Bits ‘n Bites

In early June I was invited by Jasmine (Confessions of a Cardamon Addict) to blog about “which savory dishes or drinks tastes like Canada to you?” This invitation was in anticipation of July 1st, Canada’s official birthday. It certainly was an interesting question, one I had often thought about, but usually in the context of: Does Canada really have a distinctive culture? Food is definitely part of a culture, I think. But as difficult it is to answer the culture question, the food angle is no easier.

I was born and raised in Québec, predominantly in the french-canadian culture. I now live on the West Coast of Canada, in Vancouver, a city with distinct Asian and East-Asian culinary influences.  Though I absolutely love that cuisine, and consider it part of my heritage now, I have to admit the first thought and taste that came to me when I received the invitation was my mom’s meat pie (tourtière). I also “smelled” maple sap reducing in a cabane à sucre (sugar shack), and felt the soft, sweet texture of maple taffee on my tongue. All, really, childhood memories.

Christmas time is a big cooking and baking period pretty much around the world. It’s no exception in Québec. Though my mom now lives in Toronto, I was really happy last Christmas to finally help her prepare a traditional dish, usually served in the winter: Ragoût de pâte de cochon (Pigs feet stew). I blogged about this here. Another traditional fare at that time of year is a type of quick paté called cretons.  It’s a nice little appetizer. Here’s the recipe:

Cretons à l’ancienne

Source : Jehane Benoît

1 lb minced pork, lean
1 cup milk
1 cup bread crumbs (or dried bread, finely chopped)
1 onion, finely chopped
to taste, Salt
to taste, Pepper
to taste, cloves, grounded
to taste, cinnamon, grounded

Instructions :Mix all ingredients in a saucepan. Cover and cook for 1 hour on low heat. Stir once or twice during cooking time. Store in containers. Can be frozen.

Thanks again, Jasmine, for this thought-provoking subject. Now, I wonder, to which cuisine will I turn to celebrate this July 1st?…

Barilla does it again, this time in support of Second Harvest in the US. The free downloadable pdf includes recipes from Mario Batali, David Tutera, Debra Messing, Stanley Tucci, Natalie Portman, Chris Daughtry and Marisa Tomei.

So, if Penne in a Spicy Sauce with Capers and Olives, Autumn Vegetables with Goat Cheese and Pumpkinseed Oil and Saffron Panna Cotta sound like your type of Italian delectables, head over to this site to download the book. If you’re from the USA, you can actually specify which Second Harvest you wish Barilla to send its contribution.

Offer ends February 29th has been extended to March 31st!

Stumbled upon another cooking video site today, called I’m Cooked. It looks even more homespun than Active Cooks, except for one dash of stardust: Christopher Walken showing how to roast a chicken.

(The clip above is from YouTube, but I saw the original on I’m Cooked). I haven’t seen much of Walken’s work. I know of his roles in Deer Hunter and Pulp Fiction, among others, but first saw him last Summer in Hairspray. So much for the tough guy image, I thought watching him, as Wilbur Turnblad, hoofing it with John Travolta as his wife. The next film I saw him in was Mousehunt with Nathan Lane and Lee Evans. He played a nutty pest exterminator, vanquished by the mouse of the house. Now, here he is, roasting a chicken… Nice bit of trivia: Walken’s parents were both bakers, and he grew up working in the family bakery in Queens, Walken’s Bakery.

Harper Collins is releasing a series of books people can read online for free. The one that caught my eye was the one by Robert Irvine, star of Dinner Impossible on the Food Network. You can access the full text of Mission: Cook! My Life, My Recipes, and Making the Impossible Easy here, or by clicking on the icon below for a preview (note not all chapters are available through the icon, but they are through the preceding link.)

Browse Inside this book Get this for your site

Came across a couple of cooking video sites today, courtesy of Ohio.com. The first one is called The Food Channel, part of the larger AnswersTV lifestyle network. Nice series of recipes and tips and tricks free videos. There is also an extensive series with Chefs and restaurants. Quite nice. In addition, you can pair these videos with the Wine Channel, and its  “Wine School”, another free series of videos on wine.

The second one is Active Cooks. Think of it as the YouTube for aspiring tv chefs. Always wanted to have your own cooking show? Here’s your platform! There’s a mixture of slick and homespun videos. The site has a little over 170 members and membership is free.

Take out your pots and pans, get your “mise” ready and let the cameras roll…

Maria Liberati, former super-model, now celebrity chef, stopped by Athena Isle today, as guest speaker for the Writers Club weekly meeting. She has just launched her second book, The Basic Art of Italian Cooking, available in stores and online at Amazon.

The format of a roundtable made this particularly enjoyable. Before long, there were quite a few of us sitting around Cybergrrl Oh’s magical table (a new chair appears every time someone sits on one). Maria proved to be very comfortable fielding questions and moving around. Considering this was her first time in Second  Life, I was impressed. We touched on various topics, from the use of fresh ingredients as the key to Italian cooking, to the Slow Food movement, very common in Europe, and now gaining a foothold in North America. Maria explained that her book is not so much a collection of recipes, as a story, or a collection of stories related to various dishes and foods in Italy.

Maria has a few plans in store, including a podcast and a television series featuring celebrities talking about what they like to eat and favorite recipes. The full transcript of the chat will be available a little later this week on the Second Life Writers Club website. Maria is one of the latest author to make Second Life a stop on a book tour.

With Superbowl XLII just around the corner (Feb. 3rd), the NFL is expanding its generosity by participating in Epicurious’ Wine, Dine, Donate program.

One recipe has been collected from noted players from each team. Vote on your favorite recipe and Epicurious will donate $1 to fight hunger. Click on logo below to go to site.

Sometime in early December, as I was perusing the Daring Bakers website, I noticed an ad on the site for a chocolate competition hosted by Hotel Chocolat, a UK-based purveyor of fine chocolates. The deal was simple: Submit your favorite chocolate-based recipe and their panel would pick a winner.

My all-time favorite and most acclaimed recipe is for Santa Fe Brownies, an unctuous concoction of 12 ounces of chocolate (bittersweet and semi-sweet) and cream cheese. I can’t quite recall how I got hold of this recipe. I believe my mom gave it to me, but she can’t remember where she got it from. It took me all of 2 minutes to copy my recipe onto the site’s registration and to submit it. Needless to say, I was dumbfounded when I received an email, from the marketing company behind the contest, telling me I had won! :0

Shortly after Christmas, I received my prizes: a box of Pink Champagne Truffles and a copy of the 101 Best Loved  Chocolate Recipes Book. The truffles are to die for, and the book is chock-full of scrumptious recipes (chocolate pasta anyone?…). Thank you Hotel Chocolat! It was a very nice after-Christmas present.

I baked Santa Fe Brownies while at my mother’s over the holidays. Our guests at Christmas all got to take a slab home. That recipe is definitely a winner in everyone’s book. Here’s the recipe. It’s a little-time consuming, but well worth the effort.

Santa Fe Brownies
1 cup plus 1 teaspoon butter
6 squares (6 ounces) unsweetened chocolate coarsely chopped
6 squares (6 ounces) semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 _ cups all-purpose flour
1 _ teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
5 large eggs
1 _ cups firmly packed brown sugar
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 _ cups walnuts, broken into large pieces

Cream Cheese Mixture
12 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
6 tablespoons butter, softened (no substitutions)
1 _ teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs

Instructions :
1.Preheat oven to 350 F. Line a 13x 9 inch baking pan with foil.   Melt 1 teaspoon of the
butter and brush the bottom and sides of the pan with it.  Melt the unsweetened
chocolate, semisweet chocolate, and the remaining 1 cup of butter in top of a double
boiler over simmering water.  Set mixture aside and cool slightly.

2.  Stir together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl.  Beat the eggs in a
large mixing bowl at medium speed until just blended.  Add the brown sugar, granulated
sugar, and vanilla: beat just until smooth.  Beat in the chocolate mixture, then flour
mixture, at low speed just until combined.  Reserve 2 1/4 cups batter.  Stir the walnuts
into remaining batter in the mixing bowl.  Spread the batter in the prepared pan.

3.  For Cream Cheese Mixture, beat the cream cheese and butter in a clean mixing bowl
at medium speed until smooth.  Gradually beat in the vanilla and sugar until light and
fluffy.  Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition and beat just until
smooth.  Spoon the mixture over the chocolate batter in prepared pan, spreading to
edges to the pan.

4.Stir reserved chocolate batter to soften.  Spoon the batter over the cream cheese
layer.  With a knife, cut through batters in a zigzag pattern to marbleize slightly.  Bake 1
hour 15 minutes , until toothpick inserted in center comes out barely clean.  (If the top
browns too quickly during baking, cover the pan loosely with foil.)  Cool completely in the
pan on a wire rack.  Invert onto a cookie sheet; gently lift off pan and remove foil.  Invert
again, cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

5.  With a long, sharp knife, cut brownies into squares, then cut each quarter into 8
squares.  (Can also be cut into slabs and frozen.) Makes 32.

Enjoy!

Received an invitation this morning from Julius, fellow Vancouverite and Daring Baker, to partake in a Q&A/meme/blog chain letter. The theme was, natch, food-related. With the weather being so inviting (see pic), I hunkered down inside to move this chain along.

What were you cooking/baking ten years ago?
I had recently moved to Vancouver 10 years ago and was living in a small apartment, sporting one of those tiny galley kitchen, with not much counter space. I don’t recall cooking much, or cooking very simply. I had a small tabletop barbecue on my balcony and, this being Vancouver, used that a lot throughout the year. I was not into my baking phase at that time either. I was traveling a lot for my job, taking and teaching night classes. Ramen, and derivative dishes, was often part of my diet…

What were you cooking/baking one year ago?
I had taken the Serious Foodie classes at NWCAV at the beginning of the year, which helped a lot with my confidence in the kitchen. (Little did I know at the time I would be enrolled in the Professional Diploma course a year later) I was now making gnocchi, risotto was a way to relax after work and I always had fresh tomato sauce to use on pasta or home-made pizza. I had started to bake once more, mostly cookies and mini cupcakes (see recipe below).

The snack you enjoy the most:
At this time of the year: mandarine oranges with cold smarties…But I’m not much of a snacker the rest of the time

A culinary luxury you would indulge in if you were a millionaire:
A small but complete commercial kitchen space; pastry course at the C.I.A.; a cooking vacation around the world.

What do you bake the most?
Home-made pizza

Five recipes you know by heart:
Shrimp risotto, tarte au sucre, linguine al vongole (baby clams), barbecued rack of lamb, buffalo chicken wings

One thing you cannot/will not eat:
I love dim sum, but I can’t bring myself to eat anything involving fish paste. The chicken claws are a close second…

Favourite culinary toy:
My Victorinox 8″ chef knife

A must on your “last meal” menu:
Lamb, barbecued either in rack format or shawarma or kebab, with tatziki.

Happy food memories:
My mom’s tourtière and ragoût de patte (pigs’ feet stew). Real Québec comfort food, ideal on a winter’s day (like today) …Which I will get to taste once more over the holidays…hum…

Chocolate Mini Cupcakes

Topping
8 oz cream cheese
½ cup sugar + pinch of salt
1 egg
1 package (1 cup) mini chocolate chips

Cream cream cheese and sugar. Add egg and mix well. Add chocolate chips.

Cupcake
1 – ½ cups flour
1 cup sugar
¼ cup cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt

Combine these five ingredients in a large bowl

1 cup water
½ cup vegetable oil
1 tbsp white vinegar
1 tsp vanilla

Combine these four ingredient well in a small bowl. Blend into dry ingredients. Mix well.

Fill mini baking cups to ¾ and top with a dollop of the cream cheese mixture. Bake at 350F for 15-18 minutes. Freezes well.

Here’s another Christmas gift suggestion for that foodie in your life…an online professional cooking course. Rouxbe.com, offers online cooking videos. I came across this company through my cooking school, Northwest Culinary Academy of Vancouver, who are also partners with this site. Starting in 2008, Rouxbe will be offering a full cooking school curriculum via the web. Subscribers to the site will have full access to this course, as well as all of the additional videos already present. Details are available here.

There is a 30-day free trial you can sign up for to check up the site. Annual memberships are $US49 and lifetime memberships are $US149. There is another option also available, and it’s a very interesting model I had not seen yet. You can still access the site for free after the 30-days if you sign-up for the sponsorship model. Rouxbe will find you a company, based on your tastes or interests, who will sponsor your access to the site. More details here.

To add to the fuzzies, Rouxbe donates 15% of all subscription fees to hunger relief agencies around the world through its Rouxbe for Life program. They are also Eco-neutral certified.

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Disclaimer: I am not associated with Rouxbe either personally or professionally. I did get a free annual subscription earlier in the year, as a graduate of Northwest Culinary, and because they were looking for people to test drive the site. I am not getting any commissions or kickbacks from promoting this site. I just like what they’re doing, the fact that they’re a local company and in my partnership with my school, and think they did a very nice job with the site. I also like their giving back to the community. End of story.