Farfalle Carbonara Revisited

I have been informed that my eldest daughter's school is attempting to assemble and publish a family cookbook as a fundraising item. It goes without saying that I jumped at the opportunity to contribute. The instructions were to document recipes for dishes that your children like to eat, and perhaps write an accompanying anecdote along with the recipe. I hit a bit of a creative block right out of the gate. Frankly, my youngest daughter is going through a stage were she generally hates all food except for yogurt, french fries and toast. Perhaps that's exaggerating matters, my youngest will certainly eat her bacon butterflies. She's not fond of the peas in the recipe and will attempt to eat around them; however, by lucky accident I have observed that she generally ingests a lot them quite inadvertently. 

So here's my first attempt at writing a recipe that involves actual measurements and instructions. It may not be completely accepted in North America yet, but measurement by weight and in metric is the rule, not the exception in Europe - so I have employed this approach. These kinds of measurements are more accurate and with the help of a $30 electronic scale, recipes are a cinch to follow. So, here goes - a proper recipe with proper instructions - be gentle; it's my first.

Farfalle Carbonara (alternatively known as Bacon Butterflies)

Our girls are always keen to eat their ‘butterflies with bacon’.  Fresh mint or basil makes for an excellent accompaniment; however, given young children’s general suspicion of things that are green and leafy, the herbage should be left to the side. Grownups can dress their own plate. Also note, steamed broccoli looks very pretty perched atop the pasta and knocks it out of the park for nutritional value (if you can get your three-year-old to choke it down). Bonus advantage – the sauce can be prepared in the time it takes to boil the pasta!

300g of Farfalle (bowtie) pasta

3-4 litres of water

6 slices of good quality streaky bacon

200g of frozen peas

10 ml of 18% cream

10 g unsalted butter

100g of grated parmesan cheese

3 egg yolks

10 ml olive oil, plus extra for drizzling

1 or 2 generous pinches of salt

First, get your pasta going. If in doubt, follow the directions on the package of farfalle pasta. This recipe serves four so you’re generally looking for about 300g of dry pasta to about 4 litres of well-salted boiling water. Taste your water – it should taste like the sea. Once you get your pasta going, get six strips of bacon frizzling in a pan on a medium heat. Cook the bacon until crispy, about five to six minutes on each side. Once the bacon is done, set it aside to drain on a paper towel. At the point that your pasta is about 75% cooked (in and around nine minutes), you will need to 'steal' some of the pasta water.  Using a mug or measuring cup, carefully remove 250ml of starchy pasta water from the pot and put that aside. Now get your peas into the boiling water along with the pasta. You want the peas to cook for about two or three minutes. While the peas are cooking, get three egg yolks into a bowl and beat them with the cream and about one-quarter of the parmesan cheese, then put it aside. Chop the bacon strips up into small pieces. We’re almost ready to assemble everything – remember, once the pasta is out of the water, it will rapidly start to cool – so you need to act fast. Strain the pasta and peas and get them into a large serving bowl. Add the bacon and the olive oil and toss so that it doesn’t get too sticky. Then pour in about 50 ml of the starchy pasta water and then fold in the egg yolk mixture and butter. If you feel slightly anxious about using raw eggs, fret not, for the yolks will cook in the residual heat of the pasta. Next, pour in the rest of the cheese and toss everything together. If it seems too dry, keep adding starchy pasta water until you’re happy with the consistency (if it gets too watery, feel free to tip in another generous glug of cream or more grated cheese). Once satisifed, bring the entire steaming bowl of pasta to the table and serve family-style with additional parmesan and herbs on the side. A bit of crusty bread would not be unwelcome.

Duck and Morel Pie

Remember that 'defeat' I suffered at the hands (wings?) of a duck? Well, tonight I exacted my revenge. My sweet revenge. The medieval punishment for any animal miscreant: end up in a pie.

I had one and a half breasts and one leg of duck leftover from the previous night's dinner. Not really enough to feed a pile of people, so I made this as chef's perk only. Anyway, as I mentioned, the duck had been slightly over-cooked, so there was no point in re-heating it the next day and over-cooking it more...or was there?

I pulled out the pressure cooker, cut up the duck meat and got it together with some chopped shallots, a chiffonade of fresh sage, a bit of garlic, a bunch of morel mushrooms (re hydrated from dried), along with the re hydrating liquid (leave the grit behind), the leftover duck demiglace (now a wobbly blob of gelatinous yum), a bit of duck fat (I always save and strain every last drop), some fresh thyme, a cup of red wine and a cup of water along with the usual seasonings. On went the pressure cooker lid, and up went the fire. This does not need long at all given that the meat is already half way there. I say about 25 minutes will suffice.

Once done, I opened up the pressure cooker (my favourite part of the ritual - you never know what you're going to find in there.) Inside was dark and tender and unctuous. I started mashing stuff together with a fork. Then I transferred this extremely rich ducky mess into a meal-sized ramekin. Next, I carefully piled the leftover mashed spuds on top, smoothed it all out like a potter at his wheel, and with the tines of my fork, sculpted little crop circles; a whimsical pattern derived by my unconscious mind. The Pièce de résistance? Duck fat. It's always going to be duck fat. I melted a bit in a small prep bowl, dipped in a brush and glazed my pie till shiny and beautiful.  To finish, I sprinkled with flakey Maldon salt and did a few cranks on the pepper mill. Into a 400 degree oven for ten minutes, and a further five or so under the broiler.  Take that duck!

Mother's Day Roast Duck

During the week you may have noticed that I cook relatively light, simply fare. On weekends, I step it up a bit. On special occasions and holidays - well, I try to pull out all the stops. Whenever I have one of these special feasts, upon its conclusion, I like to reflect on the merits of the cooking. The kids are in bed, the guests have left, and I will pour a small tumbler of fine Canadian whiskey and take a comfortable seat by the hearth. At this point,I will perform a mental post-mortum of the meal. There are only two outcomes as I see it: wins and defeats. For wins, the meal, in taste, texture and optics, turned out how I anticipated it to. Really, this is the sign of any good cook, i.e. the food tasted exactly how it was envisioned...or at least a very close facsimile thereof. Sometimes, a win is accidental. Perhaps the meal didn't go as hoped, but through a happy accident it went in another, equally excellent direction.
Then there are the defeats. I'm not looking for perfection, but if the food wasn't within a certain margin of error for me, than I will chalk it up as a learning experience..and a defeat.

I hate to say it, but in my heart of hearts, my Mother's day dinner was a defeat. My guests didn't think so; the plates came back clean (and I don't own a dog). But the meal, or at least parts thereof, did not turn out close enough to my vision. The meal was roast duck with duck demiglace and several accompanying sides. Needless to say, the garnitures were satisfactory. I made a celeriac remoulade - predictably delicious. I also made mash potatoes for which I replaced the usual butter with rendered duck fat. Dare you ask if that was delicious? Of course it was. The green salad was right on point. The problem was with the duck. First let me tell you about the demiglace - perhaps the one highlight of the night that prevented my confidence from completely disintegrating like dandelions in a gale.

Duck Demiglace

This amazing little elixir tastes magical, but really, the only tricky requirement is that you have a good amount of time set a side to produce it. I had two relatively large ducks at my disposal. I broke them down to leg quarters, breasts and carcasses (no small feat, I've never actually broken down a duck and they definitely have a different anatomy than chickens!). I took the carcasses, which included necks and wings and got them on a cookie sheet along with three or four star anise, six or so juniper berries, some peppercorns, one or two cloves and a good whack of salt.  I roasted them in a 350F oven for about an hour. The fat will render and you'll have some beautifully browned duck bits (the house will smell like heaven). Next, I took them out of the oven and got them into my superfluously large stock pot. (The rendered fat can be filtered and set aside for other uses - don't ever throw away duck fat!)In the pot should be one whole onion, skin on, three or four whole garlic cloves, skin on, a carrot or two, cleaned and split, a bunch of fresh thyme, bay leaves, a few peppercorns and enough cold, clean water to cover all the bones. Do not salt this! It is going to reduce and there is still residual salt from the bone roasting. I cooked this concoction, at a bare simmer for about eight hours. You can do this overnight for which an electric slow cooker would be very effective - but if you can sleep soundly knowing the gas is on, put it on the lowest simmer burner overnight (I take no responsibility if you burn your house down). After the eight hours, I strained all the solids out of the stock, and then got it into a clean sauce pan and then put it on a gentle simmer. Do your skimming at this point as the stock begins to reduce. Because a lot of the fat and scum was rendered out in the roasting process, you don't have to skim as much as if starting from raw. Anyway, I reduced this liquid (which stared out as a good four or five litres), down to a single cup. The amount of flavour packed into that dark, and slightly viscous potion was amazing. You don't want the thickness of gravy or a glaze, but there needs to be a bit of 'gravity' to it---like a nice rich jus. Once you've got it down to this level of reduction, you shouldn't even need to add salt. Get it in the fridge until you need it (it will set solid because of the rich gelatin in it. A little heat and it will loosen up again, perfect in a gravy boat along with the duck). 

Roast Duck

Then there is the duck itself. Like I said, I had two whole ducks, for which I isolated the leg quarters and the breasts. Here's the thing about ducks: they're not easy to roast. The breast will dry out before the leg is tender. A very young duck, perhaps during a crisp autumn evening may be roasted, albeit very slowly and with the understanding that you will be eating well-done duck breast. It acceptable to overlook this fact if you are enjoying the quaint rusticity of a whole roast wild fowl. On the other hand, the problem can be easily remedied by simply separating the breast from the leg. Cook the leg longer in a low oven and then pan sear the breasts. Time it so that the cooking of each conclude relatively simultaneously. Even better, confit the legs. In theory, this sounds excellent. I figured I get an A for effort in knowing all this. However, I pulled the legs out of the oven too early and whilst pan-searing the breasts, my daughters got into an all out brawl over who grandma loves best, which necessitated some officiating on my part - the duck breasts payed the price for this distraction. I don't tend to blame my kids for cooking mishaps, but..oh hell, of course I blame the kids for cooking mishaps - who doesn't?  In any event, the duck legs were about 15 minutes away from complete tenderness and the duck breasts were about six minutes too far gone. In other words, a wee bit tough; higher than average levels of mastication required. It seemed a lot of effort, for what appeared to me, a mediocre pay off. Nevertheless, like I said the guests ate with gusto - my mother-in-law, who's duck is usually overcooked anyway, proclaimed it as delicious. My own mother, savaged her plate like she hadn't eaten in days (and perhaps she hadn't) and my dear wife, mother of my children, had two helpings.

I brooded silently, staring into my wine glass trying to understand what when wrong. Such is my pain. A lesson learned - duck is a fickle beast that requires a deft touch. Next time, I'll let the kids fight it out and save my Solomonal insight for the birds in the oven.

Homemade Artichoke Antipasto

Sometimes a certain type of cooking can really seem daunting, and then in a surprising turn, become achievable with little effort. This happened the other day when I had to do something with artichokes. You see, I've been buying up all these baby artichokes because I think they're beautiful and really fun to prep. There's also the fact that they are utterly delicious. In any event, I had way too many artichokes sitting in my fridge that needed to be used immediately. I've never really been one to make jars of preserves. I've had some forays into my own charcuterie and I do own many mason jars, but I've never made jam, or canned a tomato. So why not just jump in to the fray and make a jar of artichokes in a chili garlic brine? That's exactly what I did and while expecting disaster (given I went at this with no experience or recipe), the results were startlingly good. Here's what I did:

Take at least eight baby artichokes and clean them so that they still retain the stem and have not been split. I find that the baby artichokes are tender and young enough that the purple, thistle-like choke that one usually finds within an adult artichoke is really quite edible at this stage in the plant's development - so there's no need to remove it. Anyway, once you've prepped all your artichokes, get them into some gently simmering water with plenty of lemon wedges, a few bay leaves, a few pepper corns, a few sprigs of time, a few whole cloves of garlic and a really generous pinch of salt (the water should taste salty, but not too salty). Let the 'chokes simmer for about 15 minutes or so until they start to get tender. Then turn off the fire, and leave them in the poaching water until it is cool enough to touch. In the meantime, sterilize a mason jar and lid components in some boiling water or in the oven. This recipe is not meant to last the winter in a pantry - it will be refrigerated. I sterilize the jar just to buy a bit more time in the fridge. This is by no means a true preserving method! Once the artichokes are cool enough to handle, take them out of the liquid and carefully slice each of them lengthwise. Then into your jar should go the garlic cloves from the poaching water, along with some fresh bayleaves (don't re-use the ones in the poaching water -they'll have lost their flavour), some generous peelings of lemon skin (without the pith) and a few basil leaves. Pour a little bit of the poaching water into the jar, followed by a drizzle of olive oil and a teaspoon of chopped red chillies, and then carefully stuff  the artichokes about half way up the jar, then add more cooking water, more oil, some more basil leaves and more chillies, then more artichokes until you reach the top. Get the lid on, and very slowly turn it upside down. All the liquid that was on the bottom will flow to the top. Count to five and then slowly turn it back. This is a gentle way of distributing the different flavours through the jar. Then get it into the fridge. Give it 24 hours for all the flavours to mingle.

When I've bought preserved artichokes from the store they are either in salt water brine, or in pure oil. I didn't want mine swimming in oil, but I wanted some of the flavour from the oil, this is why I mixed up a combination of salty-lemony water with drizzles of oil. The water and vinegar do separate somewhat within the jar, but given the starchy, salty quality of the now-cooled poaching liquor, the oil seems to remain suspended in it rather than all pooling at the top. I have no idea of the science behind it.  It may sound odd, but the result was most excellent. 

Since I've made them, they have gone in salads, on pasta, and as a simple side dish.  They'd work on pizza in a pinch and would be most glorious on a humble piece of grilled bread. So far it's been in the fridge for a week and still looks and smells fine. My guess is that given the salt content of the water and the initial sterilization of the jar, I can leave them in the fridge for many, many weeks; like any other jar of olives or pickles.

Of course, this little recipe has got the juices flowing and I'm now looking at my mason jars as more than rustic tea light holders and as vessels to fill. Let the adventure begin!

Black Pudding Toasts

A couple of days ago I wrote a menu and decided to try and test and develop every item thereon. Well this is the first shot. At the top of my menu, under the sub-heading 'bites' are a few different dishes that I will call 'pub toasts'. These can also be called 'savouries on toasts' as Gordon Ramsay refers to them (Marco Pierre White, less imaginatively calls them 'things on toast'). In Ramsay's book "Great British Pub Food", he writes, "Back in the days when gentleman's clubs were prevalent, small portions of savouries on toasts took the place of sweet puddings as an alternate way to end a meal." Now, these little bites no longer end a meal, but tend to either replace the meal in its entirety (allowing more intestinal vacancy for sudsy pints), or in a more refined sense, they are a perfect starter to a meal.

In Kate Colquhoun's 'Taste: The Story of Britain Through its Cooking', she relates this 1782 observation by a German tourist in England:

"...the slices of bread and butter given to you with tea are as thin as poppy leaves, but there is a way of roasting slices of buttered bread before the fire which is incomparable. One slice after another is taken and held to the fire with a fork. This is called 'toast'."

Could there be anything more quintessentially British than toast? Moreover, what better topping for toast than a dark, salty treat like black pudding. I have written about black pudding in the past here and here. I purchase mine from my local butcher shop (Close to the Bone). The pudding is made right here in Toronto. To those who are uninitiated, the chief ingredient of black pudding is pig's blood. The blood is stuffed into a sausage casing along with salt, cubed pork fat and various other seasonings and fillers such as bread crumbs or traditionally in the UK, oatmeal. For this reason, it is certainly not something you typically see being made in a home kitchen. Yet, there are some who argue that it is not out of reach of the home cook given that one has purchased a share of, or whole, live pig (something becoming more and more common these days). Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall describes the process, 

"Making your own blood sausage is not for the faint-hearted. You may be dealing with the blood of your own pigs, ideally on the very day of slaughter, while it is still warm. For me, however, getting down to business and making blood sausage is the best therapy for the inevitable stresses of slaughter day."

Black pudding is considered offal and is an excellent example of nose-to-tail eating. Anyway, there's not much to making black pudding toasts, so here's what you need to do:

Find a good proprietor of black pudding, and buy a whole link. Cut the string that connects the two ends, and then cut off a good three or four inch piece. Take a sharp knife and score the side of the piece you have cut off - this will allow you to 'unwrap' the paper or casing material (which if left on, will warp the shape of the sausage as it cooks). Then get a non-stick pan going with a good knob of butter. Use a medium heat; if it's too hot the pudding will just melt away to nothing. You want it to retain its integrity. Slice your hunk of sausage into quarter inch thick slices and get them into that butter. Let them sizzle for a while and then carefully flip them. They are very delicate - I find a proper fish slice works best for turning black pudding. Then let the other side sizzle for a while. You're looking for an exterior crust with a bit of 'snap' and a creamy middle. In the mean time, get some bread lightly toasted.  When your satisfied with the doneness, remove the blood pudding from the pan and set aside for a moment (again, do so carefully so it doesn't completely fall apart), keep the heat on the pan and drop your toast into the pan with the butter and rendered fat from the blood pudding. You're looking to slightly fry the toast...just a little frying though; take the toast to a deeper mahogany. Once satisfied, get the toast on plate and get the pudding on the toast. I like to squash and spread the pudding slightly with back of a fork - you'll get a good mix of the creamy bits and the crunchy bits. Then pour whatever remnants of butter remain in the pan right on to the toast. Garnish with a few drops of Lea & Perrins, some coarsely ground black pepper and if you want a vegetable, a few parsley leaves will do nicely.

One of my all time favourite things to eat by far.

Creamy Chicken Penne with Sauteed Ramps

Before you adjust your monitor colour, yes, that is whole wheat pasta

Well, I finally got to use my ramps...as a garnish on an unromantic pile of leftovers. Anyway, tonight was one of those dishes that are not gourmet, not terribly interesting and not my favourite type of cooking. Nevertheless, my hunch is that most people cook this way on Wednesday night: a hodge-podge of leftovers thrown together in haste. Growing up, this was more the rule than the exception. My mum would cook up Kraft macaroni and basically toss any and every leftover into it along with a tin of mushroom soup. This is my homage to that kind of cooking. I had a significant pile of left over chicken from a bird I had roasted the night before. I also had these lovely little ramps that were so hard won, yet were already getting rusty in the crisper. They had to be used....somehow.

In the end, I did my best to produce a dish that while humble, retained a certain level of decorum...and flavour. Also, given the inclusion of whole wheat pasta, it was a reasonably healthy tonic for all. Here's what I did:

I could have made this uber creamy with a heavy bechamel sauce, however, again as per my wife's instruction, I attempted to keep things light, so I opted for a veloute sauce instead. To make a veloute sauce, one basically employs the same method as bechamel except in place of milk, chicken stock is added (or fish stock if making a fish veloute). To prevent the veloute from looking like chicken gravy, a little milk is called for. Anyway, I got a knob of butter in a sauce pan on a medium heat and then added about two heaping table spoons of flour. Cook out the 'roux' until the raw taste of the flour is gone. Then deglaze with a tiny bit of Noily Prat. The alcohol will burn off but you will also end up with a vermouth flavoured buttery ball of roux in the bottom of the pan. To this, add one-quarter cup of milk and a cup or so of chicken stock (homemade works best here, but the stuff in a carton won't kill you). I used to always warm up my milk before adding to bechamel, but I have since found that it actually works better cold. Then get your whisk and start beating this ugly concoction down until it starts to become smooth and silky. Show it who is boss. As it comes back up to a boil it will start to thicken. Let it get to the point that it can lightly coat a spoon, then dump in a cup and a half of diced left-over chicken meat. Allow the chicken meat to warm through and then add half a cup of frozen peas. The chicken will soften and start to fall apart. It's all good. Try to keep the anxiety at bay; yes, it is going to end up looking like something right out of a 1960's diner. I see chicken a la king, or a hot open-faced chicken sandwich. Yes, the dreaded word 'casserole' might work here. I experienced twinges of shame whilst cooking this - it felt like something that Rachel Ray would huskily proclaim as 'yum-o'. Anyway, as they say, it is what it is.

FYI, all along I had some whole wheat penne boiling in some salted water on the back burner. Once the chicken and the peas are warmed through in your veloute and the pasta is tender, it's ready to get down to the serious busines of introducing sauce to penne. That's about it.

So what elevates this dish from a 1970's recipe card to something Beech Tree worthy? Ramps. I simply sliced them up and gave them a a quick sautee in butter with a bit of maldon salt. When I plated the dish, I sprinkled the ramps atop the pasta as a garnish. Yes, it did work. Yes it tasted good. May God have mercy on my soul.

Spring Foraging Treasures

There is nothing that could be more satisfying than harvesting one’s own food. What a feeling of power! Deep in the brain, there must be a collection of ancient neurons that retain a memory of being a hunter-gatherer. I think the simple act of plucking a fresh carrot from the soil, or perhaps snipping some home-grown herbs from one’s garden, results in the release of a kind of primordial endorphin. I have created life! I will eat tonight! Could anything feel better?

Now, take a walk through the woods and look to the ground. You'll see a vast diversity of living things. Some of these are edible and some are poisonous. Some just don’t taste good. The ability to distinguish the delicious from the lethal is an amazing, almost mystical ability for which I have no end of respect. A word of warning, and I have experience to prove the point, never eat anything you find in the forest until you have inquired with someone who knows what they are doing. Case in point: wild leeks, sometimes known as ramps, are delicacies that are revered by chefs and increasingly becoming a bit of a spring time cliché in the north-eastern part of North America. Foodies can't get enough of these punchy greens. However, when ramps are poking out of the dead leaves in the woods, they look an awful lot like Lily of the Valley. Lily of the Valley, while dainty and pretty when in bloom, is also deadly poisonous. Eating even a small amount of these plants will result in a crippling gastro-intestinal crisis and will also affect one’s heart rate. Hospitalization would be likely, death not uncommon.

I was taking a stroll through a local ravine the other day and found what looked to me like a huge whack of wild ramps growing among a small grove of oak trees. What a lucky break, I thought to myself, and proceeded to unearth a dozen or so green shoots (which resulted in the aforementioned release of the hunter-gatherer endorphin within my brain). I walked about a bit more, enjoying the loamy smell of the wood, utterly pleased with myself. Anyway, I eventually headed home and started examining my foraged leaves and sniffing them and so on. They didn’t smell like leeks, onion, garlic or any other of the smells associated with wild leeks. That was my first red flag. I also noticed that the bottom of the shoot didn’t really have a proper bulb as a leek should. The internet isn’t much help either. I did a google image search for ‘ramps’ on my smart phone and found a plant that was the spitting image of what I was holding. I am lucky that I have a neighbour who is a relatively knowledgeable forager. I decided to check with him before doing anything else, and I am certainly glad I did. I was holding lily of the valley. Egad,  a close call.  And just so the day wasn’t a total bust, after chucking the offending leaves, my green-thumbed neighbour let me raid his garden for fresh chives which certainly brightened up my omelet that morning. Lesson learned.

When I’m not busy misidentifying plant life in the forest, I’m doing it in the green grocer. A few weeks back I found what appeared to be ramps in my favourite little fruit and veg store. I took them home, put them in several dishes for a dinner party, proclaimed to my guests that they were eating the revered ramp, only later to find out I was supping on spring garlic. Spring garlic is wonderful, but not a wild plant at all. It is cultivated traditional garlic in what is called its ‘wet’ stage; a delicious ingredient no doubt, but not ramps.

On the left, spring garlic, on the right, ramps. Similar..but totally different!

Finally, this past week, after every chef has had their way with them, and every Toronto foodie is probably sick of them; I finally found some wild leeks in Kensington market for myself.

Now what to do with them?

Where is this going?

I sometimes have to ask myself, where am I going with all this?

I write about food and take photos of food. I have even turned to a food stylist to help me improve the photos I take. Originally, this was intended as an outlet for my culinary passions. I have also participated in food events for which I have killed myself cooking for massive amounts of people, but the markets aren’t necessarily the arena in which I shine. I don’t make much money at them (or in some cases I lose money). This is not a reflection of the food, which either sells out or comes close each time – it’s a reflection of the business model. I don’t think the markets work for me or my style of cooking.

Do I want to open a pub or a something as simple as a café perhaps? I think so. This is why the markets may not work for me: I prefer the idea of someone sitting down, enjoying a pint and then eating their meal with a knife and fork. What could be more pleasurable?

Currently, I have a well-established career as a media research analyst. It’s a little boring, but it pays the bills and it gets me home in time to have supper with my wife and kids each night. I get weekends off and a few weeks of vacation a year. Why would I trade that for long hours, high-stress, lack of sleep and a dubious proposition with a high risk of failing?

An excellent question.

Yet, I feel updating a blog a few times a week…discussing what I ate for supper for crying out loud…just doesn’t feel focused. So I need something on which to focus.

So I wrote a menu. Well, I write a lot of menus. It is a meditative activity that clears my cluttered mind of day-to-day detritus. I have a pile of work on my desk that requires attention, but all I’m thinking about is crumbled Stilton and bacon and hard boiled hen’s eggs. So, I wrote a menu. I’m branching beyond the ‘pub’ concept and aiming more for what I like to call a ‘Canteen’.

So what is a canteen? In the UK, the term ‘canteen’ could be compared to what we in North America might think of as a cafeteria. When I think 'cafeteria', I envision the sort in high school – squeaking chairs, plastic trays, the smell of fryer grease and spoiled apples. The food was always suspect, but not lethal. However, there is something---how should I put this---’unintimidating’ about a cafeteria. The word Canteen is even more interesting, because it has a suggestion of something vaguely militarial.  I like that. There is one concept though that unites cafeteria and canteen; the format of food acquisition. You wait in a line, have your food placed on your tray over a steamed-up glass sneeze-guard, scootch it down one of those meandering metal-tube shelves that lead to a cash register where you will identify what you have and pay the required cash. It’s all very efficient. However, I want to use the term Canteen in an ironic sense. I have no interest in little glass boxes for which you open a door and extract a small carton of milk. I will provide real table service. Instead, I want the word ‘canteen’ to connote a concept; to provide a feeling of normalcy and a real lack of intimidation. I thought of spelling it with a ‘k’ as in Kanteen, but then thought better of it. The K would make it seem Cyrillic for some reason to me, as if the K should be backwards. People would come in looking for blinis.

In any event, I wrote a menu; and this is what I intend to do: I will test every dish on this menu until they are all perfect. I may adjust them, I may scratch them right off, but I will make it perfect. It may take me a year to do, but at least now I have something to focus on. This will be the main thrust of my blog from henceforth.

So, where to start? At the top I suppose.

Post Script:

Yes, I know Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has a River Cottage Canteen, in fact, three of them in Axeminster, Bath and Plymouth. I would be lying if I said this had nothing to do with my attraction to the word ‘canteen’. So there you have it, I’ll give Hugh some credit – as if he needs it. He is the man.

Grilled Seafood with Arugula and Basil





It's been a perfect weekend for weather. Saturday night was clear as a bell and aloft shone a gloriously fat and round moon. Sunday was blues skies, fresh winds, and sweet air. There's nothing I like more than taking fresh May air and fouling it with barbecue smoke. Okay, 'foul' is not the term, more like 'improve'. I could have done steaks or burgers, but why do the obvious? I took a page from the Mediterranean diet and did some grilled shell fish along with a lovely salad of arugula and basil leaves. There were a few other embellishments to this flavourful plate. Here's what I did:

First I took about three whole cleaned squid (for notes on dealing with squid, go here), four jumbo scallops and a small chunk of chorizo sausage. Scallops sometimes have a wee little muscle attached to the side that has to be removed; it is tough and not pleasant to eat. It will be easy to notice as it may very well be the only feature on the scallop beside the flesh itself. Also, sometimes (but not often), scallops are sold with the 'coral' which is their roe. It is orange (or white depending on the sex of the scallop) and some people like to eat it (Jamie Oliver), others think it is bitter (Gordan Ramsay). It won't likely be an issue in scallops sold in Toronto.  Lastly, I tooks some good proper garlicky Spanish chorizo sausage and cut a few big grill-able size pieces. Then I created a marinade of crushed garlic, lemon zest, olive oil, fresh thyme, bay leaf and a good dollop of Italian jarred hot chillies in oil. I massaged this marinade into the squid and scallops and gave them a half hour in the fridge to get to know each other. Then out to the grill.

Squid needs to be cooked on the hottest of your grills. The grills need to be white and dry. The squid already has oil on it so it won't stick too much, and given just how little natural sugar there is in squid flesh, it is difficult to get a proper char, so hot, hot hot. The squid will likely stick a bit, but when it's done it will release itself from the grills. Scallops are a little more delicate and may stick, so for those, set aside a portion of the grill and oil it up a bit. Anyway, seafood takes mere minutes to cook on a barbecue. Earlier, I had got some red bell peppers on the grill to blacken up. Choriso sausage does not need a long time on the grill as you do not want it to dry out. You simply want to start the fat rendering process a bit, then set them aside.

To assemble, simply peel the black skin from peppers and cut it up into large strips. get some arugula leaves and some whole basil leaves and toss them in some olive oil, lemon juice and seasoning. Then get the greens on the plate with your roast peppers. Drop on the grilled squid and scallops along with a good hunk of sizzling choriso sausage. Scatter a few wrinkly cured black olives and grape tomatoes. Finish with a bit more olive oil, maldon salt and some fresh lemon.

It really is amazing how little cooking is required to make something that tasted so good.

Cumin-Spiked Chickpea and Grilled Veg Soup

Having regular vegetarian nights are an important route to good health. I love meat. Trust me, I really love meat. but I am also well aware of our over-dependence on it for dinner. It is very refreshing to omit the fauna and enjoy only the flora from time to time.

Then there are times where something that is 'virtually' vegetarian is called for. An example - homemade chicken broth along with nothing but beans and vegetables. Thus, my chickpea soup.

This soup actually would have fared quite well with a good proper vegetable stock. However, as things were, I have a daughter who is a bit under the weather, so I wanted to make some chicken soup for obvious reasons. The wife and I wanted something a little more exotic, so we treated the broth as a base and allowed for a little 'customization'. Here's what I did:

First make your stock. (I have instructions for stocks here, and here.) Then I simply took some roughly chopped zucchini, bell pepper and red onion, gave them a light coat in a bit of oil and salt and gently grilled them so that they got a bit of a smokey flavour and softened somewhat but weren't charred too much (you'd get soot floating in your soup). Get some grape tomatoes cooked down slightly by either doing the foil sachet in the barbecue along with the other veg or just get them in a hot oven for ten minutes or so. You want them soft and warm throughout with the skin just starting to wrinkle a bit. For the peppers, peel the skin of them if they're terribly loose, but they don't personally bother me all that much - it's just more fibre for the plumbing as far as I am concerned.  Then open a can of chickpeas and drain and rinse them (please feel free to work from dried - I prefer it when time allows). Then it's everyone in the pool: vegetables, chickpeas and fragrant broth. Bring to simmer and allow everything to infuse. Then get some cumin in there - roasted whole and bashed in a pestal and mortar would be just capital, but if you have the powdered type, a few pinches will give your soup a nice round flavour. Some smoked paprika wouldn't hurt either. Make sure you adjust for seasoning before serving. Cilantro would be ideal, but I didn't have any, so I tore up some fresh parsley and finished with a little piquant chili oil. Crumbled feta would make a nice touch if you're in to that. Enjoy with some grilled and oiled flatbreads for a nice light supper.