French Connection

While we're still on the topic of Provence and its cuisine...

So, as expected, this summer food magazines were filled with all kinds of tempting recipes for the 2014 barbecue season.  The July issue of Bon Appétit alone contained a full spread on DIY Korean barbecue; an Austin, TX spread featuring an outrageous-looking citrus-brined pork loin and a grilled rib eye recipe; a Middle Eastern/North African spread featuring mint and cumin-spiced lamb chops and Moroccan chicken brochettes; an article on cold smoking; and a guide to making and grilling your own sausages.  Just that single issue was enough to keep someone busy over their barbecue for months--and, trust me, it did.

But the recipe that turned out to be the single biggest revelation of the summer here at AEB--at least when it comes to the thrill of the grill--was a lonely little number accompanying a book review in the June/July 2014 edition of "Fare," the front section of Saveur.

 fig. a:  in print

The book in question was a compendium of more than a century's worth of writing on grilling and grilled foods culled from the pages of The New York Times by Peter Kaminsky.  The Times has been on fire* with their food journalism of late, with a bolder, multimedia-savvy approach that's smart, informative, au courant, and well-designed, and this tome sounds like another play to further establish position within the lucrative food & wine media market.  It's called The Essential New York Times Grilling Cookbook, and it's as much of a legacy-builder as it is a collection of hits from the Times' recent generation of superstar food writers--it's clearly meant to prove that the Times has been writing about food with insight and passion all along, decades before the advent of modern-day foodie-ism.

Anyway, Betsy Andrews' review only features one recipe, but it was one that definitely caught my attention.  The recipe was for poulet grillé au gingembre--grilled chicken with ginger--it was co-authored by those old masters of the Times' '60s, '70s, and '80s heyday, Craig Claiborne and Pierre Franey, and it first appeared in the May 25, 1980 edition.

Andrews was effusive in her praise, but what really caught my eye was that French connection to ginger.  Though it's had a presence in European cuisine since at least the days of the Roman Empire, ginger is a rarity in French cuisine.  Waverley Root, in spite of his name,** is utterly silent on the subject in his magisterial The Food of France.  Ginger is entirely absent from Richard Olney's Simple French Food and his The French Menu Cookbook.  And the rhizome appears only once in Julia Child's two-volume Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and then only in a beef recipe that already contains gingerbread as an ingredient.

The only place I'd actually ever noticed ginger in a French cookbook before was in yet another Richard Olney book:  A Provençal Table:  The Exuberant Food and Wine from the Domaine Tempier Vineyard, a.k.a, Lulu's Provençal Table.  There, Olney doesn't make a fuss about it at all, but the recipe in question always intrigued me because it just seemed so unlikely:  "Poulet Rôti au Gingembre, Coudes au Jus" (Roast Chicken with Ginger, Macaroni with Roasting Juices).  "Macaroni & chicken?"  I'd never ever tried it, but it has been near the top of my "to make" list for a long time.  When I spied Claiborne and Franey's recipe my decision was made:  there was no doubt about it, I was finally going to test this Provençal chicken & ginger combo.  I still wasn't sure about its origins (North African?  North African by way of Italy?  Was Lulu's preparation some kind of clue?), but its apparition in Andrews' book review was clearly a sign.

Plus, the recipe is dead simple.  Mysteriously so.  As Andrews puts it, "It worried me at first:  It called simply for grilling 'until the chicken is cooked,' with no specifics as to method or signs of doneness.  And it yielded so little marinade I felt it might starve the bird of flavor."  But, according to her, the results were a classic example of one of those recipes that defies logic, one of those recipes whose process is almost alchemical:  "[When] the chicken was indeed done (a condition I ascertained with the use of a modern-day digital thermometer), how exquisite it was.  Dried thyme and bay leaf and garlic added aromatic flourish.  An abundance of lemon mingled with bristling ginger to stroke the flesh with sweetness and tenderize it to a mouthwatering moistness, abetted by a final drizzle of butter" (!).

And you know what?  I couldn't have agreed more.  I, too, had the feeling that the recipe couldn't possibly work as I prepared it.  And I, too, experienced something magical instead when I cooked the chicken.  The final product looked great, but it tasted a hundred times better--it had a perfect skin, and was literally bursting with flavour.  The ginger was subtle, but present.  And that final blast of butter...  I couldn't believe what I was tasting, and neither could Michelle.

 fig. b:  in real life

Without any further ado...

Poulet grillé au gingembre 

1 2.5-3-lb organic chicken, halved, backbone removed
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp dried thyme, or 1 sprig fresh thyme (with fresh thyme in our garden right now, this has been my preference)
1 bay leaf, crumbled
1 clove garlic, minced
1 1-inch piece ginger, peeled and minced
3 tbsp unsalted butter, melted 

Season the chicken generously with salt and pepper.  Stir lemon juice, oil, thyme, bay leaf, garlic, and ginger in a bowl.  Add chicken and toss to coat.  Cover with plastic wrap and chill for 2-4 hours. 

Heat a charcoal grill, making sure that your charcoals are evenly spread and of an even height.  Ideally, you want a fire that's medium-hot.  Be patient.  Grill a bunch of vegetables first, if you have to. 

Grill chicken, turning as needed, until slightly charred and cooked through, about 35 minutes, or until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thickest part of a thigh reads 165º F.  Transfer to a serving platter and drizzle with melted butter.  Tent the chicken with aluminum foil and allow to rest for 10 minutes.  This will complete the cooking process and allow the chicken to release its delicious juices into your platter.  Serve and devour. 

Serves 2 to 4 people, depending on appetite and number of side dishes. 

[based very closely on a recipe that co-authored by Craig Claiborne and Pierre Franey for The New York Times and then adapted slightly by Betsy Andrews for Saveur]

I still haven't tried Lulu's chicken, ginger, and elbow macaroni recipe yet, but I will.  Believe me, I will.  And I haven't fully figured out that French connection to ginger yet, but I like it--I really, really like it. In fact, there have been times recently when I've declared it the very best grilled chicken I've ever tasted.

aj

* Sorry.

**Apologies, once again.

Kebab Connection, rev. ed.

Do you like music & film?

 fig. a:  kebab connection 1

Do these look good to you?

Imagine these lovingly-marinated-then-grilled morsels of chicken sandwiched inside a lightly grilled pita, with grilled tomatoes, mixed herbs, and a tangy, garlicky yogurt sauce.  Imagine them being sold on the streets of Montreal.  Imagine them being sold for a song.  Imagine them being sold with a song.  Almost too good to be true, right?  Except that that's exactly what's going to be going down this Thursday through Sunday when Yours Truly takes over the grill at Place de la Paix.

 fig. b:  kebab connection 2*

What's the occasion?  Well, FoodLab is hosting a series of grill/barbecue cooks over the next month for a series called Cinéma, DJs & BBQ.  Basically, you get two hours of DJs & barbecue earlier in the evening, followed by two hours of open-air film spectatorship.  Last week, none other than Szef Bartek got the party started right with an ode to pork & fire in advance of a RIDM en plein air screening and a couple of Vues d'Afriques films.  This week I'll be firing up the grill while four top DJs (Maus, Jan Pienkowski, Tind, and B'ugo) get the crowd fired up for a bunch of outdoor Fantasia screenings (Fantasia à la Belle Étoile, a warm-up for the 2012 festival, which gets underway next week).

 fig. c:  sound + sight

The fun starts each evening at 7:00 pm and lasts a mere two hours.  That's right, the grilling will be over and done with by 9:00 pm, in order to make way for the films.  So get in while the grilling is good.

Also:  vegetarians will be happy to know that I'm also serving a delicious grilled halloum cheese number.

And THIS JUST IN:  Michelle will be joining me in the grill pit on Saturday and Sunday night (weather permitting), so the entire "...an endless banquet" team will be reunited for yet another Montreal street food event.

Place de la Paix is located directly adjacent to the Société des Arts Technologiques (SAT) on St-Laurent between René-Lévesque and Ste-Catherine.

aj

* photo courtesy of Uncornered Market

Thrill of the Grill 3

Last year, we started a series on relatively quick grilling recipes, such as grilled sardines and Thai grilled pork skewers.  As I wrote at the time, there are times when you want to get fully invested in "slow and low"-style barbecue, in making use of smoke's considerable powers as both a tenderizer and a flavour enhancer.  But there are other times when,

you just want the pure thrill of the grill. You want the slight blackening, the light smokiness, the caramelized flavors, and the primal pleasures of cooking directly over flames. You want the payoff to come sooner rather than later. You want to take full advantage of the fact that cooking over a hot grill can be quick and easy. 

Well, it's that time of year again.  Our fully winterized balcony is a thing of the past, the barbecue is back in its place of honour, and our 2012 smoking and grilling season is well underway.  And one of the best recipes I've tested out in recent weeks is another relatively quick grilling recipe that takes us to an entirely different region of the world:  Iran.

 fig. a:  land of bread & spice

The recipe appeared in an article on the cuisine of Iran in the March 2012 issue of Saveur by Anissa Helou ("The Land of Bread and Spice").  The article begins with a rather unexpected anecdote about a meal at Ava Gardner's house in London in 1982, but it proceeds to make a case for the centrality of Iran's "complex and captivating" cuisine to the world's foodways (both geographically and culturally)--at least those of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia.  And it's a pretty convincing case.

Helou's account of modern-day Iranian cuisine in Tehran, Isfahan, and beyond, encompasses everything from home cooking, to restaurants, bakeries, and cafés, and, as the title suggests, it focuses on Iranian staples like spices and herbs, bread, and rice, of which she writes, "I've never seen so many different ways of cooking rice as I did in Iran," before describing the care which goes into making their revered polows.  Her text had me pretty hooked on the idea of cooking Iranian already, but Ali Farboud's photographs really clinched things.  Sometimes the anti-aesthetics of some of Saveur's food photography leaves me a bit cold, but, here, the article came with a photo-essay that lived up to the scope of Helou's article, and that I found positively enchanting.  That said, the photographs that I gravitated to on the afternoon that I read the article were among the least exotic and the most familiar:  Farboud's photographs of sabzi, the herb salad that's a staple of the Iranian table, and of jujeh kabab, spiced chicken and tomato kebabs.  I was looking for a quick grilling recipe at the time, and that was exactly what I found.

   fig. b:  land of sabzi & kebabs

Actually, the recipe itself didn't hurt, either.  When I flipped to page 76 and found the recipe for jujeh kabab, its intoxicating blend of yogurt, citrus, and spices leapt off the page.  I felt like I had a pretty clear idea of just how succulent these kebabs were going to be, and the recipe didn't disappoint in the least.  A few hours later, when Michelle came home to a spread of jujeh kabab, sabzi, a garlicky yogurt spread, fresh limes, and grilled flatbreads, she couldn't believe her luck.

 fig. c:  Iranian-style chicken kebabs

 fig. d:  lightly charred tomatoes

Jujeh Kabab (Spiced Chicken and Tomato Kebabs)

1 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup fresh lime juice
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp orange zest
1 tbsp ground cumin (preferably toasted and freshly ground)
1 tbsp kosher salt
1 tbsp ground black pepper
2 tsp crushed saffron
1 tsp ground coriander
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 large yellow onion, sliced
2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cubed
4 plum tomatoes
ground sumac, to garnish
2 limes, halved
grilled flatbreads, for serving 

Stir together the yogurt, lime juice, olive oil, zest, cumin, salt, pepper, saffron, coriander, garlic, and onions in a bowl.  Chop the thighs into large cubes, roughly 1-1 1/2" x 1 1/2-2".   Add the chicken to the yogurt mixture, and toss to coat.  Chill for 4 hours (you can "chill," too, but make sure you've placed the chicken in the fridge at least four hours before you intend to grill).   

When the chicken has been properly marinated, build a medium-hot fire in a charcoal grill.  Skewer the chicken on flat metal skewers (Iranian-style), or on wooden skewers that you've had the foresight to pre-soak.  Add the tomatoes to another skewer.  Grill the chicken and tomatoes, turning often, until tomatoes are soft and charred, about 7 minutes, and the chicken is cooked through and slightly charred, about 10-15 minutes. (I recommend starting the chicken directly over the medium-hot fire, charring the meat on all sides, and then moving the skewers to indirect heat for the remaining time.)  Sprinkle the skewers with sumac.   Brush the flatbreads lightly with olive and grill quickly.

Serve with the limes and the hot flatbreads.  

Serves 4. 

 fig. e:  herbs & radishes

Sabzi 

watercress
mint leaves
parsley leaves
radishes

If you've been slow to kick off this year's grill & barbecue season, let the flames begin.

aj

ChangesTwo

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

fig. a: smoke gets in my lens

Ever since May, when we finally made the switch back to charcoal grilling after years of working a gas bbq, I've been like a kid with a new toy. The toy in question, is just a classic 18.5" Weber One-Touch, but the charm has yet to wear off, and with Michelle working crazy hours, I've had a whole lot of time to carry out a lot of experiments in lump-coal burning, slow & low barbecuing.

I pity the birds that happened to build their nest just a few feet above our barbecue spot. They got seriously smoked out--over and over and over again. (At least, the smoke in question was fragrant applewood, hickory, and mesquite.) I kinda pity our neighbors, too. They weren't getting blasted with smoke the way those birds were, but the sweet, sweet smell of all that applewood-, hickory-, and mesquite-smoked meat must have been torture.

How much grilling are we talking about? Jerk pork, jerk chicken, jerk shrimp. Pulled pork, ribs, and smoked chicken. Steaks and kebabs of all sorts. Salmon steaks and halibut fillets. Fennel, eggplant, bell peppers, potatoes, mushrooms, and tomatoes.

One of the best of our recent grillfests was a night where we made a Cowboy Rib Eye recipe by Dallas chef Stephan Pyles that we'd found in Saveur (it wasn't difficult, the recipe was featured prominently on the front cover).

We followed Saveur's recipe closely, although we replaced the ground chipotle with ground Oaxacan (smoked) pasilla chile (because that's what we had on-hand), we started the entire process just a few hours before we started grilling instead of a day earlier, and we made it for two instead of four. We didn't change anything about Pyles' accompanying onion rings, though. We figured there was no sense with frying up half an onion's worth of onion rings, and that if there were any leftovers, we could refry them the next day.

fig. b: in the raw

Texas-Style Steak with Spicy Onion Rings

1/8 cup plus 1/2 tsp sweet paprika
1 1/2 tbsp kosher salt
3/4 tbsp ground guajillo chile
3/4 tbsp ground pasilla chile
3/4 tbsp ground chipotle (or smoked pasilla chile)
3/4 tbsp sugar
2 x 16-oz bone-in rib-eye steaks
Canola oil, for frying
1 small yellow onion, cut crosswise
into 1/8"-thick rings
1 cup milk
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tbsp chili powder
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp ground black pepper

In a medium bowl, whisk together 1/8 cup of the paprika, 1 tbsp of the salt, the guajillo, pasilla, and chipotle chiles, and the sugar. Put steaks on a parchment-lined baking sheet; rub with the chile mixture. Refrigerate steaks for several hours or overnight.

Make the onion rings: Pour oil into a 4-qt. saucepan to a depth of 2"; heat over medium-high heat until a deep-fry thermometer reads 350°. Meanwhile, put the onions and milk into a bowl; let them soak for 20 minutes. In a large bowl, whisk together the remaining paprika and salt, flour, chili powder, cayenne, cumin, and pepper. Working in batches, remove the onions from the milk, shake off the excess, and toss them in seasoned flour. Fry the onions until crisp, about 3 minutes. Drain on paper towels; season with salt. Set aside and try not to devour them before the steaks are done.

Build a medium-hot fire with mesquite charcoal or lump charcoal + pre-soaked (minimum 1/2 hour) mesquite chips. Grill steaks, turning once, until medium rare, about 12 minutes. Serve with the onion rings.

Serves two hungry souls.

This makes an utterly stupendous steak, and the mesquite really brings out all its Tex-Mex/cowboy qualities. The onion rings are outstanding too. As much as I love a great beer-battered onion ring, these were way simpler and spicier, and just as satisfying.

Now, never wanting to waste a good charcoal fire, I had the idea the bright idea of cooking a rack of ribs while the steak was chilling in the fridge. We made an old standby of a recipe, but this was the very first time we'd cooked them on the grill from start to finish. It was also the first time we'd cooked them over mesquite. What took us so long? Who knows? These new, improved ribs were thoroughly mind-blowing. We had them as our "appetizer." Absurd, I know. We made a bunch of vegetables in addition to the onion rings, but, sadly, they've since disappeared into a smoky haze.

One last thing: the Texas-Style Steak rub makes for a great Texas-Style Barbecued Chicken rub too (as I found out about a week later).

"Texas-Style" Barbecued Chicken

1 whole chicken
Texas-style steak rub
2-4 garlic cloves
room-temperature beer
cider vinegar
crushed red chile flakes

Rinse and pat dry a whole chicken. Add a bit of olive oil, rub it all over with that chile-based rub, add a couple of unpeeled garlic cloves to the cavity, and let it sit, covered, in your refrigerator for at least a couple of hours and preferably an entire day or overnight. Take your bird out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature. Meanwhile, start your fire, setting your barbecue up for some indirect cooking (coals and/or mesquite wood to one side, water-filled drip pan to the other, vent overtop the drip pan). You want a medium fire for your chicken. You can also make your mop now, mixing equal parts warm beer and cider vinegar, and adding salt and crushed red chile peppers to taste. When the coals are ready, place the chicken (breast-side up) on the grill over the drip pan, and close the lid, keeping the barbecue fully vented. Smoke the chicken for 2 1/2 - 3 hours, without ever moving the bird if at all possible, just adding some coals/wood from time to time to keep the fire at a relatively consistent temperature. Resist the temptation to check the fire for the first hour. After an hour, check your fire every 30 minutes, taking the opportunity to mop the bird each time. The bird is done when a knife poked into a thigh produces juices that run clear. If you want to be more accurate, use a meat thermometer to check for doneness. But be patient--a medium-small chicken will take a good 2 1/2 hours. It's worth it, though. The first time you make it, you might have your doubts (in spite of your mopping, the skin will look leathery and dry), but this makes for one fantastically flavorful fowl (juicy too!), and any leftovers can be transformed into a chicken salad that is simply heavenly.

Note: again, I highly recommend the use of mesquite for this dish. Its mineral smoke marries particularly well with this rub.

Okay, people--get your grill on.

aj

more soul for the chicken soup

As you may remember, January saw us heroically trying to stave off the common cold with a particularly tasty preemptive strike: soto ayam. What we didn't tell you, and what I now realize was largely unapparent from January's posts, was that at the time we were in the midst of a full-blown Asian kick prompted by a handful of recent acquisitions:

a) a copy of Andrea Nguyen's Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavors
b) a copy of Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid's Mangoes and Curry Leaves: Culinary Travels Through the Great Subcontinent
c) a copy of Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid's Seductions of Rice
and
d) a rice cooker*

This full-blown Asian kick only lasted a few weeks before we started to drift back into more familiar terrain--like Italian, Hungarian, French, and Mexican--but it did result in a number of outstanding meals. So earlier this month, when we suddenly realized how far we'd strayed, we took a pledge: all Asian, all month. You can expect to hear about all the highlights of our own culinary travels in the very near future, but in the meantime, here's a recipe that's a great follow-up to the soto ayam, one that doesn't pack the same spicy punch, but is also an ideal late-winter cure-all.

It's a rice soup with chicken, seafood, and mushrooms, and it's based closely on a recipe (Cháo Bôi) in Andrea Nguyen's truly inspiring Into the Vietnamese Kitchen. Nguyen's original calls for dried wood ear mushrooms, but we didn't have any of those, so we replaced them with fresh shiitakes, which have become readily available here in Montreal in recent years, so much so that we can get them at our local supermarket for the same price as your standard white mushrooms. The recipe also calls for crab. We recommend using fresh Quebec snow crab, whose short but sweet season has just begun. Half a snow crab will provide you with more than enough crab for the soup--any extra you can use to treat your cats.

Michelle still loves the soto ayam the best because of its sensory overload, but, if you ask me, this delicate little gem is easily its equal.

fig. a: before

Rice Soup with Chicken, Seafood, and Mushrooms

1 boneless, skinless chicken breast, about 1/4 lb
1 cup long-grain white rice
3 quarts homemade chicken stock**
8-10 fresh shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and sliced
2 tbsp canola oil
1 small onion, thinly sliced
1/4 cup Chinese cooking wine or dry sherry
1/2 pound medium shrimp, peeled and halved horizontally
1/3 cup freshly picked crabmeat
1/4 cup small tapioca pearls
salt
1/3 cup chopped scallion, both white and green parts
1/3 cup coarsely chopped fresh cilantro

Fill a 5-quart saucepan half full with water. Bring the water to a rolling boil over high heat and add the chicken breast. Remove the pot from the heat and cover tightly, letting the pot stand for 20 minutes in order to gently poach the chicken. After 20 minutes, the chicken should be firm to the touch yet still yield a bit. Remove the chicken from the pan, leaving the water in. When the chicken is cool enough to handle, shred it by hand and set aside.

Return the water to a boil and add the rice. Parboil the rice for 8 minutes. Drain in a colander and rinse with cold water. Set aside.

In the same pan, bring the stock to a boil over high heat. Add the rice and chicken, lower the heat to a gentle simmer, and cook for 10 minutes, or until the rice expands.

Meanwhile, in a skillet, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion and cook gently, stirring from time to time, for about 4 minutes, or until fragrant and soft. Add the shiitake mushrooms and sauté for another 2 minutes. Add the Chinese cooking wine or sherry and cook until it evaporates. Add the shrimp and sauté for about 3-4 minutes, until they curl into corkscrews. Add the crabmeat and stir to distribute. Remove from the heat and set aside.

To prevent the tapioca pearls from clumping on contact with the hot soup, put them in a sieve and rinse briefly under cold water. When the rice has expanded in the soup, add the tapioca pearls and cook for another 10 minutes. The tapioca pearls will expand and become translucent. At that point, add the seafood and mushroom mixture, heat through, and adjust with salt, if necessary.

Ladle into individual bowls and top with scallions and cilantro. Serve immediately.

Serves 4 to 6 as a highly nutritious one-bowl meal.

fig. b: after

Good to the last drop!

aj

* We realize that getting a rice cooker and a copy of Seductions of Rice back-to-back is a bit odd, given Alford and Duguid's insistence on time-honored ways. We still love making rice the traditional way for ourselves, but we also like our rice cooker, especially for dinner parties.

** We made ours with a couple of leftover chicken carcasses, two onions, four cloves of garlic, a couple of hunks of ginger, half a daikon, five stalks of celery, four carrots, the shiitake mushroom stems (see above), salt, pepper, and a teaspoon of five spice. It only took about 45 minutes to make and it made a huge difference.

"God bless Covey Hill, apple pie, and Calvados!"

It was still unusually warm out, but somehow September was now a thing of the past, October was here, and she was beckoning us to embrace the fall in spite of all the ominous signs that the summer of 2007 might actually prove to be endless (yellowjackets, terraces continuing to do booming business, people parading around in various states of undress, etc.). So Michelle put away her beach towel and her flip-flops, dusted off her fall attire, and got down to business, organizing a crack team of seasoned apple pickers to head down to Covey Hill and do some serious apple picking.*

"Covey Hill again?" Yes, Covey Hill again**. Go ahead and write us off as a bunch of tired, old cultural conservatives if you must (a veritable Covey Hill Preservation Society), but we here at "...an endless banquet" know a good thing when we see one.

fig. a: S. presents one of Mr. Safian's finest

We also know a prince when we see one. And, sure enough, as he does every year, Mr. Safian turned up not on a white steed, not on a unicorn, but on his trusty, rusty Harvester International.

fig. b: Mr. Safian

Michelle was thrilled to get a chance to introduce Mr. Safian to the apple picking team, and everyone was already pretty good and fired up about fanning out into the orchard to carry out the task at hand, when, suddenly, Susie appeared out of the blue like a little angel and gave the team her blessing.

fig. c: "That's a good girl!"

Mr. Safian's hard work and Susie's blessing paid off: the trees were healthy and heavy with fruit and the apple picking team cleaned up--literally--amassing bushels and bushels of cortlands, empires, and russets, and a bushel of Flemish beauty pears to boot.

fig. d: the haul

When you get back home from such an outing, the "problem" is always along these lines: how do you get through four bushels of apples when you're a two-person, two-cat household (especially when you're planning on going back and picking up at least another 3-4 bushels)? Well, developing an 8-apple-a-day per person apple-eating habit certainly helps, but without a proper cellar of any kind, even that kind of pace wasn't going to eliminate our stockpile. Good thing Michelle has plenty of professional expertise in how to work through bushels upon bushels of apples. Plus, she'd taken the time to hone her skills again right prior to leading the apple-picking expedition on things like apple-caramel preserve, so it's safe to say she was up to the challenge.

fig. e: apple-caramel preserve

So this is what you do: you make lots of preserves (butters, jellies, chutneys, etc.), you make lots of pies and tarts (double-crust pies, open-faced galettes, Huguenot tortes, tartes tatins, etc.),

fig. f: tarte tatin

and when you've made as many preserves and pies as you, your family, and your friends can handle, and you can't possibly handle any more sweets, you turn to Alice Waters & co. and you make the following:

Poulet à la Normande

3 1/2 lbs chicken pieces, especially thighs and drumsticks
salt and pepper
2 onions, peeled and diced
2 carrots, peeled and diced
2 tbsp unsalted butter
2 tbsp pure olive oil
3 sprigs thyme
1 bay leaf
1/2 cup Calvados
1 cup hard dry cider
1 cup chicken stock
1 cup crème fraîche

garnish:
30 pearl onions
4 tbsp unsalted butter
salt and pepper
2 or 3 medium apples, peeled and cored and sliced into 8 wedges

In a heavy-bottomed pan, melt the butter with the olive oil over medium heat. When hot, add the chicken pieces, skin side down, and brown well on all sides. Do this in batches, if necessary. When all the chicken pieces are golden brown, remove from the pan and set aside.

Pour off most of the fat left in the pan, add the diced carrots and onions and the thyme sprig and bay leaf, and cook until the onion is translucent, about 5 minutes. Pour in the Calvados and warm before igniting carefully--it will flame up [no joke!], so stand back while doing this. When the Calvados has finished burning, add the cider, stirring and scraping up any brown bits still sticking to the pan. Bring to a boil and reduce by half. Pour in the chicken stock, return the chicken pieces to the pan, and turn down the heat. Simmer, covered, for 15 minutes. When the chicken pieces are done, remove them to a dish and keep covered in a warm place while you finish the sauce.

While the chicken is cooking, start to prepare the garnish. Soak the pearl onions in warm water for a few minutes before peeling them--this makes their skins easier to remove.

Melt 2 tbsp of the butter in a heavy-bottomed pan and add the peeled onions with a pinch of salt. Cook over low heat, tightly covered, until tender and translucent, about 20 minutes. Shake or stir them now and then and add a touch of water if they are threatening to burn.

Melt the rest of the butter in a sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add the apples, season with salt and pepper, and cook for about 10 minutes, tossing them now and then, until they are golden and tender.

Strain the Calvados sauce, pressing on the vegetables to extract all the liquid, and pour it back in the pan. Skim well and bring to a boil. Pour in the juices that have collected in the dish holding the chicken pieces; stir in the crème fraîche. Reduce the heat and simmer until the sauce is reduced by a third or until it coats the spoon. Taste and adjust the seasoning as needed. Return the chicken to the sauce to warm through.

Serve the chicken in its sauce, garnished with the apples and onions--reheated, if necessary, either together or separately.

Serves 4.

[adapted slightly from Chez Panisse Fruit by Alice Waters]

We'd been wanting to make this for some time now, but we decided to save it for apple season. With locally raised organic chicken, farm-fresh vegetables and herbs from the market, Michel Jodoin's brandy de pommes from Rougemont, and Mr. Safian's ultra-crisp apples, not only was this a particularly seasonal affair, it was an all-Quebec one too, and a delicious one at that.

For directions to Mr. Safian's stand in Covey Hill please look here and here.

aj

* I'm sorry to say I was AWOL for this expedition. However, I was with the crack team of apple pickers in spirit, as they say, which explains the startling verisimilitude of what, in truth, is nothing more than a second-hand account.

** Please note: there are not one, not two, but three hypertext links here!

Thanks to T., J., and S. for making the trip a hit and for all the great photos.

Zuni Nation

During our trip to San Francisco two years ago, we ate a number of memorable meals, as you might have been able to tell from our 10-part "Revelations" series. Among those that continue to stand out after all this time, however, is our Zuni Cafe meal, the very last meal of our trip. Was it the space's triangular shape? Its wood-fired oven? Sitting upstairs in a cozy booth? Their sinfully good roasted chicken with bread salad? Or was it the fact that the Zuni Cafe got the honor (unbeknownst to them) of putting the finishing touches on our California holiday? [Answer: all of the above.] Since finally getting Judy Rodgers' inspirational The Zuni Cafe Cookbook a few months ago, the recipe for roasted chicken just kept beckoning to us until we could bear it no longer. We finally gave in and decided, "That's that," we had to try to recreate some of the magic of that fateful night.

In her preamble to the recipe, Rodgers attributes their roast chicken's renown to a combination of elements which includes the cafe's wood-fired oven, the high quality of their birds, and the practice that one gets when roasting hundreds of chickens a week. But, that said, the basic key to their success lies in three things, three things over which all of us have a fair bit more control: a small-sized chicken, high heat, and salting the chicken 24 hours in advance. You may not be able to duplicate the lovely smoky flavor that the Zuni Cafe's oven imparts, but otherwise there's no reason to despair, and Rodgers insists that The Zuni Cafe Cookbook's recipe has been thoroughly tested and fine-tuned for the home environment. That was enough for us. We took her word for it and plunged right in the other night.

And the bottom line is this: stop whatever you are doing, print out the recipe below, run to your local butcher, and pick up the nicest small-sized chicken you can find. That's how essential this recipe is. Aside from picking out a 2 3/4 - 3 1/2 pound chicken and taking the time to salt it properly, the trick (again) is to roast the bird at a very high temperature, 450°F, and it was that detail that really piqued our interest. We couldn't believe that such an indelicate method would get the results we (and the Zuni Cafe) were looking for. There's no question about it, this high-heat method really is very dramatic. The fat sputters a fair bit when the bird hits the sizzling cast-iron pan,



and the kitchen definitely gets a little smoky, but it's very worth it.

The Zuni Cafe chicken is one of the best homemade roast chickens we've ever had, and, as leaders of the Mile End chapter of the SCC, we've had our fair share. Don't go thinking you can skip the bread salad, either. That would be a terrible mistake. That bread salad is truly extraordinary; quite simply one of the best salads (of any kind) either of us has had the pleasure of encountering. The whole ensemble is perfect on a misty San Francisco night, as we found out in 2005. It's pretty awesome on a chilly Montreal winter night, too. Now, if only we had a fireplace, or one of those old-time Québécois bread-baking ovens that we've been reading about recently...

Anyway, if you're not already a proud owner of The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, and there are plenty of other good reasons to pick up a copy, here goes:

Zuni Roast Chicken (serves 2-4)

one small chicken, about 3 lbs.
4 sprigs rosemary, thyme or sage
2 1/4 tsp. coarse salt
1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

1-3 days before serving, rinse the chicken and dry completely. Tuck the herbs under the skin on the breast and thighs. Sprinkle inside and out with salt and pepper, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least one day, but up to three.

for the bread salad:

a day-old medium loaf of peasant-style bread, not sourdough
6 tbsp. olive oil
1 1/2 tbsp. champagne vinegar
salt and pepper
1 tbsp. currants
1 tsp. red wine vinegar
1 tbsp. warm water
2 tbsp. pine nuts, toasted slightly
2-3 garlic cloves
1/4 cup slivered scallions
2 Tbsp. lightly salted water
1 bunch arugula, watercress or any other bitter green

Remove most of the crust from the loaf of bread and slice into thick chunks. Brush with olive oil and broil until golden on both sides. Let cool. Rip the chunks into rough pieces of varying sizes and place in a bowl. Mix 1/4 cup olive oil with the Champagne vinegar and salt and pepper. Add about 1/4 cup of it to the bread. Toss. Mix the currants with the red wine vinegar and warm water. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 475°F. Heat a cast-iron pan over medium heat. Remove chicken from the fridge and shake off some of the salt, though you don't need to remove it all. Do not rinse the chicken. Pat dry with a paper towel if condensation has formed. Place chicken in the pan, breast-side up, and place in the oven. Roast for 30 min. If the skin is browning too quickly, reduce the oven temperature a bit. Carefully turn the bird over and roast for another 10-20 min. Finish breast-side up for 5 minutes to crisp up the skin. It should take about 45 min. to roast.

Meanwhile, sauté the garlic and scallions with a bit of olive oil until soft, but not browned. Add to the bread along with the pine nuts and drained currants. Add a bit of salted water, salt and pepper to taste and toss. Place in a baking dish and cover with foil. Place the salad in the oven after the final flip of the chicken.

Remove the chicken from the oven and turn off the heat, leaving the bread salad in there to warm up. Let the chicken rest on a serving platter while you skim off the fat from the roasting pan. Deglaze the pan with a bit of water and any drippings that the cooling chicken has given off.

Place the bread salad back in its bowl, drizzle with a spoonful (or two) of the pan juices, add the greens, a bit of vinaigrette and toss. Season to taste. Place a generous heap of salad on each plate. Carve up the chicken and serve on top of the bread salad. Enter heaven.

Worked like a charm.

[Judy Rodgers' The Zuni Cafe Cookbook: A Compendium of Recipes and Cooking Lessons From San Francisco's Beloved Restaurant was published in 2002.]

am/km

Edible Gold

The Week of Wonders Continues: Saffron Chicken

Last month’s Saveur magazine (October, 2004) had an article entitled Fragrant Feasts of Lucknow with incredible pictures of delicious looking Indian food. I was especially dazzled by the gold and silver leaf used to decorate the food, and swore I needed some in my pantry. I am still without this luxury item, but you don’t need it for this Saffron Chicken, which is naturally golden. It will give off a wonderful glow on your dinner table and is definitely worth the many steps it takes to make. Count on at least 3 1/2 hours between starting the preparation and setting it on the table. Don’t worry, about 2 hours of this is cooking time.

m

I have to admit, I still feel a bit strange about Indian meat dishes. This might seem like a strange statement given the highly omnivorous character of An Endless Banquet so far, but I was a vegetarian for 10 years and Indian was one of my favorite cuisines during that period for good reason. I still don’t even really think about eating meat when I go out to my favorite Indian restaurants—the vegetarian options can be so fantastic. The specialty of the house at our favorite Indian restaurant, Malhi Sweets [note: more on Malhi Sweets at a later date], is lamb, so we tried it one time and it was really good, but, personally, I still preferred the Malai Kofta and the Vegetable Korma. In any case, when last month’s issue of Saveur came out, I, too, was blown away by the article on the cuisine of Lucknow and its rich history, and I admired all the incredible recipes, including all the chicken and lamb dishes, but I gravitated towards the smoked eggplant dish. That was the dish that I actually thought about making. It was M. who really drew my attention to the Saffron Chicken. I thank her for pointing me in the right direction. This was a brilliant recipe—the chicken came out of the oven absolutely succulent and the sauce was to die for. After dinner and dessert our party moved on to a local watering hole. I came back in at about 2 A.M. just a little tipsy with a replenished appetite and I devoured what remained of the sauce with what remained of the garlic pitas. Heaven.

aj

Murgh Zafrani
(saffron chicken)
Serves 4-6

1 1/4 cup ghee
1 medium red onion, peeled and sliced into 1/4” pieces
8 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
3” piece ginger, peeled and chopped
1/4 cup raw unsalted cashews
1/4 cup charoli nuts
1 cup whole yogurt
2 Tbsp. clotted cream
2 Tbsp. heavy cream
salt
2 tsp. cardamom, ground and sifted
1 1/4 tsp. kashmiri chile powder
1/2 tsp. ground mace
1 4-5 lb. chicken, skinned, rinsed, and cut into 10 pieces
1 1/2 tsp. saffron, crushed
1 Tbsp. kewra (screw pine water)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.

Heat 1 cup of the ghee in a small heavy pot. Fry onions in 2 or 3 batches, stirring often, until onion is dark brown, but not burnt. Place on paper towels to drain. Chop and place in a blender. With blender running, add 6 tbsp. water and form a paste. Place in a large casserole and set aside.

Put garlic and ginger in the blender, and with motor running, add 6 tbsp. water until a paste forms. Place in casserole. Put nuts in blender and with motor running, add 1/3 cup water. Add to casserole.

Add yogurt, clotted cream, heavy cream, 2 tsp. salt, cardamom, chile powder, mace and the remaining ghee. Stir until combined. Add chicken and mix together until well coated. Mix saffron and pine or plain water and let sit 10 min. Add to casserole.

Cover pot with tin foil, set lid on top, and crumple foil around lid to form a tight seal. Place in oven and bake 1 3/4 -2 hours, until chicken is tender. Transfer chicken to a serving plate and strain sauce through a sieve, discarding solids. Season to taste with salt and spoon over chicken.

We served our Murgh Zafrani with Eggplant Masala, basmati rice, and garlic pitas (the next best thing to naan).

Note: We made three changes to the recipe out of necessity. We were unable to find the charoli nuts, kashmiri chile powder, and the kewra. We replaced the charoli nuts with the same amount of pistachios, the kashmiri chile with a bit less of cayenne, and the kewra with an equal amount of plain water. In spite of these changes the recipe turned out famously, although were we to do it over again (and we most certainly will—hopefully soon!) we might omit the pistachios and just double the cashews.