M's Cooking Diary

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2011-11-14T03:09:00.000-05:00

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> Subject: Invitation to connect on LinkedIn

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Reminder about your invitation from Mirko Buzolitch

2011-11-07T05:08:00.001-05:00

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>
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2011-10-31T23:01:00.001-04:00

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Synchronicity

2005-07-01T16:42:00.000-04:00

A few days ago, I was in a coffee shop writing my post for Taste Canada: “Strawberries and Lobster”, and in it I was saying how I though that our Canadian lobsters were the tastiest creature to walk this earth (so to speak) on eight legs.

I had finished the draft of the post and my laptop batteries being low I saved my work, closed the computer and took the book I’m currently reading.

It is “Endless Feast, Sixty Years of Writing for Gourmet” edited by Ruth Reichl. I had found it in a used book store in downtown Montréal a few days before.

I was reading the chapter on James Beard which I found fascinating as he is hardly known in French Canada although we had our own Julia Child in the person of Jehanne Benoit at that time who wrote “L’Encyclopédie de la Cuisine” which was a tome of about 1500 pages. Almost everybody had her book which was at first published as fascicule in a weekly paper that you had to bind yourself.

So back to the lobster, in the middle of the chapter “James Beard, an American Icon: The Early Years” I find the following passage that I quote here extensively:

““The Pacific’s greatest blessing, though, was the Dungeness Crab, to my mind unequalled by anything in the shellfish world.” Beard still finds the Dungeness crab supreme among crustaceans. (…) In matter as subjective as consideration of the relative merits of the Dungeness crab vis-à-vis the Main lobster or red shrimp, the Chesapeake Bay blue crab, the Louisiana crayfish, the Texas Gulf shrimp, the Alaskan king crab, or the Florida stone crab or rock shrimp, it is of course impossible to separate pure gastronomic delectation from nostalgic reflex. The oldster who as a youngster, cut his teeth on his own harvest of soft-shelled crabs will never be convinced that any other crustacean remotely compares, especially if his experience of any others is colored by the unavoidable loss of immediacy and natural ambiance entailed in the transport of regional shellfish from one place to another.”

Well, it may very well be so, but last time we had lobsters, we had guests from Brazil who had tasted in situ pitú (a fresh water shrimp about the size of a crayfish) and lagosta and France who had been fed on Brittany lobsters and tourteaux. And they all agreed that our lobster was the best.

This type of coincidence I call synchronicity. Events that seem related but are not obviously caused one by the other but seem to have a literal, poetic or physical link.

Like the time, two years ago that I was sitting on a terrace in Cologne, Germany, having a beer after having spent the day at a customer site. Cologne is my favorite German city, beautiful city, with good restaurants, small yet not provincial probably because of the proximity with France and the Nederland with which it is connected by high speed trains. It is late afternoon; over the row of buildings that close the square where I’m sitting I can see the tower of the Cologne cathedral, the Dom. It is, with the Mezquita of Cordoba (admittedly not a church anymore), the most awesome church I ever saw. I say awesome as in I was in awe when I first saw it up close, overwhelmed by it dark grandeur and beauty.

Sipping my beer, I start reading the book I had brought with me. It was one of Mordecai Richler novel, that most Mont realer of writer. I can’t remember which one it was but right there, in the middle of the book I had started on the plane to Paris and continued to read on the train from the Gare du Nord to the Köln Hauptbanhof, Richler is writing about the Cologne bombing of WWII. If I had been reading about the war, Nazism or Bomber Harris it would have been less of a coincidence but there I was reading a novel set mostly in Montreal and Paris, I had a relatively short time to read in Cologne but still while I’m there I happen to fell on the two short paragraph that talk about the city.

Talk about a coincidence!

Another coincidence was that in the Endless Feast there is a story about dandelion wine by Ray Bradbury and another story where mention is made in passing of pork with dandelion greens. There is no recipe for it. Well, I happened to have dandelion greens in the fridge and thick boneless pork chops in the freezer so I decided to make just that for dinner.

I washed and chopped up the greens and cut up the pork in cube. I sautéed the pork with salt and pepper in olive oil until it was nicely caramelized. In another pan, I put olive oil and a chopped onion. When the onion started to get some color I added the greens. When they wilted, I added the pork mixed everything well and served with sautéed potatoes and a nice chilled rosé from the Languedoc.

Unlike most people in Montréal these days, I don’t complain about the heat but on the other hand I have been drinking nothing but rosé for the last 2 weeks. It is the best thing to drink during a canicule.

Lobster and Strawberry

2005-06-27T20:29:00.000-04:00

This is my participation to Jennifer's blog event: "Taste Canada".

Nothing is more Canadian for me than strawberry and lobster. Not together of course. Although…

Nah…

My earliest memory of lobster is of going with my father in the old basse-ville in Québec city to the United Fisherman warehouse. This was in the mid-sixties and that building does not exist anymore and for the life of me I can’t remember what it looked like inside. But I do remember the outside, an old brick building, maybe four stories high, with a big English hand painted wooden sign that went the breadth of the building. I probably remember it because we would pass in front of it many times over the course of a year but I would go inside just once a year. And that was the day we had lobster. One of the happiest of the year, that day was on par with my birthday and Christmas.

My father would buy 3 or 4 lobsters and when we arrived home, he would put them in the bathtub in cold water until dinner time. I would keep them company all afternoon, playing with them, watching how their very complex mouth would move, making them walk on the bathroom floor and generally making a mess. But at the same time, I treated them with care, making sure not to dislodge the little wooden peg that kept their claws from mauling me.

When at last my father removed them from the bathroom and brought to the kitchen, I would follow him and watch how he would cook them. Later, I had no problem eating what had become in fact my pet lobsters.

I would request the biggest and gorge myself with his sweet meat. Asking for help from my father only to crack the claws with the less damage possible because I wanted to dry them and keep them in my room. I also kept the thorax with the eyes and antennas.

The meal would always end with a bit of frustration for me because by the time I had polished off my lobster, green stuff and all, my parent would still be working on theirs and I would look with envy at their plate until I learned to pace myself, starting with each leg section, bit by bit, working my way from the smallest morsel to the glorious tail. To this day, more than 30 years later and even though I usually have 2 of them, I’m always the last to finish.

I still have lobster only once a year though. I think it’s important to keep that tradition alive and now that I have a son (a month old on June 24^th) I think I’ll keep them in the bathtub when he is tall enough to look over the side.

In the category of those things that crawls at the bottom of the sea, I believe our cold water Canadian lobster, in particular the ones from “les Iles de la Madeleine” is the best in the world.

Recipe for lobster

A stock pot or such, large enough to hold your lobsters.

An inch of water at the bottom.

A good handful of coarse salt.

When the water is boiling, put the live lobster in the pot.

Say a quick prayer of thanks to the lobster spirit.

Close the lid.

Wait about 12 to 15 minutes (no more) and serve with a nice rosé and plenty of paper towels.

Now about strawberries...

In the province of Québec, a very small percentage of the strawberry crop is ever exported. In fact almost half of what is grown is self picked so the varieties grown here are chosen for their taste, not their size or abilities to sustain travel.

Right now we are full in strawberry season and seeing all those basket of red fruit yesterday at the Jean-Talon market reminded me of the only time my mother made jams.

Although a good cook, she was never into sweets. She hardly ever made dessert apart from the occasional lemon and meringue pie or pineapple mousse.

It was the summer of 67 when one of my father’s sisters visited from Yugoslavia. She came with her husband, during “l’année de l’Expo”. They arrived by ship, almost penniless as they could not take money out of the country and stayed with us for 2 months.

At one point, we went to tour l’Ile d’Orleans and my parent bought a few basket of strawberry and my aunt showed my mother how to make “slatko”. Slatko means sweet in Serbian. This is the traditional Serbian jam made of any small fruit. The whole idea of slatko is that the fruit should stay whole, so a lot of sugar is needed and it cannot be overcook.

When you enter a Serbian home for the first time, and that was how my mother and I were welcomed in my grandmother’s home in Belgrade in ’65, when we traveled there so she would meet her first grandson before she passed away, you are presented with a small glass of cold water, a jar of slatko and a spoon. You eat a spoonful of jam and drink the water and then you can enter the home. I think it is a marvelous tradition.

My mother and my aunt worked all day on that strawberry slatko. Filling jar after jar of red jam and sealing them with a thick disk of paraffin. We kept it for many years. It was so sweet that our teeth would hurt and often big crystal of sugar would form in the jar. But at then end of the summer, my aunt went away and nevermore did my mother make another jar of jam.

But I did not make slatko yesterday, I made a refreshing dessert. It’s 32C in Montreal as I write this and one will takes all the refreshing one can get.

Wash and cut in half a small basket of Quebec strawberry (or other province’s but I decline any responsibility if you use strawberries from California^(*)).

Cut 2 mangoes, lengthwise along the pit, taking each half piece in the palm of your hand and crisscrossing the flesh with the point of a sharp knife without piercing the skin.

Return the skin like a glove and you’ll have small cube of mangoes that you will only need to cut from the skin.

Mix the mangoes with the strawberries in a bowl.

Add 2 table spoons or so of white sugar, or maple syrup (Canadian content), or brown sugar.

A pinch of salt.

A few turn of peppermill. Ever since I saw the Galloping Gourmet as a kid put pepper on a strawberry pie, I use pepper with strawberry.

Wash and chop a handful of mint leave.

A few drop of orange flower water.

A few drop of cognac or Armagnac or something like that. In fact I used Brazilian cachaça.

Mix well, put in the fridge right before dinner and serve for dessert in chilled bowls. Don’t wait too much. You don’t want the strawberries to turn to mush.

That’s it

(*) No offense intended to Californian, I never tasted strawberry in California but what is exported with the name of your state on it hardly merit the name of strawberry.

Friday night fish

2005-06-18T08:25:00.000-04:00

My mother-in-law has come from Brazil to stay with us for 6 month to help with the new baby, her first grand-son. She loves my cooking so it was no big deal to accommodate her when she told me that as a Catholic she does not eat meat on Friday. Especially since although devout, she is not try to impose her faith on us.

I thought it was a good idea to eat fish on Friday; it forces me to some creativity. The fact is, she does not need to eat fish on Friday, just not meat but we don’t eat meat everyday here. Sometime, I’ll make a potato tortilla and we’ll eat some bread and cheese and we’ll eat pasta at least twice a week and most of my past dishes are meatless.

So yesterday I made filet of tilapia in papillotes. First time I made anything in “papillote” and it was easier that I thought to fold the parchment paper hermetically closed.

I sat the fish on a bed of sliced potatoes and carrot, used some chopped shallot and parsley and sprinkled some lemon infused olive oil. 20minutes at 400 or until you can smell it ready.

Ever noticed that at some point you can tell that something is cook by the smell emanating from you oven?

To go with the fish, I made rice and farofa.

I served it with basmati rice made in the brazillian-vietnamese manner. In fact the rice was cook by adding warm water to the rice until it reaches the first phalange of a finger set on top of the rice. Then boiled rapidly without the lid until craters are formed and then closing the lid and keeping the pan warm for at least 20 minutes.

This is the way it is done in Vietnam.

In Brazil, they always heat some garlic in oil before adding the rice. This I did.

To perfume the rice, I added some coriander seeds.

Farofa is toasted manioc meal with butter. It seems strange to eat what is in fact dry flour with butter but it is surprisingly tasty and interesting from the point of view of texture. IN fact most foreigners fall in love with the stuff when they go to Brazil.

I melted some butter and added half an onion chopped fine. I made sure not to color the butter and when the onion became translucent I added the manioc meal and some chopped sour pickles and

Because I know my mother-in-law loves farofa and it has been a while since she last eaten it, I made mine with some of our precious “farinha copioba”, the finest from Bahia. Made in small mills of the Recôncavo baiano (the region around the capital Salvador and the Bay of All Saints).

Mussels

2005-05-29T17:56:00.000-04:00

There has been a hiatus as my son was born last Tuesday so you can imagine that things have been a bit hectic around here. He is great. We are settling in with the new convive although it will be still a few month before he taste the local cuisine except through his mother's milk. Anytime I get the chance I make him smell something different. Today it was scone with raisins and fennel seeds. He most particular, about which breast he drinks from. He stick to the right one as if his life depended on it but makes a scream, weep and refuse to drink from the left one. They both taste the same and we can't find no difference on how hard he has to suck to get the milk. Both his mother and I are scratching our head. We laugh about it except at 3:00AM, we have to get to the bottom of this.
Tonigth, I'll be making mussels in white wine, echalottes grises and orange peels between to breast feeding session.

I'll serve them with roasted green pepper salad and oven roasted potatoes.
Cheers

Fiddlehead

2005-05-15T18:19:00.000-04:00

I bought some fiddle heads today, to eat with the Lapin au Pruneaux. Nowadays, it may be the only things left at the supermarket that really announces the arrival of Spring. I dread the day when we get fiddleheads all year long. I can’t really stop buying everything that is of seasons but it hit me hard a few years ago when I found asparagus in the middle of winter at the same price that I would pay in summer for local asparagus.

I can only imagine how little pay the poor Peruvian field hand gets so that I can eat asparagus at Christmas. So I simply refuse to eat asparagus until they’re in seasons. It is little, I know but I talk about it around me and in a small way it gets people thinking about globalization.

Another thing I won’t buy out of season is strawberries. And not because they are picked by poor illegal Mexican field workers but because they are simply tasteless. They have been bred to be red before being ripe and to look sweet and juicy (they are neither) and travel well. That they do. I have been raised on Ile d’Orleans strawberry, the island in front of Quebec City. I have even picked at 25 cents a basket them when I was 12 years old. I made $2 and lasted but a day. But they were so good. And still are if you have the patience to wait ‘til the middle of summer.

Sauces

2005-05-12T13:42:00.000-04:00

I always loved sauce. The heavy French ones in particular. The one made with glace and fond de veau. Unfortunately, like most people I can rarely spare a whole weekend to reduce 18L of veal stock to a few cups of fond.

But I developed a way to make my sauces from the braising liquid of whatever I braised. I don’t claim to have invented it. I just never saw it explained the way I do it.

First of all, as stated in previous post, I take great care in caramelizing the sofrito of onion, carrot, celery, tomatoes etc…

I don’t use chicken stock, only water and or wine.

What follow is step by step process to braise any meat:

Salt your meat and sauté in oil in the cooking pan you are going to use until the surface is well caramelized. Don’t crowd the pan.
Remove the meat, start by the onion and celery, (they have more water, take more time), add carrot, leeks. Finish with the tomatoes.
When nicely golden but nut burnt add about 2 tablespoon of flour using a shaker.
Deglaze with water, wine or both.
Return the meat to the pan.
Add water half-way to the meat and bring to a low boil.
Salt. Be careful with the salt as this will get reduced.
Cover the pan with aluminum foil and seal with the lid.
Put in the oven, (1-2hours) depending on the meat at 275 F to 325 F until the meat fall off the bone
Keep the meat warm; cover it with the piece of aluminum foil you used.
Remove the bouquet. Using a hand-held mixer, bbzzzzzzz the braising liquid.
IMPORTANT: Get 2 clean recipients. Pour the liquid in the first one through a medium-meshed sieve or chinois.
Discard whatever gets caught. Pour from the first to recipient to the second through a fine-meshed sieve.
Wash both sieve and empty recipient and repeat. Washing between each pour until the sieve does not catch anything.
Put in a small pan, taste, reduce, taste, and reduce some more.
Remove from heat and beat in a few piece of cold butter. Monter au beurre.
Plate and serve.

That’s it. This kind of sauce is velvety, tasty and artery cloying as it should. It will also allow you to compose a plate like you see in the cooking magazines.

Soupe aux gourganes

2005-05-07T17:42:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday we went to the market and I bought about 1.5kg of gourganes (or fava ). Anyway the big green bean. The one Thomas Keller makes such a fuss about. In the French Laundry Cookbook he says: “Shell the fava beans and peel the skins from the beans (peeling them before cooking prevents gases from being trapped under the skin that could cause discoloring. Remove the small germ at the side of each bean.”
It is very difficult to remove the skin from the beans when they are raw to say nothing of removing the germ. I usually do this though but for a soup… I don’t think so.
So once shelled, I blanched the beans with the skin on and then removed it.
I reserved the beans.
I made a sofrito with onions, celery, leeks, tomatoes and some prosciutto in small cubes.

When ready I deglazed with water then added about a liter. I let the soup simmer for a short while then added the beans. I let the soup simmer some more, maybe 20mins. Then I took off about 2 cup of soup and made a purée with the hand mixer and put it back with the soup.

That’s it. We had a nice salad, good bread and cheese.

Poulet Chasseur

2005-05-03T15:32:00.000-04:00

Yesterday my wife invited N and C for dinner so that we can give them long distance calling cards. They are the one in charge of calling relatives and friends in Brazil to give them the news of the birth which is less than two weeks away.

I decided to do Poulet Sauté Chasseur, using the method for “Poulet Sauté” explained by Michael Ruhlman in “The Soul of a Chef” and taking hint from Escoffier in “Ma Cuisine”.
Anything Chasseur (hunter) is cooked with mushroom. In this case I used Champignon de Paris the plain common white mushroom, oyster mushrooms and some dried porcini. I powdered the latter, using them more as a condiment. I re-hydrated the powder in water and kept the water to use for deglazing the pan.

I finished the dish with heavy cream.

As sides, I oven roasted root vegetable: carrots, parsnips, yellow and blue potatoes and some garlic cloves. I peeled the carrots and parsnips but the potatoes I just quartered. After coating everything with olive oil, I salted with coarse sea salt from Brittany. I left them in the oven for 45 min at 350C.

Each vegetable had its own color I was quite proud.

It was a very simple dinner but quite good.

2005-04-29T18:12:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday paella: The paella resting before serving. Very important. A paella should not be served piping hot. It should rest a bit before going to the tabel.

Last Sunday Paella

2005-04-29T18:09:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday paella: The meat has just been added to the sofregit. That wooden spatula is my favorite. It is made of bamboo and I bought it for about a dollar on the Sunday handcraft market on Paulista avenue in Sao Paulo.

Penne with Rapini

2005-04-28T19:38:00.000-04:00

I have been a bit slow to update this blog in the last week but between works, the baby coming soon, my mother-in-law arrival it has been a bit hectic.
Today a simple dish of penne with blanched rapini and prosciutto.
I have to make some garlic oil on the side because my wife can’t digest garlic since she got pregnant. We both find it very sad and she can't wait to be able to eat garlic again but in the mean time I'm suffering from garlic withdrawal.

So after I blanched the rapini, shook them in iced water then dried them a bit and sautéed them with salt, prosciutto some fresh basil and a lot of olive oil.

I then cooked the pasta and when ready mixed the penne with the rapini.

Mother-in-law loved it!

Paella

2005-04-25T17:59:00.000-04:00

We were at the airport this morning, waiting for my mother-in-law with N. and C. N is also from Brazil and she was telling me how she had never tasted paella. So I told her to come over for dinner that I was going to make one.

Basically I follow the recipe that I found in the book “To the Heart of Spain, Food and Wine Adventures Beyond the Pyrenees” by Ann and Larry Walker. This book is a travel narrative Spain though its wine and food. When I read that book the first time I had never set foot in Spain. I was salivating the whole time.

Although the method presented in the book to make paella on a stove is easy. I did not attempt it before having tasted the real thing in one of the best Madrid restaurant specialized in paella. It was important for me. The first I did it, I used basmati rice. Which did gives a nice “paella” but not the real texture. It was good and tasty but not authentic. When I asked a friend in Madrid if Arborio could be substituted for the real Spanish rice I was told no. Then I found a place in Montreal where I could buy the real rice for paella. Just where I had bought my paellera in the first place. The LIBRERIA ESPAÑOLA on St-Laurent Boulevard.

Because I yesterday I bought chorizo to make caldo verde and some Cornish hen, and my freezer had shrimps I decide to make a Cornish hen and shrimp paella. In general though, I prefer having chicken and rabbit and some mussels and squid.

The paellera is thin so if you use it right on top of an electrical stove, you will burn everything you put in it. I use one of those rings they sell in Chinatown to hold a wok. I put the paellera on top of it and turn on the burner to the max. I use olive oil liberally and brown all pieces of different meat in the center, pushing them to the edge as they become golden to make place for more. It’s important not to put everything at the same time. When this finished I make the sofregit (in Catalan, sofrito in castillan) from onion, garlic and tomatoes and some fresh thyme. This is critical, I make sure the falvour are well blended.

Then I mix everything, add some homemade chicken stock (now I can because there is chicken in the paella), reduced it, add the rice and some more stock and saffron thread that I roasted and mixed with hot water. I cover the paellera with aluminum foil and put it in the oven at 400 for about 30 minutes on the lower rack (important). I check then if the rice is cooked. If it is I add green peas and/or green beans already blanched and put it back in the oven to warm the vegetable. Of course, I could have mixed the greens in the rice at the beginning but then you end up with beans that are soggy and grey.

The paella is probably the most complicated dish of Spanish cooking, (I exclude dessert and anything Fernà Adria does). Everything else is just fresh ingredient and olive oil and simple cooking. For my money, I always eat better in Spain than in France.

There is even a place in Madrid where I go just to have the house salad the Ensalada "Rincón de Jaén" at the Rincón de Jaén restaurant on C/ Don Ramón de la Cruz. That the only place in the word where I remember the salad.

Last Friday Dinner

2005-04-19T22:14:00.000-04:00

Last Friday dinner was a success.

I, of course, completely forgot to take pictures. Next time I’ll put it on top of my prep list. Too bad, because some of those courses were very beautiful.

First course, first almost disaster. It was the was the “Poached Quail Eggs on Hollandaise”

I had prepared the gastrite and clarified the butter beforehand and just needed to beat an egg yolk and add the butter.

My guest are in the living room, one of my friend is serving the drinks and I put the egg yolk in the a metallic bowl with the already reduced gastrite, set the bowl on a pan with water approaching boiling, take my eyes of it for a few seconds. When I look at it next, the water is boiling furiously and my yolk is hard cooked.

Nothing to do but to mince another shallot etc…

Another near miss was the green bean salad. I hade prepared the tomato tartar from about a dozen tomato. That was not enough.

So I had to make my plate without it.

The rabbit saddle was difficult to cut in nice slice but it was very flavorful and went very well with the “Quenelles de Patate Bleues aux Noisettes” which were, themselves, quite good and visually striking.

I never found the wine I planned to serve at first. I’m sure I did not drink it so it must be under some of those wooden boxes in my cellar. In any case, as an aperitif I served a Sherry Manzanilla, “La Guita”.

The first wine was may last bottle of Viña Mein 1999, an Albariño from the Ribeira del Duero. A golden color and richness on the nose and in the mouth.

The 2^nd wine was a Gevry-Chambertin Antonin Rodet, 1999 that I had bought in Paris in 2002 before the € made the act of shopping for wine in Europe such a frustrating experience. I drank my first bottle in 2003, the tannins were still a bit harsh but now they had melted and the wine was a great Pinot Noir event.

With the cheese course and desert, I decanted a bottle of the excellent Quinta do Noval, Noval Unfiltered LBV 1998. Unfortunately by that time, I could not take tasting not but believe me when I say this is a very good LBV.

In spite of the small mistake or maybe because of them, the dinner was great fun. The food is important, but more important still is to have good friend around the table. We must have bite in the first amuse-gueule around 8:15. By the time anybody looked at his watch, it was 1:30.

Here’s my prep list as I stuck it top the fridge. It is in a kind of frenglish shorthand:

J and V mean Jeudi and Vendredi (Thursday and Friday) meaning the day I planned to make the item.

Service			Mise en Place	Assemblage
Capellini alle vongole	V		Cuire palourdes	Cuire cappelini
	V		Sauce orange/vin/jus	Rechauffer palourde au beure monte
	V		Ciboulette	Monter la sauce au beurre
	V		Capre	Rechauffer pates dans la sauce avec ciboulette
	V		Copeaux de parmesan	Monte avec capre/parmesan
	V		Beurre monte

Bacon and egg	V		Pocher oeufs	Melanger crème et hollandaise
	V		Crème fouettee	Rechauffer les oeufs
	V		Hollandaise	Monter sur cuilleres
	V		Brunoise carrote/tomates/celeri/prosciutto

Potage de pois	V		Blanchir pois	Servir en tasse avec huile de truffe et chip
	V		Blanchir menthe
	V		Mixer
	V		Passer au chinois
	J	X	Chip

Feuillete de saumon	J	X	Faire feuilles de filo	Monter gravlax/crème/feuille
	J	X	Gravlax	Coulis dans l'assiette
	J	X	Laver gravlax
	J	X	crème sure a l'aneth
	V		Blanchir feuilles de betterave
	J		Coulis de betterave

Salade d'haricote vert	J	X	Confit de tomate	Monter
	J	X	Huile de ciboulette	Tomate
	V		Passer l'huile	Huile
	V		Blanchir haricots	Huile
	V		Couper haricots	Haricot
	V		Vinagrette /crème	Laitue
	V		Nicoise verte pale	Balsamique
	J	X	Tartare de tomate

Rable de lapin	V		Farces	Monter la sauce
	V		Preparer rable	Monter la puree
	V		Cuire
	V		Pomme de terre
	V		Griller noisette

Brebis et salade de carotte	J		Epices	Coulis
	J		Coulis de raisin	Salade
	V		Salade de carotte	Fromage
	V		Couper fromage	Coriandre
	V		Reduction de jus de carrotte
	V		Feuille coriandre

Panna cotta	J		Panna cotta	Servir
	J	X	Couli de mangue
	V		Garnir

@#@#%%#& blender

2005-04-15T08:46:00.000-04:00

Most of my day yesterday was spent working on my mise en place. I got a bit short because of the blender. I paid good money for Hamilton Beach blender that’s supposed to be good. It was exercise in frustration to make the chive oil, and both the mango and beet coulis. I think the blades are ill conceived and the slow setting is too fast.

To blend anything, it needs so such liquid that you end up with colored water instead of a nice thick consistency. Even a cup of blanched chives in a cup of oil was very difficult to blend.
So if anybody knows a blender or a robot that can work with small quantities, please let me know.
Apart from that, so far so good.

I made the panna cotta before watching CSI last night and this morning I added the mango coulis. I had to scoop out a little round shaped hole to put the mango so of course I tasted it. Can you believe it was the first time I tasted panna cotta?

Now I have 6 bowls of what looks like eggs sunny side up.

More later…

The big dinner is Friday.

2005-04-13T17:23:00.000-04:00

Yes, everything is confirmed. Finally we will be 6 instead of 4. It's not much more work but I need to be a lot more disciplined in the kitchen because with the space I have, plating 6 makes it a little tight.
I’ll make pictures so look to see them here this weekend.

Here the menu.

Canapé:
Capelli de Angelo alle Vongole

Bacon and Egg. (Poached quail egg on hollandaise mousseline with brunoise de prosciutto

Soup:
Cold Potage of Green Pea and Mint, Chive Chip⁽¹⁾

Entrées:
Feuilleté de Gravlax with Beet Green
Salad of Haricots Verts, Tomato Tartare and Chive Oil⁽¹⁾
Râble de Lapin Farci au Figues et Purée de Patates Bleus au Noisette.

Cheese:
Brebis with Spiced Carrot Salad

Dessert
Panna Cotta “Sunny Side Up”

Wish me luck!
I already started cooking. The chips are in the oven as I write this and tomorrow I’ll really start cooking.

⁽¹⁾(See the French Laundry Cookbook)

2005-04-12T19:43:00.000-04:00

Roasted scallops with aragula coulis

Fabes con camarones

2005-04-12T07:34:00.000-04:00

Last summer, my wife and I were walking in Madrid. We had just arrived from Barcelona where we had spent a wine soaked week.
It was around 14:30 and we were both hungry, so we entered a small cool and dark restaurant around 300m south-west of the Plaza Mayor.

We decided to order to plate off the menu. I have no memory of what I ordered. But my wife ordered “fabes con almejas”. It means “white beans with clams” but at the time we did not know. We had asked for suggestion from the waitress and just agreed to what she pointed on the menu.
What we got was a plate of buttery white beans in a sauce aromatized with saffron with nice plump clams cooked just right. They were so good, we were both bowled over.
This is a classic of the province of Asturias.

Since I came back from Spain, I made it a few time, varying what sea food I use. The first time I made it with clams, once with bacalao (salted cod) and yesterday with shrimps.
I made a stock first, with half a dozen, head-on female shrimps (they were all full of eggs) that I chopped with shallot and a bouquet.
I sautéed one chopped onion, 2 clove of garlic in olive oil when the onion was pale gold I added a bouquet (laurel, tarragon rosemary), the white beans, salt and the shrimp stock and enough water to cover.
In a dry pan, I heated some saffron the added a few tea spoon of water to dilute the saffron and put everything with the beans. I
used a pressure cooker so that the beans were ready in less than an hour. I checked from time to time for doneness.

Before serving I added about 2 dzs cooked shrimps and let them warm in the bean.

Sauce-Feuille

2005-04-09T19:05:00.000-04:00

Two week ago I made sarma in Serbo-Croatian (or dolmades, if you are Greek) or stuffed vine leaves. I still had 2 rolls of leaves in brine left over. Tonight I decided to make “sauce feuille” but to replace the manioc leaves that are used in West Africa by what’s left of the vine leaves.

I took a piece of about 750gr of beef cut up in cubes, one onion, 2 tomatoes and some shrimp powder. I caramelized the meat, then the onion and tomatoes, added laurel, pepper, a dry red pepper and some water. When everything was bubbling, I added the minced vine leaves. It has been cooking gently for about an hour now, the meat is tender and it taste good.

I’ll be serving that on white rice.

Big dinner coming. Part IV. The 6th service

2005-04-09T12:02:00.000-04:00

For the 6^th service, I’ll make fig stuffed loins of rabbit.

We eat rabbit, at least twice a month, I usually do a version of a braised rabbit with whatever garnish happens to catch my eyes in the fridge.

I start by cutting up the rabbit in pieces and frying them in olive oil by small batches until they’re golden.
Then, I make a sofrito with onion, celery, garlic, tomatoes, sometime carrots or leeks. This is the most important part. Transforming the raw vegetable and extracting their tastes in water soluble caramelized sugar. I deglaze the bottom of the pan with water, wine or rabbit stock is I have some and if I don’t, I don’t use chicken stock! Why would I want my rabbit to taste like chicken?
I add the meat, and a bouquet garnis, cover the pan with aluminum paper, put the lid on top and in the oven it goes.

At 275F-300F for an hour or so. It can be eaten as it come off the pan or sometime, if I feel like a fancier presentation, I’ll keep the meat warm and reduce and strain the cooking juice, beating in butter at the last moment.

But back to the loin, the other day I wanted to test my knife skill so I deboned a rabbit loin. It was a lot easier that I thought it would be. Then I had to come up with something to stuff it with. I looked around the kitchen and I saw dried figs. OK then, figs it will be. Using my knife I shredded 2 or 3 figs, added some black olive, pepper, one sprig of rosemary and Moutarde Violette de Brive to hold everything together. The mustard, I bought in a small wine shop in Avignon where I also bought 2 bottles of Domaine de l”Oratoire St-Martin 2000. The shopkeeper told me that he almost cried when he tasted it. We’ll see. It's almost time to open one of these bottles and will let you know if he was overly sensitive.

I put the stuffing on the loin and rolled and tied it with a butcher string. I braised it with a bouquet and half onion. The meat was even better that when I braise a whole rabbit. I usually prefer the forelegs that just melt on the bone and the loin’s meat is usually a bit dry, but with the “Râble de lapin au figues”, the same meat was moist and tasty.

With it, I’ll serve make quenelles of the mashed blue potatoes with hazelnut s.

Speaking of cachaça…

2005-04-08T18:15:00.000-04:00

My wife, who is expecting our first child, is from Brazil. As is the tradition in Bahia where she comes from, I prepared the “temperada de parida”. Literally “seasoned of the woman who just gave birth” (I just know there is a shorter translation somewhere).

Following my mother-in-law recipe, I took a briefly blanched sprig of rosemary, one of mint and one of fennel and pushed those herbs through the neck of a bottle. I filled the bottle with cachaça 51.

When my wife comes back from the hospital, we will put the bottle on a tray with small glasses and will offer a drink to all that come to visit.

Some traditions are not to be changed.

Big dinner coming. Part III (The Fish Entrée).

2005-04-07T18:20:00.000-04:00

Still no idea for the appetizers. But the fish course will be “Feuilleté de gravlax”. A feuilleté is a pastry made of flaky dough. The French “Mille-feuilles” is one of them. It literally means “thousand leaves”.

I can’t smoke salmon at home but it is a simple thing to make gravlax and it is almost as good. Plus I can say I did it myself. I use the method describe in The CIA’s Garde-Manger manual it comes out very tasty. I replace the aquavit by cachaca, the Brazilian sugar cane aguardente. I got a very nice “Flor de Limão” cachaca from the Carvalheira distillery .

I love cachaca that’s why I rarely indulge, too easy to abuse. Most people who have traveled to Brazil (the French’s in particular, but also the Germans and the Swiss) fall in love with the stuff, among other things. They taste it mostly in “caipirinha” made with industrial cachaca but what the Brazilians call “cachaca de alembique” or artisanal, can be very good. It’s funny because in bar you’ll rarely see people drinking it unless they are tourist. Brazilians tend to stick to beer or Red Label whiskey..

I’ll prepare the gravlax early this weekend or early next week. I can also prepare the feuilleté well in advance. I’ll use filo dough. Preparing the dough myself is asking for trouble so that’s the one thing I won’t do. The method is simple:
Coat half a filo sheet with melted butter and fold. Do that three times until it’s the about size of the afore mentioned “mille-feuilles”

Put the folded filo on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper
Repeat until you have 3 per serving.
Put in the oven, at 375 until golden and crisp. About 10 minutes.
This can be done a few days before if kept dry in an airtight container.
I plan on putting fennel seeds on the last four sheets for the top layer.

Before dinner time:
Prepare sour cream with fresh dill or any other fresh herb that strike your fancy. Let it stand in the fridge for a few hours.
Briefly blanch spinach, or any other greens. I plan to use beet leaves.
I’ll also prepare a beet coulis.

To plate:
Put one filo on a plate, cover with nice slices of salmon.
Put a spoonful of sour cream.
Another filo
The blanched greens and a bit of cream.
The last sheet the one with the roasted seeds.
Use the coulis in a squeeze bottle to decorate the plate.

Lettuce soup, naaah

2005-04-07T10:11:00.000-04:00

Well, tried and discarded.

I started with a head of frisée and a handful of mixed green. Washed in cold water and blanched in very salty water. I used a big pot, a lot of water, and two handful of coarse salt. I did not want to stop the water from boiling so I proceeded by small batches, a few leaves, putting each in a bowl of iced water as they were ready.

I removed from the cold water and mixed with the blender.
When I tasted the liquid lettuce, it was very bitter. I added some raspberry vinegar, olive oil, 1 1/2 teaspoon of sugar and salt. Blended again. Tasted again.
Not bad, very smooth with a little aftertaste. I strained it through a chinois and put some ice cubes in it. Cold, it was better. My wife liked it, the color also was fantastic. I had a big glass before dinner.

But…
Well, it is closer to a health drink than to a soup or cold potage.
Is could be good for your health. A liquid salad, maybe if I had added some bread, anchovies, an egg and grated parmesan it would have tasted like a Caesar in a glass but not for the kind of dinner I have in mind.

Back to the drawing board, or should I say the cutting board…

Big dinner coming. Part II (The Soup).

2005-04-06T14:35:00.000-04:00

I have no idea what to do for appetizers.

It’ll come and if not, I’ll have 7 services. That’s all right.

It does seems a lot for a dinner where you want to have time to sit down with your friends but I you plan ahead, have a prep list stuck to the fridge door and do only things that will keep you in the kitchen for no more than 10 minutes between each services, it very doable.

That means that your mise en place is ready when your guests arrive and you basically only need to plate each service during the meal. My proudest moment was last Christmas when I served 9 courses, no sweat and the kitchen did not look like a battleground afterward.

The soup:

The soup, I think, will be a single vegetable potage. Maybe green pea, maybe squash. Squash is good and easy, I did one with three kinds of squash last fall and it was very good. I just roast it ‘til it’s done and a bit caramelized and then mix it with just enough water to liquefy it in the blender. I put salt, a wee bit of heavy cream and just before serving a few drops of truffle oil that I bought at the Galerie Lafayette’s Coin Gourmand in Paris. I love going there to dream but because of stupid laws and my own financial limits, there nothing I can bring back with me to Canada like a whole Jamon Serrano, or live coquilles St-Jacques (scallops) or a case of Chateau l’Evangile so I walk around dreaming and have a cup of hot chocolate, the best in Paris.

But back to the potage. Or instead of squash I could try to find a vegetable that is not usually served in a soup. Celery root? Green bean as in “cream of green bean”? Lettuce?

That an idea, I’ll have to try before though. Just found a lettuce soup on Epicurious.com but, of course, the recipe calls for chicken stock. What the point in doing a lettuce soup if you put chicken stock in it. ? NO! No chicken stock!

Maybe a potage of aragula and Boston, or a soup of those boxed mixed green that you find at the supermarket? Why not?

Blue Potatoes

2005-04-05T20:30:00.000-04:00

I saw those the other day on a French (from France) show on TV5. I just took it as the chef was showing how he was mashing the blue potatoes with a fork to keep the texture and seasoned them with toasted hazelnuts and hazelnut oil. He served them with thick slices of duck magret cooked rare. I though this looked good.

Blue potatoes! I have no idea where they come from but probably from Bolivia or Peru. Over there, they have something like 50 varieties of potatoes. It is very sad to see how with the industrialization of agriculture we are loosing so many different varieties of vegetable. Already in our average urban supermarket in North America, we find only about 3 or 4 kind of tomatoes, 1 of corn, 2 of carrots (the one in bag and the ones that come in a bunch), 6 kind of potatoes etc…. But I disgress

I just knew where blue potatoes in Montréal and so last Sunday I biked to the Marché Jean-Talon , our fresh produce market to buy about half a pound.
That was my first long bike ride since last summer, 90 minutes to go mostly uphill and with a head wind almost all the way. It was worth it but I paid for it on Monday.
They are very small and not really blue but more a nice deep violet. So tonight, I peeled them and boiled them in salted water, toasted some hazelnut and mashed them with a fork with olive oil as I did not have any hazelnut oil. I served them with grilled pork chops and some green beans. It was surprisingly good. They have a nice nutty flavor and they don’t loose their color and so make for beautiful plate.

Shrimp Risotto

2005-04-04T19:48:00.000-04:00

Tonight I have made a shrimp risotto. First time I do it with shrimp. I bought big 31/34 shrimp and cooked them a minute or so in salted water. I shelled them and made a stock from their legs, skin and a bouquet garnis.

I did not use saffron although sorely tempted. While I love its aroma and color, it can be overpowering. I wanted to see what flavor I could extract from the shrimp.

I proceeded like the classical risotto as coming down to us from Marcella Hazan in the “Essential of Classic Italian Cooking”. The only variation ,that I learned from another cook, is to really whip the butter in at the end; it emulsifies with the rice and gives it a very nice and smooth texture.

Just before adding the wine at the beginning, after I put the rice with the onion, I added some lemon zest.

I put the whole shrimps, right after the butter and let them warm through and served the risotto “all onda”, in the Venetian style.

The only problem was that the shrimp stock was not as tasty as it could have been if I had used shrimps with their heads.

I’ll know better next time.

Big dinner coming

2005-04-04T10:01:00.000-04:00

We will be having friends for dinner in 2 weeks. My ex E and her new beau D. New is a relative term, they have been together for the last 5 years.

Although we have never lost touch and I have seen E from time to time, I met D for the first time last week.

In any case, I started planning the menu and I’ll talk about it here in the next few days. I’m thinking 8 services.

Canapé
Appetizers
Soup/Potage
1^st Entrée (Fish)
Salade
2^nd Entrée (Game/Meat)
Cheese course
Dessert

First comes the canapés:

1^st The Capellini alle vongole:

I choose large clams. One per guest. I cook them with a bit of white wine and I prepare a reduction of wine, the clam’s cooking juice and orange juice. To assemble I put a little nest of angel hair pasta, half a spoonful of reduction “monté au beurre”, the cooked clam, parmesan shaving and a single caper.

2^nd Mini eggs benedict.

This I never made but I think it could be great. Serve a single poached quail egg on a small blini and top it with hollandaise. Serve in spoon “à la Keller”.

A lot of preparation for 2 mouthfuls per guest but it may be worth it.

Cassava latke

2005-04-02T08:01:00.000-05:00

So I’m cooking the legs left over from the rabbit saddle I made 2 weeks ago (I froze them, of course). To accompany it I’m making latke but instead of using potato,
I’m going to use cassava. It is a close cousin of manioc but it has a very low level of cyanide that cooking will break down making it harmless. It can be prepared it like potatoes.

In case you don’t know what cassava is, you probably saw it at a Caribbean grocery store. A brown root with a rough brown skin. If you look closer you’ll see that they have a relatively thick layer of wax on them. That’s there to protect them during transport. When choosing, press them gently in your hand. They rot easily. Do not buy any that has a soft spot.

To peel them, take each root and cut them in 3 or four depending on the size. Try to get pieces that don’t have any curve on them. They are easy to cut, if you just bring the knife down, not very hard, and then force it side way. The cassava will part at the cut.

Then holding the piece in your left hand, cut lengthwise with one blow of the knife just hard enough to cut through the skin, then pushing the knife around the root under the skin, remove it. Be careful to remove all the pink.

Cut each piece lengthwise and remove is a fibrous heart.

Then proceed like latke. Cassava does not contain as much water as potatoes so you don’t need to press pulp.

Because of that also you need to be careful when frying them because the latke will burn easily.

Tortilla

2005-03-31T18:36:00.000-05:00

We have an early dinner tonight because of the class early in the evening and I’m making a real Spanish tortilla.

Four years ago, when my wife was studying for her master at the Université de Montréal, she became friend with a group of Spanish student. Being Spanish, the liked to eat well, I read somewhere that the Spanish spend a greater share of their take home pay than any other European. They were 5 or 6 and share to big apartment close to the campus. As much as possible they would keep to the Spanish ate lunch, rotate cooking duties among them and eat all together in one of the apartment. But whenever they received other people M who was from Cacetes in Castilla would make tortilla. Simple egg and potatoes tortilla. He would cut them in cubes, pick some of them with toothpicks. I could not have enough of it.

The potatoes soaked olive oil were simply delicious.

M met O here in Montréal and they went back to Spain together. O is from Barcelona and M moved there with her. Here they would always speak in Castellan but the minute they set foot in Barcelona she spoke to him only in Catalan. Now they live in both language and their daughter is learning both.

They have a daughter now and live in a suburb of Barcelona that used to be a small town well outside the city. We visited them last year in their home of Sabadell and while the women were drinking wine in the living room, M and I were drinking wine and making a tortilla in the kitchen. There really nothing to it once you see it done. The trick is to cook the potatoes in good olive oil, not fry them but gently boil them so that they absorb the oil’s fruitiness.

Then you remove them from the oil, put them in the egg, mix well and cooked them in the pan. I use the same 6 inches Teflon pan. I just strain the oil in a container and re-use it 2 or 3 times. You have to judge when one side is ready, then you put a plate on top of the pan, reverse it and cook the other side.

Tonight, we ate the tortilla with a can of Cod Liver (foie gras of the sea, I love it), good bread, a simple green salad, Rosette de Lyon (a French saucisson) and, of course, olives.

Using it all

2005-03-30T19:45:00.000-05:00

One of the things I like to do when I buy fish, meat or poultry is to use everything. What I don’t use, I freeze. Even bone? In fact especially bones for the stocks.

Waste not. Want not.

For example, for most Portuguese preparation for bacalhau (salted cod), you need to soak the fish to remove the salt and then cook it water before you remove the skin and the bones. I usually, put the skin and bone back in the water and reduce this stock to a concentrated consommé.

Cod skin is very rich in gelatin (maybe this is not the right term) and after reducing you will get a nice jellified stock that you can use in court-bouillon, sauce or soup.

By the way, have a magic recipe for cod: “Bacalao al pil pil”. I’ll make it soon and write about it.

For example, here in North America, we raise million of pig but we, clearly, eat as meat, a very small fraction of whole hog. I don’t know what the rest goes but for all the pollution that industrial pork production (we can only call it production) cause we should really get more out of it than this tasteless meat and this water soaked ham!!!

While in Portugal, Spain, France and Italy, when a pig is butchered, nothing is left apart from a few bones.

When I was 4 or 5 year old we went my family and I to the small farm of a friend of my father who is Serbian. It was around Orthodox Easter. I remember that it was during that weekend I learned to play chess and I also saw a pig being killed. I remember the knife but not the actual killing; probably my mother took me out of the barn. Next I remember the pig on the dinning room table being scraped of hair and our friend daughter, who was maybe 13 at the time, examining the eyes of the dead hog.

Ode to the Pig and to the Good Butcher

I think I was sent to bed after that but they must have worked all night helped by generous shot of slivovic because the day after, there it was in the kitchen, the inflated bladder of last night star. We painted it in festive color and hanged it in the living room. That was all that was left. The rest was made into sausage, thick ragú, nice ribs and tender filet etc…

So, I’m happy when I can use everything on the same plate. Like the quails I made for the Christmas dinner. I salted and slowly cooked the quails’ thigh in duck fat. I used the breast meat to stuff ravioli the bones to make a fond that I used to sauce them.

I plated everything together. It was fun to make and it tasted very good.

The links

2005-03-29T10:34:00.000-05:00

There are 3 links today at the right of the page.

The first one is for “A la Di Stasio”. A Tele-Québec TV show about cooking, good food and good produces. I credit her and Daniel Pinard, her co-host on a previous show on really giving me the incentive to really go back to cooking for real.

Instead of just doing what I knew how to do, to search for new technique, to try new food that I was afraid to touch (Not to eat, mind you, as I have always been ready to try anything). My technique improved tenfold in the last few years.

Di Stasio always has a guest, it maybe a chef or a home cook but it always interesting. There is also visit to market or producers, showing the good product that you can find in Montreal and its region.

The second one is about the French Laundry’s chef, Thomas Keller. His book, the “French Laundry cookbook” is one of my bibles. What I like about it, is that all the recipes are without compromise for the home cook. There is no shortcut and it’s all from scratch. If it takes 3 days to do something, then it 3 days. Nothing of that “chicken stock in everything” that you find in a lot of cookbook because this is the only way to add flavour to flavourless food. The recipes are given exactly as they are done at the restaurant. The pictures are true to the food. I know this because I tried a lot of the recipe in that book and it turns out WYSIWYG! Most cookbook pictures are cooked. That’s always something I check at the bookstore, I read the recipe, look at the picture and I can usually tell if making the recipe can even remotely give something that look like the picture. If it does not, I put the book back on the shelf.

The technique (French) are well explained and you end up using them all the time in day to day cooking.

Also Keller has philosophy of respect for the food that I find helps me cook and eat better. (Read the “The importance of rabbit”)

You can read the same story in Michael Ruhlman’s book: “The Soul of a Chef”

I’ll go back to Keller later…

The third link is to another blog, “the Waiter Rant”. It is well written, humorous and although it is not about food per se, waiters are half the experience of eating in a restaurant. They make the meal as much as the chef and I think that if they are professional they deserve as much respect. Unfortunately, in North America, this is not a profession as much as in France where “garçon” is a career.

Penne with duck sauce and feta cheese

2005-03-28T22:13:00.000-05:00

Tonight, I used leftover I had in the fridge. A comfit duck thigh, some tomatoes, the ewe feta cheese from Good Friday dinner and some basil to make a very nice pasta sauce that I served with penne rigate.

I cooked the tomatoes with salt and olive oil until they were almost dry; I added the shredded duck meat. When the pasta were ready I put them in the serving bowl, added the tomatoes sauce, mixed everything well, added the basil leaves and the cheese and served on warm plate.

Penne absolutely need warmed plates. The pasta loose it heat too fast otherwise and you end up with congealed pasta at the bottom of the plate.

The sauce for the lamb.

2005-03-27T07:53:00.000-05:00

With an empty tuna can I formed the lentils at the bottom and shitake on top. Put a souris on the plate with the bone resting on top of the mushroom. I sauced the plate and voila.

Finally I decided to just reduce the sauce until it had a nice consistency and then just before plating I whipped butter in it. It lowered the acidity. It was perfect.

By that time it had taken a darker color.

I served a Chateau Lastour. A wine from the Languedoc. Nothing extraordinary but quit nice with the lamb.

Today, no cooking, we are having Easter lunch at our friends N and C.

2005-03-26T19:18:00.000-05:00

At the Kannonkop winerie in South Africa

The "Souris d'agneau"

2005-03-26T19:02:00.000-05:00

The “souris”, literally lamb’s mouse is the lamb’s shank. Probably because it look like a mouse.

I braised them with caramelized onion, salsifi, celery and tomatoes plus a whole Iranian preserved lemon. I went out biking for an hour and when I came back the whole house smelled so good I wanted to eat right away.

I removed them from the liquid now, they under aluminum foil. I passed the liquid through the chinois about 8 times, put it on ice to de-greased it and now it gently reducing on low heat. It has a nice tan color, a bit too acid maybe. To thicken or not to thicken?

I’ll serve the lamb with sauté shitake and lentil Du Puy simply cooked with tarragon an onion.

We will be thre tonight. My wife S our friend C from Brazil and me.

I’ll continue referering to people I meet through their initial. I like that.

Last night dinner

2005-03-26T12:27:00.000-05:00

The fish was excellent. It does hardly qualify as a Lent meal. The combination of cod, potatoes fried in olive oil, spinach and ewe cheese was luscious.

I served 2 bottles sauvignon blanc, one Stoneleigh from Marlborough NZ. It was great, fruity and chewy. The other the Boekenhoutskloof (I know, I know), Porcupine Ridge, RSA was so so.
Everybody was filled.Tonight, it’ll be “Souris d’agneau with preserved lemon”. I plan on making a nice sauce.

The secret to braising meat is the braising liquid. I usually don’t use wine or stock. I start by caramelizing onion, celery, carrot and tomatoes very well. It takes the time it takes. 20 minute maybe but when you add water, all the flavor has been rendered water-soluble and then you end up with a great sauce at the end.

More later

Good Friday Dinner

2005-03-25T12:08:00.000-05:00

So, we will be having friends tonight. Got up 6:30 AM to start on a few things so I don’t have to rush later in the day.

First: Pot de crème for dessert. I infused the milk and cream with all-spices, cinnamon leave (That I picked on a cinnamon tree in the backyard of a friend in Brazil), star anis, and pink pepper.

I mixed the egg yolk with the syrup from orange peel comfit that I made for the duck comfit that we had earlier this week when my friend E came over for dinner.

Then I melted some 80% chocolate with some “piment d’Espelette” which is a dry red pepper from the French Basque country. Midway between paprika and cayenne.

I used the chocolate to do a trellis design on top of the cream.

Then I made, “sarma” which is the Serbian name for stuffed vine leaves. I stuffed them with rice, onion and raisin. This is something I had not made in ages but the gesture came back easily. My father showed me how to do it when I was ten year old.

They are cooking now. When they are ready, I’ll drain them, drizzle some olive oil and put them in the fridge

Later I’ll write about the “bacalao monacal”. A Lent dish from Spain.

Oba!

To begin with

2005-03-24T20:06:00.000-05:00

To begin with...

I'm from Montreal Canada. I work in software sale taking care of Europe, Africa and South America for a small software company. I travel a lot; I have been to Europe 9 times last year, twice to the US and once to South Africa.

But one of my great passions is cooking. So I'm putting up this blog to talk about cooking, about the food I eat and the wine I drink while traveling or at home, about new idea I get and new stuff I manage to do.

Successes and failure like the saddle of rabbit stuffed with figs I made last week (success) and the foie gras in lobster aspic I made at Christmas, not so bad but considering the time I spent on it, it was a failure. (No worry, the foie gras was not wasted.

This will also improve my writing skill (if I manage to be consistent). I'm French speaking but I will write in English in order to reach more people (a bit presumptuous, I know).

We will see.

In the mean time, I need to cook some omelette as my wife and I are going to the pre-natal classes tonight.

At 19:30... This is barbarian but I might as well get use to it.

Afterward we are going to the train station to get a friend from Brazil coming to spend the weekend with us.

Later tonight I'll make a pizza with raw tomatoes and eggs.

Tomorrow, we will have guest so I'll make a Good Friday meal. More on that later