Hungry In Hogtown

Moona Lisa: cooking with La Vache qui rit

Once, as a grad student and culinary dullard living on the tips I earned waiting tables at a Tex-Mex restaurant, I met a girl I really wanted to impress.  We'd already been on a few dates, and had reached the point in our relationship where it was time to take the next, anxiety-inducing step: homecooking.  I hoped to knock her socks off (although I have to admit her socks weren't really what I had in mind) by preparing a romantic dinner, something a little different from my usual post-work Whoppers smothered in mayo while watching Law & Order re-runs.  So I created a "homemade" pasta sauce of melted cream cheese with bacon.  The result was a bit of a stodgy mess, to put it kindly, but the girl appreciated the thought enough to at least remove those socks.   

Now that I've learned a little more about cooking and food, I've discovered that some of the great cuisines frequently gild their sauces with dairy, so cream cheese wasn't such a crazy idea.  Italians finish two of their most famous preparations, risotto and polenta, with dollops of butter and grated parmesan.  A little of both goes a long way, after all.  Parmesan adds salty and umami flavours, while butter provides richness and sheen.

This maneuver is such a staple of Italian technique that there's even a native word for it, "mantecare," a verb that means to blend or cream.

Great gastronomic minds think alike, apparently, because the French also exploit the finishing powers of a little dairy.  Many French sauces are incomplete without the addition of a little -- okay, a lot -- of butter.

The culinary world has even come to adopt the French term for this technique, "monter au beurre."

For years, Rachel and I finished countless -- not all, but most -- risottos, polentas, and sauces the same way.

That all changed last year.  One lazy afternoon, I whiled away my time watching French Food at Home on Food Network Canada.  The show stars Laura Calder, a graceful, well-spoken host with a deep love and knowledge of French cooking.  In the episode I watched, she made a zucchini and La Vache Qui Rit soup she describes as a favourite comfort food of French children.

I don't doubt it.  La Vache qui rit -- it's known as The Laughing Cow in most of the English-speaking world -- is a creamy, buttery-tasting blend of cheeses, though apparently it's mainly Comté, that's easy to enjoy primarily because it is so unchallenging.  There are no funky tastes or textures, just a straightforward richness that any child (and most adults) can appreciate.

What makes this cheese so compelling is not simply its taste, however, it's also the dynamite packaging.  Not everyone recognizes the circular box with the big smiling cow on its front, but the individually foil-wrapped wedges within are iconic.  As a child, I remember going to family gatherings and gorging on this cheese.  I especially loved grabbing a wedge, finding the little red pull tab, then pulling back the foil to reveal the delicious triangle of cheese within.

It's no wonder, then, that Rachel and I made Calder's soup shortly thereafter.  It is delicious, but after cooking a batch (and enjoying a few snacks here and there) we still had many wedges leftover.

My eureka moment came while reaching into our cheese drawer to get some parmesan for a risotto.  While looking for the undisputed king of cheeses I glanced at that beguiling bovine smile and grabbed three wedges (as well as the parmesan) to add to the pot before serving.

Now, I'm sure there are many Italians out there cringing at this little experiment, and I can't say I blame them.  I actually feel annoyed when I get served risotto in restaurants that's been finished with a little whole cream; it just feels like cheating to me.

But after tasting the risotto with the laughing cow, we were very pleasantly surprised at both the texture and flavour of the finished product.  The effect is subtle, but the cheese adds richness and creaminess.  Frankly, I think most people would notice a difference in the dish but would be unable to identify what, precisely, had changed.

Our favourite risotto to pair with La Vache qui rit is a simple trio of leeks, peas, and lardons of crispy bacon.  The recipe is at the end of this post.

Having ventured into fertile territory with rice, I decided to expand my repertoire to yet another staple of the boot.  Polenta doesn't deserve its stodgy, bland reputation.  Prepared with time and care, cornmeal can be every bit as satisfying as risotto or pasta.  Of course, we soon discovered that time and care are a whole lot better with two wedges of La Vache Qui Rit.  Just stir them in along with any other seasonings, including parmesan, to finish the dish.

Polenta or risotto with La Vache qui rit seems miles away from that first pasta sauce of melted Philly.  As for the girl, she liked my cooking enough to stay close.  Rachel married me five years ago.

Leek, pea and bacon risotto

1 large leek (may substitute 1 large cooking onion)
225 g bacon (approximately 2, 1 cm thick slices)
200 g (approximately 1.5 C) fresh or frozen peas
350 g (approximately 1.75 C) arborio or other suitable risotto rice
1 L chicken stock (may substitute vegetable stock or water)
200 ml white wine, if desired
3 wedges of La vache qui rit cheese
salt
pepper
parmesan

Slice bacon into 1 cm wide lardons.  In a large saucepan or dutch oven over medium heat, cook lardons until darkened and crispy on the outside.

Preheat chicken stock to a bare simmer.

Remove lardons and all but two tablespoons of bacon fat from the saucepan or dutch oven and, over medium heat, add leeks and cook until just softened, approximately two minutes.  Add the rice, and cook until white dots appear in the centre of each grain, stirring frequently.

If using wine, add it at this point, stirring.  When it is reduced, add just enough hot chicken stock to cover the rice, stir frequently.  The liquid should barely simmer throughout this process.  Repeat this step until the rice is al dente, approximately eighteen to twenty minutes.  If the stock runs out before the rice is cooked, substitute water.

When the rice is almost cooked, add the peas and La Vache qui rit cheese, and stir until the cheese is completely incorporated into the risotto.

Finish with salt, pepper, and parmesan to taste.

Serve in bowls sprinkled with lardons and with additional salt, pepper, or parmesan if desired.

Makes four portions.

65 degrees of coagulation: Hervé This, Maxim, and the perfect hardboiled egg

I'm worried.  When Canadians think of French food, visions of soufflés, duck confit, and Camembert dance through our heads and make our mouths water.  The French, not surprisingly, lack a similar frame of reference for us.  I know this because Hervé This, godfather of molecular gastronomy, can apparently think of no comestible more typically Canadian than BeaverTails.  BeaverTails is an Ottawa-based fast food chain whose namesake product is a beaver tail-shaped slab of freshly fried dough sprinkled with any number of sweet toppings.  I admit to having enjoyed a few in my time -- cinnamon, sugar and some freshly squeezed lemon, if you please -- yet when This, grasping for an example of Canadian history and culture, came up with BeaverTails, saying "It's something.  And there are probably some rules for making [them]," it threw me for a loop.

Not that I wasn't intimidated to be interviewing Dr. This in the first place.  It's not every day you get to share a crêpe and a conversation with the world's foremost food scientist, and it's even rarer to be doing it for your first article for the The Globe and Mail.  Everything went smoothly, thankfully. Dr. This's passion for food and science are obvious, and he combines intellectual rigour with a willingness to repeatedly explain complex scientific principles to a certain someone whose limited ability to digest even rudimentary concepts limited him to only two obligatory high school science credits.

Of course, when I'm not interviewing French intellectuals for Canada's newspaper of record, I prefer to let my hair down by photographing eye candy for Maxim Magazine.  Yes, that Maxim.  But, no, not that kind of eye candy.  I cackled when I first read the email from a photo editor at the magazine asking if they could use one of my photos from the post on deep fried Oreos, but there it is on page ninety of the June issue.  I'm proud to have supplied the visual interpretation of a dish comedian Dave Attell describes as looking "like something that comes out of a clown if you tickle him too hard" in the accompanying text; I like to think it takes real skill to make that look appetizing on film.

So what better way to celebrate landmark success than with hardboiled eggs, right?  Now, I'm not talking about just any hardboiled egg, I'm talking about Herve This's signature preparation, the 65-degree egg.  It may seem simple, but a hardboiled egg is actually a difficult preparation to execute well.  At their overcooked worst, hardboiled eggs can be a green, foul-smelling, rubbery atrocity.  65-degree eggs
are the exact opposite: the yolk glistens while the white remains slippery soft, even undercooked to some.  No wonder they're all the rage among chefs.

Dusted with pepper and gilded with a few flakes of sea salt, the gentle textures of the egg pair perfectly with crispy lardons of bacon -- a playful interpretation of the typical North American breakfast.  It's also the perfect preparation for disorganized cooks.  Can't time the toast properly?  No problem, the egg waits for you because it's cooked in either an oven or a pot of water held constant at its final cooking temperature.  Cook them for two hours or a two days, it doesn't matter.  The only trick is to maintain a stable temperature.  I opted for a large pasta pot and a very low gas flame.  It took a little while to get the temperature right, but it was far easier than I suspected.

It made for a delicious late-morning snack, too. Heck, this Canuck would even choose it over a BeaverTail, tradition be damned.

Ooh la la! Rillettes à la Bourdain with Poilâne bread

We love Paris, with its wide boulevards, stunning art, and remarkable cuisine, and our hearts beat a little faster every time we reminisce about La Rambla, Gaudi, and the glories of Barcelona.  Yet more than any other place, our hearts belong to Italy.  From our first glimpse of the Colosseum, to our first bite of our first meal in Rome, we've been in love with Italy and its food.  Rob went so far as to learn the language -- taking great delight in shocking his Italian teacher by asking her the meaning of particularly titillating words with feigned, wide-eyed innocence -- and we flirted with the idea of moving there.  We gaze at the belpaese every day, or at least the map on our wall.  We even honeymooned there. 

So why the heck do we have so much French food on our blog lately?

SHF #18: Bailey's Irish Cream Crème Brûlée

I need a drink.  Badly.

There are few dishes in this world that cause me more anxiety -- of the finger-chewing, hall-pacing variety -- than making crème brûlée.  I do it, nonetheless, because the reward when I succeed is a dish so delicious I become prone to crème brûlée-induced erratic behaviour.  Take the Bailey's Irish Cream crème brûlée I've made for the liquor-themed edition of Sugar High Friday, hosted by Lick The Spoon: dark, smooth, creamy, flecked with vanilla seeds, and capped with a crackling burnt sugar crust, the already decadent custard is enriched with the unmistakable whiskey and aromatic notes of Bailey's.

But when I fail, I fail spectacularly.  For this I blame the egg, the petulant diva of gastronomy.  Treat her well, and the egg rewards you with flavour, texture, and body.  Make the slightest misstep, however, and our spoiled little prodigy is not afraid to throw her steaming hot, non-fat, organic soy milk latte on you, give you the "Do you know who I am?" treatment, and ruin your dish in a hissyfit of coagulation and curdling.  Never is this flightiness more apparent than in the creation of custards.

Weekend Cookbook Challenge #4: All it's croqued up to be

There may be no show on Food Network Canada Rachel and I enjoy more than Barefoot Contessa.  That's not to say we think Ina Garten is the best chef on the dial, or that she prepares the most inventive dishes, not by a long shot.  There's just something about her show we find endlessly entertaining.

I still remember the first time we watched an episode, after Rachel's mother had urged us to check it out.  What a strange universe it depicts.  There's Miguel, the stylist; that damn florist who looks like Stuart Smalley; the omnipresent but only sometimes seen husband, Jeffrey; and, of course, the larger-than-life presence of Ina herself.  As if that weren't enough, add the picture-perfect backdrops of the Hamptons and Ina's ridiculously well-equipped kitchen which, pardon my envy (and I'm not alone), happens to face a garden the size of a small park.

But wait, there's the food.

Gnocching on heaven's door: Boulud's braised short ribs with homemade potato gnocchi

We fell upon Italy and its food like a two-person swarm of locusts.  After five days in Malta -- the British started leaving in the 1960s, but apparently forgot to take 1960s British food with them -- we were ready to eat.  Malta is a beautiful country with a remarkable history and, for Rob, a deeply personal history too, given that his father was born there.  Nonetheless, after living on pastizzi, the delicious flaky pastry turnovers filled with ricotta or mushy peas, for the better part of a week, we approached Italy with eager appetites.

We arrived in Florence after several days of gluttony in Rome (to read a little about that, click here).  Not knowing a pesce from a pesca made eating well a challenge, but we wandered throughout the city and opened our minds and our stomachs to every tantalizing experience we could find.  I guess it's no surprise then, that we stumbled into an almost-empty restaurant at seven one evening, an unthinkable hour for any self-respecting Italian.  Thanks to the patience and kindness of our remarkable waiter, we eventually ordered a meal using a clumsy mix of broken English and heavily-accented pidgin-Italian.

But, oh, what a meal!  The highlight was a steaming plate of tiny potato dumplings sauced in a rich truffle cream that were like clouds on the tongue.  Our eyes met as I realized I was in gastronomic heaven.  Then I turned away from the waiter, and smiled at Rob.  We started laughing out loud -- it was that good.

Once back in Toronto, we put a lot of effort into recreating those lighter-than-air gnocchi.

Rocked lobster

My tiny apartment-sized freezer and I play a sick game with each other.   I stuff it full of goodies, or "oldies but used to be goodies and one day may be goodies once more," like unused baguette ends and bananas with even the slightest blemish (I'm very picky about my bananas).  I have the best plans to make banana bread, or bread crumbs, or bread pudding, or banana bread pudding.  Our freezer is bursting with my good intentions. 

Said freezer retaliates by hiding crucial dinner ingredients deep in its dark frosty recesses.  It zaps my bagels with freezer burn.  Sometimes it even spits the frozen bananas -- often blackened and shriveled like the trophies of a pygmy headhunter -- at me when I open it.

It's a love-hate thing.

Problem is, Rob has the freezer packrat mentality as well.  So when he gleefully volunteered to take all the lobster remains from our Superbowl Sunday feast, I wasn't surprised.  As everyone knows, you need lobster carcasses to make lobster broth, the essential base for a number of lobster dishes.

IMBB #23: The Crêpe Escape

Waves throw themselves onto the shore under a colourless winter sky, and the cry of gulls pierces the cold air.  If you squint your eyes a little and ignore the condos, it's easy to imagine yourself in Brittany, on the rocky edge of the Atlantic rather than in Toronto on the shores of Lake Ontario.  A February day with a chilling wind demands hearty food, so we turned to homey Breton classics to warm our insides for the latest Is My Blog Burning event, “Vive la France Régionale avec un Verre du Vin."     

"Breton food," writes Waverley Root in his classic tour of French cuisine, The Food of France, "is often spoken of with some disdain."  Part of the reason may be that Brittany is considered a place apart from the rest of France, and to some degree it is.  The Bretons were forced out of England by the Angles, and have struggled to retain their Celtic roots ever since.  The people there even speak their own Celtic-based language, Breton, which is very similar to Welsh.

Breton food isn't very subtle, but there's nothing wrong with a direct approach to deliciousness.  Many of the specialties come from the sea, including the region's rich seafood stew, cotriade, a rustic mix of potatoes, onions, and whatever the day's catch happens to be.

The crowning glory of Breton cuisine -- its gift to the stomachs of the world -- is the crêpe.

Weekend Cookbook Challenge #2: Hot for coq

The weather is miserable -- all rain, and wind, and mindnumbing greyness.  What a perfect day for comfort food.

More precisely, this is the kind of weather that suits, nay, demands, a braise, and my wife and I are only too happy to oblige.  But what to braise?  Over the past couple of months we've enjoyed braises of all sorts, from boar to short ribs, but never chicken; we've also eaten a lot of Italian, but not a lot of French.  A braised, French chicken dish?  Sounds like as good a place as any to start, doesn't it?

Let's face it, if you're going to make such a dish, there really is a standard: coq au vin.  Throw a cookbook challenge into this mix, and the recipe for said coq au vin can come only from one source: the grande dame of French cuisine in North America, Julia Child, and perhaps the most important English-language cookbook of all time, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Curds Gone Wild!

What happens when a group of smooth-skinned, fresh off the farm Meyer lemons, having just blossomed into maturity, leave home for the first time?  It's rich, it's creamy, it's...  Curds Gone Wild!

And we've got the delicious photos.

That's right, with a little manipulation we got these lemons to come out of their shells and expose themselves for the little tarts they are.  (That's enough! ed.)

Actually, there's no curd here, just lemon sabayon and pine nut crust.  The recipes come from Thomas Keller's Bouchon cookbook, which I recently broke down and bought after checking it out of the library many, many times.  Though inconveniently large (I don't actually have a bookshelf big enough to hold it), the book is a valuable resource for the experienced home cook looking to expand their technique and repertoire.

This tart is the first recipe I've tried from the book, and it is wonderful.  I've never been a big fan of making lemon meringue pie, which presents any home cook too many opportunities to screw the whole thing up: pie crust-, curd-, and meringue-making all come with numerous pitfalls.

Tart dough and sabayon are, in comparison, a snap.  In this recipe, the tart is blind baked, so it always comes out lightly browned and perfectly cooked.  Sabayon takes nothing more than a strong wrist and a little bit of patience.

The ultimate test of any recipe is, simply, does it taste good?  The answer here is an emphatic yes.  The crust is buttery and rich, but still has a little crunch; the sabayon is creamy and tart, but not puckeringly so, and there's none of the egginess that sometimes occurs with lemon curd.

I would offer only two small criticisms of the recipe: First, be sure to dock the crust before baking it; second, it seems such a shame not use at least some of the zest from the juiced lemons; so I usually add it while making the sabayon.