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.

Fish Soup with Rouille

Trekking on with our soup “diet”, this fish soup was the next in line. I wasn’t sure at first that I’d like a recipe that asked for puréed fish but it turned all right. The flavour of the soup itself was nice but the texture sort of turned me off. On its own the soup was mediocre. What I really enjoyed about this was the dollop of rouille in the middle with the toasted baguette sliced on which we melted parmesan. So far the accompaniments for the soups in this cookbook are better than the soups themselves. Well we gave this one a 3 out of 5. Were it not for the rouille and baguette, the soup would probably score closer to 2.3. Anywho, here’s the recipe for rouille.

Rouille

2 garlic cloves
1 tsp coarse salt
1 thick slice of white bread, crust removed, soaked in water and squeezed dry
1 fresh red chilli, seeded and roughly chopped
3 tbsp olive oil
salt and cayenne pepper

Long way…Put the garlic and salt in a mortar and crush to a paste with the pestle. Add the soaked bread and chilli and pound until smooth. Whisk in the olive oil, a drop at a time, to make a smooth, shiny sauce that resembles mayonnaise. Season with salt and add a pinch of cayenne.

Short way…Purée everything except olive oil in a small food processor. Slowly pour in olive oil till texture reached.

Mexicanish X-mas Supper

In order to kill two birds with one stone, as the old adage goes, we introduced a small group of our friends to semi-authentic Mexican food which also served as a holiday supper. You can see in a previous post my entry on homemade flour tortillas. I’ll say it again though that nothing beats real tortillas. Like anything made fresh and never having been in contact with a store, it’s so much better. The taste cannot be imitated. But that’s my opinion.

Now given what I just said, you’ll probably think me a hypocrite to have served canned refried beans. (Note: don’t be intimidated by the fact that these look like dog food when coming out of the can.) Supposedly these take forever to make. Beans on their own are a pain in the ass. Imagine having to refry them! Geez! Anyways, the guacamole and Mexican style salsa were made from scratch. For the guacamole, I put two fresh avocadoes, a hot pepper, a tomato, half an onion and two garlic cloves into my food processor, turned the little switchy thing and voila. Pretty much the same for the salsa but I don’t make that. My girlfriend has the recipe and I’m not quite sure where she hides it.

Also available for tortilla stuffing – in addition to such boring things like slivers of iceberg lettuce, chunks of tomato and shredded cheddar – was pulled pork in achiote and orange juice. The stuff we use is like a red spice brick which is sent to us by my girlfriend’s Mexican stepmother. Strait from the source. On the last batch of products we also got various dulce de leche de cabra treats, sun dried peppers, Maseca, corn husks, some dry pulled pork stuff and other things that I forget cause they’ve already been eaten. The next thing I’m whipping up are tamales.

In order to satisfy my appetite for spiciness, I put the two hot sauces I now have in stock on the table. The hottest in the Tabasco line, the habenero and chipotle hot sauces got a few people sweating. Now I know that these are mild in comparison to most real hot sauces but you’ve got to keep in mind that my French Canadian friends aren’t used to anything spicier than pepper and radishes. One advantage is that I was able to amaze them with my hot sauce eating capabilities. I’m like a super hero to the hot sauce layman’s eyes

For desert, my girlfriend made crème caramels which we found in our Mexican cook book which therefore means that it’s Mexican (A+B=C). The melted icing sugar caramel sitting on top of the gelatinous custard tasted a tad burnt. Supposedly that’s what it’s supposed to taste like. Served with some fresh mango I really didn’t care. It was a great end to a meal and a great launch to hours of wicked conversation and coffee drinking.

P.S. The coffee was made with my new Bodum coffee press by the way. I’m never going back to drip coffee again…ever…

Pork and Noodle Broth with Prawns

To start, let me put you into the context of my Asian food exposure. I grew up in an isolated lumbering town where everyone was snow white except 1 African-Canadian family who was a doctor and 2 Asian families who owned the Chinese restaurants. No Greeks or Ukrainians or Mexicans or Arabs where I'm from. The first time I saw a black person speak French - which is basically the primary language all over Africa - I was amazed. Shows how much I knew.

Long story short, food was basically limited to the usual Canadian and French Canadian fare. So you can say that I was pleasantly surprised when I made this soup and found that my chopsticks smelled like authentic Asian food. Not to mention that I actually found Kaffir lime leaves at my local Asian food market. I mean, for all of you big city folks living on the American west coast or anyone in a larger city of the world, finding these ingredients might be as common as finding carrots. But when I tasted this soup I got an appreciation for the delicious, not too overwhelming flavours of Asia. This particular soup is supposedly of Vietnamese origin.

Like a good spaghetti sauce, I find soup is always better the day after when it's reheated. The flavours have come together and things are all beautiful and stuff. And your chopsticks can be sniffed for hours afterwards.

Finally, I find following a recipe to the T is not any fun. This one calls for 12 ounces of pork. Do you think I really went out there and measured 12 ounces of pork? No. I cut up the pork tenderloin and stuffed it into the soup. Recipes are made to be altered. But I found that when I was starting to cook that it was better to stick to the recipe. So, rule of thumb, you can depend less and less on recipes as you practice more and more. Like anything, really.

Pork and Noddle Broth with Prawns

350g / 12oz pork tenderloin

225g / 8oz raw shrimp tails

5oz thin egg noodles

1 tbsp vegetable oil

2 tsp sesame oil

4 shallots or 1 medium onion, sliced

1 tbsp finely sliced fresh root ginger

1 garlic clove, crushed

1 tsp sugar

6 1/4 cups chicken stock

2 kaffir lime leaves

3 tbsp Thai fish sauce

juice of 1/2 lime

4 sprigs of fresh cilantro and 2 green onions (scallions) chopped for garnish

1. Remove fat of tenderloin and slice as thinly as possible. A good trick is to put the thawed pork in the freezer for 30 minutes to firm the flesh up. It's then easier to slice thinly.

2. If using raw prawn tails, peel and devein the prawns.

3. Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil and simmer the egg noodles until softened, or according to the instructions on the packet. Drain and refresh under cold running water. Set the noodles to one side.

4. Pre-heat a wok. Add the vegetables and sesame oils and heat through. When the oil is hot, add the shallots or onion and stir-fry for 3-4 minutes, until evenly browned. Remove from the wok and set aside.

5. Add the ginger, garlic, sugar and chicken stock to the wok and bring to a simmer. Add the lime leaves, fish sauce and lime juice. Add the pork, then simmer for 15 minutes.

6. Add the prawns and noodles and simmer for 3-4 minutes, or longer if using raw prawns to ensure that they are cooked. Add the shallots or onion.

7. Serve garnished with cilantro and the green onions.

Definitely a 4 out of 5.

P.S. Sorry the pork looks purple in the photo. My camera sucks. I do not like green eggs and purple pork. I do not like them Sam I...um...Fork?