Just the words “Hand Pie” make me smile. Could there be anything more adorable and appealing than a little pie you eat with your hands? To be honest, I’m not a huge fruit pie fan. Perhaps it’s because of my peach pie blunder. Or maybe it’s just that if I’m going to ingest copious amounts of butter and sugar, I’d rather partner it with chocolate or caramel rather than fruit. Plus, there’s something about a fruit hand pie makes me think of McDonald’s deep-fried apple pies. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
But stuff something savory in pastry and I’m all over it!
I was watching The Chew last week and Carla and Clinton teamed up to make Chili Hand Pies. They had way too much fun making them, and I wanted in on it. I think it would be so much fun to have the cast of The Chew over for drinks! Cooking dinner for them would be too much pressure, but I know that certainly after a few cocktails, they’d all be in my kitchen with me cooking away. Michael would be laughing while he prepared some porky goodness, Mario would be grating Parmesan Cheese over everything and Clinton would surely keep the cocktails flowing.
My sisters just read the last paragraph and I know they are thinking that I am turning into my mother, having imaginary parties with my TV friends.
Carla and Clinton did a Beef Chili. I decided to do a vegetarian version, substituting Veggie Ground Round for the beef. I also added some onions to the chili and ramped up the heat, using 3 kinds of peppers: fresh jalapeno, diced pickled jalapeno and ancho chili powder. You want the filling to be quite spicy because the pastry crust is quite mild.
The dough is made with cornmeal. They recommended cutting the butter into small slices, but I took it right from the freezer and grated it into the dry ingredients. This is a wonderfully supple dough and rolls out without any problems. I used a 5 inch tin to cut out my circles. Use whatever you have on hand. Smaller ones would also be a wonderful hors d’oeuvre. You can make the chili and the pastry a day ahead and refrigerate them separately. I rolled out all my pastry circles and stacked them between sheets of waxed paper, before chilling. That way, the next day it was all ready to assemble and bake.
Onions, garlic, red pepper, jalapeno pepper, cumin, chili powder and salt form the flavour base.
Make sure you let the chili cool before mixing in some grated cheddar.
Don’t overfill them or you will have trouble sealing them. You can simply press the edges with the tines of a fork, or get fancy and roll the edges like a rope.
Cut a few slits so the steam can escape. 20 minutes in a 400 degree oven, and they are ready to serve.
I must admit, I only became intimate with chip wagons in my early 30’s. I moved from Toronto, where there are very few chip wagons, to Ottawa, where they abound in glory. To those of you who don’t know what a chip wagon is, I will explain. A chip wagon is what got me through my second and third pregnancies. It is a french fry truck or trailer, usually parked at the side of a busy road, or in the parking lot of a shopping center.
I spent my first pregnancy in Toronto, gorging on Dairy Queen Blizzards. I only had to glance at my husband and he was off and running to the DQ for a medium Skor Bar Blizzard. I gained 40 pounds with my first.
I was dragged, kicking and screaming, halfway through my second pregnancy, from the home I had known all my life, in Toronto, to the lovely town of Ottawa. It was a difficult transition for me. However, the discovery of chip wagons helped to smooth out the rough edges of my new life. Or more specifically, the S&G chipwagon, parked just a block away from my doctor’s office, on Carling Ave. I would go to my doctor’s appointment to be weighed and measured and then right after that I would make a beeline to S&G for a cheeseburger and a medium fries. I gained 45 pounds during this pregnancy. Given that she was force-fed burgers during her incarceration in my womb, it came as no surprise to me when this child became a vegetarian.
During my third pregnancy, my love affair with S&G continued. By this point, Steve (the S from S&G), and I were on a first name basis. I only gained 30 pounds this time round. However, before you go applauding my restraint and willpower, you should be aware of the fact that child # 3 was born 10 weeks early! Don’t tell my older two children this, but I secretly believe that their little brother is the clear genius of my progeny. He had the good sense to get out early, before his arteries became irreparably damaged.
After the birth of my third I refrained from visiting Chip Wagons on a regular basis. I would indulge only every once in a while.
But over the past few weeks, driving up to my cottage, I noticed that within less than a mile there are 3 chip stands stationed on Highway 15, at the South edge of Smiths Falls. Being the keen researcher that I am, I thought it would be a great idea to study them and report back to you what I discovered. Here are the findings of my highly scientific Chip Stand Crawl Waddle.
Hank’s Fries is easy to find. By the side of the road there’s a life-size sign, featuring 6 foot long wooden fries dripping with ketchup. Locals and tourists love to stop in for lunch and a keepsake photo.
New this year at Hank’s are the pulled pork sandwich and the popcorn chicken. While I was mightily tempted, I had to stay focused, and I just ordered a small fries. My fry gal told me that they only use fresh, never frozen potatoes. She wasn’t sure what kind of potatoes they used, but she did know they were fried twice in vegetable oil. This, by the way, is the correct method to make perfect french fries. If you just fry them once at a high temperature, you will get the outside nice and brown, but you will never achieve that fluffy interior which is the hallmark of a perfect fry.
The first frying takes 8 minutes and is done in a lower temperature oil, just to blanch the fries and cook them thoroughly on the inside. The blanched fries will keep for many hours at room temperature, so they prepare lots ahead of time each morning. The second frying is done to order and takes just 4 minutes. This one is done at a higher temperature to crisp up the outside.
As she was bagging the fries, she offered a shake of salt and vinegar after filling the bag half full, so that I would get an even distribution of condiments. I said no to the vinegar but I never say no to salt!
Hank’s fries were partially peeled, which I really liked. They were slightly pale in colour and I was worried that the outside wouldn’t be crisp, but they were. I found the insides to be a little bit chewy, so I suspect that this batch was not cooked for long enough on the first frying.
About 800 metres down the road, right across from Mike Fair’s Chevrolet dealership is “Chip Off the Ole Spud.” Owners Mark and Adriana have spruced up the place with some pretty baskets of annuals. They also get bonus points for being wheelchair accessible!
Mark told me that they fry in Canola oil and use whatever potatoes are on special that week. They also use the twice cooked method, first blanching in a lower temperature oil and then crisping them up at a higher temperature. My order came very quickly, within a minute of ordering.
These fries were cut much thinner that the ones at Hank’s. They were a gorgeous burnished brown colour and I had high hopes for them. Unfortunately they were not very crispy. I suspect they had already been given their second fry a while ago and were sitting around. When I ordered them they were just briefly dipped in the oil to reheat. There was no offer to salt halfway through bagging so the seasoning was very uneven.
My final stop was Britt’s Chips, across from Town and Country Chrysler. Britt just opened at this location in May. She has a second stand, further South on Highway 15, in Lombardy, at Rideau Ferry Road.
Britt’s had the most extensive menu selection. I was dying to try the sweet potato fries and the Brittbitts (fried sugar-cinnamon and sugar-lemon dough twists), but I had to stay focused in my research, so I ordered regular fries. Interesting to note that the small fries here were only $3.00. This is 50 cents less than at the other 2 chip stands.
They fry in canola oil and use both P.E.I. and Quebec potatoes. They also use the twice fried method. They offered to salt halfway through, and offered me a little container for my ketchup so I could dip the fries, rather than squeezing the ketchup on top. I loved this touch. I always get too much ketchup on top and then there is none left by the time you get to the bottom of the bag. These fries were a light golden brown and they were very crispy on the outside with soft fluffy interiors.
When I looked at the fries closely, it seemed that many of them had roughed up edges, which explained their supreme crispness. I recall learning about this method from British cook Delia Smith for making the crunchiest roast potatoes. After par-boiling the potatoes, she recommended roughing the potatoes up a bit by shaking them in the pot so that they developed more cracks and crevices on the surface, thereby increasing the surface area for maximum outer crunch.
It would seem that Britt likes to play a bit rough with her potatoes after the first fry, and that’s a good thing! Top marks go to Britt’s chips! I’ll be back soon for the sweet potato fries.
I seem to have a plethora of mangoes. I found my favourite variety of mangoes the other day, being sold in Wal-Mart, of all places. They were selling a case for $12.00! How could I resist? My favourite variety, is the Altafulo Mango. I was patiently explaining this to my husband last Saturday morning at 6:30 a.m., after he curiously asked me why we had a case of mangoes sitting on our kitchen counter.
This is one of the many reasons I love my husband. He patiently listened to me explain the difference between Altafulo mangoes and the more common Tommy Douglas mangoes. Then he gently pointed out that perhaps the variety was not actually called Tommy Douglas, as Tommy Douglas was a Canadian politician, now deceased. He was actually the founder and first leader of the NDP Party . Um yeah, I said, I think they are called Tommy Atkin mangoes. I sliced up an altafulo mango for him to try. Altafulos have a much silkier flesh than Tommy Atkins. Tommy Atkins tend to be a bit fibrous and stringy.
He polished off his smoother than silk mango, made his hazelnut vanilla coffee (don’t get me started on flavoured coffees!) and left me alone to make mango lime sherbet and worry that perhaps I was turning into my mother. She also mixes up names of common household items. She used to call Mr. Clean “Jim Dandy.”
I discovered this recipe for Mango Lime Sherbet on food52.com. I was more than a little curious when I read the title because I grew up calling it sherbert (note the second r). That’s what my mom called it. Was this just another case of my mom butchering the English language yet again? In doing a little research I discovered that my mom was not alone, and many people erroneously add that second “R”. The proper spelling is indeed sherbet. But wait, what about sorbet?
Now that I have you totally confused, I think a little primer on the nomenclature of frozen desserts is in order here. Both sorbets and sherbets are frozen puréed fruit and sugar based desserts. However, sherbet goes one step further with the addition of some type of dairy added. Traditionally most sherbets contain 1% or 2% milk. The sherbet I am presenting here kicks it up a notch with the addition of 35% cream (whipping cream). We go one step further here by whipping the cream and folding it into the purred mango-lime base. This is a technique I discovered in the May 2004 issue of Cook’s Illustrated. Whipping the cream really lightens the whole dessert. “Lighten” here is taken to refer to texture not calories. 35% cream has the same number of calories whether it is whipped or not, but we can delude ourselves into thinking otherwise if we wish!
This sherbet is sweet, but not cloying, thanks to the addition of lime zest and lime juice. I reduced the amount of sugar slightly from the original recipe as I found the original a bit too sweet.
The success of this recipe depend, of course, on having some really ripe mangoes. If none are available, thaw a bag of frozen mangoes). If peeling mangoes is something you have never done, check out this video. Or if you have peeled lots of mangoes but are a fan of the musical group Phish (or “Phish Phan”, as they like to be known), you can also check out this video. It features their hit, “The Mango Song.”
The lime flavour in this sherbet relies on both the zest and the juice of the lime. Process the sugar with the zest. Puree the mangoes. Emily at Food 52 recommends straining the mango puree. I pureed mine, but did not find anything left behind in the strainer, so if you are using the smoother, silkier Altafulo mangoes, feel free to skip this step. This mixture needs to be chilled for several hours before folding in the whipped cream.
Twenty minutes in the Ice cream machine and the sherbet is churned. It is still quite soft at this point and really benefits from an additional several hours of freezing time. Scoop sherbet out of the ice cream machine canister, into a Tupperware container. Cover the surface of the sherbet with some plastic wrap to prevent ice crystals from forming. Then put on the Tupperware lid and freeze.
This salad is all about the ingredients. Let me say, right up front, if you can’t find any good pumpernickel bread where you live, substitute a sourdough or other hearty type bread. Do not buy supermarket pumpernickel bread. It is too light and fluffy, and when grilled, it will just burn and then become sponge like in the salad. It is not what you are looking for here. You need a dense heavy bread that can stand up to the rigors of the grill. I once actually made pumpernickel bread. It was good, but not great. Luckily, in Ottawa, where I live, we have the Rideau Bakery. They make a fantastic pumpernickel. Dense and chewy, it is the perfect vehicle for soaking up all the flavours of this salad.
This salad is the creation of grillmeisters Chris Schlesinger and John (Doc) Willoughby, from their book “Let the Flames Begin.” Now you wouldn’t expect to find a great salad in a book about BBQ, but these guys take grilling everything seriously. They give very detailed instructions for grilling the bread properly.
“Making a good piece of toast on the grill is actually not that easy. You want to get it really toasted – not just grill marked – but to stay tender on the inside. So cut the pumpernickel thick (1 inch) and make sure the fire is medium, not hot.”
I overdosed on this salad several years ago, when I made it for lunch every Saturday for 8 weeks in a row. We finally got sick of it and I retired the recipe. But I was having a manicure a few weeks ago and my esthetician was telling me about a Macedonian feta cheese that she always buys. When she is not telling me filthy jokes, we talk food. She is originally from Bulgaria and I have learned so much from her. So when she talks about feta from Macedonia, I listen! Macedonia, if you don’t know (and, I didn’t!), is bordered by Serbia to the North, Bulgaria to the East, Greece to the South and Albania to the West.
Macedonian Feta is very creamy, much like goat cheese. If you can’t find it, a Greek feta would also do very well in this salad. Just make sure you find a feta that is not too dry and chalky.
Fresh oregano is called for in this salad. It really adds an earthy quality. If you can’t find any, substitute fresh basil instead. I like to use a variety of coloured tomatoes in the salad. If you can find Lebanese (sometimes called Israeli) cucumbers for this salad, use them. If not, an english cucumber will also work. I don’t bother peeling them, but I do take the time to scrape out the seeds, with a little teaspoon. Just slice the cuke in half lengthwise to remove the seeds. I find that sometimes the seeds can be bitter and they can also make the salad a bit watery.
Before we go any further, let me just state, for the record, I’m really not a muffin person. If I’m going to eat copious amounts of sugar, fat and flour, I would prefer to ingest it in the form of a cookie. The fact that some people delude themselves into thinking that muffins are actually a healthy way to start the day irritates me. Your Raisin Bran Muffin is 360 calories and contains 10 grams of fat! You would be better off starting your day with a Chocolate Dipped Donut. with only 210 calories and 8 grams of fat! My husband is a muffin person. Enough said!
However, I digress. This is not a post about delusional breakfast idiots. Rather, it is a story about a wonderful Raw Apple Muffin, created by the incomparable Marion Cunningham, from her lovely little gem of a cookbook, “The Breakfast Book.” I meant to blog about this muffin last summer. I even got so far as baking them and taking the pictures, but then I must have gotten distracted with this. But I was gently dragged back to these muffins by my daughter. She is dating a muffin person and he was coming for a visit. She wanted to bake something for him. I agreed that these were outstanding muffins, high praise indeed, coming from me, the notorious muffin hater. I took the pictures and she baked.
I hesitate to even call these muffins. They are more like apples and raisins held together with a bit of batter. When you are mixing the batter you will probably look at the ingredient list and think you missed some liquid. You didn’t. This a supremely dense batter. It is best to use an ice cream scoop to transfer the batter to the muffin tin.
I have adapted Marion’s recipe slightly by gilding the lily. When these muffins come out of the oven, I dip the top of them in melted butter and then roll them in a mixture of sugar and cinnamon. I am under no delusion that these are healthy, but they are delicious. The huge quantity of apples and raisins makes them super moist. The sugar cinnamon topping adds a bit of crunch. Muffin nirvana!
For those of you who have been following my blog for the past little while, you know that I have been suffering from some disc problems that landed me flat on my back in bed for about 8 days. I’m pleased to report that I am continuing to feel much better. But while I lay in bed, in agonizing pain, I became quite anxious about the fact that I was unable to do any of my regular forms of fitness (treadmill, elliptical, weight training and yoga).
I have come to rely on exercise as a stress reliever, as well as a way to allow me to control my weight. A mentally balanced sane person would be more concerned about the errant disc fragment lodged in her spine, pressing on the nerve that connects to her left hip flexor and quadriceps. Yet, I seemed to be more concerned about weight gain.
Surprising discovery # 1: Shockingly in the past 3 weeks I have actually lost 5 pounds! I am not quite sure how that happened. It may have something to do with muscle loss (muscle weighs more than fat) or it could have something to do with the fact that I was unable to get down the stairs to my kitchen, where we keep the food, for 9 days. Now don’t misunderstand me here. I didn’t starve for 9 days. The lovely family members in my house did bring me food and water at regular intervals. It’s just that perhaps my regular intervals are a bit more frequent than theirs!
Again, a mentally balanced and sane person would look at this weight loss and begin planning healthy meals of quinoa, kale and lentils, so that the pounds do not creep back on. However, I saw a loss of 5 pounds and immediately started planning what I would bake and blog about next.
I knew I wanted to be seasonal and bake something with rhubarb. Of course the obligatory strawberry rhubarb pie was a possibility, but I am not really a pie lover, unless it involves coconut cream. Searching for inspiration I turned to Melissa Clark’s “Cook This Now.” And sure enough, in the May chapter, she had a recipe for a Rhubarb Curd Tart. As I read through the recipe, I made surprising discovery #2: Curds are not just for lemons anymore! You can make a curd from any fruit juice you fancy.
While I love the tangy flavour of rhubarb, I find the stringy texture a bit off-putting. Melissa had come up with a genius way to get all the tang of rhubarb, without the texture. Puree the raw rhubarb in the food processor and then strain the pulp and squeeze out the juice. Use this juice instead of lemon, in the curd. Brilliant!
For the tart crust, I wanted to try a recipe from Anna Olsen. She has a new show called Bake, on the Food Network (Canada). This week’s episode featured desserts made with Pate Sable (tender tart dough). As I watched Anna prepare the dough, I made surprising discovery #3: A hardboiled egg yolk contributes greatly to the texture and richness of Pate Sable. This European way of making tart dough was created by French pastry chef Pierre Herme.
The final tart was perfect. The crust was reminiscent of shortbread; crumbly and just a little bit sweet with the richness of butter (and egg!). The curd plays tricks on your mind. You see the yellow curd and you think lemon, but once you take a bite your mouth immediately recognizes the tart and tangy taste of rhubarb. Balanced by the sweetness of strawberries, this is one perfect bite. I think that should Anna and Melissa ever meet, they would be quite proud of their collaboration!
The secret ingredient to the rich crust is the yolk of a hardboiled egg! Butter and icing sugar are creamed together. The hard-boiled egg gets sieved and added. Additions of vanilla extract, salt, raw egg yolk and cake and pastry flour complete the dough. I like to roll out the dough between 2 sheets of parchment paper. Transfer to tart pan with removable bottom. If the dough cracks while transferring, don’t sweat it. It’s a forgiving dough and is easy to patch. Trim off excess dough by running the rolling-pin across the tart pan. Line with parchment paper and fill with pie weights or dried beans to bake.
While the tart is baking, prepare the curd. The idea that any juice can be turned into a curd has just blown my mind. I’m not sure why I only thought curd could be made with lemon. I guess I’m just not an out of the box kind of thinker, but now that I know, the possibilities are endless. I am planning a pomegranate curd tart for the fall! I always associate pomegranates with my mom. She used to make us strip down to our underwear and go outside in the backyard to eat pomegranates, because the fruit stained so badly. Luckily, these days you can already buy the fruit juiced.
When making the curd, Melissa says to stand at the stove and whisk constantly for 18-20 minutes. I did not. I walked away for several minutes at a time and everything came out just fine. Although, I must admit, when I strained the curd, I did see a few bits of scrambled egg in the bottom of my strainer.
This tart would also be wonderful with fresh raspberries, but strawberries seemed like the right choice today.
Today I am grateful for several small and large blessings! I am grateful to be relatively pain free. If you read my last post, you, may recall that I was in bed for over 8 days with terrible back and leg pain. The MRI revealed a bulging disc which was pressing on a nerve and causing me back pain. It seems to have eased greatly and I am back on my feet again. I feel grateful for a wonderful husband who brought me an extra hot skim milk latte in bed this morning.
Although I couldn’t be in Toronto today to celebrate Mother’s Day with my mom, I am grateful to have 5 siblings all living there to celebrate with her. They gathered at my baby sister’s house and had a “friendly” game of softball. Some family members tend to get a bit competitive about these things so hopefully no one sprained a hamstring sliding into first base or got bonked on the head from being tagged out at home plate. I’m sure to get a play by play analysis very soon.
Finally, I am grateful for my sweet children. My oldest was unable to spend today with me, but he drove for over 5 hours to come home for a short visit yesterday. My middle child bought me a beautiful blue hydrangea plant and gave me a very fitting (and funny) card .
And my youngest, with the help of his sister, made me a video on YouTube, serenading me with Elvis’ “Love me Tender.” So sweet!
I made these tarts a few days ago and thought we would have them today for dessert. Unfortunately they were all gone the day I made them. Luckily I have other sweet things to satisfy me!
These tarts are the creation of Lucy Waverman, food columnist for the Globe and Mail. I have adapted the recipe somewhat. The original recipe produced tarts that had a thin layer of caramel and then a thick layer of ganache. I doubled the caramel recipe so that the finished tarts would have a thick layer of both caramel and chocolate.I also added some salt to the caramel filling as well as a few decorative flakes on top of the ganache filling.
I made them in mini muffin tins. Not only do they look adorable, but there is no guilt at all involved in popping one (or three) of these into your mouth. The contrast in textures of this mini bite are what make it so special. Biting into the crisp flaky pastry you discover a silky smooth layer of bittersweet slightly salty caramel covered in a thick layer of chilled chocolate ganache. The ping on your tongue from a melting crystal of fleur de sel helps these tarts from being too cloyingly sweet.
Begin with making the caramel, as it needs time to cool and firm up. Sugar, water and corn syrup are boiled until a rich amber colour is reached. Finish with whipping cream and a pinch of kosher salt.
I like to roll out the pastry dough between 2 sheets of parchment paper, right after making the dough. Then I chill the rolled out dough. Be sure to roll the dough very thin (1/8 of an inch thick) for these mini tarts.
Let the tart shells cool completely before filling. I find it easiest to put the caramel filling into a disposable piping bag.
Finish off with chocolate ganache and a few flakes of fleur de sel.
At the beginning of April, I dashed off a hurried post about Alice’s New Classic Macaroons. I was rushing because I had a million things to do to get ready to travel to Toronto for Passover. I flew to Toronto on a Friday morning. Just before we took off, I checked my Blackberry to see if there were any messages for me. My inbox was empty. An hour later, when we landed, I turned my Blackberry back on and was shocked to see that I had over 76 emails in my inbox.
My first thought was that someone near and dear to me had been in a terrible accident or had a fatal heart attack. But as I scrolled through the messages, I realized that none of them were from anyone I knew. Most of them were from strangers telling me that they liked my latest post on macaroons.
For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how all these people had seen this post. In a normal day, I usually get about 225 hits on my blog. When I checked my blog stats later that day I was gobsmacked to see that over 2900 people had viewed my latest post. Yikes, I’d gone viral. Visions of book deals and television appearances began dancing in my head! I slowly floated down to earth when I realized what had happened. I had been “Freshly Pressed.” My blog host is WordPress. Each weekday, about ten new blog posts from over 450,000 posts are selected to be featured on the Freshly Pressed section of their WordPress.com homepage. I was one of the chosen!
For the next two weeks, each day, my Blackberry pinged repeatedly to tell me that I had another new follower. For those of you who don’t know what this means, simply put, a follower is someone who as decided that they like your blog so much that they want to be notified by e-mail every time you post a new blog entry. I must admit it was a bit unsettling to discover that that all these new people were “following” me. It was hard to resist the urge to look over my shoulder for them. I felt like such an imposter. These people were following me and I had nowhere to lead them.
Eventually I got over myself and posted a lovely entry about Farinata. Then I was gearing up to write about pistachio crusted halibut and somehow managed to injure my back. Unable to sit or stand without pain shooting down my leg, I crawled into bed. I found myself wishing, for the very first time in my life, that I had been born a male. Sitting down to pee was so painful. I have perfected the semi squat with very minimal splash. Thinking about patenting this position!
I’m not sure if it is a pinched nerve or a disc problem. I had an MRI today so I should get more information soon. I am on day 7 of bed rest and am finally able to prop myself up to type, so I thought I’d share this yummy halibut recipe with you.
I have been making this recipe for several years now. It is my go to recipe for any white fish. I never seem to tire of eating it. The crunch of the pistachio and cornmeal crust contrast so perfectly with the moist flaky halibut. The tangy yogurt-cucumber sauce is a perfect accompaniment. This recipe was created by the incredible grillmeister, Chris Schlesinger . His book “Thrill of the Grill” is like a grilling bible to many.
The fish is served with a spicy yogurt sauce. The heat in this cooling yogurt sauce comes from Maras pepper, a dried Turkish red pepper, that has a medium balanced lingering heat. I was unable to find it, so I used Aleppo pepper instead. Aleppo peppers come from Syria and they pack a moderate heat, with fruity undertones, mildly reminiscent of cumin. You could also put in a pinch of cayenne. The remaining sauce ingredients are lemon, yogurt, dill, scallions and cucumber. I like to remove the seeds from the cucumber, as they make the sauce too watery. A small teaspoon makes seed removal quite easy.
The pistachios for the crust need to be chopped quite fine or you will have problems getting the coating to stick to the fish. The halibut gets soaked in milk for about 30 minutes before breading. This is done to get rid any really strong fish odours. While halibut is mild, unless you live next to the ocean, chances are you are not buying just caught fish. The milk soak just refreshes the fish, sort of like when we shower after working out, to refresh us.
The fish goes into a hot pan coated with some olive oil. Once it is browned on both sides, it gets popped into a hot oven for the last bit of cooking.
Sometimes in life, you just have to take a leap of faith and believe that it will all turn out ok. I am not what you would call a worrier. I have discovered that the things you stay up all night angsting over usually never end up happening. It is those things it never even occurred to you to worry about that blindside you and whack you over the head. So I live my life somewhat like a turtle, not waiting for catastrophes to befall me. Disasters know where to find me if they need me.
Today’s blog post involves a recipe that takes a leap of faith to make. I was served Farinata (Italian Chickpea Flatbread) by my girlfriend Marla last week. I was visiting her in Toronto and she served me this unusual flatbread. It was a crispy and golden on top, and addictively chewy in the center. The bottom crust had a thin film of deliciously fruity olive oil and the flatbread was flavored with rosemary, salt and black pepper. She discovered the recipe on the lovely blog, Kalyn’s Kitchen.
My friend Marla is one of the brightest and accomplished women I know. She was recently named one of Canada’s Top Women Entrepreneurs. In addition to being smart as hell, she is also quite elegant and stylish. She drinks Champagne cocktails. And on top of all that, she is a fantastic cook. Everytime she cooks for me, I leave with exciting new ideas and recipes to try.
Farinata is a thin flatbread made from chickpea flour. It originated in the Italian region of Liguria. It is quite a popular snack there. Bakeries throughout the Ligurian region post the time in their windows that the farinata will be coming out of the oven and customers line up around the corner for a hot slice. I did not post a sign letting my family know when it was coming out of our oven, but somehow they knew exactly when to appear in the kitchen to devour it.
It is the perfect appetizer to serve with drinks. Marla suggested topping room temperature slices with arugula, shaved slices of Parmigiano-Reggiano, fresh figs and then drizzling the whole thing with a good aged balsamic vinegar. I was unable to find the fresh figs, but even without them, it was amazing. My friend Josh said it tasted like summer!
The leap of faith for this recipe comes when you mix all the ingredients together and look at the “dough”. Chickpea flour, water, olive oil and salt are mixed together in a large bowl. I ended up switching to a whisk to make the batter smooth. The batter was so thin and watery I just couldn’t believe that this would turn into a flatbread.
After mixing, the batter is left on the counter to rest for several hours. I was quite busy and did not get back to it for about 8 hours. When I returned, it looked exactly as it had that morning. For some reason I had expected it to have thickened or at least risen or bubbled. But it still resembled a very thin crepe batter. I preheated the oven to 475° F and once it was hot I placed a 12 inch round pizza pan in the oven for about 10 minutes to get it blisteringly hot. While I waited, I chopped up some fresh rosemary and mixed it into the batter. You could also use a 9 x 13 inch baking sheet with sides.
Once the hot pan comes out of the oven, cover the bottom with a thin film of good olive oil. I used about a tablespoon. Pour in the batter, sprinkle with some freshly ground black pepper and prepare to take a second leap of faith, that you will get the pan from the counter into the oven without spilling any batter. I placed my pizza pan on a sheet pan, but still managed to spill some on the bottom of my oven when I was sliding it in.
I kept turning on the oven light to see if anything was happening. I was convinced I was going to end up with chickpea soup. Sure enough, at around the 10 minute mark, it started to solidify around the edges, and after a further 10 minutes, I had a golden chickpea flatbread!
This is wonderful served plain without any toppings, but let your imagination go wild. Pecorino Romano, pears and honey would be fantastic. I would also love to try it with burrata, basil and ripe summer tomatoes!
For me, it’s just not Passover unless we have macaroons.That’s macaroons, with two oo’s, the ones made with coconut, not to be confused with macarons, the French confection, with one o, which are typically made with ground almonds, powdered sugar and egg whites.
In fact, I love macaroons so much that I dressed up as a chocolate one several years ago. My youngest sister, in Toronto, held a masquerade Seder. We all had to come dressed as our favorite Passover character. I took a little creative license and showed up dressed head to toe in chocolate-brown, topped with a very large pyramid-shaped cardboard hat, covered with macaroons. A word of advice for anyone thinking of trying this – don’t! I used canned macaroons (I didn’t want to waste the homemade ones for a craft project) and they became very heavy when coated with glue. The overpowering stench of coconut and glue, as we drove from Ottawa to Toronto, left everyone in out van feeling quite ill.
However, it didn’t cure me of my love for all things coconut, especially macaroons. Cookbook author, dessert chef and Chocolatier Alice Medrich, created these incredible macaroons in her recent book, “Chewy, Gooey, Crispy, Crunchy, Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies.”Leave it to Alice to come up with a genius twist on this classic cookie. Instead of using shredded or desiccated coconut, Alice suggests using coconut chips. These are wide shavings of unsweetened coconut that can be found in most health and bulk food stores these days.
Chewy, toasty and supremely yummy! The pure coconut flavour really shines through in these stunning beauties. Alice suggests shoving a large chunk of bittersweet chocolate into the centre of each cookie to take a great cookie over the top!
Egg whites, coconut chips, vanilla extract, sugar and a pinch of salt all get mixed together in a large bowl. I used vanilla extract paste so you can see the flecks of the vanilla bean seeds in my mixture. The bowl then gets set in a large pan of simmering water, to heat the mixture through and thicken the egg whites.
I used a small ice cream scoop (about 3/4 of an ounce) to form the macaroons. I stuck a piece of 70% bittersweet chocolate in the centre of each before baking. Unfortunately they oozed right out once I baked them.
I got a little smarter on the second tray and carefully inserted the chocolate into the centre of the macaroon and used wet fingertips to make sure chocolate was mostly enclosed. It wasn’t until I baked them all that I reread the recipe and discovered that Alice inserts the chocolate after baking, while macaroon is still warm!
However you insert the chocolate, these macaroons are pure coconut heaven!
