New Ways to Boost Your Grain Power 1: Barley!

 fig. a:  icy

Some days, all you really want for dinner is a bowl of soup--preferably, with a loaf of freshly baked bread, and some butter.  Soup lovers get this feeling throughout the year, of course--even in summer--but during the winter, the pursuit of soup can take on added urgency.  You know the days:  the ones with the snow squalls, the arctic blasts of wind, the temperatures that drop like an anvil in a matter of just a few short hours, possibly even a freak thunderstorm (!).  On days like these (because that's exactly the kind of day we're having here today in Montreal), there are few things as life-affirming as the first spoonful of that steaming bowl of hearty soup.  Sample the right soup, and you'll immediately feel its restorative powers begin to kick in--the very same powers that gave the first modern restaurants their allure (and the name by which these establishments became known).

Obviously, there are many, many soups that can produce this effect, but some of the most satisfying winter soups are those that make ample use of grains, like rice, barley, or oats.  These grains provide flavour, they provide substance, and they also provide comfort.  (Think about it:  why do most variations on the proverbial chicken soup come with noodles or rice, or something similar?)  Serve them with that freshly baked bread and you'll find that your grain power will be amplified.  Serve them with that freshly baked bread and a tasty beer and your grain power will be boosted even more.

Barley soup is one of the classics of the genre, but I'd more or less given up on it until I found a recipe for Grauensuppe, a German barley soup, in an issue of Saveur way back in 2011.  The recipe showed up in a fantastic article on the soup-making traditions of Central Europe, aptly titled "The Art of Soup." This was not the stodgy beef & barley soup found throughout the Anglo-American and Anglo-Canadian worlds.  Here, the barley in question was pearl barley, which keeps its form and its texture better than other varieties; the meat was German-style sausage; the vegetables included one of the staple trios of the German soup-making tradition: carrot, celeriac, and leek; and the barley was sautéed first to toast the grains and give the soup additional flavour.  The results were fantastic--one of my favourite soups of the last couple of years.  Even better:  this soup is quick and easy to make.

 fig. b:  ja, voll!

Grauensuppe 

4 tbsp unsalted butter
1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
1 cup pearl barley
8 cups vegetable stock, preferably homemade
1/2 cup finely chopped peeled russet potato
1/2 cup finely chopped carrot
1/2 cup finely chopped celeriac
1/2 cup finely chopped leek
1 tsp dried marjoram, preferably wild
2 German sausages, like bockwurst or bratwurst
1 2-oz piece of smoky bacon
freshly grated nutmeg
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/3 cup thinly sliced flat-leaf parsley leaves 

Heat the butter in large saucepan over medium heat.  Add the bacon, and sauté for about 1 minute.  Add the onion and cook, stirring, until soft, about 5-10 minutes.  Add the stock, potato, carrot, celery root, leek, marjoram, and sausages and cook, stirring occasionally, until the sausages are tender, about 35 minutes.   

Remove the sausages and bacon from the saucepan.  Thinly slice the sausages and discard the poor hunk of bacon.  Season the soup with nutmeg, salt and pepper, being careful not to overdue it with the nutmeg.   

Ladle the soup into 8 serving bowls, and garnish with parsley and sliced sausage.  Serve hot, with plenty of good, freshly baked bread, and butter.

 fig. c:  pumpkin seed sourdough

Serves 8. 

[based very, very closely on a recipe that appeared in Beth Kracklauer's "The Art of Soup" in the November 2011 issue of Saveur]

To your health (and your warmth)!

Note:  while the health benefits of this soup might prove to be lasting, its warming properties will likely prove to be fleeting.  Please remember to snuggle up afterwards.

 fig. d:  the art of snuggling

aj

Bon Hiver

fig. a: winter in Alsace

Talk about a supergroup! The good people at FoodLab have teamed up with the good people at Oenopole and the result is an inspired combination of wine & warmth that they're calling French Winter.

On the food tip:

French onion soup - 6$
Roasted Cornish game hen with embeurré de choux and apple stuffing - 12$
Salad with apples and walnuts - 6$
Potatoes boulangère - 7$
Marinated housemade goat's cheese - 8$
and for dessert
Far breton - 7$

On the wine tip:

Crémant du Jura 2008, Julien Labet 2009 - 6$
Bourgogne rouge, Hautes-Côtes de Beaune, Naudin-Ferrand 2009 - 10,50$
Gewürztraminer sec, Schueller 2007 - 7,50$
Sauternes, Roumieu-Lacoste 2009 - 11,50$

And on the tasting menu tip:

Cornish game hen, salad, cheese, and Far breton
+
all four wines (yes, all four, including the Sauternes)
=
$65

(Mon dieu! Just writing about this menu has made me so hungry and so incredibly thirsty...)

French Winter begins tomorrow, Wednesday, January 25th, and it lasts through Saturday, February 4.

FoodLab
Société des arts technologiques
1201, Boulevard St-Laurent
Montreal, QC

For more information, write to foodlab@sat.qc.ca

aj

Noma 1: Definitely not your average morning Danish, rev. ed.

fig. a: Noma: Nordic Cuisine

There's something downright exhilarating about René Redzepi and Claus Meyer's Noma: Nordic Cuisine (2006). It begins with the photographs that grace the cover and continue throughout the text. Sometimes stark (like the photo above), oftentimes almost absurdly picturesque (like this photograph),

fig. b: landscape by Noma 1

and at times even sublime, much of the impetus behind Noma's photography has to do with situating the restaurant's cuisine within Denmark's formidable landscape, and the impression one gets is of a countryside that's equal measures forbidding and abundant. Thus, alongside pictures of Greenland's desolate glaciers (what remains of them),

fig. c: landscape by Noma 2

you get pictures of lovable old Danish hippies carefully collecting herbs

fig. d: lovable old Danish hippie

that may very well end up on Noma's artfully composed plates--in this case, Hay-baked Celery Root, Black Pudding and Yellow Archangel, the first of the book's winter recipes.

fig. e: Hay-baked Celery Root, Black Pudding and Yellow Archangel

The thing is, according to Noma's philosophical outlook, Greenland's glaciers and southern Denmark's countryside don't form the strict binary opposition one might think they do. Where others see mountains of ice creeping across the landscape, the folks at Noma see "a rich flora and fauna, with crowberries, reindeer, grouse and musk ox." Bounty is in the eye of the beholder.

Now, if you've noted a little Nordic Pride in my description of the Noma cookbook, you're definitely onto something. Already, when the restaurant first began to take shape, there was the idea that a restaurant housed in an old warehouse that had once been part of the Royal Greenland Trade Enterprise and that would soon be the new site of the Nordatlantens Brygge (North Atlantic House) should have a vision that was pan-Nordic in orientation. But over the next nine months, in the lead-up to the restaurant's launch, Noma's vision really took on form. For one thing, Claus Meyer, the owner, and René Redzepi and Mads Refslund, the restaurant's two chefs at the time, took an extensive trip across the north, including jaunts to the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland, to search for ingredients and begin the process of making the contacts necessary to establish an alternative to the distribution networks available back in Copenhagen. The trip was a revelation, exceeding all expectations, and immediately the three "gastronomic explorers" knew they were onto a good thing, even if it might mean a lot of extra work.

By the time they returned to Copenhagen and began to work in earnest on what would become Noma's cuisine their vision had begun to develop into a full-fledged philosophy. Among its central tenets: take the Mediterranean notion of terroir, as well as the cultivation of biodiversity and the celebration of seasonality that goes along with it, and use it to utterly reject Southern European cuisine and its dominance of fine dining internationally. In other words, develop a cuisine "built on a basis of traditional and non-traditional Nordic ingredients," as Claus Meyer noted after one early planning meeting, one that would give "expression to the seasons' changes in a maximum way, taking things all the way to the limit." By March 2004, just four months into Noma's life, this sort of feistiness, this proudly anti-Mediterranean attitude, was already paving the way to the Nordic Cuisine Symposium, where in true Danish fashion--this is the same country, after all, that gave birth to Dogme 95--they banged together a 10-point manifesto that set the parameters for this New Nordic Cuisine. There were twelve signatories to this manifesto, representing Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Greenland, and René Redzepi's signature stands front and center.

fig. f: manifesto for a New Nordic Cuisine

Anyway, there's a lot here that appeals to us here at "...an endless banquet": seasonality and a focus on indigenous ingredients, Nordic pride and the development of a cuisine that's both innovative and steeped in tradition and that truly represents the region, and, yes, even a manifesto. We've said it before and we're going to say it again: for all the talk about Montreal's "European" flavor, this city, this province, is often at its best when it readily acknowledges its peculiar Nordic character (let's not forget that Montreal is at roughly the same latitude as Milan). Noma: Nordic Cuisine offers a virtual blueprint for how to develop a region's cuisine, how to create a cuisine that truly reflects the terroir, and how to do this within the context of a northerly climate.*

That said, Noma: Nordic Cuisine did present us with a couple of problems. First of all, I would characterize it as being one of those cookbooks that's more interested in spreading the reputation of a particular restaurant and its chef and in communicating with other top chefs than it is in communicating with the amateur. There's nothing necessarily wrong with this approach, of course, but it often results in vagueness when it comes to articulating recipes, and that's certainly the case with Noma. Take the Hay-Baked Celery Root recipe, for instance, which begins like this: "Light the hay with a match, some place away from the kitchen, and burn off the first bit of smoke." The ideas are there, and they're frequently brilliant, but you might have to be a chef (or a psychic) to figure out how to bring them to life. Secondly, Noma's tireless efforts when it came to tracking down indigenous Nordic ingredients means that quite a few of the recipes are impossible to replicate without access to their alternative distribution networks. It might be a little difficult to find local sources for musk ox, yellow archangel, and seakale, but Noma certainly leaves you with the desire to broaden your repertoire of regional and indigenous ingredients, and, overall, there's a surprising amount of overlap between the seasonal specialties there and here: fiddlehead ferns, lobster, hare, jerusalem artichokes, oysters, pears, ramps, and so on.

When it came to actually putting Noma: Nordic Cusine to use, however, we started off very tentatively. Michelle took elements from a couple different recipes and paired them, creating a new breakfast combo all her own. The first was a wonderful spice bread recipe, one that had that exact Northern European spice bread flavor that Michelle had been seeking but had otherwise failed to find. The second was a novel and, quite frankly, ingenious approach to the poaching of an egg, one that allowed for the egg to be aromatized as it cooks--in this case with white truffle oil.** She then added a caramelized scallion as a finishing touch.

fig. g: spice bread, truffled egg, caramelized scallion

Spice Bread (metric)

5 g cinnamon
5 g clove
2 g nutmeg
2 g green anise
150 g rye flour
150 g wheat flour
20 g baking powder
50 g wholewheat flour
100 g honey, preferably chestnut honey
150 g maple syrup
125 g whole milk
125 g eggs
fresh rosemary
butter and salt

Preheat the oven to 160º C. Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Crush the spices and sift them over the dry ingredients. Stir in the honey and maple syrup, then the milk, and finally the eggs. Place in a buttered loaf pan and bake until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean, about 45 min. Let cool on a rack.

Spice Bread (imperial)

1 1/2 cups rye flour
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tbsp baking powder
2 tbsp cinnamon
2 tbsp cloves
1 tbsp nutmeg
1 tbsp green anise
1/3 cup + 1 Tbsp honey
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup milk
2 whole eggs
1 egg yolk

Preheat the oven to 325° F. Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Crush the spices and sift them over the dry ingredients. Stir in the honey and maple syrup, then the milk, and finally the eggs. Place in a buttered loaf pan and bake until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean, about 45 min. Let cool on a rack.

Truffled eggs

1 egg per person
truffle oil
microwaveable plastic wrap

The basic method is as follows. Line a coffee cup with a small piece of plastic wrap, making a bowl. Take a small amount of truffle oil and spread it on the bottom. Carefully break an egg into the cup, gather the edges of the plastic up around the egg and twist it tightly closed. Secure it with twine or a twist tie. Repeat with as many eggs as are needed. Bring a small saucepan of water to simmer and maintain its temperature. Drop the eggs into the water and let them poach about 4 minutes. Carefully remove them from the water and gently take off the plastic wrap.

[both recipes from Noma: Nordic Cuisine]

To serve:

Lightly toast the bread and spread it with butter. Top with an egg and a caramelized scallion, season with salt and pepper, and enjoy.

This initial experiment having turned out a smashing success (if a modest one), we decided to take bigger steps with Noma: Nordic Cuisine the next time around.

To be continued...

am/km

P.S. If you'd like to read an actual firsthand account of what it's like to dine at Noma (complete with a whole slew of beautiful photographs)--which just received two Michelin stars in their Main Cities of Europe 2008 guide--check out Very Good Food's in-depth report.

P.S. 2 May 4, 2008: Now The New York Times has published a review of Noma as part of a piece on New Danish Cuisine in Copenhagen. Check it out here.

* More thoughts on cuisine and le grand nord: Just two week ago I attended a conference where one of the presenters, a local poet, waxed poetic (what else, right?) about Quebec's essentially Northern spirit, about the Idea of North that lies at the heart of Québécois culture. Well, as much as I wish this were true on some level, I couldn't help but think that the same culture that declared "Mon pays c'est l'hiver" some forty years ago, has spent the last 50-60 winters focusing its collective energies and fantasies southwards, towards places like Florida and Las Vegas. And, frankly, cuisine here in la belle province oftentimes suffers from the same fixation, which is why Montreal's standout restaurants are the ones that are the most fiercely independent, the ones that recognize that not only does it pay to support local and regional producers, doing so can be a source of inspiration and a sure-fire way to put yourself on the map. Does this mean we're advocating some kind of entrenched provincialism when it comes to cuisine? Of course not, but if you're going to transpose the cuisine of northern Italy or of southwestern France on the Québécois milieu, why not transpose the strong sense of terroir that goes hand-in-hand with those traditions?

** "Whoa! White truffle oil?!? Isn't that as Mediterranean as it comes?" Not at all. Locally harvested truffles figure prominently on Noma's autumn menu. Of course, the truffle we used was Italian, but that's another matter. Those fabulous Tennessean truffles we've been hearing about haven't made their way north in the form of truffle oil yet, to our knowledge.

chez les Nordiques, pt. 1

With not one but two tests currently underway at "...an endless banquet" it's starting to be like Canada's Test Kitchen around here or something. Okay, not exactly, but this time of year that's the rhythm a lot of us get into in this part of the world: a lot more experimentation in the kitchen, a lot more staying in and reading--that kind of thing.

Now, speaking of northern climes and life in the Hyperborean Metropolis--as Montreal used to proudly hail itself--coverage of Montreal often focuses attention on how "European" Montreal is. Gourmet's new special issue on Montreal, with one of its coverlines boldly proclaiming that Montreal is "North America's Most European City," is just the latest and most high-profile example. Oftentimes, however, such descriptions of Montreal and its European-ness are merely an almost knee-jerk reaction to things like the city's linguistic landscape, its overwhelmingly Catholic past, what remains of its stone architecture in the vicinity of the Old Port, and its high proportion of French restaurants, and what people fail to see is just how profoundly North American Montreal is. Of course, people have tended to have a similar reaction to New Orleans over the years, and in both cases this sense of European-ness is based on a failure to understand that the history of New France wasn't exactly a simple blip on the North American timeline. Montreal does have a lot of French restaurants--that's obvious--but as Gourmet rightly pointed out, the best of the lot draw from a vision that is at once global in outlook and passionately local, a vision certainly inspired by France, but one that is proudly North American (with an emphasis on the "North," perhaps). They're not museum pieces, they're not French restaurants in the generic sense (although there are certainly plenty of those around here as there are in most cities of the size and "sophistication" of Montreal), they're restaurants that are very much alive and are contributing to an ever-expanding sense of what cuisine--both French and North American--might mean. And while Gourmet didn't exactly dwell on Montreal's winters--it's pretty clear that the issue was drawn up and produced in the summer and fall of last year--its "Let it Snow" feature managed to capture the region's essentially Nordic character, something that profiles of the city generally overlook or elide (depending on whether they're produced by out-of-towners or locals). If the notion of terroir is crucial to understanding a region's cuisine, as the French certainly believe, than the Montreal region's unique terroir helps one understand how and why the culture here is distinctive, and why it's so different from that of France. In other words, Montreal's most European qualities might not actually be where people see them.

A case in point: gravlax.



As Alan Davidson has outlined, gravlax originated in Sweden in medieval times. The first references to the dish come in the way of surnames and are based on the Scandinavian custom of naming someone according to their profession or métier. The name itself combines the Swedish word for salmon with a word signifying burial, indicating the traditional manner used in the production of gravlax. Thus, records for one Olafuer Gravlax who lived in Jämtland back in 1348 suggest that gravlax was being manufactured in that region according to tradition--which involved burying the salmon, or other fish, in barrels or in holes in the ground, then letting it ferment--at least as far back as the mid-14th century. There were essentially two varieties of gravlax--one which was allowed to ferment for a matter of days, while the other was cured for months. The terms gravlax and surlax appear to have been interchangeable for both types, although "sour salmon" appears to have been the more appropriate descriptor for the long-cured variety. Of course, the modern process for making gravlax is much simpler and much less involved than either the short-cure or long-cure versions that were traditional--burial is unnecessary, and you need only cold-cure the salmon, or other fish, for 24-36 hours to get a good result.

Now, the fact that gravlax has become a featured item on menus around town [the photo above features a gravlax plate I recently had at Reservoir that consisted of Zubrowka-cured salmon, roasted potatoes, fresh greens, and Zubrowka-laced sour cream, just one of the many reasons we feel Reservoir is the city's best brunch spot at the moment], is not exactly unprecedented within the current North American dining scene. Gravlax has been having a bit of a revival among North America's top chefs in recent years, largely because of the freedom the dish affords--as the website for the Swedish Embassy in Washington, D.C. puts it, somewhat stiffly, "Gravlax... gives plenty of choices to follow your own preference of flavors... Have fun with it." The difference here is that salmon is native to the region and has been a staple ever since the region was first settled (in fact, salmon is certainly one of the reasons the region was settled in the first place), and that, similarly, the curing of salmon has been an important part of the culture here for hundreds and hundreds of years, long before Cartier charted the St. Lawrence. In other words, gravlax may not be native to the region--although, who knows, the Iroquois Nation may very well have had their own version of gravlax in addition to the smoked and wind-dried forms of curing they were using--but it fits in well with the local culture for exactly the same reasons that it took hold in the Scandinavian world. What makes things interesting is that this parallel culture of salmon fishing and salmon curing was first developed through the interaction (I'm being diplomatic) of non-Northern Europeans with indigenous peoples.

With all of this mind, I set about starting to experiment with gravlax myself just the other day. Inspired by my friend Caro's father's gravlax, and by Davidson's claim that "the preparation of gravlax is customarily one of the household duties allocated to men," I'd been wanting to try my hand at making some for quite some time. I also wanted to develop a recipe that would finally make good my Maldon salt promise. The results? You'll just have to be patient. I'm working on a 48-60 hour curing period.

aj

Note: the icicles photograph at the top wasn't taken this weekend, but it could have been.