French-Week 7: Crêpes, très Française!

This week in class we practised making crêpes! To me, crêpe is probably one of the most stereotypical French food. When I think about the Eiffel Tower, I also picture the baguette, foie gras, escargot, crème brûlée, and crêpes. We made savoury crêpes that were stuffed with wild mushroom sauce, a.k.a., Crêpes Farci aux Champignons Sauvages. 

Ingredients
Crêpes batter:
3 large eggs
120 g of flour
240 ml of homo milk (just a bit less than 1 cup)
a pinch of nutmeg
oil, salt/pepper to taste

Mushroom stuffing:
mixed button, Shiitake and oyster mushrooms, cut
(Shiitake's stems have to be removed because of their high fibre content)
half onion, chopped

a shot of Brandy
30 mL of 35% cream
50 mL of demi glace
oil, salt/pepper to taste

 Method
1. mix everything for the crêpes batter first, and let it sit aside while you are preparing the mushroom stuffing
2. take a pan, add some oil and sweat the onion
3. add Brandy, evaporate off most of its liquid
4. add mushrooms to the pan to sweat
5. add in the cream and demi glace, bring to a simmer
6. adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper

When you make the crêpes, make sure that you are using a seasoned pan. Dip some paper towel in the oil and lightly brush the pan with it. Make sure the pan is not too hot when you put in the batter, otherwise it will burn it quickly. The amount of batter prepared made 8 6-inch crêpes. 

* I served the mushroom-stuffed crêpes as a side to some pan seared salmon coated with Hoisin sauce.

French-Week 3, 4, and 5!

Happy Family Day everyone! I have been procrastinating for a while and fell behind on my French class recipes.  I figured that it would be a good time to catch up with my blogs during the long weekend.  

Week 3. Suprême de Volaille, Rossini (chicken breast stuffed with liver pate)

Ingredients
2 pieces of chicken breasts, supreme
2 shallots, chopped
goose liver pate
1.5 cups of demi glace
1 cup of red wine
salt/pepper, oil


 Method
 1. remove the bones in the chicken chest, prepare 2 chicken breasts, cut a pocket in each breast and stuff it with liver pate
2. add oil in pan, heat it up
3. sear the chicken breasts until light brown with hot oil (when lay chickens down in the pan, skin side down first)
4. transfer the browned chicken into a baking tray, bake at 400F for 25min
5. remove excess oil from the pan, and sweat the shallots 
6. add red wine to deglaze the pan
7. add demi glace, salt/pepper to adjust the seasoning

*the chicken was served with glazed carrots, using ginger ale as the source of sugar. 



Week 4. Paupiettes de Saumon St. James Mousseline (seafood stuffed-salmon rolls)

Ingredients
1 lb of salmon fillet
Mousse (the stuffing):
200 g bay scallops
100 g crab meat
1 shallot, chopped
1 leek stalk, chopped
3 garlic cloves
1/4 cup of 35% cream
2 sheets of nori (the seaweed for sushi), damped with water
salt/pepper, oil

Method
1. cut salmon fillets into strips
2. to prepare the vegetable mixture, add oil in a pan and heat up, sweat the shallots, garlic, and leek
3. in a food processor, add scallops and cream to make it to a smooth paste
(scallops are high in protein, so the paste should be quite thick. In case the paste turns out to be too liquidy, you can always add an egg)
4. squeeze out all the juice in the crab meat and add it into the food processor
5. add the vegetable mixture to the seafood paste, add a pinch of salt/pepper, stir everything together
6. spoon the stuffing onto the salmon strips, and roll it up. To make it Asian-fusion, wrap the salmon rolls with the seaweed nori. Now the rolls look like giant sushi! 
7. bake the rolls at 425F for 30min

Week 5. Coq au Vin (braised chicken)

Ingredients
1 whole chicken, cut into 8 pieces
4 slices of bacon, chopped
1 cup of button onions
2 packages of button mushrooms
4 cloves of garlic
2 cups of red wine, dry
a shot of Brandy
1.5 cups of demi glace
salt/pepper, oil, parley for garnish

Method
1. pre-heat oven to 400F
2. add oil to a pan and heat up, brown the chicken on both sides. Then transfer the chicken to a casserole baking dish
3. remove excess oil from the pan, then add the chopped bacon
4. once the bacon turns crispy, sweat the onions, and add mushrooms
5. add red wine into the pan to deglaze the bottom, add Brandy and demi glace. Bring the liquid to simmering, and adjust the seasoning with salt/pepper
6. pour everything from the pan to the casserole dish that has the chicken, then bake it at 400F for 40min

*it's better to marinate the chicken with red wine the night before, to make the meat more flavourful and tender

French-Week 6: MMM, lamb!

First of all, Happy Valentine's Day to you all! It's not that I have anything against Valentine's day, I like things that are pink, red, cute, adorable and heart-shaped. But honestly, I am just too practical to find getting an overpriced dinner in a overly crowded restaurant on February 14th every year "romantic". Why designate only one day a year to celebrate the love of your life? With the right person, every day is Valentine's day! 
So if you are like me, who chose to cook at home today, here's a yummy lamb rack recipe for you! 

Cari d'Agneau Florentine
- roasted lamb rack with spinach stuffing. (Anything with Florentine in its name involves spinach)

I guess lamb is not as common as beef or pork or chicken in our daily diet. I have never been a lamb person in my entire life because of the lamb-y smell, which is too distinct and strong for me to tolerate. (By the way, what's the proper English word to describe the lamby smell?) When my mom used to make her lamb stew/soup, our entire place would be filled with the smell and I had to lock myself in my room for hours. So I was pretty reluctant to try the roasted lamb rack made by Chef Klaus during class. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the absence of the smell in the meat! For once, I could finally focus on how tender the meat was, instead of being distracted by the smell! My guess is,  the smell would be less dominant if you prepare the meat by dry heat (i.e. roasting). If you never tried lamb or didn't like it before, give this easy, tasty recipe a try! 

Ingredients
2 lamb racks
half package of spinach
half onion
4 cloves of garlic
white wine
olive oil




Method
1. Clean the lamb.  To make it presentable, you need to French it. 
2. Add olive oil in pan, sweat onion, garlic and spinach, let it cool down
3. make a pocket in the meat, stuff it with sweated spinach/onion
4. season the lamb with salt and pepper
5. add olive oil in pan, sear the racks until the meat turns light brown
6. roast the racks at 425F for 20min for medium rare, or 30min for medium 

*Let the meat sit for a bit before you cut it, to prevent losing the juice in the meat

*You can use some red wine to deglaze the pan that you used to sear the meat, thicken it and make it into a wine sauce. Or make a vinegar/mint sauce, or Worcestershire sauce. I got lazy, so I just drizzled some aged, 6-year old balsamic on top, which turned out to be great! 


The lamb was served on a bed of Port-Braised Du Puy Lentils, here's the recipe for the side dish:
Ingredients
8 oz Du Puy lentils (black)
3 cloves of garlic
1 shallots
1 piece of double-smoked bacon (about 3 oz)
Fresh thyme, parsley, 2 dried bay leaves
olive oil
Port
balsamic 

Method
1. sweat the bacon, shallots, garlic in the pan
2. put in dry lentils
3. add cold water that covers the lentils
4. add thyme, bay leaves, a splash of balsamic, Port, salt/pepper to taste. Cover the pan with a lid, and let the liquid simmer for 20min with the lid on. 
5. when the lentils are about 80% cooked, continue cooking with the lid off to evaporate off the remaining liquid. 

*The other side dish in the picture, Duchesse Potato, will be covered in another blog post. 

Andddddd, of course, no Valentine's day would be complete without chocolate and strawberries! Amaretto sour goes down really well with the chocolate fondue! Who would have known?! 

Boost the taste of your dishes by Maillard Reaction!

     As I mentioned in my last post, the French stew was cooked by the same technique that I learned in 2 other stews from my classes. Basically, you brown the meat first, then you continue baking the meat in the oven in some kind of sauce/stock. Prior to my cooking classes, I have only watched my mom making beef stews and never really made one myself.  The Chinese way of making stews is quite different: you first blanch the meat in boiling water, after you skim out the floating impurities, you add soy sauce, cooking alcohol and other spices and slowly finish cooking the meat on the stove (an easier alternative is to use a pressure cooker). "Browning the meat" was a foreign concept to me. So I did some reading, and found out that this "browning reaction" actually has a name. It's called the Maillard reaction. 

bis(2-methyl-3-furyl) disulfide

     The Maillard reaction was discovered by Louis-Camille Maillard in the early 20th century, when he was trying to heat up amino acids and sugars and the mixture turned brown.The molecules produced by amino acids and the reducing sugars absorb light and create a nice brown pigment in cooked meat. However, the colouring of the food is not the only outcome from the reaction. What is more important is that the reaction enhances the flavours and aromas. Like in roast beef, cysteine, an amino acid in protein, reacts with ribose, a sugar in the meat. Together, they produce a sulfurous molecule, bis(2-methyl-3-furyl) disulfide, which is responsible for the distinct smell of beef! Other amino acids and sugars are involved in similar Maillard reactions in baked goods.
     As for many chemical processes, temperature needs to be carefully monitored. The Maillard reaction proceeds at a fairly high temperature of 130 ºC/265 ºF. If the meat surface is covered in water, the temperature will stop climbing when it reaches 100 ºC, at which temperature water evaporates and you can't really go any higher than that. This is why when you brown the meat, the surface needs to stay dry so that the heat will exceed 100 ºC. However, if you over heat the meat, at 180 ºC or higher, pyrolysis (a.k.a., burning) kicks in and it will burn the meat instead. I guess the Maillard reaction is one of those high-maintenance reactions that require your undivided attention. Luckily for people like me, who have short attention spans, browning happens fast and it usually takes 2-4min per side of the meat. 
     Happy browning, my carnivorous friends!

French - Week 2: beef stew!

Week 2. 
During this week's class, Chef Klaus demonstrated 3 dishes: crêpe suzette, estouffade de boeuf (beef stew), and batonnets de carottes et navets (glazed carrots and turnips). We made our own beef stew,  as well as the glazed vegetable side dish. The glazed vegetables were fairly easy to make. You start by caramelizing sugar in the pan (dry heat, no water). Then you add the blanched vegetables to the pan, coat them with the caramelized sugar and 1 tbs of melted butter. 

For the  beef stew, our recipe calls for 1 kg of meat. But due to the small class size, we all got a bit of extra of ingredients. I got a HUMONGOUS piece of meat, which probably weighed 2 kg just by eye-balling it! The techniques used to make the stew are pretty standard for beef stews. Basically, you brown the tough meat in the pan first and then finish cooking it in the stock in  the oven. I like this recipe because the nice touch added by the olives, which made the entire dish very French. 

Ingredients
2 kg of beef shoulder meat, cubed
4 slices of bacon, chopped
1 big onion (the meat to onion ratio should be around 1:1)
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 package of mushrooms, sliced
1/4 can of black olives
1tbs olive oil
1.5 cups of red wine
2.5 cups of demi-glace (demi-glace is made of half beef stock and half Espagnole sauce)
some flour for dusting the meat
salt/pepper

Methods
1. Preheat oven to 375 ºF
2. Cut the beef into cubes, dust them with flour. Make sure you remove all the chewy silver skins in the meat. 
3. Heat the olive oil in pan. Add beef cubes for browning. 
4. Set the meat aside in a casserole and drain off the excess fat. 
5. Fry up bacon in the pan until crispy. 
6. Sweat onion, garlic, mushroom and olives.
7. Add red wine and demi-glace. Remember to deglaze the bottom of the pan, so that you will keep all the flavour from the fond. 
8. Adjust seasoning with salt/pepper.
9. Pour everything into the casserole, continue cooking in the oven (covered) for another 2.5 hrs. 


 The final product was served with the glazed root vegetables made in class, stir-fried rice, and the leafy Chinese vegetable, Jie Lan. (I think its English name is Chinese Kale? Correct me if I am wrong.) 

Happy Sunday! 

French - Week 1: steamed mussels!

After taking Culinary Art I last semester, I signed up for 2 more classes this term, French Bistro Cooking and Italian cooking. The French class is a 10-week long course. Our teacher, Chef Klaus Mueller, is surprising not French, but German-born. He is a well travelled chef who has worked in many many countries. Unlike Culinary Art I, this course seems a lot more intimidating to me. Most students taking this class are either pursing a culinary degree or a career in the field. And then there is me, whose original intention of taking this class was that I will be guaranteed to have food to pack for lunch the next day.

Week 1.
The first class was demonstration-only. Five dishes were made by Chef Klaus: chilled Vichyssoise (cold potato/leek creamy soup), Salad Niçoise (a traditional French salad with red wine/mustard dressing), Soufflé Au Fromage, Bouillabaise avec Rouille (fish/shellfish stew), and Moulles Marinière (steamed mussels in white wine sauce). A few key points shared by the chef: salad Niçoise should be served at room temperature which makes it tastes better; soufflé needs to be served as soon as it's prepared, or the soufflé surface will collapse; don't use salmon for fish stock/stew, it's too fatty. 

My favourite dish of the night was the steamed mussels. Since I didn't get a chance to make it during class, I tried it at home the following day. Here's the recipe.

Ingredients:
1 tbs butter
1 package (usually 2 lb) PEI mussels
half onion
3 cloves of garlic
2 springs of parsley
1.5 cups of dry white wine

Methods
1. De-beard, wash and drain the mussels. Don't soak the mussels in water.
2. In a pot, melt the butter
3. Sweat the onion, add garlic, parsley, salt/pepper to taste
4. Add white wine, simmer, reduce the volume to 2/3
5. Add mussels to the pot, and cover it up to steam. The mussels are ready as soon as their shells start to open up. It takes roughly 5-8min, depending on the heat.

It was served with sour dough bread and balsamic vinegar/olive oil.

Welcome!

     Around this time last year, a friend of mine started to bring cookies, brownies and even cakes to work every week. Soon enough, we found out that those mouth-watering baked goodies were created in her baking class at George Brown College in downtown Toronto. And that was the first time that I googled George Brown College in my browser. After spending a couple hours reading through their baking and cooking course descriptions, almost immediately, I decided to take some classes there. Growing up in Beijing, baking is not really a Chinese thing. Not too many Chinese people would say that they have a sweet-tooth, especially by the North American standard. I would enjoy a nice dessert after a meal and sometimes I would bake cookies and bring them to work, but I wouldn't be bothered much if the surface of a cheesecake cracked in my springform pan. Although the baking classes seem very interesting too, Culinary Arts I became my very first cooking class that I signed up for at GBC.  

     Being a chemistry Ph.D student myself, I can easily apply my chemical knowledge into cooking. Just like setting up experiments in the lab, I gather all the starting materials (ingredients), follow the procedures (recipes), using tools (knives, pots) and heat control, to synthesize the final products (dishes). Even without too much experience, I have a decent intuition of what ingredient goes with what. I cook regularly and my dishes have received compliments at pot-luck dinners. If I was asked whether or not I can cook, I'd answer yes. But only I knew that my home-cooking menu was screaming for a upgrade. Although I could routinely make several dishes and make them really well, the old tricks did get boring when I recycled my recipes every 3 weeks or so. Expanding my cooking repertoire and learning the techniques in a systematic way are the major reasons for me to take cooking classes.
     And of course, as you may have guessed, I am passionate about FOOD! All kinds of food, Chinese, Italian, French, Thai, etc. I am not a picky eater at all and I like trying new things. While eating out, another hobby of mine (my Asianess kicks in) is to document my meals by taking close-up pictures of the food. Sometimes I write restaurant reviews here and there on Tripadvisor and Yelp. But I figured it would be nice if I can pool my food/restaurant reviews together in one place, and save them for future reference.
    Last but not least, I feel like I need a place to share my recipes. I recently found out that I am a Marven, (a term picked up from Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point), meaning, I love sharing resources and information with others, like recipes, sales in the store...Having a blog might be the fastest way to share my recipes with the biggest audience and receive feedback. Remember, it's all about efficiency.

     Long story short, I love food, I love cooking, I love taking photos of food and writing reviews, and I love sharing my recipes. So here it is, my very first blog, a blog about food, cooking, culinary education, recipes, and restaurants. Thank you for stopping by and looking forward to hearing from you!


Jan. 2013