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
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

15. Grilled Porterhouse Steak p.434

Very similar to this recipe

This recipe has four ingredients. A big porterhouse, cracked peppers, salt, and fire. This is manly steak grilling time, the opportunity to show off your grilling kung-fu. You just dropped a bundle on these steaks and they are now in your hands. Don’t mess up.

I find grilling steak a bit intimidating, I’m doing my very best to learn the vagueries of how different bits of cow react to fire but it’s a big job. I’ve been practicing the palm of the palm technique for judging doneness, and trying to get a sense of how hot a grill really is by holding my hand over it for X seconds. But all in all last summer was full of very mixed grilled steak results. The steaks I was sure were just shy of medium rare went all all the way from bloody to crispy. I don’t seem to have this problem in a pan, it’s just when I get outside. I suppose a lot has to do with hotspots and the weather outdoors, but I think the common factor is me. I’m pretty sure that my grilling chi is out of alignment.

I’m also a bit confused about steaks themselves. The recipe here calls for porterhouses. Turns out all porterhouses are T-bones, but not all T-bones are porterhouses. Apparently this has to do with the amount of tenderloin on the steak… who knew? Looking at the above picture I suppose I didn’t get a porterhouse, or a T-bone, at all. As far as I can tell I used striploin steaks. Which are T-bones, without the tenderloin attached. Confused? I sure am. To add a fun layer of complexity, in Quebec meat is billed using its French name, English translations are sometimes spotty and always metric. Remember that your 12 oz porterhouse is really a 340 gram chateaubriand.

In the end I got some very nice looking meat, that I salted, peppered and slapped on the grill. This was the first time I’d used this particular grill, and had no clue how it behaved. All in all I think I did OK. Goldilocks would have been proud, our three steaks were overdone, underdone, and just right.

The recipe (in the book, not the linked version) recommends searing the steaks for a couple minutes over very hight heat and then moving them to a cooler spot to finish cooking for ~15 minutes. They also recommend using a meat thermometer to check for doneness. This would have been a great idea if I’d had a meat thermomitor up on the island, and if my steaks hadn’t nearly finished cooking in the few minutes it took to sear them. The recipe does call for one and half inch steaks, mine were more like an inch thick, so this could explain the cooking times.

Overall everyone was delighted with their beef, I like mine on the rare side, and one of my dining companions prefers her steak grey. We all won. I think I butchered my adherence to the recipe pretty badly here, so I’m not sure I’m fit to comment on it. Pleasantly, summer is around the corner, and I’ll have ample opportunity to redo this. Yup, I’ll have to make a big succulent porterhouse in the name of science… life is hard.

a temporary rating of

Categories
The Project

A Mini Milestone

I’m over 1% of the way there! Just 1279 recipes to go. You can now keep track with the progress bar on the right.

Categories
The Book Vegetables

14. Grilled Bell Peppers With Criolla Sauce p. 557

the recipe

I was a big fan of this easy versatile colourful salsa. I made this one in a rustic cabin on a friend’s island in the Laurentian’s. Grilling is the perfect cooking method up there and these peppers turned out really well. Blackening them on the grill brought out loads of smoky flavours, which worked well with the bite in the rest of the salsa.

My version had all kinds of bite. I’m not a great connoisseur of peppers, and we don’t always have a wide selection in Montreal. I couldn’t find Serrano’s so I went with some nice looking scotch bonnets without really knowing the difference. Turns out the difference is about 250,000 Scoville units. I pitched in about one and a half peppers, and it just about took our heads off. After the fire of the first few bites had passed the peppers made the whole dish glow.

I’m not sure what this would have been like with Serrano’s, but the Scotch Bonnets made it memorable. We tossed the leftovers in with a steak and potato hash the next morning which worked exceptionally well. The recipe doesn’t mention letting this sit before serving, but I think giving this at least an hour to come together would be a good plan. Texturally it was all a bit mushy, something to give it a bit of crunch would have been nice. Maybe leaving the onion’s in slightly larger segments would do the trick. I’d also think about substituting the (useless) parsley with some cilantro.

Categories
Hors D'Oeuvres & First Courses The Book

13. Toasted Walnut, Roasted Red Pepper, and Cumin Spread p.12

the recipe

This was an absolute winner. Easy, cheap, packed with flavour, unusual, brightly coloured, exploding with garlic, what’s not to love? I’ve made this twice and I’m sure a third time is not too far away. There are flavours pulling in all sorts of directions here, sweet roasted red peppers and molasses, earthy cumin and walnuts, sharp garlic and red pepper flakes, an acidic bite of lemon juice, but everything plays very well together. It also changes a bit as you eat it. At first the sweet and spicy flavours are prominent, but after a few bites the nuts start to take centre stage.

I was complaining that the lamb tagine’s flavours were too scattered and working against each other. The flavours here are similar in some ways, but they’re pulling in concert. The result is my new favourite spread. The book suggests adding this sauce to meat, and while I haven’t tried it on a roast, I did put it on a turkey sandwich. I thoroughly enjoyed my lunch.

The only downside here is that I think I might be slightly allergic to walnuts. It’s nothing much, just a slight numbing of my mouth and lips and a tickle at the back of my throat; particularly if they’re raw. I’d probably do well to limit my exposure to avoid kindling or sensitization though. Too bad.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

12. Lamb Tagine With Prunes Apricots and Vegetables p. 510

the recipe

I’m not the hugest fan of meats in sweet sauces, and this certainly was sweet. Between the dried prunes, apricots, squash, sweet potato and honey it came close to cloying. There was a huge amount going on here, lamb isn’t a subtle flavour to begin with, and the all fruits and spices brought it near to sensory overload.

I know that Tagine’s and much North African cooking is based on these flavour profiles, but they are often more muted than they were here. The best Tagine’s I’ve had have kept the individual ingredients flavours distinct in each bite, with a mingling of their tastes in the sauce. Here I thought it blended too much, and it was texturally homogenous. I found the spicing to be quite nice, with ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg perfuming the sauce.

I would recommend cutting some of the fruit from this dish, and serving it as one of several elements in a meal. We had only this and couscous, and I really enjoyed the first few bites, I just tired of it rather quickly. The recipe also makes a whole lot of food, so my impression of this one may be tainted by having eaten days worth of leftovers.

Categories
Fruit Desserts The Book

11. Cherry Clafouti p. 817

This was a very straightforward dish, an eggy batter poured over cherries and baked until puffed and golden. It was very easy to put together, the whole batter is made in the blender, and the addition of almond and vanilla extracts as well as kirsh gave it some complexity of flavour. I’m always happy to see kirsh turn up on an ingredient list, because other than fondue au fromage, I’m not quite sure what to do with it.

The recipe recommends pitting the cherries, but gives the option to leave them whole. I left them au naturel and warned my guests. We didn’t have any incidents at dinner, however the next day I bit down on a cherry stone and may have loosened a tooth. The final dish was quite sweet, but I believe this was my fault. In rereading the recipe I notice that it called for sour cherries, and I’m fairly sure I used Bings from the grocery store. The sour cherries would have been welcome here, or if using sweet, cut the sugar.

This dish is located in the Fruit Desserts chapter of the book, but I think it would be more at home in with the Breakfast and Brunch section. It was billed as being “halfway between custard and cake”, turns out this is the state known as pancake. I was hoping it would be less sweet and more boozy, but as I mentioned that was probably my fault.

Categories
The Project

On Omissions and Substitutions

The point of this project is to prepare the recipes in The Book. If I fool around with those recipes then I haven’t really prepared The Book’s version. It would be quite unfair of me to give a recipe a failing grade when it was my playing fast and loose with the ingredient list that caused the problems. But what about personal preference? I’ve found that The Book goes too heavy on the salt, and too light on the Garlic for my taste most of the time. Since I’m the one eating all of this stuff I’m allowing myself to make minor changes in quantities to suit my taste, and to occasionally substitute an ingredient for a close cousin if it’s not to be found. I’ll be sure to tell you when and where I’ve cheated, and let you make up your mind about weather it still counts. If you leave me a comment letting me know you think I’ve improvised too much, then I’ll happily redo it.

Categories
The Book Vegetables

10. Asparagus With Tarragon Sherry Vinaigrette p.520

the recipe

This turned out quite well. I served it with steak Diane and brown-buttered corn with basil. Here the asparagus is steamed and then shocked in ice water before tossing with the vinaigrette. I usually boil my asparagus, but steaming worked very well. The recipe calls for a hard boiled egg to be passed through a sieve and sprinkled on top. I skipped this step, as my dinner was heavy enough with the steak. If I were serving this with salmon the egg might have worked very well.

The Tarragon was a great addition to this dish. The vinaigrette was simple and added a pleasant tang, while the tarragon has a great affinity for both the asparagus and the mustard in the vinaigrette. I chose to do this recipe early on in the project because I love tarragon, but don’t encounter it all that often. I actually hear about it more as a classic ingredient in French cuisine than I come across it on the plate. I live in Montreal, where every second restaurant is a French bistro, and you might expect it to turn up. That’s not to say that it’s not around, just that it’s under appreciated.

Categories
The Book Vegetables

9. Brown-Buttered Corn With Basil p. 534

Again, no recipe for you today but this side dish is so easy you really don’t need one. I browned butter in a heavy bottomed pan, and added corn kernels, salt, and pepper. When the kernels were tender (around 4-5 minutes) I stirred in some torn basil leaves.

I think the proportions were a bit off in this one. The book recommends 2 TBS of butter, 3 cups of corn, and 1 cup of basil. I would cut the butter and basil in half. Both added really nice flavours, but the extra butter just wasn’t really necessary. The problem with the basil was too much flavour, it started to overpower the corn a bit. I’d also be careful about shredding the basil very finely, as it was I got a lot stuck in my teeth.

Despite my criticisms I thought this was pretty good; fresh and summery. I think the browned butter was a great idea, it added a much appreciated layer of nuttiness to the dish which contrasted nicely with the sweetness of the corn.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

8. Steak Diane p. 427

I can’t find a recipe to link to, and that’s a real shame. This dish was a knockout. The classic version uses tenderloin, here The Book calls for much more affordable sirloins. The steaks were flavourful and ended up fillet mignon tender after a pummeling with an empty wine bottle. The steaks were seasoned with salt and pepper, then pan seared. I cooked down some shallots in the fat in the pan, and added a mixture of beef broth, Worcestershire, lemon juice, Dijon, Cognac, and Sherry (I used port). I reduced the sauce, and finished with butter and parsley.

The only change I’d make to this one would be to leave the parsley out of the sauce, it wilted kind of unattractively. I’d leave it out all together, but a bit in a chiffonade over the steaks would look nice.

This took all of 20 minutes to put together and it blew me away. I’m a sucker for a pan sauce because they rescue so much of the goodness you left behind in the pan, and can add complimentary flavours and complexity. In this case the sauce was exceptionally well balanced, and enhanced the flavour of the steaks without covering anything up. I loved that this took no time to prepare (dicing a whole cup of shallots was the most irritating part), didn’t cost an arm and a leg, and left a big impression with my guests. Traditionally the cognac is added right at the end of the dish and ignited table side, the recipe doesn’t call for it but big flames can do wonders to liven up a dinner party.

This was so good I’ve awarded it the first 5 mushroom rating of the project. Well done Steak Diane, well done.