now, I’d merely followed published recipes, tweaking them here and there. I can’t say this is a particularly daring recipe (I followed generally accepted guidelines), but it was a great experience to find my own balance, and tweak the dough so as to obtain the kind of bread that I’m most fond of.

I chose to make rolls, crusty on the outside and soft on the inside. I incorporated the chanterelle powder directly into the dough, and also added some rehydrated dried wild mushrooms, to add some texture and flavour contrast. The result was very satisfactory (heck, I was pleased as a peacock with my first original bread), and while the chanterelles’ taste was subtle, you could definitely taste the hazelnutty hint in the crumb.

The second recipe I tried was a mushroom risotto. Once again, I tried not to overwhelm the chanterelles’ flavour. I sautéed some portobello and shiitake mushrooms separately, and sprinkled in the chanterelle powder as I simmered the rice in chicken stock, before tossing in the cooked mushrooms. The powder added some colour to the rice, and once again, the flavour was there.

I enjoyed experimenting with chanterelle powder. And, being a mushroom fiend, I have a feeling I’m going to be experimenting with other powders very soon!

Mushroom Rolls

Yields 12 small rolls

2 tsp instant yeast
500 ml (2 cups) warm water (about 37.7 ºC, 100 ºF)
2 tbsp olive oil
560 g (4 cups) bread flour
2 tsp sea salt
2 tbsp dried chanterelle powder
25-30 g (1 oz) dehydrated wild mushrooms (e.g. shiitake, oyster mushrooms, boletes etc.)

Rehydrate the dried mushrooms according to the package instructions.

Pour the warm water into a large mixing bowl, sprinkle the yeast into it and whisk to dissolve.

Combine 140 g (1 cup) of flour with the salt and chanterelle powder, and whisk it into the water mixture, along with the oil and the rehydrated mushrooms. Gradually add the rest of the flour, stirring with a wooden spoon. Switch to kneading with your hands when the tough becomes too sticky and tough. The dough should be smooth, soft, and tacky by the end.

Oil the bowl and the dough with olive oil, cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 30 minutes.

Knead the dough for about 20 strokes, oil and cover again, and let rise for 90 minutes, or until doubled in size.

Separately tack two baking sheets on top of two other baking sheets. Cover the top sheets with parchment paper.

Transfer the dough onto a lightly floured surface. Divide it into 12 equal portions and form each portion into a ball. Place the balls onto the prepared baking sheets, cover lightly with plastic wrap, and let rise for 45 minutes.

Place a rack at the center of your oven, and another just below. Fill a heatproof baking pan two-thirds of the way up with hot water, place it in the lover rack of the oven, and preheat oven to 220 ºC (425 ºF).

Spray your rolls with water and put them on the center rack of the oven. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until golden brown, rotating the sheets halfway through the baking time. Remove the rolls from the baking sheets and let cool on racks.

You can freeze the baked rolls for future use.

Mushroom Risotto

Serves 2-3

150g (5 oz) fresh shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and diced
200 g (7 oz) fresh portobello mushrooms, stemmed and diced
3 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, diced
200 g (7 oz) carnaroli rice
1 litre (4 cups) homemade chicken stock
2 tbsp dried chanterelle powder
Salt and pepper, to taste

Heat the chicken stock over low heat.

Heat half of the olive oil in a skillet or wok, over medium-high heat. Add the diced mushrooms, salt lightly, and sauté until browned. Transfer the mushrooms to a plate or bowl, and reserve.

In a large saucepan, heat the remaining olive oil, over medium heat. Add the onion, and cook until soft and translucent, stirring quite often. Add the rice, and stir until the grains are coated with oil, about 1 minute. Pour in a ladleful of chicken stock, and stir constantly until all the stock has been absorbed. Pour in another ladleful of stock, then add the chanterelle powder, still stirring constantly. Continue adding the stock gradually, always stirring, until the rice is cooked al dente (if you run out of stock, add water instead). Toward the end of the cooking process, toss in the cooked mushrooms, and stir to combine and heat through. Adjust seasoning and serve immediately.

Daring Cooks November Challenge - Soufflés

2010-11-14T17:41:00.002-05:00

Dave and Linda from Monkeyshines in the Kitchen chose Soufflés as our November 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge! Dave and Linda provided many of their own delicious recipes plus a sinfully decadent chocolate soufflé recipe adapted from Gordon Ramsay’s recipe found at the BBC Good Food website.

We had a great challenge this month, for the Daring Cooks: baking soufflés! It’s been a few years since I made my first soufflé, but perfecting a recipe or a technique is also part of the DC group.

Our hosts gave us several recipes and options, both sweet and savoury. Although the chocolate soufflé sounded mouth-watering, there have just been too many sweets around here lately, so I opted for the crab and artichoke recipe, which really jumped out at me. However, while we are fans of artichokes, we prefer them fresh (Laurent is always disappointed with the canned ones – except when they’re directly imported from Italy), and those aren’t really in season right now. So I substituted the artichoke with an equal amount of corn, as crab and corn are one of my favourite flavour combinations.

Overall, I don’t have much to report for this challenge. My soufflé certainly didn’t rise as much as others soufflés I’ve seen, but it was light and airy, and I loved the flavours. I was glad for the opportunity to experiment on that level, as I’ve tended to make the same old soufflés over the years. Although I didn’t have time to try more than one recipe, I did think of quite a few, and I’m hoping to test them out over the winter.

Thanks, David and Linda, for this challenge! Don’t forget to check out the challenge recipes at the Daring Kitchen, and to take a look at the Daring Cooks’ blogroll!

Family Jewels - Cha Gio (Vietnamese Imperial Rolls)

2010-11-07T17:28:00.004-05:00

Today’s recipe is very special to me: it’s a treasured family recipe, passed on to me by my mother, who got it from my grandmother. It’s our recipe for Vietnamese imperial rolls, and it is spectacular.

I know every food-loving person goes around saying “My mother/grandmother (occasionally father) makes the best *insert homey, usually culture-specific food here* in the whole world!”, and swearing on my blender that in my case, it’s the pure and simple truth probably won’t convince anyone. But that fact is that I’ve been to more than my share of Vietnamese restaurants, and I have never found a cha gio (the Vietnamese word for imperial rolls) that even comes close to my grandmother’s. Well, okay, once: at my uncle’s restaurant in Brussels. And guess whose recipe he was using? My father agrees with me on this one: his mother-in-law’s rolls are unequalled worldwide (and we mean that literally: we’ve eaten Vietnamese food in a lot of different countries).

What makes a good cha gio? Well, for one thing, it has to be made with rice paper: wonton wrappers are for Chinese egg rolls, and have no place here. It also has to be crispy. And the rest of the secret lies in the filling. A few years ago, when I first expressed an interest in making cha gio, my mom made a few phonecalls to her siblings, nephews and cousins to get their input, and they all had different advice for the filling. Finally, she just gave me her own recipe – because who would use a recipe they weren’t convinced was the best ever?

This version uses a mixture of pork and veal, which actually isn’t entirely traditional: Vietnamese cuisine doesn’t normally use veal. However, my mother argues that using different meats makes the flavour more interesting, and I, having made versions with pure pork, pork-beef-veal, and pork-veal, agree that the latter is the most balanced one: pure pork was comparatively bland, and the version with beef was too fragrant. Did my grandmother use veal? Probably not in Vietnam, but given that she’s been living in France since before I was born, it’s likely that she did include veal in the later versions of her recipe.

Now, the big question: do my rolls measure up to my grandmother’s? Of course not. However, they are as close as I’ve ever tasted (except for my mom’s and my uncle’s). The method and ingredients are all there, now it’s just a question of tweaking and intuition – something I’ll only achieve with more experience. But in the meantime, I’m happy to share the basic formula with you all.

A note on mung bean vermicelli: in their dried state, they look like rice vermicelli, but are much tougher. Their purpose here is to absorb some of the filling’s moisture. If unavailable, don’t try to replace them with rice vermicelli, as the resulting texture might be too mushy – just leave them out and add only one egg to your filling.

Chinese wood ear mushrooms are easy to find in Asian grocery stores. In Montreal, they are usually labelled “black mushrooms” or “black fungus” – which doesn’t sound very appetizing, I know, but let’s face it, that’s what they are. They don’t have a lot of flavour, but they’ll add a slightly squishy texture to the filling, in a very good way.

Cha Gio (Vietnamese Imperial Rolls)

Yields about 30 small rolls

200g (7 oz) lean ground pork meat
200g (7 oz) ground veal
One 120g (4 oz) can of shredded crab, drained
One whole egg
One onion, very finely minced
1-2 cloves garlic, very finely minced
One medium carrot, very finely chopped
2-3 tbsp dried Chinese wood ear mushrooms
Dried mung bean vermicelli
1 tbsp nuoc mam (fish sauce)
1 tsp sesame oil
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Rice paper discs (bành tràng), 15 cm (6 inches) diameter
Canola oil

For serving:
Romaine lettuce leaves
Fresh cucumber slices
Fresh soybean sprouts
Fresh coriander leaves
Fresh mint leaves

For the nuoc cham (dipping sauce):
5 tbsp nuoc mam (fish sauce)
5 tbsp tepid water
1 tbsp white vinegar
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp hot chilli paste (optional)
1 clove garlic, finely minced or crushed

Cover the dried mushrooms in water and let them rest for about 20 minutes, or until fully rehydrated. Drain, pat dry, and mince very finely

In a large bowl, combine the pork, veal, crab, onion, garlic, carrot, and mushrooms, by stirring with a wooden spoon or by clean hand. Then stir in the egg. Your filling should be slightly wet, and hold together well. If it still seems too dry, add another egg.

With a strong pair of scissors, cut off 1 cm (1/2 inch) pieces off the tip of the mung bean vermicelli. Take care to protect your eyes, as the pieces have a tendency to fly in every direction. As you go along, mix the vermicelli pieces into the meat filling (don’t worry if they crack or break). Quantities are variable: your filling is ready when enough moisture has been absorbed by the vermicelli to give it a significantly drier feel; it should still hold together.

Stir in the fish sauce and sesame oil, and season with pepper to taste. At this stage, you can take a small piece of filling, form it into a ball, and cook it in oil, to check the seasoning.

Take a sheet of rice paper, dunk it into cold water for 10 seconds, then lay it down flat. It will soon soften and become pliable. Place a heaped tablespoonful of filling on top of the rice paper, about 2.5cm (1 inch) away from the edge closest to you. Shape the filling into the form of a small cigar. Fold the edge of the paper closest to you over the filling and roll the filling over once. Then fold both edges of the paper over, and finish rolling. Try to roll as tightly as possible, and avoid leaving air pockets inside the roll.

Set the finished roll aside, and repeat until you run out of filling. Take care not to let the finished rolls touch each other, as they will stick and tear.

To make the dipping sauce: Combine all ingredients in a small bowl, making sure to dissolve the sugar. Taste and adjust seasoning (if too salty, add more water).

In a large skillet, heat 1-2 tablespoonfuls of canola oil over medium high heat. Working in batches, place as many rolls as you can into the skillet, without letting them touch each other. Fry turning over as needed, until nicely browned and crispy on all sides. Serve hot, and eat each roll by wrapping it in a lettuce leaf and dipping it in the sauce. You can also serve do chua (pickled daikon and carrots) alongside. For a good do chua recipe, check out Andrea Nguyen’s website.

You can easily freeze the cooked rolls by putting them in a single layer on a baking sheet and putting them in the freezer for an hour, then put them in a Ziploc bag and keep frozen until needed. To reheat, bake the rolls in a preheated 200ºC (400ºF) oven, about 10 minutes per side, turning over once, until they are warmed through and crispy on the outside.

Don't Judge a Book By Its Cover - Cauliflower and Ham Casserole

2010-10-31T22:14:00.004-04:00

I’ve been on the fence about whether or not to post today’s recipe. Mostly because of the way it looks.

See, if I try to shoot it before cutting it open, it looks like a perfectly nice, comforting, but unfortunately anonymous cheesy casserole. It could be anything hiding under that layer of cheese.

However, if I try to photograph it after cutting a piece out, it looks like… Well, it looks like this. And I don’t think I need to tell you what else it resembles, I think it’s crossed all of your minds.

So, lesson learned: it’s pretty much impossible to make this cauliflower casserole look good on a picture. Trust me, it looked even worse when served on a plate. And closeups? Forget about it. It’s just not a photogenic dish. I could lose the béchamel on the bottom layer, which would make it less liquid and less… un-food-like-looking; but then I would lose all the creaminess and richness. Although in all fairness, I added too much milk to my sauce: there shouln't have been that much liquid. Another lesson learned.

However, in spite of its appearance, this casserole is pretty great. It’s a one-dish meal, with all the vegetables, protein and calcium you’ll need for dinner. Running some ham through a food processor and adding it to the sauce really boosts the flavour.

So, for once, don’t look too much at the picture. I can guarantee that the smell of this baby coming out of the oven will make you forget all about its looks.

Cauliflower and Ham Casserole

Serves 4-6

2 heads cauliflower
5 medium slices of ham
80g (3 oz, 3/4 cup) smoked cheese, grated (e.g. mozzarella or Jarlsberg)
80g (3 oz, 3/4 cup) cheddar cheese, grated
4 tbsp flour
A pinch of nutmeg
Milk, as needed
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Preheat your oven to 180ºC (350ºF)

Wash and cut the cauliflower into fairly thick florets. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil and blanch the cauliflower, until al dente. Drain and dunk into cold water to cool. Once cooled, pat dry with a clean towel or paper towels. Reserve.

Run the ham through a food processor, until it is cut very thin, almost crumb-like. Reserve.

In a skillet, melt the butter over medium heat. Stir in the flour, and cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture begins to brown. Whisk in milk gradually, a little at a time, until your béchamel sauce has acquired a smooth, but still rather thick consistency (it will liquefy more in the oven).

Toss in the ham and cheddar with the sauce and stir to combine. Add the cauliflower and coat the florets with the sauce. Season with pepper (salt will probably not be necessary, given the ham and cheese.)

Transfer the mixture to a casserole or baking dish, in an even layer. Sprinkle with the smoked cheese. Bake, uncovered, for about 20 minutes, or until cheese is melted and bubbly. Let cool 5 minutes before serving.

Daring Bakers' October Challenge - Doughnuts

2010-10-27T22:10:00.002-04:00

The October 2010 Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Lori of Butter Me Up. Lori chose to challenge DBers to make doughnuts. She used several sources for her recipes including Alton Brown, Nancy Silverton, Kate Neumann and Epicurious.

I had such a blast with this month’s challenge. It was just plain fun. There’s just something about homemade doughnuts that brings a smile to my face – and people around me.

Growing up in New York, I had my share of Dunkin Donuts as a kid. I always had a soft spot for factory doughnuts: the sweet, sticky icing, the sprinkles, the dough that somehow managed to be super soft and somewhat chewy at the same time…

And then, there were Belgian doughnuts, also known as croustillons, or oliebollen. They are merely balls of dough (sometimes made with beer), deep-fried to a crisp and served piping hot with a sprinkling of icing sugar. They are sold from carts on the street or during fairs, and served in large paper cones. They are one of my fondest sweet memories, and I really wanted to try making them this month. Unfortunately, time ran out, and I was only able to make American-style yeast doughnuts, following the Alton Brown recipe our hostess Lori had given us.

Like I said, these doughnuts were just fun to make – fun, and easy. The dough was soft and forgiving, and the only mildly scary part of the process was the deep-frying. I’ve said it before: I know how to deep-fry, I’m just always nervous when I have to do it on my own. But I was home alone on the day I was doing the challenge, so it was just me and the frying pan. However, these doughnuts fried up so quickly, they barely made a splash in the oil. I’ve honestly never seen my stove so clean after a deep-frying session.

I made two kinds of butter-based sweet icing: one vanilla, and one chocolate. Because I like to get extreme when it comes to chocolate, I added chocolate sprinkles to the latter. Actually, those doughnuts were supposed to be triple chocolate (oh yes, I would’ve gone there!), but I forgot to split the dough in two and add cocoa to one half. Oh well…

The doughnuts were very good, although I would’ve liked them to be a bit fluffier. But I think I deflated my dough too much when I rolled it to cut out the doughnuts. But they were still light, and tasty, and impressed people. I love learning to make things that I never would’ve considered tackling before. Thanks, Lori!

Don’t forget to check out the challenge recipes and the other Daring Bakers’ creative doughnuts!

Daring Cooks' October Challenge - Stuffed Grape Leaves

2010-10-14T20:35:00.003-04:00

Our October 2010 hostess, Lori of Lori’s Lipsmacking Goodness, has challenged The Daring Cooks to stuff grape leaves. Lori chose a recipe from Aromas of Aleppo and a recipe from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food.

I think I cursed when I first saw this month’s challenge. Stuffed Grape Leaves. My nemesis.

Okay, maybe “nemesis” is too strong a word. The truth is, I only attempted to make dolmas once, for the February DC challenge on the theme of mezze. It had been a fairly epic fail, with my bundles unravelling as they simmered, and the result tasting watery and bland. I had more or less decided that the whole thing wasn’t worth the time and effort.

But after my initial reaction upon discovering the challenge, I decided to give stuffed grape leaves another shot this month. After all, the recipes provided by our hostess, Lori, were more detailed than what I’d used on my own, and they looked tastier, too. And the Daring Cooks are all about challenging ourselves.

But then I left on my trip. When I got back last week, I figured I had plenty of time. And then, I set my mind on various thing, and before I knew it, I was wondering what day it was, and “Huh, today’s the 13th… Oh, crap.”

So, I made them today. Still somewhat wary of dolmas (the rice-filled version), I tried the yebra, a version filled with meat, rice, and spices. It was fairly easy to prepare, with minimal chopping required. Then I rolled everything carefully, briefly cooked the rolls in oil with a few dried apricots, and finally, after taking a deep breath, covered them in lemon juice, salt, and water. Then I quickly placed a plate over them to keep everything in place and prevent what had happened last time.

The verdict? I can’t even begin to tell you how much better these were than the mess I’d created in February. The filling held together much more, which must have helped the rolls maintain their shape. And they had much more flavour than my previous attempt, thanks to the spices and the added ingredients in the simmering water. The recipe suggested adding tamarind to the liquid, but, while I had tamarind paste on hand, I chose not to use it, because I was using a non-stick pan, and tamarind tends to have a corrosive effect on those; but I can imagine that it would have worked well with everything else.

So, I want to give a great big “thank you” to Lori for pushing me to give stuffed grape leaves another shot. I can honestly see myself making these again: I’ve decided they are definitely worth the time and effort. In the meantime, I’ve frozen most of the ones I made today, and I’m looking forward to serving them again soon.

Don’t forget to check out the other Daring Cooks’ creations, and well as the challenge recipes.

I'm back! - Wakame Salad

2010-10-08T17:19:00.002-04:00

Greetings, all! My apologies for the prolonged silence, but life once again conspired against me. I had comprehensive predoctoral exams to deal with, and then I went to visit my parents for two weeks. I did cook a little with my mother while I was there, including some blogworthy dishes – but somehow, I kept forgetting to photograph and document them. You know how it is when you’re on holiday.

Anyways, I’m back now, and ready to try and breathe some life back into this blog. Although I’ll admit my choice of topic for this first entry in a long time is not necessarily the most alluring, at least for a lot of people: I’m talking about wakame, a.k.a seaweed, salad.

I can hear the groans and feel the shudders: “Seaweed, ewww!” Or not… A decade ago, definitely, but now? Most people living in large (and not so large) Western cities have tasted seaweed, albeit mostly under the guise of nori-wrapped sushi. And I’m fairly confident most foodies have given other types of seaweed a whirl – and that a reasonable proportion must have liked it.

My mother, who grew up in Vietnam, tells me that she used to eat seaweed all the time as a child, namely in the form of dessert (I haven’t yet attempted to make the sweet dish she described to me, but it has coconut milk in it, and it sounds quite tempting). I, however, like most Western-raised kids, scrunched up my nose at the very idea. Seaweeds were slimy, disgusting things that grew on the icky bottom of the sea and tickled your feet in the most repulsive way as you swam over them. Well, I still very much dislike being brushed by seaweed while taking a dip in the ocean (I don’t like to think too much about what lurks under the water), but I’ve become a true fan of eating seaweed. So has Laurent, who has taken to snacking on nori strips, instead of chips. He’s even tried out a recipe by Laure Kié, which is basically a pizza margherita sprinkled with arugula and nori strips at the last minute. Sound weird? I thought so too. But it was surprisingly good, which makes sense when you remember that tomatoes, like nori, have high levels of umami.

I, for my part, am partial to wakame. I overload my miso soups with them. And before leaving on holiday, I would eat them as a salad at least a couple of times a week. I usually use this recipe, which includes quick cucumber pickles (basically cucumbers that have been salted and pressed). The awesome thing about this salad, apart from the addictive flavour, is that it is really, really low in fat (even more so it you omit the sesame seeds, which are my own addition). The dressing, a mixture of rice vinegar and sugar, contains no oil whatsoever, and yet it’s full of flavour. Of course, if you really wanted to add some richness, you could probably add some sesame oil, which would definitely work well with the other flavours; soy sauce would fit in, too. But if you ask me, that’s not even necessary: the light sweet-and-acidic flavour already works. I also love the textures in this salad: the chewy wakame and the still-crunchy cucumbers are a real party in my mouth.

Granted, some people don’t, and never will, like seaweed. Which is fine, as long as they dislike it for its taste, and not because of what it is. I’m not going to run the list of common foods that should technically gross us out, because you all probably have a list in your head already. And I have my own hang-ups about certain kinds of food (I’m not going to tell you which, though – knowledge is power, and some of my friends love a good dare). But my disgust of seaweed is definitely one which I am glad I overcame.

Daring Cooks' September Challenge - Food Preservation

2010-09-14T14:46:00.005-04:00

The September 2010 Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by John of Eat4Fun. John chose to challenge The Daring Cooks to learn about food preservation, mainly in the form of canning and freezing. He challenged everyone to make a recipe and preserve it. John’s source for food preservation information was from The National Center for Home Food Preservation.

This month’s Daring Cooks’ Challenge was a bit different than usual: it was focused around techniques, rather than recipes. This challenge was all about preserving food, either through freezing or canning. I’m a big fan of freezing, but canning was entirely new to me. The process seemed long and scary, and I’ve just never felt the need for it. Truth be told, we don’t have a lot of shelf space around here, what with all the kitchen gadgets and pantry staples like rice, oil, and sugar (not to mention four different kinds of flour). Recently, I’ve taken to making my own pickles, but I’ve never bothered to sterilize and seal them – simply because pickles around here never seem to last long enough to warrant the trouble!

Still, canning has always felt like something I should at least do once. So I went for it. Our host, John, had given us recipes for apple butter and bruschetta, but I chose to go a slightly different route (I hope that’s okay). I wanted to can something I knew I would use often, for different things: so I went for simple Italian tomatoes.

I got the “recipe” (more like a process) from Josée di Stasio’s book Pasta Et Cetera. Tomato season is winding down here, but I was still able to get my hands on some gorgeous red tomatoes. Prepping them for canning was easy, just a little time consuming: make a small, cross-shaped incision at the base of the tomato, then put them into boiling water for about a minute, until the skin begins to come off. Then dunk them into ice water. When they are cool enough to handle, peel them and remove the peduncle. Finally, cut them in half and remove the seeds.I ended up cutting them into large chunks, for easier future use.

Then, you have to put the tomatoes in jars, with a couple of basil leaves, pushing down to remove air pockets, and leaving a headspace of about 1 inch (2.5 cm). FYI, I counted about thirty tomatoes for eleven 125 ml (1 cup) jars. Then you put the closed jars (don’t wind the lid too tightly) into the canner.

In my case, the “canner” was a large pot of boiling water, lined with a dishcloth. NOTE: make sure to put the jars into the cool or lukewarm water first, and then bring to a boil (otherwise, the jars might crack from the thermal shock) Unfortunately, two of my jars were underfilled (I ran out of tomatoes), and started to float. This was not good, because the jars needed to be submerged with boiling water. Fortunately, we figured out a solution: more jars on top!

After 20 minutes of boiling, I took the jars out and let them cool overnight. Within minutes, they all made the characteristic “ping” sound that indicates all the air has been sucked out of the jar. And now, I have a stock of summer tomatoes to keep me through the winter! Now, if only I could find room to store the jars…

Thanks, John, for this very interesting challenge, and also for all the information you provided! I learned a lot, and it was definitely worth the effort!

Last Summery Meal - Tuna Bean Salad

2010-09-10T14:25:00.002-04:00

Fall has definitely arrived. I quite like this time of year, actually, and can’t wait for the leaves to start changing. Fall also signifies the return of my appetite for hearty comfort food, like stews, chunky soups, hot pots… Good bye gazpacho, hello osso bucco!

But, in memory of summer, here’s one last summery dish. Okay, actually, it’s something I made months ago, and completely forgot to post about. But I didn’t want it to go to waste. Plus, it can still make a nice side dish during the rest of the year.

This tuna bean salad is as simple as can be, and there are probably hundreds of it like it all over the food blogosphere, but it’s still a winner. This was pretty much an ad-lib, so proportions are approximate. This is one of the few recipes in which I use tuna canned in oil (Rio Mare brand, to be precise). I’m usually more of a water-canned kind of person, but this salad is really boosted by the oily richness. You can add salt if you wish, but the olives should be enough.

Anyways, let’s give summer a proper send-off, in order to welcome fall!

Tuna Bean Salad

Serves 2 as a meal, 4 as a side dish

One 540 ml (14 oz) can of cannellini beans, drained and rinsed (or substitute with any other kind of white bean)
One can of tuna marinated in olive oil
Juice of one lemon
A big handful of fresh basil leaves, chopped
120 ml (1/2 cup) green olives, sliced
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Combine all the ingredients in a large salad bowl, making sure to include the oil from the tuna can, and toss.