26 June 2008

As promised!

There are several things about this recipe that I love.
  1. It's not that hard!
  2. It makes quite an impact
  3. It uses a big cast iron pan, and that's just fun
  4. It's highly adaptable to other ingreediments
  5. You can eat the dough. Not too much or you'll be ill.
But there are a lot of people out there with a fear of yeasty dough. To them I say Get Over It. Quicker than two shakes of a lamb's tail you'll be whipping up cinnamon buns and brioche and hot cross buns - just try it! I'll add a simple no-knead dough soon, my friend Erin passed it on to me and it's really good. But for now, give this a try and wing it for the fillings - it's all good!

Thomas Keller’s Vegetable Spoonbread in Brioche Crust

Time: 4 hours advance prep
Serves: 6 – 8

Brioche dough
3 sticks cold unsalted butter (3/4 pound) cut into tablespoons
¼ oz envelope of active dry yeast
½ cup whole milk, warmed
4 whole eggs plus 2 egg yolks, room temperature
4 cups all purpose flour, sifted
¼ cup sugar
1 teaspoon sea salt

Vegetable filling
3 tbsp olive oil
1 fennel bulb, cored and thinly sliced
1 small Savoy cabbage, cored and thinly sliced
2 zucchini, cut into ¼ inch rounds
3 carrots, peeled and finely diced
1 medium onion, peeled and thinly sliced
1 stalk celery, peeled and finely diced
1 leek, sliced into ¼ inch rounds, soaked in water and thoroughly rinsed
3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
2 red peppers, seeded and finely diced
1 cup chicken stock
½ cup dry white wine
1 bouquet garni (1 bay leaf, 4 sprigs parsley, 2 sprigs thyme tied in a cheesecloth)
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
2 tbsp unsalted butter
2 cups assorted mushrooms, cleaned and finely chopped

Topping
½ cup grated ricotta salata cheese
¼ cup finely chopped fresh herbs (sage, rosemary, oregano & thyme)

Make the Brioche dough
1. Place the butter in between 2 sheets of plastic wrap and gently tap with a rolling pin to make pliable. Reserve at room temperature
2. Stir the yeast into the warm milk until thoroughly dissolved. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs and the yolks and then mix into the yeast mixture
3. Using an electric mixer, combine the flour, sugar and salt. Add the egg mix to the dry ingredients and combine thoroughly on low speed. Add the butter 2 tablespoons at a time mixing well after each addition until all the butter is incorporated. The dough should be fairly stiff with no crumbs present – if there are any, add a few drops of milk to absorb them. Do not over beat
4. Remove the dough from the bowl and place on a lightly floured surface. Knead a few times by hand to make sure the butter is thoroughly incorporated. Put the dough in a large buttered bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Set aside in a warm spot for 3 hours or until doubled in bulk. Punch down the dough and refrigerate until ready for use

Make the Vegetable filling
1. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet. Add the fennel, cabbage, celery, zucchini, carrots, onion, leek and garlic and cook over medium-high heat until soft – about 5 minutes. Add the red peppers, stock and wine and bring to a simmer. Add the bouquet garni, salt and pepper and simmer until the vegetables are soft and the liquid has almost evaporated, 15 – 20 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool
2. In a large skillet, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the mushrooms and a little salt and cooked until nicely browned. Add the mushrooms to the other vegetables and mix – season with a little salt and pepper

Assemble the Spoonbread
1. Preheat the oven to 325. Remove the dough from the fridge and punch down. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the brioche dough into a 13 inch round using as little flour as possible. Refrigerate the round for ½ hour
2. Coat a 9 inch skillet with vegetable oil or cooking spray. Remove the dough from the fridge and press it firmly into the bottom and sides of the pan. Add the filling. The dough should peek over the top of the filling. Fold the edges of dough over the vegetables
3. Place the spoonbread into the preheated oven and bake until golden brown, 30 – 35 minutes. Sprinkle the ricotta evenly over the surface and then layer with the fresh herbs and serve

25 June 2008

Regional, Seasonal & Organic

One of the things that I've always loved about food is regionalism. Food local to the area, grown in season. On my (infrequent) visits home to the Okanagan, I seek out the fruit in season, grab some saskatoon berries, eat sour cherries and drink Okanagan wines. In the Kootenays (Christina Lake) I go for Doukhobor food and kokanee (the fish, I'm not a fan of the beer). And here in Ontario I'm finally getting in tune to the rhythms of the growing cycle, looking forward to things as they hit the markets. I can still list the order of ripening fruits from my childhood, oddly enough. Perhaps because I would eat myself sick on them...

There are some great books out right now talking about living with a 100 mile diet (I'll list them later), only consuming that which was grown/raised/made within a 100 mile radius of the home. That philosophy takes us back a few centuries to a time where so much more of what we consumed was in our control. Not to mention that the distance between the consumed and consumer was much smaller - there are kids out there that don't equate cattle and beef, and lose their gourd if you were to point out that Charlotte (of Web fame) is actually BACON. Never mind how few people would be willing to hunt/kill/dress their meat, even if they had to. We'd see a LOT more vegetarians, that's for sure. But I digress - back to regional consumption!

I've worked with food a long time, and have been eating it even longer. I'm pretty aware of what I'm shoving into the bod, I've been in a slaughterhouse and had (very) fresh meat, I've chopped off a chicken head, gutted a fish and had plenty of game (I got game! Sorry, bad pun). I think I'm pretty up to speed on the current food chain in terms of health risks, environmental/social/global impact and sustainability. But reading An Omnivore's Dilemma (among others) scared the pants off of me. I think parents today must be freaking the heck out about what they're feeding their kids. Or at least I kindasorta hope they are.

The city of Toronto has a ton of local farmer's markets - there's one in my hood Thursdays in the evening. There are carbon credits, local organics, free-range hormone-free animal husbandry farms where you can buy into a side of beef with some friends, lists of non-endangered fish you can order instead of sea bass, etc. Wired magazine has a great article out right now on environmentalism and how much of what we think is saving the earth is actually creating a larger footprint.

There are benefits galore to eating locally raised foods in season. No diatribe/polemic here - do what you like and eat what you want, I'm not trying to convert anyone. I'm a crappy eater who defaults to cake and bacon, often together! But I'm trying (hard) to eat more sensibly whenever possible, and there's lots of ways to make changes. Do what you like, but be conscious of your choices.

Long story short, this all started in my head because I was telling the Beau about Thomas Keller's incredible spoonbread. The first time I made it was for my friends Andrea and Sarah, we couldn't stop eating it. The base is a brioche dough, it was like Butter Bubblegum. Deliciously horrific. And thinking of the spoonbread led me to thinking about Thomas Keller and Alice Waters, and their philosophy of food. Alice Waters recently co-wrote a great book called Slow Food Nation with one of the gurus of Slow Food (Carlo Petrini) - I'll post a review when I'm done.

And back to the spoonbread recipe - I'll post that later as well when I figure out how! All credit for it goes to Keller, all I did was make it and eat it.

Some references:
Slow Food Nation: A Blueprint for Changing the Way We Eat - Alice Waters/Carlo Petrini
100 Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating - Alisa Smith and JB Mackinnon
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life - Barbara Kingsolver
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals - Michael Pollan
In Defense of Food - Michael Pollan
The End of Food: How the Food Industry is Killing Our Food Supply and What You Can Do About It - Thomas Pawlick
Ecoholic: Your Guide to the Most Environmentally Friendly Information, Products and Services in Canada - Adria Vasil

24 June 2008

Testing, testing...

All right, tabula rasa! Count me in...

OK, here's the deal. I eat, therefore I am. I like to eat. I like to talk about food, read about food, cook food for people, hear about food, share my food (sometimes) - what can I say, food makes me happy. Combine it with friends and I'm all over it. I've been lucky enough to make some amazing friendships, and when I think of my friends I think of them eating. I'm just built like that.

So this will be about my adventures in Foodland and the chums I meet, make, and feed along the way. There will be random scatterings of other incidental ramblings as well - music, politics, craziness and goodstuff. Feel free to share and point me in the right direction, I like that!

Recipes, reviews, opinions, pics and assorted miscellany - you're in for the whole Kit & Kaboodle...