Button Soup

How to Use Leftover Bread

2012-01-10T10:12:00.000-07:00

This post is about two kinds of Austrian dumplings that are made from old bread.

The first is best made with bread that is a few days old, bread that is dry, but not brittle. If you let your bread sit for more than a week, so that it's completely hard throughout, you can make the second dumpling.

The first dumpling, made with days-old bread, is the serviettenknoedl, which literally translates as "serviette dumpling." Much like the French word torchon, which means towel, servietten implies that the dumplings are shaped into cylinders by rolling in a towel or serviette.

The old bread is first cubed and soaked in milk, butter, and egg (full recipe below).

Then the mixture is rolled into cylinders. Traditionally this was done with a towel or napkin, but plastic wrap and aluminum foil are more common these days.

The rolls are steamed or poached until the egg has set, about thirty minutes, though cooking time depends on the diameter of the dumpling. Once cooked the rolls can be chilled overnight, then sliced into rounds.

The rounds are often seared in butter for a bit of colour and crispness.

In Austria, serviettenknoedl are most often served with stews and braises. Below you can see them with Maibocgoulash (May deer goulash) and cranberries.

They are also an important ingredient in a regional dish called Tirolergroestl. Tirol is a province in Austria, and groestl simply means hash. Tirolergroestl usually includes ham or speck, potatoes, vegetables, knoedl, and a fried egg with a runny yolk.

Napkin Dumplings

serviettenknoedl

Ingredients

1 lb bread, between one and seven days old, dry but not brittle
4 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
4 oz unsalted butter, melted
1 cup whole milk
1 tbsp kosher salt

Procedure

Cut the bread into cubes, anywhere from 1/4" to 1".
Mix all remaining ingredients and pour over the bread. Using your hands, gently toss the bread until all the liquid has been absorbed. Let the mixture sit for 1 hour.
Shape the mixture into a cylinder 2-3" in diameter. Do not compress the bread, as this will yield a dense, tough, dumpling.
Poach the rolls in gently simmering water until firm throughout, about 30 minutes.
Remove from the water and let cool overnight.
Slice into rounds of desired thickness.
To serve, fry the rounds in oil and butter until golden brown and crisp.

If you find yourself with bread that is more than a week old, bread that has gone completely dry and brittle, you'll be better off making broeselknoedl, or breadcrumb dumplings. Use a food-processor to pulverize the stale bread into crumbs. The procedure is then similar to making napkin dumplings, only breadcrumb dumplings are typically shaped into balls, not cylinders.

This dumpling also traditionally accompanies stews and braises.

Breadcrumb Dumplings
broeselknoedl

Ingredients

1 lb bread crumbs
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
4 large eggs
2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1 tbsp kosher salt

Procedure

Combine the eggs and melted butter. Stir in the breadcrumbs, flour, and salt. Let the mixture stand for 30 minutes so that the dry ingredients can absorb the moisture.
Shape into balls with a 2.5" diameter. Poach in gently simmering water until cooked through, about 8 minutes, depending on the size of the dumplings.

Irish Cream

2011-12-16T11:16:00.000-07:00

Cream, rich as an Irish brogue;
Coffee, strong as a friendly hand;
Sugar, sweet as the tongue of a rogue;
Whiskey, smooth as the wit of the land.

-a traditional toast accompanying Irish coffee

There are two drinks that we go through in unholy quantities this time of year. The first without question is rum, as it is used in all kinds of preserves, baking, and cocktails. The second is Irish cream, consumed on its own, or diluted with a bit of milk or coffee.

For years my standby has been Bailey's, but this year I decided to make my own.

Irish cream is comprised of cream, sugar, and Irish whiskey, usually but not always flavoured with coffee. It is around 20% alcohol by volume, and has a rich, viscous mouthfeel. It is basically an Irish coffee (whiskey, sugar, and cream stirred into a cup of coffee) with the ingredients in different proportions.

If you plan on consuming Irish cream in coffee, there's probably not much point in flavouring it with coffee. I'm after a drink to be enjoyed on its own, so I've included strong coffee in my recipe.

I've come across some recipes online that use condensed milk to approximate the thickness of commercial brands. The truth is that it's not the thickness of condensed milk that gives the final drink a rich mouthfeel, it's the sugar content. Sugary liquids have a high specific gravity and give the impression of viscosity on the palate. Granulated sugar and cream therefore work just as well as condensed milk.

The following recipe is a reasonable facsimile of commercial brands, though with a more distinct coffee flavour. Obviously you can adjust the whiskey content to suit your taste.

Irish Cream
a working recipe

Ingredients

4 egg yolks
50 g granulated sugar
1 pinch kosher salt
70 mL strong, high quality coffee, chilled
33 mL heavy cream
140 mL Irish whiskey, preferreably Jameson's
1.25 mL vanilla extract

Procedure

Whisk the sugar and salt into the egg yolks.
Whisk in the remaining ingredients. Let stand in the fridge overnight.

Yard of Flannel (a het pint...)

2011-12-16T11:14:00.000-07:00

Yard of flannel is hot ale, laced with rum and spices, and thickened with egg.

Though there's a surprising number of beer and cocktail blogs that have tried out old recipes of yard of flannel, there's very little information on the history of this drink available online.

I've found no documented link between these two drinks, but yard of flannel is nearly identical in recipe and preparation to an old Scots cocktail called het pint (literally "hot pint"). The only difference is that the Scots version typically uses whiskey instead of rum.

Het pint was once an important part of Scottish celebrations, especially Hogmanay, the Scots New Year. In the 17th and 18th centuries, public houses made het pint on New Year's eve, and villagers would buy a copper-kettle's-worth to take home for the festivities.

Kettles of het pint would also be carried through the streets by "first-footers." The first person to enter a house on New Year's day was said to be a foretoken of the prosperity of the coming year. The first-foot was ideally "a man, tall with dark hair... carrying gifts, including whisky, tea, coal, or salt, symbols of good health, good fortune, good luck, a warm home, and a full larder."^[1] In some traditions the first person to cross the threshold is a more or less random event. In others young men would travel from house to house with gifts. These first-footers often carred pots of het pint with them as they walked through the town, offering the drink to passers-by.

Het pint was consumed at many other celebrations, notably rural weddings on Orkney.^[2]

Not only are recipes for het pint and yard of flannel consistenty nearly identical, they both use the same technique to develop a tall foamy head on the drink. When agitated, the egg proteins develop a head that is much more stable than that of beer alone (think: meringue). The head on het pint and yard of flannel is traditionally produced by pouring the drink back and forth between two mugs in a tall cascade.

Ale makes up the bulk of the drink, so the choice of ale to be used is the most important decision made by the cook. Nowadays "ale" refers to a beverage that undergoes a warm fermentation with a top-fermenting strain of yeast, typically producing an aromatic, fruity, floral beer. It's counterpart, "lager," goes through a colder, longer fermentation with a bottom-fermenting strain of yeast, resulting in a cleaner, crisper drink.

Until atleast the nineteenth century, in Great Britain the word "beer" referred exclusively to hopped beers (a Bavarian invention), while "ale" was reserved for the traditional, unhopped, British drink. Therefore the "ale" called for in old het pint recipes refers to this ancient style of British beer. Many contemporary beers made in the UK are reminiscent of these older styles, though they do contain some hops. Here's a description of modern Scottish ale:

Scottish Ales traditionally go through a long boil in the kettle for a caramelization of the wort. This produces a deep copper to brown... brew and a higher level of unfermentable sugars which create a rich mouthfeel and malty flavors and aromas. Overall hop character is low, light floral or herbal, allowing its signature malt profile to be the highlight.^[3]

This style of beer makes perfect sense for het pint, as the malt and caramel flavours compliment the rum or whisky. The pronounced hops flavour of most contemporary beers would probably be out of place.

I've hear that the "yard" in yard of flannel refers to the yard-long glasses in which the drink was once served, and the "flannel" refers to the rich, soft mouthfeel developed by the heated eggs. I can't find a reliable source for that information.

I don't imagine this drink will be everyone's cup of tea, as the modern man doesn't like the thought of drinking hot eggs, but I have to say it's a well-balanced cocktail with a fantastic mouthfeel.

Yard of Flannel (a het pint...)
adapted from Back to Basics

Ingredients

1 large egg
1/6 cup dark brown sugar
1 pinch of salt
fresh grated nutmeg to taste
341 mL your favourite English pale ale, Scottish ale, or possibly brown ale
1/6 cup golden rum

Procedure

Whisk together egg, sugar, and salt.
Gently heat ale and nutmeg in a heavy-bottomed pot. Do not let the ale boil.
Once the ale mixture is starting to steam, slowly pour it into the egg while whisking. Adding the ale too quickly may curdle the egg, which would be bad.
If you're a stickler for tradition, you can develop the head by pouring the mixture back and forth between two mugs. As you can probably imagine, this quickly cools down the drink. You can get just as good a head by whisking vigorously while the flannel is still in the bowl.

1. Duncan, Dorothy. Feasting and Fasting: Canada's Heritage Celebrations. ©2010 Dorothy Duncan. Dundurn Press, Toronto, ON. Page 313.
2. McNeill, F. Marian. The Scots Kitchen. ©2010 The Estate of F. Marian McNeill. Birlinn Ltd, Edinburgh, Scotland. Page 309.
3. Beer Advocate.com

Towards a Theory of Eggnog

2011-12-15T10:17:00.000-07:00

For the last two years I've been using this method to make eggnog:

whisk egg yolks with some sugar until pale and foamy
whisk egg whites with some sugar until soft peaks form
fold the two egg foams together and stir into milk and cream
add rum and nutmeg

The problem with this method, first of all, is that if it sits for even five minutes, the eggy foams separate from the milk and cream. I wouldn't mind a bit of head on the nog, but the foams make up about 90% of the volume. Even during the brief moments in which all the ingredients are properly incorporated, the light and airy texture of the nog doesn't seem appropriately robust and nourishing.

So I've done some experimenting with my nog method. First I tried simply whisking all the ingredients together, by-passing the egg separation and foaming. This version also separated, which absolutely baffles me, as whisked eggs don't separate if you leave them in the fridge.

Out of sheer curiosity I tried cooking out a mixture of milk, cream, and yolks, à la crème anglaise. It was a bit thick, even once thinned with rum, but before repeating the process with a lower yolk content I decided that the cooked-egg taste is also inappropriate to the ideal nog.

For now I've settled on using just yolks. Somehow this isn't as satisfying a concept as drinking whole eggs, but it's tasty.

Eggnog: A Working Recipe

Ingredients

4 oz egg yolks
8 oz granulated sugar
1 pinch kosher salt
16 fl oz whole milk
4 fl oz heavy cream
16 fl oz golden rum, I use Appleton's
nutmeg to taste

Procedure

Whisk sugar and salt into egg yolks.
Add all remaining ingredients and whisk to combine.

The final important piece of information I came across this year was that properly boozed nog can be made well, well before consumption, and aged in the fridge. Michael Ruhlman has successfully aged eggnog for two years, if you can believe it.

I put up a large jar of eggnog on the first of December, with the intention of cracking it open on the solstice or Christmas. It lasted maybe fours days in the fridge. A replacement batch is currently ripening on the bottom shelf.

Wild Rice and Barley Pudding

2011-12-04T11:11:00.000-07:00

A variation on a Christmas classic, using some local pantry items.

I had some cooked barley in my fridge, remnants of a barley-broth. I decided to employ the rice pudding method to save the left-overs. (Rice Pudding Method: a lengthy secondary cooking in sugar and milk.) The barley sucks up a lot of the milk and releases some starch into the pot.

Once a porridge has formed, cooked wild rice and dried cherries are added, and the whole lot is thickened with butter, egg yolk, and a touch of cream.

Since the wild rice and cherries are added at the end, they stay firm for textural contrast.

Wild Rice Broth: A Weird Digression

Have you ever noticed that the water you just cooked wild rice in is aromatic and flavourful and has a fantastic colour and is relatively clear?

It is.

So much so that I've started saving my wild rice broth, usually to be subtly incorporated into the same dish as the rice. I might, for instance, reheat the rice in a bit of its own broth.

But, if you reduce the strained broth and infuse it with a bit of garlic and celery...

...I think it's good enough to be consumed as a first course.

That's weird. I'm sorry.

Let's get back to the pudding.

Wild Rice and Barley Pudding

Ingredients

235 g cooked pearled barley
300 g whole milk
30 g dark brown sugar
1 pinch kosher salt
1/2 stick of cinnamon
50 g cooked wild rice
20 g dried sour cherries
30 mL brandy
1 egg yolk with absolutely all remnants of white removed
20 g butter
30 g heavy cream

Procedure

Soak the dried cherries in the brandy.
Put barley in a heavy-bottomed pot and cover with milk, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Stir to combine. Bring to the boil then simmer until most of the milk has boiled off or been absorbed, about 40 minutes.
Strain the cherries from the brandy. Reserve the brandy. Add the cherries and wild rice to the barley. Remove the cinnamon stick.
Return to a simmer.
Remove the pot from the heat. Stir in the butter, then the egg yolk. Adjust the consistency of the pudding with the heavy cream. Serve immediately, accompanied by a taste of the cherry-brandy.

Makes 3-4 servings.

Bread Pudding as God Intended It

2011-12-03T11:10:00.015-07:00

When I say, "As God Intended," I mean using actual, stale, left-over bread heels. Buying fresh bread just to tear it up and dry it out is like using striploin to make sausage. Or rolling a torchon of foie gras just to melt it into cooking fat.

Soaked in milk and cream, mixed with eggs, sugar, and rum-soaked raisins, pressed into a casserole and baked:

The classic accompanying rum sauce: two parts icing sugar, one part butter, gently cooked to remove the starchy taste of the sugar. Finished with a bit of egg and a lot of rum.

Once the pudding has been drenched in the rum sauce, I like broiling the dish until there are a few burnt patches. This is a trick I picked up at Jack's. The charred bitterness sets off the sweetness nicely.

Mincemeat 2011

2011-12-03T10:15:00.000-07:00

I might be in love with the idea of mincemeat more than the dish itself. It's an absolutely medieval combination of flavours: dried fruit, spices, liquour, and suet.

Last year I tried Alton Brown's recipe. It was good, though not what I was expecting. His pie is fruity, tart, and sweet. The texture was unique: the dried fruit partially reconstitutes during baking, making for an interesting chew.

This year I made some changes:

I added meat to my mince. Most recipes, including Brown's, contain only suet, but I know that my grandmother's also had beef chuck. I heavily browned the meat before adding it to the other ingredients to develop flavour texture.
I used lamb suet and shoulder, instead of beef. I happen to have lots of lamb right now.
I processed the mixture for a finer, more consistent texture
I plan on adding bread crumbs to the mincemeat before I bake it in a pie shell. Last year the liquor and fruit juices and rendered suet bubbled over the crust. I think that the bread crumbs will help keep that moisture in the pie.

This mincemeat will age in my fridge until the winter solstice. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Mincemeat
2011's version, grafting my grandmother's recipe to Alton Brown's, and using lamb instead of beef

Ingredients

2 tart apples, peeled, cored, and quartered
8 oz sultana raisins
4 oz dried sour cherries
4 oz dark brown sugar
2 ounces lamb suet, coarsely chopped
6 oz ground lamb shoulder
1 orange, zested and juiced
1 lemon, zested and juiced
1/4 cup spiced rum
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 tsp freshly ground allspice
1/4 tsp freshly ground clove
bread crumbs

Procedure

Heavily brown the ground lamb in a hot, heavy-bottomed stainless steel pan. The meat should be a deep amber on all surfaces. Strain the meat to separate it from any rendered fat. Chill thoroughly.
Combine all ingredients except bread crumbs in a food processor. Pulse until ingredients are well-combined and desired texture is achieved. Pulsing 10 times will give a mincemeat with a coarse texture. I prefer a finer, more homogeneous texture.
Transfer to an airtight container and store in the fridge atleast 1 week before using. Keeps for 6 months.
Before adding to pastry, fold in breadcrumbs.

Fruitcake 2011

2011-12-02T12:23:00.000-07:00

It's about to get all Christmasy up in here.

Here's a simple start to the Christmas posts on Button Soup. Last year I wrote about the importance of fruitcake. I'm fine-tuning my recipe year to year, and I thought I'd share the 2011 version.

This year I used our local evans cherries instead of the BC bings. They were so soft after the glacé process I worried they would be too delicate to fold into the dense pound cake batter. While they definietly don't hold their round shape like the bings, they managed to stay in one piece. Their tartness is a welcomed addition to the cake. There are some cursory instructions on making glacé cherries and candying peel in last year's fruitcake post.

Maybe next year I can use beaked hazelnuts from the river valley...

Fruitcake

Ingredients

8 oz unsalted butter, cubed
8 oz granulated sugar
8 oz eggs
8 oz all-purpose flour, sifted
2 tsp kosher salt
1 orange, zested and juiced
5 oz roasted, skinned hazelnuts
5 oz glacé evans cherries, strained from liquid
5 oz candied orange peel
approximately 1 cup of fine, spiced rum

Procedure

Preheat oven to 325°F.
Thoroughly butter the base and sides of a ceramic terrine and line with parchment.
Combine butter and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer. Cream with the paddle attachment until light and fluffy, about five minutes. Start on a low speed, and once the sugar and butter have combined, turn to medium-high.
With mixer still running, add the eggs one at a time, allowing each to be fully incorporated before adding the next. Add the orange zest and juice.
Turn the mixer to the lowest speed. Slowly add the flour. Stop the mixer as soon as all the flour is incorporated into the batter. Do not over-mix.
Fold in the hazelnuts, cherries, and candied peel.
Transfer the batter to the prepared terrine. Bake in the 325°F oven until the top of the cake is domed and brown, and a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean, roughly 60 minutes.
Remove the cake from terrine and cool on a wire rack.
Once cooled. Transfer the cake to a container with an airtight lid.
Store the cake at a cool room temperature, about 15°C. Every other day for 1 month sprinkle 1 tbsp of rum over the cake, getting the liquor on all the surfaces. I affectionately refer to this as feeding the fruitcake.

Tangle Ridge Ranch Lamb

2011-12-01T21:39:00.215-07:00

If you're unfamiliar with Tangle Ridge Ranch and their pastured lambs, here's some information to digest:

the Tangle Ridge website, complete with a video interview by Kevin
an article from the Edmonton Journal with a punny title, which I think is a requirement for all food articles in print newspapers

Last week Tangle Ridge killed this year's lambs, and Lisa and I were fortunate enough to get a whole, uncut carcass. My primary motivation was securing lamb meat and offal for this January's Burns supper (stay tuned...) Here's some details on the purchase.

Cutting Lamb

Lamb is a relatively simple animal to butcher. The carcass is easy to handle (typically 40-60 lbs) with fewer cuts than, say, a cow, or even a pig. For details on cutting, here's a great video of a master butcher breaking down a whole lamb.

Lambs are cut into four primals. First is the front, from which you get:

neck, or "scrag": one of the most repulsive words in the English language, but a fantastic piece of meat for braising
shoulder chops, roasts, or stewing meat
arm chops
foreshanks

Then the loin, which yields:

loin chops, analogous to the t-bone steak on a cow
racks, often prepared with the slender ribs still attached and thoroughly cleaned, at which point it's called a "Frenched" rack. (Is their any other nationality that becomes a verb so easily?)

The belly section of the lamb is called the flank. It's usually made into ground meat, but can also be braised or stewed.

Finally there's the legs, most often kept whole or nearly whole for large roasts.

It took me an hour to break down the lamb, including the time for the more tedious tasks like portioning the chops and Frenching the racks.

The Numbers

Compared to most other meats, lamb is expensive. My side of pork this year was $2.15/lb for a 110 lb side. This whole, uncut lamb was $5.85/lb for a 50 lb carcass. The cut and wrapped lambs sell for $7.50/lb.

Yes, compared to pork this lamb is expensive. But compared to supermarket lamb, Tangle Ridge is a steal.

I weighed every piece of meat that I got from my lamb to see what those final cuts would cost when purchased from retailers. In the spreadsheet below, the weights are what I got from my animal. The costs are for an identical cut, as sold at local retailers, mostly Sunterra Market in Lendrum, which carries a lot more lamb than most grocery stores.

There are a few cuts (flank, neck, and the "fatty trim" that I rendered out for cooking fat) that are not available in grocery stores. These represent small portions of the carcass, and are estimated at very low prices, so are a correspondingly small source of error.

If I purchased all the cuts of lamb that are now in my freezer from a grocery store, it would have cost about $8.26/lb, instead of $5.85.

I can't wait to tuck into this lamb. I'll be posting about some of the preparations over the next few months.

Coffee in Austria

2011-11-23T17:14:00.005-07:00

I was surprised to learn that Austria has a strong, distinct coffee culture. I probably shouldn't have been, as the adoption of exotic goods like cane sugar and coffee beans was the hallmark of European imperialists, and Austria, as the granddaddy of European imperial powers until the First World War, has been roasting, grinding, brewing, and drinking coffee for centuries.

The story of how coffee came to Austria was told to me several times during my stay. In 1683, the Ottoman army, led by the Grand Vizier, besieged Vienna. A Polish soldier named Jerzy dressed in Turkish garb and left the city to contact Duke Charles of Lorraine and ask for assistance. Jerzy snuck back into the city, bringing a promise from the Duke. With this information, the Viennese city council decided to resist the siege until reinforcements arrived. The Turks were later defeated in the Battle of Vienna, and forced into a hasty retreat, during which they left behind several bags of coffee beans. Jerzy is said to have been awarded, among other things, many of these bean sacks, with which he opened the first coffee house in Vienna.

Another version of the story has the Turkish beans discovered and brewed by a Capucin monk who, finding the drink too strong, dilutes it with milk, thus founding European coffee culture, and inventing what we, with most of the world (but not Austria!) call the capuccino. That was the most complicated sentence I've ever written.

I have no idea if these stories have any historical merit, but the very fact that they are widely known and repeated speaks to the pride Austrians take in their coffee. To further appreciate Austrian coffee culture, let's talk a bit about our own.

North Americans tend to distinguish between "normal coffee" and "espresso," sometimes erroneously pronounced "expresso." Many think that these are two different types of beans. They're not: they are two different methods for extracting the flavourful oils from a roasted, ground coffee bean. The same beans are used in both methods.

"Normal coffee," that is, the coffee brewed in most homes before the morning commute, is drip-brewed and filtered. Hot water is slowly poured over ground coffee beans. Under the force of gravity it seeps through the grounds, absorbing the flavour of the beans. A paper filter ensures that none of the grounds get into the final cup.

"Espresso" is made by forcing hot water under pressure through compact coffee grounds. This method of extraction produces a very different drink than drip-brewing, as it extracts and emulsifies components of the beans that are usually left behind. It yields an extremely flavourful liquid that can have an almost viscous mouthfeel. This method also produces a bit of foam on top of the drink, called crema. (Here's an interesting article on the formation of crema.)

In many parts of Europe, including Italy and Austria, almost all coffee is "espresso-style" coffee. In my experience, drip-brewed filtered coffee was only available at a few touristy rest stations and hotels. The reason I keep puting "espresso" in "quotation marks" is because much of the world uses this style of brewing, but doesn't drink anything called an espresso. It's a bit like calling braised meat "coq-au-vin-style" meat.

Anyways. Food historians now refer to three waves in the marketing and consumption of coffee in North America. The first wave was the establishment of large coffee importers like Folgers in the nineteenth century. The second wave was started by small coffee houses that made espresso-style drinks and categorized much of their coffee by country of origin and roast. This movement culminated in the proliferation of franchises like Starbucks and Second Cup that popularized a style of coffee loosely based on the Italian caffe. I say "loosely" because the language is largely Italian (grande, venti, espresso, capucino, latte, americano, macchiato, ad infinitum...) but many of the practices (like the irresponsible use of foamed milk) are not.

The third wave, still going strong, emphasizes coffee bean roasting, grinding, and brewing as an artisinal trade. Roasters and vendors are developing ways to categorize and discuss coffee that is similar to wine. They sell their brew with detailed aroma- and flavour-profiles. Their coffee us usually presented simply, without the elaborate, sweet, foamy accompaniments associated with the second wave. Even so, ordering in a third wave coffee house can be an alienating experience to the uninitiated. (If you don't know what I mean by that, go to the Garneau Transcend and try ordering "a coffee.") Third wave vendors promote fair trade, and often develop lasting, mutually beneficial relationships with coffee bean growers and their communities.

Coffee culture in Austria has been much more static over the past hundred and fifty years. Most of the classic cafés in Vienna were established in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. They have a fixed style of brewing and serving. Ordering "a coffee" in an these cafés is a bit like ordering "beef" in an American steakhouse. Here are some of the common drinks:

Brauner - Black coffee, served with a small dish of milk to be stirred in. At one time it was available as either a Grosser Brauner (bigger) or Kleiner Brauner (smaller), though the smaller version is now more or less extinct.
Verlängerter - (Literally, "lengthened,") A Brauner pressed with a little hot water.
Melange - (From the French, literally, "mixture") Coffee with steamed milk, and often whipped cream.

Coffee drinks containing liqueur:

Maria Theresia (a famous eighteenth century Habsburg) - coffee with orange liqueur and whipped cream. I can't say for certain, but oranges might be associated with Maria because one of her residential palaces, Schönbrunn, in Vienna, is famous for its orange groves.
Fiaker - a Verlängerter with rum
Masagran - ice coffee with Maraschino cherry liqueur

The coffee is served on a silver tray with a glass of water, a small chocolate, and, if appropriate, a small pitcher of milk.

Pickle Soup

2011-11-18T12:34:00.114-07:00

This is exactly the kind of delicious, hearty, ingenious, frugal dish I love.

While finely chopped condiments like relish, picalilli, and jam can be canned on their own, larger slices of vegetables like cucumbers, beets, and carrots require an acidic liquid in which to be preserved. The liquid prevents the growth of aerobic pathogens by keeping air away from the vegetables and filling the space with acid, salt, and sugar. Once the vegetables are gone, this delicious liquid can be used in a number of applications.

If this sounds at all gross to you, think about what is in dill pickle juice: water, garlic, black pepper, mustard seed, coriander, bay, cider vinegar, salt, and sugar. The liquid has been cooked out and over the course of a few weeks or months has had time to mellow and balance. It really is fantastic stuff.

My day to day use of pickling liquid is in dressings. Thinning out mayonnaise with a bit of dill pickle juice makes a great dressing for slaw. Thinning crème fraîche with pickled beet and horseradish liquid makes an elegant accompaniment for smoked fish.

I recently came across a traditional Ukrainian dish called kvasivka selians'ka that uses the brine from the sauerkraut crock:

[The soup] makes a thrify use of the sauerkraut juice that would otherwise be left in the barrel. It seems appropraite for Pentecost celebrations, since by late spring the supply of last year's sauerkraut would probably have run low.^[1]

It may only be November, but I've already gone through a few jars of preserves. Today I had some dill pickles out, so I decided to make soup.

For this particular version, I browned carrots, onions, and the garlic cloves from the pickle jar in butter. Then I added all-purpose flour and cooked the roux until aromatic and starting to brown. Then I poured in some of the pickling liquid and whole milk, which I cooked gently until the mixture thickened. At this point I added some boiled, chopped, russet potatoes, and some of the pickles themselves.

Some notes:

Consume very hot, with a healthy dose of black pepper, and a drizzle of cold-pressed canola. I don't know why, but the flavour of cold-pressed canola goes extremely well with this soup.
The exact amount of pickling liquid you use will depend on how acidic the liquid is.
The starches (the roux and the potatoes) temper the acidity of the pickles.
Browning the onions and roux brings out their sweetness, which compliments the sweetness of the pickles.

Ice Clarification of Stock

2011-11-11T12:35:00.093-07:00

This time last year I started thinking about preparations that take advantage of the frigid outdoor temperatures. I made candy in the fresh snow and tried the "apple jack" method of concentrating alcohol by freezing. I've just tried another sub-zero preparation, gleaned from the pages of The Fat Duck Cook Book. It's a fascinating technique called gelatin-clarification of stock.

In culinary school one of the cool-but-antiquated dishes you learn to make is consommé. Consommé is flavourful stock that is strikingly, brilliantly clear.

The classical method for clarifying stock uses something called clear meat. Clear meat contains albumen-rich ingredients like egg whites and certain cuts of meat like shank. When albumen coagulates, it forms a delicate network that traps the tiny particles that cloud stock. Unfortunately, in doing this it also removes a lot of the flavour of the stock, so we need to add taste-fortifying ingredients to the clear meat. The shank-meat will accomplish this to a certain extent, but we also add vegetables.

Once the clear meat is assembled it is added to the cold stock. The pot is placed over low heat, gently stirred and very gradually brought to a simmer. As the stock heats up, the eggs and meat start to cook, and the albumen network moves through the stock collecting impurities. Once the eggs and meat are completely cooked, they form a thick mat on the surface of the stock, called the raft. To release the pressure created by the simmering stock below, the raft should have a hole poked into it. The stock-and-raft is simmered gently for about an hour, to extract the flavour of the meat and vegetables

Heston Blumenthal's technique for clarifying stock is completely different and absolutely foolproof, though it takes a while longer than the classical method.

Here's the theory behind his method. A properly made stock will be rich in gelatin. When chilled, gelatin forms a network similar to that of the coagulated albumen in cooked meat and eggs.

For a stock with a typical gelatin concentration, the network forms at any temperature below roughly 10°C. If the stock is heated above this, the network melts.

Imagine freezing a stock to -18°C. The gelatin sets up its network, and the water freezes. Now imagine putting that frozen stock in a 4°C fridge. The water content will melt, but the gelatin network will stay in tact. As the water melts it will run through the gelatin network, which acts like a filter and catches the particles that cloud the stock. Once all the water has melted you are left with a cloudy clump of gelatin, and a pool of crystal-clear stock.

To really test the clarifying-power of this technique, I made the an extra-cloudy pheasant stock by cooking bones and mirepoix at a rolling boil instead of a simmer. Then I put the stock in a stainless steel bowl, covered it with plastic wrap, and set it outside overnight. It froze into a solid hemisphere.

To remove the ice, I inverted the bowl and heated the underside with a blowtorch. Once the curved surface of the hemisphere had melted slightly, the ice slid out of the bowl. I rested that ice in a colander lined with a clean dish towel, then set the whole contraption in a large glass bowl in the fridge.

It takes quite a while for ice to melt in the fridge. Mine took about 2 days. Freezing the stock in a large, thin sheet would accelerate melting.

The results are surreal. This is far and away the most dazzling stock I've ever seen. In the photo below you can see how murky the original stock was.

There are two problems with this method, both stemming from the fact that you have removed all the gelatin from the stock. First, the consommé has a very watery mouthfeel. To restore the rich texture the diner expects from clarified stock, Blumenthal typically back-adds pure gelatin.

Second, the process has a very low yield. The classical method also results in waste, but not to this extent. I think that my yield was particularly low because of the muddiness of my original stock. I started with 545 g of pheasant stock, and ended with 305 g of crystal consommé, a yield of only 56%.

Obviously this is not a process I will do very often. Like, possibly never again. If you take the time to make a stock properly, it will be clear enough to serve as a soup to all but the most pretentious guests.

Still. An interesting experiment.

Pheasant Pot Pie

2011-11-10T12:23:00.087-07:00

Last November we started getting game birds, chiefly grouse and pheasant, from Mr. McLarney, who hunts them with his English pointer. In exchange for the wild poultry, I provide Mrs. McLarney with a recipe for their preparation.

Cooking grouse and pheasant is fairly new to me, and I'm still figuring out the whole hanging-plucking-gutting-cooking thing.

From the cook's perspective, the ideal game bird (or rabbit) is shot cleanly in the head. That way there's no shot hidden in the meat. You get a higher yield, and diners won't unwittingly bite down on a piece of lead. I have very little experience with guns, but apparently getting that head shot is relatively easy when the slow-witted bird is standing on the ground. Mr. McLarney's birds are flushed from the grass and shot in flight, which makes it next to impossible to get a clean headshot. The hard fall to the ground often breaks some of the bones and causes bleeding. The damaged flesh has to be cut away before cooking.

I'm very interested in hanging the birds, which is supposed to make the meat more tender and flavourful, but the gunshot wounds and bruises that result from the flushing-method make me hesitant.

My bewilderment continues once the birds are in my kitchen. Purists insist on dry-plucking game birds in order to preserve the skin, which is considered a gastonomic delight. I've tried this a couple times now, and have found the skin of both grouse and pheasant to be inedibly rubbery.

As far as cooking, most sources, including Charlie Trotter's book Meat and Game, say that the birds can be roasted to just-doneness and yield moist, tender flesh. I haven't had any luck with dry-heat methods. My birds have all required a bit of stewing or braising, though maybe only 45 to 60 minutes.

In that vein, the most successful dish this year was pheasant pot pie. Fergus Henderson has popularized the combination of pheasant and pig trotter. The gelatin produced by cooking out the trotter goes a long way to masking any dryness in the pheasant. In the recipe below, the procedure is adapted from Henderson.

Pheasant Pot Pie

Ingredients

1 pig trotter
1 L stock, either pheasant, chicken, or pork
1 pheasant, skinned and jointed
1/2 white onion, small dice
1 carrot, peeled, small dice
1 rib celery, small dice
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 cup dry apple cider
1/2 cup cooked wild rice
3 sprigs thyme
1 small bundle sage
3 tbsp butter
3 tbsp flour
1/2 cup heavy cream
12 oz of your favourite flaky pie dough

Procedure

For the filling:

Season the trotter and pheasant pieces with salt and pepper. In a braising pot, sear the meat over high heat until thoroughly browned. Remove from the pot and reserve. Lower the heat to medium-low.
In the same pot, sweat the onion, carrot, celery, and garlic until translucent. Do not brown the vegetables. Remove from the pot and reserve.
Deglaze the pot with the apple cider and reduce the liquid by 3/4. Add the stock and bring to a boil. Add the trotter and simmer until very tender, about 2 hours.
Add the jointed, browned pheasant to the pot. Return the stock to a boil and simmer until the pheasant is cooked through, roughly 15 minutes. Remove the trotter and pheasant from the pot.
Add the cooked vegetables to the pot and simmer gently for 30 minutes. In the mean time, pull the meat from the trotter and pheasant (be sure that there are not bones left in the meat!) Pull or chop the meat into large pieces.
Add the herbs to the pot. Simmer for 15 minutes, then remove the herbs and discard. Add the chopped meat and wild rice to the pot.
In a separate pan, melt the butter. Once it is foaming, add the flour. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the flour is just starting to colour and becomes very aromatic, about 10 minutes. This is the roux.
Stir the roux into the other ingredients. Bring the liquid to a simmer and cook until the mixture thickens. Add the cream. Adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper.
At this point the filling can be chilled and kept in the fridge for a few days.

To serve:

Spoon the filling into an oven-proof ceramic dish. This can be one casserole, or several individual ramekins. Roll out the pie dough to 1/8" thickness. Press the pie dough over the filling. Cut a few holes in the dough to vent the filling. Bake at 425°F for 15 minutes, then at 350°F until the crust is golden to amber, about another 40 minutes.
Let the pie rest for 10 minutes before serving.

Eating a Jack-o-Lantern

2011-10-31T12:31:00.000-06:00

Two ways I eat my jack-o-lantern.

First, when hollowing out the pumpkin, I save the seeds. A nifty trick for separating the seeds from the stringy pumpkin guts: throw the whole mess in a large pot of water. If you rub the mass between your hands, you loose the pumpkin flesh from the seeds, which float to the top and can be easily skimmed off. Dry them on a bake sheet lined with paper towel overnight, then toss with oil and seasoning and roast until golden brown.

Second, in years past, after the trick-or-treaters have stopped calling, I've taken my jack-o-lantern off the step, cut it in half, and roasted it in the oven. Eating quality of carving pumpkins seems to vary, but most of the time the flesh tastes good, and can be puréed and converted to pumpkin soup or pie.

Back Bacon

2011-10-30T11:14:00.028-06:00

In the States this preparation is called Canadian bacon, but we usually call it back bacon. It's more or less the same process as regular bacon, only done to a section of the loin instead of the belly. There's an old style of back bacon from eastern Ontario called peameal bacon, in which a cured section of loin is rolled in peameal (crushed split-peas) before being smoked. Peameal bacon is still made down east, though nowadays cornmeal is used.

Back bacon is usually made from the eye of loin: the large, round muscle often made into centre-cut pork chops. You can also use the rib- and sirloin-ends of the loin, which have more fat and flavour than the centre. I tried the classical eye of loin.

First the loin must be cleaned. There is a band of meat and fat called the chain (in the top right corner of the picture below) that must be cut out, but can be reserved for ground meat. There is also some fat and silverskin (top left) that can be removed and discarded. I cut my cleaned loin into three sections so that it could fit in my curing bucket.

The main procedural difference between back bacon and belly bacon is that back bacon is usually brined instead of dry-cured. My brine consisted of salt, curing salt, brown sugar, herbs, and a halved, squeezed lemon. I used a ceramic plate to keep the meat submerged.

After sitting in the brine for a few days, the eye of loin is tied so that it will have a round cross-section. In the picture below you can see three different colours on the meat: there are brown parts, pink parts, and a light grey part. The cure, having lots of brown sugar, is responsible for the brown areas. The pink sections are where the loin sections were either pressed against each other, or resting on the botton of the container. The grey circle on the bottom is actually a piece of meat that was cooked by the acidity of the halved lemon.

When curing with dry rubs, you have to "overhaul" the meat: rub it down every couple of days to redistribute the cure. I guess the same should have been done for this brine. At the very least the loin sections should have been rotated so that the surfaces got even exposure to the brine. This is mainly an aesthetic issue, as the meat seems to have cured properly.

Next the loin is hot-smoked to an internal temperature of 65°C. This is the most critical part of the procedure. Since the eye of loin is an extremely lean cut, over-cooking will produce dry meat.

Here is the final product. The curing salt in the brine has given the meat a rosy colour.

The most important thing to remember when eating back bacon: it's not belly bacon. It's not the fatty slab of crazy pleasure that you might be used to. That being said, back bacon still has its place. If it's brined and cooked properly it is by no means dry. The smoke and herbs balance the piquancy of the curing salt.

Bath Chaps, Revisited

2011-10-28T11:34:00.073-06:00

The first course of Button Soup's February Pork Dinner was cold-cut Bath chaps: a boned-out pig's head, cured, rolled around the tongue, tied, poached, and sliced. While I was extremely happy with the look of those Bath chaps, they were pretty bland. I figure that the cure leached into the poaching liquid.

I had another go at the chaps with this fall's pig. This time, instead of using a whole head, I used only one jowl, cured, and wrapped around the tongue.

After rolling and tying, I seared the meat over high heat. Once chilled, I vacuum-packed the chaps and simmered them for two or three hours. This was not proper sous-vide: though the meat was vacuum-packed, it wasn't cooked in a low-heat, temperature-controlled bath. A good hunk of fat rendered from the chaps, and some insanely flavourful jus leached out. The plastic seal definitely helped the meat retain its cure. The final plate was very flavourful, strong of garlic and herbs and brown sugar and salt.

I think that the vacuum-packing also helped bind the tongue and jowl together.

Obviously the presentation of these chaps isn't as striking as that of the whole-head chaps. If I try tongue-and-cheek chaps again I'll trim the jowl to a uniform thickness. You can see that the left side of the chaps, below, is thicker. Trimming that down would give a more balanced presentation, and maybe even let the jowl wrap all the way around the tongue.

Scrunchions

2011-10-26T10:48:00.036-06:00

These are scrunchions. They're a bit like pork rinds.

"Pork rind" simply means pork skin. It can refer to the fresh, raw skin cut from a side of pork, but more commonly it means pig skin that has been rendered and fried crisp. It is actually the same as crackling, though commercially-produced pork rinds are much more delicate than the crackling that develops on oven-roasted pork.

Scrunchions are made by a similar process, but they're made of raw pork fat, not skin. I can't figure out how frying pure back fat results in a crisp product, but it does. Scrunchions are one of the finer components of Newfie cuisine, along with chow-chow, screech, and saltfish.

Like so many kitchen preparations, the snack pictured above was a happy accident. I had not planned on making scrunchions that day. Rather, I was cooking a large rib roast. My haggard butchery had left a slender flap of back fat hanging off the roast in the dry heat of the oven. Part way through the roasting I realized that this flap had crisped into a scrunchion, so I cut a number of slices of fat from the roast and left them on the wire rack beside the meat.

Once crisp the scrunchions were removed to a paper towel and sprinkled with sea salt and chopped thyme.

How to Make a Paper Cone for Scrunchions

This is also how pastry cooks make impromptu piping bags from parchment paper.

Cut a 8" x 8" square of parchment paper. Cut the square into two right angled triangles. Orient one of the triangles so that the hypotenuse is towards you, like so:

Roll the bottom left corner so that its tip meets the tip on the top centre:

Now roll the bottom right corner around the cone, so that its tip meets the other two.

You should be able to pinch all three corners:

Fold the three corners down. Fold them once more to secure the cone.

The cone should now hold its own shape, without the use of tape.

October Kills its Pig

2011-10-24T11:33:00.203-06:00

Everybody rejoices when November kills its pig.

-an inscription on the Münster Cathedral

Edmonton gets cold enough to butcher outdoors a bit sooner than Westphalia, so our version of the inscription would have October killing the hog.

This year Lisa and I bought a side of pork from Nature's Green Acres. I cut up our meat at Kevin's, on what he and his family call Pig Day. While the majority of the pork was wrapped and frozen, there was also some curing, smoking, and grinding, processes that have come to typify the season.

Brine-Curing

Processing a side of pork is made less daunting by the presence of a brine bucket. Certain pieces can go straight from the cutting board to the brine, making for less wrapping, labelling, and freezer management.

There are two types of brines. The first contains only table salt and other flavours like brown sugar and herbs. Salt is absorbed into the meat so that it is seasoned throughout its mass, and not just on the outside. The meat will retain more moisture during cooking. I call this a "seasoning brine." This is a relatively quick process: I might brine a thick pork chop for four hours before cooking it.

If sodium nitrite is added to the brine, some additional, complex chemical changes occur. The meat develops a vibrant pink colour and a piquant flavour. I call this a "curing brine," to contrast it with the seasoning brine explained above. The curing brine takes longer than the seasoning brine.

Seasoning brines are typically made the day that you cook the meat. Curing brines can be started the day that the pig is fabricated.  Cuts that are typically brine-cured include hocks, hams, eye of loin (Canadian bacon), and the tongue.

Dry-Curing

Other cuts are better cured in a dry rub. This is especially true of fatty pieces like the jowl and the belly. These cuts get mixed with the dry cure (salt, curing salt, sugar, herbs), then bagged and left in the fridge for a week, after which they are rinsed and either air-dried or hot-smoked.

Grinding Meat and Making Sausages

When I first started cutting my pig, I assumed that all the trim would supply ample meat and fat for grinding. This may be true of professional butcher shops that produce portion-controlled chops with clean bones, but when the pig is separated mostly into large roasts, there is actually very little trim.  A portion of the shoulder must be specially reserved for ground meat. I shoot for a 3:1 ratio of meat to fat.

I store my ground meat in three forms. First there are one pound bags of ground pork, unseasoned, ready to be made into patties or pie filling. I also find it handy to freeze some loose ground pork that has already been seasoned and spiced.  Finally there are sausages.

Making Stock

Even with many of the bones staying in roasts (the hocks, trotters, rib roast, hams...), there are still plenty left to make stock.  Sections of the backbone, as well as the riblets, skull, tailbone, shoulder blade, and arm bone are lightly smoked on the barbecue, thrown in a pot, covered with cold water, brought to a boil, then simmered for twenty four hours.  The next day I add the vegetables and simmer for an hour, then the herbs, which are simmered for fifteen minutes.

Finally the stock is strained and cooled, then frozen into ice cube trays so that it can be used a little at a time.

Rendering Fat to make Lard

We keep a lot of fat on the roasts and steaks, so we set aside a section of back fat especially for rendering. There is also the leaf lard, the brittle fat around the kidneys, analogous to the suet in sheep and cows. All the fat is thrown in a heavy stainless steel pot with bit of water and put over very, very low heat. The water helps distribute the heat in the early stage of the rendering. Eventually the water evaporates, but by that time enough fat has melted to serve the same function. I typically leave my fat on the stove overnight.

Turkey Stock

2011-10-23T12:18:00.232-06:00

The October installation of the Button Soup Supper Club was, predictably, a Thanksgiving turkey dinner.

Instead of roasting the entire turkey, I have been cutting the fresh bird into two suprêmes (breasts with the drumette still attached) and two leg-thighs.  There are many reasons for this. With the remaining carcass I can make a stock to be used at the same dinner as the meat. With the bird broken up into smaller pieces I can sear them to jump-start the browning.  Each piece can then be removed from the oven at the proper temperature (165°F), which happens at different times for different cuts.  Also, the turkey cooks in under an hour, which makes our Thanksgiving timeline less stressful and more flexible.

Lisa objects to this method. She feels that the presentation of a whole roasted bird at the table, and carving that bird in front of the guests, are indispensible parts of Thanksgiving. I too appreciate the pageantry of tableside carving, but I think the above gastronomic benefits trump Thanksgiving ritual.

Saturday morning we pick up the turkey from the Four Whistle truck at Old Strathcona. That same morning we cut up the bird and get the meat into a brine. We use a basic brine of salt, brown sugar, and sage. Then it's stock-making time.

I've recently tweaked my stock-making method. According to Professional Cooking for Canadian Chefs (the text that journeyman cooks and red seal chefs study), for optimal flavour poultry stock should simmer 2 hours, while vegetable stock should simmer for 45-60 minutes. If a vegetable stock has its best flavour after only an hour of simmering, why would I add vegetables at the start of a poultry stock? Why not add them only for the last hour?  Even better examples of this principle are black pepper and herbs, which release their best flavour after only fifteen minutes of simmering.  If you add herbs at the beginning of a stock, by the time you've extracted the flavour of the meat and the gelatin of the joints, what little herb flavour remains will be muddy and muted.

I also take exception to the recommended simmer-time for bones.  A passable broth can be achieved after a couple hours, but a superlative stock takes at least twenty four. I've found the right setting on my stove-top so I can keep the stock very low, barely even steaming, and let it sit unattended overnight.  I know that would make some people nervous, but I've done it countless times without issue.

Here's my complete turkey stock method.

Turkey Stock

Ingredients

carcass of one 10-15 lb turkey, including neck, gizzard, and wingtips
1 large onion
2 ribs celery
2 carrots
1 small head of garlic
3 bay leaves
roughly 2 cups dry cider
roughly 6 L very cold water
1 bunch thyme
1 bunch sage
1 bunch parsley
5 black peppercorns, crushed

Procedure

Roast bones in a heavy pan at 350°F until thoroughly browned. Remove and set aside.
Roast the vegetables in rendered turkey fat until browned. Remove a reserve for later use.
Pour any excess fat from the pan. Deglaze the pan with the dry cider and reduce au sec.
Put the roasted bones and the cider reduction in a stock pot and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil then simmer very gently for 24 hours.
Add the roasted vegetables to the pot. Return the liquid to a boil and simmer gently for 2 hours.
Add the herbs and peppercorns. Simmer gently for 15 minutes.
Strain the mixture and chill thoroughly. Once chilled, remove any fat from the surface of the stock.

Please, please save the abovementioned fat and fry something in it. Here's an idea:

Turkey Gravy
Ingredients

1/4 cup turkey fat, either from the roasting pan, or reserved from the chilled stock
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup dry cider
1 L turkey stock

Procedure

Deglaze the roasting pan with the dry cider. Reduce the cider to 1/4 its original volume.
In a separate pot, combine the fat and flour. Cook out the flour for about 5 minutes.
Stir the cider and stock into the roux. Adjust seasoning and consistency.

There are a few other ingredients that weave their way through multiple courses of our Thanksgiving dinner. This time of year we are awash in dry apple cider, which played the roles commonly reserved for white wine: deglazing pans, augmenting acidity, and consuming in vast quantities while preparing dinner. Squashes formed the bookends of the meal: we started with Hubbard squash soup, and finished with pumpkin pie.

Thanksgiving Addendum: Rumpot Update

We had our first taste of the rumpot at Thanksgiving, to see how it is developing. The pot of preserved evans cherries is fantastic. It smells of almond extract. The acidity of the fruit is rounded by the sugar and rum. I'm only making single-fruit rumpots from now on...

Notes on Baking Bread

2011-10-22T12:26:00.043-06:00

Even once I had a handle on basic techniques like dough-shaping, I found that the bread I made at home wasn't as good as the bread I made at NAIT, where they have commerical equipment like proofing boxes and deck ovens.

Here are some quick notes on using household kitchen items to replicate the equipment in professional bakeries and bake better bread.

Proofing

I've always felt that my bread doesn't proof as well at home as it does at school. At first I thought this was a temperature issue, so I tried fermenting and proofing my bread in increasingly warmer corners of the house. Turns out humidity was the more important factor.

In commercial kitchens bread is proofed in proofing boxes. These are fridge-sized compartments that are temperature- and humidity-controlled.  They stay between 20°C and 30°C, the temperature range at which yeast is most active, with a relative humidity of about 70%, which prevents a dry skin from forming on the dough.

I do my proofing in a cold oven, because it is an enclosed, draft-free space.  To mimmic the humidity of a proofing box, I tried scalding a small pot of water, putting it on the bottom rack of the oven, then proofing my dough in a lightly greased casserole on the top rack. The pot of water releases vapour, and gently warms the air in the oven.  With the added humidity, the dough develops the ideal soft, tacky feel. Success.

Baking

Whether you're searing a steak, sautéeing mushrooms, or baking a loaf of bread, you're trying to balance the desired doneness of the interior with the desired doneness of the exterior. For steak, we want a heavily caramelized crust on the exterior, but pink, mid-rare flesh on the interior. We apply very high heat to develop the crust before the interior is overcooked. If we applied the same high heat to a large roast, the exterior would burn before the interior was cooked.  For roasts we cook at a lower temperature so that the delicious brown crust is finished at the same time as the pink meat inside.

With bread we also want a deeply caramelized crust. Besides simply cooking the interior of the dough, we also want to maximize something called oven spring.

As the dough heats up in the oven, the little gas pockets that developed during bulk fermentation and proofing expand greatly. The yeast also has one last hurrah, binging on sugars and expelling carbon dioxide, but this does not account for nearly as much rise as the simple thermal expansion of gases.  The dramatic rise in the first few minutes of baking is called oven spring.

To maximize oven spring we heat the dough rapidly and evenly in a moist atmosphere. The quick heating ensures that the air pockets deep inside the dough have a chance to expand before the exterior bakes. The steam prevents the exterior from forming a crust, which would hinder spring.

To rapidly heat the dough, professional bakers use deck ovens.  The dough is placed directly onto a uniform stone or ceramic platform, called the floor or deck.

To mimmic the deck at home, I use a heavy sheet pan, inverted so that dough can easily slide on and off. You could also use a baking stone.

Commerical bread ovens also have steam generators. Immediately after the bread is placed on the deck, the baker injects steam into the oven.

To create a similar effect at home I was told by a few people to put a metal tray on the bottom of the hot oven, and to throw a handful of ice onto it after the dough has been loaded. Using ice, as opposed to water, will supposedly lengthen the release of steam into the oven.

I find I get better oven spring by throwing boiling water onto the hot pan. You get much more steam much faster. Believers in the ice method say that the steam from boiling water dissipates before the oven spring is complete. For my most recent batch, I put about three cups of boiling water onto the hot pan, and there was still a bit left when I pulled the bread out thirty minutes later.

Use a very heavy pan as your steam generator. Thin aluminum pans don't hold much heat, and therefore won't create a lot of steam immediately.

My first time I used a Pyrex casserole. It cracked. Now I use a heavy stainless steel braising pot.

How to Use Leftover Meat and Charcuterie

2011-10-09T15:43:00.134-06:00

This is the single most useful preparation that I learned in Austria. It's invaluable to establishments that use a lot of cured meat, but also a good trick to have in the home kitchen.

It's called fleischknoedl (approximately: "FL-EYE-SH KNUH-dl"). Fleisch just means meat, while knoedl is a type of dumpling that is popular in Austria and Bavaria. Fleischknoedl is a fantastic way to use up leftover meat, whether cooked or cured.

Most cooks are familiar with how to use scraps of raw meat. When butchering a side of pork, for instance, you reserve the miscellaneous bits of meat and fat so they can be ground and used in sausages and forcemeat.

There's also leftover trim when cutting cooked and cured meat. Whether you're using a commercial meat-slicer or just a knife, there is usually an end piece that is not served. This might be the slightly over-cooked end of a roast, or a dry end of salami. Or perhaps the meat is just a few days old and you want to bring in fresh product.

Thankfully the Austrians have developed a way to use these leftovers. They will keep the nubbins from roasts like schweinsbraten and kuemmelbraten, fresh sausages, and even dried sausages like kantwurst or hauswurstel. The meat is mixed with cooked onions, then ground, shaped into balls, surrounded with dumpling dough, and cooked.

While most North American homes will not go through as much cooked and cured meat as an Austrian bed and breakfast, there are still times when this preparation can be a life-saver. I'm thinking especially of ham leftover from Christmas or Easter.

I recently made fleischknoedl from the roasts leftover after the Button Soup Canning Bee: a cured, roast pork shoulder, roast pork belly, and roast beef. The recipe follows.

Fleischknoedl (Meat Dumplings)

Ingredients
adapted from Looshaus

1 kg leftover meat (see Note 1, below), cut into 1" cubes
250 g onion, small dice, cooked in a little oil until transluscent
2 kg cooked potatoes, milled and chilled
100 g all purpse flour
330 g rice flour (see Note 2, below)
4 eggs
400 g melted butter

Note 1: A good mixture would be 3/4 cured, cooked meat such as ham, and 1/4 dry-cured sausages. Fresh (un-cured) cooked meat like pork chops and roast beef give the mixture a mushy texture and should be used in moderation.

Note 2: The actual ingredient here is grieß, which most German-English dictionaries translate as "semolina." The grieß they use at Looshaus is made from corn, though it doesn't have nearly as strong a corn flavour as the corn flour available in North America. Any mild-tasting, low-gluten flour will suffice as a grieß substitute.

Procedure

Combine the meat and onions and grind using a small die.

Shape the meat and onion mixture into little balls about an inch across. Put the balls on a sheet pan lined with parchment and freeze.

Combine all remaining ingredients and knead until a soft, tacky dough forms. Do not over-knead. Shape the dough into a log.

Remove the frozen meat balls from the freezer. Cut a round from the dough and press a meat ball into it. Work the dough around the ball to cover it evenly. Repeat until all the balls are covered in dough.

You can now freeze these dumplings.

Traditionally fleischknoedl are boiled and served with warm cabbage salad. They can also be breaded and fried for some textural contrast that (to speak like Guy Fieri) puts the dish over the top.

Cold-Smoking Pickerel

2011-10-08T12:00:00.000-06:00

I recently picked up some pickerel from Rebekah's Fish at the Strathcona Market and took my first stab at cold-smoking on my barbecue.

To hot-smoke on my barbecue I just remove the grate from the righthand side and put foil packets of wood chips directly onto the flames. I put the meat on the left side, which remains off. This way the meat isn't over direct heat and will cook evenly. With the right burner on a medium-low setting, the wood chips smolder and the average temperature inside the barbecue stays around 250°F.

The point of cold-smoking is to impart the flavour of the smoke without cooking the meat. Examples of food that you might want to keep raw are cured fish, jerky, and certain types of cured meat like salami or speck. To keep the meats from cooking the temperature has to stay below 100°F. Barbecue burners are so large that no matter how low you set them, they will always produce enough heat to raise the temperature of the barbecue above 100°F.

The solution is simple enough. I ignited my wood chips in a stainless steel pan on my stove top, then put the pan in the barbecue, where I usually rest the packets. The barbecue remained off, and functioned only as a chamber to hold the smoke.

The major disadvantage of the pan method is that, without any active heat source, the chips only smoulder for about five minutes before they have to be re-ignited.

Properly curing cold-smoked meats is very important because they usually stay in the temperature "danger zone" for several hours. The danger zone, between 39°F and 140°F, represents the temperatures at which microbes grow best. Below this range they are inactive, and above this range they die. In professional kitchens they say that any food that stays in the danger zone for more than two hours is unfit to serve. When we cure meat we make the flesh inhospitable to microbes, and we can therefore keep it in the danger zone for extended periods.

Food safety aside, properly curing the fish makes the flesh firm, dense, and pleasantly salty. Below is the recipe I used to cure my pickerel, though I have to caution that I've found fish-curing to be a fickle business. I've tried the same recipe on different pieces of fish and had wildly different results.

Smoked Pickerel

adapted from Charcuterie

Ingredients

850 g pickerel fillet in one piece, skin on, bones removed
157 g kosher salt
63 g dark brown sugar
13 g crushed juniper berries
20 mL whiskey

Procedure

Mix the salt, sugar, and juniper. Spread half the dry cure in a container that will just fit the fish. Lay the fish, skin side down, on the cure. Pour the whiskey over the fish, then sprinkle the remaining cure over the fish. Try to get more cure on the thicker parts of the fillet.
Cover with plastic wrap. Rest a flat board for pan on the fish, and top with a 500 g weight. Refrigerate for 20 hours.
Rinse the cure from the fish. Pat dry with paper towel and let rest, uncovered, on a wire rack in the fridge for at least an hour.
Cold-smoke with maple chips until desired flavour is achieved.

I served my smoked pickerel with green pea and wild rice crepes, and celery root slaw with grainy mustard dressing.

Sunflowers: A Failed Experiment

2011-10-01T12:11:00.018-06:00

When I was little I watched cartoons on Saturday mornings.

At one o'clock custody of the television passed to my mother, who watched Victory Garden, an American public television show that tours some of America's greatest gardens.

I hated this show.

Now that I'm all growed up, I rather like it. A couple years ago I was watching Victory Garden when they interviewed a chef from Boston who used sunflowers like artichokes. I filed this idea in the deeper recesses of my brain until this summer, when I came into some sunflowers from Tipi Creek.

I pulled out the flower petals, then started cutting away the dark brown seed heads until I had something that looked sort of kind of a little bit like an artichoke:

As a controlled taste-test, I simmered this flower head in lightly salted water until tender.

The result was pretty gross. A slightly slimey texture, an off-putting, floral taste (duh...)

If anyone out there knows how to prepare sunflower heads, I'm all ears.

Harvest Day at Tipi Creek 2011

2011-09-25T10:23:00.036-06:00

September 24 was the last harvest day at Tipi Creek CSA for 2011. We look forward to this every year. Our Thanksgiving dinner is planned largely around what we take home that day.

Of the three years we have been members of the Tipi Creek CSA, this was the least productive. You'll remember that May through July was cold, wet, and dreary. While this was mitigated to some extent by the sheer variety of vegetables grown, overall we ended up with a lot less produce than in previous years. That being said, with August and September being hot and sunny, we still had a fantastic final harvest day.

Here's more information on Tipi Creek:

their website
my run-down of the CSA
a cost comparison from last year: CSA v. farmers' market v. grocery store

Below are some photos from the harvest day. Thank you, Ron and Yolande, for filling our larder with fantastic vegetables. Can't wait for next year.

Dry Cherokee Beans

Corn

Cabbage (my favourite...)

Cabbage's Half-Brother, Kohlrahbi

Beet's Half-Brother, Chard

Greens

The Pumpkin Patch

Button Soup Canning Bee

2011-09-20T22:21:00.191-06:00

Until recently the only bees I knew of were honey bees, spelling bees, and quilting bees. There was a time when there were many other types of bees. Canning bees, for instance.

A "bee" is any gathering with a task in mind. In the days of yore it was often implied that people were coming together to help one person or family accomplish a large task in a relatively short amount of time. In rural Canada a community might gather to help a family thresh all their grain. Another threshing bee might be held the following week at a different farm.

A family history book tells me that food and whiskey were provided to those who helped. That same family history cautioned not to serve the whiskey until the chores are done.

The Button Soup Canning Bee

After a summer hiatus for my trip to Austria, the Button Soup Supper Club returned in September. A group of ten friends helped me put up a large amount of preserves, and were then treated to a large spread for dinner.

Preserves included dill pickles, pickled onions, onion marmelade, beet relish, figgy mustard, highbush cranberry sauce, pickled garlic (cloves and scapes), and piccalilli. For those unaware, "piccalilli," at left, is just relish, made with a wide assortment of vegetables instead of just cucumber. My mother's family always made it with green tomatoes. This particular batch used overgrown zucchini, bell peppers, and onions.

Preserving Mountain Ash (Don't...)

Besides the more familiar preserves listed above, we also made some experimental batches of mountain ash jelly. A botanist friend has ensured me, time and time again, that our mountain ash are edible. I've finally conceded that they may be safe to eat, but they aren't worth eating.

I hate to say that, because we had people cleaning and processing mountain ash all day, but the fact is that the berries are just too soapy and bitter. We even tried a traditional Scottish recipe for rowan jelly in which the whole, uncrushed berries are gently simmered, supposedly to minimize the extraction of soapy flavours, but the resulting liquid was still inedible.

Crushing Apples with a Meat Grinder (Don't...)

We also crushed and pressed another round of apples that day. On the recommendation of an internet site, instead of using a proper crusher, we tried a large meat grinder. It didn't work very well. The grinder worm wasn't able to put the apples through the machine, so we had to force them through with the plunger. We ended up crushing the apples more with the plunger than the blade of the grinder. It took forever. Never again.

Dinner

Part way through the afternoon we pulled out the hard cider, which was in its bubbly, alcoholic, sweet spot.

For dinner, since the kitchen was tied up with people chopping vegetables and boiling jars, we ate simple dishes that could be prepared well in advance.

First was headcheese, ideal for serving large groups because a) it's cheap as nails, and b) it can be made the night before and simply sliced to order. Taken with pumpkin seed oil and cider vinegar.

Next we put out some roasts: pork shoulder, pork belly, and beef eye of round. Sliced and served on crusty buns with coleslaw and homemade potato chips.

A jar of each preserve was set out to sample with the sandwiches.

Dessert was sour cherry pie and vanilla ice cream.

Thanks to those who helped out. I have you all scheduled for next September.

Highbush Cranberries

2011-09-19T10:25:00.041-06:00

Most of the highbush cranberries in the nearby park have lengthened into a distinct oval shape, which means they're ready for picking.

Often when harvesting or foraging in balmy summer, I find myself looking forward to the colder months ahead.

Much of the past year has been devoted to exploring seasonality beyond ingredients: looking at traditional dishes and meals that mark the season. I pick highbush cranberries mostly for use in two meals: Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. (If there's a little extra that can be enjoyed in November with some game meats, all the better.) So as I romp through the bush in late summer, I'm actually thinking about fall and winter.

Similarly, when candying cherries in August, I might envision a Christmas cake, or when picking pumpkins in September, a jack-o-lantern. So it is with seasonal eating, that one eye looks back on the past, and one looks forward to the future.

To separate the cranberries from their stems and pits, I use a food mill with a fine die. I cook out the sauce with a good pinch of salt, and honey.

After being processed in the canning pot, the jars will wait in the cellar until the turkey is killed.

Vegetable Off-Cuts

2011-09-18T14:03:00.137-06:00

One of the benefits of getting vegetables from a CSA, farmers' market, or backyard garden, is that you often get the entire plant.

As with animals, there are parts of certain vegetables that are usually thrown out. The most common examples are the green leaves of vegetables that are grown for their roots or stalks. These greens deteriorate quickly after picking, so they're cut off before the vegetables are shipped to the supermarket.

Of course, not all vegetable off-cuts can be eaten. Some are poisonous (the leaves of the nightshade family, including potato and tomato), and I find that some that do make their way to the farmers' market are of dubious eating quality.

Let's start with the good ones. Here are some vegetable off-cuts I like, and some ideas on how to use them.

Beet Greens - Primo greens. Much like Swiss chard, with colourful, tender, stalks.
Celery Leaves - One of my favourite greens of all time. The leaves from the light green heart are especially good. They are tender, and taste more like celery than the stalk.
Onion Greens (not to be confused with green onions...) - Green onions are a variety of allium developed for their long green shoots. Varieties of onion grown for their bulbs (eg. Spanish, White, Walla Walla) still have edible greens, though they rarely make it to the supermarket. They aren't as tender as green onions, but they still make for good eats, especially when folded into dough and deep fried.
Horseradish Greens - I was surprised when I saw these at the farmers' market. They taste remarkably similar to the root, though with less pungency. They can be used sparingly in green salads, or minced and folded in a compound butter for steak.
Radish Greens - Peppery taste similar to the radishes themselves. Good as salad greens, or chopped and mixed into radish butter.

I've seen the following greens for sale at farmers' markets, or have tried them at Tipi Creek, and found that they have inferior eating quality. If you've successfully prepared any of the veg below, I'm curious to know how you did it.

Carrot Tops - Some sources say you can make soup with carrot tops, though I find them too tough. My only success with carrot tops has been in making a flavoured oil.
Kohlrabi Greens - These walk the line. I find them too tough, whether raw or cooked.
Cabbage Greens - By "cabbage greens" I mean the large leaves at the base of the stalk that fall away from the head. Like kohlrabi greens I find them too tough, even when braised.
Broccoli Greens - I've heard people rave about broccoli greens, but I've found them inedible, even with extended cooking. I think maybe the young greens that are taken while thinning the garden are good, but the leaves taken once the plant has gone to seed are fibrous.

Hard Cider

2011-09-16T11:53:00.062-06:00

Earlier in the month we pressed our apples into cider. The juice that ran from the press was sweet and tart, with a full, milky mouthfeel, and a subtle siltiness that I think was from the skins and seeds of the fruit. It had a cloudy, oxidated colour and was a pleasing drink in all of its many facets.

Then the cider sat in my basement for a week. Fermentation took hold, and for a brief few days, the cider got even better. A yeasty aroma developed, and the resulting alcohol woke up the palate. The drink was effervescent.

I should have bottled all my cider at this stage. Hindsight is 20/20.

As it is, I left the cider to ferment for another two weeks before bottling. By this time not a molecule of sugar remained. In these later stages of fermentation some marked off-odours developed, notably sulphur (rotten egg) and acetone (nail polish remover). Some of these odours persist in the bottled cider.

Do I still drink it? Yes. Only when very cold. I also cook with it. Cabbage sautéed in bacon or lard, then briefly braised in apple cider, for instance.

It also makes a passable mulled cider, sweetened with honey and simmered with spices like cinnamon and clove.

Can't wait for next year, when I encapsulate that cider in its sweet spot.

Rhubarb Leaves: A Thought Experiment

2011-09-12T15:59:00.088-06:00

Before I say anything else, please, please, please don't eat rhubarb leaves. They're considered poisonous.

That being said, I have a theory that I'm working out. I'm wondering if there is a way to prepare rhubarb leaves so that they aren't poisonous.

I started thinking about this after reading about taro. Taro root is a tuber native to India, but common in the cuisines of the Caribbean, South America, Polynesia, and much of Asia.

Taro, both the tuber and the leaves, contain a large amount of calcium oxalate. When eaten raw they burn your mouth and throat, but boiling them dissolves the oxalates and renders them safe to eat.

Rhubarb leaves also contain a large amount of oxalate, and according to most sources this is the chief reason they are considered poisonous. If it is this soluble compound that makes rhubarb leaves unsafe for consumption, we might be able to boil the leaves and drive off the toxin, just as in taro leaf preparation.

As I mention in my disclaimer, I'm not a chemist or a botanist. For all I know the oxalate content of rhubarb leaves is too high for boiling to be effective. Or maybe there are other compounds that are responsible for its toxicity.^[1]

I have no idea. I don't plan on testing it out myself. I'll leave it for the food scientists. (Though of course no one is studying rhubarb: it's a hardy perennial that already grows in most backyards, and there's no money to be made from it.)

I'm just wondering out loud.

1. McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking. ©2004 Scribner, New York. Page 367.

Notes on the Evans Cherry

2011-09-11T00:36:00.186-06:00

This was the first year that I got to work with a good deal of Evans cherry, a sour cherry variety that grows well around Edmonton. It's a very different beast than the sweet BC Bing cherries I've used in the past.

In some applications you can more or less substitute our sour cherries for Bings. In others you can't. Here are my findings.

Baked Goods

This is what God intended us to do with sour cherries: bake them in pastry.

I don't have a recipe for sour cherry pie. In fact, I don't think you should use a recipe, because different cherries have different levels of moisture, sugar, and acidity, and additions of cornstarch and sugar should be varied accordingly.

Here's my process. Macerate the pitted cherries in about half their weight of granulated sugar and a good pinch of salt. I also like to add lemon or orange zest. Leave the mixture at room temperature for at least an hour. This draws a lot of liquid out of the fruit.

Transfer the cherry mixture to a pot and bring to a simmer. Meanwhile, prepare a cornstarch slurry of one part starch and one part water. Stir the slurry into the cherries. This is the trickiest part of the preparation, as you want the filling to set after the pie has been baked and cooled to room temperature. When a spoon is dragged through the cherries, it should take a few seconds for the mixture to level out and fill in the trench. Taste and adjust sweetness.

Cool the mixture to room temperature to make sure that it sets properly. Then transfer the filling to a bowl and refrigerate until chilled thoroughly. It's important for the filling to be cold at the start of baking for two reasons. First, if you are covering the filling with any pastry, especially a delicate pattern like the lattice, above, the pastry will be much easier to work with if it is resting on cold filling. If you try to arrange a pastry lattice on warm filling, the fat in the dough will melt and the pastry will be more or less unworkable. Second, if you put a warm pie into a hot oven, the filling will likely boil over the lattice and over-cook, forming a rubbery skin on top of the pie.

After making a properly thickened filling, the most important part of our pie, and of any pie for that matter, is a properly baked crust.

Undercooked Pastry: A Rant

At right is a strudel (the French style, made of braided puff-pastry, not the Austrian style...) that is sold at a reasonably popular coffee shop.

The staff that bakes these convenience products no doubt look for a certain pale golden brown colour to form on the outside of the pastries, then immediately pull them from the oven - even though there is still a thick mat of raw dough inside!

Make sure your dough is cooked all the way through, so that it's flaky and tender. Don't just look at the dough: touch it to make sure it's firm throughout.

Glacé Cherries

Last Christmas I made a fruit cake filled with glacé Bing cherries, hazelnuts, and candied orange peel. I decided to try making glacé sour cherries this year. The process is described in the fruit cake post, linked about.

The sweet and sour taste of the cherries was fantastic. The sour cherries are much more delicate than the Bings, and looked a little haggard after the boiling. They didn't entirely break apart, but I expect them to turn to mash when folded into the dense pound cake batter that I use for the fruit cake. We'll see soon enough.

The syrup that the glacé cherries are preserved in is fantastic in sparkling water.

Dried Cherries

Evans cherries do dry okay, but it takes forever. In my dehydrater, running on the "Fruit/Vegetable" setting (135F), it took 30 hours to reach raisin consistency.

The dried cherries are extremely sour, even more so than when fresh (which I should have anticipated...)

I had originally planned to eat these dried cherries in yogurt and granola, but they are way too tart to be consumed with tangy yogurt. Suggested alternative uses: game terrines, "Raincoast Crisp" style cracker, and other applications where there is meat or starch to temper their acidity.

Rumpot

Last year BC Bings were one of several fruits I threw into my rumpot. I imagine that this preparation would benefit hugely from the acidity of the Evans cherry.

Last year I noticed that the more delicate fruit, notably raspberries, broke up into tiny pieces in the pot. I suspect this will be true of the Evans cherries.

The many varieties of fruit in a rumpot blend together to form a generic "red fruit" taste, so this year I made "single fruit rumpots," ie. one pot entirely of sour cherries, one of plums, and so on. Hopefully these pots develop unique flavours that will showcase the fruit better. I'll get back to you on the results.

Conclusion

Sour cherry varieties like Evans and Nanking generally bring more taste and complexity to the table than sweet varieties like Bing. The principle difficulty in working with them is their delicate, moist flesh, which damages easily. They can be used in most sweet cherry applications, though they generally will not maintain their round shape.

Fall Foraging around Hinton

2011-09-10T20:44:00.107-06:00

While on the AMS Great Alberta mushroom foray near Hinton, we found a few other types of wild edibles.

Labrador Tea

Labrador tea is a little evergreen shrub. It was once commonly brewed by the natives and used in countless medicinal applications. It was also part of some of the traditional gruit mixtures of northern Europe. (For an explanation of gruit, and why it could be important to our provincial brewing identity, please see Alberta Beer: A Thought Experiment.)

The principle flavour of Labrador tea is minty evergreen. I swear when I bruise the fresh leaves I also get a sweet melon aroma, but I haven't been able to convince others of this, nor have I been able to coax that flavour into solution. Labrador tea can be used much like young evergreen buds, in tea, syrups, and dry cures for meat.

Buffaloberry

Many trails we walked were absolutely overgrown with buffaloberry. The fruit is tart, bitter, and slightly soapy. There is some good information on-line about the traditional uses of buffaloberry (also known as foamberry, soapberry, and sopolallie). Most interesting is the practice of beating the berries in a large bowl until a meringue-like foam develops. This preparation is called Indian ice cream.

Bog Cranberry

I didn't even know bog cranberries grew in Alberta. These are the low-lying cranberries that are traditionally maintained and harvested by flooding the field in which they grow.

While we stepped over plenty of cranberry bushes, ripe berries were few and far between. Those I was able to sample had the classic tart and bitter blend we expect from bog cranberries.

Walking in the woods is fun.

High Season for Mushrooms

2011-09-09T10:20:00.053-06:00

We've been enjoying a lot of mushrooms of late. There have been two Alberta Mycological Society events in the past month that have had us eating and contemplating mushrooms non-stop.

First was the AMS Expo, the City of Champignons at the Devonian Botanical Gardens. Chad and Thea dreamed up a fantastic soup and mushroom tasting plate that Lisa and I helped them cook and serve.

Then on the Labour Day weekend we headed out to Hinton for the AMS Great Alberta Foray. Above left are some of the edible vareties found that weekend.

Thank you to the AMS for enriching our culinary life and letting us explore the Alberta countryside, turning over logs and hopping over streams in pursuit of fungi. And thank you to Chad and Thea for getting us involved in that organization in the first place.

I'll leave you with a couple of the mushroom plates I cooked this month.

Mo-Na Foods, an Edmonton distributor specializing in foraged food, recently brought in some enormous morels from the Yukon. Here they are stuffed with rabbit mousseline and served with carrot purée:

Hedgehog mushrooms look similar to chantrelles, only they have teeth under the cap instead of ridges. Most mushroomers agree that hedgehogs are tastier than their more-famous cousins. After a quick sautée Lisa and I ate some on grilled flatbread with goat cheese and charred green onion.

Apple Cider

2011-09-08T07:48:00.002-06:00

To most contemporary city-folk the word "cider" implies fermented apple juice. My grandparents made the distinction between "cider" (juice pressed from apples) and "hard cider" (fermented apple juice). For now I have simply made cider, and will leave the discussion of hard cider and its variants for another post.

This week we picked about 150 lbs of apples from three different trees:

one beautiful, well-trained tree yielding large, blushing apples, which I will be referring to as "Ron's apples";
one crabapple tree with bright red, tart fruit;
one hideous, unkempt tree in our backyard that grows small green apples. The tree is so large and spindly that we harvested its apples by climbing into it, shaking it vigorously, and then collecting the fallen fruit from the surrounding grass.

After harvesting, we borrowed a crusher and press from Kevin. The crusher is a garburator, intended for a kitchen sink, outfitted with a hopper and a power switch. You can read about Kevin's design here. The press is a strong wooden frame with a carjack that drives a plunger onto the crushed fruit, described here. Thank you, Kevin.

Some notes and photos from our cider day.

Here are the apples we used. Below, left are the crab apples. Below, right, Ron's gorgeous apples.

And here are the tiny, bruised apples from our backyard. They don't look particularly appetizing, but apparently they make for good cider.

Some sources say to wash and stem the apples before crushing. Others say this is unnecessary.

Here is Kevin's crusher, doing what it does best. The apple mash comes out white, then rapidly oxidizes to the rusty colour we associate with apple juice.

With a traditional crusher the mash will sometimes be put through a second time for a finer grind. This in unnecessary with the garburator. It's very thorough.

The apple mash is scooped into a piece of cloth, which is twisted and squeezed to extract some of the juice. We found that at least 90% of the juice could be pressed from the mash in this manner, without the use of the actual press.

Once the mash wrapped in cloth is shaped into a disc it is called a "cheese." Some sources say to tie the cloth with a peice of string. This is unnecessary. The cheeses are stacked inside the press. Some sources say to place wooden discs bewteen the cheeses. This is also unnecessary.

Then the car-jack is opened to drive the plunger onto the cheeses. The juice flows out of a spigot at the bottom of the bucket.

After being pressed, the cheese is dense, dry, and crumbly. The left-over bits are called pomace. In many parts of Europe grape pomace is mixed with water and sugar, fermented into a weak "wine," and then distilled. The resulting liquor is called grappa in Italy (especially famous in the provinces of Friuli and Piedmonte), marc in France, and tsipouro in Greece, to name only a few of the regional variations. I suspect a similar drink could be made from this apple pomace.

We crushed and pressed the three different apples separately so we could taste the juices on their own. Tasting notes:

Ron's Apple Cider - A good balance of tart and sweet, with a hint of almond extract, probably from the seeds and skins. Slightly silty mouthfeel. Reddish brown.
Crabapple Cider - Very tart, but still surprisingly flavourful and pleasant to drink. Brilliant pinkish red.

Our Backyard Apple Cider - This was the real surprise for me. They are by no means choice eating-apples, and most were battered and bruised by our harvesting method. Their juice, however, was fantastic. A great balance of tart and sweet, and a distinct grassy finish.

The three types of cider were then mixed together. While "single variety" may be popular with coffee and wine, apple cider and any of its fermented and distilled derivatives are always made from a blend of several apple varieties. Half the work of the cider producer is in finding the right mix of sweet, tart, and aromatic apples to create a balanced drink.

Once mixed, the cider was syphoned into carboys to clear over night. The roughly 150 lbs of apples made 40 L of cider.

This really is one of those epic, rewarding, seasonal "chores," like tapping maple trees and slaughtering pigs. There's lots to be done with the cider, yet. Stay tuned.

Rose Hip Jelly (With a Brief Description of the Chemistry of Jellies)

2011-09-07T21:47:00.006-06:00

When rose flowers wither and fall from the plant, they leave behind a little green ball called a rose hip. In late summer those hips swell and turn red, and start to look like berries.

They are not berries, as you will discover if you open one up. Rosehips are full of seeds and what looks like white hair. If eaten raw those hairs will irritate your mouth and throat. Don't eat those hairs raw. The fleshy part around the seeds and hair can be eaten raw. It has an interesting flavour; depending on the plant and the time of year it can taste like fresh cut grass, or a tomato, or possibly a plum.

Though rose hips can be eaten fresh, they are most commonly made into jelly. They contain little pectin, so the jelly usually contains another fruit, like apple.

Two hours have passed between when I wrote that last sentence and when I wrote this one. It crossed my mind that I don't really know what pectin is, so I read a large section of On Food and Cooking to find out. If you like, I can tell you what I found.

The Chemistry of Jellies

Unlike animals, plants get all their nutrients and energy from soil and air and sunshine. They therefore stay in one place, and require a rigid framework on which to grow. Like animal cells, plant cells are made of fluid enclosed in little sacks of a semi-permeable membrane. Unlike animal cells, they also have a firm wall surrounding their cell membranes for additional structural support.

These cell walls are analogous to reinforced concrete. Fibers of cellulose act as the iron rods, and hemicellulose and pectin act as the cement that cross-links the iron rods. Hemicellulose is made of glucose and xylose sugars, while pectin is in fact "long chains of sugar-like subunits,"^[1] whatever the hell that means.

Here are some things that happen when we cut and cook fruit:

the thermal and physical disturbance breaks the pectin chains in the cell walls apart,
cell membranes rupture, spilling cell fuild everywhere, and
the loosed pectin dissolves in that cell fluid (and any other liquid you have added to the mix).

The pectin does not re-form into its characteristic chains because it has been diluted, and the sub-units can't reach eachother. To aggravate the matter, the pectin sub-units accumulate a negative electrical charge, and so are actually repelled by eachother!

As sympathic cooks we can help pectin chains re-form by doing the following:

adding sugar - Sugar is hygroscopic and attracts water. With water molecules flocking towards the sugar, the pectin molecules have an easier time finding eachother.
boiling off excess water - This also reduces the distance between pectin molecules
adding acid - Acidic solutions are full of hydrogen ions (H⁺) that neutralize the pectin molecules' negative charge. After contact with a hydrogen ion, the pectin molecules no longer repel one another.

The three steps above that help reform pectin chains also happen to preserve the fruit!

With the pectin chains re-formed, there is now a network that traps water and gives the jelly its characteristic firm-but-wiggly texture.

Don't you feel empowered by all this information? Put it to good use:

Rosehip and Apple Jelly
adapted from River Cottage Handbook No. 2 - Preserves

Ingredients

325 g rosehips
775 g apples, peeled and quartered (I used windfall apples from my questionable backyard apple tree, removing any severely damaged sections)
roughly 550 g sugar

Procedure

Place the quartered apples in a straight-sided pan. Cover with water. Bring to a boil, then simmer until the apples soften and turn to pulp.

In the mean time, chop the rosehips in a food processor.

Add the rosehips to the pan and simmer for 10 minutes.

Remove the pan from the heat and let stand for 10 minutes. Pour the mixture into a scalded jelly bag suspended over a bowl. Drain for several hours. After 24 hours I ended up with about 800 mL liquid.

Measure the juice and put it into a pot. Bring to a boil, then add 400 g of sugar for each 600 mL of juice. (My 800 mL of liquid required 533 g sugar.) Stir until completely dissolved, then boil to setting point, 220F.

After boiling I had roughly 500 mL jelly. Pour into hot sterilized jars.

Rose Water

2011-08-29T15:23:00.001-06:00

Today I tried a nifty trick I saw on Alton Brown's masterpiece show, Good Eats: making rose water at home.

The idea of eating my provincial flower excites me. Unfortunately, our true wild roses have already lost their petals and developed hips. There are, however, several late-blooming domestic varieties still flowering.

Wherever you get your roses from, make sure that they haven't been treated with any chemicals.

Rose Water
adapted from Good Eats

Ingredients

1 L rose petals, chemical free
2 L water

The set-up is simple. Start with a very large pot. I used my canning pot. Put a clean brick or heavy ceramic dish in the middle of the bottom. Scatter the rose petals around the brick. Add the water. There should be enough that the flowers are more or less submerged. Next put a stainless steel bowl that is slightly narrower than the canning pot onto the brick. (The brick simply keeps the bowl above the boiling water and prevents it from floating around.)

Now invert the lid of the canning pot and cover the pot. Put about 2 L of ice in the hollow of the lid.

Place the pot on medium heat and simmer for an hour. The aroma and flavour of the rose petals is captured in the steam. The steam rises to the top of the can, where it meets the cold lid and condenses back into water. Because of the roughly conical shape of the inverted lid, the condensate rolls to the centre, where it drops into the expectant stainless steel bowl.

A diagram:

After an hour I had about two cups of rose water. Be careful not to spill any of the melted ice into the stainless steel bowl when removing the inverted lid.

At this point I have no specific plans for the rose water, though I suspect it will make its way into some whipped cream shortly.

Raspberry Leaf Tea

2011-08-19T10:59:00.001-06:00

This is a quick one. I just learned that raspberry leaves make good tea.

Pick the leaves, dry them in a low oven, and store in an airtight jar.

To serve, steep in hot water for 4 minutes, as you would any other tea, and strain.

I'm not good at describing the subtlties and complexities of something like tea. To me, raspberry leaf tea tastes a bit like green tea...

It's good.

Squash Blossoms

2011-08-17T15:34:00.001-06:00

If any food can be described as ephemeral, it's squash blossoms. They're only around for a short while, and once picked they deteriorate rapidly, which is why you usually can't get them at grocery stores, only farmers' markets and neighbourhood gardens.

Squash plants actually produce two different types of flowers: male and female. The male flowers grow on the end of long, slender stems. The female flowers grow on thicker stems that buldge where they meet the flower. This bulge is what will eventually become a squash.

Generally there are more male flowers than female. The male flowers can be picked without affecting the production of fruit, so long as a few are left behind to pollinate the females. Some sources say to remove the stamens from the interior of the male flowers before eating. I don't. I hope it's not a safety thing. Picking the female flowers will prevent fruit from developing on that stem. Even so, it's worth picking a few females, especially once the buldge on the stem has grown into a tiny, malformed squash.

The flowers of both summer and winter squash are edible. (Summer squash are varieties that are picked young, and therefore have tender, edible seeds and skin, like zucchinis and pattypans. Winter squash are varieties that are mature when picked, and therefore have tough, inedible seeds and skin, like butternut squash and pumpkins.)

While they can be eaten raw, squash blossoms are usually lightly battered and fried. They can also be stuffed.

Below are two blossoms from a pattypan plant. The flower at the back is female, as you can see from the small, green pattypan attached to the base. The front flower is male, with the characteristic long, slender stem.

The blossoms are filled with a homemade ricotta (something my ancestors would have called "clabbered milk") mixed with lemon zest, lemon juice, an egg, and basil. I used a piping bag to stuff the flowers.

The batter is just skim milk thickened with a bit of flour. Tempura-style batter is also popular. The flowers are lightly coated with the batter, then fried in canola oil at 350F. You can shallow fry in a straight-sided pan (just add enough oil to come about half way up the side of the flowers) or deep fry in a pot. Once the batter is crisp and the interior hot, maybe one minute, remove the flowers to a bowl lined with paper towel. Season and consume immediately.

August on a plate:

Rhubarb Onion Jam

2011-08-16T13:54:00.001-06:00

I've had recipes for rhubarb relish passed to me from both my family and Lisa's. Though one is from Ontario and the other from Alberta, they are uncannily similar: one part chopped rhubarb and one part chopped onion, stewed together with cinnamon, clove, and other "pumpkin pie" spices.

This has been my default rhubarb sauce to accompany meat and hearty bread for the past couple years, but I have to admit it's not a show-stopper. I've been trying to elevate this recipe, and a friend of mine recently found the way.  His discovery of rhubarb onion jam was one of those rare times when something in the kitchen goes horribly wrong, but the food turns out better than if all had gone according to plan.  I think many of our favourite foods were probably discovered this way: grape juice was left out, and mysteriously started to ferment; dry leaves fell into a pot of boiling water; or a marshmallow was accidently impaled on a stick and left too close to a campfire. Rhubarb onion jam resulted from a similarly serendipitous mistake.

The mistake was that a pot of simmering rhubarb relish was left unattended for an hour. By divine providence the pot was covered, and enough moisture trapped within that the relish didn't really burn, but rather stuck to the bottom in a thick mat of caramelized "jam." With a little water and scraping, that jam was retrieved and found to be delicious.

This happy accident can be reproduced in a controlled manner through an intensive cycle of developing and capturing fond.  Remember that word, "fond"? The one with the nasal "on" and the silent "d"? We discussed it briefly here.

To create good fond, you need a stainless steel pan. To capture it, you need a wooden spoon, and possibly some liquid.

Start with the abovementioned ratio of rhubarb and onions. Cook them in a bit of hot oil. When the rhubarb and onions have broken down to a paste, spread them evenly across the surface of the pan.  Once a layer of caramel-coloured fond has developed on the bottom, use the wooden spoon to scrape the fond into the paste. Redistribute the mixture and repeat. If the fond is difficult to remove, add a few tablespoons of water; they should help lift the sticky residue off the pan.

The mixture will slowly darken and thicken. Continue the process until a jam-like consistency is achieved. I finished the mixture with honey, to balance the concentrated tartness of the rhubarb.

The rhubarb and onions shrink dramatically in the process. Starting with 300 g onions and 300 g rhubarb (about four cups of ingredients all told), I finish with less than one cup of jam.

Rhubarb onion jam gets along famously with cornbread and pork.

Austrian Sausage Stands

2011-07-23T17:15:00.318-06:00

Würstlstände are sausage stands. They punctuate the sidewalks of every city in Austria. People from all walks of life crowd around these kiosks for, say, a quick lunch, or a post-bar snack: a sausage, fried or steamed, served with some manner of bread, mustard, and beer or pop.

While certain types of sausage appear on almost every würstlstand menu, it can be frustrating trying to pin down their characteristics, as a huge variety of sausages can go by the same name. Bratwurst, for instance, is sometimes based on pork, sometimes on veal, sometimes stuffed into slender lamb casings, sometimes into wider hogs...

Here are some very general descriptions of the most common würste:

Burenwurst - Apparently a corruption of "boerwurst," a hearty South African sausage distinguished by its coarse texture.
Debreziner - Debrec is a city in Hungary. The only characteristic that seems to unite all debreziners is the liberal use of paprika.
Waldviertler - The Waldviertel (literally "forest quarter,") is a region in Lower Austria, famous for rustic cuisine. This sausage is lightly smoked and made of pork.
Frankfurter - A very long, slender, boiled sausage, with an extremely fine interior similar to most North American hot dogs. In Frankfurt these sausages are called Wieners. Go figure.

Sacherwurst - In my experience, these are indistinguishable from frankfurters.
Bratwurst - The familiar "brat," a frying sausage.
Bernerwurst - More common in cafeterias and restaurants than sausages stands, this is a sausage stuffed with cheese and wrapped with bacon.
Weisswurst - One of the few sausages that always takes a very specific form. Literally "white sausage," though it is usually more grey than white. Made from veal and pork fat which are very finely ground and emulsified. A delicate sausage, it is boiled and taken out of its skin before being served. It is very much a Bavarian sausage. Within Austria it is only commonly found in Salzburg, which is right by the Bavarian border. Traditionally eaten before noon, with a brezel (pretzel), sweet mustard, and white beer.

In North America the term "hot dog" refers to both the dish (ie. a wiener in a bun), and the style of wiener itself (ie. an emulsified link flavoured with garlic and smoke). In Austria a "hot dog" is a sausage shoved into a long, crusty roll. You can therefore have, for instance, a bratwurst hot dog, or a burenwurst hot dog. If you don't specify "hot dog," your sausage will probably be served with a round crusty bun on the side, as below. Note the ceramic plate.

Käsekrainer

While outsiders recognize wiener schnitzel as the national dish of Austria, I think most Austrians acknowledge a special sausage called käsekrainer ("KAY-zeh KREYE-ner") as their greatest culinary achievement.

"Käse" means cheese. I have no idea what "krainer" means, and neither do any Austrians. Käsekrainer is a sausage with a finely ground interior that is riddled with cubes of cheese that melt when the sausage is cooked. It is the crown jewel of Austrian streetfood.

Within twenty four hours of returning to Canada I had procured the ingredients for a käsekrainer test batch.

Käsekrainer: A First Attempt

Ingredients

1000 g pork shoulder
200 g Sylvan Star Gruyère, rind removed, diced into 3/16" cubes
16 g kosher salt
1/2 tbsp light corn syrup
1 pinch sodium nitrite
2 cloves garlic (the Austrians call them "toes," which I thought was cute...), minced
1 bay leaf, ground
1/4 tsp smoked paprika
1/4 tsp mustard powder
1/4 tsp freshly ground, toasted coriander
1 pinch cayenne
fresh ground black pepper
5' hog casings, soaked and rinsed

Procedure

I chose to experiment with Gruyère because of its famous melting properties (it is the go-to cheese for fondue and raclette). To my surprise, Sylvan Star has their own version of the alpine cheese:

Cut the pork into 1" cubes. Spread on a tray lined with wax paper and keep in the freezer until "crunchy" but not frozen solid. Grind the meat through a 1/4" plate. Add the salt and spices to the ground meat.

Spread the ground meat onto a tray lined with wax paper and return to the freezer for about 15 minutes. Regrind the mixture using a 3/16" plate.

Using the paddle attachment of a stand mixer, slowly mix the forcemeat while adding the corn syrup. When the force binds and becomes tacky, fold in the cubed cheese.

Fry a small piece of the mixture and taste. Adjust the seasoning as necessary.

Stuff the mixture into the hog casings and twist into 6" links. Hang on a wooden dowel to dry for an hour.

On Cooking Käsekrainer

On the streets of Vienna there are actually two types of käsekrainer. They result not from different methods of manufacture, but from different methods of cooking.

The first, when passed through the würstlstand window, looks like any other sausage; it is only upon biting into the link that you discover the cheese. The second has a crunchy crust of cheese fried onto the exterior of the sausage. I don't think I need to spend much time explaining why the latter is superior (the nutty-tangy taste of browned cheese, the accentuation of the textural contrast between sausage skin and interior...)

Having only cooked a couple of käsekrainer links myself, I am still working on my crust development.

Inevitably (and especially in homemade links) some cheese will leak out the ends during cooking. My working theory on crust development is that the sausage must be rolled through this cheese while it is still gooey, so that the cheese adheres to the skin. Otherwise the cheese will brown and stick to the pan, instead of the sausage. As a rule of thumb, move the käsekrainer frequently while cooking.

The sausage must be eaten very hot, or the cheese will re-congeal.

This recipe and cooking process result in an acceptable approximation of an Austrian käsekrainer. I think that most of the versions I had there were lightly smoked. While the smoked paprika in my recipe goes some distance to capturing that flavour, I think the next test batch will have to be cold-smoked before frying.

Austrian Charcuterie

2011-07-20T07:02:00.285-06:00

For starters let me say that Austrians don't use the word "charcuterie." To some of you that may seem obvious, as Austrians speak German. Yet for some reason most of the English-speaking world uses the French term "charcuterie."

While French words do weasel their way onto fine dining menus in Austria, they are nowhere to be found in descriptions of butchery or cured meat. For these, Austrians have their own, precise way of speaking, belying the strength and individuality of their traditions.

In contrast, the charcuterie renaissance in North America uses of grab-bag-blend of terms from across Europe. Bresaola (northern Italian), is mentioned in the same breath as saucisson sec (French), and jerky (Plains Indian).

Despite all this, I still use the term "Austrian charcuterie," in the hope that North Americans curious about Austrian cured meat will be more likely to stumble across this page.

Anyways.

Charcuterie has a very special place in the Austrian diet. Breakfast, for instance, invariably consists of bread, cheese, coffee, and some form of cured meat or pâté. The larger cities are dotted with würstlstände (sausage stands, which will be discussed in a future post). To my mind, the greatest place to sample Austrian charcuterie is at certain taverns called heurigen.

Heurigen ("HOY-ree-gen," singular heuriger)

Austria produces a lot of wine. Most of this wine is consumed within the country while it is relatively young, (which is why Austrian wines are very rare in this part of the world). The word heuriger literally means young wine, but the term usually refers to a special kind of tavern. Winemakers will open up shop for a couple of weeks so that guests can come to drink the young wine, which is served with plates of cold food such as cheese, spreads, bread, and charcuterie. The word for these savoury accompaniments is brettljause ("BRET-tel YOW-ze"). Brett means board, as the food is usually spread out on a wooden board. Brettl, I think, is some kind of dimunitive form, though I'm not entirely sure. Jause means snack.

While heuriger usually implies wine, there are also most heurigen. Most is a type of cider, usually made from apples, though sometimes pears are used. Most is quite different from the commercial ciders we know. It has a pronounced sourness, and in my brief experience it is usually not heavily carbonated. Sometimes it's straight up flat.

Since heurigen are open irregularly for short periods throughout the year, the owners will hang an evergreen bough (busch "BOOSH") over their door or signpost so that passersby will know when they are open. For this reason, in the province of Styria, heurigen are called buschenschänken (singular buschenschank). Schank means bar, as in the place where the bartender stands. The implication is that the wine, intended to be drank young, is stored in barrels and poured from the bar, instead of being bottled for long storage.

I suppose the star of the heuriger show is supposed to be the wine or most, but for me the main attraction was always the charcuterie. So, without further warbling I would like to introduce you to the main players of Austrian charcuterie, as they are served in traditional heurigen.

Blunz'n ("BLOON-tsin") - Blood Sausage

This is the infamous blood sausage, which we have toyed around with a couple times here on Button Soup. In Germany it is called blutwurst. In Austria it is called blunz'n. Austrian blunz'n is a very different creature to English black pudding or French boudin noir.

I attribute the success of my last attempt at blood sausage to the inclusion of a panada, a mixture of milk and bread. Austrian blunz'n is very heavy on the bread content. In fact, the first piece I ever had was riddled with white cubes that I assumed were pork fat, but turned out to be bread. While English black pudding has a pronounced blood taste, and a pastey texture, blunz'n is subtle and light, somtimes more like a dumpling than a sausage.

My favourite blunz'n so far had a pleasant acidity to it. I'm not sure whether this was from added vinegar, or if maybe rye sourdough was used in the panada.

Besides being sliced for cold platters, blunz'n is surprisingly common in the kitchen. There is a traditional dish called blunz'n gröstl, which is a blood sausage hash. We also had blunz'n baked into an eggy bread:

Grammel ("GRAM-mel", plural grammeln) - no translation

This is a weird one, as you may have guessed by the fact that there is no satisfactory English translation.

The first time I had grammel was in a dish called grammelschmaltzbrot. It appeared to be rendered pork fat spread on rye bread, with tiny, crunchy flakes that resembled bacon bits, only much smaller, maybe the size of kosher salt crystals. I asked a handy Austrian what exactly I was eating. She said, approximately, that when pork fat is rendered and then "pressed" (strained?) you are left with grammel. I wondered aloud. Bits of skin? Bits of meat? She wasn't sure.

When searching the internet, I came across this explanation, which is well-written, but I think entirely inaccurate. The author says that grammeln are mineral deposits in the fat of Mangalitzas, an Austro-Hungarian heritage pork breed renouned for its eating quality. I don't buy this, simply because I ate plenty of grammel that was not from Mangalitzas.

By Occam's razor I'm more inclined to believe the sources that say grammel is a form of connective tissue in the fat that cooks out in the rendering process. Whatever it is, it's crisp, golden brown, and sinfully savoury. Its existence is all the more surprising to me because I have rendered a lot of pork fat in the last couple years, but hadn't thought to skim through the residue to look for something as small and delicous as grammel.

Grammel is also used in the kitchen. When there is a bit of residual lard on the grammel, it binds to form a paste, which can then be rolled into a knödel (roughly, "KNUH-del," a dumpling).

Hauswürstel - ("HOWS-voors-tel", literally "house sausage," in fact just dried sausage)

Similar to French saucisson sec, this is an essential component to any heuriger spread. The most interesting version I had contained the delicious green pumpkin seeds common in Styria.

Preßwurst - ("PRESS-voorst," headcheese)

Austrian preßwurst is very similar to our headcheese, though I would say the meat is packed much more densely (ie. there is less jelly between the pieces of meat). Even so, it holds together extremely well, and can be sliced very thin. It's usually doused in vinegar, then called "saure preßwurst."

Kümmelbraten (roughly "KOOM-mel-BRAT-en," literally, "caraway roast," roast pork belly)

This was a pleasant surprise: pork belly, usually lightly cured, roasted with caraway seeds, and served with the skin on. A fantastic crunch from the crackling, which splinters into little nuggets during the slicing.

Schweinsbraten - ("SHVINES-brat-en," roasted pork shoulder)

A simple roast, sliced and served cold, is a very common brettljause. Sometimes the meat is cured, sometimes not. Somehow the only picture I got of a cold pork roast was this haggard slice below, which I had already prodded with my fork.

Bratlfettnbrot - ("BRAT-tel FET-en-brot," approximately "roast drippings, with bread")

One of the fantastic byproducts of roasting meat is the drippings. They are comprised of two parts. First is the highly gelatinous meat juices. Second is the fat rendered from the meat. There was a time not so long ago when every housewife would pour the hot pan drippings from a roast into a jar and keep them for later use. The fat can been scraped off and used to sear meat. The juices, which solidify when refrigerated, can be used to fortify pan sauces.

In Austria the whole mix, that is, the partially solidified meat juices and the rendered fat, are served as a spread. It is called bratlfettnbrot, which is possibly the most amusing word in the Austrian language. Or any language.

In the picture below you can see the bratlfettnbrot in the plastic jar on the right, with the spoon sticking out. The picture is not from a heuriger, but rather at Dominik's house. Dominik was the student Lisa and I hosted last summer. You may remember him from the fantastic Austrian dinner he and his friends cooked for us while staying in Edmonton.

Some photos.

Heuriger meals are finished with mehlspeisen ("MAYL-shpeye-zen," literally "flour food," baked desserts) and schnapps. Austrian baking and distilling will be covered in future posts.

Candied Lilac

2011-06-10T07:47:00.000-06:00

A special report from Button Soup's Senior Backyard Correspondent, Lisa Zieminek

With Allan in Austria, I have been tasked with keeping him informed of what’s happening in our new yard, and documenting developments with copious photographs and notes.

A couple weeks ago, the several lilac trees scattered throughout our yard burst into full bloom, filling the air with sweet perfume.

Last year we learned that lilacs are edible. The tiny flowers can be added to salads for a splash of color. They can also be made into beautiful, delicate candies that last long after the blossoms have fallen from the trees and their sweet smell has left the air. Rather than keeping the memories of spring with mere photographs, I decided to preserve a little piece of the season in candy form, to be enjoyed upon Allan’s return.

Candied Lilac

Ingredients

simple syrup (heat 2 parts sugar and 1 part water to 225°F, then cool to room temperature)
individual lilac flowers, stems removed
ultrafine sugar (sold as “berry sugar”)
patience – it's a tedious job

Using tweezers, dip the lilac flowers in the simple syrup, shake off any excess liquid, then place them onto the ultrafine sugar. Turn the flowers in the sugar to coat all sides, or sprinkle them with sugar to achieve the same effect. Let the flowers dry overnight, then store in an airtight container.

The candied petals look like delicate crystals – they are a beautiful garnish for cupcakes or ice cream. They have a crunchy texture and a sweet, floral taste. (They are flowers, after all...)

-Lisa Zieminek, Sr. Backyard Correspondent

Evergreen Syrup

2011-06-10T06:37:00.000-06:00

A nifty trick I picked up at Looshaus, a hotel and restaurant in Kreuzberg, Lower Austria.

Pick evergreen "buds" (the small bundles of new needles that appear in late spring), simmer them in simple syrup (1:1 water to sugar), and transfer the whole mess into glass jars. The syrup takes on a fantastic, minty, pine flavour, which the Looshaus chef says gets even better with a few months storage. Strain the needles out before using the syrup.

Some ideas for usage:

sauces for game meats (think: evergreen gastrique)
ice cream
in sparkling water (beer flavoured with young spruce needles was once common in Canada...)
pork brines

The same process can be used for other common backyard plants, like dandelion and elderberry.

This Summer on Button Soup...

2011-05-20T01:01:00.141-06:00

Most of the posts on Button Soup this year have been about the Supper Club. In case you've missed any, there have been four dinners:

The Supper Club is taking a break for the summer. I am typing this post from Semmering, Austria, which is an hour or so south of Vienna, in a mountain pass between the provinces of Lower Austria and Styria. I am here for one month to cook in their kitchens, and then for a second month to explore the region with Lisa.

I debated for some time whether I would write about this trip here on Button Soup. I describe Button Soup as 'Food from Edmonton, AB' in both the geographical and cultural sense, and I've always focused on home-cooking, rather than the professional sort. I wondered if writing about Austrian kitchens, and professional ones at that, would somehow upset the soul of Button Soup.

Now that I am here, I realize that I have to write about this place. Studying foreign cuisines teaches you about your own. In fact, several of my past experiments have been inspired by or stolen from the food of central and eastern Europe. For instance:

Wheat Pudding - (Ukrainian kutia)
Rum Pot - (German rumtopf)
Fir-Smoked Ham - (beech-smoked Black Forest ham)

So, over the summer you can expect lots of posts about Austrian food.

Freelance Editor's Competition

I will be typing my posts on a German keyboard. The major differences between a German keyboard and its English counterpart are the inclusion of the 'umlauted' vowels (ü, ö, ä...), and that the 'y' and the 'z' keys are in the oppostie positions. I can't seem to unlearn what Mavis Beacon taught me, and I am constantly typing 'zou' instead of 'you,' and 'verz' instead of 'very.' As one of those neurotic, condescending pricks who corrects people's grammar and doesn't respect menus with spelling errors, it's extremely frustrating.

If you ever see that I have typed a 'y' where there should be a 'z,' or vice versa, be the first to comment on it and win a jar of homemade preserves.

There's one more exciting feature this summer on Button Soup.

Introducing Lisa Zieminek, Button Soup's Senior Backyard Correspondent

Lisa is my girlfriend. We live together in McKernan. She taught me how to cook.

While I am cooking in Austria, Lisa will be closely observing the growth of the edible plants in our backyard in Edmonton. She will periodically post about some exciting kitchen preparations of those plants.

It's going to be a busy summer. Stay tuned...

Dandelion Salad

2011-05-16T13:43:00.001-06:00

At left is the first harvest from the yard, largely rhubarb and dandelions.

When picked young dandelions are tender and bitter, with a slender red stalk. Classically, they are often served with bacon, garlic croutons, hard-boiled egg, and vinaigrette.

Here's a variation on that theme.

Firstly, in addition to the greens, this year I gave the roots and flowers a go. The roots have the same bitterness as the leaves, obviously with an added crunch. The flowers are very fun to eat. They have a slight sweetness

Instead of the classic hard-boiled egg I used a soft-poached quail egg. When broken, the yolk runs through the leaves and tempers their bitterness.

The dressing was made with cider vinegar, a touch of mustard, a touch of bacon fat, and canola oil

Instead of bacon I used pig's ear.

I should tell you a bit about pig's ear.

When I make headcheese, I simmer the entire head of the pig. To make the soft, creamy version of headcheese that I enjoy, I include mostly the jowl fat and the tender meat. I exclude parts of the head that will conflict texturally, notably the ears, which have cartilage in the them.

Since they have been simmered extensively, these bits of ear were coated in seasoned flour and fried crisp.

At first bite, the fried ears are not much different than crispy bacon. Once you reach the centre there is the distinct crunch of the cartilage. A very interesting eating experience.

This salad goes well with weissbier.

Perennials Bequeathed

2011-05-14T17:20:00.056-06:00

In January, Lisa and I bought a house in McKernan. The backyard was a gift that spring has recently unwrapped for us. Over the last couple weeks we've discovered that the previous owners of this house were active gardeners who established a mass of edible perennials.

Following are the edible plants that are appearing in our yard. If you think we've misidentified anything, please let me know. (We're new at this...)

Strawberries

Apples

Horseradish

Juniper (with mature berries)

Raspberries (lots of raspberries...)

Rhubarb

Cherries?

Currants?

Birch Syrup

2011-05-04T16:06:00.001-06:00

I just had my mind blown.

While Lisa and I were collecting sap from our maple trees, Judy was doing the same from a birch tree in her backyard in Spruce Grove.

She just brought over some of her syrup. I had a spoonful. I'm reeling.

I mentioned that our maple syrup has a distinct fruitiness that I've never come across in commercial syrup. Judy's birch syrup tastes like fruit juice - like pear juice, I would say - and it finishes with some of the green, nutty flavour of the fresh sap.

The birch syrup is very thin, nowhere near as thick and sticky as store-bought syrup. The flavour is remarkable. I don't know exactly how I'll use it in my kitchen. I might just have a spoonful for breakfast every morning, until its gone.

Maple Sugaring in Edmonton: The Numbers

2011-04-28T00:43:00.029-06:00

The sap run ended a couple weeks ago, and all my sap has been processed into syrup. I described the tapping process here. The first tree I tapped actually forks into two large trunks. Since both trunks are more than ten inches across, I put one tap in each. Part way through the sap run, I realized that I have another maple tree on the other side of my yard, so in total I had three taps.

Now I'll fill you in on the collection and processing of the sap. First, you have to walk through a lot of deep, slushy snow:

Here is the forked tree, on the east side of my backyard.

And here is the tree I missed at first, tucked away in the soggy southwest corner of the yard.

The buckets had to be emptied every day. Some days they would have overflowed if they hadn't been emptied. Even during periods of low flow, it's best to empty every day to maintain the freshness and cleanliness of the sap.

Sap flow started very high, then tapered quickly (daily sap quantities are listed below). Here is a shot from the first full day of the run, when I got about 4 L from the eastern tree.

As I mentioned in the previous post, the sap itself is delicious, even without being reduced to syrup. If you are only tapping one tree, you might get more bang for your buck by drinking a few litres of sap instead of reducing to get a cup or so of syrup. Something to consider.

Strain the sap to remove any debris and store in the fridge.

Once you have collected enough sap to fill a stock pot (10 L in my case), boil the sap over medium high heat. I was cautioned to do this outside, as allegedly a sticky residue can build up on surfaces if done indoors. I ignored this caution and boiled the sap on my stove with the vent hood running. No residue appeared, perhaps because I was processing a relatively small amount of sap.

As soon as the sap is brought to a simmer, it turns from clear to cloudy. If you continue to boil the sap down you get a very murky syrup that looks a lot like honey:

If you want clear syrup, you have to remove the "sugar sand," the calcium compound that is clouding the liquid. Lisa and I simply stopped boiling partway through the reduction, let the sugar sand settle to the bottom of the pot, then decanted the syrup and continued boiling. My understanding is that the sugar sand is not harmful in any way; it is removed simply to clarify the syrup. Here is a picture of some of the sugar sand we filtered out:

If you are diligent with your decanting and filtering, you will end with a more familiar looking, clear syrup.

I didn't reduce my syrup to the same thickness as commercial syrup. Besides being less sweet, the flavour of my syrup is much different than store-bought: there is a very pronounced fruitiness, one that I would associate with a fine honey.

The Numbers

Below are the quantities of sap I collected each day. Note how the flow starts very high, then tapers to almost nothing in a matter of days. At this point I thought that the run had ended, and I stopped checking my buckets. Then about a week later I was in my backyard and noticed that the buckets were overflowing. Some of the sap was lost, but I don't know exactly how much. Also, I don't know if the break in the flow had to do with the weather (it was very cold and overcast on those days), or if it is part of a regular cycle in the run. Interestingly, the second wave of the run produced noticeably sweeter sap.

The maple syrup article in On Food and Cooking said that sugar maple sap is typically reduced by about 40 times, and birch sap by about 100 times. Having a maple tree, but not a sugar maple, I was expecting to reduce somewhere between 40 and 100 times. I ended up reducing by only 29, though, as I mentioned above, my final product was not as thick and sweet as commercial syrup.

Tapping the trees took about ten minutes. Emptying and straining the sap took about ten minutes each day of the run. Boiling the sap down took a few hours every few days of the run, but obviously you don't have to stand over the pot and watch the liquid reduce. In the end I got a litre and a half of syrup, which I suspect will amply garnish our pancakes for a year.

For the longest time I thought that there are few maples around Edmonton, and that the ones that are here are no good for syrup. I was wrong. Now as I walk through my back alley in McKernan, I see suckering maples everywhere. Many of them are too small to tap, but there is still a huge amount of "untapped' sweetness in our city. Maples, like caragana, are much more common in the older communities of Edmonton than in the newer suburbs, as they are considered "messy" plants, what with all the suckering and keys...

Next winter I'll put a small ad in my community newspaper to see if there's anyone interested in learning to do this. If you have a mature maple (or birch) tree in your yard, here are some resources for you.

A great website with lots of detailed information: http://www.tapmytrees.com/
Mack, Norman (ed.) Back to Basics: How to Learn and Enjoy Our Traditional Skills. ©1981. The Reader's Digest Association (Canada) Ltd. Montreal, QB.
Or contact me through Button Soup

Button Soup Easter Dinner

2011-04-26T20:55:00.000-06:00

The April installment of the Button Soup Supper Club was an Easter Dinner with Lisa's family, featuring some of the traditional, symbolic ingredients and dishes discussed earlier. The menu:

Hot Cross Buns

Potted Rabbit, Crackers, and Cheese

Young Spinach with Bacon and Quail Egg

Smoked Ham with Scallop Potatoes

Oat Cake in Maple Syrup

Hot Cross Buns

Potted Rabbit, Crackers, and Cheese

Butchering Rabbits: a "break" from tradition

Rabbits are not usually butchered by neatly separating the joints, as you would a chicken. They are broken into forequarters, hindquarters, and a saddle by cleaving right through the bones. Chefs often bitch about how tedious butchering rabbits is, "especially since there's practically no meat on them." Their words. Not mine.

The problem with cleaving is that you're bound to splinter the bones. I've bitten down on a fragment of rabbit bone in restaurants more than once. Taking the time to properly butcher the rabbit by cutting through the joints and not breaking the bones minimizes the chances of choking someone. It also shows that you care about your ingredients and take your job seriously. Anyways...

Below, from top left: hindlegs, caul fat, kidney, heart, liver, tenderloins, forelegs, loin with belly attached.

The meat was confited and pulled...

..then potted.

I hope that the lady who invented Raincoast Crisps has made her fortune, because imitations are now everywhere I look: supermarket shelves, online recipes, restaurant cheese plates, as well as my kitchen.

Raincoast Crisps are made by baking a loaf flavoured with dried fruit, nuts, and herbs, then thinly slicing that loaf and baking it for a second time to make crackers. Like I said, recipes abound online. This one is my favourite.

The finsihed plate: potted rabbit, dried fruit crackers, Sylvan Star smoked gouda, and Smoky Valley Valencay.

Salad

Quail eggs!

A very fatty slab of bacon

Young spinach (which costs a fortune at the market at this time of year, but can be got...), hard-boiled quail eggs, bacon, onion, and vinaigrette.

Smoked Ham with Scalloped Potatoes

Problems with Brine Penetration

Even working from Ruhlman's recipes for ham, I always (always!) have problems with brine penetration. With any ham larger than a hock, it seems that no matter how long I leave the meat in the brine, the brine can't reach the middle of the cut, closest to the bone. I might have to start injecting the brine deep into the meat...

Oatcake in Maple Syrup

This dish showcased this year's maple syrup. A simple oatcake was baked, then cut into squares and cooled. The baking dish was then filled with hot maple syrup, which the cake soaked up like a sponge. Essentially a lazy man's pouding chômeur (a lazy man's poor man's pudding?)

Served with ice cream.

Easter Sunday: Food as Symbol

2011-04-22T07:33:00.000-06:00

The food commonly eaten on Easter Sunday is rich in symbolism. The ingredients and dishes are rooted in two traditions: the Jewish Passover dinner, or Seder, and the pagan springtime festival of renewal and fertility. Easter food shows how these two traditions have combined to form our current concept of the holiday.

Bread and Wine

Growing up, Easter Sundays began with a church service that re-enacts the last supper of Christ, which was a Seder. The first “meal” that we ate on Easter Sunday was therefore a meager one: the sacrament of communion, an unleavened wafer and a sip of red wine.

It is said that when the pharaoh freed the Hebrews, they fled Egypt so abruptly that they didn’t have time to let their bread dough rise. To this day, for eight days at Passover, Jews abstain from leavened bread, in remembrance of the flight from Egypt.

Wine, too, has special significance at a Seder. In fact, several glasses of wine are poured during the meal, each representing a different stage of the Hebrew exodus.

At the last supper, Jesus created new meanings for these traditional foods.

Now as they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and when he had said the blessing he broke it and gave it to the disciples. “Take it and eat”; he said, “this is my body.”

Then he took a cup, and when he had returned thanks he gave it to them. “Drink all of you from this,” he said, “for this is my blood, the blood of the covenant…”.¹

Jesus used bread to symbolize his body, and wine to symbolize his blood. Together they symbolize his bodily sacrifice to atone for the sins of mankind. The taking of holy bread and wine has been the central sacrament of the Catholic faith for centuries. Eating the body and drinking the blood is a way for followers to renew and participate in that sacrifice.

Meat

Roasted lamb is another regular dish at Seders. It represents the sacrificial lambs killed before the tenth plague in the exodus story. The final plague that Yahweh sent to Egypt was a mist that killed the firstborn male of every house. Before the plague descended, Hebrew families were instructed to slaughter a lamb and spread some of the lamb’s blood onto the door of their home. This served as a signal for the plague to “pass over” the house.

Lamb later became a special symbol in the Christian faith, as “Lamb of God” was a common epithet for Christ. Roasted lamb continues to be the most common Easter meal in sheep-rearing regions like Greece and Provence.

Beyond the specific religious connotations of lamb, there is a general connection between newly born animals and spring. Animals, both wild and farmed, give birth in the spring so that the arrival of their children corresponds to the start of the growing season. Beyond lamb, all manner of young animals have come to represent spring generally, and Easter specifically. Suckling pig, for instance, is a common Easter dish in Lorraine.²

Rabbit is a symbol of spring for a different reason. With a long breeding season, a short gestation time, and large litters, rabbits have been pagan symbols of fertility since ancient times. They often feature in Easter meals, especially in Germanic nations.³ Rabbit is not a common meat in North American homes, but it appears on our Easter tables in a different form, namely chocolate bunnies.

Eggs

Eggs are an obvious symbol of birth and renewal, as they contain the beginnings of life. Before the advent of industrial agriculture, the first eggs of the season would have been laid around Easter, as hens stopped laying during the winter. Even if eggs could have somehow been coaxed out of chickens earlier in the year, they were forbidden during Lent through much of European history.

There are many elaborate Easter baking traditions involving eggs, notably from Mediterranean Europe, where Portuguese, Greek, and Italian bakers make rich loaves of bread with coloured, hard-boiled eggs baked into them. Often the colour of the eggs is important. Red, for instance, represents Christ’s blood.

A more modest version of this baking tradition is found in the hot cross bun. Made from rich, yeasted dough with plenty of eggs and milk, traditionally these buns were scored with a cross before baking. The cross has been deeply symbolic for thousands of years, representing infinity, rebirth, and the sun, so there was a tradition in Europe of scoring bread with a cross long before the birth of Christ.⁴ In fact the cross was a symbol of shame for early Christians, a reminder of Christ’s betrayal and death. Over time the cross has come to symbolize resurrection. Modern hot cross buns are usually drizzled with a cross of sweet sauce.

Hot cross buns as we know them originated in England, where street vendors sold them around Easter, singing:

Hot Cross Buns!

One a penny! Two a penny!

Hot Cross Buns!

This song is still commonly sung to children across the British commonwealth.

Eggs that don’t make their way into Easter breads are often used in crafts, like painted eggs. Eggs are either evacuated or hardboiled, then died or painted. Traditionally the colours were extracted from food: red from beets, and blue from cabbage, for example.

Despite these long and (ahem) colourful traditions, eggs increasingly only appear in one form: chocolate.

Vegetables

Another way that the Easter dinner table mimics the renewal in the field is in the use of vegetables. Spring provides fresh vegetables that haven't been seen in months. Early-rising plants, like chives, onions, and asparagus are common at Easter dinner.

Conclusion

Easter food represents the complex history of the Christian faith from its roots in Judaism, its gradual break from several Jewish practices, such as dietary laws, and the assumption of many pagan holidays and symbols. Easter food, from the communion wafer to the chocolate egg, represents the amalgamation of the Jewish and pagan cultures in the form of Christianity.

References

The Jerusalem Bible, Matthew 26:26-28
Larousse, p. 959.
Larousse, p. 442.
Duncan, p, 123.

Sources

Sap's Running

2011-04-04T11:00:00.005-06:00

Some time on or around Saturday, April 2, the sap in my maple tree started running.

Details on the harvest to follow, with much number-crunching. Some preliminary observations.

the sap runs during the day, not so much at night
right now I'm getting about 1.5L of sap per day
the sap looks pretty much like water
the specific gravity of the sap is 1.008 (small but detectable amounts of sugar)
the sap tastes every so slightly sweet, with some very pronounced flavours: woody, nutty, very "green"
I think I could drink a glass of the sap with breakfast every morning for the rest of my life

Once I have an appreciable amount, maybe 10L, I'll start boiling.

Button Soup St. Patrick's Day Dinner

2011-03-20T21:59:00.001-06:00

The Button Soup St. Patrick's Day Dinner was a North American-style observance of the holiday: a celebration of Irish heritage, generally, and not a commemoration of the saint. Even so, there were no cartoon leprechauns, no buckled top hats, and no green beer. Instead there were four courses based loosely on traditional Irish dishes, lots of alcohol, music, and some readings from Irish writers.

By chance, I was cooking four dishes that I have posted about in the past. Descriptions follow. All "Hipstamatic photos" are courtesy of Andy Grabia, a true son of Erin (his aversion to brawn notwithstanding). Thank you, again, Martin Kennedy, for playing host.

Brawn, Clover, Buttermilk

Brawn is the British word for headcheese, the preparation of which I wrote about here. In that post I mentioned that the brawn would look much, much better if the meat were first brined; it would be rosy pink, instead of questionable grey. This time around I did a proper brine of kosher salt, curing salt, and brown sugar.

I cut the jowl and tongue into tidy cubes that were white and red, respectively, while shredding the rest of the head meat. I enjoyed this incarnation of the headcheese much, much more than the last. Unfortunately the dish wasn't received enthusiastically. The modern eater has a serious problem with meat jelly.

The brawn was garnished with clover shoots. I thought serving clover on St. Paddy's day was a fantastic idea. Besides the obvious Irish connection, it seemed appropriate to serve sprouts at a time of year when we we're sprouting our seedlings indoors, waiting for the snow to melt (see left). Judy bought a bag of red clover from a seed vendor, who was mildly disgusted when she found out we were going to eat the sprouts ("Clover's cow food!"). The shoots are almost indistinguishable from alfalfa. They taste fine on their own, but honestly they didn't add much to the dish.

Sprouting is dead simple. Just soak the seeds in water overnight, then drain and rinse twice a day until they grow to the desired maturity. We kept our seeds in a glass jar with a nylon stocking stretched over the mouth. Water can be poured through the stocking to rinse the sprouts, then the glass can be inverted to drain the water away.

Headcheese is beautiful - visually and conceptually - and it pains me as a professional cook that I will probably never be able to prepare this to an appreciative audience.

The sauce was mayonnaise made with egg yolks and cold-pressed canola, thinned out with buttermilk for a bit of tang, and spiced with cayenne and mustard.

Potato Broth, Dumplings

I first wrote about potato broth here. The basic idea is to steep potato skins in vegetable broth to infuse the liquid with the distinct flavour of potatoes. This particular version didn't work out too well. The broth didn't take the flavour of the skins, possibly because I boiled the potatoes before peeling them, instead of roasting them as I did last time.

Black Pudding, Colcannon, Apples

Black Pudding is the British word for blood sausage, the preparation of which I wrote about here. In that post I mentioned that the filling didn't bind properly: the cooked sausages crumbled when sliced. This time I tried a recipe from the Au Pied de Cochon Cookbook. My only departure from Picard's recipe was using oat flour instead of chestnut flour. The major difference between this recipe and the last is the inclusion of a panada, which is bread soaked in milk. The final sausages held together beautifully, and were tender and smooth to boot. This is now my default blood sausage recipe. Thank you, Martin.

Colcannon is a mix of mashed potatoes and cabbage or kale. My colcannon is mashed potatoes heated in some of the brawn cooking liquid and butter, then mixed with shredded cabbage that has been braised in cider vinegar and bacon fat.

After the black pudding rounds were seared in a skillet, slices of Granny Smith were cooked in the same pan.

Whiskied Fruitcake, Hard Sauce

My computer is trying to tell me that "whisky" isn't a verb. How frustrating. I made fruitcake for the first time this past Christmas, and wrote about it here.

Fruitcake is a very common dish in Great Britain, even outside the Christmas season. This particular manifestation was made with orange peel, walnuts, and raisins. I soaked the baked cake in Jameson's. Though appropriate to the St. Paddy's Day theme, Irish whisky is much less aromatic than rum, and not great for flavouring baked goods.

The cake was dressed with a classic hard sauce: two parts icing sugar cooked out in one part butter, then finished with Jameson's and egg.

Other Notes from the Dinner: Alcohol and Literature

That's protestant whiskey!
-McNulty on Bushmills, in The Wire

As you might expect, alcohol played an important part in the dinner. I was thoroughly razzed for bringing Bushmills ("Protestant whiskey"), though it was appropriate to my Orange heritage.

There's a big difference between Scotch and Irish whiskey. The malted barley used in Scotch is dried over peat fires, and after fermenting, is twice distilled. Traditional Irish whiskey doesn't have any of the smoky, peaty notes of Scotch, and is thrice distilled for a smoother taste. Mel Priestley recently wrote a brief but informative article for Vue Weekly on the history of Irish whiskey. Thank you, Mel.

The real star of the show was Redbreast Irish whiskey. Very, very smooth. Heavy on the butterscotch. Delectable.

Obviously there was Guinness.

I can't imagine that Joyce was a willing celebrant of St. Patrick's Day, but he still made an appearance at our dinner.

Now, at the name of the fabulous artificer, he seemed to hear the noise of dim waves and to see a winged form flying above the waves and slowly climbing the air. What did it mean? Was it a quaint device opening a page of some medieval book of prophecies and symbols, a hawklike man flying sunward above the sea, a prophecy of the end he had been born to serve and had been following through the mists of childhood and boyhood, a symbol of the artist forging anew in his workshop out of the sluggish matter of the earth a new soaring impalpable imperishable being?

Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.

St. Patrick's Day

2011-03-17T07:07:00.000-06:00

I have only a tenuous claim to Irish ancestry. While I do have ancestors who lived in Ireland proper, they were Orangemen (Anglo-Saxon protestants, at left...) I don't think I have any Celtic blood in my veins.

St. Patrick's Day, now one of the kitschier holidays we celebrate, has been completely divorced from its origin. March 17 is actually the Catholic feast day for St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. The details of St. Patrick's life are often debated, but the popular traditions and stories are more important than the historical facts. It is the legend of St. Patrick that has informed the beliefs and practices of Catholics for more than a thousand years. The legend is truer than the truth.

Patrick was probably born in Scotland, but at a young age he was captured by pirates and sold into slavery to an Irish chieftain. He escaped, became a priest, and later returned to Ireland as a bishop. He is commonly said to have converted the Irish to Christianity. Though he no doubt won many converts, it is more likely that he was sent to maintain an existing Christian community.

Patrick explained the holy trinity to his followers using the three leaves of the shamrock, which also happened to be a sacred plant to the Druids. This is an example of Christianity adapting by blending with pagan culture (something we will discuss a lot more when we get to Easter...)

Patrick is also said to have banished all snakes from Ireland after they disturbed him during fasting and prayer. There is an old wives' tale that a snake will never slither over a trefoil (ie clover). I'm not sure whether this belief predates St. Patrick, and the snakes left Ireland because of the bounteous clover, or if they now avoid clover because it reminds them of St. Patrick. I've heard the story told both ways.

March 17 is the anniversary of Patrick's death.

Button Soup St. Patrick's Day Dinner

An old joke: I'm giving up drinking for Lent, and I'm giving up Lent for St. Patrick's Day

What is interesting about St. Patrick's Day, given our focus on feasting and fasting, is that it is often excused from the rigors of Lent. In all of Ireland and in most diocese in North America, St. Patrick's Day is formally exempt from Lent, and Catholics can indulge in meat and alcohol and dancing and all the other revelry normally forbidden at that time of year.

The March installment of the Button Soup Supper Club was an Irish dinner for the Feast of St. Patrick, graciously hosted by Martin Kennedy of the Garneau district. It featured some traditional Irish fare, with a special emphasis on breaking the Lenten fast for one night. Full recap to follow.

Button Soup St. Patrick's Day Dinner

Bill of Fare

Brawn, Clover, Buttermilk

Potato Broth, Dumplings

Black Pudding, Colcannon, Apples

Whiskied Fruitcake

Ash Wednesday

2011-03-14T07:35:00.001-06:00

As I mentioned in my description of Lent, a 1966 papal decree changed Catholic fasting practices, but when my mom was little Fridays were still fast days. Meat was forbidden, but fish was allowed. This why in 1963 McDonald's added the Filet O' Fish to their menu - so that Catholics could eat there seven days a week.^[1]

There aren't any McDonald's in Webbwood, Ontario, so in my mom's house, Friday dinner was always macaroni and cheese, usually with fish cakes. Her family observed these meatless Fridays for decades after 1966. In fact when I was growing up, I had macaroni and cheese for dinner every Friday. We also had this meal on Ash Wednesday. No food could be taken between meals. It's a modest concept of "fasting," but any form of self-denial is noteworthy in our society.

Restaurants are tapping into nostalgia with gourmet re-inventions of mac and cheese. In the last year I have eaten macaroni at The Sugar Bowl, Urban Diner, Hardware Grill (served with loin and belly of pork - a combination borrowed from The Fat Duck), Avenue Diner (in Calgary) and Farm (in Calgary). These versions were all made with a Mornay sauce: a bechamel (roux and milk) with cheese. Some were finished with truffle oil.

My mom's mac and cheese has three ingredients: parboiled macaroni, canned tomato juice, and grated cheddar are mixed in a casserole and baked in the oven until the juice has reduced to a sauce and the cheese has formed a crust on the top. Taken with black pepper.

Below is a picture of this year's Ash Wednesday dinner: macaroni in cheddar, with canned tomatoes (the last of last season!) and dried chiles.

1. The history of the Filet o' Fish is detailed in this article from USA Today

Pancake Tuesday

2011-03-13T07:29:00.000-06:00

The time before Lent has always been given to feasting and revelry. Variously celebrated as Carnival, Mardi Gras, and Shrovetide, it represents the last chance for Catholics to indulge in meat, alcohol, and other decadent foods until Easter. The festivities have given rise to several food traditions. Obviously meat and pastry are common, but since the celebrations often include a parade, many types of street food are made. Venetian fritoles (fritters) are an example.

For Canadian Catholics the day before the start of Lent is called Pancake Tuesday. While they are masquerading in Venice and dancing in Rio, we are sitting down with our families to have breakfast for dinner. Apparently the tradition started as a way to use up the butter and eggs in the house before Lent.^[1]

This year Pancake Tuesday was on March 8, which I think is the latest date at which it can possibly occur. Below is a picture of my pancake dinner from this year (shared with co-workers after a shift): cornmeal pancakes, smoked sausage, and apple slices, with butter and maple syrup.

Lent

2011-03-12T10:56:00.000-07:00

I've written a series of posts about the food that I cooked over the past couple months, a period I broadly refer to as the Easter season, though it also includes Lent and St. Patrick's Day. We'll start with Lent.

Lent: A Primer, for the Uninitiated

What is Lent?

Lent is the Christian season of repentance and self-denial preceding Easter. It is commonly said to represent the forty days and nights that Jesus spent fasting in the desert. Until the 1960s, the Catholic Church had strict laws about what food could be eaten during Lent: all animal products, whether meat, eggs, butter, or cream, were forbidden.

Historically, this "meatless fast" was observed not only during Lent, but on every Friday of the year. These fasts played an important role in European history. They were a major point of contention between Rome (where olive oil was common) and northern Europe (where animal fats like butter were common). During Lent, countries like Germany would have to buy huge amounts of olive oil from Italy. (It's not a coincidence that Germany and many other animal-fat-loving nations are now protestant.)

In medieval Europe there were ways around these fasts. The wealthy could buy dispensations from their local church, allowing them to eat animal products on fast days without divine consequence. The Church made a huge amount of money selling dispensations. The tallest tower of the Rouen Cathedral in Normandy (which was the tallest building in the world for a few years in the 19th century) is often called The Butter Tower, because its construction was paid for largely by the sale of such dispensations.^[1]

Fish is not considered meat in Catholic dietary law, and many a medieval European lived half his life on some form of gruel and salt cod.

Catholics continued to observe these laws until a papal decree in 1966 made Lenten fasting more or less optional. These days Catholics will voluntarily give something up for Lent, whether it be meat, alcohol, Jersey Shore, et c. When I was little we usually gave up candy, which made the chocolate eggs and bunnies of Easter morning all the sweeter.

When is Lent?

Let's work backwards. Easter is on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. This year the equinox (ie. first day of spring) was on March 20. The first full moon after that was Monday, April 18, so Easter was the following Sunday, April 24.

Look at a calendar. Starting at Easter Sunday, go back exactly one week: that is Palm Sunday, the start of Holy Week. Go forty days back from Palm Sunday and you should be on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent.

Lent corresponds to one of two seasons traditionally associated with famine: early spring, when winter stores are running low and spring crops haven't yet appeared.^[2] Easter, at the end of Lent, occurs during the greatest time of rebirth in plants and animals. (Maybe not so much in Edmonton, but definitely in places like Rome and Avignon...) The "spiritual seasons" of the Catholic Church mirror the natural seasons.

I have a special interest in this seasonality, because in our industrial food system there are no seasons, let alone seasons of scarcity. I have never in my entire life, for instance, been more than a few hours from my next meal. The only seasonality in the supermarket is in prices: you can buy strawberries in January, but it will cost $20 a pint.

Following are some posts about the food I cooked and ate during Lent.

References

On Curing Salts (and Fearmongering)

2011-03-06T22:38:00.002-07:00

Have you seen this commercial for McCain's frozen pizza?

"What do other companies put in their pizzas? Something called sodium nitrite..." Those last two words are pronounced with a blend of confusion and self-righteous disgust. The molecular diagram of the compound is flashed across the screen for further effect.

The food industry is quick to pick up on trends.

My generation was taught to read labels, and to mistrust "chemical" ingredients. However:

The resistance to... 'scientific' ingredients has always seemed to me misguided. In the objector's mind a line is drawn between science and cookery, which usually turns out to be entirely arbitrary. No one objects to table salt (sodium chloride) or table sugar (sucrose) in a recipe, but an ingredients list that includes fructose or sodium citrate is viewed by some with suspicion.^[1]

The Complete Skinny on Curing Salts

How salt preserves food

Imagine microbes within a piece of meat. When salt is first added to the meat, there is a relatively high concentration of salt outside the microbes, and a relatively low concentration inside. The cells of the microbes try to equalize the salt concentration on both sides of the cell membrane by expelling water and taking in salt. This ultimately either kills the cells or severely reduces their functionality. The meat itself also loses water and takes in salt, thus making it inhospitable to any microbes that show up later. That is how salt preserves food.

The difference between table salt and curing salt

Cured meats were once made with table salt, sodium chloride. This is the salt on your kitchen counter, and the salt you taste when you swim in the ocean. However, for hundreds of years we have known of other salts, naturally occurring in small quantities, that are even better at improving the flavour and storage-life of cured meats.

One such salt is potassium nitrate, or saltpeter, which is still used in Europe. In North America, potassium nitrate has been replaced by sodium nitrate, which was found to be more reliable.

The reasons why these nitrates are better than table salt at preserving meat are several and complex. Here's an example. Iron oxidizes fat, turning it rancid. When added to meat, nitrates form nitric oxide, which binds to iron atoms, preventing them from oxidizing the fat, and prolonging the storage-life of the meat.^[2]

The difference between sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite

While nitrates have been added to cured meats since at least the 17th century, in the 19th century it was discovered that salt-resistant bacteria in the meat convert the nitrates to nitrites, and that nitrites are actually the active curing agents.

Now sodium nitrite can be added directly to curing mixes. Meats that will be cured for only a short while (say, a few hours in a smokehouse), are treated with sodium nitrite. Meats that will be hung in a cellar for several weeks are treated with a blend of sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate, which is slowly converted to nitrite, thus protecting the meat for the entire curing process.

Retail forms and terminology

Here's where it gets really confusing.

You can't buy 100% sodium nitrite (unless you work at a pharmacy, maybe). It will always be cut with regular salt. In the US the most common form is a mixture of 93.75% sodium chloride, and 6.25% sodium nitrite. Brand names include Insta Cure #1 and Prague Powder. When buying from butcher suppliers in Edmonton, the most common mixtures are actually 95% sodium chloride, and 5% sodium nitrite, possibly with trace amounts of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), which is an anti-caking agent. The mixture will likely be called F.S. Cure, which is made by a company called First Spice, then packaged for the supplier that you are buying from.

In the US, curing salts are tinted pink so that they aren't confused with table salt. This gave rise to the terms "pink salt" and "tinted cure mix" (TCM) for sodium nitrite. For some reason, this precaution is not taken in Canada. The curing salts I buy are white as snow, though they are still sometimes called pink salt. It's commonly believed that the pink colour of cured meats is from the pink die in some curing salts. This isn't true: it has to do with the chemical reactions taking place in the meat.

In the US sodium nitrate is sold in a mixture of 92.75% sodium chloride, 6.25% sodium nitrite, and 1% sodium nitrate. It, too, is usually died pink in the US, but left white in Canada. The most common brand name is Insta Cure #2. From butcher suppliers around Edmonton you are more likely to be sold the F.S. Salami Cure, which can be used for all kinds of dry-curing, not just salami.

Health concerns

Curing salts have been demonized as a carcinogens. Here is a quote on the subject from the preeminent food scientist, Harold McGee.

...at present there's no clear evidence that the nitrites in cured meats increase the risk of developing cancer. Still, it's probably prudent to eat cured meats in moderation and cook them gently.^[3]

Conclusion

Curing salts are in fact what make traditionally cured meats safe to eat. The simple truth is that dried sausages like salami that will be hung in a cellar for several days or weeks must be treated with nitrite and nitrate.

To completely avoid curing salts is to avoid the unique flavours and textures of traditionally cured meats like salami and bresaola. As for the "nitrite-free pepperoni" on McCain pizzas: traditional pepperoni is dried, and therefore requires the addition of curing salts. If McCain pizzas have nitrite-free pepperoni, this means one of two things: either they are improperly curing their meat, or they are not drying their pepperoni. Obviously the latter is what is happening. I would argue that the sausage on their pizza cannot properly be called pepperoni, as it isn't dried. Too bad pepperoni isn't a protected designation.

References

1. This is Heston Blumenthal in the history section of The Fat Duck Cookbook. I wrote the quote on a scrap piece of paper, without the page number, and have since returned the book to the library. Bad journalism.
2. McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking. ©2004 Scribner, New York. Page 174.
3. Ibid. Page 125.