I’m still here!

Last weekend I was in eastern Ontario doing a bit of stargazing with friends. This weekend I’m the Master of Ceremonies at the Bloody Words Mystery Conference here in Toronto. In between I have my graphic design work, so really, I’m swamped.

That doesn’t mean that I’m not thinking about food and this blog. There are a couple of exciting developments that I want to tell you about.

First, we will soon have a resident wine expert. I mean what goes better with food than good wine? I can’t tell you more about it at the moment because I want to build up the suspense (I am a crime writer after all), but I will say that this person is an exceptionally experienced wine journalist, and I’m really excited about what he’s going to bring to the table, so to speak.

Second, we will soon have a video component to AMFAS. Some footage has already shot at the St. Lawrence Farmers’ Market, and there are plans to bring you all into the fabled Blechta Test Kitchens here in Toronto. More on this very soon – since the videographer is currently on his honeymoon!

A third thing: Several weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about my disgust with a Tropicana product I’d bought. I’m sure I had nothing to do with it, but there are now several lawsuits being brought against Tropicana in the US about just what I was bringing to light. You can read about it HERE.

Lastly, I don’t want to leave you without even a tiny recipe. It’s one of our favorite things to enjoy in late spring, and early and late summer when radishes are at their best. We saw a reference to it originally in a Time Life cookbook on Provincial French cuisine many years ago. When we were in Paris in fall 2008 for some book research, we browsed a street market, spotted a beautiful, fresh bunch of French Breakfast radishes (those long ones with the white tips). Since there was also a boulangerie right around the corner and another vendor was selling homemade sweet butter, we grabbed what we needed and went back to the apartment we were renting. It turned out to be a simple, yet sublime culinary moment (we’d also bought a chilled bottle of Chablis for the princely sum of 3.5 euros). Trust me on this.

Open-face Radish Sandwiches
Serves as many as you want

INGREDIENTS
1 bunch of French Breakfast radishes (only these will do – honestly)
Sweet butter (the cultured European version if you can get it)
The best and freshest baguette you can find

METHOD
1. Slice the baguette. The slices should be at least 3/4 inch thick.
2. Generously butter the baguette slices. The butter should be cool but still reasonably spreadable.
3. Slice the radishes – which should be room temperature – lengthwise in half and put them on the buttered baguette slices.

Serve this with a dry white wine. You will be in heaven.

Food doesn’t get simpler or better than this. The combination of the crunchy, moderately spicy flavor of the radishes with the cool butter and a perfect baguette is unforgettable. I know it sounds weird to most folks, but it really does work – almost as well as doughnuts and bacon. (I’ll blog about this culinary marvel sometime in the future).

That’s why you’ll now always see French Breakfast radishes in our garden. Every spring, as soon as it gets barely warm enough, I’ll be out there planting these little beauties.

An Autumn Dessert in Spring?

We have one grower at the St. Lawrence North Market from whom we buy all our apples and pears. Last year, Clement Orchards seems to have had a bumper crop of fantastic Cortland apples, most of which they kept in cold storage. We’ve been eating about a quart a week for the past few months because you can seldom get really good apples at this time of year. These have been perfect: still crisp, flavorful and tangy. Most evenings, we cut up a couple for our dessert.

Last evening, we had some good friends in town, Paul Musselman and Violette Malan (you should read her novels!), who came to town to pick up some San Marzano tomatoes I started for them. They both understand what eating real food is all about, so we made our paella outside the traditional way (Violette is of Spanish extraction and they have a wonderful Paella Party every November). I will share this amazing, but rather tricky to cook recipe someday soon.

The thing that stumped us was what to make for dessert. Evenings still can be cold here in Toronto (it wasn’t last night, though, as it turned out), and those good apples stuck in my mind. We have a fantastic recipe for a French-based rustic apple tart that is superb, but a good deal of its preparation is last-minute and with the paella to concentrate on (it takes a lot of tending when cooked outside), I knew the tart just wouldn’t be the dessert to make (next time, Violette and Paul!). Then I thought of our apple crisp.

It was a huge favorite in the early years of our family. Even though our kids have long since flown the coop, we still make this a fair bit in the fall and winter when the local apples are at their best, but I don’t think we’ve ever made it in spring. Anyway, it was perfect for the situation: you can prepare the whole thing hours in advance and just throw it into the oven as soon as you sit down for dinner. We had great apples, so I thought, Why not?

Here’s the recipe. It’s pretty easy, with only the peeling and slicing of the apples being a bit tedious. The results are wonderful, especially served with ice cream or whipped cream. If you can’t find really good apples now, just put this recipe aside until the fall when stores should be flooded with great fruit.

A word on apples: You want to make this using a good crisp apple with lots of flavor. As mentioned, Cortlands are terrific. Northern Spies are also a favorite around here (you may need to add a bit more sugar of honey, though) as are Winesaps. My favorite is Russets which are good for only a few weeks in late September/October. They’re hard to find, but worth it with a very surprising sort of non-applelike flavor. Make sure you get real russets and not golden russets – which are a clone of golden delicious and russets. They’re just not as good.

Apple Crisp
Serves 8-10

INGREDIENTS
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup rolled oats
¾ cup dark brown sugar
½ cup walnut pieces
½ tsp salt
½ tsp baking soda
½ cup sweet butter
8 cups apples
¼ cup sugar (or 3 Tbs honey)
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp allspice
½ tsp cloves
a generous grating of fresh nutmeg
1 tsp lemon juice

METHOD
1. Preheat oven to 350°. Butter a 9"x12" baking dish.

2. Peel, core and slice the apples. As you work, place them in a bowl of water with a good squeeze of lemon juice or apple cider vinegar to keep them from discoloring.

3. Toast walnut pieces on a baking sheet placed in the oven until nicely browned and fragrant. It usually takes 10-12 minutes.

4. In a large bowl, put in the flour, oats, sugar, salt and baking soda. First using a pastry blender and then your fingers, work the butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture is uniform and well-blended.

5. In another bowl, mix together apples, sugar or honey, spices and lemon juice.

6. Place apple mixture in bottom of baking dish, sprinkle over the walnuts, then cover with the oats mixture.

7. Bake for 50 minutes or until top is nicely browned and the apples soft and bubbling. Serve it while still warm. A scoop of good vanilla ice cream is just perfect on top.

It’s time for fiddleheads

One of our favorite spring delicacies comes in late April or early May up here north of the forty-ninth. Yes, they appear in your market (if you shop at the right ones) and you could grow them on your property (they’re perennial, too), but there’s something special about going out into the forest to a spot that only you know and fill up a plastic bag or two. They do keep for awhile, but they’re at their best when freshest, so don’t take more than you will eat in a week or so.

I’m of course speaking of fiddleheads, the not-yet-unrolled fronds of ferns, and it’s a vegetable that is not as well known as its more traditional relative, asparagus, which is too bad. I think they’re far more tasty. I’ll let all of you who don’t know guess why these treats are called fiddleheads.

We hadn’t heard of them before we moved to Canada. A bushel basket appeared at the food co-op we belonged to in Montreal, and I had no idea what they were. A few questions later, I left with a paper bags holding enough for four servings. At least I thought they were enough. Once we’d cooked them up and served them, I realized we should have bought twice as many.

I will say right off the bat that they can have a rather strong taste as far as some feel, but my guess is that the ones eaten that tasted strong were older. Eaten the day they’ve been picked, they taste and smell of the forest, sort of reminiscent of asparagus, but better. With a touch of butter, salt and pepper, they can be quite a magical addition to a meal.

So, off into the forest: what do you look for? Well, we scoped out our secret patch later in a summer when the fronds were fully grown. What you’re looking for are ostrich ferns. They have a rounded top to the fronds – as opposed to bracken, which has a pointy top. I have heard that you can eat bracken fiddleheads, but I’ve also heard that they might have something in them that won’t agree with people – especially if you consume a lot or they’re undercooked. Other species of fern that are edible as fiddleheads are Cinnamon (or buckhorn) fern, and royal fern. There are other strains that are picked as fiddleheads but these are the most common in eastern North America. If you do see them fresh at a market, be prepared to pay somewhat dearly for them.

You’ve tramped through the forest to your special spot a few weeks after all the snow has disappeared (it will probably be moist, so wear some rubber boots). All you need is a sharp, short bladed knife. One with a curved blade works best. The fiddleheads will be in clumps sometimes with seven to a plant. Cut them off close to the ground. But don’t take too many! If you just lop off everything, the plant won’t recover, and that would be a shame. I was told by someone in the know that it’s okay to take up to three.

Special warning! Take only those fronds that have not yet unrolled very much, the tighter the better. As the fronds unroll, they produce a toxin that can make you pretty ill. You should also not eat them raw. Don’t think they’re all that dangerous, though. If you were to eat leaves or stems of tomato plants, they could kill you.

Back at home, you will need to remove the brittle brown covering. This is most easily done in the sink. Just dump them in, fill it with cold water and rub the fronds a bit and it will come off. If the spot where the stem was cut turns a bit brown, just cut it off with a knife.

How do cook them? We like to just steam them, although they can be boiled (less flavor to my mind) or roasted (the French like them this way, apparently). We steam them for ten to twelve minutes. I’ve seen recipes that call for twenty minutes of steaming. I suppose if you’re cooking a quart of them, you might want to increase the time a bit, but a pint cooked for twenty minutes would be a sin. Discard the water they’re cooking in or over. You can find other recipes that call for baking, sautéing and frying, but it’s a good idea to give them a quick steam (7-10 minutes before continuing cooking.

Just before serving, we toss them in a bit of butter with a good squeeze of fresh lemon. Basically, you can cook and serve them any way you would asparagus.

But you have to move quickly! While they are available frozen or canned, fresh is certainly the best. If you want to go to the trouble of picking your own, you will have a very memorable treat – for free.

My second favorite soup

I don’t know, but there’s something about spring that makes me want soup. So lately, there’s been soup on the menu a lot around here. It may go back to summer visits to my aunt’s cottage in Three Lakes, Wisconsin, where my grandfather felt that dinner (meaning the midday meal) wasn’t dinner without a first course of soup. Being Czech, those soups often had dumplings, something my aunt was a dab hand at. Regardless, the soups were always delicious.

Soup is a lovely thing and most recipes reheat very well and that makes them good for quick and simple meals. We always have great stock on hand, so preparing them is generally a snap. Just fetch what we need from the basement freezer, throw in a few ingredients and put it on the stove to simmer. Make enough, and you can have several meals with little effort.

On to my second favorite soup: New England Clam Chowder. It’s something that’s not hard to find on many restaurant menus, but really good NECC, unfortunately, is hard to find. Two things stand out in the poor versions: too few clams and too much flour. I can see why restaurants scrimp on the clams. They’re expensive while potatoes, onions, celery, milk, etc. are not, but heavy in flour by the scoop? Why would anyone do that? After an hour or so kept at serving temperature, it’s better suited to being used as lumpy wallpaper paste.

Up till recently, the best chowder I’d had was at Legal Seafood in Boston. It was a bit light on clams, but it had great flavor and a nice texture: not too thick and not too thin.

A few years back, I decided I really needed to add this delicious soup to my culinary arsenal, so I hit the books, so to speak, and also the Internet. Over the course of half a year, we had a fair bit of experimentation as I tried various ingredients and refinements. Eventually, I came up with one that really is exceptional. The basic recipe is courtesy of the CIA. No, not the spies of the US government, but The Culinary Institute of America near Hyde Park, NY. Every single person I’ve served it to has said it’s the best they’ve ever had.

I don’t remember the original now, but there’s not much changed here because the recipe was so good right out of the gate. The addition of Worchestershire sauce and sherry are what makes this version an absolute stand-out. You’ll notice that the ingredient amounts are pretty specific. Don’t be tempted to use a half-cup of flour, for instance, rather than the seven tablespoons called for. The recipe is rigid because it works perfectly with these amounts. The only thing you might be inclined to fudge on is the heavy cream. We’ve gotten by using table cream if we’re being virtuous, but the best version is to keep all ingredients as given. Since we only make this once or twice a year, the extra butterfat isn’t all that dangerous.

A sidebar: Vicki really prefers Manhattan clam chowder, partially because she prefers thinner soup to thicker, but also because she feels tomatoes and clams are such a good combination. She went off on her own culinary journey of chowder enlightenment, and someday I’ll prevail upon her to tell you all about the results. I do have to say that her recipe for Manhattan, more idiosyncratic and original, is a fine one. I still prefer the New England version, but I’ll eat hers anytime.

One bit of history: Manhattan clam chowder was apparently given its name by New Englanders as a subtle put-down for what they felt was an inferior version by the folks in the big city.

New England Clam Chowder
Makes 8 servings


Note: Buy chopped ocean clams from your fish monger for this, not those baby clams you find in the supermarket. We use Capt. Fred brand in a large, 51-ounce can packaged for restaurants. If your fish monger doesn’t carry something like this, it can certainly be ordered in. This size can has a lot more clams and clam juice than you need to make this recipe. I have a companion Stuffed Clam Oreganata recipe that I’ll share with you all at a later date.

INGREDIENTS
1¼ lbs 
canned clams, minced, juices reserved (3¼ cups of meat if you don’t have a kitchen scale)
3 cups clam juice
3 slices double-smoked bacon
1½ cups onion, ¼" dice
7 Tbs all-purpose flour
1 bay leaf
¾ tsp fresh thyme, minced
1¾ cups redskin potatoes, ¼" dice
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
¼ tsp salt
freshly-ground pepper
6 Tbs medium dry sherry
½ tsp Tabasco sauce
1 tsp Worchestershire sauce

METHOD
1. Chop the bacon relatively finely. Drain the clam juice from the clams and add enough bottled clam juice to make up 3 cups – if needed. If the potato skins are clean, we don’t bother peeling them.

2. Cook the bacon slowly in a soup pot over low heat so the fat renders thoroughly and the bacon becomes slightly crisp, about 6 minutes. Stir occasionally.

3. Add the onion and cook until it’s translucent, about another 6-7 minutes. Now, add the flour and cook over very low heat for another 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. You don’t want it to brown!

4. Whisk the clam juice into the onion/bacon mixture, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the thyme, bay leaf and potatoes and simmer until tender, between 10 and 12 minutes. Stir the pot frequently to keep the mixture from scorching.

5. At the same time, heat the clams, cream and milk in a saucepan until it reaches a simmer. You DO NOT want this to boil.

6. When the potatoes are just done, add the clams and cream to the soup base, stir and simmer another two minutes. Stir in the salt, pepper, sherry, Tabasco and Worchestershire sauce and your soup is ready. It will be even better if you let it “age” for a couple of hours and then reheat it carefully before serving it in heated bowls.

You really must offer oyster crackers with this. In fact, we’ve heard that it’s illegal in parts of New England not to do it! The best ones I’ve found are made by Westminster Crackers of Rutland, Vermont. They may be hard to find but you can order them. Visit their website.

The key to enjoying cooking

I’m sure we all know our fair share of people who say that they don’t enjoy cooking. Some of them may even be able to turn out a pretty respectable meal, but they don’t enjoy it. Others just eschew anything to do with the kitchen. If they don’t have someone else who will prepare their food (meaning a lot of the guys out there), then restaurants, take-out joints and the frozen food section of their supermarkets become the main beneficiaries.

Some people claim that they can’t cook. I find that completely unbelievable and feel it’s simply an excuse to keep that person out of the kitchen. Unless a recipe calls for a particular skill that takes a long time to develop (fluting mushrooms comes to mind), then anyone who can follow a well-written recipe should be able to turn out food of which they can be proud.

Cooking at a reasonable level isn’t hard. It simply requires attention to detail and organization.

When I dig a little deeper with reluctant cooks, I find almost universally that they’re afraid of failure and get easily rattled as a number of things require attention simultaneously. Both of these things can come crashing together if you’re not organized. And I think that’s the basic problem with them: organization.

French cooks have a saying every cook should engrave in their minds as they begin preparing a meal: mis en place. Loosely translated it means “everything in place”. In other words, have everything measured, prepped and organized before you begin to actually apply the heat. Every time I get to the end of cooking a meal and realize that I didn’t enjoy it much, I will find that I hadn’t prepped everything I should have. Even a good cook is prone to mistakes and forgetfulness when they’re trying to prep part of their meal while they’re cooking another. Heaven knows I’ve wrecked more than my share of food, and I’ll bet that nearly every time it’s been because my attention was divided because of inadequate organization.

The past few months I’ve made it my mantra to have everything ready to go before I turn on the stove. This means all the ingredients and most of the cooking utensils are ready and waiting. I’ve also read through the recipe (if it’s something I haven’t made often recently), or if it’s a dish I’ve made a lot, I at least go through all the steps in my head. I’ve even gone as far as buying a set of small mis en place bowls to hold items like herbs, spices and other small-amount ingredients. It might be overkill, but it keeps me relaxed.

Having worked in restaurant kitchens, where things can get really busy at times of maximum service, I know that the key to the job is being completely organized. If you’re not, you’re toast – or what you’re cooking is. It really is the same thing at home. You don’t want to be crawling around the innards of your fridge or rushing out to the store when your attention needs to be on what’s being heated. Never forget: when you’re cooking, you’re playing with fire and things can get out of hand quickly. Pay attention.

So if you have never cooked, find a basic recipe for a dish you’d like to make, read through it – twice, making sure that you understand everything. If you find you don’t, maybe you should find another recipe. Now measure and prep all the ingredients for your dish, and away you go. Once you’re cooking, follow the recipe’s cooking instructions exactly. This is not the time to improvise!

Don’t let yourself become distracted. Emptying the dishwasher while you’re browning a piece of meat or frying up some onions may seem like a good use of time, but things can burn amazingly fast. (Trust me on this one. I have vast experience at burning things!) Enjoy the process and learn by watching what happens. At its heart, cooking is merely chemistry. You’re applying heat to a number of ingredients and changing them chemically into something different – and hopefully wonderful.

I also find cooking this way to be very relaxing: the careful assembly of my ingredients, watching them change as they cook, the fragrances rising from the pots or the oven. Yes, things can get wild as a complicated meal with several dishes all become ready (hopefully) at the same time, but if the cook has stayed organized and thought things through, even this pressure can be enjoyable.

So forget your cooking fears! Get out into the kitchen and start learning. You may find you actually enjoy the process. And there’s nothing like the satisfaction of sitting down to a great meal that you’ve prepared.

Like I said: trust me.

A gray day calls for nice hot soup!

It’s one of those early spring days here in Toronto that’s gloomy, damp and for some reason always makes me feel chillier than I ought to feel. Since I had to do a bit of spring gardening work in the backyard this morning, I came back into the house feeling cold and a bit miserable.

Fortunately, I found Vicki hard at work on our lunch. We had the ingredients on hand to make a quick and delicious soup that warmed me to the tips of my toes: Tuscan Bean Soup. It was ready from start to finish in about thirty-five minutes.

I believe Vicki originally found this recipe in one of our many cookbooks, but as usual, we messed around with it a good bit since making it for the first time. Another good thing is that it’s vegetarian and comes with a good balance of vegetables to give you a healthy shot of complete protein, always an important consideration when you’re not eating meat.

As always, good soup begins with the best stock. Today, we used our vegetable stock made with bags of frozen peelings, leftovers, herb stems and tomato skins from our sauce-making late last summer. When we get enough, we throw everything into our very large stock pot and put it on to simmer for a few hours. That happened earlier this week, and as we hadn’t packaged up the new stock to put it into the freezer, we didn’t even have to thaw it.

[Sidebar: This current batch of stock contained trimmings from celery, carrot, onion, leek greens, shallots, garlic, parsnips, and tomatoes, as well as stalks from parsley, thyme, rosemary and sage. All of these are things we save whenever we’re prepping food. So what most people would throw in the garbage or compost, we save for stock. It tastes fantastic and is basically free except for the energy needed to freeze it and later cook it. Afterwards, the remains go into the compost bin and break down very quickly. What’s not to like about that?]

Other than the stock, the rest of the ingredients in this soup are pretty unremarkable. About the only thing we might not have on hand all the time for this is the Savoy cabbage. Everything else are pretty well staple items in our kitchen.

So if you’re in the mood to whip up a warming soup that’s simple, quick, and tasty, you might want to give this a try.

Tuscan Bean Soup
Serves 4 as a supper dish 

Vicki’s eye was caught by this recipe as she was looking for a hearty fall/winter soup. She had her doubts when she saw cabbage because we don’t think of cabbage as a vegetable that Italians usually eat, but beans are definitely a staple of the Tuscan diet. So she figured, what the heck, she’d give it a try. It is fantastic and tastes even better when reheated. Cannellini beans are like navy beans, the ones used to make baked beans. You should be able to find them canned in the supermarket. Buon appetito!

INGREDIENTS
3 Tbs olive oil
1 cup coarsely chopped onion
1 cup sliced leeks (¼" thick slices), white portion only
1½ cups redskin potatoes, ½" dice
1 Tbs minced garlic
6 cups vegetable stock
1 14 oz. can cannelloni beans, drained
6 oz. Savoy cabbage, shredded
3 Tbs chopped flat-leaf (Italian) parsley
2 Tbs chopped fresh oregano
3/4 cup freshly-grated Parmesan cheese
salt and freshly-ground pepper to taste

METHOD 
1. Heat the olive oil in a soup pot, and gently cook the onion, leeks, potato and garlic for 4-5 minutes until they are just beginning to soften.

2. Pour in the stock, cover and simmer for 15 minutes.

3. Stir in the cabbage, beans and half the herbs, season and simmer for a further 10 minutes.

4. Spoon about one third of the soup into a food processor or blender and process until fairly smooth. Return the soup to the pot, adjust the seasoning, and heat through for 5 minutes.

5. Ladle the soup into heated bowls, sprinkle with remaining herbs and Parmesan cheese. Serve with a crusty baguette, or garlic toasts. To make garlic toasts, simply slice the baguette, drizzle some olive oil over each slice, rub them with a sliced clove of raw garlic, and toast in the broiler until golden.

It was supposed to be a nice Sunday fry-up…

Yesterday began as a quiet Sunday morning (with two concerts looming later in the day for Vicki) and we both felt like having something more substantial than our usual yogurt, cereal, and fruit. With some of the Sausage King’s fantastic breakfast links and double-smoked bacon, and eggs from our favorite supplier (organically-raised, pastured chickens), we had the makings of a classic British fry-up, something we have enjoyed at many B&Bs in Olde Blighty. Nothing beats one of these if you want to begin your day with a stick-to-your-ribs breakfast.

I decided to grill some tomatoes to go along with fried mushrooms, so we broke our usual vow not to buy these things out of season. Vicki came home with two that still had the stems and were hydroponically grown, so we stood a chance to have something better than what’s usually available. They turned out surprisingly well with the addition of a bit of balsamic vinegar drizzled over the top.

She’d also come home with some fruit juice because we’d already had two cups of coffee. Since she’d be concertizing in a few hours, Vicki didn’t need her nerves jangling from too much caffeine.

The juice was a Tropicana® product, so it came at a premium price. This brand’s whole image is built on real fruit juice, you know, better than average orange juice from fresh-squeezed fruit. They’ve branched out over the years to other fruit juices, but the image that sticks in a shopper’s mind is all about the fresh-squeezed orange juice, right?

Fresh is not what we got.

The 1.75 L container of “Tropicana® Tropics® Paradise Blend™ juice has a lovely photo of a pineapple, a mango, a passion fruit (I believe), accompanied by an azure blue sea and a lovely phalaenopsis blossom. Vicki picked it up after seeing “100% juice blend” at the bottom of the carton. It also says in a small flash: “2 servings of fruit per 250 ml serving”.

The juice didn’t taste bad, but I looked at the label more closely while we ate, and I realized we’d been had. The back of the carton begins with:

2 servings of fruit in every glass*
No added sugar
Excellent source of Vitamin C
Source of Potassium

All good so far, right? Then I looked at the Nutrition Facts box. Next to Fibre was a big fat 0 grams. Hmmm... One thing that is especially important for anyone’s diet is fibre. That is one of the big reasons that fruit is recommended for everyone’s daily intake of food. Fruit is an excellent source of fiber, especially water-soluable fiber which you don't get from grains. To be fair, Tropicana did not promise us any fiber, but it was my expectation that there would be some in the juice. But that's what this is all about: playing to the buyers' expectations.

My eyes dropped down to the ingredients list: “Fruit juices from concentrate (pineapple, apple and passion fruit), carrot juice from concentrate, natural flavours, vitamin C, colour.”

To say the least, I was furious. I know why the put carrot juice in: it’s cheap and adds a color. But I’ll bet that people would think twice about buying this product if they’d included a bunch of carrots in the package photo. Apple juice is in there, too, again, probably because it’s cheap. And what's particularly tropical about carrots and apples?

What natural flavours are they using? That’s a pretty nebulous term and makes my antennae twitch. If the fruit juices used were from high-quality fruit, you’d expect them to have a lot of flavor, right? Why does this product need more flavor? I leave you to figure this out. Ditto for colour. Why does it need added color, and what was this color made from?

Finally, an “excellent source of vitamin C”. Why? Because they added it, just like you’d get ascorbic acid from a vitamin tablet. Most of it didn’t come from the fruit juices used.

I’ve previously done some research on the way Tropicana makes their products. I doubt if you’ve ever had a glass of any of their products that was made from absolutely fresh fruit. Even their orange juice is pretty highly processed: Click Here to view an article that appeared on the CBC not that long ago.

I’m not saying that this product will make you ill or anything. I’m just really incensed that they are leading consumers down the garden path. The packaging, the choice of words, and their advertising campaigns leads us to believe that we’re getting something just a few steps away from the orchard, minimally processed and better for you then the cans of concentrate you’ll find in the freezer section. You’re happy to pay more to buy a quality product. The only thing different from Tropicana® Tropics® Paradise Blend™ juice and frozen concentrated juice is that you're paying for them to add water.

What you’re being sold, while perfectly legal, falls far short of the expectation generated by Tropicana®'s advertising and product packaging. Great advertising? Sure. Completely honest and above board. I’m not so sure there. I certainly won’t be buying this product again. I will also stay away from all Tropicana® products in the future.

We should have just served water and slices from some very nice fresh Cortland apples that I bought from the Clement’s at the market the previous day.

-=-=-=-=-
Sorry for the mixture of US and British English. Blame it on the packaging. I wanted to quote it directly.

Blechta kitchen staples: food

A reader of this blog has asked me to list the things we have in our kitchen. Boy, that’s a huge topic, and one that comes with a lot of pitfalls, since we cook very individually, which I’m sure most people do. I also always pull back from things like this because it’s too close to telling people what to do, and I have a natural aversion to that. But on the other hand, isn’t that what this blog is all about: my opinions on food. I guess I just have to get used to this “being an expert” thing, even if every day it’s hammered home to me that there is so much more I don’t know about food and cooking. In fact, that’s a terrific topic for a future posting.

Anyway, Helen (the aforementioned reader) is right. Maybe it is time to take everyone into the Blechta Test Kitchens here in beautiful downtown Toronto, and reveal what’s lurking in our larder. In a later post, I’ll also discuss the tools we use for cooking and why we’ve chosen them.

Certain things in every kitchen are considered staple items, and we’re no different. There are things we must always have on hand so we’re not constantly running to the grocery store. We also have a rough idea what we’re going to cook over the next week, so that I can do a sensible shopping when we make our weekly run to the St. Lawrence Market. It’s amazing how your fridge, shelves, and freezer can fill up with stuff if you don’t. Not having a shopping list is also a great way to have a lot of good food go bad – and to us, that’s a cardinal sin.

So what are considered staples in the Blechta kitchen? Our goal is to have enough food on hand so that we can get away without shopping for a week. I almost always go to the Market, but if I can’t, we’re good to go and don’t have to rely on the supermarket.

To start off, every fall, we preserve chopped tomatoes in 1, 2 and 4-cup Mason jars. Ditto for tomato sauce. Since we cook a lot of Italian food, jars are brought up from the basement at least once a week. Tomatoes also add depth to stews and casseroles, so in winter when we make these a lot, a bit of tomato is generally thrown in. We also preserve chutney, spiced peaches, dill pickles and currant jelly. The only canned tomato we use is paste. It’s possible to make it but difficult because it burns easily and you have to stir it constantly for a very long time while it boils down. We also freeze roasted red peppers that we do up over a wood fire, a favorite fall ritual.

We always have several dried pastas on hand, lately it’s made more with spelt than anything. Pasta is on the menu once or twice every week and spelt is better for you than plain white pasta. For most things, it tastes better, too.

As for grains, we always have white and brown basmati rice, white arborio rice, wild rice, kasha, cornmeal and rolled oats. White and whole wheat flour (or graham when we can find it) are on hand. Whole grain flours are kept tightly wrapped in our freezer. In our freezer we also keep walnuts, pine nuts, cashews and slivered almonds.

For fats, we have several different kinds of cold-pressed olive oils (we use mostly olive oil for cooking), canola oil, sweet butter, heart-healthy margarine, and a bit of rendered bacon fat. For vinegars, we use many so you’ll always find red and white wine, apple cider, tarragon and two different grades of balsamic, one for general cooking and one for very special salads (the expensive stuff). We always have white sugar, light and dark brown sugar and some very special honey from a friend in Quebec. Our freezer holds a liter jar of maple syrup from our source in Eastern Ontario. And there’s usually milk and yogurt on hand.

In the freezer you'll always find an assortment of sausages (from the Sausage King), a package of Berretta ground beef (grass fed when we can get it), a whole chicken and maybe some chicken parts (from Clement Poultry), bacon, and usually a pork steak. We keep canned tuna, baby clams and smoked oysters (something we love) in the pantry, and you can usually find a few salted anchovies lurking in the back of the fridge. Also in the freezer is a good assortment of stock: chicken, fish, beef, lamb, duck and vegetable. (Read about making it HERE.)

Our spice/herb shelves are full with nearly anything you can imagine, and during the growing season we grow at least a dozen herbs either in pots or the garden (bay, chervil, chives, cilantro, sage, rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil, parsley, dill, and summer and winter savory). We always have a stock of juniper berries and Hungarian paprika as well as Spanish (sweet and smoked). We only use sea salt and have many different kinds, and we keep green, red, white, and black pepper in mills. Fresh garlic, shallots, lemons, limes and some fresh herbs in winter are on the top shelf of the fridge door. We have about 5 kinds of mustard (most from Koslik’s) and of course you’ll find low-fat mayo and ketchup. A lot of different rubs, Worchestershire sauce, tabasco, dry mustard, pickle relish, Asian chili sauce are also lurking around for use when needed. We have three different soy sauces on hand at all times, and use them more than you’d imagine. They work much better than salt in most sauces and stews.

For fruits and vegs, you’ll always find red and yellow onions, carrots, celery, various greens, several different kinds of potatoes (from Bob Taylor, “The Potato Guy”), some sort of apple and various fruits in season. We also keep some canned and frozen fruits and vegs for emergencies.

In the fridge’s dairy drawer, we stock parmesan, romano, cheddar and some sort of blue cheese (I’m very fond of blue cheese). You’ll usually find one or two other kinds, since we find it hard to resist when we’re at Chris’s Cheesemongers at the market. We always have some organic eggs from pastured chickens.

Last of all, you will never find us without a spare bag of Kick Ass coffee from Kicking Horse. Vicki could not get up in the morning without it.

So, what do you consider staple items?

Let’s go Hungarian!

Some of the first cookbooks I ever got were part of a Doubleday book club my mother and I joined, the Cookbook Guild, or some such thing. It was the usual deal: promise to buy a certain number over the course of a year and you’d get a bunch of free ones. Two of these remain among my favorites: Leone’s Italian Cookbook and The Blue Danube Cookbook. Both contain some wonderful recipes that we still make a few times a year, and both are a lot of fun to read. They certainly inspired me along the way.

I’ve inundated you all with enough Italian recipes over the past two months, so I feel it’s time to branch out a bit. Today, I’m going to delve into a chicken favorite from the latter cookbook, and share a quick, easy and very tasty recipe from one of the countries touched by the Danube River: Hungary.

Probably like me, you think of paprika when you hear the words “Hungary” and “cooking”. The first thing you should know (if you don’t already) is that Hungarian paprika is very different than the more usual Spanish paprika. They are certainly not interchangeable. So if you want to try this recipe, you’ll need to have some Hungarian paprika on hand. Fortunately, it’s not hard to find these days. I buy all my herbs and spices from bulk food warehouses, mostly because you’re guaranteed to get fresh if they are a busy place, and second, because they almost always stock some of the harder to find items like Hungarian paprika.

How to describe it? There is more depth of flavor than Spanish. Both are made from red peppers and some can be quite spicy. Mostly what you find under the generic term Hungarian is known as Delicate (csípősmentes csemege) or Exquisite Delicate (csemegepaprika) which is slightly more pungent. If you have a Hungarian food store nearby, check out some of the others. You’ll find them in all different colors, flavors and spiciness. Hungarians, as you’ll soon discover, are very into paprika.

As for this dish, Chicken Paprikash, the second word refers to the addition at the end of cooking of sour cream. If you make this dish without sour cream, it would be called Chicken Paprika. It’s worth a try, but we prefer the sour cream version.

It is simplicity itself to make, doesn’t take very long, and the only knock I can give it is that it doesn’t reheat successfully unless you don’t mind the sour cream separating. It tastes fine otherwise.

Chicken Paprikash
Serves 4-6

While you can serve this very easy and delicious dish with egg noodles, the traditional accompaniment in Hungary is “Noki”. If you’d like the recipe for these little gems, let me know. They’re actually pretty easy to make. Altogether it’s a satisfying meal on those cold winter evenings or in early spring when the chickens are young and tender.

Speaking of which, if you can find a source of farm-raised, free range chicken, buy it! You will be amazed at what real chicken tastes like.

INGREDIENTS
1 large chicken (or parts equaling such)
2 Tbs bacon fat
1½ cups red onion, finely chopped
1-2 Tbs Hungarian paprika
½ tsp Salt
2 Tbs flour
1 cup chicken stock
½ cup sour cream (at room temperature) We use low-fat sour cream and it tastes just fine with this.

METHOD
1. Cut up the chicken into pieces (we usually cut the breasts in half). Rinse and pat dry thoroughly.

2. In a frying pan, melt the bacon fat and cook the onion until it is golden. Remove to a bowl.

3. Sprinkle the chicken pieces on all sides with paprika. Add a bit more bacon fat to your pan if needed and brown the chicken a few pieces at a time.

4. Arrange all the chicken in the pan in one layer. Sprinkle with salt, cover and greatly reduce heat. Let chicken stew in its own juice for 15 minutes. Add a bit of water if the pan is getting dry. Chicken is cooked if its juices run clear when poked with a knife. Remove the chicken from the pan and keep warm.

5. While this is going on, heat up the stock.

6. Blend flour in with the gravy in the pan. Cook for 2 minutes. (We usually add a bit more paprika here, too.) Add heated stock, cooked onions and stir gently, scraping up any of the good bits sticking to the bottom of the pan. When the sauce has thickened, put the chicken back in and cook gently until everything is heated through.

7. Place the chicken in serving bowl, then stir the sour cream into the sauce. (Never boil sour cream! It will separate.) Check for salt and grind some black pepper into the sauce. Pour over the chicken and serve while piping hot.

Recipe is mostly from The Blue Danube Cookbook by Maria Kozslik Donovan

Our latest batch of Guanciale

If you’ve been following this blog from the beginning – or have looked back that far into the archives – you’ll know that one of the first posts was about my new-found interest in home charcuterie, or “making sausage and stuff like that” – if you don’t like high-fallootin’ cooking words.

One of the simplest of home curing recipes is guanciale, an Italian bacon-like creation that is found primarily in the central part of the country near Rome, although its fame seems to be spreading. We were able to find some in such small places as Gaiole-in-Chianti when we were in Italy last June. It was almost impossible to find in North America until relatively recently, too. Now, we can even pick some up two blocks from our house at Zito’s, an Italian grocery that opened last summer. If you want to try your hand at making guanciale, the recipe is HERE. The only difficult part of making this delicacy is finding the proper place to hang it. We’re lucky. Our basement is pretty nigh perfect. In the colder months, humidity is around 75% and the temperature is 55°F.

Anyway, we just brought our second batch of guanciale up from the basement yesterday. This one was different than the first in that I added more juniper berries and thyme. I also added about an ounce of Orvieto (white wine) to each package for the duration of the curing stage.

So what are the results? This batch has a more pronounced juniper flavor but I don’t notice the thyme much more. There is slightly more sweetness which is possibly due to the wine. The bit I sampled was raw, but this weekend we’re going to make our favorite recipe that uses guanciale, spaghetti all’amatriciana (recipe below), so we’ll be sampling some of the new batch after it’s been cooked, which may yield different flavor results.

I think we’re pretty much over our curing season as the basement temperature is on the rise. The humidity is also dropping which means that drying is speeding up – which is not a good thing since I believe this second batch has hung a bit too long. I’ll have to be watching this more closely in the future. I’ve also made some lonzino (cured pork loin) which dried out a bit too much – but it is very delicious. I’ll do a post on that at a later date.

On to Amatrice which is the originating town of today’s recipe. It’s in northern Lazio and its founding goes all the way back to Roman times, if not further. Since amatriciana sauce uses tomatoes, the recipe can’t be all that old since tomatoes were unknown in Europe before the settling of North America. As for guanciale, I haven’t been able to discover anything about its origins, but I suspect it goes back quite a long time, primarily because it’s so easy to make.

In any event, some bright person way back when decided to combine the flavor of fresh Italian tomatoes to their local meat delicacy and a match made in heaven was the result. Put simply, amatriciana is a fantastic dish. As a matter of fact, it’s become my redheaded wife’s favorite. When we arrived in Rome last June, very travel-stained after a horrible flight and a search for Vicki’s missing luggage, practically the first thing we did was leave the apartment we’d rented in the section of town near the Villa Borghese in search of a restaurant and some amatriciana. My photo to the right was taken at that restaurant and on the plates in front of me are two kinds of amatriciana: red and white – or as it’s also known, pasta all grigia, a recipe I’ll share on some future occasion, completing our guanciale trifecta (spaghetti alla carbonara being the third).

Spaghetti all’amatriciana is simplicity itself to make, but it is not with out controversy in its ingredients. (What else is new?) Romans add a bit of sliced, then sautéed onion to the sauce. If you’re from Amatrice, you apparently look on this addition with deep scorn, bordering on contempt. We’ve made it both ways, and I have to admit we enjoy the bit of sweetness that the onions add. Don’t use too much, though! Onion can easily overwhelm this recipe.

Spaghetti all’amatriciana
Serves 4

This is our idea of a great dish. Not only is it absolutely delicious, but you can put it together in about the time it takes to bring a pot of water to the boil to cook your pasta. Guanciale is a must. Look online if Italian food stores in your area can’t help you. It might be a bit hard to find, but accept no substitutes! With a glass of good Italian red wine, you’ll feel like you’re in a trattoria in Roma. Also, if you can find canned San Marzano tomatoes, all the better. They are the best sauce tomatoes in the world and worth the effort to source.

Unlike Carbonara, this dish isn’t at all finicky to make. It’s a perfect dish to make for company because it can be cooked ahead, stopping at step 4. Just bring the sauce back to a boil as the pasta cooks. Bucatini pasta is generally used by Romans for this dish, so use it if you really want to be authentic. Buon appetito!

INGREDIENTS
1 lb dry spaghetti
1-2 Tbs Olive oil
6 oz diced guanciale (trim off any rind first) – okay, if you must substitute, use pancetta.
¾ cup thinly-sliced onion quarters
½ cup dry white wine
1 liter diced tomatoes (or one 28-ounce can)
½ tsp hot red pepper flakes
1+ cup freshly grated pecorino Romano (do yourself a favor and buy the imported stuff)
pepper to taste

METHOD
1. Heat olive oil, then fry guanciale over low heat until it’s crisp and browned. Remove from pan with a slotted spoon. Leave all the fat. You’ll need it.

2. Cook the sliced onions in the guanciale fat and olive oil until it’s translucent.

3. Add the tomatoes, white wine and pepper flakes, then boil the sauce fairly hard to evaporate most of the liquid. Meanwhile cook the pasta to taste.

4. When everything is ready, put the cooked guanciale back into the sauce 
and stir it a bit.

5. In the sauté pan over low heat, toss the pasta with the sauce to get it well-coated, then add the pecorino Romano and a good grinding of pepper. Toss thoroughly to melt the cheese into the sauce. You probably won’t need salt since pecorino is a fairly salty cheese.