Blue Cheese Soup, an original recipe

The bulk of my mothers side of the family fled from Hungary in 1956. A few years later my great grandmother was called to Canada to help take care of the children, my mother and uncle. Thankfully, in-amongst the turmoil of fleeing their home and living as a refugee in a cold foreign country, my grandparents and great grandmother safeguarded a few wonderful traditions and personal quirks, not to be forgotten by future generations. I'm still not sure whether my memories of my childhood at my grandparents were spent learning traditions from the old country, or simply being indoctrinated by my grandfather with his own eccentric love affair with food.

For some reason this story only came about in the last couple of years, yet it characterizes my grandfather perfectly. After eating a diner which my grandmother had prepared, my grandfather and great grandmother would look at each other and wink, as my grandmother describes it. This was signal that it was time to slip away from the kitchen table and make their way to the garage where they kept The Cheese.

I never got a chance to experience The Cheese, and today nobody seems to remember what it was named (though to my grandmother, it has many nicknames), however we do know that it was kept in the garage on account of my grandmother not allowing it in her house, and that it was selected by virtue of its unique qualities which no other cheese available in Canada possessed. 

In my imagination, it has a delicate cream colored tone, interrupted by sharp cords of faded gray. Some might look at it and imagine it pulsates with terrible life, only biding its time before it unleashes its devilish powers on their palate. I see it as I would a beautiful slab of marble, its character a virtue to be relished, not avoided. It would, of course reek like the goddess herself, as all good blue cheeses should.

I should probably stop here and discuss the qualities that scare people away from blue cheese. There is aroma, texture, taste, and aftertaste. All the things you expect when you put something in your mouth for the purpose of consumption.

the aroma is strong, but not in itself unappetizing 
...... the texture is slimy and oily, yum
the flavor is like eating blue socks
and the aftertaste is there for hours.. unlike your friends
I will edit this section later, as without a hunk of cheese under my nose for inspection, I am finding it difficult to describe the peculiar character of good blue cheese without resorting to sarcasm.

However, if you like blue cheese, or even just the thought of blue cheese without my trying to sell you on it, then you're OK in my books.

I may never get to sample the cheese of my grandpas delight, however I did inherit a natural affinity for blue cheese. This recipe is a subtle reminder for those who have experienced the delights in the past, and a great starter dish for someone who is wary.

If you need more encouragement, which I am generally not apt to give, then know that this soup is consciously designed to accentuate the wonderful qualities of blue cheese, while minimizing the so called bad. In the end, there are enough other familiar flavors that the cheese takes on a fairly subtle role. 

And if it turns out, after all this that you simply don't like blue cheese, then at least you will be left with a substantially nourishing soup.
mmmmmm substantial nourishment

My Hungarian Grandmother's Silvas Gomboc

My Hungarian Grandmother's Silvas Gomboc, sweet plum dumplings wrapped in potato dough.

There are several dishes which marked my childhood at grandma's house. I didn't know it at the time, but these few dishes would form the basis of my love of cuisine, and my desire to learn the culture and traditions behind foods. 
I grew up in a city with little ritual to its food, though it is a major city, it just doesn't have the same panache or history that some of the great world cuisines have (mind you, we are getting a whole lot better now-a-days at bringing our ancestral heritage and cultural food into the spotlight).

Though we ate regular north american food most of the time, there were these rare occasions when my grandmother would make certain Hungarian delicacies. At the time I couldn't figure out why she didn't make these items all the time, but that was, apparently, before I learned about seasonality. 

I will eventually write about all of these such dishes as I can remember. Pogacha, Palacsinta, and todays article, Silvas Gomboc, plum dumplings wrapped in potato dough, and coated in toasted bread crumbs.

Celiac not Celeriac

It doesn't take much to pique my interest in the culinary world. A dish, a smell, a picture, an attitude, almost anything can become a catalyst for new endeavors. A dear friend developed Celiac Disease a few years ago, the perfect motivation to flex my culinary muscles you might think, but its been a long time since I first learned this about her.

Why have I been so stubborn in this regard? I should have very easily filled this role, and by rights I should be a master of gluten free cooking today. The reason, internet logophiles, is simple.

Soy flour noodles.

Somewhere along the line, during a very misguided experience in alternative health care, I was convinced that soy flour was the end all solution to all my worldly problems. I purchased a canister (very ritzy) of the stuff and noticed a recipe for noodles proudly adorning its cardboard periphery. "Haw" I thought, "noodles made from soy, surely this is not a ploy, definitely I can enjoy, ooh noodles made from desiccated soy", I laughed at my subtle wit, and then proceeded to crack eggs and beans alike into an amalgamate of crumbly yellow lentil scented, dough resembling material. I'll save you from the suspense now and tell you that nothing about this particular experiment worked, and 14 dollars worth of soy flour canister, and the 62 cents of soy flour it contained was destined for compost faster than a space ship travels through interstellar space, assuming that the space ship travels at the same speed by which a canister filled with broken dreams falls at terminal velocity from hand to trash.

The noodles became a yellow crumbly mess, and of course, they broke apart when boiled. Furthermore, the flavor was very unlike any pasta I had ever had before, and one I would rather not have again. This was 6 years ago, perhaps with newfound ambitions I could quash my gluten free inabilities. 

After weeks of putting it off I made my plight internet bound, and I was immediately struck by the convolution and general backwardness of most of the resources to be found. Comparatively, if I am searching for a regular wheat bread recipe outside of my frequented and trusted websites, I would go for the website with the fewest and most basic recipes, and as much input from home bakers as possible. Unfortunately some digging is required before finding such a golden resource. 

Separating the wheat from the chaff (gluten humor... HAW!) which litters the internet stores of gluten free baking recipes and information became a difficult and obsessive task for me. There are many websites with very poor quality recipes, and not having the history with obscure flours and ingredients, I had to rely on my previous experience in recipe reading to determine which websites could be trusted, and which needed to be avoided. First I searched simply for Celiac recipes, of which there are many. However I am not willing to buy prepared flours, or expensive gluten free bakers mix #5. Thats not the point of this whole exercise. The lack of feedback was also unsettling and a cause to rule out the vast majority of otherwise likely informative websites.

I searched blogs, knowing that in the world of blogs, feedback would not be an issue. Being assured of a real human behind the scenes testing out recipes was also a boon. Unfortunately, the number of professional Celiac bakers in the world is apparently pretty small, or at least those willing to put up authentic sounding recipes for free to the public.

Finally I directed myself to the BBC website, a website for british folk, and one which I have used with good success in the past. Their selection of recipes is very small, a good sign in my books, and they claimed a rigorous selection process for the recipes they were willing to stand behind. I chose to make their white soda bread, and their strawberry sponge. Alien looking recipes which required I abandon everything I knew previously about soda bread and sponges, which took less effort than expected. 

Hilarious Conversations about Food, an ongoing chronicle thereof (pt.1)

This is part one of a series I find myself calling, Hilarious Conversations about Food, an ongoing chronicle thereof. Here, if everything goes according to plan, you should find transcripts of actual conversations had or overheard by myself, of a nature which I deemed worthy to post on the Worldly Wide Web. Since I have yet to really meet anyone with my peculiar craziness towards food, I fear this section wont be updated often. I shall try my best.

An msn conversation between Kait and myself from earlier this summer:

-----

Patrick - I had stampede mini donuts.. they were more than enough for me.

Kait - he he he.... maybe that's what's causing you such grief.

Patrick - Id rather blame the state of the world today.. but I guess minidonuts pretty much sum that up, dont they??

Kait - in a sick way they do.

Patrick - the sugar represents the harsh conflict of political forces. the cinnamon represents the thin veneer of lies they use to cover up the sugary conflict. the shape is indicative of the never ending plight of our ancestors. And the dough harkens to a stronger realization that we are simply eating our world away.

It all makes so much sense now.

Kait - you need to include this in your food blog.

Patrick - ooh and the bag.. the bag is there to keep the sugar in so when you are done you can lick your fingers and stick em into the sugar.. you pig.

-----

I am well aware that this section of the blog could easily be called, Patrick's boundless arrogance, and how "ooh I just love my own wit", a chronicle thereof. 

Tenderloin in Red Wine and Peppercorn Sauce

This dish is the result of an accident, and an inability to keep my wine stores properly stocked... a very happy accident indeed.

I set out one monday evening after a delightful and unusually enterprising meeting with a close friend of mine to make steak in peppercorn sauce (steak au poivre), a recipe I got out of a cruise ship cook book of all places, and one which my family has come to adore. As with all endeavors based solely on good intentions and plans made with half a brain late one evening, I found myself missing crucial ingredients, as well as with a fridge stocked with prepped veggies for dinners long since past. A single bottle of wine, red wine, the wrong wine, stared plainly at me from the back of my cupboard, laughing mercilessly at the contortionist act one has to endure to simply peer into the depths of the aforementioned cupboard, let alone reaching blindly back only to knock the bottle over. 

I counted my ingredients:

tenderloin medallions, cut 1 1/4 inch thick

1/3 cup red wine

2 tbs green peppercorns in brine

one half white onion diced

6 or 7 quartered button mushrooms

1 cup to 1 1/4 cup beef stock

1 tbs sugar (optional)

and the ingredients to make a roux, 1 tbs each flour and oil

This should work, I said now with a sore back. Why shouldn't it work? Well, I'll spoil the ending for you now, it did work!

I started with the sauce, having decided to grill the tenderloin instead of pan sear, I would not be developing any delicious fond in the pan to boil into the sauce, and knowing that I could keep the sauce hot while I waited for the tenderloins to be cooked to perfection all at once on the grill. 

-Discard the brine from the peppercorns, and rinse with water. Crush the peppercorns lightly with a mortar and pestle, or with the back of a pan.. or something large and flat and otherwise capable of smooshing brined peppercorns, and leave to soak in the red wine

-Saute button mushrooms in a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of vegetable oil until the edges start to brown.

-Add the onions and continue cooking until the mushrooms are caramelized and the onions become translucent and only very slightly browned

-Add the flour and the oil for the roux and cook, stirring for a minute until the flour forms a paste and clings to the mushrooms

-Add the green peppercorns and red wine mixture. stir until a slightly thinner paste is formed from with the roux

-Add the beef stock slowly, mixing constantly in order to produce a smooth sauce

Allow to simmer happily on the stove on a low heat until the onions are soft

after a few minutes have passed of simmering, taste the sauce. I added a small amount of sugar at this point which helped to balance out the sharpness of the red wine, and the salty heat from the peppercorns.

Grill the tenderloin medallions until done to your liking, and allow to rest before smothering in a blushing deep burgundy sauce which you have fortunately prepared in advance, you smart rascal, you. 

A word on tenderloins and peppercorns, from which this recipe is named... but not about red wine, as my lower back holds a grudge.

Tenderloins: a delightfully tender meat with little fat, little connective tissues, and not well known for its flavor. This loin sits against the ribs of the cow, and as such some fat can be found towards the larger side of the cut. Use the same principals when buying tenderloin as when buying any other choice cut meats. Fat marbling will be your biggest clue, as it seems most tenderloins come shrink wrapped and wet aged at local wholesalers.

Cooking tenderloin can be a little bit tricky, depending on the methods you use to test doneness. poking at the meat with your finger will likely give false results of doneness, as tenderloin is generally much more tender than other cuts of meat, go figure. Chances are while you were flipping the medallions on the grill, the meat fibers will start to separate naturally to give you a glimpse of the doneness inside. If you must, you have my permission to make a small cut into one of the medallions, as the juices lost from a small cut will be nothing compared to a grill full of overcooked and rather expensive meat, and the knowledge of tenderloin doneness is a valuable tool. 

Brined green peppercorns used to come in a can which held softer and slightly less potent peppers, and were easier to work with. However now it seems that I can only find the bottled version, which are rather unpleasant to bite into without first crushing the peppercorns, and then allowing them a short soak in red wine to take away some of their bite. These are the same green peppercorns you find in spice mills, only instead of desiccating them, they are soaked in a brine like capers... but they are peppercorns, not capers.

Peppercorns prepared in this way are a magical culinary device. They are very bold, but they fit into many recipes where a strong pepper flavor is desired. I highly recommend experimenting with these on your relatives and others who will give you honest feedback. 

French Onion Soup

There are some dishes which are so simple and delicious, they cry out not to be mucked with. And when those dishes cross my family, their pleas go unheard. One such dish which my family has been tweaking for a lifetime is french onion soup. 

I remember the first time I tried my mom's french onion soup. I also remember the only way they got me to try it was by telling me that booze was third on the list of ingredients. Finally I remember not liking it at all, however, as its a favorite of my parents, it was a dish soon to grow on me (metaphorically, of course). Now my mother and i have made french onion soup so many times that we almost dont need the recipe to remember its four ingredients. 

Not meaning to get all mushy here, but french onion soup is the quintessential dish from all my previous experience in the kitchen. Few ingredients, lots of time and attention, and a house full of the aroma of slow cooking foods. Nothing makes me happier (nothing of course, except for september 16 when Starwars the Force Unleashed comes out!). This is one of those time tested and true recipes which has little creative process involved in its creation, but a great deal of thought into the technique, quality of ingredients, and small alterations to the whole process. Essentially it is a dish which holds the memories of decades of tweaking and my own families traditions and rituals surrounding french onion soup nights.

Of course with a dish like this, I cant simply give the recipe and let you have at it, so I will endeavor to educate you on the entire ritual. The first step, before you haul out your brand new Global only onion chopping knife, and your bushel of onions, go around the house and close off all bedroom doors. This dish will stink up your house like a snake in a mongoose factory... which is great, until you have gorged yourself on soup and you cant bare the thought of it anymore. Then, get out your Global only onion chopping knife and bushel of onions. 

A note on chopping onions: especially for men, you will want to have the phone handy for when you start chopping. Onions make you cry like a blubbering boobkin, use it to your advantage and call up your mother inlaw in a sobbing heap in order to guilt her into not visiting on the weekend, or call up your spouse and show her your sensitive side. The onions can wait, its called milking it.

A  further note on french onion soup etiquette: if you eat french onion soup alone, then you sleep alone too.

Finally, french onion soup freezes remarkably well. There is little fat to absorb freezer flavors, and with that many onions, you dont need to worry about any overpowering aromas seeping into your soup.

The recipe to serve 4 soup lovers, or 8 appetizers:

4 large yellow (sweet/ vidalia) onions

4 cups good beef stock (low sodium)

3 tbs good brandy

2 tbs sugar

Peel and slice the onions down through their core, then cut into half rings. Separate the onion rings by hand. Pour two tablespoons of vegetable oil into a stock pot large tall enough to have at least three or four inches of height over top of the onions, otherwise stirring will become an issue, and place over medium heat. At first you will only need to stir occasionally, every minute or so, but as the onions cook down you will need to stir more frequently. Browning in the early stages is bad, as it leads to bitter flavors, so concentrate on sweating the onions very slowly. It will take about an hour of stirring in which time you must not leave the kitchen. The sugars which stick to the pan burn very quickly, and so will need to be scraped often. About 45 minutes in, add the sugar, as the onions are finally about ready to start taking on some color.

I have thought about cooking the onions in the oven, but I have not yet experimented with this. The more gentle indirect heat from the oven would probably protect from burning, and perhaps allow the juices from the onions to evaporate faster. Something to look into in the future. 

After your hour of stirring and scraping the pan, your onions should have reduced down to less than one fifth of their original volume, and have formed a small tan colored mass in the pan. Add the brandy and scrape any remaining sugars off of the bottom of the pan. Add three cups of the beef stock and taste. If its too salty, add water. If its not beefy enough, add more stock. The first thing you should taste should be sweet, onion sweet. Afterwards a crisp saltiness which harkens to the delicious earthy stock your are using. It isn't a very complex flavor, and it does well with a great deal of variations with regards to the balance between the sweet and salty. So go with what you like. 

Put the lid on, and put it on the lowest heat on your stove, and forget about it for at least three hours. You may need to add more liquids after the simmering is done, but taste first. 

Traditionally you would place a crouton of sour dough on top, and top that with some stringy white cheese before broiling it to crisp up. I recommend this whole heartedly. 

Pizza wrap-up: finally a dough which doesn't suck

Ok guys, lets talk dough, pizza dough.

Over the years I have learned a few things about food, and even fewer things about baking, but one lesson which keeps cropping up is that simple ingredients, and well thought out processes produce some of the most mind-blowing dishes. Pizza is simple, or at least it should be, and is therefore subject to this rule.

By all means, make your pizzas as complex as you are capable of. Ingredients piled inches thick, sauces which take days to simmer, meats spaced just so as to be perfectly symmetrical. Do all that, as it is the american way with pizza, but do it knowing that your missing something truly magical. 

I had an epiphany with pizza several months back, and have been working on the process to get it just to my liking. Pizza making should be simple. Few high quality toppings, prepared in an instant and thrown into a blisteringly hot oven. But few dishes are quite that simple. No, if you want to make the best home made pizza you have ever tasted (and have it stand up as a reasonable facsimile to those fond memories of your last visit to naples), then realize that it is the dough which requires the complexity and the time consuming processes. 

Think of the Japanese and real Italian philosophy for noodles for a moment. There are, of course, toppings and sauces and the like, but every aspect of a noodle dish from either of these cultures is designed to showcase the noodle. Entirely backwards from the North-American standard of whatever noodles highlighting a bottle of sauce, I know. 

Now lets think about pizza, as that is the topic of this article. Any pizza dough will not do. The dough has to be able to be stretched by hand, which produces a crust that is at once light, crisp, and with just enough bite (forget the rolling pin). It has to have flavor, which comes from long rises which allow yeast to do its yeasty thing. Finally, pizza dough has to crisp up quickly, otherwise your pizza will fall apart, and the crust will get soggy. 

The recipe I use is taken directly from Alton Brown's Good Eats (season 3, episode 9 - Flat is Beautiful)

Ooh look, some clever web designer put the recipe online, how handy.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/pizza-pizzas-recipe4/index.html

For those of you who watch tv, I would hope that you saw Heston Blumenthal's show, In Search of Perfection, where he cooks his perfect pizza. Heston goes out of his way to make the pizza simply complex, thats what Heston does, but in the process he came to the same road block any aspiring pizza chef will come to, the heat! The best pizzas are cooked in a wood fired brick oven, and the best wood fired brick ovens can reach temperatures of 900 degrees!  You could scour the internet for brick oven plans (or, I could just save you the trouble and direct you here: http://www.fornobravo.com/pompeii_oven/table_of_contents.html ), or you can come to the same conclusion that I had been mulling over, and which Heston recommends, which is to forgo the pizza stone, and cook on cast iron. 

Cast iron stores a great deal of heat, heats quickly, and transfers heat to foods better than stone, and as such it is the preferred cooking surface for pizzas. Heston cooks on an upturned enameled frying pan, which leads to tiny pizzas. I cook on an upturned rectangular griddle. My pizzas are bigger than Hestons. Who would you trust?

Set your oven to full broil with your cast iron surface in place and close the door. It needs to be as hot as possible in there, your oven can handle its self clean cycle, it can handle having the door closed on broil. Then start stretching out your pizza dough. The oven and the cast iron will take time to heat up fully, and by the time your first pizza is ready, so to should be the oven. 

Making sure your pizza can still slide on the peel, send your first pizza into the inferno quickly, and close the door behind it. I place the cast iron cooking surface about 6 inches away from the broiler element in my oven. When the pizzas top is browned, the crust has some blackened marks to it around the edges, and the bottom of the crust sounds crispy when tapped on, your pizza is done. You will, however, have to experiment with how far from the broiler element your cooking surface has to be in order to ensure that your crust and toppings reach perfection at the same time, as ovens apparently vary. 

Finally, adorn the top of your pizza with a sprinkling of parmesan, cured ham, fresh basil, and a grind or two of good salt, and allow your pizza to rest for a minute or so on a cooling rack before you cut into it and eat.