Farewell But Not Goodbye

After 148 posts and a 3-month hiatus, it is time for me to bid farewell to this blog.  Life has a way of taking precedence, especially when free time is at such a premium.  That said, my goal of finishing this cookbook in my late friend's name and (hopefully) earning a profit for charity has not diminished in the slightest.  It just means that the time that would have been taken up by maintaining a blog would go now more directly into the production of the book.  (It's a bit of a juggling act, considering I have three other books in the works + the unavoidable day job.)

It's been a fun journey and I've learned a lot in the process.  There really is no end to what one can discover about food or cooking.  And then there's always the best part: the tasting.  I still feel like an ignoramus when it comes to cuisine -- I don't pretend to be an expert at anything -- but I hope someone out there in the wide web of the world has gotten something good out of this. 

Check back from time to time.  Because one day, the cookbook will be here.  Thanks for reading.  TTYL.

Southern Comforts

I usually have lame excuses for not posting in a long time, but this time I have a good one: I've been out of town for the past week and will continue to be on the move for another week! 

As friends and family know, I'm pursuing a personal project which has taken me to Texas and now New Mexico.  California is to follow.  Having made sure that the Internet would always be accessible, I was expecting to write almost daily about my dining adventures, especially since there's very little home cooking involved when on the road.

Well, while the eats in Texas were very good, they were almost all deep-fried, grilled or Tex-Mex.  It made for a repetitive and generally unhealthy menu.  Furthermore, the dining venues weren't exactly conducive towards photo-taking.  I felt alien enough being a very visible minority; it might have been too freaky for the locals if I started taking pictures of my food.

At last, today I was in Santa Fe and had my first taste of light food since leaving home.  At a modest little place called the Palacio Cafe, I had a refreshing half-sandwich and salad.  The sandwich was a BLT with whole wheat bread accompanied by a simple salad with balsamic vinaigrette.  My beverage was a delicious prickly pear iced tea.  In other words, cactus tea.  One thing I am loving about the southwest is that all iced tea here is unsweetened which is the only way any iced tea should be served, IMO.  And refills are always free.  The prickly pear tea was oddly familiar to me, but I couldn't quite place the taste until I remembered that my brother had given me a pouch of cactus tea upon returning from Tucson.  Unfortunately, I always made it hot and didn't like it much.  Served cold, I can't get enough of it.  A squirt of lemon perfects it.

For dinner, I found myself at the Atomic Grill -- aptly named considering Santa Fe's close link to the Manhattan Project.  I would have walked away from their menu which offered standard pub fare, but I was immediately attracted to their Fried Avocado Salad.  They took two fleshy halves of a whole avocado, rolled them in some breading then fried them to a light crisp.  The indentations where the pit used to be are filled with a creamy, tangy crab salad.  Leafy greens and yellow peppers are on the side, drizzled with a honey mustard dressing.  It was satisfying without bloating and seasoned just right.  I'd love to emulate this at home!

Shortbread Redux

I have no new recipes up my sleeve today. What can I say... excuses always sound lame, but it's been busy. More about that later.

Recently, I revisited one of my older recipes from March: Orange Coriander Shortbread. For Mother's Day, it seemed appropriate to send Mom something home-made from my own repertoire. To give it a personalized twist, I tried three flavor variations. Going clockwise from bottom left: (1) Lavender Orange, (2) Kaffir Lime Leaf and Lemongrass, and (3) Vanilla Poppy.

Not mentioned in the names is the grated lime rind that went into (2) -- Kaffir Lime Leaf Lime Rind Lemongrass sounded a little excessive. For (3), I scraped seeds from a vanilla pod rather than use vanilla extract. I like how the specks of vanilla blend right in with the poppy seeds.

The only thing I would do differently is to omit the lemongrass... as much as I adore its aromas, even finely ground lemongrass is too fibrous and clashes with the delicate texture of shortbread.

Happy belated Mother's Day to all you fabulous Moms out there!

Free as a Bird

I consider myself to be relatively food conscious, but it was still a very rude awakening to watch Jamie Oliver's Fowl Dinners -- a brutally honest examination of the poultry industry. I mean, I try to do my part by buying only free-range or free-run eggs if available, or at least organic eggs. Likewise with chicken meat. I know there are cynical counter-arguments that "free range" isn't what it's cracked up to be, but my choice is driven less by concerns about my own nutrition and more by the quality of life we owe to these creatures who nourish and sustain us.

But Jamie's show rattled me when I learned that egg farmers routinely euthanize large batches of male chicks after selecting female chicks most suitable for egg-laying. (Why the male chicks can't be sold or given to poultry farmers is beyond me.) A container full of fuzzy, adorable male chicks were gassed live on the show as audience members looked on in horror.

Less emotional but equally unsettling was the realization that we consume many third party commercial products that are made from eggs, almost none of which are organic, never mind free range. Cookies, cakes, ice cream and salad dressings are some of the less obvious examples. Sure, it's obvious when you think about how these things are made, but are you thinking about the quality or origin of the egg when you pick up a bag of chocolate chip cookies?

Hellmann's mayonnaise is my Achilles' heel. Their half-fat mayo is especially killer -- for someone like me who is perpetually watching her weight, it's a blessing to have something that tastes so creamy and rich at half the fat. Yet I had to give it up after seeing Fowl Dinners. {sniff}

For a while, I've been making do by making my own version of mayonnaise with half the effort: I posted a recipe last summer which I call Almost Mayo Sauce. By using soft/hard-boiled eggs instead of raw ones, it skips the hassle of ensuring that the emulsion stays stabilized. (You can all too easily screw up home-made mayo by over-whisking past the point of emulsion and causing it to separate itself again. It's salvageable by adding more egg yolk, but it's still annoying.)



Well, now some great news! Hellmann's has announced that they are using only locally sourced "100% Canadian free-run eggs". I'm usually very leery of big corporations that make these kinds of feel-good claims but this change makes me ecstatic. It shows me that there is enough push and demand out there among my peers for what Hellmann's calls "real food". By shaping the market, we make it possible for local farmers to succeed and create financial incentive for ethical farming practices. Maybe we're not doomed... it's nice to have hope.

Upscale Munchies

Poutine is a staple of this native Québécoise's diet. On a late night outing with friends or after a great concert, an attack of the munchies would have to be quelled by a cup of crispy fries and squeaky cheese curds bathed in thick gravy. The ubiquity of authentic poutine joints in Montreal -- like Lafleur's and La Belle Province -- made it easy to satisfy those cravings when I lived there. Toronto chefs can dish out some respectable interpretations of poutine, but I have to go a fair distance out of my way to get my hands on any of it.

Montreal chef Martin Picard has inspired me to give it a go right in my own kitchen. Picard is the chef/owner of Au Pied de Cochon -- a mecca for nose-to-tail meat lovers -- and host of The Food Network's The Wild Chef. I've had firsthand experience of the devastatingly good eats at Cochon, the most memorable of which featured foie gras. So it should come as no surprise that Picard has a recipe for Foie Gras Poutine.

Foie gras is not something one cooks with every day. It's a pricey indulgence that can't be found on the shelves of the neighborhood supermarket amongst packaged bologna and imitation crab meat. I bought my first fresh foie gras at A Taste of Quebec, allowing myself the splurge only because it was my bday. However, the price made me incredibly indecisive about what to do with it... that is until I found Picard's poutine recipe.

The seared foie gras tasted like bacon and had the texture of soft, buttery tuna belly inside. The foie gras sauce was tasty but not really necessary; I'm generally content with just a really savory, thick gravy. If only I could snack like this every time I get a case of the munchies...

Black Gold

In cuisine as in fashion, everything old eventually becomes new again. While platform shoes and mullets are probably best left in the past, black garlic is an ancient Asian food that has suddenly become all the rage across North America in the last two years.

Fermentation at high heat turns ordinary garlic bulbs into gift-wrapped packages of soft, sweet, black cloves. The acrid intensity of raw garlic is replaced by a soothing flavor that evokes hints of molasses, soy sauce and faint mushroomy notes. Perhaps my description fails to do it justice. Let me just add that I had a strong (happy) vocal reaction to the taste even though I was alone in the kitchen at the time!

The brand I bought was of the Toronto based Just a Pinch variety. Their black garlic comes in a small foil pouch -- the size of a packet of cat treats. There were two whole bulbs inside, just waiting to be peeled.

The confluence of several recent developments led to my first recipe invention involving black garlic. First, on the occasion of my birthday, Lynn and a group of wonderful friends treated me to a fantastic dinner at Torito Tapas Bar. One of the dishes we ordered was a richly flavorful and comforting stew of juicy chorizo and potatoes in a red sauce that tasted of red bell peppers and paprika (which is readily used in a lot of Spanish cuisine). The potato and sauce combination is called patatas brabas or patatas bravas. The smokiness of paprika in both the chorizo and the sauce triggers my taste buds like in a Pavlovian dog.

Second, I stumbled across some Portuguese chourico spiced with my favorite piri piri hot sauce at my normally disappointing neighborhood supermarket. I thought perhaps chourico was a relative of the chorizo, so I decided to give it a shot. (Read the informative essay by food writer David Leite on the battle for supremacy between chourico and chorizo.)

Third, I found the black garlic at the upscale Longo's near my work.

Fourth, a friend who recently returned from a trip across various African countries brought me some pure palm oil.

Fifth, I got into a hunger-inducing discussion with my brother about gourmetizing our beloved street meat, the humble hot dog. I envisioned some kind of chili dog made with black garlic and something crunchy and fried sprinkled on top of it, like fried onion or fried potato bits.

Thus, my concept for the following recipe was born:

Chourico Black Garlic Ragout with Potato Galettes

For the Ragout
1-2 pats of butter
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
2 links of chourico (or chorizo), diced
1 whole can (796 ml) of San Marzano tomatoes, crushed
4-5 cloves of black garlic, chopped or minced
1 bay leaf

For the Galettes
1 medium potato (I used a white potato here)
3-4 tsp oil (this is where the palm oil came into play)

1. Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Melt the butter.
2. Sweat the onion in the butter until translucent or even lightly browned.
3. Add the sausage to the pan and heat through for a minute or two.
4. Pour in the crushed tomatoes and their juices.
5. Add the black garlic and bay leaf and allow to simmer for 15-20 minutes.
6. While the ragout is cooking, coarsely grate the potato.
7. Heat half of the oil in a non-stick pan over medium-high heat.
8. For each galette, pinch a generous amount of the shredded potato and drop it onto the hot pan. Press down with a spatula and lightly shape it so that it is flat and roughly the size of a regular cookie. When it feels like each galette is holding its shape, flip it over until the potato has fried to a golden brown (or orange-brown in the case of the palm oil). You can probably fry a few at a time, depending on the size of your pan. If the pan seems dry between batches, add the rest of the oil.
9. When firm and crispy, remove the galettes from the pan and drain them on paper towels.
10. To serve, spoon out the ragout into a bowl. Place one or two galettes on top.

Next on the menu: I have to try out the recipe for Baked Banans with Black Garlic!

Great Balls of Fire

When I was kid, my ultimate favorite candy was the spicy hot cinnamon jawbreaker. The bigger the better. For days I would work on one, reveling in the tongue-numbing heat and getting high on the sugar. Biting or grinding it was a no-no because it would accelerate its demise.

Imagine that intense flavor and add 33% alcohol and you get Dr. McGillicuddy's Fireball Whisky from New Orleans. I picked it up on a whim the other day, drawn to it by the name, the old time labeling, the cinnamon and the price (750 ml for a mere $18.95 CAD). Ice cold shooters go down both hot and cold. It has an even balance of whisky kick, spicy punch and soothing sweetness. I normally dislike whisky but this I can grow to love.

It has fired up my creativity as well as my tongue: I can see this folded into a sauce to be drizzled over ice cream. Or poured over sponge cake, or mixed into icing to be slathered on top of carrot cake squares. Maybe it would work in a decadent brownie batter or an apple pie filling. It might be nice over pancakes with syrup or in some fruit preserves. The possibilities are endless.