Lex Culinaria

IMBB 25: Italian Bread Salad

I love the tomatoes at the Strathcona Farmer's Market. We buy probably 3 pounds every weekend from April to September. They look so nice and taste so fresh, I have such trouble resisting. What better to complement these gorgeous fresh tomatoes, than some tender, fresh basil, also from the Farmer's Market?

It is precisely because I love these tomatoes (and the basil is SO fantastic looking right now) that decided to make the Pappa Al Pomodoro - a Tuscan cooked tomato and bread soup for the "stale bread" edition of IMBB. I'd been contemplating making it since I received a copy of the Silver Spoon for Christmas, so we went off this morning to buy some of those gorgeous tomatoes and basil. When I got them home, I couldn't bear the thought of cooking them - I much prefer the tart flavour of these perfect fresh tomatoes to cooked. Besides, I bought gorgeous yellow, orange and red ones and cooking them would have blended their beautiful bright colours beyond recognition.

So I ended up using the ingredients one would usually use for Pappa Al Pomodoro to make a salad instead. Of course I added a couple of special touches, which I think worked pretty darn well. I had to stop Cakes licking the bowl. I can see this becoming a favourite in our house. It's light and tangy and refreshing. The fried ciabatta soaks up the gorgeous tomato juices without getting mushy or falling apart, lending it a meatier texture than most Panzanellas. This makes a great lunch all on its own. It'd be great for company because you can make it in advance and just let it marinate away for a few hours. It would also make an excellent starter for a meal of roasted or grilled beef.

Because this isn't really a Panzanella or a Pappa Al Pomodoro, I don't really know what to call it, other than ...

Lex's really good Italian bread and tomato salad

Serves 4 as a light main

80 ml (1/3 cup) good quality olive oil

3 large cloves garlic minced

300 grams day-old ciabatta, sliced into large cubes (I used 1 + 1/2 individual sized ciabattas from the Italian Centre Shop)

650 -700 grams (1 + 1/2 pounds) ripe red, orange and yellow tomatoes

1/2 teaspoon fleur de sel or other good quality grey sea salt

1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper

juice of 1/2 lemon (about 50 ml)

1 teaspoon minced lemon rind

3/4 loosely-packed cup fresh basil

30 grams parmigianno reggiano, shaved

In a large stir-fry pan, heat the oil over medium - low heat. Toss in 2/3 of the garlic and slowly cook in the oil until golden. With a slotted spoon, transfer the golden garlic to a large mixing bowl. Increase the heat under the oil to just shy of high. When the oil is quit hot but not smoking, add the bread. Turn the heat down to medium-high and stir-fry the bread until it is well browned and the oil has been absorbed, about 8 minutes.

Meanwhile, chop the tomatoes coarsely and add to the bowl with the cooked garlic. Add the remaining fresh garlic, salt, pepper, lemon juice and rind. Stir the mixture gently to encourage the salt to draw juice from the tomatoes. When the bread is nicely browned, stir it through as well. Allow it to marinate for 30 minutes to several hours. 10 minuted before serving, chop the basil up very roughly and stir it through. Stir through all but a few (reserved for garnish) of the Parmesan shavings.

Spoon into 4 low soup plates and top with reserved Parmesan shavings.

The Best Dinner In My Life!

Most brides save bits of ribbon and maybe press some flowers from their bouquet in between the pages of their wedding album.

Not me.

The one thing that enjoys pride of place in my wedding album, aside from photos, and the marriage certificate, is the menu saved from the vineyard restaurant where we held our wedding reception.

That's because it was the best and most important dinner I have ever had, and ever will have.

I've said it a number of times on Lex Culinaria, and I'll say it again now... the greatest joy in life, well, in my life anyway, is the sharing of a beautiful meal and a nice glass of wine with people you love.

The food at Manton's Creek that night was great. The restaurant was beautiful. The service was exceptional. But most importantly, we got to share that terriffic meal as our first together as husband and wife. We shared it with each other, and with our closest friends, and with our families. That, above all else is the reason it was the best meal of my lifetime.

Cakes, Here's to many more meals shared in love. You're my favourite dining partner, my hero and my best friend. Thanks for three amazing years. I love you more than words can say.

PS. I had the prawns and the eye fillet. They were out of this world. Also - if you ever get the chance to Try Manton's Creek Pinot Noir, do. It's fantastic.

Dining Out for Life

Living Positive, a local support organization that provides much-needed help and support for Edmontonians living with HIV/AIDS has banded together with a few of Edmonton's best restaurants to raise funds for their cause on April 27, 2006!

These great local restaurants are donating 25% of their food sales this Thursday:

The Blue Pear

Blue Plate Diner

Cafe Select Downtown

Cafe Select Southside

Chianti Cafe

The Creperie

Il Forno Ristorante

Jack's Grill

Manor Cafe

Savoy Lounge

Suede Lounge

When you book your table for the 27th, be sure to tell them you're "dining out for life"! You can enjoy a great local meal and support the businesses that support your community all at the same time.

Check out the Dining Out For Life website for more details.

Hi

Remember me? I used to post here.

Unfortunately, both Cakes and I came down with a nasty virus on Easter Monday and on top of that I have worked a kazillion hours at the job that pays the bills. So. No posting. Boo. Also, no really great food that is worth posting about. I have been living off of bananas and my stash of tinned soup that hides in the bottom drawer of my credenza at work (handily holds about 24 tins!). I never want to see Campbell's Chunky Chicken and Sausage Gumbo or Fajita Beef again. Seriously folks. 24 tins. That's a lot of soup.

However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. My throat is somewhat less raspy today and I can smell things intermittently, so may attempt some cooking later...

In the meantime, how about a grautitous photo of my cats...

Martha Lied

Long before the Im-Clone scandal and her jailhouse stint, Martha Stewart had critics. In fact, a number of her irritated Westport neighbours made a mocking version of Martha Stewart Living, entitled "Is Martha Stewart Living?" and which purported to include such things as recipes for making your own water from scratch involving molecular fusion.

The main criticism seems to have been that no normal person, sans Martha's army of helpers and artists and photgraphers and stylists, could hope to do many of the things that were featured in Martha's magazine. Being a type A person I didn't really subscribe to those beliefs...I mean, why wouldn't I spend a few hours on sunday knocking up my own oatmeal, lavender and honey soap? It seemed a perfectly reasonable proposition to me. Still does.

In this month's magazine, the diva of domesticity has managed to include instructions for a craft that should make even the most intrepid of her accolytes cringe in fear....chocolate-filled easter egg shells.

These eggs were not easy to make. They are not charming or sweet. They are the devil's own easter eggs. They are the ultimate craft for the incurably insane. Even though they are filled with Callebaut chocolate, I never want to see one again as long as I live.

The creation of a dozen of these heinous little treats involved several scorched hands, headaches, offensive mounds of laundry and more headaches. The coating of every surface of this kitchen....

with scorching, sticky, molten chocolate. If ever there was a need to warn Martha fans that "you should not try this at home...." this is it.

As you can see from the photo, we managed to get far more chocolate on the outside of the eggs than the inside. While I'm sure martha would have had an assistant carefully cleanse each egg shell with cotton swabs dipped in organic lavender water, we just licked ours clean. No sense in having all that melted chocolate go to waste.

Summer Barbecue Challenge

...a one-off food blog event to inspire great outdoor cookery all summer long!

I really enjoy trying something new and interesting when I'm cooking. I love a challenge. Despite this I somehow manage to keep coming back to the same old standby foods when we do a barbeque: sausages, steak, potato salad, corn on the cob. I rarely venture beyond this.  I always think I'll do something different, but then I just don't seem to have any ideas.

Now that summer's truly around the corner (for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere) the challenge of what to have with the barbeque is upon us again. This year not a one of us will fall be forced to fall back on the same old cliche barbeque dishes again.

...If you're like me, stuck in barbeque rut, step outside your comfort zone and come up with one interesting barbeque dish.

...If you don't seem to have any problem moving beyond the potato-salad-and-corn-motif, share your wisdom with us.

Here's the deal for this one-off food blog event:

1) between now and May 13, 2006 cook and write a post about a barbeque dish that you think is special;

2) email me the permalink to your post, your name and your blog's name on or before May 13th;

3) I'll post a roundup over the weekend;

and here's the BEST part:

4) we'll all have a virtual recipe book of fantastic barbeque dishes to inspire our backyard and campground cooking all summer long!

Sign up. Join in. Chow down.

Two-For-One Sausages

I don't know what the heck Otto Von Bismarck was on about when he lumped law and sausage into the same category of things you never want to see made. That's disrespectful of sausage. And now that I am an official sausage maker, complete with sausage making device and several thousand feet of hog intestine in my freezer, I take exception to his most famous statement. Sausage is pretty fun to make.

My nude little sausage experiment a few weeks ago confirmed for me what I already knew. I would like to make actual sausages with actual casings. So Cakes and I trotted off to K&K deli last Saturday and bought us some hog guts. Than we trotted off to Home Outfitters (which, by the way, still has a HUGE assortment of the sexiest blenders and mixers ever, please buy one. I think everybody should have one!) and procured us a sausage stuffer meat grinder contraption for the Kitchen Aid.

Then we stuffed ourselves a heap of sausages. We made two different kinds: a beer, garlic, rosemary and mustard sausage and a spicy black olive Chorizo sausage with red wine. Both were pretty yummy, although I think we'll have to use slightly fattier meat next time as they felt a little dry to me.

I thought I'd be grossed out at having to handle innards, but it really wasn't gross at all. Mind you, the casings came all nice and clean. I don't know that I would have enjoyed the sausage making as much if I had to clean the intestines from a hog I once knew as "Pinky".

Stuffing the sausages is dead easy, although it's definitely a two person job: one person to fill the hopper and work the on/off switch and one person to guide the sausage and twist the links as they come off. We stuffed the whole batch that you see in the photo above inside of 30 minutes. We had 4 Friends over to help us celebrate our new talents and by the end of the night, the six of us managed to eat all the sausages but about a dozen. Pretty impressive feat. J-Y kept claiming that they were the best goddamn sausages he'd ever eaten, but then J-Y also drank a whole bottle of wine all by himself so perhaps was feeling pretty positive about the whole world, deserving or no.

Judge for yourself.

Chili and Black Olive Chorizo

Will make about 20 to 25 sausages if you use 18 mm casings

• 800 grams organic ground pork
• 600 grams organic ground beef
• 150 ml red wine
• 5 cloves garlic minced
• 1 tablespoon paprika
• 3/4 teaspoon sea salt
• 3 teaspoons sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
• 1 cup minced pitted semi-dried kalamata olives
• 1 teaspoon liquid smoke
• 1 1/2 cups cooked arborio rice
• 1 cup minced fresh organic parsley

Mix really well. Before you stuff into casings, take a tablespoon or so and fry it up quickly in the frying pan so you can taste whether the seasonings are what you want. Then you can adjust the seasonings because there's not much half for a badly seasoned sausage once its in the casing. Once you're happy with the taste, stuff into soaked, rinsed casings. You could also roll these into roughly sausagy shapes if you don't have the equipment for stuffing casings, but in that case I'd add a raw egg or two in to help the sausages stick together better.

Garlic, Rosemary and Mustard Seed Sausages

Will make about 20 to 25 sausages if you use 18 mm casings

• 800 grams organic ground pork
• 600 grams organic ground beef
• 150 ml beer
• 5 cloves garlic minced
• 1/2 tablespoon crushed dried rosemary
• 2-3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh rosemary
• 1/2 cup seeded Dijon mustard
• 3 teaspoons sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 teaspoon cayenne
• 2 teaspoons chili pepper flakes
• 1 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
• 2 teaspoons liquid smoke
• 1 1/2 cups cooked arborio rice
• 1 cup minced fresh organic parsley

Follow the same directions as for the spicy black olive chorizo.

Pistachio-Crusted Roast Elk with Wasabi Mash

About a week ago the Melbourne Age ran an article about a Melbourne restauranteur who stepped on some toes by recreating other several great chef's most popular and striking dishes in his own restaurant, right down to the presentation, and passing them off as his own unique creations. This unleashed a volley of fire from critics and an equally vociferous response from supporters. The cheffing (is too a word) community appears to have come to the conclusion that, up to as point, recreating someone elses' dish is a form of flattery, but that at some point it becomes fraud. Perhaps the truth lies somwhere in the middle, as it does with most things. And while we need to be sure we do the right thing by others in crediting their ideas, we also need not to take ourselves too bloody seriously.... I mean, a burger, even an avantguard art-burger, is not exactly the same thing as Notes From Underground or The Garden of Earthly Delights and honestly, if you ever think you've created an unusual or original meal or dish, I'm guessing some one else, somewhere else has already come up with something that probably is very similar. Maybe spookily similar. As one of my favourite chefs, Greg Malouf, has said, any chef would "be lucky to have made two completely original dishes in [their] life." I reckon Greg's made a fair lot of dishes.

The topic of recipe crediting and recipe ripoff is a constant topic of debate amongst food bloggers. The medium makes it so easy for a person's ideas and writing to be appropriated and the anonymity of the web makes it easy for the perptrators to get away with it.

So, because it is a perpetual hot blogging topic and, because I'm essentially a nosy person who can't resist a good sticky beak, I visited the website of the rogue restaurant and persused their menu - suspicously sans photos! Some items sounded pretty good and I decided that the pairing of pistachio and beef sounded particularly nice. Worth a go anyway. I hunted around online for a while and found a recipe that had part of the idea I was after - pistachio crust - although the wrong meat (what I had on hand was elk) and a several ingredients that I don't particularly care for, so I did my best, and, honestly, it was pretty bloody good.

The crust is gorgeous and sweet and salty and because I pre-browned the roast in a frying pan at super high heat I still got the benefit of the nice brown caramelised outside, despite the thick crust. I absolutely adore pistachios and they did look really nice agansit the rare elk roast. The wasabi mashed potatoes were the perfect side dish for this essentially asian themed dish.

Pistachio-crusted elk roast with wasabi mash

• 2-4 pound elk (or beef) roast
• 1/2 cup beef stock
• 1/3 cup oyster sauce
• 1 disc palm sugar (or about 1/3 cup)
• 1/4 cup unsalted white rice wine
• 1/4 cup fresh squeezed orange juice
• 1/4 cup fresh squeezed lime juice
• 1 teaspoon orange zest
• 1 teaspoon lime zest
• 1/2 tablespoon sesame oil
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon red chili flakes (or 2 small red chilis minced)
• 2 cups crushed pistachios

Combine all ingredients except pistachios in a large ziploc bag. You might need to melt the palm sugar first by melting into some of the liquid ingredients, which have been warmed.

Marinate for 1 to 6 hours.

Remove roast from marinade. Reserve marinade and pat roast dry. Sear roast on all sides in a lightly oiled frying pan.

Preheat oven to 450F.

Boil marinade in a medium sized pot over medium high heat for 5 minutes. Reduce until it forms a sauce about the consistency of pancake syrup.

Brush roast liberally with about half the sauce and press handfuls of pistachios onto the roast surface. It may help of you just dump the nuts in the bottom of a large shallow dish, pop the roast in and use you hands to press the nuts to the surface of the meat.

Transfer roast to a roasting pan with a metal rack.

Pop the rast into the oven. After 20 minutes reduce the heat to 400F

Roast until the centre reaches 120F to 140F for a rare to medium rare roast. For a 2 pound roast this should take about 30-35 minutes total cooking time.

For the wasabi mash: Boil 1.5 pounds yukon gold potatoes. Mash well with 1/4 cup butter, 1/2 cup sour cream,  1.5 teaspoons wasabi powder and salt to your liking.

Serve the meat and potatoes with a little of the extra sauce drizzled over.

Recipe Collection Meme

I was tagged by Kalyn's Kitchen for this recipe collection meme. It's fascinating to see how other people get to the end product that appreas on their blogs. Some rely heavily on cookbooks, others browse the web exclusively...I gather that most are somewhere in the middle. I used to be a compulsive cookbook purchaser but in recent years I've been reformed by the bounty of the web.

I buy quite a few cooking magazines and look through them for pictures of stuff that makes me drool. I also do a lot of my recipe research online - both through recipe websites bt also through restaurant menus available online. I guess I use the photos and one-line menu descriptions as a base for what I'm going to cook and then work out from there how I'm going to do it.

Where do you obtain the recipes you prepare?

They really are a sort of mish mash. I find photos or menus descriptions I like, work out how I'm going to make it and then google around to see if I can find something similar as a starting point. Sometimes I just pull an idea out of the air and go for it. A great recent example is the prawn agnolotti I made. I had a few ingredients in my cupboard I wanted to use so I just pulled the recipe out of my head. Other than the pasta dough. Which, If I've got access to the French Laundry's basic pasta dough recipe...well I'm not going to argue with that.

How often do you cook a new recipe?

I make three or four new recipes a week, usually at the weekend, because during the week, I've got very little time to cook - we generally eat out or eat leftovers or something simple like spaghetti bolognese.

Where do you store your favourite recipes?

On my blog. In my head. In my "recipe box" on Epicurious. In Word. On pieces of paper that look like this...

How large is your recipe pile? Is it organized? How?

It's kind of hard to organise so many different sources, so I don't. Luckily I have a shocking good memory. Lists on sticky notes, lists in Word Pad.

What is the oldest recipe in your to try pile?

I don't really have a to try pile. I just make whatever I feel like at the time. OOOOhh wait. I've been meaning to make Molly's chocolate scones for bloody ever!

Are you really ever going to make all those recipes in your to try pile?
See above.

Do you follow a recipe exactly or modify as you go?

Always modify. Sometime I'd really like to trey a recipe as written just so I can say I have.

What is one new recipe that you're scared to try?

Puff pastry. Sounds like way too much work. I have the attention span of a gnat.

Tag at least one new food blogger for this meme ("new" as in only blogging a few months)

Hooked On Heat's been around for just about 6 months now, but In my books that's still fairly new. I love Indian food, so if you do too, head on over.

Tag at least one food blogger you visit regularly but never interacted with:

I'm pretty sure every site I visit regularly I comment on. I'm not really the lurking type.

Tag at least one food blogger you constantly visit and leave comments:

Stephanie at Dispensing Happiness. She constantly dispenses happiness to me. Also Bea at La Tartine Gourmand, because I love everything about her blog...it's absolutely compelling - top notch photos, great food choices, gorgeous sounding recipes.

Tag anyone else you want:

Clare at Eat Stuff

Rachel at Fresh Appraoch Cooking

Moira at Who Wants Seconds

Beacuse I really dig these three sweet, sweet girls and haven't been good at dropping by their blogs lately because I am a slack tart, and I miss them & their blogs. And I'd really love to know more about them and so would you!

Prawn and ginger agnolotti with verjus and shellfish oil

On my recent trip to Australia I spent a whole glorious hour in the newly revamped David Jones Food Hall off Bourke Street in Melbourne. I used to love DJ's Food Hall and was a bit choked that we moved before the re-vamping was done. As my holiday shopping budget was limited, I wanted to take back with me a few things that really spoke to me of the  Australian food scene. The four items I bought at food hall were just that: a precious bottle of Tetsuya's red Shellfish Oil, a bottle of of Wild Appetite wasabi & ginger dressing and two of my old favourites: Maggie Beer's Verjuice and Valley Produce Company's Cabernet dressing. Yum.

Since I got back I've been scheming of ways to use these items to their best advantage. Over the weekend, I came up with this way to showcase an old favourite and a new favourite...

Prawn & Ginger Agnolotti with Verjus and Shellfish Oil  - Serves 2

• 1 recipe pasta dough
• 250 gram prawns
• 1 egg white
• 1/2 teaspoon fresh minced ginger
• 1 pinch salt
• a few twists black pepper
• 2/3 cup Verjus
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1/4 teaspoon wasabi powder
• 1 teaspoon shellfish oil

Mince prawns up roughly. Combine minced prawns with egg white, ginger, salt and pepper.

Put a large pot of salted water on to boil.

In a smaller pot, combine verjus, butter and wasabi. Heat over high heat to reduce to about 1/4 cup. You'll have to watch that it doesn't boil down too much while you're making the pasta.

Roll pasta out quite thin into a rectangle roughly 15" to 16" long and 9" to 10" wide. If it's much bigger than that, you might not need all of it. Cut the rectangle in half the long way - you should now have two longish strips about 5" wide. Dollop heaping tablespoonfuls along one long half of each strip, about 5 per strip. There should be an inch or two of space between them. Use a pastry brush dampened with water to moisten the un-dolloped half of each pasta strip. Gently fold the damp half over and press firmly around each lump of filling to seal, pressing out any air bubbles as you go. When all the lumps of filling are completely enclosed, use a pasta/pastry wheel to cut them apart.

Drop them immediately into the boiling water and allow them to cook for 5 to 7 minutes, or until you can see through the thin dough, that the prawns have gone pink.

Remove and drain pasta. Place 5 in each bowl and drizzle first with the Verjus reduction and then with the shellfish oil.

The verjus makes both a tangy and sweet sauce, while the slight hint of wasabi pack a little surprising heat. For homemade pasta, these are pretty quick and easy, and the sauce takes next to no time. You can also whip this up at the last minute, provided that you keep a bag of frozen prawns on hand. Everything else is pantry stuff.