on the meaning of names

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

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

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

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

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

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

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