February 6, 2010

Pan-seared duck confit

My completed duck confit

Currently, I am working on a project to find the best donut in Toronto (as if I could afford to gain any more weight), and so far, it has had a definite impact on my cooking.

Early in the planning stages of my donut pilgrimage, I decided to set some standards for comparison. I thought about what I like best in a donut, and what I think a good donut should taste like. To make this easier, I mentally deconstructed a very standard donut into two categories: “pastry and procedure,” and “accoutrements.”

The pastry and procedure category includes things like dough, texture and cooking methods, and the accoutrements category includes things like toppings, fillings, glazes and decoration.

Experimentation is no doubt a common trend in contemporary cooking in Toronto, and baking is no exception to that rule. As there are endless combinations of donut accountrements, I have decided for the sake of my health and my reader, to focus on the “pastry and procedure” category and the most basic aspect of any donut: dough.

To free you from this horribly long and misguided donut introduction to a piece about duck confit, I will cut right to the chase. All donuts are made with some sort of dough, and the best ones have a consistent texture – slightly challenging, crispy exterior, and a soft, dense interior.

And that, ladies and gentleman, is the same texture that I most currently have been striving for in the kitchen.

There, finally, I spat it out. If you’re still reading, I’m sure I’ve already lost you to your iTunes library or YouTube at least once by now, but that’s OK, I don’t have any sponsors to answer to. Don’t feel bad, it’s my fault for writing such a poor lead.

***

Craving something savoury and warm, I went out to buy some duck and duck fat to make confit. I headed straight to the St. Lawrence Market, dealt with the usual bullshit from butchers trying to monopolize  (“Nope, I don’t have duck, and nobody in here does. I do have some great Canadian chicken, though!”) till I finally found someone selling both duck legs and duck fat.

As soon as I arrived home, I pulled out my slow-cooker and set it on high, threw in the duck fat, waited for it to melt and slowly simmer, and I threw in the legs. Altogether, the legs were slowly cooking in the fat for about 5.5 hours.

To join the confit on the plate, I parboiled potatoes, sliced them into medallions, and then fried them on high heat in duck fat to give them a nice crispy shell and remain soft and warm inside (get it? That’s the donut texture I was yammering about earlier!). For a sweet contrast, I added some chopped shallots and whole snow peas to the mix.

When the potatoes, snow peas and shallots were ready, I removed the legs from the fat and seared them quickly in a frying pan to achieve the same crispy-outside-soft-inside texture I’ve been playing around with ever since I first decided to go hunting for donuts.

Delicious!

January 6, 2010

Pide

A new obsession is always fun, and I am now going to introduce you to the newest addition to my long list of sensual pleasures: Pide (Turkish pizza).

The only place I’ve had pide is “Pizza Pide” on the Southwest corner of Gerrard and Pape in Toronto’s east end. From the second you walk in, the warm smells of lamb and Sujuk are prevalent- totally irresistible.

The guys behind the counter slide your pide on a platter, slice it, and give you an enormous pile of garnishes (white onion, parsley, tomato and pickled hot pepper) to customize each bite (if you dine-in).

The pastry is light, there is no tomato sauce and the ingredient selection is far more diverse than any other pizza joint. For example, one of my favourite pides, Kavurma Kasarli, is solely roasted lamb and mozzarella. Also a favourite, Sucukulu Yumurtali, is turkish sausage (sujuk) and eggs.

Turkish Sujuk is a cured beef sausage, that to me, is like a hybrid of cacciatori and chorizio.  Fatty like cacciatori but fragrant and spicy like chorizio. I’m currently looking for a solid source in Toronto to pick it up.

I’m still very new to pide, and am still working my way through the menu at Pizza Pide, so I really can’t speak to it as an expert, but I have been making it at home and am really beginning to understand how to put one of these pizzas together.

A few weeks ago, I took a trip back to Hamilton to visit my folks, and my father and I went out to find the ingredients to make our own pide.

We used a pretty basic dough recipe, and ingredients we felt worked with the Pide.

These are the pides we created:

Sujuk and Mozzarella / Spinach and Feta

Lamb and Mozzarella

The Second set of pides (lamb) were made after the first two, and were far more successful, as they didn’t open up and turn into canoes.  The difference was that for the lamb pides, I used an egg wash and stretched the dough much thinner. Like I said before, I am still experimenting with Pide, and would love any expertise that anyone has to offer.

November 17, 2009

Cider braised chicken thighs with carmelized onions and figs

I made this about a week ago, from a recipe posted by Natalie Maclean (twitter @NatalieMaclean) on her blog. It was a cold, damp night and autumn was very clearly setting in for a while. The figs tasted like summer, but the warm cider, onions, lemon and ginger had me thinking about wearing sweaters and going for an afternoon hike.

Cider braised chicken with carmelized onions and figs

 

It’s quite delicious. Next time, I think I’ll make it with a risotto, though. It really would have been nice with something else to balance the sweet cider, figs and onion.

As a side note, the cider I used was from Bennett’s in Ancaster, Ontario- about a 15 minute drive from my folks place, where I grew up in Hamilton.

November 1, 2009

Halloween latte art

Themed latte art is always fun. ‘Nuff said. Though I don’t usually support the practice of etching latte art with a thermometer, there really is no other way to add eyes and teeth to a skull.

Halloween was so busy Grinder, by the time I was able to snap a picture of any of these, the milk had started to separate. Oh well.

You’ll have to excuse the photo quality in this post, as I shot these pictures with my terribly inadequate cell phone camera.

Etched Skull

Etched Skull

First attempt at a skull and cross bones

First attempt at a skull and cross bones... Little sloppy, but you get the point

).”]Skeletal rib cage, shoulders, pelvis

Skeletal rib cage, shoulders and pelvis (suggested by Wayne MacPhail [wmacphail on Twitter

 

October 21, 2009

Michael Smith talks about food hacking and open source recipe sharing

After tracking his evening dinner plans through Twitter, my roommate and I hopped on our bikes and rode downtown to find Michael Smith. Though this video is for a class project on food hacking and maker culture, it is nevertheless relevant for Sensual Eating; a food blog.

Smith was in Toronto promoting his new recipe book, “The Best of Chef at Home

October 14, 2009

Vegetable Brie Omelette with Dill

For breakfast this morning, I raided my fridge for the left over ingredients from last night’s sandwich, and made an omelette.

Once I had all the ingredients, my girlfriend headed downstairs to the Bonjour Brioche bakery to get one of the best baguettes in the city.

I'm totally serious when I say this is the best omlette I have EVER had.

I'm totally serious when I say this is the best omelette I have EVER had.

Ingredients:

2 Organic Large Eggs from Rowe Farms

Red Onion

Green Pepper

Chopped Dill

Tomato

Olive Oil

I really don’t have much to say here other than this omelette was incredible, and you really ought to make yourself one this morning.

As I digest this omelette, I am working my way through a fresh french press of an Ethiopian Sidamo from Toi & Moi in Montreal.

Fragrant dill omlette with a fragrant cup of sidamo? I think yes.

October 14, 2009

Dinner Tonight: Salmon Sandwich from the Gods

After buying a coffee this morning, and seeing smoked salmon on the menu beside the counter, I decided today would be the day I made myself a smoked salmon sandwich. No matter how much I tried, the idea wouldn’t leave my head. Sitting in class, there was only one thing on my mind: salmon.
As soon as class let out, I went to the St. Lawrence Market to satisfy my craving, and bought the ingredients for this sandwich.

Salmon Sandwich from the Gods

Ingredients:

Fresh stone-baked bagel
Atlantic smoked salmon
Pickled capers
Fresh Dill
Tomato

Fresh squeezed lemon juice
Green pepper
Cream cheese from Alex Farm
Red Onion
Salt & Pepper

Besides the fresh flavours, the textural complexity is what makes this sandwich so unbelievable.
The salmon and cream cheese are soft, but the peppers and red onions provide a nice crisp crunch.

The salt and pepper bring everything together, and the dill and lemon juice bring out the sweet flavour in the capers and the green pepper.

Altogether an amazing sandwich, if I do say so myself.

Cheers.

October 13, 2009

Thanksgiving turkey

turkeybestWell, not much to say here, but I thought it would be good to post a picture of the bird we ate last night for dinner. Though, it may look fairly basic, it wasn’t. Before going to the oven, my father soaked the entire 22lb turkey in a brine of sea salt, water and brown sugar for about 6 hours.

The effect: a nearly perfectly seasoned turkey, requiring no salt at the table.

Though there were a few types of stuffing, the cornbread and buttermilk stuffing stole the show.

Personally, I don’t really get too excited about turkey, but this one was quite delicious. When I eat thanksgiving dinner, I usually don’t go for the basics like squash and cranberry sauce. Instead, I spend the majority of my calories on things like liver and rice, green beans and almonds, and the various turkey stuffings.

You’re going to have to excuse the lack of pictures and the quality of the one picture that I have posted here, as I was pretty busy drinking red wine…

October 12, 2009

Doing the Matt Taylor pour.. slightly crooked

I stole this pour from Matthew Taylor at Mercury Espresso Bar in Toronto’s east end. Matt owns the place, and if you get a chance, you ought to go and have him pull you a triple ristretto.
He knows more about coffee than anyone I have ever met, and can pull some serious shots.

Video credit: Nicole Henderson

October 12, 2009

Garlic soup with poached egg

Now, the intent of this blog isn’t exclusively to post recipes, but I have recently been experimenting with soups, and came across a recipe for this one, and enjoyed it quite a bit. Whether or not you find garlic an appropriate main ingredient in a soup, you’re sure to like this one. This soup will incite feelings you never thought capable.

This soup satisfies so many different feelings and cravings at once, it is most certainly sensual eating. Without the egg, this soup is warm, fragrant but light. It smells heavily of the thyme and oregano, but tastes mostly of the garlic. The heavy flavour of the garlic is balanced perfectly by the herbs, and the chicken stock gives the soup a complex base. The saturated pieces of stale bread carry the flavour well, and don’t become a floating blob of mush, like any fresh bread would.

When you drop in the egg and let the yolk bleed, it transforms the light soup into a hearty and thick meal.

The best part: this is an incredible easy soup to make.

Ingredients: 2 heads of garlic (seriously, 2 heads)

chicken stock

1 bunch of thyme

1 smaller bunch of oregano

1 egg

stale bread

Start by breaking the garlic into cloves, but leave them unpeeled. After that, throw everything into a pot with the simmering chicken stock.

Let the soup simmer for about 40 minutes, and ensure that all of the garlic is soft. Then remove all of the thyme and oregano. There will be a few floating particles left in the soup, but you can leave those in.

Now, collect all of the garlic with a strainer, and use a spoon to mash it up against the side of the strainer. If it isn’t obvious, the object of this is to extract as much of the flavour possible from the garlic.

Poach the egg to the point where the yolk is soft and viscous.

Now, pour the soup over a few pieces of the stale bread, and drop in the poached egg. Cut off the excess egg whites and drop the egg into the soup.

Break the yolk, and let it bleed.