Chef Alexander Svenne

Too many rants, not enough recipes

2011-11-10T17:50:00.000-08:00

Bistro 7 ¼ Braised Beef Shortribs

2 lbs English cut beef short ribs (from the shoulder)

2 tbsp canola oil

1 large onion, diced

1 dark beer (I use fort garry dark)

1 tbsp chili powder

2 cups beef or chicken stock (you can use canned)

2 cloves

S+p to taste

season short ribs with chili powder
brown on all sides in canola oil
add onions, cloves, beer and stock.
cover and roast for 6 hours at 225F (or put in slow cooker)
cool in the liquid.
Skim fat, reheat in liquid. Reduce liquid until it is saucy. Check seasoning.

Serve with mashed potatoes and vegetables

White Bean and Chorizo Soup

1 chorizo or other spicy sausage

1 small onion, diced

1 stalk celery, sliced

1 clove garlic minced

2 l chicken stock

2 cups cooked white beans (or one can)

1 potato, diced

2 cups chopped kale, or spinach or any other dark leafy green

1. 1) slice the sausage, sautee

2. 2) add the onion , celery and garlic

3. 3) add stock, potato and beans, bring to a low boil. Simmer until potatoes are cooked

4. 4) add greens and simmer until cooked. (kale will take a few minutes)

An open letter to a customer on the subject of foie gras

2011-10-22T14:34:00.000-07:00

I received a letter today on the subject of foie gras. A customer chose not to come in to my restaurant because I have Foie Gras on my menu. This letter is quite timely, as the debate is heating up in California. I wrote her a lengthy response, which I decided to post. Some of the themes in my response you will see reflected in previous blogs. I have posted a link to a letter from Incanto on the subject of foie gras.

This customer chooses to eat a vegan diet. For those of you don't know this about Bistro 7 1/4, we do an excellent job of accommodating vegan clients.

Her letter:

Dear Chef Alex,

I was recently disappointed to find out that your restaurant menu features foie gras. I'm sure you are aware the controversy behind this dish, but I would just like to provide you with some further information regarding the production of foie gras, in hopes that you will seriously consider removing this item from your menu, and set an example for other restaurants who also feature this cruel dish.

Ducks and geese used to produce foie gras are kept in tiny cages or sheds and have pipes jammed (roughly and painfully) down their throats three times per day so that grain and fat can be pumped into their stomachs, causing their liver to bloat (about 10 times its size!). The birds suffer a great deal of pain as well as injuries and infection in the process. The birds often develop foot infections, kidney necrosis, bruised and broken bills and tumours in their throats so that this unnecessary 'delicacy' can be eaten. Production of Foie Gras is so cruel that it has actually been banned in California and force feeding has been banned in several countries around the world. As a vegan and animal rights activist I wish that all meat could removed from the menu as cruelty and pain is involved in all farming methods. I understand that your clientele eat meat and the majority are neither vegetarian nor vegan, so all I am asking is that you please consider removing the foie gras from the menu. It is cruel, inhumane, painful and unnecessary. In fact, I know many people (omnivore) who refuse to eat at any restaurant that serves foie gras, so I believe removing foie gras from the menu would have only positive effects.

Here is a video exposing the cruelty and torture involved in the production of foie gras, if you are interested in seeing exactly what goes on: http://youtu.be/32815SIgq1A

Thank you for your consideration,

Anonymous

my letter:

Thank you for your letter. I appreciate hearing your concerns.

I feel that any time you make a decision about what to eat, you make a series of ethical choices. Are you content with factory farmed pork or do you seek out pastured pork? Do you eat meat or stick to vegetable proteins? Do you buy organic from california or uncertified produce from down the road? Farmed fish or wild? None of these decisions are simple.

You can buy organic produce from california, but it is wrapped in plastic and shipped 200 km in diesel trucks. And do we ever consider the plight of the migrant workers that harvest the produce?

As a chef and restaurant owner I daily make ethical choices about the food I serve. Sometimes, for practical or financial reasons, I fall short of the standards I set for myself. This being said, I think I do a very good job of buying sustainable fish, locally and humanely raised meats, naturally farmed or organic produce, and I feel the need to support small local producers.

But beyond that, I feel it is also my customers place to make ethical choices about their own dinners. I oppose most attempts to restrict or regulate our freedom to make those choices. Most of my customers enjoy meat, so I am happy to provide this. Some choose to only eat meat from small, local producers that are humanely raised, I do my best to provide that. Some of my customers choose to eat no food from animal sources, I feel I do a very good job of providing food for those customers.

As for Foie Gras, I feel there is a lot of misinformation and sensationalism. The language used colours the debate. No one says that the ducks an geese are not force fed, but the anti-foie movement will colour the description by saying the birds are "painfully force-fed. There is little evidence to support the claim that the birds feel pain in this process. The videos that the anti-foie activists use are quite horrific, but these videos are made to shock. The process of force-feeding happens for a very short period of time and is very quick the rest of the time, these birds live quite peaceful and happy lives. Ducks and geese being raised for foie are free range and are treated better than any factory chicken. Most egg producers will raise their laying hens 3 to a cage, in cages barely big enough for one of them.

But ultimately, the choice to eat foie or not to eat foie lies with my customers. If my guests feel the same outrage that you do, or are simply turned off by the idea of foie, then they will stop ordering it. If my customers stop ordering foie gras, I will stop supplying it. My menu is filled with many great choices. If you choose to not eat foie gras, you are welcome to make that choice. If you choose not to meat at all, you are welcome to make that choice as well. But please remember, that even those who choose to eat vegan are still faced with many ethical food choices.

I just received a link to a blog posting on this very subject. This is from Incanto restaurant in the San Francisco. Incanto is probably on the forefront of sustainable and ethical dining in the US. Their position is interesting and well researched. It is worth a read, if only to further the debate. Check out http://incanto.biz/2009/02/01/shock-foie/

Again, I thank you for your letter. I feel that food, and the choices we make around food, is not something we should take lightly. Healthy debate and discussion is always a good thing.

Alexander

She responded to my letter with the following:

Dear Alexander,

Thank you for your reply. I wholeheartedly agree with you that one makes an ethically driven decision whenever they choose to purchase or eat food. Meat vs. vegetable, local vs. imported, etc. However, the truth is that the majority of people do not know or understand exactly what is involved in bringing their meal to their plate and are not aware of many of the issues such as animal abuse and torture, environmental damage, etc. Reform needs to start somewhere, which is why I chose to write to all restaurants in Winnipeg serving foie gras. It is a small start - I understand that removing all meat from your menu would definitely affect your clientle, but foie gras seemed like a small enough opportunity to make some change and prevent some suffering. Before someone can make an informed ethical decision, they need to know the facts, and sadly most don't. I don't think the people who choose to order foie gras off your menu are monsters who would knowingly support the gruesome torture of innocent creatures. I think that they are individuals who maybe aren't aware of the exact processes and vast amount of suffering and abuse involved in the procurement of their meal. If someone had to sit down and watch beginning to end the process behind foie gras and then eat the end result, I highly doubt that most people would (on the same note, I feel that if most people actually witnessed or knew completely what goes on in a factory farm, most people would be vegan).

I understand that business is ultimately about profit and customers, but animal abuse of any kind is never tolerable and I do disagree with your stance on providing this option to the customer as long as they keep buying it. Although your customers may dictate specific tastes and demand in your restaurant, ultimately as the restaurant owner and chef, the menu is up to you and the decisions you make as to what goes on and is removed from the menu is completely up to you. As an animal rights activist I know the importance of standing up for what you believe in and if no one ever did that - or educated people on the implications of their decisions when they are not aware of them and therefore able to make an informed ethical decision - no progress would ever be made. It's never good to take an all-or-nothing attitude. We can never make the perfect ethical decision ALL of the time - but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't do everything we can to try to make the best ones we are able to in any given situation. Because you serve meat on your menu which means the suffering of millions of animals, doesn't lessen the impact of a simple and single decision like choosing not to support one form of cruelty (foie gras).

Thank you for the link - I did check it out. I have heard that argument in a few different articles and books before - that because animals are not physiologically the same as humans we should not anthropomorphize them. Equality doesn't mean treating two beings exactly the same (we would never allow a duck to vote because they are not capable of reasoning) - it means viewing their life and wellbeing as equally important to another's. The thing is, we cannot ever fully have a sense of how any creature other than ourselves feels pain. I can't even be sure that you feel pain in the same way I do - I have never felt it from your point of view and therefore I cannot say I know what it would feel like. But, since we do not know for a fact that animals do feel pain in the same way we do, we need to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they do. To assume otherwise would be cruel. I find little validity in the statement that tube-fed birds in foie gras production appear "unstressed". While in each and every case it may not necessarily be the "tube" that is the thing causing pain and suffering to these animals, certainly having one's liver expanded 10 times it's size and suffering infections, breaks and bruises is undeniably painful. Farms and production sites are all about turning a profit - very little to no care is taken in ensuring that each individually animal is healthy, comfortable and not suffering - that's not profitable. I'm not saying all farms operate exactly the same, but largely most farms do not have the resources to ensure the wellbeing of each animal. I recently wrote to the Minister of Agriculture on two particular foie gras production sites in Canada - birds were witnessed choking on their own blood, suffering infections and broken bills, unable to move, kicked and thrown about like pieces of garbage and beaten to death by being pounded against the ground while fully conscious. No one can even try and tell me that these birds are "unstressed" and pain-free!

You mentioned that the videos made by anti-foie gras activists are made to shock, but unfortunately they are shocking because what is witnessed is shocking! There are many large organizations who produce these videos; they are not contrived or set-up - they are actual footage. I'm not sure where you heard that the birds live painless, peaceful lives - their lives are anything but painless and peaceful. If you look up information and laws regarding "free-range" you will see that the term actually means very little. The term is not clearly defined in Canada and is often open for interpretation amongst farmers - a small piece of dirt for animals to run around in, a window in a shed - the birds often live in filthy conditions with a variety of bacteria and parasites - I have read a number of studies done on "free-range" animals in both Canada and the U.S and am disappointed that so many are deceived by that term actually denotes. Most people think that free-range looks like the idyllic farm - red barn with animals happily grazing and running around the field, but that's not the way it is. Please do not think that free-range means peaceful - it is not.

Anyway, yes, debate is always healthy and welcome! I did receive your request to post my email on your blog and I did check out your blog (I was very happy to see you take an interest in vegetarianism and veganism - it is such a peaceful way to live and I commend you for that!). You have my permission to post my initial email to you on your blog, but only if this reply is posted as well and my last name is omitted. Also, if you could send me the link to your posting that would be great!

If you want to reply to this email that is ok, but I will not reply back again. I have contacted quite a few restaurants and am anticipating on replying to all of them at least once. I just don't have the time to keep a debate going with each one (as fun as it would be!). I do really want to thank you for taking the time to read my email and for responding - I'm sure you are very busy, but it does mean a lot to me :) I have heard wonderful things about your restaurant and your food, and I also do appreciate you accommodating vegans and vegetarians on your menu :)

Thank you and have a great day!

soft food, its a bit of a rant

2011-09-08T17:31:00.000-07:00

Why is it that everyone wants their food soft?

Every year, our society spends millions of dollars on the toothpaste-toothbrush-dental industry, so I doubt it is because we all have bad teeth.

But we do we all want out food soft? The "best" and most expensive cut of beef is the tenderloin. Everyone loves it because it is soft. The biggest compliment you can give to a meal is that you can "cut it with a spoon" or that it is "like butter". But again I ask, why is soft food good? If soft food is good, why am I not charging $32 for a bowl of pablum?

Let me give you an example. Chef's love hanger steak. You always see it in chefy type cook books. You might see it on the menus of the hipper restaurants. It is a very tasty, very beefy tasting cut of meat. But you know the problem with hanger steak? You have to chew it. I am not saying its tough. I just saying, that compared to beef tenderloin, it is a little more "toothsome." When I serve hanger steak to my customers, unless they know what they are ordering, they will complain that it isn't tender enough. Me, I will always choose a flavourful steak over a bland piece of meat that is "like butter".

Here is another example. Last year I switched to a new shrimp. I did it because I was trying to find a shrimp that was considered sustainable. The options for procuring sustainably wild-caught or farmed shrimp range between devastating to the environment to just really bad for the environment. There is some "laughing bird shrimp from the gulf that is sustainable, but reminds me of the little shrimp you would have in your shrimp and avocado croissant sandwich in the early eighties. There is some "organic" farmed shrimp from belize or honduras which is pasty and bland. You can get beautiful spot prawns from BC, but they are expensive and highly seasonal. And most of them stay in BC. So, I discovered, with help of my fish monger friend Phil, some very tasty shrimp from Mexico. This stuff is caught by small day boat fishermen in the Sea of Cortes. This stuff is considered sustainable, and best of all, it is really tasty. It tastes like the shrimp you would have on the beach in mexico. But you know what? I get complaints. People are so accustomed to the mushy texture of mangrove-raping black tiger prawns, that the extra chew required to enjoy these shrimp is too much for some people to take. You know the difference between a crapy supermarket skinless wiener and the satisfying snap you get from a "european" style frank? Well this shrimp has that little snap. But people say its tough.

So I ask you, what's with all the soft food? We are gifted with agressive incisors, sharp little canines and good solid molars. We spend a lot of money to maintain our chompers. So why are we afraid to use them?

Don't judge your meal by how tender (read soft) your meal is, but by how tasty it is. Sink your teeth in to it, enjoy it!

tune in next week when I talk about "sweet food". Another example of North America's juvenile palette.

Bistro Gal

2011-06-16T12:01:00.000-07:00

Before she was Bistro Gal, she was my wife. Before that, she was punk rock chick, figure skater, folk fest volunteer and activist Danielle.

The wife of a chef puts up with a lot. Late hours, unpredictable schedules, lousy money is kind of what they sign up for. It can get so bad that they become what people have started calling a Chef's Widow. (www.chefswidow.com) And over the years my wife, Danielle, has put up with a lot.

Not only did Danielle have to put up with the usual chef craziness, she had to put up with my own unique brand of craziness. For example, every time we had a baby, I left a good stable job and took a new job. When my first daughter was born, I left the Tap & Grill to go work at 3 different jobs until I found on that stuck. When my Son was born I left Pasta La Vista to go work at Pineridge Hollow and when my youngest was born, I left Pineridge Hollow to open the Bistro.

When I was at Pineridge Hollow, I had everything. A stable job, a decent salary, full creative control, a garden and my own goats. So, I decided to leave and open my own place. Not only did Danielle support this descision, when she should have said "are you nuts? stay at your perfect job!", she actively encouraged me and helped me get the place off the ground.

And that is how she has always been. Any crazy idea I come up with, she is right there with me. When I asked her to put our lives on the line to open a little Bistro, she said sure, lets do it. Owning a restaurant was my dream, not hers, but she made it her own. When we opened, she was homeschooling our children, working in the post-trauma department at Klinic and working nights at the bistro. Very soon, she put her career on hold to work at the bistro full time. The bistro is what it is, and is as successful as it is, because of the genuine warm welcoming hospitality that she brings to the room.

Even though life can be stressful, it is not easy running a small business, it is so much better that we can do this together. I get all the glory, and she holds me up. Nothing I do could be possible with out her. She supports me, she helps me realize my dreams, she nurtures and cares for me, she has fun with me, she joins me on all of our crazy adventures. In return, I give her more craziness. Often I wonder why she puts up with me. Often I wonder why she sticks around. She could just find a nice doctor or lawyer to be with. But she chooses to remain by my side. And for this, I love her deeply.

Thank you Danielle Carignan Svenne for all you do. Thank you for being you.

Chef's Don't Get Hangovers

2011-06-04T06:20:00.000-07:00

People think chefs drink a lot. This is, of course, a myth.

I woke up this morning for the second time in a month in a strange city with a low grade headache and my insides asking me WTF? This is the second time in a month that I found my self closing down a local wine bar with my new BFF Chef Michael Blackie. And just like last month in Ottawa, our grape fuelled carousing was the night before the big event. Why do we do this to ourselves?

One my friends in the twitter universe asked us if we were "nursing hangovers". I flippantly responded, "chefs don't get hangovers". While this is not entirely true, it is true that chef's don't "nurse" hangovers; we ignore them.

There is an ethic among chefs that you just have to "git er done". My friend, Chef Aron Epp, has a motto: "Head down, work hard." Guests will arrive, they will expect to be fed, and it is our job to feed them. How we are feeling in the process, really doesn't matter.

I learnt this as a teenager working at Chi Chi's. Some nights I'd stay out all night carrying on with my friends, catch a couple hours of Z's, and then show up to work for my 7:30 prep shift. I wasn't going to let my boss give me shit for being hungover so I would work extra hard. What I learnt in the process, is the best way to get rid of a hangover is to work hard. If you are really hungover and you lay around all day nursing it, you will feel like garbage all day long. If you ignore the hangover and just do some hard physical work, you will feel right as rain in a couple short, painful hours. I see this in my young cooks at the Bistro now. They will never complain, they will never call in sick. The only way I will ever know that they are hungover, is the jumbo size bottle of Gatorade in their station.

But why do we do it? I think people attracted to the restaurant industry are highly social people. I don't party like I used to when I was a young man, but I do like to get together with friends. And because for the most part we work nights, our socializing happens in a friends restaurant with a few drinks. While we are enjoying each other's company we are fully aware that we have to get up tomorrow morning and "do it all over again". But we never want the party to end. How many times have I said , "That was stupid. But it was so much fun". It is hard to end a good conversation with friends.

In the past month I have been involved in two national "chef events". Last month I was privileged to represent Manitoba at the Prairie Scene conference. Today, I am cooking at the Cooks and Curds gala dinner at the Great Canadian Cheese Festival. Both times we had the opportunity to get together with the chefs involved. We all work so hard that it is nice to meet other chefs in fun social settings. Last night, we had chefs literally from coast to coast. We had a chef from Tofino, and chefs from Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, and everywhere in between all sitting at the table together. This was such an incredible time that how could we cut it short, just because we had a lot of work to do the next day.

We all knew, that we would wake up feeling rough, down a couple mugs of coffee and then get to work. No one at the table would be "nursing a hangover". And tonight, we will do it all over again. Watch out "Acoustic Grill", we are all coming tonight.

I am especially privileged to be able to work with my wife Danielle. So when I am out carousing with "the boys" she is right there beside me.

The Essence of Hospitality

2011-05-20T10:40:00.000-07:00

After the 8th course was served, the host stood up to make a toast. "This is the essence of hospitality."

I want to describe two very different dinners. I want to explore what brings them together, because in there somewhere, is the meaning of hospitality.

The first dinner was an off the grid dinner hosted by me and a few industry friends at a warehouse space in the exchange. The guess were given a time and a date, but no location. On the day of the event, they received a call from someone they had never met telling them where to go that night. "look for the blue door." When the entered they were greeted with a cocktail concoction involving grapefuit, elderflower, gin and oregano. They were ushered up a rickety freight elevator to the third floor in what looked like a construction zone. Here they received two apps, one was a pice of tuna with horseradish wrapped in pickled cucumber and one was a waffle with chicken pate, coffee chipotle syrup and crispy salty quail skin.

They were led into a space which was beautifully appointed with linens, candles, flowers and silverware. At each seat was a little gift box which held an amuse bouche. Four different types of amuse gave the guests something to talk about. Then the dinner commenced.

8 1/2 courses all expertly paired with wine or other beverages followed. We had "bacon wrapped scallops" which took the form of a bacon consomme with scallop noodles, we did quail confit and quail ribbons, we made a pork cheek bolognese with a duck fat "parmesan". For dessert we messed with Thai flavours with a coconut panna cotta, a thai basil ice cream, a cream curry syrup and cashew brittle. The we finished with frothed brie, blackberries and balsamic caviar. The event was about four hours of wine and food and fun. Some of the guests said it was the best meal they had ever eaten.

The space belonged to a friend of ours. It was the third floor of a building he had bought. The space we were in was going to be turned into an apartment for him. This dinner, felt like the first dinner party in his new home. Everyone arrived to the dinner, he said, with the usual one or two degrees of separation, but now they had zero degrees of separation. People in the room started as strangers, but now they had a shared experience. My friend, the host, said that this dinner was "the essence of hospitality".

The very next day we were having a nice peaceful sunday. We had had a very long week which culminated in this fancy dinner and very late night. We were at home, trying to do as little as possible. My wife had made a big pot of soup so that whoever needed to eat, could eat whenever they needed to. If you have never had one of Danielle's soups, you need to understand that her soups are hearty. They make hearty stews look like gruel. Big chunks of potato, vegetables, kale, beans, hot sausage held together with just enough broth to allow her to call it a soup. Always delicious.

Our good friends came by to drop something off, or pick something up. They are also a family of five with kids that correspond in age to our kids. We were chatting at the door with the mom, and gradually one kid after another came in. Eventually the dad came up to see what was going on. We hadn't visited with these friends in a couple of weeks, so we wound up inviting them all to come in. We poured drinks, ladled big bowls of Danielle's soup and tore big hunks of bread. As tired as we were, we all had supper together and had a lovely time. At the time, reflecting on the night before, I thought to myself, "this is the essence of hospitality."

Fish with Cheese: The curse of the purists.

2011-02-01T06:12:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has ever seen Scott Conant on Chopped will know that combining fish or seafood with cheese is a serious no-no. He will argue, whenever he's given the opportunity, that Italians never combine seafood with fish, and by extension, neither should you.

He is not the only one who takes this line of thinking. Many "foodies" will argue the same thing. I have customers who remind me of this every time I cook a seafood pasta. Recently on Iron Chef America, the talented Chuck Hughes was criticized for his lobster poutine because it was made with cheese curds.

When asked why, there are usually two defenses given to this position. The first goes something like this, "The cheese will hide the delicate taste of the fish." I would like to argue against this by saying that there is a huge spectrum of cheeses and a huge spectrum of fish. Yes, a dover sole would be drowned out with a heavy stilton, but the flavour of a grilled sardine can stand up to anything. My other argument is that we use many strong flavours when cooking fish, that are perfectly acceptable: Olives, capers, fennel, garlic, tomato.

The second defense is the old stand by: tradition. Italians never combine cheese with seafood. This may be partly true, but even the Italians have exceptions. A pizza with anchovies will still have mozzarella. Linguine with clams will often be served with a little shaved pecorino. I used to enjoy a tasty dish at Mona Lisa of shell pasta stuffed with shrimp and smothered with melted cheese.

But why must the cuisine of North America be slave to the traditions of a small European nation, even if it is a nation known for its food. The no cheese and seafood rule does not extend past the Italian borders. The culinary tradition of France does not have the same restrictions. Going back to Escofffier's Grand Cuisine, we see countless recipes of delicate fish combined with cheese and cheese sauces. Northern european culinary traditions will combine pickled or smoked fish with hard cheeses. In American tradition, we see such delicious classics as shrimp with cheesy grits.

North American cuisine, arguably on the forefront of cuisine today, is about moving beyond tradition. The best practitioners know the tradition, they know the rules, and they know where and when to break or bend them. Lobster mac and cheese? Why not? North american cuisine is about looking at tradition and spinning it with our own personal creativity.

But ultimately it is about taste. If you like cheese with seafood, go for it. enjoy. Sometimes I give in to the purists. I will serve a seafood pasta without cheese. Invariably, I get asked for a side of parmesan. Why? Caus regular people don't care about the rules, they like cheese on their pasta. Two of our best selling mussel dishes are with bacon and cheddar or blue cheese and mushroom. Ask my friend Tamara about the lobster grilled cheese I made her.

I could go on, there are so many ways the food purists are trying to beat the fun out of eating. Don't even get me started about sushi ginger! Your best bet is to cook from your heart. Learn from the past and have fun experimenting with new twists. Cooking has more to do with the senses then the intellect. And the next time one of these foodie snobs looks down their nose at you, grate a little extra parm on your seafood linguine, smile, and say with out any shame, "I like it this way"

Breakfast TV

2011-01-06T10:27:00.000-08:00

I was on Breakfast TV this morning and this is what I made:

Cassoulet

The original pork and beans, this is traditional dish of france, and one of my favourites from the bistro. Don’t get to hung up on having all the right ingredients, think beans and meat, try to get a good balance of flavours. Beans absorb flavours and can taste flat if you are not paying attention. Taste for salt and pepper, acidity and sweetness, and make sure their is enough moisture to keep the cassoulet from being heavy.

For the Beans:

1 cup dry white beans, I like the texture of Great Northern Beans, but you can use navy beans or white kidney beans.

6 peppercorns

4 bay leaves

1 sprig fresh thyme

2 cloves

1 diced onion

1.Soak beans overnight.

2. drain and rinse beans, place in large heavy pot with lots of water. Add seasonings.

3.bring to a boil, then simmer until beans are tender but not mushy.

4. drain off any excess liquid.

5. or you can cheat and use canned beans, but you compromise both flavour and texture.

For cassoulet

1 onion, diced

1 clove garlic, chopped

4 slices of bacon, cut into 1 inch pieces

4 -2inch pieces of cooked pork belly. Feel free to substiute pork shoulder, hock, ham...

4 lamb sausages. feel free to substitute whatever sausage you like. Garlic sausage works.

4 legs duck confit.

2 cups cooked white beans

1 tomato, diced

2 cups chicken stock

salt and pepper

¼ cup bread crumbs

1 tbsp garlic butter

in heavy dutch oven sautee bacon. Add garlic and onions. sautee until onions are golden.
Add sausage, and brown on both sides. Add the rest of the meat. (I usually cook the duck leg separately to get that nice crispy skin)
Add beans, tomato, chicken stock. Bring to a boil. Check for seasoning.
combine breadcrumbs with garlic butter and cover the beans. Bake at 325 for 45 minutes.

Braised Beef Short Ribs

1 tbsp vegetable oil

12 meaty, english cut shortribs

1 large onion julienned

1 bottle of dark beer

2 cups chicken or beef stock

salt and pepper

Season short ribs with salt and pepper. In a heavy skillet, brown shortribs on all sides. Do this in batches, if you try to brown they won’t brown well. Transfer browned shortibs to a casserole dish or dutch oven. A slow cooker works as well.
After removing all the ribs add onions to the pan, lightly brown. Add beer to onions to deglaze the pan. Bring to a boil and reduce. Add stock and bring to a boil.
pour onion and stock mixture over short ribs. Cover ribs with tin foil, leave one corner uncovered to allow the steam to escape and reduce the sauce. Bake in a 275F oven for 6 hours (or in a slow cooker).
Let short ribs cool in the liquid. When the ribs are cold, you can remove the fat.
Reheat ribs in liquid, check seasoning for salt and pepper. Serve with mashed potatoes and your favourite veggie.

Pecha Kucha

2010-11-23T06:23:00.000-08:00

They were sitting at the bar, talking with great excitement and passion. I asked them if they had just come from a concert. They answered, "Pecha Kucha". Then they explained.

Pecha Kucha is a gathering of creative people where creative people talk about some aspect of their craft or life that they feel might be interesting. The subject matter and format can be quite divers, but the event is governed by a strict structure. The participants show twenty slides and each slide is shown for only 20 seconds. Each presentation lasts only 400 seconds (6mins 40 secs). Pecha Kucha was invented in Japan as a way to get notoriously long winded architects to tighten up their presentations. It is now an international event, being hosted regularly in over 300 cities. Winnipeg does one four times each year. The statistic is that any night of the year, there is one happening somewhere.

So these guys sitting at the bar said, "Chef, you should do one!" I said sure, that sounds like fun. And thought nothing more of it. Until I received an email inviting me to present at the next Pecha Kucha. And so, last thursday night, I found myself standing on stage at the Park Theatre presenting 20 slides for 20 seconds each.

I talked about my creative process, how I cook, where I draw inspiration from. I was trying to get across the notion that cooking is partly about preserving an old tradition and partly about furthering that tradition with new ideas. I tried to focus on the sense that most of cooking is not about crazy creative explorations and fanciful presentations, but i is about the basics. It's chopping onions and peeling carrots. While I presented my slides, I cooked. I made a batch of Tequila mussels in my 6 minutes and 40 seconds. I felt it important that my slide show had a sense of smell component added to it. At the ends some of the guests enjoyed my mussels.

I was the last of twelve presenters. The presentations ran the gamut from a piece on architecture to solve humanitarian crises around the world, to a artist showing pictures from his sketch book. One guy presented a story about how he developed a popular iphone app. (Makes me want to develop my own, but I don't know what it would do.) Shawna Dempsey did a presentation on her art, it was almost a retrospective, with slides of her different work. Another gentleman presented about his relationship with a great aunt who he only got to know late in her life. One gentleman presented on a trip to new york and his visit to the world trade center the day before 9/11. He talked about how fate intervened and saved him from being in the towers the next day. One woman, presented photos that she wove into a short story. Some of the presentations had audience participation. One had you touch and hold onto a complete stranger, the other had you look deep into the eyes of your neighbour and say "you're fucked, and that's okay".

It was a great night. It was inspiring, informative and entertaining. I was honoured to be invited to present. I look forward to the next one, I will attend just to see the presentations. But I am already planning my next slide show. 20 recipes in 20 seconds each.

Thanks to the organizers of pecha kucha for inviting me and putting on the event. Thanks to Kiki May for taking photos and putting together the slides. Thanks to Eric at the Park for hosting the event. Thanks to Ruben for covering my shift on line so I could attend. And as always, thanks to Danielle, my lovely wife for her love and continuous support in all my crazy projects.

(I tried uploading the slide show, but it seemed to confuse blogger. I'll try again, later.

So I tried again, and then again. Does anyone know how to attach a video?)

but you can check out some pictures on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/adrianjkshum/5191816719/in/photostream/

yes, the pumpkin ravioli is back, but come try the choucroute garnis

2010-11-10T11:58:00.000-08:00

Okay, so this is how it played out. I kept the pumpkin ravioli. I am making and serving it exactly the same way I have made and sold it for the last few years. People are loving it, and we are selling lots of it.

Also, I brought the cassoulet back, the rainbow trout with fennel, the duck confit with cherries, the warm fennel salad and the gnudi with butternut squash, sage and brown butter. We also brought back the big double cut berkshire pork chop with spaetzle, braised red cabbage and caramelized apples.

For new things, I am doing foie gras with apples and toasted almonds. We have a tasty baked polenta dish (see my blog about San Francisco) and a dessert with apples, bourbon ice cream and bacon brittle. (Ditto) I also added a whole new sections called bouchées (ripped that name of from Frances in San Fran). Here you can get a little bowl of olives, some pickled eggs or some crispy fried white beans. Or, my favourite, a spiced pickled egg. We take Herman's Natures farm eggs and pickle them in a brine with cumin, coriander, fennel and hot chilies. Yum. It's like the big jar of pickled eggs you see at the garrick hotel or the woodbine, but we have 'kicked it up a notch'.

My favourite new dish is the Choucroute Garnis, which translates to big pile of pork with saurkraut. This is a classic bistro dish which originates in Alsace. "Why do you see this Alsatian dish on the menus of Paris Bistros?" I hear you asking. Well, let me tell you. A large number of the cooks at Paris restaurants orignally come for Alsace. Many left Alsace during the franco-prussian war and subsequent conflicts along that border. While learning the traditional paris dishes, they brought in some of their favourites from home. Choucroute Garnis is one of these dishes. I have wanted to put choucroute on the menu for as long as the bistro has been open. But I thought maybe it was too weird. I have run it for specials, but it never really did well. Maybe it was just too rustic to be considered a "special". So, this time round, while writing the menu, I decided I would try it out and see how it went. So far, it has been well recieved and I am serving lots of it. The idea, is that it is saurkraut cooked with "garnishes" which tend to be sausages and other pork products. Some versions might even have seven different sausages is it. We use knackwurst, which is basically a smoked bratwurst, smoked pork chops, fresh pork belly and smoky bacon. We serve this dish with mustard, bread and cornichons.

Other dishes from last year didn't make it back on the list. The one we get the most requests for is the bouef bourguignon. It's a great dish, but to be honest, I really only put it on the menu to capitalize on all the free publicity it got for Julie and Julia. But it is a dish I will use for dinner specials this season. In fact, I had a customer ask about it just yesterday. They have a reservation for Nov. 20th and were wondering if it was back on the menu. I told them no, but that I would run it for my dinner feature that night. Did you know that you can put in requests for dinner features? I have one good customer who always request veal chops when they come.

So anyway, the fall menu is written. It is tasty. And now, we right the fall/winter wine list. Any requests? I'll definitely put an Alsatian white on to go with the choucroute.

Choucroute Garnis

Step 1.

1 jar/can saurkraut. (If you know any hutterites ask them for some, they make the best)

1 medium onion, julienned

1 clove garlic, smashed

1/2 lb bacon cut into lardons (you can substitute the bacon for a smoked pork hock, or diced ham)

4 bay leaves

4 juniper berries

6-8 peppercorns

1-2 whole cloves

1 tsp mustard seed.

2 cups dry white wine. (riesling is the classic)

combine all the ingredients in a heavy pot or dutch oven. Simmer on a low burner or in a 300F oven for an hour. You can use this right away, or refrigerate to use later. We also use this on a a sandwich and in our new mussels with saurkraut, knackwurst and mustard. It's great on hot dogs, a little more interesting and less acidic than your standard jarred saurkraut.

Step 2.

choucroute from step 1

4 smoked (or fresh) pork chops

4 cubes of slow roasted pork belly

4 sausages.

16 potatoes

2 cups chicken stock

this is just a guideline. use as many different sausages and as much smoked or fresh pork products as you like. avoid overly lean cuts, they go against the spirit of the dish, and will get stringy from long cooking.

1. combine all ingredients in a heavy dutch oven or casserole.

2. bake at 300F for an hour.

3. serve with mustards, pickles and good hearty bread.

Pair this with a good german or alsace riesling or a tasty lager style beer.

where did we eat, and other helpful hints for travelling to san francisco and napa

2010-10-19T15:08:00.000-07:00

-sit at the bar or kitchen counter whenever possible

-ask the staff where to go eat. the cooks and servers all know the new hot spots. All of our favourite food places came from a recommendation from restaurant staff.

-get to know the bartender at your hotel. tip well and be kind.

-the Bart from SFO to downtown San Fran is easy and cheap.

-The F-line has antique streetcars, on purpose.

-Homeless people make good tour guides

-San Francisco has the best buskers. One guy had a real drum kit. another an actual piano. Larry the bucket guy makes a drum kit out of buckets. he is awesome.

-the streetcar stops just long enough to perform a crack deal if you know who to talk to

-the map of san francisco is flat. the town isn't. what might look like a "nice little walk", isn't bring your sherpa

-california avenue goes straight up.

-dungeness crab is best served plain. it is the only food that isn't made better with butter. Every place down on fisherman's wharf serves it.

first meal: La Taqueria on Mission. I had cow face and beef tongue, D had pork carnitas and shrimp.

first meal in Napa: Rutherford Grill, one of our favourites on the whole trip. In the town of rutherford, on rutherford rd. Rutherford is between Yountville and St. Helena.

- everything in Napa shuts down at 9:00. One exception is Bouchon which serves until 11:00

For Breakfast in Napa we went to the Luna market, a little grocery store across from our hotel, the Rancho Caymus, in Rutherford, which catered to the mexican population that worked at the wineries. We had breakfast burritos with egg, beans potato and chorizo

Oakville grocery in Oakville is better than the more famous Dean and Deluca's in St. Helena. great place to grab a quick pic nic lunch if you are doing the wine tour.

Bistro Jeanty, is fun, busy and loud. The food riffs off bistro classics. Sit at the bar. They have about 7 different types of pastis. Great cocktail list.

Bouchon, Thomas Kellers's french bistro. Less expensive and far more casual than French Laundry, but not worth the money. Doesn't live up to the hype. Fussy small portions. Which is okay, but only if the flavours were bang on. Which they weren't. Duck confit was way to clovey and lacked that tasty crispy skin. Marinated veg salad was weird with crab beignets which were smaller than a tater tot with as much crab flavour.

Couldn't get in to either French Laundry or Ad Hoc (Thomas's family style restaurant). Everyone was saying the Redd was fabulous, but we never made it.

In the town of Napa we went to Angele, which was tasty. Artsy takes on bistro classics. Locavore philosophy. Good cocktail list. Nice big patio, we sat at the bar.

Morimoto: did not enjoy. The designer had fun with this space. Felt unwelcome and uncared for, so we didn't stick around to try the more interesting dishes on his expensive menu.

Carpe Diem, had some nice desserts, although the candied potato chip was more gimmick than anything. Nice people. The owner knew where Winnipeg was, he was a hockey fan.

Boonfly Cafe, on the old sonoma road attached to the Carneros Inn. Charming, quite beautiful. Really tasty food. Excellent coffee. Awesome burger, great BLT sandwhich with heirloom tomatoes. definitely worth the trip.

In San Francisco we stayed at the Palomar Hotel. Very nice. Clean, modern, right downtown. from 5 to 6 their was a free wine reception. Have a glass of wine, and order the crab cakes. made with dungeness crab and not much else. Don't you hate crab cakes that are all breading and filler with very little crab? Or the ones that where the crab is so overworked that it tastes like sand paper? These are not like those, these are barely held together, almost pure crab, and tasty. While you are here, ask the bartenders where to eat in town.

First night we went to the Slanted Door in the ferry building. Modern take on vietnamese food. We had some really tasty clams with pork belly and some summer rolls with lots of yummy shitake and greens and tasty things. I had the girliest cocktail ever. With raspberries and vodka and shaken up with an egg white. All pink and frothy, luckily I am secure in my masculinity.

then we walked halfway to Nopa. Straight up hill. then we called a cab for the last half of the walk. Nopa was fantastic! Busy, lively, loud. We arrived at 930 on a wednesday and it was packed. We would have to wait 45 mins for a table. Food was fresh and local, interesting cocktails. They had a wood oven and a wood grill in their open kitchen. Probably the best restaurant experience we had in San Fran.

Thursday we went for breakfast at Boulettes Larder in the Ferry Building. The chef was intense. half an hour before lunch, she didn't have the lunch menu written. D had scottish cut oatmeal. hates oatmeal, loved this, came with garnishes of walnut, flax, raisin and brown sugar in cute little boxes. I had the fluffiest scrambled eggs ever with spinach and black eyed peas cooked in roast pork drippings. so good.

at cafe mystique on castro we had hummus with spicy ground beef. really delicious Morrocan mint tea.

at cafe zuni we had the house cured anchovies and a salad with pancetta and parm. tasty.

Frances for dinner. On Noe in the castro. farmer's market shot of two kinds of melon and tequila. house blended house wines served by the ounce. the bring you a beaker and charge you for what you drink. tasty crab beignets. lamb served 3 ways with rapini, and the tastiest chicken roulade you've ever seen. voted top 10 new restaurants in the US by Bon Appetit and you can see why.

Brenda's for breakfast. French Creole spot in the heart of sketchy town. We arrive, we are told to write our names on the clip board outside. when our table is ready, the call us. We begin with a flight of beignets. plain, apple, dark chocolate and spicy crawfish. I had crawfish and adouille pot pie and D had shrimp and grits smothered in a tasty brown sauce. worth the wait.

lunch we had dim sum in china town. china town is super touristy. apparently there are less touristy mini china towns in San Fran, but we wanted to see the big one. bought a mah jong board. Does anyone know how to play mah jong? Don't go for dim sum at 2 in the afternoon. the food is still good but you miss the whole show. highlight? the shang hai soup dumplings.

started dinner with a braised beef shortrib at the hotel bar. our bartender tells us, "tonight, I'm driving" she chooses our snack and pairs wines with it. Thanks, Morgan.

then pie at Mission pie. I had a plum pie and Danielle had a mixed berry.

walking up mission, their are a bunch of people grilling "mission style" hot dogs. fried up with lots of onions on little flat top grills out of the sides of mini vans. I am sure they have their permits in order. I had guerilla guacamole made right their on the sidewalk.

went to a bar that was basically under the free way. Zeitgiest. Looks like any college/punk rock bar anywhere in the world, until you step outside. The bulk of the bar is in this empty lot, hemmed in with 12 foot fence and barbed wire. the lot is filled with rows of pic nic tables. the facilities are porta potties. everyone sits together. one woman was doing yoga. most of the beer is sold in pitchers. great vibe, tons of fun.

then to bar agricole. recomended by the chef of Boulette's Larder. the courtyard up front featured tables and a herb garden. the restaurant was very new with lots of wood and crazy ligth fixtures made out of plastic tubing. The place was seven weeks old and beautiful. I had another cocktail involving an egg white, but at least it wasn't pink. We were really tired, so I don't remember all the dishes, but we had sardine roll mops and a dish with three kinds of radish and lardo.

tired and full, we still grab a street crepe from a vendor across the street. Danielle falls asleep with the crepe on her pillow.

saturday is ferry building farmer's market. We start with breakfast at blue bottle coffee. the individually drip each cup. Danielle had a caramelized belgian waffle, and I had a coffee cake that involved guiness and caraway.

the market is incredible. fresh dates, walnuts, pomegranates, limes, heirloom tomatoes everything you could possible want. oysters, fresh lamb, cheeses, cured meats, jams, juices... we ate "korean tacos" which was nori filled with grilled pork belly and yummy sauces.

we had salumi cones at boccalone. I bought a tasty salted pig parts t-shirt. we bought N'duja, guaciale and wild fennel and orange salami to bring back with us.

Cow Girl Creamery was beautiful we had a very enthusiastic cheese boy. we told him we wanted only California cheeses. we got about four from the Girl Creamery and about ten others. everything from a fresh chevre, to this stinky cheese made like a gouda, but kept soft. loved the story of the dry jack cheese. exclusive to California, this cheese was invented when during th war the local italian community couldn't import their prized parmagianno, so they asked the local cheese makers to dry and age their monterey jack to the consistency of parm. the dust it in cocoa.

rented bikes and biked down to fisherman's wharf. it was fleet week and their was a blue angels air show, so it was crazy. wall to wall people. so much fun.

we had dungeness crab at the blue mermaid. i had a big frosty glass of anchor steam ale. Dungeness crab is best eaten plain. we experimented. it is the only food that is not made better with butter. butter detracts from the sweet flavour of the meat.

not done yet, we had these delicious grilled chicken skewers from a street vendor. they were done with some sort of teriaki sauce.

that night we celebrated our bartender's victory at the bar tending competition by enjoying her lavender cocktail

then a cab to cosentino's In Canto. Nice spot, we sat in the lounge with a very friendly, career server. D ordered the with a poached egg and shaved cured tuna heart. I had the blood pappardelle with pork trotters and foie gras. I think we had dessert, i think mine was a goat cheese cheesecake, and Danielle's was a chocolate mousse, but its all a blur now.

sunday, we must return home. we have breakfast at thai place in the airport. really tasty soup. even the airport food was good! lunch at the ihop in the vancouver airport, not so much.

so, if you go to san francisco, eat small amounts often. you won't be disappointed. we ate six or seven meals a day. some were better than others, but we didn't have one bad bite of food the spaghetinni whole time we were there.

now, planning our next culinary trip. Chicago? New York? New Orleans? Italy?

we might just have to settle for the Canad Inns in Grand forks.

What I like in a restaurant

2010-10-08T09:48:00.000-07:00

We walk in, sit at the bar. The bartender asks you want you want to drink and where you are from. He pours Danielle a glass of wine, and me a pastis with a side of water. It's a french bistro so I feel the need to drink pastis. I point to the two most expensive on the list and ask him which one is best. He recommends the cheapest one and says it is his favourite. We scooch over a spot to let two more join us in this busy, yet cosy spot. The bartender cracks a few jokes. When he discovers we own a french bistro in Canada, he starts speaking in French to us. He knows about three words, but is feeling pretty proud of them. We order an app, puy lentils and pork belly with duck confit. We contemplate a second app, but he warns us that it is a rich dish and maybe we should just start there. We are there because we have a 9:30 reso down the street and it is only 8:30. By the time it is time to leave, we contemplating cancelling our reso and staying at Bistro Jeanty. No, we need to go to Bouchon.

The next night, we walk into Morimoto. The Iron Chef has a new spot in Napa. The woman at the door greets us with a warm smile and seats us at the bar in a very impressive, large room. Lights clearly designed just for this space, over sized yellow wing backs, grey and steel, a gleaming stainless kitchen. So we sit at the bar, and wait. The bartender is busy talking to a couple that were clearly hipper than we were. When asked, he gave us a drink menu. He makes the wrong drink for me, then replaces it. Danielle orders a gimlet, which tastes nasty and chemically. We apologetically send it back, the bartender was trying to "kick it up" by using Hanger One Kaffir Lime. Sorry if it was too intense for us. He takes the drink away but doesn't offer to remake it, neither does he offer an alternative. The menu is overwhelming, crazy stuff we have never seen before. We order some (well-made) sushi as we contemplate what else to order. The bartender doesn't go out of his way to talk with us, he doesn't ask if we have any questions about the food, he doesn't suggest his favourites. We get no love from him. I am sure the food there was fabulous, but we don't stick around long enough to find out. We paid for our one drink and our fish and walked down the street...

Our favourite restaurants in Napa and San Francisco, were not the fanciest. They were not the ones run by celebrity chefs. They were not the ones we had read about in food magazines or on Urban Spoon. Our favourite restaurants were the ones which had warm and welcoming staff. Our favourite restaurants were loud and busy. Our favourite resaturants were the ones where the staff seemed to care about their place. Our favourite restaurants were the ones where the staff seemed to care about us.

Our Favourite restaurant in Napa was the Rutherford Grill, in the Town of Rutherford. We sat at the bar, the bartender let me sample the local draft beers before ordering. He suggested a white from "down the road" for Danielle. On our first visit Danielle ordered the vegetable plate which featured local produce at its best. I had a wood roasted chicken salad. Our second visit Danielle had the veg plate again and I had a really great French dip sandwich. We were told by several people that they do the best cheeseburger in California. We hung out at the bar with a local winemaker who was clearly a regular. He said that he was part of two teams of regulars who regularly occupy this bar. He claimed his team was the A team, although the two gentlemen sitting on the other side of us, members of the other team, would argue that point. This was the kind of place that after our first visit we were recommending it to other travellers we met at wine tastings.

Our favourite restaurant in San Francisco was Nopa. This place was a moderately sized restaurant, but when we arrived at 9:30 on Wednesday night, it was packed. We were told that we would have a 45 minute wait. We went over to the narrow bar area for a drink while we waited, and

muscled in to the first on seats at the long bar top. The head bar tender was intense. His eyes were constantly scanning the bar for things that needed doing and customers that needed help. I asked him, as he was stirring drinks, "do you taste every drink you make?" He replied with "do you taste your food?" But in the midst of all that intensity he cracked jokes, engaged in political debate, asked us about our restaurant and generally helped us have a good time. It didn't hurt that the food was fantastic as well. Simple yet interesting, flavourful and oh so comforting. We had cubes of polenta with creamed corn, ridiculously tasty cherry tomatoes and melted cheese. We had wood grilled broccoli with buttered bread crumbs and anchovies. We had a chicken noodle soup that would make your grandma weep.

We left California filled with ideas about food, about wines, about drinks, about better ways to run a restaurant. It was supposed to be a holiday, but we spent the whole time thinking and planning. It was great to be inspired, but it was also nice to see that we were doing some things right. I was quite excited that my duck confit was better than Thomas Keller's duck confit at Bouchon, but more importantly, it was nice to be reminded that the type of restaurant we like to eat at, is the type of restaurant we own. Our place is busy and loud, the food is comfortable and tasty and we are warm and welcoming. Bistro 7 1/4 is the type of restaurant I would seek out if I was visiting from out of town.

Sage Garden Herbs

2010-09-26T18:02:00.000-07:00

check out www.herbs.mb.ca

Sage Garden Herbs is one of the nicest places on the planet. You will be driving down St. Mary's. You will cross the perimeter, you will drive past all the nurseries and garden shops, and you will think you are lost and you missed a turn off. You will be almost at the floodway when you see the sign. You will slam on the breaks, almost missing the lane, and freak out the driver behind you.

When you drive up the lane, you enter an oasis of herbs and flowers.

I love going to Sage Garden Herbs. You walk through the greenhouse. You are encouraged to rub your fingers through the herbs. The scents delight and overwhelm. Not only is there basil and thyme and oregano, but there are twelve different types of basil, 6 oreganos, 9 thymes. I have tried lime basil, orange thyme and pineapple sage. This place is a cook and a gardeners paradise.

And Dave Hanson, the friendly proprietor, knows everything about the herbs he sells. He will tell you where they are from, how to grow them, which plants will do best in your conditions, how to harvest them, what to cook with them, all their medicinal properties and tidbits of folklore around them.

The reason I am writing about this place now, is that I was out there last weekend doing a cooking demo. Dave planted a garden last spring filled with squashes, peppers, chard, onions, and a large variety of heirloom tomatoes. Dave wanted me to come out to demonstrate what to do with all his garden's bounty. So, I arrived out there with a knife, a couple of frying pans, a little olive oil, salt, pepper etc. He had a table laid out with a cornucopia of fresh deliciousness, and said "Go!" In fourty five minutes I had prepared an heirloom tomato salad 3 ways; made a tomato and goat cheese galette, rolled some swiss chard rolls and whipped up a delicious choke cherry and lemon verbena mojito. I was just about to whip up a squash pancake with a tomatillo chutney, when Dave Yanked me off the stage. I had been talking for almost an hour and could have gone on for two more hours. Unfortunately, I was trumped by a troupe of belly dancers.

After demonstrating some basic knife skills, I started talking about how I want to encourage people to cook without recipes. I was talking about letting the produce inspire and direct you. I wasn't two minutes into my presentation when a woman in the back row raised her hand and asked "will you be giving us recipes for these?"

so, I told her I would post them on my blog.

Heirloom Tomato Salad, 3 ways

2 lbs assorted heirloom tomatoes, look for a variety of colours, sizes and shapes

2 tbsps white wine vinegar

4 tbsps olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

1. cut tomatoes into wedges

2. toss with oil and vinegar, season.

version 1, simple basil

toss basic recipe with a quarter cup fresh basil

version 2, south east asian

1 tbsp mint, chopped

1 tbsp thai basil, chopped

1 tsp lemon grass, finely chopped

1 tsp ginger, finely minced

1 tbsp green onion or chive, chopped

1 hot pepper, finely minced

mix all the above with basic tomato mix

version 3, a little bit greek

2 tbsp oregano, chopped

1 tbsp basil, chopped

a few sprigs of thyme

1 small red onion, juilenned

1/2 cup feta, crumbled

1/2 cup calamata olives

mix all the above with basic tomato mix

Heirloom Tomato and goat cheese Galette

basic tomato recipe

1 cup goat cheese

1/4 cup fresh basil

4 round of pastry. (make your own, by frozen puff pastry, even use pita bread)

salt and pepper to taste

spread goat cheese on pastry

arrange tomatoes on top

sprinkle with fresh basil, season with salt and pepper.

bake at 400F for 10 to 15 minutes

Swiss Chard rolls

8 large leaves of swiss chard. (Large beet greens work as well)

1 farmer sausage, removed from casing and chopped up

1 cup cooked white rice

1 tbsp chopped fresh dill

1 clove garlic, crushed

1 cup heavy cream

1. in skillet, saute garlic sausage. add garlic and dill. remove from skillet and mix in with rice. check seasoning. add salt and pepper as required.

2. cut stem off swiss chard. With the back of a knife, crush the spine of the leaves to make more flexible. blanch leaves quickly in boiling water. fill leaves with sausage rice mixture and roll tightly.

3. in skillet where you cooked the sausage add cream. bring to a boil. place rolls in hot cream and simmer to heat through. serve.

Choke Cherry & Lemon Verbena Mojito

1/4 cup choke cherries

2-3 leaves lemon verbena

2-3 leaves fresh mint

2 wedges of lime (one is for garnish)

1 tsp simple syrup (optional)

1 1/2 oz white rum

4 oz soda water

1. in mixing glass muddle the cherries with the mint and verbena.

2.add squeeze of one lime wedge, throw whole wedge in the glass

3. add rum and simple syrup. Shake vigorously. Strain into a highball glass over ice.

4. top with soda water, garnish with a lime wedge. enjoy!

the one I didn't get to:

Over Sized Zucchini Pancake with Tomatillo Relish

2 cups grated zucchini from one of those ridiculously large late season squashes

2 eggs

1/2 cup bread crumbs

1 tsp salt

1 tsp paprika

canola oil

1. mix squash with eggs, bread crumbs and seasonings.

2. form into pancakes and fry in oil until both sides are golden and crisp.

3. serve with tomatillo relish and sour cream. this is also a great base for a piece of grilled fish.

Tomatillo Relish

1 tbsp canola oil

2 cups tomatillos, husks removed and diced

1 medium onion, diced.

1 jalepeno or other hot pepper, minced

1 clove garlic, minced

1 tsp cumin seeds

1 tsp coriander seeds

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup cider vinegar

1. saute onions. add garlic, spices, jalepeno and tomatillo. saute for 1 minute.

2. add sugar and vinegar. bring to a boil. simmer until the mixture has a "relishy" consistency.

A few more random things you might want to know about sage garden herbs.

* they have the best grass seed. It is called eco-lawn. it uses grasses native to this part of the world. it grows slow, so less mowing. It grows anywhere, even in full shade. It will eventually grow thick enough to choke out weeds. I have never had any luck with grass seed, but this stuff is awesome. Plant in the fall, again in early spring, and again in fall. The only prep work is to rake the lawn before you spread the seed.

*In spring you can order lady bugs from Dave to spread in your garden to eat other bugs. Nature's pesticide! Did you know that in southern california, they drop lady bugs from planes to protect their organic field greens crops?

*Dave and I used to do food and herb demos together. The highlight was the Thyme Martini. We are talking about reviving these in the spring. Look to the Sage Garden Herbs website for more details.

check out www.herbs.mb.ca

Now, what should I do with pumpkin pappardelle?

2010-09-16T11:01:00.000-07:00

Fall is my favourite season. At very least, it is in the top five. And I love fall food. It really is the best of all possible culinary worlds. You have tons of great local produce still available, but the weather has cooled down so you feel like cooking again. In summer, cooking is about using the kitchen as little as possible; quick salads and a piece of meat grilled on the BBQ. But in the fall, the crock pot comes out, the big dutch oven is dusted off and the roasting pan comes off the top shelf. In fall, you feel like cooking again. Slow braises, stews, big hunks of meat slowly roasted for hours, this is what fall cooking is all about. You have market gardeners practically giving away their squash, root vegetables and hearty fall greens. Fall is the time to gather your friends and family back around the hearth and cook and eat until there is nothing left to do but sleep.

I love Fall at the bistro. This is the season when I get to bring back all my favourite cool weather dishes. Cassoulet reappears on the menu, probably braised lamb shank and of course pumpkin ravioli.

But wait, there's the problem. We have too many favourite fall dishes. There is no room for anything new. My god it's killing me! I am stagnating! I am sick and tired of the stoopid pumpkin ravioli!

There is always the tension for me between giving the customers their best loved dishes and being able to create new food experiences. I need to keep myself interested in order to cook well, but everyone has been asking about the pumpkin ravioli since the day we took it off the menu. What am I to do? The longer we are open, the more difficult this problem becomes. We will put a new dish on the menu, but then this becomes a favourite that we can't get rid of.

When I have time, and am feeling creative, I will sit down and write a new menu as if I was opening a brand new restaurant. I will think about the flavours of the season, I'll flip through my cooking magazines and cook books. I'll visit the local markets, grocery stores, even wander through the aisles of the local safeway looking for inspiration. I'll call my purveyors and find out what they have this time of year. "Herman," I ask, "What do you have going on this season?". He answers, "pumpkin pappardelle". Now, what should I do with pumpkin pappardelle?

Once I have my brand new menu written, I look at my most recent menu and the menu from last year, and figure out what I want to keep from these menues. Then I combine the old and the new. Wrestle with finding room for all the things I want. Decide that some of my dishes will be saved for dinner specials, argue with my wife, staff and customers about what everyones favourites are, and finally, usually 1/2 an hour before we launch the menu, we have a menu on paper ready to go.

Nature's Farms Pumpkin Pappardelle with Ground Turkey and Sage Meatballs

Meatballs:

1 lb ground turkey

1 small onion, finely chopped

2 tbsps minced parsley

1 tbsp minced fresh sage

2 (vita egg) eggs,

1/2 cup sour cream or yogurt

1/2 cup dry bread crumbs

pinch of cayenne

salt and pepper to taste

1. combine all meat ball ingredients.

2. form into small meat balls.

3. bake meatballs in a 350F oven for 15 mins until cooked through

pasta:

1 lb Nature's Farms pumpkin pappardelle

3 or 4 sage leaves

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsps butter

1 clove garlic, minced

pinch of chilies

2 cups, arugula

1/2 cup almonds, toasted

turkey meat balls

1. saute sage, chilies and garlic with olive oil and butter. Add meat balls.

2. cook pappardelle according to pkg directions.

3. toss pasta with meatballs, arugula and almomds. Check seasoning.

4. serve, top with parmesan if desired.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

2010-08-26T07:37:00.000-07:00

There are two types of questions. The first type you ask because you are genuinely curious and want to know more about any given subject. The second type you ask to demonstrate that you already know something and is often used to show that you are smarter than the person you are asking the question to.

The first type of question I love. I get them all the time at the bistro. They usually begin with something polite like "sorry to bother you but I was wondering..." or "you must hate all the questions, but..." The truth is I don't feel bothered by questions, I welcome them. If I am super busy, you might have to wait for an answer, but I will always try to answer your questions. If I don't know the answer, or only have a partial answer, I will help you try to figure it out. Often the answer can be logicked out from what we already know. When I have time, I will run down to grab one of my many cookbooks or food reference book, or check on the internet for an answer. The reason I put the kitchen in the middle of the room at bistro, is that i wanted to be able to engage and interact with my guests around food and related issues. I didn't build the kitchen this way to put on a show, I did it to be part of the conversation. And genuine, curious questions are often where the conversation starts.

For myself, I am infititely curious. I am always trying to learn (and hopefully remember) new things. I have often said, that the day I stop learning about food is the day I quit cooking. I know lots about food, but I know that there is lots still to learn.

The second type of question is all about making yourself feel superior. Sometimes you get a guest who had watched too much food network tv, or read too many foodie books and

is just itching to let you know how smart they are. Sometimes they are trying to demonstrate their righteousness. Usually it is a matter of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing". This customer knows a little bit about a subject, doesn't have a deep understanding of the issue, but doesn't care. They just want to sound good.

"Is the duck local?". There is no commercial duck industry in Manitoba. Almost all the ducks served in all the restaurants across the province serve duck from either quebec or the U.S. I know this, because I spent some time on the Manitoba Regional Cuisine tourism board and we were all looking for a local duck supplier. Since then, I have found a local duck processor and I do in fact have local duck. But I am definitely the exception. "Where do you get your lamb from?" is the other popular question. To this, I hang my head in shame and say Australia. The Manitoba lamb industry is so small that it is very difficult to get a consistent supply of the one cut that a restaurant needs. Canadian lamb from other sources is quite expensive and the last time I put Quebec lamb on the menu I got complaints about the price. But I don't know why I let customers make me feel bad about myself. Most of the food i buy is either locally raised or comes to me through small locally owner purveyors. I do good, and I keep trying to do better. But sometimes the way in which a question is asked can cut like a knife.

Guest: "what type of butter is that?"

Server: "A chili butter, ma'am"

Guest: "yes, but what type of butter is that?" Server runs to the kitchen, we explain we use unsalted butter and mix in jalepenos, roasted red peppers, chili flakes and chili powder.

Server: "we use unsalted butter"

Guest, starting to get annoyed:"But what type of butter is it?"

Server:"we mix in jalepenos, roasted red peppers, chili flakes and chili powder"

Guest: "oh, so it's a compound butter"

Server:"yes, its a compound butter" This whole interaction transpired so that the guest could demonstrate that they knew the culinary term "compound butter". This is a term used in cooking school and culianary textbooks. All it means, is butter mixed with stuff. The guest already new everything they needed to know about this butter but needed tho show they knew the right term. If the guest was genuinely curious about cooking, they could have asked something simple like "is this what they mean by compound butter?", but the entire interaction was designed to make the server feel small.

another one:

Guest: "what type of foie gras do you use?"

Server: "It's duck foie gras"

Guest:"no, i mean what type?"

Server:"It's quebec foie gras"

Guest:"what type is it?"

Server: (after consulting with the chef) "It's Lac Brome foie gras, grade A"

Guest: "no, thats not what I mean. what type of foie gras is it?"

Server: (further consult) "Do you mean is it a torchon? a terrine? A pate? It is just straight foie gras. We salt it, pan sear it..."

Guest: (visibly annoyed) "No, there are two types of foie, which one is this?"

Server comes talk to me, "she says there are two types, which one is this?"

Chef: "does she mean duck or goose?"

Server goes back to the guest to find out what she means.

Guest: "Is it lobe or escalope?"

Server: "Well, we buy the whole lobe, but when we slice it is an escalope..."

I could site a hundred other examples. But what I really wan tot get at here, is the intent behind the question. Are you asking the question because you are genuinely curious, or because you want to demonstrate how much you already know? Are you trying to expand your knowledge and elevate your life, or are you trying to make your self feel bigger by making your server feel small?

Alton Brown knows more about food than i do. I probably know more about food than you do.

You probably know more about food than john my 16yr old prep cook. But this is not the point. Food is about nourishment and enjoyment. It is fun and should not be taken too seriously. It is great fun to learn about food, and I invite you to experience and learn about food along side me. Ask me questions. Ask me many questions. I'll ask you questions in return. But don't feel the need to impress me. And don't ask questions just trip us up or make yourself feel smart. You probably are smart, now lets dumb you down a bit with a couple cocktails.

Compound Butter

according to the Food Lover's Companion a compound butter is:

butter creamed with other ingredients such as herbs, garlic, wine, shallots and so on. The French term for compound butter is beurre composé.

Maître d'Hotel Butter

From The Professional Chef (CIA) 8th edition

1 lb butter, room temperature

2 oz minced parsley

1 1/2 tsps lemon juice

salt and pepper to taste

1. work butter by hand or with the paddle attachement of an electric mixer until it is soft. Add remaining ingredients and blend well. Taste, and adjust seasoning to taste.

2. The compound butter is ready to use, or it may be rolled into a log or piped into shapes and chilled for later use.

variations:
Compound butters are only limited by your imagination. You can add or substitute any of the ingredients to make your own version. Common butters are garlic butter, tarragon butter, dill butter. Think of flavours that will complement the food you are creating. I like making a blue cheese and walnut butter for steak. Another favourite rosemary and roasted garlic.

Chili Butter

we use this on our hammer chops at the bistro.

1 lb butter, room temperature
2 oz red pepper, roasted, peeled and seeded. finely chopped
1 tbsp, jalepeno, finely diced (leave seeds and innards in if you like it spicy)
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp (or more if you like heat) dried red chili flakes

1. work butter by hand or with the paddle attachement of an electric mixer until it is soft. Add remaining ingredients and blend well.
2. The compound butter is ready to use, or it may be rolled into a log or piped into shapes and chilled for later use.

what does Emmy Lou Harris and Etran Finatawa have in common?

2010-07-24T08:39:00.000-07:00

Cooking at La Cuisine, Chapter 2

For the most part, all the performers eat with the volunteers. They eat the same food in the same blue and white tent as all of us. On some occasions we have performers who request special meals. They might cite health reasons, religious reasons, cultural differences, but for whatever reasons they give we try to accommodate. This performers are on the road for a large part of their lives and it is important for themselves to keep themselves healthy and happy. Sometimes, the "green room" crew takes care of the performers food. Sometimes they come to me.

This year, i was asked to make fish for Emmy Lou Harris. "Anything but salmon, she is sick of salmon", I was told. So I thought, because she is in Manitoba, i'll cook her pickerel. I wanted to keep the fish in the same flavour profiles as the rest of the dinner, so I floured the pickerel with chick pea flour that i seasoned with a little cumin, and then served it with lime and chives.

A couple of days later, we were asked to make a special meal for Etran Finatawa, a band from Niger. When they came for lunch, they asked for rice. The chicken in salsa verde was going to be good, but they needed lots of rice. So Danielle ran out front (in our little golf cart) and got rice from the East India Company. For dinner, I was asked to make a meat curry and a veg curry with lots of rice. That evening, we were serving a greek inspired dinner with grilled lamb and an eggplant moussaka. So I took the ingredients and twisted them to make a lamb curry, an eggplant and chick pea curry and rice (this time we made the rice).

Emmy Lou Harris's Chick Pea Flour Pickerel

4 boneless fillets of Manitoba pickerel

1/2 cup chick pea flour

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp salt

pinch of cayenne

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp butter

1 tsp lime zest

1 tbsp chopped chives (or green onion)

lime segments

1. combine flour with cumin, salt and cayenne. Dredge pickerel in this mixture

2. heat oil in a pan and add butter.

3. fry pickerel on one side for about a minute and a half. flip and fry the other side for the same.

4. Sprinkle pickerel with chives and lime zest. serve with lime segments.

Etran Finatwa's Lamb Curry

2 lbs boneless lamb leg, cut into stew sized pieces

1 medium onion, diced

1 stalk celery, chopped

1 carrot, sliced

1 jalapeno, stemmed and chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

1 tsp ginger minced

1 tsp curry powder

1 tsp cumin

1 cinnamon stick

dried chilies (as hot as you like it)

1/2 cup raisins

2 cups water or stock

1 tbsp chopped fresh mint

1 tbsp chopped cilantro

1. In a heavy bottomed pot brown the lamb. Do this in batches so you get nice colour. remove lamb from pot.

2. add onions carrots and celery to pot and cook till onions start to brown. Add spices and cook for a couple minutes. Put lamb back in pot. Add all the remaining ingredients except the mint and cilantro. Stew lamb on low heat for about 2 hours. (If you are a slow cooker type, this would work great in one of those) until it is very tender.

3. mixed chopped herbs into stew. serve with rice.

Etran Finatawa Eggplant and Chick Pea Curry

1 tbsp oil

1 large eggplant, cut into 1 inch dice

1 small onion, diced

1 red pepper, diced

1 green pepper, diced

1 jalapeno, minced

1 clove garlic, minced

1 tbsp curry powder

1 tsp coriander seed

chilies to taste

1 can chickpeas, drained, or one cup dried chick peas soaked and cooked

1 cup apple juice

1. in heavy pot sauté onions and peppers until onions are caramelized a little. Add eggplant and spices, sauté for a few minutes.

2. Add chickpeas and apple juice. Cover and simmer for about 1/2 an hour. Veggies should be tender and all the flavours nicely combined. Serve this with rice

Cooking at la Cuisine

2010-07-19T19:21:00.000-07:00

Bison Short Ribs with Maple and Chipotle

700kg bison short ribs (6000 pieces)

24 cans chipotle in adobo

2 x 4L jugs maple syrup

12 x 4L jugs pancake syrup

6 x 4L jugs soy sauce

4 x 50lbs yellow onions

500 ml salt

500 ml chili powder

500 ml pepper

12 x 100oz cans ketchup

60L water

1. Dice onions. Puree chipotle in adobo.

2. place shortribs in 18"x24" tinfoil pans. You will need about 80 pans.

3. combine onions, chipotle, syrups, soy sauce ketchup and spices.

4. pour syrup mixture into pans on top of short ribs. Cover pans with tin foil.

5. Put pans in Hot Hot Hots set at 275F overnight. Roast until falling off the bone tender.

This is a typical recipe of La Cuisine. We are the people who feed all the performers, volunteers staff and special guests of the Winnipeg Folk Festival. This amounts to about 4000 meals, three times a day for five days. In between meals and late at night we offer a continuous stream of snacks. We run the kitchen with a crew of about 250 volunteers. Some of these people are chefs, but most of them are teachers, social workers, mechanics and any thing but a cook.

Hummus

folk fest size normal person batch

48 100 oz cans chickpeas 1 28oz can chickpeas

12 Litres tahini 1/4 cup tahini

6 L olive oil 1/2 cup olive oil

5 L lemon juice 1/3 cup lemon juice

2 kg garlic, minced 1 clove garlic, minced (or more)

750 ml cumin 1 tsp cumin

250 ml paprika 1/3 tsp paprika

125 ml cayenne pinch cayenne

500 ml salt 2/3 tsp salt (to taste)

1. puree chickpeas with tahini.

2. add lemon juice, garlic and spices. puree.

3. with food processor going, drizzle in olive oil to emulsify.

4. serve with grilled pita and olives

One week before the folk festival begins, we have no kitchen. A crew comes in to set us up with 16 bbq's, 8 rented flat top grills, 5 coke coolers, 50 or so folding banquet tables, and 6 hot hots. The hot hots are ovens (of my invention) that were built by the hutterites for us. They are 6 feet tall, 5 feet wide and three feet deep. They are made of heavy industrial strength steel. The racks inside are made out of rebar. These ovens are heated with tiger torches that we stick in the bottom. The first three I had built used one torch per oven. Fully cranked, these would heat to about 325F. We call these the hot hot hots. The second set of three, I had set up to use 2 tiger torches per oven. These heat up to about 500F. We call these the über-hots. Our refrigeration comes in the way of 2 53' reefer trailers and one 30' freezer trailer.

Three Bean Salad

normal person batch

1 can kidney beans

1 can chick peas

1 bag frozen green beans (or 1 lb fresh green beans trimmed, blanched and cooled)

1 stalk celery

2 green onions

few sprigs of parsley

dressing:

1/2 cup canola oil

1/2 cup red wine vinegar

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp paprika

pinch dried chilies

1/4 tsp fennel seed

1. chop celery, onion and parsley. drain and rinse beans

2, combine dressing ingredients.

3. toss beans and veggies with dressing. This is best if you make it a day before you need to serve it.

Our kitchen was started 36 or so years ago by a man named Harry Paine. He established a tradition of serving a very high calibre of cuisine. He and folk fest founder Mitch Podolak felt that if you fed performers and volunteers well, they would be happier, they would work harder, they would come back the next year and and they might even work for less money. So, carrying on the tradition, we can't get away with serving chili and hot dogs for 5 days in a row. We put together a menu that includes things like bbq leg of lamb, lentil mousskka, jerk chicken, pulled pork with biscuits and gravy, wild rice casserole, and meatloaf (both a meat version and a veggie version with mushroom "un-gravy"). We need to make sure we have food for meat lovers, vegetarians, vegans, people with gluten or lactose intolerance and a wide range of allergies and religious restrictions. Each meal is centered around a theme or a culinary style. Friday lunch we had perogies and farmer sausage. Saturday lunch with set up a taco bar with black beans, chicken in salsa verde or slow roasted pork "carnitas". Our desserts include maple blueberry creme brulee (done with a tiger torch), upside down chocolate pudding cake, and something I called "fake baklava". On sunday we did a brunch with bacon, sausage, hash browns, cheesy scrambled eggs, fruit salad and a baked apple pancake.

Baked Apple Pancake

1 cup apple pie filling (store bought, or if you are feeling fancy, sautee apples with brown sugar, butter and a pinch of cinnamon)

3 eggs

1 cup milk

1 cup flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1/4 cup white sugar

1 tbsp cinnamon

1. in a greased 9 x 13" pan spread apple pie filling.

2. combine eggs, milk, flour and baking powder. DO NO OVERMIX.

3. spread pancake batter over apple pie filling

4. bake in a 400F oven for 15 minutes until puffy, firm and golden brown.

5. combine cinnamon and sugar and sprinkle over pancake.

Cinnamon Cider Syrup

1 cup apple juice or cider

2 cups brown sugar

1 cinnamon stick

1. combine all ingredients. Bring to a boil and simmer until "syrupy".

2. serve warm with baked aple pancake.

So this, my friends, is how I spent my summer holidays. In order to feed all these people, I build a recipe book (actually a data base) of 103 recipes. I have included just a small sampling. If you want specific recipes, or menus, just leave a comment on this blog and I will add your requested recipe to this page. Thanks, see you all at the festival next year!!!

I would like to thank all of our volunteers for their hard work. I would like to thank the folk festival staff for their support. I would like to thank our suppliers for their products and donations. And I would like to thank all of you volunteers and performers for enjoying our food and for making us feel so good about it. Thank You, happy Folk Fest!

Haute Campfire, vol. 1

2010-07-17T12:24:00.000-07:00

How to elevate your campsite fare.

Alright happy campers, there is more to campfire cooking than weiners roasted on sticks, beans straight out of the can and s’mores. The beauty of campfire cooking is that everything you make tastes better. So if you are an alright cook at home, you will be awesome out here. To make life easier, I always pack little ziploc bags with spices. I make blends, my mexican blend with chilies, cumin and coriander, my imediterranean blend with oregano, rosemary, thyme, you get the idea. I also make little baggies of pancake batter, bannock dough, pizza dough and the like. You can mix all the dry ingredients, (including instant yeast) and the fat and then you just need to add water at the campsite. Be careful if you have to cross the border, there might be some ‘splainin’ to do.

One real quick meal is asian noodles It can all be done in one pan, and you can use whatever veggies and meats you have on hand. (at the folk fest camground, you can go get some veggies from our little porduce stand, a luxury you don’t have when camping in the deep dark woods) When I camp, I always like to bring a bag of frozen cleaned and deveined shrimp. It keeps your cooler cold, and can be turned into a light snack or quick meals. Those little tetra packs of tofu are great for the campsite as well.. To make campsite chow mein, slice up your veggies into bite size pieces. You want to take advantage of the campfire’s quick unpredictable heat so slice everything fairly thin. If you are using beef or chicken, slice it thin, shrimp is right out of the bag. tofu cut into ½ inch bricks. You can also crack open a can of chick peas or kidney beans if that is what you have. Heat you frying pan over the fire. Pour in a little oil. Quickly sautee your protein, add your veggies. If you brought ginger, garlic or chilies add it now. Now here’s the trick, you need to save those little pacakges of soy sauce you get with chinese takeout. Add some soy sauce to the pan and a little splash of ketchup (everyone always has ketchup at the campsite). The ketchup adds as little sweetness, some tang and that glossy chinese stirfry look. Now add your noodles. I like those little mini packs of steamed udon noodles, or those steamed chow mein egg noodles work great. Try to get a noodle that is already fully cooked. Even you instant ”mr. noodles” would work. Add a splash of water or apple juice to heat the noodles and make a sauce. Garnish your noodles with a little toasted peanuts, trail mix or everyone’s camprgound favourite “gorp” for a little texture.

I love to do Huevos Rancheros on the campfire. You use salsa to protect your egg from the inconsistent heat of the campfire. To make, heat salsa in a frying pan. When it comes to a low boil drop in one or more eggs. Poach to desired doneness. If it is getting too hot, remove pan from heat. It will continue to poach with its own heat. Heat up a toritlla on the side of the grill. Drop egg and some salsa onto the tortilla. Garnish with cheese, lettuce, tomato, green onion, or whatever you have.

For something more substantial, I make cast iron cassoulet. Grill sausages, whatever sausages you may have. Sautee bacon and onions in a cast iron pan. add a sprig of thyme or rosemary. Add tomatoes, the grilled sausage and canned beans. (you can use white beans, black beans or even libby’s brown beans). Season with salt and pepper. Then take some bread crumbs, or crumble up some stale bread and mix it wth butter. Sprinkle crumb on top of cassoulet. Classic french cooking over a campfire!

For dessert, here is a great cast iron rocky road brownie recipe. In a bowl mix 6 tablespoons cocoa, 1 cup sugar, and ¼ tsp salt (you could have this all done ahead in a little baggie) Mix in ½ cup vegetable oil or butter with 2 eggs. Grease your heaviest pan with oil or butter. I like to bring a cast iron pan camping, In the pan toast about ½ cup nuts. You can use walnuts, pecans, peanuts, whatever you have. Get the nuts nice and hot, because these will help cook the batter from the inside out. Spread batter into the pan. Sprinkle with with chocolate chips and mini marshmallows. If you have any caramel candies, throw those in as well. You can even add broken up cookies or chocolate bars. The whole thing is going to look like a mess, but will taste fantastic. Keep pan away from the hottest flame and when the batter is about half cooked remove from the heat and cover with a large plate, pizza pan or tin foil. Let the heat of the pan fininsh cooking the batter. Dig in!

A horse is a horse, of course, of course

2010-05-28T10:48:00.000-07:00

I think I need to talk about my decision to serve horse meat at Bistro 7 1/4. To begin, I want all of you to know, this is not a decision I made lightly. Many of the things I do are spontaneous or whimsical, but this decision is something I have been wrestling with for 2 years.

Personally, I don't have any problem eating horse meat. (I will get in to my own reasons shortly.) But serving horse meat has stirred up some controversy. I have a very good customer who informed me she would not be coming to our restaurant as long as we have horse meat on the menu. Another customer, who owns horses, joked after finishing his meal here that he would have to go home and count his horses. There was a little on line discussion about the ethics of horse meat on our facebook page. Other customers have been excited by it and have wanted to try it. Those who try it, enjoy it.

Before I get into this discussion, I want to tell you a little story about rabbits. I was serving rabbit pot pie as a lunch special one day. When a customer heard what the special was, she started to cry, told us she had rabbits for pets, and walked out. I don't know if she ever returned. What I wanted to say to her was that although people have rabbits as pets, the rabbits I was serving were not anyone's pets. These rabbits were raised for food in the same way we raise chicken, pigs and cows for food.

Eating horse meat is perfectly acceptable in some cultures, and totally taboo in others. France, has restaurants devoted to the preparation and service of horsemeat; but just across the channel in England the idea of eating horse is horrific. The United States has predominantly followed the English example. In Canada, it is a little more complicated. English speaking Canada is generally opposed to the use of horse meat, but in Quebec it is far more acceptable. All through the world, you will find examples where horse is accepted and counter-examples where it is strictly forbidden.

In a multi-cultural society, we are always dealing with the questions of what is acceptable and what is taboo. For Jews and Muslims, eating pig is taboo. Hindus don't eat cow. Very few of us, eat bugs, although that is a common food staple in much of the world. I don't think i could eat the meat of a dog, but if i was in a place where it was culturally acceptable would i turn it down? For some of my customers, eating any meat at all is wrong.

I guess what it comes down to is the ethical choices we make as individuals, and the lines that we draw for ourselves. Every time you put food in your mouth, you make an ethical choice. And these choices are complex. Is it organic? Was it humanely raised? Does its production or shipping harm the environment? How much was the farmer paid for his work? Was the farmer treated fairly? Who are we supporting by paying for this food? The list goes on.

The ethical decision includes what species of animal we are okay with. I believe, that if you are willing to eat one type of animal, you should be able to eat any type. I say this, but i know that I would draw a line somewhere. And that's what it is all about. Where do you draw the line? Some people eat fish, but not fowl. Some eat no meat, but dairy and eggs are fine. Others avoid all animal products. And others, eat whatever you put in front of them.

As a restaurant owner and chef, I make ethical decisions about what I will serve every day. I don't always make the right one. Sometimes price, convenience or expedience wins out over the "right" choice. Sometimes the "right" choice isn't clear. I may have conflicting "goods". Which is better, organic lettuce grown 2000 miles away shipped in plastic bags or non-organic lettuce grown a few miles down the road with the mud still on the roots? I choose to buy much of my meat from local farmers. I choose, for the most part, fish that is considered sustainable. I use eggs that come from free run chickens. I support small, local grocers.

But once I have made the menu, the ethical decisions don't stop with me. You, the customer get to make those choices in what you order. If you think eating pork is wrong, then you will choose not to order it. Some people come to my restaurant, the "home-of-giant-grilled-hammer-chop", and order strictly vegetarian food. Some vegans come, and trust me to make them some thing special. Maybe you like duck but think foie gras is wrong. Then I suggest you order the duck and not the foie. Maybe you choose to only order organic wines.

And so, if you come in and I am serving horse, don't get upset with me. Just don't order it. If no one orders horse, it won't stay on the menu very long.

Is it wrong to serve or eat horse? I don't think so. At least it is no more or less wrong than eating cow or any other animal. So back to the question of why I put horse on the menu. Partly because it is a tasty, healthy meat. But I guess i wanted to engage in this very debate. The horse meat controversy is a catalyst for a lively debate about the ethics of food.

So, I invite any of you to come down to talk to me, email me (chef@sevenandaquarter.ca) or post comments on this blog. This conversation is worth having.

Everyday I make choices, I don't always make the right ones. But I sure do think about them a lot. And I guess that is my point. We all need to think about the food we put in our mouth.

Too many rants, not enough time

2010-04-23T08:28:00.000-07:00

So I have been paralyzed! Too many things to talk about that I can't decide where to start.

1. potato-gate, i was going to write about how the big bully Peak of the Market, yes, the guy who talks into carrots, was oppressing the small farmer, the small grocer and the small restaurants who want to buy direct from the growers. But before i got to my computer, peak of the market met with the potato coalition people and made concessions to allow small producers to sell root crops with out restriction. (Thank you to the Shreimers, the Crampton's, Tall Grass Prairie and Ben Kramer and all the rest who lead the charge) I did get a letter back from our premier's office 4 days after the issue had been resolved, saying he would forward my letter to Stan Struthers, Ag minister.

2. Iron Chef Centrex, My team was brilliant but were crushed in the final. I was going to post a play by play, but some of the highlights include turkey skin short bread, rabbit ice cream, smoked chicken wings in a butternut bbq sauce-hanging over smoking coals, rabbit baby back ribs, butternut ravioli with butternut chutney, zucchini sangria...

3. Rapid Transit, not really a food issue, but it sounds like the city is building a bus path from downtown to my restaurant. 170 million to increase my traffic. I think i need more seats! But really, if we are going to spend money on rapid transit, shouldn't it be useful?

4. M.L.C.C , oh don't get me started!

5. Milk, it is easier to buy crystal meth than to get milk from a cow. This was going to spin into a tale of how the man (government) is so concerned about "protecting us" that they interfere with our ability to make informed choices. The people become like children...

6. Horsemeat why is it okay to eat some animals and not others? Why would rabbit pot pie make one woman cry and leave the restaurant but a chicken sandwich is perfectly fine? How do you decide what is ethical? I try to come down to two questions, Is the animal humanely raised and slaughtered? Is it sustainable? but what other issues are there?

7. Complaints and forgiveness, so many people don't complain in a restaurant cause they "don't want to cause trouble". The problem is that if you don't complain we can't fix it. If we can't fix it you will leave with a negative impression of the restaurant and then you will tell your friends how much we suck. If we can fix it, you will be happy and we will be happy. If i overcook your steak, let me make you a new one. Once you have complained, and it has been addressed, forgive us. We all make mistakes and in a busy restaurant it is hard to always be at %100.

8. %110, you can't give anyone %110. all you got is %100 percent. i was at a hotel that promised that if your room wasn't %110 clean you would get your room for free. I wanted to take them up on this, because no room could ever bee %110 anything. I could spin this rant into the overuse of meaningless cliches. Doesn't anyone have new words? hey, it is what it is.

9. waiting for your table: When you go to your dentist, and arrive on time, you expect to wait 1/2 an hour before you are brought in to see anyone. At a restaurant, why do people get annoyed when they have to wait 10 minutes for their table? At least at the restaurant, you can have a cocktail while you wait. They should have martini bars in medical offices!

10. Chew your Food why is it that in north america, the true test of the quality of a piece of meat is how soft it is. Are we too lazy to chew? Every piece of meat needs to be as tender as boneless, pumped, chicken breasts. This really limits the types of things a chef can do. Personally, i don't mind a piece of food that is a little "toothsome".

11. How Much Does Your Food Cost? I wanted to talk about what it costs a restaurant to put food in front of you, and let you in on the secret of how little money the owner actually gets to take home. I am concerned with restaurant reviews that focus largely on price, particularly when the reviewers sense of current prices is a little out of date. Food costs, labour costs, rental prices, and utility costs have all gone up in the past few years, and menu prices have to go up accordingly. My favourite customer comment is "32 for a rack of lamb", I can get one at safeway for $8. Yes sir, you could, but it is not quebec lamb, it doesn't come with a herb crust, potatoes, veg and a sauce, you would have to buy it, prepare it, serve it, pour wine, play music, wash the dishes and mop the floor when you left. You are not doing all this for $8. I think for my next blog, coming soon to a computer near you, will start here. I guess I want all of the dining public to understand that restaurant owners want you to get value for your dollar, and want you to leave happy and satisfied.

veal brains and fresh chick peas

2010-03-09T12:14:00.000-08:00

Just got back from Montreal. Actually, it was two weeks ago, but time sure flies. I was looking at my last post and realized I haven's posted since December. Sorry about that, i am not a very reliable blogger it seems. Well anyway, here goes:

Veal Brains and Fresh Chickpeas

Visiting the markets in montreal always makes me weep. Tears of joy, yes, but tears of longing as well. We were in Montreal for 3 days and we visited 2 different markets. At Jean Talon we visited Olives et epices. Every spice you have ever read about in fancy cooking magazines. not only that, but they have a spice smelling station and an olive oil tasting bar.

Still at Jean Talon, I visited a butcher that raises pigs on Iles de Madeleine. A six hour boat ride, followed by a 15 hour car ride brings to the market a beautifully rustic selection of cured pork products. Tender head cheese, not overdone

with gelatin, sea salt cured bacon, rillettes and cretons, terrines made with hearts and kidneys, and a selection of beautiful dried sausage. We tried a spicy, very spanish tasting chorizo and an incredible dry liver sausage. The eighteen year old girl behind the counter, un-like the stereotypical apathetic teenager we have grown to expect, was passionate and knowledgeable about the products she was purveying. This one, she says, starts off tasting like sweet pork, then you get the liver taste, then you get a hit of spice. She let us try a piece, and you know

what, she was right. Back in winnipeg, I gave a few slices of this particular sausage to a good customer of mine. This gentleman, born in Hungary, man of the world having lived in both Paris and Rome, said that this was the best sausage he had ever tasted.

Our day was not yet done. We had heard from the cooks at Au Pied de Cochon, that they had picked up some fresh chick peas at Jean talon market just the other day. I have never even seen fresh chick peas! So we went looking. Exploring the produce section was incredible. Vendor after vendor selling beautiful fresh produce. We saw baby squashes, yellow and white carrots, wild mushrooms, bright red tomatoes that smelt like tomatoes, dandelion greens, salsify, golden beets, fingerling potatoes and more. And then we found the fresh chick peas. In my life, chick peas come in a can or dried. These, looked like little pale, slightly fuzzy, pea pods. Each pod had one or maybe 2 chick peas. They looked like chick peas, but were a pale green. Their flavour was a revelation. Yes, they had the flavour of a chick pea, but this was combined with the fresh green taste of a garden pea.

We finished of our day with the frothiest cappucinnos I've ever seen.

The next day, we hopped on the metro and went to the Atwater market. Again, we were blown away by the produce sellers. Remember, this is February in Montreal. As in Winnipeg, there is still a foot of snow on the ground. This produce is not coming from the neighbouring farms. Yet it is so important to these green grocers to only showcase the best. Not only is the produce fresh and healthy looking, it is displayed in beautiful ways. Individual pint cartons of baby carrots, cherry tomatoes, baby squashes, haricot verts and more are all arranged to create a painting with colour and texture.

Our day at Atwater always begins with a stop at the bakery. We go for cafe au lait served in a bowl and pain au chocolat (chocolate filled croissants) . We go their with the clear intention of having pain au chocolat, but we are always tempted to have the apricot pastries, or the almond frangipane tarts, or the eclairs... It takes a great deal of willpower to stick to the plan. After shopping for a couple of hours, we always return to the same bakery for a light lunch of terrines, pates, rillettes and local microbrewed beer.

After breakfast we check out the butchers. The second floor of the market is taken up by 6 or 8 butcher shops. Each one has more variety than anything we have in Winnipeg. Although they all have a wide range of products they all have a focus; one will do veal, the next duck, the next wild game. The first one we visited was clearly into sausages. In addition to a wide range of cured, dried and smoked sausages, they had 60 distinct flavours of fresh sausage: wild b

oar with red wine, broccoli and cheddar, cauliflower and bacon, spinach, maple you name it. Another butcher we visited had all kinds of duck confit, foie gras terrines, duck rilletes, pates and whole lobes of fresh foie. Another shop had ready to go meats. Beautifully garnished roasts of veal, pork or bison all tied, seasoned and ready to go in the oven. All decorated with elegant cuts of vegetable, fruit or charcuterie. Another shop had cuts of local veal. Not just chops and cutlets, but necks, cote de veau, shanks, liver etc. Every shop had its own boudin noir (blood pudding). My favourite was the one that was cooked and packed in duck fat. One shop had a whole shelf of thinly sliced, cured meats: duck prosciutto, air cured venison, salted beef. Just when I thought I had seen everything, I came to one shop that had in their cooler: fresh quails, fresh sweetbreads, fresh lamb kidneys and fresh veal brains. This is stuff you rarely find in

Winnipeg, and when you do, its always frozen. What struck me at that moment, was that people around here must eat this stuff. You wouldn't keep fresh veal brains on hand if you didn't know someone was going to buy them.

Our next stop, was the cheese shop. Here, we go a little crazy. We purchased about twenty different cheeses. Most of them raw milk from quebec. Hard nutty cheeses, outrageously stinky cheeses, bloomy rind goat cheeses, salty blue cheeses, old raw cheddars and runny bries. The people who work there clearly love cheese. They enthusiastically offer us cheeses to try. They will shrink wrap them for us for the flight, and will be sure to be gentle with the soft cheeses.

And then our last stop is always the little gourmet grocer. Here we struggle to decide which of the hundred types of mustard we should buy. How many different salts do we need? Do we bring home some crazy pastas, some beluga lentils, some white truffle honey? We buy a bottle of elderflower cordial, some violet syrup and some hibiscus flowers packed in syrup.

And then, fully laden down, we hop onto the metro and return to our hotel.

When we return from Montreal people always ask us, where did you go? what did you do? where did you eat? When we tell them we spent most of our time in the markets they think we are pretty lame. But if I went to Montreal, and the only thing i did was go to the market, i'd be happy.

So I can hear you all asking, "where's the rant, Alex?" My blogs usually have a bit of a ranty tone to them. When i publish my first cookbook, it will be subtitles "recipes, ramblings and rants of chef alex" So far, i have presented a sweet travelogue of my trip to Montreal. So here we go:

Why can't we have a year round in-door market in winnipeg?

I love St. Norbert Farmers market. I go there as often as I can. I love that more and more farmer's markets seem to be popping up and I try to visit each of them. There is one at Assiniboine downs with some great meat suppliers, there is one at Pineridge Hollow, one in old market square and even one in Osborne village. The problem is that these places are only open one or two days a week for about 3 or four months in the summer.

Market shopping is not a lifestyle here. We go to markets in the summer kind of like a hobby. But we don't really do our shopping there. When I lived in Italy, our only fridge was the size of a bar fridge for a family of 5. We kept a jug of milk, a bottle of water and a couple of beers for papa in the little fridge. For food, we went to the market every day. Every day we had fresh produce, fresh bread, a couple of yummy cheeses and we would by our meat or fish for the day. There was no weekly trip the the big box grocer. Buying food was part of your every day experience, and because of that, our food was always fresh, new and always tasty.

When the forks opened, many years ago, I was super excited. Finally, Winnipeg was getting a year round, in door market. Unfortunately, my dreams were quickly shattered. The forks is a nice place to take your out of town guests, it is a nice place to go tobagganing and skating in the winter, it is a good place to host events like the children's festival or the dragon boat races, but it is no market. Inside the forks market building, you have a food court. You have a few boutique shops. There is one butcher, one baker and one green grocer. The forks, from its inception really missed the mark. I don't want to disparage individual shop keepers, as they are all well meaning, and like me, are just trying to make a buck and put a little away for the kids college fund. The problem the forks faces is structural. The forks does not allow competition. If there is one candy seller, there can't be two. if there is one meat seller there can only be one. And this is a huge failing. It is competition that makes a market great. I remember in Italy when there would be half a dozen stands selling nothing but roma tomatoes. All basically thesame, all roughly the same price. Each Tomato vendor was convinced that they had the best tomatoes, and they would do whatever it took to convince you that his were bigger, tastier and cheaper than the next guy. In that kind of atmosphere, you could never get away with selling bland, dry or wilting tomatoes. The vendors in the markets in Montreal are all in fierce competition. They have to always be convincing you that their sausage or their honey or their carrots are the best. In this kind of fiercely competitive market, you are forced to have the best products available and you have to put great effort into displaying your wares in beautiful, eye catching ways.

The other problem our market faces is that it is not used as a place to shop. And this is a catch 22 situation. Because it is not a great market, no one goes there to shop. Because no on goes there to shop, it can't be a great market. People will stop and pick stuff up when they are there, but no one plans there weekly shopping around the market. The forks meat market tried to do some neat stuff. She had some great steaks, some merguez, andouille, toulouse and other neat sausages. I was pretty excited, but the next time i was there it was all gone. She couldn't sell enough to keep it up, but because she couldn't keep it up she couldn't build a following. So, becasue the forks doesn't do the volume of sales it needs to sustain it, it can never get good enough to attract the following it needs.

People say we can't have a year round market becasue we have winter half the year. To that I say phooey! Yes, phooey! Montreal has winter as well and they sustain at least 3 markets. We need a market modelled on the atwater market. Indoors, year round, with butchers, bakers, green grocers and the like. A market that encourages competions and pusshes for excellence. In the summer, like they do at atwater, we can add stalls outside the market building for all the farmers to bring in their seasonal wares. And what I say to all of you, if someone out there has the vision to make this happen, then all of you people who take food seriously, need to get out and support that market.

on the meaning of names

2009-12-13T07:15:00.000-08:00

When is a chowder just a soup? How far can you go from an original dish and still keep the original name? I was having a discussion about food with another chef last night and it turned into a rant about the naming of dishes on a menu.

I am all for inventive cuisine. I am all for pushing the limits. I love the twists on classic dishes that creative chefs engage in. But i wonder how far you can stray from that dish and still use that name. Do dishes have an essence that must be preserved?

Let me explain. Beef carpaccio is thin slices of beef served raw. A simple drizzle of olive oil, some sea salt, fresh cracked pepper and maybe parmesan or capers sprinkled on top. Creative chefs can dress it up with arugula or shaved fennel, drizzle truffle oil, maybe a gastrique whatever they want. Any funky riff on the classic and it is still carpaccio. I think you can make it with bison or venison or elk and still call it carpaccio. What happens when you move away from red meat? Is thinly sliced raw tuna or salmon still carpaccio? or are we better off calling it sashimi? But it gets really dicey when we start talking about fruit or vegetables thinly sliced. Thinly sliced beets, or tomato, or cucumber is not carpaccio, its a salad. Thinly sliced watermelon, i don't care how you dress it up, is just watermelon.

Another favourite is bisque. Bisque is a rich, creamy soup made of crustaceans. What makes bisque interesting is that the shells are pureed and added to the soup. Bisque is traditionally thickened with rice. If you made a creamed soup with salmon and pureed it should you call it a bisque? If there is no seafood, can it be a bisque. Is a pureed tomato, mushroom or squash soup a bisque? Is it fair to call it that?

What about chowder? My definition of chowder is a soup which contains potatoes and bacon. It can be creamy (new england) or not (manhattan). It is traditionally clams, but i've made mussel chowder, crab chowder, corn chowder and my new favourite, cauliflower chowder. But the essence, to me, is potatoes and bacon.

Chicken cordon bleu is chicken stuffed with ham and swiss cheese. Is it still cordon bleu with prosciutto and fontina? Is a caesar still a caesar if you grill the lettuce or leave out the anchovies? Do latkes have to contain potato?

I encourage chefs to go crazy! Do whatever. Combine flavours that have never been combined. Use techniques in new ways, or invent completly new techniques. Just don't stick it with an old name. Leave the classics intact. If you are creative enough to invent a new dish, you are creative enough to give it a new name.

I am not talking about deconstruction here. Deconstruction in the culinary world is the technique of dismantling a classic recipe and re-assembling the components so that the diner can experience the essence of the original dish as they enjoy the different components separate and then recombined. (For all you literary critics and english majors out there, don't start getting all technical and start quoting derrida on me. This is a culinary movement that has little to do with literary criticism) Deconstruction, done right, is all about preserving or even celebrating the essence of dishes.

I am talking about moving so far from a dish that you lose the essence of that dish. What makes beef carpaccio interesting, is that you are eating an item that you usually eat cooked (beef) and serving it raw. If you serve tomatoes thinly sliced, it might be pretty, but it really is not that interesting, and it is definitely not carpaccio.

Roast Cauliflower Chowder

1 head cauliflower

2 tbsp canola or olive oil

1 onion, diced

1 red pepper, diced

6 slices of thick cut bacon (cut into 1 inch peieces)

1 clove garlic, smashed

4 potatoes, diced

4 cups chicken or vegetable stock

1 cup heavy cream

salt and pepper to taste

sprinkle of parsley

1. cut cauliflower into flourettes, toss in oil. on a cookie sheet spread out cauliflower and roast at 400F for about 20 minutes. ( it should be nicely browned)

2. Sautee onions and peppers with bacon. add garlic.

3. add potatoes, cauliflower and stock. Bring to a boil and simmer until potatoes are tender.

4. add cream, check seasoning and serve with a sprinkle of parsley.

enjoy!

small is beautiful

2009-11-23T18:54:00.001-08:00

Everyone is talking about the ethics of eating. Should we eat organic? Biodynamic? Vegetarian? Vegan? Buy local? Eat within 100 miles from home? Free range? pasture fed? Humanely raised? Sustainable?

All these things are good, but anyone who has been in earshot of one of my rants, will know I have concerns with all these categories. Recently I have been thinking of the importance of the small.

Small is beautiful.

Last week I was given a cd of music by Corin Raymond (www.myspace.com/corinraymond). The title of the cd is "there will always be a small time". In the title song he talks about how the big time music industry will often let you down, and is falling on hard times. But the small time music industry, playing in clubs and parlours, will endure. The only thing that won't change, he sings, is "that folks like us will sing songs for folks like you". Music, he says, "is coming home again".

I was listening to this, and thinking about small, and realized that food needs to come back home again. Restaurants need to stop buying from big multinational suppliers and buy from small local growers, farmers, grocers, butchers and bakers. Home owners should shift their buying from the big chains to the local corner stores and markets. Diners need to move away from the big chain restaurants and start frequenting the mom and pops. We need to move away from buying meat raised in huge ranches, fed in overcrowded feed lots and slaughtered in the monolithic meat packing facilities and start buying meat raised in pastures on family farms. We need to move away from the intensive hog barn operation where the pigs never see the sun and find a local supplier buying his pigs from a family farmer. Stop buying produce shipped from California or further when we can find beautiful vegetables at our nearest market gardener.

The prevailing theme here, is small. Small time producers can't afford all the pesticides, hormones and antibiotics that the big guys use. Small producers also need less of these. All the big lysteria or salmonella outbreaks have happened in the huge production facilities. Do you remember when we couldn't eat spinach? This was because all the spinach was coming from a small number of huge corporations. If we sourced our spinach from hundreds of small farms, we wouldn't need to worry if one of these suppliers developed a problem with salmonella.

When we lived in Italy, we had a small fridge. It was a bar sized fridge for a family of 5. In it we kept milk, water and a few beer for papa. The small size could be a problem, but created an opportunity for a lovely new way of life. Instead of driving to a big supermarket every week, loading a cart full of groceries, and filling a big fridge and an equally large freezer with food for the week; we would walk, every day, to the market. We would visit our favourite (small) tomato guy, our lettuce guy, our mushroom guy; we would buy meat from the butcher or fish from the fish monger. We would grab some bread from the baker and of course a selection of cheeses. And we would do this every day. Always fresh, always tasty.

I have a small restaurant, so come eat at my place. But enjoy other small places as well. We were at the Falafel Place the other day, and loved it. Check out the Underground Cafe or Eat! Bistro. Go visit Scott at Pizzeria Gusto, say hi to Fern at In Ferno's. And there are many more little places to choose from. And if you are craving Earls' calamari, go for it. But the next time, try that little diner down the road from you.

I am not suggesting that you give up the superstore's and costco's of the world. I was just at costco today and bought a lifetime supply of herbes de provence. But I am encouraging you to shop at Vic's Fruit Market. Buy your meat from Marcello's, or Denny's or the Ellice Meat market; wherever your local butcher is. Don't eat wonder bread. Buy real bread from Tall Grass or Le Croissant. Go online and look up www.harvestmoonfood.ca to find out about the harvest moon farmers co-op and their "know your farmer" philosophy. Support your local small businesses whenever possible. They need you. They will appreciate your 20 bucks more than the CEO of FacelessFoodCorp Inc. In return, you will be rewarded with better food and better service. And you will develop a real relationship with your food and the people who produce it.

And as you look around the food world, and see all the problems with sustainability, BSE, swine flu, lysteria outbreaks in luncheon meats, salmonella outbreaks in spinach, or tomatoes, or sprouts, GMO products, overuse of antibiotics and hormones, trans-fats, food additives, the dominance of high-fructose corn syrup everywhere...

...remember, there will always be a small time.

Small is beautiful.

Small recipes:

I wanted to add some small recipes. I was going to do sliders, mini-burgers, but I am writing an article on sliders for the spring issue of flavours magazine. So I didn't want to scoop my own story. So I decided to include recipes for devilled eggs. With the entertaining season upon us, we are always looking for tasty, easy appetizers that can be made ahead. And who doesn't like this retro favourite.

The method is simple. Boil the eggs and cool them down. Peel the eggs and cut them in half. Scoop the yolk out. mush the yolk with the other ingredients, and return to the hollow of the egg. You can spoon the yolk back in, make perfect balls with a small ice cream scoop or pipe a rosette in with a star tipped piping bag. Traditionally, the eggs are sprinkled with paprika. I am including three variations, but beyond that, let your imagination run wild.

A few tips for boiling the eggs. Start with good eggs. I like natures farm eggs, sold as Vita Eggs. If you can get eggs from a local farmer, even better. Look for free-run, or organic eggs. But be warned, just cause it says "farm" on the package, doesn't mean the chickens haven't been raised in a wearhouse building near the airport. When I boil the eggs, I put a lot of salt in the water. This helps the egg peel easily and won't effect the taste. The most full proof method I know for hard boiled eggs, is to put them in a pot of cold water. bring them to a boil. Then I put a lid on the pot and turn the heat off. As the water cools, the eggs will cook, and then stop cooking usually at just the perfect state of doneness. I find them easiest to peel, if you crack the eggs, then run them under cold water. Water will get inside the shell, separating the white from the shell.

Lobster Devilled Eggs

6 eggs

4 oz chopped lobster meat (canned or from cooked lobster tails)

1 tbsp finely diced red pepper

1 tbsp finely diced green pepper

1 tsp finely diced chive

1 tsp finely chopped parsley

1/4 cup mayonaise

1/2 tsp paprika (and some to sprinkle)

pinch of cayenne

salt and pepper to taste

1.)mush eggs, mix all ingredients together, return to egg.

Bacon Devilled Eggs

6 eggs

4 slices of bacon

1/4 cup mayonaise

1/2 tsp paprika

pinch of cayenne

salt and pepper to taste.

1. cook bacon until crisp, drain and reserve the fat.

2. cut 12 thin slivers of bacon for garnish. finely mince the rest of it.

3. combine egg yolks, bacon and seaonings with mayo and 1 tbsp of reserved bacon fat

4. return to egg whites and garnish with bacon slivers

Curried Devilled Egg

6 eggs

1/4 cup yogurt

1 tsp curry powder

1 tbsp slivered almonds

1 tbsp chopped chives

1 tbsp raisins

1 tbsp cilantro

salt and pepper to taste

1. combine all ingredients. return to egg

duck and brussel sprouts

2009-11-02T19:18:00.000-08:00

I got it in my head that I wanted to do duck with brussel sprouts.

I start with a nice big duck from my hutterite friends. I rinse it off, inside and out, score the skin on the breast and thighs to let the fat run off. There are two little flabby bits of skin at the bottom that i cut off. save these for the next step. I sprinkle the skin liberally with sea salt and coarsely ground black pepper. Freshly ground of course! There is never a good reason to use pepper that was ground a month ago.

In the pan, I lay out diced red potatoes, quartered white onion and a whole bulb of garlic, split into cloves. The duck goes on top of this. Into a 45oF oven. The goal is to crisp up the skin, get it nice and brown, but to still have a little pink left in the meat. I roasted my duck for about 1/2 an hour.

For the brussels, I started with those two flabby bits of skin from the duck. I cut them into little julienned strips. In a big heavy skillet, I browned the duck skin and rendered all the fat off. It was like little duck lardons (french for bacon bits).

I sliced the brussel sprouts and browned them in the skillet with the duck skin and duck fat. I poured in a splash of white wine and deglazed the pan. I let the wine reduce and cooked the brussel sprouts a bit. Then I stirred in some grainy mustard and some wild flower honey. A little salt and pepper to season it, and yum.

I piled the crispy potatoes on plates, piled the brussel sprouts next to the potatoes. Then I sliced the duck and lay the pieces on top. And voila, duck and brussel sprouts! This is how chefs and their families eat on their night off.

p.s my kids had "shake and bake" chicken

Thanksgiving

2009-10-13T20:30:00.001-07:00

When we gathered my family around on thanksgiving, I asked each one of them what they were thankful. My son said pizza. My eldest daughter said friends and family. And my youngest said she was thankful for us coming together at the table for a family meal.

I am thankful for all these things as well. I like pizza. I cherish friends and family. And the gathering together of people for a shared meal is so very important to me. We opened Bistro 7 1/4 not so that we could run a successful business, but so that we can share the warmth and comfort of meals shared with others. Many of the guest we greet each day started as welcome strangers and have now become cherished friends.

I am thankful for all of you who come to our restaurant. We started with a crazy idea. We took a great risk. But all of you who come here, and keep coming back have supported us and made our dream come alive. You have supported us, and you have forgiven me when I have overcooked a steak. You have supported us, and forgiven us when we screw up a reservation. You have supported us, and forgiven us for when a dishwasher dumps a glass of wine on you table. And you have all celebrated with us. Celebrated with us in the party which we host nightly at the bistro. You have shared your birthdays, anniversaries, graduations with us, and we have shared ours with you. And you have come to us when it is a cloudy wednesdsay and you just want a bowl of mussels. And for all you love and care and support, I thank you.

I am thankful for all my staff. We have a great crew of people who work here. Often we feel more like family than co-workers. Yes, like family, we bicker. But more often than not, we support and care for each other. I have staff who have been with us since the very beginning. I have staff that came to me as teenage dishwashers and now are holding down responsible full time positions in the kitchen. I have staff with years of experience in the industry and could work anywhere, but have stuck it out through thick and thin. We all work very hard, but we have a great time together. I am thankful for each and everyone of those names on my schedule.

I am thankful for my friends, my UU church and my broader community. You provide fun and nourishment to us. You bring joy to us when you come through our front doors, and you bring comfort when we gather together. You remind us every day that the world is a good place and the people in it are worth caring for. Thank you.

I am incredibly thankful for my family. I am thankful for my mother-in-law who does the daily cash outs, washes the stinky kitchen towels and takes care of the kids at night. I am thankful for Marcel who chauffeurs the kids to their various activities, takes my kids out on special outings to the bookstore or sushi bar or costco for hot dogs, and is always their to bail us out in a pinch. I am thankful for my parents. My parents who helped us get the bistro of the ground in the first place, my mom who bakes and my dad (he calls me chef) who fixes the railing on the stairs and the toilet paper holder in the men's room. My parents who are always willing to go on a late night run for more mussels or to replenish the vodka we just ran out of. Thank you.

I am thankful for my kids. They always forgive me for being gone for such long hours and will always share their joy and love with me. They will bring me breakfast in the morning, sasha will explain his theory of 12 dimensions to me in great detail. Olivia will always make me laugh, and encourage me to sit on the floor and play playmobil with her. And ursula, wise beyond her years, always caring for others, will keep me hip and young and cool. Thanks to all three of you.

But I am most thankful for my beautiful wife, Danielle. Every year she gets more beautiful. While the rest of the world gets older, she seems to get younger and hipper. She is the reason I am successful as a chef. She is the reason Bistro 7 1/4 opened. When she saw that we were ready, her strength, vision and skills made my dream a reality. And she is the reason the bistro is still going strong. Danielle has an incredible ability to make everyone feel welcome, loved and cared for. She creates the atmosphere that makes people fall in love with the bistro. On nights when she can't be here, people feel it. But I am also grateful for her support behind the scenes. As a mother, she makes sure Ursula has the right ballet slippers, that Sasha's gee in pressed and Olivia gets her cardboard dulcimer decorated in time for kindermusik. She make sure the hydro bill gets paid and groceries get bought and that there is cold beer in the fridge for when her husband returns from work. And she does all this while homeschooling the kids and working every night at the bistro. And for me, she is always there to back me up, support me and defend me. I may be the big hot shot chef, slinging my knives and flaming my pans, but she is the one holding me up, encouraging me and providing me with (almost) unconditional love. For Danielle, I am most thankful.

Thanks!

a life measured in milk crates

2009-09-16T08:23:00.000-07:00

T.S. Elliot may have measured his life in coffee spoons, I measure my life in milk crates.

Being a restaurant owner, you tend to collect milk crates. Blue, black, yellow, red, we get them from our distributors and we pick them up from our wholesaler. 16-1 liter creams, 9-2 liter milks or 4-4litre jugs, or we use them to carry random arrays of smaller items. We might get 10 or 12 new crates a week. We are supposed to return them, but never return them at the same rate we collect them so they pile up. Sometimes we have a wall of milk crates in the basement of the bistro and a similar wall in the basement of our home.

Milk crates are very useful. They are sturdy, they are a good size for carrying as they never get to heavy, they have good handles and they are stackable. We use them to haul laundry back and forth between the bistro and home. They hold folded towels very neatly. When we first opened, and were doing our own napkins, I routinely brought nine or ten crates home to my dear sainted mother-in-law to wash, iron and fold. Milk crates are great for holding dry goods. They are used to keep pails off the floor. We rig up extra work spaces by stacking a few crates. Some of my shorter dishwashers use them as a step stool to reach the top shelf.

At home milk crates have many uses as well. My five year old uses a crate to stand on so that she can reach the sink. They are the perfect size for holding records, remember vinyl? They make great bookshelves (lay the on their side) and with a piece of plywood you have built a table. I have used a bunch of them to build a rack for the chopped wood for my stove. For a while there I was using a milk crate as my brief case, and when I am working on a new menu I cart books and magazines back and forth in a crate. I usually have a crate lashed to the back of my bike with bungee cords (another essential tool) so that I can transport groceries. Can you believe someone stole the crate of the back of my bike? If he had asked nicely, I would have given him a crate. I've got lots.

Beyond their utility, milk crates represent the cyclical nature of life. We go through our days, collecting crates. A few at a time, really unaware that they are piling up. Then before you know it, we have used all the crates we need and the extras have piled up into walls or towers. No longer useful, these crates create obstacles and barriers. Every once in a while, we must look at our milk crates and get rid of the excess. We must load up the truck and return them to the wholesaler. Just as trees shed their leaves in fall, we too must shed our milk crates.

Once purged of milk crates we are free to start collecting them again. And so, we go around again...

Why government should not compete with small business

2009-08-30T09:18:00.000-07:00

This past Saturday, I placed an ad for a cook in the Free Press. A little one column, inch and half long ad. I debated whether I was going to spend the extra 10 bucks to put a border around the ad.

On the same page, Manitoba Lotteries Corporation places an ad for cooks and servers. Four columns wide, complete with logos, frivolous swoopy lines and plenty of dramatic white space. This is followed by a second 4 column ad for one of the restaurants at one of the government-owned casinos.

When small business and government compete, we don't compete at the same scale. I could

never spend the money on such extravagant want-ads, yet we are essentially looking for the same people. Government run operations don't have to follow the same sets of rules as small business.

I am not one of those anti-tax, small government, american-talk-radio-listening-to right wing reactionaries. I believe in big government. I support universal healthcare and feel it should be expanded. I support social welfare, I believe employment insurance should support more people, I think public utilities should be publicly owned, I drive on our highways and enjoy our parks.

I feel that we should decide which areas should be privately owned and which should be publicly owned. And we should maintain a clear distinction between the two. We need to keep them separate. Government should not compete with its citizens for the same sales dollars or even staffing.

It seems obvious that the entertainment and hospitality industries should be taken care of by private business. Government involvement in this area seems ludicrous. Movie theaters, restaurants, night clubs, cafes, sports bars, pool halls and any other entertainment and hospitality business should be owned by private business. And yet, the government sees fit to run large scale entertainment venues, complete with restaurants and bars, in the form of the casinos. These casinos were built on a scale that most private investors would only dream of. (In fact, when the First Nations opened their casino on Brokenhead, Manitoba Lotteries limited their size to reduce competition with their own casinos) And, these casinos compete directly with small business in Manitoba. Although the concepts are a little different, when citizens are deciding where to go and spend their entertainment budget, they must choose between McPhillips Street Station and Bistro 7 1/4. (Just ask which has the bigger marketing budget)

Beyond the question of scale, there is a question of regulation. Manitoba Lotteries, who runs the casinos, gets to decide who will be their competition, how big they can be, and under what rules they must follow. The Manitoba Liquor Control Commission decides who gets to sell alcohol, how much they must charge, when they can be open. There is an inherent conflict of interest when a government body is allowed to regulate the industry which it profits from. The MLCC should regulate the liquor industry, but should not retail alcohol. And the casinos should be privately owned and run by the mob, just like in the good old days.

And so, when cooks need to decide where to go work, they need to choose between the big four column ad promising better pay and benefits to deep-fry chicken fingers, or the little ad promising the chance to cook duck confit and pork belly for people who really love food.

p.s. I decided to go with the $10 border

In praise of ugly fruit

2009-08-23T10:24:00.000-07:00

Why can't you get a decent tomato at a supermarket? People complain that you can't get a decent tomato in January, but I have little sympathy for that. It's january, people! Tomatoes in January have to travel all the way from the antarctic. What I am talking about is why you can't get a decent tomato in August.

Sure there are those crazy "vine-ripened" tomatoes where they leave little pieces of the vine still attached as some sort of evidence that this thing came from a plant. But do we need to pay those prices? And even the best "vine-ripened" tomato can't compete with a backyard tomato in august.

This time of year, the supermarkets should be over-brimming with piles of juicy, red, locally grown tomatoes. But last night, when I ran out of my local tomatoes from Vic's and was forced to send one of my boys to S-way to buy tomatoes, he returned with wooden, pale and completely juice-less fruit.

When I was a boy, my father returned from a trip to africa with a big roll of Guava fruit leather. Much to the dismay of my family, I think I ate the whole roll. I couldn't get enough of that sweet, almost floral, gauva goodness. Until recently, I had never tasted a fresh guava. On my first trip to Mexico, we stayed at an all inclusive resort. On the buffet everyday they had a wide selection of beautiful fruit, mangoes, papayas, pineapples, melons and little green round fruit. I asked what these fruit were and was told they were guavas. I was so excited. Finally, twenty five years after my first guava experience, I was going to try the real thing. "blah". These little green fruit were completely bland. None of those unctuous, floral, tropical fruity flavours I remembered. I was utterly disapointed. Crushed. A precious childhood memory dashed upon the rocks. It was like discovering that Santa Claus was a lie.

The next year I returned to mexico and stayed in the old part of town. There was a little hole in the wall grocer just down the hill from our condo. Clearly this store catered strictly to locals. There was a big basket of ugly yellow fruit covered in brown spots. But the aroma grabbed me. It brought back a flood of childhood memories? Are these guava? I asked. "si senor". Is this how you are supposed to eat them? I asked. She had no idea what i was saying. Eventually between my three spanish words and her 3 english words we determined that these guava were perfectly ripe. I bought a big bag, took them back, and ate. All my guava dreams were realised. All those flavours I remembered came flooding back. Joy. Bliss. A revelation came to me in the shape of ugly fruit.

The all-inclusive resort had to appeal to North American sensitivities. The fruit had to be firm, green and blemish-free. That is how we like to buy our produce north of the Mason-Dixon. We don't want mishapen fruit, we reject squishy tomatoes, and we would rather buy green bananas than bananas with brown spots on them. But when buying food, what is more important, the look or the taste?

For decades, through careful breeding, (I am not even talking about GMO stuff) we have been developing produce that meets the requirements of a mass, supermarket audience. Fruits and vegetables are deveoped for colour, consistency of size and shape, and for shelf life. Taste never enters into the equation. As a result, we have bins full of perfect tomatoes with no flavour.

Another problem is that our produce, especially tomatoes and tree fruit, is all picked to early. Fruit is harvested under-ripe and then allowed to ripen in warehouses. Food service distributors don't even talk about ripening, but use the term staging: "ship stage 3 tomatoes". And the fruit gets put on the supermarket shelves still under ripe. Pears aren't really tasty until they are soft, yellow and starting to go brown. But the produce manager wants to sell them bright green and rock hard. When his pears go yellow, he throws them out. And because we buy groceries in large carloads to last us a week or more, we want to buy the fruit underipe, so it can sit in our fridges without going bad.

The solution is to stop shipping tomatoes so far. The stores should be buying them from the closest place they can procure them. Then they can buy them ripe. We the consumer should shop daily, go to small markets instead of doing the big supermarket shop.

And we should start demanding ugly fruit.

a song by guy clark:

Ain't nothin' in the world that I like better
Than bacon & lettuce & homegrown tomatoes
Up in the mornin' out in the garden

Get you a ripe one don't get a hard one
Plant `em in the spring eat `em in the summer
All winter with out `em's a culinary bummer
I forget all about the sweatin' & diggin'
Everytime I go out & pick me a big one

Homegrown tomatoes homegrown tomatoes
What'd life be without homegrown tomatoes
Only two things that money can't buy
That's true love & homegrown tomatoes

You can go out to eat & that's for sure
But it's nothin' a homegrown tomato won't cure
Put `em in a salad, put `em in a stew
You can make your very own tomato juice
Eat `em with egss, eat `em with gravy
Eat `em with beans, pinto or navy
Put `em on the site put `em in the middle
Put a homegrown tomato on a hotcake griddle

If I's to change this life I lead
I'd be Johnny Tomato Seed
`Cause I know what this country needs
Homegrown tomatoes in every yard you see
When I die don't bury me
In a box in a cemetary
Out in the garden would be much better

then I could be pushin' up homegrown tomatoes

chanterelles and revolution

2009-08-09T10:28:00.000-07:00

I had a customer in the other day a customer came in and said to me, "we need a food revolution!"

She had a few too many to drink, and was an old friend, so I humoured her kindly. But she is right. She was looking back to the great food revolution in southern california, led by Alice Waters as a culinary Che Guevara. She felt it was time for southern manitoba to experience a similar revolution.

At the time, I was thinking about blogging about Chanterelles. I was also thinking about blogging about the farmer's market. Somehow, all these things started to come together for me. And although I haven't quite figured out how they all tie in together, ideas are starting to form.

John Ash, a famous chef and one of Alice Water's co-revolutionaries, said in a talk he gave in winnipeg a few years ago, that we, the consumers, have to start demanding better. (we'll hear more about John Ash's in future blogs) He said how we in the rest of the world say "it's easy to eat locally and organically in Southern California". But he describes a California before the food revolution. The food production industry was dominated by large farming operations producing food for mass market consumption. The bulk of the food farmed was destined for the canneries and the frozen foods factories. It was chefs like Alice waters and others who started demanding something better. They started talking to farmers and small time producers and making connections. They also started demanding more from their big suppliers as well. This small group of consumers changed the culinary landscape for themselves and the rest of North America followed.

And so is it time for Manitoba consumers to demand better? Our retail market is dominated by the big 3, (superstore, safeway and sobey's). The bulk of the produce we buy comes from california or further afield; even when local produce is available. Our beef comes from alberta. Even a lot of our own fresh water fish is processed in China. Looking for pickerel cheeks? Good local product. Chances are they are coming from Europe or Asia.

What's the problem? We grow the stuff, why can't we buy it? The food chain can be divided into 4 pieces. The grower, the distributer, the retailer and the consumer. The problem lies with all of these people.

Manitoba growers tend to be stubborn. It is easier to do things the way they have always been done. I once went to a free range chicken producer. I was representing a fairly large buying group of restaurants, including a major downtown hotel. I asked for free range chickens to be raised to a size the chef's could use, 2-3 lbs. The chicken farmer said, "no, I raise 6 lb birds". He explained that a lot of the cost of a chicken was in the start up cost. So I told him we would pay more per pound for the birds if we could have the size we need. "nope, we raise 6 lb birds". So I said to him, we would pay the same amount of money for a 2 lb bird as he would make for a 6 lb bird. "nope, we raise 6 lb birds.". His papa raised 6 lb birds, his papa's papa raised 6 lb birds, and be damn sure he was gonna raise 6lb birds. Growers that try to change things tend to be seen as fringe element nut jobs. Gauge the reaction you get when you talk to a conventional egg producer about Nature's Farms free run aviary system. Apparently hens liked to be cooped 3 to cage.

Distributors, as a whole, have a hard time supplying local products. They have national accounts, that need consistent supply. Why? Why can't I order local corn when it is available and get corn from georgia when that is all there is? It might just be laziness disguised as logistics. The problem may lie in the fact that the food distribution network is dominated by a few huge multinational conglomerates. And the other distributors have to compete with these huge companies. These big (American) companies have buying and growing contracts with major farming conglomerates. If FoodCorp Inc. had to pay local prairie farmers a fair price for their green beans, this would cut into their profits.

The retailers have the same problem. They need nationally available products and consistent supply. Again, I ask why? Whole Foods Markets in the U.S. are able to operate with a committment to local products. Each store would look a little different, but that is okay. If my local safeway sold Manitoba lamb when it was available and New Zealand lamb when it wasn't, I would be okay with that. Instead of promoting consistency, the supermarkets could be celebrating diversity. We would only have to convince one of the big three to do this, the other two would be forced to follow. The other option is just to stop shopping at these monster markets. Smaller, local retailers are better placed and more willing to support local producers. Shop at Vic's, DeLuca's, Marcello's meats, Gimli Fish, Tall Grass and any other corner grocer you can find.

But the biggest problem will always be the consumer. As long as we are content, nothing will change. If we don't demand local products, they won't supply them. As long as we are happy to buy organic lettuces, in gas flushed plastic bags shipped hundreds of miles on diesel trucks from southern california and think we are doing good by buying organic, nothing will change. If lamb racks that have been cryovac'd, frozen, warehoused, put on huge ocean freighters, shipped 3000 miles, warehoused again, put on diesel trucks and shipped to the supermarket warehouse to be distributed to your local grocer are good enough for us, they will be good enough for the supermarket purchasers. We need to ask, "where is this coming from?" How was it grown? Who picked it? How much packaging do we really need? Why can't we get fresh food?

So in the middle of all this walks my mushroom lady. An adorable little Croatian woman who goes out, by herself, into the woods of southern Manitoba and forages wild mushrooms. She brings me porcini, lobster mushrooms, matsutakes (if I am lucky) and most of all chantrelles. As I am cooking up these beautiful little fungi, I wonder, why can't we get better food here? It all grows here. Why are there so few artisan cheese producers? We have cows? We have sheep and goats? Why doesn't anyone raise ducks, make foie gras, raise guinea hens or squab? Why can't I find heirloom tomatoes? Why doesn't safeway sell saskatoons? Why do all the people making sausages in this province make only 3 kinds of sausage? There is more to life than pepperettes, farmer sausage and kielbassa. Why? Why? Why!

Maybe it is time for a food revolution.

You know what we need? A real market. A market that encourages competition. A market filled with diverse producers all vieing for your dollars. A year round daily market. Don't get me wrong, I love the St. Nobert Market and other local farmers markets. I was just at the Assiniboia market and found some great meat producers. But Saturday, is at the end of the week for me. I want to buy my fresh produce tuesday morning. In fact, I want to go to my local market everyday and select the fresh food I want to enjoy on any given day. I think we are the only major city in Canada which doesn't have a real year round market. We could follow the model of the Atwater market in montreal. Inside they have year round market stalls. During the growing season the market spill out into the parking lot to accomodate all the local farmers. A year round market would say to the big retailers that we are no longer content. It would challenge them to do better. A year round market would provide us with the fresh local products we need. By encouraging free competition on a small scale, it would challenge growers and producers to create new and better products. Local dairies would have a venue to sell farmhouse cheese, local butchers could create new and delicious charcuterie products. Food would get better and better.

So consumers, it is in your hands! Demand better! Buy Local! And demand better food from your local producers.

Consumers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your shopping carts.

Be sure to check out the comment below, very smart and insightful.

If you can get your hands on fresh chantrelles (try deluca's) here are a few quick recipes.

Chantrelles, Polenta and a poached egg.

sautee chantrelles with garlic, butter and fresh parley.

add a splash of white wine, reduce

make polenta, (follow pkg direction, cook it long and slow), keep it soft like porridge

top polenta with sauteed chantrelles

top with a poached egg (one per person)

garnish with grtated parmesan.

Pan Seared scallops with chantrelle chowder

sautee onions, diced bacon. add diced potatoes and chantrelles.

Add chicken stock and simmer until potatoes are tender

add heavy cream, season with salt and pepper

dry large scallops and sear in a hot pan until golden.

serve shallow bowls of the chowder, top with scallops.

Chantrelle Pasta with arugula and blue cheese

Boil penne or other short pasta. (gnocchi would work as well)

sautee chantrelles in olive oil with garlic and a pinch of dried chilies

toss penne with arugula, sauteed chantrelles and crumbled blue cheese

(this would also be good if you added cream for a sauce)

Enjoy!

Summer Sangria

2009-07-30T06:26:00.000-07:00

I know, it doesn't seem like it, but summer is sangria time. Next week it is going to get real hot, and you are going to love these cold fruity sippers. All summer I keep a jug of sangria in the fridge. Any ends of bottles you have just get tossed in, any fruit you have can get tossed in, and whatever juices you find. Sangria is a great way to use up those fresh local berrries that are to smooshy to serve to the kids. Sangria is great made fresh, but gets even better the next day. Serve your sangria with lots of ice and a spritz of soda water.

Red Sangria

1 L red wine

1 L cranberry juice

1/2 cup brown sugar

4 oz brandy

1 orange, quartered and sliced

2 cups assorted berries (raspberries, strawberries etc.)

White Sangria

1 L white wine

1 L white cranberry or green grape juice

4 oz triple sec

1 cup green grapes

1 cup diced honeydew melon

1 cup diced mango

1 lemon, quartered and sliced

Pink Sangria

1 L dry rose wine

1 L strawberry watermelon juice (or white cranberry with peach)

4 oz creme de cassis or chanmord

1 cup diced watermelon

1 cup sliced strawberries

Blue Sangria

1 L dark red wine (like a baco noir or aussie shiraz)

1 L blueberry or blueberry pomegranate juice

4 oz creme de cassis

4 oz blue curacao

4 oz amaretto

2 cups blueberries

Chocolate Cherry Sangria

1 L cabernet sauvignon

2 jars european sour cherries with juice

4 oz creme de cacao

2 oz espresso vodka or kahlua

dark chocolate for shaving on top

What I did for my summer holdays...

2009-07-20T22:23:00.000-07:00

At the bistro, we go hard. Lots of meals, long days, late nights. Sometimes we need to take a break. This year, for our summer holiday, we decided to run the backstage kitchen at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. I guess, as they say, a change is as good as a rest.

At the folk festival we feed the performers, volunteers, staff and guests of the folk festival. Conservative calculations say we feed 4500 people, three meals a day for 5 days. That's a lot of granola.

500 kg bison short ribs

750 Litres milk

10775 ml garlic

216 Litres canola oil

1600 lbs peppers

and a palette full of kidney beans

We fill 3 fifty foot reefers with food. We have 220 volunteers cooking like mad. we serve lamb tagine with couscous, green curry tofu, chicken and salsa verde tacos. 3 meals a day for 5 days, with a continuous flow of snacks. All of this is done under a tent in a field in a park. we cook on rented griddles, 17 BBQ's, and in giant, Hutterite built ovens we call out "hot-hot-hots" and our "uber-hots". (If anyone knows a good patent agent, give me a call cause I designed these ovens). All day, from 9 am til 1 am, there is a line up in the kitchen, people looking for food.

this is what we normally do, and you would think that was enough. But no, I need to heap more onto the pile. This year, we added on drink pairings with each meal, fresh popped popcorn, and a guerilla kitchen that would pop up unexpectedly serving hot snacks such as huevos rancheros and caesar mussels to hungry volunteers.

To top it off, I got to go on mainstage. I did a cooking demo between the Punch Brothers and King Sunny Ade. I taught 16000 people how to make a campfire pizza. We had a pizza crust tossed back through the audience. Apparently some kid got pizza dough slapped in his face. (if you are out there, sorry.)

One of my highlights was having Vance Gilbert in my kitchen. He is a big folk fest favourite, a performer from Boston. He scrambled eggs and griddled potatoes for hours. Yelling at my crew for more potatoes, calling us a bunch of "melon-farmers". we had a riot! He even went to his daytime workshop with his dirty kitchen apron, running late because he "just came from his shift in the kitchen".

Why do we do it? Why not spend the week at the beach? I love the people i work with there. I love the people I cook for. I love making that many people feel happy and cared for. I love the community we build each year. But mostly, I love the terrified excitement I get from feeding that many people. I love the adrenaline rush!

see you at the fest next year!

the raw and the cooked

2009-06-08T21:16:00.000-07:00

This spring I was given the opportunity to do a raw food meal for 12 people, a gluten free meal for 12 people and a heart smart dinner for 12 people. All three were done at the special request of our customers.

The raw food dinner came about when a friend of a friend was in having salad with nothing but fresh lemon. We started talking and I found out that he and his wife enjoy a strictly raw food vegan diet. Raw foodists eat nothing that has been cooked. I agree, or perhaps I offer, to cook him and his wife a strictly raw food dinner. Well, I guess they enjoyed their first meal because they booked to come back with another couple. The second meal was a success so this gentleman decided to invite his family out for a raw food birthday dinner.

Raw food is more than just salads and chopped up veggies. I was challenged to create memorable meals with colour and texture, complementing and contrasting flavours, interesting constructions. These meals need to be nutritionally complete. Just like any other dinner, 'cept raw.

I made sprouted legume crackers. I made chilled melon soup. Tomato and fennel was pureed and dried to make a pasta like skin for manicotti which I filled with a creamy avocado and almond mixture. (Tastes surprisingly like ricotta). I made a creamy hemp seed ice cream and a chocolate cake out of fresh cocoa nibs, ground date flour and dried bananas.

The guests said the food was delicious. I have another raw food dinner coming up.

The gluten free dinner was less of a stretch. Our menu is already quite celiac friendly. I have a good friend with celiacs so since we opened three years ago we are always mindful of this condition. If our dishes don't need to have flour or grains, we won't use it. And many of our dishes can be made gluten free with minor modifications. We always have at least one good gluten free cake on the dessert menu. We even stock Frio, a gluten free beer. The only hitch was doing the fries. We had a pot of oil on the stove, (we fry breaded products in our deep-fryer and there is a fear of transference) but just couldn't keep it hot enough. But otherwise, the dinner went off smoothly.

The third interesting dinner came at the request of a couple who are regulars. Would we do a heart smart dinner? Those of you who have been to the bistro will recognize the irony of this. Bistro 7 1/4 is not really the type of place you think of for heart smart dining. "What are the three most important ingredients is french cooking?" I will often quiz my customers. "Butter, Cream... (pause for effect)... and more butter". We are known for our hammer chop, a 24+ oz fatty rib steak that we serve with sweet potato fries and top with, you guessed it, a chili butter. Our favourite appetizers are the grilled pork belly and the fatty beef scraps which we deep-fry. There is enough butter and duck fat vapours in the air to clog your arteries just by breathing it in. Even our salmon dish, which is usually heart smart, is topped with butter and on a chowder made with reduced cream and bacon. So, when asked to do a heart smart dinner, we were shocked, but of course we said yes.

4 oz portions of lean beef or grilled halibut, roast potatoes, asparagus, it all looked very elegant. Fennel and grapefruit salsa graced the halibut; fresh tomatoes in balsamic adorned the steak. The dessert however as the highlight. I made a chocolate cake with nothing but cocoa, egg whites and sugar. It was rich and dense and deliciously chocolaty. It was a hit. The guests left satisfied and happy.

Why did I do these special dinners? I am not hurting for the business. They take extra work when I already have a pretty full day. I guess I agree to take these things on for two main reasons.

The first is the challenge. It is easy to get complacent in your cooking style. You keep rehashing old recipes, using the same techniques. It is easy to get stuck in a rut. Doing these alternate dinners challenges you to discover new techniques, research new recipes, explore new ideas. Cooking a new style of meal forces you to think outside of the specific box you are in. I would challenge all of you to try eating vegan for a week, that will stretch your gastronomic mind. Challenging yourself in this way will make you a better cook the rest of the time.

The second, and most important reason, is the power of yes. Without getting motivational-speaker-creepy on you, excellent customer service is about saying yes. Lemon in your water? yes. Extra olives in your martini? yes. Can we come in at 11:30 even though your sign says you close at 10:00? yes. Can I get my salmon without bacon and my livers with extra bacon? yes. Can you do a raw food vegan dinner with no fermented products or mushrooms for twelve next Saturday? yes.

But this is not a stretch. It seems like this makes more work for me, but

saying yes is way easier than saying no. I genuinely want to make people happy. It is not a marketing strategy. Genuine hospitality comes from an instinct to provide to you guests not only what they need, but what they want. So saying yes is easy. It is never confrontational. It is never difficult. Why say no, when you can say yes and make someone happy?

Iron Chef Centrex

2009-04-28T07:05:00.000-07:00

ALLEZ CUISINE!!!

We were invited to compete in an Iron Chef style competition at the Centrex food and hospitality trade show. Eight restaurants competing for the exhalted title of Iron Chef Centrex. On the first day we are paired off into for contests. Our first battle was against Provence Bistro. The winners on the first day go on to battle the each other on the monday until two teams are chosen to enter the final battle.

The "battle of the bistros" as it was billed started at 12:00 noon. Half an hour before the battle started, we were told that the mystery ingredient was tomatoes. We were give a lovely basket of romas, beefsteaks, bruno rossas, orange, yellow, campari and grape tomatoes. We were pretty excited about this ingredient, you can do a lot with tomatoes. The goal is to do as many dishes as you can in that time. You are judged on quality, presentation, originality and how organized your kitchen is. The safe approach would be to shoot for five dishes, we decided to do seven with an optional eighth dish.

The eighth dish, which we never got to, was going to be chicken noodle soup. We had a stock on from the chicken carcass we deboned and we had noodle scraps from the ravioli, we were just going to throw in some fresh chopped yellow, orange and red tomatoes, some fresh herbs and voila. But we just ran out of time.

Time is deceiving. Time is elusive. Time is fleeting.

Half an hour into the battle, it felt like we were just starting. Fourty minutes in, Provence puts out their first dish. A tomato bisque. We still had nothing near completion. We had to kick it into high gear. In the last ten minutes we plated 7 dishes, with the last plate hitting the table as "time" was called. High fives all around. Someone from Big Rock brings us all a can of beer, which goes down nice.

Our first dish was a trio of all the yummy parts of the chicken. The parts that the chef saves for himself when carving. We did the drumette with a dry curry spice on a mango and brunnorossa bbq sauce, we did the oyster with a balsamic camapari and the popes nose roasted crisp with a black bean and yellow tomato salsa.

We smoked salmon with a shaved pineapple, cherry tomato and red onion salad. Raw beef carpaccio wrapped around a beet and tomato slaw, came next. This was going to be served with a yellow tomato sorbet but the sorbet wasn't freezing. I decided to use the unfrozen sorbet as a sauce instead. But as I am scooping I realise their is plenty of frozen sorbet stuck to the side of the ice cream maker. I dump it out and scape the sides to get two scoops for the plate. then came ravioli stuffed with chicken livers with a roma tomato and sundried tomato sauce, this was followed by spinach gnudi with grape tomatoes and a chicken and yellow tomato sausage. Then we did a chicken "saltimbocca" with goat cheese and smoked tomatoes. We were going to serve it with fries but they just weren't ready on time. Of course, we had to do dessert. We made a rice pudding, and candied yellow tomatoes to the consistency of dried fruit. We mixed that into the rice pudding, served that in our little copper pots, and garnished it with more candied tomato. Boom, seven dishes! a flurry of plating, right down to the wire, but we did it.

We won this competition, just barely. We would be competing in the semis tomorrow.

As the fairmont was setting up, I went to them and said, "I have one piece of advice, realize that an hour is not a lot of time".

"oh we know," was their reply, "we timed it out in our practice runs"

They practiced? Really? I think they might be taking this all a bit too seriously. Practice runs, don't they have a restaurant to run?

So, we find out that Monday morning we would be up against the fairmont. The little bistro that could against the mighty fairmont. This is like cameroon competing against brazil at the world cup. This is David and Goliath. I better remember to bring my sling shot.

We knew we would have to step up our game. We needed more burners, so we brought three of our own. We needed to have water boiling, deep fryer oil heating and wood chips smoking right off the top. Mostly we needed to hit the ground running. About ten minutes before we start, I start to wind up the crew. I start jumping, pep talking, clapping my hands randomly, quoting Gordon Ramsay in a bad accent, and just a little trash talking. As we start, I say "we need our bistro music." Clint, J-9 and I all start singing our versions of our favourite bistro hits. We were singing three different songs, but somehow it all worked.

Our secret ingredient was scallops. This threw us off for a minute. We were convinced we were going to get pork, or maybe turkey. Adapt, adopt and improve. The big question was, can we do a dessert with scallops?

First thing, I cut up onions, celery and garlic for a few different dishes. My cutting board is filling up, I know I am going to get dinged points for mess, but I had a lot of things on the go.

Changing strategy a little from the first round, I decide to throw out dishes earlier. Twenty minutes in our first dish goes out: Black bean soup with smoked bay scallops.

I decide we have a good start so I declare, "we are doing the risotto!" We are going to complete 8 dishes.

Then in rapid succession: scallop and salmon seviche with a carrot and apple salad (all orange and yellow), Pan seared scallops with a mango salsa, spicy surf and turf skewers with beef filet, pineapple and scallop. The beef and pineapple was cut in the same size and shape as the scallop. This we served with a cucumber, lime and pernod shooter.

On the way to the convention centre, we stopped at Dollarama. we needed squeeze bottles. At the store, I found these horrible shot glasses shaped like a curvaceous woman's torso wearing a bikini. I new we were going to do a shooter, so I grabbed these. I didn't know if we would have the cajones to use these tacky glasses. But of course, we did. Team Bistro has cajones to spare.

After the first competition, I decided that we would do Cassoulet. When I saw the ingredient, my heart sunk, scallop cassoulet? But why not? I smoked some chicken breast, seasoned and roasted a drumstick, and made a scallop sausage. Put all this together with the tasty white beans I had made in our little copper pots, topped with buttered bread crumbs and roasted until crusty and yummy. While I was doing this, Clint made a quick pickle with lemon juice (we had no vineger to work with) and tarragon which we put into our mini-pickle jars. We served our cassoulet with "cornichons" on the side.

We then put out a scallop slider with bannock "buns", goat cheese and a quick mayonaise. This time, the frites were ready on time. Our dessert was a ricotta and orange tart, which we covered with thin slices of scallop. We covered this with sugar, and "brulleed" the sugar. This dessert was served with an apricot compote.

"Time?!" We had four minutes left. The risotto wasn't quite ready, the grilled scallops were still raw. How much time now? "Three minutes." "Where's the parmesan? I need butter!" I plate the risotto. Beet risotto with grilled scallops garnished with a candied beets and a beet syrup. "how much time left?" We had done eight dishes with two minutes to spare.

We all looked at each other, do we have time to do one more dish? "hell ya!" J-9 shouts out, "cucumber, cream cheese scallops!" Clint slices and arranges the cucmbers, J-9 grabs the cream cheese, I slice the raw scallop. we arrange this on the plates, garnish with a sliver of sundried tomato. A little coarse salt, done. 9 plates!

Well, today David doesn't slay Goliath. Goliath goes on to win the whole competetion, but it was a battle well fought. We had a ton of fun, banged out a lot of dishes, and carried oursleves with style. Thanks to Clint Ducharme and Janine Meijer for their hard work and creativity, you rock! And thanks to Danielle, my partner for her love and support.

Thanks Junior CCFC for inviting us to compete in this fun event!

Chefs vs Line Cooks

2009-04-24T00:29:00.000-07:00

I was watching Hell's Kitchen tonight and one of the things one of the competitors (Ben) said really got stuck in my craw. While trying to defend his poor service in the kitchen, Ben said "I am a chef, not a line cook." He defended his position by saying he leads big brigades and so he is not used to actually cooking in a kitchen during service.

It is my belief that a chef is a cook first. You get to be chef not only because you can lead a crew, but because you can jump into any position is your kitchen and handle yourself with grace and style. If your grill cook shows up late, you need to jump in. If the salad guy is sick, get in there. I still pride myself on being a great dishwasher, and when the situation requires, I roll up my sleeves and start scrubbing. A chef needs to be able to hold his or her own on the line.

One of the reasons I opened a small restaurant was so that I would still be able to cook. The bigger the restaurant, the less time the chef spends cooking. The reason I am a chef is that I love to cook. And not just fancy stuff. And not just the creative process. But everyday, getting slammed on the line, board full of white chits, every burner full and blazing, customers lined up out the door cooking. Line cooks get off on that rush. It is not just the high-faluting cheffing that we aspire to, but the day in day out fire and knives cooking that we love.

So Ben, you who are too good to line cook, good-bye. The world needs more cooks and fewer chefs.

Visit your local coffee shop

2009-04-21T23:39:00.000-07:00

So, McDonald's has launched a coffee promotion. Free coffee. I have even been assured that their new coffee is actually good. But people, don't fall for it! This is McDonalds we are talking about. This is the same multinational monster that has convinced the world that the height of culture can be stuffed into a sesame seed bun and wrapped in paper. This is the company that is deforesting the planet to raise cattle only to be ground into lifeless flat grey patties. This is the same incubus that seduces tourists in such exotic locales as rome, cairo and bangkok away from trying the authentic tastes of the local mom and pop restaurants in favour of something safe and familiar. This is the same company that encourages us to sit in line in drive thrus with our engines idleing and spewing carbon into the air instead of finding fresh food at a local grocer or market. This is the company that has convinced us that fast is better than good, and convenient is more important than wholesome. So don't be fooled, the coffee may be free, but it is still too high a price to pay.

But don't you stand their all smug while waiting to pick up you venti half-caf latte. Sure Starbucks may talk of ethics and sustainabilty, but it too is a monolithic multinational. So is our beloved Timmy's. All these places seek to level our culture, to replace character with consistency, and to limit the choices we have. These huge coffee empires compete unfairly with your friends and neighbours who try to run little neighbourhood coffee shops. Don't get me wrong, I am no more righteous than you. I love my soy latte with an extra shot, I love the convenience of being able to get my coffee on every street corner. But maybe we should try a little harder to support our local coffee purveyors.

Every neighbourhood has one or more little coffee spots. The owner might be behind the counter pouring your java. In Wolesley we have the Neighbourhood Cafe and bookstore, in the exchange we have the Fyxx, Downtown we have Twist Cafe and Voila cafe, St. james has Roka Jacks, Brandon has Forbidden flavours. Go up stairs to DeLuca's for a great espresso. When at the mall, don't go to Tim's but walk over to McNally Robinson's. Pop into Stella's. Satisfy your sweet tooth by checking out Baked Expectations or Dessert Sinsations. Visit your favourite local cafe, diner or bistro. Every neighbourhood has it's own unique choices. Every one of those spots has its own characters and story.

And don't forget to support our local roasters. We don't need to import our coffee from Seattle, or even Vancouver. We have Black Pearl, Sunstone, Wellington's, DeLuca's and Green Bean all roasting locally. They all offer a variety of roasts and beans, with many fair trade and organic options. Next time you are standing in line waiting for you grande chai moccacinno, and the smiling lip pierced teenager behind the counter ask you how you would like you coffee, politeley reply, "Locally roasted, please".

Next time you need your caffeine hit, don't pull into the nearest drive-thru superchain, go the extra block and check out a neighbourhood coffee spot.

What is your favourite local coffee shop? Post a comment and let us know.

Recipes for D.A. Niels cooking Demo

2009-04-21T14:22:00.001-07:00

So, on Saturday I found myself at one of my favourite kitchen stores, D. A. Niels on Berry St.

I had been asked to do a cooking demo. When I arrived the store was full of people. (Not all there to see me, some were shopping). By the time I had myself set up, I had a small crowd of people gathered around me.

Normally when I do these demos, people come by, watch for a bit, try a little of the free food maybe ask a question or two and then leave. On this particular saturday my "class" sat for almost two full hours absorbing every detail.

In exchange for their dedication and loyalty, I promised to post the recipes on my blog, so here they are:

(I have already posted them on my twitter page at Twitter.com/chefalex)

Thai Coconut Curry Mussels

1lb mussels

1 tsp canola oil

1 stalk lemongrass, finely chopped

1/2 jalepeno or small chili, finely minced (use more or less depending how hot you like your food)

1 tsp minced ginger

1 tsp minced garlic

1 tsp green curry paste

1 lime wedge
1 cup chicken stock

1/4 cup coconut milk

couple sprigs each cilantro and basil (roughly chopped)

1 green onion cut into 1 inch pieces

1. combine lemongrass, ginger, garlic, chilies, curry and oil in skillet. Saute briefly.

2. add mussels and stock, bring to a boil. Add coconut milk. Cook until mussles are open.

3. squeeze in lime and throw wedge in pan.

4. toss in basil, cilantro and green onions right before serving.

Asparagus Strudel Appetizer

1 pkg filo pastry

2 bunches asparagus, ends trimmed

1 lb brie

1/2 cup toasted pecans, crushed

1/2 lb butter

1. melt butter. lay one sheet of filo on counter. brush with butter. lay a second layer, brush with butter, lay a third layer, brush with butter.
2. slice filo into thee wide strips. Lay a slice of brie at base of each strip. Top brie with 3 asparagus stalks and sprinkle with pecans. roll filo around asparagus. brush with butter.

3. Bake at 450F for 10 minutes, until filo is golden brown. Serve as is, or cut into bitesize appetizers.

Black Forest Crepes

crepe batter:

3/4 cup flour

2 eggs

2/3 cup milk

1 tbsp melted butter

1 tbsp cognac

1. whisk all ingredients together, stir vigorously. Pour through a fine mesh strainer.

2. let rest for at least an hour, as long as overnight.

3. check consistency, should be like heavy cream. Thin with water if neccessary.

4. cook crepes in crepe pan, or non stick skillet. fold into quarters.

Chocolate ganache

1/2 cup heavy cream

12 0z good quality chocolate, chopped

1. bring cream to a boil, pour over chocolate. let sit one minute. Stir until chocolate is melted. keep warm.

Sour cherry compote

1 jar sour european cherries, drianed (reserve 1/4 cup juice, drink the rest with soda or vodka)

1/4 cup cherry juice

1 oz kiirsch

1/2 cup white sugar

bring all ingredients to a boil, cook until liquid is syrupy.

To assemble:

warm crepes and lay on plate. top with cherry compote, chocolate ganache and whipped cream. Decorate with chocolate shavings and stemmed cherries if you have.

If you want to get fancy, heat cherries in pan. place crepes in pan. add 1 oz brandy and flame crepes. trasfer to a plate then top with chocolate and whipped cream.

Taste of a Nation

2009-04-15T22:01:00.000-07:00

Once a year, the hospitality industry gets together to "give back" to our community. We gather at the Fairmont Hotel to celebrate Taste of a Nation. SOS events happen around the world but I am priveleged to be part of our event in Winnipeg. SOS events are great because all the money raised goes to the charity. They are also great because we chefs get to see each other and hang out.

We arrive at the loading docks with our carts and coolers and bus bins laden with sauces and salts and tongs and frying pans. Immediately there is a camaraderie. We trash talk while setting up our chafing pans; we laugh while lining up our ingredients; and we joke while waiting for the health inspector.

Then the doors open. 450 people swarm into the ballroom. "Thai mussels, yes green curry, lemon grass, ginger...would you like to try our snout salad?" I repeat, and repeat, 450 times. Some people know us, have been to our place, and for others we are new. "South Osborne, you know, just down from the park theatre..." Some people stay and chat, others come back for seconds.

Then it starts to slow down. Danielle and I get to leave the booth, and explore and shmooze. Many of the chefs are wandering around trying each others tastes. We have some great wine, shiraz-malbec for me, chardonnay-riesling for Danielle. We start the quest for foie-gras. Scott from gusto did a kickass duck 3 way Italian style (I've done a three-way Italian style, but it didn't involve a duck), 529 had my favourite prime rib yorkshire bites, The chocolate shop was innovative with their bannock cups filled with tasty bison; Lobster corndogs from the current, golden caviar and pink champagne shooters from Beujena's. For dessert we had tasty cookies from Pineridge Hollow and fantastic red beet filled chocolates from Constance Popp. But for Foie Gras we had to visit our friends at Oui. Foie Gras Torchons with sauternes gelee. Is it rude to ask for seconds? We washed it all down with tasty vodka, ukrainian beer and some ice wine.

A good night all around.

Then we pack up. As the caravan of carts and coolers winds its way back to the loading dock, we resort to the basest of kitchen humour. It is amazing how often "that's what she said" can form the punchline to a good off-colour joke.

We return to the restaurant to unload and have a night cap. Sure we worked hard, spent our own money, raised money for a good cause, but taste of a nation is one of the highlights of the year. The night when the hosiptality crowd gets together for a good time.

Spring Cocktails

2009-04-15T17:14:00.000-07:00

Try these refreshing, light, spring cocktails

Watermelon Strawberry Martini

1 1/4 oz vodka

1/4 oz chambord

1 1/2 oz watermelon strawberry juice

ice

fresh strawberries and watermelon cubes to garnish

combine juice, vodka and juice in shaker with ice, shake and strain into a chilled martini glass.

ganish with strawberry and watermelon

Honeydew Cucumber Mojito (makes 4 cocktails)

1/2 cup diced honeydew

1/2 cup diced cucumber (seeded)

4 or 5 mint leaves sprig of mint

1 tbsp honey

1/2 tsp grated fresh ginger

6 oz white rum

mint and cucmber to garnish

in blender, puree melon, cucumber, mint, ginger and honey.

mix in rum, pour over ice in highball glasses

garnish with mint, a cucumber slice and a straw.

Lemonade Martini

2 oz lemonade

1 1/2 oz vodka

1/2 oz triple sec

sqeeze of fresh lemon

ice

a spalsh of soda

lemon zest to garnish

combine lemonade, vodka and triple sec and sqeeze of fresh lemon in shaker with ice. Shake vigorously, strain into martini glasses. top with a spash of soda, garnish with lemon zest.

Enjoy!

pungent vs stinky

2009-04-05T11:29:00.000-07:00

In George Orwell's essay, Politics in the English Language in a section on "pretentious diction" he says "Bad writers ... are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones"

In the most recent Flavours issue I had an article (www.flavoursmagazine.ca) about crusts. Yummy ways to add crispy crusts to dishes. I submitted a recipe for "stinky mac and cheese" I make a dish at the restaurant in which I use all the ends and scraps from the cheeses we use for our cheese board. This makes a wonderfully rich and stinky version of the classic mac and cheese. When Brandon Boone, a man who I respect and admire, edited the article, he changed my word "stinky" to "pungent."

"Pungent Mac and Cheese"

Mr. Boone thought that sounded better. I think it sounds gross.

When people talk about cheese, we often refer to the sharper cheeses as "stinky". We rarely use the word pungent to describe food. The only time I might use the word pungent would be to say something like "the chicken that we forgot at the back of the fridge, was particularly pungent"

So, now it is up to you, gentle blog-followers, to settle this matter once and for all.

Is "pungent" a better word than "stinky". Does "Pungent Mac and Cheese" sound tastier than "Stinky Mac and Cheese". Join in on this online poll. Comment on this post with your preferences or arguments. Is there a better word than either of these two?

Let the games begin.

Alex

check out the whole essay at www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit It is a great essay which seems even more relevant today than when it was written over 60 years ago.

Photo of Mac and Cheese from Flavours Magazine, taken by Brian Gould

sorry

2009-04-05T11:03:00.000-07:00

recently, I was given heck for not posting on my Blog in a long time. Sorry.

Turns out last time I posted was december. I was working on my winter menu. We have started our spring menu, and I am looking ahead to summer.

I actually didn't know you cared. I put these word out there in the "blogisphere" and never know if people read them or even notice. It is nice to hear that people check my blogs, although it gives me more of a sense of obligation to post regularly.

I also wonder what types of things I should post. I like writing, and have lots to say. But what kinds of things are you, the gentle reader, interested in hearing from me. Do you want recipes, do you want updates about the restaurant, do you want seasonal food things?

As a chef, people assume that I am so passionately devoted to food that food is all i think about. But ask my staff, I have an opinion about everything, and my opinions change daily. Nothing I like more than a good rant. I have an archive of stock rants that I pull out when needed, and I am always willing to create a new one to suit the occaision. (how do you spell that?) should I stick to food topics, or can I rant about politics, art, religion, rent-a-nerds, or what ever bee happens to be inhabiting my bonnet at any given moment. I wrestle with this question, but maybe I just need to relax and write about whatever is in my head.

Anyway, thanks for reading these posts, I have a few new posts that i am going to fire off in rapid succession, and then I will try to remember to post regularly. Please feel free to comment on these posts, I welcome the interaction. Or you can always email me at chef@sevenandaquarter.ca

Thanks,

Alexander

p.s. i have just discovered twitter. Check it out at www.twitter.com/chefalex

Writing the Winter Menu

2008-12-26T13:11:00.000-08:00

As soon as I finish one menu, I start thinking of the next one. Ideas spin around my head for the next two months. I talk to Danielle, Clint, all my staff about ideas I have. I look at books and magazines, play around, try things out, run things as specials. By the time I get to actually writing the thing I have a fairly clear picture about what I want to do.

Then I sit down to write it. I set aside a chunk of time, usually pour myself a glass of wine or port, and start writing. The picture I though I had is never as clear as I thought it was. And it is always a lot more work than I think it should be.

I like to have a fairly solid first draft before I show anyone. Then I will sit down with Danielle, and we will tear it apart. I will tell her the things I really like, and what areas I am struggling with. We will look thorugh books, remember meals we have enjoyed in the past, toss ideas back and forth. Danielle is a great cook, and also has a good idea of what types of things our customers love. Sometimes I overthink things, and Danielle will call me on that. We are driven by the idea of Luxurious Comfort Food, but mostly, we cook food we would like to eat. Hopefully, there are enough of you out there who like the same things we do.

So far, this is what I am thinking of:
I want to re-invent our burgers, I want to use pork belly in more ways, I want to do more weird fifth-quarter off cut stuff (We going to do a snout salad with pig snout cooked two ways), I want a luscious duck dish people go crazy for...
... then the question is always "what stays?" the livers and short ribs for sure, but what about the hammer chop? It feels kind of fall to me, but is is a fabulous dish and kind of unique to us. Do I keep the salmon the way it is? What new mussels will I do? What are my three small salads, what are my dips? Do we continue with the fennel maramalade?

So any way, time to start. I am using this blog to stall, so I am going to start writing. I will update this blog as I work on the menu. If you have any suggestions, feel free to send them to me with a comment. We can all be part of the process!

Alex

Grilled Cheese and fresh cracked pepper

2008-12-26T11:43:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I just wanted to post the links to a couple of good foodie blogs.

For the grilled cheese lover, there is the grilled cheese manifesto at

http://tobemrsmarv.com/2008/11/30/grilled-cheese-manifesto/

Another great foodie blog with fabulous food photos is

http://www.freshcrackedpepper.wordpress.com/.

Please let me know of any other good food blogs that I can add to this list.

My chef friend marnie just gave me a great link to a cheese website, with a Canadian cheese podcast.

www.allyouneedischeese.ca/passionates/audionewsletter/microsite )

Thanks,

Chef Alex

The Longest Day

2008-12-22T07:53:00.001-08:00

While my fellow Canadians are celebrating the shortest day of the year, I find myself living the longest day. December is always busy in our bistro. It's busy every where, but Friday seemed a little extreme. At 4 O'clock our bistro was still full of lunch customers. Our first dinner guests sat down at the bar at 4:30.

My day usually begins at 11:30 when we switch on the open sign and unlock the front door. (others on my crew start their day at 5am) But this last friday, by the time we opened we had already fed 25 ppl. We had a catered out a holiday luncheon to Concordia hospital. Salmon with grilled vegetables, chicken and mushroom fusilli, fig and prosciutto sandwiches and a tray of Christmas dainties provided by Chocolate Zen Bakery (www.chocolatezen.com).

Lunch started promptly at 11:30 and by noon the restaurant was full. We had a really great lunch special of cocoa chili fettucinni (nature's pasta) with chorizo and shrimp. This sold like crazy, we went through an entire case of noodles! In addition to the pasta we dished out a silly amount of mussels, chicken sandwiches and croque madames. By 1:15 the first of our large groups celebrating christmas parties was beginning to arrive. I quickly ran down stairs to place a wine order. Although I had received what I thought was more than enough wine the day before, we had run out of a number of labels. (I would have to do yet another order the next day.) Soon, the bistro was filled again with long tables of merry revellers. Back on the line, me and Ruben slammed out one table of 10 after another. In the background, my nighttime cooks were scurrying around like santa's elves, trying to stay out of my way, yet needing to be ready for dinner.

At 4:30, as I am sitting down for a brief pause, Clint comes down to tell me "it's started."

"are you ready?"

"no"

"so", I reply grudgingly, "I guess you need me to do these orders?" So I found myself back on the line, clean jacket and apron, ready to go all over again.

The restaurant fills up quickly. We kick it into high gear and pop out a dizzying amount of food in what felt like record time. At 8:15, everyone is fed and we are waiting to clear the back half for the Christmas party that has already started to arrive. With a momemtary pause in the barrage of orders coming in, I grab clint and ruben and my wife and we run across the street for a much deserved, and hastily quaffed, pint from Luxalune.

Then we are back into it. Appetizers and mussels for the big party, apps followed by dinners for the rest of the restaurant, salads and soups for the big party, more new tables up front, mains for the big party, a few more tables turn up front...

Clint looks at the clock, "it's 11:30". We laugh, I am geared up for one more turn, but sadly, the longest day is done.

Cocoa Chili Fettucinni with shrimp and chorizo.

1 lb cocoa chili fettucini from Natures' Farm (or any other fettucinni)

1 tbsp oil

1/2 lb peeled and deveined shrimp

2 chorizo sausages (or other hot sausage), sliced

1 onion diced

1 red pepper diced

1 clove garlic, crushed

a pinch (to taste) of dried chilies

1 cup chicken stock

1 cup heavy cream

salt and pepper to taste

1 tomato diced

1/2 cup grated sharp cheddar

1. boil pasta

2. saute onions and peppers in oil, add chorizo.

3. add shrimp, garlic and chilied and saute until shrimp is opaque.

4. add stock and bring to a boil

5. add cream, check for seasoning. Toss pasta in sauce. Toss in diced tomato.

6. serve topped with grated cheddar

Enjoy!

Christmas Cocktails

2008-12-10T20:19:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple of fun cocktails for the festive season. The first is based on a hot mulled wine we always have around christmas called glög. For those who don't like hot wine drinks, and I have discovered there are many, this is a chilled drink served in martini glass.

The second just looks like winter, all white and soft. Be very gentle with how much mint you use. It is really just there to give a wintery chill to the drink, use too much and your martini will taste like toothpaste. The trick to this drink is to really shake it vigourously, this will make it nice and frothy.

Have fun, e njoy!

Christmas Crantini

1 oz dry red wine
¾ oz vodka
¼ oz triple sec
2 oz cranberry juice
squeeze of orange

Shake with plenty of ice
garnish with an orange slice and cinnamon stick

White Christmas

1 oz Godiva white chocolate liqueur
1 oz vanilla vodka
1 oz cream
dash of crème de menthe or peppermint extract
white chocolate shavings

shake vigourously with ice. It will get nice and frothy
garnish with white chocolate

Here's another one...

remember the old song, "I'll have a blue christmas without you..."
When you sing it, do you put on your best Elvis voice, or do you always remember the porky pig version?

Blue Christmas

1 oz vanilla vodka
1/2 oz "mirtillo" blueberry liqueur
1/4 oz amaretto
1/4 oz Blue Curacao
2 oz blueberry cranberry juice

shake on ice, serve in a martini glass, garnish with frozen blueberries

I love the combination of blueberry and vanilla, and I love blueberry and amaretto. Here we have it all together!

Treasure of the Sierra Madres: Discovering Mexican Soups

2008-12-02T13:28:00.000-08:00

The "true" story behind the mexican soup article that appeared in the fall issue of Flavours.

The article, too controversial to print.

Treasure of the Sierra Madres: Discovering Mexican Soups

11:58 the wheels of our plane bounce down onto the tarmac. We are welcomed by smiling men with automatic weapons. The P.A. system and bright yellow signs warn us of lengthy and awkward searches, but the officials look bored as they stamp our passports, asking no questions. Outside of the airport we are greeted with warm ocean breezes and palm trees. We are herded on to the bus which takes us to our hotel. We are in Mexico.

0n day three we find ourselves in a remote mountain village. We had rented a jeep and were on our way to tour an old mayan city. Somewhere, we took a wrong turn. As we went higher and higher into the mountains the road got rougher and rougher. The little donkeys at the side of the road laughed at our 4X4 struggling with the bumps and ruts. Couple times we got stuck, a couple times we nearly flipped and once we nearly drove of the edge of a cliff. At the end of the road we come upon a little village. Maybe village is too big a word. It was a few ramshackle huts pieced together with slabs of broken concrete, pieces of plywood, some assorted truck parts, heavy blankets, and sheets of corrugated tin. Somewhat surprisingly, in the centre of this circle of huts, was a little stone church. A few children ran around playing some incomprehensible game, some of the scrawniest chickens you have ever seen hunted frantically for bits of grain, a tired old three legged dog lay in the sun. As we stood there, wide eyed, a woman old enough to be Pancho Villa’s mother, stepped out of one of the huts. Without a word, she invited us to come in. She sat us down on old apple crates and served us big earthenware bowls of soup. It was a black bean soup as dark as the midnight sky. It was spicy and earthy. Little pieces of smoked meat we hoped were pork enriched the soup. As we ate we discovered layers of nuanced flavours. The tang from lime and vinegar, layers of spice from diverse chilies, cumin, black pepper, garlic, and the beans themselves: silky smooth with little pops of texture, Sweet and smoky, and woodsy. At first the beans served as a foil for the sharper flavours but by the end, they had taken centre stage. Without a word, this old woman’s soup had told us we were welcome, we would be cared for as long as we were there and we would find our way home. We returned to our hotel content.

On day five we were strolling the boardwalk, ducking the smiling and aggressive sales people offering us everything from $2 necklaces to timeshare condos. We came upon a little collection of huts and beach umbrellas which seemed to function as a crude food court. Each little stand posted a hand painted menu offering an almost identical selection of food items; Tacos al pastor, grilled marlin on sticks, octopus seviche. They were cooking up this food on little grills too small and rustic to enjoy the name hibatchi. We had our fill of tacos, garnished with onions and jalpenos; and the marlin, sweet and spicy and smoky; and the corn sprinkled with chili and lime and doused in crème fraîche. And then we noticed in the back, closer to the water another little umbrella.

As we approached, we noticed that the fabric on the umbrella was torn. The man seated beneath the umbrella was probably younger than I but his weathered skin made him look twice my age. Canadian politeness made me ignore the fact that he was sitting on a cart which looked like a child’s wagon with both of his legs amputated above the knees. In front of him he had a battered old cauldron of a soup pot, precariously balanced over an open fire. He spoke one word to us, “Pozole?”. We nodded an affirmation. He ladled out big Styrofoam bowls full of blazingly hot soup. The bowls were filled with big chunks of fish, still on the bone, crab legs, mussels, and fat red prawns. The broth tasted like the sea. But in this mess of delectable sea food, the highlight was the pieces of pozole. This dried, starchy corn, made tender by long slow cooking was at once earthy yet ethereal. This lowly corn imparted not only a feeling of comfort, but a sense of a connection the generations of people who have farmed and survived of this humble grain. All the way back to the hotel, we talked about this soup. We raved about the quality and abundance of the seafood, which we prairie folk are definitely not used to, but we kept coming back to the life affirming presence of the corn.

On our second last night, our hotel hosted a “Mexican fiesta”. Alex, my tocayo, and our favourite server told us we must come. “This is when we serve the real mexican food”. Alex saved us a table up front. We ate heartily, enjoyed traditional music and dance, and drank margaritas, cervezas, more margaritas, and more tequila. The next morning, I woke up a little green around the gills. I crept down to the dining room, holding on to my head to keep it from spinning, on a quest for coffee. My tocayo was there, with his usual broad smile, “you don’t look so good!” he laughed. He sat me down at a table in the shade and told me he had just the thing. He comes back a few minutes later, not with the mug of coffee I was looking for, but with a deep clay bowl filled with a dark red soup. Floating in the soup were little pieces of grey meat and bones from an animal I didn’t recognize. I delicately swirl the soup with my spoon only to discover long ribbons of tripe. The look of the tripe, and the overwhelming aroma made my already tenuous stomach churn. “It’s menudo… This will make you feel better… trust me” I did trust him, but maybe this was just too much. Gingerly, I took wee sip off my spoon. Almost immediately I felt the transformation. The warm spices started to clear my head. And the rich flavourful broth restored energy to my body. I could feel the tips of my fingers and toes start to tingle as life returned to them. I started off slow, but by the end, I was practically licking the bowl. One bowl of this strange and wonderful soup and I was a new man. I was ready to enjoy my last day in Mexico. And I started by ordering a margarita.

For recipes, go to www.flavoursmagazine.ca search recipes for black bean soup, menudo, or seafood pozoles

What is Winnipeg Food.

2008-11-27T23:40:00.000-08:00

What is winnipeg food?

Recently I was reading the local paper and there was an article about a new cookbook, featuring a Canadian chef cooking Canadian cuisine. The article mentioned the trouble the cookbook author has always faced in offering Canadian food. Is there such a thing, the article asks? 10 years ago, I would have shared his frustration. But nowadays, there are so many chefs cooking what they would define as Canadian food. This trend started years ago with restaurants like Canoe in toronto, River Cafe in Calgary and Sooke Harbour house on Vancouver island. Many of our greatest chefs, like Jamie Kennedy, Michael Staedtlander and Rob Feenie would describe their style as Canadian. Locally we have a number of restaurants serving food they define as either Canadian or Manitoba Regional cuisine. Although defining Canadian cuisine remains as difficult as defining Canadian culture or Canadian identity, I don't believe there is anyone left who still wonders wether there is such a thing as Canadian cuisine. Although difficult to define, we know it when we taste it.

Last week, I had a group in from Toronto. They came for dinner, then returned for lunch the next day. They enjoyed their meals very much, but when they were done, they asked me where they could get some real Winnipeg food. "What do you mean by Winnipeg food", their server politely asked. "You know, perogies and goldeye." We sent them to Alycia's. This brought back a recent memory of a call I got from a writer for National Geographic Traveller. She wanted to interview me about the food scene in Winnipeg and about my bistro specifically. I agreed to the interview, but when she called me up she said, "I really only have two questions for you: Do you serve pickerel? Do you serve bison?"

Why does winnipeg food have to be so narrowly defined? We are more than just Perogies and goldeye. We are more than pickerel and bison. We are an incredibly multicultural city, with restaurants representing nations around the world. Is Winnipeg cuisine french canadian or metis? Is Winnipeg cuisine ukrainian? Is Winnipeg cuisine german, italian or icelandic? Is it Askenazi? Is it Vietnamese? Chinese? Phillipino? Is it aboriginal? Is it old? Is it new? Casual? Fine dining? The answer to all these questions is yes! Winnipeg cuisine is all these things and more. Would you ever go to Toronto and ask "Where can I go to get the real Toronto cooking?"

My wife and I own a funky little french bistro. We were born and raised in Winnipeg. Is our restaurant winnipeg cuisine? You bet your smoked goldeye it is.

Recipe:

World's Easiest Smoked Goldeye Mousse

meat from 2 smoked goldeye, be careful to remove all the bones

1 cup cream cheese (winnipeg style?)

pinch of cayenne

(variation: add 1 tbsp horseradish)

in a food processor, puree goldeye, cream cheese and cayenne until smooth.

serve with crackers and a garnish of capers, cornichons and red onion.

Firing Up Your Sweet Tooth

2008-06-04T12:17:00.000-07:00

This article appeared in Summer 2008 issue of Flavours Magazine.

The main goal of summertime cookery is to get out of the kitchen as quickly and as often as you can. From June to September, the stove should be used as little as possible and if it is used, only for extra storage space.

Apart from tossing together a few salads and slathering some marinades (bottled or otherwise) onto hunks of meat, all the cooking should happen outdoors. The barbecue, whether it is a 4-foot stainless steel Cadillac or a teeny charcoal hibachi, is your best friend under the sunshine.

So, we have all figured out how to cook the perfect steak. We have aced salmon fillets, chops and chicken breasts. A few of us have even ventured into lamb legs and butterflied whole chickens. We have our favourite rubs, marinades and sauces. We even have the sides figured out with our foil wrapped potatoes and our grilled veggies. But what about dessert?

The most obvious summer dessert is ice cream. You can even make “adult sundaes” by drizzling a little liqueur on your crème glacée. But chef, what else is there?

Well, let me tell you. First of all, look to one of your camp favourites—s’mores of course. It’s time to improve that basic with banana, more chocolate and handfuls of marshmallows all tossed into a cast-iron pan and wrapped in aluminum foil. But for something a little more elegant, look to fruit. Grilled pineapple is a personal favourite. The grilling brings out the sweetness and adds a caramelized nuttiness to the fruit. Peel and cut into thick slices, brush with a little oil and grill on both sides until you have nice charred grill marks. Another fun barbecue dessert is a fruit kebab. Cut any firm fruit into cubes then toss in a marinade of honey, ginger, mint, citrus zest and a little oil or melted butter. Skewer the cubes, alternating fruit, and then grill.

Be warned, the fruit will get soft as it cooks, so remove skewers from the grill before they are in danger of falling off. Serve the fruit with a sweetened yogurt dip or melted chocolate.

If you are feeling really adventurous, try baking your favourite cake or pie on the grill. You’ll need a barbecue big enough to sit a cake pan on one side without any direct heat underneath. Then, light the opposite side and as soon as you close the lid, you have transformed your ‘cue into a convection oven (the dry heat makes great pie crusts). For best results, use a shallow cake pan or bundt pan to ensure the cake cooks through. Also be sure to rotate your cake a quarter turn every 15 minutes to ensure even baking.

But what if you want to go even further and make fancy desserts?

To do so, we’ll need to break it down into parts. First, grill some peaches and then a piece of puff pastry. Marry the two with a sticky sweet caramel sauce and suddenly you’ve got a mock tart tatin. Or try roasting some apples and then using them in an apple wood smoked crème brulée.

So while steak might be your first thought when it comes to cooking outdoors, try grilling a dessert instead.

Apple Wood Smoked Creme Brulee

Ingredients

1 Granny Smith apple
1 wedge of lemon
2 cups (500 mL) whipping cream
1/2 vanilla bean, split (or 1 tsp pure vanilla extract)
1/2 cup (125 mL) sugar plus 4 tsp (20 mL) for caramelizing
5 large egg yolks
2 tbsp (30 mL) brown sugar
1/2 tsp (2 mL) cinnamon
1 cup (250 mL) apple wood chips

Directions

Heat one side of the barbecue, leaving the other side cool. Soak wood chips in water for 30 minutes, then drain before you start. Cut apples in half and remove the cores. Rub with lemon and place cut side down on barbecue. Grill until nicely caramelized. Flip apples over to lightly char the skin. While the apples are grilling, combine cream, vanilla and sugar in a small pot and place on grill (or side burner) and scald the cream. Remove the vanilla bean and scrape seeds into cream. In a bowl, gently whisk egg yolks, then slowly pour hot cream into eggs, mixing well. Remove apples from grill and coarsely chop. Toss apples with brown sugar and cinnamon. Spoon apple mixture equally into 4, 4 oz (125 g) ramekins and fill each one with cream mixture. Place ramekins in a 9” x 9” (23 cm x 23 cm) metal baking dish and fill 3/4 full of water.

Wrap wood chips in aluminum foil and place on hot side of barbecue. Close the lid and wait until they begin to smoke. Place pan on the cool side of the barbecue and bake for 30 to 40 minutes. They should be just set and a little jiggly in the middle. Do not over cook as they will continue to set when they cool. Remove from heat and place in the fridge to cool for at least one hour.

When ready to serve, sprinkle each one with a little sugar, and using a blowtorch, caramelize the sugar.

Serves 4

Grilled Peach Gallets

Ingredients

8 ripe peaches (or nectarines)
1 cup (250 mL) orange juice
1 cup (250 mL) golden brown sugar
1 oz (30 mL) brandy or Grand Marnier
1 tsp (5 mL) vanilla
1 package puff pastry
2 tbsp (30 mL) butter, melted

Directions

Cut peaches in half and remove the pits. Combine orange juice, sugar, brandy and vanilla. Add peaches to mixture and let marinate for a couple of hours (or overnight). Roll pastry out to 1/4” (5 mm) thickness and cut into 6” (15 cm) rounds. Dock pastry with a fork and brush both sides with butter. Clean and oil grill. Grill rounds of pastry over moderate heat. Flip when first side is golden brown and has formed a nice crust. Don’t worry if the edges burn a little, that’s all part of the flavour. Remove peaches from marinade. Pour the marinade into a small pot and place on the grill or side burner. You want to bring this to a boil and then reduce it to sticky syrup. Grill the peaches, cut side down, until caramelized and soft. Arrange peaches on pastry rounds. Smother in sticky sauce and enjoy.

Serves 4

Campfire Cast Iron Chocolate Banana Rocky Road Brownie

Ingredients

Brownie
- 1/2 cup (125 g) butter
- 8 oz (250 g) bittersweet chocolate, chopped
- 3/4 cup (175 mL) sugar
- 3 eggs
- 1 tsp (5 mL) vanilla
- 1 cup (250 mL) flour
- 1/2 tsp (2 mL) salt
Bananas
- 2 bananas
- 1/4 cup (60 mL) butter
- 1/4 cup (60 mL) brown sugar
Toppings
- 1/2 cup (125 mL) walnuts
- 1 cup (250 mL) mini marshmallows
- 1 cup (250 mL) chocolate chips

Directions

Brownie:
In a small saucepan set on a heated barbecue, combine butter, chocolate and sugar and cook until melted. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature. Add eggs, one at a time, to chocolate mixture, beating after each addition. Stir in vanilla. Add flour and salt; mix to combine.

Bananas:
Melt butter in a 9” (23 cm) cast iron pan over grill. Fry bananas until they start to brown. Add sugar and cook, stirring gently to dissolve, until sugar caramelizes. Remove pan from heat.

TO ASSEMBLE:
Drop brownie batter by spoonfuls in among the bananas. Sprinkle brownie with nuts, marshmallows and chocolate chips. Return to heat and cook over low heat with the lid closed until brownie is cooked. It should be firm, but the bananas, chocolate and marshmallows will ensure it
stays gooey.

Serves 4

Alex Has Spring Fever

2008-03-19T09:23:00.000-07:00

This article appeared in the Spring 2008 (Vol. 5, Issue 2) issue of Flavours Magazine.

The tulips are in full bloom. Fresh asparagus fills the market stalls, fiddleheads are foraged down by the river, and the babbas are bringing in pails of morels. Every cooking magazine is featuring fresh spring market produce. But most of these come from our southern neighbors, and, unfortunately, on the Canadian prairies, we are still under a thick blanket of snow. The image of spring and the frosty reality rarely connect.

Spring is a difficult time for cooks in Manitoba. Everyone is craving fresh spring flavours. By mid-March we are sick of the soups and stews, the long braised meats and the hearty casseroles of the winter months; we want fresh, light and bright. We are sick of earthy potatoes and sturdy roots; we want newly sprouted light green things.

It seems that the prairie cook is left with only two options. You can break down and buy the California produce, pretending it is really spring, or you can resist the temptation of spring produce until your farmer friend a mile down the road brings you the first bag of fresh cut asparagus from his garden. This is an issue for me, as a restaurateur, because my customers want a spring menu, but they also appreciate it when I buy local. What’s a chef to do?

Reinterpret the ideas of fresh and bright.

Think of fresh not as freshly sprouted from the ground, but freshly sprouted from your mind. Reinterpret “fresh” to mean new ideas. Try cooking something you have never done before. Never cooked Thai before? Try it. Put a new spin on a family favorite. Go to the supermarket and find ingredients you have never used. Why not try your hand at molecular gastronomy. Grab some agar and make basil caviar, turn a sauce into foam, paint your plates. Deconstruct something. Challenge yourself to prepare something you have never done before.

Find your bright flavours in fruits you will never be able to source locally. I am thinking mostly of citrus flavours and tropical fruits. Nothing awakens a tired palate like a burst of citrus zest. Try combining grapefruit with ginger or fennel; lime with cumin and chilies; lemon with mint and cardamom or orange with coriander. Mangoes, papayas, and passion fruit are all great this time of year. Pair them with some zippy chilies and fresh ginger. After the months of stodgy starches the tang of a perfectly ripe mango or the crunch of a green papaya will warm you up like a Chinook blowing in from the mountains. Bright, acidic citrus will thaw the frost on your palate the way the warm April sun melts the snow on the roof. Tropical and citrus flavours provide the zip you need without spoiling the excitement of the first crop of fresh local greens.

Don’t worry. The snow will melt, the grass will grow again. Soon asparagus, green peas, chive and tarragon, baby lettuces, spinach and those crunchy radishes will return. These things are worth the wait. You will appreciate the really good stuff more if you just hang in there.

Baked Halibut with Fennel and Grapefruit

4, 6 oz halibut fillets
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp fennel seed, toasted and lightly crushed
Pinch of chiles
1 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp olive oil, divided
1 fennel bulb, stems removed and thickly sliced
1 red grapefruit, peeled and cut into segments
1 tsp grated ginger
1 tbsp chopped mint
1 tbsp lemon juice

Preheat oven to 450 F.
Combine paprika, salt, fennel seed, chiles and brown sugar; mix well.
Brush halibut with 1 tbsp of oil and dust with spice mixture.
Combine fennel with grapefruit, ginger, mint, lemon juice and remaining olive oil (if grapefruit is particularly tart, add a little white sugar or honey).
Top each piece of halibut with the fennel-grapefruit mixture and bake in oven for about 10 minutes, or until fish flakes easily with a fork.

Serves 4.

Mango Chicken Skewers with Green Papaya Slaw

4 boneless chicken breasts, cut into bite-size cubes
1 mango, peeled, seeded and cut into cubes
1 red onion, cut into large pieces

Marinade:
Juice and zest of one lime
1/4 cup coconut milk
1 tbsp grated ginger
1 clove minced garlic
1 tsp curry powder
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

Combine marinade ingredients in a bowl and mix well.
Add chicken to marinade, cover and refrigerate for a few hours or overnight.
Skewer chicken, alternating with mango and red onion.
Grill or roast in 450 F oven until chicken is cooked.
Serve with Green Papaya Slaw.

Green Papaya Slaw:
1 green papaya (save seeds to decorate the plate)
1 English cucumber
1 Serrano chile, cut into short, paper-thin strips
1/4 cup coarsely chopped cilantro
Juice and zest of one lime
1/4 cup coconut milk

Peel papaya and remove seeds.
Grate papaya and cucumber on the largest blade of your box grater, or on the julienne blade of your mandolin.
Combine with chiles, cilantro, lime and coconut milk.

Serves 4.

Gingerbread Cheesecake with Dried Fruit Compote

2007-11-27T12:38:00.000-08:00

A fun twist on classic holiday flavours...

Crust:
1-1 lb pkg ginger snap cookies (approx 30 cookies)
¼ cup butter

Crush cookies in food processor.
Melt butter, mix into cookie crumbs
Line 10 inch spring form with parchment, leave a 2 inch collar above the sides of the pan (you will need this height)
Press gingersnap crumbs into bottom of pan. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes. cool.

Cheesecake
1 ½ kg cream cheese
8 eggs
2 cups sour cream
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp powdered ginger
½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp cloves
Pinch of nutmeg
1 tsp vanilla

Whip cream cheese in mixer until smooth
Add eggs, two at a time, and whip until combined
Add sour cream, brown sugar, spices and vanilla. whip until well combined
Pour filling into prepared pan. Bake at 325 F for 1 hour or until cheesecake is firm but still jiggly. cool to room temperature on the counter, then chill.

Dried Fruit Compote
2 cups mixed dried fruit (apricots, raisins, prunes, cranberries, cherries etc.)
1 cup sugar
½ cup water
Zest and juice from one orange
1 tbs grated or slivered fresh ginger
1 oz Grand Marnier or rum

Bring water and sugar to a rapid boil.
Add dried fruit, orange and ginger. Simmer until liquid is absorbed and fruit is soft.
Add Grand Marnier or rum.

Le Grande Fromage

2007-09-01T09:04:00.000-07:00

This article appeared in Volume 4-Issue 4 of Flavours magazine.

A piece of brie, with its powdery white coat and creamy interior, begins to droop on the cutting board. It’s accompanied by a shard of dark orange mimolette, a crumbling chunk of blue St. Agur, and a snow white slice of chevre. A wedge of rebluchon gives off an aroma that is at once inviting and intimidating. A few pieces of ripe fruit, cleansing the palette, and some fresh baguette and rustic crackers complete the scene. This, gentle readers, is heaven.

As a chef, one of the highlights of my week is cheese shopping. At my restaurant, we feature a cheese board on our menu. I like to offer at least twelve different cheeses, and, having customers who come regularly for this item, I must continually update my offerings.

I pick one of my favorite gourmet grocers. I march up to the cheese counter, and the unlucky attendant sees me coming. He knows he will miss his coffee break; I plan to monopolize his attention for a while. I scan the counter for anything new or something I haven’t tried. If I am curious, he will offer me a taste. I try to cover a variety of nations: France, Italy, Spain, Netherland, etc. And, of course, I always make sure to have a vigorous representation of Canadian cheeses. When I buy, I buy big. “I’ll take that piece,” I say, pointing to a healthy wedge of St. Andre. The cheese purveyor holds up the chunk of fromage, and with his knife indicating a sliver, he asks, “This much, sir?”
“No, the whole piece, thank you.” Some attendants are quite familiar with me; they don’t even ask anymore.

This spring I took a trip to Montreal. I was vacationing, but also meant to buy cheese. We went to the Fromagerie Atwater and established certain criteria: we wanted raw milk cheeses which we haven’t seen before or can’t get in Manitoba. Twenty cheeses later we stopped but could have easily doubled this amount. The cheeses we chose ranged from aged raw milk cheddars to fuzzy, warm, butter-soft sheep’s milk cheeses. We loaded up our suitcase and carried this aromatic baggage back to Winnipeg.

Cheese is truly one of the greatest culinary achievements of all time. For variety and versatility, it is unbeatable. We enjoy cheese for appetizers, cooked in our main dishes, garnishing our salads, and it is even used in desserts. We enjoy it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and it is the best snack food going.

Cheese is remarkable for its humble beginnings. Originally, it was a method of storing excess milk before refrigeration. In hot climates, it was discovered that milk could be preserved by curdling it with acid, such as vinegar or lemon juice, and preserving it with salt. The discovery of rennet, probably by accident, provided a more efficient and versatile curdling process. The earliest cheeses, seen in Egyptian drawings as far back as 2000 BC, would have been much like today’s feta. Cheese makers in cooler climates found that they could use smaller amounts of salt and acid and allow cheeses to age. Aging creates complex flavours, interesting textures, and vivid aromas. Cheese makers started experimenting with different varieties of molds and bacterium to further alter the quality of their cheese. How long and how hard a cheese was pressed determined its softness. Some would have their rinds washed, often with beer or wine, others would have rinds inoculated with mold (such as brie and camembert), and would be wrapped in a wax rind. I cook with a wonderful blue cheese, hailing from Spain, which is wrapped in grape leaves.

The French farmhouse tradition of cheese making started early and remains strong today.Modernization and mechanization in the 20^th century, which developed mass production techniques for cheese, threatened the farmhouse tradition. In North America, a majority of cheeses are mass produced from pasteurized milk. In fact, in the U.S, processed cheese exceeds the sales of “real” cheese. Luckily, the true cheese lovers appreciate the individuality of artisan cheese. Like a fine wine, it has a real sense of terroir.

Behind every cheese there is a pasture of a different green under a different sky behind meadows encrusted with salt that the tides of Normandy deposit every evening; meadows perfumed with aromas in the windy sunlight of Provence; there are different herds, with their shelters and their movements across the countryside; there are secret methods handed down over the centuries.

- Italo Calvino, Palomar, 1983

The technique and artistry of the cheese maker will also be tasted. Recently, in response to a demand created by increasingly sophisticated consumers, there has been a resurgence of farmhouse cheeses. In post war Europe, the number of cheese makers rapidly declined as they were replaced by cheese factories. However, in the last 10 years, the number of small producers is beginning to rise. In North America, the farmhouse tradition, although young, is definitely developing. Quebec is seeing an explosion of cheese makers, many of which are winning international awards. A Quebec cheese, Le-Pied-du-Vent, recently won the dubious distinction of the world’s stinkiest cheese.

"Comment voulez-vous gouverner un pays qui a deux cent quarante-six variétés de fromage?"

-Charles De Gaulle

With the increasing variety of cheeses, how do you choose what will appear on your cheese board? Gone are the days when a few cubes of marble cheese, a mini wheel of canned Danish camembert, and few Baby Bels would make a sufficient cheese display. I like to look for variety. Cow, goat and sheep’s milk cheeses each have their own unique character. Select some that are soft and some that are some hard. Choose a variety of styles and nationalities. I make sure to include good blue cheese, whether its Roquefort, Bleu Benedictin or Gorgonzola, a mild cheese like a gouda, and a creamy cheese like boursin. You also need a stinky cheese, such as a reblochon, trappiste or my new favorite: the ultra runny Epoisse Perrier. Add a hard cheese: an Italian pecorino, a Spanish Manchego or English farm house cheddar. Don’t forget a goat cheese. Sometimes I will add what I call a “fun cheese”: one of the many varieties of fruit filled white stiltons or wensleydales. My personal favorite is the mango ginger stilton. You always need a brie or camembert: try some of the great triple cream bries like the St. Andre.An effective way to focus your cheese board is to select a theme, and then search for variety within that theme. Themes can be based on nation or even region: French, North Italian, or Quebec for example. They can be based on the type of cheeses, such as raw milk cheeses, sheep cheeses, cheddars, or blue cheeses. It would be fun to do a cheese board that starts with mild creamy blue cheeses, like Blue Bresse, and then moves to hard sharp blues, like St. Agur, Stilton or Queso Valedon. You would want to include Cashel Irish blue, Cambozola, and Buche de Neiges Bleu. There is a great organic blue goat gouda, and, if you can get your hand on it, there is a blue cheese from New Brunswick made by “That Dutchman!”, which is inoculated with blue mold spores and then wrapped in black wax. It looks like a white gouda but tastes like a well aged blue cheese. You can put out twenty great cheeses, but sometimes a simple plate, made up of one or two really special cheeses and a few pieces of fruit, is all you really need. When tasting cheese on a cheese board, it is usually best to start with the mildest cheese and work your way up to the stinkies and blues.

Fresh fruit on a cheese board is a classic pairing. The principle purpose of the fruit is to cleanse the palette between bites. Fruit can also be used to create spectacular taste contrasts and compliments. The tartness of fresh raspberries will cut through the creamiest of bries, while a thin slice of pear will simultaneously enhance and mellow the stinkiest stilton. Try using dried fruit as well: golden raisins with a French chaumes, figs or dates with goat cheeses, and apricots with morbier or any cheese with ash. Nuts also enhance a cheese board: walnuts with blue cheeses, almonds with Swiss cheeses, and hazelnuts with anything. Add pizazz by serving your cheeses with fruit compotes, preserves or chutneys. Always serve cheese with thinly slice breads or crackers.

A fun way to serve a cheese course is to do what is called a composed cheese course. You pick one cheese and one complimenting fruit and present it in an unusual fashion. I have included three recipes for composed cheese courses. Have fun, play around, enjoy!

Walnut & Roquefort Ice Cream with Honey Roasted Pears

Walnut & Roquefort Ice Cream:
2 cups milk
1 cup whipping cream
6 egg yolks
1 cup golden brown sugar
1 oz Cognac
1/2 cup walnut pieces, toasted, plus extra for garnish
1/2 cup Roquefort (or other blue cheese), crumbled

Combine milk and cream in a sauce pot set over medium high heat and scald.
Whisk together yolks, brown sugar and Cognac.
Pour hot milk into eggs while whisking.
Return to pan and gradually heat, stirring constantly, until mixture forms light custard (it should coat a spoon).
Chill mixture until cold.
Poor into an ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer's directions. If you do not have an ice cream maker, put into a 9" x 13" pan and freeze. Remove from freezer every hour and beat until smooth.
When ice cream is mostly frozen but still soft, fold in Roquefort and walnuts.
Freeze until firm.

Pears:
1 tbsp butter
1/4 cup honey
3 pears, peeled, cored and quartered

Preheat oven to 400 F.
Melt butter and stir in honey.
Toss pears in honey mixture and place them on a cookie sheet, making sure they are not touching.
Roast in oven for 45 minutes - they should be taking on a rich golden color with a mahogany brown around the edges.
Cool to room temperature.

TO ASSEMBLE:
Serve 2 wedges of pear to each guest with a quenelle or scoop of the Roquefort ice cream.

SERVES 6

Pistachio Crusted Chevre with Blackberry Port Compote

Pistachio Crusted Chevre
1, 3" log of soft chevre
1 cup fresh pistachios

Gently toast pistachios in a skillet set over medium-low heat.
Chop (or food process) to make coarse crumbs. Spread crumbs onto a plate.
Slice log of chevre with a thin-bladed knife or a cheese wire. If it crumbles, don't worry - just squish it back together with your hands.
Press the slices of cheese into the pistachio crumbs to cover both sides.
Chill until cold.

Blackberry Port Compote
1 cup port
1 cup fresh blackberries
Pinch of sea salt or other exotic salt

Bring port to a boil and reduce by half.
Add blackberries to port and toss to coat.
Cool to room temperature.

TO ASSEMBLE:
Place on slice of cheese on each plate. Top with a blackberry. Drizzle with Blackperry Port Compote.

SERVES 6

Dried Apple Mimolette & Brie Napoleans with Calvados Syrup

Calvados Syrup
1/2 cup Calvados
1/2 cup sugar
1 cinnamon stick

Bring Calvados to a boil (taking care around an open flame as the alcohol could ignite).
Reduce by half.
Remove from heat and stir in sugar.
Add cinnamon stick.
Return to a boil and cook until syrup coats the back of a spoon.
Cool to room temperature (if syrup becomes too thick, mix in a few drops of boiling water)

Dried Apple Mimolette
3 apples
1 cup ice water
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice

Preheat oven to 170 F.
Combine water, sugar and lemon, mixing well.
Slice apples as thin as you can (use a mandolin or meat slicer) crossways. Don't worry about the cores - the slices are thin enough that you won't notice them.
Place apples in lemon juice solution.
Arrange apples on a cookie sheet lined with parchment.
Bake in oven for 4 hours or until dry.

Brie Napoleans
1 baguette
1/4 lb creamy Brie
1/4 lb Mimolette

Thinly slice baguette.
Slice Brie into 12 slices.
Shave Mimolette (a veggie peeler works well for this).

TO ASSEMBLE:
In this order: prepare stacks of baguette, Brie, Mimolette, apple, baguette, Brie, Mimolette, and finally apple. Right before serving, drizzle stacks with warm Calvados syrup.

SERVES 6

Fried Green Tomatoes

2007-06-21T11:49:00.000-07:00

This recipe appeared in the June/July 2007 issues of Flavours magazine.

My father-in-law introduced me to Fried Green Tomatoes (for what it’s worth, he also introduced me to Lonnie Donegan, Popeye’s chicken, and Jack Daniels). Marcel, who is now chef for the Oblate Sisters, would pan fry thick slices of green tomato with onions and banana peppers, and serve them over toast. This is still a perennial summer treat for me; sometimes I add a fried egg or grilled Italian sausage.

Green tomatoes are hard and sour when raw but become tender and develop a delicious sweetness when cooked. They have an almost tropical fruit quality in their tangy, sweet-and-sour flavour. This is probably why every old prairie cookbook will have a recipe for green tomato chutney along side its recipe for pickled watermelon rind.

Chefs, cookbook writers and gardeners wax poetic on the joys of a beautiful, ripe red tomato fresh out of the garden. A fresh garden tomato’s colour, fragrance, and powerful burst of flavour all conspire to give you a culinary moment which is near perfection. “There are only two things that money can’t buy,” as Guy Clark sang, “and that’s true love and home-grown tomatoes.” Little red and orange cherries, bright yellow pears or teeny tiny grape tomatoes are like sweet little candies right out of the garden. Crisp, bright early girl tomatoes on toast with mayo and a leaf of basil make a simply faultless lunch. Thick slices of dark red beefsteak or ox blood tomatoes sit proudly next to a perfectly grilled steak. An attractive summer salad would include a variety of heirloom tomatoes: from green zebras to purple brandywines, tossed in a light vinaigrette, and complimented by some edible flowers such as spicy nasturtiums, lemony begonias and cucumber scented borage blossoms. The anticipation of summer tomatoes is what keeps prairie people alive through the cold winter months. Garden tomatoes are the light at the end of the tunnel, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the beacon of hope which keeps us going when the world around is cold and bleak. No one but a prairie person experiences the pure joy of that first tomato, fresh and juicy, picked from the garden vine.

If beautifully ripe tomatoes are so good, why in the world would you pick them under-ripe? Firstly, tomatoes can fall off the vine before they are ripe (usually the kids knock them off while sword fighting in the garden). Sometimes you want to pick your tomatoes unripe because the weatherman is predicting a frost. You might also want to pick the small and misshapen tomatoes to encourage the other tomatoes to grow bigger and redder. People who enter vegetable growing competitions are continually trimming the smaller fruit in order to give more energy to the remaining fruit. This is how they grow zucchini’s to the size of Volkswagens. The best reason to pick green tomatoes: they’re fun and they taste great.

Green tomatoes are delicious simply fried in olive oil or butter. You can lightly bread them with flour, bread crumbs or corn meal. You can dice them and use them in chutney - just substitute them for the peaches, apricots, mangoes or whatever your favorite chutney recipe calls for. You can cut them in half, oil them and BBQ them. They make an interesting and delicious pie. You can dice them into salsas and gazpachos, or use them in place of tomatillo in southwestern recipes. You can peel, seed and puree them, spice them up with lime, green Tabasco and Worcestershire, and then spike the mixture with vodka for a zesty green Caesar. Summer is here, have some fun and treat your self to some fried green tomatoes!

Green Tomato Pie

Pastry:
1 ½ cups all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
¼ lb lard
¼ lb butter
½ tsp nutmeg
½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp nutmeg
¼ cup orange juice
ice water

1. Put flour, salt, sugar, spices, lard and butter in food processor. Pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal.
2. With processor running, drizzle in orange juice and enough ice water to form a dough.
3. Wrap dough and chill.

Filling:
12 medium size green tomatoes
2 cups golden raisins
Rind and juice from 1 lemon
2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup cornstarch
¼ tsp salt
½ tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup grated ginger
¼ cup butter, cut into small pieces

1. Preheat oven to 450F
2. Roll out half of pie crust in pie plate. chill
3. Toss tomatoes, lemon and raisins together
4. Combine dry ingredients.
5. Toss dry ingredients with tomatoes. arrange in chilled pie shell. top with dots of butter
6. Top pie shell with remaining pastry, crimp edges. (if feeling fancy, do a lattice crust)
7. Place pie in hot oven, reduce heat to 350. Bake for 45-60 minutes or until crust is golden brown.
8. Cool to room temperature before serving.

*Try serving this with a healthy scoop of rum raisin ice cream!

Green Tomato Napolean with Crab and Arugula
serves 4

16 thick slices of green tomato

3 eggs
¼ cup buttermilk

½ tsp paprika
½ tsp salt
½ tsp black pepper
1 cup flour

½ cup cornmeal
1 cup bread crumbs
1 tbsp chili powder

¼ cup canola oil
1 lb crab meat
2 cups cream
1 red pepper, diced
1 small onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 pinch chilies
1 tbsp chopped fresh dill
¼ cup dry white wine
s+p to taste

1 lb arugula leaves
½ cup sour cream
chopped chives or green onion

1. Whisk eggs and butter milk together. combine flour, salt, pepper and paprika. combine bread crumbs, corn meal and chili powder.
2. Bread tomato slices by dredging first in flour, then in buttermilk/egg mixture, then in bread crumb mixture.
3. Fry tomato slices in canola oil, work in batches. Place cooked slices on paper towel on cookie sheets. keep warm (you can do this ahead and reheat)
4. Saute peppers, onions and garlic. Add chilies and herbs. Add white wine and reduce. Add cream and reduce by half.
5. Add crab to heat through.
6. Layer napoleon with 1 slice tomato, a spoonful of crab, a few leaves of arugula. Start and finish with tomato slice.
7. Garnish each stack with a dollop of sour cream and chopped chives

Berkshire Pork Recipe

2007-04-12T08:15:00.000-07:00

This recipe ran in the Winnipeg Free Press' Arts & Life section on March 28th, 2007.
Click here to view the whole story.

36 hour (or so) pork shoulder

1 pork shoulder (bone in, skin on)
¼ cup white vinegar
½ cup chili powder
¼ cup ground mustard
¼ cup smoked paprika
¼ cup minced garlic
¼ cup brown sugar
1 tbsp canola oil

Combine spices, garlic sugar and oil to make a paste.
Massage vinegar into pork shoulder.
Smear pork with spice paste to liberally cover. Let sit overnight (12 hours)
Oven Method: place lasagna pan full of water on bottom rack of oven. Place pork on rack just above water bath. Set oven to 250F. Roast for 4 hours. Reduce temperature to 200F and let roast for 20 more hours.
Slow Cooker method: Place roast in slow cooker. Set at high for 4 hours then reduce to low for 20 hours.
To Serve: While still warm, remove skin from shoulder. Pull the meat away from bone and pull meat into shreds. Toss with BBQ sauce. Serve as is, on a biscuit or a bun.

Fort Garry Ale BBQ sauce

1 tbsp canola oil
4 large onions, julienned
1 tbsp minced garlic
¼ cup chili powder
1 tsp chili flakes
½ cup brown sugar
½ cup soy sauce
1 Fort Garry Dark Ale
2 cups ketchup

Sauté onions over high heat until starting to brown. reduce heat and continue to sautee until dark brown. Stir often, don’t let them burn.
Add garlic, spices, sugar soy sauce and beer. Bring to a boil then simmer until half the liquid is gone.
Add ketchup and simmer for 20 minutes.

Egg-cetera, Egg-cetera

2007-04-07T09:39:00.000-07:00

Published in Flavours Magazine, Spring 2007

Take an egg.
Spin it.
If it wobbles, it is raw.
If it spins like a top, it is hard boiled.

Long before well dressed rabbits started hiding eggs on Easter morning, the egg has been a symbol of spring. With images of fertility and the magic of new life, it is a fitting image for this time of year.

Eggs really are quite magical. An egg can thicken liquids, making custards, sauces and soups. An egg and expand in volume manifold times to build sponges, meringues and soufflés. An egg can emulsify oils to make liquids into thick rich spreads and sauces. It can clarify stocks and consommés. An egg can bind solids for burgers, pates, casseroles. Mix it with cream cheese and sugar, you have cheesecake. Mix it with flour, you have pasta. An egg can be cooked hard or served soft. You can fry it, bake it, poach it, boil it or serve it raw. Ever deep fry an egg? Believe me it’s cool.

The egg is an essential ingredient in almost every chef’s pantry. The 101 pleats on a chef’s hat are symbolic of all the ways a chef should be able to cook an egg. By the late eighteenth century the French had recorded 635 ways to cook eggs. Eggs are used in both savoury and sweet dishes. Eggs are enjoyed on their own, but are often essential ingredients in the preparation of other dishes. Cakes benefit from their ability to hold air, mayonnaises and hollandaise rely on the emulsifying properties of their lecithin, and consommés depend on their skill at clarifying liquids. Even many old style cocktails are made with an egg in the mix.

I personally think an egg can make almost anything better. It is not by accident that Bobby Flay poaches or fries and egg on every Iron Chef America competition he is on. Rest a poached egg on your chicken livers, your hamburger or steak, a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, even a salad. If you are making a pizza, crack an egg into the centre of it before you bake it. For a really great club house, sandwich a fried egg between the layers. Use egg yolks to enrich your white sauces. To take French toast to a new level, mix the yolk with milk to dip your bread, then whip the whites into a meringue. Top your fried French toast with meringue and finish under the broiler. If a recipe is good, adding an egg will make it egg-cellent!

Try this, make a simple linguine dish with some smoked salmon, green onions and maybe some green peas or tomatoes. Poach an egg and put it on top. Or this, heat up some salsa in a frying pan. Maybe add a little ham or spicy sausage. Crack a couple of eggs in the pan and cook. Add a little grated cheese. Wrap in a tortilla, quick and easy huevos rancheros. Bring a pot of consommé (home made or store bought) to a boil, and serve into warmed bowl. Crack an egg into each bowl and cover with a plate. Wait 3 minutes for the egg to poach. shave a little parmesan cheese, or other sharp cheese, and crack some black pepper on top. For variations on mayonnaise, try making a remoulade sauce or a sauce gribiche with hard boiled egg. There are dozens of things you can try.

Helpful hint for peeling hard boiled eggs? Add a lot of salt to the water when boiling the egg. It won’t effect the taste, but will make the shell come off much easier and cleaner.

When buying eggs, you really should try to buy good quality eggs. Ideally, you have a few hens in your back yard. If not, make friends with a farmer. When buying store bought eggs, look for free-run, organic or omega-3 eggs. I personally like the Vita or “Nature’s Farm” eggs. A good egg doesn’t cost that much more, but you will find they will have a better colour and more flavour. A good egg will even whip up to greater volume. “What’s the difference between a brown egg and a white egg?” people often ask. “the colour.” So always use the best and freshest eggs you can find.

When it comes down to it, you really can’t beat an egg. Just talking about it, whips me up into a frenzy. All yolks aside, I could fill a photo albumen with egg dishes I have created. And that’s no egg-zageration. So get cracking, shell out some coin, buy a dozen and enjoy. I am sure you will be egg-static. Come on, don’t be chicken, try something new. It will be like a feather in your cap. Is my punning making your brain feel a little scrambled? You know, you are right. Un oeufs un oeuf. So I will stop this silliness and leave you with some recipes.

Pink Lady

1 ½ oz gin
½ oz apple jack or apple Bacardi
¾ oz lemon juice
¼ oz grenadine
1 egg white

Shake with ice and strain into a martini glass
Garnish with a maraschino cherry

Duck Egg custard with Morels in a rice noodle nest

4 duck eggs (can substitute large chicken eggs, but why?)
1 cup heavy cream
¼ lb chopped morels (fresh, or rehydrated dried)
¼ cup white wine (sauv blanc)
1 tbsp butter
1 clove garlic, minced
salt and pepper to taste

¼ pkg rice vermicelli
¼ cup canola oil

Using a knife, crack off top of each duck egg, keeping shells intact.
Pour egg into bowl. Carefully remove yolks from egg and put in separate bowl. Whisk yolks lightly. (use whites for another recipe)
Sauté morels and garlic in butter in small sauce pan. Add white wine and reduce. Add cream and heat until just scalding.
Whisk hot cream into egg yolk, a little at a time.
Using little cookie cutters, small bowls or ramekins stand egg shells up in a casserole dish. Pour egg mixture into egg. Fill casserole dish, ½ way up the eggs with water.
Bake eggs in a 350F oven for 30-40 minutes (custard will be firm but still jiggle a little)
For nests, soak rice noodles in water to soften. Arrange noodles in small nest shapes. let air dry. Heat oil in heavy skillet until just smoking. drop rice noodles in oil. They will poof up very quickly. remove from oil and let drain on paper towel

Presentation: Place a nest on each plate. If you are feeling fancy, use a bay leaf branch to make the nest look like it is in a tree. Place duck egg in noodle nest. Serve. (If you feel really fancy, shave a little black truffle on top, or top with caviar.)

Asparagus Salad with “béarnaise poached” egg
This takes the traditional béarnaise sauce ingredients and re-configures them to create a yummy topping for a spring asparagus salad.

Salad:
1 bunch asparagus, trimmed and cut into 2 inch pieces
1 head butter lettuce
1 bunch chives, cut into 2 inch pieces
¼ lb manchego (or other firm, medium sharp cheese) cheese cut into 2 inch matchsticks

Vinaigrette:
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp dijon mustard
1 tsp sugar
½ tsp paprika
3 tbsps olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

In boiling salted water, blanch asparagus. Chill in ice water.
Whisk together vinaigrette ingredients.
Toss asparagus, chives and cheese together with vinaigrette.
Arrange butter lettuce leaves on plate. top with asparagus mixture.

“Béarnaise Poached” Eggs:
¼ cup red wine vinegar
¼ cup dry white wine
¼ cup minced shallot
¼ cup chopped fresh tarragon
¼ tsp pepper
¼ tsp salt
2 cups water
4 eggs

Combine vinegar, wine, shallots and seasonings in small saucepan. Bring to a boil and reduce by half.
Add water and return to a boil. Carefully drop eggs into boiling liquid and poach until whites are firm but yolk are still soft.
Remove eggs from liquid and place on top of asparagus salad. drizzle a little liquid on top of salad.

Baked Egg with Ham, gruyere and spinach
6 eggs
6 thin slices of whole wheat bread, crusts removed
¼ cup Dijon mustard
6 slices good quality ham
6 slices gruyere cheese
1 lb spinach
salt and pepper

Grease a 6 cup muffin container
Spread slices of bread with mustard. line each cup with one slice of bread, mustard side up.
Line each piece of bread with one slice of ham
Wilt spinach (in frying pan or microwave) and squeeze out excess liquid. place a spoonful of spinach on top of ham.
Crack and egg, and place on top of spinach.
Place slice of gruyere on top of egg.
Bake in a 450F oven for 15 minutes. Egg white should be firm, but yolk still soft.
Garnish with a dollop of mayonnaise and fresh chopped parsley.