My Mom’s “Special” Flank Steak

19 May

Ever since I was a small child I always loved my Mom’s “special steak”. We often had it for Sunday dinners on the BBQ, or on special occasions (hence the name). Years later, I still make Special Steak using my Mom’s base marinade recipe, and my kids love it the same way I did when I was their age.

And last weekend my 81 year old Mom and my 83 year old Dad made it for me for my…uh…26th…uhhh… 36th birthday.  Yeah, that’s it, my 36th birthday.

I do improvise a bit on my Mom`s original recipe and add some “optional” ingredients depending on what other dishes I am serving with it. For a more Thai spin, I might add in a teaspoon or two of fish sauce, some lime juice and cilantro, and serve with rice and sauteed baby bok choy.

For a more Italian spin, I’d use olive oil instead of grapeseed, and add some fresh rosemary and oregano served with roasted potatoes and rappini.  You get the idea…. : -)

Flank steak is a great budget and meal stretcher. One steak, sliced thinly can generally translate into a great dinner for 4 with leftovers for steak salad or sandwhiches the next day.   I saw small ones at Oceans in Brampton for about $5 last weekend.

Flank steak is known in French cooking as `bavette`, and is cut from the abdominal muscles of the cow.   It is a fairly long and flat cut of meat, and is significantly tougher than other beef cuts like chuck or loin.

The best way to deal with tough cuts of meat is either braise them or put them in a marinade.  I would definitely braise a brisket or a shank, but in the case of flank, I marinade it.  In this recipe the steak benefits from a good 24 hours in a marinade to allow the acids to break down the tough fibers in the meat.

Also, when you slice your steak, be sure to slice against the grain of the meat.  When I say grain of the meat, I think if you look at a raw piece you will see that there is a definite pattern of long fibres that run in one direction in your steak.

When slicing the steak you want to cut against or across the grain to shorten the fibers to make for the tenderest cut.  This is a great graphic I found at Blue Kitchen that shows exactly what I mean.

The long downward pointing arrow shows you the direction of the grain in the meat.    And the dashed arrow shows you where to put your knife to get the best cut.

The other thing to do is cook it medium-rare to medium.  It will be fine if you cook it well, but it is much, much better with some pink in the middle.

My Mom’s “Special“ Flank Steak

1/3 cup grapeseed or vegetable oil (choose a neutral cooking oil)
1/3 cup honey
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
2 teaspoons chopped garlic
1 teaspoons chopped ginger
1 onion, sliced

The night before, in a medium bowl, combine the marinade ingredients. Prick flank steak all over with a fork.

Place meat in a resealable plastic bag, or shallow glass dish (or place the plastic bag in the shallow glass dish ;-) )
Pour marinade over the steak, turning meat to coat thoroughly. Cover, and refrigerate for at least 6 hours and overnight if possible. Turn meat several times during marinading.
Preheat grill to medium-high heat. Oil the grill grate.
Place steak on the hot grill, and discard the marinade. Grill meat for 5 minutes per side, or to desired doneness.
Let rest 5 minutes so juices re-absorb.  Slice meat thinly, always against the grain.

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Fennel Lemon Salad

19 May

This salad is simple, yet elegant and would be at home on any dinner table.  Interestingly, fennel actually comes in two different shapes – round and then more oblong and slightly flattened.

The round bulbs, called maschi, are actually the male fennel and the oblong bulbs, or femmine, are the female fennel.  The round bulbs tend to be more available at the beginning of the season and the oblong, female ones later in the season.

Apparently the female ones are more prone to seed, hence the fertility connection to the feminine.  I do not really find that there is a taste difference between the two, but the maschi are supposed to be sweeter. As if a male could be sweeter than the female!  Pfffft!!

Fennel Lemon Salad

1 bulb fennel (look for one with lots of fronds)
1 lemon
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon sugar
a pinch of sea salt

Slice the fennel in half and remove the hard, central core and cut off the tops at their base. Pluck the fronds off the tops and reserve for later use.

Slice the fennel bulb very thinly using a knife or a mandolin if you have one.  Place in a medium sized salad bowl. Zest the lemon and sprinkle on top of the fennel.  Add reserved fronds.  Squeeze juice from lemon on top of the salad.  Sprinkle with sugar.  Toss.  Allow to macerate for about an hour before serving.

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Culinary School Chronicles – Futomaki and Tamago

16 May

Monday night sushi class once again.  Tonight’s class focused on making futomaki, which are the “fat’ sushi rolls with multiple ingredients, and then we moved onto hand rolls or cones as I think of them. After that, we were given our own salmon fillet to slice and tasked with working on making nigiri again.

Many of us arrived early to help get the class room ready. Someone was washing rice, someone else making the wasabi, while others did things like distribute ingredients. It was a crazy bee hive of activity unlike that which I usually see before a GBC evening class. At the end of it all, we ended up with 24 identical trays containing what we needed for the evening that looked like this.  And we started at 6:17 p.m.

Chef starts by making two items that will go into the futomaki – sweet shitaki mushrooms and tamago. The mushrooms were brilliant, and once I was finished rolling them in my futomaki I just stood there and ate the rest of what was in my container. I had no idea dried shitakes could taste so good.

He also said to keep the cooking liquid from the mushrooms once we were done and he’d show us next week how to turn it into the sauce for the BBQ eel.

Now the tamago really caught me by surprise. Tamago is that eggy-looking piece of sushi on your plate that you either love or disdain. I was in the second category until tonight mostly because I didn’t understand what went into making it or why you’d want to order it if you could have fish.

Tamago is a sweet egg omelet, generally made with eggs, water or mirin and, in the case of our recipe, maple syrup.

The tamago is made in a square fry pan and the technique is to put a very thin layer in the bottom of a well oiled pan, let it cook, then flip it back on itself several times (using chopsticks only of course) and then repeat, building layer upon layer of egg. Check out this video to see a commercial tamago chef in action to see what I mean.

As I said earlier, futomaki are the “fat” sushi rolls and usually do not contain any raw fish. Chef tells us they are generally made with pretty colours and simple fillings because they are intended as starter sushi for children. Haha…I like that…for the kids. The adults eat their fugu, uni and unagi and the kids get futomaki with sweet tamago and shitake, crab stick and pretty tobiko (fish row).

The futomaki rolling wasn’t too bad – I got the knife cuts and organization part pretty fast and Chef liked that I was constantly cleaning my knife and board, but I was told in the end I used too much rice.

That is fixable with practice though and my second was definitely better than the first so the next one will be better still.  Maybe one day you will even see my futomaki, but for now…like a puff of smoke…they’re gone.  Into the belly.

Got to use my new yanagi-ba knife which was fun but scary. We had to use it to peel cucumbers with the blade cutting towards our palms!  Freaky and disconcerting and technique requires refinement by me but I did ok.

I also did a pretty good job (very consistent I must say) slicing my salmon so I am happy about that and that skill is coming along.

We also practiced making sake nigiri again.  My nigiri, though smaller compared to what I often get in restaurants or food courts still had too much rice by Chef’s estimation.

He brought in scales for us to weigh our rice. His were 13 and 14g and he said he lets us do 15-20g. The one I weighed was 19g. Whew.  Apparently we lose 2 slices of fish for every gram over 20.  Well, probably not but that is the word….

Culinary School Chronicles – Styles of Sushi

11 May

Still plugging away at the basics we went over in class one…so much information to take in.  As I said before, sushi is about the rice, and sushi literally means vinegar rice. So what is the difference then from piece to piece?

The two most well known varieties of sushi are maki sushi and nigiri sushi. Maki or rolled sushi is made with rice and other ingredients rolled together in a sheet of nori.  Nigiri sushi, otherwise called hand-formed sushi,  consists of an oval-shaped nugget of rice topped with a slice of raw fish or other item.  Then there is sashimi, which is just the sliced raw fish.

In the realm of maki sushi, the most well known varieties are the futo maki – the large or fat rolled sushi with several ingredients, the hoso maki or thin rolled sushi with only a single ingredient, uramaki or inside out roll (a Western creation) and temaki or cone-shaped hand roll.

There are a ton of different fish and other ingredients used in sushi making but these 20 or so are the ones you are most likely to see on the menu at your local sushi restaurant:

Buri – adult Yellowtail
Ebi – Shrimp
Hamachi – young Yellowtail
Hirame – Fluke
Hokkigai – Surf Clam
Hoshigarei – Halibut
Hotate – Scallop
Ika – Squid or Cuttlefish
Inari – Deep fried Tofu
Izumidai – Tilapia
Kani – Crab or imitation crab
Katsuo – Skipjack Tuna
Maguro – Yellow Fin Tuna
Saba – Mackerel
Sake – Salmon
Tai – Seabream or Snapper
Tako – Octopus
Tamago – sweet egg omlette
Tobiko – Flying fish
Toro – Blue Fin Tuna belly
Unagi – freshwater Eel
Uni – sea urchin

And then there is fugu or pufferfish.

Fugu can be lethally poisonous due to its venomous tetrodotoxin so it must be carefully prepared to remove toxic parts and to avoid contaminating the meat.

The serving of fugu in restaurants is strictly regulated in Japan and only qualified chefs are permitted to serve it.

For a great post on the various types of sushi with lots of pictures and descriptions, check out this link over at Jonesblog.

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Culinary School Chronicles – Sushi Con`t

9 May

I kind of skimmed over some of the other things we learned in our first class – there was SO much – to get straight to the nigiri making, so I thought I`d come back and do a separate post to talk a bit more about Japanese ingredients and the Japanese meal.

First though….knives!  My favourite part.  One of the guys in class said my eyes actually got big and I came alive when Chef took out his knives.  These are such beautiful instruments when crafted by Japanese forgers.   I love this scene with Sony Chiba as Hattori Hanzo from Kill Bill.  But I digress….

There are four basic Japanese knife styles, and each has its own special task, much like the German knives have their specific function in the European kitchen. (Photos from Whitemouse.)

Deba-bocho

This knife is the Japanese kitchen workhorse and we are told are used for butchering fish, chicken and beef.  The deba bocho has a heavy, curved blade for cutting through bones, and the blade is too thick for chopping vegetables as they can break during cutting due to the thickness of the blade.

As you can see in the photograph, they come in a variety of sizes and you choose according to your task and hand size and comfort.

Usuba- bocho and Nakiri-bocho

These knives are the vegetable knives.  The top knife, the nakiri, is used for cutting greens and the lower knife, the usuba, is used for cutting non-leafy vegetables, like carrots and cucumbers.  The usuba is sharpened only on one side, while the nakiri is sharpened on both.

Unlike the deba-bocho, both these knives have a straight blade, and the usuba really looks like a cleaver to me.  The nakiri-bocho and the usuba-bocho have a much thinner blade than the deba-bocho which makes slicing straight through soft vegetables easy without having to apply pressure.

Oroshi hocho and Hancho hocho

These are special knives that are very long and are used specifically to fillet tuna and other large fish.  The oroshi is the longer of the two and can fillet a tuna (a huge fish) with a single cut.  Often several people are required to make that cut tho.  Ever seen a video of the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo? Watch the video if not…fascinating.  This second video shows the knives in action as a huge tuna is butchered.

Tako-biki and Yanagi-ba

These knives are the sashimi knives.  The tako-biki has a straight end and is usually used for preparing octopus, while the yanagi-ba is uses for filleting and slicing most other small fish.

For class we are told to come the next week with a yanagi-ba, and perhaps a usuba if we want a vegetable knife.  Chef also says this is the week someone always cuts themselves on their new knives, so I am putting extra bandaids in my kit since the college has gone latex free and those ones suck!

In terms of ingredients and terms we are told about the following, some of which you will know, some not so much.  We are to use only the Japanese names in class so, we are told to get to know them.  Now, so will you.

Wasabi – This is Japanese horseradish which you can now often find fresh in Canada, but if not, you can certainly buy in powdered form which you reconstitute with water.  We are cautioned not to buy the paste.

Gari – This is the pink pickled ginger you are always served with your sushi.  It is intended as a palette cleanser between types of fish and should not be laid on your fish or marinated in your soy sauce.

Shoyu - This is Japanese soy sauce which is made with fermented soy beans.  It is intended to be used as a flavour enhancer for the fish and should be used in moderation, as one would use salt.

Nigiri – A piece of fish placed on top of a nugget of rice.

Maki – A roll cut into 6 equal sized pieces.

Nori – A sheet of dried seaweed used to roll maki.  It should always retain a crispy texture and have resistance to the tooth when biting.

Hashi – Japanese chopsticks which are used as the knife, fork and spoon at the table.  Never gesture at anyone with your chopsticks and never stick them upright in a bowl of rice.

Katsu-bushi – Bonito flakes, threads or powder.  These are the beige flakes you sometimes see dancing on top of warm Japanese dishes.  These flakes are made from very thinly shaved dried bonito fish.  They are often used in soup stocks.

Konbu – Dried sheets of kelp often used in soups and stocks for flavouring.

Miso – Available in white or red, this is a fermented soybean paste.

Mirin – Japanese sweet rice wine which is used in marinades and soups.

Tofu - Tofu is made by coagulating soybean milk and pressing the resulting curds.  Soybean milk is produced by soaking, grinding, boiling and straining dried fresh soybeans.  Generally, the Japanese use silken tofu which has a softer consistency than regular tofu.  Firm is also available.

Wakame – A thin and stringy seaweed, deep green in color and used in making seaweed salad and miso soup.

That is only a small cross section of the ingredients we are to use and I cannot wait for week 4 where we get to work with Unagi (grilled eel).  Thrilling and gross at the same time!

So I will leave you with an essential Japanese recipes – one for Miso Soup.  Chef David made his using the bones of the salmon that had been removed when he filleted the whole fish for our nigiri exercise.  You would never see the addition of salmon bones to a fish stock in classic French cooking because it is an oily fish, but it definitely works here.

Traditional garnish for the miso soup are thinly sliced scallion, sliced shitake mushroom, thinly sliced kelp (slice up the sheet you use to flavour the broth) and finely diced tofu.

Miso Soup

5 litres water
3 oz. mirin
450 g white miso paste
1 piece konbu (kelp)
3 oz dried hana katsu (dried bonito flakes)
1 bunch green onions, very thinly sliced
1 square tofu, small dice
Shitake mushrooms as needed
1 oz dried wakame

Directions:

Bring the water to a boil in a medium sized pot.  Add your piece of kombu and cook for 5-10 minutes.

Using a strainer, or china cap, add the miso and place the strainer in the hot water to soften it.  Use your whisk help dissolve the miso.  When it has completely melted, bring the water back to a boil.  Add tofu and stir.

When boiling, add a handful of katsuo to the stock and immediately turn off the heat.  (At this point the soup can sit for about 30 minutes.  Just bring back to a boil, whisking, before serving and adding garnish).

Place garnishes in the bowl and ladel soup over top.

 

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Culinary School Chronicles – Sushi!

8 May

This Monday I started my sushi class, which is a bit daunting but terribly exciting all the same.  While I have tried my hand at making maki rolls before, I never ventured into the realm of buying my own raw fish and making my own nigiri.  But then I was trying to figure out what to follow up Charcuterie with and my kids saw this course on the offering list and well, truthfully they begged me to take it.  So I am.

Sushi can mean many things to many people.  I think I had sushi for the first time back in 1990 when I had no idea what it was and two ladies from the office where I had my first job introduced me to it.  I was totally hooked but there were only a few select places back then to get sushi in Toronto.  Today, there are sushi restaurants every few blocks and you can even pick your Bento Nouveau box from your grocery store or their retail outlets in food courts.

In its essence, however, sushi is about the rice.  In fact, sushi actually translates to `vinegar rice`.  Su means vinegar in Japanese, and shi is the word for rice.  Sushi…vinegar rice.

While there has always been a certain amount of formality in the classes I have taken at GBC, the atmosphere is much more relaxed than in the Skills courses or the daytime courses.  We are adults…we have lives….if we can only stay for demo then have to go, that it is ok kind of thing.  Set up how you like, change this and that in the recipe and depending on what we made, take it home to finish because things like fish, for example, don`t reheat well.

Then I came to Sushi class with Chef David Chung, and things changed.  But in an awesome way.  Chef David trained to become a sushi chef in Japan over a 3 year apprenticeship.  An apprenticeship as a sushi chef involves a very slow progression, as well as repetition and more repetition.  The apprenticeship really develops the chefs as culinary artists, as well as ingraining a deep respect for tradition, precision and quality.

He tells us of stories of how he wasn`t even allowed to touch the rice for the first few months, then came learning to make the rice, which took many, many months to learn.  Then there is forming of the `nuggets` as he calls them.  More and more months of that using rice wrapped in plastic to practice on – a learning technique he subjected us to also – before he was allowed to get anywhere near the fish.

We are told that we are to arrive as early as possible before class to assist him and his TA in setting up the classroom and preparing the ingredients for the day`s class.  While Chef will make the rice for us each class, because there isn`t sufficient time to do it properly during class, we learn the essentials by watching.  We are to set up our work stations in a particular way.

We are told that we should only use a rice cooker at home and to use short grain rice that has been washed, drained and rinsed at least 5 times.  We are told to only use fresh wasabi (which incidentally is pronounced WAH-sah-BEE not wah-SAH-bee) or the powdered and never the paste.  We are told how our station is to be set up each week and what is to be in what position in our tray.

We get a lesson in sushi eating etiquette – apparently you shouldn`t mix your wasabi or gari (pickled ginger) into your soy sauce and,when dipping, you should only dip the fish portion, never the rice.  Whoops on all counts for me.

We see how to steam the rice, which comes out perfectly, how to make the sushi vinegar and then watch in awe as Chef combines the two in a huge rice mixing bowl, called a hangiri or handai using his shamoji, which is a flat wooden paddle-like rice spoon.  The design of the handai and the shamoji ensure that the seasonings will be distributed as evenly as possible without crushing the rice or breaking the grains.  Impressive.

We go over Japanese ingredients, the structure of the Japanese meal, learn about knives – we are expected to have a Yanagi-ba for the next class – and then Chef makes us the best damned miso soup I have ever eaten.  Then we start to work.

Chef demonstrates the technique for forming nigiri fingers, then we are provided with sushi rice nuggets wrapped in plastic and a tane `fish` (green onion) to practice with.  Chef then goes person to person watching and coaching to ensure that everyone has the motions down correctly.  It goes something like this….

  1. Wet your hands in your water bowl (top right beside cutting board always)
  2. Clap your hands together (with drama and flair of course) to get rid of excess water
  3. Pick up a 15g nugget of rice with your right hand

    Ichi - Make the H

  4. Grab the tane fish with your left, and dip the index finger of your right hand into the  wasabi
  5. Wipe the wasabi on the tane fish.
  6. Lay the rice nugget in your right hand on top of the tane fish.
  7. Making a “H” shape with your fingers, lightly grip the rice between your index finger and thumb.  Lay the thumb of your left hand over top of the fingers to complete the H, and press gently.  This is `ichi`or movement 1.
  8. Then make an  “I” shape by placing your thumb at the top of the rice block and then lay your index finger on top.

    Ni - Make an I

  9. Flip the rice and tane over and transfer to your right hand.  Then move it back to your left palm, and repeat the H and I motions.
  10. You have made one nigiri.

Restaurant Visit – Catch

6 May

For anyone who has lived in the ‘hood on St. Clair West in Toronto for any amount of time, they will know Filippos and The Rushton.  The Rushton has been at the corner of St. Clair and Rushton Road for as long as I can remember.

Then there was Filippo’s on the opposite corner across Rushton Road – which incidentally was the first restaurant my husband and I went to when we moved into a basement apartment on Rushton Road circa 1991.

When Filippo’s closed its doors for good about 2 years ago, it was acquired by Frank Pronesti who owns the Rushton.   After about a year and a half of renos the space re-opened this past February as Catch, a restaurant specializing in sustainable seafood.

Thank you Frank!  I am so happy to see a new restaurant on St. Clair West that has a new and interesting focus.  The restaurant focuses on sustainable seafood from a variety of Oceanwise-certified suppliers, and changes  the menu often to take advantage of seasonality. Our menu was labeled #23 since the restaurant opened Feb. 7, 2012.

The space is small (maybe 26 seats plus 10 at the bar) but quite striking, the elaborate ceiling and fixtures in particular.  We arrive for a 6:30 dinner reservation (reserving the day before we had a choice of 6:30 or 8:30 on a Sunday night!) and by 8:00 every table and the bar was filled.

The restaurant’s menu is  stacked with an interesting meld of East coast meets Mediterranean dishes, with selections coming in the S, M and L categories.  Small generally means a side or an appetizer meant for one.  M indicates a moderately sized plate that could be a light main or a plate for sharing, and L a regular sized main.

Then there were the whole fish options.  Regular items include the 1.5 ($55) and 2.5 lb ($85) PEI halibuts.  Also huge 15lb+ halibut available on 4 days notice.  Enough to feed the whole fan-damily!  Also there was a nice looking whole trout available the day we attended which the table next to us ordered to round out their shared paella ($33) meal.

For those not in love with fish, there was a lovely sounding lamb sirloin with pear, fennel and muscat grapes ($27) and BBQ chicken thighs with harissa, fingerling potatoes and onion ($18).

For apps we decided to do a bit of sharing.  We ordered six oysters from PEI ($18) which came with freshly grated horseradish, a homemade tomato caper sauce and a vinegar mignonette.  Convinced the oldest son to try his first oyster!  Not bad for a 16 yr old.  Not sure he was sold but at least he tried.

Then the jarred clams ($10).  Not entirely what I expected but good – shelled clams served cold in clam broth in a mason jar.  Brenden ordered the Scallop Ceviche which was thinly sliced Massachusetts scallops served with grapefruit.  Succulent and buttery.  Next time we’ll try the Hot Jar, which is apparently a mason jar of house preserved hot and mild peppers.

But the best for me was the grilled octopus ($15) which was tender and had a lovely char, served with sliced fingerling potatoes, wilted greens, roasted pepper and a salsa Genovese.  Nice mild spice and extremely flavourful.

I admit when our appetizers came we were so intrigued that we dived right in and I forgot to take pictures until all I had available was empty plates and utensils licked clean to show you.  A good sign for you I think even if I can’t show you the dishes.

Smoked Trout with Papardelle

For mains I had the Erie Pickerel ($18)  - I love Ontario pickerel – which was served on a beautiful fresh herb cassoulet of red and white beans.

Glen and Justin had pasta dishes which were a nice appetizer size.  Glen the Smoked Trout Papardelle ($16) and Justin the Prawn Cavatelli ($18) – both lovely and fresh and in light brothy sauces.

Tuna Melt

Brenden had the “Tuna Melt” which was albacore tuna with a crunchy Manchego cheese crust served on a celeriac coleslaw and grilled bread.  A cool twist on an old favourite.  He loved it.

Tres Leche

We don’t often do dessert but since it was my birthday Glen and I shared the Tres Leche cake with oranges – so rich but so wonderful.

And the boys each had the PB&J which had an angel food – type cake with cold peanut butter and a warm homemade jelly.  All good.

I am not a fan of peanut butter growing up in a Scottish home where such things were just not on the menu, but even I enjoyed my taste of their dessert.

Service was good, despite other reviewers who complained about it being slow, and I note that the bread is comp’d now and not $3 as previously complained about.

All in all, a very welcome addition to dinner on St. Clair West and a place we’d definitely go back to for a nice dinner.   And they said the patio was coming soon!  St. Clair West is always a great spot for alfresco dining and people watching.  Check it out!

With wine (not for for the kids of course!) dinner was around $60 pp with tax and before tip, so not an every day for us but well worth it.

 

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Pintxos de Tortilla with Bravas Sauce

1 May

Tortilla Española or tortilla de patata is a dish served in pretty much every tapas restaurant in every part of Spain.  Tortilla can be eaten hot or cold or at room temperature and is a popular lunch or picnic dish across Spain.  When served as a tapa, it is cut into bite-size pieces served with toothpicks and is called pintxos de tortilla!

In its essence, tortilla española is thick omelete made with just eggs, onions and potatoes.  The dish is one of the most simple out there, likely developed by peasants who had access to potatoes brought to Spain and eggs from their farm.

In the traditional version, the potatoes are sliced very thinly and are then fried with thinly sliced onions in a lot of olive oil until tender.  They are then drained and mixed with eggs, where upon they are returned to the pan to cook slowly until the bottom sets and is golden brown.

The tortilla is then flipped over using a plate, and put back in the pan so the other side can cook until the entire omelete is set.  This is more complicated than it sounds….believe me.  I know from experience.

A couple of tricks I have picked up along the way are:  (1) make sure the plate you are flipping your tortilla onto is larger than your fry pan by a few inches and (2) wet the plate you are flipping onto slightly so the tortilla does not stick and slides more easily back into the pan.

Bravas sauce is the spicy tomato based sauce used to dress the famous Spanish tapas dish patatas bravas.  It is a simple tomato sauce spiced with only smoked paprika, vinegar, and hot peppers.  That’s where the “bravas” comes in…you have to be brave to take the spice.

This recipe is based on an idea I read that Ferran Adrià put forward, that has apparently become quite popular with Spanish home cooks.  Adrià says that Galicians, who are the masters of the tortilla de patata like their omelets crispy, so he fills the potato tortillas with potato chips. Thus, you get the thin, salty crispness without the bother of frying.  And the best part is, it works!

For this recipe you can use nice artisinal chips fried in olive oil, but a good super-market chip like a Lays work well.  You just want to avoid ripples, thick cut chips and those that are flavoured with anything but salt.

So here we go…Ferran Adrià’s tortilla de patates served as pintxos (small bites) and made with potato chips.  Sounds absurd but Adrià is such a master at flavour and texture I believe in anything he suggests.

Pintxos de Tortilla

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, peeled, quartered and thinly sliced
2 ounces good quality potato chips, lightly crushed
6 eggs, beaten lightly
Salt and pepper to taste

Whisk eggs in a medium sized bowl.  Add lightly crushed potato chips to egg and allow to sit for 10 minutes for the chips to soften.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a non-stick fry pan over medium heat.  When hot, add onions and cook until they soften and and start show some caramelization.

Once softened, pour egg-chip mixture over the onions and combine.

Pat down using a spatula so that the tortilla is flat.  Turn down heat to medium low and continue to cook for 6-8 minutes, moving the tortilla around to make sure it isn’t sticking.  Tortilla should be golden brown underneath.

When the tortilla is mostly cooked through but still a bit wet on top, invert a large plate over top of the frying pan, and quickly flip it over, leaving the tortilla, cooked side up, on the plate.

Quickly slide the tortilla back into the pan and continue to cook the second side for a further 3-4 minutes until completely set through.

Remove from heat and allow to sit for a few minutes to set up before serving.  Either cut into wedges or squares and serve as is or with a sauce such as bravas sauce!

 

Bravas Sauce

2 large tomatoes or 1 cup canned, diced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon smoked Spanish paprika
1 Thai or other chili,
Salt and pepper to taste

If using fresh tomatoes, bring a small pot of water to the boil.  Using your knife cut an X at one end of the tomatoes.  When the water is boiling gently drop tomatoes into the hot water and blanch for 30 seconds to loosen the skin.  Remove from water and set aside to cool.  When cool enough to handle, peel the skins off the tomatoes, cut in half and remove the seeds.  Chop to a small dice.

In a fry pan, heat olive oil over medium heat.  When hot, add tomatoes, chili and smoked paprika and cook until sauce becomes thick, about 15 minutes.  You can add the chili whole or crumble it into your sauce depending on how brave you are.

When thick, add the vinegar and allow to continue simmer for 2-3 minutes more to remove some of the harshness.  Season with salt and pepper.

 

 

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Culinary School Chronicles – Duck Terrine

22 Apr

Despite a somewhat rocky start to our morning, today’s class turned out to be highly entertaining, albeit in a particularly juvenile way.  We started the morning off by spending an hour out in front of the school in the cold waiting for a fire alarm to be resolved.  I guess when you have so many demo labs, kitchens and gas stoves, it takes the Fire Department quite some time to check them all to confirm there is no danger.  So there we were…for an hour.

I don’t know if the fire alarm completely threw us all off kilter but for some reason all morning long none of us seemed quite right.  All demo long one person after another would stumble into a verbal fumble – the best one by Chef Ian.

When I asked him if we had to do the aspic portion of the dish since we had lost an hour of class time due to the fire alarm and were trying to speed stuff up, he said no we didn’t. Then he went on to announce to the class “For those of you not aspic-ing….”

I’ll let that one sink in a minute for you.  Ha ha.  For the remainder of class someone – me in particular – would giggle every time he said “aspic”.

Today`s class is our last charcuterie class and we are making Duck Terrine.  A terrine is really just a form of forcemeat or rustic pâté that is baked in a loaf form.  You may remember from my post on galantine that a forcemeat is lean ground meat that is emulsified with fat.  Terrines are usually served cold or at room temperature.

In the case of today`s recipe we are grinding pork belly and duck leg meat to make the body of the terrine and we are mixing in dried cherries and pistachios for flavour and then laying lightly cooked duck breast in the middle.

Photo from Profimedia International /Alamy

This recipe also called for us to make aspic.  He he he…aspic….  Aspic is a gelatin that is made using a meat stock or consommé.  They are generally served on cold plates alongside charcuterie items or can be poured over food and allowed to set to protect it from the air.

Photo: Peter Hertzmann

Another form of aspic we`ve been talking about lately is called the chaud-froid.

In this form of aspic the meat jelly is combined with a velouté, béchamel, or cream.  Pretty funky looking, eh.

I guess we have to keep aspic and chaud-froid for Charcuterie II.  Hopefully in the fall.

This dish I will definitely make again, though I think I will save myself some work deboning the duck and duck legs and just buy 2 nice large breasts to work with, so I am going to write the recipe that way.

Also, know that the below recipe involves no aspic-ing!

Duck Terrine

(Serves 8-10)

2 large Moulard duck breasts (about 1 3/4 to 2 lb total)
2 tablespoons oil
3 oz. Grand Marnier
3 oz. brandy
zest and juice of one orange
1 cooking onion, finely diced
1 large clove garlic, finely chopped
1 lb pork butt or shoulder, cleaned and cubed
1 egg, beaten slightly
Pinch of cinnamon, nutmet, mace and juniper berries (all ground)
3 sprigs rosemary, finely chopped
3 sprigs thyme, finely chopped
1/2 cup pistachios, shelled
1/2 cup dried cherries
12 strips bacon
Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350°F.  Prepare all your mis en place – chop your onion, garlic and herbs.  If you haven’t done so yet, chop up your pork butt and return to the fridge to stay cold.

Line bottom and all sides of a terrine dish with slices of bacon, overlapping edges slightly, leaving a 2-inch overhang on long sides.  Return to the refrigerator until ready to fill.

Prepare the marinade for the duck breast – combine Grand Marnier, brandy, orange juice and orange zest.  Divide in half.  Half will be a marinade and the other half will go into the terrine.

Remove skin from both duck breasts and cut into chunks.  Place one duck breast in the marinade and coat.  Marinade at room temperature for 30 minutes. Chop the other duck breast into cubes about 1 inch in size.

In a food processor, blend the chopped pork, duck and duck fat in batches to a coarse texture.  Add the egg, reserved marinade, and onions, garlic and herbs and continue to process.  Fry off a small pinch of mixture and check seasoning.  Add more of whatever you think it is missing.

Tip mixture out into a mixing bowl and fold in pistachios.  Return to the fridge to become cold again.

Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a sauté pan.  Once hot, add duck breasts and sear on both sides for about 3 minutes per side.  Remove from pan and allow to cool before slicing.  Once cooled slice on the bias and set aside.

To assemble your terrine, place half of your mixture in the bottom of the terrine and smooth out.  Line with dried cherries.  Place sliced duck breast on top of cherries.  Add another layer of cherries.  Place remaining half of mixture on top of the duck breast, and smooth out.  Fold bacon back in tightly over top of terrine.  Lay a few more slices of bacon across the  top (which will be the bottom) and tuck the ends in.

Bake terrine in a bain marie (water bath) until thermometer inserted into center of meat registers 155 to 160°F. This will take about 1.5 hours.  Remove terrine from oven and cool  on a rack for about a hour before slicing.

 

 

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Bacon coffins? Bacon eggs?

17 Apr

J&D’s is truly  a site for anyone who loves bacon….to death LOL!!  Besides selling products like bacon-flavoured envelopes (mmmmvelopes), bacon salt and baconnaise, they now sell the bacon coffin.

For a mere $2,999.95 you can be buried or incinerated in a coffin that looks kind of like it is made of bacon.  Sort of.

While products like baconnaise I can get, things like “Naughty Bacon” a bacon flavoured personal lubricant, are just outside my reality.

Their fan page on Facebook is kind of cool though as they post some interesting takes on things to do with bacon.

The other day they had….bacon eggs.

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