Archive for November, 2009
I’m back. We survived re-entry into the real world, sustained on the drive by some sugar cookies wrapped in a napkin. (It wasn’t difficult, post-brunch buffet.) I just know I’m going to wake up tomorrow morning starving and Jonesing for eggs Benny. And who’s going to make my bed?
I did manage to catch a bit of Chef Patrick Turcot’s session while I was there – he’s the wonderful, friendly executive chef of the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge, and he always does something maple-y, being French Canadian and all.
He made a Maple Syrup Pie. I haven’t told Mike this – I might be able to get away with making one and wrapping it up to tuck under the tree, and forego shopping altogether.
So here you go. Look how easy it is! It’s no more complicated than making packaged pudding on the stovetop. Eat it in small slices, or make tarts – they might be a nice alternative to butter tarts this Christmas. Although is anything ever a better choice than butter tarts? It’s best to not compare – I’m so making these and scoring bonus maple points with Mike.
Classic Maple Syrup Pie
If you want to call this a tart, like Patrick did, make your pastry shell in a tart pan with a removeable bottom – it looks extra-elegant this way.
1 1/2 cups pure maple syrup
1 cup whipping cream
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/4 cup cold water
1 9” prebaked pie shell
Whisk together the syrup and cream in a medium saucepan set over medium-high heat. In a small dish, whisk together the cornstarch and water; add it to the maple syrup mixture and bring it to a boil. Cook for 2 minutes, stirring, until thickened. Pour into the pie shell and let it cool until set. Serves 8.
November 12 2009 | dessert | 24 Comments »
No, not for dinner – but you don’t really want to hear about how I ate chateaubriand all over again, do you? (That’s beef tenderloin with béarnaise sauce – like hollandaise, made with egg yolk and clarified butter. Oh yes. I’m a bit ashamed of myself for how much of it I ate. On everything. Turns out it’s pretty damn yummy on bread, too. And vegetables. And fingers. I gave my dessert to Mike, but downed a few chocolate truffles and fancy martinis.
It snowed all day today – thick, slow, quiet snow so ideal for the holidays that I fully expected to see a bunch of JPL elves on the roof outside my session dumping bagsful of fluff over the edge. (You know The Snowman by Raymond Briggs? Like that.) We snuck out for an hour in the afternoon and made snowmen and threw rocks through the thin ice at the edge of the lake. I don’t want to go home tomorrow. How could it have been seven days already?
But the food. My sessions this year have been on the subject of sweet gifts from the kitchen: my Grandma’s Peanut Brittle, sugar plums, chocolate bark, candied pecans and chocolate mint cookies made with After Eights. Setting up after lunch W came into my room and helped himself to bowls and ingredients and started doing his own impromptu chocolate dinosaur cake demo. It was pretty damn cute if I do say so myself. I mean, look at him! What makes it even more funny is that he’s never actually seen me do this.
The inspiration for the bacon brittle came at breakfast, when faced with chafing dishes overflowing with the stuff. I piled some on my plate and brought it to my session, chopped it and stirred it into peanut brittle along with the nuts. (Mixed salted nuts – delicious, but I think if I planned it I’d stick to pecans.) It was almost as big a hit as W.
Bacon Pecan Brittle
The recipe for my grandma’s peanut brittle is written by hand on an old recipe card I still have; it turns out to make a great basic recipe whether you want to make a nut brittle with peanuts, hazelnuts, almonds, pecans, pumpkin seeds or mixed nuts. Or bacon.
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup corn syrup or honey
pinch salt
3/4 cup water
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 cups toasted pecans or other nuts
a few slices of bacon, cooked until crisp and crumbled or chopped
Combine the sugar, corn syrup, salt and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Stir constantly until the sugar dissolves. Once the sugar has dissolved do not stir, but swirl the pan occasionally until the mixture reaches 325°F on a candy thermometer.
Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla and baking soda – the mixture will foam up in the pan. Stir in the bacon and nuts. Immediately pour onto a rimmed baking sheet that has been sprayed with nonstick spray and spread out fairly thin with a spatula or the back of a spoon that has been sprayed as well.
Cool completely and break into chunks. Store in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks. Serves about 10.
November 12 2009 | sweet stuff | 14 Comments »
What a novelty! Tonight I think I’ll actually post what I had for dinner.
I couldn’t possibly relay the food that I’ve consumed over the past several days at the JPL-suffice to say it has been superb and in excess. Dinner tonight started with Sweet Potato Carrot Bisque, poured over crispy fried red onions (which were already in the soup bowls), then chicken stuffed with Fairwinds farm goat cheese and roasted fingerling potatoes, and white chocolate mousse with berry sauce for dessert. I figured the soup recipe was easy to share; plus it’s delicious. (I apologize for the nasty photo – it was dark, and the wine rendered me not as steady as I’d have liked.)
And also – I had gone to Shoana’s most excellent (say like in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure – am I dating myself?) mixology class in the afternoon, at which I tested no fewer than 7 cocktails – for research purposes, you understand. I think she may have convinced me to buy a martini shaker. Or dig out the one I bought at a garage sale a few years ago.
Yet another great thing about Christmas in November is that you get to take home a book full of recipes – everything you ate in the dining room, as well as all the recipes from the presenters.
Sweet Potato Carrot Bisque
This was served over crispy fried red onions which had already been placed in the soup bowls; to do this, thinly slice the onions and cook in oil until crispy.
2 cups chopped carrots
1 large sweet potato, peeled and chopped
1 L (32 oz.) chicken broth
1 Tbsp. butter
1/3 cup chopped onion
1 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. curry powder
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. lemon juice
1/2 cup plain yogurt
In a large pot simmer the carrots and sweet potato in the stock for 20 minutes, or until tender, adding more water if you need to to keep the vegetables covered. Meanwhile, saute the onion in the butter until translucent. Add them to the pot of veggies. Add the sugar, curry, nutmeg and salt and puree with a hand-held immersion blender (or transfer to a regular blender in batches) until smooth. Add the lemon juice and yogurt and heat through. If you like, serve over crispy fried onions. Serves 4.
Chocolate Martini
2 oz. vodka
1 oz. crème de cacao
2 oz. milk (optional)
ice
chocolate shavings or finely crushed candy canes (optional)
Rim your martini glass by running a wedge of lime around the rim and dipping it into a shallow bowl of chocolate shavings or crushed candy canes. Shake everything else up (lots of ice) in a martini shaker and strain into the glass. Drink.
November 11 2009 | beverages and soup | 7 Comments »
Sorry for the late post, but we’ve been making rather merry this weekend at Christmas in November. Saturday night was the gala dinner, at which I sat beside Michael Smith and Bill Pratt, the executive chef in charge of feeding the athletes at the upcoming Olympics in Vancouver. We ate asparagus shooters, salmon on chilled Isreali couscous, beef tenderloin with bearnaise sauce and cheddar scalloped potatoes, and a maple yule log for dessert. Eggnog and cranberry martinis before dinner and Mission Hill wines with, which were undoubtedly contributing factors to Mike (mine, not Smith!) dancing with a hundred or so women and a feather boa afterward, and doing the limbo. The next morning I found a feather boa at the foot of the bed, and a trail of feathers leading up to our cabin. The dance floor looked like we had been sacrificing chickens.
What I love about this shot: not only is he getting jiggy with it, he has Dwight Schrute hair.
At around eleven the power went out – the entire JPL property (200+ buildings) and half of the town of Jasper. I walked back to the cabin to relieve the babysitter (W fully expected a giant baby to show up on our doorstep when we told him about her coming) and with the stone fireplaces roaring and candles lit on every table the live band kept playing, and the party went on. The generators kicked in before midnight and all was well – it was, in fact, one of the highlights of the weekend. We may have to figure out how to pull the main breaker during the next gala evening.
During the days, the long main ballroom is sectioned off into three rooms, and I’m sandwiched between Chef Michael Smith and Ken Kostick as we do our respective sessions. It’s a ton of fun. Sunday morning we were all a little worse for wear, and Ken paid a visit to my room in an attempt to keep us quiet; I ran over to his and begged his crowd to laugh a little louder at his jokes. Then I went to the other side and heckled Michael about his baking pans (which were much shinier and newer than mine) and stole some of his cookies.
His topic: the science of the chocolate chip cookie. He claims to have come up with the ultimate recipe, and who am I to argue when faced with a basket full of them, warm from the oven?
This is his chocolate chip cookie recipe from the newly released Best of Chef at Home (which I’ll draw a name for tomorrow, and get him to sign it for you!). The addition of a bit of corn syrup allows the cookies to brown more quickly, so that they come out of the oven when they’re cooked properly, rather than overbaked – people tend to want their cookies to be golden, but that often means that when they cool down they’ll be crispy instead of chewy. So a bit of corn syrup helps them look done closer to the point when they actually are done. Consider it a little extra insurance against overbaking.
In terms of timing – I would have to add that exactly 12 minutes is going to produce different cookies depending on their size and the accuracy of your oven, so do make sure you check them early. It’s easier to bake them a bit longer than to reverse time. They should be golden around the edges, set but still soft in the middle – if you like them chewy, remember that they will firm up as they cool.
Chocolate Chip Cookies
from The Best of Chef at Home, by Michael Smith
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
1 Tbsp. corn syrup (optional)
1 egg
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1 cup chocolate chips
Preheat your oven to 375F.
Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt and set aside. Using a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar together until smooth. If you don’t have a stand mixer, beat vigorously by hand in a mixing bowl.
Add the corn syrup, egg and vanilla and beat until combined. Scrape down the bowl and gradually add the flour mixture, beating just until combined. Stir in the chocolate chips. Using a spoon, scoop out a ball of dough, roll it a moment in your hands and then drop it onto a lightly greased cookie tray. Slightly flatten the balls but leave lots of room in between to allow the cookies to expand.
For a soft, chewy cookie, bake for exactly 12 minutes. For a cookie with a bit of crispy crunch, bake for exactly 15 minutes. Cool for 2 minutes on the cookie tray and then remove to cool further.
One Year Ago: We were on our way to CIN! And look how little W was…
November 09 2009 | cookies & squares | 45 Comments »
It started snowing this afternoon in Jasper – big, clumpy flakes that fell quickly, like wee snowballs, blowing sideways past the window in the main lodge. We were sitting by the stone fireplace, eating hot seafood chowder and sliders, after an hour or so of full-contact ping pong downstairs. Feel free to hate me a little bit.
It was a fitting reception for the first group arriving for Christmas in November. Chef Michael Smith arrived late in the afternoon with chef Paul Rogalski (of Rouge) followed by Ken Kostick and Karl Lohnes. Chris Standring arrived yesterday, like us, and Gail Hall and the crew from the Edmonton Journal. Next week Anna Olson will come, and one of my favourite ladies of all time – Elizabeth Baird, with her sidekick, Emily Richards. I’m so sad to be missing them. I’ll get over it. Perhaps another hot chocolate will help.
As guests arrived, giant silver tureens of real hot chocolate sat in waiting with bowls full of mini marshmallows and shaved white and dark chocolates alongside. Just inside the main door, a chef baked sugar cookies in the Rolls-Royce of all EasyBake ovens, a $5k little unit I used myself a few Christmas in Novembers ago. As she pulled them out, she dolled them up with icing and coloured sugar so that we’d have something warm to nibble on with our hot chocolate.
It was entrapment; forcing me to fill yet another cup with molten chocolate and chug it down. How could I not? Later, I added red wine (thanks Mission Hill!) to the mix, figuring they’d even each other out. There were also eggnog martinis, by the way, and a buffet so over the top I don’t even know how to start describing it. We’ll have it again on Monday night; I’ll try to summon the energy to tell you about it then. Maybe a hot chocolate will help.
I know I wax poetic on the subject of hot chocolate about every November, but it really is something that’s so dead easy to make, and yet so many people resort to the instant packaged stuff, which is full of all sorts of nastiness. Really, if you’re going to bother, it might as well be fantastic.
So here’s the Real Thing, to take you through winter right and proper.
Hot Chocolate Bisque
adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s Paris Sweets, from Ladurée, via Orangette
Use a really great chocolate for this, like Bernard Callebeaut, Lindt or Scharffen Berger. The blending is more important than you might think; whipping it emulsifies the chocolate and milk, making it perfectly smooth.
3 cups milk, 2% or whole
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
6 oz. semi or bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
In a medium saucepan, combine the milk, sugar and water over medium heat; whisk occasionally until the sugar is dissolved. Increase the heat to medium-high and bring the mixture just to a simmer. Remove the pan from the heat and whisk in the chocolate.
Blend right in the pot with a hand-held an immersion blender, or transfer it to a traditional blender. Blend for a minute, until smooth and frothy. Serve immediately; rewarm if you need to get it hot.
Serves 2-4.
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November 06 2009 | beverages | 68 Comments »
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