in the kitchen: halibut

Sometimes we're so busy at work, I forget just how pretty and of course, tasty, some of our plates are. I recently had the chance to stop and smell the um, beurre blanc, and snap a quickie from the fish station.

Slow roasted halibut, roasted carrots (yellow, white, purple and sweet Nantes), beurre blanc, radish and chervil.

in the kitchen: chomeur pudding

So the weather outside is frightful, and you're craving something warm, sweet and totally indulgent; 'tis the season, after all. Well, kiddo, do I have just the thing for you!

Enter the chomeur pudding (or pouding, as they say in Quebec). This little doozy of a dish is something I first tried at Au Pied de Cochon, a spot justly (in)famous for its celebration of all things fatty and fun...just thinking about the foie poutine makes my heart beat just that much faster, for real.

Here's the deal; think warm, gooey maple syrup bathing a tender biscuit in all its sticky toffee glory. With a bit of cold pouring cream to help wash it all down...mmm, I just can't resist!


Chomeur Pudding

(I recently found out that this literally means a poor man's/unemployed person's pudding, since the very few ingredients could be found in even the barest of cupboards...so now there's definitely no excuse not to try this out!)


dough
3 eggs
6 oz butter
1 cup sugar
1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch salt


syrup
2 cups maple syrup
2 cups 35% cream
pinch salt

Cream together your softened butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Add eggs, one at a time until blended. Scrape down bowl and add flour, baking powder and salt.

Mix just until combined. The dough should feel quite sticky and gloppy, (that's the technical term) like a loose biscuit batter. Chill your dough at least 20 mins before using.

As for the maple syrup, um, syrup - it's as easy as bringing your cream, syrup and pinch of salt up to a simmer. Give it a stir and let it cool down. That's it!

Assembly time. You can do individual portions (may I gently suggest that smaller is better, these babies are rich) in oven safe bowls, or bake the whole lot in one large casserole dish.

Scoops of chilled dough...



...mostly covered with the maple syrup mix. And into a 350 oven.

The individual portions take about 15-17 minutes to bake. Your kitchen is going to smell amazing, by the way!

The only tricky part is letting them cool down enough so you can eat them without burning your face off. Sticky, sweet and oh sooo yummy...

...the only thing better is to have a supply of cold pouring cream handy (slightly boozed up with Jack Daniels, totally optional, but definitely recommended).

Unrepentant comfort food at its best; this is how I plan to survive the long winter ahead!

in the kitchen: olive oil cake

I've been puttering around a few ideas for the fall menu, so I thought it would be fun to show you what I've been up to!

I'm a visual kid; most of the ideas get scribbled down so I can get an overall sense of placement (it also helps to figure out if we actually have the equipment and ingredients ready to make the dish!). The larger sheet in the back has some of the original menu; the doodle on the ticket paper is an idea based on olive oil.

A taste-memory:
One of the boys at work recreated a tasty snack he had in Italy - a thin slice of crusty sourdough, grilled, then covered with dark chocolate shavings. The toast was placed under the broiler just until the chocolate melted, then drizzled with plenty of extra virgin olive oil and a sprinkle of crunchy sea salt. Amazing to say the least; great crunch, nice sweet/savouriness, and a pleasant bitterness, all lubed up by the fruity olive oil. Mmm.

Another taste-memory:
My dear university boyfriend, happy to share some of his British-ness (and tired of me making fun of his Marmite toasts), gifts me with my first Terry's Chocolate Orange. Yum, I'm in love!

So, what is a gal to do, but play around with the idea of the olive oil cake...and here it goes.

B likes to name the equipment; the large food processor is called Robo-Cop.

A good olive oil is a must! I'm loving these orange and mandarin infused ones right now. (I blend them with a plain, fruity oil so it the batter doesn't get too perfume-y.)

Getting the ingredients together...

Cream the oil and sugar (check out the colour, by the way, how happy!), add orange zest, then eggs, then alternate additions of flour and milk. Really easy!

The batter is very loose, and bakes up very moist and rich, almost like a pound cake.

Butter and flouring the moulds. I pour the batter a third of the way up for the individual 3-inch cakes...and into a 350 oven for about 15-17 minutes.

The moist little cakes, ready for the plate...





Olive oil citrus cake with hazelnuts, orange confit and chocolate gelato with maldon sea salt.

olive oil cake

1 1/2 cups good quality olive oil
2 1/2 cups sugar
zest of 1 orange or lemon
3 eggs

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch salt

1 1/2 cups milk

In a large mixing bowl, cream together olive oil, sugar and zest until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time; mix in between each addition.

In a smaller bowl, combine dry ingredients.

To the oil/sugar/egg mixture, add half the dry mix; stir, then add half the milk. Stir in the remaining dry, then rest of the milk.

Pour batter into butter and floured moulds and bake in 350 oven.

(In this case, my 3-inch mini tins took about 17 minutes - I imagine a larger cake pan, say 9-inch, would take about 30 minutes...the cakes are done when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out cleanly!)

Enjoy!

Kitchen Lessons: Part One

Sometimes you end up learning the most memorable lessons in the most unlikely of places. How was I ever to expect that my scatterbrained, neurotic bookworm self would discover so much by navigating through the daily hustle and bustle of a working kitchen? Not only did I learn heaploads about cooking with and caring for my ingredients, I experienced small, quiet revelations about how to care for myself and those around me.

Lesson Number One:

Taste. Season. Taste again.

One afternoon I was making a mix for lime sorbet. The ingredients were few and simple enough: lime juice, lime zest, sugar and water. I first followed the recipe, and thought that something wasn't quite right. The limes we were getting in were tougher and drier than normal; their juice wasn't as tart either. So, I adjusted accordingly. A bit more juice went in and a tiny bit more zest to balance out the sugar.

Thinking I had arrived at a pretty good point, I checked in with my chef. Wordlessly, he proceeded to add even more lime juice, zest, sugar...tasted the now puckeringly sweet-tart syrup and to my surprise, added a tiny pinch of salt. "Taste," he said. Somehow the salt had magically enhanced the sweet and sour qualities of the lime, made it taste more like itself.

Next he added: "You had a good start, but remember, you were tasting your mixture at room temperature. When we freeze it, all the flavours will be dulled, because our tongues taste less and our noses smell things weaker when they are very cold. So we do just like Spinal Tap, yeah? Turn it up to eleven. Now it'll turn out better when it's finished."

I learned, and am still learning (always, always still learning) about cooking with context in mind. Which has the often disconcerting result of learning to talk to yourself.

How cold is the meat before it hits the pan? Room temp, or was it straight from the fridge? - it'll make a difference to how long, and how evenly it will cook. Are we serving it right away, or do I need to hold it for a bit? What are we eating it with? (The vinaigrette, it tastes a touch too sharp now, but when it dresses the asparagus/fish/new potato, it'll be just right.) Do those strawberries, blushing red as they look, actually taste like anything this week, or do they need some help? Do I use just sugar or an acid, like lemon juice, or aged balsamic vinegar to bump them up, or perhaps a bit of both?

Nothing exists in a vacuum, especially something as sensual and as social as food. And it's a nice thing to be thoughtful, or mindful rather, of how and who you're cooking for and eating with.

Sometimes it's as simple as giving yourself permission to question things as they are, and then proceed to tweak the details until they turn out almost as good as you always imagined them to be.

I am discovering that learning to cook is about learning to be open minded, to be flexible and to be willing to constantly make small adjustments. Learning in a working kitchen is a bonus, because you have access to a roomful of experience to help you to not only develop, but learn to trust your sense of judgement. You, in turn, learn what pleases you, so that you can pass that pleasure on to others.

A simple but lovely idea: Taste. Season. Taste again.