Still Learning

I guess that the holidays bring out my nostalgic side, because the other day I found myself reading some of the early posts on Bring Your Appetite. In my opinion, a trip down memory lane is never futile. It’s a chance to look at how you’ve grown and changed over time, and hopefully a chance to learn from your mistakes. With about three years’ perspective, I can easily see many of the mistakes I made, and also how my cooking style and abilities have changed. My very first post probably illustrates this the most. I introduce myself and talk a little about what my cooking skills and knowledge level are, and why I decided to start this blog. Wow, what a change three years can make: I wrote about how I often used bouillon cubes in the place of real stock (*shudder*), how I rarely cooked without a recipe (if I use recipes now, they are only guidelines), and how I didn’t know any famous chefs who weren’t on the Food Network (I am now a big fan of many chefs who have never appeared the Food Network). A lot has happened in that time: I went to culinary school, I worked in the culinary field, I cooked more at home, I ate at better restaurants, and, last but not least, I maintained this blog. So, of course I changed, and of course I learned.

Some things haven’t changed, though. I still love to cook, and look forward to the time I set aside almost every day to be in my kitchen. I still like to try new things: new foods, new recipes, and new methods of cooking. I’m also still learning, and I plan to continue learning for the rest of my life. Looking at my old posts was a good reminder of this.

Just last week, I cooked something I had never cooked before. It was rabbit stewed in red wine. I had eaten rabbit before, but never prepared it myself. I chose a Julia Child recipe, because who better to be my guide into the field of rabbit cookery than the “French Chef” herself?

The recipe required that the rabbit be cut up for the stew. Julia suggests that you have your butcher do this for you, but there was no way I was going to let this opportunity to work with an animal I had never butchered before slip away from me. During my internship at Café Juanita, I watched the cooks cut up rabbit many times, so I had a decent idea of how to proceed. Despite the large differences in the anatomy of a rabbit compared to a chicken (a creature with which I am very familiar), the general principals are still the same: cut at the joints, and, when separating flesh from bone, use the bone as your guide so that you lose as little flesh as possible. I think I did an all right job, but I could certainly use some more practice.

Julia’s recipe and everything else I’ve ever read about cooking rabbit warns that this meat has a tendency to dry up and become tough easily. This makes it a good meat to stew, and marinating it beforehand will help it to be even more tender and flavourful. Julia suggests having the rabbit sit in a combination of red wine vinegar and herbs for twenty-four hours, and it turned out to be an excellent suggestion indeed.

The rest of the process will be familiar to anyone who has braised or stewed meat before: the meat is browned, then placed in a casserole with liquid (in this case, the reduced marinade, along with reduced wine, and beef stock), and cooked slowly until the meat becomes tender.

What absolutely makes this dish is the sauce that is put together at the end. When the rabbit is finished, it is removed from the casserole. The liquid left in the casserole is reduced, and then prunes that have been stewed in Cognac, stock, and butter are added, along with the rabbit’s liver, if you want. I also couldn’t resist finishing the sauce with a couple dabs of butter to give it a glossy sheen.

Pour this over the warm rabbit, and voila! Rabbit stew is served.

There are few things as rewarding as cooking something for the first time and having it come out as a great success. This rabbit stew was exquisite. Was it also decadent? Yes. Time consuming? Yes. Worth the trouble? Absolutely. After all, it was all in the name of learning something new, and that is always worth the trouble. I hope you’ll take the leap with me and try something new one night soon because trust me, you’ll be glad you did.

Rabbit Marinated in Vinegar and Herbs, and Stewed in Red Wine
Adapted from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, vol. 2 by Julia Child and Simone Beck, pp. 246-249
Serves 4-5

The marinade:
½ to 2/3 cup red wine vinegar (depending on the strength of the vinegar)
½ tsp cracked peppercorns
3 tbsp olive oil
½ cup sliced onion
2 large cloves garlic, unpeeled, halved
4 juniper berries
½ tsp oregano
1 bay leaf
½ tsp thyme
1 whole rabbit (2 ½ lbs), cut into eight pieces

The stew:
4 ounces bacon, cut into 1 ½-inch sticks (makes about ½ cup)
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 cup sliced onions
1 marinated rabbit
1 rabbit’s liver (optional), seasoned and floured
3 tbsp. flour
Marinade from rabbit
1 bottle of red wine, preferably young and full-bodied (Mâcon, Côtes-du-Rhône, Mountain Red)
2 cups beef or veal stock

The sauce:
20-25 large prunes, simmered for 10 to 15 minutes in ¼ cup Cognac, ½ cup of beef stock, and 2 tbsp butter
Sautéed liver (optional), cut into small pieces
2 tbsp butter

Taste the vinegar you plan to use to marinate the rabbit. If it seems very strong and harsh, only use ½ cup. If it doesn’t seem overly acidic, use up to 2/3 cup. Combine the vinegar with the rest of the marinade ingredients in a bowl or casserole large enough to hold all the meat comfortably. Add the rabbit and baste it with the marinade. Cover and refrigerate the bowl, basting and turning the rabbit occasionally. Marinate at least 24 hours, or up to 2 to 3 days.

Preheat the oven to 450 F. Brown the bacon in a large frying pan. Add the oil, and stir in the onions. Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently, until the onions are tender and lightly browned. Transfer the onions and bacon to a heavy, oven-safe casserole large enough to hold the rabbit pieces easily.

Meanwhile, remove the rabbit from the marinade, dry thoroughly with paper towels, and season with salt and pepper. When the onions are out of the pan, add more oil if necessary so that the pan is filmed by 1/8 inch. Raise the heat to medium-high and brown the rabbit pieces on all sides. Add the rabbit to the casserole. Sprinkle on half the flour, toss the rabbit, sprinkle on the rest of the flour, and toss again. If using the liver, brown it quickly, removing it from the pan as soon as it has browned on all sides.

Heat the casserole to sizzling on the stove, then set uncovered in the upper third of the preheated oven for 5 minutes; toss again, and return the casserole to the oven for 5 more minutes. Lower the oven’s temperature to 350 F.

Meanwhile, pour the browning fat out of the frying pan, and pour the marinade into it. Boil it down until the liquid has almost completely evaporated. Pour in the wine, boil down to half its volume, add the stock, bring to a boil, and set aside.

When the casserole is removed from the oven, pour the hot wine and bouillon mixture over it. Stir everything in the casserole so that it is well blended. Bring the liquid to a simmer on the stove, cover, and simmer in the oven. Regulate the heat so that the stew bubbles slowly and regularly throughout the cooking, and baste the rabbit pieces occasionally. Stew for about an hour, or until the meat is tender if pierced with a knife.

When the rabbit is done, remove to a serving platter, cover, and keep war, while finishing the sauce. Remove bay leaf, and skim surface fat off the liquid. Bring to a simmer, skimming. Reduce until you have about 1 ½ cups of sauce, thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Add the prunes with their liquid and the cut up liver, if using. Simmer 2 to 3 minutes, drop in the butter, and swirl the sauce until the butter has completely melted. Taste and adjust the seasoning as desired. Pour the sauce over the warm rabbit and serve immediately.

A Few Reasons Why I Love to Cook

When you’re passionate about something, people often ask you why it is that you love that thing so much. In some ways, this question is impossible to answer since most of the time, if you’re passionate about something, it can’t be explained by a list of concrete reasons. You’re passionate because you are and that sometimes seems like the best explanation. Still, there are usually a few tangible reasons a person can cite to explain why he or she loves what they do. I’ve been asked why I love cooking many times. I have yet to come up with the best way to answer the question, but I do have a few reasons I know are true.
I do, quite simply, enjoy the process. I like to throw onions into a hot skillet and hear them sizzle, see them begin to change color, and smell that unbeatable aroma as they cook. I like to have a pot of sauce simmering gently on the back burner as I work to put together a meal. Also, I like to eat. There’s no doubt about it: putting a delicious piece of food into my mouth is one of my favorite experiences in the whole world. The experience is enhanced tenfold when that delicious bite is something that I created. However, the experience is never as good when I am alone. Eating good food that I have cooked is always better when I get to share it, which brings me to the final reason why I love to cook: sharing food.
I almost never go to someone else’s house without food in hand. I like to show up at the door with something I’ve made to hand over. Maybe it’s a desperate attempt to get people to like me; maybe it’s something to break the ice because that’s generally not something I do well on my own. I also never have anyone in my house without offering them food. If I have time, I’ll plan what I’ll serve my guests, whether it is for a meal, or just a snack. If they show up unexpectedly, I always have something languishing in my pantry or fridge that I can doll up and serve. I do this not because I feel obligated to, but because I love it.
Last night, I shared food with someone I share food with just about every day: Andrew. For no reason other than the fact that it was Saturday night and I felt like it, I made us a four-course romantic dinner. I did it because I love to plan meals, I love to make meals, and I love to share food.
So, want to know what I made?

We started with Sesame Seared Tuna and Yuzu Sweet Soya Sauce.
Then, we moved on to a refreshing Salad of Upland Cress, Fennel, Radicchio, and Pear with Balsamic Vinaigrette.For our main, I made Braised Lamb Shanks with Anchovy and Tomatoes on Semolina Gnocchi.
To finish, we had Lemon Mascarpone Mousse with Honey Wheat Tuiles.

It was downright transcendental. And that is why I love to cook.

Goodbye to Gourmet

So have you heard? After nearly seventy years of publishing, Gourmet magazine is shutting down for good. You can read about it here.

I have been a subscriber to Gourmet for the past year, and though I have enjoyed some of the articles and recipes from the magazine, I can’t say I am very surprised about this news. When my subscription first started, I eagerly looked forward to that one day a month when I would receive a nice, fat parcel rolled up in my mailbox containing the newest issue of Gourmet. All other plans would be forgotten as I would tear open the plastic covering and immediately begin to flip through the glossy new pages. Sometimes, my eye would catch on a recipe I knew I had to try at the earliest opportunity, and even less often, I would find an article that I looked forward to reading. However, as the year went on, I found myself feeling far less excited about the prospect of a new Gourmet coming my way. In more recent months, when I have opened my mailbox to find the latest magazine, I found myself thinking, “Oh yeah, I guess I was due for a new one.” The magazine would then go to my coffee table, where it would sit, unopened, until probably some night later in the week, when I got bored during a commercial break while I was watching TV, I would browse through it. Needless to say, Gourmet has not been very inspirational to me.

Now, I don’t want to sound like a hater. Like I said, I do use recipes from Gourmet, and I do sometimes read its articles. I really liked the fun concept of their latest September issue: recipes from A to Z, including letter-themed menus, with every dish starting with the same letter. Not exactly useful, but definitely fun. Being from Montreal, it was exciting to see the November issue had an article about fishing in northern Quebec. These points that catch my interest, though, are few and far between. My point here is that Gourmet just isn’t keeping my attention, and, so it seems, I am not the only one who feels this way.

The NY Times article I have linked to above talks about the colorful history of Gourmet, and some of the foodie greats, like James Beard and M. F. K. Fisher, who have contributed to its pages over the years. As wonderful as this all is, the article kind of proves the point: in its heyday, this magazine was great, it was interesting, it was current, and it was an influence on many home cooks, but this is all in the past. Lately, it has been stuck in a rut and losing readers. Before I even heard about the imminent closure of Gourmet, I decided not to re-subscribe to the magazine, switching it instead for a year of Food and Wine.

The article also mentions how some readers are miffed that Gourmet is being shut down, while Bon Appétit, also owned by Condé Nast Publications, is not. Just as I understand why Gourmet cannot continue, I understand why Bon Appétit can. I have been subscribing to Bon Appétit for the past year as well, and unlike with Gourmet, my excitement over receiving each month’s issue has not faded, and I still read through the magazine as soon as I receive it. Perhaps this is a matter of personal opinion, but I prefer Bon Appétit’s articles, recipes, and even pictures to Gourmet’s. Every month, I look forward to seeing what the At the Market item will be, a feature that highlights a product that is in season, and gives several recipes to make use of it. I love Molly Wizenberg’s Cooking Life article, the Health Wise section, and The Baker, a new monthly article by Dorie Greenspan. These features are all from Bon Appétit. Gourmet’s monthly features are comparable in theme, but I find they are not as well written, and the topics are often of less interest to me. The bottom line: I chose to keep my Bon Appétit subscription going, while ending my Gourmet one.

Should the magazine carry on just because it is an American cultural icon? I don’t think so. It certainly is a shame that the magazine could not continue to be the inspiration it used to be. This is the end of an era, and that is sad, but inevitable. If I was wearing a hat, I would take it off in respect to the important role Gourmet magazine has played in the history of food literature. For the future, I look forward to being inspired by the quality food magazines that continue to be published today.

New Year’s Party: Cooking with Lianne & Three Recipes

The guests arrived at around nine in the evening, but we started cooking at one-thirty. We were exhausted before the party even started, there was way too much food, but I wouldn’t have changed a single thing.I am home in Montreal for the holidays, and spent most of New Year’s Eve and into the early hours of New Year’s Day with my friend Lianne who threw a New Year’s party for our nearest and dearest. We spent the morning shopping and the afternoon in the kitchen together, so I had the rare opportunity to cook with a partner. Cooking with someone else who loves to cook and is creative and adventurous in the kitchen can be both fun and frustrating. While both of us share the same passion for food, we often disagree about the way things should be done, whether it’s how the celery should be cut for the crudités platter, or how much food is enough food. Lianne and I have very different cooking styles: we both like to be creative, but while I like to look at books and recipes for ideas and to get some basic techniques for what I am about to make, Lianne usually dives right in and likes to experiment without peeking inside a single cookbook. Still, on occasion, our creative visions intersect and we agree enthusiastically on things. So a conversation between us might go like this:

Me: Shouldn't you be baking that uncovered?
Lianne: No, I'm going to keep it covered.
Me: But don't you want the sauce to reduce and thicken a little?
Lianne: No, I want the sauce to stay the way it is.
Me: Maybe you could take to cover off for the last five minutes.
Lianne: Nope, I'm going to leave it on.
Me: Fine, do whatever you want.
Lianne: OK, I will.

Or, it could go like this:

Lianne: So I'll add some hot sauce, some brown sugar—
Me: Oh, you should add some vinegar to give it a little acidity.
Lianne: Yeah, good idea! I am so with you on the vinegar.
Me: Maybe a little tomato sauce?
Lianne: Hm, no, I don't want it to be like a pasta sauce.
Me: No, just a tiny bit to give it a hint of tomato.
Lianne: So maybe a bit of tomato paste?
Me: Yeah, that would work. And some soy sauce.
Lianne: Yes, soy sauce!

But whether we were working like a well-oiled machine, or disagreeing on everything, we had fun with it and got to enjoy together one of the great pleasures of the holidays: communal cooking. The kitchen was messy and cluttered—we balanced platters of hors d'oeuvres on bags of vegetables, placed cutting boards on stools because there was no more counter space, and filled the sink with dishes, but we made it work. We joked and bickered and collaborated and disagreed, but it was all part of the process, and we relaxed considerably once Lianne's boyfriend started serving us gin and tonics. It was New Year's Eve and we were spending it together and amongst all our friends—we had plenty to smile about.

So, because I want this post to be somewhat informative and not just my disorganized ramblings on the pains and pleasures of cooking with your best friend, allow me to leave you with a few pieces of advice:

• When it's -20 degrees C outside, don't put your pretty blue cheese appetizer served on endive leaves out to keep them cold—they will freeze and then wilt when you bring them in. We learned this the hard way.
• When throwing a cocktail party, prepare less food than you think you will need—it will probably still be too much. It was for us.
• Yes, olive oil does indeed smoke when heated to too high a temperature.
• Breadcrumbs soaked in a little milk add delicious moistness to meatballs.
• Sometimes, you need to throw your cookbooks aside and trust your own culinary instincts.
• Sometimes, no matter how many great ideas you have, you might learn a thing or two by studying a perfected recipe.
• Cook with your best friend, even if you spend the whole time arguing, because you will grow closer from the experience and love each other despite your disagreements.

And a few recipes:

Sweet-Chili BBQ Chicken Wings
From: Lianne

2 lbs. chicken wings
1/4 cup Thai sweet chili sauce
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup ketchup
1 tbsp. soy sauce
1 tbsp. paprika
1 tbsp. Montreal steak spice

Preheat oven 350 F.

Cover a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Place chicken wings in a single layer on the baking sheet and bake in preheated oven for about 20 minutes until the wings are almost cooked through and the skin is just beginning to brown. Remove from the oven.
Meanwhile, combine the remaining ingredients in a large bowl to make the sauce. When the wings are done, transfer them into the bowl with the sauce and toss to coat the wings well. Using tongs, place the wings back on the baking sheet and return them to the oven for another 5 to 10 minutes, until wings are cooked through and their outsides are crispy. Serve hot.

Stuffed Mushrooms
From my Mom

24 medium mushrooms
1/4 cup finely chopped green onion
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup dry bread crumbs
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 tbsp. snipped parsley
1/2 tsp. dried basil
Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease a baking sheet or cover with parchment paper.

Remove mushroom stems (loosen the stem by gently pressing it on all sides with your thumb, then remove with a gentle pull; use a spoon to scoop out any of the stem you may have missed) and finely chop the stems. Melt butter in a medium skillet over medium heat. Add the stems, onions, and garlic and sauté until they are tender. Remove from heat and stir in remaining ingredients. Fill mushroom caps generously with stuffing mixture to just shy of overflowing. Place mushrooms, filled side up, onto the baking sheet. Bake uncovered in the preheated oven for 15 minutes. Serve hot.

Crème Brulée
From Lianne. Makes 4 crème brulées.

5 egg yokes
1/4 cup white sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
2 cups heavy cream
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 275 F.

Combine all of the ingredients and mix well. Pour mixture into four ramekins. Place ramekins in a baking dish and fill the dish with water to about 3/4 of the height of the ramekins. Place the baking dish in the preheated oven and bake for 45 minutes to an hour. Remove from oven.
Remove the ramekins from the baking dish and allow them to cool slightly at room temperature (so that the ramekins won't crack). Once they are cool enough to touch, place in the refrigerator and chill until the custard has set.

Sprinkle a thin layer of white sugar over the contents of the ramekins. There are two methods for caramelizing the crème brulée: if you have a handheld blowtorch, fire the tops of the crème brulées, moving it quickly over the entire surface. If you don't have a blowtorch, the crème brulées can be caramelized under the broiler: place the ramekins in a baking dish and place on the oven rack in the top position under a preheated broiler. Leave the oven door open and watch them carefully--they will only take a minute or a little more to caramelize and they will go from good to burnt very quickly, so watch it carefully and remove as soon as you start seeing some brown spots. Serve immediately—you want the custard to be chilled and the caramelized top to be hot.

A big shout-out to anyone who is checking out Bring Your Appetite because you heard me on Montreal's CJAD. Thanks for stopping by!

Vegetarianism & Vegetarian Gumbo

Vegetarianism: what comes to mind when you read that word? A diet without any meat, certainly, but what does that entail? Do you imagine a diet of salads instead of stews and tofu instead of steak? Do you think of your favorite meaty entree—lasagna or tacos—with the meat removed? Or maybe you are vegetarian and you think of all the varied and interesting dishes that make up your diet.

As an omnivore, it is easy for me to jump to the conclusion that a vegetarian diet is a diet with many of my favorite foods removed from it, but this would be a vast misrepresentation of what a vegetarian diet has the potential to be. People choose to be vegetarian for many different reasons, but whether it is for health or ethical reasons, it leads to the same thing: placing a specific limitation on what one can eat. But instead looking at this limitation as something that leads to a duller diet with less variety, I believe that it is important that we look at it as exactly the opposite.

Ever heard of the book Gadsby: Champion of Youth? It is a short novel by Ernest Vincent Wright in which the letter “e” is never used. Now, you might be wondering why someone would want to do such a thing, and make an already difficult task—writing a novel—even more difficult? Well, it’s pretty simple: for the challenge. By placing this limitation on his writing, Wright forced himself to expand his vocabulary, find new and more interesting ways of saying things, and make what might have been a very ordinary novel anything but. I think that vegetarianism does a similar thing in the context of food. Taking meat out of your diet forces you to do what I am always trying to do in my cooking, which is to step outside the box, to seek out new ingredients, and new ways of doing things.

Now, of course, I realize that vegetarians generally don’t choose to be so simply for the sake of challenging themselves—as I said, there are a lot of reasons to become vegetarian—but the resulting challenge accounts for some of the most interesting foods we eat. If no one had ever decided to remove meat from their diet, would we have all the delicious vegetarian dishes that we have today? It’s doubtful. And imagining a world without vegetarian cuisine is as dreadful as imagining a world without Chinese, Italian, or French cuisine—a bland culinary world indeed.
This little exploration of vegetarianism was inspired by the Vegetarian Gumbo I made for dinner recently. The recipe came from the lovely 101 Cookbooks blog, in a post about a month ago. (And on a quick side note, if you haven’t checked out this blog, you really should! Heidi’s recipes are perfect examples of how wonderful vegetarian cuisine can be.) This recipe really showcases the kind of creativity in cooking that a vegetarian diet inspires. It takes many of the traditional elements of gumbo—making the roux, slowly stewing the ingredients, finishing with the file—and then adds a twist to make this a meatless, but fully balanced meal.

The change, of course, comes in the addition of protein, traditionally chicken, shrimp, and/or sausage. It would have been easy to toss in some beans, or maybe even tofu (though the thought makes me cringe a little), but instead, Heidi has you poach eggs in the gently simmering gumbo. The result is a warm, earthy stew surrounding a rich poached egg, creating the ideal dinner for a cold winter night.
If you liked this post--or even if you didn't--please leave me a comment and let me know. I'd love to hear what you think!