Cuts Like a Knife

While trolling the Web I noticed a post from someone on a "chef" site who mentioned that they had just purchased an expensive Henckels chef's knife and then purchased an expensive Henckels electric knife sharpener. This is analogous to purchasing an inkjet printer in many ways; the printer is cheap but the cartridges are horrendously expensive.

So Henckels wants you to purchase their expensive chef's knife and then quickly wear it down to a nub (it would only take a matter of months if you used their electric sharpener) then buy another one.

I have other beefs with Henckels, so to speak. What are you supposed to do with a chef's knife? Well, slice things, but far more, chop things. And the way to chop a lot of things is with the rocking motion--you leave the tip of the blade on the board and rock the rest of it over the food (and not your thumb, which I happily did yet again this week.)

Trouble is, the Henckels has a bolster on the blade--that's the thick metal girdle, or heel, that comes out from the bottom of the handle to form a thick ridge all the way to the cutting edge.

That means that if you use an electric sharpener, which is insane to begin with, you're going to end up with a chef's knife that is developing a gap between the heel of the blade and the board.

In fact, this will happen even if you use a stone (as I do) or a steel (those tubular metal rods with rough surfaces that butchers seem to love.) And that's exactly what happened to my Henckels after a couple of years. Then I found my garlic wasn't getting chopped as well.

So it seems silly to get a knife with a bolster and sillier to get an electric sharpener.

I have a Kasumi "Damascus steel" knife that's light yet deadly (it's not a santoku but is shaped pretty much like a regular chef's knife, but without the bolster.)

And I use a stone with one medium-coarse side and one fine. I find that it delivers a far more accurate edge--because you're carefully controlling the angle of the grind--than a steel, where your hand is going to twist slightly (unless you're a pro, which I'm not.)

A good article on chef's knives can be found here. And an excellent article by our very own Barry can be found here.

The guy says "when I run my finger along the blade I can actually feel it curve upward . . ."

Ouch. That really proves his case that he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

More Vacation Scribbles

Since I’ve been in California for the holidays, I’ve been immersed in foodie stuff, although I haven’t felt hungry for the past few days. I made an absolutely brilliant batch of garlic dills the first day I arrived. I’ve now taken to dragging around a food diary. It’s absolutely essential when you make stuff. You think you won’t forget, but you always do.

When that magical moment hits, when you really nailed the curry, that’s when you’ll be glad you wrote it all down. So I’ve finally worked out all the proportions for the dills—believe me, even 1/6 of a cup of salt can make a huge difference—so now I’m confident I can replicate it over and over, thanks to my food diary (really a tiny battered dollar-store notebook with its own pen.)

A couple of other foodie things have entered my universe, although I actually detest the word “foodie” and will never claim to be one.

One is the Bill Buford book, Heat. I read rave reviews of it here and there, so I was curious to pick it up. It’s actually one of the oddest books I’ve ever read. It’s like this middle-aged guy decided to get into professional cooking all of a sudden and applied to work for free at Mario Batali’s Babbo restaurant. So far so good, from an interesting point of view. You get a perspective from a non-career dude, and one who’s actually a journalist by profession. But when you actually get into the book, it seems like it’s just one stream-of-consciousness narrative from a sometimes drunk writer. He hops all over time, doesn’t mention his two kids even once throughout the whole book, and I was convinced he was gay due to his writing style until he finally mentioned that he had a wife.

Very different from Anthony Bourdain’s tautly-constructed style. Bourdain has a true writing talent and organises his anecdotes in a meticulous, word-spare fashion that neatly builds, shocks, amazes, and resolves in a true writerly manner, yet one is not constantly reminded that he’s writing. A chef homeboy, unabashed and unvarnished. But Buford’s book just left me feeling like he should have maybe smoked less weed during the writing of it.

And tonight I finally saw “Sideways.” Of course, as anyone connected with food should be aware, this was a landmark “foodie” picture. Well, maybe a landmark “winey” picture. As foodie pictures go, it was absolutely first-rate, never losing sight of the story and realism. Which reminds me of another foodie picture, Dinner Rush. That was so involved with food that you knew some major food fans had a hand in it, kind of like Francis Ford Coppola’s movies, in which he worked as much of his love of food and drink into the script as possible.

But this tiny immersion into the foodie stuff that I’ve experienced lately (I actually got a panini grill for Christmas! Damned if I know what to do with it. And a Jamie Oliver Flavour Shaker) reminds me that I really despise those who take food to ridiculous extremes—ever heard of fennel pollen? El Bulli and gastro-molecular cooking? I rest my case—and that food should be what it’s supposed to be—nourishment. Let’s keep the goddamned art out of it. Plaster a canvas with Gouda and green peppers if you want art. Leave my bowl to its lowly misery of mac and cheese.

Now to the matter of the six fondue sauces that I drunkenly promised my sister-in-law for the Great Fondue Party of 2006 . . .

Vacation Thoughts

For most of my life I’ve wanted to Be Somebody. The trouble is, I’ve never known who. I always wanted to be someone else. I always wanted to be able to do the stuff that someone else did. Anything that was remotely cool, I wanted to be able to do. How could these people do this stuff, and how could I do the same thing?

The conundrum, now that I see it for what it really is, is that I wanted to do everything, not just one thing. I wanted to do everything well. I discovered an ability to spell very early on; I liked words and their power on the page. I’ve always read like a maniac, but surprisingly, despite my love for reading and love for writing, I just can’t conceive of writing a book. That’s what authors do! And I’m not an author.

When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a musician. I really, really wanted to be a musician. Coincidentally, I also wanted to be a painter. I actually invested real time—countless hours for a teenager—to practicing music and art, and it wasn’t something forced upon me—it was by choice.

But somehow, the best guitarists were too talented. I practiced and practiced and practiced and they were always much better than me. They had that . . . thing, that good guitarists have. That I don’t have. I became a bass player, but shadowing me was always Jaco Pastorius. In the face of such genius, what can you do?

I went to art school. At least here, from sheer perseverance, was something I could do. I specialised in pointillism, an extremely time-consuming form of self-torture that involved creating drawings just by tapping dots of ink on an illustration board.

Looking back, my ambition was highly unrealistic. Mainly I realised that these things are the only thing these people do. Ordinary people don’t want to write and paint and be professional musicians. Being great in all of these fields is a task for a Goethe, or a Dante.

So why is it that I’m so pissed off that I haven’t perfected the art of cooking rice? Why is it not perfect, time in, time out, every grain fluffy yet tender, moist yet firm? Why is it? Why the hell is it?

Because if you can tell me, I’m just positively keeling over to know.

Huh? Why?

Five-Year-Old Pizza

He rolled out the dough, spread the sauce, grated the cheese and put on the toppings. I'd say he has the makings of a top chef. The pizza was excellent, considering it was made by a half-boy, half-frog . . .

I Scoff You Down!

A few culinary notes (do you say kewlinary? I tend to say cullinary but I don’t think I’ve ever heard the word actually pronounced) but some things are not arguable pronunciation-wise, says my inner beheemoth (--or is it behemmoth?):

Turmeric is not tewmeric. It’s termeric. Cumin is not cummin or koomin. It’s kewmin. I think. Cardamom is not card-a-MON, mon. It’s card-a-mom, Mother. And what is basil? Do you say bay-zil? I tend to say bazz-il but I don’t know where I learned that.

And oh! the difficulties of spelling. Just spell that spice that makes little girls nice. Two Ns or two Ms?

But don’t annoy me about that guy that runs a restaurant. Originally, a restaurant was a place in which you could find comfort; food, perhaps, a bed, perhaps companionship. In French, it was a place that “restored” your spirits: a “restoring” (restaurant) place. This is the “-ing” form of the French verb: “liv-ing” = “viv-ant”, “talking” = “parl-ant” (although in both languages these can be other forms of speech as well.)

Still, there is no arguing about it: a person who owns a restaurant is not a “restauRANT-teur,” a mistaken English extension of the anglicized word (I will leave the semantics of these things to people who actually SPEAK French and rely on my anglinstinct), but a “restauRAT-eur”--pronounced "rest-o-RAH-teur," meaning “someone who restores.” A quibble, I know, but peeve-inducing nonetheless. (I will concede that the "rat" portion of it does contribute to the quality of some restaurants.)

Again, the French will probably weigh in with their (rightful!) opinion.

Lastly, one final pet peeve: one does not “scoff” or “scoff down” food. One “scarfs” it. To scoff is to mock or make fun of, definitely not to eat. Again, I leave the etymology to you, but I know it to be true.

Whaddya know, I kinda rind.

Ray-Bashing Episode II

Tony Bourdain continues to be my candidate for the most hilarious person on the planet, able to say something totally outrageous while couching it in terms more labelled merely inappropriate.

Thus his comment in this article about Rachael Ray: “Chefs aren’t threatened by her because she’s not one of us,” adds Anthony Bourdain, one of the few professional chefs to speak out about Ray. “I’ve run into Rachael,” he continues. “She’s very cheerful and nice in a fem-bot sort of way. I mean I harbor a deep secret wish that in her spare time she’s decapitating puppies in her cellar while worshipping the anti-Christ but I’m afraid I’ll be disappointed.”

Fuckin' hilarious.

Spark o' Life

There was a time when you would have to get out your typewriter, or perhaps use a pen. Maybe even a fountain pen. Then you’d have to type or write something that you thought was relevant, say to the world condition, or maybe something you felt peeved about that day. Then you would have had to finish it nicely and fold the paper it was typed on and then put it in an envelope and either take it to the post office or put a stamp on it yourself and drop it in the mailbox. And then your letter would wing its way to the newspaper where you were sending it. Then, a bunch of people you didn’t know might or might not look at your ramblings and then might or might not decide to put your letter in the “Op-ed” section. One of these days, if at all.

But now, you just do what I’m doing. Type in your room on your computer, click a few buttons, and if you want the world to know what you had for lunch today, you can just click “post” and hundreds, even thousands of people you’ve never met before can read anything you choose to type.

Well, now that you hundreds if not thousands of people are reading, I’ll just tell you that I put a tiny but bright spark of life (my son) to bed and am about to have a beer.

So there.

The View from Silence

When I was a kid, I found myself one night in a cabin deep in the heart of Tanzania at 2 o’clock in the morning. I will never forget awakening to the deafening sound of . . . silence. It was a silence so acute that you couldn’t even call it silence: it was the utter absence of sound. One felt suddenly rendered deaf. It made me very nervous, as if a vengeful god had plucked the drums from my ears.

But what was infinitely, horribly worse, was the darkness. It was so dark in that room that I felt as though I had suddenly had my eyes removed. I just wanted to go to the bathroom, but the thought of getting up from the bed and feeling my way through the thick, indifferently silent miasma of inkiness was extremely unnerving. None of the lights worked. It was a safari camp — everything was switched off at 11.

“Geoff,” I pleaded in a drawn whisper to my older brother who lay in the bed next to mine, “Wake up!” But he wouldn’t.

I thought I was losing my mind until my ears and eyes finally registered something: a hiss and some lights through a window. It was the camp owner’s jeep, making a routine patrol through the camp. Buoyed that I was not an ocularly-challenged deaf person, I somehow made it to the bathroom.

Now, here, I sit on a futon in semi-rural Japan at 4 o'clock in the morning, a few hours after having spent 20-odd hours on planes, trains and automobiles. Coming from a place ten minutes by bus from Guy and St. Catherine, the silence here is awesome, mind-bending. In Montreal, there is never the absence of sound. It is a deep hum that continues, day in, day out, all day, all night. The rush of a truck three miles away, the quiet eternal roar of Decarie Expressway.

And even in the wee hours, the sky is ablaze. An apocalyptically orange pall casts its light over everything. Even having dark curtains never prevents this baleful glow from seeping in through every crack.

Here, although I type on a black laptop keyboard, I can see it in the dim light of the ubiquitous fluorescent ceiling lamp that I’ve dimmed to its lowest setting. And the silence, while deafening, is tangible. There is the calm, inexorable hiss of the hard drive. If I strain, there are tiny noises from around the neighborhood, occasionally, as if to reassure me that I still have ears.

But I am reminded, in this suddenness of suppressed senses, of that Tanzanian night, and I wonder if somehow, in the presence of light and sound, I’m missing something.

Tipping Points

I'm definitely not against tips. But to force someone to work for them — that I am against. I'd prefer that my server was getting a decent wage to begin with. Then if I liked the service, I'd give them a tip. In Japan, it's considered gauche to tip a restaurant server. Admittedly, the prices of meals there might be somewhat higher than in the West, but no longer by much. And I've tipped servers there anyway; you kind of have to force it upon them, but they hardly ever refuse, assuming it's just between you and them and not in front of a table full of customers.

I was reading a blog from my erstwhile "hometown" of San Francisco that led to a blog by the local critic (scroll down and you'll see a discussion of what various restaurant employees get paid) that led to an article about tipping being abolished by one of America's most famous chefs and it raised anew my wonder at this tipping practice in North America.

I think a server who doesn't have to worry about tips will be a happy server. He knows that even if you, as a fickle member of the public who is known within your circle of friends as "famously cheap" — and I have known quite a few folks like that — withhold his tip for some imagined slight, he won't get totally stiffed on the 5-course dinner he has just served you. He may have done his best but you just didn't like the food — which of course was Chef's fault, but Chef gets paid his regular salary anyway. So I think a regular, living wage plus whatever the public wants to give in tips is a good idea all around.

Actually, if I had my way, I'd tip in advance. That way, you'd be SURE to get better service.

Unspoiled Brats and Other Sausages

The ingredients for a sausage-making session

My old meat grinder, actually quite a fragile thing (Krups Butcher Shop) gave out on me several months ago. I didn’t realise how annoying this was until I contemplated buying the same old store-bought ground beef/pork/veal/you name it. You have no idea where this stuff comes from — some fright ads want you to believe that the meat of 1,000 cows could be in your hamburger — so if you’re used to grinding your own meat, as I had come to be, it was quite intolerable.

Let me get something quite straight for those folks that read the preceding paragraph and then moved on because the whole idea of grinding meat at home just seems to be too much trouble. Let me tell you what’s too much trouble. Too much trouble is baking. Anything. Why the hell are you going to devote an entire afternoon to assembling some baking project, the easiest of which is going to be some store-bought cake mix and the most difficult a levain bread made from your own starter, when you can go to the local baker and buy an excellent cake or a brilliant baguette for less than a few dollars?

But try going to the neighbourhood grocer and get a hamburger that was ground that day from meat that was all in one piece at the time (not assembled from “trimmings”) or a sausage that is not composed of — and this is almost 100% certain — some proportion of mystery meat. You can’t get sick from an underdone loaf of bread, but you sure can from mystery meat.

So why does grinding your own meat fall under the same umbrella of fear-of-cooking as, say, deep frying, pastry-making or pickling?

Deep frying. Hot oil! Burn. ER. Greasy black things floating in vat of burned oil to clean up.

Pastries. Millions of bowls, flour everywhere, hot ovens, tons of greasy utensils and pans to clean, not to mention directions so precise that if you miss by 1/4 of an ounce you’ll end up with a bathroom sponge.

Pickling. Don’t make a mistake on the sterilization of that jar, dude, or C. Botulinum might be tickling your cucumbers. Plus, wait a month before you can taste your project.

I’ve done all that stuff, and the only one of them that consistently wins in the Reward-for-Amount-of-Effort-Expended-with-Least-Hassle department is grinding your own meat.

The pork

I don’t eat meat a lot, probably not even once a week. Sometimes not for a couple of weeks. Chicken is good. Fish is good. Vegetables are good. So when I do eat meat, I want the best. I don’t go to fast food places to have a hamburger. If I’m going to eat some fattening, cholesterol-laden meal, let it be on a field of battle chosen by myself. I’ll choose the cheese. I’ll choose the meat. I‘ll know exactly what’s in it.

So after a couple of months of going without my homemade ground-meat selections, I began to hunger for a burger or the simple pleasure of a sausage, and bought a new meat grinder. This one promised to kick some major ass on my old one, so I put it to the test today.

Project: three different sausages. Number 1, the old standby, hot Italian. Number 2, bratwurst; a first. Number 3, Thai chicken-turkey, also a first. Why three? Because getting the grinder out and assembling and cleaning and producing is work, so you might as well do as much as you can while you’re at it. It might not come out again for three months, but guess what? You might still have the results from last time in the freezer.

It’s fun. And portable. And durable. You can’t haul your latest pastry creation cross-country and expect it to survive, but you sure can carry twenty frozen sausages and have them taste the same as the day you made them.

So this is how it went: I bought a Waring Pro MG800 for about $120. This bastard will grind your fiancé’s diamond ring down to a nub. I went to the butcher and bought all the ingredients for the project: two pork-based sausages and one poultry-based sausage. Recipes will follow, but I want to get the ground rules down first.

Pickling, you don’t have everything sterilised, you die. Sausage-making, you don’t die, but you have to outsmart the enemy, which is germs. Key here is cold. Cold, cold, cold at all times. Everything cold. And no cross-contamination. Don’t grind turkey in the same grinder as the pork before it without a thorough washing. Imagine you’re a surgeon about to operate before you make each sausage and you’ll be on the right track. That doesn’t mean sterilize, it just means clean; hands clean, tools clean, vessels clean, machine clean. Meat cold.

Par-freeze the meat before grinding. This means freeze it until it’s half-frozen. It makes it easier for the machine to grind and keeps everything a lot more sanitary. Bacteria double every 20 minutes at room temperature. Only a few really drunk ones venture out when it’s 1 degree centigrade.

Grinding chicken and turkey

Assemble all the other ingredients before even breaking the meat out of the freezer. This is so simple it’s pathetic. Often, it’s a list of powdered spices, sugar and salt. Then all you have to do is grind the meat, mix the spices in, and voilà, instant sausage. Bring the meat out of hibernation while it’s good and half-frozen. Grind it with the spices or grind it and then mix in the spices. Use your hands. Wash them thoroughly before, but then be a kid and mix all the gooey stuff together. Warning: if you’re doing it right, your hands will get unbearably cold. This is good. Warm them up under the tap and resume.

Once everything is thoroughly mixed, it’s taste time. Make a small patty of the meat mixture and fry it up. Make sure it’s completely cooked through. Brown it nicely. Taste. While you’re doing this put the meat in the refrigerator. Keep the bugs hanging out at the bar, not going to see what’s going on outside.

Adjust the seasonings. At this point you might want to retire the meat to the fridge for the night. But don’t wait past tomorrow.

Time to stuff! Your grinder will have a stuffing attachment. You will have bought the casings from your butcher. This is not scary. They’re just medium hog casings, which means that they look like tapeworms swimming in salt water. You’ll load them onto your stuffer horn after washing them through the tap and then you’ll stuff. Then you’ll twist and make links and then you’ll you’ll semi-dry the sausages (that you made!) on racks in the refrigerator overnight.

Stuffed, rested overnight and ready for the freezer

Then you’ll grill, broil, poach or sauté them, or freeze them to be consumed at your leisure for three months or so.

One afternoon. Less hassle than baking a chicken pot pie or making minestrone soup. But here’s the best part, the part I was saving up. It’s not just that you made it yourself. It’s not just that you know exactly what’s in it. It’s not just that it really wasn’t very difficult, and that you don’t have to even be a totally incompetent moron to do it. It’s that it tastes amazingly good. Not just regular good. Light years beyond anything you will have tasted before you did it. 100 times better than any store-bought product. 50 times better than any restaurant-eaten product. And this is just if you blindly follow instructions! If you get creative, well, the stuffing’s the limit . . .

The finished product

New York-Style Spicy Hot Italian Sausage
3 lbs. pork butt
3/4 to 1 lb. pork back fat (unsalted)
1/3 cup sun-dried tomatoes in oil, drained and chopped fine
3 tablespoons anise-based liqueur, like Sambuca
2 tablespoons anise or fennel seeds
2 tablespoons minced garlic
2 tablespoons red pepper flakes
4 teaspoons kosher salt
2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons coarsely ground black pepper
1 teaspoon ground cayenne
1/4 cup water, as needed
Medium hog casings

Grind the pork and back fat with the rest of the ingredients through your medium (not coarse and not fine) grinding plate, adding a little at a time of each. No need to be precise. After everything is ground, remix with both hands until thoroughly combined. Make a small patty, fry it up and taste. Adjust seasonings. Stuff or refrigerate overnight and stuff the next day.

Fresh Farm Garlic Bratwurst (Sheboygan style)
1.5 lbs. pork butt
1 lb. veal shoulder
1/2 lb. pork back fat (unsalted)
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons finely chopped garlic
2 teaspoons coarsely ground black pepper
2 teaspoons ground mace
2 teaspoons ground caraway seed
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 cup whole milk
Medium hog casings

Grind the pork and back fat with the rest of the ingredients through your finest grinding plate, adding a little at a time of each. After everything is ground, remix with both hands until thoroughly combined. Make a small patty, fry it up and taste. Adjust seasonings. Stuff or refrigerate overnight and stuff the next day.

Thai Chicken and Turkey sausage
1.75 lbs. boned chicken thighs with skin (very important to maintain the proper fat content)
1.75 lbs. boned turkey thighs with skin
1 bunch of fresh cilantro, stems and leaves, chopped finely, about one cup (may need more after tasting)
1/2 cup finely chopped fresh purple basil, or green if you can’t find it, chopped (may need more after tasting)
1/2 cup finely chopped fresh mint, (may need more after tasting)
1/4 cup Nam Pla (Asian fish sauce) do not skip!
1.5 tablespoons grated fresh ginger or galangal
3 tablespoons of Thai green curry paste (available at most grocery stores, do not skip)
1 tablespoon kosher salt or to taste
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon coarsely ground black pepper
1 teaspoon ground cayenne
Medium hog casings

Grind the chicken and the turkey through your medium or coarse plate. Add remaining ingredients and combine thoroughly with hands. Make a small patty, fry it up and taste. Adjust seasonings. Stuff or refrigerate overnight and stuff the next day.

Notes:
It’s incredibly important to taste the sausage mixture before you stuff it. One very crucial ingredient is the amount of salt. Remember that you can always add more, but not take away. Depending on the fat content of your meat, the apparent saltiness can vary wildly, even though you’re sticking to the recipe. The judicial addition of sugar will generally offset too much salt, but once there’s a certain amount it’s past the point of no return. You don’t want to go there.

Sausage recipes are as different as pickling recipes. There are no amounts graven in stone. One butcher will tell you never to put veal in the bratwurst and another will tell you to make it only of veal. Find a recipe you think you can trust, make it, fiddle with it, then make it your recipe. Some people put bread crumbs or eggs in hamburgers. Some people don’t. They taste different, but not including one or the other isn’t going to kill you. So experiment. I love garlic and heat, so I’ll double or triple the garlic in a recipe. Likewise for the peppers. The thing is, if you’re like me, you’ll never find it like the way you make it on the commercial market. Few people like high-octane food, so no commercial producer in their right mind will make it that way. That’s why I make my own sausages.

Death, Ray

Is it just me, or does anyone else despise Rachael Ray? I used to watch her occasionally, but the way she talks just grates like hell. If I hear “yummo” or “delish” or “eevoo” one more time, to quote Jack Torrance, I’m going to bash someone’s head right the fuck in.

Okay, I guess it’s not just me.

Who knew?

A hilarious report on CFCF news names “Elio’s” as the best pizza in Montreal. Can’t remember number two, but BM pizza was number three. Don’t know about Elio’s, but BM is one of those places whose menus you find shoved in your mailbox. The kind who also make steak subs and egg rolls. Not good.

How do these people arrive at such results? Simple: the voting public. The lowest common denominator. Drag 50 people off the streets and McDonald’s will win Best Fries every time.

Well, it’s my opinion that there is no best pizza in Montreal because they’re all so mediocre, but I can assure you they’re not going to be found at Elio’s or BM pizza.

While I’m on the topic of hilarity, it’s really funny to see these huddled holdouts sitting on terrasses outside coffee shops that still have chairs outside, smoking their cigarettes. In my neighborhood, a lot of them are Arab. I wonder if they’re still going to be out there, earnestly arguing and puffing away, come January.

Happy Halloween

If I see "Spooktacular" or "Boonanza" one more time I think I'm going to scream. But to tell the truth, I actually prefer Halloween over Christmas. Not that I go to costume parties or anything. Kids can't even come around because I live in a secure apartment building. So I'll just try to bring a bunch of healthy snacks (is there such a thing in stores at Halloween?) to the day care where my son used to go. He's in Japan now. It's apparently becoming trendy for Japanese to celebrate Halloween these days. Give me a goddamn break.

Anyway, I carved daddy pumpkin and baby pumpkin for him. Have a goddamn spooktacular boonanza.

I'm Awake Now

Yes, I’ve been remiss. But sometimes there’s just nothing to write about . . . it’s been one of those doldrum summers. Very few food adventures.

An abortive attempt to firm up a fresh pasta recipe by using cake flour instead of durum semolina (apparently it mimics the Italian 00 grade flour) which ended up tasting like bland store-bought. Ah well, lesson learned.

And then, incredibly, the possibility of creating a restaurant. Since it’s basically a peyote dream at this stage, the less said the better.

But in the past couple of days, a stirring of the old culinary urges. First, prompted by watching Julia Child on PBS and seeing a certain Nancy Silverton describing how to make a sourdough starter. Well, that got my attention. The last time I tried to “capture” wild yeast, it was a miserable failure. I attributed it to a general lack of wild yeast in Montreal when it was -25 outside. But I discovered that it doesn’t work that way, if you have organic grapes. More on that later.

And today, I scoured Côte-des-Neiges looking for my favorite pickle, dill spears with garlic. It seems they’ve disappeared from the shelves of all Montreal stores. None at Metro, none at Maxi. Haven’t been for months. In fact, the main wall of dill pickles at both places now advertise “No garlic.” Sacrilege!

So I decided to make them from scratch. I delved in pickling a few years ago, so I had the canning jars ready to go. All I needed were the correct cucumbers and some fresh dill and I was off. It only took about three hours (a lot of just waiting) and no specialised equipment, and now I have two quart jars of spicy garlic dill spears all pickled and ready to sit in a cool place for two weeks until they’re ready to devour.

I wrote everything down, so if they’re outstanding, I’ll post the recipe. Might even make a movie out of it.

Also came up with a new way to make curry that blew away even me. The good thing is that I wrote it all down and reproduced it from my own recipe the next day, and it was actually better . . . it’s just a hair’s breadth away from being as good as the Jalfrezi at Mysore . . . absolutely fantastic with my basmati pilaf and naan from the little grocer at Plaza Côte-des-Neiges.

It’s getting cold, and about time, too. A Montreal winter is just the thing for this pasty, miserable summer that has come and gone. And the creative juices are stirring from their long hibernation . . .

Break from hiatus

Okay, I'm jarred out of my summer lethargy by two things: one is that tomorrow I fly yet again to California. I will try to drum up some culinary adventures.

The other is by the discovery of HDR photography. This is a bizarre form of photography that makes it possible to capture all the dynamic range that humans see; in other words, imagine a room in the darkness with the sun outside. You can see everything in the room AND everything outside the window, but the camera will have a very difficult time of it. Thus, we're used to seeing photos with this incredibly limited dynamic range. Thus, HDR photos. Take a look at this one, for example. It looks bizarrely like a painting, but it's totally done with photographs, and not even manipulated as some Photoshop images can be.

More of these types of images can be seen here.

I'm definitely going to get in on this one . . .

Fun Day

I don't do Mondays.

Mondays are out. They're evil and pestilent. I'll warrant half of the population expend most of their stress anticipating Mondays.

Not me. But there's a trade-off: not having a regular M-F job, I need not fear Mondays, but then again, a Monday might make or break my week. Yes, you M-F job people, you have security. But what about Sunday? Talk to me about Sunday, because it means Monday is coming. How can you realistically relax? Huh? Can't go on a bender. Oh, oh, oh God no. Coming into work with a raging hangover? Hey, as a recreational all-weeker, I'd rate that feeling as a minus-twelve. So, what are your Sunday options?

Fucked. So Sunday is fucked and Monday is also fucked. So where does that leave you? Friday, that holiest of days. Or Saturday, the day 'Hovah gave to sinners. But let's look at it carefully: Friday, you get slide-ass shitfaced. So Saturday, you're a wasted wreck, only suited to go to Reno-Depot and suck up a Price Club hot dog for lunch. Then it's home and your thinning dendrites feast noiselessly upon The Learning Channel until six, which is when you declare amnesty and go take a nap. Hey. Hey. HEY!!! Tomorrow's Sunday, asshole.

So, okay, a third of your week is fucked. What about the other parts of it? Not much left.

Tuesday you're really into work. You have to be, because of all the shit you left undone in anticipation of last weekend. So, work, work work. Home and actually feeling good because this is the first day you didn't feel like shit. Wednesday: make plans with the co-workers for this weekend!!! You asshole. A self-perpetuating never-ending cycle of horror. This is what you look at when you comb your hair in the mirror every morning.

But gamely, you plow on to Thursday! Happy Thursday! This is when you finally have the energy to go to the bank and the post office and mail that goddamn bill and call your grandmother. And you feel a little bit . . . good! Because tomorrow's Friday, fuckin' A! Fuckin' goddamn fuckin' A, tomorrow's Friday all over again! Yay!

And then there's Saturday.

Hy Ate Us

As you can tell, this blog has been officially on hiatus for about two months. Mostly because I'm busy taking care of the darling boy, but also because nothing culinary has come my way recently ever since the Atlantique steak fiasco. Boy, did that dampen my enthusiasm to the tune of $200.

No telling when the next culinary adventure will come along, but . . . in about ten days I will be off to California. About a month after that, I will be off to Japan. It's really endless, these trips . . . sometimes I just don't know how I do it. But I must.

I've been writing lyrics for imaginary songs. As of now I'm too lazy to put them to music but I might get around to it.

Mind If I Piss In Your Coffee?

Used to be when you went into a restaurant in Montreal, you were ushered to the back of the room if you were unfortunate enough to be a non-smoker. It didn't help, of course, but on top of that the sight of the smokers occupying the good tables next to the large bay windows coupled with their noxious fumes easily reaching you anyway made you very, extremely displeased.

So I smoked for ten years. I smoked a lot for ten years, like, uh, my life depended on it. But I don't any more. And I don't appreciate having to smoke when I don't want to, which is what I have to do when someone lights up next to me, or even 50 feet away from me.

So since the new non-smoking laws went into effect May 31, instead of the smokers getting the best seats inside the restaurant, they get the best seats outside the restaurant, on the terrasses that are the mainstay of hundreds of restaurants and coffee shops all over the city. Just walking by one on the street envelops you in a noxious plume of carcinogens, so imagine actually having to eat something in the middle of one.

Quebec just doesn't get it. There should be a blanket ban of smoking in all places where children can sit down on chairs. There, that makes it easy to understand, doesn't it?

God Does Play Dice

It was delectable garlic, melt-in-your-mouth, still wet on the outside, the inside almost delicately pink. It had been pulled fresh from the ground of a small farm lot in Nara, Japan, and I'd put twelve of the amazing bulbs into a plastic bag and into my suitcase for the long journey home, praying that Customs wouldn't smell it and take it away. They took away a bunch of things (see below) but they inexplicably didn't take the garlic. I was in luck!

The first meal I made with it was incredible; an amazing pasta aglio oglio in which the character of the garlic really shone. And I still had eleven and a half bulbs left!

Since they were so fresh, they were beginning to smell a bit musty from being cooped up in newspaper and a plastic bag, so I opened the bag and put it into an open box in a dim corner of the kitchen so the garlic would dry out somewhat. And then I planned my next feast: Spicy Garlic Shrimp with Fresh Rosemary served over Penne Pasta.

Salivating over what I knew would just be the best garlicky feast I had ever had, today I assembled all the ingredients and prepared all the ingredients except for the garlic, which I wanted to leave for last. Slicing garlic is one of the most sensual kitchen duties I know. I went to get the box. It wasn't there.

I think the cleaning lady threw it out yesterday.

More Japan Photos

Thanks to Blork's prodding, I actually took a spare 5 minutes out to learn how to use Flickr, so I posted some of my Japan photos there. Thanks, Blork!

Japan Photos

Much like Blork, I also took lots of photos when I went to Japan recently. The beauty of the digital is that you can snap away like a madman and never have to worry about paying for it (assuming you have enough card space.)

Unfortunately, I don't know how to use Flickr, and don't have the time to investigate it yet, so I'll have to store large files on my own server and have Blogger resample the ones I send to it.

I went through all the photos last night (365 of them, not even close to Blork) and picked out three I'm going to make 20x30" prints of, have them dry-mounted at Atelier 68 on St. Laurent for about $53 each and put 'em up on my wall. They're all landscapes, and I decided to make a triptych out of them (larger size version is on my server.)


In this photo, they're much closer together than they're going to be on the wall, but I was struck by looking at them after I'd chosen them that all the lines seem to line up — ie. the distant mountains proceed in the same line as do the nearer mountains and even the foreground shapes, vaguely. And I hadn't purposely done a panorama shot — these were from completely different vantage points.

If I ever get a life, I'll learn how to use Flickr and put up some more.

The Sweet-but-burned Smell of Satisfaction

Marvel: Abu Baby is just about now reaping the rewards of his lifelong wish to enter Hell. Have a safe and long, long trip, dude!

Flightmare

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Land of Noise

The chorus of living things provides an almost white-noise of sound at 10 p.m. on a warm spring evening in a countryside corner of Japan. Thousands of tiny newly-minted frogs compete with hordes of noise-generating insects in an insane chorus that sounds like 10,000 mini-747s all taking off at the same time.

But that doesn’t compare with the man-made cacophony that greets a traveller to Japan. Inside the airport, things begin talking, singing and beeping from the moment you exit the aircraft. An escalator tells you to be sure to hold onto the handrail and be careful of the last step. The robot trolley-car that ferries you from one terminal to the next tells you first when it’s about to arrive. Then it tells you where you’re going once you’re on it.

Trucks run to and fro during daylight hours everywhere in Japan yelling on loudspeakers about everything from elections to gummy rice. Supermarkets blare the supermarket theme and food hawkers yell at you to come try their wares.

But it’s twilight near a rice field where you find tranquillity.

This is why you reluctantly come to terms with Japan.

Land of Shoes

It’s not often one has to make a decision regarding the purchase of a new pair of shoes in terms of how easy it will be to remove and put them on again where I come from, but not doing so, and not doing so at length, is something that must not be easy to do the fiftieth or even hundredth time in this, the Land of the Shoes.

Because you’re going to have to take them off and put them on again if not five, but fifty times a day in Japan. And the rules seem to be muddy. Private houses are a no-no for shoes, but that’s easy to enforce. However, even within private houses, there are yet more rules. If you wear the “knock-around-the-house” slippers into the bathroom (well, there aren’t bathrooms here—there’s a toilet but it’s always separate from the bath area) your hosts will blanch, aghast at this violation of sanitation rules and the slippers will be thrown away, pretty much along with your hitherto stellar reputation.

Public spaces seem to be a free-for-all. In an elementary school, for example, you seem to be prohibited from wearing shoes anywhere that the dirt becomes concrete. The kids are indoctrinated from birth to wear this set of shoes for this purpose, then carry around another set of shoes, or maybe two, for various other purposes. Shoe lockers abound; hundreds upon hundreds of them, with the kids’ names dutifully inscribed above.

Restaurants are a crapshoot. More traditional ones have a genkan, or foyer, where all the guests have to remove their shoes and replace them with nasty, ill-fitting rubber replacements, and more modern places don’t have any shoe rules at all, thank God.

Hospitals? Lose the shoes. The typical ante-room in a large institution will harbor hundreds of pairs of shoes. There even seems to be a shoe-master who carefully vets every “guest” to make sure they’ve properly doffed their pair and have successfully mated with a replacement.

Needless to say, this shoe-centric society’s rules and regulations makes for some honest tooth-gnashing. How can the bathroom slippers be somehow cleaner than the living room slippers? Are we somehow implying that most people urinate on the floor? And the well-trodden halls of primary schools and hospitals are hardly modicums of hygiene. What’s next, remove your shoes before boarding the train?

One thing’s for sure: the slipper industry is undoubtedly concocting new rules as I type.

Spiffy Graph

This is a portrait of montrealfood.com. No, really. It's a Java applet representation of the site in the form of an abstract graph. The different colors represent the different kinds of tags used in the site.

Who knew montrealfood was so pretty?

Galangal or Fries?

You're cooking for four friends tonight. Which menu would you think would be easier: Thai curry, with lemongrass, galangal, lime leaves and bamboo shoots, with jasmine rice and gyoza on the side, or hamburgers with oven fries?

"EEEEENNNNHHHHHH!!!" (sound of gameshow wrong-choice buzzer) if you chose the burgers.

I always thought that simple stuff like sandwiches was a much easier menu choice than complicated spice-filled extravaganzas, but a while back I realized that whenever you have anything approaching a one-pot, reheatable solution, you've just taken yourself to a stress level approaching zero.

I know that on the surface, the curry with its exotic ingredients and fussy prepping, spicing and dicing can seem to be more trouble than it's worth — viz. an entire afternoon in the kitchen — but please compare it to a huge, last-minute plating nightmare of trying to keep six burgers hot while dressing them six different ways, then trying to make sure the fries haven't wilted into soggy greasebars by the time you get them on the plate. At least with the curry, it's all done by six and you're sipping a glass of wine while chatting to the guests, not slicing red onions or monitoring the potatoes in the oven.

Which is why I dread the great Burger Shoot coming up in the next few days. I not only have to make them, I have to film them.

Bees In My Bonnet

Last night, as I was settling into my bean bag chair with a nice glass of wine to watch Hawaii Five-0, I suddenly felt something tickling my hand. I brushed at it with my other hand and lo and behold! Something fell on the tatamis. I switched on the light and to my horror I saw that it was some large, beetle-like insect.

I ran to the kitchen to get a glass and some cardboard so I could scoop it up and deposit it on the balcony, but just as I was about to do so, it flew straight into my face. Needless to say, I was mightily disturbed at this turn of events, but even more disturbed when I realised it was a bumblebee. How it managed to squeeze through a 1/4-inch crack in the screen door I'll never know, but there it was, in my bedroom, buzzing around madly, attracted to the halogens on the ceiling.

I must admit here that I'm uh, somewhat averse to things that sting, no matter how many people assure me they'll only sting if you annoy them; that's why to date, I've only ever been stung once, and that was when I stepped on a wasp poolside.

So I was confronted with a mighty dilemma. Where the hell was I going to sleep if I couldn't catch the bastard? All of a sudden, it sort of barrelled down the wall and fell behind my bed. Considering that a mere half-hour before I had changed all my sheets and pillows from a tan scheme to a black scheme, spotting some jet-black insect was going to be difficult. I carefully snatched my blankets and pillows off the bed, carefully inspecting them for Bee Boy, and dragged them into the spare bedroom, shaking them off to make sure he was not hitching a ride.

Then I went back in and did a thorough search. But the damn thing was nowhere to be found! I swear I looked for 20 minutes. How could a bee that size disappear?

I nervously watched the rest of H-5-0, expecting the bee to buzz straight into my ear, and then turned out all the lights and retired to the spare bedroom. I left the screen door open so maybe he'd fly out during the night (yeah, right.)

The bed in the other room is not comfortable, so I didn't get much sleep. But this morning I awoke, had a coffee and sat down at my computer, which is in the spare room. Imagine my consternation when a huge buzzing erupted from near my lamp. There he was, dive-bombing me again, no doubt for some imagined slight. And then, just as suddenly as he appeared, he disappeared. So I'd been sleeping in the same room as him all night anyway!

But how did he get from a room with a closed door into another room with a closed door? Could there have been two bees?

He's still up there somewhere. As I type I occasionally look up nervously. And maybe his pal is hanging around in the bedroom, waiting for me to come settle in for Hawaii Five-0.

Or maybe not.

I swear this is the first time I've ever had the legit opportunity to say it, but here goes: Two bees or not two bees? That is the question.

Definitely Not an Agony Booth

This is something I would dearly love to have instead of the "airplane galley"-style kitchen I'm saddled with: the circular kitchen (with thanks to Barry for alerting me to this.)

Nano-cuisine

A chef friend of mine, who works at a prestigious downtown address, and who demanded in shrill terms that he remain nameless, claims to have created a bold new cooking style that he swears will take the culinary world by storm.

"I call it 'Nano-cuisine,' but it's actually more accurate to call it 'Micro-cuisine.' I haven't yet got it down to the complete 'nano' level, " he explained sheepishly.

"So let me understand this," I said, and hazarded a guess: "You're making, like really, really small appetizers. Amuses-bouche."

He was shocked! "No, no, not that at all," he proclaimed, and since we were at my house, he asked me "Do you have any chicken?" Yes, I said, but it was leftovers from being grilled the night before.

"Perfect," he said and ran out the front door. In a few minutes he was back from his car, bearing a small metal box.

"This," he said, "is an Electron Microwave."

Huh? I was totally confused. "I got it from an inventor in Germany," he explained. "It's not out on the market yet. It's not even meant for food — it's for purifying metals."

So . . . . ? He insisted I get out the chicken, so I did. It was a half of a whole breast that I'd grilled the night before. He asked for a saucer and put the chicken breast on it. He opened a little metal door on the box and put the saucer in — it just managed to fit. "It's Li-Ion-powered," he told me, when I asked where the wires were.

And then he pushed some hidden control — this is a tiny box, so I couldn't see anything — and the box started buzzing quite noisily, but only for about ten seconds.

"There! " he said, and asked me for a dinner plate. Mystified, I complied, and from the box he removed the saucer. I was blown away. There was only a tiny brown thing sitting in the center in about half a teaspoonful of what looked like juice. "That's the chicken breast!" he chortled in response to my frozen mask of a face. "It's the total essence of your chicken breast, electron microwaved to nano size! Sorry, micro size! If it were nano you wouldn't be able to see it."

Amazed, I looked more closely at the saucer. Indeed, it did look somewhat chicken-like.

"Let me plate it!" he said, and grabbed my dinner plate. With a tiny sugar spoon he delicately scooped up the chicken morsel and its juice and deposited it in the center of the plate. "We need a garnish," he said, and spotted my basil plant on the shelf. He grabbed a couple of leaves off of it and put them next to the chicken. "There! Taste it!"

So I got the smallest fork in my drawer and delicately nudged the chicken breast onto it along with a basil leaf and put it in my mouth.

My God! I was floored, almost falling backward against the counter. "Yes!" he yelled excitedly, "See, it's the flavor of the whole grilled chicken breast reduced into one tiny morsel! All the fat and the calories are there as well! Isn't it amazing?"

I had to admit, after I swallowed, I was full. Completely sated! This guy has an incredible thing going. He says he's going to open up the first "Nano-cuisine" restaurant next month, right here in Montreal. Keep your eyes on this space!

Just the Place for Your Bitchin' Kitchen

Would you believe that we have the ultimate kitchen supply place right downtown, here in Montreal? Cuisine Gourmet is a cook's paradise. They stock most major brands of kitchen equipment and lots of peripheral stuff like gadgets, graters, glasses and grill pans. It was actually comparable to some of the uppity places in California. Mind you, this is not a restaurant-supply place, but one for home cooks. (It didn't seem like the kind of place that would be happy about photos so I didn't take any, but presumably their website will be up soon.)

I was almost immediately able to find what I'd been looking for on eBay — a Cuisipro Accutec Extension Grater and I also bought an OXO Good Grips pastry brush. Curious, I went on eBay to see how I would have fared if I had bought both there. Surprise surprise: with shipping the grater would have been CAD $36.72. The brush would have been CAD $10.58, with a total of $47.31. The total with tax at Cuisine G? $48.29, less than a dollar's difference.

I'm pretty sure that when you get into the higher-ticket items, like All-Clad pans or food processors, you're going to be better off on eBay, but this was a great surprise.

They have a great selection, far better than La Soupière's, with a full line of Microplane, Le Creuset, and OXO et. al., so there's no excuse: get down there immediately and snag that potato ricer post-haste.

Let Them Eat Steak

We ate some steak.

Trashed

So my house is a fucking mess. Sometimes, you have to embrace the mess. Step around that Metro garbage bag full of junk mail and tissues near the kitchen door. You'll throw it away eventually. Maybe tomorrow!

But not now.

You tossed your clothes on the bathroom floor when you took a bath this morning. Guess what? They're still there! You'll just walk around them for now.

No one is coming over to witness your slovenliness. Why the fuck clean it up? It's not like there are cockroaches running around—that would completely creep you out to the extent that even YOU would clean things up. Nah, it's more like, for example, your desk.

What the fuck is up with your desk? Why haven't you even had a nodding acquaintance with the thought of sweeping aside the pile of CD-ROMs and old bills and crap that you know very well is still there after four months but don't know what to do with? Huh? Why?

The inner voice is raging, "WE'RE LIVING IN A SOCIETY!" but you're just going about your day and ignoring it. Hey, I know: run the dishwasher! Like a clean kitchen is a clean house. Okay, well, it's a step.

So, like a blind person, you just adjust your thinking. That GameBoy steering wheel lying on the floor that you never use, you'll just negotiate a path around that. Maybe one day, you'll actually get around to throwing it away! But at least you know (and better yet, your naked toes know!) where it is. The kitchen garbage, which has now run up the sides of the can, with you stupidly trying to gather up the loose ends of the bag to contain. Just throw it away! But somehow, you're powerless. The coffee cup that you used yesterday, which is still sitting on the windowsill, where you put it while admiring the nice day outside. Just put it in the dishwasher! Nah, it won't hurt to leave it there a couple more days.

Oh, the horror, and how wide it yawns.

Do I Seem Annoyed.

Did that headline bother you. Did you kind of miss the question mark at the end of it. Would you really like it if everyone wrote like this, all the time. No, that would be bothersome, wouldn't it.

But just imagine if everyone wrote sentences like this? If every statement they made ended with a question mark? I wonder if you're one of them without realising it? (Well, if you are, I love you anyway?)

Okay, enough of that; point made. But this plague seems to have infected adults over 40 as well — probably victims of their own children, no doubt. If you're old enough, you will remember a time before people over 18 framed statements without a question mark at the end, but now, listening to a typical North American adult, that era seems to be a very, very long time ago. With children, it's almost a tic, as if they're suffering from Statement-Averse Syndrome (or by its medical name, Questionitis, or inflammation of the question gland.)

Where did this abominable speech defect enter into our language? Would you like to hear someone, like, always, you know, umm, go through, like whole sentences or, like, talk like this for several paragraphs, y'know?

It's just as annoying, believe me.

Please, if you talk like that now, think about it and JUST STOP YOURSELF before you do it?

You'll be doing us all a favor?

Que Sadilla, Sadilla

If you're out of ideas for something fairly quick and junk-foody-yet-tasty you could always make a quesadilla. You can pretty much put whatever you want in them. Here's my recipe:

ChefNick Quesadillas with Sun-dried Tomatoes

Red onion, julienned
Red pepper, julienned
Oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
Cilantro, leaves plucked, stems removed
Canned or bottled pickled jalapeños, in slices
Sharp cheddar, Gruyère or Gouda cheese, or combination
Bacon slices, cooked and split into 1-inch squares (optional)
Large flour tortillas

Place flour tortilla on cutting board. Layer as follows, distributing sparsely but evenly:

Cheese, in a light layer that barely covers the tortilla
Sun-dried tomatoes
Cilantro
Onion
Red pepper
Jalapeño slices
Bacon (if using)
Final layer of cheese, barely covering other ingredients

Cover with another flour tortilla. On medium heat, preheat a lightly greased non-stick skillet slightly bigger than the tortillas. When the skillet is hot, carefully slide the quesadilla into it off the cutting board, taking care not to lose ingredients.

With a wide spatula, press down the quesadilla as it begins to get hot, especially near the edges, so that the melting cheese seals the two tortillas. It's difficult to tell when to turn it over, but to be safe, after about 4-5 minutes, flip the quesadilla. I usually do this by putting the cutting board on top of the pan; holding the cutting board with the palm of my left hand and the pan handle with my right, I quickly turn the pan and board upside down so the quesadilla is now on the board. Then I slide it into the pan and cook the other side. Do this carefully.

When cooked, let rest on the cutting board for a few minutes, then cut with a pizza wheel. Serve with a good salsa. Note: if quesadilla is soggy, let rest for about 30 minutes, then reheat individual pieces in non-stick skillet on medium for about 8 minutes. These are also great refrigerated and then reheated.

Building a Relationship with your Server

I'll never forget the waiter at Chez Panisse. His name, perhaps, but not his face and certainly not his personality.

It was the mid-80s, and I was in design school. I didn't really have the cash to be spending a lot of time at Chez Panisse, a storied restaurant in Berkeley, California, but it was only the upstairs café, not the prix fixé downstairs, and a bottle of wine and a good casse-croute went a long way to restoring my sanity during those hectic days.

My dining companion was whoever I could find. I always bought, or they wouldn't have come. I didn't have a girlfriend at the time, so it was invariably a friend from the racquetball club that I played at, or rarely, a first date.

But I made it a priority to try to make it to Chez Panisse at least once a week.

The turnover there was quite slow. After all, who wouldn't want to work at Chez Panisse? At the time, it was quite possibly the most famous restaurant in North America. But when the waiter — let's call him John, because I honestly can't remember his name — suddenly entered into the mix, we somehow clicked. John was almost completely silent, all of the time. There were no long speeches or grovelling attempts at ingratiation. When he spoke, John tended to be brief, but there was a sly underpinning that one could never put one's finger on — as if the joke was always on you, but in a nice way.

So, as is my wont with servers I like (we used to call them waiters or waitresses) I gradually started tipping him more and more. It wasn't because I wanted better service. It was simply because when John served you, he served only you. He never forgot that quick "Oh, and a glass of water, too?" like most servers. Even when the restaurant was at its busiest, and it could get very busy, the glass of water would be at your table within a minute. The man had a mind like a steel trap.

It was innocent at first. I usually tipped 20% regardless, but it started creeping up with John. He was regrettably not always my server, but I gradually learned his schedule and tried to arrange my visits around it. And the tip began to creep upwards. Back then, a dinner for two with a few glasses of wine would run maybe $50. I began to tip John 25, then 30%. And silently, always silently, the experience at Chez Panisse got better and better. There was hardly a word exchanged between John and me except for the usual orders and thanks for a good dinner.

But then strange things started happening. On a very busy night, probably a Friday, I came in with a date. It was rare. I was usually with a racquetball partner or two. But John was there, and he immediately knew what had to be done. Within minutes, we were given the bay window table — the best seat in the house. I was amazed. I said nothing but felt like the guy in Goodfellas. My date was wowed. As usual, John said nothing, and attended us with the usual slight smirk on his face, as if we were all in on a huge cosmic joke to which only he knew the punchline.

That night I tipped him 60%.

And it went upwards from there. I wasn't rich, but I did the mental math. I could have this incredible time at the best restaurant in America (and I realised it even then) and all it would cost me was a little extra. I scrimped in other places in order to save for Chez Panisse.

And it paid off. One night, John put a plate of baked artisanal goat cheese (only the best for Alice Waters) down in front of me. "John, I didn't order this," I protested. He just smirked and walked away. It was not on the bill.

Another night, one with another rare date, a half-bottle of Roederer champagne was delivered in an ice bucket with two champagne glasses. By John. I knew by this time not to protest.

By this time the tip was up to 80%. This meant that on a meal costing $60, the tip was $48.

The turning point was the day I tipped John the cost of the entire meal. It was a meal in which my companion and I —I forget who — received a literal red-carpet treatment. It was like I was Charlie Sheen and we were at Spago. Dishes came fast and furious, the wine flowed — and half of it was unordered. Orange and grapefruit salad with wild fennel. Pizzetta with spring onions and anchovies. Caymus "Special Selection" Napa Cabernet.

John's expression did not change when he came to collect the credit card payment. The half-smirk remained. "Thank you, sir," he said, tipping his head slightly, and then he melted into the hubbub.

Imagine my surprise when I next brought a date and John suddenly wasn't there any more. "Oh, John," remarked the server, "He always wanted to open his own bookstore. He went off to do that. He was a good guy, huh?"

Yep. He was a good guy.

Further Reading

A Predictable Outcome (knowing me)

PETA ("People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals," the organization against the killing of animals, also affectionately known in some quarters as "People for the Eating of Tasty Animals") has a new war on its hands. Forget the debate about the murder of harp seals in Canada. This time the group is focused on a small island in the Pacific, several hundred miles from Mexico, now owned by the French. Its name is Clipperton (pop. 18.)

It seems that the island is a haven for Sooty Terns, a type of seabird. The island is so isolated that shipments of fresh food only occur about once every three months. So, "We eat the wildlife. There's no choice," says longterm resident Pietro Rocha, 59. However, since according to an ancient law (still on the books) the islanders are not permitted to carry firearms, the method of killing is somewhat primitive. "We use slingshots," says Rocha. ”We have no other way to cap the bastards."

And PETA is up in arms. "They should find another way of sustaining themselves. Perhaps supplies could be flown in from Mexico. Can't they grow vegetables? Need they kill these defenseless terns with stones? Imagine the suffering," says PETA spokesperson Pamela Anderson.

But Rocha is unrepentant. "Let Pamela Anderson and her boobies (another bird species prevalent on the island) have a grand party together. This is our livelihood. We have to do this to live."

In the face of mounting campaigns against the islanders from PETA groups, sometimes in the form of actual monitoring from offshore organization boats, Rocha summed it up for the entire populace of the island:

"We will not relent. We will never surrender. We will leave no tern unstoned."

Thai Chicken and Yang Chow Basmati

Thai Chicken (adapted from Le Cordon Bleu Home Collection)

4 chicken thighs, skin-on, bone in, or 8 chicken wings, skin-on, bone in, or any combination thereof

Marinade:

4 cloves garlic, chopped
2 T grated ginger
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
2 tsp Nam Pla (fish sauce—do not leave out)
1/4 cup good soy sauce (not Kikkoman)
1/4 cup honey, or 1/4 cup Mirin
2 green onions/scallions, cut lengthways into thin strips
2 serrano or piquin chiles, finely diced (optional)
1 tsp. chopped lemongrass (optional)
2T lime juice

Garnish:

2 green onions/scallions, cut lengthways into thin strips
Small bunch cilantro leaves

Combine all marinade ingredients. Pour over chicken in a container with a lid. Marinate for 24 hours, or if you have a Foodsaver, 3 hours in the vaccuum marinating container (comes in handy!)

Preheat oven to 400F. Arrange the chicken in a shallow roasting pan, well-spaced. Pour over some of the marinade and bake for about 1 hour, basting frequently with remaining marinade.

Arrange the chicken on a serving dish and garnish with scallions and cilantro. Serve with rice and spring rolls with a chile-garlic dip.

Yang Chow Basmati Fried Rice

You don't need to use basmati rice for this, but the only acceptable alternatives would be Patna and preferably Jasmine. Do not use Uncle Ben's, Texmati, arborio or Calrose Japanese rice. Jasmine is the best substitute and cooks very similarly to basmati.

Pre-cooked Basmati

2 cups Basmati rice
2 T ghee (clarified butter) or 2 T vegetable oil
1/4 cup shallots
2 bay leaves
3 whole cloves
3 whole cardamom pods
2" or so stick cinnamon
3 garlic cloves, diced
2 1/3 cups chicken broth or water

Rinse rice thoroughly. Let soak in water for about 90 minutes. This allows the rice to swell somewhat and adds to fluffiness once cooked. Result of soaking is that you need less liquid to cook it in.

Drain rice through sieve. Heat large nonstick sauté pan on medium-high. Melt ghee or oil. Add shallots, bay leaves, cloves and cardamom. Sauté for approximately 5 minutes. Add drained rice and garlic. Sauté until rice becomes somewhat glassy, about five minutes, stirring constantly. Heat chicken broth in microwave until almost boiling.

Add broth, stir to combine thoroughly, reduce heat to minimum, cover pan with aluminum foil, then pan top. Steam for 18 minutes or so. Turn off heat. Let rest for 10 minutes. Remove whole spices, stir to fluff up.

Fried Rice

This must be cold — not room temperature, but cold — before preparation, so either flash-freeze very carefully until cold or store in refrigerator until next day. If you try to make fried rice with hot or warm rice you will end up with a sticky mess.

Chop the following in small dice (about 1/3 cup each; add or subtract vegetables according to taste:

Carrots
Celery
Red onion
Red or green peppers
Green onions

Plus, according to taste:

Diced garlic
Diced chilies

Prepare:

1/2 cup good ham diced in 1/4" dice
1/2 cup baby cooked shrimp

2 large eggs

1T sesame oil
2T peanut oil

1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup Mirin

Sauté chopped vegetables in oil on medium-high heat for approximately 10 minutes, stirring constantly. Add garlic and chilies, sauté five minutes more. Remove from pan and set aside. Sauté cold rice in 2T oil until warm. Add all the rest of the ingredients. Add soy sauce, Mirin. Stir to combine. Break eggs into bowl and whisk together. Drizzle onto rice and stir thoroughly to combine. Cover and cook on very low heat for 10 minutes. Serve.

On a Roll

Warning — Rant Quotient: Off The Charts

I'm sorry to be writing all this airline-centric copy. To people who rarely fly, it must be a remarkable bore. But I think the points I have to make here also apply to the small-mindedness of a lot of other service-oriented industries. Mainly: when the airlines decide to cut back in amenities, they don't really think it through carefully; rather, in emergency terms of black and white. "Jesus Christ," one suit realises, "If we only remove three in-flight magazines per plane per year, we save $10,000 in fuel costs." In suit-speak, this is absolutely true.

You fucking idiot. While you're counting beans, you're overlooking the obvious. I would gladly PAY for a $40 meal in economy — meaning, what you serve in First and with free wine — even though your costs for the meal would probably be more like $20. Fuck it, I'd leave a fucking tip, too, if the meal pleased me! Why is it that the airlines can't transfer the restaurant model to the skies? Fuckin' cruise ships got the idea long ago. Meanwhile, we're being humiliated with choices of Subway sandwiches on flights less than 5 hours. Just plug me in for that in-flight option of "full gourmet meal with wine for $40." I'm already paying up the ass; what's $40 extra?

Listen, motherfuckers, it's quite simple, at least to me: offer a great product, ie. what you plaster your Business Class geeks with, and offer it at a price. A reasonable price, say, what you'd pay in a real restaurant. Serve it on a real plate and include a couple of glasses of decent wine. That's worth $40, don't you think?

What, the rabble that travels in Y class doesn't have brains? Need I remind anyone that all the fucking hijackers from 9/11 were in Business class. Gourmets all, no doubt.

When are the fucking airlines going to get a clue?

The Dagwood Challenge

The challenge: what to make out of this list of leftovers, cooking for one.

After almost a week of cooking a separate meal every night, I am left with a bunch of items in my refrigerator that need to be used. The good news: they're all still very fresh. The bad news: they're all over the place in terms of menu creation. Can you come up with an acceptable menu using these ingredients (plus anything purchased in addition to help the menu along)? It's quite a challenge.

Ingredients:

Small container of sour cream
Small cube of feta cheese
Large cube of Gouda
Parmigiano Reggiano
Garlic-shallot parsley butter
Cilantro
Italian parsley
Lettuce
Jalapeño chilies
Carrots
Celery
Red onion
1/2 red pepper
4 ripe cherry tomatoes
Small amount Jambon Toscane (ham from Tuscany)
Fried rice

All I can think of is some very bizarre salad along with maybe chicken and some fried rice. Is there a soup in there?

Cry Me To the Moon

Warning — Rant Level: *****

Jesus fucking Christ. I don't drive a gas-guzzling SUV or a muscle car. In fact, I don't drive any car at all. So I don't give a flying fuck what the price at the pump is. But they're giving it to me up the ass another way: I just bought a ticket from YUL-YVR-Osaka return and it cost me $1405.58. And that price only if I stayed for six days (which I don't want to do.) If I'd turned around within 6 days it would have jumped $700 to $2200 (all prices Canadian.)

As I'm looking at approximately four roundtrips to Japan and four roundtrips to San Francisco yearly (long story) one can quickly see that any $1 increase in oil prices is going to be hitting me rather hard.

All in an era where the planes are more crowded, they're offering no amenities and flying is basically a fucking drag. Hmm. I'll have to start sharpening up my Business Class wheedle a little more diligently.

Not Your Parents' Salad

I believe I just ate the best salad I have ever eaten (and I certainly got the most out of a $30 steak! Works out to $10 a dinner.)

It's adapted from a recipe in the book Steaklover's Companion, by Frederick Simon. You don't have to use Kobe beef for this — any old filet mignon will do. The crunchy bits of chile, red pepper, green onion and beansprouts coupled with the tangy sesame-ginger dressing and the unctuousness of the steak make for a superlative dining experience.


Pacific Rim Kobe Steak Salad with Sesame-Ginger Dressing (Serves 4)

For the Marinade:
2tsp. sesame oil
1tsp. soy sauce
2 garlic cloves, chopped fine
1 tsp. Chinese plum sauce
1 small serrano chile, seeded, chopped extremely fine ( I used a Jalapeño because I couldn't find Serrano)

For the Steaks:

Either use the leftovers from last night's rare filet mignon or grill yourself some new ones. Slice the steak into very thin strips.

For the Sesame-Ginger Dressing:

1/2 C rice vinegar
1/4 C grated ginger
1/4 C sesame oil
2 T soy sauce (usukuchi is best if you can find it)
1 garlic clove, chopped fine

Mix well in a bowl and let flavors merge for 30 minutes

For the Salad:

2 heads Boston lettuce, leaves washed and separated, only the best inner leaves reserved for the salad
1 red onion, julienned
1 red bell pepper (capsicum for you Brits) julienned
1 cup bean sprouts, cleaned up and sorted for only the best
2 scallions (green onions), white part only, sliced on a diagonal

Marinate the sliced steak in the marinade and cover for at least 30 minutes at room temperature.

Combine all the salad ingredients except the steak and shake with as much of the dressing as you like, but be generous.

Pile salad on an attractive serving vessel and drape steak slices on top. Drizzle with remaining marinade. Serve.

Here's The Beef

Kobe Beef Steak Sandwich with Truffle Oil Marinade



I figure this sandwich cost me altogether about $35 worth of ingredients. Not quite the monstrosity here, but pocket-lightening nonetheless.

Okay, so the truffle oil idea wasn't in my original plans. But as I was getting geared up to make this thing, it occurred to me that a tango for one is not a dance. The Kobe royalty needed at least a Marquise for a match, or the sandwich wouldn't work. And tasty or not, aged Gouda just wasn't up to doing it alone.

So I hustled off to the the place where truffle oil comes from and plunked down an astounding $42 for a small bottle.



Not that I have a clue what truffle oil is.

But when I got home I warmed the leftover Kobe steak very gently in aluminum foil in the toaster oven — I did by no means want it to get any more done — and then sliced it thinly and tossed it in a tablespoon of truffle oil.

Then I assembled the sandwich. My great regret here is the bread. I do not understand why Montreal is so bereft of good bread. This sandwich cried out for a sourdough roll or seeded baguette but they are in very short supply here. I had to make do with a Première Moisson submarine loaf — quite a despicable thing when you actually get a good look at it. Definitely not a good tango partner, unless you panhandle for a living.

But the redeeming ingredients were perfectly ripe little cherry tomatoes, the choicest chunks of a fresh Boston lettuce tossed in balsamic vinaigrette and an amazing shallot-garlic-Italian parsley butter.



With sweet gherkins, Japanese mayonnaise and Polish mustard rounding everything off, all in all, the end result was a triumph, despite the bread. How many steak sandwiches have you had to chew your way through, pulling out whole slices of steak en route?

There was no hard chewing here. The steak might as well have been foie gras.



Well, don't believe me, just believe your eyes. And imagine. I did all this so you don't have to.

There, Rare

Now that I have the steak blog going, I am conflicted. If I make a steak dinner, should I post there, or here? Perhaps the answer is to post some aspects here, then narrow them down there. If you're a vegetarian, you won't want to go there. You may not even want to stay here. But if you're an incisor-user, you'll definitely want to go there, because I made my first Kobe steak tonight.

Here is the video.

Resto Review

Reviewed a restaurant for the first time in two years. I really should get out more.

Late-night Comfort Food

Leftover Pasta with torn Prosciutto, White Wine, Garlic, Green Peas, Basil and Parmesan

When it's time to take stock of what you've got in the refrigerator, and when you're reluctant to get dressed and go to the all-night grocery store, this is what you make.

6 slices or so of prosciutto, torn into pieces
1/2 cup or so of white wine
1 large clove or so of garlic
1/2 cup or so of mini-green peas
Basil leaves
Parmigiano Reggiano
Cracked pepper
1 pkg. cooked cold spaghetti or spaghettini
1/4 cup or so of extra-virgin olive oil

Heat non-stick pan with olive oil on medium. Add prosciutto and garlic. Sauté five or six minutes. Add white wine, cook for another three minutes or until slightly syrupy. Add peas and spaghetti and mix well. Toss pasta and other ingredients, mixing well. Reduce heat and cover for three or four minutes.

Serve in a wide bowl with lots of Reggiano and pepper and garnish with basil. Serve a side mixed baby salad with Japanese goma dressing. Have a large glass of Sauvignon Blanc and freeze some chocolate truffles for the in-bed surprise. Watch Perry Mason on TV Land.

Oh Lo Lo C'est Dzuur

I was sitting in an airport bistro in San Francisco the other day reading a magazine when some people came in and sat at the bar behind me. I didn't pay much attention, but after a while I noticed that they were speaking a foreign language. As I usually do, I tried to figure out what it was. Hmm . . . it was not unattractive, not particularly guttural . . . Eastern European, perhaps? Yes, definitely from that part of the world. Possibly even Serbo-Croatian.

But then I noticed that a key feature of the language was the word "Lo," which seemed to be tacked on to just about everything they said. Interesting, thought I, kind of like the "desu" at the end of Japanese sentences or the "nida" in Korean.

I thought no more about it and returned to the magazine.

When I checked in at the gate, I noticed that the same four people who were at the bar were checking in as well! Serbo-Croatians going to Montreal? How odd. They spoke perfect English to the agent, almost accentless. And then I heard it: the giveaway. One of them said "Dere." My god, they're Québecois, I realised. Then I listened more closely.

" . . . an ce maman lo lo," one of them was saying, and after about a minute I realised she had been saying "En ce moment là . . ." and then someone said "Oh lo lo, c'est dzuur . . ." of course meaning "Oh-la-la, c'est dur . . . "

Well, it was a revelation. I speak pretty good French, but I was taught it by Belgians, who sound a bit like Parisians. Since I hadn't been expecting Québec French, I just assumed it was some foreign language that I couldn't speak. And now I realise that's quite true! Half the time at the grocery store I don't have a clue what the bag guy is saying to me when he says "Tsu vuy an sac?"

I'm learning, but I still say "deess" instead of "diss" when I say "dix," or "pah sa" instead of "po so" when I say "pas ça." It must sound quite quaint.

Tsu camprain s'q' j' dis, lo?

The Best Way

The best way to start . . .

. . . and end a plane trip:

Why Me?

Call it the luck of the draw. Call it a bullet with my name on it. Call it someone whose time has come. Call it Fate, Chance, Karma, Kismet, Feng Shui. Call it Oh No, Not Me Again, Why Did They Pick Me, Why Did It Have To Be Me . . . . in reverse. Call it The Word Of God. Call it anything you goddamn want. Call it What The Fucking Fuck. But why the hell did they bump me up to First Class . . . again?

It began as most flights do, but with a difference: this was the day after Easter. Every Tremblay in the phone book was gonna be on Flight 760 from San Francisco to Montreal, and I was dreading it. Imagine my horror when I checked in, only to be told there wasn't a single window seat available! That means "really, really full, dude."

So I whipped out my usual Aeroplan wheedle, waving totally useless upgrade coupons (you practically have to buy a full-fare ticket to use one) and generally trying to charm the hell out of the agent. Needless to say, it didn't work. He told me to try at the gate for a window seat. So, a couple of glasses of wine later. I approached the gate agent and gave her my boarding card. She said she'd call me. Just before boarding, she did. She gave me a new boarding card and I thanked her. Then we started boarding. I looked at my card and saw "4E." "That's can't be right," I thought. "That's all the way . . . in the front!"

And so it was. I had to double-check with the purser. "You wanna complain?" he said a bit snidely, but oh, no, I so did not want to complain.

So, for the second time in as many trips with Air Canada, I flew first class. Free-flowing Chardonnay. Herbed chicken with green beans and baby potatoes. Haagen Daaz ice cream. A nice Bailey's Irish Cream to finish.

I don't think I'll ever be able to fly economy again . . .

Maid by Mao Followup

Interesting article in the National Post about the Jan Wong pseudo-story about becoming an undercover maid. Better read it quickly before it gets snatched, but basically, . . . . . . . my sentiments exactly.

There is an interview conducted “online” by her employers in which stringent parameters are outlined about the nature of the questions allowed, which of course results in much fawning and soft lobs in her general direction. A couple of illustrative quotes for your reading pleasure:

Karen McIntosh from Hamilton writes: "Many were very critical of the fact that you have a housekeeper and expressed the view that you were being hypocritical of those that hired you as a maid. Would you care to defend yourself here?"

Jan Wong: "Thanks, Karen. I don't understand what is hypocritical about my hiring a housekeeper. She has worked for me and my family full-time for 11 years. Now she comes in once a week. I have a housekeeper, but I have also considered getting an agency maid. Now that I know what I know, I think I won't. Mainly people tell me they're so glad I didn't clean their homes."

Jeez, Jan, I’ll have to remember that when I’m next in a Tibetan hovel, about to be rounded up by local Revolutionary Anti-bourgeois-roader Party stalwarts and looking for a Chinese maid to clean up the turds I left behind. I'll just tear up your resumé, shall I?