Fall, Other Pastries, Pie and Pastry

Apple Strudel

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Apple strudel, fresh from the oven.The most common form of strudel in North America is puff pastry filled with sticky jam or compote, the final product very similar to a turnover or a chausson.

The original strudel, the Viennese strudel, is a different beast entirely.

Austrian strudel is made with a simple dough consisting of flour, salt, water, and vegetable oil.  High protein flour is used, and the dough is mixed extensively so that there is intensive gluten development.  This allows the baker to stretch the dough until it is so thin it is almost transparent.  The expression in Austrian kitchens is that the dough should be thin enough that you could hold the dough over a newspaper and read the text through the dough.  … Continue reading.

Fruit

Fried Apple Peels

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Fried apple skins tossed with sugar and salt.The only time you should ever peel apples is when you are going to cook them.  Once cooked apple skins are hard, like photography film, if you can remember what that tastes like.

The only time I peel and cook apples is when I’m making apple pie or apple sauce, which is only a few times a year.  Most of the apples that pass through our home are crushed and pressed whole to make cider.  In this process the skins are broken up very fine so that they lend some body and tannin to the drink.

What I mean to say is I don’t actually peel very many apples.  But when I do peel those very few apples it bothers … Continue reading.

General

On Cooking Resinous Herbs

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Last night I ate out at an Italian restaurant, one of them new-fangled Italian joints that have hardly any tomato sauce on the menu, and nary a checkered table-cloth or plastic grape vine in sight.  I had a bowl of squash tortelloni with brown butter and sage, a classic dish from the hallowed kitchens of Emilia-Romagna.  The sage was raw.

People usually freak out over raw chicken, not raw herbs, but eating those fuzzy, grey, acrid sage leaves was at least as unpleasant as contracting salmonella.

Chefs distinguish between fine herbs and resinous herbs.  Fine herbs are delicate and usually eaten raw.  Examples are basil, parsley, chervil, and tarragon.  Resinous herbs are more robust and are usually cooked.  Examples are … Continue reading.

Meat, Poultry

Chicken Stew

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chickent_stewUnlike beef stew, which I make from fresh cuts of beef, chicken stew is foremost a way of reclaiming and elevating leftover roast chicken.

There’s not much point in stewing chickens these days.  Old recipes like coq au vin are from a time when we actually let some of our birds grow old enough to be tough and require stewing to tenderize.  Basically all of the chickens that we eat now are less than two months old, so their meat is extremely tender.  Stewing these birds only dries them out.

However, if you happen to have leftover roast chicken, shredding the meat and coating it in the sauce of a stew returns some moisture and savour to the meat.

In … Continue reading.

Vegetables

How to Cut Bell Peppers

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For most applications the inside of a bell pepper, the pale membrane holding all the seeds, needs to be removed.  In my experience most home cooks do this by cutting the pepper in half, then scooping out the seeds with their fingers.  Frankly this is barbarous: it’s a slow, clumsy method that will always leave seeds behind.

Your knife is faster and more fastidious than your fingers.  Here’s a quick and thorough way to separate the core from the flesh.

How to Cut Bell Peppers

Cut the top and bottom off the pepper.

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Make a vertical cut through the wall of the pepper, then run your knife along the inside of the wall, like so:

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In this manner you can … Continue reading.

General

Herb Oil

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Tarragon oil floating on pear and parsnip soupHerb oil is a powerful tool to have in your culinary belt.

It is a fantastic way to preserve a glut of herbs, especially a glut of herbs that are past their prime, for instance basil that is starting to get moist and speckled.  This less-than-attractive basil still has loads of flavour.  And parts of the herb that are usually discarded, say the thick, woody stem of a basil plant, are also full of flavour, and make great herb oil.  Herb oil keeps for weeks in the fridge and months in the freezer, and if made properly it is a stunning, concentrated, lustrous, fluid version of the plant it is made from.

My herb oil process is ripped directly from … Continue reading.

Drink

Switchel – Old-Timey Drinking Vinegar

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And in my thirst they gave me vinegar

-Psalm 69:21

Switchel, old-timey drinking vinegar, make with apple cider vinegar, molasses, and gingerThis post is part of an ongoing fight against the tyranny of the lemon.

In the ancient world drinking vinegar was for the destitute and god-forsaken.  In fact, it was the last thing Christ drank before he gave up the ghost.

So it is interesting that in North America, before we had access to cheap lemons and limes, we made several thirst-quenching drinks with vinegar.  The most famous of these was probably switchel, a mixture of apple cider vinegar, molasses, and ginger, diluted with cold water.  Switchel was often given to farmhands during the hot harvest season.

I know drinking vinegar sounds really weird, but with balancing sweetness and … Continue reading.

Meat, Poultry

Chicken Wings

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Chicken wings straight out the fryer.Buying whole animals forces you to eat their various components in rigid proportion.

For instance, if you go out on a Wednesday and eat two dozen chicken wings, you have eaten the upper appendages of six chickens.  If you had to purchase those chickens as whole birds, you would then be stuck with a dozen breasts and a dozen legs that you would need to consume before you ever ate wings again.

All this to say I don’t prepare chicken wings at home very much.  But I love them, and sometimes I’ll squirrel away the wings from my chickens, accumulating them over several months, until I have enough to justify preparing them bar-style.

Anatomy of a Chicken Wing.  If … Continue reading.

Meat, Rabbit

Jackrabbits

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A hare hanging out in my backyard, waiting for my fruit shrubs to become vulnerable.I live in McKernan, a neighbourhood in south Edmonton.  Our most common fauna are magpies, sparrows, squirrels, and jackrabbits.  There are jackrabbits everywhere.

Specifically, these are white-tailed jackrabbits, which aren’t rabbits at all, but hares.  Hares are larger than rabbits.  They have longer hind legs, and longer ears with black markings.  Hares live above ground, while rabbits make burrows beneath.  Hares change colour with the seasons; rabbits don’t.  Male hares are called jacks, females jills, and babies leverets.

One last charming tidbit on jackrabbits: they are named because their long ears reminded someone of a jackass.

I learned all of that from this National Geographic post.

As far as I can tell, jackrabbits love neighbourhoods like McKernan and Garneau.  … Continue reading.

General

Stewed Rhubarb

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A ham sandwich with stewed rhubarbAt home I call this preparation stewed rhubarb, a name that has all the sex appeal of a cactus.  At work I call it rhubarb compote or jam to trick other people into eating it.  It’s not a compote because there aren’t any large pieces of fruit.  It’s not really a jam either, because it hasn’t been set with pectin.  It’s just stewed rhubarb.

Stewed rhubarb is rhubarb cooked with sugar.  It’s a preparation so basic that it doesn’t need a recipe, though as a ballpark ratio you can start with 2 parts chopped fresh rhubarb and 1 part white sugar by volume.

Cook this mixture over medium-high heat.  Soon liquid will pool on the bottom of the pan.  With … Continue reading.

The personal website of Edmonton chef Allan Suddaby