Bits ‘n Bites

One of the exhilarating aspects of being part of the bakerhood that is Daring Bakers, is knowing that you become a better baker after each new challenge. There is always a trick or two to pick up, a new way of looking at a process, a new direction to stretch your skills and comfort zone. This challenge proved this once more.

Hosted by  Breadchick Mary (The Sour Dough), and Sara (I like to cook), we were dared to bake French Bread, the Julia Child way. Well, I’ve baked a lot of bread from scratch, but I have to admit my jaw dropped when I read the instructions. How could a recipe with four (4) basic ingredients take so long!? Eight ( to nine (9) hours?! Whoa! The bread I usually bake entails one proof/rise, shaping and a second shorter rise. Total time from kneading to fragrant bread out of the oven: 2.5 hours. My curiosity was piqued. We had been warned so many times in cooking school not to let the bread over-rise, that I was a bit skeptical. Nonetheless, on a quiet Sunday, I got up early and plunged in.

I’ve always made bread the old fashion way, kneading by hand. Since the option to use an electric mixer was offered with this challenge, I decided to try it that way. Improvement #1: It’s a lot more efficient to make bread this way. The mixer bowl is ideal for the first proofing. A keeper. Next up? Using the oven, with the light on, as the rising chamber. Brilliant! Even better, wrapping the bowl in a towel. That’s how I’ll be rising bread from now on.

The whole process was pretty straightforward, just time consuming. I may have gotten a bit impatient at the end. My shaped bread (three ficelles) could have risen a little longer. Still, I was really happy with the final results. I’m not sure I’ll be repeating the whole process in the future, but I’m sure the tricks learned will make my regular method even tastier. Thanks for the challenge, Breadchick Mary and Sara!

The full recipe is available here.

Finally, with craziness of the holidays behind me, I can settle down once more and get my life back on track. It’s nutty – all this hoopla for one day…

Although I haven’t contributed much to this blog recently, the holidays were all about baking and cooking for me. I went back East to spend the holidays with my mom. It had been a couple of years since I had been to T.O for the holidays, so it was my turn to make the trek. Luckily the weather cooperated and stayed mild throughout my stay. Despite that, I wasn’t in the mood to confront mobs of people in stores this year. Luckily, my shopping excursions extended to grocery stores. I was determined this year to learn the technique for making Quebec’s traditional stew of “Ragoût de pattes”, or pigs’ feet stew. Since we were hosting the Christmas dinner, it all got rolled into a week of non-stop cooking and baking. It was great!

The recipe my mom uses as her base for the stew is from Jehane Benoît, a famous Quebec cook. With a few modifications, we came out with this recipe. (Hint: caramelize your onions and hocks until dark brown for a richer sauce).

Ragoût de pattes de cochon

1.5 kg pork hocks
1 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Pepper
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 pinch Nutmeg
4 tbsp Butter
4-6 cups Water
1/2 cube of chicken stock, dissolved in water above
1 Cup onions, caramelized
4 tbsp flour, roasted
1/2 Cup Water

Instructions :
1. Season pork hocks with salaison (salt, pepper, ground cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg)
overnight .
2. Caramelized onions in a deep saucepan in 2 Tbsp butter. Remove from saucepan.
3. In same saucepan, melt 2 tbsp butter and sear well pork hocks.
4. Add water and dissolved chicken stock cube, and onions to pork hocks. Bring to a boil, and then simmer for at least two
hours, until meat falls from bones.
5. Remove pork hocks from saucepan and cool overnight in fridge. Remove/skim congealed fat.
6. Roast flour in oven until caramel brown (350F).
7. Remove meat from bone and set aside.
8. Thicken pork hocks liquid with roasted flour until nice thick consistency. Season with
salt, pepper (and allspice) to taste.
9. Add cooked pork meatballs and pork meat and heat thoroughly.
10. Traditionally served with boiled potatoes.

Pork Meatballs
1 lb ground pork, lean
1 Cup Milk
1 Cup bread crumbs
3/4 Cup onion, finely chopped
1/2 Cup celery, finely chopped
to taste Salt
to taste Pepper
to taste Allspice

Instructions :
1. Mix milk and bread crumbs well
2. Add pork, celery and onions. Mix well.
3. Add seasoning to taste and refrigerate overnight.
4. Roll mixture into 1-inch meatballs and fry in a bit of butter until 3/4 cooked.
5. Add to Ragoût de pattes to complete cooking.

This was one of the best ragoût we ever made. The key being patience in caramelizing your onions and hocks. The flour should also be dark brown, but not burnt. It took us over an hour to get it the right colour in the oven. But it was well worth the wait…

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.

German meat producers Toennies has announced they have successfully developed a schnitzel that can be cooked in a toaster. The product wil be introduced in German supermarkets in 2008. Other countries will follow later on. Story from Taste.com.au. (Photography by Ben Dearnley)

This challenge called for a recipe with sugar. What better representative for this than my home province’s famed Tarte au sucre. I dug into my oldest cook book (publ. 1955) for this one. Jehane Benoît was Québec’s Julia Child of the mid-1900 to mid 1980’s. She was the dean of Québec cuisine. I inherited this book from my mom and have been carting around since the 80’s. I had never actually done any recipes from it until now. To keep the whole challenge as retro as possible, I also did Mme Benoît’s dough recipe for the crust. This will be a keeper as it turned out to be quite flaky and quick to do. Who knew?!… Here is the translation of both recipes, in the same format as they appear in the book:

Hot Water Pie Dough
1 – Put in a bowl 1/2 cup of fat or vegetable shortening. Add 1/4 cup of boiling water. Beat until creamy
2 – Sift together 1-1/2 cup of pastry flour, 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon of salt
3 – Add liquid ingredients to sifted ingredients. Mix until all form a soft ball. Cover and store in refrigerator 1 hour. Use for any type of dough.
4 – For a richer dough, beat 1 egg with the water and shortening.

Sugar Pie
1 – Cover an 8-inch pie plate with dough. Spread with 1/2 inch of brown sugar or maple sugar. Wet with 3 tablespoons of cream or milk; dot with a few small dices of butter.
2 – Cover, to taste, with a few strips of dough and bake in a 400F oven for 35 to 40 minutes.

The results (picture below) were quite good, despite my fear that it would taste way too sweet. I have another quick recipe I usually use when making this dessert. It’s more on the caramel-creamy side, compared to this one. It’s one of my stand-bys when invited to dinner, and goes really well “à la mode”.

Quick Sugar Pie
(Recipe: courtesy of Mme Paquin, Trois-Rivières)
1 cup of brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup whipping cream
1 tablespoon flour

Mix ingredients in bowl. Throw in a frozen pie crust and bake at 400F for 30 minutes. Serve with vanilla ice cream. It tastes even better cold, the day after.