The Dog's Breakfast

gone fishing

2012-04-15T23:28:34Z

Seven years ago, we travelled to Thailand for the first time, and were dazzled by the dichotomy of what we found there. The sacred, ancient temples stood watch over the commercial tourist trade, and the smoke of incense and of burning garbage was everywhere in the air. I ate a meal of green curry on that trip that was so fiery hot that my mouth became anaesthetized, but I finished every delicious bite.

Silver-skinned snook. Also called Robalo in Portuguese.

Fast forward to 2012, and we are now off to Singapore, Indonesia, and a little bit more of Thailand. We missed seeing the Andaman coast on our first trip as we arrived the day after the tsunami hit. Our trip this year promises to be a real culinary journey. We will be hitting the hawker food stalls in Singapore that serve up some of the best food in that part of the world. We may even take in a cooking class in Bali.

And of course, we will be eating plenty of fish as we have as of late here at home. This whole roast fish treatment is very simple, and very tasty. Thank you to Donna Hay for suggesting lemon salt – a combination of fleur de sel and lemon zest. This goes great with oven roasted fries that we have made about a bazillion times since we first saw Ina Garten do them several years ago.

We promise to come back with plenty of interesting stories and photos. So stay tuned. We’ll be back in a few weeks.

Whole baked fish with lemon salt

serves 2

2 whole fish, scaled and cleaned, about 1.5 pounds each
3 large cloves of garlic, minced
4 tbsp. of butter, softened
2 tsp. lemon zest
1 tbsp. sea salt, preferably flake salt

Prepare the lemon salt by combining the zest and salt in a small bowl.

Combine the minced garlic and softened butter.

Using a sharp knife, make diagonal slits in the fish, cutting through the skin into the fillet.

Rub some of the butter on the outside of the fish and into the slits. Put the rest of the butter inside the fish.

Bake at 400°F for 30 – 35 minutes, or until the skin is crisp.

steak au poivre

2012-04-03T12:19:58Z

We finally went to Joe Beef last week. We’ve been hearing about it since it opened, but for us it was like the hot new tv show or blockbuster film that everyone is raving about: the raving is a big turnoff. But after reading the new Joe Beef cook book, which is basically an edible love letter to the city of Montréal, we were dying to go. We’re not particularly interested in the Joe Beef approach to cooking, but fascinated by how the book perfectly captures and communicates in plain English what’s often weakly described as our city’s joie de vivre, or uncertainly defined as a certain je ne sais quoi.

The experience of the restaurant delivered what the book so expertly decodes. It’s much more than the swagger of the menu or the poise of the wine list. I’d even say it doesn’t really matter what you eat there, because everything seems infused with the same sense of terroir, the same playful irony, and the same bacon. We enjoyed a complementary course of shaved ham (the whole ham, it seemed) and hot toast slathered with a gravy of foie gras. Just because we looked like a couple of hungry guys, I guess, or because the sommelier was touched by our enthusiasm for the wine she’d recommended. Maybe everyone was getting free ham that night. It wouldn’t be surprising.

Rob had a bisque and grilled rabbit with prunes, and I had Pojarski of sturgeon, with a sauce meurette (featuring fabulously cooked mushrooms that turned out to be snails), and then lobster spaghetti. Enough food to feed a small family for a week. Not surprising I guess, from a chef who likes to eat a dozen chops in one sitting.

We didn’t have beef, but this steak au poivre is a kind of homage to Joe Beef’s Montreal. We live in the neighbourhood where McMillan and Morin worked for so long before moving their act to lower town – a strip of St-Laurent Boulevard frequently called The Main, and sometimes called the spine of the city because of the role it has played in connecting Montreal’s many cultures. At the moment, it’s mainly supper clubs, pool rooms and tattoo parlours that seem to open one season and close the next, but there are also places that seem like they’ve been here forever, like the butcher shop Slovenia.

Slovenia butcher shop on historic St. Laurent Blvd.

Unless you know about Slovenia, it’s not the kind of place you’re likely to be drawn into, or even notice as you pass by. The sun has bleached all colour from the products in their window displays, and you can’t see in anyway, because the windows are completely fogged up by an ancient steam table by the front cash that keeps sausages hot for sandwiches. Once you’re inside, the tiny shop is impossible to navigate. I think the fridge where they hang the meat is larger than the store itself. In any case, we bought some beef tenderloin there once about 5 years ago and haven’t bought it anywhere else since.

This steak au poivre recipe has two major inspirations: Julia Child, from whom we enthusiastically borrow the idea of including red Szechuan pepper in the mix. The other inspiration is Ethné and Philippe de Vienne’s spectacular collection of peppers. We’ve experimented with a wide variety of the dozens they carry and are completely in love with both their early harvest green tribal pepper and their red Kampot pepper. Maybe you don’t need 5 of the world’s best peppers to make a good pepper steak, but here on the Main, this is how we like to do things.

steak au poivre

2 small, thick steaks (tenderloin and faux-filet work well)

1 tsp. grey salt or other coarse sea salt
2 tsp. wild Madagascar pepper
1 tsp. red Kampot pepper (or Tellicherry extra bold)
1 tsp. early harvest green pepper
½ tsp. white pepper
10 red Szechuan pepper berries
olive oil
about 2 tbsp. butter, separated
1 lg. shallot, minced
3 tbsp. Armagnac, Bourbon, Calvados, etc.
½ C demi-glace
scant half-teaspoon of finely chopped fresh thyme

Rub the steaks with the salt.

Grind the peppers together into a coarse powder and apply to all sides of the steaks. Let rest at room temperature for at least half an hour.

In a cast iron pan just large enough for the steaks, heat a thread of olive oil and a knob of butter over very high heat, until almost smoking. Reduce the heat to medium-high and sear the steaks 2-3 min. on each side, being careful not to overcook.

Turn off the heat and remove the steaks from the pan. If they are very thick, they may need to finish cooking in a hot oven. Otherwise, just let them rest.

Add another knob of butter to the pan and bring it to a bubbling foam over medium heat. When the foam subsides, add the minced shallot and cook, stirring occasionally, for about 2 minutes. Raise the heat to high and add the Armagnac. Allow it to boil for 20 seconds, or ignite it and allow the flames to die while shaking the pan very gently. Add the stock and reduce by about half while stirring – this will happen quite quickly. Turn off the heat and stir in a final knob of butter and the thyme. Do not re-boil the sauce or it will split. Check for seasoning and pour over the steaks.

Serve with a well-structured and tannic wine based on Cabernet Sauvignon, Sangiovese, or Nebbiolo.

fennel – straddling the seasons

2012-03-11T21:47:37Z

Today was one of those days in Montréal where the sunny side of the street is lined with armies of pedestrians drunk on sunshine, while the shady side is completely deserted and cold. Some people have front gardens that are already dry and waiting for spring rain, but most display a mix of snow and garbage, layered over the past season. The air smells wonderful, and the earth like rot. You’re cold one minute and hot the next. You have absolutely nothing to wear. You have no idea what to eat.

Enter fennel. It’s a perfect mid-season vegetable because you can a) always find good bulbs, b) feature it alone or in concert, and c) use it raw or cooked. One of our favourite ways to use this anise-flavoured bulb in the winter is to mix a whole head of butter-sweated fennel slices into mashed potatoes, along with a handful of toasted and cracked fennel seeds, and some roasted garlic.

We also love a very simple salad of shaved fennel, it’s a refreshing counterpoint to crisply roasted birds of all kinds, and we often have it with things that like coleslaw, like these fantastic ribs. It’s the very easiest thing: you shave a head of fennel and add lemon juice, lemon zest, olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste. The trick is the shaving – you need a mandoline that will give you translucent slices. Ours doesn’t go that thin, but we have a truffle shaver that does the trick. The salt and lemon juice soften the fennel into silky ribbons – just don’t let it sit too long, or it will get mushy. A large head will make side salads for 4-6 people.

We’ve also been roasting fennel, since Fine Cooking showed us how in last September’s issue. If you like the flavour of caramelized onions, you will love caramelized fennel. Again, this simple treatment is more of a technique than a recipe, so fool around with it. The basic treatment is to slice the bulb into quarters, and then slice each piece into four more quarters. You need to trim the base off first, but leave the core intact so the pieces don’t fall apart. Toss them with oil, salt and pepper and roast in a very hot oven (Fine Cooking recommends 500F, we use 425F convection roast) until golden, and crispy on the bottom. Scatter a half cup or so of Parmesan (or Asiago, or Pecorino) over the fennel and roast a few minutes more, until the cheese is bubbling, or until the smell of it is driving you mad.

untameable Vieques

2012-02-27T01:23:25Z

Zagat just named Vieques one of the world’s top food destinations. Situated 10 miles southeast of the Puerto Rican mainland, Vieques is Puerto Rico’s little sister – a largely undeveloped place with no traffic lights, a complex and fascinating history, some of the Caribbean’s most spectacular beaches, and a food scene that would make Anthony Bourdain wet his pants. (See Big Papa’s roast pig with Creole spices below.)

Screaming hot peppers at the market and wild chickens everywhere. Welcome to Vieques.

We’ve been guests of the island three times over the past 5 years, and were amazed during a recent visit to see how the local food scene is blossoming in response to the steady increase in tourism. (The W opened a hotel here two years ago, on coastal property next to what the locals call Gringo Beach.) There are only ten thousand people living here, and most of them are employed by the island itself, through a conservation project headed by the US Navy.

Sol Food is a great place to pick up lunch for the beach.

Claimed by Spain shortly after Columbus’ 1492 voyage, the island was also an object of conquest for the French, English, Danish, and Scots. During WWII, the US designated Vieques a naval reserve, with plans to harbour the British fleet there had England fallen to the Third Reich. But for three centuries the island was also a lawless outpost, and somehow Vieques retains the indomitable spirit of the swaggering pirate. The people of Vieques pushed the US Navy out for good in 2003, and the island is returning once again to its naturally rugged state.

Our favourite: Red Beach.

There is fierce pride in the island’s idiosyncrasies: its feral horses and weekly cockfights, a bio-luminescent bay, and enough archaeology to qualify the entire island as a museum. (The ruins of the 19th century sugar refinery and the abandoned military bunkers will throw you into a dramatically ‘LOST’ frame of mind.)

Ruins of a sugar refinery built in the 1830's.

Cooking on the island, it follows, is also flavoured by a delicious sense of discovery and adventure. Our favourite place to forage is ‘The Vegetable Truck’ – an enormous refrigerated roadside trailer full of some of the things you came for, and lots more that you didn’t. We found limes the size of grapefruits one evening. They also sell tires and car batteries, and I think lottery tickets. Shopping for dinner is huge fun, because so you always arrive home with a real wild card. There’s also a little vegetable market that goes up a couple of times a week. Here there are things imported for the island’s expats – shitakes, baby greens, basil, along with local things we just couldn’t put our finger on – dried gooseberries? Baby jicama?

Thursday mornings, Big Papa roasts a pig in the island’s northern town, on a main road that’s also dotted with lunch counters and bakeries that seem glamorously stranded in the 1950s. On the South shore, there’s a strip of low-key, bar-and-grill-type shacks that serve barefoot food with tropical hospitality. On your way to the beach, you’ll find someone, in some beatific little truck, that’s got your lunch fixed right. There are also a small handful of fine restaurants on the island whose sophistication and creativity suggest that Vieques may soon produce a celebrity chef, or constellate 3 Michelin stars.

Big Papa roasts a pig in downtown Isabel Segunda.

We hear the W on Vieques makes a terrific gin and tonic (for $15 USD), and that the locals all took gleeful advantage of the hotel’s Thanksgiving misprint: $80 for a 12-person turkey dinner, delivered anywhere. (It was supposed to read $180.) We prefer to mix fresh piña coladas and pick limes off the tree at Cacimar House, where there’s also a kitchen equipped to turn the day’s discoveries into dinner, and a pool for midnight dips to soothe our sunburns.

Fabulous Cacimar House - www.islandcharm.net

As the sun sets over a nearby hill, Venus and Jupiter appear on cue for cocktails. The cicadas and frogs provide perfect dinner music, and every morning is greeted by a symphonic competition of roosters and dogs. A luxuriously wild place, Vieques. Just the way we like it.

asian-style noodle soup

2012-02-03T01:36:52Z

Our new favourite thing: a one-bowl meal that’s crazy-good, dead easy, and guaranteed to get you glowing, no matter how cold it is outside. While probably not authentically anything in terms of style, it’s genuinely restorative, with a strong, distinct yang character that warms the heart of winter’s deep yin.

chicken-tamari-ginger-garlic broth - umami, or ooh mommy?

This soup is one of several brilliant permutations suggested by the Japanese Noodle Soup recipe from Cook’s Illustrated. We’ve done this with seared beef tenderloin, sliced into silky pink ribbons, and five-spice duck breast, which lends dark fragrance and depth to the broth. But we like this best as chicken noodle soup. It’s clean, but rich. Comforting, but sophisticated. With something this simple, it’s not just quality of ingredients that’s key – you also have to have a quality approach.

To begin with, if you don’t already, please make your own chicken stock. We do the simplest stock possible: 5 pounds of raw carcasses with 8 quarts of water and 3 tablespoons of fine sea salt. Include 4 necks and 2 or 3 chicken feet if you can find them, they add luscious velvet to the stock. Boil, skim, and reduce to the barest simmer for 4 to 5 hours, longer if you like a stronger stock. What, no onions, carrots, celery, peppercorns, parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme? No. Just bones and salt. And just wait for it.

It may seem expedient to cook the noodles and chicken in the broth (and you can, if you’re sick, or having a bad sugar crash), but the elegance and purity of this dish really emerge from a more mindful arrangement of ingredients prepared separately. Individually. If you cook the noodles in the soup, their starch will cloud the broth and make it sticky. Cooking raw meat in the broth is not as detrimental, but searing it will develop better flavour, and a more tender texture.

You get the picture. It’s a bit Zen, the whole process, with meditative insight on Ways of Slicing Green Onion, and a perfectly circular sprinkle of sesame seeds. I’m joking, but not really. Sometimes preparing a dish can be as nourishing as eating it.

Asian-style noodle soup (slightly adapted from Cook’s Illustrated)

3 quarts chicken stock
1 head of garlic
a 4-inch piece of ginger
1/3 C tamari (or soy sauce)
1 tbsp. sugar
8 oz. soba noodles
1 lb. chicken scallopini
3 green onions
black sesame seeds
clilantro sprigs
sesame oil

Bring the stock to a boil, then reduce the heat to a low simmer. Separate the head of garlic into cloves and slice the ginger into thin rounds. Using a mallet or rolling pin (etc.), bruise and somewhat flatten the unpeeled garlic cloves and unpeeled ginger rounds. Add them to the simmering stock with the tamari and sugar, and steep with a lid on for half an hour. Remove the garlic and ginger from the stock with a slotted spoon.

Meanwhile, cook the noodles and rinse them well under cold water.

Slice the onions.

Season the scallopini and sear them 2 minutes on each side, or until just barely cooked through. (The hot soup will finish them off.) Let them rest a minute, then slice against the grain into thin bite-size strips. Add any juice to the broth.

Arrange the noodles in bowls, and add hot broth. Garnish with sliced green onions, cilantro, drops of sesame oil, and sesame seeds.

VARIATIONS:

- turkey scallopini, beef or pork tenderloin, shrimp, tofu
- baby spinach, watercress, tatsoi, mizuna
- udon noodles, rice noodles, ramen noodles
- bean sprouts, toasted nori flakes, kombu, mushrooms

lemon lime pickle

2012-01-22T21:53:34Z

A food-minded friend and neighbour introduced us to home-made lime pickle a couple of years ago. We had a great time shopping for the ingredients at a local Indian specialty food store that stocks such rare treats as fresh kaffir lime and bitter gourd. And the recipe we used was a real winner: it took first prize in the Housewives/Amateurs section of the All-India Citrus Fruit Exhibition in 1957.

The recipe is published in a wonderful old collection called Mrs. Balbir Singh’s Indian Cookery. The book has enjoyed 13 printings. For this year’s new batch, we dared to make a few changes – mostly because we wanted to include some of our preserved lemons, which change the pickle’s flavour quite a bit.

We also used less oil and lime juice, because we wanted a denser condiment with less liquid, and also added extra mustard seeds for more crunch. The resulting pickle has fantastic balance (although being a pickle it is rather salty), and the inclusion of lemons gives it a surprising lightness and a very clean flavour. If you really love the one-two punch of lime that lime pickle usually delivers, leave the lemons out.

Lemon lime pickle
(loosely based on a 1957 recipe from Balbir Singh’s Indian Cookery)

5 preserved limes
3 preserved lemons
1 1/2 C mustard oil
2 tsp. powdered chile
1/3 C brown mustard seeds
1 C ginger cut into small matchsticks
20 small dried red chiles
15 small fresh green chiles
the juice of 4 limes
6 tsp. fenugreek seeds
1/4 C coarse salt

Cut the citrus into 1/2-inch pieces, and juice the limes. Toast the fenugreek in a hot skillet, then coarsely grind. Slice or finely chop the green chiles, seeds and all. Peel the ginger and slice it into small matchsticks. Gather all your ingredients close to the stove.

Heat the oil in a deep pot, “until a blue haze appears”. (We saw a distinct blue ring appear around the oil’s edge after several minutes of heating, but were also afraid it was about to burst into flames. If you’re afraid to go this far, just get it really hot.)

Off the heat, add the powdered chile and mustard seeds. The oil will foam. When it subsides, and after the seeds have toasted for a few seconds, quickly add the remaining ingredients to prevent the seeds from scorching. Cook over medium-low heat for about 10 minutes, or until the citrus has softened somewhat. Store refrigerated, in airtight jars.

springerle cookies: lasting impressions

2012-01-15T22:29:47Z

Just before Christmas, I stumbled across a Springerle cookie recipe, and was immediately drawn to this fascinating and intricate edible art. Using a mould or rolling pin, these edible confections have been made for hundreds of years and have a fascinating history. Historians have traced the origin of Springerle cookies back to an pagan German festival called Julfest, celebrated in midwinter. Part of the festival included sacrificing animals to the gods in the hope of a short winter and early spring. Those who could not afford to do so gave tokens in the forms of breads and cookies shaped like animals. The tradition survived over time and Springerle cookies are often seen at Christmas time.

Anise oil gives these cookies incredible flavour.

The variety of stories you can find depicted in Springerle moulds is truly fascinating. Dating back as far as the 14th century, you can see family histories, biblical scenes, stories from daily life as well as holidays like Christmas. By the 18th and 19th centuries, these cookies were used as birth and wedding announcements, to mark important holidays, to send messages of love, and even depicted news of the day and political satire.

This historical Springerle carving shows Bishops suggestive of Saint Nicholas using a donkey to carry apples that were given out to children (the jester). Source: cookiemolds.wordpress.com

The "Show Stopper" rolling pin from House on the Hill.

A couple things to note here for best results. If you can get your hands on baker’s ammonia, (baking powder will work if you can’t), it will help give you a more defined cookie impression and will also help make very light cookies. I used cake flour and baker’s ammonia, and was surprised at the amazingly light texture of the cookie.

Another trick is to make sure that the dough is of a very even thickness before pressing the mould onto the dough. When making the impression, you need very even pressure, and a steady speed of motion as you roll. House on the Hill has a great primer video for these cookies.

House on The Hill is a great resource for Springerle moulds or rolling pins, and they carry everything else you need to make these cookies. They are actually quite simple to make, it just takes a careful hand and a little practice. Not only are these cookies incredibly beautiful, they are like a delicious piece of history, just waiting to be eaten.

Perfection Springerle Cookies

from House on the Hill

1/2 teaspoon baker’s ammonia (Hartshorn) or baking powder
2 tablespoons milk
6 large eggs, room temperature
6 cups powdered sugar (1 – 1 1/2 #)
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened but not melted
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon of anise (if substituting fruit flavored oils, use 3 teaspoons)
2 lb. box sifted cake flour (Swansdown or Softasilk)
grated rind of orange or lemon – optional (enhances flavor of the traditional anise or the citrus flavors)
more flour as needed

Dissolve hartshorn in milk and set aside. Beat eggs till thick and lemon-colored (10-20 minutes). Slowly beat in the powdered sugar, then the softened butter. Add the hartshorn and milk, salt, preferred flavoring, and grated rind of lemon or orange, if desired. Gradually beat in as much flour as you can with the mixer, then stir in the remainder of the 2 lbs. of flour to make stiff dough. Turn onto floured surface and knead in enough flour to make a good print without sticking. Follow general directions for imprinting and drying cookies.

Bake on greased or baker’s parchment-lined cookie sheets at 255° to 325° till barely golden on the bottom, 10-15 minutes or more, depending on size of cookie.

Store in airtight containers or in zipper bags in the freezer. They keep for months, and improve with age. Yield 3 to 12 dozen.

chicken liver mousse with Gaziantep pistachios

2012-01-08T22:29:33Z

We recently discovered a butcher who made our spirits bright over the holidays with such delectables as dindonneau (young turkey), and confit of goose drumsticks. A few weeks ago we noticed they had goose and pheasant livers in stock, which gave us the idea to try a mousse de foie de volaille. Of course when we went back to get them, all the exotic livers had been snatched up.

One thing we really should know by now is when you see something like wild game livers, you grab them, before someone else does. You don’t say – they’re not on the list, or, I didn’t plan to make paté tomorrow. You seize the opportunity. On the other hand, you have to exercise a certain discipline, or else you come home with things that are just going spoil. We’re constantly throwing out green chiles, for example, because they seem so rare to us, and look so cute in their little green grocer’s package. One will get used in scrambled eggs and the other 39 will turn into mush in the crisper, beside some slippery cilantro.

I’m sure you understand. And in any case, there’s nothing wrong with good chicken livers. This is the second time we’ve made this mousse, and it seems the only real trick is deciding how hot and how long to cook the livers. The first time around, we left them rather pink, which gave the final mousse a wonderful colour, but something of a raw finish. On the second attempt, we treated the livers more like meat – searing them for flavour and poking to make sure they were springy and done. The browning made the mousse taste a little too meaty. It’s a delicate balance. We’ll split the difference next time, colouring them only very slightly on the outside, and letting the inside cook to a pale (not bright) pink.

What’s so wonderful about a simple liver mousse is how easy it is to accessorize. You can make a crust of cracked black pepper and serve with hot Polish mustard. You can load it with your favourite herb. Here we added pistachios to the mousse and on top as well. We used Turkish nuts from Gaziantep, and they taste as intensely of pistachio as their emerald colour suggests. Good with a Port jelly, but great with the home-made pepper jelly we were lucky enough to get for Christmas.

Chicken liver mousse (slightly adapted from Julia Child)

NOTES: Some butchers sell livers and hearts together, if this is the case, you will need a little more to make a pound of livers alone. You can omit the pistachios if you like. Give the liver trimmings to your dog and he will love you forever.

1 lb. chicken livers
2 tbsp. chopped shallot
1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
2 tbsp. butter, plus 1/2 C melted butter
1/3 C Cognac, Armagnac, Madeira, Port, etc.
1/4 C whipping cream
1/4 C shelled pistachios, plus 2 tbsp. chopped pistachios
1/2 tsp. salt
pinch of dried thyme

1. Trim the livers well, removing any fat, large veins, or discoloured parts. Slice them into equal-sized pieces, about one inch square.

2. Sauté the liver and shallot with the black pepper in butter over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until slightly coloured on the outside, and cooked to a uniform, pale pink on the inside.

3. Scrape the liver and shallot mixture into a blender jar. Deglaze the pan with the cognac (or whatever), reduce slightly, and pour this liquid into the blender jar.

4. To the blender jar, add the cream, whole shelled pistachios, salt and thyme. Blend to a smooth paste. Add the melted butter and blend again.

5. Using a wooden spoon or spatula, force the mixture through a seive. Pour into a mould or ramekins, and top with the chopped nuts.

figgy toffee pudding

2011-12-31T02:04:21Z

It has been a busy and eventful year full of discoveries, adventures, lessons learned, time spent waiting and time spent catching up. It was also a year where we took a break from the blog, and late in the year, returned to it with fresh eyes and a slightly different approach.

We are now approaching this blog as a place to explore and discover new foods, ingredients, and ways of cooking and enjoying what we eat. Rather than the eternal search for the prefect plated shot of chocolate cake, we’re taking a more elemental approach to food and finding the various secrets new ingredients can yield. Or finding new ways of using ingredients we have already come to know.

Case in point: figs. A new use of figs around the holidays that we had never tried before was the classic English figgy pudding – something that was not really a part of my childhood despite my grandfather having emigrated to Canada from England. Add a little toffee sauce and – shazam – you’ve got a Christmas classic.

Looking back at the year, one of the big lessons learned has the art of simplicity. Rather than over-doing it, over-reaching and trying too hard, sometimes the answer lies in knowing just when to pare back, when to use three or four ingredients rather than a dozen. Chopin said “Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.”

So we would like to wish thanks our readers for following us on our culinary journey of discovery, and wish you all a happy, healthy, and simply delicious 2012.

Figgy Toffee Pudding
From “Forgotten Skills of Cooking” by Darina Allen

Serves 8 – 10

8 oz chopped dried figs
½ pint tea (optionally: hot water)
1 stick unsalted butter
¾ cup fine sugar
3 organic eggs
2 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon espresso coffee (optional)

For the hot toffee sauce

1 stick butter
1 ¼ cup sugar
10 oz corn syrup
1 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla

8 inch springform pan, or 8 ramekins

Preheat the oven to 350^oF. Brush the cake pan with oil and line the pan with oiled parchment. Soak the figs in hot tea for 15 minutes.

Whip the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then fold in the sifted flour. Add the baking soda and baking powder, vanilla and coffee to the figs and tea and stir into this mixture. Turn into the lined pan and cook for 1 to 1 ½ hours or until a wooden skewer comes out clean.

To make the sauce, put the butter, sugar and syrup in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and melt gently over low heat. Simmer for about 5 minutes, remove from the heat, and gradually stir in the cream and vanilla. Return to the heat and stir for 2-3 minutes until the sauce is very smooth.

To serve, pour some sauce on the plate, put the figgy pudding on top and pour on more sauce. Serve with whipped cream.

roasted figs

2011-12-25T00:42:48Z

Here is an ace up your sleeve for the holidays. This uber-simple Martha Stewart recipe is more of a technique or treatment: you take dried figs, toss them in honey and olive oil, and roast them with a little salt. Sound interesting? Wait until you see what happens to them in the oven.

Dried black Mission figs. Spooky, and reminiscent of black pearls.

The heat of roasting brings the dried figs back to life. Some of them will puff up to form almost perfect globes. The honey and oil mixture gives them a thick, shiny gloss that hardens slightly as the figs cool. They come out of the oven looking like something you want to put on a Christmas tree.

On top, the unroasted figs; the roasted ones below. We included some miniature Shiraz figs, and sprinkled them all with a little gold leaf when they came out of the oven.

We like to put these little jewels on a cheese board after a festive dinner, alongside our favourite nuts and some good dark chocolate. They’re especially good while they’re still hot.

Honey-roasted salted figs

Martha Stewart

1/4 C olive oil
1/4 C honey
10 oz. dried Turkish figs
10 oz. dried Black Mission figs
1/2 tsp. coarse salt

NOTE: You don’t need Mission figs to make this. Flake salt and fleur de sel work really well here, they look like a fine dusting of snow.

Combine the oil and honey in a large bowl, and toss the figs in the mixture. Spread them on an oiled sheet, sprinkle with the salt, and roast for 12-17 minutes at 400F, giving the pan a hard shake after about 8 minutes. You know they’re done when they’re puffed and roasted looking. You can let them go quite dark, but be careful not to burn the sugars. If you’re not serving them right away, be sure to loosen them from the pan when they come out of the oven, and again after a few minutes of resting.