Another Summer, In the Books

Hey there, been a whirlwind summer, managing the kitchen of a busy lakefront, patio-based bistro. It gets easier every year, but I suppose 'easy' is a relative term. There was sweat, and BUCKETS of it. There were curse words, and plenty of them. Had a terrific staff this year. I love them all. Thanks for everything. Labour Day weekend marks the day when I have to bid adieu to some of the stalwarts that made the summer as successful as it was. I will miss you all and thank you so much for your time, love and tenderness, to paraphrase Michael Bolton. Without your help and attentiveness, this summer's chaos would not have gone so smoothly.

I hope to begin to make more blog entries henceforth. Summer is too busy to stop and reflect, unfortunately. To those of my employees who are staying on through the the fall...thank you! There is a new menu being launched soon, and many more good times to come. To those who are going off to school, I offer you a heartfelt thanks, and wish you all the best of luck in your collegiate endeavours.

Cheers

Chef D
Sent from my BlackBerry Bold 9900 on the Bell 4G H+ network

Moroccan Tomato Soup

A nice soup to get into your repertoire is a good pureed tomato soup. The fundamental here is to NOT have it look and taste like tomato sauce. Easier said than done, but when armed with a few eclectic flavouring profiles and pro-grade finishing techniques, your tomato soup will be the talk of the interwebs.

Pictured above is a bowl of spicy Moroccan tomato soup with mint chiffonade and basmati rice. You can make this with ripe roma tomatoes, or very good quality canned plum tomatoes. Avoid the really cheap stuff if you can...the product is generally watery, overly acidic and bitter, from my experience.
The recipe, scaled down from a 14L batch to a more home-friendly 4 liters, is as follows:

Ingredients:

3 L of ripe roma tomato, quartered
3 cans of coconut milk
1 small white onion, diced
10 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tbsp dried ground cumin
1 tbsp dried ground coriander
1 tsp of cinnamon
1/4 cup curry powder
1/2 tsp dry chili flakes
Kosher salt and pepper
1 pinch of saffron (10 threads) - optional
1 cup of mango (puree or chunks)
Water or vegetable stock
Cooked basmati rice
Mint if desired

Method:

1. In a large heavy bottomed saute pot, like a Dutch Oven, bring 2 oz. of vegetable oil to temp over med-high heat. Saute the onion, garlic and all the spices except the saffron together and allow to cook down a little, until onions are translucent.
2. Add the tomato quarters to the pot and stir in well. Add the coconut milk and mango, being sure to rinse out the cans with water, and add to the pot, for a total of 1 liter of water. Add saffron threads.
3. Allow to cook over medium heat for 30 minutes. Season with salt and pepper
4. Puree the soup thoroughly with an immersion blender until smooth and velvety. This soup may need to be passed through a china cap to remove tomato skins, depending on how well your blender works.
5. Readjust seasoning, and cook a further 20 minutes.
6. Remove from heat, add cold cooked rice to your liking (I would suggest 2 cups). Stir in. If you wish to eat right away, return to the burner.

Serve with yogurt, flatbreads, etc., and garnish with mint. A nice presentation is to make a timbale (mold) of hot rice in the center of every bowl, and ladel soup around it, as illustrated.

Enjoy!
~Chef D

Back on the old horse! Err, pig!

Please accept my humble yet vehement apologies for being so lax with this blog lately...I've been <cliche>very busy</cliche>. So enough with the schlepping, I have many entries to get caught up on. The first one will be about pork belly...the Grand Czar of all fatty meats.

Pork belly is, in essence, the belly of a pig :P ... Think bacon, except kept in it's whole slab form, and not cured or smoked in any way. Bacon (slab or sliced), on one hand, is treated with a salt and sugar cure, and smoke is imparted one way or another (naturally or artificially). The cure is called TCM (tinted curing mixture)...it contains nitrates that artificially tint the meat pink. That's right! Cooked pork or ham is not naturally pink! It's supposed to be white, when left unadulterated by cures and the like. Pork Belly: It's what's for DINNER!

So pork belly is literally raw pig belly fat. Sounds good right? It is! The pork belly I procure for the restaurant is of the Berkshire variety (special black furred pigs raised in the standard of the Royal family, or so the story goes). It is very firm and creamy to the touch. Let's cook it!!! Shall we just season it up and chuck it on the grill? Sure, especially if you want to set off the fire suppression system! Here's how the pork belly is prepared, as illustrated in the above picture...

I began by lightly scoring the pork belly in a criss-cross fashion. Then, I rubbed in a salt, pepper and thyme mixture, then added a little homemade crystallized garlic. I made sure that I seasoned all surfaces, then laid it into a shallow hotel pan, and partially submerged it in melted duck fat (the other Grand Czar of fats...more on that later). I added a few toasted black peppercorns, a few feuilles de laurier (Bay leaves) and a couple cloves of garlic. I wrapped this pan with aluminum foil, and placed it into a 275F convection oven for 2.5 hours. I let it rest, still covered, for another hour. Then I uncovered it, and let it come to room temperature. Let me tell you, the investment of patience is well worth it. Cutting off a piece of this confit (slow cook in large amounts of fat), and savouring it, allowing it to melt, was absolute heaven. The meat that is intermingled with the layers of precious fat is super tender, and requires next to no chewing, thanks to the lovingly slow cook method that embodies 'confit'. This, for me, is the absolute nirvana of porkdom. Pork belly (Berkshire or otherwise) is available from your local butcher by special order.

Simple Soul Warmer

I had some nice sweet potatoes laying around my pantry today, so I thought I would put them to use. I put together a quick soup utilizing simple ingredients that most people have in their refrigerators and cupboards. The result was a velvety smooth and subtly sweet soup that is sure to please. Check out the recipe and give it a shot. I have downsized it from the batch I made (10L), to yield a 3-4L batch, good for 6-8 servings. Make note of the 'do ahead' step if you wish to do it.

Ingredients:

• 2 medium to large sweet potatoes, peeled, quartered lengthwise, sliced 1/4"
• 1 large Yukon Gold potato, peeled and diced
• 3 small sprigs of fresh thyme (or 1/4tsp dried), tied tightly with butcher twine (for ease of retrieval), tied to pot handle
• 1 small white cooking onion, diced
• 1 tbsp minced garlic
• 20 roasted garlic cloves ** (do ahead)
• 5 strips of bacon, cut crosswise into lardons
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 3L chicken stock or vegetable stock or water
• Kosher salt, pepper and vegetable oil for sauteeing

** place 20 peeled garlic cloves in the center of a foil square, shiny side up. Season with kosher salt, pepper and 2 tbsp of olive oil. Fold packet closed, bake in 350F oven for 30-35 minutes.

Method:

• In a Dutch Oven over medium heat, gently saute the onion, bacon and raw minced garlic until bacon begins to crisp slightly and onions are translucent.
• Add sweet potatoes and Yukons to the pot, stir in to incorporate. Add thyme sprigs. Saute for a few more minutes longer.
• Add stock and roasted garlic, and allow to simmer for 30 minutes or until potatoes are tender.
• Season to taste with salt and pepper. Remove thyme and discard
• Use immersion blender to puree soup to a velvet consistency
• Finish soup with heavy cream and readjust seasoning as needed.

Serve with fresh toasted baguette crustinis with melted cambozola (brush baguette slices with garlic oil from garlic roasting method), and a dollop of chive yogurt (simply diced chive and plain yogurt).

Enjoy! If you have any ideas of things you'd like to see on this blog, let me know. Any epicuriosities/culinary questions are more than welcome!

Any comments? I encourage you to feel free to leave them below!

Cheers
-D

Oven Dried Tomatoes: Worth The Investment

First of all, happy belated New Year. It's been awhile, due partly to the fact that I'm lazy, and partly to the fact that I've been busy. Better late than never. So I blow the 2011 cobwebs off my blog, and dive headlong into awesomeness: home made ovendried tomatoes! Better tasting than you can buy in any store. Period. So extremely versatile. Last forever. Custom tailored flavour. Love it.

I start with a nice ripe selection of roma tomatoes. Cut the tomatoes lengthwise in half, then each half into quarters. Place these wedges into a large bowl. Add enough kosher salt to the tomatoes to begin the evisceration (sounds gross, akin to what a spider does to a trapped insect in it's web) process. I would suggest 1/2 cup of kosher salt to 12-16 whole tomatoes. Make sure the salt is evenly distributed, so as to result in an even cure. Transfer tomatoes to a collander over a sink. Allow to drain for 4 hours at least, moving the tomatoes around gently every hour or so, to move as much water as possible. Let gravity do its job.

To backtrack a little, allow me to explain: This salting process accomplishes 3 things: 1) Evisceration (dessicates, draws water from, dehydrates, etc.), which concentrates the natural flavour of the tomato, removing the natural dilution inherent from added water, and 2) Flavours. The water that is drawn from the tomatoes will be replaced with a curing agent, namely, salt. Finally, 3) Cures. Salt is a natural cure (preservation). It dries out things, so it virtually eliminates harmful bacterial invasion, namely the heterotrophic bacteria that decimates moist unliving things.

Once the tomatoes have drained to your satisfaction, lay them out on a raised rack over a cookie sheet (may need 2 or 3 depending on how many tomatoes you want to cure), as pictured above. Make sure they are evenly spaced. Things done evenly result in more even results... if that makes any sense.

If you have a convection oven, then great! Set it at it's lowest setting, maybe about 180F, and on high fan setting. Place the trays in the oven, and leave the door cracked slightly, to allow the steam from the drying process to escape. This step may take hours...it takes exactly 2.5 hours at 200F + High Fan in a commercial convection oven to thoroughly dry these tomatoes. For a normal conventional oven, I would estimate 140F, oven door cracked open, and the same time length. They can be left in a powered down oven overnight if they need more drying. The result should be a tomato that resembles jerky.

Uses: There are plenty, but only limited to your imagination. They are great when slightly reconstituted (hot water added to make them more pliable) as a snack, in a pasta dish. They are terrific in salads. A real showstopper. Friends will be amazed, and appreciate the time and effort it took to dry your own tomatoes. You can cure them with garlic (just a few bruised cloves that you throw in with the salting/draining process) or basil or any other flavouring you like. Oh, and they keep indefinitely. Another big plus!

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to post below, or contact me directly.

Cheers!

-D