The Chef as Artist

"Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: give me leave to do my utmost." - Isak Dinesen [from "Babette's Feast"]

I got into a heated debate with a colleague the other day. This man often tells me exasperating stories about his family's fickle dining behavior. He will cook dinner to his children's precise specifications instead of defining the parameters of the meal himself. If their whims suddenly change, he will indulge them by cooking another meal over again from scratch. One child will eat only certain classes of foods and only with a particular condiment. The other will overdose on sugar if left unchecked. Neither of them eat balanced meals of their own volition, which prompted me to ask how they came to be so fussy. He conveniently blames his wife for instilling these bad behaviors, but I listen to him bitch and complain daily about the countless foods he dislikes and his convoluted, self-imposed dietary restrictions based on old wives' tales.

I bite my tongue through most of these stories, but I finally had my breaking point with his latest anecdote. He and his wife went to an expensive restaurant with a highly regarded reputation. There was a spicy dish on the menu that his wife was adamant about having, yet she doesn't like spicy food. Preparation of the dish required the spices to be deeply infused into the ingredients, so there was no easy way to make it less spicy. Instead of ordering another dish, my colleague told the waiter to tell the chef to thoroughly wash off the ingredients and gave further instructions on how to cook the rest of the dish.

I was aghast. My face probably had the same dumbfounded expression that the waiter displayed -- an expression that my friend apparently found puzzling.

To begin with, I have never been able to understand food fussiness. I'm not talking about managing allergies or digestive intolerances, making health-conscious or ethical choices, or the avoidance of tainted food. I mean the arbitrary, irrational dislike of a particular food. I say "irrational" because there is no logical argument for why a person should hate strawberries, for example. Friends have often heard me say that I hate brussels sprouts, but this isn't an accurate statement: I have no trouble eating them if they're on my plate, and will admit that they are pretty good when fried with bacon. (After all, almost everything tastes great with bacon. Even chocolate.) It's been my lifelong mantra to try anything once, and when it comes to food, there is nothing that I wouldn't consider eating if cooked well.

Human beings have an instinctive but retarded fear of anything unfamiliar. I'm old enough to remember a time when sushi grossed out everybody who wasn't Japanese. "Ewwwwww," the grade school twits would castigate me as I ate the food of my cultural heritage. Today, it's both gratifying and contemptuously ironic that you can't pass a downtown block without stumbling across someone peddling sushi. It makes me rebel by embracing everything.

I've also long argued that a person who claims that she hates something, probably just had an isolated, unfortunate experience with a rotten or badly prepared version of that thing. I've successfully tested this theory with a number of people, including (and especially) myself. For most of my life, I didn't see the point of super-hot and spicy flavors, because all I felt was the burn. Then one day, it was explained to me that good quality chilies and hot sauces have a discernible flavor that isn't overtaken by the heat. One taste of a lovely habanero mango hot sauce purchased at a hot sauce specialty shop turned me around completely. I haven't looked back.

Yet the greatest affront in my colleague's story was that he told the chef how to cook the chef's own dish. This place wasn't Harvey's. My friend argued that as a paying customer, he has every right to dictate how he is to be served. I couldn't have disagreed more. The way I see it, you are not paying to be served -- you are paying for the honor of experiencing one particular person's interpretation of food. The chef is an artist and the restaurant is his/her gallery. What idiot would tell Picasso to stop painting Cubist people with eyeballs where their shoulders should be? What douchebag would tell Francis Ford Coppola that he should have cast someone other than Brando in "The Godfather"? What moron would tell Mozart that "The Magic Flute" would have been better without all that singing?

When I was in Miami a few years ago, I took the opportunity to dine at Nobu. Chef Nobu Matsuhisa is a legend in the world of Japanese fusion cuisine. Without any second guessing, I immediately went for the full-course omakase menu. Omakase loosely translated means "I leave it up to you"; it is the chef's personal selection of dishes. No clue is given as to what will be served: the element of surprise is the objective. The price for all of this was steep. Yet I had no inclination to complain or dictate what was presented to me. Every bite was a revelation.

If I ever have the extraordinary fortune of experiencing something like Heston Blumenthal's Perfect Christmas Dinner, it would be an honor to let him dish out whatever he's got. If Blumenthal wants me to eat his brussels sprouts, you betcha I will and I'll be damned happy about it.

The same etiquette applies when dining at a friend's house. If someone spent hours slaving over the stove to make a special meal for me, I'm not going to sulk in my chair that the rice wasn't cooked the way I like it, or that brussels sprouts were put into the casserole. I'll eat it all with gratitude and great relish.

My colleague retorted with another story. There is a steakhouse that he frequents because their steaks are his "favorite". Yet there too, he tells them to butterfly his steaks before grilling them because they never cook it to the right doneness. Was he not justified in making this request?

First of all, why is this his "favorite" steakhouse if the cooks are too incompetent to know how to grill a steak medium-rare? Second of all, there's a vast difference between the expectation of something that was offered and promised vs. demanding something that is above and beyond what the chef has committed to do in his/her menu. Expecting a steak to be cooked medium-rare when that's what you ordered is perfectly reasonable. If it wasn't cooked right, the reasonable thing to do is send the steak back. (If poultry isn't cooked right, you better send it back! You can get salmonella poisoning or worse.) It's not reasonable to change the process and procedures already established in the kitchen.

I have zero tolerance for high maintenance dinner guests ("can you replace the tomato with a red pepper, make my croutons extra crispy, hold the garlic, put the marinade on the side even though I know the chicken is supposed to be marinated in it, make sure you drain those fries on a paper towel, and do you use olive oil or vegetable oil in this dish?"). There is a funny scene in Curb Your Enthusiasm in which someone orders a Cobb salad but asks for virtually every main ingredient to be substituted for something else. In the end, what the person is asking for is another kind of salad that is on the menu, but instead of ordering that, the person insists on having the Cobb salad.

My impatience for people who create unnecessary complications, combined with my Japanese abhorrence for stepping beyond one's place, are admittedly personal biases. Perhaps there is justification for telling a chef how to do his/her job. But given how arbitrarily people develop their personal preferences, how far can one encroach on an artist's right to free expression?

Seeing Red

My approach to buying produce is to look around and pick up the first color or shape that appeals to me. It sometimes leads me to buy things I've never tried before, or things I know how to prepare in only one or two ways. These limitations aren't a deterrent -- they incite me to play with my food.

Red chard is one of those foods that I like looking at, but have limited experience with. I've boiled and stir-fried chard, and that's about it.

On a lark, I put it on a pizza. I used ready-made puff pastry as the crust, sprinkled grated cheddar and Romano cheese as a base, seeded and chopped some Roma tomatoes, then buried it all under a mound of freshly chopped red chard. I drizzled some lemon-infused olive oil, ground some salt and pepper, then baked it in the oven at 425°F for about 20 min.

Baking dried up the chard, shriveling them into dark green and red curls. The bitter taste of fresh chard was turned soft by the heat. The purple-red stems that drew me in the first place looked great with the roasted tomatoes and the golden, cheesy crust. Red chard is definitely something I'd like to experiment with some more.

Changing the Set Meal

In Japan, most restaurants offer one or more teishoku (定食) or "set meals". These are standard combo meals that feature a main dish, accompanied by rice, soup and a few side dishes. One such combo is the tonkatsu (豚カツ) teishoku: a deep-fried, breaded pork cutlet served with a thick, Worcestershire-like sauce along with rice, and finely shredded cabbage.

Traditionally, the pork is simply dredged in flour, dipped in egg, then breaded with panko -- a flaky, crisp bread crumb product from Japan -- before being deep-fried until golden.

It occurred to me recently that I could add seasonings to the panko to make it more interesting, like Italians do with their breaded and fried foods. So I mixed some cayenne pepper, salt and finely grated orange rind with the panko.

One major drawback of fried food made with bread crumbs is that leftovers become soggy in the fridge. And let's face it, our love affair with deep-frying is conditional on the crunchiness of the golden exterior. Once soggy, they don't regain their crispness in the microwave, which is sadly the only equipment for warming up work day lunches at most places of business. The solution to this -- which I discovered from a recipe by Canadian chef Michael Smith -- is to use finely ground cornmeal instead of bread crumbs. It stays crunchy in spite of condensation and reheats very well. So I added a handful of cornmeal to the dry mixture for extra bite.

The pork I used came from the Korean supermarket. One detail that helped this dish enormously was the fact that the cutlets were deeply scored on both sides, creating deep grooves in which more of the breading could adhere to the meat.

Lacking a deep-fryer and not being a fan of deep-frying, I've always shallow-fried my tonkatsu and found that it works just as well. I used clarified butter this time because (a) I had clarified a whole block of butter a few days ago, (b) it has a higher smoking point than most cooking oils, which is important when fast frying at a high temperature is required.

The tonkatsu was cooked through yet very moist and tender. The orange rind was a nice foil for the tonkatsu sauce and the cayenne gave the dish an extra little kick. It goes to show that you don't have to be confined to the set menu . Playing around with this old standard was tasty and fun.

First Blush

I realize that drinking wine is a fun pastime (or addiction), not cooking. But I'd like to give a special nod to the Cosme Palacio y Hermanos Rioja from the Bodegas Palacio in Spain.

Back when I used to live in Montreal, I once had an apartment located above an SAQ (the Quebec liquor board) store. I didn't earn as much back then, so I was on the lookout for affordable, quality wines. The curly gold typeface of the Palacio label caught my eye, and the under-$25 price was equally attractive. That was a foundational moment in my existence as an oenophile. The Hermanos Rioja is the reason why Riojas are my favorite budget varietal. It is full-bodied and ripe with berry notes. You can feel gluttonous without breaking the bank.

I couldn't find it on LCBO shelves when I first moved to Toronto. For one brief summer it appeared, then disappeared again. I was resigned to the idea of having it only when I went back to Montreal for a visit.

The past month was a grueling one in terms of work: I did overtime every evening and every weekend, promptly breaking my new year's resolution to maintain a better work/life balance. When the work was over, I decided to celebrate with some wine.

To my amazement, not only did I stumble across my beloved Rioja, it was a 2004 Reserva. "Reserva" generally denotes a higher quality wine that has been "reserved" (i.e. aged) for a period before being sold. 2004 also happens to be a pretty good year for Riojas.

The excitement of finding that bottle in Toronto, and the building anticipation as I brought it home was as intoxicating as the wine itself. Cheers to the simple pleasures in life.

Whatever Soup

Not all cuisine is complicated or calculated. Sometimes you can throw random things into a pot and make it work.

I had turkey stock, leftover chicken, red peppers, onion and lentils. I heated everything, added a dollop of sour cream, sprinkled some nori (seaweed) flakes and presto, a tasty, filling soup. End of story.

Persian Galbi

Although beef is beef, wherever you go, some cuts of beef can only be found in certain places. Koreans love their galbi, which literally translates to "ribs", but has the de facto meaning of "marinated beef short ribs". My local Korean supermarket offers the rib meat without the bone, optionally marinated for bulgogi.

I recently picked up a package of un-marinated, boneless galbi meat as an excuse to Persian-ize it. My first serious foray into Persian cooking came when Amitis -- an admirably stalwart friend who is also my climbing partner -- took the time last year to show me some fundamentals. However, my interest in Persian food is not at all new. Most times I buy beef just so I can eat it with dried, ground sumac, which I have adored for many years now.

An über simple Persian marinade for kebabs consists of onion, garlic, oil and saffron (with a touch of salt and pepper). I let the galbi soak it up overnight. By the next day, the saffron strands had imparted a faint orange hue to the meat. After a fast fry, the meat was ready. I served it on plain rice and sprinkled sumac, of course. The meat was incredibly tender (even after reheating it for lunch the following day) and the marinade was delicious without being overpowering.

Aubergine Cuisine

I am a huge fan of aubergines/eggplants. Roasted and mashed with tahini and garlic, it makes a killer baba ghanouj. Seasoned with Indian spices and deep-fried in ghee, it becomes a delicious eggplant sabji/sabzi/subji/subzi. However, I think the tomato is eggplant's soulmate. Moussaka exemplifies this perfect pairing. I recently made this dish for a pot-luck (which I sadly couldn't attend because of a cold).

I had always thought of moussaka as a Greek dish, having grown up in the company of staunch Greeks like Georgia, my enduring friend since the second grade. (Georgia is also responsible for acclimating me to heavy doses of garlic -- if a recipe calls for one clove, I'll use four -- and making me exceptionally picky about those staples of Greek cuisine, souvlaki, tzatziki and olive oil.) Wikipedia tells me otherwise: musaqqaʿa is an Arabic word that refers to a cooked and cooled salad consisting of eggplant and tomato. Bulgarian, Bosnian, Serbian, Romanian, Turkish and other cuisines have similar versions of moussaka. Clearly, other cultures also agreed that eggplant and tomato was a good match.

The Greek variety is basically composed of three layers: a bottom layer made of eggplant slices, a middle layer made with ground meat (usually lamb; I used beef here), tomatoes, onions and garlic, and a top layer that is essentially a béchamel sauce (sometimes topped or mixed with grated cheese). The casserole is baked until the top becomes golden brown. It's hearty and healthy.

Breaking Bread

Every year, I go through a period of baking bread for several consecutive weekends. My 2009 bread-baking phase has just begun. The fact that snow has finally begun to melt has spurred me to end hibernation and start getting active again.

Making bread from scratch is both easy and difficult. The directions for doing it are fairly simple. It's time-consuming, only because there are long periods in which you have to sit back and wait for the yeast to do its job; the manual effort required is minimal. Yet there are books upon books written about the subject because there is no single "right" way of making bread while there are so many ways of getting it wrong.

Flour, yeast and water are the core ingredients. It's not as straightforward as it sounds.

The choice of flour is wide-ranging. One thing for certain, the conventional white flour found in grocery chains are inadequate for making good bread. Hard-wheat flour is the choice of professionals according to James Beard, "the dean of American cookery" and author of the seminal "Beard on Bread".

For leavening, you have a choice of fresh ("compressed") yeast or active dry yeast. You can also grow your own starter. Justin Piers Gellatly -- the head baker and pastry chef at Fergus Henderson's St. John restaurant in London -- nurtures his own starter named "Mother", made with rhubarb, water, yogurt, and a variety of flours. Fleischmann's active dry yeast is probably the most pervasive brand in North America (I remember using it in Home Ec. class). Unfortunately, I find that it gives off too much of a commercial, yeasty smell in any bread made with it. I've tried no-name and organic brands with varying levels of success.

There's room for experimentation with the water as well. While tap water is the obvious choice, some bakers use filtered water. Baguette bakers allegedly benefit from the use of fresh spring water. Nigella Lawson recommends "potato water", which is the starchy water left over from boiling a few potatoes; this tip has worked remarkably well for me. (Another Nigella tip is to mix yeast directly into the flour without proofing it separately first -- it certainly speeds things up, but I'm not totally convinced yet that this is conducive to light bread.) Chinese bakery demands alkaline water, as I learned from Episode 4, Season 1 of "Diary of a Foodie". Water temperature also impacts the bread: if it gets much hotter than 115°F, the yeast cells will start to die. In addition, the quantity of water needed changes significantly depending on the altitude and climate. The volume specified in a recipe is almost never the required amount.

Kneading the dough is another significant component of bread-making. Every baker has a different hand movement that works for them. I've worked out a one-handed, quarter-turn method that allows me to switch sides if one hand gets tired. Other bakers swear by a two-handed stretch method. Either way, the key is to know when to stop. The best rule of thumb I've heard is to keep kneading until the dough achieves the texture of your earlobe. Alternatively, when you poke the dough, it should be elastic enough to spring right back.

Then comes the proofing process. It's merely a waiting game in which you do nothing. Yet if you don't wait long enough, you can end up with a brick. Linda Haynes, founder of Toronto's popular ACE Bakery, advises that you let the dough perform its second rise until it doesn't bounce back when poked. The dough also needs to be covered so that the exterior doesn't dry out before baking.

Baking is another step that doesn't require any effort from you, yet it elicits a wide range of techniques and recommendations from bakers. Do you use a glass or aluminum loaf pan? Do you need a baguette pan? Do you prefer free-form loaves on a baking sheet? On unglazed tiles? Do you line the sheet with parchment? Do you dust it with flour, cornmeal or perhaps oil the surface? Do you spray the oven with a misting of cold water? Hot water? Or do you throw ice cubes onto the oven floor? What about a tray of water at the bottom? Do you spray in the center of the oven or only on the sides? How humid is it outdoors and how is it going to affect the amount of water you should mist into the oven? Do you glaze the top of the loaf with egg wash for a shiny sheen? Or do you slash the surface for visual effect? How hot should the oven be?

These are details that I gathered over the years from many, many sources, and I still haven't cultivated the ultimate bread recipe for myself. Anyone can make bread. At the same time, I admire and respect the hard-earned experience of professional bakers who must have practiced with many many loaves before getting to where they are now. If you have your own special tips or tricks, let me know!

For Peanut

Valentine's Day is an insidious holiday, even when you're conveniently partnered up with somebody as Feb 14 comes rolling around. Unrealistically heightened expectations of romance (= effort and $$$) and the unsolicited pity doled out to single people make me wonder if the transitory boost in flower and chocolate sales are worth the trouble. I've long held this cynicism, whether in or out of a relationship.

However, there is one love that is truly unconditional and eternal: my affection and empathy for animals, especially those who have been a part of my family. If I'm going to honor anyone on St. Valentine's Day, it should be them.

Feb 5 was the fourth anniversary of Peanut's death. Peanut was my first feline roommate. He graced me with his presence in the second half of his 16 years of life. A family had given him up for adoption at 8-years old, citing "allergies" as the reason. This was a cruel sentence, since older cats have very little chance of being adopted -- everybody squeals for kittens who steal the spotlight at every adoption event. However, I wanted an older cat as my first pet. They're house-trained, more mellow and mature, and less apt to get into silly mishaps. The day I brought Peanut home was one of the happiest days of my life. It was the culmination of a lifetime of pining for a pet.

Peanut was an old soul. He was extremely patient and giving towards everybody, including the new cats who came into our lives. Although his day-to-day routine was relatively free of drama, he would often let out a heavy sigh at the end of a day, as if to let me know he was carrying the burdens of the world. He loved to burrow under blankets and often stuck his head in my armpit or the crook of my arm at night. Peanut was also a gentleman: he never stepped on me or jumped onto tables or counter tops, unlike the other cats who have come into my care. He's the only cat I've met who spent a lot of time in front of mirrors: he was often seen admiring his reflection, turning his head this way and that to see himself at different angles. Every night, he would conduct lengthy monologues in front of a mirror, waking me up with his peculiar chatter. He exhibited an intense fear of rolled up newspapers, which led me to believe he may have been mistreated by his previous family.

It was 4:10am when the vet called me to hurry to the emergency clinic. Peanut had been in hospital for over a week, having endured two operations in an attempt to alleviate an intestinal blockage. Sadly, his body couldn't handle any more and was giving up: his kidneys started shutting down, he developed pancreatitis, his lungs began filling up with fluids and his digestive tract was painfully blocked. He had been lethargic, but suddenly got up with a gasp, widened his eyes and started pacing his cage. It was an alarming spike in pain, one that signified that he was near the end.

I'm glad I was given the opportunity to say goodbye on our own terms. But making the decision to let him go was, without a doubt, the most agonizing choice I ever had to make. I spoke to him and petted him softly as he went, hoping that his last moments were comfortable and peaceful.

Peanut's favorite foods were fish (especially tuna and salmon), cheese and peanut butter (I made this discovery long after naming him). I thought I should commemorate him with a recipe devised in his honor. First, I created a cat template by cutting some styrofoam -- the styrofoam trays that groceries use to pack meat and vegetables are great for this. I rolled out some puff pastry and traced out the cat shape twice. A round hole was cut out of the second piece. The pastry pieces were brushed with egg white and the piece with the hole was placed on top of the other. When the pastry puffed up in the oven (425°F for 15-20 min), it did so with a nice round indentation in the middle, which I scooped out to make the indentation even deeper.

I baked a salmon fillet in the oven until cooked through. I flaked the flesh then tossed it with grated cheese while still warm, to melt the cheese just a little. I chose marbled cheddar because Peanut was an orange/beige tabby. Then a few fronds of dill were mixed in for color. The mixture was spooned into the centre of the pastry.

My current feline roommates begged for me to share. I gave them some of the salmon and the cheese, hoping Peanut would be pleased with it as well.

Little Beauty

It's been a busy week, and as a result, a big bundle of Chinese broccoli (or kai-lan) was left to languish in my vegetable crisper. When I finally got around to cooking them, I discovered that one of the florets had actually blossomed into lovely little flowers. So tiny and fragile, they were begging to be saved. So I separated the flower head from the stem and set it in a shallow pool of water. After a day, the other buds started to bloom as well. Even my cats took a liking to it.

Creating Fusion

"Fusion Cuisine" was a term that used to make me scoff. It makes me think of white boys in rapper duds and yellow fever geeks with anime posters over their beds. In trendy restaurants, "fusion" is a euphemism for the expropriation of a foreign culture to compensate for the lack of imagination or talent.

But once in a while, chefs like Susur Lee and Nobu Matsuhisa prove that fusion cuisine can be more than just a gimmick. It can bring together the best of different worlds and invent new experiences.

I'm no Susur or Nobu, but I gave it a shot today with Indian and Italian. I wasn't trying to be cheeky -- I just wanted to mix together the things I like to eat.

It began like a risotto. Finely chopped red onion was caramelized in oil, then arborio rice was added to seal each grain in the oil. Chunks of green apple (with their skins) also went in until lightly warmed. Lentils and raisins were added, then heated chicken stock was poured in until the dry ingredients were barely submerged; more stock was added whenever the liquid seemed mostly absorbed. When the lentils and rice reached the desired texture, the pan was removed from heat and curry powder was incorporated. Right before eating, a pinch of garam masala was sprinkled on top. Grated Romano cheese also worked well with the dish.

Unlike the pumpkin fiasco, everything in this recipe just fell naturally into place. Apples and raisins go together. Sauteed apples and curry also go together (I've made curried apples and sage before, which I enjoy). Lentils go with curry and rice. Therefore, I imagined everything would fit together as a risotto.

The garam masala was a suitable finish for the dish, because it lends itself well to sweet and savory flavors. Garam masala is a blend of ground spices with distinct cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamom notes. When consumed with the cooked apples, the aromas and natural sugars create a lovely fusion. Nothing phony about that.

Trial and Error

Master chefs have the uncanny ability to taste a new recipe idea in their minds before they even lay a hand on a skillet. It's an enviable talent, especially considering how much food ends up in the compost bin when my "experiments" go awry.

For the past month, I've been developing a recipe that features pumpkin. My messing about in the kitchen led to a couple of interesting but slightly peculiar flavors before finally yielding success.

First, what worked: oven-braised ginger pumpkin. It involves thin slices of pumpkin, parsnips and yellow onion braised in diet ginger ale with a sprinkling of raisins. It is left in a 425°F oven to cook very slowly for over two hours, or until the edges start to brown and most of the liquid is gone.

The idea of braising it in pop came from chef Patricia Yeo -- the modest yet astonishing genius I first saw on Iron Chef America, battling Masaharu Morimoto. I came across an article in which Yeo admitted that her secret for savory sweet braised beef shins is Coca Cola. While she's certainly not the first person to cook with a carbonated beverage, it drew my mind to ginger ale.

Ginger ale isn't nearly as popular as cola, but I've always been a fan of its muted sweetness and natural ginger flavors (yes, it really is made with ginger). Braising with it concentrates the taste and lets the aromas bloom. I guarantee you that the smell alone will make you salivate.

Now for the screw-ups: my first attempt began with a can of pumpkin puree, and that was my first mistake. The canned stuff will save you time but it's as bland as baby food and thick as gruel. I added some cilantro, chicken stock, fat free sour cream and barley. It was actually pretty good up to this point except for the texture. And then I had the bright idea of adding some garam masala (I'll have more to say about that spice blend in another post). In theory, I thought it would work because the hint of nutmeg seemed like a good match for pumpkin. But again, it all came back to the odd taste of the canned pumpkin which clashed somehow with the spices.

My next attempt began with the braising of fresh pumpkin in ginger ale. However, I was still thinking of making a soup at this stage, so the pumpkin and leftover liquid all went into a pot with stock and barley. My mistake was to use regular ginger ale instead of the diet variety, which made the soup noxiously sweet. Perhaps I could have omitted the braising liquid from the soup. In any event, I tried to compensate for the cloying sweetness by adding more ingredients. I added some milk, which didn't do much. Then, thinking of Asian soups that involve fish sauce for some saltiness, I poured in a couple of teaspoons -- I figured salty would counteract sweet. Don't ever do that. It was utterly revolting.

The soup could have worked if it hadn't been so sugary to begin with. However, I prefer the braised pumpkin on its own. I happened to be sipping some full-bodied red wine while cooking it and the pairing was solid. Lamb or steak with couscous would make a great accompaniment. It just took a couple of kitchen disasters to get to this point.

Roasting in Winter

When it's cold and miserable outside, I get the urge to roast meat. The Canadian winter lasts for the majority of the year -- comedians joke that our summer lasts two weeks and Canadians cry because it's true. So it follows that I get the urge to roast for the majority of the year.

This week my inclination was to roast a pork loin. I found a big fat one at my local grocery. I considered what I could serve with it and immediately thought of green apples. You know a perfect pairing when you see one: Fred and Ginger, Cheech and Chong, Ren and Stimpy, R2-D2 and C-3PO, pork and apples. "Sweet" and "meat" are two words that I don't normally like to associate together, but pork seems especially amenable to sweet fruits, vegetables, marinades and sauces. It creates a delightful play between sweet and savory.

Making the roast was easy. I rubbed it with a blend of garlic, dill, lemon rind, lemon juice, olive oil, ground cumin, pink peppercorns and Dijon mustard. On the bottom of the roasting pan, I placed green apple slices and poured a cup or two of water to keep the apples and drippings from burning. Then I roasted it at 425°F for a couple of hours until the internal temperature of the meat reached 160°F (for medium-rare).

Next on my mind is a roast coated with some kind of dry rub. The Canadian winter is long.

Mellowing Out with a Good Soak

Cheaper cuts of meat are generally tougher and more chewy than choice cuts. But you can be kind to your wallet and your teeth by cooking cheap meats very slowly over low heat.

Such was the case with the bargain beef I had bought in a bid to save some money. After caramelizing a generous heap of shallots and garlic, I lightly seared the cubed beef and then drowned everything in coconut milk with lemongrass, chopped collard greens, Chinese broccoli, green curry paste and a dash of fish sauce. The pot was allowed to simmer, unaccosted, for nearly three hours.

The result was a beef stew with buttery soft meat chunks. It kept very well for several days and tasted great even when reheated in the microwave.

A slow-cooked dish that you make for someone else is meaningful, because it is infused with the time and care you put into it. Stews like this one are exactly what I'd like to put in the book.

Top of the Shop

Lynn, my fabulous friend and sporadic co-contributor here, was the one who introduced me to ras el hanout among many other gourmet treasures. It is a beautifully aromatic spice blend used across the Middle East and North Africa. In Arabic, it reportedly means "top of the shop" or "head of the shop" -- a reference to the fact that the blend is composed of a spice trader's very best merchandise. Given that explanation, it's not surprising that what goes into that blend varies depending on where you buy it. For some sellers, it's a trade secret.

The only common denominators that I've been able to find are cinnamon, cloves, and mace and/or nutmeg. The recipes I've seen also add combinations of coriander seeds, cumin seeds, fenugreek, fennel seeds, mustard seeds, Damascan rose petals or rosebuds, ginger, turmeric, salt, black pepper, white pepper, cayenne, allspice, aniseed, orrisroot, lavender, galingale, cardamom pods, etc. Having never even heard of some of these seasonings, you can see why it's easier to just buy the blend instead of making it.

Whatever the mix, ras el hanout imparts a deeply complex fragrance and flavor to dishes that call for it. My favorite application so far is to use it in a marinade/rub for roast chicken. I've also collected recipes that use it in vegetable pie, couscous with roasted vegetables, and even a spiced fruit cake.

Recently, I discovered how astonishingly well ras el hanout works with chicken livers. I've talked before about my newfound enjoyment of offal, and while "liver & onions" is a respectable pub dish, it has never been as exciting as ras el hanout, liver & onions. Making it couldn't be simpler: fry up some onions, add chopped livers, sprinkle some ras el hanout, and cook until the liver reaches a safe internal temperature of 70°C for at least 2-3 minutes. (The livers shouldn't be bloody in the centre.) I served it with some rice and a dollop of sour cream to counteract the spiciness.

Sufferin' Succotash

Ever since I heard Sylvester the Cat exclaim "sufferin' succotash" (well, it was more like "thufferin' thuccotash" given his lisp) on Looney Tunes, I had long wanted to know what "succotash" was.

Succotash has its roots in Native American cooking. The term comes from a Narragansett word that means "boiled corn kernels". You'll get a different recipe for it depending who you ask, but corn and beans are the star ingredients. The word may have entered the American vernacular when this frugal style of cooking became popular during the Depression era, though I don't have enough evidence to back this up.

I also couldn't find any definitive recipe for succotash, so I improvised my own. Since corn was the most common denominator, I chose to hand-shuck fresh corn. It gives me great satisfaction to pop out whole kernels of corn, even though it somehow makes me think of teeth falling out. My choice of bean was the lupini bean, which I also manually popped out of their shells.

Some bite-sized cubes of chicken breast were lightly seared first and onions were thrown in as an aromatic. I added a modest amount of chicken stock to keep the chicken from burning or drying out. The corn and lupini beans were put in, then to add some color, I chopped up some baby bell peppers. I gently simmered the pot until the chicken was cooked through. Last but not least, no herb goes better with chicken than dill, so a few fronds were chopped and mixed in near the end.

I think the dill made this dish as sprightly as it turned out to be. It's evocative of summer, which is a welcome distraction from the brutal Canadian winter. I'd like to think that other people might find this dish soothing as well.

The Cure for Fish

Being a former Montrealer, it goes without saying that I love a good bagel. And nothing goes better with a good bagel than cream cheese and gravlax.

It never occurred to me that I could make my own gravlax until I went to a wine tasting event and encountered a chef who was doing a cooking demonstration. He did a great job of illustrating how absurdly easy it is to cure fish: encrusting it in salt and sugar, weighting it down (with something like a heavy cutting board), leaving it a day or two in the fridge, and voilà.

At first, I had some anxiety about salt's effectiveness at killing unwanted bacteria, but if mankind has been preserving food with salt for millennia, then surely I can do it too.

Different chefs have varying ideas about the best salt-to-sugar ratio. The first time I cured salmon, I did a 50-50 ratio. The result was far too salty and required a lot of rinsing before it became edible. I've gradually decreased the amount of salt with each subsequent attempt. Most recently, I used two parts sugar to one part salt. It was a touch sweeter than I'd like. So perhaps a touch less sugar next time?

Scandinavians traditionally add dill and sometimes vodka or aquavit to the curing mix. I had fresh dill, so I used it. But there's really no hard-and-fast rule that says you can't add other kinds of seasonings. I had kept the salt from when I pickled some limes. Using it in the curing mix yielded gravlax with a faint lime aroma.

For easy clean-up, chef Jacques Pepin likes to wrap the fish with the curing mixture in plastic wrap, then seals the whole bundle in aluminum foil before weighting it down. This way, any moisture sucked out of the fish doesn't dribble all over your refrigerator. Pretty neat.

The Food Cooks You

This past Xmas, my overly generous parents spoiled me with some gift certificates for Amazon. I'm sure that I'm not alone in my triple addiction to movies, music and books. So, the exuberant thrill of receiving that ubiquitous Amazon box must also be a fairly universal experience. My cats share my excitement, albeit in a "box hab" (CuteOverload slang for "box rehabilitation") sort of way. All cat owners know about their pets' amusing fondness for cardboard boxes, an instinctual remnant of their wild ancestors who felt safest living in burrows.

My Amazon wishlist never seems to get shorter, partly because of the abundance of mouth-watering cookbooks that smart publishers have been cranking out year-round. At the top of my list are Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's "River Cottage" series of books. I've mentioned him before and the River Cottage URL has always been in my list of favorite links.

The very first time I learned of Whittingstall was when I was channel-surfing and came across an episode of one of his TV shows. In the program, he tried to convince junk-eating, bargain-shopper city dwellers that locally-grown organic produce and contented livestock were well worth the few extra quid for the improvements in taste, health-factor, sustainability, and ethical responsibility. I liked his gentle demeanor and unwavering conviction, even as he was demonstrating the slaughter of his own livestock. Now that's a tough sell, especially to the faint-hearted who have never stopped to think that the baby back ribs that they so love to eat come from adorable creatures who look like "Babe". But his arguments were well-grounded and certainly made a believer out of me.

The same conviction comes through in the books I ordered: "The River Cottage Cookbook" and "The River Cottage Meat Book". Within seconds of opening the "Meat Book", I was thoroughly absorbed by the opening chapters on his decision to raise and eat his own livestock. It will never turn around a die-hard vegetarian or vegan who thinks it's absolutely wrong to be eating animals. But it will give meat-eaters a deeper awareness of how much power and responsibility they hold in driving the market towards free-range, organically raised livestock. As long as people keep buying the cheap stuff, the market will continue to sustain inhumane, industrial forms of animal farming.

However, the books are not all rhetoric. There are plenty of gorgeous recipes inside. I like them for their rustic simplicity. You won't find any pretentious haute cuisine in here; just good home cooking. I'm a little intimidated by the recipes for headcheese -- it will be very freaky to bring home a whole pig's head from the butcher's. I'm not sure I would even know where or how to start carving. But I hope to try it some day.

Another item I ordered was the DVD of "How to Cook Your Life". I hadn't seen it before; I bought it solely on the strength of director Doris Dörrie, whose "Enlightenment Guaranteed" is one of my most favorite indie films, about a pair of German brothers seeking Zen in Japan. "How to Cook Your Life" is a documentary about Zen priest and chef, Edward Espe Brown from the Tassajara Mountain Centre in California. Brown has been cooking food at the monastery for over 40 years and has published a seminal book on bread baking called, "The Tassajara Bread Book".

This film isn't about cooking or recipes, per se. It's about approaching food with the same kind of mindfulness that Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall endorses at the River Cottage. One of the Zen practitioners at the monastery says, "We're cooking the food, but in terms of practice, the food is cooking us." In other words, the act of cooking teaches many life lessons such as patience, awareness, adaptability, generosity, and so on.

The film may not hold interest for a general audience, who I suspect will find it too slow. To someone who thinks and feels profoundly about food, this is a calm meditation on our daily bread.