12 September 2010 by pat.

Last weekend I bought peaches to make the peach tart described earlier in the blog. I had two peaches left over, which I left in the paper bag. They continued to ripen, and were flavourfully fragrant and quite soft when I remembered to check on them today!

Trying to figure out what to do with them, I decided I wanted them to be part of a main dish, not a dessert (mostly because I seldom eat desserts). Alas, I couldn’t do a proper Beyond-the-Fringe Frog a la peche, so I had to come up with something else.

I decided to make a curry: curries work well with fruit (think: dried apricot, or raisins, or currants) so I thought that fresh peach would work well.

I went over to Meating on Queen (local organic butcher), and bought three magnificent bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs.

I brought them home, and browned them in a little bit of olive oil in my cast iron skillet. Then removed them to a bowl while I sautéed some chopped onions, and then added two chopped (freestone, peeled) peaches to them. Sautéed for a while longer, then added a few tablespoons of curry powder, mixed well, and added some white wine to make a sauce. Cooked it for a bit, then put the chicken back in the skillet, put a lid on it all, and transferred to the oven at 350F.

After a half hour, I added some roasted cashews to the mix, and put some brown basmati rice on to cook.

45 minutes later, dinner’s ready to eat. Here’s the skillet as it came out of the oven.

Had a piece of chicken with curried peaches and cashews  on some basmati rice. The sauce thickened up very nicely. For additional heat, I had a bottle of Himalaya Gourmet Hot Carrot Pickle in the fridge that I bought at the Cabbagetown festival.

That, and a green salad, made for a very enjoyable dinner.

And I have leftover chicken for other meals.

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10 September 2010 by pat.

Working at home means, frequently, making lunch at home (unless escaping for a spot to meet with others due to cabin fever!).

Today, while rummaging through the fridge, I found a few ingredients that should be eaten up before going bad. They included:

• Oven-roasted side bacon from Witteveen’s at the St. Lawrence Market
• Polenta
• One white mushroom
• Frozen spinach

First into the pan went the bacon, followed shortly by the polenta, and then the chopped mushroom. I microwaved the spinach on the plate.

What was missing? I could have used a clove of garlic and a cipolinni onion in the frying pan, added just after the bacon and before the polenta. Maybe a few (rinsed) salt-cured capers, some chopped sun-dried tomato that had been preserved in oil, to bump up the color quotient, and add a little bit of bite.

I should have noted the name of the mushrooms when I purchased them at Phil’s Place at the St. Lawrence Market. They’re delicious: I’ve bought them there before. Big meaty mushrooms that do well in a frying pan, absorb the flavours of things they’re cooked with, but don’t have a very strong flavour of their own. Here’s a picture of two of them. The plate they’re sitting on is 6″x6″, so you can see that they’re a good size. If I recall, they were $9.99/lb.

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6 September 2010 by pat.

 I documented the process

There was prep work that had to be done before flinging the ingredients together.

First, I toasted the sliced almonds in a frying pan. It didn’t take long to toast them over a medium heat.

I tossed them constantly.

Next, I had to prepare the fresh peaches. First, a pot of boiling water, and I blanched them by boiling them for almost a minute.

Next step was to peel them. They peeled really easily, thanks to the blanching. Peel came off in big strips.

Then came the challenge! These were supposed to be freestone peaches, so they should release easily from their pits. Would they?

I cut around a peach, grasped the two halves, and rotated. Yes! They easily separated, and the pit came out without any fuss. Then I chopped the peaches all up

.

Now it was time to make the pastry dough. I did some prep work by chopping the butter and putting it back in the fridge to cool, and by cooling some water in the freezer so it wouldn’t melt the butter when I added it.

Following the instructions on the pate brisée page, I pulsed the dry ingredients together, then added the butter.

A few more pulses, and then a few tablespoons of water, followed by a few more pulses, gives the following result.Next, pat it together into a ball on a floured surface. Handle as little as possible.Mix all the filling ingredients together.Roll out the dough, put the ingredients in the middle, and pull the edges of the dough up over the ingredients.Bake in the oven at 350F for 45 minutes to an hour. I regret to say that mine hadn’t browned after an hour, so I quickly put it under the broiler, but didn’t remove it fast enough: hence, it’s a little… umm… dark on top.

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4 September 2010 by pat.

It’s time to test out my hypothesis that the apple & blue cheese tart recipe can be made, with appropriate substitutions, with almost any fruit.

Today I went to the St. Lawrence Market, and found these beauties at the farmers’ market.

SO:I’m substituting:

• peaches for apples
• fresh goat sheep cheese for gorgonzola
• lemon thyme for thyme
• toasted sliced almonds for walnuts

I’ll be making it tomorrow. The woman who sold me the peaches told me to keep them in a paper bag in a warm place until tomorrow to ripen them up a bit more for the tart.

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29 August 2010 by pat.

Steve stopped by briefly this afternoon on his way over to the spit for a bike ride.

While here, we talked about this and that, jobs, software, travel, food…

And while talking about food, we started talking about eggplant. What to do with eggplant? Other than the standards (baba ganouj, grilled eggplant, moussaka) what do you do with it? I’ve used it in spaghetti sauce (it pretty much disappears: thickens the sauce a bit, but doesn’t hold together).

While continuing to catch up on my RSS feed this afternoon, I ran across a description of eggplant terrine and the photos look delicious. Vegetarian gourmet terrine, recipe in Marc Vetri’s book. I found the recipe on Google Books.

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31 May 2010 by pat.

OK, before you get upset at my lousy diet, I had a great big green salad with tomatoes and cucumbers and asparagus, ‘kay?

But tonight was meant for leftovers! Actually, I deliberately made leftover potatoes this morning: I peeled and cut up two potatoes and cooked them so I could use them for dinner. I only used one potato: the other one will be used later in the week.

Friday night I did a slooooooow braise of a Boston Butt pork roast. I put in a Dutch oven:

• 5lb pork roast salted and peppered, then browned on all sides
• 8 cloves garlic, smashed
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 stalks of celery, cut into 2″ lengths(those vegetable ingredients I sautéed in the pot after I removed the browned roast)

Then I added:

• 1 can of Guinness beer
• 2 peeled and chopped carrots
• 2 peeled and chopped parsnips
• 2 bay leaves
• and about 750ml of water, until the roast was almost submerged.

Bring to a boil on the stove, transfer to slow oven for 5 hours. So I fork-separated and had some pulled pork off the roast tonight together with the potatoes, and that yummy cheese.

First the potatoes in the cast-iron frying pan with a drizzle of olive oil and a knob of butter. Eventually add the pork (it just needs to warm up). Shortly after, some cheese. Don’t try to grate the cheese like I did: just crumble it in your fingers.

Yummy one-pan meal. Hash browns and pulled pork with apple-cinnamon cheese.

That’s a cheese with potential. I can see doing a bunch of things with it. Like a grilled cheese sandwich!

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25 April 2010 by pat.

But forgot to blog about it!

It ended up taking the whole evening to make the stock, so I made the soup the following evening.

I had two bunches of wild leeks, and I cut them apart at the bottom of the leaf.

Sautéed the bulbs and stems along with a couple of onions, and then added the stock from the previous night together with some potatoes, cut into 6 to 8 pieces each, depending on the size of the potato. There were probably about 3 pounds of potatoes. Also added some black pepper. Would have added some nutmeg, but I seemed to have used it all up. Must remember to buy some more.

Simmered until the potatoes were cooked, and then roughly chopped and added the leek leaves to the mix, and cooked for about 5 more minutes.

Removed from heat, waited for it to cool a bit, and then used my stick blender to turn it into a homogenous soup.

It’s good hot, it’s good cold. I like it cold with a little drizzle of white truffle olive oil!

I’ve frozen it in two sizes: hefty meal and soup appetizer.

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20 April 2010 by pat.

I’m starting it! I make some chicken stock before getting into the potatoes and wild leeks.

On the stove I have a big pot with

• 3 onions, quartered;
• 3 stalks of celery, chunked;
• 6 (very small) cloves of garlic, smashed;
• 1 kg of chicken backs from Rowe Farms (was only able to get those today: their stall at the north St. Lawrence Market was out of them on Saturday).
• 2 big pinches of kosher salt;
• A flat palm’s worth of basil
• Same of savoury.

So after that simmers for a few hours I’ll have chicken stock.

Then I’ll start making the soup.

No, it’s not for dinner tonight

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6 April 2010 by pat.

Tonight’s dinner was scallops and pine nuts on sautéed arugula with garlic.It was good.

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5 April 2010 by pat.

Had lots of leftovers in the fridge, so time to put them all together!

I had

• Diced turkey thigh (cooked)
• Diced maple smoked bacon (cooked)
• Confit of sliced mushrooms
• Cherry tomatoes
• Baby arugula
• Ripe avocado
• and some Bolthouse Yogurt & Chunky Blue Cheese dressing.

So that was dinner.

If I were to do it again, I’d probably add some pine nuts so something would crunch.

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2 April 2010 by pat.

My friend Sandy has done a mash-up of bread recipes.

She came up with the following. Now, the really cool thing about this is you don’t need to make the loaves at once: make a loaf, put the rest of the dough back in the fridge until you want to make the next loaf, then just pinch off a hunk and make fresh bread without going through the work of doing it all from scratch each time.

Makes 4 1-lb loaves.

• 3 cups lukewarm water (about 100F)
• 1-1/2 tbsp granulated yeast
• 1-1-/2 tbsp kosher or other coarse salt
• 6-1/2 cups unsifted, unbleached, all-purpose white flour
• cornmeal for dusting

To prepare dough:

1. Add yeast and salt to water in a 5-quart bowl or lidded plastic food container. Don’t worry about getting it all to dissolve.
2. Mix in all of the flour at once with a wooden spoon or in a large food processor/mixer with a dough attachment until the mixture is uniform and all flour is incorporated. If mixing by hand and it is difficult to mix all the flour in, wet hands and work by hand. Don’t knead the dough. The dough will be wet and loose enough to take the shape of the container.
3. Cover (not airtight) and allow to rise at room temperature until it flattens on top or begins to collapse, approximately 2 hours. The dough can be used for baking at this point, although it will be easier to work with after refrigeration.
4. Refrigerate for up to 2 weeks, cutting off and baking portions as described below.

Dough can be frozen in 1-lb portions; defrost overnight in the refrigerator prior to baking.Baking:

1. Dust a piece of waxed paper or parchment paper with cornmeal.
2. Sprinkle surface of refrigerated dough with flour, then pull up and cut off a 1-lb piece (about the size of a grapefruit) using a serrated knife. Sprinkle liberally with flour to keep it from sticking to your hands and to work into the dough. Gently stretch the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all sides to form a ball with a smooth top, and create the gluten cloak for rising. Most of the flour will fall off. Dust the top with more cornmeal, since this will become the bottom of the loaf.
3. Rest the loaf on the paper and let rise, uncovered, for about 40 minutes.
4. Preheat the oven to 450F for at least 20 minutes with a covered pot or Pyrex dish in the oven.
5. When the oven and dish are at heat, put your hand under the paper, lift the loaf, drop it upside down into the pot (removing the paper), and cover the pot.
6. Cover and bake for 30 minutes.
7. Uncover and bake for an additional 15-30 minutes until crust is brown.
8. Lift out and cool on a wire rack.

Variations:

Feel free to add herbs, cheese, or substitute different types of flour: you can use this recipe as a base to make all kinds of breads.

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18 March 2010 by pat.

Bought an organic chicken, and put it breast side up in a roasting pan, decorated with anchovies and coarsely ground black pepper. I gave it an initial spritz of olive oil, and after that, just basted it with juices every fifteen minutes. It was almost 4 pounds: that’s 20 mins/pound plus 20 mins., was 1 hour 40 minutes. It was awesome. I had problems stopping myself from eating.

Something I did with some of the rendered chicken fat: I had a bunch of small button mushrooms (around 15) that had been in a paper bag in the fridge for a couple of weeks. I truly advocate using paper bags for mushrooms: if you don’t eat them immediately, they dry — they don’t turn slimy, they don’t get mouldy. There’s a use for mushrooms that are a bit dry — they’re really great when you cook them! There is less moisture that has to be removed by the cooking process. So tonight I cleaned the ’shrooms, removed the bottoms of the stems, and cut the little ones in half and the larger ones in quarters.  Took a couple of basters worth of liquids from the cooking chicken and put them in a small cast iron pan, brought it up to temperature, then added the mushrooms for 6 minutes. Oh gawd, they were good. Finished them with a little cream, and served on a toasted English muffin.

Saved the rest of the chicken drippings in a container in the fridge so I can repeat the experience, but will try more and different ’shrooms next time: gotta go to the St. Lawrence Mkt and check out what they’ve got, and try cooking them up.

I’m fancying a mushroom paté made of meaty mushrooms with some butter and well cooked eggplant. I may give it a try in the near future!

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9 March 2010 by pat.

I started making paté while I was a university student, too broke to afford to buy some. It’s definitely an inexpensive dish to make. I used to use a blender; now I use a food processor.

I’ve been through a number of variations through the years. I started with chicken livers, ground pork, and butter. Over time, I ditched the ground pork, have sometimes substituted duck fat for butter, and have added other ingredients. Once I added curry. That worked. Once I tried to make one that tasted garlicky. Wasn’t able to succeed, but knew I’d never be able to succeed when I put a half-head of garlic in, couldn’t taste it, but started burping garlic a couple of hours later. Not something I’d recommend!

It slowly evolved so that, at its simplest, it’s 1 pound of chicken livers to 2/3 pound of butter and 1 medium onion, season to taste.

Here are the recipes in their current incarnation. The idea to add apples came from a Jamie Kennedy paté I had a number of years ago at his Wine Bar. I added Calvados after I saw a recipe using it on the web somewhere. The recipe with duck fat stems from me corrupting a Jacques Pepin recipe.

Paté #1

This is the basic recipe — you can add spices and herbs to it to do what you want. I’ve used basil, Italian herbs, green peppercorns, and even did it once with curry powder. 

• 1/2 lb butter
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• about 1/2 cup chopped mushrooms
• 2 apples peeled, cored, diced
• 2 oz calvados
• 1 lb chicken livers

Making paté takes time. Take the time to do it right: if you try to rush things, you’ll have too much moisture in the paté, and it will be too soft. In a small frying pan, melt a couple of tablespoons of butter and add the apples. Cook them slowly until most of the moisture is gone from them and they have carmelized on the outside. This will take about a half-hour or so.

While that’s happening, in a 10″ frying pan (cast iron’s really good for this) melt a couple of tablespoons of butter and add the mushrooms. Cook them down until they’ve released all their water and become dark and meaty. Add the onion and sweat it. Add the calvados, and cook the liquid down until it’s almost all gone. Add the rest of the butter, and when the water in it has boiled away, add the chicken livers. Add the apples. Cook until the livers are pink inside, and remove from heat. When cooled, process in a food processor until smooth. Spoon the mixture into a plastic-lined loaf pan, cover with plastic laying directly on the paté (otherwise it oxidizes and turns gray). Refrigerate.

Paté #2

Stolen idea from Jacques Pepin, but I’m using chicken liver instead of duck (and most cleaned ducks these days don’t seem to come with the livers in them!)

• 1/2 lb duck fat
• 2 shallots, finely chopped
• 3/4 lb chicken livers
• salt and pepper to taste

Heat the duck fat, and give it 15-20 minutes over a medium-low heat, until it starts to get a little bit of color to it. Add the shallots, and give them a minute. Then (slowly! you don’t want hot fat splashing) add the chicken livers. Cook until pink inside, then remove from heat. When cool, process in a food processor, and press through a sieve. Spoon into a plastic-lined loaf pan, or small jars if giving as a gift, or a crock.

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8 March 2010 by pat.

I had the opportunity to make a post roast dinner for some friends recently.I went to the grocery store, and was surprised that all they had in the meat section was tiny little 0.5Kg pot roasts. Not enough for a family of four with two sons in their late teens!

So I asked the girl at the deli counter if she controlled the meat counter as well, to which she replied that no, there was someone else, and she’d get him.

A young man came out, we spoke, he had no brisket, but would see what he did have. He came back with a big blade roast, and said it was the smallest of what he had out back. It’s not the tenderest cut, but it’s got big flavour, and makes for a good pot roast if treated well so it doesn’t seize up.

I bought it.

I brought it home.

I rinsed it off, applied “steak spice” and salt and pepper and let it air-dry and come up to temperature — about two hours.

With my roast nice and dry, I put the dutch oven on the stove, just below medium, and put some oil in the bottom of it. When it was shimmering, I added the pot roast, and gave it about 5 minutes a side (if you pretend it’s a cube with six sides, it works better than you might think).

Fully seared, I then removed the roast from the pot, and deglazed with about a half of a carton of organic vegetable stock, and to that I added:

• about 2 tablespoons of tomato paste,
• 2 bay leaves,
• 1 chopped onion,
• 2 chopped scallions,
• 4 smashed garlic cloves,
• about a half-litre of water,

and brought to a simmer.

Then I put the roast back in the pot, and it was pretty much submerged: only a couple of centimeters of it was in air. Lid on the pot, and then into a really slow oven: 225F for one hour per pound. This roast was about 7 pounds, so it went in overnight, from midnight to 7am.

Took it out, put the meat thermometer in, and it was well done.

Wrapped foil around it, and reduced the liquid in the pot to about half, then puréed it with a stick blender, thickened it with about 2 tbsp of flour, and added some parsley, chives, and pepper to the gravy.

While I was goofing around with the gravy, I put into a roasting pan some onions, potatoes, squash, and carrots, and drizzled and tossed them all with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and roasted them for a couple of hours at 350F.

Assembled everything into a roasting pan for delivery and easy reheating (well, the gravy’s in a plastic container) and covered with foil.

Oh. The pot roast weighed 3.14kg. Does that mean I can call it a “pot pi”?

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20 February 2010 by pat.

Last Friday I bought a fair amount of meat from Witteveen’s in the St. Lawrence Market. I still had the three lamb loin chops in the refrigerator tonight, so I had to use them for dinner.

Tonight’s dinner was simple: lamb chops grilled on a cast iron grill pan, with some steak spice rubbed into them, and kale and asparagus.

For the meat, I brought it up to room temperature, seasoned it, and then tossed it onto a cast iron grill pan that I had lightly oiled and brought up to about a 4 (out of 10) in temperature. The oil was smoking, I put the exhaust fans on, and cooked the chops for 10 minutes a side — which is about double what I give them in a flat cast iron pan. The raised grill lines impart a lovely pattern on the meat, but it does mean that most of the meat is not in contact with the heat source, so it takes about twice as long to cook.

For the veggies, I cleaned and prepped, and only cooked them while the chops were resting. Kale, torn to bits and microwaved for 2 minutes; asparagus microwaved for 45 seconds. (I wish I could remember where I bought the asparagus because it’s the grittiest asparagus I’ve had in at least 10 years. I spent 5 minutes washing 5 measly stalks, and it was still gritty.)

I had some heliodoro rosemary cheese from Alex Farms in the fridge that I knew would pair well with the lamb and would be very tasty on the greens. It had been there a while, and had gotten quite hard. The vegetable peeler, my first choice of tool, wasn’t up to the task. Absolutely no go. I might as well have tried to peel the bricks on my house. Forget about picturesque white curls sitting on the greens!

Next, I tried ye olde box grater. Hah. Even more useless than the vegetable peeler. The cheese just rode down the outside of the grater like it was on ball bearings. Pressure on the cheese caused it to break into some pieces, but no grating happened.

Then, Lee Valley to the rescue. Pulled out the microplane, which used to be sold for woodworking purposes, until the Lee family discovered that chefs were using them. Man, does that thing bite into things! I can imagine what it would do with wood, because it certainly did the job with my (almost) petrified heliodoro. It turned it into lovely light little gratings, as you can see.

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