Edible Tulip

Eating Chicken

After 14 years as a strict vegetarian, bordering on veganism, eating very little dairy and very little fish, I've suddenly embraced the meat lover within. This has not even been a conscious decision. I just CRAVED meat this summer. I was dating someone who loved meat, who talked about meat, and I started to want meat. One evening he arrived at my cabin late at night and cooked himself an omelette with cheese, fried potatoes and ham. I couldn't get enough. He fed me little forkfuls until I was saying: more, more, more. Then I was over to the other side.

I subsequently went to my parent's house for dinner and ate, ahem, lamb burgers! Delicious. Towards the end of the meal the only sound heard was my little voice "er, are you going to eat the rest of that lamb burger on your plate" to my mother, to my brother, to anyone. I wanted more.

Then when my boyfriend came for dinner the other week I made a delicious made-up recipe of stir fried vegetables and chicken strips served atop egg noodes. This is a loose recipe.

Egg noodles or rice

Bean sprouts
Slivered broccoli
Slivered carrots
Slivered red peppers
a bunch of chopped rapini

2 skinless boneless chicken breasts boiled in water for 10 minutes then cooled so they can be shredded easily with fingers and added to the mixture

A marinade of: tamari, sesame oil, chopped garlic, chopped ginger, a tiny bit of honey, vegetable oil, fresh lemon juice, a touch of tahini, salt and pepper and hot chile flakes

I can't stress that you can't make too much marinade. The vegetables can be stir fried in it and then the chicken is added and then as you top the noodles with the bounty add more marinade. Add more salt and pepper and even a bit of a lime pickle relish.

Serve in large Chinese bowls. Drink wine or Tsing Tao beer. Delicious! And heart warming.

Tonight after my first day back at the "office" I clicked in my heels along Bloor Street to the butcher and thought "whoever imagined". I couldn't be happier OR more satiated! (Or sated, I always get confused).

Barbecued Salmon

I live near the Ontario Fisheries Products which is a wholesale dealer of fish, fish and more fish: pike, halibut, haddock, pickeral, Georgian Bay freshwater fish, Atlantic salmon, arctic char, baby shrimp, picked fish, smoked fish, swordfish, Atlantic lobster and frozen fillets for convenience. They've been very good to me so that when I call on a Wednesday looking to pick up fish for 18 people that afternoon when they aren't even open to the public (that's a wholesaler day) they oblige, bone an enormous salmon fillet (or three) for me and have it all packed in ice ready for pick up. I highly recommend buying your fish from them if you visit the Collingwood area on weekends.

Now on to the fish. And barbecuing it. To be honest, I'd never barbecued anything in my life before I started cooking at this retreat centre. It frightened me. It reminded me of my barbecue set is better than your barbecue set rivalries that used to go on in the suburban town of Oakville where I grew up. It reminded me of aging white men in white pants drinking budweiser beer cooking sausages while watching the Masters Golf tournament through the sliding doors. This is ridiculously stereotypical I know. I had to combat those phobias however. That not only aging white men with white pants can barbecue. So I did it. I initiated myself by cooking FISH on a hot flame (nearing 700 F which was totally accidental and due to a tempermental barbecue) for almost 20 people. Lo and behold it turned out perfectly -- people raved, they told me even their husbands couldn't cook salmon this good, I was shocked. Partly I think it is due to the thickness of the fillets I use (between 2 - 3 inches in parts), the freshness of the fillets which produces a lot of oil which holds the moisture and the fact that I marinate after cooking so it seeps into the warm flesh.

I don't recommend bringing your gas stove up to the 700 F mark. I try to maintain the barbecue at 400 F but sometimes it doesn't behave. At 400 F it usually takes about 20 minutes for the salmon to cook through - the outer flesh is turning white, the inner flesh is nearing a paler pink and the very inside is still streaked with bright pink. This to me means it is done. Because by the time I close the barbecue lid and turn off the barbecue (and also the gas), the fish will continue to cook for a few minutes while I arrange all the other dishes on the buffet table. I put my fish fillet on a long piece of foil because I don't have a fish grill. My father does and it works very well. I do not cover my fish to poach it; I keep the top open to the elements of barbecuing because it imparts a slightly smoky flavour.

I dress my salmon in a simple vinaigrette and serve it with this sauce poured over top: 1 cup olive oil, juice of 3 lemons, 1/2 jar of capers plus juice, 2 Tbsp chopped fresh dill, salt and coarse ground pepper.

That charred looking thing in the top upper right of the photo is barbecued garlic. I didn't research it before doing it and I now know that perhaps I should have wrapped it in foil like I have done to roast garlic in the oven. This got excessively sticky and molten. I could still use the deep recesses of each clove but only enough to smear on a few toasted baguette slices which I then topped with a marinated grape tomato and fresh mint balsamic salsa.

Arctic Char & Simple Steelhead

I missed the latest incarnation of IMBB again. There's truly no acceptable excuse except I forgot my camera when I cooked fish for 18 people last Thursday, I then cooked an opening dinner Sunday followed by a very late night drinking wine and eating celebrating Father's Day with my folks and frankly I was fried.

This simple dish of arctic char and steelhead trout didn't look entirely appetizing to me at first. I like my fish grilled (which I find adds sweetness) and then balanced out with an acidic sauce: citrus, capers, coriander chutney, whatever, rather then a sweet asian influence but mother was cooking and so I ate. And it was indeed tasty. She used a blend of coriander, cardamom, cayenne, cumin, black pepper, and sea salt and just patted the dry spices into the flesh of the fish. Father then grilled as only father does on his grill.

Arctic char (Salvelinus alpinus) is a northern cousin to salmon and it resides for the most part up around Labrador and Nunavut. And just like the Inuit have over 100 words for the english word "snow" they also have an admirable list of words that all apparently mean arctic char: iqalugaq, iqaluk, ilkalupik, ivisaaruq, kisuajuq, majuqtuq, nutiliarjuk, situajuq, situliqtuq, tisuajuq. The arctic char has a subtle sweetness to it and is much flakier and less oil saturated than a typical wild salmon fillet. The Steelhead, although a trout, I found rather fatty and not nearly as appetizing as the arctic char. I personally like my fillets fishy and flaky and chewy not meaty and rich and dissolve-in-the-mouth.

Everybody LOVES Chicken Marbella

Tonight marked the opening of the Art Retreat Centre where I'm a resident chef (food shopper, menu planner, grocery put-er-away-er, dishwasher, kitchen therapist). It was an exciting event: 12 guests arriving to the country for 6 intense days of painting and drawing with a live model under the tutelage of an award winning artist. Nerves were high, lots of wine was drunk.

I put out platters of pate, cheese, grapes, pumperknickel crackers, pears, vegetables, red pepper dip, and a delicious tomatillo salsa. Dinner was basmati rice, an asian stir-fry (kale, bok choy, leeks, mustard seed, ginger, garlic, sesame, lemon), Ace baguette bread, baby spinach salad with radicchio/endive and a whole grain vinaigrette, and Chicken Marbella to feed an army. Homemade pies followed. People were giddy with anticipation, a little drunk on newness, overwhelmed by the spectacular views of green and rushing rivers and ecstatic with the food. That made me a little proud but not surprised. I've never had anyone dislike this chicken dish. It's a staple. Perfect for a cottage crowd that likes to mill around drinking cocktails because it stews in its own juices and never dries out. There's never any rush to get it to the table.

I like the process of making it too. I am a vegetarian and I've somehow converted most of my boyfriends along the way to eat the foods I do (probably because I'm mostly the one cooking them). So I don't often cook meats of any sort. Chicken I don't mind. I like buying 4 whole chickens in pieces and pulling the skin from the flesh, ripping it back to expose taut tendons, wrapping it around the nobules at the end of each drumstick. It's hard work. Once all the chicken pieces are in the deep steel pan, I get busy on the other finnicky ingredient: mincing a whole head (not clove) of garlic. Then the rest is easy. It's about gathering handfuls of ingredients in your hand and positioning them properly around the chicken pieces: apricots, pitted prunes, green and black olives, a jar of capers, some olive oil and red wine vinegar, coarse salt and black pepper. Adding some bay leaves and then covering up the whole bounty to marinate for 24 hours. An hour before serving you splash white wine over the chicken and then sprinkle brown sugar on top to glaze.

Every plate came into the kitchen looking licked clean except for a few gnawed on bones. That I would say was a successful meal.

Baked Halibut

Unfortunately preparing a rice dish for the latest ISMBB edition didn’t pan out as I had planned. Unexpected visitors, an extraordinary amount of thunderstorms and power outages, and last minute emergency outsource cooking duties all got in the way of making Chinese red rice (the colour is leached into the sweet rice from the skins of adzuki beans) as my entry.

Instead, I cooked a mean chile for 175 people and accidentally used Indian spices instead of the traditional Mexican ones and nearly burnt holes in the esophogus of all who innocently dug in to the steaming pot. Oops. I curdled a crème anglaise that was intended to accompany a fig compote for a dinner of 85 out-of-town guests. I was tired. I had chile lawsuits on the mind. It's a single moment on a too hot flame that is the distinction between custard and curdled. I know this now. Then there was a day of thunder and lightening and tree shaking all around my little cabin. I cooked fish, had a friend over, drank a few bottles of wine and stayed up watching the sky and listening to the river gorge its outlying bed. We're all living in the swamp now.

Saturday night's meal was so simple and I prepared 99% of it before anyone arrived. The potatoes, called tattooed potatoes because of the way the herbs emboss the flesh, are crispy and tender at the same time. You take a cuople of potatoes per person (I used new red potatoes), cut them in half, press some fresh herbs (rosemary and thyme work best) into the cut flesh, and place face down in several tablespoons of olive oil in a roasting pan. Cook at 400 degrees for 40 minutes. We also ate the halibut (recipe follows), a pan of roasted asparagus with balsamic and fresh Parmesan, a salad of endive and radicchio (seasoned with coarse salt and wine vinegar) and a latticed raspberry pie for dessert.

The Art of the Anchovy

The artistry lies in the ability to delicately flavour a dish while remaining anonymous. Of all the times I’ve slipped anchovies or anchovy paste into a pasta sauce or dressing nary a soul has been able to attribute the slightly salty zing. This is probably a good thing. People seem to have issues with anchovies. I agree. An elongated worm-like purple stretch of a fish with spiky hair follicles is not perhaps the most appetizing presentation but their magic works. They add such an incredible depth of flavour to the simplest recipe they are worth tricking even your loved ones.

I confuse sardines and anchovies. I know biologically they are different species. And I know sardines come in cans where you pull the lid back and they are basked in oil whole. Anchovies are always in fillets (the ones I buy anyway), usually salted, and in a brine or oil. I wouldn’t substitute sardines for anchovies in any of my recipes because sardines aren’t particularly welcome at the dinner table but in Europe I saw many more sardine dishes than I did anchovy ones.

In 1993 my friend Virginia and I traveled from Paris through Spain and Portugal by train. For the most part, we spent our days exploring and then either took an overnight train where we tried to catch up on some sleep or else we bunked up with a local family. I was not yet convinced of the safety of this second arrangement when we arrived in the Algarve and Virginia immediately sidled up to an older man and starting walking up a remote hillside in silence with him heading out of the village. I trudged along behind cursing that we were never going to get out of Portugal with all of our appendages intact (if you’ve ever been to Lima you’ll notice that quite a lot of that city’s population aren’t equipped with all of their flailing limbs. Did you ever wonder why?). Anyway it all worked out just fine. We slept in a double bed on the rooftop of this man’s house. We watched the stars and ate cookies in bed while writing by oil lamp in our journals. We were also awoken at the first sign of daylight to the smell of frying fish. The Portuguese love their sardines. And they seem to cook them all day long. If they weren’t being cooked over an open fire directly under the rooftop we slept on then they were certainly being cooked in every one else’s open fire within shared air space. To this day you couldn’t get me to eat a fried sardine but I love a good anchovy.