Book: A Taste of My Life by Raymond Blanc

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Raymond Blanc is the chef of two-star Michelin restaurant Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons in Oxfordshire England. He was born in France and moved at an early age to England to work in the food industry. This book is a story of his early years as a farm boy all the way to his major success as one of England and the world’s finest chefs. Raymond Blanc also includes a few recipes of his classic recipes in the pages.

It’s as much an entertaining read as it is a useful read for aspiring young chefs. Allow me to show you just a few of the reviews the book has received.

“A delicious offering.”
~The Times

“A rattling good story.”
~BBC Good Food

“We hail his astonishing determination and his evocation of his life at home with Mum and Dad, and revel too in his descriptions of English catering in the years before Blanc.”
~Guardian

“Only a few great chefs are produced every century. Raymond Blanc is one of those great chefs.”
~Marco Pierre White

And an excerpt from the book if I may:

“I remember one of those rabbit meals when I looked up from my plate and stared at my mother. She had misty eyes, yet she had a smile on her face. The teardrops were there because she loved her rabbits. She adored them when they were alive, and it broke her heard when they were turned into a dish. The smile was there because, my God, the rabbit tasted superb. You could call it the French paradox. In France in those days, if a driver spotted a hare on the road he would, without hesitation, chase the animal in his car, if need be chase it across the fields, and probably get nowhere. My point is that although animals were regarded as stroke able, they were primarily viewed as eatable. Invariably, the family pet ended up on the plate.”

Get the book. It kept me entertained on the train during my commutes to school while in London. You’ll enjoy it, I promise.

Find it on Amazon.ca or Amazon.com for between $12-$19.

Recipe: Lavender Goat Cheese Tart with Cranberry Port Compote

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I absolutely love a nice fresh, soft goat cheese. The creaminess, tartness, slight saltiness, and depth of flavours in a good goats cheese make it one of the most enjoyable cheeses to eat.

A while ago while preparing for a catering event I had the idea of mixing goat cheese with a bit of dried lavender I had purchased while in Maui. The result, when paired with a bit of honey, was magical. The lavender brought a beautiful floral quality to the cheese and the honey really just set everything off.

This recipe is a great one to use for an appetizer or just for a snack with friends. Enjoy!

Lavender Goat Cheese Tart with Cranberry Port Compote
serves 4

16 six-inch circles of phyllo pastry
clarified butter
600 g soft goat cheese
1 tablespoon dried lavender ground into a powder

1 cup fresh cranberries
100 ml port wine
1/2 cup sugar

honey

In sets of four, layer the phyllo pastry circles with a brushed coating of clarified butter in between each layer. Line 4 greased four-inch round skillets or baking dishes with the pastry like you would for a pie crust. Mix the goat cheese with the lavender and divide between the four pastry lined skillets. Bake in a 360°F oven for 15-20 minutes or until the cheese starts to brown slightly on the top and the pastry is golden.

For the compote, simply add all the ingredients to a small saucepan and cook over medium heat until it is a thick, jam-like consistency. Let it cool and spoon on top of the finished tarts. Drizzle with a bit of good quality honey and serve.

Book: The Flavour Thesaurus

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It’s a book without pictures. It’s a book with no recipes. Yet I still consider it one of the most helpful cook books I have.

The book is The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit. Like it’s title suggest, it’s a guide to ingredients and their flavours. The book puts ingredients into different flavour categories such as Earthy, Floral Fruity, Marine, Green + Grassy, and many more. It then will take an ingredient and give pairing suggestions. An example would be Globe Artichoke. Some of the pairings suggested are: Globe Artichoke and Bacon, Globe Artichoke and mint, Globe Artichoke and Pea, and Globe Artichoke and Pork. For each pairing, the book gives details on the flavour and texture profiles of each and reasons to why the two work together.

If you enjoy being creative in the kitchen, if you’re a chef responsible for developing menu items, or if you just want to know why the heck the chef at the last restaurant you went to would put Goat’s Cheese and Coffee together, then you need to get this book.

Buy it online at Amazon.ca or Amazon.com for about $20.

Recipe: Confit of Duck with Rustic Potatoes

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Confit. Meat cooked slowly in it’s own fat until it melts under your fork. Yes please.

Today’s recipe is one of my ultimate comfort foods. The best part is that you can cook a lot of the confit, and if you store covered it in it’s own fat in the fridge it will last for months. Here we go.

Confit of Duck with Rustic Potatoes
serves 4

4 duck legs
2-3 litres of duck fat (use pork fat if duck fat is too expensive)
6 cloves of garlic, smashed
10 sprigs of thyme
1 cup rock salt

4 large potatoes
mixed salad greens

Rub the duck legs with rock salt, garlic, and thyme. Let the duck sit with all of the previous for an hour and a half in the fridge. Melt the fat in a pot. Rinse off the duck legs and place them in the fat along with the garlic and herbs, making sure they are completely covered. Place in a 250°F oven and cook for about 4 hours or until the skin on the drumstick near the joint shrinks back towards the thigh. Alternatively you can cook on the stovetop at a medium-low temperature, making sure the oil never boils. Once the legs are cooked you can store them in the fat (fully submerged) and they will keep in the fridge for months.

In a saute pan, heat up some of the fat to quite hot and add the potatoes, cut into rough chunks. Continue to cook on high heat to get some good colour and crispness on the potatoes. Put into a 400°F oven to finish cooking, tossing a few times through the cooking process. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Heat up a bit of the fat in a pan and place the duck leg in, skin side down. Keep the skin pressed to the pan and cook until the skin is crisp. Serve with the potatoes and a bit of mixed greens tossed with olive oil and a bit of lemon juice.

Ingredient Focus: Infused Salt

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Infused salts are so much fun to use. By infusing salt with other flavours you not only boost the flavour of the salt, you also boost the flavour of what you add to the salt. It might seem like a daunting task, but it’s the easiest thing in the world to do and it will provide an extra boost to your meal. Simply sprinkle it over cooked meat, pastas, risotto, anything.

All you need to do is put coarse sea salt in your food processor and pulse it until you have the size of grain you want. If you don’t have a food processor use a mortar and pestle, please don’t use a blender. After that, all you need to do is add your flavours to the salt. The longer the mixture is left, the more the flavours will develop. Below is a list of some examples of what you can infuse your salt with:

  • thyme
  • rosemary
  • lemon zest
  • orange zest
  • lime zest
  • star anise
  • cinnamon
  • oregano
  • cloves

Recently I infused salt with thyme and lemon zest and put it in small mason jars as Christmas gifts. Everyone I gave it to loved the idea.

Recipe: Roasted Garlic Risotto with Guanciale and Soft Egg

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Hey there food lovers!

So the last post was an Ingredient Focus on Guanciale, a type of bacon taken from the cheek of a pig. I promised a recipe to use it in, so here it is. I decided that a great way to showcase the texture and flavour of Guanciale would be in a nice risotto. Check it out.

Roasted Garlic Risotto with Guanciale and Soft Egg
serves 4

1 cup arborio rice
1 litre chicken stock approx. (can be substituted for any other type of stock)
50g shallots, fine dice
1 head of garlic
100ml white wine
100g Guanciale, skin removed and cut into matchsticks
50g unsalted butter
50g parmesan cheese or aged gouda (In the picture I used a 3 year aged Gouda. Money.)

Roast your garlic head (wrap in foil with some oil and salt and cook for about 30 minutes in a 350°F oven) and remove the garlic from it’s skin. Smash it into a paste. Fry Guanciale in a pan until crisp. In a large sauté pan, sweat the shallots gently for a few minutes in the fat rendered from the Guanciale. Add the rice to the pan and toast it for a few minutes over medium heat. Add your roasted garlic paste and fried Guanciale to the rice. Pour the white wine into the pan and stir until it is absorbed. Add your hot stock a ladle at a time and stir constantly to work the starches out of the rice. You’ll know it’s time to add more stock once about 80% of the liquid in the pan has been absorbed. Patience is the key to a beautiful risotto. Cook the rice until it is cooked but still has a slight bite to it. Once the rice is done, mix in the butter and grated cheese to add a richness to the dish. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

To poach the egg, bring a pot of water with a couple tablespoons of white vinegar to a simmer. Create a whirlpool in the pot with a whisk and drop your egg into the middle from as low a height as possible. Cook for 3 minutes and refresh it in an ice bath to stop the cooking immediately if you aren’t going to eat it right away, otherwise just serve it straight out of the pot.

I hope you enjoy the recipe! Leave a comment and let me know how it works out!

Josiah

Ingredient Focus: Guanciale

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Do you like bacon? If you don’t, please stop reading this blog, never come back, you’re not welcome.

Seriously.

Well maybe not seriously.

But seriously…WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH YOU!?!?!?!

Anyway, back to bacon.

Recently I was watching an episode of Chopped, which is a TV show where 4 chefs compete in a series of 3 rounds of black box competitions. In one of the rounds, an ingredient the chefs got was Guanciale. I had never heard of it before.

Quickly the contestants realized that it was basically bacon but made with the cheek of a pig rather than the belly. It’s cured, smoked, hung, and from all reports is basically bacon. Obviously I had to try it.

The next time I was at the market I saw a piece of it at one of my favourite shops, Oyama Sausage Company. I bought it.

In the next post there will be a recipe featuring Guanciale, but for now I’ll explain it to you.

Guanciale is distinctly porky, tastes very much like bacon and for all intents and purposes, looks like bacon when you fry it up. I find that the fat is not as soft and takes a bit longer to render. In terms of flavour, it is a bit sweeter and not quite as salty. Now of course all of this depends on how each (guanciale vs bacon) are prepared, but I am using a basic Pancetta as my reference point.

Stay tuned for the next post where I’ll show you how I used it for lunch today!

Thanks for reading!

Restaurant: Meat & Bread

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Meat & Bread is one of those places that is down to earth, trendy, upscale, and cheap all at the same time. It is a sandwich shop in Vancouver (corner of Cambie and Hastings) that is pumping out some of the best sandwiches I’ve ever had the pleasure of putting in my mouth.

I first heard about Meat & Bread while I was living in London just through some friends’ Facebook statuses. My curiosity was then increased when I saw it featured in an issue of Wallpaper* magazine. I knew that as soon as I got back from Vancouver I would have to visit.

The signature sandwich at Meat & Bread is the Porchetta sandwich. Piled between two soft halves of a ciabatta bun are juicy pork, crispy pork skin, and tender pillows of pork fat. All of this amazingness is supported by a house made mustard that is out of this world. Best part aside from the flavour? 8 bucks.

They also feature an additional daily sandwich, feature soup, feature salad, meatball sandwich, and a wicked grilled cheese. It’s a small menu and that’s the beauty of it. Simple food, done right, and affordable.

To the guys and girls of Meat & Bread, thank you for your gift of Sandwich.

Book: Ginger Pig Meat Book

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image courtesy of http://www.thegingerpig.co.uk

This book is simply one of my favourites. While it may be an emotional connection that warms my heart to it, that doesn’t change how great the book is.

The Ginger Pig Meat Book is the fantastic new-ish book from The Ginger Pig butcher shop in London, England. I discovered this butcher’s shop while studying in London at Le Cordon Bleu this past year. The shop is amazing. The quality of meat that they carry and the knowledge of the butchers is outstanding.

The really cool thing about this book is that aside from great recipes, it also provides a ton of information on different cuts of meat, different varieties of breeds of each animal and information on which breed is best for which cuts of meat, and stories of how the shop grew from the humble beginnings to what it is today.

The one downside to the book (if you can call it a downside) is that all of the measurements and some terminology is very British. For example, instead of a recipe calling for 1 cup of milk it would call for 250 ml of milk. Also all of the weights are metric which might take a bit of getting used to for those used to using cookbooks with imperial measurements.

In short, get the book. You can pick it up on Amazon by clicking HERE.