Love Apples

Cassoulet.

Following the recipe for duck confit, I'm here filling a friend's request for the way we make Cassoulet.

1. The Pork Skin. Yes. The first ingredient is something that's rarely found in a cookbook, but that to me is in every way the foundation. You line the ovengoing pot (I use an oval Staub or Le Creuset--oval shouldn't matter, but makes my heart go pat pat) with the skin, after first taking most of the fat off. I conceive of the inclusion of the skin as plain magic--or more prosaically, I think that it provides protection to what's within, that its high collagen would provide body to the liquids, and, needless to say, it provides a great complexity of flavour.

2. The Rest. Scatter in some 3 cups of flageolet, rinsed. a few bay leaves. Pepper corns. One each dried hot and mild pepper. A twig of rosemary. A sprig or two of thyme. 3 whole echalottes grises. 6-8 garlic cloves. We add 4 tablespoons of homemade tomato paste (Bertolli's Conserva), though sometimes we don't--. Then add a fair piece of pork shoulder, cut into two inch cubes. Cover generously in stock (if homemade and salt free; I usually use duck stock with some fat on top) or water or a mix of both. Braise in a 130C/Gas Mark 1/275F oven for 4 hours, checking on fluid levels after 2. At this point add simply-spiced sausage, and 6-8 pieces of duck confit. Allow to warm and meld for about an hour and fifteen minutes. I usually place the duck pieces somewhat on top so as to allow the skin to take a bit of colour.

This is the cassoulet we made last weekened, before we put it in the oven.

December. Duck Confit.

One of the vertebrae in my kitchen is making confit. Here a smaller lid is used in the bigger pot to ensure that the duck pieces are submerged. This is how I make it:

Love Apples' Duck Confit.

I usually make double this, but it looked obscene on the page and I couldn't bear it. This confit is therefore for 6 duck legs (2-2.5 kg/4.5-5.5lbs). Add gizzards and wings with the tips cut off if you have them.

The Confiting Fat. You can buy rendered duck fat, but it's best to make it at home. Commercially available fat is rendered at too high a temperature, and it effects texture and taste. To render your own, take about 4 kg duck skin, or 2 kg cavity fat; chop into a rough dice and place in a deep heavy ovenproof vessel (I use my Staub or Le Creuset) with about ½ cup of water. Set oven to 110C/225F/Gas Mark ¼; place in oven. It may be ready in 2 hours, or may take longer to fully render. Allow to cool enough to handle safely; strain. If using duck skin, reserve solids to crisp for another use.

This should yield about 7 cups of rendered duck fat, but it depends on the water content of the skin. I believe it will make enough, but it depends on the shape of pot you use to make the confit. I always think too much is better—so many uses, plus it freezes well.

Salting and Curing. For 6 whole duck legs use 16 generous tablespoons coarse sea salt alone, or with the addition of any or all of the following: 3 tablespoons peppercorns, crushed; 2 bay leaves, crumbled; 2 tablespoons juniper berries, crushed; 4 sprigs fresh (or 1 tsp dried) thyme; 2 small sprigs fresh rosemary, leaves chopped (or one healthy pinch dried and crumbled); and 2 cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped. I go through periods of using lots of herbs, to periods of using only austere bay, juniper, thyme, pepper to periods of finding salt alone the best thing. Rub salt or salt mix into duck pieces. Cover and chill. Commonly it's said that it should be allowed to cure refrigerated from 8 to 24 hours. I don't disagree, but I do note that there's a significant difference between 8 and 24 in terms of the saltiness of the final confit. And so if I intend to serve a whole leg per person, I allow only 8 hours of curing, while if it's for smaller pieces in a bigger context (such as for cassoulet), I let it go for longer. But usually I keep to 8 hours or so—it's sufficient yet doesn't overwhelm.

After curing time, rinse salt off under cold water, and pat duck pieces dry.

Confiting. Allow rendered duck fat to come to room temperature. Pour into a very heavy enamelled pot or heavy ovenproof crock. Slip duck pieces into it, making sure all pieces are submerged in fat. At this point you may add some whole garlic cloves or a head of garlic with the top sliced off and/or 1 or 2 cloves (as in clous de girofle, not garlic) Cook over a low flame/in slow cooker/in very low oven until fat reaches 90C/195F (it should take nearly an hour to reach temperature), and allow to cook for another 1 ½ or 2 hours, monitoring temperature periodically. It is ready when meat seems tender at the bone.

Remove duck pieces to a heat-proof glass jar or a crock. Pack tightly. Heat fat until small bubble form (well short of smoking point), and carefully ladle over duck pieces, making sure all pieces are covered in fat. Allow to cure refrigerated for at least one week. If you wish to keep for several months, seal in a further layer of home-rendered lard (lard is more dense than duck fat, and therefore seals with greater efficiency), and cover with parchment paper.

Pork shoulder, lamb shank, goose, and even turkey make for fairly fantastic confits, and this recipe suits well, and only needs to be adapted for cooking time.

St.Nicholas Day 2008

For Northern and central Europeans, December 6th is St. Nicholas Day, and St. Nicholas Day is the chocolate holiday.

It's admittedly a kid's holiday. Ostensibly, you're meant to polish your own shoe and leave something out for him to eat. But in our house, it has perversely turned into St. Nicholas finding his own way to the fridge, the shoe cupboard (notice how he found my most fanciful outrageously colourful ones), and getting treats for adults. I just get to come downstairs and find them. This year, Neuhaus, all crème fraîche fillings. R. must have told him what I like.

Vanilla, & Suddenly Christmas.

The first snow didn't make me do it. Nor did the unrelenting Christmas music coming from every store as I walked on St. Catherine Street the other day. It wasn't the offers reaching my inbox every ten minutes from online bookstores, even as those usually tempt me.

It was my delivery of vanilla. 1 kg of organic tahitian vanilla, to be precise. Swoony swoon swoon. Even through all the wrapping the whole entry way was perfumed by them. I couldn't wait to break it open. I love making my own vanilla extract, of course, but I love too having the beans on hand.

Let the baking begin. Let Christmas come. I'll either be ready or so blissed out on the scent that I won't care.

Obsession Morning: Green Tomato and Ricotta

It's this dish.

Sauteed garlic--much of it--and green tomatoes barely cooked. Warmed, really. With good ricotta. Red chiles.

I woke up needing it craving it wanting it lusting it.

I must go to the market. Only I know disaster to strike. I'm sure there are no green tomatoes at Jean Talon. I was just there yesterday. I waited too long. I'm a fool. A hungry hungry fool. I know nothing that will satisfy this craving other than this very thing. A body's frustrated desire is always a sad thing. When is Spring coming?

Montreal j't'aime: Breakfast.

It was cold this morning. I felt all sorts of unsure about going out for coffee, even as I told R. I would. There is coffee at home. And I always say I'll bundle up, but somehow I can't do it. And now I've dug my own credibility gap within myself, so I know I'll be going brrr. And sure enough, brrr.

But then there's this--. Walking into a café where the air is made of butter and yeast and warmth. There are people speaking to one another joyfully, oblivious to the harshness of Monday, of losing the Grey Cup yesterday, or frozen puddles. Croissants and a man playing the accordion. I know instantly that for the rest of the day, they'll be no such thing as cold.

Labels.

Each drawer has a label for content. Mixer attachments. Cookie cutters piping bags and tips. But then lots more. Lots. I couldn't stop. I know it's weird. I'm quite amused that they've taken over my kitchen, when it's quite not me. Yet I also don't really know what it says about me.

But I've noticed the labels serve as a new Rorschach in my kitchen. Labels that then let me label. Here I thought myself fairly innocent in my decision to make them.

People who love them. (Hm. A bit controling of you, no?) People who hate them. (I so get it! But what's with being so judgemental?)

People who want to love them, but can't believe they do. (Me too! So right and yet so wrong.) People who want to hate them, yet drool in lust. (You're right--I'm still trying to suppress the drool...)

People who judge me as obsessional bordering on the insane. (Point taken.) People who suddenly like me a bit better, and never thought I had it in me. (Frankly, neither did I. But I worry about it, so should you!)

The truth is it's one of the best things I've ever done in terms of having a social kitchen. People who borrow the house for a weekend know their way, friends who visit maneuver without me. And then, the selfish part, friends and family who help put away dishes do so now with astonishing accuracy.

**

I love this photo taken by my friend David (whose most excellent photo work can be seen here--updated daily). It accentuates yet obscures the obsessive order of the labels.

Cinder Toffee.

I love days where I get to think through the homemade treats I shall give away for Christmas presents. It brings together three distinct joys:

1) I'm able to anticipate the pleasure of giving homemade things. It's a feeling not unakin from the thrill of as a kid giving my mum a potpourri jar fashioned out of modeling clay. Nor do I now, in my grown self, trust much better the pleasure that will be felt in the actual thing rather than in just the gesture, but it somehow doesn't matter.

2) I get to practice my kitchen-scientist persona, in an attempt at anticipating what will keep how well for how long, and, hence, how far in advance in can be baked and given.

3) I get to eat the final results.

The cinder toffee above hasn't passed step 2) very well--it becomes tacky quickly so would need be given right away. But it's fun to make--candy-making always is magical. Sugar made molten as shown the first small photo. Then in the second, baking soda. That's all. And tasty shards on icecream.

Croissant Custard Tart

Yesterday I made the twin to this tart. This one I made when D.--a friend who's really a brother--was visiting. He was to arrive around 5, and though we had dinner plans and cocktail foods might have been in order, I thought that he would want a warming homey welcome instead.

It's a custard tart, but made with croissant dough. I looked in the freezer, I was sure I had some dough stashed away. I was wrong. But determined! And so in a heavy day of work, I found myself compelled to rush home in mini breaks to roll out the dough, and folding and turning, each time rolling out with it the ever thinner layers of butter encased within.

Work

Run

Roll

Fold

Chill

Run

Work

And again. And again.

Though huffing and puffing, I thought I had done it all seamlessly until I noticed someone looking at me perplexed and I realised I had flour on my face. But it's for D.! He'll love it!! He'll feel everything he's meant to from it!!!

When it came to baking, a bit of distraction set in, and it got a bit more time in the oven than I intended. See the darker edges. Damn. But surely it won't matter he won't notice he'll read through it it's ok I mean look at it and it's CROISSANT.

So you'd think. But when he heard my fake humility before a masterpiece--"sorry the crust got a bit too much heat"--instead of telling me that he hadn't noticed, that the whole is divine he answered: "It's okay. I'll just sit here and gnaw on it." Grrr. Yeah, a friend who's just like a brother.

Obama. Pollan. Woohoo!

It's been more than a week since Obama's victory. I haven't started to breathe completely yet. But I must say, partial breathing feels great!

I've been aware of how much I've been containing in the many many months prior to last Tuesday. I feared and hoped--even as through much of it, fear won out. The ugliness of the last eight years still dawning on me more every day, colouring who I was in my very ability to think that things might be ok again. And the McCain/Palin campaign's incitement to hatred reached registers I hadn't thought I would see openly displayed in my lifetime. I tried to hide from it--too raw making--but each throwaway snippet burrowed into me. Worry. Worry. Worry.

But after all the anticipation, it happened almost all at once. Early key states fell our way. And it kept going. And we all kept going.

There are many small ways that calm is trickling over me. The one that fits right into these pages is this: I mentioned a few weeks ago that Michael Pollan wrote an open-letter to the next president-elect for the New York Times Magazine about the urgent need for sweeping agricultural reforms. I hoped, as indeed many did, he would read it. I recently found out through a friend that Obama has not only read it, but made reference to it in this interview.

I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen [sic] about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector.

This might indeed be a new day.