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.

Wingin' it: tofu, Buffalo-style

On a recent episode of 30 Rock, Gavin Volure, a reclusive business tycoon played by Steve Martin, describes Toronto as "just like New York, but without all the stuff."

Ouch!  Our fragile Toronto egos insist we live in a world class metropolis -- the New York of the north, you know -- but our heads say, "No way!"  That's why it's a shot to our collective inferiority complex to hear hogtown sarcastically cut down to size.

So how do we soothe our bruised egos?  Simple, we look down on our noses at our perceived inferiors, and no city makes us feel more smug than Buffalo.  The mistake on the lake.

Ask a born and bred Torontonian what comes to mind when they ponder the Queen City, and the answer is likely to be one of three things: urban poverty and crime; those ridiculous, nasal accents with their whiny vowels; and fire, fire, everywhere fire (I'm looking at you Tonawanda, Lackawanna and Cheektowaga).  Seriously, Buffalo, do your local newscasts feature stories about something other than homicide and house fires?

Buffalo is not without its charms, however, none greater than its glorious contribution to gastronomy: the buffalo wing.  And though there is some dispute as to which Buffalo landmark can properly lay claim to having invented it -- most accounts cite the Anchor Bar -- no one doubts the city of origin.

As a teen, my family used to make frequent shopping trips to Lewiston, New York, a small border town just down the road from Buffalo.   Every trip concluded with a hundred wings at the same watering hole.  I miss those wings, partially because I enjoyed those trips, but also because there are few foods I enjoy more.

Despite its bar roots, the humble chicken wing has a lot going for it.  Texturally, it offers a disproportionate level of deep fried crispiness relative to its size.  Most importantly, traditional Buffalo-style wing sauce is quite acidic, which cuts the heavy qualities of fried food with a perfect spicy zip.

As a wing traditionalist, I feel compelled to add that under no circumstances can I endorse wings smothered in barbecue sauce.  They are an affront to gastronomy.  A thick, sweet sauce is perfect for many grilled and smoked meats, but it has no place on a tender morsel of deep fried chicken.  Likewise, batter on chicken wings must be condemned as needless frippery.

Sadly, there are other emerging threats in the world of the chicken wing.  Supplies of perhaps the world's greatest bar munchie are woefully low after the bankruptcy of North America's largest wing producer, Pilgrim's Pride, while demand is way up because of Super Bowl weekend.  The situation is so dire, Stephen Colbert has been reduced to warning of the coming "Wing-ageddon" (sorry fellow Canucks, click here and fast forward to 2:48 to see the video):

That got me thinking about chicken wing alternatives.  During my wayward youth, I frittered away two long years as the world's worst vegetarian.  My virtuous experiment ended during my second year of university when a three month stint of eating nothing but Mr. Noodles no doubt contributed to a ten day hospital stay that included surgery, urethral swabs, catheters, and six-a-day Demerol injections (okay, the Demerol was actually kinda fun).  Some vegetarian.

The lingering impact of the "Time of the Great Meatlessness" is a profound love of tofu, especially when deep fried.  Done properly, deep fried tofu, much like chicken wings, has a crispy exterior and a meaty interior.  That got me thinking: Wouldn't deep fried tofu make an awesome chicken wing substitute?

So I tried it, and it does.

Now, you can deep fry and smother pretty much anything in a sauce of butter, garlic, hot sauce (I use Frank's) and salt and it'll taste pretty good, but I was surprised by just how much I enjoyed this dish.  Good tofu has a firmness that conveys a certain meatiness, but the crowning touch is crumbled blue cheese.  Though I prefer ranch dressing with my chicken wings, a sprinkling of gorgonzola adds a little funk and a necessary hint of umami to the finished product when made with tofu.

So no mercy, Buffalo!  As if it weren't bad enough that we're trying to steal your football team (albeit poorly), now we're stealing your wing sauce for our own nefarious ends.

Perhaps I'm being too harsh.  There must surely be reasons to live in the Queen City beyond chicken wings.  A recent scientific study suggests that improvements in air quality over the past few decades have led to increases in life expectancy in many North American cities, with Buffalonians (Buffaloes?) enjoying a greater benefit than almost anyone else -- up to ten extra months according to researchers.

I felt a little jealous upon hearing that news, but not for long.  After all, who wants to spend ten extra months in Buffalo?

Buffalo Tofu

In a pinch, steps 3-5 can probably be skipped (though I've not tried).  I boil my tofu before cooking it after reading a note in Sichuan Cookery, by Fuchsia Dunlop, that this step removes any lingering flavour of the coagulant used to make it.  The time in a low oven is done merely to dry out the tofu before frying. It can probably be replaced by slicing the tofu and leaving it to rest for a few hours or even overnight, uncovered, in the fridge, or by pressing the tofu to remove as much moisture as possible.

300g firm tofu
1L vegetable oil
30g blue cheese (Gorgonzola)

Half recipe, Alton Brown's buffalo wing sauce

1. Preheat oven to 80C (175F).
2. Thoroughly rinse the tofu and slice into rectangles 1cm (0.4") thick and approximately 3.5cm long x 3.5cm thick (1.5" x 1.5").
3. In a large wok, bring 1 litre of water to a boil, add the tofu slices, and simmer for 5 minutes.
4. Remove tofu from the water and drain on paper towel.
5. Place the tofu slices on a rack atop a cookie sheet and let dry out in the oven for 30 minutes, flipping the tofu after 15 minutes.
6. Remove from the oven and store, refrigerated, in an airtight container until ready to cook.
7. In a large wok, heat the vegetable oil over medium-high heat until it reaches 190C (375F).  Add the tofu and increase the heat to high.  Maintain the temperature of the oil as close to 190C (375F) as possible, adjusting the heat as necessary.  Fry the tofu, flipping occasionally, until golden brown and slightly puffy, approximately six minutes.
8. While heating the vegetable oil, prepare the buffalo wing sauce and set aside in a large bowl.
9. Drain the tofu briefly on a double layer of paper towel, add to the bowl of wing sauce, stir to combine.  Crumble the blue cheese on top of the sauced tofu.  Serve immediately.

Rise up! Donut soufflés, donut ice cream, and coffee and donut macarons

Over the course of the past several years I've spent countless late nights prepping obscure dishes, some wondrous, some wretched.  Just the other night, Rachel walked in on me, took one look at my goo-covered hands and gave me that "Oh, you're doing something crazy again" look she gets when I go off half-cocked well past my bedtime.  She then performed a quick about-face and marched off to slumberland.  She's the sensible one.

Me, I prefer to plumb the depths of my rich inner life over prep work, pondering questions that few people ever entertain.  The other night it was sperm. 

The story begins with the humble glazed donut, an endlessly ridiculed fried delicacy that most epicures dismiss with nary a thought, but I adore.  I'm not alone, however, as artisans like Mark Israel of New York's Doughnut Plant elevate everyday rings of dough to gourmet status, while chefs like Thomas Keller and Homaro Cantu take things one step further, plying donuts into service in the name of fine dining.  One of Keller's most famous dishes is his playful rendition of coffee and doughnuts in which he serves a fresh cinnamon sugar donut with a cup of cappuccino semifreddo.  Cantu's contribution is even more extraordinary: donut soup, a velvety concoction that distills the essence of donut into a demitasse cup of creamy goodness.

Unfortunately, after making Cantu's donut soup at home, I've become a little obsessed.  And it wasn't just over how to conceive new donut creations, it was also about how to improve on the one thing about homemade donut soup that still troubled me: texture.  As delicious as donut soup is -- and it is fantastic -- most straining devices fail to filter out the little grains of donut sediment that make it a flavour superstar and textural disappointment.  That's how I found myself milking away on a Superbag of donut purée long past midnight, trying to distract myself by ruminating about all creatures small and really small.

Superbags are marvels of kitchen technology that render sieves, chinoises, and cheesecloth obsolete.  These bags are made of flexible, non-reactive, heat-resistant, dishwasher-safe material.  Those characteristics make it home cook friendly, but what makes it extraordinary is how incredibly fine a filter it is.  I own two of them.  One is a 400 µm (that's a micrometre, or micron if you're old school) bag that puts any sieve to shame.  The other is only 100 µm.  How small is 100 µm?  Good question, because it's exactly what I was pondering late the other night.  The answer: it's only slightly greater than the width of a human hair and less than twice the length of guess what?  That's right, one human sperm.

I finally put Superbags to the test this week in an attempt to exorcise the donut demons that have dogged me.  Many months ago I attempted a macaron for the ages: a coffee-flavoured meringue biscuit filled with donut-flavoured pastry cream.  My experiment failed because both my cookies and my pastry cream bombed.  Macarons are notoriously finicky cookies, so I don't intend to dwell on that, but the donut pastry cream is another story entirely.  I hoped to use donut soup as a base to create a pastry cream.  A good idea, I thought, until I tried the pastry cream, which had an unappetizing texture on a scale somewhere between custard and mashed potatoes.  In the end, I had to abandon the coffee and donut macaron dream.

But visions of donuts still kept dancing through my head.

So I decided to try something new.  Precisely what, I wasn't sure.  After cooking and steeping eight small glazed donuts from my local grocery store in a mixture of milk and cream and then processing them into a purée with a hand blender, I filtered the resulting delectable gunk through the 400 µm Superbag.  Unlike my previous donut soup, this version didn't have any grittiness on the tongue whatsoever, but it did have a heaviness to it that I thought I could improve by using the 100 µm bag.  The difference stunned both me and Rachel.  The resulting purée still had body and impeccable glazed donut flavour, but this time it felt like an elegant cream soup on the tongue; the only drawback, of course, is that it took twenty minutes of constantly milking each Superbag in the middle of the night to extract the purée in the first place.

My first experiment with the new and improved purée was ice cream.  I'd done something similar with sticky toffee pudding and enjoyed the result.  The only drawback to that preparation was also texture.  The finished ice cream had some fine particles of cake in it that distracted from the flavour.  Donut ice cream is still a work in progress, unfortunately.  When frozen, the custard takes on too firm a texture; it's ice, for sure, but the cream part is a little iffy.  My hunch is that the starch in the donuts muddies the texture of my preparations, especially this and the pastry cream.  I just needed to find a way to overcome it or, better yet, make it work to my advantage.

So, back to the drawing board.  After making so much ice cream I have a freezer full of egg whites begging to be used, so I thought I would try soufflés.  My original plan was to drizzle them with a coffee glaze, but one taste of a preliminary powdered sugar and brewed coffee concoction turned me off of that idea quickly.  I opted for a sprinkle of ground espresso beans instead, a moderately flavoured accompaniment that complements the main attraction.  Much to my surprise, the donut flavour shines through nicely.  The recipe, which I've included below, still needs some work, however, so use it at your own risk.  The flavour may be good, but I'm having a hard time finding the right temperature at which to bake.  At 400F, the soufflé rises and gets a nice golden brown top, but the downside is that eggy flavours tend to develop.  At 350F, eggy flavours aren't a problem, but I can't get a delicious golden crust.  No matter what the temperature, these soufflés fall almost immediately after coming out of the oven.

I suppose I should look upon my experiments a little more positively now.  Thanks to the Superbag, I've almost figured out how to make a delightful donut soufflé, and I suppose I can give donut pastry cream one more chance.  What's more, I've jammed my head full of even more useless but entertaining knowledge for that next inevitable venture into late night cooking.  Did you know, for example, that one micrometre is but a mere one one-thousandth of a millimetre and that 100 µm (also known as a myriometre) is equivalent to the thickness of a layer of paint or the length of a dust particle?  Welcome to my world.

Donut Soufflés

This recipe is still very much a work in progress, so use it at your own risk and experiment with it, please, then let me know how to improve it.  Maybe the issue is temperature, maybe it's the lack of egg yolks.  I don't know right now.

I used a variation of this donut soup recipe, opting for cream instead of water, and then loosening it with more cream as necessary.  Straining it through both a 400 µm then a 100 µm Superbag makes for a huge improvement in texture, but I'm not sure it's necessary when making this dish.

135 g (4 large) egg whites
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
120 g (5 Tbsp) granulated sugar, plus more to prepare ramekins
200 g (200mL) donut soup
Espresso beans, ground
butter

Preheat oven to 400F.

Rub inside of ramekins (or small coffee cups) with just enough butter to coat.  Add approximately one teaspoon of granulated sugar and swirl to coat ramekin.  Tap out any excess sugar and set aside.

Combine egg whites and cream of tartar in stand mixer and whisk with whisk attachment until soft peaks form.  Add sugar and continue whisking until stiff peaks form.

Place donut soup in another large mixing bowl.  Add one third of the egg whites and stir into donut soup.  Add another third of the egg whites and fold in gently.  Repeat folding process with the remaining third of the egg whites.

Add mixture to ramekins, but do not fill to the top.  Leave 1 cm of clearance between the mixture and the rim of the baking dish.

Depending on the size of the baking dish, bake for 8-10 minutes, until the soufflés have risen and a light, brown crust has developed on top.

Serve immediately sprinkled with a little ground espresso bean.

Nosh In My Backyard, Part II: el Bulli's rose petals in tempura, sardines wrapped in grape leaves, and a bowl of cherries

Every fall, I can close my eyes, inhale the air around me, and imagine, if only briefly, that I live in a vineyard rather than the heart of downtown Toronto.  When the wind is right, the sweet smell of countless clusters of ripe grapes perfumes the streets of Little Italy.  Hundreds of wooden grape crates pile up in front of houses, evidence that the scent is not entirely homegrown, but few backyards in this part of town, including our own, are complete without at least one sprawling grapevine. 

That Toronto's original Portuguese and Italian quarter hosts so much viniculture should come as no surprise, but I didn't realize until we left the heart of the highrise concrete jungle, a place literally without backyards, how rich the urban breadbasket truly is.  My favourite sign of spring is the profusion of tiny white blossoms on our neighbour's cherry tree.  Any flowering fruit tree will do, however, from the pear and crabapple trees across the street, to the apple trees that shade the patio of a nearby College Street café.

Such visions of a quaint urban idyll feed into the current rage for all things local.  Locavorism, as it's come to be known, may well be the hottest trend in food and dining.  Fed by concerns over product quality and environmental sustainability, locavorism has grown from a niche market to a cornerstone of modern gastronomy.  At restaurants, provenance used to be the exclusive domain of wine lists, now it's hard to find a menu that doesn't gush about the origins of its Mennonite chickens or Cookstown Greens.  "Local," it seems, has become the current shorthand for "quality."

If only that were true.

Yes, locally grown food often tastes superior to food that has endured a trans-continental flight, but that's not always so.  Rachel and I participated in a community-supported agriculture (CSA) initiative last summer and found the produce disappointing.  Our large weekly box often contained wilted vegetables in quantities too small even for a meal for two.  Come fall, we were only too happy to abandon our failed experiment.

Restaurants that foresake foreign products do so at the risk of serving lower quality dishes while fostering a false sense of virtue.  As an environmental statement, eating at a restaurant pales in comparison to the greenest option of all: staying at home and cooking.  This has not stopped some of the highest profile names in the restaurant world from flaunting their green credentials by making token gestures like eliminating imported bottled water from their menus.  Alice Waters made headlines last year by doing just this, though her push for sustainability apparently doesn't include eliminating all those bottles of imported vino from Chez Panisse's wine list despite the restaurant's proximity to one of the world's great wine regions.

We can neither forgo frequent trips to the market and grocery store nor our occasional reliance on Chile for some winter veggies, but this year I was determined to take advantage of the bounty that grows around us.  El Bulli's rose petals in tempura are actually the perfect marriage of purpose and convenience.  I'd been hoping to make this dish for a couple of years, but finding edible roses proved to be an obstacle I could never overcome.  Even organic florists tend to hem and haw when asked if their product is safe for human consumption.  "I wouldn't do that if I were you," was the typical response.

Thank God for our front yard, which has exploded with red and white roses this summer despite our (apparently benign) neglect.  Our three bushes produced enough roses for a small army of blushing brides and beauty queens, let alone a recipe that calls for a mere twenty petals.  The tempura batter in which they fry defies convention; it's actually leavened with yeast and left in the fridge for four hours to develop its flavours.  Once removed from the fat, the petals are drizzled with a little honey and rose water then sprinkled with a grain of sea salt.  The result tastes wonderful.  Sweet, salty, uncannily succulent, and, yes, floral.  Surprisingly, however, those floral notes come not from the rose, that, on it's own, tastes rather plain, but from the rose water garnish.

I almost missed the perfect opportunity to take advantage of our grapevines.  Despite being grape lovers, we've never been overly fond of the grapes that grow in our backyard.  Our neighbours, decades-long veterans of the grape growing game, insist they're unsuitable for wine, but the thick and leathery skin that surrounds their sugary flesh renders them equally inappropriate for the table.  For the past two autumns all they've done is fill our nostrils for a couple of weeks with a scent powerfully reminiscent of Welch's grape juice and beckon a bevy of winged diners.

A few weeks ago, after spending part of an afternoon trimming our vine and rather shortsightedly disposing of a small bagful of leaves, I realized I'd just binned the best way to take advantage of our plant.  No worries, of course, because I simply hopped back on our stepladder, and trimmed a few more leaves from our vine.  My original plan was to make dolma, grape leaves stuffed with rice, herbs, and other fillings, like ground meat, but, much to Rachel's chagrin, I've never been a fan.

I searched high and low for an alternative before stumbling upon sardines.  Rachel and I both adore oily fish, and this dish is fantastic (see recipe below).   I stuffed the gutted bellies of our sardines with a mixture of diced preserved lemon, parsley, and ground black pepper.  After boiling the grape leaves for one minute, a process that muddies their normally vibrant green colour, I wrapped them tightly around the sardines, leaving only the head of the fish and part of its tail exposed.  After ten minutes on a hot charcoal grill, all that's left to do is split these little swimmers open, sprinkle them with sea salt and drizzle with some freshly squeezed lemon juice.  We savoured their juicy flesh against the contrasting crunch of the grilled leaves on a lazy Saturday evening spent in our backyard with a crisp white wine.  It was heaven.

Of course, growing your own food isn't all wine and roses.  I must confess to lusting after our neighbour's cherry tree.  Not only are cherry blossoms gorgeous, but cherries rank among my favourite fruits.  Besides, the branches of their tree stretch into our yard, forcing me to duck just to walk the path to my front door.  I take that as a clear sign that their tree pines as much for me as I pine for it.  How, then, to get my hands on some of those cherries?  Guile's not my forté, so I asked.  After careful consideration, we were given permission to take some delicious cherries.

There is but one problem.  These cherries aren't so delicious.  After reading so many descriptions of people picking and eating ripe fruit directly from the tree and being overwhelmed by the experience perhaps I expected too much.  The typical palaver involves "tasting sunshine," or "feeling Mother Nature's juices drip down your chin" and other such nonsense.  These "sweet" cherries tasted like nothing of the sort; instead, they made me yearn for a taste of the California cherries I've actually enjoyed so far this season.

Two out of three ain't bad, I guess.

Besides, the summer has just begun, and I hope Little Italy's patchwork of backyard farms produces a bumper crop.  Yesterday I passed a humble backyard garden down the street.  It's tended to by an elderly Portuguese man who takes obvious pride in his work.  His tomato vines are slowly spiraling their way skyward, and, tucked in a corner, the vibrant orange and yellow of the season's first zucchini flowers signal yet another opportunity to feast on an uncommon delicacy.  I'm sure this gardener cares not one wit for culinary trends, and he's probably never even heard the term "locavore," he just yearns for the simple pleasure of rediscovering each year the flavours that have comforted him his entire life.

Grilled Sardines Wrapped in Grape Leaves

This recipe can, of course, be made with jarred grape leaves preserved in brine.  If you have access to a grapevine, follow this guide to selecting leaves.  We prefer the wonderfully smoky, lightly charred taste imparted by charcoal grilling, but I'm sure this recipe works equally well cooked on a gas grill or roasted in the oven.

Making preserved lemons is a simple process, and the results enhance the flavour of any number of dishes.  We use Eric Ripert's recipe from A Return to Cooking.  The recipe from Chez Panisse Fruit via 101 Cookbooks is very similar.

12 large grape leaves, rinsed
8 sardines, gutted, cleaned, and scaled
1/2 preserved lemon, rinsed, flesh removed, and finely diced
16 sprigs Italian parsley
salt and pepper to taste
1 lemon, cut into wedges

Using scissors or a knife, remove the stems and any thick, attached vein, being careful not to cut the leaf in two.  Cook the grape leaves in a pot of boiling water for 1 minute.  Remove from the water, separate carefully, and lay flat on a tea towel to dry.

Preheat outdoor grill to 230C (450F).

Lay leaf vein-side up, using pieces of any spare leaves to patch holes.  Lay sardine diagonally across the leaf, so its head extends just beyond the tip of the leaf.  Stuff the chest cavity of each sardine with parsley and preserved lemon, and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Fold one end of the leaf over the sardine and tuck it firmly under the fish, then roll the sardine until it is tightly packed in the leaf.  Repeat with remaining sardines.

When grill has come to temperature, place sardines over direct heat and close lid.  Flip after 5 minutes and continue grilling, covered, for 3-5 more minutes, until sardines are fully cooked but still moist.

Serve immediately with additional salt, pepper, and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice to taste.

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.

SHF #34, Nosh In My Backyard: Regan Daley's wild blueberry pie and el Bulli's rhubarb with sugar and pepper

The summer heat shimmers around me and I can hear the oscillating buzz of grasshoppers as I sit on my front steps.  Time is stretching out and slowing down the way it does only for children. I don’t even realize I’m hungry until my mother appears with a pile of vermilion stalks on a plate, with a little bowl next to it.  I dip a rhubarb piece into the sugar in the bowl and bite down, savouring the shock of the sharp juicy sour crunch.

Rhubarb grew in a shady corner of our backyard, looking like horizontal ruffled elephant ears.  We’d pick the stems before they got too thick and woody, and cook them in jams and pies, while the children would often eat them raw with sugar as a treat.  Even though I hated celery and complained about its strings, I’d tear into rhubarb stalks with relish and valued the stringy fibres that straggled behind for their ability to hold extra sugar when I swept the stem through the sugar dish.

Ferran Adria offers a more sophisticated version of this childhood treat in el Bulli: 2003-2004.  He takes tender young raw rhubarb, carefully trimmed to minimize the tough fibres, and rolls them in demerara sugar and black pepper.  It’s a sharp dish -- the crystals of the sugar and the pepper’s heat seem to emphasize the sour taste -- but the added flavours round it out as well.  It’s surprisingly elegant for such a simple preparation.

It's also a perfect dish for the latest edition of Sugar High Friday, hosted by the passionate cook, which is all about going local.  Not only does rhubarb grow like a weed in our home province, Ontario, but the rhubarb we used to make our version of this dish was given to us by our friend Jill, who harvested the stalks from her mother's garden.

My parents no longer live at that house, but their current home does have another crop in the backyard.  Wild blueberry bushes dot the rocky brush behind their house in Sudbury, and it was an easy task to step out for fifteen minutes and return with a small pail of sapphire-hued treasures.  I say "was."  Construction crews are building a new housing development right over the backyard berry patch.  Sudbury’s economic boom is bad news for my blueberry pancake habit, which my mom has indulged during every summertime visit.  At least the construction reduces the chance of hungry bears coming into the yard, lured by the berries.

And there is simply no comparison between wild and farmed blueberries -- one of the reasons I gorge myself on blueberries at my parents’ house.  Sure, the domestic ones are just as pretty and twice the size, but they’re completely flat in flavour.  The wild ones pack a whallop of acidity and sweetness into each tiny globe, worth every sunburn and mosquito bite and sore back from picking that I’ve endured in their pursuit.

Regan Daley agrees.  "There is one thing you must remember in order to make this pie:  YOU NEED WILD BERRIES!  Never use the cultivated ones.  They make lousy pies, and lousy everything else for that matter," she states in her book In The Sweet Kitchen.  Blueberry pie has never been a real favourite
of mine, but I’d picked and brought back several pints of berries from my last visit, Rob was eager to try it, and Regan had not yet steered us wrong.

Her track record is still perfect.  The crust, made with lard and butter, is phenomenal:  light and crisp and flaky, we chased the last bits around the plate with our forks, unwilling to let any crumb go uneaten.  And the filling!  Rather than the stodgy, almost solid gel of store-bought blueberry pie, this is a juicy confederation of berries in all their summer glory.

We ate an astounding amount of the pie when it was fresh from the oven, and an even more surprising amount the next morning.  The recipe specifically mentions that, being comprised of flour, egg, and fruit, blueberry pie is an "honourable" breakfast food.  And though it may not be my mom's pancakes, it extends the tradition of fashioning simple, delicious treats from the bounty in the backyard.

Dill-icious: Kool-Aid pickles

Italians employ an elegant, nuanced term, cucina povera -- literally 'poor cuisine' -- to describe the collection of humble peasant dishes that form the backbone of their many regional cuisines.  But to think of cucina povera as merely a set of dishes is to miss the point. It's really a mindset, a determination to extract flavour and texture in the face of deprivation and the paucity ingredients that accompany such hardship, as well as a testimony to our common need, regardless of time, geography, or class, to eat food that tastes good.

But, oh, how the Italians have succeeded, thrived even, under such circumstances.  They may well be the most accomplished scavengers on the planet, enjoying a bounty of dandelion and other wild greens, and a plethora of fungi they collect themselves.  They're also masters at preparation, having long ago perfected methods of preservation that turn ham into prosciutto, a long-lived culinary feat that actually reaches peak flavour up to two years after slaughter.  That's an enduring legacy.

Flogging a dead horse: Au Pied de Cochon's foie gras poutine with horse fat fries

Italy boasts one of the richest gastronomic inheritances of any country.  It seems unfair that any place, let alone one tiny corner of that country, Emilia-Romagna, should be home to so much culinary gold: parmigiano, prosciutto di Parma, balsamic vinegar, mortadella, and pasta fresca.  As mouthwatering as that list is, keep in mind that it excludes an even longer list of gastronomic treasures from other parts of the belpaese: Piedmont's white truffles, the risotto of Piedmont, Lombardy, and the Veneto, and Tuscany's olive oils.  And that's just a selection of northern Italian specialties, there's still the south.  And the wine.

Yet I can't help but feeling that Italians cheat themselves.  Don't get me wrong, this italophile wishes he could wake up many mornings in Bologna or Rome, start the day with a cappuccino, and then gorge on local specialties.  But have you ever eaten marvelous foreign food in Italy?  Yes, there exists the occasional Chinese or Indian restaurant, but they are largely an afterthought in a country where gastronomic xenophobia is the norm.  What chance does food from the other side of the world have in a country where food from the other side of the mountain is viewed with disdain? 

Canada -- English Canada, really -- is a different story altogether.  With perhaps the exception of Newfoundland, we have no native cuisine.  The Great White North is a gastronomic Great White Canvas.  Over the past century, we've begun filling that canvas with the smells, tastes, and textures of the countless ethnic groups that weave the fabric of this country.  Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident that in our major urban centres.  Walk the streets of Toronto, for example, and you'll be confronted by a series of delights from around the world.

The Horse Crisperer: horse fat french fries

Those of you that don't already hate me for cooking with horse fat are probably going to hate me for my next statement: McDonald's french fries are perhaps the best fries in the world.  Period.

Before you disregard my last statement as the ravings of a culinary lunatic, hear me out.  I know it's fashionable to dismiss all fast food with a sneer and a wave of the hand, but McDonald's fries deserve a second glance.  Sure, they're about the farthest thing possible from artisanal or slow food, but that alone does not justify ignoring them.  Engineered food -- even fries developed in a lab cum test kitchen -- can be superb.

We can all agree on the fundamentals of a great french fry: a crunchy exterior, lots of salt, and a rich taste without greasiness. The only aspect of the fry that triggers debate is the proper texture of the interior, which is really a debate over which kind of potato -- baking or boiling -- to use in the first place.  Jeffrey Steingarten, in his brilliant piece on horse fat french fries, observes that North Americans tend to prefer their interiors fluffy, whereas Europeans prefer them creamy.  There's no argument that the soft flesh of the fry should act as a contrast to the crispy shell.  Now, visit your local McDonald's and order some fries.  They conform perfectly to this ideal.

I believe I can fry: deep fried Oreos

I'm always amazed when I see a pearl of molecular gastronomy wisdom unintentionally applied to everyday cooking, doubly so when the dish just happens to be something most food snobs would shun, like industrially manufactured cookies.

Last month, I made Heston Blumenthal's fried fish.  In his efforts to build a better batter, Blumenthal uses two secret weapons: alcohol and carbonation.  The bubbles in carbonated liquids such as beer create batters that are lighter and crispier than batters made with water alone.  Blumenthal takes this idea to its logical extreme by not only adding beer to his batter, but by carbonating it all in an iSi siphon.  The use of beer in fish batter is hardly new, but it's exciting to see the underlying principle -- that carbonation enhances the texture of the final product -- applied elsewhere.  Enter Oreos.