Beef Fondu with 3 Dipping Sauces

So we've all done fondu's before. Stick some canned fondu sauce in a saucepan and have your guests cook their own damn meal ;) We served ours with chinese fondu style beef slices - which are just really thin slices of eye of the round - shrimp, spinach, zuchinni, chinese radish, mushrooms, broccoli, cauliflower, red onion, and three types of cheeses: smoked gruyère, colbe, and mozarella. I made little pockets full of cheese, veggies wrapped in beef so that it doesn't leak all over the place and enjoyed more food than I should have eaten.


To kick things up a bit I made three dipping sauces. One of them was just the leftover of the lemon oil I used for the salad the other day (see previous blog entry) and the other two were aïoli and an improvised fig balsamic honey sauce. Now aïoli is just a fancy word for garlic mayonnaise which is just egg yolks with oil and a squirt or two of lemon juice. For this particular recipe I used half an egg yolk - don't ask - and beat it together with one mashed garlic clove. To properly mash a garlic clove, chop the garlic as finely as you can, sprinkle a bit of coarse salt on it and then use the flat part of your knife and press down with your palm, working it to really mash the garlic to a paste. You obviously need a proper chef's knife for this. No paring knife here.

Once the egg yolk and garlic are properly combined, slowly whisk in 1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil making sure not to pour in more than what can be absorbed. So pour slowly then whisk or have someone pour for you while you work up some of that unused elbow grease. The mixture should now be nice and stiff so add about 1 tablespoon of lemon juice to break it up a bit, whisk together one last time and voilà! You've just made aïoli! And don't tell your friends it's just mayonnaise with garlic. You'll sound cooler if you say aïoli. Pronounciation unsure...I just say ah-ee-oh-lee.

The other dipping sauce I made was basically the flesh of three black figs, a tablespoon of water, a tablespoon of honey and a few splashes of balsamic vinegar. I didn't measure anything and just went with my gut. My cheesy beef and vegetable fondu bits had the delightful opportunity of going for a dunk before dissapearing forever down the gullet.

Mmmmm....saucy goodness...

Vichyssoise

When it comes to making soups, there can be nothing simpler than Vichyssoise which could also be called a Leek and Potato Soup. It's traditional French fair, smooth and a delight to eat. The use of leeks is also nice because they're just like a milder onion. All the deliciousness but none of the strong smelly taste.

What's also nice about puréed soups is that it really doesn't take any fancy cutting or special presentation. Just simmer, stick the hand blender in there, serve and enjoy. If you don't have a hand blender you should really invest in one. The alternative is transferring everything back and forth between the pot and the blender. And plus you get to buy kitchen toys. Fun times!

Leek and Potato Soup
from "A little taste of France", Murdoch Books

50g butter
1 onion, finely chopped
3 leeks, white part only, sliced
1 celery stalk, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
200g potatoes, chopped
3 cups chicken stock
3/4 cup cream (10% is not too heavy and not too light)
2 tbsp chopped chives, optional

1. Melt the butter in a large saucepan and add the onion, leeks, celery and garlic. Cover the pan and cook, stirring occasionally, over low heat for 15 minutes, or until the vegetables are softened but not browned. Add the potatoes and stock and bring to the boil.

2. Reduce the heat and leave to simmer, covered, for 20 minutes. Allow to cool a little before puréeing with a hand blender or in a blender or food processor. (You could also go super old school and push the soup through a fine sieve with the back of a wooden spoon.) Return to the clean saucepan.

3. Bring the soup gently back to the boil and stir in the cream. Season with salt and white pepper and reheat without boiling. Serve hot or well chilled, garnished with chives. Another option is to serve the hot soup and have people pour in the amount of cream that they want. This cools down the soup a bit, allows everyone to add cream to taste and also helps when reheating because you easily avoid curdling the cream.

This soup is definitely a 4.8 on 5 in our book.

Simple Salad with Lemon Oil and Lots of Snow

So like I said last time, there's a whole chapter in Cook with Jamie that's all about salads. I figure it's not a huge sin if I don't have all the ingredients for a salad so long as it's close. I mean a basic salad is a basic salad. I'm not talking about fancy salads with cured meats and fancy cheeses and dressings with 28 ingredients in them. But this particular salad was entitled "Simple Crunchy Salad". I was missing romaine lettuce, green beans which were supposed to be blanched and cucumber. The ingredients I did have were Boston lettuce, a carrot, celery heart, parsley and I added some grape tomatoes. This chapter also has a few recipes for dressings; because if you're going to make fresh salad, might as well make the little extra effort to make your own fresh, preservative-free dressing. And the dressing I chose couldn't be any simpler: 3 1/2 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice with 10 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil shaken together and seasoned to taste with sea salt and freshly ground pepper. Simple dressing, simple salad but really nice taste.

In the background you might recognise a generous slice of tourtière which also goes by the name of meat pie. Where I'm from a tourtière is made with ground beef but this one was made with ground pork. It was storebought so it wasn't the best I've ever eaten. I'm used to 3/4 meat and a thinner crust. All that was needed was a bit more ketchup yet it was still easily outshined by the simple salad. Some things are just better when your grandma makes it.

Oh and here's a photo of my front yard today. The office was closed so I'm snowed in :) Who says winter isn't a beautiful season?

Lobster with Clarified Butter

Just thought I'd rub it in that I ate fresh lobster for supper today. Boiled for 5 to 6 minutes a pound and then dipped in a bit of clarrified butter, it's a simple meal that's high on flavour and simplicity. Flavour and simplicity. Two words that are so beautiful together when it comes to food.

Also, notice how nicer this picture is compared to all previous posts. That's cause we got a new camera. There's even an option that's specially designed to take pictures of food. How cool is that?!

Cook Tomato Salad with Jamie

At the top of my list of things I love are food and books. Therefore the natural combination of the two is a real treat. I like books that aren't only cookbooks but tell you a story for the recipes or are the recipes that a person gathered on a trip of some sort. Two books of this sort I'd been eyeing recently were given to me by my mother-in-law for Christmas. I got both Kylie Kwong's My China and Jamie Oliver's new book Cook with Jamie.

The basic principle of Jamie Oliver's book is that this celebrity chef's cooking program through his restaurant Fifteen is here presented to the general public as a sort of cooking textbook. I haven't seen recipes so far that are just slapped onto a page without any context or story or explanation. For example, the first recipe I prepared from this book was for a tomato salad. The introduction to the recipe is actually longer than the recipe itself and there are gorgeous photos to go along with all of them. And then you get to the recipe for the tomato salad and you're not just given steps to follow but little explanations that clarify why it is you're being asked to perform such and such an action. In the recipe in question, once you've cut you're fresh mixture of different tomatoes into odd sized pieces, you put them in a colander over a bowl and sprinkle them generously with sea salt. But the instructions don't just say do 1, then 2, then 3 and so on. They say that the reason why you're doing this is to draw out some liquid from the tomatoes to concentrate the flavour. It also explains that he's not expecting you to eat all of that salt...the salt will, for the most part, run off with the excess liquid of the tomatoes.

I've done basic tomato salads like this before. Tomatoes + olive oil + balsamic vinegar. All that's different here is the preparation of the tomatoes and the expected additions like garlic, fresh marjoram and basil and the not so usual addition of a hot red pepper. The recipe's additions were good. But it's the preparation and the learning that went along with the preparation that makes this book worthwile. Now I know that if I draw some water out of a vegetable that I'll be able to concentrate it's flavour. Simple in retrospect but it's one of those millions of little things that need to be learnt in the kitchen.

Cook with Jamie is a recipe book that reads like a cooking show. You get all the information that can be delivered in live action but in a format that allows you to move at your own pace. Isn't learning fun?!

Sausage and Cheese Breakfast

As always, we picked up a few things at the Farmer's Market. This time the menu was all-French. And I mean European French, French.

There's this French vendor, Ferme du diamant, who sells all sorts of specialty meat products. He's got veal, veal cutlets, smoked duck, foie gras, a whole selection of terrines, and the most delicious sausages I've ever had. Now I'm not usually a huge fan of sausages. It's all the stuff they put inside it which is mostly preservatives, fat and salt. But mention any hot dog or mainstream sausage and you've just started this vendor off on a rant about how gross food can be made. His animals are properly raised and his products are full of nothing but real, untampered food. In the above photo you can see the veal sausage with cheese and parsley that I bought from him for this particular breakfast alongside a healthy little dollop of grainy mustard. A few weeks ago I also bought a wild boar terrine and another Landais county pate with cognac which were both magnificent. Though both of these contain liver, I don't find it gross because I know the liver was put in there on purpose and is not just some remains that were floating around the blood covered floor of a slaughterhouse. If ever you're in Dieppe, New Brunswick, you must visite the Ferme du diamant's booth. If you already live in the Dieppe and Moncton area then I suggest you pull yourself away from your computer and sample the delicious local product that is NOT featured at your local supermarket. Farmer's market. Not super-market.

Right beside the abovementioned booth, there is a small Belgian lady who sells these beautiful goat's cheeses. We sampled a few which were all very delicious but finally opted for what I think is the Madawaska cheese. It's a very creamy, almost liquid cheese, wrapped in a beautiful crust and perfect for this little breakfast dégustation on a bit of Montreal style bagel. We went back today and bought an even bigger wheel. Good food is hard to find so when you find it you make sure to support it. And everyone at a Farmer's market is worth supporting. They're locals with a passion for their products. There is pride there that can't be matched by the highly advertised and unethically produced food you find at the grocery stores. The present is the best time to emerge from your suburban bubble.

Achiote Chicken Xmas Supper

We moved to the Maritimes because supposedly people were nice and life moved at a slower pace which is essential to quality of life. Though these things are true, living far away from the people and places we know is hard...especially during the holidays. For me, the Christmas season is not complete without some family squabble and seeing children opening presents. But, seeing as we might as well make the most of our present situation, we decided to alleviate the situation with a quasi traditional holiday meal.

It beeing a very mild December day, we fired up the bbq. Now we sometimes buy a pre-seasoned chicken and shove that on the beer butt stand. This time, however, I rubbed our achiote and orange juice mixture all over the chicken and under the skin. (Note: if you're going to put anything under the chicken's skin, you've got to be very delicate so as not to rip the skin. You also don't want to unstick too much of the skin from the flesh cause then everything's going to leak out and all of your efforts will have come to not.) With our red bird all moist and smocky, we prepared some peas, mashed potatoes with gravy, cranberry sauce and stuffing. And though it really didn't feel like Christmas, we had a nice meal and came that much closer to realising how important home is. My grandmother told me on Christmas Eve that there's a reason why the age old saying "home is where the heart is" still exists. I guess I best start listening to my elders.

Happy holidays and have a wonderful new year. I hope you get to spend it with all of the people who are dear to you.