Author: KC

I'm a graduate student in Montreal. I spend most of my time studying drug addiction using brain imaging techniques. I'm also a foodie, exploring the culinary world both in and out of my kitchen.

Categories
Poultry The Book

43. Rabbit With Mustard Sauce p.408

The recipe is very similar to this Epicurious version. Except that both Dijon and Whole grain mustard are used, and 2/3 cups shallots are browned in the pan before deglazing the fond.

Rabbit with… wait for it…. wait for it…. mustard sauce! yawn. It’s good, don’t get me wrong. But it seems like people hardly eat rabbit at all, and most of them will never have tasted it without a mustard sauce. This recipe follows three or four variations each for squab, poussin, and quail. Beyond the question of why the lone rabbit recipe in the book is tacked on to the end of the poultry section, why did it only get one rendition? I know a lot of people are uncomfortable eating cute little bunny rabbits, but they’re delicious. Similarly the book is devoid of recipes for venison, wild boar, or horse, all of which are on the menus around Montreal. Horse is probably just a Quebec thing, and Canada is developing it’s culinary identity around a lot of game meats, but those ingredients are much more familiar to me than any of those little birds.

Anyway, the recipe itself was pretty good. It’s simple, and it’s a classic for a reason. I found a beautiful rabbit for this one, probably closer to 4 pounds than the recommended 3. I liked the textural addition of whole grain mustard as well. It’s a very simple and unpretentious dish. The rabbit is browned, the shallot – white wine – mustard sauce is brought together, and the rabbit goes back in to cook through. Afterwards the rabbit is removed, the sauce thickened, and some parsley is stirred in at the end.

I’ve complained many times about parsley, and all of my objections stand. Also, stirring parsley into hot dishes doesn’t do anything for it. It’s only use in my mind is for a bright green punch of colour, heating it so it turns limp and grey sort of defeats the purpose.

It’s not the recipes fault, but it felt like something was missing. That something is tarragon. My father often made rabbit with mustard sauce growing up, particularly while he was living in Belgium. His version always added tarragon to the mix, and it was absolutely delicious. Taragon and mustard are natural buddies, and mustard with rabbit is a classic. It’s such a natural fit, but a quick search for tarragon mustard sauce recipes didn’t turn much up. The anise flavour adds it’s own dimension, and compliments what’s already going on in this dish. I’d highly recommend trying it.

This dish tasted good, was easy to prepare, and at least rabbit made the book in some fashion. It wasn’t inspired, but it was a solid basic. If you’re unfamiliar with rabbit this is a great introduction.

Categories
The Book Vegetables

42. Pan-Browned Brussels Sprouts p.526

the recipe

A while back I mentioned that I’d think about opening a restaurant that specializes in helping adults overcome their childhood food traumas. Brussels sprouts will feature prominently on the menu. This preparation is the perfect reintroduction to this maligned vegetable. Boiled or steamed they can be fairly one-note bitter, and overcooked they have that sulfurous stink that’s so common in foods kids hate. Here they’re prepared simply with garlic and pine nuts in a bit of butter and olive oil. The garlic, and the nutty flavours of the browned butter, and pine nuts compliment the sprouts beautifully. The presentation is dramatic and very attractive, and the sprouts end up crisp, lively, and just cooked through. My dining companion and I made twice as much as we thought we’d eat, but polished the whole plate off.

I liked these so much I made them for the boys on one of our weekend getaways. That experience emphasized how important a heavy bottomed pan, and careful heat management are to getting this recipe right. Using a flimsy non sitck, on an unfamiliar stove I managed to leave half of them mostly raw on the inside, the other half overdone and all of them unappealingly blackened on the bottom.

That said this is still far and away my favorite Brussels sprouts preparation. As long as you can maintain low even heat the sprouts get caramelized on the bottoms, and perfectly cooked though. This recipe is ideally balanced; it manages to show off everything that is great about Brussels sprouts, and deftly avoids their weaknesses.

Pan-browned Brussels sprouts, you’ve earned your 5 mushroom rating.

Categories
Cakes The Book

41. Orange-Poppy Seed Cake p.706

Sorry, no recipe.

I made this cake for a friend’s birthday party. The best way I can describe it is as a brunchy coffee-cake dressed up for dinner. During the day it works down at the espresso shack as that cute poppy seed loaf in the counter. It’s moist and rich with sour cream, and has a very pleasant fluffy but yielding texture. The cake has 2 tsp of orange zest mixed in, which are understated during the day, but they’ll sparkle at night.

After work the cake turns it up for an evening on the town. Most of the citrus flavour comes from the Grand-Marnier orange juice syrup it slips on. Paired with a flirty dollop of creme-fraiche, and a burst of berries to make the outfit pop it’s ready to go anywhere you’d care to take it.

This cake was simple to put together, it did require making a meringue, and some folding to keep the airy texture I was looking for, but it’s basically a breeze. Once the cake is baked little holes are poked all over and it’s bathed in the Grand Marnier syrup.

Grand Marnier is my favorite digestif, so I’m always happy to have it show up in desserts. The zip of the creme fraice was nice, but it was a touch heavy and coating. Serving this a la mode, or with whipped cream might have worked, or better yet with nothing at all. I had intended to top it with berries, but when I made it good looking berries were not to be found. No great loss as this cake stands up all on it’s own.

Categories
The Project

Back at it

Sorry for the long absence. I’ve been traveling, and my home computer crashed while I was away. I have all my notes and photos on this machine, so my grand scheme of writing blog posts while driving the pacific coast was thwarted. I had an amazing vacation, but I’m happy to be back to my kitchen, and to commune with the internet once again.

Categories
Cakes The Book

40. Warm Chocolate Raspberry Pudding Cake p.740


the recipe

I can’t say that I pulled this off with the grace or style of Julia Child, I hope that I honored her commitment to salvaging disasters with this dish. The concept here is basically an upside down cake. The bottom of the pan has a chocolate pudding layer, and then a cake batter goes in on top. The Book says that “When the cake is inverted on the a cake plate a few minutes after it emerges from the oven, it is instantly bathed with a rich, creamy, oozy frosting.”

My version did involve some oozing, but that was mostly cake batter spilling over the sides of my pan and onto the bottom of my oven, where it provided that smoky barbecue flavour that is so valued in fine pastry making. I think what ended up on the bottom of the oven was mostly the “pudding” part, and what was left mixed in with the top layer of cake. It came out as normal cake topped by extra moist yet somehow burnt cake. As the picture indicates it didn’t come out of the pan without a fight either. But, I forged ahead, topped it with some powdered sugar and hoped for the best.

I can explain the bit of burning and setting of the pudding that occurred, because I baked this before I got an oven thermometer. I now know that the oven is always 25 degrees hotter than I think it is. However, the spillover is inexplicable. I used the right size pan, and it spilled over within the first 5 minutes of baking. I’d go with a 10 inch plate if I were to make it again.

The recipe calls for seedless raspberry jam. I couldn’t find any anywhere, so I was reduced to running a jar of seeded jam through a fine mesh sieve. This was far more annoying than I ever would have expected.

I was pleasantly surprised when my guests and I set into it. The cake had a nice super-moist texture, and there was great chocolate-raspberry flavour. Unfortunately, like almost all deserts in the book, it was cloyingly sweet. My guests and my dining companion had nothing but good things to say about it, and when we talked about this cake yesterday she only remembered how delicious it was. I thought the book was just into sweet sweets, but it turns out other people are too.

Personally I wasn’t a huge fan of the cake, it didn’t work out anywhere near how I’d expected it to, and it left me with a lot of oven cleanup to do. However, it delighted my guests, and after all entertaining is about pleasing them and not yourself. I’ll have to give this a higher rating than I think it deserves out of deference to the palates of my friends.

Categories
Pasta, Noodles, and Dumplings The Book

39. Penne with Broccoli Rabe p.206

I can’t find an Epicurious recipe for this one. If I had this might have been a 4.5 mushroom dish, but I can’t bear not to share this simple flavourful Tuesday night supper with the world. Here it is.

2 pounds broccoli rabe
1 pound penne
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 garlic cloves, sliced
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes, or to taste
Salt

Accompaniment: finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

Trim and discard any yellow or coarse leaves and tough stem ends from broccoli rabe. Cut off florets and reserve. Cut stems and leaves crosswise into 1-inch-wide pieces. Wash stems, leaves, and florets and drain in a colander. Cook Broccoli rabe in a 6-quart pot of boiling salted water (1 tablespoon salt per every 4 quarts water) until stems are tender, about 5 minutes; drain.

Cook pasta in a large pot of boiling salted water until al dente.

Meanwhile, heat oil in a 12-inch heavy skillet over moderately low heat. Add garlic and red pepper flakes and cook, stirring until garlic is golden, about 1 minute. Add broccoli rabe and salt to taste, increase heat to moderately high, and cook, stirring occasionally, for 3 to 5 minutes.

Drain pasta and toss with broccoli rabe until well combined. Transfer to a bowl and serve with cheese.

Broccoli rabe is usually sold as rapini here. I don’t think I’d ever tried it before I met my dining companion. She adores all bitter greens, but rapini is her special favourite. It looks quite a bit like leafy broccoli, and has a similar taste, but with a serious bite. Apparently it’s a member of the turnip family, and some of that sharp flavour comes through. Rapini was definitely the vegetable find of 2006 for me. We eat it quite regularly, and I hope that I’m getting the touch. It’s a bit tricky because it has tough fibrous stalks, and relatively more delicate leaves. The idea is to get the stalks tender, without overdoing the leaves. More than once I’ve stopped early (inedible stalks), or gone too far (nasty yellowish leaves, and a bit of a sulfurous funk). I think I’ve got the hang of it now, and the 5 minute mark set in this recipe is right on the money. The photo is proof that it came out a vibrant green, and I assure you that it was toothsome and not a bit mushy.

For a recipe I’m giving a 5 mushroom rating to, it’s horribly written. It wasn’t at all clear to me what I was supposed to do with the florrets that I’d reserved. Were they meant to go in to boil with the stalks? possibly. Perhaps then they are the broccoli rabe that goes into the pan with the garlic and oil? Would have been nice to specify it. Does that mean that the boiled stalks go into the pan as well as florets? Perhaps reserve the florets, meant reserve for another purpose. Who knows. Anyway, I boiled the stalks, cooked the garlic and red pepper flakes, then added the stalks to the garlic, cooked for a bit and tossed with the pasta. I forgot my little bowl of florets on the counter and they never made it into the dish at all.

I guess the recipe is pretty tolerant, and it is delicious. Do what you will with the florets, but do make this dish.

Categories
The Book Vegetables

38. Roasted Carrots and Parsnips with Herbs p.529

the recipe

I nip, you nip, we all nip for parsnips!

I love them mashed, boiled, grilled, broiled, sauteed, and particularly roasted. They behave almost exactly like carrots, they look like carrots, they taste quite a bit like carrots, and yet… the carrot is a superstar of the vegetable world, and the poor parsnip is drinking alone at the bar slurring “whachs ur problum, not ornge enough fur ya??” at unsuspecting passersby. They’re not as sweet as carrots, but I think they bring a lot more flavour to the table. They’re also a whole lot starchier, meaning that they pretty much have to be cooked.

It’s hard for me to be objective about this recipe, because I’ve been making my own version of it for years. I normally toss carrots and parsnips with oil, salt, pepper, and assorted dried herbs, then roast them. The advantage this recipe has is the addition of water to the pan which helps the vegetables get tender, then as the water evaporates they’re able to brown up. When I make this I generally just use dried herbs, I’m not sure it makes a whole lot of difference in a dish that’s roasted for an hour. That said the sage and rosemary were delicious.

This is one of those pretty basic recipes that’s hard to rate. It would be delicious if you followed the recipe exactly, or if you improvised wildly around it. But it was solid, and it won’t lead you wrong.

Categories
The Book Vegetables

37. Swiss Chard and Chickpeas p.542


the recipe

This quick stew was fine, nothing special, but fine. It’s centred around swiss chard and chickpeas, with a bit of tomato, onion, garlic, and lemon juice. It was a bit bland, and the flavours never really came together. The fibrous swiss chard and grainy chickpeas didn’t make for the most appealing texture either. On the other hand it was a heathly and simple side dish.

I think this was a case of great things being inappropriately combined. Sauteed swiss chard with a bit of onion garlic and lemon is an excellent summery vegetable dish. Simiarly a simple chick pea salad with those ingredients is a satisfying dish any time. Put them together and add tomato, and you get something less than the sum of it’s parts. I don’t think tomato would be particularly good with the chard or the chickpeas alone, and it didn’t really add much to the stew.

On the plus side the ingredients were easily available, there was almost no effort involved in making it, it’s cheap, and it feels healthy. Unfortunately “tastes really healthy” is the food equivalent of “has a great personality”.

Categories
Grains and Beans The Book

36. Basic Polenta p.264

the recipe

The linked recipe differs from The Books version in the cooking directions. The linked version would have us standing there stirring the polenta for 40 minutes, which is enough to get me to give up on polenta forever. Fortunately The Book’s version is kinder, we’re only asked to stir 1 minute out of every 10 for 40 minutes, leaving it covered when it’s not being stirred.

This isn’t the flashiest polenta in the world, but as the title implies it’s a very solid basic. Restaurant polenta (and grits for that matter) are often an excuse to hide half a pound of butter and a giant brick of parmigiano-reggiano in an unassuming package. All that’s in this basic version is water, cornmeal, and salt. As you might expect the earthy corn flavour is prominent. It’s not as delicious as the dressed up versions, but your waistline will thank you. Because there’s so little in there it’s also very neutrally flavoured, and makes an excellent base for sauces and gravies. I recently served braised chipotle pork-hocks on a bed of this polenta, and I couldn’t have asked for a better combination.

The most important thing about a “basic” recipe is that it work flawlessly. This is a rock solid method. I’ve made whole batches, half batches, and quarter batches, without changing the method at all. It comes out perfectly every time, and making it doesn’t take up too much of mine.

Categories
Cookies, Bars, and Confections The Book

35. Cranberry Caramel Bars p.691


the recipe

I really enjoyed these bars. I brought half of them to a party, and they disappeared instantly. I enjoyed more of them over the next week, and brought out even more from the freezer a couple months later. All that to say, the recipe make a lot of bars, and they keep and freeze well. They’re filled with pecans coated in a buttery-tart cranberry caramel. This filling goes down onto a shortbread base, and the whole thing is drizzled with melted chocolate. They weren’t light, they weren’t particularly easy to put together, they weren’t cheap, but they were absolutely worth it.

Any bar that starts with a shortbread base is off to a good start in my book. It’s so simple, and invariably fantastic. The cranberry caramel tasted great. The butter and sugar were cut by the tart cranberries, which kept it from tasting too rich. The caramel allowed me to play with my candy thermometer, and convinced me I really need a better one. Because the butter goes into the caramel from the beginning it’s got to be monitored carefully. It needs to get hot enough for the sugar to caramelize, but not so hot that the milk-solids in the butter burn. Once the cranberries and pecans have been added and the mixture has been allowed to return to 245 degrees it has to be spread out on the shortbread base very quickly. The caramel is dense, sticky, stringy, and ferociously hot. An errant bit of pecan slipped off my silicone spatula and landed on my wrist. The candy Gods reminded me not to be too casual with a nice little burn.

After the bars have cooled you can add the chocolate. The book recommends snipping the end off a Ziplock bag, but there’s no reason you can’t use a pastry bag if you have one. I wish I’d been a bit more careful in decorating them, my random crosshatch wasn’t the most attractive, nothing wrong with it, but I could have made them prettier. The chocolate was nice, but certainly not necessary. They might have been better looking without it, and while the flavour didn’t detract at all I’m not sure it added much. Between cranberries, pecans, and shortbread there was a lot going on flavour-wise, and chocolate didn’t particularly elevate, or marry these flavours. I know the “add chocolate to make it better” school is strong, but in this case adding chocolate made them chocolatier, not necessarily better.

These squares would be a welcome addition to any Christmas baking repertoire, and work well for pretty much any occasion the rest of the year too. Because they keep so well, they’re ideal do-aheads. I thought the flavour and texture were great, really crunchy between the shortbread and nuts, with a gooey chewiness from the caramel. The caramel also acted as a glue, and counteracted some of the crumbling problems that shortbread is prone to. With or without chocolate these are delicious, reliable, and impressive squares. They probably merit a 5 mushroom rating, but they lost half a mushroom for attacking me.