Picnics offer just enough outdoors to satisfy the inner woodsman

July 2012

Ever since families decided that a nice warm cave was superior to spending another night on the savannah, we have been romanticizing the great outdoors.

I imagine that it only took a week or two of comfortable, protected, pest-free indoor living before someone said, “Gee, why don’t we spend the weekend in the forest and get back to nature?” And then they heard a Saber-toothed tiger roar and that bright idea was forgotten for about 40,000 years.

We owe our current infatuation with camping to Baden-Powell and his brainchild, the Scouts. This was a stop-gap that gave young British men something to do between the earlier era when they might have looked forward to being pressed into naval service and WWI’s conscription. Camping became an earnest endeavor. Trench building was a fun activity and a boy’s love for the great outdoors could be measured in merit badges.

Scouting had one major benefit: The rest of the family could stay home.

Cars changed that when we were encouraged to go trekking together. Camping became a marathon endurance activity—get the tent into the car, get it out of the car, get the poles up (I thought you brought the poles), get the tent up, get the fly over the tent, sleep, take the tent down, drive to another location, repeat.

A friend, considering the camping experience, once told me that his idea of roughing it was to go to a motel and leave the windows open.

Urban foraging isn’t about making a dandelion salad. Save that for a dinner party. Painting: Émile Bernard

What made camping worthwhile was, of course, food. Food tastes better when it is eaten just before complete exhaustion.

How else could someone have successfully marketed lemon sublime gel or freeze-dried ice cream as a something you would actually look forward to eating?

Today, however, we can remove the camping and keep the food.

This is called a “picnic” and it provides just enough of the great outdoors to satisfy my inner woodsman.

The best picnics require the least amount of effort.

If you have superb fixings in the fridge, by all means take out that perfect arugula salad and slice the leftover beef Wellington; however, we are in Montreal. This city may be the summer picnic capital of the world, where all you need is a basket to hunt down lunch.

Urban foraging is not about making a fresh dandelion salad. Save that to impress friends at a dinner party: “Oh, I just plucked this from the garden.”

The Montreal picnic is a cornucopia of seasonal fruits and veggies, locally made cheeses and charcuterie, freshly made breads and even potent liquid refreshment.

Check out the free weekend tastings of Quebec wines and ciders at Jean Talon market.
Then it’s a couple of hours in the great urban, professionally designed, municipally designated outdoors (Jarry or Angrignon parks or Mount Royal or Cap St. Jacques) and frankly that’s enough. After that, it’s cinq-à-sept in Balconville with a cold one and great memories of a day well spent. With luck, you won’t even get a mosquito bite.

No Mayo, No Risk

Yugoslavian Potato Salad

Of course, you want to bring at least one homemade dish on the picnic. This validates you as a cook and implies that if you had really wanted to, you could have provided a meal for everyone on the block. I’d vote for what the Flavourguy’s family knows as “no mayo, no risk, Yugoslavian potato salad.”

Take 4 medium size potatoes and boil them until barely done in their skins. Let them cool, remove the skin, cut each in half lengthwise, slice thinly, add a quarter cup or so of thinly sliced red onion, a dressing of olive oil and cider vinegar (2:1), bacon bits and salt and pepper. What you don’t eat at the picnic will keep for several days in the fridge.

TheFlavourguy@gmail.com

“I did it my way” should be everyone’s triumphal wedding march

Barry Lazar

June 2012

Weddings are not about two people making a public commitment to share a life together. They are not about a ceremony that manifests its roots in a culture or religion. All of that is about marriage, and that is not the same thing.

Marriage is a wonderful thing, weddings … not so much.

As with any good chemistry, when two elements are attracted to each other, there can be a strong reaction. So weddings are actually not about tradition or anything else. They are about power. There is a profound structural formula at work. The older a couple is when partners wed, the more power they have over the affair. The younger the couple, the more that power is transferred to others: wedding consultants, well-meaning but misguided friends, and of course, parents.

Weddings aren’t even necessarily tied to romance. I realize this is a cynical view.

Weddings aren’t always about romance. Photo: Cliff

Nevertheless, one wintry day, when Celina and I decided to stop living in sin (what a delightful expression!), I asked our rabbi about how much time he legally needed to post a notice of marriage in Quebec. He said about three weeks. I checked the calendar and saw we could get married mid-February. Thus we entered a legal union on Valentine’s Day. It does mean that I am unlikely to forget the date. It also means that my mate doesn’t necessarily appreciate my wonderful expediency and prefers to celebrate our first date, which coincides with her birthday, but that is another story.

Being able to organize one’s wedding lets control stay with the two partners most concerned. Short timelines mean that there is less of a chance a relative or friend will meddle. Forget Mendelssohn or Wagner (dum-dum-de-dum …). “I did it my way” should be everyone’s triumphal wedding march.

Large weddings do have a major advantage. With judicious planning, the couple gets to sample from several caterers, providing weeks of free meals before having to make a final choice. Focusing on the food also takes one’s mind off all of those nettlesome details that can ruin this important lifetime event: the design of the invitation, how many people can come from each side of the family, which online retailers will be used as gift repositories, or what statement the clergy should make that will offend as few people as possible. (“Say, does God really need to be involved?”).

Keeping it small, on the other hand, offends as few people as possible. We got ours down to 16 and had the wedding at home. Celina wore a gorgeous handmade wedding dress (she had wanted jeans but her mother said she wouldn’t come). I got to dance with my dad with shots of vodka balanced on our heads. (Where did that tradition come from?) A month later, my sister threw a party for our friends and nobody gave us a blender.

BBQ salmon bones

Here’s a Flavourguy summer favourite. Get salmon ribs from a fish store. This is the part of the fish that remains once the filets are taken off.

Cut them into plate-size portions and marinate them in a rich sauce. My favourite is a mixture of white wine, soy sauce, sesame oil and Chinese chili-garlic sauce in a ratio of 4-3-2-1. (For every 4 tablespoons of white wine, use 3 of soy sauce, 2 of sesame oil and 1 (or less) of the chilli sauce). Alternatively, try a mixture of balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

Marinate for a couple of hours in the refrigerator. Cook quickly under a broiler or over a barbecue grill. The flesh firms up and there is a surprisingly decent amount to eat. This is a pick-up-and-chew meal, very casual dining. Eat with friends.

TheFlavourguy@gmail.com

Mom set a standard for herself and no one will raise or lower the bar

May 2012

Mother’s cooking never disappoints. This is an axiom: profound, empirical, Pythagorean.

Restaurant cooking often disappoints. Equally, it can be elegiac. We can enter a restaurant and anticipate the meal we will get. Whether we are at Schwartz’s or Joe Beef, there is an unwritten contract that says: Enter here and you will be served. You will eat well and leave happy. When we have a bad restaurant meal, when we are ignored, when the food tastes less than as advertised, when we anticipate something better, we can always exercise our right to never come back. This never happens at Mom’s.

There is, however, also an unwritten contract at Mom’s. It says: Enter here and nothing has changed. Your uncle will tell the same joke he told last week. Your cousin still smokes on the balcony. The roast chicken dish you picked at last week, you’ll pick at again this week.

The rice pudding that you loved as a kid is the same one you will eat tonight. Mom’s is about comfort dining. This is not the same as good food or an elegant meal, although depending upon your mom, it may be. It is about consistency.

Mom set a standard for herself a long time ago and neither you nor anyone else is going to raise or lower that bar.

I have been blessed to have had several moms cook for me. My mom—known to her granddaughter as Granny—died a few years ago. Granny could make anything.

Her standing rib roast and Yorkshire pudding have yet to be equaled, in my estimation, anywhere. Granny’s croissant bake has been handed down to my wife, who has mastered it and it can now be brought to my daughter.

My college buddy’s mom made only two things: tuna fish salad and hot dogs. My buddy thought he had died and gone to heaven when he encountered college cafeteria cuisine. Still, his mother made a fine tuna fish salad.

My mother-in-law, Grandma Sarah, who passed away at 102, made an outstanding pickle soup. I admit that this is an acquired taste and that I am perhaps not rigorously sufficiently Ashkenaz to appreciate it. Yet there are those in my family who treasure this recipe and it, too, will be handed down for generations.

My father’s wife, who claims not to cook anything, makes a superb brisket that she proudly delivers to us each Passover.

There is very little difference between a slow-cooked brisket and one that has braised for hours in a wine and gravy sauce with cooked carrots and a Texas-style beef barbecue except perhaps the wine, gravy and carrots. It is really more a question of whose mother makes it.

What all moms share is that their recipes never disappoint. There is no Iron Chef category for Mom’s cooking. No super chef in the kitchen shouting: “Wham! Let’s add some grape molasses to that veal roast, Grandma!”

When we go to Mom’s, we don’t want surprises, we don’t want a cook experimenting in the kitchen or to have a sommelier face off over a bottle of wine. At Mom’s, anyway, we probably brought the bottle.

Traditionally, Mother’s Day is when Mom is taken out for dinner. I once took my future wife and her mother out for Chinese food. I had assumed that my mother-in-law-to-be liked Chinese food, as she often made chicken fried rice with soy sauce. We went to Chinatown.

I had been cautioned not to order anything exotic or spicy. I ordered off the wall, having no idea what the dishes were but certain that they would be home-style cooking and “interesting.” We started off with chicken soup. Then there was a watery beef stew with steamed vegetables and rice on the side. There were hints of black beans and Chinese seasoning in the sauce. I remember thinking, not too spicy, very subtle flavours.

Grandma Sarah looked at me. “This is Chinese food? This I can make at home.”

Mom’s croissant bake

Originally made with stale croissants, it works well with most bread. As slices, heels and bits get left on the counter, we stash them in the freezer until there’s enough for this dish.

For 6 cups of stale bread or 6 croissant: mix together 3 cups of milk, 3 eggs plus another egg yolk, ¼ cup of breadcrumbs, ¾ cup of grated Parmesan cheese, a ¼ teaspoon of white pepper and ¾ teaspoon of onion salt.

Put the bread in a 6-cup soufflé dish and pour the mixture over it.

Let it stand at room temperature until the liquid is completely absorbed (about 1 hour).

You can refrigerate this overnight, but let it come to room temperature before baking. Preheat the oven to 375F. Bake for 7 minutes then reduce to 325F and cook another 45 minutes until the mixture is set and lightly browned.

TheFlavourguy@gmail.com

Kitchen is a no-friends zone

Barry Lazar

April 2012

As Porter wrote and Garland sang:

It’s friendship, friendship,

Just a perfect blendship,

When other friendships have been forgot

Ours will still be hot!

Now, as I understand it, the Garland was a 36” gas range and the friendship was hot because this is really a song about the kitchen. Blendship must refer to a blender. Later in the song, Porter writes about cooking (If they ever cook your goose, turn me loose) and dining (If you ever lose your teeth, when you’re out to dine, borrow mine). There is even a comment on stew (If they ever make a cannibal stew of you, Invite me too!). Obviously, this is a friendship based on food.

Many a friendship improves over a good meal. However, few friendships are made in the kitchen. This is because 1) the kitchen is a dangerous place and 2) there is no room for democracy.

Let’s look at what friendship requires: equanimity, patience, good humour.

Commercials like to show that food and friendship come together in the kitchen. They show all of us trendy folk as bon vivants, eagerly sipping amusing little wines, hauling a roast from the oven, making pasta and engaging in lively conversation all at the same time. They never show that danger is just a misstep away: The wine making me tipsy and less amusing, the rack falling from the oven, the briefly untended oil smoking in the pan, the water for the pasta boiling over, the utensils hanging overhead, the dog underfoot … Where are the cameras for this reality show? Arghh!

No, in my kitchen, those whom I want to keep as friends stay just beyond the periphery of knife, sink and stove.

Then there is the question of democracy. The love of my life, the mother of my child, the woman with whom I have made so many of life’s key decisions (yes, these are all the same person) knows that we can do many things together: choose a car, raise a daughter, go on vacation, plan for the future. But we can’t make a meal. When one is cooking, the other acts as sous-chef—“what can I do for you dear” (said supplicatingly to whomever holds the knife) —or, more wisely, leaves.

Democracy implies that one party knows what the other is doing and that there is room for compromise. Those of us who cook regularly understand that we may not know what we are doing (“let’s see what we have in the fridge today”) and, if we do know what we are doing, there is no room for compromise (“of course, I put an egg in it, I always put an egg in it”).

If I have any sage advice for young swains, it is to invite your friend over for dinner but don’t let her near the kitchen. Oh yes, and forget the sage. My mate hates it.

Pasta amici

Here is a dish to make when a friend comes over and perhaps even better as comfort food, if the friend cancels. (Ahh you fool, see what you missed …)

I like penne for this and have found that the de Cecco brand holds up nicely. There are three stages of cooking: baking, boiling and frying. You can do all this at the same time, but don’t answer the phone!

Plan for 100 grams of dried pasta per person for a main course. Cooked in several quarts of boiling water, it should take about 12 minutes. Drain, toss lightly with oil and set aside covered with a towel.

Have ready: a cup per person of shrimp (shelled, uncooked) or boned chicken (no skin, cut into strips) or both, plus a dozen spears of asparagus, washed and trimmed, a sweet red pepper, an onion and garlic.

Drizzle a little olive oil over a dozen spears of asparagus and bake them in a toaster oven until cooked but still firm. Chop them into the same size as the penne. Slice the pepper and onion to the same size.

Finely chop at least one clove of garlic. I use three, but I have known my friends for a long time.

Heat a little olive oil in a pan until the oil is very hot and shimmers. Add the garlic and stir. As it turns golden, add the onion and pepper. Cook until these are soft. Add the chicken and shrimp and cook these through. They should be firm and opaque, but not browned. If you like, stir in fresh or dried oregano and a tablespoon of tomato paste diluted in a little of the pasta water. Add the asparagus and the pasta and reheat. Sprinkle coarse or kosher salt and freshly ground pepper. Grate a hard Italian cheese (such as Asiago, Parmesan, or Romano) at the table.

TheFlavourguy@gmail.com

Julia held the kitchen door open for men

Barry Lazar

March 2012

When did celebrity chefs take over the kitchen? Oh, didn’t you hear me? Maybe I should speak to you as if I were a celebrity chef: WHEN DID CELEBRITY CHEFS TAKE OVER THE KITCHEN?

It wasn’t long ago that Julia Child was the role model for adventurous cuisine. She of the “what-the-hell” attitude and the counsel that “if you don’t have butter, use cream.” She was the role model for liberating food from fastidiousness and women from the kitchen.

I think she had a greater effect on our generation, the first to be raised on TV, than America’s most famous TV news anchor, Walter Cronkite. Cronkite came back from reporting on the Vietnam war discouraged with American prospects.

“If I’ve lost Cronkite,” President Lyndon B. Johnson said, “I’ve lost Middle America.” Meanwhile America was looking at its middle,finding that it liked it, and Julia Child filled it.

Post-Second World War food had been relegated to science. Whether we were coming from farms or from far away, we migrated to cities. We were told that we had to be educated. Old styles of cooking—rural or immigrant—could be improved. Bread was bleached and fortified. Vitamins were added to milk. Soups were canned. Not only did Father Know Best (and what did he do at the office, anyway?), but mother knew nothing.

In the kitchen, it wasn’t recipes that ruled as much as regulations. Forget about a pinch of this and tasting. If you didn’t have a set of measuring cups calibrated in eighth-of-a-teaspoon increments, you were finished. If you didn’t rely on experts raised under the dicta of home economics, you might as well not get up in the morning.

By making cooking adventurous and fun, Julia liberated us. And by us, frankly, I don’t mean me, since men were given the role of playing with fire, outside, when the weather was nice, with a beer. In the 1950s, men were as likely to be in the kitchen as women were to be outside manning (and there’s a verb for you) the grill.

Julia changed it all. By making cooking fun, she let men come into the kitchen. Graham Kerr - equal parts cook and evangelist (oh was he ahead of his time) and Jeff Smith, the Frugal Gourmet. They all said it was okay to have fun with cooking and you didn’t have to be brazen or beautiful to do it. You could be Middle America.

Now, however, Julia has morphed into Roseanne Barr. Rudeness is mistaken for passion and stardom equated with competence. If the chef is good looking and yells a lot, that’s even better. Gordon Ramsay has a lock on this, but others are trying to catch up. You can catch him on Kitchen Nightmares, Hell’s Kitchen, and the F-Word. F might stand for Food but it could as well beFuhgeddaboudit.

Then there are such shows as Iron Chef and Chopped that traumatize anyone thinking of making dinner. No wonder the fastest-growing part of any supermarket is the takeout section. Heat and serve. You’ve come a long way baby ... back to TV diners of the 1950s.

So, I root for Julia and sanity in the kitchen. I turn to her for advice as she gives just a hint of a smile when I drop the chicken on the floor (“You’re in the kitchen, no one is looking”) or her comment that “Once you have mastered a technique you hardly need to look at a recipe again and can take off on your own.”

This is the chef I want as my guide. A quiet nudge pointing to perfection. Shh! There’s cooking going on here.

Soup by Julia

Here is a recipe for basic soup adapted from one of her last books, Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom.

Bring the following to boil: 3 cups sliced leeks, 3 cups of chopped and peeled potatoes, 6 cups of water, ½ teaspoon salt. Simmer until tender. That’s the basic soup.

After 20-30 minutes, taste for seasoning. You can switch onions for leeks or combine them. You can use chicken stock instead of water. You can serve it chunky style or purée it. You can add a dollop of sour cream to each bowl at the table.

If you want it cold—a vichyssoise—purée it, add half a cup of cream and chill. You can add almost any vegetable to the basic soup: cauliflower, peas, red pepper, carrots ...

As Julia writes: “This is how you come up with some of your own marvelous ideas and secret “house recipes.” And no one does marvelous better than Julia.

TheFlavourguy@gmail.com

Don’t let weighty issues stand in food’s way

Barry Lazar

February 2012

If you want to be fit in the kitchen, forget about food.

When it comes to food and fitness, I have an ideal world in which each bite helps to magically transform my body into a citadel of strength and energy. In this realm, I know the nutritional value of every dish and have memorized the latest pictogram from the Canada Food Guide.

Each morsel I consume brings me closer to the grail of the perfect body mass index, or BMI, although I really might be happier with a BMW.

Then there is my daily life, where food and fitness battle as I try to sort “right” from “wrong” at the kitchen table.

Is chocolate good for me, or bad? Should I eat bread because it is high in fiber or will it cause gluten allergies? Are eggs good for cholesterol this week or is it only the yolks that I should worry about and then maybe not? And the most vexing question: Can I buy blueberries in January if they come from Chile?

In fact, it won’t be long before supermarkets have WiFi and shopping carts are equipped with iPads so that every decision we make can be justified to a 13-year-old: “Hey Dad, are you sure that the cereal you are buying is high-fiber, low-fat,
free-trade, hand-picked and packaged in a sweat-free labour zone in a country without nuclear weapons?”

My mantra used to be: “I’m hungry. That looks good. I’ll eat it.” Now I require an armload of data before I think of shopping. Sure, I can argue that we should only stock our refrigerators with foods high in vitamins and fiber, low in calories and locally grown; but I know that tomorrow I’ll fry my egg in some savoury olive oil to which I’ve added a pinch of dried chili pepper and I’ll soak it up with leftover baguette.

Citius, Altius, Fortius

No, if you want to be fit in the kitchen, forget about food. That’s what I figure. Instead, I am adopting the Olympic motto: Citius, Altius, Fortius—Swifter, Higher, Stronger. After all, if it is good for Olympians, why not me?

We’ll start with fortius. Push away the electric stuff. Focus on the manual. Why use a breadmaker when I can knead? Sure a breadmaker is quicker, but I burn more calories in 10 minutes of kneading, which is about how much time it takes for me to haul out the mixer or breadmaker, add ingredients and clean up later.

Kneading is also a mini-cardio workout. I knead until I break into a bit of a sweat. For more serious strength-builders, I keep a couple of mortars and pestles. A small one is great for making salad dressing: mash a clove of garlic with a bit of salt and freshly ground black pepper, add olive oil and continue mashing.

Then add vinegar—wine or apple cider vinegars work best. The ratio of oil to vinegar is about 3:1, then some Dijon-style mustard to blend it all together. Moving up a level, I use a heavier and larger stone mortar and pestle for grinding spices and making pesto.

Now let’s focus on citius. Speed comes into play, here. While the bread is rising, I work on the rest of the meal and plan for something that is labour-intensive, such as a stir-fry, curry or stew.

I want to have lots of ingredients ready. I chop these by hand and add them to a pot quickly.

The order is simple: onions and garlic (and spices) first to brown or at least soften, then denser foods (carrots, peppers, etc.), then less dense, such as celery or fennel. If it is a soup, stew or curry I add liquid and finally herbs.

If I use potatoes (diced by hand), I add them in the last half hour. Since chopping by hand requires a sharp knife, I have to make sure that it is honed—another quick workout, great for dexterity in the wrist.

Finally, altius. The higher the kitchen tools, the more I have to reach. Admittedly, a 5’10 husband and a 5’2 wife may differ over this. Stuff I tend to use, such as the mortars and pestles, goes onto the top shelf.

Then, it’s knee bends to get the turkey roaster out or find the frying pan.

Having everything on the kitchen counter is overrated and who has enough counter space anyway? If you think I am exaggerating, have you noticed how those cooks move on Iron Chef or Chopped?

For the Flavourguy, fitness begins in the kitchen but it may have nothing to do with food.

TheFlavourguy@gmail.com

Turkey tradition, or how to display your fowl

Barry Lazar

December 2011

Let’s talk turkey—this is our family’s most enduring holiday food, but that doesn’t mean it is our favourite dish. In fact, frankly, some of us might leave it out, but we can’t. It’s a tradition! So much so, we eat it twice.

For Hanukah, we require a protein supplement for the massive amount of fried carbs we will eat. Cold smoked turkey, sliced and ready on the table, is a great counterpoint. Making latkes—potato pancakes—at the last moment, which is how we do it, requires everyone out of the kitchen except the latkes mistress. Platters come. We ingest. Platters go back for refills. The kitchen is sealed off under smoke and oil fumes.

While the traditional latkes are frying, other traditions our changing. We may remember “dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, I made it out of clay,” but we also know Adam Sandler’s Put on Your Yamaka, Here Comes Hanukah and Tom Lehrer’s I’m Spending Hanukah in Santa Monica. Go ahead, Google them and then come back to the column.

Turkey is now as much a part of our Hanukah celebrations as Adam Sandler and a nine-branched menorah. Then there is the other family feast, a week or two later. With about 20 Jews and a couple of Catholics in our clan, we celebrate an indigenous festival on December 25 known as ChrisHanukah.

This, too, requires a traditional turkey, but served hot. We have discussed several ways of doing this.

A few years ago, my sister, who traditionally cooks the turkey, received a turkey fryer as a gift. Some gift. Turkey frying requires immersing the bird in a vat of boiling oil. This is a technique for engineers, not cooks. Imagine damp stuffing hitting boiling oil or a slight miscalculation with searingly hot fat overflowing the pot. For informational purposes, you may wish to see an instructional YouTube video of the ignition of William Shatner deep-frying a turkey. Beam me up Scotty, indeed. We, of course, would do it safely. We could do it in the garage, or better yet outside, or safest yet, not at all.

Another approach, recommended by food writer Mark Bittman, is to split the turkey down the middle, flatten it and cook it at a high temperature. This takes about 45 minutes.

This means that we are presenting a somewhat diminished splayed fowl, reminiscent of a deflated football on a large plate. A holiday feast demands oohs and ahhs and the Flavourguy thinks that an impressively large turkey should largely impress.

Tradition rules. Old school. In the oven. We take a walk through the woods while the turkey roasts. We baste it, probe it and make a group decision as to when it is done. By tradition, I make the pan gravy as it rests. By tradition, my brother-in-law carves thin slices with such skill he could be performing surgery on Grey’s Anatomy, not the turkey’s.

Maybe one year we will discuss barbecuing a turkey or serving it Mexican style with a spicy mole sauce. In fact, part of the tradition is discussing different ways to cook it. But traditionally, what we like about our turkey is that it is invariable. After all this talk, it is always the same. So we eat some turkey with lots of stuffing and gravy; and then the tradition continues: leftovers for a week.

  

Instead of a recipe, here are two gift ideas: No cook really needs another set of fondue forks or a bottle of chili-flavoured olive oil. But all cooks love books that do more than give recipes, that bring us into the minds and hearths of a cook. In that category, I suggest Ruhlman’s Twenty: 20 Techniques 100 Recipes A Cook’s Manifesto ($45). The first chapter is not “appetizers” or “main courses.” It is titled Think. This book had me questioning my cooking with ways to improve it.

Another great gift for lovers of Montreal is The Art of Living According to Joe Beef: A Cookbook of Sorts ($40) from the brassy Little Burgundy bistro Joe Beef.

There are dishes you will want to make, such as spaghetti homard-lobster or the four-page centrefold of a monster smorgasbord. But what sets this book apart is the writing of Joe Beef’s co-owners, including David MacMillan’s foodie take on Montreal history and Fred Morin’s recipe-laced tale of a Via Rail trip to the Gaspé, and his insane directions for building a smoker. (Start with a $1,000 industrial-strength acetylene torch.) Forget deep-frying a turkey, we’re not in Dollard any more.

With either book, you are more likely to spend several hours enjoying the writing, and the authors’ love for food, than getting back into the kitchen. And, after any holiday feast, what could be better than that?

Flavourguy@theseniortimes.com

This kitchen reno is like the TV series that keeps coming back

Barry Lazar

November 2011

A home renovation project is like a sitcom series. There is the affable contractor, the slightly confused dad, the mom who has great design ideas but is just a little flustered (“Hey Luuuucy...”); Mike Holmes and HGTV come in and offer indispensable advice and somehow, it all works. Over the summer, it gets done and in the fall, the renovated room is shown off like a new grandchild. The theme song for this series is Whistle While You Work.

My series is a little different. Mine invariably gets cancelled during summer reruns. And, most frightening, every season begins the same.

It starts with the arrival of the IKEA catalog. We are inspired. Oh, look at all the neat rooms full of wonderfully designed products. Everything makes sense. But where, I ask, are the overflowing recycling bins, the compost bucket filled to the top with old teabags and a soupçon of fruit flies? Where is the dishwasher that only gets half the dishes done and the oven door that doesn’t quite close right? Where, in short, is my kitchen? Oh yeah, that’s what this renovation is all about.

So, filled with optimism and a bank account partially flush with last year’s tax rebate, we start the process again. Like Sisyphus, we push up the hill. We open the Ikea catalog and ohh and ahh. This year we will get it right. We measure appliances, looking at what is right (size) and wrong (dials on top of the stove next to the burner for Pete’s or someone else’s sake.) We babble of Nutids and Datids and Doofis (what insane computer selects these names?). We go to JC Perrault and Almar and Sears. We spend hours online comparing facts, figures and fridges, checking Consumer Reports and Epinions.

And, every year, we fail. Our problem is that we actually like what we have. We have a small kitchen, smaller than average, with appliances that made sense 30 years ago and still work. There is the smaller-than-average refrigerator, the portable dishwasher that wobbles across the floor when we need to use it. The microwave is analog. It has a dial and no digital readout but it is big enough to cook a turkey. The refrigerator does what it is supposed to do—it keeps food cold. It doesn’t spout cold water (amazingly, I use the tap for that) and the ice cubes are always ready inside the freezer, they don’t cascade from the door.

We have a 24-inch gas range. In New York, London and Paris, apartments come with 19-inch, 20-inch or 24-inch ranges. In Montreal, asking to look at a 24-inch range marks us as either severely impoverished or wildly eccentric.

There is a lovely 24-inch Aga range that costs $6,000. There is a flimsy GE model coming in at less than a 10th of that. Damn little in between.

This year’s Kitchen Renovation series has been true to form. After months of research and touring appliance showrooms, we have accomplished nothing. The series is over for another season. The last scene of the final show has us eagerly awaiting next year’s catalog. Over the credits, you can hear our theme song. It’s Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.”

In the meantime, I came across a wonderful way to cook a roast in Cook’s Illustrated. Their recipe is for prime rib. I found it also works great for less expensive cuts.

Buy a roast three to five inches thick. Remove the meat from its package, dry it and salt it well all over.

Put it in on a rack in the refrigerator, uncovered, for 24 hours. The circulating air and cool temperature ages the meat. Bring the meat out and let it come to room temperature, about an hour or two. Turn the oven to as low as you can get it, probably about 210F (or 100C).

Heat a little oil in a very hot frying pan large enough to hold the roast. When the oil is smoking, sear the meat well on all sides until it is well browned. Put the pan in the oven. Leave it for five hours. Yes, five! Check occasionally with an instant-read thermometer (these cost $10 to $20 in hardware stores and supermarkets).

Turn off the oven when the thermometer indicates that the meat’s internal temperature is 110F (44C), but keep the meat in the oven. The roast’s temperature will continue to climb to about 120F as the roast rests for another hour. This produces a delicious, rare roast beef. The juices can be strained and made into gravy with a little red wine and some beef or chicken stock.

flavourguy@theseniortimes.com

Well-aged delights are not old food, they are mature food

Barry Lazar, B.S.W

October 2011

Old times. Old folks. Old Food.

Prohibitively expensive 50-year-old balsamic vinegar, barely affordable 25-year-old port, 4-year-old Canadian cheddar with a sharp taste and slight crystalline crunch on the tooth, 18-month-old prosciutto sliced paper thin and melting on the tongue, 3-month-old home made orange marmalade, thousand-year-old Chinese eggs. Twenty-eight-day-old air-dried beef, bock beer, a hard karnatzel, Schwartz’s smoked meat, kimchi, sauerkraut, yogurt, cider vinegar, sourdough bread. So many great things age well, well before we taste them.

In our rush for fast food, we often forget that time is also an ingredient in foods we enjoy.

Actually, enjoy isn’t the right word. I think it is savour. Even the word savour implies that we will indulge ourselves and take time to relish (ahh, and that is such a wonderful word in itself) the flavour. The Flavourguy believes that the expression “time is of the essence” goes both ways. For some things, speed is required. But time is also essential to bring out the best qualities in good food, even ourselves. With aged food, we often don’t know what we will get. The smell, the taste, come as a surprise.

A fall apple must be crisp and juicy. A freshly cooked chicken should taste, well, of chicken and seasonings. We don’t want something else and we don’t expect something on our plate that has substantially mutated. But delicious, aged food has gone through a mutation. And once a food has gone through this process, we are ready to shift our allegiances.

“It was a good fruitcake, but not as good as last year’s.” Or: “I’m sure that the sausage had more garlic the last time you made it.”

My sister and a friend once planned a trip to London. I recommended that they stay in a small old hotel that had been the home of William Hazlitt, the 19th-century essayist. The hotel was narrow with a high winding staircase. Their room was near the top.

I had arranged that there should be a large wedge of Stilton cheese and a bottle of port in their room. As they climbed the stairs, with a porter carrying their bags behind them, the smell from the cheese wafted down.

“This place stinks,” one of them said. “Why would Barry suggest that we stay here?” The porter, I was told, simply chuckled.

Our senses trick us. A stinky room isn’t pleasant; a ripe Stilton is superb.

I have noticed that as I age, food competes with memory. It has nostalgia for a mistress. I often find myself eating something that may not taste quite as good as I expected, yet I continue to eat it, because I am searching for that hidden memory of when it tasted fantastic. Yes, this is what tomatoes used to taste like and, huzzah, they still do! And don’t these ripe autumn pears go great with that old cheese?

So here’s to aged food, call it mature.

The kids won’t like it. That’s for sure.

As for us, we’ll procure

Strong tastes, ripe flavours, and so ensure

We each become an epicure.

OK, try this: Hard and hearty vegetables from crudités leftovers: bits of broccoli, slices of carrot, peppers, etc. Anything hard (leave out the cucumber).

Heat some oil in a pot, cook a clove or two of chopped garlic and a chopped onion until both are soft.

Cut the veggies into toothsome bits. The amount doesn’t matter. Less makes soup, more edges toward stew. Both are good. Stir.

When the veggies have cooked for a few minutes, add chicken, beef or vegetable stock. Homemade is best, but canned and cubes are OK. When the carrots are soft (but not too soft), it’s done. Add tomato paste, salt (if necessary) and pepper. I also like to add oregano or herbes de province but others prefer the Simon and Garfunkle mix (parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme).

Serve with a crusty loaf and a hard, aged Italian cheese for grating, such as asiago, romano, or parmesan.

Of course, it tastes even better the next day.

flavourguy@theseniortimes.com

There are no mistakes, only unique creations

Barry Lazar

September 2011

I read recently that a French philosopher once said that all human misery comes from our inability to sit alone in a room.

And to this, I would add, with a pot and some water and maybe a little bread, and perhaps a chicken for the pot and water; and, as long as we are at it, I wouldn’t mind some salt with the bread, maybe a little butter, unsalted in this case. And so it goes.

If necessity is the mother of invention, boredom begat inspiration. What’s wrong with being bored? The ideal green-tea-sipping, zen-focused, mantra-mouthing me should be happy spending hours contemplating the universe. But in reality, there is reality. Chicken soup for the soul is all well and good, but chicken soup for the table is so much better.

There are two levels of inspiration when it comes to cooking. First, we challenge the conventional. For example, the most basic prepared food is probably bread. Every culture has a version of flour and water fashioned into dough that is fired, baked or steamed: chapatis, sourdoughs, pitas, tortillas, pizza, matzoh—it is basically the same. However, we are never satisfied with basics and constantly change the formula. Add more water, some baking powder and an egg, and we roam into cake land.

Similarly, braised beef is nice by itself. But when company calls, the Flavourguy adds vegetables in the last half hour of cooking and serves stew. If more people drop in, I can thin it with more stock or water and it’s a hearty soup. Add bread, cheese and a salad and I am home free.

Recently, friends came over for hot dogs and potato salad. The teenage male (a joy to watch, a human being in the act of near continual consumption) asked for ketchup. We didn’t have any. But I mixed a few tablespoons of canned tomato paste with a little Worcester sauce, dashes of sugar and salt, a teaspoon of cider vinegar and just enough water for the right consistency.

“You can make ketchup?” he asked, amazed at my sudden inspiration.

This exercise in immediate gratification reminded me that there are two levels of inspiration in the kitchen. First, we are inspired to create. And then, if all else fails, and it often does, we can be inspired to rename the dish. A fallen soufflé? It’s now a frittata. Pancake batter is too thin? Voila—crêpes! Homemade ketchup tastes different than Mr. Heinz’s? Ahh, that’s because it is really an Indian chutney. While in P.E.I. this summer, we cooked dinner for friends who try to eat food from as many local sources as possible. I had an inspiration and decided to make pad Thai, a dish they had never eaten, with P.E.I. lobster instead of the traditional shrimp.

Lobster pad Thai

Take a half-pound (about 250 grams) of rice noodles for four people. Let the noodles soak in very hot water for about a half hour, or until they are supple but not mushy. As they soak, prepare the rest.

The sauce: Mix a half-cup of ketchup, a tablespoon of Vietnamese fish sauce or Worcester sauce, a teaspoon of sesame oil and a half-teaspoon of chili paste or similar hot sauce.

Cook two chicken legs (any method of cooking is fine and leftover chicken is great too), remove the skin and coarsely chop the meat. Cook a lobster (or buy one pre-cooked), cool it, remove the meat from the tail and claws and coarsely chop it. Set aside a half-cup of chopped peanuts, a cup of chopped fresh coriander leaves, a teaspoon of dried chili flakes, and two limes. Use half a lime for juice and cut the rest into slices.

Drain the noodles and set them in a colander. Heat a large frying pan or wok with a quarter-cup of oil. Stir in a finely chopped clove of garlic. When it starts to brown, stir in the sauce. When it bubbles, add the chicken and lobster and then the noodles, tossing everything together and cooking until the noodles are barely soft. Put the pad Thai on a platter and cover it with peanuts, chilis and cilantro. Drizzle the lime juice over the dish and decorate the platter with the lime slices.

flavourguy@sceniorscene.com

Get your tongue receptors ready for a souped-up summer

Barry Lazar

Ju y 2011

Here is the theory. We eat cool foods in the summer: cucumber soup, gazpacho (which is basically cold tomato soup with a PhD), a salad Nicoise (sounds so much better than tuna fish and egg salad, doesn’t it?), and of course ice cream, because cool foods make us feel better on hot days.

Who wants a plate of steaming pasta or a beef stew when the temperature scrapes into the 90s? And forgive me if I slip into something Fahrenheit. Saying that it is 30 degrees and blistering doesn’t cut it for me.

Then there is the other theory: Hot spicy foods cool us down. Hence, curries and jalepeños, Mexican, South-Asian, la vida piquante. We go heavy on three-chili items at Thai restaurants and search out vindaloo on Indian menus.

Spicy foods jumpstart our body’s air-conditioning system. We sweat profusely. Perspiration leads to evaporation and we feel cooler. (Although I know this works, when it is hot I still go old school and reach for a beer.)

Spicy dishes do not have to be hot in the temperature sense. The heat factor of spices, particularly hot sauces and chilis, is rated in Scoville units. A sweet bell pepper gets zero on this scale. Frank’s Redhot, which is my current favourite and is great in rice dishes and Bloody Marys, comes in at 450, with bottled tabasco sauce a bit more.

Eating a tabasco pepper by itself, however, is an eye-opening 50,000 Scoville units. That’s hot but most of us could handle it. However, a Habanera pepper ups the ante to 350,000 which is why wearing gloves is a good idea when cutting up these babies.

After that, we enter the insane multimillion Scoville territory, where bottled sauces are given names that would work for the Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Mad Dog 44 Magnum Extract, Blair’s Jersey Death, Satan’s Blood. The labels look great and I love to give them as gifts (nudge, nudge, dare you ... yeah, maybe later ...) but you really don’t want to try these. The Flavourguy knows that these burn out the tongue’s flavour receptors.

By the way, if your food is too hot and spicy, ask for hot tea. Hot water lifts the pepper oils from the tongue quickly. Yogurt dishes like raita or lassi may seem to do the trick but they only give the tongue a short, quick cooling down. For me, the ideal summer recipe is low in temperature and high in spicy heat. Shaking more tabasco onto my gazpacho gives me a dish that heats me up and then cools me down.

Three cool soups for hot days

Schav

Schav is the Yiddish/Polish word for sorrel. Sorrel leaves are similar to spinach but more sour. Cook the sorrel in a little boiling water as you would spinach. Don’t drain. Let this cool and then chop in a blender or food processor, adding milk and salt to taste. Serve cold. The more milk, the thinner and sweeter it will be.

Cucumber soup

This dish brings Greek tzatziki together with Indian raita because it uses garlic and cucumber. If you don’t dilute it, it makes a great dip. Peel and slice one English cucumber or two regular sized cukes. Chop them finely in a processor or blender with a glove of garlic, a tablespoon each of chopped onion and fresh dill, a teaspoon of salt, 3 cups of yogurt and enough water to dilute for soup. Serve cold with freshly ground pepper and more fresh dill.

Gazpacho

In a blender or food processor, put a clove of garlic, a large piece of peeled cucumber, a can of crushed and peeled tomatoes, half a sweet red bell pepper, a teaspoon of good olive oil and a little salt, some hot sauce and freshly ground black pepper.

I taste this and adjust the ingredients freely. Do not add more garlic, but let the flavours blend as they sit in the refrigerator for at least an hour before serving. Add ice cubes to dilute and cool it further. Let them melt fully before serving.

Serve with toasted garlic croutons.

(Toast bread and then, while the toast is still hot, rub both sides with a cut garlic clove and slice into croutons.)

Barry Lazar is the Flavourguy. Email flavourguy@theseniortimes.com

Music to your ears? Kitchen Confidential is music to your taste buds

Barry Lazar

June 2011

The editor of The Senior Times requested a column in tune with this month’s theme, music.

With this in mind, I rummaged through some old appliance manuals, where I came across a copy of Fisher & Paykel’s rarely performed Kitchen Confidential in the key of C Diminished.

Synopsis: A food writer’s plans to renovate his kitchen fail when his 30-year-old appliances refuse to stop working.

Act 1: Enter stage right, the food writer, singing the aria Un bel di vedremo, espresso (one fine day, if I only had an espresso machine).

The writer tosses ground coffee into a percolator, crying bitterly that it makes decent coffee but it doesn’t impress his friends and it also takes up space that could be used by a Nespresso automatic espresso machine. His wife comes in and sings the well-known O Mio Riciclaggio (Do we really need more crap to recycle?).

This lively banter continues until he opens the refrigerator to take out the milk and both sing the lovely duet Recondita Aroma (I know that smell, but I just can’t place it). The writer claims it is the fridge’s fault with the lively Fridgio, Fridgio, Fridgio, but his wife points out that the milk is past its best-before date. As she starts the dishwasher, the food writer exits, improvising on Puccini’s Nessun Dorma (let no one sleep, as long as that appliance is making noise).

Act 2: The curtain rises, revealing the writer hunched over a table looking at plans for a new kitchen. He is humming Si, mi chiamano Ikea (I’m so happy I went to Ikea). He looks at the toaster oven. His wife enters stage left and sees his baleful glance. She says there is nothing wrong with the toaster oven.

He softly sings the poetic Vesti la giubba (Maybe I could cut the cord). She sings the Laughing Song, later reprised in the operetta Die Fledermaus und die Küche (The Bath and the Kitchen). They exit cradling the toaster oven and singing what is now known as the Torreador song, Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre.

Act 3: The curtain rises on a kitchen that is being demolished. The writer and a carpenter enter singing a contrasting duet. The writer sings the jaunty La mia moglie (My wife is going to kill me) as the carpenter counters with O mio babbino caro (My boy, this going to cost a fortune).

The writer says he has a headache and goes to lie down. The stage goes dark while a spotlight focuses on him humming the plaintive È sembrato allora come una buona idea (It seemed like a good idea at the time) as he falls asleep. His wife enters and wakes him with the hearty Italian folk song, Napoli urrà (Why are you having a nap?). As the lights grow brighter we see that nothing has changed and that this was a dream. The curtain comes down as they sing together the oft repeated Se non è rotto (If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it).

* * *

On that note, a quick and tasty Italian appetizer. Take a slab of stale bread, ideally a length of baguette or a thick slice from a crusty country-style loaf. Cover this with alternate slices of fresh tomato and boccacini (this is fresh mozzarella formed into small bite-size balls: boccacini means small mouthfuls).

If possible, treat yourself to the more flavourful but more expensive boccacini di bufalo, sometimes called uova di bufalo (buffalo eggs), which is made from water buffalo milk. Boccacini di bufalo are usually sold one to a container as they are big and one should be enough.

Cut up a few leaves of fresh basil and sprinkle this on top. Drizzle olive oil and balsamic vinegar over this. Sprinkle sea salt or kosher salt crystals on top with a couple of grinds of black pepper.

Let the dish sit for several minutes so that the flavours meld into the bread. Slice into portions that can be picked up easily.

Barry Lazar is the flavourguy.

You can reach him at flavourguy@theseniortimes.com

Politicians can be great patchkers, but it’s best left to making coffee

Barry Lazar

May, 2011

Patchke: (patsh-keh) Yiddish for fooling around or making a mess of things, often used in the negative, as in: Don’t patchke with this recipe.

Well, I am a patchker. If there were a Patchkes Anonymous, I’d be their poster boy. “It’s been three weeks since my last patchke ...”

For example, this is how I make coffee:

1. I spend a half hour at a specialty store deciding which beans to buy: Columbian, Sumatran, dark roast, mild. The more elaborate the description, the better: “Harvested at dawn by Micronesian women using only the index and ring fingers of the right hand. A succulent, morbidly dark roast with hints of chocolate, hazelnut, 25-year-old cognac and berri-berri.” Since I am a patchker, I buy two kinds of beans and do the blending myself.

2. I grind them at home, always shifting the grinding wheel minimally above or below the previous setting, searching for that perfect abrasion: “See, the grinder recommends I set it at 3.2, but I find that 3.14159 works best. Coffee is best with pi.”

3. To brew the coffee, I use a Neapolitan coffee maker. I boil the water, making sure to remove it from the heat at 200F, more than that and the coffee is bitter. I pour the water into one compartment and ground coffee goes in another above that. I invert the coffee maker and the coffee drips through. It can take a while before I get to drink it.

Here is how my wife makes coffee:

1. Buy a large container of Maxwell House all-purpose grind.

2. Boil water.

3. Make coffee.

Anyone can do that!

What she does not realize is that the patchker aspires not merely to make something better, but to personalize it. Great taste is a by-product of profound inspiration. Anyone can follow a recipe, but the patchker understands that a recipe only indicates the right direction and requires constant adaptation, as in “The recipe calls for onions but I use shallots and just a dash of truffle oil.”

Think of a patchker as the kitchen GPS, constantly recalculating.

I grind at home and use a Neapolitan coffee maker

Patchke also implies that there are too many things to do, as in this Wikipedian example: I wanted to make candied orange peel, but to be totally honest, this recipe is sort of a “patchke” already, what with all the zesting and juicing and orange-sugar glazing, so I scrapped that ambition.

Clearly, this person is not a patchker. A true patchker would consider more zesting, maybe grapefruit and orange; and, if one citrus is good, why not three?

Patchking guarantees the uniqueness of a dish. I might start with the Joy of Cooking or Second Helpings, even as Picasso, an obvious a master of patchke, studied Rembrandt and Reubens but, once inspired, adapted freely.

Politicians can also be excellent patchkers. Jack Layton strikes me as a patchke guy. Stephen Harper, not so much. Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay seems to be continually making a patchke.

Back in the kitchen, patchke rules. Each dish I make can be improved. And who knows precisely what is in it? Certainly not me. So, if you come to my house for dinner, don’t ask for the recipe. Unless you, of course, plan to patchke.

A simple, great steak

Ask your butcher for a well-trimmed bavette or flank steak. Get a larger portion than you will want to eat. This makes great steak sandwiches the next day. Rub the meat with salt and pepper and whatever herbs and spices you like—this is The Patchke Factor—I like finely chopped garlic; others add thyme oregano chili flakes, etc. Rub both sides with olive oil. Cover the plate and leave it on the counter for an hour or overnight in the refrigerator. Make sure it is at room temperature before you cook it.

Cook on a very hot grill for about three minutes a side. Leave it on a warm platter for five minutes before serving.

Advanced patchking: Heat a pita over the grill while the steak is resting. Slather the warm pita with garlic mayo (add crushed garlic and a tablespoon of olive oil to a half cup of mayonnaise and maybe some finely chopped parsley or a little cayenne or Dijon mustard or .... you get the idea) and mix well.

Spread some on the pita and put the steak on top.

Barry Lazar is the flavourguy. You can reach him at flavourguy@theseniortimes.com

April – that tease – is the cruelest month, and I love her

Barry Lazar

April, 2011

Aahh Spring! April is the cruelest month, wrote Eliot, doling out lilacs. If he were in Montreal, he would be talking not just about one month, but about spring, which rarely lasts as long as April.

My wife, Celina, born in Poland, once said that I, born and raised in Montreal, never knew spring and she was right. Our spring is a fortnight crammed between winter and summer, between slush and mud. When we were In Poland in the spring, I noticed that things moved more slowly, the days were warm, and nights were cool. Europe has four seasons, each about three months long. I find such steadfastness amazing. For me, that is the essential difference between Europe, with its traditions, history and respect for the past, and North America, where time is money and we never have time for anything, not even Spring.

In Krakow, I moved between coat and jacket, sweater and shirt. Layers came off comfortably. Here they are thrown off in desperation. My inner town crier shouts: “Hear Ye! Get that spring while it is still here.”

The day before the equinox, I wore sandals. To hell with it, I muttered, spring is about to be here. I was determined to embrace her as, briefly, the sun was shining; and then, of course it was minus-3 Celsius that night.

April is the cruelest month because it is a tease. How else could we make maple syrup were it not for those teasing warmish days and coolish nights? We are teased into spring with a promise of budding pussy willows and a crocus poking through the snow.

I shovel the snow from my balcony, urgently promising to reward myself with that first spring barbecue. Inevitably, after I toss the last shovelful onto the yard, a weather warning announces a snowfall. I contemplate removing snow tires from my bike and car and won’t dare do either until at least the middle of the month.

April is a horrible month. I love it so. It breaks the back of winter even as March promised to do so and failed.

For the Flavourguy, April is a problem. We have not yet cooked all the winter dishes that I had planned. All, the foods that I had laid down for a cold season of eating. Bigos—that wonderful Polish hunter’s stew, will not get made again this year. The salt cod might suffer freezer burn if it does not get used soon. The double portions of cassoulet are almost finished (beans again?).

Now we anticipate early local asparagus. I go to the Jean-Talon market eager to see whether Alain Darsigny has stopped importing vegetables from the southern U.S.A. and Mexico and is filling his bins with local produce. Already, by mid-March, the first season’s canning of maple syrup was at the market.

Passover has its own demands and the order of the service dictates the bitter and the sweet. The haroset—that masonry confection made from dried fruits, nuts and wine—is the last remnant of winter for me. Winter is the time of eating what was preserved. Spring awakens the senses and Passover promises greenery and flowers and the first season’s taste of fresh local vegetables. Passover comes at the full moon, bridging one month to another and the winter past to the spring of hope.

April is the cruelest month, the tenderest month and far too short.

In preparation for spring, I suggest the simplest of pleasures: Quebec asparagus, steamed just beyond toothsome but not too limp, sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds and kosher salt and drizzled with lemon. Place a small knob of fresh, sweet butter on top and let it slowly melt. Eat it with the fingers as the Gods of spring, and Emily Post, intended.

flavourguy@theseniortimes.com

A dented but perfect inheritance

Barry Lazar

March, 2011

Uncle Matt’s fish poacher is battered and stained. It once contained my world, not all of it, but enough to fill my head with memories of feasts and family.

These are the best memories, the ones with deep roots, of holiday meals, Friday night family suppers, and visits to our extended family in the States. We were a tribe that marched south and north. Other families may have had Toronto or B.C. or Maritime connections; but ours was a family of longitudes stretched along the eastern seaboard. When an occasion arrived, we would pile into a station wagon and head down the coast.

Often, our destination was New York City. Uncle Matt and Aunt Lee were the sophisticates in our family. They were the New Yorkers (first the suburbs and then the city) and we were the Montreal groupies.

Matt’s supermarket was the streets of the city. He would take us out for pushcart hot dogs, for sushi served from conveyor belts where you grabbed what passed by, for anything that caught his attention. At his home, nothing was unusual and, in some ways, all of it was. He made my first steamed clams, in a steamer with a faucet at the base, letting me get more clam juice for slurping. My first wok stir-fry was under his supervision: “Here, add these shitake mushrooms and more hot peppers. Wham!” Matt was decades ahead of the iron chef. Aunt Lee, a former model and eternally rapier thin, may have been his muse, but I proudly became his eater. These were my teen years, when I was beginning to realize that there was a world of great stuff to eat beyond my home. Not that things were bad at home, but this was the early ’60s and Caribbean roti joints on Victoria, Szechwan restaurants in Chinatown, and Italian food beyond Piazza Tomasso were just starting to percolate in Montreal. I had arrived at the right time and Matt’s New Yorker approach to eating was my inspiration.

Barry Lazar

March, 2011

This approach is worth noting, because we often take it for granted that eating and dining are pretty much the same. Dining is formal; there is an order to the cutlery and rules. Dining is done in dining rooms and states that there is a hierarchy as to how food is served and who serves it. Dining can be fun but that is a by-product. However, eating can always be fun. Eating requires no rules and not necessarily any order. Tastiness precedes decorum. There is a Spanish saying: Life is short, start with dessert. I don’t have a problem with that.

Matt is still around, heading into his 90s and planning to move to California. The weather is warmer and the last of his family is there. He is packing up. The other evening my brother drove back from Manhattan with enough used kitchen equipment to compete with Sally Ann. He stopped off at our place and hauled out the fish poacher. “Matt wanted you to have this.”

It’s from another era: aluminum with cast aluminum handles, about 20 inches long. The lid has a couple of small dents so it won’t fit perfectly. That’s all right. When you get past a certain age, a few dents are expected. I’ll have to check it while cooking. That’s fine. Older things deserve to be checked up on. The first time I’ll use it will be for something special but simple: a wild arctic char that I get once a year from Nunavut or live farm raised catfish, which I can sometimes find in Chinatown. I’ll add a little soy sauce and Chinese cooking wine and enough water to keep it at a slow boil. A dash of sesame oil, a few slices of ginger and a couple of scallions should be good too; Matt would like it that way.

You can reach Barry Lazar at flavourguy@theseniortimes.com

In love and sushi, compromise is on the menu

Barry Lazar

February 2011

My first real date with my mate-to-be was either going to be a romantic disaster or an exercise in relationship realism.

We met through friends. Then there were days of long phone calls. Of course, I am talking about an antediluvian period of the Earth’s history, namely pre-Internet.

(Permit a brief digression: Recently I spent time with a group of third- and fourth-graders and talked to them about food writing. With me was a photographer in her 30s. We were working with schools as part of a project under the Blue Met literary festival. During the chat, the photographer mentioned she had taken her first pictures with her parents’ camera as she hadn’t had one as a kid. “Miss,” asked a young girl, “didn’t your cellphone have a camera?”)

But back to the phone—a landline of course—hardwired to the wall. At some point, it seemed logical that if we were spending this much time on the phone, we should get together. I suggested dinner at my place. To plan for the evening, I decided to go Japanese: This way there would be something to talk about in case our previous phone chats proved to be the highlight of our relationship.

My mate-to-be came over, duly impressed that I was cooking. I laid out the freshly cut tuna, the wasabi mustard, the hand-sliced and pickled ginger, the various kinds of fish I had brought fresh from the market and sliced and layered on fingers of rice, the rolls of sushi. My mate-to-be was, she told me later, mulling this over.

“This guy is interesting,” goes her internal dialogue. “I hate sushi and in particular raw fish. If I tell him this, he may be insulted and I may never see him again. However, if I don’t tell him, I may end up eating this the rest of my life.”

There is a long, non-conversational pause, so I pour some sake. Eventually, she decides. “This is very nice, but I don’t eat sushi.”

“That’s not a problem.” I say, as I think: “More for me.” I sip some sake and get the next course underway, knowing that there can be nothing wrong with deep-fried veggies and shrimp.

And this is how our relationship has progressed. It works well for the flavourguy, a.k.a. the refrigerator chef. Mate-to-be, now mate-for-many-wonderful-years, buys what is on sale—cheap cuts of meat, bushels of veggies—and we make them together. I haul out whatever is in the refrigerator and work on that. The secret to a long-term relationship, as I learned from that first date, is to come with a Plan B. It is not the food that counts, but the meal. The objective is never to focus on only that truly amazing dish, but to eat well together–and compromise is always on the menu.

A bit of batter goes a long way

Mix a cup of flour with a teaspoon of cornstarch and a dash of salt. In another bowl, beat an egg, a cup of ice water and a tablespoon of white wine, sherry or sake.

Peel and thinly slice such firm veggies as carrots, eggplant, celery, raw asparagus, and red or green sweet peppers. Prepare slices of chicken, shrimp, scallops, etc., which have been thawed and patted dry. Dust the meat and fish lightly with flour.

Heat oil in a pot until it is 375F (190C). A cube of bread will brown in a minute at that temperature. When ready, mix the dry ingredients into the beaten egg. Dip the meat, fish and veggies into the batter and fry them, a few at a time, until golden brown. Take your time doing this so that the oil temperature doesn’t drop. Drain the tempura on a rack, ideally over the oil, and then on paper towels and keep them on a platter in a warm oven until ready to serve. Serve with soy sauce thinned with sake or white wine, or a tempura dipping sauce, available in many supermarkets. flavourguy@theseniortimes.com

Québécois meal after New Year’s mass included tourtière – and Canada Dry

Barry Lazar

December, 2010

Food brings us together. Religion often separates us. What happens when the event calls for both? My first New Year’s mass was an opportunity to observe and enjoy what until then were foreign rituals.

I had been friends with the Archambaults for several years. They had a son my ago, Jean-Pierre, and our families had chalets in the Laurentians. We often skied together.

One New Year’s Eve, they invited me to a midnight mass at the beautiful St. Sauveur church, built more than 150 years ago.

As a nice Jewish boy growing up in Montreal, I was familiar with churches even as a young teenager. In 1881, Mark Twain, giving a speech in Montreal, remarked that he couldn’t throw a brick in this city without hitting a church window. In the 1950s, it was still a city of hundreds of churches with pews filled every Sunday.

I was familiar enough with ritual to know that one often knelt to pray, which was not done in synagogues, and that during the service I might be asked to contribute some change as a basket was passed around. I knew that at the end of many services, those wishing to receive the priest’s blessing would be offered the blood and body of Christ, a transubstantiation through wine and a wafer; I knew I would sit in my pew while this was going on.

At that time, I assumed that Judaism was eminently rational. I would learn later how much symbolism and mystery it retained. But for a kid barely into his teens, a Catholic church was literally awesome. I was looking forward to hearing prayers and hymns in Latin and French, to the exotic smell of freshly burning incense, and to the warmth of the community.

I wasn’t prepared for the holy water in a fount at the doorway. As we walked in, the Archambaults put their hands into it. I did too, clutching the quarter I had prepared for the offering but not knowing when that would be. Perhaps this was where I was supposed to leave the money?

Had I somehow baptised myself? What was going on? When I removed my hand and waved it about, people looked at me. Not only was my gesture completely unfamiliar (where did this lad come from?), but somehow I had plucked a quarter from the holy water and they wanted to know how I had done that. The youngest Archambault wanted to know if there were any more. After mass, our midnight meal was traditionally Québécois. I remember in particular tourtière meat pies warm from the oven, served with homemade ketchup, and an insanely sweet sugar pie.

The adults drank wine and beer; the kids got pop. I was handed a bottle of Canada Dry. The label was marked Kosher le Pesach – Kosher for Passover. Somehow, this kosher soft drink had made it from one season – Passover is in the spring – to the following winter. I was the only one who could read the Hebrew lettering. No one could remember when it had come to the house. Who buys cola 9 months old?

I looked out the window to a clear, cold night. It was a New Year’s Eve, une fête québécoise et Catholique; and God was giving me a wink.

A late night winter’s meal

Let a slow oven work its magic. Preheat to 300F/150C. In a large pan or pot, brown lamb shanks (one per person) in a little olive oil or butter – takes about 10 minutes. Add a half cup of beef or chicken stock or white wine mixed with a crushed clove of garlic, a teaspoon of favourite herbs (thyme, parsley, herbs de provence), and a half-teaspoon each of salt and freshly grated pepper.

Cover the pan and put it in the oven. Cook a half cup of lentils or navy beans per lamb shank. Boil for two minutes, cover and remove from heat for an hour. Check occasionally and add more hot water if necessary. Drain, add water to cover and an onion studded with a couple of whole cloves. Add a dash of salt, clove of garlic and a bay leaf.

Simmer slowly (do not boil) for an hour, until they are tender. Add more water if necessary. Remove from heat. Let the lamb continue cooking until tender. Add the beans and liquid, and cook, covered, for 30 minutes. Remove the pot from the oven for 30 minutes before serving to let the meat reabsorb the liquid. Serve with a baguette and salad.

Flavourguy@theseniortimes.com

Fit fat foe fet ... I smell dietary issues (and the last food taboo)

Barry Lazar

November, 2010

I’ve often wondered what they eat in those gruesome fairy tales. The giant in the story about Jack and the beanstock has problems that might be diet-based. He can smell the nationality of those approaching and he grinds up their bones for bread. Perhaps the desire for bone-bread is a symptom of the olfactory problem. This is a case for Dr. House.

But, not to digress, I note that the witch in Hansel and Gretel pops children into the oven after enticing them into a confection-covered cottage. The wolf in Little Red Riding Hood eats well by eating, well, whomever he can find. And there are others. Now, I recognize that these tales are associated with cannibalism, perhaps the last food taboo. However, all the characters who ate people don’t seem to have eaten much else. This – the most attenuated version of the Atkins diet – might indicate that a pure protein diet creates strong antisocial tendencies. Okay, the witch who snagged Hansel and Gretel might also suffer from a sucrose-related disease. None, not even the presumably athletic wolf, would be considered healthy in the sense that a healthy person is sensible and well balanced.

I bring this up because it is often by looking at the extremes of radical diets that we can recognize what it means to be healthy, although most diets promise fairy-tale endings: You’ll live happily ever after.

To achieve immediate results, most diet programs urge a limited food intake of porridge (Goldilocks, it’s all you really need). Results come quickly (have this apple, Snow White, and you’ll be a different person), but eventually things return to normal. Most diets don’t work; many people actually become fatter after they end their regime. Hands up anyone who has gone through this. I’d put two hands in the air right now but I need them for typing.

The long-term solution is to focus on fitness, not fatness. Take a walk before dinner. Eat slowly. Cook what you eat. Portion out the meal; don’t serve it from a large dish or platter. We all have sensible rules we know we should follow.

Food guru Michael Pollan’s advice used to be to buy food only from the supermarket perimeter. That’s where the veg, meat and dairy counters are. Everything in the middle of the store is processed food. His new dictum is simpler: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Both are smart approaches to making us more conscious of what we eat.

As I see it, another key to a successful diet is to stop demonizing food. “This dish will harm me” is the admonition of all diets. Only the secret formula (fee, fie, foe, fum) can save me. After all, what kind of diet would make money unless it had a complex multi-page-book-and-buy-this-DVD approach to killing the food demon? Instead of trying the next fad, consider what Michael Pollan suggests and remember the Italian folk saying: It is better to spend money on the grocer than on the doctor ... or the diet book.

So, I am working on this story in which an old woman gets Hansel, Gretel and Goldilocks to walk into a grocery store. So far everyone seems to be okay …

A quick fall dish:

Rapini with pasta. This balances great veggies, some carbs and a touch of protein. The cheese gives it just the edge of fat you need to feel full. For protein, pancetta or prosciutto are traditional, but you can add leftover chicken, shreds of roasted meat or even a firm cooked fish like tuna.

One bunch of rapini, sometimes called broccoli rabe. Wash well, trim the ends, blanch for a minute in boiling water, drain and chop into chunks. This amount is good for three or four people.

For pasta, I prefer the corkscrew-like fusilli for this dish, but choose what you like. Use 100 grams or a quarter-pound of dried pasta per person. Cook until it is firm and drain it, reserving a cup of the pasta water. Stir a little olive oil or butter into the drained pasta so it doesn’t stick together.

Heat a finely chopped clove of garlic and a few chili flakes in a tablespoon of olive oil. When the garlic is soft, add a quarter-cup of meat per person, cook until the meat is heated through and browns. Add the cooked pasta with a quarter cup or more of the pasta water to create some sauce. Stir well and continue cooking until everything is cooked through. Sprinkle a couple of tablespoons of grated cheese (parmesan, romano, asiago or any hard Italian cheese) and toss. Add salt and freshly ground pepper at the table.

And don’t wolf it down.

flavourguy@theseniortimes.com

The revenge of the appliances

Barry Lazar

October, 2010

For the past couple of years, Celina and I have been working on our dream kitchen. It’s all arranged. I know exactly where the plans are. They are in my dreams.

We have visited showrooms, browsed through catalogues and spent hours on-line. Our kitchen is small and neither of us wants to bust down walls. We want to renovate the kitchen, not the house. We take notes about refrigerators that could fit into the arms-length alcove where the old refrigerator has always been. I seek out decent quality 24-inch gas stoves that use the same space that has been perfectly fine for the old stove for almost 30 years. We look for a dishwasher that won’t take up much more space than, well, than the dishes that go into it. Is that too much to ask?

However, we’ve found out that if you want a decent quality small appliance that doesn’t cost a fortune, you won’t find it here. Go to Japan. Go to Europe. Go to Brooklyn. But Canada? Fuggedaboutit! We are a big country putting up big houses and bigger kitchens. If I haven’t grown, why does my kitchen appliance have to?

I envy those who can walk into an Almar, IKEA or Sears and actually buy what they want. One of our problems is that we are basically happy with the kitchen we have. It is small, there is no table, no stools or chairs, but it functions beautifully. I can cook anything I want on the four-burner gas stove. The wok, frying pan, pots and pans I regularly use, even the corn boiler in the corner, are all within a step or two. Overhead, I have spatulas, graters, tongs, whisks, a heat diffuser, colanders and strainers. Behind me is the sink, to the left the fridge.

But after more than a quarter-century, things are wearing out. The oven seal is cracked, the heat leaks out and the wood cabinets abutting the stove are scorched. The refrigerator has problems keeping an even temperature. The portable dishwasher is great for storing dirty dinner plates, but not so great at cleaning them. The counter is loosening and cracked. There are plenty of reasons we should have done a kitchen makeover years ago, but I have decided that it’s not completely our fault.

I believe that appliances talk to each other. Some of them have this little joke: I’ll go first and then a week after I get replaced, it’s your turn. But let’s not do it too fast. You think I’m kidding? Notice that the blender breaks down about a week after you buy the Cuisineart. The coffee grinder cranks out its last bean two months later. If you had known all of them would go, you might have tried to find one food processor that replaced them all; but no, they are determined to break down separately.

Maybe our oven, the microwave (it is still analog, with a dial and no digital window), dishwasher and refrigerator have been together too long. They know that the next one to go will convince us to renovate and then we’ll get rid of them all, so they just keep going.

In the meantime, I cook.

Time for comfort food:

Mrs. Grinstein’s honey cake recipe (I am going to stay old school with imperial measurements for this.)

Preheat oven to 350F.

1/2 pound honey (about 2/3 of a cup), 1/2 cup strong coffee, 1 teaspoon baking soda. Melt honey in the coffee, add baking soda, let cool.

2 eggs, 3/4 cup sugar, 3/4 cup oil, 1 apple, peeled and coarsely grated, 1/4 cup orange marmalade, 1 teaspoon vanilla. Beat eggs and sugar, add coffee-honey mixture, apples, marmalade, oil and vanilla.

2 cups plus 1 tablespoon flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon allspice, 1/4 teaspoon each cloves and nutmeg, pinch of salt.

Mix the dry ingredients together. Stir this into the egg mixture.

Use 2 loaf pans. Oil the pans or line with parchment paper. Fill the pans with the batter. Bake for one hour or until a toothpick can be inserted and comes out clean.

flavourguy@theseniortimes.com

Gardener’s lazy-fair approach reaps a single fruit

Barry Lazar

September, 2010

There was a blueberry in the lawn.

To be precise, there was a small blueberry bush in the half-acre of summer meadow we tried in vain to sustain at our cottage.

But the meadow was about to become history. Without the benefit of horses, cows or even geese to keep the growth down, the forest had given us an ultimatum: You mow or I grow.

This was a bitter disappointment. For more than a decade, we had assumed that merely removing the occasional tree that had erroneously taken root near the cottage would be sufficient.

I thought that we and the woods had an understanding. It was the laissez-faire (perhaps lazy-fair) approach to gardening. The woods, knowing our intentions, would stay where they were. But they had encroached about a foot a year and after a dozen years, we had stopped hedging our bets for some serious hedging.

I could imagine a sci-fi script where, in a few more years, roots of pin cherry trees would thread their way through the floorboards, spruce saplings would pop up in the pipes and bayberry bushes push from under the mattresses.

I would call it Little Cottage of Horrors, but by then it would be too late. So there I was, mowing the meadow, and grumbling, when a firm, lustrous blueberry presented itself before my blade. I plucked it and ate it. It was delicious, the start of my summer harvest. Our woods have troves of blueberries. We usually bring home a gallon or two, which are the base for a year-long series of fruit pies.

Ours is a splendidly local harvest. It includes wild raspberries, Saskatoon berries, chanterelle mushrooms and occasionally wild apples.

My search for the harvest extends to what the local farmers’ markets offer but I am not an orthodox locovore. I will buy tomatoes year round, as Quebec hydroponics producers have something relatively decent in the winter, and I enjoy bananas and pineapples whenever they are in the house.

Yet the Flavourguy within me yearns for the few weeks when strawberries come before raspberries, when the first macs are in season, when tomatoes are misshapen and the size of grapefruits, each bite is full of flavour and juice dribbles down my chin, when all I need for a taste of heaven is to slice the tomato thickly, add sea salt and a torn basil leaf on top, a splash of olive oil to spread the flavour around, and, if I feel lavish, a drop or three of balsamic vinegar. Keep a crust of bread on hand to mop up the sauce.

I will gorge on tomatoes during the brief time they are available, also for the few weeks we have fresh local corn and new potatoes.

I walk through the summer knowing that each bite might have to last until next summer. The fall is for preserving and the spring for anticipation. But the summer is for feasting. If not now, when?

As for the potato, I think of it as “the other pasta.”

Make a pesto of basil, salt, garlic, grated hard Italian cheese and a sprinkling of roasted pine nuts and serve that with small boiled potatoes. Alternatively, add fresh dill and butter or garlic, oil and chopped parsley.

And if you make too much, hooray, it’s even better, as there will be potato salad the next day for lunch.

Flavourguy@theseniortimes.com