Fiddleheads soup in December?

Last spring, my girlfriend and I picked a ton of fiddleheads in the forests surrounding Ottawa. Of course, we left enough of them on each plant to make sure the plant would not suffer too much from our harvest. Even then, probably because of the great excitement caused such an abundance of fresh greens after a long winter, we collected them in such huge amounts and that we had to freeze a few large bags. In fact, we collected so much of them that they still clog the freezer. We are using them once in a while, in fried rice for instance, but there is now a need to use them up before they degrade too much (yes, things do loose taste and texture in the freezer).

I made this soup out of one of our big bags the other day. I simply cooked them in water, pureed them with the cooking water, and strained the puree to remove the fibrous parts. I then seasoned the soup and tasted. Let’s say politely that it was not very good. I wondered for a long time why I had so much trouble eating this vegetable that my girlfriend love so much. While experimenting with my soup in order to make it better, I discovered that a little bit of acidity tremendously helps me appreciate this vegetable better. A touch of balsamic vinegar, sour cream and tomatoes were then added to the soup making it much better. It was still not a tremendous success, there are much better soups to be made, but I now know how adding a little bit of acid greatly improve this vegetable that I otherwise tend to find a bit, well… weird.

That’s one thing to remember for the next spring!

Pears poached in port wine and spices

Sometimes, and especially when composing a menu for a weekend diner, I find it amusing to subtly link each dish to the other in a succession of services. I guess it comes from my secret fantasy in which I am the chef of a very fine restaurant in only serving people who like and do play with their food. Anyway, when I cooked my rabbit the other night, I also prepared a desert using similar flavours. The rabbit was braised in a spices and dark beer sauce so I decided to poach my pears in a syrup aromatised with the same spices. I decided to forgo using beer here for obvious reason and replaced it with port, water and sugar instead. I’ll let the more adventurous cooks show me how to make desert with beer.


The pears were quite good and so was the syrup which I concentrated into a delightful sauce. In the end I was quite glad of my experiment but I still find the cost of making such desert a bit steep: I used a good cup or two of a fairly good and therefore expensive (at least for me) port wine in my recipe.

Bird Flu - Eggs and poultry eaters beware: The boogeyman is here!

I just found this article about the potential consequences of bird flu on food safety. As with most governmental agencies these days, they suggest some basic hygiene procedures and some culinary annoying ones like:

“Eggs yolks should not be runny or liquid.”

This is something I am not willing to do for now. I just can’t imagine having my Sunday brunch eggs thoroughly cooked… especially if I’m having poached eggs. I also love homemade mayo and other egg yolk based sauces. In any cases, if bird flu hits us, it would spread from human to human not from egg to human. I understand that these guidelines apply mostly to areas currently affected by the current epidemic and that aim at reducing the probability of a virus mutation into a lethal killer. The problem is that I always fear over-zealous civil servants when addressing food issues. Will bird flu be the end of organic bird farms? Will runny eggs become only available in clandestine restaurants?

Let me set the record straight here: I am afraid of a potential bird flu pandemic but I am equally afraid of misdirected policies in time of great social apprehension and panic.

However, in the event that runny eggs are to be portrayed as weapons of mass destruction and eradicated from the face of this planet, you could still find comfort in my fake soft-boiled eggs.

Paper Chef # 13 - Fake soft boiled egg

The ingredients for this edition of Paper Chef as found on Tomatilla and An Electronic Restaurant are:

• Rice (good, I have a few bags of different types of rice on my shelves)


• Carrots (cheap, good and readily available = perfect!)


• Anchovies (salty, pungent… excellent to kick up almost any recipe… great!)


• Something from the other side of the world that helps make this dish a celebration for you. (Celebration… ok… Food is festive… but where the heck is the opposite of the world?)

I feel quite at ease with most ingredients this week, but I didn’t realize there would be some geographical research involved in this. I dropped out of my PhD studies in geography a few months ago and now I have to get back at it? Procrastinating my way to an answer using internet I found this website which can help any of you to know where that other end of the world is located.

I live in Ottawa, Canada. The opposite of the world, for me, is in the South Indian Ocean just between Australia (hello, dear judges) and the Kerguelen Islands, a remnant of the French Empire. The only commercially available product coming out of these waters found in my area, at least the only one that I am aware of, is the Chilean Sea Bass which is found in the cold seas surrounding Antarctica. It used to be abundant but has been over-fished for the years now and many fear its future might resemble the fate of the Atlantic cod, a social and ecological disaster well known here in Canada. There are already many people involved in the politics of fishing over this species. As such, I am a bit reluctant to use the product.

There are also some problems in dealing with the antipode approach to this “other-side-of-the-world” theme. After all, antipodes, by their physical nature, are usually quite similar, at least ecologically speaking: the climate is usually similar and so is the agriculture practised in each places. There are, of course, cultural differences that usually come into play when such distances are involved. In my case, however, the colonial powers of the last centuries pretty much erased many of the cultural differences between here and the antipode. Ottawa, the city where I now reside is a French and English bilingual city, the capital of a country made of a cultural compromises between these two same European traditions along with a few trace from a long repressed native culture. The antipode of Ottawa, as you know by now, is located between Australia, a country which resemble Canada in many ways obviously without the French influences, and the Kerguelen Islands, a French territory in the Indian Ocean. We are therefore talking about an essentially western culture combining both English and French influences at each point of the antipode.

Perhaps this “other side of the world” theme is more evocative in nature and one could imagine many ways to look at the problem. For instance, we could do like 2-minute Noodle Cook did and use the equator to make a reflection around the waistline of our planet. One could also count 12 time zones to find the opposite slice of the planet or get the equivalent of a place’s latitude in the opposite hemisphere. I bet one could even create a complicated equation which would factor a certain degree of randomness, especially along the latitude gradient, to find a place as different as possible from one’s own.

As for myself, I’ve arbitrarily decided to go the easy way and pretend that China is the opposite of where I live. Since my girlfriend is Chinese, it makes this decision a bit suspicious, so let me explain such a choice. Firstly, there are exactly 12 hours between here and China and therefore it is on the opposite side of the planet in terms of day and nights. Secondly, although the climate is extremely diverse in China from North to South and even East to West, most of the places I visited there are in very hot subtropical areas that are at the climatic opposite of my dear cold Canada. Thirdly, China is very different, culturally speaking, from the western world (at least this is what I slowly start to understand after more than 4 years of common life with my wonderful partner). Fourthly, China is where cartoons characters tend to end up when they dig a hole through the Earth. Finally, it was cold and snowy today and I didn’t want to browse from shop to shop for a product that I was not even sure to find. So I went through my girlfriend’s spice rack, picked a few bottles and smelled them to find the perfect ingredient: some kind of mixed spices that I thought would complement the dish I had in mind.

You will know about this dish in a few minutes, but let’s recapitulate for now. The ingredients that had to be part of my dish would then be

• Carrots


• Anchovies


• Rice


• A Chinese spice mix (I can’t be more specific for the moment since I just can’t read the label but I am guessing there is a good amount of star anis in there)

Now, one of the suggested paths was to make something celebratory. At home, we try to make every meal as festive as we can. Life is too short for boredom, so even the simplest hot dog meal has to be as festive as possible.

On the other hand, there are some traditions around festivities in my family. One of my favourite is the Sunday brunch at my mom’s place. We usually end up eating soft-boiled eggs, croissants, cheese, some charcuteries and a ton of fruits. It is the soft boiled egg avenue that I decided to follow for this edition of paper chef.

Now you have waited long enough, here it is: the “carrot and anchovies rice-croquette fake soft boiled egg” with a slight Chinese spices accent and made of recycled products at 70%. I had the idea of making such a dish while thinking about rice croquettes, Japanese breakfast rice balls with a piece of fish hidden inside and, of course, soft boiled eggs.



Two days ago, I made a risotto and we had some leftover in the fridge. Risotto is rarely good when reheated so I had to find an imaginative way to use it and avoid loosing it. This edition of Paper Chef came to the rescue forcing me to deal with a great list of ingredients that got my mind going: carrots, rice and anchovies. Since I noticed that a ‘Super Saver’ category had been created, my desire to use my old risotto grew even stronger and I made an extra effort to keep everything as cheap as possible. As such, I decide to use the oil in which my anchovies are kept instead of the anchovies themselves and to stick to a minimal amount of ingredients. Heck! I even recycled my old frying oil for this recipe.

Here’s the recipe:

Carrot and anchovies rice-croquette or fake soft boiled egg

Ingredients:

• Old risotto (one with few added ingredients)


• About 1 cup of carrot juice


• About I teaspoon of ‘anchovy oil’ (the oil from your jar of oil packed anchovies)


• The same amount of flour


• 1 small pack of gelatine


• A good pinch of that Chinese spice mix on my girlfriend’s spice rack


• Sea salt (remember, the antipode of where I live is the Ocean)


• Frying oil

Steps:

1. In a small bowl, mix the gelatine with half of the carrot juice.


2. In a sauce pan, make a roux using the flour and the anchovy oil.
   
3. Slowly add the other half of the carrot juice and the spices.


4. When the sauce has thickened and almost reaches boiling point, pour it in the small bowl with the rest of the juice and gelatine. Mix well. Verify seasoning and add salt if needed.


5. Place in the fridge for a few hours to set.


6. Once set, use a melon baler or a spoon to mould your ‘egg yolks’


7. Using the old risotto, mould eggs and place one of your carrot and anchovies ‘egg yolk’ in each of them.


8. Deep fry each egg for a few minutes until they are golden brown.

The result is a nice crunchy rice croquette with its own sauce inside. The gelatine, by making the sauce solid at cold temperature, helps when creating the desired shape but melts during the cooking process giving the impression of a decadent runny yolk of a soft boiled egg. We served them with a bit of coriander leaves because we thought that deep-frying stuff would mean a somewhat greasy food but we were probably able to control the temperature enough to avoid that unpleasant greasiness. Oh, yeah… this must be awesome with a cold beer (do I get a bonus point for mentioning beer here?).

Now we are asked to nominate ourselves for one of the four categories. Let’s see where I could fit:

Paper Chef Personality - creative, clever or witty writer (English is a second language to me and I don’t feel like a very clever or witty writer…….. yet)
Paper Chef Super Saver - budget meals or crowd pleaser specialist (Hey… I used recycled ingredients like ‘anchovy oil’ and an old risotto… my carrots were in a 10 pounds bag that I only paid 1$... and to top that I also used recycled oil to fry my ‘eggs’… I could be a winner here)
Paper Chef Prestige - food styling, presentation or plating up expert (not my specialty… I’m actually quite bad at this)
Paper Chef Nutrition Genie - magician for getting fussy diners to eat veggies, less salt, less fat (hum, my dish is probably a bit too fat to fit in there… but I’m sure kids would love to eat carrots this way)
Paper Chef Supreme - the champion for Paper Chef #13 (I’d love to win this one but there are some awesome cooks out there… I’ll pass)

So I officially nominate myself in the Super Saver category!

And as for the gifts… In the event that I win one, I’d like to get the Ground Australian bush spice sampler pack. I’d love to try to other ingredients too but a sampler pack seems like a good option in order to satisfy my curiosity. I’m just afraid I’ll get addicted to some of those and have to rely on mail order in the very near future.

Braised rabbit in spices and Trois-Pistoles beer sauce

It's a success!

It is rare that I am as proud of my kitchen achievements as I am right now. Yesterday, saw one my best success with rabbit ever. This one started at my local newspaper and magazine shop. This is where I quickly browsed through a new local gastronomy magazine named ‘Flaveurs’. At first sight, this magazine looked fairly pompous, often showcasing expensive ingredients and let’s admit it: the name is awful. Nonetheless, in part because I learned as a kid not to judge things and people by their appearances, I decided to browse the recipes to see if there was something that would provoke my imagination. One of these recipes proposed the use of one of our best and most unusual local beers, Trois Pistoles, to braise rabbit. I forgot most of the original recipe but remembered that it requested a small amount of beer (100 ml I think), one head of star anis and about 2 cups of demi-glace. For those who read French: this could be the original recipe (link) but I can’t confirm for now.

Brewed by one of the best know micro-breweries of Canada, Unibroue, Trois-Pistoles, as I said, is an incredibly good beer but is also a quite atypical one. It is a very dark beer made like a strong Belgian Abbey beer with aromas reminiscent of exotic spices, dark chocolate and brown sugar. It is surprisingly soft on the palate in part due to its slight sweetness. It is not your typical dark beer so I would not advise using a Guinness or a similar beer in this recipe: a nice brown Belgian Abbey beer should do the trick better.

I started my recipe using half a bottle of beer and a few spices which included prominently star anis and clove. After reducing this mixture for a few minutes, I tasted it and was quite disappointed by the taste of it: I wanted a much stronger taste of spices infused in the beer. I then looked at the comparatively large amount of demi-glace in my other pot and realised that I would need much more beer and spices to alter its taste sufficiently for my guests to notice them in the final product. There was definitely a need to move away from the original recipe that I had partly forgotten anyway. I reluctantly poured in my pot the rest of the beer bottle that I planed to drink while cooking and added about ¼ of a cup of star anis along with a few other spices. In the meantime, I browned the rabbit pieces in a small Dutch oven.

Happy with my work, I opened another Trois-Pistoles to celebrate another happy late afternoon in my kitchen. And then, I got distracted and forgot about my rabbit for a few minutes… when I came back, there was a bit of smoke coming out of the overheated Dutch oven… nothing to cause panic yet but there was a need to act in order to avoid a catastrophe. I then decided to deglaze the pot with some of my newly opened beer to reduce the heat and avoid loosing the nice fond which had been created on the base of the Dutch oven. There was now over 1 ½ bottle of beer in my recipe. The rest went as planed and the result more than surpassed my expectations. Here’s the recipe!

(Note that the quantities are approximate since I didn’t measure anything… and don’t be fooled by the ugly picture: this dish was awesome!)


RECIPE
Braised rabbit in spices and Trois-Pistoles beer sauce

- 1 Rabbit cut in 6 or 8 pieces
- 2 bottles of Trois-Pistoles (341 ml each)
- About two cups of demi-glace (I used the commercial powdered version to reduce the costs… I’m sure this recipe would get even better if you use a better product or you own heavily reduced brown veal stock)
- 2 thinly sliced shallots
- ¼ cup of star anis (whole)
- ½ tea spoon of clove (whole)
- ¼ tea spoon of Sichuan pepper (whole)
- A tiny bit of cinnamon stick (cinnamon, as well as all the other spices in this recipe can be overwhelming so stick to these amounts or use your own judgement to adapt this recipe to your own tastes)
- 1 sprig of thyme
- 1 or 2 bay leaves
- Salt and pepper to taste

In a small sauce pan, slowly reduce, on a very low flame, the content of one bottle of beer in which you add all the spices but the salt and pepper along with the thyme and bay leaf. Then strain in the demi-glace sauce and season to taste. In the meantime, season and brown the rabbit in a Dutch oven with a little bit of oil or butter and reserve. Add the shallot until they are very lightly browned. At this point, add the content of the second beer bottle to deglaze (minus a few sips which should be enjoyed by the cook). Let reduce the beer by half. Put the rabbit back in your Dutch oven along with the flavoured demi-glace. Place in the oven for about an hour at 350° Fahrenheit. Before serving, strain the sauce in a small sauce pan and reduce to desired consistency (by half in my case).

A note on the picture: the rabbit was served with a lemon and cabbage risotto, roasted tomatoes and some oven roasted root vegetables. The roots and tomatoes were quite good but the risotto had a sourness that I didn’t like: too much lemon! I also added chestnuts in my original recipe but I came to the conclusion that they didn’t add much to the dish. There must be a way to make a decent presentation with this recipe… I’m open to any suggestion regarding this as I will certainly make this recipe again.

Now, the next things to try with this recipe:

• Marinate rabbit in beer and spices for a few hours before hand.
• Use only the legs of the rabbit keeping the loins for other uses and the bones to make the stock from which the sauce will be produced. (e.g. for 4 people: use 2 rabbits which will give two carcasses for broth, four loins for another meal and some extra meat from the front legs which could be used in again another recipe)
• Try a similar version with chicken legs.
  
  

Pizza dough + Pizza sauce + Toppings + Cheese = Pizza!

We had some leftover pepperoni and mozzarella cheese in the freezer from a previous pizza party. Since I feel like cleaning the freezer these days, I am trying to reduce its content as much as I can and yesterday I felt the cheese and pepperoni had to go. I'm not a bit fan of pepperoni but sometimes I have a strong desire for the type of pizza I had so often as a teenager. Yesterday was one of these days. I quickly made dough using different types of flour that I had at hand in the kitchen and prepared a sauce using a can of tomatoes, a can of tomato paste, a few cloves of garlic and a handful of dried oregano. I finished my sauce by adding a pinch of salt, a pinch of sugar, some hot sauce and a few drops of vinegar in order to balance the seasoning.

Then my partner joined me and the kitchen and each of us made our own pizza. My partner added a mountain of pepperoni and just a little bit of cheese along with onions, bell pepper and mushrooms. As for myself, I layered just little bit of pepperoni, lots of cheese, about the same vegetables and added tomatoes and olives.

The result was alright. I feel the crust was too thick in the center and not enough at the edge and that it didn't raise properly. Otherwise... it was pizza... pretty much the same kind we get at the local pizza joints. Nothing very good, nothing fancy but filling... exactly what I appreciated during my teen years.