BBQ-Week 1: Korean Ribs and Grilled Asparagus!

Summer is finally here! And you know what that means, time to light the BBQ! To me, grilling chunks of meat in front of a BBQ has always seemed like a guy's job. But after hearing many good things about this particular BBQ cooking class, I decided to give a try. I had no prior experience of BBQ cooking besides grilling a couple burgers and buns for a quick dinner, so a lot of new techniques are ahead of me to learn! Unlike all my other classes, students work in teams in this one and we are working in a special lab, equipped with industrial food prep tools and gadgets. In this first class, we made Grilled China Town Style Beef Short Ribs (really, it's more Korean than Chinese) and Balsamic Grilled Asparagus. 

Ingredients

1.5 lb cross cut short ribs, quarter inch thick

salt/pepper to taste

Marinade: 

1 cup pineapple juice

60 g ginger grated

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

1 Thai chili

1/4 cup soy sauce

1/4 cup hoisin sauce

1 tsp seasame oil

Methods

1. combine all the marinade ingredients in a bowl and whisk

2. save 1/4 of the marinade for basting later

3. marinade the ribs for about 3hr

4. grill on medium heat, and use the 1/4 marinade to baste

* to get nice grilling marks on the meat, grill them 45 degrees to the grill mark first, then turn the rib 90 degrees (perpendicular to the initial direction)

* if you don't have a BBQ, you can just cook the ribs in a non-stick pan or in the oven using broiling for a few minutes 

Sunday brunch - Baked avocado egg!

I have been craving for home-cooking for a week now as I spent a few days in San Diego at a conference. As today is the first Sunday that I got since my return, I decided to have a lazy morning with some home-made brunch. I found this recipe online a while back, and finally, I got a chance to try it. Usually I am quite skeptical about online recipes, but this turns out to be really nice!

Ingredients

1 large avocado, halved and cored

2 eggs

Parmesan cheese

salt/pepper to taste

Methods

1. choose a large avocado, ripe but still firm. Cut the avocado into halves, remove the core, and  use a spoon to take out more flesh so that the hole is big enough to hold 1 egg each

2. season the avocado with salt and pepper

3. put one egg into each avocado half

4. grate some cheese on the avocado

5. bake at 400F for 15-20 min, depending on how hard you want the egg to be

               

* the baked avocado egg was served with Ciabatta bread. Once baked, the avocado becomes softer. You can almost spread the avocado on the bread like a pâté! 

Indian-Week 1: Lamb Curry!

Spring is finally here! So is the spring semester at George Brown! Having taken the French course and two Italian courses in the past winter term, I started to notice that even though we got new recipes in every class, the cooking techniques, on the other hand, are getting repetitive: browning, braising, baking, roasting, etc. If you are like me with a short attention span,  learning new techniques, even with a risk of messing up, is a lot more appealing than repeating the reliable old tricks. So here I am, signed up for the Indian class, which I know absolutely nothing about. 

Unlike all the other classes, Week 1 in Indian is not just a Demo-only class. It actually has a lab component, and we made lamb curry. I knew that I found the right class when I couldn't identify half of the ingredients on the recipe. Challenge is good. Challenge = Excitement. 

Ingredients

600g lamb, boneless, diced 
40g ghee 
5g cumin, whole
1 cinnamon stick
2pc cloves
3pc cardamom
5g red chili powder
5g turmeric powder
5g coriander powder
5g garam masala
ginger paste
garlic paste
1 onion, chopped
250mL canned tomatoes, crushed
1 lemon, juice
1/2 bunch cilantro leaves, chopped
salt to taste

Methods

* Our Chef kept emphasizing the secret of good Indian cooking: the sequence of adding ingredients. Garam masala needs to be added at the very end. If it's added during cooking, it'd add a bitter taste to the dish. 

1. get a pot, heat up the ghee

2. add all of the whole, seed-based spices (cumin, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom), wait until the cumin starts to crack open

3. add chopped onion, sauté until golden brown (takes about 20min w/o lid on the pot)

4. add garlic and ginger paste, sauté for 2 min 

5. add all the powder-based spices EXCEPT garam masala  (chili, turmeric, coriander)

6. add the tomato sauce, mix well

7. add the lamb, cover the lid, cook at low-medium heat for 1hr (1.5hr to get very tender meat)

8. once the meat is done, stir in garam masala

9. garnish with lemon juice and chopped cilantro 

TA-DA..... my very first Indian dish! 

Northern Italian-Week 3: Polenta con Gorgonzola, salsa funghi

Polenta at Osteria Giulietta e Romeo

Also in Week 2's class, we learned how to make polenta with gorgonzola cheese and mushroom sauce as a side dish for the breaded lamb rack.  I find that this polenta loaded with cheese is too heavy to company the lamb, so that I made it separately and served it like a main course. The first time that I tried an authentic polenta dish was in Verona, last summer when I visited my two dear Italian friends. They took me to Osteria Giulietta e Romeo for lunch. If you ever find your way to Verona, I highly recommend this awesome restaurant where you can get a nice tasting menu of Northern Italian food. Being lactose-intolerant and having grown up with Chinese food, I have only been  learning in recent years to appreciate the beauty of cheese in small quantities. The Gorgonzola is definitely one of the stronger tasting cheeses that I still need to get used to. But for the sake of this traditional Italian dish, I kept this cheese in the recipe regardless. 

Ingredients

Polenta flour, 250 g

1 L water to get firm polenta, or 1.2 L water to get softer polenta

gorgonzola cheese, 400 g

4 portobello mushrooms

1/2 onion

beef stock, 1.5 cups

1 garlic clove

salt/pepper, olive oil

Methods

To make the mushroom sauce:

1. add oil in a pan, sweat the onion and garlic

2. add mushrooms, and a pinch of salt to further sweat the mushrooms

3. deglaze the pan with the beef stock

4. simmer the stock and reduce the volume until it thickens up

To cook the polenta:

1. in a pot, boil the water, season it with salt generously

2. pour in polenta while stirring fast

3. when polenta starts to thicken, change to low heat

4. keep stirring for another 1 min 

5. take a tray, splash the surface with some cold water,  spread a layer of polenta, then add a layer of cheese chunks, then a layer of mushroom sauce, repeat the layers for one more time 

6. garnish with parmesan cheese and parsley

Northern Italian-Week 2: breaded lamb rack!

In this week's class, I learned a new way to prepare lamb racks, the "Modena" style. Basically, the lamb rack was first breaded, then pan-seared, and finally baked to complete the cooking. To be honest, this is not my favourite way of making lamb racks. I find the breaded surface  a bit weird. I prefer the French way (http://ppcao.blogspot.ca/2013/02/french-week-6-mmm-lamb.html)  to cook the rack a lot better, which gives you a lovely crispy skin on the lamb from the browning process. 

Ingredients

1 rack of lamb, Frenched
1 egg beaten 
white breadcrumbs, dried
1 clove garlic
1 sprig sage
1 sprig rosemary
1 sprig thyme
1 sprig mint
flour, salt/pepper, olive oil






Methods
1. French the lamb rack to expose the bones
2. take some flour, add salt and pepper, mix well
3. beat the egg, add a splash of cold water
4. prepare the breadcrumbs: chop up the herbs and garlic,  mix them into the breadcrumbs as well as a pinch of salt and pepper and 1 tbsp olive oil 
5. roll the rack first into the flour (make sure you shake off the excess flour), then dip the rack into the beaten egg, then cover the rack with breadcrumbs and herbs. 
6. add oil into a pan, heat it up, and brown the breaded rack at all sides
7. transfer the rack to a baking tray, bake at 400F for 15 min (medium rare) to 20 min (medium)

*always rest the meat before you cut it, so that you wouldn't lose too much of the juice

8. balsamic vinegar goes really well with lamb. To make a balsamic sauce, you can add the vinegar into a small pot, heat it to simmering, and reduce the volume to half, then whisk in a bit of olive oil to thicken up the sauce. Or if you feel lazy like I did, use a thick, aged balsamic directly works well too.  

French-Week 10: Seared duck breasts!

This week was our final French cooking class. According to the recipes in the class notes, we were supposed to make Caneton Roti au Confit d' Airelles Rouge (roasted whole duck). Our chef decided to teach us a bit extra. He roasted one whole duck as the recipe says and for the second duck, he took the breasts and legs off and cooked them separately.  The breasts were pan-seared and served with a cranberry/apple sauce, the legs were made into duck confit. For the duck that I got, I wanted to practice both ways of making the breasts and legs. The seared duck breast was very delicious, however I can't say the same about the duck confit. I accidentally neglected it for too long on the stove, it needs optimization next time. So for now, I will just cover the breast recipe. 

Ingredients

2 duck breasts (marinated overnight with salt/pepper/a splash of Brandy)

For the sauce:

360 g cranberries, chopped

1 cup sugar

2 tsp lemon, rind

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 cup diced apple

1 cup diced celery

Methods

1. take the marinated breasts, dry the surface

2. heat up a pan, add oil, pan-sear the skin side of the duck breasts first

3. turn the breasts and pan-sear the other side of the breasts 

 * the breasts should be 80% cooked from the skin side, and the rest 20% should be completed  from the other side

4. transfer the breasts to the oven, bake at 375F for 10min for Medium 

5. for the sauce, heat up a different pan, add a bit of water, add sugar and cranberries, lemon zest

6. bring the liquid in the sauce to a boil, then simmer for for 1hr to reduce the volume 

7. add in the diced apple right before the sauce is ready

* on the duck, I added a bit of warm fig jam which turned out to be a great addition!

Northern Italian-Week 1: Gnocchi!!!

Ever since my trip to Italy last summer, I have always wanted to relive the incredible gastronomic experience at home. Here I am, taking both the Northern and Southern Italian cooking classes. Each class lasts for 6 weeks, with the first class being demo-only. 

In Week 1-Northern Italian, our chef showed us 4 things, gnocchi di patate, sugo di pomodoro (basic tomato sauce), finissima di branzino marinata (marinated sea bass with Italian salad), and panna cotta (creamy dessert). Gnocchi was definitely my favourite by a large margin! One of the most memorable meals that I had in Italy was a gnocchi dish with smoked salmon in a creamy tomato sauce in Murano, a small island near Venice. To recreate that dish, I tried once, using the gnocchi that you can find in a groceries store and it usually comes in an air-tight bag. It turned out to be a bad, BAD idea. I think because of the packaging, preservatives were added and they make the gnocchi taste "off". You could almost taste the assembly line! I guess gnocchi could look a bit intimidating to make, but really, it's a lot easier than I anticipated. This is my first time to make those lovely potato dumplings, and they are way beyond my expectations! 

Ingredients

1000g baking potatoes

300g all purpose flour

3 eggs

60g Parmesan cheese, grated

salt/pepper/nutmeg to taste

Methods

1. boil a large pot of water

2. put potatoes (with skin on) into the boiling water, cook until done

3. peel the skins off the potatoes, press them through a potato ricer

4. add eggs, flour, cheese and salt/pepper/nutmeg, combine everything to make a dough

5. kneed the dough for 5min or so (when you pinch, the dough should spring back slowly)

6. take a small piece of the dough and throw it into the water as a tester. If the dough holds together for 3-4min, the dough is good. If the piece falls apart, you need more "binding" agents in the dough. Add an egg and try again.)

7. don't rest the dough and work fast with it. Roll it out to small logs and cut it into bite size. Lay them out on a floured tray. (you can freeze them at this point)

8. throw the gnocchi into heavily salted boiling water. They are done as soon as they float to the surface of the water. Then take them out. 

9. heat a pan, add olive oil, saute smoked salmon quickly. Then add tomato sauce, and gnocchi, toss them up until they are coated with the sauce. 

10. grate parmesan cheese on top when you serve it, garnish with parsley

Until next time, my friends, buona sera!

French-Week 9: Seafood pie!

This week we made Fruits de Mer en Croûte Nantua, which is one of my favourite dishes that we have covered in class so far. I have always been a big fan of seafood, and I find that seafood is probably the easiest thing to cook because of its inherently good taste. As long as you remember not to overcook it, you will probably get a nice dish even with little practice. Here's a great recipe for a gourmet dish that can be easily made on a busy weekday night!

Ingredients

5 oz scallop

5 oz lobster

5 oz salad shrimps (the tiny cooked ones)

1 shallot, chopped

some stems of parsley

2 oz or 60 mL Brandy

4 oz Béchamel (roughly 2 spoons)

1 sheet of Puff pastry

1 egg

salt/pepper, butter, olive oil

Method

1. heat up a pan, melt some butter to sweat the shallot, then put the shallot aside

2. add olive oil in the pan, sear the scallops quickly using high heat

3. if you have an open flame, add a splash of Brandy and flambé it. If not, just add the Brandy and let it reduce a bit

4. separate the cooked scallops and the juice by straining them, set the scallops and juice separately aside

5. repeat Step 2-4 twice for lobster meat and shrimps, separately

6. combine all the seafood, stir in some chopped parsley and Béchamel, toss them around

7. whisk the egg to make an eggwash

8. take a sheet of Puff pastry, cut it into half, place the seafood on one

9. brush the edge of the pastry with eggwash, cover it up with another half of the pastry, brush the pie surface with eggwash

10. bake at 400F until golden brown (takes about 20-25min)  

                               

                                   

*side dish: Ratatouille "Provençale", a French vegetable stew

I had some pastry leftover. So I decided to use it up by turning them into some ham/cheese pastry rolls. Use a strip of Puff pastry, lay a layer of ham, then a layer of Jarlsberg cheese, and roll it up. (Make sure that you use a type of soft cheese so that they will melt when heated) Brush the surface with eggwash, bake at 375F for 20min. 

French-Week 8: Pork Wellington!

When I saw this week's recipe Fielt de Porc Wellington in class, the first thing jumped into my mind was, Oxford! I still remember the first time that I had beef Wellington. It was in the summer of 1999, when I attended a summer school in Oxford, England to study English. School usually finished around 3pm on weekdays, and after that my friends and I would spend the rest of the afternoon wandering around on High Street, shopping, taking pictures, and of course, snacking on local food like Fish and Chips, pastries, and Wellington before heading back to our host families for the real dinner. So as you can imagine, I was pretty excited to recreate the food from my memories this week! If you are like me and wondering why a traditional British dish showing up in a French cooking class, you would find this inconclusive explanation on wiki:

"Some theories suggest beef Wellington is named after Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington; other theories go a step further and suggest this was due to his love of a dish of beef, truffles, mushrooms, Madeira wine, and pâté cooked in pastry, but with a noted lack of evidence to support this. Other accounts simply credit the name to a patriotic chef wanting to give an English name to a variation on the French filet de bœuf en croûte during the Napoleonic War."

British or French, the important thing is, Wellington tastes great!! And it takes a lot less work than I thought it would. Here's how:

Ingredients

1 pork tenderloin

300g Puff pastry

half onion, chopped

3 cloves of garlic, chopped

1.5 lb of mushrooms (about 2 boxes), pureed by food processor

1 egg

butter, salt/pepper

Method

1. remove the silver skin/fat from the tenderloin

2. rub salt and pepper onto the surface of the meat

3. add butter into a pan, brown both sides of meat, and let it sit aside

4. in a second pan, add olive oil, sweat the onions

5. add chopped garlic

6. use a food processor to make a mushroom paste, and transfer the paste to the pan with onion/garlic

7. sweat the mushroom paste, and evaporate off the liquid that comes out of the mushrooms

8. adjust seasoning with salt and pepper

9. let the mixture sit aside and cool down

10. take Puff pastry out of the freezer right before use (it's hard to work with when it gets warm)

11. lay a layer of mushroom stuffing

12. place the browned tenderloin on top of the stuffing

13. roll the pastry and fillings into a log. 

14. brush the pastry on the edges with eggwash so that they will seal up. Cut off extra pastry. 

15. Brush the surface of the log with eggwash. Bake at 375F for 40min. 

* make sure you let the log rest for a few minutes before you cut it up, or the pastry will collapse. 

Pork Wellington

Because I had some leftover mushroom stuffing and extra button mushrooms, I decided to make them into stuffed mushroom caps and served them on the side. 

Stuffed mushroom 

Method

1. add oil in a pan, sweat 1/4 of chopped onion

2. add the mushroom stuff to pan, mix with onion (if you don't have the pureed mushroom from the Wellington, you can chop up the mushroom stems and use them instead)

3. let the mixture cool off for a bit, then add them into 1/2 cup of grated mozzarella cheese, mix well

4. stuff the mushroom caps with the mixture, grate parmesan cheese on top

5. bake at 375F for 20min

6. garnish with curly parsley

                                 

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.