Wild Mushroom Risotto (Balls) with Black Truffle Oil

This is pure comfort food.

I admit I shy away from (or cheat at) risotto because of the time of stirring involved. I also more often have basmati or brown rice sitting around, neither of which are the perfect arborio rice required for traditional risotto, but it's Christmas, and exceptions must be made.

Traditionally a risotto is made of sautéd onions and garlic in olive oil, to which rice is added. After the rice is coated with the oil mixture and begins to stick, the pan is deglazed with white wine. Then broth or wine is added in 1/2 cup quantities until the rice is al dente, just tender. Apparently you can just keep adding wine from a bottle until it's gone, but more often I'll use what's leftover from a bottle of white in the fridge and then finish it with MSG-free vegetable or chicken broth. Still haven't mastered the home-made versions of these...broth that is, not wine. Maybe wine someday.

This recipe calls for a lot of mushrooms for flavour, and a recurrence of the white (or black) truffle oil used in the polenta. In restaurants risotto will often be partially pre-made, or ready to be re-heated, so the traditional parmesan or romano may already be added, but if you want (or need) to skip the cheese when making this at home, there should be enough creaminess from the slow-cooked rice and broth to satisfy. Maybe add a little extra salt if there's not enough in the broth to substitute for the salt in the cheese.

Dried wild mushrooms
warm water for soaking
olive oil
onion
garlic
portobello or other fresh wild mushrooms (I love the Fromagerie Atwater's selection [Montreal] but stick to the brown crimini, which are a steal)
short grain rice (arborio)
vegetable or chicken stock
salt and pepper to taste
white truffle oil
fresh parsley
parmesan or raw swiss cheese (optional. The swiss is what I ended up using as a dip for the risotto balls made out of the leftovers)

Soak the first wild mushrooms in warm water for 30 minutes while you chop the garlic and onion. Then drain the mushrooms through a strainer lined with a paper towel to remove the grit but save the liquid. Rinse and chop the mushrooms.

Sauté the onions and garlic until soft and add fresh mushrooms, chopped. Cook until the liquid has evaporated and then add the soaked and chopped wild mushrooms. Stir in the rice and cook a few minutes more.

Bring the broth and reserved soaking liquid to a simmer, so that with each addition to the skillet it doesn't need to waste time heating up before it is absorbed by the rice.

Add 1 cup of stock to rice and raise heat to medium high stirring constantly, but lightly(!), until liquid evaporates or is absorbed. Most of the liquid actually does evaporate but the flavour from the broth stays, which is why this tastes so much more intense than regular rice. Just be careful your broth doesn't have too much salt, or all you'll taste is sodium and the mushrooms will be wasted. Add all the rice in 1/2 cup quantities until the rice is tender, about 18 minutes. Remove from heat and add salt (or not, probably not), pepper, and truffle oil, and finally, parsley. Optionally stir in parmesan or other cheese.

This was such a good texture. Luxurious cream...but the flavour was hollow. I was disappointed. I think it was the truffle oil, but it was definitely missing something. We did try the risotto at this point but it was mostly left for the following day when it had dried out a little. We shaped it into meatball-size spheres and baked the risotto balls (instead of frying in butter). The risotto balls were served as hot hors d'oeuvres, brought around on platters with a small dish of raw, grated swiss cheese (unpasteurized, so acceptable for most lactose-intolerant people as the un-killed bacteria eats the lactose). The risotto was much better with the swiss cheese, mostly because it overwhelmed the hollow earthy flavour. Seemed like cheating, but was still very warm and comforting, definitely not heavy like it can be when you stir in the cheese. This way you get to taste the swiss in every bite, instead of having it melt into the ball's already-creamy texture.



Verdict: I'd make it again, but use white wine instead of all vegetable or chicken stock. Probably a dry white would work nicely.

Disgusting Smoked Trout Spread on Baguette

I should have left the poor baguette alone.

I love smoked trout (and smoked salmon, the recipe's substitute if no trout is available), I love dill, I like yogurt, lemon, chives and pepper, but this was gross. 50% of the testers of this spread disliked it violently.

I don't think I like horseradish. It's either this or the yogurt was too bitter or runny.

1/2 lb smoked trout
1 c. yogurt cheese or ricotta
lemon juice
horsradish
dill
chives
pepper
salt to taste

This is a simple recipe. You blend the first 4 ingredients in a blender or food processor and then stir in the rest.

But I used plain yogurt instead of yogurt cheese. Yogurt cheese involves draining the excess liquid from the yogurt by using a cheese cloth. I also think ricotta would have worked better, but we made two versions of this, one with soy yogurt and one with probiotic yogurt and neither was particularly good. We used less yogurt in the soy version and it was better, but not even a little extra salt could save it. No one at the party disliked it, but lets just say that when I was testing it I didn't want to have to keep testing it after each subtle change, like adding a little more salt, or a little more lemon. We didn't have more trout to add, which may have worked better. I wish we'd just put out the trout as it was. There was nothing wrong with it. Poor trout, all coated in gross yogurt and horseradish. Simple is better. This is a good lesson.

Next post...risotto balls. Simple recipe, fancy presentation. Step in the right direction.

Wild Mushroom Bruschetta on Polenta Diamonds, variation on a recipe from Bonnie Stern's Heartsmart Cooking

I realized in the last post I gave pictures, but did not actually give the cooking process for the wild mushroom bruschetta with goat cheese (and the variation with lactose-free feta).

olive oil
shallots
garlic
portobello (or other wild) mushrooms
thyme
pepper
salt
parsley
unripened goat cheese yogurt cheese or light ricotta (yogurt cheese is yogurt that has been strained through a cheesecloth to thicken...or just use a thick plain yogurt)
more garlic

This is a beautiful recipe. In a cookbook with five 'bruschetta' recipes, this is a nice variation on the traditional tomato recipe. The recipe does say it's okay to use other cheeses and the feta worked well, being not too salty. Feta does have less lactose than most cow's milk cheeses as it's mostly goat's or sheep's milk, but the lactose-free version here is more likely a 'miracle', or disgrace, of modern science.

Heat oil and sauté shallots and garlic for a few minutes (never heat olive oil over medium heat or it will burn. Canola oils and vegetable oils can go higher but don't contain the flavour or those much-lauded omega 3's). Add mushroom, thyme and a little pepper. I ran out of thyme...hilarious, I know. So I searched and decided on tarragon, a nice aromatic with the mushrooms and supposedly good for digestion. This is a nice effect when I use cheese of any sort as trusting my digestive system is often a bit of blind faith. Cook until liquid evaporates and stir in salt and parsley.

Then in a food processor add cheese of choice, a little more pepper, the second batch of garlic, and yogurt cheese or ricotta. This doesn't blend well. A food processor would be a better plan, especially when you're trying to get the spread out after it finally does blend. You can add more yogurt cheese to make it more spreadable, but it dilutes the flavour.

Then all you do is put a touch of the cheese mixture on the polenta diamonds and top with the mushroom bruschetta and a little sprinkle of parsley, or more tarragon.

Party Prep: Pastry, Peppers and imPerfect Polenta

With all the preparations for the 2nd annual family house party in full swing, I tackled the ''P's".

Fresh off my mousse mistakes, I decided to separate the great Mocha Buche de Noel into sections. This is first of all necessary, as the mousse needs to be frozen, the soufflé pastry needs to cool and all these layers need to not fall apart inside or outside of your freezer, and second of all good for my self-esteem. The pastry seemed by far the least intimidating step.

The idea for a Buche de Noel is you make a baking sheet of chocolate cake (in a low-fat chocolate cookbook this becomes a soufflé pastry to keep it light), a baking sheet of chocolate mousse (the good recipe for bittersweet truffle mousse rather than the dreaded mocha mousse), unpeel the chocolate layers from their respective baking sheets, roll them up, wrap it all in a meringue layer and stick it in the oven for 4 minutes like a Baked Alaska. The effect is one of frozen mousse inside, warm maringue coating outside, and the meringue looks like the bark of a tree, a Christmas tree, or "buche".

Cocoa Soufflé Pastry:
eggs, separated
vanilla
sugar
cream of tartar
cocoa
jelly-roll pan (the baking industry's money-grab item - it's only a baking sheet with a lip, as most have anyway)

This recipe from Alice Medrich's Low-Fat Chocolate Cookbook certainly got off on the wrong foot when no length of beating was suggested. In the last recipe I had undertaken, the dreaded mocha mousse, she was so adamant that under no circumstances should the beating time of 3 minutes be cheated, but here she did not say a peep? Well I beat it for 3 minutes and hoped there wasn't a third recipe somewhere hiding in the book which read "Actually, you never want to beat for 3 minutes as the egg yolks will turn white, become very scared of chocolate, and never, ever fold correctly, resulting in unsuccessful Christmas parties".

I had decided to make the pastry layer thinking it would be a nice break from mousse, but no, soufflé is just like mousse in the egg white/yolk separating, beating, and folding EXCEPT there's no need to make sure they get to 160 degrees because it's going to be safe no matter what once it's in the oven. Oh hurray! Soufflé now seems easy to me. The hardest part was after:

1. Beating the egg whites to soft peaks (still a bit of a guess) on MEDIUM speed,

2. Adding the remaining sugar, increasing the beating speed to HIGH until stiff but not dry (again, hope and a prayer),

3. Folding some of the egg whites into the yolks and then everything back into the whites after sieving the cocoa on top

you have to make sure the whole thing does not collapse as you fold and finally spread into a baking dish lined with aluminum foil. I've had a few too many soufflés collapse in the oven on me and if this happened, the buche de noel would be a little non-cylindrical, probably resulting in the mousse oozing out the sides. Not a bad thing, necessarily, as it would be the most delicious tree sap created since maple syrup, but no so good when trying to surround it, eventually, with meringue.

Well it didn't implode. The middle didn't sink. My self-esteem would last one more day until the next mousse-making.

On to easier tasks, or so I thought...

Polenta Diamonds


I doubled a recipe for polenta from Bonnie Stern's Heartsmart Cooking

10 cups of milk or water (I did a mix)
4 cups of cornmeal
salt
pepper
white truffle oil

Seems simple, and it was. Bring the water/milk to a boil, add salt and pepper, whisk in cornmeal. Reduce heat to low and let cook for 30 minutes, stirring. Remove from heat and stir in truffle oil. I cooked it and stirred and poured it into baking dishes to cool. In Northern Italy polenta is everywhere. It's served as a porridge, with more liquid to cornmeal ratio, and then the leftovers harder up, some of the liquid evaporates, and are grilled, fried in butter, or baked into a cornbread-like consistency to be topped with other ingredients the next day. Kind of in the same way you take stale bread and turn it into bread pudding, or toss leftover dried-out rice into a soup. So my concept with the polenta was to cool it in pans, leave it to dry out and cut it into the diamond shapes you see everywhere in bars in Milan, and top it with:

1. Goat cheese spread and Wild Mushroom Sauté (and a version using a lactose-free feta)

2. Moroccan Cooked Tomato Salsa topped with scallions


(This worked well with the "layer" theme of the party), but the polenta did not dry up. Even after baking it for 20 minutes it stayed mushy inside, like a pancake that won't cook through. With assistance, I tried frying them in butter, only to come to the conclusion that the butter was used to make overly dry polenta softer after, not to make soft polenta harder. The outsides solidified but the second you move them from the pan they fall apart. It was still delicious, but you can't have layers if everything squishes together, and messy finger-food at a party is a recipe for disaster, and labour-intensive cleaning, neither of which are good.

So the polenta got left for two days to see if anything could be evaporated. In the end I think we baked all ten cups of it twice, tried frying 1/4 quarter or it and left the left to be scooped up with a spatula. It actually worked out alright. Instead of cutting the pieces individually, the diamond-shapes were made with a knife as guides for party-guests to try to scoop, and then each diamond was topped with a mound of the salsa or cheese and mushrooms. The colour contrast between the two layer toppings was beautiful and the diamonds weren't so mushy by the party.

Oh, for the white truffle oil, I did splurge and go to a specialty store. White truffle oil is olive oil infused with truffle, a mushroom. It's all very chi-chi, yes, and I'd never tried it before. It gave a woodsy-flavour to the cornmeal and is a nice touch as long as you don't overpower it with salt.

The Moroccan Cooked Salsa was so easy to make! Five ingredients:

Red peppers
olive oil
A head of garlic, separated into cloves and finely chopped
4 jalapenos
3lbs plum tomatoes or 3 cans drained and chopped

You broil the red peppers until their skins are black, let them cool and peel the skins off of them. This is not so fun sometimes. If they broil unevenly then all the skin doesn't blacken, and it's kind of hard to remove it all. Two tricks are to cut the peppers so the skin is equidistant from the broiler so it blackens evenly, and once broiled, leave them to cool in a plastic bag. I think this makes it easier to remove the skins though I'll admit I don't fully understand.

12 cloves of garlic? Seriously? It cooks down so it's not too strong. This is not raw garlic. Honestly, in the end, you don't really taste the garlic. The jalapenos you do taste, and feel, though. Dicing four jalapenos should be done in kitchen gloves. One is bad enough but four stays in your hands, can cause irritation, gets in your eyes, and generally overwhelms your kitchen. Also, don't skimp on the oil when you sauté them with the garlic or they'll smoke up your entire kitchen. Cook these a few minutes, add the tomatoes and cook 20 minutes. The taste would be completely different if you use fresh tomatoes, but it's December in Newfoundland, so you can get mush better quality from canned. Just don't add any extra salt in the end when the recipe says "salt to taste". I don't care if you're addicted to sodium, the extra salt would add nothing.

After 20 minutes add the reserved roasted peppers, which have subsequently been skinned and diced, and cook 15 minutes more. Also delicious on toasted or un-toasted baguette, instead of mush polenta.

2 dips down, 1 to go.

The Sky fell back up (I destroyed a milk chocolate mocha mousse)

Back to Alice Medrich's "Chocolate and the Art of Low-Fat Desserts".

Oh Alice, I'm not happy with you right now. I'm not happy with me, sure, but I'm not happy with you. Your bittersweet chocolate truffle mousse recipe is sublime - manageable and delicious. but your white chocolate mousse recipe which is also used for the milk chocolate mocha mousse I tried make yesterday) is not very good at all. It follows the same general guide to mousse-making (add soaked gelatin to chocolate mixture and let thicken, make safe meringue and then fold together) but the chocolate mixture doesn't have any egg yolks, which would help thicken it, and the meringue just didn't work the same way using a skillet as it did when I used a pot of water.

Take 1: the eggs I was using (brought to room temperature so they would cooperate), wouldn't separate, and I got yolk in my cream of tartar and water mixture.

Take 2: The water couldn't go up the sides of the bowl inside the skillet, and the recipe didn't say how hot the water should be, so even with incessant scraping and stirring to keep the egg whites from cooking, they cooked. Scrambled egg white mousse is not delicious.

Take 3: I lowered the heat of the water in the skillet and got assistance to hold the candy thermometre in place. The trick is that when you place a bowl of egg whites, sugar, cream of tartar and water in a skillet of hot water, you need to stir quickly so the eggs don't solidify, but you don't want to over-stir and minimize the rising potential of the whites, which you'll need once you remove them from the heat. The whole purpose of this ridiculous method is to make sure the whites reach 160 degrees Fahrenheit to prevent the possibility of salmonella poisoning, which is rare enough, but does happen. Does the end of not possibly getting sick from salmonella outweigh the pain of fussing with a thermometre while you try so hard to not cook eggs? Depends how much mousse you make in your life time, and how lucky you feel. I initially tried my tested method of stirring with the thermometre while waiting to see if the eggs were hot enough. Nope, they started scrambling. Quickly help came in the form of a friend holding the thermometre for me while I stirred. It was safe! Unfortunately I think the eggs can scramble at a lower temperature if you're not stirring, so just because they're starting to cook doesn't mean they've reached the right temperature. Quickly off the heat, I stuck the egg beaters in the bowl and beat at highest speed until stiff peaks formed. Well, see, that was tough to tell, because the eggs didn't rise. Like my naan, they had nothing left in them to give. I beat until it seemed like they may have been stiff and then let a mousse novitiate fold the chocolate mixture and whites together. It was a bit soupy.

So I decided to call it pudding. It was not light and fluffy. Like the naan, it was a bit dense. "Stunned as me arse", we'd say in Newfoundland. Once it refrigerated a bit, it did solidify a little, but there was certainly no more air getting into it. It was not a fluffy pillow on my tongue.

Well, mousse, I'll try again tomorrow. Christmas still needs three more meringues out of me. That's a lot of second chances. Lemon mousse cake, frozen chocolate mousse cookie filling and mocha buche de noel await.

Satisfaction and Christmas Eve Indian: Madhur Jaffrey's Kashmiri Lamb Rogan Josh, cabbage with peas (bund gobi aur matar), basmati rice and yes, naan

There are two recipes for Rogan Josh in Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking. I've made the first and was disappointed. the flavour was off, and it wasn't as full-bodied and epiphanal as it should have been, despite all the fresh spices. but I love this book and I decided it was worth trying the second one. The main difference is this one is stewed with the bone-in and uses no garlic or ginger, replacing it with fennel and way more yogurt (in my case almond breeze, because as miraculously as I can eat probiotic yogurt, once you boil it all the nice friendly bacteria are murdered and they're avenged by the lactose that quickly runs amok in my lactose-intolerant stomach. The almond breeze was thinner than the yogurt so I boiled off more of the liquid, looking for the right stew consistency in the end, the same way you can make evaporated milk).

To go with this there were two cabbages in the house, and two cabbage recipes in the cookbook.

I thought a bit of basmati rice would be lovely, and not trying to overwork myself for the day, decided to forego the undertaking of naan bread. but I got cajoled into it.

Kashmiri Rogan Josh
fennel seeds
plain yogurt (or almond breeze)
cinnamon stick
cloves
stewing lamb with bone
salt
paprika
cayenne
ginger
water
garam masala (this is just a blend of spices. Every Indian cook has their own blend, and uses different proportions, but the books' version calls for a mix of cardamom seeds, cinnamon stick, black cumin seeds, cloves, black peppercorns and nutmeg ground in a coffee grinder. I think I accidentally left out the nutmeg and peppercorns and used ground cumin instead of seeds. Oops, but it all worked out just fine)

Indian must be prepped. Grind the fennel in advance and set aside. Make the garam masala and set aside. Then portion out all the spices and combine the ones that go in at the same time. I would even go so far as to set them up in a line in the order in which it's all added. All this "1 second later add..." is ridiculous, but I am not Indian. Who am I to judge?

So with help, we cut two inch cubes off a huge chunk of lamb, which was...well, bloody, and harder than a chicken to butcher. I saw a guy at a market do it in 2 minutes...For me, it took 40 minutes to get the cubes cut and the fat trimmed. Then the fun started.

You grind fennel seeds in a coffee grinder or mortar and pestle, set a bit of oil (way less than the called-for 6 tbsp) and add whole cinnamon and cloves, followed (exactly two seconds later) by the meat and 2 tsp of salt. 5 minutes later add the paprika and cayenne (I wonder if this was traditionally done with saffron but it's more expensive. You need a good paprika to make this work). Then add the yogurt slowly so it doesn't curdle. If you use almond breeze like me you don't have to worry so much about this, but this whole time the heat has been on high, so if you skimp on oil, as you should, I think, you need to make sure you're stirring very quickly up until this point. Without enough oil, the spices won't release their flavours very well. The stew is going to be fatty enough, just because it's a fatty meat. You don't get a lot of flavour from the vegetable oil, so I don't see the point.

Then add the fennel and ginger powder and then the water. Now leave the lid ajar (more ajar if you use almond milk or another kind of milk) and finally reduce the heat to medium. Let it cook 30 minutes, then cover completely and reduce to low for another 45 minutes. When it's all done, remove the lid and add a little garam masala, very, very little and either boil off excess liquid or serve immediately. Remember to remove the bones!

Oh wow it worked. So, so much better than the other recipe in the book for rogan josh. It's incredible what a slight difference in spices can make. Or, more likely, stewing with the bone in. All of a sudden you're transported to a world where your taste buds are happy to belong to you. They veritably sing.

The cauliflower dish was simple and beautiful and was underwhelmind compared to the rogan josh, but the sweetness of the peas and cabbage, was still nice. I think it would go better with fish, maybe chicken. Definitely something with lemon.

Bund gobi aur matar (cabbage with peas)
green cabbage
peas
oil
cumin seeds
bay leaves
turmeric
cayenne pepper
hot green chili pepper
salt
sugar
garam masala (the same as above)

this was simple and beautful. The prep was the most time-consuming bit, chopping the cabbage into fine, long threds.

Heat the oil, add the cumin and bay leaves (again, no cumin, so I added it later. Browning ground spices doesn't work well and you end up with burnt flavour). A few seconds later, once the bay leaves take on colour, add the cabbage and peas. 30 seconds later, the cayenne and turmeric. Cover, turn heat to low. 5 minutes later add the green chili, salt and sugar. Cover again and cook 2-3 minutes. Remove the cover and sprinkle with garam masala. Stir and serve. Remove the bay leaves! I love how the basic recipe is the same for most Indian dishes. Whether it's a 20 minute vegetable dish or an hour and a half meat dish, the concepts are the same. Ah, tradition. That's what Christmas is all about.

Basic recipe for everything Indian "stewed":

Heat a ton of oil
Add whole spices for a short period of time
Add meat or vegetables
Add other spices in a ridiculously precise order (potentially also add liquid)
Add fresh chilis and spices that have an immediate impact (salt, sugar)
Add garam masala. The freshly ground, uncooked spices, season everything (a more well-rounded generic seasoning than the Western use of salt and pepper)

Then I burnt the basmati rice. It didn't boil over. I'm an idiot. So I scraped the unburnt rice into another pot, add more water and cooked it on low until it was actually done. Blasphemous, I know. From a girl who respects the rules of proper-rice making, and even calls herself a sushi-maker, soaks, lets sit and tries so hard to perfect rice, this was embarrassing. The best-laid plans...

And the naan. I was nervous then, having messed up rice and meringue already that day. but my dad wanted it, so I set the yeast to sit in warm milk (almond breeze for 20 minutes). Maybe it was too hot. There was no temperature given. Anyway, it sat for a little over 20 minutes. How bad is that? I've only made bread maybe 3 times in my life. I'm no bread expert, yet. So I chastised myself a little and added the overly-soaked yeast and to the mixture of flour, salt and baking powder. Then I added the teaspoon of sugar (fully-refined sugar, so the yeast had a fighting chance, as opposed to a sugar replacer like xylitol or agave nectar with a low glycemic index), vegetable oil, soy yogurt and one beaten egg. I hate soy. It hates me. Mostly it hates me, but I used it here because there was really no alternative. Probiotic or soy, either way my stomach will be unhappy with me. The bacteria dies, but in retrospect I should have used probiotic to help the yeast along. The bacteria doesn't get killed until after the rising process. I kneaded, and kneaded and kneaded until it became "smooth and satiny" or so I thought. Maybe it wasn't long enough? Maybe it wasn't elastic enough? I shaped it into a ball, placed it in a bowl coated in oil, rolled it around, covered it with plastic wrap, and left it in a warm place to rise for an hour.

It didn't rise.

So many things could have gone wrong. It turns out there was a draft behind the stove. I couldn't place it in the oven at it's lowest temperature or even with the light on, because the bowl was plastic. Whatever the reason, it didn't rise. So the "punching down" process was short. The rest was fun, though. If you've never made naan, I recommend it for aggression. You get to knead, yes, but then you get to divide the ball into six smaller balls, roll them out one at a time and then "slap" them onto a heavy baking sheet. Put them in the oven, preheated to the highest possible to temperature, to recreate the heat of a tandoor clay oven. 3 minutes later put them under the broiler untnil they puff up and crack on the top. That is perfect naan. Mine were not perfect, but they cooked well, they puffed, they got slightly blackened craters and looked wonderful. They were just a bit...dense. Like excuses people make for children. Yes, it's true, I perhaps like naan more than I like children, even these naan.

Because they were beautiful and still tasted sweet and chewy, it was not a trial to use them to soak up the delicious juices of the rogan josh. Although the salty sauce soaked better into the basmati rice, there is something so natural, and fun, about scooping meat onto a big piece of flat bread. Bowl and meal in one. Messy, yes. Delicious, yes. This is not "proper" food. This is salt of the earth appreciation for the miracle of good food, good company and the entire experience of eating. So different from the French interpretation of the same mantra.

Despite the mistakes, the chaos, the time involved, this was an unforgettable meal. It finished perfectly, with the jarring contrast of a chocolate mocha mousse (pudding sort of), whose meringue didn't rise, whose chocolate didn't thicken, and which tasted absolutely delicious and satisfying none the less. Yes, satisfaction. That's the word I was looking for.

Great Expectations-Christmas Challange 2010

Perhaps I'm being a bit overly ambitious.

I am catering my family's Christmas party. This is not chips and dip. This is not even fruitcake and pigs in a blanket. To give you an understanding of what I have to live up to, last year my buffet and hors d'oeuvres menu was grouped into three sections: fish, fruit and cheese, and desserts. Oh, and a bunch dips and roasted vegetables (toasted asparagus, nutty cauliflower and broccoli to go with a miso honey dip) on other tables in the house. All with wine pairings. Fish included seared scallops, shrimp martinis, lobster sushi, and a smoked salmon sushi pizza. Fruit ranged from figs to blackberries. A wild mushroom and lentil paté, and two creamy leek dips (in addition to the miso, one version with honey and one with agave nectar). Cheeses were probiotic, lactose-free...or just really, really good and in excess. The hot hors d'oeuvres were bite-size corn and red pepper pancakes with jalapeno salsa and chicken (or vegetable) kebabs with mango chutney.

and desserts...oh desserts.

Fudge brownies with broiled coconut frosting, and a variation with a rich chocolate frosting. My family's traditional gumdrop cookies, blackbottom cupcakes, an assortment of chocolates and candies, and a chocolate fondue dip for the fruit. All, except the cupcakes, in vegan and non-vegan, but often lacto-intolerant-friendly forms.

Then the wine.

We started with champagne, because everything goes with champagne.

Then light whites with the fish. Pinot grigio to complement the touch of lemon on the scallops. Sauvignon blanc for the shrimp. An Alsatian Gewurztraminer and organic chardonnay for the fruit and some of the cheeses (goat's milk, brie, camembert) and cabernet sauvignons and pinot noir to go with the fruit and chocolate combination. Then merlot and shiraz for the richer chocolate desserts and finally port and ice wine to finish the desserts, or by themselves.

Also a slow-cooked mulled cider. I couldn't forget that.

but that was last year. This year I'm more ambitious. The theme is layers...

On toasted baguette:
Smoked Trout Spread
Wild Mushroom Bruschetta

On polenta diamonds:
Moroccan Cooked Salsa
Southwestern Brisket, optionally with avocado cream

On the side:
Arugula Salad with shrimp, roasted asparagus and fennel
Fruit, dried and fresh, for garnish

Hot hors d'oeuvres:
Lamb Koftas
Wild Mushroom Risotto balls

and desserts (this is where the theme of "layers" truly shines):

Lemon mousse cake
Blackbottom (white top) cupcakes
Thin oatmeal cookie sandwiches with either gumdrops, dried apricots, or bittersweet chocolate, filled with frozen chocolate mousse (vegan and non-vegan options) or fresh lemon
Mocha Buche de Noel

If I can make a mocha buche I think I will cry from joy. It involves making two meringues. The lemon mousse cake involves making a third, and a fourth will be made to be frozen for the cookie sandwich filling. That's a whole lot of opportunities to mess up. Fortunately, I planned for this inevitability, and figured the more people drink the less they will care. With this in mind, I brought home three Quebec dessert wines: a blueberry hydromiel (honey wine), a a blackcurrent wine, and a strawberry mistelle (a lot of fermented fruit juice and straight alcohol). And, of course, my dad's apple cider.

But wait! There's more. I also plan on making a traditional Indian dinner of lamb rogan josh, bund gobi aur matar (cabbage with peas), and basmati rice. but then I get interrogated: "Are you making naan???" *sigh* My non-mousse arch-nemesis, rising bread dough. Ah, we meet again, but I come well-prepared. Decent flour, good yeast, a lot of determination, and help.

So now, off to make the blackbottom cupcakes, then prep the lamb, saving the mousse and naan for last. These things don't combine...

and yet, it's a time of miracles. I'll skip the prayer, but keep my fingers crossed that it all works out.

Coq Au Vin: Bonnie Stern's "The Best of Heart-Smart Cooking"

I always thought I was supposed to be French. There are many factors involved in this, ranging from my love of homemade, fresh, rich, but healthy, food made from high-quality ingredients, to my idolization of a digestive liqueur that creates a seemingly bottomless stomach in which you can fit yet more delicious food. I also admire the café culture, where a good conversation can pass an afternoon, and lunch is extended to allow this to happen in miniature every day, independent of business and economics. I enjoy market culture, knowing the people in your city or town, the farmers, the boutiques, and the original 100-mile diet.

I do also, however, believe I should have been Japanese, Italian and Indian, mostly for culinary reasons, so I won't get too carried away.

The fact that I can explore all of these "should-have-beens", is what makes me truly Canadian. And in THAT tradition, I decided to use leftover red wine to make a Coq Au Vin.

2 chickens!
Flour
salt
pepper
olive oil (or bacon)
brandy (I used amaretto)
24 pearl onions or shallots (exactly 24???)
24 garlic cloves!
1lb mushrooms (preferably wild)
carrots
red wine or stock
beef stock (I used extra wine and chicken stock)
bay leaf
fresh: thyme, rosemary, tarragon, parsley

The recipe called for two 3lb chickens cut into 4 pieces each! That's a lot of chicken! but I did as I was told and chopped them into breasts and drumsticks and removed the skin.

1st mistake: The recipe specifically says to pat the chicken pieces dry before putting them into the flour/salt/pepper mixture. Um, oops? You're supposed to end up with extra flour that you discard. I didn't have any extra.

Then sauté the chicken pieces in olive oil, five minutes per side (for the bacon eaters, brown the bacon, discard, drain fat from pan but don't wash it, and sauté the chicken in what's left.)

2nd mistake: my skillets were way too small for my large chicken pieces. I ended up using two skillets and two pots for the whole dish because there was so much. The upside of this was that I got to flambé twice! There's nothing more exciting than pouring sweet alcohol over a hot skillet and lighting it on fire. So doing it twice was like it was my birthday. The sad thing about the recipe is that it says that if the alcohol does not ignite, don't worry. The consolation prize is that the alcohol evaporates anyway. That sounds like a very bad birthday.

You then add the carrots (cut precisely on the diagonal, of course), onions, garlic and mushrooms and cook until brown. Then add the wine and bring it to a boil. Deglaze the pan by scraping the brown bits from the bottom. I love the idea of using alcohol to scrape up the brown, tasty bits created by previously adding alcohol.

After it boils, you add the stock (or stock and more wine, if there's extra), rosemary, thyme, and tarragon. Add the chicken, bring to a boil, and reduce heast and simmer for 45 minutes.

(Potential) mistake #3: I wasn't sure how much, if any I was supposed to stir the chicken while it was simmering away. It became very red from the wine where it touched it, and I wasn't sure if it was supposed to sit on top of the vegetables or be more like a stew. I decided to stir but not all over the chicken got covered in juice.

Now the upside of the excess flour (mistake #1) is that 45 minutes later when you remove the chicken and vegetables to a platter, and after you've skimmed the fat from the surface of the the juices left in the pan, the sauce thickens up very quickly. Instead of adding flour at this step, like you would do for a gravy, you just simmer the juices uncovered until thickened, and it takes no time at all. A lot of people have gotten antsy at large turkey dinners waiting for the gravy to thicken. No problem this time.

Then pour the sauce over the chicken (there's not much sauce left, but it's so flavourful that, in true French style, a little was more than enough. Top with parsley and serve.

Verdict? The dark meat was so moist. The white breast meat was a little dry, but the mushrooms stole the show. The red wine brought out the earthy flavours. I can only imagine if I had used wild mushrooms instead of brown cremini. Just don't use white button. It's too much of a taste sacrifice. I think I ate about half of all the mushrooms in my one serving of chicken (the recipe serves 8-10, and the amount of chicken certainly makes that believable), so four to five servings of mushrooms...mmm...the next time I have leftover red wine that isn't worth drinking, I will sauté mushrooms and onions and pour red wine over with a little salt, pepper and parsley for garnish.

I loved this recipe for the healthier version of a traditional dish. Skimming the fat, removing the skin of the chicken and sautéing in olive oil certainly lighten it up, while the rich taste of the wine, broth and braising of the meat does not make it feel like a compromise. Every bite of this dish was a guilty pleasure.

The Sky is Falling (I made a passable lemon mousse)

I did exactly what should be never be done when making mousse...

...I multi-tasked. I was rushed and nervous and my egg whites started boiling, and I made a drastic substitution, but my goodness, it worked. The pillows of fluff that I tasted yesterday were enough to convince me that chocolate is not always the best kind of mousse, or cake, or guilty pleasure. I know it's blasphemous, but dear lord it was a mound of lemon-flavoured heaven. The meringue melted on the tongue, and it was so light because there was no dense chocolate to weigh it, or me, down.

Oh, Alice Medrich, you should write another cookbook. It will be my other favourite. It will be exactly like your other "Chocolate and the Art of Low-fat Desserts" from which I took my birthday toasted hazelnut and dark chocolate mousse cake, but this one will be all lemon recipes. In the introduction to the recipe Medrich even says, "Every dessert chef needs a lemon mousse recipe". This is it. I didn't even think I liked lemon that much. I usually skip over the lemon recipes looking for the next decadent chocolate one, but you have shown me to be naive, Alice. So many wasted years thinking mousse could only succeed in chocolate form.

Yes, I'm done waxing poetic about lemons. Ridiculous, I know.

I did almost everything right:

gelatin
lemon zest
lemon juice
sugar
eggs, separated
vanilla
cream of tartar
heavy cream

When I see 'heavy cream' in a recipe, I turn the page. So I had turned this page a lot. Heavy cream needs to be whipped and needs to expand. Almond Breeze, my milk substitute, does not expand. Basically I replaced heavy cream with milk. I thought my mousse would collapse. If I actually managed to get the egg whites to the elusive 'stiff peaks' stage it would all be for naught. Well, sometimes you just shrug and push your luck.

The recipe: You sprinkle the gelatin over cold water and set it aside until you're ready for it. Then combine the zest, juice and sugar in a saucepan. I really need a juicer, because it's a little cold these days and my hands are a little dry. Lemon juice all over dry hands is painful and only a little short of self-flagellation.

Here was my problem with the recipe: It said to heat this mixture on medium heat and bring to a simmer. In the meantime you beat an egg and egg white until light in a bowl and then pour some of the hot lemon mixture into the egg. Well my lemon mixture didn't simmer and then it boiled so I was extremely careful pouring it into the egg. I was not about to mess this up so early in the game by letting my eggs cook. Then pouring the egg mixture back into the pan, I checked the recipe to see that I was supposed to stir it until it barely started to simmer around the edges. Well it got to about a rolling boil in 5 seconds because I had waited so long for it to simmer in the first place.

This was Alice's fault, but the next part was my fault. I have a very small strainer and you're supposed to strain this mixture (which had thickened up probably too much) into a bowl to remove the lemon zest. This process took about 5 minutes because it had to be done in stages of pouring, straining, pouring, straining. In that time I was praying that the eggs didn't get stuck to the pan I ended up with lemon frittata. Miracle of miracles...

Then you add the vanilla and gelatin to the bowl, which is placed in a larger bowl of ice water. I was also worried that I had taken too long straining and adding the gelatin and vanilla now would be too late. I did it anyway. Perfection be damned.

Then meringue. See first blog-post ever re: chocolate mousse to summarize my fear of meringue. I don't own a stainless steel bowl. I own very nice and, I hoped, heat-proof, bowls but when you're dealing with temperamental (hah!) candy thermometres, 90 seconds, and the difference between salmonella and a happy stomach, it's a little risky to throw caution to the wind. So I threw it in the right direction, but threw it none the less. I whisked the egg whites, cream of tartar, and sugar with one of the beaters from my hand beaters (I need a whisk too I think) and held my breath while I put the beater down to get the thermometre into a cup of hot water by the stove (poor planning in advance on my part). The whites were okay. I don't trust my thermometre. It has wrecked or jeopardized my food in the past, so I stirred with it to help it along a little, carefully avoiding the bottom of the pan that would trick it into thinking it was hot enough. It got...well, close enough to 160 degrees. The book said a minute and a half and then check it. I hate removing the bowl from the water though because if it's not ready then it has all this time to cool down before you put it back in and start counting again. It seems like it'll never get to a safe temperature that way and your egg whites are losing their potential fluffiness...So again, wind/caution, and I removed the bowl without spilling the egg whites into the water in the pot (Oh, I used a big pot instead of a skillet to get more water boiling and heat the eggs faster through the thicker bowl) and beat to what I figured might pass for stiff peaks. Really it was all I could do because the bowl was just about too small for the quickly-rising egg whites. I always under-estimate the size of bowl I'll need for expanding egg whites, but once you're beating you can't stop and change bowls, you need to keep to keep going. So again, prayer helped and only a little egg white flew from the bowl onto various appliances. WAY better than my pumpkin pie disaster.

At this point I realized I hadn't added the milk to the lemon/gelatin mixture like I'd planned. So I hoped it wouldn't make it too runny to add it now, but what choice did I have? Leave it out? Leave milk out of a mousse? Hmm...even I don't have the courage for that yet.

Folding. After all this hard work, how much air would be lost from my meringue? How many clumps of egg whites would remain because I was scared of mixing? This is another reason lemon is better than chocolate. Mocha-coloured chocolate really stands out from white meringue, but lemon is much more forgiving. I tried a new folding technique - scooping under and letting the mixture fall off the spatula toward the back of the bowl, before rotating the spatula back toward me to make another incision. This made a whole lot more sense in terms of 'folding' the mixture over, as it created a nicer hill than when I rotated the whole mixture over and it kind of plopped down on top of itself. Basically I shoved the meringue off the spatula while it was still horizontal and instead of turning the spatula over to follow the falling meringue, I rotated it toward my body. It seemed to work anyway. The nice thing about no whipped cream was that there was one less folding step. It's hard enough beating part of the lemon mixture into the egg whites and then everything back into the lemon mixture.

Finally, it was done. Nothing collapsed. Nothing got salmonella. And the taste?

Oh it was so good. Organic lemons. Amalfi, the home of limoncello and the ridiculous rules for the selection of lemons for their alcohol of choice, would be proud.

So I beg you all. Try a lemon mousse next time.

I think that's enough religious imagery for one day.

Home-made Pumpkin Pie

Pumpkin Pie is a problem.

Problem #1: Every decent recipe I found in my recipe books and online called for evaporated milk or dry-milk powder (which, as far as I know, doesn't come in a lactose-free version). Then there's the issue of store-bought pumpkin purée, which just doesn't taste the same. Fortunately it turns out (Thank you "Food Substitutions Bible") that evaporated milk is just milk that has had some of the water evaporated from it so it reduces in volume, making what it's added to less soupy than if you used regular milk. So I put 2-1/4 cups of almond milk on the stove to reduce while steaming the pumpkin.

Problem #2: The recipe I found online for pumpkin pie:

http://www.pickyourown.org/pumpkinpie.php

said that steaming would be faster than roasting. I always roast. I'm a good roaster. I should have stuck with what I knew. Steaming ended up taking a ridiculous amount of time because all the pieces of pumpkin didn't fit in my steamer and the lid couldn't fully close. It also added more liquid to the pumpkin that you just have to drain off later. I skipped the suggestion to use a cheesecloth overnight and stuck with paper towels. You might be thinking, why didn't you do it in the microwave? Well, paranoid me decided that since most of the nutrients in squash are lost when you boil them, the microwave would probably suck those nutrients up just as fast. So my only options were to steam or roast.

Problem #3: My blender broke...so once steamed I hand-blended the pumpkin, leaving me with a little more texture in the squash than a traditional pumpkin purée. That's not the problem. That was fine. It was getting pumpkin EVERYWEHERE that was a problem. The recipe is huge. It makes tons and tons of pie filling, so my largest mixing bowl wasn't big enough to hand mix the pumpkin with the evaporated milk and all the other fillings without it getting all over the kitchen and my clothes. I don't own an annoying 'Kiss the Chef' apron, so that didn't save me either. Combine the handmixer with the soupy-ness of Problem #2 and pumpkin flew everywhere. Fortunately I was by myself and no one saw this disaster and I 'forgot' to take a picture. I did have a great moment where I stopped what I was doing, stood back, and realized how ridiculous the situation was.

The recipe:

Ingredients

• a pie pumpkin
  
• 1 cup sugar
  
• 1.5 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon ground allspice
• one half teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract
• one half teaspoon salt
  
• 4 large eggs
• 3 cups pumpkin glop (ok... "sieved, cooked pumpkin")
• 1.5 cans (12oz each) of evaporated milk (I use the nonfat version) for best results.
  If you can't get canned evaporated milk, make your own from nonfat dried milk and make it twice as concentrated as the directions on the box call for!
  If you can't get nonfat dried milk, just use milk.
  If you are lactose-intolerant, use lactose-free milk.

One pie pumpkin ended up giving me six cups of pumpkin purée, so I double the recipe. Seemed like a good idea to make double and freeze extra pies for when they're needed most. You never know when you will desperately want a piece of home-made pumpkin pie. Or when you won't have time to make dessert for a special occasion. Or perhaps, like the Montreal Gazette, it makes a great gift? Maybe not such a good Hallowe'en costume (see previous post), though you would make a lot of friends by covering yourself in pie.

I digress...

The only changes I made to the recipe (I was a pumpkin pie novitiate) were to adjust the spices. I ground my own cloves and cinnamon. I usually triple the cinnamon no matter what but the fresh spice was more pungent. I may have also killed a lot of the fluffiness of the recipe by having to separate the batter into separate bowls and move the hand-mixer between bowls. I don't think starting and stopping the mixer is good for keeping air in the batter.

Anyway, then I made my mom's recipe for pie dough. It hasn't failed me yet. The trick is to have the butter or margarine at room temperature before you cut it in:

Pie Crust Recipe:

For a double -crust 9" pie (or two double-crust smaller pies):

2 c flour

1 tsp salt

3/4 c shortening (margarine or butter) at room temperature (1.5 margarine squares)

5-6 Tbsp cold water (I always use 6)

Blend flour, salt and shortening until particles are the size of small peas. Add water. Shape dough into a two balls with hands. Roll out one ball on a clean surface covered in flour. Turn the pastry as you roll so it forms a circle. Re-apply flour to rolling pin (or wine bottle, or water bottle, in my case) as you go. Lift from surface and place on pie plate. Repeat with second ball and place in second pie plate or on top of fillings of first pie.

I made three pieces and then froze pie filling in containers to make three more pies at a later date!!! The recipe also says you can just cook the pie filling and have a crust-less pie, which I later tried and was pretty happy with. I think I under-filled the pie plates. You don't have to worry about overflow as the pie didn't get any bigger in the oven, so fill it right to the top.

So pie got made, eaten, enjoyed, and tons got frozen. Now I won't have to make another pie filling for...well, I'd say at least Easter, which is probably when I'll start craving it again.

Lessons learned:

1. Roast the pumpkin!

2. Evaporated milk is so easy to make, so don't be dismayed by recipes that call for it

3. Get a food processor...

4. Pumpkin doesn't stain, which is super.

Buttermilk Pound Cake with Blueberry Honey Wine Glaze

What does one do when one goes to an 18th Century Quebec Marketplace? Learn to weave, blacksmith, and sample honey wines, I suppose. That's what I did a few months ago, anyway, and have had a bottle of bottle of Blueberry Honey Wine being saved for a special occasion ever since. The opportunity came when I moved, but then all the little details of moving overcame my need to celebrate the actual move. finally I decided to make a recipe I'd wanted to try for awhile. From my favourite cookbook, "Chocolate and the Art of Low-Fat Desserts", I found a recipe for a buttermilk pound cake with an optional variation of a liqueur soak and liqueur glaze. Originally calling for rum and brandy, two things I don't usually keep around, I decided to substitute the honey wine, which was definitely sweet enough, and hopefully flavourful enough.

The poundcake in itself was incredible. So light and fluffy. Like pie dough, the trick was to have all the ingredients at room temperature.

Flour
Baking powder
Baking soda
Salt
Eggs
Vanilla
Buttermilk (or plain yogurt. I used probiotic, even though the probiotics get killed when baked, thus I get a little stomach sick. You could use soy or sheep or goat's milk yogurt if you can find it and can digest it)
Butter
Sugar

Loaf pan, bundt pan or tube pan

Seems like a basic recipe but it's the quantities that make the difference. Using the minimum amount of fats to maintain the silky texture and delicate flavour of the cake.

The flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder get whisked in a large bowl. The egg and egg whites in another. Vanilla and buttermilk in another. Working quickly while the eggs still have their air, cut the butter into pieces in a large bowl and beat for 1 minute (an entire minute, yes) to soften. I do not question this book. Gradually add the sugar and beat on high for 3 minutes. Again a long time. If you have a stand mixer, not a hand mixer, your arm will thank you. Dribble eggs in slowly, mixing for about 3 minutes. On low, beat in a third of the flour mixture, then half the buttermilk (yogurt) mixture on medium speed. Back to low speed to beat in half the remaining flour, then high for the rest of the buttermilk. Finish on low with the flour.

Summary of mixing:

1. Make sure the butter is extremely creamy pre- and post-sugar addition.
2. Add the eggs incredible slowly.
3. Alternate the flour and yogurt additions
4. Add vanilla only at the end.
5. Takes a grand total of 11-15 minutes, depending on whether you have to reach far and wide for the yogurt or flour bowl. You don't want to have to turn off the mixer at all. The more air you keep in the cake, the fluffier it will be.

Scrape the batter into a pan and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.
Loaf pan: 65-70 minutes
Tube pan: 35-40 minutes
Bundt pan: ...it doesn't say...use your toothpick skills

While the cake is baking prepare the liquor soak: 6 tbsp. blueberry honey wine (or flavoured liqueur of choice) and 2 tbsp. sugar should be simmered for two minutes in a small saucepan. Set aside

Glaze: 1/4 cup powdered sugar and 2 tbsp. blueberry honey wine stirred in a bowl. No alcohol will be boiled off here, so maybe don't offer it to children for breakfast, but what do I know about children?

Unmold the cake over a rack (I used the rack from the toaster oven) placed over a plate. Stab the cake all over with a skewer, and spoon the liquor soak over the top of the cake. Remove the rack and collect the excess soak. Replace the rack and pour the soak again. Repeat until all the liquid syrup is absorbed. Then brush the glaze over the top and sides of cake (Do the top first so the crumbs from the side don't make it look messy), and cool completely before serving. Letting it sit overnight enhances the flavour of the soak, but it will be every tempting to try it right away.

How I love this cookbook. At first I was a little disappointed by the flavour of the cake. I wanted more blueberry and less sugar. I thought maybe I'd add a little lemon next time to the soak, but after a few days the flavour got better. I would still consider the lemon, but the cake was oh so good on it's own, that I didn't mind too much. Perfection can still be achieved. A reason to make more pound cake.

Roasted Cornish Game Hens (or Chicken Breasts) with Wildflower Honey & Orange

2 Cornish Game Hens (1 1/2 to 2 lb. each)
6 tbsp. plus 1/3 cup dry white wine
1 1/2 tbsp. honey
1 1/2 tbsp. chopped fresh thyme
2 bay leaves, preferably fresh, each torn into about 4 pieces
Pinch of crushed red pepper flakes
1 medium orange
1 small yellow onion, cut crosswise into quarter-inch-thick slices
salt and pepper
1 tbsp. butter
1 cup chicken broth

I didn't use cornish hens, but if you do, here's how to prepare them:

Discard giblets and use kitchen shears (or muscle backed by a good knife) to cut along both sides of the backbones and remove them. Then cut each hen in half along the breastbone. Trim off the wingtips.

I cut the chicken breasts into halves and put them in the called-for large bowl.

In a small bowl you combine the wine, honey, thyme, bay leaves, and red pepper flakes and stir to dissolve honey. Give up if the honey doesn't dissolve. It won't matter. Oh, I used sweet vermouth instead of a dry wine like pinot grigio or sauvignon blanc. I figured there would already be a fair bit of sweetness in the dish thanks to the honey so a little extra wouldn't hurt. Really, I just happened to have a tiny bit of vermouth left over and didn't have any wine. Another substitution was blueberry honey for the wildflower honey. Again, it was what I had.

Peel the zest from the orange into large strips and 'let the strips drop into the bowl with the hens". I'm sorry, does it disturb the hens to have the zest thrown haphazardly into the bowl? Well, I dropped them delicately just in case.

Add the honey mixture and sliced onion and toss well. Apparently it's okay to toss once everything's added but the hens have a problem with the orange zest by itself. Like a blind double date. You don't like being alone with the stranger and can't relax until your well-meaning, adorably-cute couple of friends show up. Maybe I just don't like oranges...(see post for rosemary chicken thighs).

Cover and refrigerate 4 hours or overnight. Fortunately that nervousness goes away, and some oranges are of rather easy virtue.

A half hor before cooking you're supposed to remove the hens from the marinade, but this seems ridiculous. You're supposed to then throw out your marinade. 6 tbsp. of vermouth and some beautiful honey down the drain? No, no, no. Originally I thought to boil the marinade on the side but the recipe already gives you pan drippings to make a jus. So I did it in the slow cooker. The recipe says to discard the marinade and pat the hens dry, which I believe is because the sugar in the marinade would burn quickly in the oven, but in the slow cooker it won't. After cooking in the slow cooker (about 4 and a half hours on high), you just transfer the hens to the oven and broil them for about 2 minutes, or cook less in the slow cooker and finish them in the oven (350F) to brown. If you do them in the oven completely, let the hens sit first for 30 minutes at room temperature and preheat the oven to 450F.

Season the hens with 1 tbsp of salt (I forgot this part...) and some pepper. Roast skin side up and baste occasionally with 2 tbsp. melted butter (or the marinade juices, as I did, for less fat. The hens will give a little marinating juice themselves). Cook for 30 minutes or until a meat thermometre registers 175-180F. Transfer the hens to a serving platter and tent with aluminum foil. This makes the hens more juicy. It's the same thing you would do at Thanksgiving and Christmas, if these are turkey holidays for you. If you cut into the meat right away it will be dryer. It also gives you time to make the jus or gravy.

While the baking sheet that you baked the chicken on is still hot add the remaining 1/3 cup of wine (or vermouth) and scrape the brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Then pour the pan contens into a small saucepan with the chicken broth (Slow cooker option: pour juices from the slow cooker into a small saucepan. No scraping required, but remove the bay leaves and orange zest!). Boil the sauce 2-3 minutes until a little thicker. Remove from heat and whisk in a tbsp. of butter. I actually did do this and it made the whole dish a million times better. Just a little bit. You really don't need the two tbsp for basting. I don't find you can even taste the flavour that way. To serve, you pour a little sauce around the hens and pass the rest at the table, but I found that the flavour was wasted by pouring it around. Instead a little bit with every bite, like a dipping sauce, worked much better.

Verdict?? I couldn't really taste the orange, so I liked it. The meat was so tender (thank you slow cooker), and the dipping sauce gave me the great taste of organic butter without making me horribly lactose-intolerantly-sick. Would I go out with M. Orange again (That would be Mr. Orange for all the anglophones out there)? Maybe without all the fuss. Skip the marinade altogether if you're using a slow cooker. Don't bother with dried spices, like the bay leaves and thyme, if you don't have fresh. Probably skip the orange. It gives it a nice aroma but it's not necessary, at least not if you use a sweeter wine or a sweet vermouth, where it will be overpowered. If you want the orange to cut through, use some juice from the zested orange. You're just going to eat it anyway.

I'm not inspired to cook this again, but I think I would definitely use the general strategy for the jus/dipping sauce again.

Oh, yeah, to go with it I made a risotto in the slow cooker. I'd been meaning to try it since short-grain brown rice risottos take way too much time to stir by hand. So I took some leftover roasted root vegetables (squash, turnip), and sautéed) them in 2 tsp. of olive oil with a small diced onion. Add a cup of rice and stir to coat. Add the root vegetables and a tiny bit of wine or vermouth (again, what I had) to deglaze and toss into the slow cooker with 4 cups of water. 4 cups was a wild estimate. Usually it's 2 cups of water for normal rice (1:2 ratio rice:water) but risotto is creamier and recipes say 1:6. Taking into account the fact that the water evaporates as you stir on the stovetop, in the slowcooker I decided to go halfway and try 4 cups. It worked really well. Just a note that I decided to make risotto after seeing a recipe by infamous Chef Louis Rhéaume ( see "Thai Green Curry soup" post) and wanting to see if he could do Italian better than Thai. But my confidence was shattered so I took his recipe and bastardized it and, in my opinion, saved myself the disappointment. Sometimes a woman is better off...

Chicken Thighs Roasted with Rosemary, Red Onions & Red Potatoes: My Roasting Bible (The Best of Fine Cooking Magazine)

2 navel oranges
2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
kosher salt
1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
8 baby red potatoes (12 oz.), halved
2 medium red onions, sliced into half-inch-thick circles
Two 5-inch sprigs fresh rosemary, plus 3/4 tsp. minced
8 chicken thighs (about 8 oz. each), trimmed of excess fat and skin

I have a roasting bible. Whenever I have a ton of root vegetables that need to be used up, I get the urge to roast them, and I turn to a magazine that I found in the grocery store over Christmas last year. That is when most people start to decide that roasting is a good idea. If you're going to roast a chicken, what else can I throw in the oven with it? Pretty much anything. You just need a reference for how long things should be roasted, and what flavours complement the roast. The pictures in the magazine, though, were so beautiful that I've been meaning to try more of them. Mostly simple recipes with basic ingredients, French-style cooking, for satisfying meals. Though I'm not a huge fan of orange in recipes, specifically desserts, I ended up with two navel oranges kicking around my house and then stumbled upon this recipe, which was too convenient to pass up.

I grated the orange zest, added the oil, a tsp. salt, and red pepper flakes. I tossed a tbsp. of this with the vegetables on half of a large rimmed baking sheet. I had bought a whole chicken rather than just legs and placed the legs, the giblets and wings on the other end of the baking sheet and brushed them with the remaining oil mixture. I unfortunately had to use dried rosemary and crush dried chili peppers in a mortar and pestle, which may have resulted in less flavour, but I tucked this rosemary between the chicken pieces and sprinkled lightly with salt.

I then roasted for 20 minutes and 425 in the oven followed by a round of basting. There was lots of uice to marinade with thanks to the addition of the giblets. I continued roasting and basting every ten minutes for 30 minutes.

Then the weird part...you peel the oranges, removing the pith and membrane. You slice crosswise into half-inch circles and then chop into half-inch pieces. Add 1/4 tsp. of rosemary to this and when the chicken is done you pour it over the chicken on a serving platter. How do you pour chunks of orange? I decided to scoop as much of the orange juice that escaped in the cooking process as possible, but there really wasn't much liquid to pour. Navel oranges should be juicier, but the orange flavour really didn't get into the chicken. For me, who doesn't always appreciate orange flavour, this shouldn't have been a disappointment. I mean organic chicken, roasted simply with vegetables. Should have been beautiful. It wasn't bad...it's just, well, the French in me thought that if had gone to all the trouble of removing membranes and pith and chopping into precisely 1/2 inch pieces, then there should be something to show for it besides the visual effect. Next time I think I would add some of the juice to the vegetable marinade/basting liquid. If you're trying to make the dish taste of orange, shouldn't the cooking process employ more orange? The zest didn't have enough punch.

Still, a nice recipe from a good magazine. I also added carrots and turnip to the roasted vegetables in a seperate baking dish, which did cheer me up a bit.

In the spirit of second chances, I am in the marinading stage, as I write, for the recipe on the adjacent page-Roasted Cornish Hens with Wildflower Honey and Orange. Okay, I cheated more on this one...Roasted chicken breasts (what was left from butchering the chicken for the above recipe)instead of cornish hens, and blueberry honey instead of wildflower. Blueberry goes with orange right? If it's awful I'll use a little lemon juice instead next time. I'll give the recipe and results with the next post.

Optimistically,
Amie

My Halloween Costume, why I no longer want to be a Montreal Gazette, and how not to make Thai Green Curry Soup

I know that title is a bit dense but I swear it's all connected. It all started with a free copy of the Montreal Gazette. At the Lionel-Groulx metro near my house there is often a man handing out free copies of the Montreal Gazette to subway users. He is hard to track down when you're looking for something to read, but seemingly ubiquitous when you're in a rush. Like panhandlers, I get an awful sense of guilt when I don't want to take the paper, and an equally awful sense of guilt when I do, for having taken a free paper that costs subscribers money. Moral issues aside, this man's job is tough. He stands there for hours on end dealing with the moral squeamishness of so many Montrealers. He is a professional, however, and a very good one at that. While passing one way with my roommate, I overheard him saying, "Get your free Gazette here! Sir, would you a Gazette?! Mademoiselle, voulez-vous un Gazette?!" I did not take one, however, choosing instead to borrow only one section from my roommate rather than lug the whole thing around.

An hour later I returned to the metro, still holding my borrowed section of the Gazette, and listened attentively to this man, feeling a secret connection to him because he didn't have to convince me that it would be a good idea to have possession of a newspaper today. "Free Gazette. Who doesn't want a Gazette? Great to give as a gift! Makes a great Hallowe'en costume!".

I nearly died of laughter. A Hallowe'en costume? All I could picture was someone with pieces of the paper taped all over their body at a party. Who would have thought? Well, I thought about it. This man is more bilingual than me, thus smarter, and his words deserve consideration. A gift. I would like to be given a free Gazette. In fact, I had already asked my roommate, who already had a copy, if I could borrow a section of his, but it was "Makes a great Hallowe'en costume!" that really stuck with me. It could be done. In fact, I insisted it must be done and the story must be told. So I took my section home later and found a recipe for Thai Green Curry Soup that looked pretty great (I could finally use my kaffir lime leaves that I've been hoarding and it didn't call for coconut milk, to which I am a little allergic), and started thinking that the Gazette was a pretty wonderful publication.

Or so I thought, until I made the soup.

I should have been more skeptical. The author of the 'thai' recipe was Louis Rhéaume, and he described the taste of kaffir lime leaves as "like lime, but more interesting". So I decided to wager my Hallowe'en costume, and respect for the Gazette, on the quality of the soup. I did everything exactly as called for. I made the chicken broth from scratch (no bay leaf needed?) using an organic chicken carcass, I used fresh herbs. Basically I did it all right, and what happened? Well, nothing phenomenal. The recipe can be found here:

http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/some+Thai/2022533/story.html

It's pretty low in fat because of cooking the chicken in broth instead of oil, but the chicken gets dry very quickly if overcooked, and the curry paste (apparently you can substitute curry powder? Again, skeptical) and ginger don't get a nice sautéed flavour because it's added to the broth directly as well. Basically you toss it in with the lime leaves, lemongrass, hot peppers (which actually shouldn't be sautéed or you''ll be coughing for a good half hour from the fumes) and let it simmer. One pot soup. Soften some vermicelli rice noodles in water that's been brought to a boil, and add the bok choy to the soup one minute before serving. Optional garnishes will give a little colour but the enoki mushrooms that you get around here are not the best, by any means, and it's too late to give any flavour to the broth. Maybe adding ground coriander seed to the broth would have been a good addition to the few suggested fresh sprigs to be used at the end. Some chili sauce? Yes it's sugar and sodium, and a bad cook's way to make the dish better, but when the soup is cooked, it's a good looking option.

So I no longer want to be a Montreal Gazette for Hallowe'en. What would I be promoting? Bad recipes? Well, I still respect the free Gazette guy. He's still hilarious. So maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea. I would probably shed all night though...maybe I could wear a better publication underneath?

Or I can just add another little white lie to the front of my traditional little white lie costume: "Thai Green Curry Soup is easy to make! Makes a great gift!" Shamefully, I did give some of the soup I made away...

Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking: Khatte Chole (Sour Chickpeas)

So I got side-tracked from dessert when I ran out of meals...some might say that dessert is a meal. Sometimes I may agree. But every now and then you really need some properly balanced carbs and protein...Although, that could be argued as sugar and eggs. Or flour and milk. Or Hazelnuts and...I digress.

En tout cas, anyway, sour chickpeas were made. I had the absolutely most amazing tomatoes I'd ever tasted in my life begging to be used. The farmer at the organic farmer's market forced me to eat it in front of him. They could be eaten like apples. I don't even really like tomatoes, hence the use of force. They must always be added to something to mask the acidity, but not these. These I was actually sad using in a cooked dish because I was scared it wouldn't let them live up to their potential. Then I slapped myself in the face for the motherly instincts I don't have and remembered that they were already picked and therefore already on the downswing and I'd be doing them a favour, not letting them become old and cynical. Work that one out, Freud.

The chickpeas were so nutty that I was actually excited about chickpeas. Normally one doesn't get excited about chickpeas but I'd made a butternut squash and chickpea soup from the same chickpeas that tasted like hummus (no, I didn't add any tahini) and was so blown away by the flavour. Who knows what the difference between these and any other dried chickpea is, but there you have it. All the perfect ingredients, including a homemade garam masala (Indian spice blend-there are so many different variations for different kinds of foods you're making but most Indian families would make their own from the 5 or 6 unground spices in their spice tiffin like cinnamon cloves, coriander seed, cumin seed, cardamom, maybe mustard seed. Handy little coffee grinder will save you a ton of energy with a rolling pin and plastic bag or a mortar and pestle).

First soak the chickpeas. The recipe in Madhur Jaffrey's "Indian Cooking" says to soak the chickpeas for 20 hours. I usually soak overnight but I figured I wasn't going to mess this up by NOT procrastinating. So 20 hours later I skimmed the soaking liquid and stuck the pot with the chickpeas and a lot of water (around 8 cups) to boil. Apparently, for digestion, the trick is to skim off the scum once it comes to a boil. Then simmer for an hour and a half. Meanwhile, I put some of the onions with the ginger, chili pepper, lemon juice and some of the salt in a little container to marinate (I think this makes the onion less harsh as it doesn't get cooked). Then saute the rest of the onions in more oil than I ever wanted to use at one time (I still used less than the called-for 6 tablespoons) until they get brown bits on them. Not from burning so much as quasi-deep-frying. Fried onions are a delicacy and often used as garnish (like in biryani). Take that, poutine. On a list of the things that sound like horrible food ideas but work out gluttonously well, fried onions comes in first, though cheese curds on fries with gravy comes in close behind. Only real difference is the onions by themselves wouldn't be what you'd crave after a night of drinking. How many places can you find biryani 24 hours anyway? Wait! I actually do know both a 24 hour poutine place and a 24 hour Indian place that I hope serves Biryani. Maybe not, because it's so time consuming to make it well, but who said anything about the necessity to "make it well" in the world of 24 hour food. D.A.D.'s Bagels in NDG (Notre-Dame-de-Grace, west of downtown Montreal) serves 24-hour Indian, and of course, La Banquise serves 24-hour poutine (Plateau-a closer walk from Montreal's St-Laurent club district).

Sorry, the onions. These ones are part of the dish, but still suck in that delicious oily taste. Then you add the tomatoes and smush them against the side of the pan. I nearly cried. Smushing those gorgeous tomatoes. If I had read the recipe more closely before starting to make it, I may have foregone the whole thing in favour or not smushing the tomatoes.

Then add the coriander, cumin and turmeric and 30 seconds later add the drained chickpeas, some of their water and the remaining spices. Okay, lets take a minute here, or perhaps 30 seconds, to think about why spices are added in 5 second, 30 second, or 1 minute intervals in this cookbook. I feel pressured to actually count to 30 every time I read one of those instructions. Should I set the kitchen timer? Do I start counting when I pour or when I stir? Should I subtract the number of seconds it takes to start the kitchen timer, or has Madhur Jaffrey taken that into account in her expert calculations? I'm far too much of a wuss to disobey her instructions. I would not potentially ruin an entire meal out of skepticism. It's published. It must be true. Again, I digress.

This whole thing then cooks for 20 minutes and during this time you DO NOTt:

1. Go watch television and forget to turn on the timer

2. Figure you know approximately how long 20 minutes is so it'll be okay

3. Figure it's just chickpeas and their already cooked anyway so a little extra cooking won't hurt...

...because even with a lid on enough liquid can escape that the chickpeas, and more importantly, the precious tomatoes could start sticking to the bottom of the pan and you've tossed the rest of the soaking liquid so your only option is to dilute the mixture with bland water. I'm so sorry, Madhur. You tried so hard to teach fools like me to make your wonderful cuisine, but think of it this way: If I had done it perfectly, I might start thinking I was capable, even proficient and I might even start taking your instructions loosely, and then where would I be? About 30 seconds late, that's where.

The key to SOUR chickpeas is to add the onions marinating in lemon juice with the chili pepper after all this cooking is done. So, finally, DO NOT:

4. Do like some foolish people and forget to add

5. Heat the lemon juice after you have added it. I didn't get the opportunity to make this mistake as I messed up at my fourth DO NOT. For now I will assume that, when completed properly, this recipe is delicious, as Madhur Jaffrey is brilliant and I but a lowly servant.

Oh yeah, serve on rice and supposedly with a bunch of other, much harder recipes from the same beautiful book.

Plans in the Works...

I'm out to conquer safe meringue. I had big plans to try a lemon mousse in "Chocolate and the Art of Low Fat Desserts" but it called for heavy cream that had to be whipped. As far as I know, there's no dairy-free substitute. So I guess I'm stuck with trying another chocolate meringue. Oh well?? There are worse things in life.

So now the new plans are to try the bittersweet chocolate mousse, which follows a similar recipe to the truffle chocolate mousse, but this may be put on hold in favour of chocolate soufflés first, just so I don't get bored with repetition.

Chocolate and the Art of Low-Fat Desserts by Alice Medrich

After hours of searching for a real, but cream-free, chocolate mousse in vain (so many unwanted tofu and avocado options) I gave up. Some things are just not meant to be. Until my birthday. Then looking through my favourite cookbook, I decided on a Bittersweet Chocolate Truffle Hazelnut Mousse Torte. Yes that's a lot of adverbs, adjectives and nouns slung together, but I got over it when I realized that the back of the cookbook featured three mousse recipes with no avocados, no tofu, no whipping cream and no soy. All I needed to replace to make my lactose-intolerant stomach happy was the milk. How I love Almond Breeze.

Ingredients:
Sugar
Toasted and blanched hazelnuts
Cocoa
Instant espresso or coffee powder
Brandy (or vanilla or other flavouring or liqueur)
Egg whites

Bittersweet Chocolate Truffle Mousse:
Gelatin
Eggs
Cocoa
Sugar
Milk (Almond Breeze)
Bittersweet or semisweet Chocolate
Vanilla
Cream of Tartar

Giving myself 5 hours for this undertaking, I started blanching the hazelnuts. The trick is boiling them for 2 minutes in water with two tablespoons of baking soda, then squeezing them out of their skins in cold water. Finally drying and toasting them in the oven at 350 for 15-20 minutes (until fragrant). This took a bit longer than planned, but there was no chopping, no mess, only slight dying of my fingers black, and a delicious snack of toasted hazelnuts which far surpassed the raw ones. I nver knew the skins were so bitter, but the sweet results were eye-opening.

The food processor is a wonderful thing when you know how it works. Double- and triple-checking that everything was secured before plugging it in and turning it on, I processed the hazelnuts with the sugar and cocoa. It was so fun pouring in just enough egg white to turn it into the consistency of fudge frosting, a delicious image. I had to remind myself to not eat it with the raw egg inside. Then another nit-picky detail: tracing three 8-inch circles on parchment paper on baking sheets (unfortunately I only had enough for two full circles and one circle made of two pieces of parchment. Not so good for spreading stiff layers of hazelnut. It turned out to be a very thin layer, more wafer-like than cake-like, but more than enough flavour from the hazelnuts would later result in a glad feeling for not consuming way too many nuts in a dessert that tastes rich but really isn't that bad. Don't get me wrong, two chocolate bars in a cake is easy math to figure that if you cut it into 8 pieces, you're eating a quarter of the chocolate bar per piece (more than enough fat per serving) but so much flavour and so much less fat than a traditional mousse. After baking and cooling the hazelnut layers, they peeled easily off the parchment, making me very happy I hadn't caved and baked them directly into cake pans, greased or not.

Then the mousse. I've always sucked at meringue, so making a "safe" meringue, where the egg whites are cooked to 160 degrees celcius before being beaten until stiff and cool, was a daunting challenge. The chocolate part was easy. Let the gelatin sit with water five minutes or until needed, combine ingredients up to milk in saucepan (the trick is stir only a little almond breeze or milk into cocoa/sugar mixture until smooth, then add the rest, to resist clumps of cocoa), heat without scalding and when taken off the heat stir in the chocolate. Cool in an ice bath to thicken.

Then the egg whites. Stainless steel bowl in skillet of bowling water to create a quasi-double-boiler. Instead of whipping the eggs directly in the bowl, however, you first stir with a wooden spoon while burner is on high heat to get the egg whites hot enough to not have to cook more, but to keep it from scrambling. Unfortunately, I THINK I didn't have the heat high enough on the skillet as it took way too long to get the egg whites to 160 (only supposed to take a minute) so when they finally got there and I hurriedly got the bowl to the stand-mixer and set it to high, the egg whites had mutinied and decided to rise. they did get stiff...and then limp...but I hoped they might change their mind, or think about something stiffening, but in the end, I was left unsatisfied and disappointed. I couldn't be angry at them. It was my fault. I didn't handle them properly. How could I expect them to perform with all the pressure I'd put on them and how nervous I had been. I certainly am no professional, but I will persevere and try again sometime.

Anyway, it really wasn't that bad. The mousse just wouldn't be as fluffy and light as it should have been. Even folding egg whites in to chocolate is a dangerous thing, but I figured not much more harm could be done and I diligently cut in, scooped under and let fall back into the mousse until fully combined. The mousse seemed a little runny so I stuck it in the fridge to encourage thickening, in a juvenile attempt to cheat death...or maybe that's a little too macabre? Maybe just to cheat sickness, like a cold, or a sniffle.

When I gave in to defeat-by-mousse and decided it was time to layer the mousse anyway in a springform pan, my genius idea to make the hazelnut rounds a little smaller than 8-inch no longer seemed like a brilliant idea. the mousse had thickened a little and didn't drip everywhere but it did extend past the borders of the layers. The cake should have been a lot taller in an epic ode to the triple-layer cake, but this squished version was going to be just as tasty, so I poured and topped with another hazelnut layer and poured and topped. Back in the fridge until dessert.

Finally the cake came out, the springform sides were removed from the pan and the mousse was cut. The hazelnut cracked, but by now it really didn't matter, and the delicious, chocolatey glop was spatula-d and knifed and scooped onto plates. Chocolate got everywhere as the mousse overflowed it bounds and the advantage was that the mousse needed to be wiped from the pan sides. Fortunately my non-discriminatory cake-eating friends ate happily, accompanied by prosecco (isn't everything better with prosecco?) and the chocolate was not too sweet, not too bitter, and I woke up the next day with not even a sugar headache, miracle of miracles.

My new goal, to make more of the chocolate desserts in the book involving mousse. I WILL get it right. This will culminate in the ultimate mousse adventure: Triple celebration cake, featuring three kinds of mousse. Not sure how I will substitute the cream cheese in the mocha mousse recipe, but I have brainstorming plans with raw fresh cheese, LEGAL in Quebec (take that Ontario!).

Also looking forward to trying the Buttermilk pound cake (have to find yogurt that I can eat...I think baking kills the probiotics that eat the lactose in my yogurt, so may have to resort to difficult to digest soy). It will be worth it, however, as it calls for a liqueur soak and glaze that I bought an amazing bottle of blueberry liqueur at an 18th Century Quebec marketplace in the Old Port. Another day will produce a sweet chestnut torte, my new favourite flour replacer.

Alas, mousse can be made better, but it still tastes absolutely and completely divine.