What I Ate (#1023 in a Series)

Chicken Fajita 3.0.2

I really don't know the difference between a fajita, a taco or a burrito, but sometimes these are just the most fantastic things to make. Mine has everything in it: hot, cold, crunchy, soft, spicy, veggie, meaty, cheesy, tomatoey, wheaty, toasty . . . can't say that about too many foods. And it's as easy and complex to whatever degree you're in the mood for. You could just slap one together with whatever's in the fridge, or you can lavish some care on it, which is what I did.

Nick's Spicy Niquita

Salsa

Ingredients
1 lb. cherry tomatoes (about 50 or so), halved
2 large jalapeños or serrano chilies, roughly chopped
4 large cloves garlic, diced
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Method

This is a my version of the Moroccan dish "Salade cuite," meaning "cooked salad." Possible additions would be chopped onions or cilantro to finish. Assemble all ingredients in a baking dish. Mix thoroughly, making sure everything's nicely coated with the olive oil. Salt liberally. Preheat the oven to about 350º and bake uncovered, stirring occasionally, for about an hour. Remove from the oven, cover and let stand until salsa comes to room temperature.

Filling

Ingredients
1 cup chicken, oven roasted and well seasoned

1/2 red pepper, cut into rings

1/2 large red onion, cut into rings

4 large cloves garlic, diced

Diced chilies to taste

Sauté the vegetables in a little olive oil until cooked through; a little char on them won't hurt. Just before filling your tortilla, add the chicken in to reheat.

Assembly

Warm a flour tortilla. I put a sheet of aluminum foil on my electric burner and heat the tortilla on medium until I get some char on both sides.

The way I like mine is to layer a heap of the chicken mixture on the bottom, followed by a liberal dose of salsa, then a liberal sprinkling of cilantro, then some grated cheese (Asiago is a particular favorite), a little chopped red onion and finally a handful of lettuce (baby lettuce mix would be good here).

Roll your creation up tightly and carefully and serve with a nice Pinot Grigio or Sauterne.

Summer Rolls (Gỏi cuốn)

This entry has been long promised. Brigitte and I both had a sudden lusting for these rolls, which are not-deep-fried spring rolls. I suppose you could deep fry them, but chances are they'd fall apart, and most of the ingredients are raw anyway. That's what's so good about them; they have a satisfying crunchiness that cannot be surpassed, at the same time tasting like you're eating a herb garden.

So here it is (click pics to embiggen):

Summer Rolls

Not perfect cylinders, but it'll come with practice

Ingredients
The "essential" ingredients, in other words the ones that should always be there are

Carrots, finely julienned
Bean sprouts, blanched for 20 seconds in boiling water and then plunged into an ice-water bath
Vietnamese rice noodles, any size or shape, soaked in hot water until soft, then plunged into an ice-water bath
Some form of meat filler, such as shrimp sautéed in garlic and sesame oil or shredden chicken
Mint, whole leaves
Cilantro, whole sprigs

You can go to town on the other stuff. Yesterday I put in:

Enoki mushrooms (they look almost like cooked spaghetti with little heads), lightly sautéed and rapidly cooled
Green onions, shredded
Cucumber, peeled and seeded, cut in julienne strips, then lightly salted for five minutes, then rinsed, with excess water removed
I added basil leaves to my green mixture, plus hearts of romaine lettuce for extra crunch.

And of course, the wrapper, which happens to be Vietnamese rice wrappers (see photo) which are made of liquid rice that is dried on bamboo lattices in the sun (hence the patterns on them).

Method
Get all your ingredients prepped completely first. I make a list of the order I'm going to layer them in. All the ingredients should be at room temperature or below. For shrimp, slice into thin strips or small pieces; whichever you prefer. My list is:

Shrimp
Mushrooms
Cucumbers
Noodles
Carrots
Green onions
Bean sprouts
Mint
Basil
Cilantro
Lettuce

To moisten the rice wrappers, I have a neat trick: using a three-ply paper towel (Bounty etc. -- don't do what I did yesterday and use a cheap supermarket brand -- they'll all fall apart), moisten with warm water and lay on a cutting board. Moisten another towel and have it ready. Put a rice wrapper on the bottom towel, then cover completely with the second one.

After about a minute, the wrapper will be completely soft. Roll the top towel up just over the halfway point of the wrapper, and start layering the ingredients in the middle, making sure not to put too much in, and leaving about a 1.5-inch space on either side. The last ingredients, the leaves and lettuce, will help bind the other ingredients together. Now, carefully roll the bottom of the rice wrapper over the ingredients, moving the top paper towel up as necessary. When the wrapper is completely over the ingredients, start to fold it underneath them, like you're rolling a cigar. At this point, fold the sides of the wrapper in like the sides of an envelope and continue rolling until it's (hopefully) a tight cylinder.

At this point, cover a plate or a plastic container with more moist paper towel and put the roll in. When you have two or more, take care that they don't touch, or they may stick together and rip.

Cover with more moist towels and voilà. They're best eaten right away, but they'll last about 12 hours in the refrigerator. Dip with a peanutty satay sauce or anything else you prefer. Like I said, I like mine with ghost pepper sauce.

The rice paper wrapper

The shrimp, sautéed, before cutting

The prep, including some vicious Thai chilies at the bottom (not for the faint of heart)

I think I overstuffed this one

Nickshrooms

Got an extreme urge to make stuffed mushrooms yesterday. I used to eat them at a sports bar after some heavy-duty games of racquetball with a nice glass of wine, and they were heavenly. Except those were only breaded and deep-fried; mine are stuffed.

Mind that you can pretty much stuff them with anything that you wish -- they're kind of like spring rolls or pizza. So just use this recipe as a guideline. I can imagine these stuffed with crab, shrimp, sausage, foie gras (well, maybe not foie gras -- yecch) but something that would need to stay the same in all is the chopped mushroom innards, some kind of cheese and preferably, lots of garlic.

So here we go:

Ingredients
There are no set proportions here. Just use as much of each as you like, or leave it out altogether.
Medium-sized cremini mushrooms (I use them for a break on white mushrooms. Plus they have more shroominess).
Finely diced shallots
Finely diced garlic
Finely diced ham
Finely diced parsley
Finely diced basil
Finely diced jalapeños
Herbed cream cheese (I use Boursin)
Grated other hard or semi-hard cheese of your choice
Salt, pepper, and any other spice you like
Panko (Japanese bread crumbs)
Flour or tempura flour
Buttermilk or half-and-half

Method
With a sharp paring knife, cut off the hard end of the mushroom stems, then cut around the rims of the mushrooms. Twist the stems out and with a small spoon, try to get as much material as possible out of the cap. Chop the stems and mushroom insides finely.

In a small skillet, sauté the shallots, garlic, ham and jalapeños in a little olive or truffle oil until no longer raw; about five minutes. Let this mixture cool to room temperature. Mix in the cheeses, parsley and basil until thoroughly combined.

With a spoon, fill the mushroom caps generously with the mixture, making sure that they're thoroughly packed. You might have some mixture left over; eat it.

Pour the buttermilk or liquid of your choice into a shallow bowl. Pour some tempura flour onto a flat plate and repeat with another plate and the panko.

With your fingers, dip a filled mushroom cap first into the liquid, then cover with flour. Redip into the liquid, then cover with panko. Try to make sure each mushroom is evenly covered.

On a tray covered with aluminum foil, place your filled mushroom caps and put in the freezer for three hours.

Heat enough vegetable oil in a pan to cover the mushroom caps on medium until a drop of water sputters in the oil. Carefully lower the mushrooms into the oil. Do not go away. When the mushrooms have turned a rich blonde/brown, remove with a spider to a plate covered in paper towels. Let rest for five minutes. 

Serve with a Ranch-style dip and garnish with chopped parsley.

Ingredients

Stuffed caps

Caps after freezing

Nickshrooms

Nick’s Four-Cheese Pasta Gratin with Almond Crust

Ingredients

3 tablespoons butter

6 garlic cloves, finely chopped

4 large shallots, finely chopped

3 tablespoons all purpose flour

3 cups hot whole milk

1 cup heavy cream

2 cups extra-sharp cheddar cheese, grated 

2 1/2 cups Old Amsterdam gouda, grated

1 cup gruyère cheese, grated

1 2/3 cups lightly packed grated Parmesan cheese

1 teaspoon hot pepper sauce

1/2 cup whole almonds

1/4 cup fine dry Italian-style breadcrumbs

1 pound short-tubed pasta

Parsley for garnish

Method

Melt butter in heavy medium saucepan over medium heat. Add garlic and shallots; sauté until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add flour; stir 3 minutes. Whisk in hot milk. Bring to simmer, stirring. Cover partially; simmer until sauce thickens slightly, stirring occasionally, about 8 minutes. Remove from heat. Add cheddar, gruyère and gouda cheese, 1 1/3 cups Parmesan cheese and hot pepper sauce. Whisk until sauce is smooth. Season with salt and pepper. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover; chill. Whisk over medium heat to rewarm before using.)

Preheat oven to 400°F. Generously butter bottom and sides of 13x9x2-inch baking dish. Blend 1/3 cup Parmesan, almonds and breadcrumbs in processor until nuts are coarsely ground. Add 1/2 cup almond mixture to prepared dish. Tilt dish to coat bottom and sides. Return any loose almond mixture to processor. Cook pasta in large pot of boiling salted water until tender. Drain well. Return pasta to pot. Add sauce; stir to coat. Transfer to prepared dish. Sprinkle remaining almond mixture over.

Bake until almond mixture is golden and crunchy and sauce bubbles, about 30 minutes. Cool on rack 5 minutes.

Garnish with Parsley. Serve with sliced spicy Toulouse sausages and hot mustard.

Duffalo Burgers!

I threatened it, and yesterday it came to pass. I bought a duck breast from the local butcher and some pre-ground bison at my local Metro. I wanted to grind the bison myself but they only had the pre-ground.

I wouldn't want to make a bison burger all by itself because it has not a fleck of fat in it -- it's probably 2% fat as opposed to the 20-odd percent we want. So the duck was a fantastic solution. Even then, I had to cut several ounces of fat off the duck before I saw fit to use it.

Ready for the grinder

You can see those massive bands of fat still on the duck; those would be the mortar to hold the bricks together, so to speak.

Ground Duckalo! Or is that Buffaluck?

I formed it into neat patties which unfortunately only yield 5 quarter-pounders.

Ready to grill!

I made a salsa to go with it, but I didn't want to make a Tex-Mex burger; just a nice spicy ketchup-type condiment. I roasted a few yellow cherry tomatoes, a few vine-ripened tomatoes, a few shallots, onions and garlic, then added cilantro and some vinegar.

Ready for a 450-degree oven

Done

Then I puréed it and added salt and pepper.

I bought some smoked Gouda, on the advice of messrs. Chris "Zeke" Hand and his partner E.Coli of the Montreal Burger Report, and sautéed the burgers in a cast iron pan. They did not need fat, and required but three minutes per side.

I had previously buttered two onion rolls from Quality Kosher with garlic butter and had toasted them in the cast-iron pan. I smeared them with salsa on both sides, added the burgers (a double for my friend Daniel), added three slices of semi-crisp bacon, thin slices of vine-ripened tomatoes, smoked gouda and aged cheddar slices, and finely shredded onions coated in buttermilk and flour and deep fried in duck fat until crispy, topped it all off with hearts of romaine, served crispy oven fries alongside, and voilà.

Daniels' double burger! Click to enjoy!

The Duffaluck Burger. Daniel completely demolished his and I managed three-quarters. I deem it an unqualified success! It tasted smoky, lean, sassy, not at all gamy and I will make it again TONIGHT.

Nick's Turbo-charged BLT

If I had my way, the BLT would be about six letters longer. I always love to stuff as many things as I can into an ordinary BLT. I love to mess with the concept. Therefore, no two of my BLTs will ever be the same. Even with the basic ingredients, there are half a million ways you can vary the composition. In this version, the odd man out is the cucumber; but it packs a welcome, crispy crunch. Next time I might do it with some sautéed shiitake mushrooms. The secret to a good BLT is the contrasts of the cold and the hot, the soft and the crunchy, the sweet and the salty. Only your imagination sets the limits. And though it might seem like a heart attack on a plate, indulge. Don't skimp on the fats. You're only going to be having one of these once in a blue moon.

Tonight's was a good one. Let's see what was done.

Waiting for lettuce

One hell of a good sandwich

Ingredients
Country bread (pain à campagne), unsliced
6 slices thick-sliced applewood-smoked bacon
1/2 medium red onion, sliced thinly
4 slices thinly-sliced 6-year aged cheddar cheese (from the edge of a block)
1 slice Emmenthal cheese
4 slices thinly-sliced Italian tomato
4 thin slices English cucumber
1 cup chopped romaine lettuce, heart section preferred
Japanese mayonnaise, or a mixture of Hellman's and a little dijon mustard

Method
Cut two slices of the bread, at least 1/2 an inch thick. Set aside.

In a small nonstick skillet, sauté the onions on medium heat in some butter until brown and almost getting crisp; about 15 minutes.

Prepare a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil. Lay out the bacon. Bake at 500 degrees either in a toaster oven or a regular oven, about 7 minutes or to your desired doneness (I like mine still somewhat soft, not hard and brittle). Place in a bowl lined with paper towels.

Toast the bread until just showing some color; spread mayonnaise on both slices. On one slice, place the cheeses. Toast in a toaster oven until the cheese has melted.

Assemble the sandwich: layer the bacon first, then the the cucumber, then the caramelised onions, then the tomato, then a hefty bunch of lettuce.

Cut in half. Serve with a glass of Barolo.

Jumbo Shrimp II

I have to admit, I don't like peeling shrimp. But not for the reasons you might expect. Tonight, as I peeled these delicious monsters, I couldn't help thinking about them grazing across the ocean floor, going home at night after a hard days' work finding plankton, greeting their jumbo-shrimp wives and children, only to be plucked suddenly from their tranquil lives by an illegal Russian purse-seine operation.

Flash frozen! The sheer horror. And then to be brined in salt and sugar -- as if they needed more salt -- and peeled, headless and forever wriggle-less, in my kitchen sink. I gave them names as I peeled them . . . "Goodbye, Harvey . . . goodbye, Adolphus, goodbye Margaret and especially goodbye, Troy. You will be missed, and I promise to say a special prayer to the Shrimp God, Scuttillus Maximus, on your behalf, so you go to shrimp heaven."

And shrimp heaven it was tonight!

Check it out! If you look closely you can just see that extra-pink spot on Adolphus (third from left)!

It it Quacks . . .

And then there was light at the end of the tunnel.

Doing a magret de canard is childishly simple. You simply can't ruin it unless you cook it into shoe leather, which I do NOT advise. Duck should be eaten rare, or at most, medium rare. It is not like chicken. It is not like turkey. It is strikingly similar in taste and texture to a very tender filet mignon of beef.

I brined mine in a salt and sugar solution overnight, but it appears not to have really affected the taste, as it would chicken breasts.

So:
Magret de Canard Wrapped in Bacon
Ingredients
1 large duck breast, about 1-inch thick, including fat
3 strips thick-cut bacon
Salt
Pepper

Method
With a very sharp knife, score the fat of the duck breast without cutting all the way through in a criss-cross fashion. Salt and pepper both sides. Wrap the breast with the bacon slices.

In a non-stick frying pan preheated to medium, set the duck, fat-side down. Don't move it around. Cook about 8 minutes, occasionally draining the duck fat (or saving it to fry some potatoes!). Turn the breast over and cook approximately six to eight minutes for rare. It's always better to cook it less than you think, because you can't uncook it if it's too well done.

Remove from pan and let rest on a warm plate tented in aluminum foil. If not eating soon, put in a 100-degree oven.

Serve sliced thinly. I removed the fat from the slices but it's not necessary, unless you're watching your waistline, in which case you wouldn't be eating duck.

Serve with scalloped potatoes and superfine green beans with a nice Sauvignon Blanc.

Duck breast, scored and seasoned

Duck breast, wrapped in bacon

Magret de Canard with scalloped potatoes, green beans and shiitake-pleurot sauce

A Better Duck I have Yet to Eat

It all came together like a symphony orchestra after a long tuning. Frankly, I don't know what I was agonizing about. The duck itself was the easiest thing out of everything to make. I literally had to cool my heels most of the afternoon, because making it ahead was not an option.

As I mentioned before, the sauce was fantastic, after the addition of some wild honey and mustard:

Sauce for Magret de Canard
Ingredients
2 large cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 small onion, finely chopped
1/2 lb. Shiitake mushrooms (about six large ones) stemmed and sliced
1/2 lb. Pleurot mushrooms (about 2 large ones) stemmed and sliced
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon flour
Handful Italian parsley, chopped
Handful fresh tarragon, chopped
1 cup good white wine
1 ½ cups veal or chicken stock
1 teaspoon wildflower honey
1 tablespoon piment espelette mustard (any dijon-style will do)
3/4 cup heavy cream (35%)
Salt and pepper to taste
Love

Method
Sauté the mushrooms in butter on medium heat until browned and have lost their liquid. Set aside. Sauté onions and garlic in butter until done; approximately 8 minutes.

Add wine and reduce to approximately half; add broth and reduce further, maybe 15-20 minutes all together. Add back the onion mixture, parsley and tarragon, cook a couple of minutes further. Purée everything with a hand blender and return to pan.

Tastes a lot better than it looks

When ready to finish the sauce, reheat on medium. Add honey and mustard and combine well. Add back mushrooms. Add cream and reduce on medium low heat, about 7 minutes. Adjust for seasonings. Serve!

Ze Sauce, Boss! Ze Sauce!

Oh

My

God

Don't you just love it when serendipity rears its welcome head, when a situation you thought was definitely going to be fucked turns out to be exactly the opposite?

It was the time that many cooks dread: time to make the sauce. One mistake and you're twisting in the breeze, 9 feet up. A hair too much salt and the table will fall silent. A hair too much sweetness and a vague rumbling will sweep the room. Too thick, too thin, too dark, too floury, too heavy . . .

But get it right, OOOOooooo . . . . . you've just won the chef's lottery. I cursed when I tasted it and it was too damn salty, but then I thought, wait a minute -- don't you dare put sugar in it. Half a teaspoon of wildflower honey and those sweet onions . . . that's all you're going to need! And I was luckily right.

I started by sautéeing onions and garlic, knowing I'm just going to liquidize them later. Remove. Then a tiny roux, some unsalted butter and some flour. Not too thick. Then some white wine. Reduce. Then some veal broth. Reduce. Then add back the onions/garlic, and some chopped fresh tarragon and parsley. Taste. Add a little more wine.

The mushrooms shrink ten-fold

Christ alive. We haven't even come to the heavy cream, a dab of duck fat and the brilliantly sautéed shiitakes and pleurots . . . this duck is going to be the happiest duck on Planet Earth.

Waiting for the cream

PS. Never underestimate the power of tarragon! I bought a whole bottle of Pernod thinking I was going to use it for the sauce but in the end decided to use tarragon and drink the Pernod instead. Life is swwwweeet.

Holy Indigenous Varietals, Batman!

I'm Blooking! Yes, blogging while I'm cooking. I can't believe the mess I'm in (wasn't there a rock song about that? Something to do with Doctor, Doctor, Please) but at least the first mess is behind me.

I'd drive you nuts if I posted three recipes in one shot, so let me do it post-by-post.

Twelve-Cheese Scalloped Potatoes with Bacon and Heavy Cream

Okay, I lost count of how many cheeses there are in this dish. Let's just say "lots." Right click to save and print for the attending cardiologist when you check in to ER.


Step one: The Mandoline

The "Ripple Cutter." If it seems to be grinning, it is.

See, you need a mandoline for this dish. Anything else and it will be a Fail, unless you're an expert potato slicer with an extremely sharp knife. So get one, a quality one. I have a Matfer.

Ingredients

2-3 large Idaho potatoes (don't use new or waxy Yukon Gold-type potatoes) depending on how many people you are going to serve

1 mid-sized red onion, very thinly sliced
4 slices thick bacon, preferably applewood-smoked, briefly broiled in the toaster oven and cut into one-inch slabs

Internal cheese
1 cup grated Gruyère cheese
1/2 cup aged cheddar
1/2 cup good goat cheese, sliced into rounds
1/2 cup Provolone cheese, chopped
2 tablespoons chopped garlic, mixed into the cheese
Parsley

Topping
1/2 cup Pecorino Romano cheese, grated, mixed into 1 cup crushed Italian-style croutons
3/4 cup heavy (35%) cream

Method
Ripple-cut the potatoes at about 1/8" thick. If not using immediately, immerse in cold water. Mix the garlic and parsley with the grated cheese

When ready to assemble dish, preheat oven to 350º (an oven thermometer is very handy).

Dry potato slices thoroughly with paper towels.

In a large cast iron pan, or baking dish, layer in the following order:

Potatoes to completely cover the bottom of the pan/dish
Bacon
Onions
Internal cheese, generously sprinkled
Cream, generously applied
REPEAT in same order

After the last layer of potatoes, sprinkle the remaining soft cheese mixture. Then  sprinkle thoroughly with Romano/bread crumb mixture.

Bake, uncovered, at about 250-300 degrees for half an hour. Check every ten minutes to make sure the top is not getting burned.

Cover pan/dish with lid or aluminum foil and bake one hour longer. Let rest. Serve.

Mandolined potatoes

The Suspects

The first layer

Ready to go into the oven

Eh voilà, your ticket to bump up to the head of the line to see Reza Pahlavi, your new cardiologist

Have I Bitten Off More Than I Can Chew?

Hmm . . . it's Cooking Saturday. In case you didn't know, it's when I tune in PBS and watch all the cooking shows and cook right along all day.

Brigitte's not here and I have no one to impress, so it's experimentation time . . . if it's lousy I'll just dump it and no one will be the wiser.

But on today's menu is duck breast in Shiitake and Pleurot Tarragon-cream sauce with three-cheese scalloped potatoes and superfine green beans . . . well, all good and well, until the bacon came along.

Yep, you read it right. My little eye espied the bacon, sitting frozen forlornly in its extra-thick glory, and I vowed to myself and it that I would not leave it there a minute longer. (Hell, I don't mind being dead and sliced up, but dead and sliced up AND frozen? Mercy).

So dinner has become BACON-WRAPPED Duck Breast with three-cheese scalloped potatoes WITH BACON and superfine green beans.

I'm up to my neck in it as I type. I'm documenting all with the camera, so look for a juicy update later today. I weighed 163 yesterday, but I'm going to weigh 263 tomorrow.

What I Had For Dinner Part XVII

What else would a bachelor make when his wife is on a ten-day trip? Why, garlic shrimp with spaghettini all' pomodoro, of course.

And what would he make tonight? Why, Thai green chicken curry with bamboo shoots, basmati rice and ghost-pepper salsa!

The Dreaded "Ghost Pepper"

So called. In actuality, it's the Bhut or Naga Jolokia, or Morich . . . it's all the same for the hottest chile in the world, by far. I guess, like some dreaded mafia guys, ya gotta have seven nicknames to match your reputation.

I'm not normally a masochist, but I definitely like hot food. I was a little suspicious when watching a youtube movie of some clown eating an entire Jolokia but I quickly realised that this man was very sincerely sorry he had done what he'd done.

I was foolish in my youth but I realise now that it is not at all hard to find some noxiously incendiary pepper to crash your mouth. I actually quite enjoy my habanero salsa, which involves finely chopping habaneros and mixing with tomato, onions, cucumbers, you name it.

But the Jolokia actually makes the habanero pale into green pepper territory. It will and can put you in a hospital.

So naturally, the other day while buying my Indian munchies at a place on Victoria, I was suddenly inspired to ask if they had any Jolokia.

Turns out they do. I mixed up some salsa to have with some curry I made the other day and I put a teaspoon of this stuff in it. I tasted a smidgeon but now I'm going to have the curry, with much more than a smidgeon. Wish me luck.

Here are the pics if you want to pick some up.