Jinxed by the Baking Spirits
Every Fall my office hosts a fundraising bake sale for Centraide. However, unlike every other Fall, this year they suggested employees show off their culinary talents with a bake sale and sharing of recipes between the bakers and the eaters. Although baking is not one of my talents (every time it is more of a struggle than anything else), a couple of weeks ago I decided to step up to the challenge and showcase the only dessert that for me is fool-proof – me being the fool in this scenario. Since meringues are one of my favorite sweet treats, years ago I taught myself how to make them and they are always a hit. However, this time around the baking spirit jinxed me as you can see from the picture below. Something happened during the cooking process and the meringues resulted in a sticky caramel mess, as opposed to the light crunchy sweet bites they were supposed to be. This happened on Tuesday night, the bake sale was schedule for Thursday and with a dozen wasted eggs I was completely discouraged. The rest of that evening was spent frantically flipping through my many cookbooks trying to find another baking recipe I could replicate without too much difficulty.
At that point I remembered a dessert I had made a few times this summer which was a real hit and easy to make since it did not involve any baking per se. Chocolate pistachio cake – a refrigerator cake they call it since all you need to do is stick it in the fridge overnight to let it set. The recipe is inspired from Picnics, a recipe book published by Ryland Peters & Small. Here is my interpretation of it.
No Bake Chocolate Pistachio Cake
- 2 ½ cups dark chocolate, chopped
- 1 stick unsalted butter or ½ cup margarine
- 2 cups crushed graham crackers
- 1 cup pistachio nuts, chopped
- ¼ cup crystallized ginger, chopped
- ½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon cardamom
Put the chocolate and butter (or margarine) in the top of a double boiler set over simmer but not boiling water, and melt gently. Stir in all the remaining ingredients, then spoon into a 9 inch tin pan (or springform pan) lined with plastic wrap. Press the mixture well into the bottom and sides of the pan and smooth the surface with a spatula. Cover with foil and refrigerate over night before unmolding. Serve in bite-size pieces or slices.
Worried that I wasn’t going to have enough bites to sell at the bake sale, I remembered that I had a large bag of fresh cranberries I had just picked from the market that weekend. I decided to do a Canadian twist to a classic French dessert that my mother made for me growing up. Clafouti is typically made with cherries but since I had cranberries I decided to give that a try. It turned out nicely for a first try, probably the only this to go well for me with this bake sale prep!
Cranberry Clafouti
- 1 cup of fresh cranberries
- 4 eggs
- 125g of granulated sugar
- 80g all purpose flour
- 80g butter
- 1 cup of milk
- 1 pinch of salt
Preheat the oven at 375°F and grease a round glass or porcelain pan, 25 to 30 cm in diameter.
In a large bowl, beat the eggs like you would for an omelet. Add the salt and sugar and mix until well incorporated. Sift the flour over the egg and sugar mixture. Melt the butter and allow it to cool a bit before adding it to the batter along with the milk.
Spread the cranberries in the dish and pour the batter over them. Place on the middle rack in the oven and cook for about 45 minutes or until the top puffs up and begins to brown. Using the tip of a knife, cut through the Clafouti to make sure it has cooked through evenly.
My baking mishaps did not end at the meringues. The morning of the bake sale, I woke up earlier than usual because I had to make individual portions and packages of my desserts. I cut my Clafouti into quarters and packaged them up in plastic wrap. I took out my chocolate pistachio cake from the refrigerator and tried to release it from its glass rectangular mold. Usually I use a metal cake pan for this recipe but since I was making a larger batch for the bake sale, I decided to spread the batter into one of my larger glass rectangular molds. The thing about glass is that, unlike the tin molds, they do not allow for any sort of bending of the pan to release its contents, and that is precisely what happened to me that morning. My chocolate pistachio cake was stuck in its mold and there was nothing I could do about it then. I figured I’d just take it to work as is and hopefully as its tempers it will be easier to release from its pan. A few hours later, it was still stuck. The bake sale was to start shortly and I still hadn’t prepared my individual portions. Eventually I decided to sacrifice part of the cake and cut out a side layer. After this ordeal, my chocolate pistachio cake was finally cut up into individual squares, presented on the Centraide table alongside my Clafouti quarters. Other than my two desserts there must have been about a dozen varieties of desserts for sale. The table was emptied under an hour… I guess you can say the event was a success!
Back to School
The streets are bustling with freshmen making their way through with beer chugging contest initiations, 99¢ pizza (or at least that’s how much it cost when I was a freshman) at closing time and a greasy spoon breakfast or their preferred hangover remedy. It got me reminiscing about my freshmen initiation and first year of university. I remember hating the taste of beer and having to chug pitchers during the McGill Pub Crawl. I remember my parents taking me out for a smoked meat sandwich at Montreal’s legendary Schwartz’s. I remember loading up on KD boxes and ramen noodles at Club Price. I also remember my parents saying “How is she going to manage? She doesn’t even know how to cook herself an egg!”
For those who know me, you would probably be surprised to hear that. For those who don’t know me, I spent my last three years of high school in boarding school; in other words cafeteria for breakfast, lunch and dinner! And although i grew up with my parents preparing home cooked meals every night, I personally never stirred a pot. I think the only thing I ever cooked with my mom was home-made play dough when I was 4…which I ended up eating anyway. Growing up I knew a lot about food, loved to eat in large quantities but never learned how to prepare any of it.
All that being said, my culinary exploration and fascination with food started that first year at McGill, in my tiny apartment kitchen tucked away in a closet-like space. In that kitchen, I cooked my first soups, my first spaghetti meat sauce, my first salmon filet, my first cheese fondue, my first huevos rancheros, my first Irish stew, my first veggie lasagna, and after a few failed attempts my first successful hollandaise sauce.
Now that you’ve calmed down for the first weeks of intense partying, the readings are catching up on you, midterms are right around the corner and you’ve started burning the midnight oil on those term papers. So in tribute to all you poor souls recovering from your initiations and the rest of those starving first year students, I present my own first year staple: “poule au pot”, which directly translates to “chicken in a pot”. This dish is the meal of my childhood that I looked forward to on Sunday nights. It tops my list of comfort foods and my cousins (for lack of brothers and sisters) are always astonished with the way I can inhale this dish. In university I learned to be creative with it, meaning that I didn’t restrict this dish to only a stew-like meal but transformed it into other things. Before moving on, one must start with the basics!
The Freshman “Poule au Pot”
- One chicken, whole and insides cleaned out
- One large onion, cut up into large pieces
- One leek, sliced
- Carrots, sliced
- Turnips, cut into large cubes
- Potatoes, cut into large cubes
- Bay leaves
- One tbsp of Herbes de Provence
- Cloves, whole
- Pepper, whole
- Salt
Grab the biggest pot you have, big enough to hold the whole chicken. If you do not have a pot big enough, then you’ll have to make a smaller portion simply by using a few chicken legs (bone-in).
Put the pot onto a medium heat, drizzle with olive oil, add the onions and leek, and sauté for a couple of minutes. You simply want to sweat the onions and leek, not brown them. If they start browning, lower the heat.
Put the whole chicken in the pot (make sure its been rinsed under cold water first) and add water until it covers the chicken. Add one heaping tablespoon of salt, a few whole black peppercorns, two bay leaves and the tablespoon of Herbes de Provence. Cover and simmer for about an hour depending on the size of your chicken. Obviously the smaller the chicken the less cook time it requires.
After one hour, using a spoon remove and discard any impurities and extra fat gathering at the surface. Add the carrots, turnips and potatoes. Let the pot simmer for another 30 to 45 minutes, checking regularly for impurities to be discarded. You may also want to check the vegetables for doneness; you want them to be fork tender. At this point your “poule au pot” is ready!
You can serve it in a bowl as a stew. You can remove the chicken and veggies from the pot and strain the liquid to make a clear broth – a great base for other soups, sauces, rice, etc. You can pull the chicken apart from the carcass and use the meat throughout the week in soups, sandwiches, salads, stir-fry, casseroles. Save the veggies and use them whole or purée them as a side. If you purée them, you can thin it out with the broth, add a little milk or cream and make a cream of vegetables. The possibilities really are endless with this classic Sunday night French dish. Be creative and enjoy reusing leftovers to make something new and interesting. This time I decided to make a simple chicken and vegetable soup: to the broth I added the chicken that I shredded, leeks, carrots, parsnips and mushrooms as seen in the picture.
To the students out there who decide to make this dish, go ahead and use its French name when referring to it. Not only does it have a nice ring to it but you can also pull out your pretentious first-year tongue when serving this up to your fellow intelligentsia and tell them that King Henri IV of France declared that every laborer of his kingdom should be able to afford “poule au pot” every Sunday.
The Politics of Catering – Part Three
Tortilla Española
Kefta Meatballs / Roasted Red Peppers
Grilled Bavette / Chimichurri
Japanese Crudité Bundles / Soy Sesame
Black Olive Tapenade / Flat Bread
Event day! My boss graciously allowed me to leave the office early in order to do some last minute prepping and setting up. The campaign office doors are supposed to open at 6 pm. At precisely at 6 pm sharp and not a second later, supporters start filing in while I’m still setting up.
The trays and platters are filled a placed in the reception area, the menu and ingredient list displayed, napkins laid out and extra toothpicks ready at one’s fingertips. Little by little people start crowding around the food table, shaking hands with the man of the hour – M. Karim Boulos, and mingling amongst them.
Around 8 pm the crowd starts to dwindle and the trays become emptier. With this event I not only had the opportunity of meeting many interesting people but was showered with compliments. *blushing*
120 tortilla cubes, 180 meatballs, 100 bavette skewers, 100 crudités bundles and 25 hours of labour later, the event can be deemed a success!
The campaign office doors opened, people were fed, people met, posters went up… the campaign is officially underway!
An immense thank you goes to everyone who supported and helped me over that week, especially my better half who himself was busy with his own campaign prep. Most importantly, thank you Karim for giving me my first catering gig!
The Politics of Catering – Part Two
Sit back, relax and grab a glass of wine because this is going to be a long one, quite representative of how my prep week felt.
Wednesday at 5 pm, the night before Karim Boulos’ Campaign Launch event, I am rushing out of the office and over to the grocery store to pick up the last of the ingredients needed.
At 5:30 pm, I’m flaring up the BBQ to char the red bell peppers, roast the garlic, sear the bavette and cook the kefta meat balls.
Two hours later, help finally comes to the rescue! Together we start chopping, mixing, blending and skewering the various ingredients.
At 10:30 pm, the kitchen looks like a huge mess and we finally take a moment to sit and relax while the tortillas cook in the oven. Wine in hand, tired and exhausted from being hunched over cutting boards, blenders and food processors, we sit back and proudly glare at the result of our labour neatly packed in their respective plastic containers, ready to be prepped onto their serving trays. By 11 pm Layla heads home to catch some well deserved sleep but if she hadn’t offered to lend a hand (and a sandwich) I would have been up much later than I was.
At 11:15 pm, there is only one thing left to do: cut up the cucumbers, carrots, yellow bell peppers and scallions into juliennes, to have them ready to be wrapped in nori just before the event.
At 1 am, I’m lying in bed exhausted yet restless… still planning how the event will unfold later that day….
Tortilla Española, makes one
- Eight eggs
- One onion, chopped
- Two potatoes, peeled and cut into small cubes (about 1 cm)
- One chorizo sausage, cubed (about 1 cm)
- ½ tbsp paprika
- Olive oil
- Salt and pepper
Begin by steaming or blanching the cubed potatoes until barely tender. You want the potatoes to hold their shape. If they start to break up they are overcooked. Strain, pat dry and allow to cool.
In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the eggs, the paprika, salt and pepper.
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Drizzle some olive oil in a medium oven-proof skillet and bring up to a medium heat. Add the onions and sauté until soft and translucent. You do not want the onions to brown. If they start gaining color, turn down the heat. Add the chorizo and potatoes, sauté a couple of minutes. Combine into the bowl containing the egg mixture and pour into the skillet. Cook until the bottom barely starts to set. Transfer skillet to the oven and allow the tortilla to cook through, about 30 minutes.
Remove the tortilla from the skillet by flipping it onto a plate (plate the plate over the skillet, then flip). This can be served hot or cold, in pie slices or cubes. Makes a great brunch or aperitif!
For this event, I needed to make three and I chose to serve the tortilla cold in bite-sized cubes, no dip necessary.
Roasted Red Pepper Dip, makes four cups
- Eight red or yellow or orange bell peppers
- Two tomatoes, blanched, peeled and cored
- One head of garlic
- ¼ cup olive oil + a few extra drizzles here and there as needed
- Salt and pepper
On the grill or in the oven on broil, roast the peppers whole until skin is completely charred. Remove from grill or oven, put in a large bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Allow to cool before removing the skin and seeds.
Slice the top of the heads of garlic, place on a piece of aluminum, drizzle with a little olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Wrap it all up with the foil and throw it onto the grill or oven. Let the garlic cook for at least 30 minutes or until the cloves sweeten and caramelized. Remove from grill and allow to cool.
Bring a medium pot of water to a boil. Score the bottom of the tomatoes with an X and drop into the pot of boiling water. Blanch for two minutes. Using a slotted spoon remove the tomatoes and immerse them into a bowl of ice cold water. At this point the skins should peel off easily. Remove also the core and put into the food processor.
Place the skinned and seeded peppers into the food processor, squeeze out the roasted garlic from its skin into the food processor, add the olive oil, salt and pepper. Blend until smooth. If the mixture appears too thick, feel free to add more olive oil. Thickness of this dip depends on how you like it. You can also make it extra thick and use it as a spread.
For this event, I used this recipe as a dip for my Kefta meat balls.
Chimichurri, makes about two cups
Let’s take a little trip down south, to a small place called Argentina. It the condiment used for all types of grilled meats. Used as a dipping sauce or a marinade, chimichurri is at the epicenter of Argentinean asados – aka. barbecue. After a few trial and errors I have come up with my own combination for chimichurri, one that is reminiscent of my many culinary experiences in Latin America.
- One bunch parsley, about 2 cups
- One bunch cilantro, about 2 cups
- Three garlic cloves
- One red hot pepper, finely chopped
- One lemon, juiced (about one tbsp)
- One cup olive oil
- Salt and pepper
In a food processor, mix together the parsley, cilantro, olive oil and lemon juice. You want the mixture to create a smooth blend. For the hot pepper, I recommend finely hopping it by hand so that it doesn’t get lost into the mixture. Don’t forget your latex gloves for this part!
Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper to taste. This mixture can be stored in the fridge for a couple of days but don’t forget to let it come to room temperature before serving since olive oil tends to congeal when cold.
For this event I grilled up some flank steak simply seasoned with salt and pepper, thinly sliced it and skewered bite size pieces onto a toothpick. I served it cold with the chimichurri as a dipping sauce. Chimichurri is great as a marinade or condiment on just about anything: beef, pork, chicken, shrimp, veggies…
Japanese Crudités Bundles
Crudités are always a staple snack food for any sort of event. There is a reason they have stuck around for so long, they are crunchy, healthy and foolproof, but who says you have to stick with the old fashioned carrots and celery with ranch dip. In an attempt to make things more interesting without adding too much complexity I decided to give it a Japanese twist.
For this recipe use a variety of raw vegetables that can be easily julienned into about 3 inch strips. Combine a variety of colors to maximize visual appeal. Create bite-size bundles and wrap it together with a strip of nori – seaweed paper normally used to make sushi. Mix up a dipping sauce and you’re ready to serve! Although this requires a little prep time, it is still a very simple dish that brings a lot to the table. People will be impressed, I promise. 
Here are the ingredients I used to put this dish together:
For the bundles: carrots, cucumbers, yellow bell pepper and scallions, all julienned and wrapped in a strip of nori. The nori is delicate and susceptible to moisture so try to work with dry hands, moistening your finger only to make the end of the strip wrapping stick together. You can use clean and dry scissors to cut the sheets of nori into strips. Play around with different sizes to see what works best for wrapping. Unfortunately these bundles cannot be prepared too much in advance or else the nori will get gummy and unpleasant.
For the dipping sauce: four parts soy sauce, one part sesame oil, one part mirin, hot pepper sliced horizontally (use as much or as little as you want), a few pinches of sesame seeds. Mix all ingredients together.
Black Olive Tapenade, makes one cup
- One can of black olives
- One garlic clove
- ¼ tbsp anchovy paste
- One small bunch parsley
- ¼ cup olive oil
- Pepper to taste
Strain the olives but preserve the liquid, it will come in handy if the mixture needs to be thinned out. Combine all ingredients in a food processor and mix until coarsely blended. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper. Adjust thickness of the tapenade by adding some of the preserved liquid. Serve with crackers or any type of bread.
Don’t forget to check the cans of olives at the grocery store and make sure you’re buying the pitted kind. Or else you will end up like I did on Wednesday night at 9pm, spending over 30 minutes removing the pits from each individual olive. Thanks to my lovely friend Layla who generously offered to help with the catering prep work and provided Boustan sandwiches, we got a dis-assembly line thing going and finished in no time.
If ever you are faced with the unfortunate task of having to remove pits from olives, grueling as it sounds, there actually is a trick to doing this easily. Using the flat part of a chef’s knife (it’s the large one with a wide blade), press down on the olives. This should slit the olives and enable the pit to slip out easily.
An immense thank you goes out to Layla for not only helping with the prep work, but also for providing good conversation, great company and lots of fun!
The Politics of Catering – Part One
This is the part I like to refer to as “What the hell have I gotten myself into?!?!?!”
In the past couple weeks I have been volunteering – aka supporting my better half – in the municipal electoral campaign for M. Karim Boulos as City Councilor for the district of Peter-McGill. In the midst of helping with translations, doing door to door drop offs of reusable shopping bags for a “plastic bag free Montreal” and simply lending a hand here and there, the discussion of the Campaign Launch event came up. On a whim, the words “I’ll cater your event for you!” slipped off my tongue before my brain realized the implications of what I said.
Before I know it my inner planner kicks in to high gear and I’m sending out menu items for a cold cocktail buffet. With the menu feedback I am also given the following parameters: there will anywhere between 60 to 100 people attending, the cocktail is this upcoming Thursday at 6pm, less than 6 days away, and there is no available budget. At this point, the inner planner slips into near-panic mode. I have never ever performed anything even close to this kind of reception. I’ve had prepared many 5 course dinner parties for 10 or more people, I have prepared eggs Benedict for more than 15 people for Jon’s birthday, but this kind of magnitude was way beyond my experience. I had no idea how much to prepare, how many dishes to present or how to manage with zero budget.
I decided to set a menu with items I was comfortable with and had previously prepared on more than one occasion. Of course, my creative side likes to show its colours in these types of situations so I came up with a different take on the fool-proof and oh-so-boring crudités platter and ranch dip: julienned veggies wrapped in nori served with a soy sesame dipping sauce – aka. Japanese Crudités Bundles.
Hell bent on getting this accomplished properly, I armed myself with my menu, ingredient list, shopping bags and headed to the market for my first round of shopping. Cucumbers, carrots, bell peppers (red and yellow), hot peppers, lemons, parsley, cilantro, scallions, garlic, 3 kg of Kefta meat = $45. Next stop is the dollar store for supplies. Napkins, toothpicks, tongs, plastic serving platters = $11.85. Final stop is the grocery store to pick up the menu’s staples. Eggs, potatoes, onions, chorizo, bavette (or flank steak), nori, sesame oil, soy sauce, black olives, anchovy paste, olive oil = $72.37.
Total cost so far is $129.22. Whoohoo! Mission one accomplished! I must keep reminding myself that I am not feeding a meal to these people, simply providing a little something to nibble on while they mingle, and assuming only 60 people show up then $2.15 a head is not a bad deal!
In any case, after the food prep frenzy I will have a better idea of what individual portions will look like.
Here is the final menu that will be featured at Karim Boulos’ Campaign Launch event, this Thursday, September 17th, 2009:
Tortilla Española
(eggs, potatoes, chorizo, onions, paprika, olive oil, salt and pepper)
Kefta Meatballs / Roasted Red Peppers
(Halal Kefta meat / red bell pepper, tomato, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper)
Grilled Bavette / Chimichurri
(beef / parsley, cilantro, hot peppers, garlic, lemon, olive oil, salt and pepper)
Japanese Crudité Bundles / Soy Sesame
(nori, cucumbers, carrots, bell peppers, scallions / soy, sesame oil, hot peppers, sesame seeds)
Black Olive Tapenade / Flat Bread
(black olives, anchovy paste, garlic, parsley, olive oil, salt and pepper / courtesy of Arouch)
Out of my fridge
Food is our common ground, a universal experience – James Beard
Every one’s gotta eat! It’s simple enough, a basic survival instinct. Lucky for us we’re at the top of the food chain and have opposable thumbs at our disposal. Now, it’s time to put them to good use and rekindle that long lost love affair with your knife and skillet. The best meal comes right out my own fridge and is at the core of my daily life. I live for every meal. Yes I love food, I love preparing food, but most importantly I adore the moments that food creates. The moments range from heading to the market on a sunny Saturday, chopping onions with goggles on, taming flare-ups on the bbq, sitting down for a hearty stew on a cold winter day, and perhaps one too many glasses of wine with friends and family. Just as simply, it can be sharing an ingredient, a recipe, a technique that will be passed on from one kitchen to another, and today that is my goal. Together we’ll get a few burns, heal a few scars, create some memories. This is my everyday kitchen and I hope you enjoy it.
