Fruit, fat and sugar

Written on July 26, 2010 by Mr Duess in Uncategorized
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Here’s a recipe just smelling of long, hot summer days, ideally eaten by a cabin on a lake.

And the best thing: you don’t even need an oven for this, making it ideal for cottage cooking.

You’ll need

  • 1 pint of fresh berries, your choice. This being Canada, blueberries rock, but fresh Ontario strawberries (chopped) or raspberries also work really, really well.
  • 1 pint of, well, fat. This can take the shape of crème fraîche, 14% sour creme or even Greek Yoghurt. It really depends on how healthy you want this to be. The first time I tried this I used 14% sour creme and it was so good we ate it all in one sitting.
  • 1 cup of dark brown sugar
  • The peel of one lemon, micro-planed. Seriously, if you don’t yet own a microplane run, don’t walk to the store and get one. It’s one of the most useful tools you can have in your kitchen, ever.
  • Brown sugar, one cup.

Fold together fruit and creme/yoghurt. Put into a shallow, heat proof  dish.

Sprinkle over the lemon peel.

Sprinkle over the sugar.

That’s it. All done with the prep. Now put the dish over indirect heat into a really, really hot BBQ – and we’re talking charcoal here, I can’t see this work on a gas BBQ – and let caramelize for three minutes. Keep an eye on this, as the sugar has a tendency to burn if you’re not careful.

Alternatively, preheat your broiler and broil for about two minutes. Again, keep an eye on things. The first time I made this the sugar blackened almost instantly. I took it out, removed the burnt sugar and back it went, with some fresh sugar, but one shelf lower until the sugar started bubbling.

Home made ginger ale

Written on July 7, 2010 by Mr Duess in DIY, Recipes
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Ginger Ale, like many sodas, started life in the drugstores of early 20th century America. And unlike the artificially flavoured concoctions often sold as ginger ale today the original didn’t just pack a flavour punch, it also contained all the medicinal properties that ginger is justly famous for.

Thankfully, making your own ginger ale is really, really easy and the end result is one of the most refreshing sodas you’ll ever encounter. For three one liter bottles of ginger syrup – you’ll dilute it about 1:5 – you need:

3 one litre glass bottles with a cap. Clean, then sterilize in an oven set to 200ºF for 30 minutes.
1 kg of ginger, peeled
500 gr of dark brown sugar. We use Redpath Demerara.
The juice of six to eight large lemons.
The peel of one lemon, yellow bit only.
3 litres of water.

Grate or chop your ginger. If you have a food processor, process until chopped but not mushy.
Combine water, sugar, lemon juice and peel and ginger in a large pan. Bring to a rolling boil, then reduce heat to a simmer.
Skim off any foam that forms and let simmer gently for 30 minutes.

Line a colander with cheesecloth and decant into a large bowl. Fill into your bottles while still piping hot and close. Let cool down. We keep our bottles in the basement. They should theoretically last for at least a couple of months, but especially during summer the ale is so popular we’re making a new batch every two weeks, sometimes more often.

To serve, dilute to taste with sparkling or still water over ice.

Bacon Dashi with Potatoes and Clams

Written on May 9, 2010 by Mr. Stephenson in Fish and seafood, Japanese, Meat, Mr Stephenson, everyday cooking
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I was in “The Good Egg” at the market the other day picking out a Japanese Cookbook for a birthday gift for Mr. Duess. Of course, the lovely young lady at the cash knew him and knew of our bacon exploits (Mr. Duess works in the neighbourhood and his tales of our bacon making have spread like wildfire). Word gets around in this city quite quickly it would seem.

I spoke with her at some length about how I’ve been digging into the Japanese cooking and how much I was excited by the simple but fabulous Dashi – a quick broth made from kombu seaweed and usually bonito flakes. There is a satisfying meatiness, a delicate smokyness, a lovely sea taste to the whole thing. It can be used to make soups, braises, sauces – in fact its usefulness is similar to chicken stock but it tastes nothing like chicken stock. Its something entirely different and takes your dishes to a totally new place.

With great excitement, the woman behind the counter pointed me toward the momofuku cookbook, and in particular a recipe for BACON DASHI. %#$&-ing %#$& !! A broth made from bacon. You will be mine bacon dashi!

While I have yet to purchase the book, I did make the dashi and a great little dish with it.

The bacon dashi is a piece of cake: half pound of good quality bacon – I used our S&D special home made bacon of course, 8ish inches of Kombu seaweed, 2 liters of water and 20-30 minutes of simmering on the stove. Its a revelation. It has the smokiness of the bonito and that glutamatey sea taste from the kombu. The fish flavour of the bonito, however, is replaced with a fabulous porkiness. This would be a appropriate moment to say…um wicked… this is really something else.

On to the dish – clams and potatoes in bacon dashi. I read this recipe from a blog posting on Momofuku for two in which Steph cooks her way through the Momofuku cookbook. Her account of customizing the recipe to avoid what she saw as an obscene coupling of the open clams with fingerling potatoes is super entertaining and her photos of the dish are really fab.

Once the bacon dashi is made, you simply cook your clams in the broth, add your cooked potatoes, sprinkle with some chopped, fried bacon and there you have it. Neither I, nor Mrs. Stephenson could stop thinking about it for days after. I would put this on the highly recommended list.

Charcoal tempura

Written on May 1, 2010 by Mr Duess in Japanese, Mr Duess, Vegetables and fruits, fire cooking
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We love tempura, but the smell of deep frying in the house is always a serious disincentive to making it. We don’t believe in single use appliances, and also don’t eat fried food all that often, so we don’t own a dedicated deep fryer.

Enter the little Chinese charcoal brazier I picked up at Tap Phong a couple of weeks ago. I figured if it pushed out enough heat to make a huge pot of chicken curry it should get oil hot enough for frying.

After the charcoal was lit I topped it with a cast iron round bottom pan and added a generous amount of canola oil. A candy thermometer gave an indication of temperature and sure enough within five minutes the oil had reached 350ºF, the ideal temperature for frying.

Prep was really simple: A couple of sweet potatoes went through the slicer, some lovely organic broccoli got separated into little florets. The batter consisted of one egg, one cup of iced water and one cup of flour. Mix quickly but don’t overmix. The batter needs to stay lumpy for best results. Dredge the vegetables in flour, in batter and fry. Serve with a dipping sauce made from soy sauce and mirin.

It was simple and delicious. Sorry about the crappy images, my camera is in repair and all I had handy was my iPhone.

Oh look, a mise en place complete with blowtorch. What could be better?


The temperature dropped about 10º every time I added a fresh batch of vegetables but came up back to 350 in no time at all.

Corso Italia and Pici

Written on May 1, 2010 by Mr. Stephenson in Mr Stephenson, Sauces, everyday cooking, italian
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Well spring has sprung and I, for one, am excited about the summer cooking season. Mrs. Stephenson and I are moving to a new part of the city – Corso Italia, or Old Little Italy in our fair city of Toronto. One of the main reasons we love the neighborhood is the food. The restaurants are unassuming, friendly and quite amazing. Not fancy, just good. The bakeries and the grocers are also very down to earth and you’ve never seen better Italian groceries that you see there..places like Dianna’s and Tre Marie bakery were reasons to make the trip up there and now just around the corner to what will be our new place.

Also, on the new place list, is our excitement about having a shop space and nice big back yard. This means a few things: salami curing chamber, cold smoker, and all round fabrication shenanigans.

In honor of our new, Little Italy destination, I’m posting a nice dish that we made – Pici with a roasted tomato sauce. I was insporied by one of the best meals of our Italian trip a couple years back. In Cortona I ordered the same thing in a tiny hole in the wall place and it was the best meal I had the entire trip – simple, extraordinarily flavourful, and clean. You could not ask for more.

I started the meal with an arugala sald with cornmeal cursted king oyster mushrooms. Again very simple – cut mushrooms tossed in olive oil and cornmeal with a touch of salt, roasted in the oven.

Making the sauce for the Pici is super simple:

• cut and toss some tomatoes and garlic (a few cloves – how much do you like it?)  in olive oil  and a touch of salt

• roast the oven for 45-1h at 400-450, until the skins start to brown

• blend (I use a hand blender…super simple, you could also use a food mill if you’re looking for rustic texture)

• reduce on the stove on low for an hour or so

• season – salt, pepper, herbs (I did mine with a hand full of fresh basil…awesome!)

Thats it. Really good, really simple. Perfect for spring, though It’ll be even better when we get the field tomatoes going!

The hand of meat

Written on April 6, 2010 by Mr. Stephenson in Articles, Meat, Mr Stephenson, everyday cooking
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Knowing that I love all things meat, Mrs. Stephenson graciously passed this link on to me. Not technically about heritage cooking techniques unless one considers cannibalism as a heritage food tradition. Gruesome, yes,  but likely very tasty.

Check out the aptly named “not martha” post and very thorough documentation.

A really good curry, cooked on an open fire

Written on April 4, 2010 by Mr Duess in Uncategorized
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We have an abiding interest in simplicity, especially simplicity when it comes to cooking. Sure, it’s nice to own a proper range, but what is cooking if not the application of heat to food? And surely our ancestors didn’t own 24,000 BTU stoves with electronic ignition. They cooked stuff in a pot, over a fire.

So when I found this clay and metal charcoal burner at Tap Phong, my favourite Chinatown kitchen store, I had to have it. Some years ago my parents had given me a Le Creuset cast iron wok as a present. As a wok it was useless – it takes way too long to react to heat – but I could see it work with the burner. $24.00 later I was on my way home, excited like a kid the day before Christmas.

I decided to make a curry, a curry I’ve made so many times that I am very familiar with it. This would allow me to learn what is essentially a whole new way to cook without having to worry about a recipe. Here’s an approximate list of ingredients:

  • Chicken thighs, skinned, bone in
  • Potatoes, new, cut into quarters
  • 1 can of tomatoes
  • 2 onions, diced
  • 3 gloves of garlic, minced
  • 1 piece of ginger, about thumb sized, minced
  • 1 tsp of ground turmeric
  • 1 tsp of ground cumin
  • 1 tsp of ground coriander
  • 1 red chilli, or to taste
  • 1 stick of cinnamon
  • 1 bunch of fresh coriander, chopped
  • a handful of curry leaves

Start by frying off the onion in a light olive oil, or ghee if you want to be authentic. I tend to choose olive oil for health reasons and I don’t find it changes the flavour much. The first lesson I learned was that charcoal gets hot – way too hot. I had to let everything burn down until the heat was low enough not to instantly burn the diced onions.

Once that had happend I sweated the onions for ten minutes until translucent, then added the garlic and ginger. Add some charcoal to get the heat up again – almost instantly – then add the spices and fry for another minute or so. Add the tomatoes, crush with a fork and cook until the oil separates. Stir in half the fresh coriander

Add the chicken and the potatoes and add enough water or stock to barely cover. Cook until the chicken starts falling off the bone and the potatoes are done. Take off the heat, remove the bones and shred the meat. Stir in the remaining coriander and serve with rice.

Lessons learned:

  1. The one thing I was worried about the most – will I get enough heat – was never a problem. If anything, I had too much heat at my disposal. The clay of the burner acted like a heatsink, once it was hot it stayed that way for at least an hour.
  2. There’s no precise control. In the end I just went with it, adding some water to cool things down when there was too much bubbling and then just let it reduce again.
  3. It will take time to master the burner, but I am already hooked. It is a very direct, basic way of cooking and the fact that I got a tasty curry out of it without any major mishaps on my first attempt tells me that there’s much goodness to be had this way.

Keeping clean by making your own laundry detergent

Written on April 3, 2010 by Mr Duess in Uncategorized
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This post is a bit of a departure from our usual subject matter, but I believe that it still fits the spirit of this site.

Mr. Stephenson and Mr. Duess don’t think of themselves as hippies. Still, they both share a desire to go back to basics and to understand the origin of the things that surround us all. Things that have become so complex that we often accept them at face value, without questioning or understanding the process that brought them into being. Bacon is one of these things, cleaning materials are another. We all use laundry detergent, but most of us have no idea what’s in these bottles. Is it good for us? Is it good for the environment? Is it fairly priced, or are we just being sold the equivalent of fancy tomato sauce, where a cute label hides cheap ingredients?

It is a sad fact that the indoor air in the average Canadian house is about ten times more polluted than the air outside. Hard to believe on a summer’s day in downtown Toronto, but depressingly true nonetheless. Much of that air pollution originates from cleaning products, including laundry detergents.

Let’s take a look at the list of ingredients found in your average supermarket laundry detergent. Many chemicals in household washing powders and liquids can cause allergies, asthma, skin and eye irritation and increase the risk for certain cancers. Additionally, these chemical compounds are not environmentally friendly and damage the ecosystem and atmosphere.

The ingredient nonyl phenol (NPE) is a general group of synthetic surfactants. This chemical biodegrades slowly and leaves trace amounts in the soil and water. Researchers have found that NPE in water can cause feminization of male fish. It is also thought to increase the risk of breast cancer as it mimics female hormone activity in mammals.

Synthetic surfactants called alkyl benzene sulfonates (ABS) or linear alkyl benzene sulfonates (LAS) are slow to biodegrade and can cause skin irritations and allergic reactions in susceptible individuals.

Another family of synthetic surfactants is called diethanolamines. These compounds are also slow to biodegrade in the environment and react with natural nitrogen oxides and other chemicals in the atmosphere to form nitrosamines which are known carcinogens.

Ethylene diamino tetra acetate or EDTA is a synthetic compound used to reduce calcium and other mineral hardness in water and promote foaming. However, foaming has nothing to do with how well the detergent cleans. EDTA remains in the environment and can dissolve heavy metals in waterways, allowing them to circulate into the food chain.

Phosphates are added to some laundry detergents to soften hard water and help to clean clothes. However, phosphate is a natural nutrient for ecosystems and when drainage water runs into waterways, it can cause excess growth of marine plants. This results in a loss of equilibrium in the ecosystem, killing other plant and animal species.

And while this all sounds incredibly depressing, there is one very easy action we can take: Make our own laundry detergent.

Making your own laundry detergent is surprisingly simple. The ingredients are widely available from supermarkets and health food stores and the results we’ve achieved in the Duess household are on par with commercial products, with none of the drawbacks. White fabrics come out fresh and white, dark clothes stay dark and wool stays soft. Here’s what you need:

Home made laundry detergent for dark fabrics:

  • 2 parts of natural soap flakes
  • 1 part of Borax
  • 1 part of washing soda

Home made laundry detergent for light fabrics:

  • 2 parts of natural soap flakes
  • 1 part of Borax
  • 1 part of washing soda
  • 1 part of safe bleach

That’s it. The ingredients are safe for the environment, and septic systems, and bio-degrade rapidly. They are free for foamers, making them ideal for high efficiency washers and front loaders. In addition, the ingredients needed are typically considerably cheaper than the commercial equivalent, making for welcome savings.

We buy our soap powder from the Toronto Soap Works, which has Borax already mixed in.

Pre Spring Pancetta

Written on March 7, 2010 by Mr. Stephenson in Curing, Meat, Mr Stephenson
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We’ve been a touch neglectful in our reports this winter. Meh, winter. The time changed today and that signals that spring is around the corner. What better way to celebrate than to get a little pancetta action going on. Here’s a lovely Berkshire belly that Mr. Duess sourced from his new neighbourhood butcher in Kensington market. Its all tied up and clothed to hang in my drafty drafty kitchen cupboard. Take that Mr. Duess!

Well, now its ready for the drafty cupboard. Cheesecloth keeps it contained but still open to the air.

Cured and tied. Ready for the drafty cupboard.

The great bacon making of 2009

Written on November 21, 2009 by Mr Duess in Curing, DIY, Smoking
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belly

Today I picked up 10 pork bellies at the Springfield Farm Store. The pork is from local, naturally raised pigs, no hormones, no antibiotics. Tomorrow we’ll be starting the cure. Our butcher, shown in the picture above, has agreed to let us use her cold room, so we don’t run out of fridge space at home.

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