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.

Long may you Rome: four days in the Eternal City, the inspiration for homemade guanciale

With days of feasting on rare regional delicacies behind us and the prospect of a transcontinental flight and the accompanying return to "the usual" ahead, it's no wonder Rachel and I approach the final meal of our trips to Rome with a hint of dread.  But after four visits to the Eternal City, including one this past fall, we've learned to deal with the pain of the "last supper" by curing our depression with a bowl of carbonara at Pommidoro (Piazza dei Sanniti, 44).  Rome's greatest contribution to comfort food is simplicity itself: strands of al dente spaghetti dressed in a luscious sauce of egg yolks, grated pecorino cheese, lots of ground black pepper, and cubes of succulently salty and crispy guanciale.

Ah, guanciale.  For some, prosciutto or jamon represent the pinnacle of porcine pleasure, for others, that means bacon.  For me, pig nirvana is the remarkable guanciale at Pommidoro.  Guanciale is pig's jowl, a rich, fatty, full-flavoured cut of meat, cured in salt and spices.  Romans use it in much the same way we use bacon or some other Italians use pancetta.  The key difference between bacon and guanciale is that the former is usually salt-cured and smoked, while the latter is just salt-cured with herbs and spices.  I adore the spaghetti alla carbonara at Pommidoro because their guanciale has a crispy exterior, meaty interior, and a taste that reminds me strongly of the Colonel's secret blend of herbs and spices.  Say what you will, I love that flavour.

And guanciale is just one of many specialties that distinguish Roman cuisine.  Our first task after an early morning arrival was to set out for a breakfast featuring one of the world's great breads.  Pizza bianca isn't that much different from any other leavened yeast bread -- it's nothing more than flour, a little sugar, water, yeast, olive oil and salt -- but good pizza bianca is an experience not soon forgotten.  This flatbread features a light, pillowy crumb under a crispy, olive oil and sea salt gilded crust.  There's an article in Jeffrey Steingarten's book, It Must've Been Something I Ate, in which he froths over the pizza bianca at Antico Forno in the Campo de' Fiori, an enthusiasm he apparently shares with another notable food writer, Amanda Hesser.  Rachel and I enjoy its pizza bianca.  It's exceptionally light and has a wonderfully delicate texture, but we prefer the pizza bianca from the bakery just steps from our hotel.  Panificio Fagiani Ubaldo (Via Varese, 36) makes a far denser bread, but it features more olive oil and flakes of wonderfully crunchy salt, and it has a noticeably mineralized taste that we love.  Both dazzle, but a bread that combines the texture of the pizza of the Antico Forno with the flavour of the Panificio Fagiani Ubaldo would be transcendent.

Rome in the fall also means puntarelle, a crunchy, slightly bitter variety of chicory that is a regional, seasonal delicacy.  Romans typically serve them as a salad dressed with anchovy, garlic, olive oil, and vinegar.  Rachel and I tried our first and best bowl at Dal Cavalier Gino (Vicolo Rosini, 4).  The mixture of anchovy, garlic, oil and the crunchy texture of this bitter green call to mind a classic Caesar salad.  I would kill to get my hands on some, but I've never seen them in Toronto.  Not only are they hard to find, they're a pain in the ass to prepare.  We watched teams of greengrocers in the Campo de' Fiori labour over a time-consuming process that involves cleaning, cutting, shredding, and soaking a plant that resembles an asparagus-producing weed. 

The most pleasant surprise of our trip was a dazzling lunch at Palatium, a stylish enoteca run by the regional government to showcase Latium's remarkable food and wine.  We started with a selection of local salumi, such as finnochiona, a peppery sausage with a noticeable dose of fennel seed.  But the star of the meal was a stupendous cacio e pepe pasta featuring fresh, golden tonnarelli (square-cut spaghetti) made with locally sourced organic flour and caciocavallo cheese, a southern-Italian specialty, that, when aged, adds a salty, parmesan-like bite to dishes.  Rachel took one bite of my perfect pasta, then asked me to trade it straight up for her less than perfect, but still excellent, amatriciana.  I did it, but the words "cacio e pepe" have now become a convenient shorthand for "you owe me" around our house.  Dessert was an orange and ricotta tart with a little drizzle of melted dark chocolate and some diced peaches.  Surprise, surprise, this was no ordinary ricotta.  This was ricotta romana, a sheep's milk cheese so precious it's been given a protected DOP status.  It also makes one hell of a tart -- light and creamy, with a subtle but noticeable orange taste.  The only problem with Palatium is the service, which is maddeningly slow even by Italian standards.

Pizza bianca, puntarelle, Palatium.  We miss them all, so we don't want to add our favourite Roman delight, guanciale, to that list.  But despite the growing popularity of traditional Roman dishes that require it, like carbonara and amatriciana, guanciale remains scarce in North America.  Quality bacon or pancetta make a decent substitute, but after finding Mario Batali's recipe for homemade guanciale in The Babbo Cookbook and motivated by our recent visit, I decided it was time to make some myself.

The biggest obstacle was sourcing the pig cheeks.  After several weeks, I finally managed to get my hands on some from Cumbrae's (the same butcher who helped us find lamb brains), one of Toronto's finest butchers.  Floppy and fatty, and still covered with a layer of whisker-dappled skin, uncured cheeks bear little resemblance to the marvelous epicurean delight they eventually become.  After a week covered in kosher salt, thyme, and black pepper, followed by three weeks dangling from pieces of string in the fridge, our two cheeks metamorphosed into a marvelous treat.  The skin had hardened into a leathery carapace, but the flesh beneath had darkened and firmed until it resembled the fattiest of bacons.

We used it first in a delicious risotto, sautéing lardons of guanciale until they were crisp outside but still supple inside, then using the drippings in the pan to wilt dandelion greens.  This guanciale astonishes.  Without the often overbearing smokiness of some bacon, Batali's cured pig cheeks taste overwhelmingly porky, but with a marvelous saltiness and mild peppery and herbal notes.  Texturally, guanciale dominates bacon, which, especially when sliced, is only ever crispy or soft; guanciale offers both at once, popping under your teeth.

Though delightful in risotto, the pinnacle of guanciale achievement remains spaghetti alla carbonara.  Despite the simplicity of the ingredients, carbonara is actually a remarkably difficult dish to execute well.  The trick, as I see it, lies in the sauce.  North American recipes often call for the addition of cream.  This is a form of culinary heresy I detest.  The sauce requires nothing more than raw egg yolks, which add plenty of richness on their own, and the magic of pasta water.  Of course, adding hot water to raw eggs demands some skill, unless the desired outcome is scrambled eggs carbonara.  I posted our first carbonara recipe two years ago, but I've updated it here.  The only real change is that I now use a bit more pasta water, both in the egg yolks and in the pan with the fat leftover from cooking the guanciale. 

And though it's not that last meal at Pommidoro on a chilly fall day after strolling through the Eternal City, our spaghetti alla carbonara with homemade guanciale is a delicious way to rekindle fond memories -- the Bernini sculptures at the Galleria Borghese, the awe-inspiring dome of the Pantheon, and the Baroque splendour of the Trevi Fountain -- from a kitchen many thousands of kilometres away.

Spaghetti alla carbonara

There are a couple of keys to producing a creamy sauce, not scrambled eggs:
1. Use room temperature eggs
2. Temper the beaten eggs with a bit of the pasta water
3. Try to add the egg mixture to a warm, not hot, pan.

500 grams spaghetti or bucatini
4 room temperature egg yolks plus one whole egg, beaten
200 grams guanciale, pancetta, or best bacon cut into 1.5 cm (approx 3/4 inch) lardons
30 grams (approx. 3/4 cup), finely grated pecorino romano or parmigiano reggiano
pepper to taste
1 tbsp olive oil
pasta water

Bring a large pot of water to a boil.  When water boils, add a generous amount of salt.

Heat a sauté pan over medium heat.  Add olive oil and guanciale, and sauté until outside is crispy but inside remains slightly chewy, approximately 5-7 minutes.  Drain desired amount of fat from pan (guanciale fat tastes good, so I try to leave it all in the pan).

Place spaghetti in boiling water.  Prepare as per package instructions.

When there are five minutes remaining in the pasta cooking time, add 125 mL (approx. 1/2 cup) of the starchy pasta cooking water to the guanciale fat in the sauté pan.  Return pan to medium-high heat.  Reduce the mixture by at least half, stirring occasionally until the mixture has emulsified.

Add pepper to taste to beaten eggs.  Slowly add 70 mL (a generous 1/4 cup) of the pasta water to the egg mixture.  Do not add quickly or the eggs will scramble.

When spaghetti is al dente, lower the heat under the sauté pan to low.  Drain the spaghetti and add it to the sauté pan.  Slowly add the beaten eggs to the noodles, tossing constantly (I find a good set of tongs work best) and adding more pasta water, if necessary, to loosen the sauce.  Add pecorino and more pepper, if desired.

Serve promptly with additional pecorino and pepper.

Brain food: Mario Batali's lamb's brains ravioli

My first exposure to the glories of lamb offal was entirely accidental.  "Abbacchio con funghi," read the chef's recommendations at one of Rome's oldest restaurants, La Campana, and a succulent lamb chop or tender braised shank did seem like a perfect fall supper in the Eternal City.  Moreover, because of my almost non-existent knowledge of Italian at the time, I was tickled about having understood the Roman dialect word for lamb.

"Pride goes before a fall," they say, and I was about to learn my lesson.

The full name of the dish is actually "animelle di abbacchio con funghi."  I naively ignored that first word, dismissing it as nothing more than a minor detail.  This is Rome, however, a city that prides itself on its culinary artistry with the "quinto quarto," or "fifth quarter" of the animal, the collection of snouts, guts, brains, and tails that have been staples of the city's working class cuisine for millenia.

When my meal finally arrived, I couldn't help but notice the extensive network of ridges and crenelations running through my piece of lamb.  "Rachel," I muttered, "I think I've ordered brain."  Not quite, it turns out, but nestled within my pool of rich brown gravy and mushrooms lay a tender, plump lamb sweetbread.  I had a decision to make: suck it up, try it, and then reach an informed opinion, or take a mulligan and order something new.  My decision: eat first, ask questions later.  So I screwed up my courage and took a bite.  Not bad, really.  The texture was smooth and rich, pillowy like a dumpling, and the meat gravy superb.

Having finally eaten a sizable portion of my meal, I tried to ask our waiter what I was eating by tapping my temple while asking, "Dove?" -- the Italian word for "where" -- hoping he would understand the implication, which he did.  "Si," he confirmed.

I continued to eat more, though I didn't attack supper with my usual gusto.  Yes, even I -- gobbler of rabbit ears and glutton for horse fat --  get culinary cold feet.  I'd like to rationalize my anxiety by claiming fear of mad cow disease, but no lamb has ever been diagnosed with BSE and no case of Creutzfeld-Jacob disease, the human equivalent, has ever been linked back to sheep.  No, my fears about eating lamb brains aren't about what's in the lamb's head.  It's about what's in mine.

Brain presents a big culinary problem for most of us.  It's squishy; when cooked, it's grey.  Both factors are a huge turn off.  But the bigger issue with brain, I think, stems from the unmistakable resemblance of an animal's brain to our own, and from the immense symbolic weight we place on that organ as the locus of thought and as the seat of the soul.  We rather easily disassociate ourselves from animal flesh, but we've all taken enough high school science classes or watched enough sci-fi and monster movies to recognize that a lamb's brain looks almost exactly like a miniaturized version of our own.  We recognize a little too much of ourselves in a brain.

I first tasted actual lamb's brains a few years ago at Babbo, Mario Batali's flagship New York restaurant.  Batali actively promotes cooking with offal, and his menus reflect his passion.  At Babbo, our server urged us to try the lamb brains francobolli -- postage stamps of fresh pasta stuffed with a mixture of poached brain, ricotta, sauteed onions, and a little seasoning, dressed with gently heated butter, some fresh sage, and a sprinkling of parmesan -- so I took the plunge.  I'm glad I did.  The brain's contribution is more texture -- a slightly creamy lusciousness -- then flavour, but the dish really does taste marvelous.

Of course, Batali does his best to make "the nasty bits" palatable to his patrons.  As others have already pointed out, he usually mixes offal into his dishes in small quantities, and it's probably no coincidence that the lamb's brains are hidden within a pasta envelope.  As they say: out of sight, out of mind.

It's an entirely different story when you're both diner and chef.  Any illusions are forgotten the instant you hold a chilled, slick brain in the palm of your hand.  No easy task given how difficult it is to find naturally raised lamb in Toronto.  The most pleasant surprise I received when preparing lamb brains is price -- they were free.  According to my butcher at Cumbrae's, no market exists for the product in Canada.  The next step, cleaning the brains, can hardly be described as pleasant.  For one, there were a few small chunks of skull wedged into the brains -- a by-product, no doubt, of extracting the brains from the skull using a saw -- and, for two, there's the pain-in-the-ass task of removing the outer membrane and blotches of congealed blood.

After soaking the brains overnight in a couple of changes of water to drain any remaining blood, the recipe, which I adapted from an identical recipe for calf's brains in The Babbo Cookbook, is entirely straightforward.  Rather than fuss over the pasta envelope, I prepared basic, square ravioli, not postage stamps with fancy edges.  The homemade dish, though less artfully presented, is every bit as good as the restaurant version.  The richness of the filling marries artfully with butter, flavours complemented by the sharp herbal note of sage and the zing of lemon zest.  We even found one friend eager to taste the dish, and he enjoyed it too.

Having come this far, we must now decide if we want to explore brains further.  Where Batali uses brains as just one note in a broader harmony, Fergus Henderson features them front and centre.  The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating includes a small section of lamb brains recipes, everything from deep fried brains to a terrine.  There's even a recipe for cold lamb's brains on toast, "for those who particularly enjoy the texture of brain."  Hmmm.  I'm not sure we're there yet, Fergus.

CAMPIONI DEL MONDO! Celebrating with lasagna bolognese

Wooooooooohoooooooo!!!!!!  Champions, baby!

What better way to celebrate than with another tricolour dish?  That's why it's time to unveil Hungry In Hogtown's ultimate lasagna bolognese.  Check it out.  Every last bit of it is homemade -- the spinach pasta, the ragù, you name it.  It's so good, you'd probably headbutt someone in the chest if they ever tried to steal a piece.

There are only a few keys to making a brilliant lasagna, and fresh pasta is the first.  I know, making pasta is something of a pain in the ass, but paper-thin layers of pasta fresca are infinitely better than those clumsy frilled shrouds sold in stores.  It takes mad skills to assemble a ten-layered lasagna (what can I say?  I have the skills to pay the bills), and it just can't be done with store-bought pasta.  Fresh pasta deserves a post of its own, and we will eventually get around to it, but here's Mario Batali's recipe if you're eager to get your hands dirty in the meantime.

Ramp-age! Our introduction to wild leeks

You can tell someone takes eating seriously when they measure the seasons in food.  You know the type (because you probably are the type).  To the food obsessed, spring isn't about snow melting or the Earth reaching a particular point in its orbit, nor should it be.  Nope, to the perpetually food aware the advent of spring is really about the arrival of baskets of wonderful produce in local markets.

Take me, for instance.  Come late April and early May, my eyes are peeled for asparagus.  Once I see local asparagus at the St. Lawrence Market, I know without doubt that it's spring.  Ladies and gentlemen, spring has arrived.

IMBB #24: Nigella's lemon linguine, apple tarts, and the happy food dance

I have a "thing" for Nigella Lawson.  I know that sounds clichéd, and, for what it's worth, it is, but let me try to explain.  It all boils down to this: there's something magnetic about a woman who takes profound delight in the act of eating.  I don't mean this specifically about her, either.  It applies equally to all women, really.

My wife Rachel delights in good food.  Whenever she enjoys her first bite of something exceptional, she invariably does the "Happy Food Dance."  I believe it's a relic of her genetic heritage, because I've seen her mother perform the same seated hip wiggle.  If she especially loves what she's eating, Rachel has even been known to swing her shoulders a little, too.  The Happy Food Dance is so reliable I now use it as a barometer to measure the quality of any dish I prepare.

The flip side to my attraction to women who are passionate about food and cooking is a mistrust for people who don't enjoy or don't care about what they eat.  You know the type.  They view food as "fuel," or they refuse to try anything outside their comfort zone.  If a person can't open themselves up to the simple pleasures of a good meal, what else are they hiding?

The entrée and dessert we're presenting for the "Make it in 30 minutes" edition of Is My Blog Burning are not only quick and easy to prepare, they have both induced full body Happy Food Dances from Rachel.  That means quality, people.

IMBB #22: The power of pasta

I believe in the power of pasta.   Yes, that sounds pretty corny, but stop for just a moment and think about it.  At its simplest, a noodle can be nothing more than flour (whether wheat, rice, or, well, pretty much any grain) and water, yet from that simple combination humans have derived a product that can be adapted to satisfy the appetites of a person from almost any culture in the world.  Top a wheat noodle with olive oil, hot pepper, and parmesan -- a condiment almost as simple as the noodle it dresses -- and you have an Italian classic, aglio, olio, e peperoncino.  Now travel halfway round the world, and sauce a rice noodle with tamarind water, fish sauce, bean curd, and a number of other spices and flavours, and you have a noodle dish of amazing complexity and taste, pat thai.

No matter our family background, our culinary roots are Italian, so we have made two lovely pasta dishes for this event.  They are quite different from each other in terms of ingredients, but they share an honesty in their respect for the components and for the eaters.  We had help, though.  Just last week I got my hands on a copy of 100 Ways To Be Pasta: Perfect Pasta Recipes from Gangivecchio, by Wanda and Giovanna Tornabene, a mother and daughter who run a restaurant and inn in Sicily that is said to serve the best food on the island.  After a couple of days, much indecision, and a little analysis of the leftovers in our fridge, we chose the following two dishes:

Some Pig Blogging Weekend: The Boar Supremacy

Tough, stringy, and flavourless.  That was our first impression of boar.  We were in Siena on our honeymoon, and surrounded by the picturesque streets of that mediaeval Tuscan town, we had stumbled upon some of the worst food  Italy has to offer.  Never trust the recommendations of the tourist office, even when asking for typical fare (we soon learned to scout out good restaurants by asking the owners of food shops and students, and looking for lineups outside tiny places with their menu available only on chalkboard and only in one language -- the local one).

But we were intrigued enough by boar, a traditional Tuscan meat, to hunt down some recipes for boar ragu (aka: ragu di cinghiale) upon our return to Toronto.  The best ones seem to come from Mario Batali (like this one or this one), the patron saint of cooking in our household.  The following is an adaptation of one of his recipes.  It seemed only natural that we'd make it in honour of the Some Pig Blogging Weekend.

The world's best spaghetti alla carbonara (and lots of gratuitous sex)

If I were told I could eat but one thing for the rest of my days pasta would be it, yet it occurs to me I have yet to write even one word about it.  How the hell did that happen?  How could I have possibly neglected my favourite, if you had to pick your last meal, meal, to this point?  Beats me, but I guess I should explain how it all started.

As a university student, pasta was little more than a cheap, easy way to feed myself.  My pasta specialty -- I can't believe I'm admitting this -- was a concoction of overcooked penne drowning in a sauce of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup and hot sauce.  ("Robert, for crimes against good taste you are hereby sentenced to a lifetime of Chef Boyardee.")  Did I enjoy it?  Much to my shame, I did, but I like to write it all off as typical college-age experimentation.