Pickle Soup

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.

1.  Pisetska Farley, Marta.  Festive Ukrainian Cooking.  ©1991 University of Toronto Press.  A very good read.

Ice Clarification of Stock

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.

Turkey Stock

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

1. Roast bones in a heavy pan at 350°F until thoroughly browned. Remove and set aside.
2. Roast the vegetables in rendered turkey fat until browned. Remove a reserve for later use.
3. Pour any excess fat from the pan.  Deglaze the pan with the dry cider and reduce au sec.
4. 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.
5. Add the roasted vegetables to the pot. Return the liquid to a boil and simmer gently for 2 hours.
6. Add the herbs and peppercorns.  Simmer gently for 15 minutes.
7. 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

1. Deglaze the roasting pan with the dry cider.  Reduce the cider to 1/4 its original volume.
2. In a separate pot, combine the fat and flour.  Cook out the flour for about 5 minutes.
3. 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...

Button Soup St. Patrick's Day Dinner

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.

Crisp Pig's Tail with Broth

A pig's tail is an extension of its spine: a sequence of small vertebrae, surrounded by meat, and fat, and skin. The tail meat itself is not so different than the meat from, say, the shoulder. You are, however, afforded the pleasure of gnawing the meat off the bones.

The tail is a surprisingly tough muscle that needs to be simmered for a few hours to become tender. This got me thinking about the broth that would result from the cooking process. It happens that my second favourite soup of all time is ham soup. When smoked ham hock is simmered with vegetables, the resulting liquid somehow takes on the flavour of the meat without any noticeable detraction from the flavour of the hock itself. The final soup is comforting, smoky, salty, savoury, perfect for cold weather, and a great example of the ingenuity inherent in so many simple, frugal dishes. I decided I would serve the tail-broth alongside the crisp tail.


The Process

As with heads, tails usually have some whiskers that need to be shaved or singed. You can see that my tails both had a small piece of the rump still attached. That meat was later used as a garnish for the broth.


With the ham hock soup in mind, I kept the tails in a standard brine (salt, brown sugar, curing salt, herbs) for about a week.


After brining, the tails were patted dry and left overnight in the fridge, uncovered, to dry out the surface. The next day they were hot-smoked, then simmered with vegetables, herbs, and, to add a little body to the finished stock, a couple of trotter bones.

Once the meat was tender, about three hours, the broth was strained and chilled so that the fat could be removed.

I pulled the chunks of rump meat from the tails, then cut the curly-queues into segments. Each tail was about nine inches long, so with six diners, everyone got a three inch piece.


We coated the tails with seasoned flour, egg wash, and bread crumbs.



Finally we fried the tails until brown and crisp. They were served with hot mustard. Brined, smoked pork, clinging to a bone: a bit like a ham lollipop.


The broth was reheated and simmered with a few sprigs of rosemary. Once thoroughly infused, it was poured over green lentils, vegetables, and some of the shredded rump.

The flavours were simple and direct: smoke, rosemary, and pork. A restorative broth to be sure.

Burns Supper - First Courses: Barley-Broth and Scots Rabbit

Some would think this is the inside of my compost bin, but it's actually the inside of my stockpot: roasted lamb bones and vegetables, as well as all the darkly caramelized bits scraped from the bottom of the roasting tray. These flavours formed the soul of the Burns Supper, as the resulting stock was used not only in the soup, but also in the haggis and the clapshot. They were the mellow, earthy foundation of the entire meal.

Making a pot of stock the night before a large meal has become a very fond tradition. The house fills with the aroma first of roasting bones, then of the simmering stock, while excitement for the coming meal slowly accrues.

Some specifics on the stock. First I roasted lamb bones from Four Whistle Farm. It's hard to come by good lamb femur bones, I think because of the popularity of leg roasts and shanks. A touch of tomato paste was smeared over the bones for the latter half of the roasting. Then onion, carrot, celery, and garlic were baked. The pans were deglazed with water, and bay and rosemary were added. Finally the whole lot was covered in cold water, brought to a simmer and left overnight.
 
 

Barley-Broth

Vegetable-wise the soup contained onions, kale, and carrots.

Pearled barley was cooked in a separate pot so that it wouldn't cloud the stock.

The final garnish was lamb neck. Neck is a variety-cut that sounds a lot grosser than it really is: the meat is indistinguishable from that of the shoulder. The necks were seared, braised in some of the lamb stock, cooled, shredded, and added to the soup.

Rabbit

This dish is most commonly called either "Welsh rarebit" or "Welsh rabbit." "Rabbit" is the original name, though no one knows the origin of the term. Some say it was originally derogatory, suggesting that if a Welshman went out to hunt rabbit, he would end up eating cheese for dinner.  The dish is currently experiencing a revival, and modern authors and cooks prefer to use the corruption "rarebit," as it avoids the obvious confusion with the hopping mammal.

At its heart, rabbit is hot cheese on toast. The best versions also include beer.I borrowed a technique from Fergus Henderson's book The Whole Beast. He makes a roux, then whisks his beer into it, creating what is essentially a beer velouté. The cheese is then melted into this sauce.

Besides serving Henderson's version of "Welsh" rabbit, made with Guinness and cheddar, I also developed a Scots version using Innis and Gunn and a mild gouda. If you are unfamiliar, Innis and Gunn is a Scottish beer that is aged in oak barrels, and is really one of the most remarkable beers I've ever tasted.

Scots Rabbit
Adapted from Fergus Henderson's recipe for Welsh Rarebit

• one tablespoon butter
• one tablespoon white flour
• one cup Innis and Gunn


• one pound mild Sylvan Star gouda, grated

Melt the butter in a saucepan. Add the flour, and cook until starting to colour. Whisk in the beer and bring to a simmer. Add the cheese. Stir the mixture until the cheese is thoroughly melted and a uniform sauce forms. Pour into a shallow dish and allow to set. This can be done the day before the meal.

To serve, spread onto pieces of toast and broil until the cheese browns.

The rabbit goes very well with a glass of the beer you used to prepare it. Actually it goes well with alcohol of any kind.

Cooking with Blood: Civet

This week I had the opportunity to cook with pig's blood. There's actually more classical applications for blood than you may think.

Fresh blood has a beautiful colour, similar to red wine, but with an opalescent sheen. When heated, the blood turns burgundy, then brown, and eventually black. It coagulates somewhere around 75°C, which makes it ideal for thickening liquids.


Civet: A Gateway Dish

If you're at all squeamish about cooking with blood, this is probably a good dish to start with.

The two things that make a civet a civet are: one, that game is marinated in wine which is later used to braise the meat; and two, that the braising liquid is thickened with blood and used as a sauce. In some cases this is the blood of the animal you are cooking. Collecting the blood of true game animals is difficult because of how they're killed, so pig's blood often stands in as a substitute.

In this case I had some stewing meat from a calf elk that Kevin hunted. Here's the basic procedure.

• Marinate the meat in red wine (I used a Syrah) with sliced onions, carrots, garlic, bay, and black pepper.
• Remove the meat and let it drip dry in a colander.
• Cook bacon in a braising pot. Remove and reserve.
  
• Brown the game meat in the bacon fat.
• Return the bacon to the pot. Pour the marinating liquid (with sliced vegetables and aromatics) over the meat. Scrap the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon to capture the delicious fond.
  
• Cover and simmer until meat is tender, maybe two hours. I also added some reconstituted dried morels partway through the braising.
  
• Separate the liquid from the meat and vegetables. Remove the bay leaf. Reduce the liquid to concentrate the flavours.
• Use maybe two tablespoons of blood per cup of braising liquid. Temper the blood, then add to liquid. Heat while stirring until the sauce thickens. Be careful not to bring the liquid to a boil, as the blood will curdle and ruin the smooth texture of the sauce.
• Pour the sauce over the meat and vegetables.
  

The purplish brown of the finished dish is from the wine, though the cooked blood happens to have a similar colour.

The blood adds a very pleasing mineral note that works well with the flavour of the meat.

It's also a dead-simple thickener to use. Even quicker than cornstarch or roux, as it doesn't need to be cooked out. It brought my braising liquid to a nappé consistency in a few moments.

I don't think I've used the word "nappé" on this blog before. Let me explain. "Nappé" (said "nap-EH") is one of the those fantastic French cooking words that doesn't have an acceptable substitute in English. Napper (also pronounced "nap-EH") is the infinitive form of a verb meaning to coat evenly with a thin layer of sauce. When thickening a sauce, the most common way to judge consistency is to simply dip a spoon in the pot, remove, and observe how the sauce clings to the back. In the early liquid stages the sauce will simply slide away, perhaps leaving a few streaks behind. Once the sauce has thickened, it will cleave to the spoon and leave a perfectly even coating. This is a nappé. You should be able to run your finger across this coating and leave a clearly defined streak.

Potatoes

Potatoes? You gotta be poor to eat potatoes. Real poor.

-Tuco Ramírez in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly


The importance of potatoes to my family was a slow revelation. I always knew from off-hand, quietly resentful remarks that when my parents were young they spent a lot of time tending to potato patches. Only recently did I fully understand the role potatoes played in their lives.

We usually consider bread to be the embodiment of simple, gratifying food. References to bread in European history, mythology, and religion are too numerous to count, but here are some highlights. Ample supplies of bread have often been the foundation of political stability. During the long period of decline, Roman emperors are said to have placated the masses with "bread and circuses," that is, by giving away bread and hosting spectacles like the gladiatorial fights. On the other hand, bread shortages incited riots during the French Revolution, which prompted Marie Antoinette's infamous proposal: "Let them eat cake". The Bible is replete with references to bread, where it is the main symbol of bodily nourishment. The two most notable references are in the Lord's prayer ("Give us this day our daily bread") and the breaking of bread during the last supper before Christ's death, which became the central sacrament of the Christian faith, in the form of communion.

Potatoes, being native to America, were unknown to Europe until the sixteenth century, weren't widely eaten there until the nineteenth century, and even then were considered peasant food. They don't have the benefit of biblical references, to say the least.

My parents grew up on farms in Ontario, and while they baked bread at home, potatoes were the staff of life. My mom ate potatoes twice a day almost every day of her childhood, usually fried potatoes with lunch and boiled potatoes with dinner.

Her family grew them in huge quantities to last the winter. They were stored in the cool basement in crates with three solid walls and a fourth wall made out of slats stacked and held in place by grooves. The potatoes were sprinkled with lime (the chemical, not the fruit) to prevent rot.

With this in mind, I have a dish to celebrate the potato: a dish befitting the nourishing, comforting, hearty character of the tuber. This ain't duchess potatoes or Vichysoisse. I'm talking about a potato broth with dumplings.


Potato Broth with Dumplings

Conversations about potato dishes usually focus on texture (the ideal French fry has a crisp exterior and fluffy interior, the ideal mashed potatoes are smooth but not gummy...) I love this broth because it makes you think about how potatoes taste. Potato skins are used to infuse a vegetable broth with potato flavour, without any of the thick starchiness we associate with potato soups.

Start with the dumplings. The key to pillow-like potato dumplings is to have as little moisture in the potatoes as possible. This way the milled potatoes will require less flour to form a dough, and there will be accordingly less gluten in the finished dumplings. Use low-moisture, starchy potatoes like russets.

Boil or bake the potatoes whole, with the skins on. Once they are cooked through and still hot, peel away the skins in large segments and mill the potatoes. Clouds of steam will escape in the process, ridding the flesh of excess moisture. Spread the milled potatoes on a sheet pan and cool thoroughly to let a maximum of moisture evaporate.

Lay your potato peels on a rack and dry thoroughly in a warm oven.


Once the potatoes have cooled, add flour and mix until a dough forms. To shape the dumplings, roll the dough flat, cut into strips, then cut the strips into rectangular pillows.






Now the broth. Make a simple vegetable broth by sweating onions, carrots, celery, and a touch(!) of tomato for colour and acidity. Add parsley, bay, and pepper. Cover with cold water and simmer for about an hour. Strain out the vegetables.

Add the crisp potato peels to the vegetable broth and simmer until you can taste the potato and the broth has reduced to a flavoursome concentration. Remove the peels before serving.

Austrian Dinner

But you know what the funniest thing about Europe is? It's the little differences. I mean, they got the same shit over there that we got here, but it's just there it's a little different.

-Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction


I am part of a culinary exchange between NAIT and a school in Semmering, Austria. This past month I hosted an Austrian student named Dominik, whom a lucky few met at Valerie's psychedelic taste-tripping party.

On Dominik's last full day in Canada, we coerced him and two of his Austrian colleagues, Mike and Lena, to cook us a classic Austrian dinner.


First Course: Frittatensuppe (Pancake Soup)

Domink requested that we make a good beef stock for the soup course. To make good stock you need good bones. A few vendors at the Strathcona market sell "soup bones," which I think are small sections of rib and chine. When I told the owner of Trowlesworthy Farms that I was interested in something more substantial, he opened a cooler containing whole femur bones, which he sells as dog bones. It just so happens that these shin bones, in particular the "knuckles" at the ends, are the best bones you can use for making stock, as they have a lot of cartilage that breaks down to form gelatin, giving the finished stock a rich mouthfeel. I asked if they could cut one of these bones, which are roughly two feet long, into three inch segments. They could. One shin bone, cut up, cost me about ten bucks.


When Dominik told me they were going to serve "pancake soup," I thought I had a good idea of what he meant. In culinary school we have to memorize a collection of classical French terms for garnishes. For instance, any dish with the words "Du Barry" in the description will feature cauliflower. Dishes described as "à l'égyptienne" will usually have rice, eggplant, and tomato. Consommé "célestine" is garnished with julienned crêpes. This is what I had in mind: a bowl of broth with a few delicate strands of crêpe.

I was wrong. We were served a heaping mound of sliced pancakes with a cup of steaming stock ladled over top. It was the most satisfying soup I have had in a very long time. I love sopping up the last bits of soups and stews with bread. In fact, I have eaten entire bowls of soup by soaking them up, teaspoon by teaspoon, with pieces of bread. This was like a fetish soup, that gratified my perverse reliance on starch to consume soup.



Etiquette sidebar: Lena scolded me for trying to drink wine during the soup course. Canadians are barbarous.


Second Course: Wiener Schnitzel

I just found out, this week, that "wiener" means "from Wien (Vienna)". Wiener Schnitzel is often made with pork, but sticklers for authenticity will demand veal.

Large cuts of veal never make it to the display case, but most grocery stores that sell fresh veal cutlets will have made those cutlets in-house, meaning that they will have some kind of veal hip on hand. We bought 2kg of inside round from Andy's Valleyview IGA for about $35/kg. I have no idea why veal is so much more expensive than beef.

Mike cut the round into slices about 3/8" thick, then pounded them a little flatter than 1/4". "Pounding" is a pretty misleading description of what Mike did. There was a pronounced horizontal aspect to his strokes, which stretched the meat without tearing it.

The schnitzel was dredged in flour, egg wash, bread crumbs, and then fried. The meat was very nearly submerged in the oil. Apparently Austrian restaurants cook their schnitzel in the deep-fryer, not a pan.

The veal was served with potato salad. Waxy potatoes were boiled whole, then peeled and mashed with grainy mustard, white vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper.





Dessert: Apfelstrudel (Apple Strudel)

Austrians love sweets.

North American cooks base a meal around the meat they will be serving. They say, "We're having steak for dinner", and they plan any vegetables, starches, and desserts around that meat. I once read that Austrians plan meals around the dessert. "We're having sachertorte for dinner", and they choose the meat and vegetables accordingly.

Strudel was another dish that I thought I understood quite well: puff pastry with a jam-like filling. Apparently that is a French-style strudel, a far cry from the Viennese strudel of Dominik's homeland. His was a long cylinder of apples, raisins, rum, sugar, and bread crumbs, rolled into pastry by an ingenious dish-towel method (see below). The log was then sliced and served with whipped cream.








A pot of coffee accompanied dessert. Austrians are prodigious drinkers of coffee.


Schnapps

When Dominik first came to our home about one month ago, he presented us with a bottle of apple schnapps. If anything I consumed during the night represents Vincent Vega's "little differences" speech, it is schnapps. Do we have schnapps in Canada? Of course. It's that 15% peach liqueur that sixteen year old girls drink. Dominik's schnapps, which was made by his neighbour in Schwarzau im Gebirge, smelled of apple orchards and burned like whisky.

We finished our evening under the lilac tree in our backyard. It was grey, chilly, and mosquito-ridden. We made a serious dent in the schnapps.

I hope Dominik remembers his time with us fondly. (I know Lisa and I will.)