(rhubarb strawberry) crisp

Working from this recipe, I made a rhubarb strawberry crisp today. For the fruit, you proceed as for pie. In this case, about 6 cups of sliced rhubarb and strawberries were tossed with about a cup of sugar, a few tablespoons of corn starch and a big pinch of cinnamon. I used a 9x13 pan, which I did not butter (although the recipe calls for buttering). Other crisps/crumbles that I'd made recently had a topping that was too starchy; I was using flour and rolled oats but too little sugar and rubbing cold butter into the dry. For today's crisp, I used

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup rolled oats (I like large flake)
• 3/4 packed brown sugar
• a pinch of salt

and here's the surprise

• 1/2 cup melted butter

The dry ingredients are mixed and then drizzled with the melted butter and everything is tossed to combine. The resulting mixture does not hold together but is rather more like dark brown pebbles. This is spread over the fruit and the dish is baked at 375 for about 30 minutes until the topping is browned (I would say "browner"). This was a delicious crisp, and the topping was awesome. As soon as I find my copy of the "The Best Recipe" (we're still unpacking), I want to cross-check with their approach.

strawberry shortcake

Pie season has returned; I have baked an apple pie and there is a red currant tart in the oven right now. But a few days ago I finally got strawberry shortcake to work:

Before starting, cut up as many strawberries as you can, and mix them with a bit of sugar. Let them stand, the longer the better; the syrop that emerges from them is the key. Make one large, thin biscuit (I made it with 1 cup of flour), but add to the recipe 1/4 cup sugar for every cup of flour. You could go even sweeter. When the biscuit is done, let it cool a bit, and split it carefully into two thin layers. On the bottom layer put all the strawberries, and all the syrop from them. Add some whipped cream, and then replace the top layer. "Ice" the shortcake with more whipped cream and some leftover strawberries.

waffles and pancakes

I have been remiss in posting, despite having learned many useful things in the last few months. Here is one:

When making waffles or pancakes, you do much better to separate the whites from the yolks of the eggs and beat the whites separately till they are stiff (or close). Make the batter with the yolks and then fold the beaten egg whites into the batter. Fluffy, light waffles!

One thing I am interested in is whether you could replace all rising agents with this technique. After all, how did they make pancakes before there was easily available double-acting baking powder?

meat loaf

G-ma2005 (otherwise known as Grandma Jan) came by a few weeks ago and taught me the ancient secrets of meatloaf. I very slightly modified it into this ridiculously simple recipe:

Mix equal volumes of ground beef and crushed saltine crackers, plus a significant amount of chopped onions, plenty of salt and pepper, and enough eggs to make it stick together (roughly 1/2 lb meat, one egg, one onion, and half a sleeve of crackers). Form this into a loaf an put it into a 375 F (190 C) oven.

After about 10 min, pull out the loaf and cover it with a mixture of ketchup, brown sugar, and worchestershire, mixed to your liking (comparable quantities of each does well, although G-ma2005 prefers a larger fraction of ketchup). Continue baking for another 30 min or so. It is hard to over-cook it.

Fuzzmama notes that this is not meat as garnish. It is transcendant the next day in a sandwich.

latkes

I love potato pancakes. It turns out their preparation does not involve rocket science. Grate four potatoes and one onion (prepare to cry). Mix with two eggs, a few tbsp of flour, and a whole heck of a lot of salt and pepper. Fry large, flattened spoonfuls of the mixture in plenty of hot olive oil until very dark brown, turn, and make the other side dark brown too. Serve with sour cream and smoked fish, or apple sauce. These quantities make about twelve pancakes (serves about four).

As you proceed with the frying (with two pans doing two or three at a time), you can preserve the cooked pancakes on paper towels in a 170 F (80 C) oven.

An expert variation is to drain the shredded potato, let the starch settle out of the drained liquid, and mix it back in, but that may qualify as rocket science. One night we added shredded celery root, to good effect.

mirepoix

A mirepoix is a mix of chopped vegetables used to build the foundational flavours of many dishes. In classic French cooking, the mirepoix consists of two parts cooking or yellow onions to one part each of carrot and celery. If that sounds like rocket science, if I wanted for example one cup of mirepoix, I would use half a cup of onion, a quarter cup of carrot and a quarter of celery.

Other cuisines have their own take on mirepoix. The function is always the same: build a solid base or backdrop of flavour against which to highlight the goodness of the main ingredients.

• Indian: the highly aromatic "wet masala" of onions, garlic and ginger
• Cajun/Creole: the "holy trinity" of onions, celery and green pepper

lentil soup

This was great for lunch with a crusty baguette (we tried the new "La Tradi" from Eric Borderon's artisinal bakery in Quebec City).

• in a heavy-bottomed pan, sweat a cup of classic mirepoix in a bit of olive oil (covered at medium-low heat)
• add half a cup of small green lentils, a small handful each of red-skinned potato, rutabaga and zuccini and a sprig of thyme
• all the veg should be chopped or diced medium (the size of a green pea)
• add eight cups of water, bring to a boil and simmer for about half an hour
• season with salt (about two teaspoons) and pepper when the lentils are tender

water-based soups

Almost all of the soup-related entries here at F,NRS call for chicken stock. Sometimes, however, I don't have any stock on hand. This entry is meant to be an on-going record of soups that don't seem to suffer for lack of chicken stock and those that do or might.

Good with water:

• cauliflower soup using the pureed vegetable soup algorithm replacing stock with water
• lentil soup
• leek and potato, but I oversalted it (Dec. 2008)
• (Hogg say:) carrot-ginger: a bunch of carrots, a cubic inch of ginger (boil carrots and ginger with salt and blend), orange juice and cream

Bad with just water:

• chicken noodle (just kidding)
• Tuscan white bean soup, probably

pork rillettes

I've been wanting to make this ever since I bought Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles cookbook over a year ago. Finally got around to it last weekend. I served it with toasted baguette and sour cornichon pickles as a starter for Valerie and Roger. Of the five kids also eating, four loved it and the one who didn't doesn't like anything. It's ridiculously easy to make (as advertised) and insanely good. Even better than...get this... cretons.

Cut into 2 inch chunks and put into a heavy-bottomed pot (still lovin' that Creuset I got for my 30th birthday) the following:

• 1 lb. pork shoulder
• 2 lb. fresh pork belly (this cut is used to make both bacon and salt pork, but you want neither of those things; for me, getting this requires a trip to a good butcher, as it isn't the kind of thing supermarkets stock)
• 4 cups of water
• 1 bouquet garni (spigs of parsley and thyme and a bay leaf tied together)

Simmer for six hours, stirring from time to time. When it's done, there will be no water, an abundance of beautiful, golden brown liquid fat and chunks of meat that readily fall apart into shreds and some of which has browned a bit in the hot fat. You add a teaspoon of salt to this and pull the meat apart with forks. Pour everything into a terrine-like dish. Bourdain covers with thinly sliced pork fat, but I didn't have that so I just used plastic wrap. It's supposed to be better if you let it age for three days before you eat it, but I can't say I've noticed a difference between the taste the day after making it and today, which is three days after. So damn good!

sausage, squash, and apple

PMC came down to the fuzz compound for the weekend, and we threw sweet pork sausages, peeled and cubed butternut squash, and large apple chunks into the oven for 30 or 40 min at 400 F (200 C). The apple was over-cooked into a kind of thick apple sauce, but the squash caramelized on the cast-iron pan and the combination of the three ingredients was great! Everything had been tossed with olive oil, but to PMC's astonishment, it didn't need any salt or pepper.