...an endless banquet

Currant events

2009-07-10T10:38:00.006-04:00

fig. a: red currants

It's that time of year again, and over at Pavillon de la Pomme, our favorite local autocueillette establishment, you can find both red currants

fig. b: black currants

and black currants at the moment, with blueberries, gooseberries, and others on the horizon (if the Good Lord's willing, and the sun keeps shinin', that is). Red currants are a personal favorite, and you can definitely find enough for all your home canning needs, but a late frost and a whole lot of rain hasn't made for the best crop. Black currants, on the other hand, are a considerably heartier variety, and they seem to have absolutely thrived. We found the black currant bushes heavily laden with perfectly ripe berries, so we focused our attentions on them.

While you're out there, don't miss out on Pavillon de la Pomme's apple cider, apple cider vinegar, honey, and maple syrup (look for their private reserve in the clear glass bottles),

fig. c: fresh eggs

not to mention eggs so fresh their yolks will get up and talk to you.

aj

5/5

2009-07-09T21:48:00.011-04:00

The New Laloux received its first review in the local press earlier today.

fig. a: Chaises Musicales 2, the sequel

The review appeared in Voir and, as you may have already surmised, it was the second part in a series on a "musical chairs" trend in Montreal's current fine dining scene.

Anyway, I think it's safe to say that Gildas Meneu's review is a glowing one. Just how glowing? Well...

fig. b: count 'em

(That's five out of five, or "grande table.")

Now, Éric Gonzalez is probably used to this kind of praise--he's been a critical darling everywhere he's touched ground in Montreal, and he even has a Michelin star under his belt. Michelle, however, is new at this game. This is the very first time she's been reviewed as head pastry chef, and Meneu's review was enthusiastic about her desserts:

DOUCEURS

Ici, Éric cède la place à Michelle Marek (en charge également du menu du Pop!, juste à côté), talentueuse pâtissière qui traite les desserts comme des plats à part entière. Si le fameux pot de crème de Patrice Demers figure toujours à la carte, tournez-vous plutôt vers ce gâteau aux amandes et aux cerises couvert de crème de camomille, d'un granité d'amandes et d'un sorbet à la cerise. Une petite merveille. Ou encore vers les doux contrastes du gâteau moelleux à l'orange et épices et son crémeux de chocolat aux noisettes grillées. Pas sûr que vous vous en remettrez.

For those of you out there in cyberland who might be francophonically challenged, we thought it might be funny if we enlisted the aid of Babel Fish in translating. The results looked like this:

SOFTNESSES

Here, Eric also yields the place to Michelle Marek (in load of the menu of the Pop one!, just at side), talented pâtissière who treats the desserts like dishes with whole share. If the famous pot of cream of Patrice Demers always appears in the chart, turn you rather towards this cake to almonds and cherries covered of cream of camomile, d'a granite d'almonds and d'a sorbet with cherry. A little marvel. Or towards soft contrasts of the marrowy cake with l' orange and spices and its crémeux of hazelnut chocolate roasted. Not sure that you will go back from there.

Mmm, marrowy cake!

The translation was so awful (predictably so), that it reminded us of a favorite cartoon of ours:

fig. c: Spy, December, 1987

If you're confused, a somewhat less automated translation might read as follows:

SWEETS

Here, Éric yields to Michelle Marek (who's also in charge of the menu of Pop! next door [Michelle's only in charge of the cocktails and the desserts at Pop!, not the entire menu--ed], the talented pastry chef who treats her desserts like dishes in their own right. Even though Patrice Demers's famous pot de crème still figures on the menu, direct yourself towards the cherry and almond cake with chamomile cream, almond granita, and cherry sorbet instead. It's a small marvel. Or towards the delicate contrasts of the orange & spice sponge cake and its chocolate crémeux with toasted hazelnuts. I'm not sure that you'll ever look back.

Top Ten #30

2009-07-06T23:42:00.005-04:00

fig. a: Only Angels...

1. Only Angels Have Wings, dir. Hawks

2. Toronto the Good

fig. b: A16

3. Nate Appleman and Shelly Lindgren, A16 + Meatball Mondays

4. A Young Summer Party, Cornwallville, NY

fig. c: Sonic Youth

5. Sonic Youth, The Eternal (Matador)

6. The Whalesbone Oyster House, Ottawa

fig. d: Alice Coltrane

7. Alice Coltrane, Journey in Satchidananda (Impulse)

8. Happy Go Lucky, dir. Leigh

fig. e: Abner Jay

9. Abner Jay, True Story of Abner Jay (Mississippi Records)

10. the new Laloux, Montreal

Toronto Notebook

2009-07-02T23:13:00.003-04:00

For the most part I was there to hunker down in the archive of a library

fig. a: Space: 2009

so that I could do some research on some pioneering figures from the early history of Canadian cinema,

fig. b: les glâneuses et les glâneurs

but I was there for five days and four nights, so I also had a chance to do a little snooping around.

fig. c: mobile home

Libretto

I'd been reading great things about Pizzeria Libretto for a while, and I'm pretty much always in the mood for a good pizza, so when I found out my host hadn't been yet and was intrigued (if highly skeptical), it seemed like a natural.

Man, has Ossington ever changed. I remember staying out there with friends in the mid-1990s and things were pretty quiet--mostly just the odd Portuguese and Vietnamese establishments and a bunch of garages. Well, those days are gone. Ossington is lined with hip bars, restaurants, and boutiques, it's a full-on mob scene on Saturday nights (of course, the fact that it was NXNE at the time probably contributed to the mayhem), and the garage that sat next door to where my friends used to live is now some kind of post-industrial nightclub. Pizzeria Libretto is equally emblematic of the new Ossington. It's young, it's happening, it's packed to the gills, and house music throbs throughout the premises. There was a healthy line-up when we got there, but we were a party of two, so 45 minutes later (after we'd slipped out to kill a couple of beers at The Communist's Daughter, a great little neighborhood watering hole) we were seated at one of their communal tables, menus in hand.

It's not 100% clear that the crowd is there for the pizza or for the ideology*--it seemed to me like the clientele was more scenester than pizza connoisseur--but that's too bad because Libretto's pizzas really are great.

fig. d: the people have spoken 1

They've got a lovely crust, they're perfectly baked and blistered, and their toppings are well balanced and of premium quality. We both loved the House-made fennel sausage with caramelized onions and Ontario fior di latte, but the prize-winner might very well have been the basic Marinara D.O.P. with a bright San Marzano sauce, garlic, oregano, and a few basil leaves. That was certainly the one K. liked the most.

Think local, eat Universal

fig. e: Universal Oriental

The next evening I found myself attending Saloon Sundays (so called because they have a BYOB policy in effect on Sundays with no corkage fees to boot) at Universal Grill, a friendly, low-key neighborhood joint that's situated in a beautiful old diner space, one that dates back to the first half of the 20th century. M. ran (nay, speed-walked) back to her place to pick up a bottle from her cellar so that we could take full advantage of the free corkage, and we sank our teeth into Universal's tasty assortment of comfort food classics and neo-classics (crab cakes, jerk chicken, blackened snapper, finger-lickin' dry baby back ribs, and Key Lime pie).

Manic

Some of you may recall that Michelle once had the following to say about Manic Coffee: "The best coffee ever! The best! Ever!" Well, I wasn't about to pass that up, so I went and had a Manic macchiato.

fig. f: Manic macchiato

"The best coffee ever!" is a helluva claim, but after sampling the goods, I could understand Michelle's fervor. Later that night, 12 hours after what turned into an afternoon threepeat, I could still understand understand Michelle's fervor.

Enter Sandman

One afternoon I found myself wandering around Chinatown,

fig. g: since 1943

admiring the contrasts,

fig. h: since 1961

when I suddenly felt the lure of Kensington Market. Actually, more than anything, I was jonesing for another coffee and I remembered that I'd once had a pretty fine brew at Ideal Coffee. So there I was, heading down Nassau towards Ideal, when who should I run into but our good friend Sandy.

He invited me into his pad to hang out for a while, and while we got caught up, I sat there and admired the collection of wall-mounted pizza crusts he had on display in his well-appointed kitchen.

fig. i: better homes & kitchens

Then I picked poor Sandy's brain about local food & beverage finds. There are at least 2.7 million stories in Hogtown, and Sandy didn't want to overwhelm me, so he limited himself to two choice tips.

Dark Horse

Sandy mentioned that the crowd at Dark Horse might be interesting because of the fact that it's located in the Robertson Building, an historic Spadina Avenue building whose current mantra is "innovation, sustainability, community," and whose premises are something of a hub for Toronto's arts, design, and progressive politics communities. I didn't notice anything special about Dark Horse's patrons, but I did notice the Robertson Building's impressive Biowall,

fig. j: better buildings & gardens

and it was hard not to miss their gleaming white espresso machine.

fig. k: white heat

Even better: they knew how to use it.

fig. l: Dark Horse macchiato

Another day, another fine macchiato. Although, this time, fearing another night of involuntary jitterbugging, I limited myself to just one.

Mother's

Mother's Dumplings is a 21st-Century Chinatown classic, Sandy told me, a small, underground establishment that's used the power of the handmade dumpling to build a fanatical following since they opened their doors in 2005.

fig. m: The Shadow knows

Just one taste of my first pork & chives steamed dumpling was all it took for me to join their ranks.

fig. n: the people have spoken 2

A real handmade dumpling can those of us who love them a little crazy, and Mother's Dumplings' walls were testament to this particularly pleasurable affliction.

AGO

With all the buzz surrounding the newly Gehry-fied Art Gallery of Ontario, I had to go and take a look, but Frankly it wasn't the new entrance, the glass & wood facade, the sculptural staircase, or south wing that impressed me,

fig. o: self-portrait

it was the elevators.

Balm on Gilead

Years ago now, Michelle and I had a superlative meal at Jamie Kennedy Wine Bar that we wrote about in some detail in these very pages. When someone suggested that I visit Jamie Kennedy's Gilead Café, his café-cum-production kitchen in Corktown, I was only too happy to comply.

I loved the look of the place from the moment we entered.

fig. p: someone's been canning

I loved the atmosphere too. The counter staff was warm and knowledgeable, the setting had that no-nonsense vibe you get when you're in close proximity to a working kitchen. It was hot out that day, and just outside there was a loud, dusty construction site, but inside, things at Gilead Café were calm and welcoming, and I instantly felt at home.

fig. q: JK burger

Gilead Café's menu is all about the comfort food, but here the comfort comes not only from familiar favorites, but from the flavors of the very best locally grown produce, locally raised meats, and locally produced artisanal cheeses. Take their house hamburger: the beef is pasture-fed, the cheese is Ontario artisanal, the greens are local and organic, and the mayonnaise, the ketchup, and the bun are all homemade. In other words, this ain't your typical diner burger, but more importantly it tastes just as divine as a real burger ought to.

K. took the pulled pork sandwich, and while it came with the kind of thick, tomato-based sauce that is less to my liking, the pork itself had been masterfully smoked in the big rig they have out back.

fig. r: JK desserts

Dessert was great too: a homey coconut bar, an organic Ontario apple (the best one I'd had in about 8 months), and another excellent macchiato.

Plus, how many cafés can you think of where you can pick up a 2.5-kg bag of organic, stone-ground Red Fife flour for the road?

Libretto, 221 Ossington, (416) 532-8000, www.pizzerialibretto.com

The Communist's Daughter, 1149 Dundas St W, (647) 435-0103

Universal Grill, 1071 Shaw Street, (416) 588-5928, www.universalgrill.ca

Manic Coffee, 426 College Street, (416) 966-3888, www.maniccoffee.com

Dark Horse Espresso Bar, 215 Spadina Avenue, (416) 979-1200

Mother's Dumplings, 79 Huron Street, (416) 217-2008, www.mothersdumplings.com

Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas Street W., (416) 979 6648, www.ago.net

Gilead Café, 4 Gilead Place, (647) 288 0680, www.gileadcafe.ca

aj

* In this regard, as well as others, Pizzeria Libretto appears to have been inspired by NYC's Una Pizzeria Napoletana (who can blame them?), although UPN's pizza manifesto is an outright smackdown by comparison.

on the market 1

2009-06-30T11:19:00.003-04:00

a continuing series on finds to be found in Montreal's markets...

fig. a: bajhis!

hot bhajis!

Devotees of Jean-Talon Market most likely already know this, but, after a lengthy hiatus La Dépense's delectable vegetable bhajis are back and, we're happy to report, better than ever. They're no longer sold out in front of the store--now you have head to the back of the store to get them--but they have a small, well-appointed kitchen that's dedicated entirely to the production of fresh bhajis, and they're just as good a deal as ever ($3 per order). And, never afraid to innovate, La Dépense has introduced their own currency to commemorate the return of the bhaji as well as to help facilitate their acquisition: Bhaji Bucks.

fig. b: bahjis!

How does the system work? It's as simple as 1-2-3: 1 ) You pay for your order/s at the front counter. 2) You get issued your very own Bhaji Buck/s. 3) You take your Bhaji Buck/s to the back of the store and hand it in to receive your order/s.

La Dépense, Aisle 4, Jean-Talon Market, 7070 rue Henri-Julien, (514) 273-1118, www.epicesdecru.com

fig. c: fresh Quebec chèvre

fresh chèvre!

Just across the aisle from La Dépense, you can find a stand called Chèvrerie de Buckland that offers a selection of particularly fine goat's milk cheeses. Their own line includes le Maréchal, an excellent firm, Tomme-style cheese, but our current favorite is the funny-looking specimen you see above, an ultra-mild, ultra-creamy fresh chèvre from Ferme Cassis et Mélisse in Saint-Damien-de-Buckland* that goes particularly well with fresh Quebec strawberries.

Chèvrerie de Buckland, Jean-Talon Market, Kiosk 116, (418) 789-2760, mbruneau@globetrotter.net

aj

* I've said it before and I'll say it again: roughly 50 years since the Quiet Revolution, living in Quebec continues to be an education in Catholicism (especially when it comes to the names of obscure Catholic saints).

WWDD

2009-06-25T20:40:00.005-04:00

He might very well grill halibut, that's what.

I was leafing my way through David Tanis's A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes the other day once again, reading up on what he has to say about grilling, when I came across his recipe for Grilled Halibut With Indian Spices.

fig. a: leafing through

I'd admired the recipe before, but this time it really clicked. I was in the mood to fire up the barbecue (once again), I was craving seafood, and, hell, I'm always in the mood for "Indian spices." Plus, I'd invited my Mom over for a barbecued meal, and I thought this one might keep her on her toes. Michelle had to work (again), but I asked her if she thought she might like a grilled halibut fillet when she came back home from work that night, and she said, "Uh, yeah, sure." Little did she know what was in store for her.

Grilled Halibut with Indian Spices

1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
3 cloves
1/2 tbsp ground turmeric
1/4 tsp cayenne
4 halibut fillets, about 6-8 ounces each
salt and pepper
1 tbsp olive oil
15-20 cherry tomatoes, halved
yogurt sauce (recipe follows)
a small handful of mint leaves

Toast the cumin, coriander, fennel, and cloves in a dry cast-iron pan over medium heat until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Transfer to a spice grinder or mortar and grind until fine. Put the ground spices in a small bowl, add the turmeric and cayenne, and mix until well blended.

Lay the halibut fillets on a baking sheet and season liberally with salt and pepper. Drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle the spice mixture over the fish, and, using your hands, massage it in. Cover and refrigerate the fillets for up to several hours (although 2 hours worked just fine). Bring the fish to room temperature before cooking, about half an hour.

Prepare a fire in a charcoal barbecue. Grill the halibut over medium coals 3-4 minutes per side, until just opaque throughout.

Arrange the halibut on a large platter and surround with the cherry tomatoes. Sprinkle the tomatoes lightly with salt. Spoon a little yogurt sauce onto each portion and pass the rest at the table. Sliver the mint leaves with a sharp knife and scatter over the plate.

serves 4

Raita is a natural with these grilled halibut fillets. Tanis's raita is a little on the new-fangled side (e.g. olive oil), but don't knock it till you try it. The grated ginger is a particularly inspired touch.

David's Raita

1 1/2 cups whole-milk yogurt
1/2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 tsp finely grated ginger
1/2 serrano pepper, finely chopped
salt and pepper

Put the yogurt in a bowl. In a small frying pan, heat the olive oil over a medium flame. Add the mustard and cumin seeds. When the seeds begin to pop, add the garlic and let it sizzle briefly, making sure it doesn't brown, about 10 seconds or so.

Scrape the contents of the pan into the yogurt. Stir in the ginger and chile. Season the sauce with salt and pepper. The sauce will keep in the fridge for a day or two, but it tastes best freshly made, and once you've tasted it, you'll have a hard time keeping it around for a day or two.

fig. b: yellow medley

These recipes come from a menu Tanis calls "yellow hunger," and, as this name suggests, it's meant to be a composition in shades of yellow, with the halibut a vibrant yellow-orange. Sweet yellow tomatoes (cherry or not) haven't appeared on the scene here in Montreal yet (at least not local ones), so we recommend going the sweetest red cherry tomatoes you can find. Tanis accompanies his halibut with a gorgeous salad of shaved summer squashes and squash blossoms, but they too have not yet arrived. So I broke up the yellow theme a bit by grilling some fennel, and roasting some potatoes using the Zuni Cafe method (I did use Yukon golds as my potatoes, though). The medley of yellow idea is a nice one, but Tanis encourages his readers not to be slavish:

This is a book of recipes and menus, but I hope what it is, too, is a book about cooking by instinct--improvisational, the sort of cooking that doesn't need a recipe.

Free your mind and your food will follow, or something to that effect.

All I know is that halibut has rarely tasted this good and that the meal was a huge hit. You should have seen the look on Michelle's face when she sat down to the spread before her.

aj

ChangesTwo

2009-06-24T09:15:00.004-04:00

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

fig. a: smoke gets in my lens

Ever since May, when we finally made the switch back to charcoal grilling after years of working a gas bbq, I've been like a kid with a new toy. The toy in question, is just a classic 18.5" Weber One-Touch, but the charm has yet to wear off, and with Michelle working crazy hours, I've had a whole lot of time to carry out a lot of experiments in lump-coal burning, slow & low barbecuing.

I pity the birds that happened to build their nest just a few feet above our barbecue spot. They got seriously smoked out--over and over and over again. (At least, the smoke in question was fragrant applewood, hickory, and mesquite.) I kinda pity our neighbors, too. They weren't getting blasted with smoke the way those birds were, but the sweet, sweet smell of all that applewood-, hickory-, and mesquite-smoked meat must have been torture.

How much grilling are we talking about? Jerk pork, jerk chicken, jerk shrimp. Pulled pork, ribs, and smoked chicken. Steaks and kebabs of all sorts. Salmon steaks and halibut fillets. Fennel, eggplant, bell peppers, potatoes, mushrooms, and tomatoes.

One of the best of our recent grillfests was a night where we made a Cowboy Rib Eye recipe by Dallas chef Stephan Pyles that we'd found in Saveur (it wasn't difficult, the recipe was featured prominently on the front cover).

We followed Saveur's recipe closely, although we replaced the ground chipotle with ground Oaxacan (smoked) pasilla chile (because that's what we had on-hand), we started the entire process just a few hours before we started grilling instead of a day earlier, and we made it for two instead of four. We didn't change anything about Pyles' accompanying onion rings, though. We figured there was no sense with frying up half an onion's worth of onion rings, and that if there were any leftovers, we could refry them the next day.

fig. b: in the raw

Texas-Style Steak with Spicy Onion Rings

1/8 cup plus 1/2 tsp sweet paprika
1 1/2 tbsp kosher salt
3/4 tbsp ground guajillo chile
3/4 tbsp ground pasilla chile
3/4 tbsp ground chipotle (or smoked pasilla chile)
3/4 tbsp sugar
2 x 16-oz bone-in rib-eye steaks
Canola oil, for frying
1 small yellow onion, cut crosswise
into 1/8"-thick rings
1 cup milk
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tbsp chili powder
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp ground black pepper

In a medium bowl, whisk together 1/8 cup of the paprika, 1 tbsp of the salt, the guajillo, pasilla, and chipotle chiles, and the sugar. Put steaks on a parchment-lined baking sheet; rub with the chile mixture. Refrigerate steaks for several hours or overnight.

Make the onion rings: Pour oil into a 4-qt. saucepan to a depth of 2"; heat over medium-high heat until a deep-fry thermometer reads 350°. Meanwhile, put the onions and milk into a bowl; let them soak for 20 minutes. In a large bowl, whisk together the remaining paprika and salt, flour, chili powder, cayenne, cumin, and pepper. Working in batches, remove the onions from the milk, shake off the excess, and toss them in seasoned flour. Fry the onions until crisp, about 3 minutes. Drain on paper towels; season with salt. Set aside and try not to devour them before the steaks are done.

Build a medium-hot fire with mesquite charcoal or lump charcoal + pre-soaked (minimum 1/2 hour) mesquite chips. Grill steaks, turning once, until medium rare, about 12 minutes. Serve with the onion rings.

Serves two hungry souls.

This makes an utterly stupendous steak, and the mesquite really brings out all its Tex-Mex/cowboy qualities. The onion rings are outstanding too. As much as I love a great beer-battered onion ring, these were way simpler and spicier, and just as satisfying.

Now, never wanting to waste a good charcoal fire, I had the idea the bright idea of cooking a rack of ribs while the steak was chilling in the fridge. We made an old standby of a recipe, but this was the very first time we'd cooked them on the grill from start to finish. It was also the first time we'd cooked them over mesquite. What took us so long? Who knows? These new, improved ribs were thoroughly mind-blowing. We had them as our "appetizer." Absurd, I know. We made a bunch of vegetables in addition to the onion rings, but, sadly, they've since disappeared into a smoky haze.

One last thing: the Texas-Style Steak rub makes for a great Texas-Style Barbecued Chicken rub too (as I found out about a week later).

"Texas-Style" Barbecued Chicken

1 whole chicken
Texas-style steak rub
2-4 garlic cloves
room-temperature beer
cider vinegar
crushed red chile flakes

Rinse and pat dry a whole chicken. Add a bit of olive oil, rub it all over with that chile-based rub, add a couple of unpeeled garlic cloves to the cavity, and let it sit, covered, in your refrigerator for at least a couple of hours and preferably an entire day or overnight. Take your bird out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature. Meanwhile, start your fire, setting your barbecue up for some indirect cooking (coals and/or mesquite wood to one side, water-filled drip pan to the other, vent overtop the drip pan). You want a medium fire for your chicken. You can also make your mop now, mixing equal parts warm beer and cider vinegar, and adding salt and crushed red chile peppers to taste. When the coals are ready, place the chicken (breast-side up) on the grill over the drip pan, and close the lid, keeping the barbecue fully vented. Smoke the chicken for 2 1/2 - 3 hours, without ever moving the bird if at all possible, just adding some coals/wood from time to time to keep the fire at a relatively consistent temperature. Resist the temptation to check the fire for the first hour. After an hour, check your fire every 30 minutes, taking the opportunity to mop the bird each time. The bird is done when a knife poked into a thigh produces juices that run clear. If you want to be more accurate, use a meat thermometer to check for doneness. But be patient--a medium-small chicken will take a good 2 1/2 hours. It's worth it, though. The first time you make it, you might have your doubts (in spite of your mopping, the skin will look leathery and dry), but this makes for one fantastically flavorful fowl (juicy too!), and any leftovers can be transformed into a chicken salad that is simply heavenly.

Note: again, I highly recommend the use of mesquite for this dish. Its mineral smoke marries particularly well with this rub.

Okay, people--get your grill on.

aj

ChangesOne, rev. ed.

2009-06-15T23:19:00.009-04:00

fig. a: wry smile

Why the wry smile?

First there was pastry school. Then there was Les Chèvres & Le Chou. Then there was La loux. And now there's, well, Laloux.

There were also some important stages and a whole lot of silly blog business along the way, but for years now Michelle was always careful to correct people when they referred to her as a "pastry chef." "Pastry assistant," she'd tell them.

Until now, that is. You see, for about a month now, Michelle has actually been a full-fledged pastry chef. Her longtime chef and mentor, Patrice Demers, decided to pursue an opportunity across town, and suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, Michelle found herself promoted to head pastry chef. It's been a hectic few weeks, with her fair share of twelve-hour days, but Michelle's happy to report that things are going very well, indeed, her new desserts have been a hit, and an entirely new slate of desserts is just weeks away. Meanwhile, the savoury side of the kitchen also has a new chef: Eric "Cube" Gonzalez. And Pop!, Laloux's bar à vin has enlisted the formidable talents of James MacGuire as creative director. Talk about a Dream Team.

fig. b: rhubarb special

Michelle's menu:

far breton with candied walnuts and Armagnac ice cream

buttermilk panna cotta with rhubarb soup, rosemary flowers, ginger shortcakes, and rhubarb compote

orange spice cake with dark chocolate cremeux, caramelized hazelnuts, candied orange, and hazelnut mayonnaise

and, as of today,

pain de Gênes, kirsch-soaked cherries, camomile cream, almond granita, and cherry sorbet

But, look out! Summer fruits are just beginning (hence her new cherry dessert), and Michelle's got big plans!!

As per usual, Laloux's desserts are available both at Laloux and at Pop!, the bar à vin next door.

aj

Green Mountain Getaway 2

2009-06-14T00:01:00.006-04:00

If Day 1 had been all about variety, Day 2 was much more focused: bread, bread, and more bread. All of it exceptional.

Return to Red Hen Baking Co.

The day before we'd mostly just taken a look around, found out the baking schedule, and made arrangements to come back. This time around, though, Michelle was all business. She ordered about four loaves, including their four-grain, three-seed Mad River loaf and their wonderfully sour pain au levain, because she wanted to conduct a small survey of Red Hen's line of breads.

fig. a: Red Hen comes home to roost

As promising as our crusty, long-fermented Red Hen Baking Co. loaves looked,* our more immediate concern was coffee and breakfast, and the folks at Red Hen were happy to indulge us. And their selection of morning breads was so downright tantalizing that we didn't hold back: one croissant, one ham & cheese croissant, one lemon currant scone, and, it being just days before Easter, one hot cross bun. The croissant was quite simply a superior croissant, the kind of croissant that sets a bakery apart from 98% of the competition, the kind of croissant that secures a bakery's reputation. The ham & cheese croissant could have been just some kind of Americanized gimmick, but with that superior croissant pastry stuffed full of North Country Smokehouse ham and Boggy Meadow Baby Swiss, it was a work of art and a true Vermont original.

fig. b: Red Hen scone

Not to be outdone was the utterly classic lemon currant scone. Michelle found it just a touch heavy on the lemon zest, and consequently a bit over-perfumed, but I was mightily impressed, and was all too happy to have more to myself.

fig. c: Red Hen hot cross bun

The pièce de résistance, however, was Red Hen's hot cross bun. It seems a little perverse talking up a bakery's hot cross buns in June, when Lent is another nine months off, but at least this'll give you plenty of time to plan a visit. The bottom line: I'd spent years looking for the perfect hot cross bun. Little did I know that it had been waiting for me in Middlesex, VT all along. Crusty and perfectly baked, subtly spiced, sourdough-based, not too sweet, but also unafraid of adding a little bit of cruciform icing to the mix. One was simply not enough.

Another brief stroll

Loaded up on carbs, we headed down into the Mad River Valley to Waitsfield and its friendly tourist information center. When we asked about walks/hikes in the vicinity, the woman at the desk recommended the Mad River Greenway. The Waitsfield area is absolutely riddled with trails, of course, but it being the height of Mud Season at the time, she felt the Greenway was our best option. Who were we to argue? Especially when the fields looked like this,

fig. d: shadows and tall trees

and the river looked like this.

fig. e: Mad River blue

The Greenway was friendly, too. One jogger passed us at one point, and as she did, she turned to us and said, "Hi. Or should I say, bon soir?" [sic], evidently because she'd seen the Quebec license plates on our car.

We just smiled and said, "Auf wiedersehen."

Hunger Mountain Coop

fig. f: facing Hunger Mountain

After grabbing another coffee in Waitsfield, we made our way to Montpelier and its Hunger Mountain Coop. We were already big fans of a couple of other Vermont coops--Burlington's Onion River Coop and Middlebury's Natural Foods Coop--but we'd never been to the Hunger Mountain Coop, even though we'd visited Montpelier before. Turns out it's not that surprising that we'd missed it on previous visits--it's a little tucked away, and you kind of have to be looking for it. Which we were. You see, we'd gotten a hot bread tip from a trusted source--namely, that Hunger Mountain carried Bohemian Bread.

fig. g: on the shelves @ Hunger Mt.

If you care about great bread and you're not familiar with Bohemian Bread, you should be. Robert Hunt and Annie Bakst's decision to say goodbye to the big city and start up an artisanal wood-fired brick oven bread operation in rural East Calais, VT is a story worthy of Helen & Scott Nearing or Mick & Alida Anderson. The fact that they make some of the finest loaves in Vermont makes the story all the better. Bohemian Bread is a small-batch operation so you have to know where to look. In addition to the Hunger Mountain Coop, you can also find them at Buffalo Mountain Coop in Hardwick, VT, Plainfield Coop in Plainfield, VT, and the East Calais Store on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, "usually after 1:00 PM." We highly recommend the effort. Bohemian's rosemary/lemon loaf was the single best bread we've tasted all year, and that's saying something, because Red Hen Baking Co. was no slouch.

Not that we limited ourselves to just getting Bohemian Bread at Hunger Mountain Coop. Vermont's coops always leave us feeling like kids in a candy store. They're so well-stocked with so many of our favorite things: cheese, beer, apples, bacon, cider, bread, flour, honey, raw milk...

Parker Pie Co.

From Montpelier, we drove deep into Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. Rumor had it that there was great pizza to be found in the Village of West Glover and we were hell-bent on finding it. I mean, we'd been eating bread all day--why stop now?

fig. h: exterior, Parker Pie Co.

The Parker Pie Co. is yet another totally emblematic Vermont small-business enterprise. Vermonters love their general stores. They love their pizza. And they also love their micro-brewery beers. This we know. The genius of the Parker Pie Co. is that it's a pizza parlor/micro-brewery beer specialist situated ever so informally in the back of a general store. The atmosphere is just as fantastic as you would imagine, the selection of beers is limited but top-notch, and the pizzas are honestly very, very good. They don't have a wood-fired oven, but they're making awfully good pizza pies in their commercial pizza oven. We seriously couldn't have been happier with our Vermont Smoke and Cure Sausage/mushroom/red onion number and our twin pints. And we took our sweet time to relax and soak in the ambiance before the drive home.

fig. i: interior, Parker Pie Co.

The hospitality was friendly too. Made us feel right at home.

fig. j: hospitality, Parker Pie-style

Talk about the perfect end to the perfect Green Mountain Getaway.

Red Hen Baking Co., 961B US Route 2, Middlesex, VT, (802) 223-5200, www.redhenbaking.com

Hunger Mountain Coop, 623 Stone Cutters Way, Montpelier, VT, (802) 223-8000, www.hungermountain.com

Bohemian Bread, East Calais, VT, www.bohemianbread.com

Parker Pie Company, 161 County Rd, West Glover, VT, (802) 525-3366, www.parkerpie.com

Many thanks to EB.

aj

* Later that day we were able to confirm just how excellent they actually were. The verdict: very excellent!

Green Mountain Getaway 1

2009-06-10T10:39:00.000-04:00

fig. a: Mad River Valley

We saw a lot of mountains (including some that still had snow on 'em), and we drove over and around quite a few more, but we didn't get around to climbing any, because our spring getaway to Vermont took place several weeks ago, right in the thick of what they call Mud Season in the Green Mountain region. So our only hike of the trip was actually just a six-mile walk along the greenway that cuts through the Mad River Valley, and most of our discoveries were made indoors.

Cold Hollow Cider Mill

fig. b: SH CIDER HOT CIDER BAK

One could hardly call Cold Hollow Cider Mill a "discovery." A sign out in the parking lot indicated where tour buses should stop to unload their busloads of passengers. They also have a 1-800 number. But we'd never been, so it was new to us.

Cold Hollow Cider Mill is exactly that--a big, ole cider mill that allows you to waltz through the works and check out where they press their famous apple cider. They're also famous for cider-based products like their apple cider jelly. But the main reason we were there was for the doughnuts--the apple cider doughnuts Michelle and I are such big fans of, and that Cold Hollow Cider Mill is legendary for. They were good, damn good, but what really caught my eye was that beautiful Lady apple on the wall next to the coffee machine. I asked the guy behind the counter if I could take a picture of it and he just said, "Uh, yeah. Whatever." So I did.

Red Hen Baking Co. + Nutty Steph's

fig. c: CHOCOLATE BUNNIES HOT CROSS BUNS HERE

Red Hen Baking Co. sits in Middlesex, just a few miles away, and Michelle had heard that they were making some of Vermont's finest loaves of bread. We went twice. The first time was just to take a peek, check out the baking schedule, a have a nibble (a fantastic potato bread roll). The sign out front read "HOT CROSS BUNS," but it was late afternoon by that point and they were out, so we made plans to return early the next morning for pastries and a coffee.

fig. d: Chocolate giraffe

This being Vermont, Red Hen shares a space with a knitting shop and an artisanal chocolate-maker/granola-maker. We didn't get to meet her to verify, but the chocolate-maker/granola-maker goes by the name of Nutty Steph ("It doesn't get any nuttier than this!"). Frankly, we were a little scared of a concoction that consisted of a chocolate-covered banana coupled ever so suggestively with a chocolate-covered pineapple ring and that came complete with a suitably saucy name--"Tropical Intercourse," or "Jungle Love," or something--but we can vouch for Nutty Steph's exceptional chocolate bark, which kept me revved up and rarin' to go for the better part of the next 36 hours. The Nutty Steph's story started with real, honest-to-goodness, maple-sweetened Vermont-style granola, however, and granola remains the bread and butter of the operation. Like I said, this is Vermont, after all, and the fact that artisanal granola is a viable option here is one of the reasons we find ourselves so fascinated by the place.

Vermont Artisan Coffee & Tea Co.

fig. e: COFFEE LAB

On our way out to Red Hen/Nutty Steph's we passed a mysterious place that was situated down off US Route 2, in a warehouse-like building, but that had an intriguing sign out front: Coffee Lab. I turned to Michelle and said, "I bet you there are some seriously entrenched hippies in there roasting some far-out beans." I had a good feeling about the place, so we made a pledge to take a closer look on our way back.

Thank god we did.

45 minutes later we pulled into the parking lot in front of Coffee Lab. I was good and ready for some kind of transcendental coffee experience, but as we walked up towards the door I suddenly got the strange feeling that we had misread Coffee Lab. Maybe it wasn't the hippie roasting outfit we were both hoping for. Maybe it was just some oh-so hip design firm with a suitably caffeinated name, because all we could see on the inside was an office set-up, some computers, and a small group of people standing near the door having a discussion. It was almost 5:00 pm. Was it closing time at the design firm, or something? I was just about ready to head back to the car, but Michelle, who was apparently experiencing a rare instance of chutzpah, forged right ahead, through the door, into their circle, and, mustering her best Rita Hayworth, announced, "I'm afraid I interrupted something."*

Turns out the group consisted of a handful of Aussies who'd flown halfway around the world to seek the wisdom of one Mané Alves, founder of Vermont Artisan Coffee & Tea Co. and of the Coffee Lab that adjoins it. And why had these Aussies flown halfway around the world to seek Mr. Alves' wisdom? Well, it just so happens that Mr. Alves is a world-renowned expert on coffee, a man who not only travels the world sourcing his coffee, who not only runs a sophisticated roasting operation, but whose opinions on coffees, roasts, and blends is prized by firms large and small from around the world.

So, no, this wasn't a coffee shop, but it was a small-scale but major-league roasting operation, and Mr. Alves was a true gentleman. Though neither the Coffee Lab nor Vermont Artisan Coffee & Tea Co. is a retail operation, their doors are open to the public and locals do swing by to pick up their top-notch coffee. We ended up having a nice, long conversation with Mr. Alves about Vermont Artisan Coffee & Tea Co., its history, its sourcing, and its latest ventures, about Montreal (as a young man in the early 1970s, he'd been urged by relatives to relocate to Montreal and become a lawyer, where he was told the recent influx of Portuguese immigrants would mean unlimited business; he opted for Vermont instead) and its surprising lack of artisanal coffee operations (which he attributes to powerful regional coffee cartels operating just north of the border), we got a tour of the premises and got to check out their current line of beans firsthand, and, when we were done, we got Mr. Alves' advice on which of his coffees we should take home with us. After years of abiding by the corsé culte, in recent months we've becoming big fans of such medium roasts as Philz "Canopy of Heaven" and Kicking Horse's "Kootenay Crossing." Mr. Alves highly recommended his Ethiopian Yirgacheffe,

fig. f: yirgacheffe

and he was right on the money.

Hands down, our Coffee of the Year.

The Alchemist

fig. f: tapheads

It seems hard to believe now, but the fun had just begun. Literally minutes after leaving Vermont Artisan Coffee & Tea Co., we were sitting at The Alchemist's, big, handsome bar, quaffing some of their handcrafted extreme beers. Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name and they're always glad you came. Other times you want to go where everybody knows your name, they're always glad you came, and they've got an exceptionally talented brewmaster who uses only the best imported malts and the hoppiest domestic hops and who knows his way around his seven barrels. That's when you go to a place like The Alchemist. And, let me tell you, this place is serious. Not only do you overhear guys having serious discussions about serious beers, but you also hear them having serious discussions about each other's limited-edition serious beer t-shirts. Seriously. Hell, even their Lightweight, a pilsener-style beer "made with the light beer drinker in mind" was a serious trip.

fig. g: samplers sampled

Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to try their hand-pulled, cask-conditioned ale, because they only do one batch per week, and we'd shown up on Day 7 of the ale cycle, but we loved their assortment of British-inspired, Belgian-inspired, German-inspired, Hoppy, and "American Wild" beers, and their $4 pints and $1 samplers made enjoying them awfully easy.

Good-looking food, too. We didn't partake, however, because we had a dinner date.

A Brief Stroll

We still had a little time after quaffing and before dinner, so we took a stroll around Downtown Waterbury,

fig. h: W is for...

and imagined what it would be like to live in such an enlightened place.

Hen of the Wood

fig. i: mud season @ the grist mill

It was almost dark by the time we finally made it to Hen of the Wood, but the old grist mill which houses the restaurant had a promising glow to it.

Hen of the Wood was our star attraction, the single most important reason we'd come down to Vermont in the first place.

Michelle had been talking about Hen of the Wood even before Mark "The Minimalist" Bittman began gushing about how he's "sort of in love with the joint" last year, but afterwards the phrase "Hen of the Wood" became something of a mantra for her. It sounded like a little slice of heaven: a top-notch restaurant that places a pronounced emphasis on all things local, environmentally sound, and sustainable, that features a carefully chosen All-American wine list and an equally carefully chosen All-Vermont cheese list, and that is situated in an old stone mill, next to gushing rapids, in a sleepy Northern Vermont town. And with a menu that included such highlights as

Hen of the Woods Mushrooms, Grilled Vermont Bacon, Poached Egg, & Grilled Red Hen Bread

Smoked Cavendish Quail, Mustard Spaetzle, & Braised Greens

&

Winding Brook Farm Pork Loin, Local Fingerlings, Turnips, Valentine Radishes & Parsnips with House-made Red Wine Mustard

plus some truly wonderful service, Hen of the Wood lived up to all expectations. Put simply, we had such a good time at Hen of the Wood that we didn't really want to leave. When we finally managed to tear ourselves away, we spent the whole drive back to our motel through that crisp, starry Vermont night trying to figure out a way we could relocate to Waterbury.

Cold Hollow Cider Mill, 3600 Waterbury-Stowe Road, Waterbury Center, VT, 1-800-3-APPLES, www.coldhollow.com

Red Hen Baking Co., 961-B US Route 2, Middlesex, VT, (802) 223-5200, www.redhenbaking.com

Nutty Steph's, 961-C US Route 2, Middlesex, VT, (802) 229-2090, www.nuttystephs.com

Vermont Artisan Coffee & Tea Co., 80 Commercial Drive, Waterbury, VT, (802) 244-8338, toll-free 1 (866) 882-7876, www.vtartisan.com

The Alchemist, 23 South Main Street, Waterbury, VT, (802) 244-4120, www.AlchemistBeer.com

Hen of the Wood, 92 Stowe Street, Waterbury, VT, (802) 244-7300, www.henofthewood.com

* The line appears in Howard Hawks' Only Angels Have Wings (1939).

Praise is due

2009-06-09T15:40:00.012-04:00

fig. a: total sell-out

Thanks to all of you who helped welcome back the Super Ape, and helped us sell out in just over 90 minutes (!). Thanks also to C & H, our lovely co-hosts, for their grace under pressure, and to CWI for providing us with some truly awesome desserts.

And heartfelt apologies to all of you who showed up after the food ran out. We promise: we'll make it up to you. Next time (and there will be a next time) we'll make twice as much.

If you want to know how to make your own batches of Jamaican jerk pork and Super Ape-Approved Ginger Beer, not to mention Rice & Peas and Hot Pepper Shrimp, you can find our original instructions here.

And if you want to know what all this Super Ape business is about, it's just our humble homage to the great Lee "Scratch" Perry, whose 1976 recording of "Roast Fish & Cornbread" provided my initiation into the mysteries of Jamaican cuisine.

aj

Return of Super Ape

2009-06-06T14:00:00.003-04:00

He's back!

Five words: jerk pork B B Q

Return of Super Ape
an AEB + C&H joint
Sunday, June 7, 2009
12:00pm - 2:00pm
in the alley behind 5960 St-Urbain (btwn Van Horne & Bernard, and just a couple doors down from Backroom Records and Bake Shoppe)
Montreal, QC

aj

Just when I thought things couldn't get any better..., rev. ed.

2009-05-11T15:55:00.010-04:00

Just when I thought uppuma couldn't get any better, along came our friendly neighborhood Fruit Guru to prove me wrong. He arrived with a box of mangoes, but not just any mangoes, mind you, Alphonso mangoes. I liked the look of the box from the moment I set eyes on it.

fig. a: Alphonso in the house

And when I opened it, I found the mangoes nestled in shredded ruled paper.

fig. b: shh, they're resting

Adam warned me that this might be the #1 fruit event of the year, but, even so, I really wasn't prepared for these "Indian Farm Fresh" Alphonsos. I haven't had a case of fruit frenzy that was this intense in years. (Come to think of it, the Fruit Guru was the genius behind that fruit event, too.) I had my first bite, and it was pure ecstasy. So sweet, so highly perfumed, so perfectly textured. Within about a minute, I'd finished my first two and was onto my third. Michelle was still hours from returning home. At the rate I was going, the box would be finished within about 15 minutes. It took superhuman will to set my fourth Alphonso back in its place, put the cover back on the box, and tear myself away, but somehow I did. Hours later, when Michelle finally got home from work, she was awfully glad that I had.

The Fruit Guru imparted the following sage words before he left that afternoon: "Every day that begins with an Alphonso mango is a good day." So the next morning, we gave 'em a whirl. First we had them with a fresh batch of uppuma. Then I had some more on yogurt.

fig. c: can't touch this

He was absolutely right: it was a good day. A very good day.

aj

P.S. The word on the street is that now's the time to find Indian Farm Fresh Alphonsos. The season is short. Call your favorite South Asian grocer and ask for them by name.

P.S. 2 As you can see from our comments, there have been reports of Alphonsos sightings at Marché Thurga on Jean-Talon in Parc Ex and Marché Oriental on Victoria. Good luck!! And TY to our intrepid mango hunters!!!

Uppuma: it's what's for breakfast.

2009-05-10T20:39:00.007-04:00

fig. a: uppuma: "just try to resist me!"

I first discovered uppuma sometime way back in the 1990s through my friend Carolyn. She'd gotten way deep into vegetarian Indian cuisine. Many of us admired Yamuna Devi's Lord Krishna's Cuisine: The Art of Vegetarian Indian Cuisine back then, but I'm pretty sure Carolyn was the only person I knew who owned it. And I'm positive she was the only one I knew who had the guts to actually use Yamuna Devi's Lord Krishna's Cuisine. I, on the other hand, distinctly remember looking at those long lists of ingredients and getting totally overwhelmed. I made Devi's carrot pickle once, but that was as deep as I ever got into her 800+ page tome. Anyway, I also remember the first time I had uppuma for breakfast. Carolyn and I were visiting her parents at the beach, and she just whipped it up one morning. Just like that. I wasn't 100% sure what it was*--I just knew it was South Indian and that it involved a long list of ingredients--but it was a revelation. As much as I loved spicy food at the time, I still had trouble coming to terms with spicy breakfasts--huevos rancheros and New Mexican chile verde breakfasts were about as far as I was willing to roam. Spicy/sweet breakfasts that were egg-free were the height of exotica to me.

The sad thing is, I never watched Carolyn's prep closely enough to figure out how uppuma was made, and therefore it never became a part of my repertoire. I'd think about those uppuma breakfasts longingly from time to time, but it never really went much farther than that. And within a few years I'd lost touch with Carolyn and had totally forgotten the name of her oh-so-exotic breakfast specialty.

Skip ahead about a decade. Michelle and I had just picked up a copy of Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid's Mangoes and Curry Leaves. The first time I leafed through it I knew--I just knew--I'd find the recipe I'd been looking for. Sure enough, there it was on pages 92-3--"Semolina Uppuma"**--with a nice little anecdote about Mr. Alford's affection for the dish, and the daily ritual he had while in Kerala: a swim in the ocean, a walk, and uppuma and coffee every day for breakfast.

Since getting reacquainted with uppuma,*** it's become my #1 breakfast, the breakfast I look forward to the most.**** There's still something unbelievably magical about it, and, as long as you have the necessary ingredients readily at hand, it's dead easy to make. The primary ingredient is semolina, the same substance that's the basis of Cream of Wheat. As much as I love Cream of Wheat, uppuma is something altogether different. For one thing, you start off by dry roasting the semolina. Then you transform it into the most heady concoction of spicy and sweet. You'll never look at hot cereal the same way again. In fact, you should be forewarned: uppuma might very well change your life.

Semolina Uppuma

2 cups coarse semolina flour (if you live in Montreal, look for "semolina #2" in local stores)
3-4 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp butter or ghee (if you choose to omit this, use the extra tbsp vegetable oil listed above)
1 tsp black mustard seeds
10 unsalted jumbo cashews, whole or coarsely chopped
2 dried red chilies, stemmed and coarsely chopped
pinch of asafoetida powder (optional)
1 tbsp minced ginger
2-3 green chiles, such as cayenne or even jalapeño
3 cups hot water
1 tsp salt, or to taste

accompaniments:
1 lime, cut into wedges
plain yogurt
1 ripe mango
1 ripe banana
handful of cashews, lightly fried in a little butter, ghee, or oil until golden
candied dates and their syrup
honey

Place a skillet, preferably a wide and heavy one, over medium-high heat and add the semolina. Dry roast the semolina, stirring it frequently with a wooden spatula or spoon to prevent burning. The grains at the center, underneath, will start to turn brown first, even when it might seem as though nothing is happening yet, so every minute or so, run your spatula under the center and move the golden grains to the side to let the others take their place and become golden. After 2-3 minutes, lower the heat to medium, and continue to cook for another 4 minutes or so, until all the semolina grains are lightly touched with gold. Pour into a bowl and set aside.

Place a wide heavy pot over high heat and add the oil with the ghee or butter (if using). When the oil is hot, add the mustard seeds. Once they splutter, lower the heat to medium, add the cashews, dried chilies, and asafoetida and stir-fry briefly. Add the ginger and green chilies and stir-fry briefly, then add 3 cups of hot water.

Bring to a boil, add the salt, then add the semolina slowly in a trickle. Keep stirring with a wooden spoon as you add the grain to get it all properly mixed and to prevent lumps from forming, just as you would with porridge or polenta. Continue stirring and turning for another minute to break up lumps and moisten all the semolina. It will absorb the water quickly and if the mixture seems dry (if there are lumps of semolina that have not been fully moistened), add a little more hot water and stir. The semolina should be tender and all the water should be absorbed. Remove from heat and serve with the accompaniments of your choosing.

Our favorite combo is freshly squeezed lime juice, yogurt, fresh mango, toasted cashews, a candied date, and some of the candied date syrup.

Note: traditional uppuma recipes call for a smidgen of urad dal (Alford and Duguid's calls for 2 teaspoons), as well as some curry leaves, both of which can be hard to find if you don't live near any South Asian specialty food stores. We've found that our uppuma is still tremendously satisfying without them.

[based very closely on a recipe from Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid's Mangoes and Curry Leaves]

aj

*Carolyn's parents had even less of a clue than I did. In fact, I think her dad was kinda scared.

**Why "semolina uppuma"? Well, as Alford explains "uppuma" is also a term for a method of cooking involving "flavored oil and hot water."

***I've also gotten reacquainted with Carolyn, I'm happy to report, thanks to the miracle of Facebook. In fact, you'll be happy to know that Carolyn's a food blogger too. A New Orleans-based vegan blogger, no less, and "cake maker to the stars" (with not one, but two food blogs). Check it out. Not only that, but you can find her very own, totally vegan uppuma recipe on her first site. Vegan yum! Vegan super yum!!

****Truth be told, it's not just for breakfast anymore. I've been known to have uppuma for brunch, lunch, and dinner too, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Field Notes: Westmount

2009-05-05T12:39:00.014-04:00

fig. a: an appetite for books and a thirst for wine

Appetite for Books

Saying Appetite for Books is the city's best source for cookbooks and food writing really isn't saying much because it's one of the only cookbooks and food writing specialists in town, but if you haven't had a chance to pay a visit yet, Appetite for Books really is an excellent bookstore. Not only do they carry all the latest titles from the world of celebrity chefdom, but they have a very thorough selection of back catalogue classics, and they also carry a lot of less obvious, harder-to-find titles, like John Shelton Reed, Dale Volberg Reed, and William McKinney's Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue (it being barbecue season,* Appetite for Books is well-stocked with literature for the barbecue aficionado at the moment), one of our favorite recent reads. They also host a very popular series of cooking classes in their beautiful full-service, on-site kitchen. Give them a call or check out their website for details.

Appetite for Books, 388 Victoria Ave., Westmount, (514) 369-2002

Miyamoto

Talk about a fabled history. Dentaro and Yone Miyamoto first came to Montreal in 1945 after having languished in British Columbia's internment camp system during the war years. Dentaro got a job in a brick manufacturing factory; Yone worked in the garment industry. Dentaro retired in 1957 at the age of 65, and when he did the couple decided to embark on a new life as grocery store owners. They opened a shop on St-Hubert and ran it until Dentaro's second retirement in 1981. For those of you who aren't great with numbers, that's another 24 years (!), meaning Dentaro was now 89 years old (!!). That same year, the business moved to its present location on Victoria Ave. (just a couple of doors down from Appetite for Books), and Dentaro and Yone's grandson, Wesley, took over.

Today Miyamoto Foods isn't as cute as it used to be when it was located on St-Hubert,

fig. b: Miyamoto on St-Hubert

but it's still an excellent place to shop for Asian specialty foods and kitchen supplies (especially Japanese), and it's the only place in Montreal that we know of that sells fresh wasabe (Thursdays only, special order in advance).

Miyamoto, 382 Victoria Ave., Westmount, (514) 481-1952

aj

* Isn't it sad to live somewhere where barbecue is relegated to a season?

of beds and fruit and recipes

2009-05-03T23:06:00.001-04:00

fig. a: bed-in Montreal 1969

2009 marks the 40th anniversary of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's famous/infamous bed-ins, one of which took place in suite 1742 of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel right here in Montreal. Beginning on May 26, 1969 and lasting one whole week, the Montreal bed-in was the second of two odd, bed-bound happenings they staged as part of their extended honeymoon, and the one that resulted in the "Give Peace a Chance" recording. The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal is currently commemorating the event with an exhibition entitled "Imagine: the Peace Ballad of John & Yoko," and the show is both more extensive and more interesting than one might have, well, imagined.

fig. b: yoko ono apple 1966

Among other things, it goes a long way towards setting the, uh, record straight on John and Yoko.

fig. c: the beatles apple 1968

fig. d: john & yoko acorns 1969

There wasn't any mention of what John & Yoko ate during their stay at the Queen Elizabeth, but fruit are an important motif in the first few rooms of the show,

fig. e: yoko grapefruit 1970 (1964)

and Yoko Ono's 1960s "instruction paintings" and "instruction pieces" are essentially conceptual art recipes.

Sample "recipe":

Painting To Let The Evening Light Go Through (1961)

Hang a bottle behind a canvas. Place the canvas where the west light comes in. The painting will exist when the bottle creates a shadow on the canvas, or it does not have to exist. The bottle may contain liquor, water, grasshoppers, ants, or singing insects, or it does not have to contain.

Back at home our cats were staging their very own 40th anniversary commemoration.

fig. f: bed-in Montreal 2009*

And out the window the view looked like this:

fig. g: instant karma

"Imagine: the Peace Ballad of John & Yoko" runs through June 21, 2009 at the Musée des Beaux Arts (1379 Sherbrooke St. W., (514) 285-1600). Admission is free.

aj

* a.k.a. the peace ballad of Boris & Audrey

Qing wha'? Qing Hua!

2009-04-28T23:01:00.008-04:00

fig. a: the remains of the soup

"Soupes raviolis."

Yes, that's what the window reads: soupes raviolis. We'd seen the sign before, but didn't realize soupes raviolis = dumpling heaven.

Qing Hua is a tiny little shopfront establishment that sits in the basement of a building at the corner of St-Marc and Tupper. There's seating for maybe 20. The menu consists entirely of three options: dumplings, salads, and soups. The dumplings make up about 90% of the menu and are the star attraction. To emphasize this point a bilingual placard on the wall explains in just a few short words the long and glorious history of the Chinese dumpling.

fig. b: 1400 years' history

Dumpling options are broken down into three categories: vegetarian/seafood, seafood/seafood with meat, and pork/beef/lamb. Orders range in price from $6.49 to $13.99 and contain about 18-20 dumplings (we didn't bother counting because, frankly, we just couldn't wait to dig in). We'd been told that an order of the beef noodle soup with fresh, hand-pulled noodles was a must, but apparently the folks at Qing Hua won't be offering the beef noodle soup for about a month, because the chef suffered a noodle-related injury (we didn't ask too many questions). So we went with the wonton soup instead, and it was a stunner. You see, it's all about the dumplings, and at Qing Hua every single dumpling is made to order. When our orders of freshly steamed pork & cabbage and pork & shrimp dumplings arrived we nearly cried. Our favorites were the shrimp & pork dumplings--each of them contained a whole shrimp, and they were a little brothier than their siblings. We recommend having them with the Chinkiang vinegar and a few droplets of the chili oil from the fixin's bar.

fig. c: the menu

Afterwards, we noticed a FOR RENT sign in a window just down the street. It was only a 3 1/2--probably a little tight for the two of us plus our two beloved cats--but we looked at one another and said the exact same thing: "We could get take-out! All the time!"

Qing Hua Dumpling, 1240 St-Marc, (438) 288-5366

sugar shock 2

2009-04-28T20:18:00.004-04:00

fig. a: actual map used to get to PDC Sugar Shack

By now, if you've been keeping up with the sugar shacking scene here in Quebec, as I'm sure you have been, the basic outline of this story is probably familiar to you:

1. Earlier this year, Martin Picard & the rest of the gang at Montreal's Restaurant Au Pied de Cochon took the next logical step in their 10-year plan and bought a nice chunk of land outside of Mirabel that came complete with an extensive sugar bush and a sugar shack.
2. There they went ahead and opened their latest venture, Cabane à Sucre Au Pied de Cochon.
3. In typical fashion, they took the classic cabane à sucre menu, and turned it on its porky little ear.
4. Crowds have come flocking and Cabane à Sucre Au Pied de Cochon, which was originally meant to be something of a lark, a respite for Au Pied de Cochon's weary équipe and their loved ones, has been fully booked for weeks now.

Sensing that Quebec was more than ready for an upstart sugar shack (we certainly were), "...an endless banquet" went ahead and made a reservation for opening night, way back in March. The thing is, opening night got bumped. That's right, a couple of days before we got a polite phone call informing us that they'd had to roll back the opening by a night, and, unfortunately, the next night was out of the question for us. And by the time we got around to calling back and trying to rebook, they were totally complet--right into May. So we put ourselves on the waiting list and said our prayers.

And--wouldn't you know it--a few weeks later we actually got a call back. Some poor suckers had bowed out and suddenly we found ourselves with a reservation for three at the bar, which just happens to be our preferred way of dining at Restaurant Au Pied de Cochon.

From the moment we got to Cabane à Sucre Au Pied de Cochon's location in St-Benoît de Mirabel, we loved the look of the place. No sleigh rides, no petting zoo, no period costumes, and, this being a rather balmy late-April evening, no snow. Just a simple sugar shack, a street hockey court, and some tractors.

fig. b: Hockey Night in Canada

And this ain't no vanity project either. Cabane à Sucre Au Pied de Cochon is an honest-to-goodness sugar shack sitting on a heavily forested parcel of land. Why buy gallons and gallons of maple syrup if you can make almost 550 gallons of your own? Why buy firewood for your famous wood-burning oven if you can chop your own? And wouldn't it be nice to raise 50 free-range pigs that actually lived free-range lives? Yes, it would. That's the idea, anyway. In the meantime, the team at Au Pied de Cochon has a big ole wood-burning evaporator, and they know how to use it.

fig. c: the evaporator

And the food? Well, the rumors are true. The meal is stupendous. Three massive courses, and all three are totally mental. Three and a half, if you order an extra tourtière with real ketchup aux fruits, and our advice to you is that you'd be a fool to miss out.

Highlights:

1. omelet with scallops and sea bass
2. tourtière with real ketchup aux fruits
3. buckwheat ployes with cretons and house-cured gravlax
4. salad with oreilles de crisse, ham, hazelnuts and a mustard vinaigrette
5. tempura-fried lobster maki with foie gras
6. maple-glazed magret de canard with a luscious polenta and brussels sprouts
7. and the house banana split with maple barbe à papa, maple sponge toffee, maple-glazed peanuts, and maple ice cream was certainly the most dramatic of the three (!) desserts, but our favorite was the somewhat more subdued maple baked Alaska.

And that's only about 60% of the set menu. And that's their toned-down menu. They started off serving five totally mental courses (!).

Like I said, the rumors are true. This time the sugar shock lasted two days.

Cabane à Sucre Au Pied de Cochon, 11382 rang de la Fresnière, St-Benoît de Mirabel, (450) 258-1732

prices are $45 for adults, $15 for kids under the age of 12, and little piggies under the age of 2 EAT FREE.

aj

coming home

2009-04-20T15:06:00.003-04:00

fig. a: "Coming Home" at home

If all of our unbridled enthusiasm for Andrea Nguyen's Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavors has managed to get you intrigued about Nguyen's book, but you still haven't gotten around to purchasing your own copy (we can't post every one of her recipes), and you're not a subscriber to Saveur, you might want to visit your local newsstand and shell out for this month's issue (May 2009). You see, one of the features is an amazingly evocative article by Nguyen called "Coming Home"--an account of her return to Saigon/Hô Chí Minh City with two of her sisters--and it comes with six recipes, a guide to shopping for Vietnamese specialty items, and a guide to Vietnamese herbs.

aj

fringe festival 2: Falafel Freiha

2009-04-19T16:13:00.001-04:00

Fringe festival: a continuing series covering deliciousness on the edge of town.

Both of us are huge fans of the falafel sandwich and of falafel more generally, and we have been for years and years, but we'd more or less given up on Montreal falafel. So, about a year ago, when our friend Adam told us about an earthly falafel paradise hidden somewhere in Laval, we sat up and took notice. The thing is, that was all he told us. He didn't tell us the name, and he didn't tell us what its precise location was. Fearing we'd use "...an endless banquet" to go public with the information, thereby unleashing the colossal communications potential of the Information Superhighway and blowing a scoop, he merely teased us with the notion that the real deal might be hiding somewhere in the hinterlands. The Geneva Conventions have been invoked over less.

It took some work, but finally, a few weeks ago, we managed to convince Adam to take us to the promised land (those pesky Chowhounders had long since discovered Adam's precious find, so he was a little more willing to dish). And as we weaved our way up towards Rivière des Prairies and Laval, Adam briefed us:

AG: So, guys, here's the deal: Falafel Freiha is a hole-in-the-wall serving one dish only.

AEB: Falafel, right?

AG: Wrong. The best falafel you've ever tasted.

AEB: (Hmm... We've had some pretty fine falafel during the course of our journeys: San Francisco, Berlin, Köln, London, Paris...) Yeah?

AG: I'm serious. The owners are artists, their sandwich a story. It unfolds with a narrative arc...

I can't really remember the rest word-for-word. Frankly, all his talk about falafel and artistry--of an "erotics" of falafel--had me a little distracted. I just remember thinking that Adam had given this place a lot of thought, and that I was really, really hungry.

And? The verdict?

Well, all I can tell you is that if Falafel Freiha's house sandwich is a story, it's a short story, because it sure didn't last long. My sandwich was fresh, it was made with love, and it was generous, and, quite simply, I devoured it. We all did. One after another.

Actually, the shop itself is a pretty interesting story. The husband and wife team that operates Falafel Freiha comes from a family that has been a major name in falafel in Beirut for decades. They came to Laval seven years ago, promptly established their falafel shop, and have been doing the Freiha name proud ever since. The shop was busy, busy, busy, but they're not in it for the money, or so we were told. No way. It's all for the glory of falafel. Real falafel.

Sitting out in front of Falafel Freiha, eating our full loaded sandwiches (tomatoes, pickles, herbs, tarator sauce) in the bright spring sun, it was hard not to believe them.

Falafel Freiha, 3858 Blvd. Perron (corner of Curé Labelle), Laval, QC, (450) 686-2446

aj

sugar shock

2009-04-10T22:28:00.007-04:00

Sure, there were inevitable effects of consuming roughly a gallon of maple syrup and maple syrup products (from fèves au lard, to tire d'érable, to roughly eight cups of maple syrup-sweetened coffee), but the real shock came from finding ourselves at a sugar shack that actually serves good food in a low-key, honest-to-goodness, relatively kitsch-free atmosphere.

For a couple of years now, we'd been hearing that Rigaud's Sucrerie de la Montagne was a cut above. An enthusiastic review in The New York Times earlier this year seemed to confirm these reports. So we rounded up a gang of sugar-shack seekers and checked things out for ourselves. And, I have to say, we were impressed. The meal wasn't absolutely perfect--we had quibbles with the quality of the ham, the pie crust used for both the tourtière and the tarte au sucre, etc., and we still believe that if you want a truly exceptional sugar shack meal, DIY is the way to go*--but it was much better than average, they served some ultra-traditional dishes that I hadn't seen at sugar shacks before (like ragoût de boulettes), and the overall experience (location, aura, music, service, ambiance) was the best we've encountered, and that's something that's hard to duplicate at home.

In brief:

We liked the look of the place from the moment we set eyes on it.

fig. a: barn

Sucrerie de la Montagne is so close to Montreal, too. You barely leave the island and you're already there. It's possibly even a little too close. Rang St-Georges is pretty developed. But turn in to Sucrerie de la Montagne's parking lot, and suddenly the modern world fades into the distance a little.

fig. b: cart & horses

It was almost worth going for the cart ride alone. The cart driver was a true prince. Great personality and a beautiful accent.

Michelle felt a little sorry for the horses, though, because of the way they got stuck with their hooves in a puddle while I took a picture of them. She decided to join them, in a show of solidarity. So I took a picture of her, too.

fig. c: Michelle

Sucrerie de la Montagne doubles as an auberge--they've got a couple of rustic cabins that you can rent out all year long--at pretty reasonable rates, too. We've already made tentative plans to return mid-winter next year. Do a little snowshoeing, read some books by the fireplace, and emerge every now and then to eat a hearty québécois meal--who can argue with that? All of the accommodations were nice, but this cabin was our favorite.

fig. d: cabin

Sucrerie de la Montagne is a fairly old-school sucrerie. The evaporator was running on firewood, and when you headed into the woods, it was sap buckets as far as the eye could see, not that space-age plastic tubing you see at most sucreries these days.

fig. e: sugar bush & sap buckets

We were happy to see that the buckets were from our friends at D & G.

fig. f: bucket by D & G

Inside, the vibe was vintage, through and through.

fig. g: horse & sleigh

The sucrerie itself was a grand old structure, with one main dining hall, and one set of smaller dining rooms, each one with their own band. Our party of nine got seated at a long table in the main dining hall, and not long afterwards the first course (pea soup) was served, the band (Les Cornus) got fired up, the kids started dancing, and the next thing we knew, we were off.

fig. h: the spread

Sugaring-off season is short, so if you'd like to take in a traditional sugar shack meal at Sucrerie de la Montagne, you gotta act fast.

Sucrerie de la Montagne, 300 Rang St-Georges, Rigaud, QC, (450) 451-0831

aj

* Then again, we haven't tried Au Pied de Cochon's brand-new sugar shack yet, but we've heard nothing but raves. We're slated to go later this month, before the season is over. You can expect a full report.

In the Mood for Rice

2009-04-09T08:00:00.002-04:00

fig. a: the rice cooker is unveiled

The premise:

In some ways, our whole month could have been inspired by this scene from Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love. It's 1962 and Mrs. Chan's (Maggie Cheung) imported electric rice cooker (from Japan, of course) causes quite a stir--no one in their Hong Kong apartment complex has ever seen anything like it. The rice cooker is a vision of modernity--one of many--but like every other such vision in Wong's film, it's an ambivalent one. It's tied to both romance and heartbreak. At this point in the film, however, the rice cooker is still simply an innocent novelty, and it generates a considerable amount of excitement and enthusiasm.

At the beginning of March, we took a pledge that had a lot to do with the excitement generated by our own newly acquired rice cooker: all-Asian, all month. Most of the month was spent trying out Far East Asian recipes (Chinese, Japanese, Korean), but we also made a whole lot of Southeast Asian food (mostly Vietnamese), and towards the end of the month we began to steer things towards South Asian cuisine (especially Indian). A few of these dishes were noodle-based (like Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow [Tony Leung], the two of us are both serious noodle lovers), but for the most part, because of the rice cooker, these meals were rice-based. As the month proceeded, we began to lovingly refer to the experiment as March Madness.

fig. b: lavers!

The pitch:

Michelle was seriously psyched (maybe even hyped) about the prospect of an Asian banquet for her birthday, one that she was sure would be the crowning achievement of March Madness. She loved the idea of a big spread with lots of rice fresh from our rice cooker, lots of side dishes and condiments, and seasoned lavers to pick everything up with. She also liked the idea of people milling about and mingling, instead of our usual sit-down affairs. But when I asked her if she had any special requests, she said she wanted to build the party around some kind of activity. At first I thought she was just being difficult, but then it dawned on me...

What if we threw a big Asian-themed banquet at a bowling alley? We could rent a few lanes, invite about 15-20 people, haul in a big homecooked Asian spread, and plug in our rice cooker to make fresh rice. I was imagining one of those big bashes Elvis used to throw in the early days of his stardom, when he'd rent out an entire bowling alley or roller skating rink from closing hour until dawn so he could pal around with his friends--only, instead of fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches, there'd be things like Hawaiian-style ribs (after all, Elvis loved Hawaii, didn't he?). Anyway, we'd call the event Rice Bowl (pretty catchy, huh?) and though the sticky fingers might not make for too many perfect games, I thought it would make for an unforgettable birthday bash.

The problem:

As it turns out, no bowling alley or salon de quilles in Montreal will allow you to bring any food. Presumably because they all house concessions. Most of them won't even let you bring a birthday cake, unless it's for a kid's birthday. I begged and pleaded, but to no avail. I even laid the name of the event on them. Nada.

Then I thought, "Well, if we can't bring the spread to the bowling alley, maybe we can bring the bowling alley to the spread." So I got on the horn to see if someone had a Wii + Wii Sports (which I'd heard comes with simulation bowling) they'd be happy to loan for a good cause. I found plenty of Wiis, but no one willing/foolish enough to let us get our grubby hands all over their beloved vids.

So we scrapped the Rice Bowl concept and focused strictly on the food. Go ahead and use it, though. Seriously. If you happen to live in a town with bowling alleys that aren't so uptight about trucking in food, or if you have the moulah to rent out an entire bowling alley, Elvis-style, or if you happen to own a Wii, feel free to host your own Rice Bowl event. I mean it. It's yours.

The recipes:

The following are some of the highlights from our menu.

This is kind of a strange hybrid dish that we created, but it turned out to be one of the night's most popular dishes. The basic idea behind it--poaching the Vietnamese meatballs in soup--is a classic. Poaching them in a dashi was our idea.

Shiitake Dashi w/ Vietnamese Meatballs

For the meatballs:

1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 1/4 lb boneless, skinless chicken thighs
1 tbsp baking powder
2 tbsp tapioca starch
1 tbsp sugar
5 tbsp fish sauce
3 tbsp canola oil

Slice the breasts and thighs across the grain into 1/4-inch-thick strips. Keep any visible fat for richness, but trim away any cartilage or sinewy bits to make it easier to process.

Whisk together the baking powder, tapioca starch, sugar, fish sauce, and oil in a bowl large enough to hold the chicken. Add the chicken and use a rubber spatula to mix well. Cover with plastic wrap and marinate in the refrigerator for at least 8 hours and ideally overnight. The chicken will stiffen as it sits.

Remove the chicken from the refrigerator and use a spoon to separate the pieces somewhat. Working in batches, grind the chicken in a food processor until a smooth, stiff, light pink paste results. (This step will take several minutes, and it'll really give your food processor a good workout.) Stop the food processor from time to time to scrape down the sides. When you are finished, there should be no visible bits of chicken and the paste should have a slight sheen to it. Using the rubber spatula, transfer each batch to another bowl.

This paste is the basis for a number of Vietnamese preparations (like sausages), but it can also be shaped into quenelle-shaped meatballs (using two spoons to shape them) and poached in soup, and that's exactly what we did.

This recipe will make an enormous number of quenelle-shaped meatballs. We made about 40-50 (roughly 3 per person) and froze the rest of the meat paste for later use.

For the soup:

16 medium dried shiitake mushrooms
4 cups water
salt
light soy sauce
sake

Bring water to boil in a saucepan. Add the mushrooms to the boiling water and simmer without a lid for 5-8 minutes. Remove the mushrooms and flavor to taste with salt, soy sauce, and sake.

Save the mushrooms and use them in another preparation.

Add the meatballs to the soup. When they float to the surface, let them simmer, uncovered, for 10 to 12 minutes, or until cooked through. The meatballs will impart a subtle flavor to the broth. Adjust the seasonings and serve in bowls with one or two meatballs per bowl.

Serves 12 as an appetizer.

[recipe combines elements from recipes found in Andrea Nguyen's Into the Vietnamese Kitchen and Soei Yanada's The Heart of Zen Cuisine]

March Madness was all about the rice, but it was also all about the Asian pickles. Along with the Carrot and Daikon Pickle featured in an earlier post, our other favorites were these two. If you have a mandolin (the kitchen tool, not the musical instrument), you're going to love this first one. (Actually you'll probably love it either way, but you'll only be able to make it if you have the kitchen tool variety.) No need to buy that weird dyed stuff at the store anymore.

Pickled Ginger

1 lb young ginger (use the freshest, most perfect ginger you can find)
2 tbsp sea salt
2 cups rice vinegar
3/4 cup sugar

Peel the ginger. Use a mandolin to slice the ginger crosswise very thin.

Place the ginger slices in a bowl and add 1 teaspoon of the salt. Toss with your fingers to blend well, and let stand for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, put a small pot of water on to boil. Rinse off the ginger with the boiling water and drain well.

Place the vinegar, sugar, and the remaining 1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons salt in a small nonreactive pot and heat, stirring, until the sugar has entirely dissolved. Meanwhile, fill a wide-mouthed 1-quart jar with boiling water, then drain it.

Using tongs, place the ginger in the jar, then pour the hot vinegar mixture overtop. Cover tightly and let the pickled sit overnight before using. The ginger keeps, well sealed in the refrigerator, for 2 months or more.

[recipe from Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid's Seductions of Rice]

fig. c: Viet-style mixed vegetable pickle

Mixed Vegetable Pickle

1/4 cup salt
3 cups lukewarm water
1 large bell pepper (red, yellow, or orange), seeded and cut into strips 1/2 inch wide and 1 1/2 inches long
2 large carrots, peeled and cut into matching pieces
1 small head cauliflower, trimmed and cut into 1-inch florets
2-3 hot green chiles, chopped into thin rounds
2 cups distilled white vinegar
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 cups cold water

Combine the salt and the lukewarm water in a large bowl and stir with your hand to dissolve. Add all the vegetables. The water should just cover them--if it doesn't, add more lukewarm water as needed. Set aside for 4-6 hours. The vegetables will soften and become slightly chewy.

Meanwhile, prepare the brine. In a saucepan, combine the vinegar, sugar, and cold water and heat over medium heat, stirring occasionally until the sugar has dissolved. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool completely.

When they're done, drain the salted vegetables, but do not rinse them. Put them in a 2- or 3-quart glass container. Pour in just enough brine to cover and discard the remainder. Cover the container and refrigerate overnight. The pickle is ready to eat the next day. It will keep well in the refrigerator for about 3 weeks. After that, it will lose its edge.

[adapted from Andrea Nguyen's Into the Vietnamese Kitchen]

This next recipe is unbelievably simple and remarkably satisfying. It's also 150% vegetarian.

Mushroom & Tofu Salad

1/2 pound shiitake mushrooms, stems trimmed and saved
2 small rectangles Japanese fried tofu
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp rice vinegar
1 tsp sake
1/4 tsp sugar
togarashi

Grill the mushrooms and tofu square directly over a gas flame or grill, turning them with tongs to ensure they are golden on all sides. OR, place on one or two small baking sheets under the broiler and broil until the mushrooms are tender and the fried tofu is touched with brown.

Slice the mushrooms into narrow strips, discarding any tough parts. Cut the tofu into strips the same length as the mushroom strips. Place in a shallow serving bowl.

In a small nonreactive saucepan, heat the soy sauce, vinegar, and sake. When they are warm, stir in the sugar until dissolved. Let cool slightly, then pour over the mushrooms and tofu and stir gently to coat. Sprinkle lightly with togarashi and serve.

[recipe from Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid's Seductions of Rice]

Hands down--no ifs, ands, or buts about it--our two most popular dishes of the evening were these next two: the spicy-sweet Hawaiian style ribs, and the Vietnamese-style glazed duck legs. Both literally vanished into thin air.

fig. d: ribs & rice

Hawaiian-Style Kalbi

1 1/4 cups light brown sugar
1 cup soy sauce
1 tbsp Asian sesame oil
1/4 tsp crushed red chile flakes
4 cloves garlic
1 2-inch piece peeled fresh ginger, finely chopped
3 lbs pork baby back ribs
3 scallions, thinly sliced

Whisk together the brown sugar, the soy sauce, the sesame oil, the chile flakes, the garlic, the ginger, and 1/4 cup of water in a large bowl. Add the ribs and toss to coat. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let marinate for at least 1 hour at room temperature, or refrigerate overnight, turning occasionally to coat.

Heat the oven to 450º F. Remove the ribs from the marinade and arrange, curved side up, on a rack set over a rimmed, foil-lined baking sheet. Roast for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat the marinade in a saucepan over medium-high heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until thick and syrupy, about 20 minutes.

Using tongs, flip ribs and cook, basting frequently with the reduced marinade, until the ribs are browned, glazed, and tender, 15-20 minutes. Transfer to a serving platter and garnish with the scallions.

[recipe from Saveur's March 2009 issue]

Honey-Roasted Duck Legs

4 cloves of garlic, smashed with the broad side of a knife
1" piece of fresh garlic, thinly sliced and smashed with the broad side of a knife
3/4 tsp Chinese five-spice powder
1/4 tsp salt
6 tbsp honey
2 tbsp light (regular) soy sauce
1 tbsp dark (black) soy sauce
1 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine or dry sherry
3/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine or dry sherry
2 tsp peeled and grated ginger, pressed through a fine-mesh sieve to extract 1 tsp ginger juice
6 whole duck legs, trimmed of excess fat and skin
2 tbsp hoisin sauce

special equipment: steamer

To make the glaze, in a small saucepan, combine the garlic, ginger, five-spice powder, salt, honey, light and dark soy sauces, and wine. Place over medium heat and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat. When the bubble action ceases, pour the glaze through a fine-mesh sieve placed over a medium-sized bowl, pressing on the solids with the back of a spoon to extract as much liquid as possible. Let the glaze cool completely.

Select a large, shallow bowl or a deep plate that fits in your steamer tray. Add the salt, wine, and ginger juice and stir to dissolve the salt. Add the duck legs and use your fingers to coat the duck legs well with the marinade. Arrange the duck legs so that there is minimal overlap, to ensure even cooking. Put the bowl in the steamer tray and set aside to marinate for 15 minutes.

Fill the steamer pan halfway with water and bring to a rolling boil over high heat. Add the steamer tray, cover, and steam the duck for 25 minutes. The skin will pull back from the flesh, and cooking juices will collect in the bowl. Transfer the duck legs to a plate and discard the cooking juices.

Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat to 425º F. To promote heat circulation and allow the fat to drip away from the duck, place a flat roasting rack on a foil-lined baking sheet. Put the duck, skin side up, on the rack, spacing the legs as far apart for one another as possible. Roast for 35 to 40 minutes, or until the skin is crisp and lightly golden. Turn on the exhaust fan as the duck roasts, because the dripping fat can cause a fair bit of smoke. If more than 2 tbsp of fat accumulates in the pan during roasting, remove the duck from the rack, make a spout in one corner of the foil, and pour off the fat. Then quickly return the duck to the rack and continue roasting. (We had to execute this step twice.)

When the duck is ready, using tongs, lift each leg from the rack, roll it in the glaze to coat evenly, and hold it above the bowl to allow the excess glaze to drip off. Return the duck to the rack, skin side up. Roast the legs for 5 minutes and then coat them with the glaze again. Roast for 3 to 5 minutes longer, or until the glaze richly colors the duck. Remove from the oven and let cool for 10 minutes.

After glazing the duck legs the second time, return the remaining glaze to the small saucepan and add the hoisin sauce to make a dipping sauce. Warm over medium heat, adding a spoonful or two of water if needed to balance out the flavor. Pour into a small serving bowl.

Using a heavy cleaver, chop the legs through the bone into bite-sized pieces. Or, slice the meat off the bone. Or, just serve the legs whole and let people chomp into them Friar Tuck-style, like we did. In any case, arrange the duck on a platter and serve with the sauce.

If you have any leftovers (highly unlikely, given how incredibly juicy and delicious these duck legs are), you might want to use the duck meat as the "boldly flavored meat" in your very own homemade bánh mì.

[recipe from Andrea Nguyen's Into the Vietnamese Kitchen]

fringe festival 1: Dic Ann's

2009-04-02T23:06:00.015-04:00

Fringe festival: a continuing series covering deliciousness on the edge of town.

fig. a: Dic Ann's double w/ cheese, fries, and a simple machine

I'd actually been to Dic Ann's numerous times. Once to their Vaudreuil-Dorion location, where Michelle and I successfully had a meal, and at least three times to the flagship location in Montreal North, where I kept getting shut out because I kept going on their off days (they're closed on Mondays and Tuesdays). So, as of a couple of weeks ago, I still had never actually completed my pilgrimage to Dic Ann's. (Michelle, on the other hand, did eventually make it, but that's another story, and one that, unfortunately, I wasn't a part of).

Anyway, when we found ourselves part of an excursion to deepest darkest Anjou in search of canning supplies, we decided to see if we couldn't talk our host into a little late-afternoon detour to Dic Ann's on the way back, to reward us for our efforts. We felt confident we'd get our way, too. Our host was something of a patsy when it comes to Dic Ann's, someone for whom the words "Dic" and "Ann's" hold powerful associations. We knew all we had to do was to utter those magic words and things would fall into place.

And fall into place they did. The next thing I knew, there I was, seated at the counter, ordering up my very first real Dic Ann's in a location that hasn't changed a whole heck of a lot in over fifty years of operation.

Now, if you're one of those for whom the words "Dic" and "Ann's" don't hold powerful associations, consider the following a primer. Dominick "Dick" Potenza hailed originally from West Virginia, was raised in Upstate New York (Utica), and became something of a mover and a shaker in the supper club scene of the Rochester-Buffalo corridor. It was there, as part of that scene, that he met Ann "Ann" Collechia, a jazz accordionist (!) who was performing under the stage name Ann "Ann" Russell. They got hitched, and, it being the early 1950s, they began fantasizing about opening their own fast food operation (you know how these things go), one that would showcase an original recipe they'd cooked up: a hot-sauce-smothered hamburger. They moved to Montreal, and in 1954 they opened their original hamburger joint at the corner of Papineau and Crémazie. Two years later, due to overwhelming popular demand, they picked up and moved to their Montreal North location. And the rest is hamburger history.

As you can probably tell from the picture above, the Dic Ann's burger is a thin burger. Unabashedly so. It was designed that way so that they could be produced at high volume.* The kicker is the famous hot sauce, which is essentially a spicy meat sauce. A patty is placed in the bottom half of the bun (a bun that's unusually flat, it must be noted), that trademark sauce gets drizzled all over the burger (meat on meat!), cheese gets added (or not), and then they slap the second half of the bun on top (as one might expect)--that's it, that's all. No ketchup, no pickles, no tomatoes--none of that jazz. The Dic Ann's experience is an elemental one. It's also an essential one.

Oh, yeah: and the popsicle stick/tongue depressor in the picture? It's to use as a lever, so you can work the burger up and out of the plate.

fig. b: Dic Ann's on Pie-IX

Dic Ann's, 10910 Pie-IX Blvd., Montreal North
[they began franchising in the 1990s, and now have ten locations, including one in NDG and one in Longueuil, but in our books it's the Montreal North location or nothing]

aj

* The system works. Dic Ann's production lines have set several world records in this department, including most burgers served in one hour (1,542), and largest "off the street" order for a single client (502 burgers, prepared in just over 24 minutes).

Top Ten #29

2009-04-01T13:07:00.002-04:00

fig. a: Fassbinder/Sir

1. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, dir. Fassbinder (especially when it's part of a double bill with Imitation of Life, dir. Sirk)

2. Rice Bowl

3. James Villas, Villas At Table: A Passion for Food and Drink

4. homemade bánh mì

5. "Actions: What You Can Do With the City,", Canadian Centre for Architecture

6. Hawaï

fig. b: Don Drummond

7. The Best of Don Drummond

8. Dic Ann's

9. Duplicity, dir. Gilroy

10. uppuma

aj

Montreal Spring

2009-03-29T13:44:00.008-04:00

Thursday night we decided to go out on a date. We wanted to go to a movie, but we were saving that for dessert. We wanted something with a little more substance for dinner.

So, we packed a couple of our AEB Bánh Mì and we went to the Canadian Centre for Architecture to check out "Actions: What You Can Do With the City," an exhibition that features 99 actions intended to "instigate positive change in contemporary cities around the world."

This was our kind of exhibition: a topic we feel strongly about, and a massive--somewhat playful, somewhat haphazard--assortment of displays and artifacts.

We found inspiration at every turn, and we were happy to see that quite a number of the 99 actions turned on food-centric and food-related issues like urban gleaning and urban greening. There were things that we'd heard about, like New York City's Freegans (#12) and "Wildman" Steve Brill's foraging tours of Central Park (#23). But there were plenty of things that were new to us too.

Like the Fallen Fruit collective in Los Angeles (#9) who've mapped the city's vast number of publicly accessible fruit trees (orange, lemon, lime, kumquat, peach, plum, apple, and so on),

fig. a: fruit-hunting instruments, fruit maps of Los Angeles, etc.

and who host nocturnal fruit gathering excursions

fig. b: fruit-hunting foray

and jam-making parties (!).

And the Continuous Picnic project in London (#82),

fig. c: London lemon

which supports "low-intensity urban farming" and hosts a market and an endless picnic (!!), both of which serve to showcase the city's impressive biodiversity while encouraging its growth.

Hell, there were even some recipes on display, like Helen "Ladybird" Nodding's brilliant recipe (#56) for creating organic graffiti (suitable for what Nodding calls, "a quiet revolution" (!!!) out of moss (!!!!):

fig. d: life & death in London

1 can of beer
1/2 teaspoon sugar
Several clumps garden moss

You will also need a plastic container (with lid),
a blender and a paintbrush
_________________________________________________

To begin the recipe, first of all gather together several clumps of moss (moss can usually be found in moist, shady places) and crumble them into a blender. Then add the beer and sugar and blend just long enough to create a smooth, creamy consistency. Now pour the mixture into a plastic container.

Find a suitable damp and shady wall on to which you can apply your moss milkshake. Paint your chosen design onto the wall (either free-hand or using a stencil). If possible try to return to the area over the following weeks to ensure that the mixture is kept moist. Soon the bits of blended moss should begin to re-couperate into a whole rooted plant – maintaining your chosen design before eventually colonising the whole area.

[We haven't a chance to test Nodding's moss shake recipe yet, but we'll let you know when (and where) we do.]

fig. e: heaven & earth in Montreal

Anyway, the city looks different to us now, even more full of promise than it usually does.

"Actions: What You Can Do With the City," Canadian Centre for Architecture (1920 Rue Baile), through April 19, 2009

aj