Do NOT Make Pizza . . .

. . . when you do not have your full attention on the job.

Of the possible food groups I can think of, pizza has to be one of the most complicated. There are simply so many things that can go wrong at any time.

Tonight I did not have my FULL attention on what I was doing. My son was buzzing around, wanting to put ingredients on it. At one point, Barry stopped by and we had a spirited conversation about what was going on in the Middle East.

So naturally I fucked up. All the prep was there, but I was so distracted that I lost track. I became sloppy. DO NOT TRY TO MAKE PIZZA if you are going to be sloppy.

There is only you. You are the only person who is going to make the pie, make sure the oil is on the crust, cornmeal is on the peel . . . if you only forget one step, you're FUCKED. No one is going to help you. You're "Mr. Pizza", everyone has heard how "Nicholas makes the best pizza in town!!!" so you have a name.

So I got distracted. We were entertaining Barry and I just got fatigued; all the prep was done but I was getting too tired to go through with it, as he wasn't even going to eat it. I preferred sitting around and drinking wine.

I didn't put enough corn meal on the peel. The pizza stuck to the fucking stone. I was too tired to do all four pizzas. Thank god Brigitte rescued me and patted me and cleaned up the mess. When I yelled at her about where my long-handled tongs were and the pizza burned while we tried to find them, she kept her cool. I didn't.

So, Pizzas: 4, Nick: 2.

Update at 11.

Tomorrow

I love this place called Parthenon, just off Cote des Neiges, on Van Horne, I think.

I love to cook, but there are just simply things that you can’t do at home. I wander the aisles at Tzanet and gaze at the industrial ovens and grills and believe it or not, I scheme privately to myself, wishing there were some way to get one into my house (Christ, with my kitchen about as big as a Windjammer Cruiseline’s, you KNOW the best I’m going to be able to put out is a fairly tasty grilled hot dog).

And Parthenon simply makes the best grilled shrimp . . . as I type the words the smoky piquancy, the lemon aftertaste, the sheer knowledge that it should be accorded its own Food Group in the Pyramid . . . well, it makes me Lust.

And when I lust, it usually means, can I make it at home, myself?

So naturally, I tried. First off, I recognized what I don’t have, namely, a wood-burning oven, or charcoal, or whatever. No grill. So how to get that smoky taste, that indefinable shrimpicity?

I’ve become a tiny expert in these things because I’m so doomed in this pathetic apartment kitchen . . . I HAVE to find workarounds for this stuff. I know it’s not going to taste identical but I have to try my damndest to make it as close as possible because I simply can’t afford to go to Parthenon every time I need their shrimp.

So here is what I did, and I have to admit, (unseen hands patting back) it turned out okay. In other words, I’ll do it again.

First off, I had to duplicate the sleekness. There were Things on the shrimp which I can only interpret as batter and spices. Plus, the shrimp have to be gigantic. Like, mega-shrimp. (You might want to substitute small lobsters, but do shell and devein them nicely).

So here is what you do:

Ingredients

10 -12 very large shrimp, 12-14/lb.
Two eggs, lightly whipped
1/4 cup shallots, minced
1/4 cup garlic, minced
1/4 cup corn starch
1/4 cup flour
Salt and cracked black pepper (in the flour and corn starch)

Method

Shell and/or devein the shrimp. Brine them for an hour or so. Rinse and drain thoroughly. Pat dry. Dredge each shrimp through the eggs, then through the flour/corn starch mixture. Skewer the shrimp on a wooden skewer so it doesn’t curl while cooking. Proceed with all the shrimp. Now sprinkle the shallot/garlic mixture on the shrimp and turn to encrust thoroughly. Don't worry, those bastards had a marriage agreement with the eggs so they'll stick, trust me.

Heat a grill pan on medium for six minutes. Place the skewered shrimp on the grill pan, watch carefully, turning every three minutes for about nine minutes, or until all sides of the shrimp are no longer translucent.

Drizzle with lemon juice. Serve on Greek rice with tsaziki and toasted pita (sheesh, you want me to give away those recipes as well? Tomorrow. As they say in Athens, tomorrow).

Not Paté Chinois

Comfort food . . . I’d like to shoot the progenitor of that term. Some savvy marketer, no doubt. But what it implies is that French Fries, for example, are uncomfort, but that macaroni and cheese is comfort. What do they mean? Foods that Mother made us? My mother was a lousy cook. There was nothing comforting in her food, love her though I do.

Could they have meant “simple”? As in, not foie gras or feuiletté de ris de veau au sapins crû? Doh. We get it. Anyway, I hate that term, so I won’t tell you this recipe is comfort food. It’s just goddamn food.

But Brigitte commented that it was Paté Chinois (before I made it). It is most definitely not that Québecois abomination, I can assure you. French Canadian food is usually some bizarre hybrid of fur trappers’ roadkill and some odd food idea from Ancient France, but it sure don’t have a lot to recommend it. Poutine? Yecchh.

So, this is Shepherd’s Pie, people, a dish with a very old provenance, and it sure doesn’t come from China. Plus, I made sure I put my goddamn stamp on it — after all, I’ve made it about a thousand times and I just keep improving it.

Ingredients
Sauce

1 1/2 lbs. stewing beef, ground in grinder or by the butcher
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
30-40 small pearl onions, peeled
5 large shallots, thinly sliced
4 tablespoons worcestershire sauce
5 large cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup chopped oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes
1/2 cup dry white wine
2 tablespoons crème fraîche
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup demiglace sauce or substitute Knorr demiglace sauce powder
1 can corn niblets
Parsley
Salt and pepper to taste

Potatoes
3 large russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 2-inch cubes
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1/2 cup of shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup of grated parmigiano-reggiano
1/2 cup of crème fraîche or sour cream
2 tablespoons compound herb butter or butter/parsley/thyme/rosemary mix
Salt and pepper to taste

Method

Sauté pearl onions in some olive oil on medium until browned and slightly soft, about 10 minutes. Remove from pan and set aside; sauté shallots until translucent, about 6 minutes. Add garlic and sauté a further two minutes. Remove shallot-garlic mixture and place with pearl onions.

Grind beef, or if already ground, stir in the garlic, worcestershire sauce and sun-dried tomatoes, combining thoroughly. Heat more olive oil in the pan and sauté the ground beef mixture until it begins to lose its pinkness. Add the wine, crème fraîche and chicken broth and stir well. Cook on medium heat until the liquids have reduced by half. Add the demiglace or about 4 tablespoons demiglace powder and cook until slightly thickened, about ten minutes, stirring constantly. Add shallot/onion mixture and combine well. Add corn niblets and about 1/4 cup corn juice from the can (for the sweetness). Add chopped fresh parsley and salt and pepper. Taste often during the cooking; a bland and/or salty filling will not make a good pie.

Place filling in a large rectangular Pyrex baking dish. Pat down into an even layer. Place in the refrigerator or freezer to cool down to a cool/cold temperature.

Put the cut potatoes into a large pan of slightly salted water. Bring to a boil. Set timer for about 20 minutes. At the end of the 20 minutes test the doneness of the potatoes with a fork. They should be completely soft with no resistance.

Drain in a colander. In a large metal bowl, combine the cheeses, garlic, crème fraîche and herb butter. Using a potato ricer, rice the potatoes into the bowl. Combine thoroughly, adding salt as necessary. Add pepper.

When the sauce is completely cold, smear the mashed potatoes on top very carefully with a fork so that they form an even layer. Use the tines of the fork to make attractive patterns. Preheat the oven to 450 and place the pie in the oven on the middle rack. Watch it carefully; it should start browning within 20 minutes. If it starts browning too quickly, reduce the heat to 350. If it’s not browning quickly enough, increase heat to 500, but watch carefully. It only takes 60 seconds to burn.

After about 30 minutes, remove from oven and carve into rectangles. Serve with a good Girondin from Bordeaux.

Thoughts on No Longer Being a Vegetarian

I was a vegetarian for, I think, at least six months this year. Not only a vegetarian, but I didn't eat any wheat as well. No pasta. No bread!

It was completely by choice, but how did I feel then and how do I feel now? Do I feel like a prick because I eat hot dogs, the messier the better? Do I feel less healthy? Well, yes and no.

I recently had a steak sandwich and I was so fucked up the next day that I realise that it's a stomach-learned skill to eat stuff like steak. But I love steak! I had a steak blog, ferchrissakes!

But, mark my words, I also had a vegetable blog.

You can gaze at these two extremes of the pendulum and you can ponder. How has it affected my eating habits? After all, I'm living proof of both experiments. I have to admit that I'm still parsing the data.

One thing I can say is that for me, giving up meat and wheat was not hard at all. It was very interesting. I discovered many things that I had ignored in my omnivore days, namely lots of rice dishes, but also rice noodles, quinoa and cooked fish, which I used to hate (love sushi, hate cooked fish, go figure).

Did I miss stuff like hamburgers, pizza, pasta, bread, steak and hot dogs? Sure. But it was not insurmountable at all. I think one thing that was on my side was that I didn't have any issues with those foods. I wasn't out to make any statements or go on any diets. I just simply gave them up to just give them up. No agenda at all.

So it was just as easy to slide right back into omnivore-mode. Yes, now I crave hot dogs at 4 a.m. or am jonesing to make some fresh-pasta XtravaGanZa but it wouldn't bother me if it all went away tomorrow and the vegetable blog came alive again. Or the steak blog, for that matter!

Wouldn't bother me at all.

Anyone for a shrimp blog?

My $450 Recipe

When I was in France earlier this year, I had it in my mind that I would write a cookbook. I wasn’t exactly sure what kind of a cookbook I would write, but I had in mind something that reflected how I liked to cook; namely, all day, with sometimes quite complicated recipes and hard-to-find ingredients.

I’m the type of cook who will either abandon a recipe right in the middle of cooking it because I’ve forgotten a crucial ingredient, say, galangal, or I’ll just march right out there in blowing snow to go get it. Aside from pastry and dessert making, I love to go to the ends of the earth to find ingredients. I hate substituting “in a pinch.”

So my modus operandi was usually to cook on a Saturday, doing the shopping that morning and then cooking all the rest of the afternoon, watching cooking shows while I cooked and leisurely sipping Cuivrée, and that’s what I wanted this book to reflect. It was to be called The Saturday Cook.

To this end, for a month in France, I was busy assembling recipes from everywhere; the Internet, my own cookbooks, and then I went out and bought cookbooks in French at the bookstore in Bordeaux and started picking recipes that I liked and translated them into my MacBook laptop. I made a few, too, and sometimes the results were spectacular. I even went as far as to design the first few pages with my own food photography; I was well on the way.

Alas, when I got back to Montreal, one day I was playing the guitar along to some jam tracks on my laptop and it started stuttering, so I did what I normally do to balky machinery: I hit it. The rest can be guessed.

I trashed the hard drive. All was lost. I replaced the hard drive but the guy who replaced it said there was no way he could get any data off the old one. All that effort, all those translations, that whole month: gone. But I wasn’t about to give up. I took the hard drive to a data-recovery service in Montreal operated by a really nice Russian guy. But data recovery is not cheap. It took him a month and in the end he was only able to rescue 27 text files. It cost me $450, and there was only one recipe that was recovered that I either didn’t already have duplicated somewhere else or that I could track some version down of on the Internet.

Here’s the list of some of the recipes (that I had miraculously emailed to someone before the hard drive crashed) that I intended for my book, and at the end there’s the recipe that I made in France that was so spectacular that I wrote it down. It’s the only one that survived . . . a $450 recipe.

Asian Tomato and Mushroom Chicken (à la Marengo)
Asian Vegetable-stuffed Beef Rollups in Teriyaki Sauce
Balinese fried chicken
Beef Rendang
Bucatini with Prosciutto and Feta
Burmese beef and potato curry
Burmese chicken curry
Chicken Jalfrezi
Chile dogs with homemade chili sauce on Knackwurst or Frankfurters
Chile-garlic dip
Cucumber-Garlic Raita
Cucumber-Shallot-Chile Salad
Farfalle with roasted cherry tomatoes, goat cheese and kalamata olives
Fresh homemade pizza å la Luzzo’s in New York
Ginger Beef
Hmong curry
L'Express Raviolis Maison (fresh raviolis in a hunter’s mushroom sauce)
Late-night Leftover Pasta with prosciutto and parmesan
Linguine with Prosciutto, Gorgonzola and Basil
Magret de canard with honey dijonnaise
Nachos with four cheeses, pancetta, garlic, olives and jalapenos
Thai Green Chicken Curry
Pacific Rim Kobe Steak Salad with Sesame-Ginger Dressing
Penne with Chicken, Feta and Dill
Pita Rapture with chicken or beef, peppers, onions, lettuce and cilantro with a Caesar dressing
Quesadillas with three cheeses, bacon, jalapenos and cilantro
Seekh Kebab (ground beef on skewers)
Sri Lankan Cucumber salad
Sri Lankan Mulligatawny
Sri Lankan pork curry
Szechuan-style Chile Shrimp
Tandoori-Style Chicken Burgers with Cumin Yogurt Sauce
Thai Beef “Mussaman “ curry
Thai Beef and Basil Flat Rice Noodles
Thai Spicy-sweet Roast Chicken
Tomato-Onion-Chile Salad
Yang Chow Basmati Fried Rice

And the $450 recipe:

Asian Tomato and Mushroom Chicken

Ingredients:

6 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, halved lengthwise
1 medium onion, cut in thin crescents
4 medium very ripe tomatoes
8-10 shiitake or matsutake mushrooms, thickly sliced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup cilantro, finely chopped
1 1/2 tablespoons Sambal Oelek
3 tablespoons Mirin
1 cup chicken broth
5 tablespoons sesame oil
3 tablespoons peanut oil

Method:

Brine chicken in 4 cups warm water with 4 tablespoons salt and 3 tablespoons sugar for 15 minutes. Remove from brine and pat dry.

Heat 3 tablespoons sesame oil and 1 tablespoons peanut in large nonstick frying pan on medium-high. Brown the chicken one one side in hot oil: about 7 minutes. Turn and brown other side for an additional 4 minutes. Remove from pan and set aside.

Add 1 tablespoons sesame oil and 1 tablespoon peanut oil and sauté mushrooms until water has completely evaporated and mushrooms have reduced by half and are browned on both sides.

Remove from pan and set aside. In remaining oil, fry onions until limp, about three minutes. Add garlic, sauté two minutes. Add tomatoes. Sauté about 5 minutes; add back mushrooms. Sauté another 5 minutes, then add chicken, Sambal Oelek, mirin and chicken broth. Stir to combine. Simmer covered, for 10 minutes. Add cilantro and simmer for 5 minutes.

Serve over basmati rice.

Son of Pizza Meetsa Mozza

Yesterday it was experiment time. Now I know enough about pizza-making to not panic when things go wrong. (Famous last words).

One thing I've learned about an extensive pizza session is to prepare the day before. Do all the prep of the meats and vegetables and cheese. That means, cook the Italian sausage, shred the prosciutto, slice the olives, onions, peppers, mushrooms, garlic or whatever it is you're using, make the tomato sauce you'll be using, and stash it all in the refrigerator. Then actually assembling and making the pizzas should be fairly brief.

So the next day all you have to do is preheat the oven (I suggest for at least an hour at 550 degrees, with your pizza stone in), bring the dough to room temperature, bring out the mozza di bufala and let it drain, assemble your dough board, corn meal, olive oil and brush (if you use olive oil) and you're set.

I had a to-and-from with Blork as I was doing the prep and I asked if he thought my following theory might hold water: I figured that if you kept all the ingredients as cold as possible, they wouldn't cook as quickly and the crust would have more time to develop a char and a crispy underside.

He figured that it would probably delay the cooking for less than a minute, and maybe possibly cool the stone down as well. Good reasoning!

Then, I wondered if the layering made a difference. He pretty much described his layering the same way I do it; stuff like green peppers, slivered onions, mushrooms (if any are being used) on the bottom, followed by possibly some cheese, then the meats/olives and then the top layer of cheese.

I agreed with him, but since I was making four pizzas I decided to experiment.

One thing I found out right away is that the first pizza will be the best. The stone will be ultra-hot and the oven won't have been opened for an hour and a half.

Then it goes downhill with all the opening of the oven and the repeated cooling of the stone, but it's unavoidable, unless you have all four pizzas dressed and sitting on their peels and you just shove them in one after the other. Which can't be done in my kitchen.

What I also found is that the cheese on the bottom is a very bad idea. I did two identically topped goat-cheese pizzas but just reversed the layering, and the one with the toppings on the top burned badly. The one with the cheese on top was pretty damn good.

I found that I could get a pizza done in 7-8 minutes, which is pretty good, considering some home recipes call for 15-20 minutes on 425! Ouch, don't be giving me a slice of that.

So, the pizza saga goes on. I will not rest until the dough does! (Hey, I'm getting pretty good at spinning! They're actually looking non-rhomboid!)

Pizza Update #3

I decided to try putting the pizza stone on the bottom rack of the oven this time before preheating it, as with my previous methods since watching the action at Luzzo's in New York involved putting the stone as close to the broiler as possible. The reason was that I was not getting a good char on the bottom, and I theorised that if the stone were nearer the bottom element I could cook the pizza on broil (550F) and the top wouldn't get incinerated before the bottom had a chance to get done.

Blork, my partner in pizza crimes, agreed with me, so that's the way I did it. Results, however, were disappointing.

The pizzas turned out okay but there was no appreciably upped char on the bottom of the pizzas even with an extended cooking time. The ones nearest the broiler had been done in seven minutes and the ones on the bottom took at least ten. The char on both kinds was not very developed, but the ones done near the broiler had their toppings very well cooked, as you can imagine.

Blork stresses that getting a good char in a domestic oven is probably not going to be possible, and I agree with him. But I'll keep working on it . . .

Another thing I noticed with this batch is that making three pizzas out of the boule de pâte from the pizza place at Atwater is a mistake; I should divide it into four pizzas instead of three because the ones I tried to make were too huge and became square. My pizzas have to be hip.

Pictured is a goat cheese pizza with Hungarian peppers, garlic, olives, Toscano ham and Marechal de lait cru cheese with cherry tomatoes. Damned good if I may say so myself.

Saffron Chicken II

Tonight I made my fantasized recipe . . . and it worked amazingly well! I tried to follow the score as faithfully as possible and didn't taste it until the very end. There were only a couple of points where I diverged from the method; namely, I upped the amount of spices, I sautéed the shallots separately from the onion as the pan seemed to be quite crowded with the shallots alone, and I added some cornstarch towards the end to thicken up the sauce. But other than that, it was a fantastic success, and extremely easy to make.

Next time I will put some bamboo shoots in it, perhaps, or some red pepper, or substitute shrimp for the chicken. However, all in all, it's a brilliant base recipe that proves I right the thongs that make the hole whirled thing. Or something like that.


Saffron Chicken
4 tablespoons ghee or peanut oil
8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs
6 large shallots, finely diced
4 large cloves garlic, minced
1 medium onion, cut in 1/2 inch squares
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1 tablespoon chile powder
3/4 cup coconut milk
1 cup chicken broth
3/4 tsp. salt
1 teaspoon palm sugar
1 teaspoon tamarind paste
1 tablespoon saffron threads
Juice of half a lime
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Method
Brine chicken in salt and sugar (about 1/4 C each per litre of water) for about 2 hours in the refrigerator. In a non-stick saucepan, sauté the shallots in 1 tablespoon ghee (clarified butter) or peanut oil on medium heat for about 10 minutes or until translucent. Remove from pan and sauté onions in another tablespoon of ghee for 8 minutes. Add garlic and sauté another two minutes. Remove from pan and set aside.

Add 2 more tablespoons ghee. Heat until sizzling, then add the chicken, cumin, coriander and chile powder. Mix well and sauté until browned on all sides, stirring frequently, about 8-10 minutes. Add back onion mixture, then coconut milk and chicken broth. Bring to a boil then reduce to medium low and simmer, uncovered, 10 minutes, stirring frequently.

When sauce has thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon (if at this stage it is not thick enough, add 1 tablespoon cornstarch mixed in water), add the palm sugar, tamarind paste and saffron. Stir well to combine. Simmer another ten minutes, covered, stirring occasionally. Add lime juice and 1/4 cup cilantro. Stir well to combine. Serve on steamed basmati rice with cilantro garnish.

New Recipe?

I write songs. But songs don't have recipes. They just exist. There are no measurements. You either know how to do it or you don't. The songs are either good or they aren't. It all depends on how many songs you've written.

So it suddenly possessed me to write a recipe. I've never made this recipe, and I don't know how it's going to taste. Probably someone out there has made something similar, but I deliberately didn't do any research. Something just came out of nowhere and said: "Saffron Chicken."

I had to think: what style? Could be Italian. French. Vietnamese. Indian. I settled upon that all-encompassing category: Asian. But as I typed it up, I imagined what it would taste like. And I realised that I don't have to imagine. I already know what it's going to taste like. I don't know the method, but I'll improvise and find it, just like I improvise a solo on top of a song (done; see below -- Ed 11/03).

What do you think it's going to taste like? How do you think it should be made? I'll make it exactly according to the specifications and not taste it once until it's time to eat, just to see how faithful my culinary instincts are . . .

Saffron Chicken

4 tablespoons ghee or peanut oil
8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs
6 large shallots, finely diced
4 large cloves garlic, minced
1 medium onion, cut in 1/2 inch squares
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. ground coriander
1 tsp. chile powder
3/4 cup coconut milk
1 cup chicken broth
3/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. palm sugar
1 tsp. tamarind paste
1 tbsp. saffron threads
Juice of half a lime
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Method:

Brine chicken in salt and sugar (about 1/4 C each per litre of water) for about 2 hours in the refrigerator. In a non-stick saucepan, sauté the shallots and onion in 1 tablespoon ghee (clarified butter) or peanut oil on medium heat for about 8 minutes or until translucent. Add garlic and sauté another two minutes. Remove from pan and set aside.

Add 2 more tablespoons ghee. Heat until sizzling, then add the chicken, cumin, coriander and chile powder. Mix well and sauté until browned on all sides, stirring frequently, about 8-10 minutes. Add back onion mixture, then coconut milk and chicken broth. Bring to a boil then reduce to medium low and simmer, uncovered, 10 minutes, stirring frequently.

When sauce has thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon, add the palm sugar, tamarind paste and saffron. Stir well to combine. Simmer another ten minutes, covered, stirring occasionally. Add lime juice and 1/4 cup cilantro. Stir well to combine. Serve on steamed basmati rice with cilantro garnish.

My Kitchen

I’m very, very particular about my kitchen. It’s probably the most groomed room in the house. No, not because of expensive appliances. It’s also more akin to a galley on a small boat, so every iota of space counts and for one who likes all his tools at hand, this can be a blessing and a curse.

The pots and pans became a major storage issue until I bought a pot rack, from which hang at least 8 pans and pots. Brilliant!

Early on, I had a very expensive food processor, but I ditched it. I actually prefer to do the prep and I have a hand mixer so it’s not necessary.

I need a very, very good chef’s knife that always has to be sharp enough for me to literally shave with.

I need a dishwasher. My kitchen is too tiny to put up wooden dish racks. I like all needed items, eg. vegetable peelers, cheese graters, pizza cutters and so on to be within hand’s reach. Same with oils, sauces, dry goods and spices.

I need an in-sink garbage disposal. I can’t stand the smell of yesterday’s chopped, discarded lettuce rotting in the garbage. I do all the peeling, husking, coring and discarding directly in the sink.

I need lots of counter lighting, preferably halogen. One at each station. I need counters to be swept completely clean constantly. I cannot cook if I sense the counter is dirty.

I mainly use paper towels to dry/clean things. Dishcloths or sponges accumulate too much bacteria. (Chuck Gerba once opined that a typical kitchen counter has more bacteria on it than your toilet seat). If the sheet of paper towel is only wet and not dirty, I hang it over the oven handle and let it dry and then use it as a counter rag.

The kitchen should be used for only one thing at any given time; I can’t stand someone coming in to make a sandwich while I’m prepping dinner. Actually, make that I can’t stand anyone being in the kitchen while I’m cooking unless we’re partners making the same dish.

I love my kitchen. And my kitchen loves me.

Magret de canard au miel

I made Magret de canard au miel dijonnaise tonight. The actual magret I got from Jean-Talon market, at a game store (gibier). I ended up being slightly disappointed, because it was nowhere near as sleek as the one I made in France; still, it beat a filet mignon hands down.

You want to brine the duck breast in a mixture of sugar and salt for about an hour before cooking. When it’s time to cook, sprinkle the non-fat side with salt and pepper generously and cook from a cold pan to medium temperature. The fat is going to render; dump off but save! Duck fat is sooo tasty.

Cook for about ten minutes on the fat side, then turn over and cook for ten more. Place on a plate and foil-tent. Put in oven at around 200 degrees while you do the sauce.



Sauce
3 tablespoons clear honey
2 tablespoons dijon mustard
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon
1/2 cup of chicken broth
1/2 a cup of chardonnay
Salt, pepper

Reduce all for about six minutes on medium. Pour over sliced magret. Serve with petite pommes de terres and haricots fins.

Pizzafolies

Blork was more prescient than is possible in his comment when he recommended going back to his regular pizza peel. Trouble is, I can’t. See, when I have my dough laden with its ingredients (pictured below) it is almost impossible to get it off the peel and onto the pizza stone (hot! hot! Close oven door RIGHT NOW!) without something going into freefall, be it the dough scrunching, cheese falling off, what have you . . . at least with the traditional peel, even with corn meal.

He might beg to differ, but for years I wrestled with pre-baking the dough for a few minutes so it was hard enough to slide on and off the traditional peel, and it just never came out right . . . it wasn’t until I started using the slide-off peel that I could assemble everything on the dough and expect it to still exist in its format when it came to sliding it onto the stone. (Why does this sound so sexual?)

So, conditions were ripe last night for disaster. Thing is, I had forgotten just how to slide the pizza off the Super Peel . . . instead, I assembled it on the peel on the SLIDE-ON position, so when I went to slide it onto the red-hot stone, I realised it was the opposite and I could not get it off the peel, it being sloppy and not inclined to slide in one piece (see doomed pizza, assembled, last photo). Trust me, with two other pizzas and all the ingredients and a dinner date waiting in the wings, I was not in the mood for this to happen.

I tried to spade it off onto the traditional peel. It went, sloppily, but as predicted, that was about that. When I tried to get it onto the stone, it fell apart. Literally. Cheese, mushrooms, peppers, all over my 550-degree oven, all over the pizza stone.

Fire, fire about to happen, thought I, and desperately tried to rescue the situation. Luckily, my neurons, dendrites and axons decided to get together and finally have a party and cooperate after months of feuding and I was able to rescue the situation. The one disaster-pizza I had to toss, but the other two were awesome.

Below is pictured the roasted cherry-tomato-red-pepper-sun-dried tomato-prosciutto-mozzarella di bufala concoction that I came up with. The other pizza had no sauce, just truffle oil, goat cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, Kalamata olives, basil and arugula.

Roasted Cherry Tomato pizza sauce

Ingredients
A bunch of cherry tomatoes — doesn’t matter how many. Lots. Little buds removed, quartered
Two large cloves garlic, diced
Sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil, drained and finely chopped
Roasted red peppers, also out of the jar, patted dry and finely chopped
Good olive oil
Fresh oregano
Chicken broth

Method
Assemble all ingredients in a casserole. Mix well. Roast on about 500 degrees for about 45 minutes, observing often and stirring about every 15 minutes. When done, let cool at least to room temperature.

Purée sauce with hand mixer or food processor, adding chicken broth if too thick. Spread on dough.

Kitchen Gadgets Part 19

As noted in this post I do like my little toys. But over the years I've become more discriminating. I don't want to "simplify" my kitchen experience. Ergo: get a food processor. I don't want to process food (at least like that). I want to spend the time chopping and dicing. Obviously the only things I'd want to process would be meat for grinding and pasta for flattening. The things I can do myself I want to do myself.

Blork pointed out that "highly specialized tools are for the birds." Quite correct, but only for the Geospiza fortis family of finches.

I, on the other hand, am a crow. And I like my highly specialized tools. Specifically, I like them because they are highly specialized.

But to clarify, I don't like useless so-called time-saving devices; rather, devices that (insert "heh-heh" here) make me look more professional than I really am.

A garlic press is an example of a so-called time-saving device; however, even though I possess one, I would only use it in a bare minimum of cases, because I simply enjoy chopping garlic. It is my hobby to see how finely I can chop it (indulge me!) and squeezing the fuckers into paste is not enjoyable to me unless I'm in a particular mood.

But the finer things, as Blork mentions: a Microplane grater is something I can no longer do without. An amazing chef's knife is something I can no longer do without, and the amazing stone sharpener that complements it.

Other Stuff I Have Gone Through And Discarded: several garlic choppers, a useless and dangerous "food flipper", and many other "As Seen On TV" items that usually belong to Starfrit.

But I must say that I still use my Hearthkit and I particularly enjoy my pizza peel (one of which I personally had sent to Blork).

And now I have two more tools that make my caw a little more raucous: witness the Benriner Turning Slicer. I've always wondered how those sushi places got those little carroty curls and radish hairs onto my plate and now I know.

And how those little cucumber slices have those tiny notches in them (specialized cucumber notcher, not pictured). But just look at the results! (Guaranteed not Photoshopped!)





And spy this fine colander I got at the kitchen supply store . . .



keeps your pasta out of the soapy dishwater that you clean your serving bowl with!

So, time will tell whether these things will ultimately be consigned to the back shelf of the dark cupboard but for now I'm a sucker for that kitchen gadget . . .

Nick's Garlic Shrimp Linguine

Bought some fresh linguine at Capitol at Jean-Talon market the other day, so I decided to make some garlic shrimp. At my local Metro they now have a frozen self-serve case where you can choose various-sized shrimp at $9.99 a pound so I’m always tempted. I’m basically on a shrimp kick as a leftover from my vegetabledom.

I improvised this recipe, so you’ll probably want to as well.

Garlic Shrimp Linguine



Ingredients
12-13 large raw shrimp, peeled (tails off)
4-5 large shallots, finely chopped
6-7 large cloves garlic, finely minced
1/2 lb. fresh Shiitake mushrooms, cleaned, stems removed, and sliced
1 lb. fresh linguine pasta
2/3 cup dry white wine
Olive oil
Compound herb butter
1 cup grated Pecorino Romano cheese
1 cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese
Red pepper flakes
Italian parsley
Basil
Salt and sugar for brining shrimp

Method
About thirty minutes before starting to cook, brine frozen shrimp in lukewarm water with about 1/3 cup of salt (dissolved) and about 1/4 cup caster sugar (dissolved).

Cook pasta until a hair short of al dente, about 4-5 minutes. Do not overcook! The pasta will cook further with the other ingredients.

In a large non-stick skillet, heat about three tablespoons olive oil on medium heat until shimmering. Sauté mushrooms until they have lost their water, about five minutes. Remove and set aside.

Add about two tablespoons herb butter and sauté shallots for about five minutes; add garlic and sauté three minutes more.

Remove and add to bowl with mushrooms.

Rinse shrimp under cold running water, pat dry.

Add two more tablespoons herb butter to pan and one teaspoon pepper flakes. Add shrimp and sauté for about two minutes on one side and three minutes on the other. Remove and place with shallot-mushroom mixture.

Add wine to pan. Cook until vaguely syrupy, about 8-10 minutes. Add the cooked pasta, the shallot-mushroom-shrimp mixture, and the two cheeses. Chop about half a cup each of the basil and parsley. On medium-heat, mix all ingredients thoroughly; serve immediately on warmed plates. Drink a nice dry Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Grigio.

Shrimp Stroganoff

It's been a while since I posted. Japan was a disaster, as usual. I arrived in the evening after a grueling 20-or-so hour journey, ate, went to sleep, woke up the next day, went back to sleep, woke up, ate dinner, went to sleep, woke up, packed my bag, headed for the airport and did another 20-hour journey. The only consolation was that I was in First Class from Japan to Vancouver, but the hitch was that I slept the whole time.

Today will be a week since I've been back and it's truly the first day I feel human again (it always takes about a week).

But the other day I did have the pleasure of making my new favorite dish, Shrimp Stroganoff. It was only the second time I've made it (the first was for Shelley of montrealfood.com and was a grand success) but this time was excellent as well. If you really want to blow away your friends or family you will make this! The kicker is that it's really easy. But do not substitute sour cream for crême-fraiche.

Nick's Version of Shrimp Stroganoff


Ingredients:
1 1/2 pound frozen large raw shrimp (15/21), peeled and deveined (easy-peel is fine)
4-5 large shallots, diced finely, to equal about a cup
9-10 cloves garlic, minced, divided
1 tablespoon red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon Cajun seasoning (available from various spice manufacturers)
4 cups or more shiitake and pleurot mushrooms, stems removed, washed and sliced
Olive oil, as indicated in method
Approximately 1 1/4 cup chicken broth, divided
Approximately 1/2 cup dry white wine
Approximately 1 cup crême fraiche
1 tablespoon cornstarch
Handful chopped Italian parsley
Handful chopped fresh dill
Salt and pepper to taste

Method
Brine the shrimp. In a microwave-safe container, combine about four tablespoons sea salt and two tablespoons sugar with half a cup of water. Heat in microwave until almost boiling. Stir to dissolve salt and sugar. Pour into bowl, add frozen shrimp.and warm water to cover. When thoroughly thawed, remove shells as necessary (tails as well), rinse and drain.

In large nonstick sauté pan, add about three tablespoons olive oil. Heat on medium until shimmering. Add shallots and sauté until translucent, about three minutes, then add about half the garlic. Sauté further about two minutes, then remove and set aside. In same pan, add 2 tablespoons olive oil, remaining garlic, Cajun seasoning and red pepper flakes. Sauté one minute, then add shrimp. Spread evenly throughout the pan. Cook one minute on one side, then turn shrimp with tongs. After a further 2 or so minutes, or until pink, remove shrimp and set aside.

Add mushroom slices to pan and sauté until mushrooms have shrunken by half. Remove to bowl with shallots. Add wine and 1 cup chicken broth to pan. Cook down until reduced by half — approximately 8-10 minutes.

In separate container, mix crême fraiche with remaining chicken broth and cornstarch and combine thoroughly. When mushrooms are done, add all remaining ingredients except shrimp, parsley and dill and stir constantly until sauce coats back of a spoon.

Reduce heat to minimum; add shrimp, parsley and dill and combine well. Heat through, about three minutes. Serve immediately over white rice. Garnish with parsley.

My Asian Pantry

I just went to Kim Phat to replenish my Asian pantry. It’s all I ever seem to eat these days, because the cuisine is a) spicy, and b) very vegetarian/pesco-friendly.

So I thought I’d just assemble what I have for your amusement. I left out some of the almost-empty bottles in the refrigerator, but here’s what’s in this photo (click on the photo to magnify):

From left to right, top row: Tamari soy sauce, spicy Thai chili sauce, plum sauce, sweet red chili sauce, (top) sambal oelek (bottom) coconut milk, (top) Mussamun curry sauce (bottom) green curry sauce, (small jar) shrimp paste, (top) tamarind sauce (bottom) kimchi, mirin bought in Japan, (top) Thai green curry paste (bottom) “goma” sesame salad dressing bought in Japan, dark shoyu bought in Japan, ultra-high-quality shoyu bought in Japan (haven’t had an opportunity to use it yet!) sesame oil bought here, and ultra-high quality sesame oil bought in Japan.

Front area, left to right: turmeric root, Thai stir-fry paste, rice paper, rice vermicelli, lemongrass and palm sugar. There is galangal in my freezer and numerous Asian condiments in my refrigerator that I’ve left out, but this is my basic Asian pantry. What’s in yours?

What I Hate About Recipes

Sometimes I go through my voluminous library of cookbooks. It’s not so much an urge for food porn. It’s more like being a musician and reading scores for songs, which I regrettably can’t do (can’t read music). But I read them for sport, for ideas, for mind-fodder. But sometimes I get really annoyed.

I think I have maybe ten books on Indian cooking alone. Some of them are from the U.S. and some are from the U.K. But every single one of them has a different recipe for basmati rice. If at all.

It’s just gross inefficiency on many levels. It’s like you wrote out Brahm’s Fifth but only gave vague directions as to where the sharps should be. But those are the easier ones to parse.

The maddening ones are where they specify, say, 3 ounces of coriander. Three ounces of coriander? What the fuck, I’m supposed to get out my coke scale and weigh the fucking thing? How about a quarter cup?

But what takes the cake is the “5/8ths of a cup of yogurt” for a Cream Cheese Kofta Curry in the cookbook “Complete Indian.” Five-eighths of a cup? Waaah? How about “A little more than half a cup”?

Considering 95% of the world makes dinner with no measuring whatsoever, it seems ridiculous that a cookbook can be published, well, so ridiculously. What the fuck is a medium onion? Please tell me.

And why are there fifty ways to cook basmati rice? Every single cookbook I have has a different formula. Thank god I found mine and now it comes out perfectly every time. Two cups of water for one cup rice? Recipe for a very effective glue.

Lesson: most cookbooks are like the charts for the Beatles that you find in music stores; bogus, simplified instructions that will always produce a mere parody of the real thing.

Nick's "New Canadian" Four-Cheese Pasta

I was being prodded to make “Mac ‘n’ Cheese” the other day when I coincidentally stumbled across the post at one of my most favorite food blogs these days and was astonished how close it came to Djou’s recipe.

Of course, I’ve posted noodle recipes on this blog before, but I don’t eat Mac ‘n’ Cheese; I eat Baked Creamy Four-Cheese Pasta.

So, even though I will be only tasting it, not eating it, as I am semi-officially no-wheat (well, I might make an exception this time!) here is the recipe:

Creamy Baked Four-Cheese Pasta

Bread Crumb Topping

1/2 cup Italian-style breadcrumbs
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup whole almonds, ground coarsely
1/4 teaspoon table salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 tablespoon chopped Italian parsley

Vegetables

3 shallots, finely chopped
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
with 2 tablespoons butter

Pasta and Cheese

1 cup 5-year-old grated cheddar cheese
1/2 each cup grated Gruyère, Emmenthal and Maréchal au lait cru cheeses (for the latter an aged Gouda may be substituted)
1 cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano
1 pound penne pasta, preferably Barilla penne rigate (thinnest ones you can find)
1 tablespoon table salt
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup 3.5% milk
1 teaspoon Tabasco
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

Method

1. For the topping: Combine all items well. Set mixture aside.

2. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 400 degrees.

3. For the pasta: Bring 4 quarts water to rolling boil in stockpot. Combine cheeses in large bowl; set aside. Add pasta and 1 tablespoon salt to boiling water; stir to separate pasta. While pasta is cooking, in a sauté pan, fry the shallots and garlic in about two tablespoons of butter until translucent but be careful not to burn. Remove from pan and set aside.

4. In the same pan, add the two tablespoons flour and butter (always keep the flour/butter ratio equal to produce a good roux) and cook on medium heat until thoroughly combined.

5. Heat the milk/cream mixture in the microwave until hot; add to the pan with the roux. Add the shallot-garlic mixture, stirring often. Finally, add about 3/4 of the cheese and combine well. Add the Tabasco to taste (I like it hot).


6. When pasta is very al dente (when bitten into, pasta should be opaque and slightly underdone at very center), drain about 5 seconds. Flush with cold water to prevent further cooking.

7. Generously butter bottom and sides of 13 x 9 x 2-inch baking dish. Add about 3/4 of prepared breadcrumb mixture to prepared dish. Tilt dish to coat bottom and sides. Return any loose breadcrumb mixture to a container.

8. Put the drained and cool pasta into the baking dish and pour the cream/cheese mixture on top; shake gently to let the mixture settle.


9. Sprinkle the remaining cheese over the top.

10. Now evenly sprinkle the remaining breadcrumb mixture over the whole dish. If there is not enough, either add more breadcrumbs or grate more parmesan. You’ll know what to do.

11. Bake in 350-degree oven, uncovered and watching carefully, until light brown. Cover and lower heat to 300 for about another 20 minutes, watching carefully every five minutes or so. When it’s bubbling around the edges of the pasta, remove the cover and blast it with the broiler for about 3-5 minutes to get a nice crispy crust.

That’s MY Mac ‘n’ Cheese.


PS. I became Canadian today

Hip-hop Vegetables

Can you say “wrap?” Good. Now say "rice paper" . . . and you’re on your way to the most incredible taste sensation. The thing about meat, be it chicken or beef or pork or duck or quail, is that is can never be (or shouldn’t be) crunchy.

And the mouth craves crunchy! And the mouth also craves raw, sometimes . . . one gets tired of cooked, cooked, cooked.

So, we made incredible vegetable wraps—some would call them un-fried spring rolls—last night, and here is how you can, too.

You need:

Rice-paper wraps. These are usually disks, large or small, that look like translucent glass and are stiff and dry. You get them at your friendly Asian food store.

Shrimp, declawed and deveined, sautéed in sesame oil and garlic and julienned
Carrots, julienned (into matchsticks)
Red, orange or yellow pepper, julienned
Green onions, white part only, sliced lengthwise into long shards
Snow peas, threaded and both ends removed, sautéed briefly and then julienned, with
Shiitake mushrooms, sliced thinly and sauteéd with the snow peas.
Beansprouts
Cilantro, washed, leaves separated and patted dry
Serrano chiles, julienned (optional)

Method:
Get all your mise in place. Best to line up all the ingredients next to each other, assembly-line style. Have a clean kitchen towel at the ready. And go!

Put the rice paper disk in warm water for about thirty seconds. It’ll take a few tries to get used to how it handles. Quickly place the ingredients one by one , starting with the cilantro, on the bottom third of the rice paper disk. Roll the bottom up over the vegetables, then fold in the sides. Then complete the roll. You now have a vegetable wrap.

For dipping sauce:

Orange-chili dip:

1/4 cup orange juice, pulp included
2 tbsps. soy sauce
3 tbsps. mirin
1 tbsp. rice vinegar
1 tbsp. sesame oil
2 tbsps. Asian chili sauce, such as sambal oelek or chili-garlic sauce
1 tsp. nam pla (Thai fish sauce)
1 tsp. minced garlic
1/4 cup chopped green onion
1/4 cup chopped cilantro

Mix all ingredients thoroughly, let stand 30 minutes to blend before serving.

Amazing

The pesco-ovo-lacto-vegetarian saga continues. Last night it was Thai green curry with shrimp, something I usually do with chicken. Very odd to taste shrimp where chicken used to be, but I’m getting used to it. It’s just picking off the tails—that I will never get used to. One after all does not have to peel the tail feathers off every chicken breast.

And sesame-cashew rice noodle salad (no meat, no wheat) . . . rice noodles are a devil to make, much touchier than your ordinary pasta. Re: gluey on the outside, hard on the inside. Don’t you hate that? But I defeated it by putting the throwaway mess in the microwave in water for a few minutes and it actually turned out fine (recipe to follow).

Walked to the Asian store (Kim Phat, at Plaza Cote-des-Neiges) yesterday, and as usual it was like being a kid in a candy store. So many sauces, so little time. I could barely stagger home with my haul.

But my cucumber salad is becoming perfect, now that it’s being made and consumed in large amounts every day, so when the magic formula has been determined (it changes like the wind but is always good) it shall be posted.

Haven’t seen a chicken or a cow in almost a month now.

Amazing.

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Spicy Sesame Noodles with Chopped Peanuts and Thai Basil


1 tablespoon peanut oil
2 tablespoons minced peeled fresh ginger
4 garlic cloves, minced
3 tablespoons Asian sesame oil
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1/8 cup mirin
1 tablespoon (or more) hot chili oil
Salt to taste (but can always adjust with soy sauce instead)
Packet Vietnamese rice vermicelli
12 green onions (white and pale green parts only), thinly sliced
1/2 cup coarsely chopped roasted peanuts
1/4 cup thinly sliced fresh Thai basil leaves

Heat peanut oil in small skillet over medium heat. Add ginger and garlic; sauté 1 minute. Transfer to large bowl. Add next 6 ingredients; whisk to blend.

Follow package directions (good luck!) for vermicelli. Drain thoroughly and transfer to bowl with sauce. Add sliced green onions and toss to coat noodles. Let stand at room temperature until noodles have absorbed dressing, tossing occasionally, about 1 hour. Stir in peanuts and Thai basil; toss again. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve at room temperature.

(After-note: the next morning the noodles had somehow magically become al dente; don't give up on them! It turned out to be awesome!)