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.

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.

Squirrels & Pumpkins

Tori: Why are the pumpkins at that angle? And why are the stems not showing?

R.: How can you have forgotten? Our squirrels have a penchant for pumpkin seeds.

Ah yes--they were brazen this year. Much of the pumpkins is actually hollowed out by them.

I had forgotten, but how could I indeed? The pumpkin's--Lino's pride--are usually placed in waiting on the kitchen porch. Squirrels line up, as though pupils waiting their turn, 3 or 4 at a time.

In Montreal, you can always tell tourists when they take photos of squirrels, while the rest of us wonder what their meat might taste like. Making peace with our household gods has meant a modus vivendi with the squirrels. We accept that $60 of every $100 we spend on the garden is taken in squirrel tax. By tomorrow, I'm pretty sure the same proportion will have applied to the pumpkins.

And yes, that is snow. Sigh.

Walnuts. Earth.

I just get lost in them, even looking at them here.

**

It was meant to be a short stroll in the Botanics. The weather was pronounced iffy. I expected my mum to tire quickly because we got a later-than-usual start. But the gardens performed their usual magic: we forgot limitations as we started for an unassuming corner of the grounds.
There was much to make us stop. When flashy autumn yields to muted colours and fallen leaves, suddenly things that were hidden--branch stem vein--come to the fore. They don’t jump into the eye, mind you; they need be sought. We did, and saw.

**

I have a thing for nuts in their outer husks. The more vulnerable story--before only hard shell. They made me think of oranges and peaches, but decidedly unjuicy--more still-life than fruit.

**

Something broke the bounds of their mesmerism. I walked on. But they've stayed with me. Or at least so in a more applied state: I couldn't wait to come home and sauté some in duck fat; salt; eat.

Conserva.

I've long placed Paul Bertolli on my list of people I'd marry without much further thought. His Cooking by Hand has been to me, as to all who read it with eyes open, a revelation. That anyone could pay attention to this extent. That anyone could see through the layers of an ingredient to read its core.

My 2003 copy has lost its dust jacket--something I mind a little, and don't. I miss his floured hands, even as I love the austere pebble-coloured expanses I have now. I have lent it many times, feeling unusually trepidatious over potential loss. My worry stone.

Comes this year, and I've developed a whole new level of swooning love for him: making Conserva. It is Bertolli's version of southern Italy's estratto--tomatoes made into paste--dried into intensity on planks in the sun.

Our Conserva was almost not to be. We though we had run out of summer. The tomatoes had been watery. Getting to the core of them would surely only reveal rain. I didn't have enthusiasm for Quixoticsim when there was so much to do still in the kitchen. But then a few weeks later than one would have expected, some San Marzano tomatoes took in the last of the sun. I couldn't leave them at the market even as I didn't need more sauce. Suddenly, Conserva was back on the horizon.

No plank. No sun. But four days and nights in a very low oven until it was the colour of brick, turned over countless times, to achieve 90% reduction in weight. My heart just lurches thinking about it.

October Market

I feel we're both anticipating mourning, the market and I. Each time closer now.

Evidence should tell me it's just me--the market ready for a rest. Then again, I look at the green tomatoes, the chard. Somewhere an eternal spring.

I hate myself for the drama I feel. Yet how do I let go when it's another year I didn't hold completely, didn't fully take in.

I'll try again.

Summer for Winter: Portuguese Peppers.

I can't tell you my near-manic need to capture summer and jar it. Even as we're now in deep fall.

I thought I was done. And then, perhaps primed by spectacular red leaves on my drive through Mount Royal to the market, I instantly felt I needed these, even as I'd never needed them before.

Lino calls them Portuguese peppers. And so I do too.

They have some heat. Not as much as some chiliheads I know might favour, but heat nonetheless.

I bought two bushels. That's a lot of capsaicin in one house for a little person like me. Especially as it’s a volatile little compound. As I worked, it caught in my throat each time I opened my mouth. Something to note when anyone wants to keep me quiet.

I used the food processor's slicing disk to slice them--my KitchenAid one makes satisfyingly fat ones. As I did to slice about three heads of garlic. We then laid them out on some half-sheets, drizzled them with olive oil, and popped them in a 105C/225F/Gas Mark 1/4 oven for several hours.

When they looked all sorts of happy and early burnished having given up much moisture the angels, they were made into a paste, this time using the ordinary twin blade of the processor. Some was joined with roasted eggplant. All of it put into mini jars and frozen, ready to accompany some goat cheese, or used in sandwiches, or used as dip or spread with social food to go with drinks. I love how just going by instinct works out: a new memory of warmth for cold days.

Streams of Giving Thanks.

I've this thing where for holidays I don't want to use a cookbook. And so, as it was this weekend for Thanksgiving, (Thanksgiving in Canada is celebrated the second Monday in October.)

Thanksgiving is a ritualised event. A largely codified one at that. But oral history is, here too, is to me more powerful.

I love to think that the series of movements that lead to supper that come from us, with no other voice to guide but that of relationship to the day, the friends who will sit around the table, the ingredients--and relationship to memory.

Much from memory, yes: Approximate minutes per pound and internal temperature. The proportions for popovers. But the stuffing for this fine local bird was a stream of consciousness work. Perfect for the day.

I'm Out of Control: Pumpkin Cake

If you're one of the people coming for Thanksgiving on the weekend, avert your eyes now.  Because it's better as a casual surprise treat.  Because I've been known to  change my mind.   

I know what I'm about to admit labels me as a food snob, and to amplify the injurious term, here's insult: it makes me a very unoriginal one. 

But here I go: I hate fancy cake moulds.

It's cake.  It's made of butter *and* sugar.  If it's not gorgeous-enough on its own, something's gone terribly awry.  I think of the fancy cake mould as dreadful cake's attempt at alibi  ("I can't be bad, your honour.  Look at me! I'm CUTE!"), only it turns out to be its M.O..

The betrayal of my principles started with my mum requesting a kugelhopf pan.  I thought this innocuous-enough: we're central European; we're allowed kugelhopf.  But then suddenly I'm buying heart-moulds, small ones, for dense chocolate fallen and purposefully wobbly Valentines.  The cakes seemed to me adorable in their flawed states, and--I clung to hope--spoke for me.  (I can't be a crap wife organising Valentine's at the last minute, your honour, look I'm heartshaped!  And self-deprecating!") 

From there, I'm not sure what turn the spiral next took.  But... well... here's a cake from a mould I found at the back of the pantry.  The photo is of the trial run, to make sure the cake would hold up.  By the weekend, I need to find some kind of sandwiching icing.  (I am a good hostess, your honour, I made pumpkin cake for party favours!)

Fall Summer Fault.

This is the time of year that has me all sorts of split because:

1. I love autumn more than I can say. I go weak at the knees with the scent of fallen leaves, the hearttripping beauty of the colours, the crisp air, the skies that stretch forever.

The dense nostalgia that has my ears straining to hear geese flying, wishing for somethings lost or never gained, also has me in a unique state of restlessness. Yet it's less so than my usual, if only because I need to be still-enough to take in a season that has one very aware that in a short time it will be gone.

I've childhood poems. To Autumn. I come by this honestly.

1a. I often wish nostalgia = away. So exhausting, so sticky, so done.

2. I'm still hanging on at the last strands of summer. Don't Go-o-o-o. I need just one more bursting berry, one more moment of drowning in your plenty.

And so from the faultlines of my soul, where I prepare for pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving next weekend, a final homage to summer 2008. Peach cobbler, made of Quebec peaches. More butter than you'd guess. And on the plate, lots of cool pouring cream.

Slow. Roast Garlic.

The kitchen is a roller-coaster of existential victories, and angst.

Often I feel overwhelmed with the weight of responsibility of a fine ingredient. As I hold it, I feel a definite sense of Don't. Mess. Up--.

It's a perfect [goose or char or yellow beet], don't mess it up.

And this isn't only in fits of self-loathing. I'm simply very aware that there's bit of perfection in my hands. There's a lot I can do wrong, whilst the only right I can perform is to preserve its integrity, or nudge it to make manifest its hidden beauty.

Yet at other times, I feel as though I created the perfection.

I'm not blind to the heresy of this. But I tell you, it's a ticket into heaven nonetheless.

Just now, as I write this, I'm making bread. The dough is in a process that's enormously dynamic--bubbling, transformational--and I'm metres away from it, as I will be for the rest of day. Yet with the loaf in my hands, I will feel I. made. bread.

Roast garlic shall never strike me with the same power, and really, in the end, nothing shall. Nonetheless, there's was a bit of magic here too. It is the first time it came to me that I might roast garlic in the slow cooker. Necessity was the mother of my invention: all the usual heat sources taken up with other things. And voila.

I didn't make the garlic gene, I didn't grow the garlic bulb, I didn't invent the slow cooker, surely I'm not the first to put them together. But somehow it registers as though I had. And how perfectly!

****

These were roast for a soup. But they are lovely spread on bread or such.
Heads of garlic, root-end intact, tops nipped.
Thin drizzle of olive oil.
A slow cooker.
A few hours.

Love Apples: the Canning. The 2008 Edition.

Normally canning tomatoes goes like this:

Get up before dawn, without an alarm set, just from the excitement. A sensation not unakin to Christmas morning.

Tie hair back
Brush teeth
Wear something that likes tomato
Tiptoe downstairs
Make tea
Peer outside
Turn on Puccini
Put blanching kettles up to boil
Wash tomatoes

By the time it's Saturday morning for the rest of the world, serious progress has been made. I feel virtuous and aesthetically pleased. I feel like I've been to church.

This year, er, not exactly that.

Everything was off schedule: our house, the market, the lands. We had just gotten home from PEI, and I had placed an order for heirloom San Marzanos. When I saw them, it was love at first sight. Yet to start all of this on a Monday, one day before a Big Family Visit, and work deadlines looming, made for less than ideal conditions.

And so: Wash. Blanch. Grind. Cook. Can. All of it in fits and starts. R. did the bulk of it: early, late, in small spaces in between. It all felt disjointed; hollow; burdensome.

Ah, but then, a moment of grace-- As I was coming home from a late meeting, and several breaths before I turned the key in the front door, I was already able to detect the glorious scent of my tomatoes emanating from every brick and stone: sweet yet, now, burnished; their depth discernable. My senses trilled with them. Is it any wonder they call them love apples? It was the incense of our home. It was church after all.

Copyright 2008. All rights reserved for photos and text.