soupnancy

The sun is bright and spring is in the air! Finally.

Although food-wise, locally, it’s a ways away – with 2-3ft of snow still in the woods!  

The sap is barely running, at least for artisanal bucket operations like ours that rely on natural flow. (Commercial outfits on big plantations siphon with tubes). However it will go fast with the double digit forecasts on the horizon..

Perfect timing, our annual Wild Maple Menu at Les Jardins Sauvages is underway this week end with a dressed up version of a sugar shack themed menu – Maple mushroom popcorn and soda, Cattail crepes with cretons and pickles, Pea soup with maple sap and maple smoked ham, wild beach peas, reduit poached egg with soba and sea lettuce, Wild boar and cassoulet, Maple scented Mushroom maple desserts etc.. Maple menu photos 

So, I’m prepping for that, while keeping the JeanTalon Market stall supplied with our soups, 'wild' Kombucha and our line of products/preserves. The slow season can be just as busy for me flying solo in the kitchen.. Yup, it’s also time to hire for the season!  To plan and promote our spring menu and May events, workshops and etc. The first greens and fiddleheads kick of the season for us in a mad rush; we have to be ready. It is at the end of April that it typically all starts, then bang in May! when there is the widest variety of wild edibles around here from dandelion and crinkleroot leaf to spring beauty and live-forever for salad, nettle, live-forever, linden and day lily shoots etc, foraging heaven..

But the thing is.. I am having a hard time focusing, ‘feeling it’ and being pro-active – that normal excitement/anticipation for the change of seasons..  It feels far off.  And I don’t feel much like writing about food, let alone updating my decrepid blog.

Because I just lost my Dad.  https://groupegarneau.com/avis-deces/donald-hinton-4305/?fbclid=IwAR3uN77MQ58YDOwZhlPIAQQKzFYrKmXnLr5ltI4qvyb2_IHwPi_onF7a_Aw

Even if he was 85, had a full life, was at home with his wife until his stroke, with no chronic illness or medication beyond the likes of Tylenol. Even if he went peacefully with my mom and all of us ten kids around him living tender moments until the end. Even if I know that death is a part of life, and that we are blessed. Everyone has lost a close one or worse. I am grateful to have had him as a Dad, to have my sweet mom and all my wonderful brothers and sisters who are all chips off the old block.

 Dad and baby me 

Nonetheless, I’m sad. I worry about my Mom, and it’s just that Everything reminds me of him. The little wooden bowls and engraved cutting board in my kitchen.  The food..  Peeling potatoes. He loved his ‘spuds’, everyway, but especially baked.

As I make my pea soup and cassoulet, I think of him, how he loved both, his beans. And everything Maple! Every year, he would splurge on maple products to our delight while my Mom scolded him for spending so much money. It was a seasonal treat!

The cloudberry in the pot is soo Dad as he was from Newfoundland and loved his ‘bakeapple’.  So scrumptious with cheese.  We Hintons eat a lot of cheese!

As I make a salad dressing, the anchovies recall childhood memories of him and his sardines, I would dramatically run out of the house pinching my nose and screaming about the stench. Once a week, we had to eat fish and I would kick up a fuss. Now, I appreciate all fish, especially fresh but canned too: anchovies in a Caesar dressing, Puttanesca (see my recipe* below) or Bagna Cauda.. (Recette en français)  If top quality, even straight up on bread with butter -Imagine, Dad!

That said, my Dad was a delicate man with a delicate palate. When I was a young chef, I remember him finding my cooking over-seasoned, but then he came around. Accustomed to traditional ‘English’ fare, he found garlic and pepper spicy! But somehow hot mustard was fine. Later in life, he was fond of hot sauce too. He would taste a dish a bit at a time analytically before making up his mind or giving a compliment, but how he savoured his meals. Always the first to line up at the buffet. Seated at the table before anyone, ever eager for dinner, but not before grace!

It’s hard to not choke up at all the little Dadisms that lurk about, popping up surprisingly as I go about my business. I’m listening to CBC in the background of course like my Dad, and it seems that every show or tune has some connection. I check up on my mead and my cider, he would want a wee drop just to 'wet his whistle'. I figure the choucroute is ready, but I can't quite decide, so I stick it in the fridge wishing I could ask his opinion. Besides my soups, he particularly liked my pies and choucroute (sauercraut)… ‘My, that’s some good’, he would say. 

As winter recedes, the darn raccoons are out, so it’s time to stop leaving the birdseed kicking around and using the outdoors as a freezer.. Such banal day to day things elicit a Dad flash. Amused with my raccoon stories from summer camp (I could not keep the devilish critters from my peanuts and snacks), he gave me a stuffed raccoon, which I found to be a silly gift as a teenager (thinking I was too cool for tou-tous.) But I slept with my Raccoon into adulthood, nibbling on his whiskers when I couldn’t sleep. I still have my Raccoon.

My Dad was so special, you see. He was my prince, my hero. A great Dad and model human bean (who appreciated a good pun). He was so fun, so cool, so wise. Deep. Sweet. Just a good egg.

A man of mind, heart and soul; So ‘up there’ with the gods, yet so ‘down here’ with us.

A man of words and big ideas, between his literature, poetry, philosophy and religion.

But who also appreciated the small things in life and simple pleasures – good ‘grub’, a glass of red wine, cracking nuts, star-gazing, or a picnic on the Plains with some sightseeing and rough and tumble play. He was a lover of nature, of art and history; He enjoyed carving wood and working with his hands, as well as fixing things around the house.   

And music! From the hymns, Scottish melodies and Newfoundland tunes he played on the piano to strumming with Paul and the boys at family gatherings, always a ukulele or guitar in hand.

He was so disciplined and serious, yet so playful. My first and fondest memories of him revolve around fun. He would read us stories on his lap with all the character voices and movement, he was the best storyteller. And the airplane rides, wow!  Or even rides in the snowshovel, or his car, which he called ‘she’. On Sunday afternoons, he would take us for ‘randies’ (car rides through the countryside to pick up apples or corn.) ‘Grocery day’ and ‘Pizza night, traditions like his Christmas crackers’ - he made every little thing so exciting. When I said ‘higher, faster’ on the swing, he was all for it, while Mom had a heart attack.

He was my chauffeur, dropping me off at school with his 'Work hard, have fun!' or 'Be good!'

I was his alpha, and so we fought too, as I grew into a mischievous kid and teenager who challenged him.. He contained my fight and taught me nuance and critical thinking throughout our debates, instilling values like honesty with his disapproval of my profiting from the fact that I looked young to pay less on the city bus or at the movies, say.. He earnestly tried to teach me patience.

He wrote us humorous poems on our birthdays. Besides the words of wisdom and quotes he flung about, He also said the most amusing things: Holy Mackerel! Winkle dinkle donkle! His swearwords more like a poetic exclamation: ‘Blessed Fortune, Night and Day!’

A real gentleman, a stickler for manners, proper grammar and rules, all that stuff you find tedious as a child that you are thankful for later. Yet, a real boy with his love of planes, trains and automobiles, puzzles and mystery stories.  Ready for anything, his pockets were full of trinkets and tools, paper clips and rubber bands. A real charmer, he had a special twinkle in his eye. Deep down, he was a romantic. He loved my mom fiercely and completely until the end. His last wish I know was to make her happy.  He often told me to be kind and take care of my man.

A family photo from their 50th anniversayYou'd think it was Richard & Liz, but no, my young parents

‘Aimez vous les uns et les autres’. Felix Leclerc

His love and quest for meaning was inclusive not exclusive, which is what made him a tremendous example for conventional religion in the modern world when it frequently gets a bad rap as an answer to our spiritual needs. Because he did it right; he never forced his beliefs on any one. It seemed to be all about interpretation, an exchange of ideas and honing in on the essential. About faith, community, being a better person for the good of all. He spoke of other religions in parallel, and listened to our musings on it all. He once suggested that I was in effect praying to God in expressing myself wholly through my life and vocation, being true and working hard, with mindfulness and meaning, by striving to be a good person. It didn't seem to bother him much that I didn’t go to church or do bible talk. He was a missionary in the sense that he shared moral values, showed by example and that he helped the less fortunate of all stripes.

He was a discrete man of tradition, yet curious and open to the world. It’s amazing how he evolved throughout our lives (no doubt, with us 10 kids as catalysts, but still). In so many ways.. It was heartening and inspiring to see him navigate the changing times. His emails were adorably adorned with emoticons. He loved his meat and potatoes, but his favourite restaurant of late was Les Saveurs de l'Inde on Maguire (Indian). He was acquiring a taste for Kombucha too! And how he softened up with age, hugging us to death.

A quiet man of faith, a teacher and scholar, a Newfoundlander and francophile, a loving and playful father of ten and grampy to 14, all that and so much more..  My Davinci-esque Dad.  And my favourite customer at the restaurant, he loved coming to la table champêtre, wine bag in tow. He claimed he didn’t care much for mushrooms, but he devoured our wild mushroom menu with 35 kinds. Ha!

As I write this, I can’t help but wonder about my punctuation, if I have enough paragraphs… Relentless about correcting our English in a Quebec city sea of French and Franglais, he once chided that I was one big run-on sentence;  ‘strike the enter key, Lass’. My sister Louise is here to correct my English, now.

Back to the grind at Les Jardins Sauvages. He would probably tell me to settle down and get on with it.

I always said that in the dance and race with nature that is our life, how each year, the passage of seasons was thrilling, each time around different, unique and full of surprises - Thanks to the weather, Mother Nature,  the Gods that be and the 'je ne sais quoi'. So true. Who knows if it will be a late spring, when the trout lily, or the first morels will show up..

One thing is for sure, now Maple season and early spring will not only be about sugaring off, snow crab, Easter eggs and planning the green season, but about Dad’s passing and remembering him. Which is fine. Like my Dad, we like our rituals, more meaning in everything with the years, and life is richer for it. With his legacy woven throughout the fabric of our lives, in the heartbeats of my beautiful siblings, nieces and nephews. So much to toast to, right! 

‘C’est grand la mort, c’est plein de vie dedans’ Felix Leclerc

At the funeral home, us kids, Mom and Uncle Maurie

Here’s to the season ahead, and to my Dad, Rev. Donald Macintosh Hinton, Cheers!

Our goodbye words to him at the hospital and funeral were from his beloved Shakespeare, ‘Good night sweet Prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. ‘

Since this is supposed to be a food blog, I will finish with a food story and some cooking tips (as well as a few links to real spring posts about wild edibles below**), after

my entertaining ‘Dad cooks fennel tale’..

One day later in life after the kids had moved out and my mom was starting to do her own thing once and a while or maybe delayed who knows; anyhow my dad saw that it was 5pm and there was nothing happening on the stove, so he made himself dinner ('supper' to him). He got to enjoying cooking on occasion. He would write me about his culinary exploits. He once saw an intriguing looking vegetable at the store and cooked it up, ‘my, ‘twas deeelicious indeed’ (he hadn't a clue what the white bulb that resembled celery but with the aroma of licorice was?!). He bought it again and repeated the exercise only to find it tough and inedible. So, I asked him what he had done. ‘Well, I put it in the oven!’, he replied. ‘Ok Dad, did you add oil, some water or cover it in foil or what?’ ‘No, I just put it in the oven’. ‘But Dad, you can’t just stick a big head of fennel in the oven like that. (like a potato?!) You must have gotten lucky the first time, perhaps because it was a small, young, naturally water gorged fresh specimen, and then you probably used a dish that had sides to provide some steam, or your oven wasn’t too hot or..'  Oh. OMG did I find that hilarious, so cute. And then followed up by giving him instructions for better, more consistent results in the future:

Fennel tips:

• Cut in wedges and pan-fry in olive oil/butter to color, add garlic, deglaze with white wine and chicken broth, season with salt, pepper, thyme or herbs of choice and optional tomato, and finish in oven covered until tender (30min+)
• Cut in wedges and pan roast in oven coated in oil and herbs or on BBQ, finishing on lower heat (or covered) until tender
• Make slaw: Shave thinly and marinate for 30+min with salt, pepper and a sprinkle of cider vinegar/white wine vinegar or lemon. Add a good oil and serve in salad or as a side dish for fish, poultry, pork, meat or in a poke bowl or pasta with parmesan style cheese..

 

*My Puttanesca Recipe - making 'stinky' fish yummy

(I like to add a wild green like daisy, but any tender green like arugula or baby spinach could be used, or not):

Pasta Puttanesca à la Marguerite

Chef Nancy Hinton, Les Jardins Sauvages

 4 portions

150g                                       spaghettini ou pâtes de choix

30ml (2 cu.à soupe)             huile d’olive

30ml (2 c.a.s.)                       échalotes françaises émincés  (1)

15ml(1 c.a.s.)                        d’ail émincé (2-3 gousses)

20ml (1 grosse c.a.s.)          anchois hachés (4-5)

45ml (3 c.a.s.)                       câpres (et/ou boutons de marguerite marinés)

5ml (1 c.a.t.) ch.                    origan et basilic séchés

2ml (½ c.a.t.)                          flocons piment fort

500ml (2 t)                             tomates en des (2 tomates)

15ml (1 c.a.s.)                       beurre

125ml (1/2 t)                          parmesan râpé

50g (3t)                                   feuilles de marguerite

2ml (1/2 c.a.t.)+                     poivre noir au goût

1ml (1/4 c.a.t)+                      sel au goût

Méthode:

Cuire les pates dans l’eau bouillante jusqu’à ‘aldente’ environ 8min ou 1min de moins que les instructions sur la boite. Égoutter en gardant une partie de l’eau de cuisson. Mettre de coté.

Dans le même chaudron, faire suer les échalotes dans l’huile avec ail, anchois, câpres et épices 1-2 min.. Rajouter les tomates.

Retourner les pates au chaudron avec 1/2t d’eau de cuisson et le beurre et brasser. Fermer le feu.  Ajouter le parmesan et les feuilles de marguerite et brasser. Rajouter un peu plus d’eau de cuisson si nécessaire/si sec. Assaisonnez au gout et servir. Garnir de quelques feuilles fraiches.

 

Some relevant posts from the archives for my Dad

An ode to my Dad’s Newfoundland, my Hard Tack piece http://soupnancy.squarespace.com/blog-journalessays/2015/5/4/connecting-with-my-newfie-roots-via-hard-tack.html

From 2008, A reflection on ‘God’ that I remember my Dad appreciating if only in that I was contemplating these things. And for the record, I certainly don't believe that praying is bogus, especially now.. http://soupnancy.squarespace.com/blog-journalessays/2008/3/23/for-easter-eggs-and-god.html

 

**A few real Spring posts (about food/ wild edibles and not death)**

 Late spring edibles and foraging guidelines http://soupnancy.squarespace.com/blog-journalessays/2017/6/15/spring-meets-summer-foraging-issues-and-guidelines.html

Spring pickings http://soupnancy.squarespace.com/blog-journalessays/2015/5/5/officially-spring-2015.html

Ok, enough with my seasonal rant about eating local and fresh, enjoying the seasons in time, blablaba..

The reality is it is still winter, everyone is fed up, what to do? No choice but to suck it up, get out when the sun is shining, cook up a storm at home with imports or whatever will make you happy in the moment. Chez Nino helps.. The snow crab and nordic shrimp have begun; Another key address at Marché Jean Talon is Ferme René Lussier for great local tomatoes! 

But! Of course, I have to say something about eating well off season too, and that comes down to putting up. No one talks about it past Sept/October, but this is the time to convince any gourmand that it’s a good tool to have in your box, FTR utterly essential in my world for year round happiness. Now is the time to dream ahead and start planning for next year.

Eating seasonal food out of season is very cool too.  Local, fresh, put up at its peak. It’s our way at La Table des Jardins Sauvages, and we've been trying to convince people of this for years with our line of local & wild vegetables and mushrooms that are frozen sous-vide. It's beginning to catch on in winter, one customer at a time, from the market clientele to chefs.

At the restaurant, we have our roots stored for the winter, greens blanched and vaccum packed or dried, mushrooms, pickles, frozen berries, coulis, tomatoes, peas, corn, game, you name it ..  We have a fully stocked pantry and ten freezers. It’s a parallel approach - taking full advantage of the season, gorging on fresh while preserving the bounty for later.. It becomes normal to eat ramps, fiddleheads, corn and sea spinach in winter as if the seasons don't matter, but it means we have local and wild all year, our trademark. Like in the old days, it just makes sense, and its delicious..  So basically, we’re following the seasons, except for in winter when you eat the other seasons from the gardemanger.

Trust me, you will be less grouchy in winter when you have a freezer full of goodies and canned goods in the pantry.. The thing is, with a whack of preserves, no matter how brutal the weather, you don’t need much to be content, maybe a touch of green crunch and tomatoes from local greenhouses or a bunch of romaine from the store ..  Not to mention that if  there is a major catastrophe, you’re covered for a while (I’m waiting for the next ice storm, we will be wining and dining, weehah!).

So keep that in mind before the growing season starts! Think like a cook, MEP (prep) for the year.. Enjoy the moment first, but don’t forget that at the same time, you could also be preparing for next winter without too much effort. Clean or cook a bigger batch when making dinner, pop a few containers into the freezer. Take a few hours a week, or a day a month in summer/fall, make a party of it, and put up! A foodie stay-cation?! Canning is a good idea for tomato sauce and pickles, but most things are fine, even best just frozen, often blanched/cooked first as with vegetables. Of course, a sous-vide machine to vacuum pack is ideal but I find that most things for the home are fine in Tupperware style containers.  I do our soups and sauces that way and they keep well for months so you shouldn’t be afraid to freeze if you don’t have a sousvide machine.. A dehydrator is great for an array of things, from herbs to fruit to onions and mushrooms.  

These are my lifesavers, some ideas to get you psyched and ready..

Quebec Garlic/Ramps/Scapes:  With the bulb or root, mince and pasteurize by cooking slowly in oil (no colour). Freeze in small containers or sousvide. Pull one out every month for the fridge and every day cooking. Leaves can be transformed into raw pesto (frozen) as with scapes and used the same way. A knife tip/scant teaspoon goes into my salad daily. (Our ramps our picked sustainably on our own property for home use only).

Stinging nettle: Great dried (for tisane, soups, to grind as an herb/seasoning/food additive) or blanched and frozen for soup.. Or made into soup right away..

Most salad greens are best eaten fresh in season and that’s it. Sturdier ones like spinach/lamb’s quarters can be blanched and frozen. Which means you can’t make salad with them afterwards, but they make a nice veg accompaniement or added to soup, pasta, omelets, smoothies etc..

Herbs: Dried or Pesto. I dry some except the most delicate, and make pure pestos, say with sea parsley, sea rocket, crinkleroot leaf (minced with oil, salt) and freeze in small containers to use in cooking. For the market/home, I make a finished pesto (sea spinach, sea parsley, garlic, cheese..) which is ready for pasta, pizza or whatever.

Salted Herbs: I love this old-fashioned recipe which consists of mirepoix (onion, celery, carrot) minced with a ton of chopped herbs and summer greens (a dozen plus) and salt.  I use this magic potion to boost stews and soups, for quick sauces and marinades. I use less salt than a traditional recipe so I freeze it, but it could keep in the fridge for months)..

Tomatoes  - Sauce is the easiest. Whole tomatoes are nice to have too. I can both in mason jars, but it’s easier to freeze, less trouble and you don’t need to worry about ph (acidity). If you jar, make sure you know what you’re doing, add some lemon and boil the jars for 10min+.

Wild and cultivated vegetables, buds, corn, fava beans, peas.. Clean, blanch a few minutes and freeze sousvide or in ziplocs. Some vegetables are best roasted (say squash) before freezing. I pickle some buds and fiddleheads, but keep most natural for later use. For some, it’s a one time seasonal soup and that’s it (served fresh at the restaurant, or packaged and frozen). Forget about putting up asparagus, say.

Mushrooms: I put up 30+ varieties in a myriad of ways, it depends on the mushroom (Dried/Frozen/Pickled/Candied..). Some are best dried (those with a soft texture or with aromas that only develop upon dehydration as with boletes); some firm varieties can be frozen as is but not many as they often develop a bitterness, on top of a mushy texture; many I have found can be frozen well after a first cooking. We have a frozen, local ‘Melange Forestier’ (with first cooking) that we introduced last year, just starting to take off as customers/chefs realize that it’s a good deal, local quality variety that you just can’t get here in winter and if you buy fresh, imported and cook them up (losing half in water), it ends up costing you twice as much. Forget about wild mushrooms in winter otherwise beyond the dried for soup/sauce/stuffings.

Stew/Braised meat:  In hunting season, I make big batches of stew from moose, duck, partridge etc and freeze for the winter. When we slaughter whole deer, I keep all the tender muscles for roasting, make sausage and braise the rest, making stock with the bones – all gets frozen for future use.  I highly reccomend meat sharing (a carcass from a local farm, butchered in pieces, shared among 2-4 families) if you don't have a good butcher like Prince Noir nearby.

Fish/Seafood is best fresh, but still when you come across whole fish freshly caught, filet it up and freeze (this is best sousvide or if not cooked within a couple of months). Nordic shrimp and scallops IQF if fresh.

Berries, fruit: I make jams for the shelf and coulis (both canned, as well as some less sweet for the freezer); I like to freeze most berries whole (and rhubarb diced) IQF to cook with them year round.

Pickles:  Ok, pickles remain a condiment, not a main course to drown the winter blues, but how nice to have on hand to punch up a salad or accompany a charcuterie plate with sparkle, color and crunch. Besides the classic JS fiddleheads and mushrooms, I pickle a shitload of things, have a few traditions like hot sauce and ratatouille that aren’t wild at all, but necessary in my pantry, like my natural green bean pickle and peppers.

There are so many more possibilities on all fronts, from the cooked to the pickled, or natural fermentation (more tricky), to wines and alcohols, extracts.. I steep herbs in alcohol (thé des bois, foin d’odeur, juniper berries, elderberry) too.

Certain precious things should be kept seasonal, because they are best that way. But who’s to judge. Almost anything you love can be put up in some form or another. I like to eat ramps and sea spinach year round (a relatively new luxury habit of mine being with François des bois), which in fact only makes me more excited when the season starts, so I can stock up..

I hope I have you revved up for the growing season, and eating well off season too.. Don't despair, the greens are around the corner!

Happy Spring!

PS and BTW, many of these preserves, we sell at our kiosque Marché Jean Talon if you don't feel like doing it yourself..

 

My path to witchdom via phytotherapy and aromatherapy

Being in the business of serving up wild edibles, there is no doubt that we attract a special sort of clientele – yes, foodies in search of new gastronomic adventures, those embracing the growing trend of local, seasonal, organic and wild, as well as the DIY earth hugging granolas for whom food is medicine and health a religion.  The latter always bothered me slightly because I’m more of a hedonist, somewhat of an accidental proponent of healthy food. 

Taste has always come first for me.  Which has always made me seek out and value quality.  The best and freshest naturally means local and seasonal, organic, the least transformed the better.  Eco-sense, ethics, community and traceability have increasingly become important to me too.  Luckily, wholesomeness follows naturally – bonus!

Up until now, when customers inquired about medicinal properties it kind of got on my nerves..  ‘Just choose to eat good quality, real food, lots of variety, enjoy it! and everything will be fine’ is my mantra.  No need to be a strict vegetarian or raw foodist, nor treat food as medicine, follow diets, take supplements or read nutrition labels.  I hate the idea of taking the fun out of eating, when it can be such a source of pleasure on a daily basis.  Good food and health seem to go hand in hand without too much superfluous worrying.  Maybe it’s easy for me to say, because fruit and veg, cheese, nuts, whole grains, rice and moderate amounts of naturally raised meat make me happy - not fast food, big ass feedlot steaks or sweet desserts; wine yes, cola no.  It surely helps that I love cooking and have easy access to the best ingredients, not distracted at the stove by screaming fussy kids either.

I stand by this, but now that I’ve got the cooking part pretty much down, I can’t help but be interested in plants as medicine.  Just to keep learning, to branch out in parallel, to more fully understand the power of the plants at hand and of our diets and well being in general.  And so that my customers don’t get on my nerves.

So I took a few classes at the Jardins Botaniques – on Medicinal Plants, another on Aromatherapy/Essential oils, and oh a perfume atelier just for fun.  Wow, another world opened up - utterly fascinating.  I remain one who would rather eat my garlic in a dressing or stir-fry rather than oil a clove to be propelled up an orifice (for a cold), but hey, it’s good to know.  I now understand the concoctions of smashed greens François slathered onto my bites and burns.  I never knew cabbage and parsley leaves could do so much for bobos or nursing mothers, nor how useful clay is.  Now I can say that my stinging nettle soup benefits your intestines/liver/digestion and might calm your excited kids right down.  I can state with assurance that our house tisane has mega purifying, calming, tonic properties, and pregnant women can drink it in moderation without worries.  I’ve learnt about all kinds of new tricks and plants that can heal or at least help most common problems.  If I had a baby, I wouldn’t be rushing off to Urgence right away, knowing how to slowly lower the temperature or gauge how serious the trouble is, what to do in the meantime..   I have acquired many more uses for onions, wild greens and many of the things hanging around my kitchen.  To think that other budding naturopaths have to go to a health food store and buy powder or pellets. 

This is all useful knowledge that will only be reinforced this year as François picks the plants and I cook or put them up; all of a sudden, I will be seeing them in a different light.  And I will finally be able to intelligently answer keener granola customer questions with more than anecdotes without wanting to brush them off.

Although less directly connected to our work at Les Jardins Sauvages, I have to say that it is the essential oils that really enthralled me.  I am attracted to Aromatherapy because I am a nose person and I love all the natural scents; they just make me happy.  Little did I know how much more there was to it though!  Being concentrated essences of plants (by distillation), essential oils (not oils persay by the way), they are medicine, natural antibiotics (as well as sedatives, digestive aids, tonics, skin care remedies and everything else..). Of course you have to know how to use them; they have to be administered with knowledge and care because an internal treatment could be like drinking 100 tisanes, an external treatment like putting a ton of petals into your bath or skin cream.  (Extra caution is in order when it comes to children and pregnant or nursing mothers). Most commercial shampoos, creams or pharmaceuticals rely on the same active molecules, only from a cheaper source, often synthetic or diluted, pumped up with preservatives and stuff you don’t need, hence the side effects.  That’s another thing – I was happy to learn how to distinguish the real thing from all the crap out there.  Let’s just say that you cannot trust the chick in the health food store if you’re making your own medicine.

It always annoyed me how unregulated this world was, which made me less inclined to dabble in it or take it seriously.  But the great thing about pyhtotherapy/homeopathy and etc in Canada in general is that it’s open – so that if you are well equipped, you are free enough; no need for a prescription or a diploma to buy a plant extract or an essential oil, like in France say.  The downside to this is that there is so much fraud & n’importe quoi out there to navigate through, that you can easily hit and miss, give up on a ‘natural’ treatment or even worsen your problem if not well guided. 

No, I haven’t started cooking with essential oils – I prefer the plants in their raw state for that.  But for the pleasure of a nice scent in the room or on my body; for most minor ailments, colds, aches and pains, skin creams or cosmetics, household products, I’m sold on the merit of essential oils.  Even internally for a cleanse or to treat a digestive problem or infection, say urinary or gastro.. 

For the record, I was never taken by traditional medicine anyway, probably because I don’t like taking pills or foul tasting medicine, but also because I never found that much of it really worked.  Luckily, I don’t get sick much, but I’ve become sceptical with respect to doctors who don’t listen and prescribe, prescribe, prescribe. I’d rather deal with my sleep issues than become addicted to pills; I prefer to suffer some pain than feel AFU and sick from pain killers. I dealt with my decapitated nose sans painkillers.  Often, over the course of my life, I’ve filled out prescriptions and not taken them, everything turning out fine.  I’ve also cooked many fancy dinners for pharmaceutical companies watching them woo the doctors.  I’ve lived long enough to believe in the placebo effect, and so if a medication does scarcely better, that’s bogus and not the basis of an industry the way I see it..  Conditions created to justify sketchy products, all the kids on Ritalin - it all makes me queasy.  From observing my entourage, I’m also very worried about antibiotics, seeing how often they aren’t effective and what havoc they can wreak on a system.  So, if essential oils can do the trick, I’m all for it. 

I have yet to personally test a lot of all that I believe to be true, and I’m extremely cautious, starting slowly, reading extensively.  Aromatherapy is better documented than you might think.  Yet, with what I’ve actually done, I see results and it’s so much more enjoyable than conventional medicine, the aromas!  I think François is a little scared.  I have a concoction for everything and he is my live-in guinea pig.  So as soon as he shows signs of an ache or pain or digestive problem, I’m on top of him.  At least he’s getting more massages.  He’s right that I was almost disappointed when his cold symptoms didn’t amount to anything one day, all he needed was rest.  When he woke up, there were jars of potions waiting for him, not to be tested, sigh.

Here are some simple things that have worked for me (some straight, others diluted in an appropriate oil like almond or noisette, olive or argan) - the tip of the iceberg:

#1 To relax/sleep:  True Lavender (also Orange, Ylang Ylang) – on solar plexis, wrists, interior elbows.  I’ve been an insomniac all my life – nothing makes me sleep.  Melatonin sucks compared to this.

#2 Headache/sluggish morning:  Menthe poivrée dabbed precisely on temples, wrists; Epinette noire on back spine (adrenal glands).

#3 Muscle Pain, cramps:  Eucalyptus citroné, Basilic, Anis vert, Menthe poivrée, Lavande – massage, works instantly to ease pain/inflammation

#4 Digestion:  Basilic, Citron, Menthe Poivrée, Lavande – massaged on stomach.  I made this for François but used it one night after a big restaurant meal, felt it all move down, slept well

#5 Psoriasis: Bois de rose, Sauge, Lavande, Tea tree, Menthe verte in Calendula

#6 Mouthwash and spray : Menthe Poivrée, Citron, Thym à thymol, Tea tree, Eucalyptus radié  (5% in water, need to shake) – I love this; it keeps your mouth fresh for way longer than normal mouthwash, and a spray bottle in the car makes up for moments when you can’t brush..

#7 Air freshener/sanitizer:  Sapin baumier, eucalyptus globulus, lavande, pamplemousse, verveine on and on.  I’ve made a few specific deodorizers (bathroom, kitchen) diluted in water and a shot of alcohol.  More frequently (every night), I play with the oils I put in the pot on the wood stove like I was cooking up the perfect fragrance for the room & my mood. (I have yet to purchase a diffuseur or nebulisateur). 

#8 Kitchen cleaning/cutting board: Citron/pamplemousse

#9 Tea Tree oil: straight onto a new pimple

These are examples of easy external uses, but there are many more possibilities around the household, as well as internally - which I’ve been looking into, with friends and family members in mind.  Say for Excema, Flatulences, Constipation, Migraines, Menopause, Sinus issues etc.. Because between FB and me, we don’t have enough bobos to satisfy my hunger to come up with remedies. 

Besides formulating my own creams, cough syrup, sanitizer and bugspray, I am very into the theoretical exercise of finding the perfect accessible essential oil treatment for every ailment, also bringing in my plant class and food knowledge, with suggestions for diet, lifestyle and etc, tisanes on the side, and including other old school treatments like the ‘bain de siege’..  So funny, but did you know that sitting your ass down in cold water can do a lot of good things (not just for fever, but circulation, constipation..)

I’d rather eat well and exercise than have to stick a garlic clove up my butt or sleep with crushed onions in my socks and lettuce and/or clay strapped onto my body or sit in icy water, but I guess I’d prefer the above to going to the hospital.  With essential oils, I feel like I might be able to keep all that to a minimum when the time comes, no antibiotics or medicine - only rarely some stinky old school witchery..  And as for the pissenlit, ortie, achilée and plantain, bring them on .. All these wild plants seem to be common arsenal – preventative on all levels; ortie our magic plant like ginger for the Chinese.  I am now the girl that walks around with a mason jar of some green infusion in hand.  I find that it makes me drink more water besides all the other benefits.

Watch out, I may very well be on my way to becoming a witch.  However, in my den, there will always be good food and wine and sweet smelling things, not just bitter tisane and painful ointments.  At Les Jardins Sauvages, maybe I should make it a tag-line - you get good food, meat and decadence but with a major dose of greens on the side, tisane to finish, phytotherapy!.  I could even offer up an essential oil rub or pastille to help digestion for the road, for a supplement of course. 

 

 

My Dentist moment – Flossing and Eating right

I happened on an enthusiastic dentist hygienist recently, an endearing chap from Columbia.  You could tell he was passionate about his job and took it seriously.  He was so careful and thorough, explaining every movement.  So often, I’m curious about what they’re up to exactly, what a given tool or paste is, but indisposed to ask with my mouth wide open or drugged up, my questions usually go unanswered.

Dentists and co. have always been telling us to floss.  They give you a new toothbrush and floss kit with every visit.  I go through the brushes but not all the floss.  I’ve always been an overzealous brusher and a slacker when it comes to flossing, perhaps because I have the right sort of teeth spacing that nothing gets stuck.  Flossing and coming up with nothing makes you feel like it’s no big deal and more inclined to skip a day here and there.  But anyway, this guy put an end to that. I have been flossing diligently since.  It wasn’t out of fear, I had a clean slate (mouth), but it was his intensity and passion – he struck a chord in me.  Imagine how frustrating it is for a dentist (or dental hygienist) to meet people who don’t take their teeth as seriously as they think they should?

It reminded me of myself going on about food and what I see and know to be important.  Say, when it comes to avoiding industrial ‘food’, buying real food from small producers with integrity, and simply cooking ‘real’ food day to day.  How can you not find the time to eat fruit and vegetables??  When people tell me they don’t have time to go to the market or cook, but manage to keep up with facebook, hockey, baseball, soccer, sitcoms, American Idol and etc, I’m flabbergasted. 

When I tell friends and home cooks how to make their life easier with Mise En Place (planning and prepping for several meals in advance) and how easy it is to eat well, and they continue to order in, buy and eat crap from the superstore, I don’t get it.  Knowing how simple it is to whip up a salad with every meal, or how easy composting is and how absolutely doable and delicious it is to eat fresh and local for most of the year, I sigh as I observe these tips falling on deaf ears because they are ‘ too much trouble’. 

When I point out how essential it is to favour naturally raised meats or rest your roast and you don’t do it; when you buy margarine instead of butter, those pre-peeled pseudo carrots or cheap olive oil or pre-ground pepper - not valuing and appreciating your food or farmers, it bugs me and I feel sorry for you.  No time?  C’mon, with all of the above, we’re talking five or ten minutes here and there.  It takes seconds to peel a carrot.  All to improve your life, make you happier and healthier, while better for the local economy and planet too.

All to say, I understood this guy.  And so yes, I can find the time to floss.  It’s for my own good down the line!  Like with taking the few extra minutes to shop right and cook for one’s well-being.  With food though, it’s even better, a win-win no-brainer - short term pleasure AND a long term investment!

 

 

At les Jardins Sauvages, we are celebrating Canada Food Day next Saturday, July 31st. 

(Un message en français suit)

This is a national ‘holiday’ celebrating local food and good eating.  On the same day, across the country, both chefs and home cooks (whole villages even) will be simultaneously feasting on menus composed of fresh and local products while raising a glass to our rich and diverse culinary landscape.  Organized by Anita Stewart, acclaimed food writer and long time proponent of Canadian food.  Read all about what's going on from coast to coast here..

www.foodday.ca.

http://cuisinecanadascene.com/2010/07/22/food-day-canada-2010/

Of course, my menu is always focused on local, artisanal and wild foods, but I love this initiative.  We should be eating like this year round both for our health and happiness, as well as for the land.  I like the idea of fostering national and regional culinary pride, and I am all for another reason to get together over good food and wine.  At the height of the growing season, every meal is so easily a celebration!  

Our food day menu can be viewed on the website http://jardinssauvages.com/index.php?nom=menu&res=m&m=31canada10en, or below.

Just so you know, juicy Saskatoon berries have shown up since I posted this menu, as well as a number of other surprises, mushrooms of all kinds too..  So my menu will be overloaded with seasonal bounty!

To reserve, please call 450-588-5125

 

Menu

July 31st, 2010 

*Canada food day*

 

Nordic shrimp with wild ginger,

sea asparagus and sea rocket, fava beans,

bell pepper, oxalis and mint

 

Cauliflower soup with La Moutonnière cheese, sea parsley pesto and bee balm

 

Salad of wild greens with egg & duck ham (purselane, daisy, sea spinach, day lily), cherry tomatoes, pickled hen of the woods, 

crinkleroot-chia seed dressing

 

Venison from the farm, hops-sarsaparilla pan sauce, wild mushrooms,

cattail flour polenta, cattail spear

 

Optional : Quebec cheese plate,

home made bread and chutney

(100g for two, 7.50$ supplement per person)

 

Wintergreen ice cream sandwich in a sweet clover meringue cookie,

 wild blueberries and Labrador tea syrup

 

Tea, coffee or house tisane

Fair trade espresso, 4$ supplement

 

Bring your own wine

75.00$ including taxes, service extra

 

Your host and forager:

François Brouillard

Your chef: Nancy Hinton

 

*A Canada wide celebration of local food * www.foodday.ca 

 

 

Salut!

Nous célébrons ‘Canada Food Day’ A la table des Jardins Sauvages Samedi prochain,  le 31 Juillet, 2010.

Ce jour, à travers le Canada, comme à toutes les années depuis 2003, c’est la fête des produits du terroir. L'idée c'est de créer un menu mettant en valeur de beaux produits de chez nous, bien manger et célébrer la richesse culinaire Canadienne (et Québécoise) - ensemble les chefs dans les restaurants avec leurs clients, et les gens au BBQ à la maison.  Cet événement est organisé par Anita Stewart, une grande doyenne de cuisine Canadienne. www.foodday.ca

C'est certain que mon menu est toujours basé sur les produits locaux, artisanales et sauvages, mais je trouve cela une belle initiative.  A la hauteur de la saison, c’est si facile de manger frais, d’embarquer les gens et les sensibiliser à la façon la plus saine et joyeuse de se nourrir..  En plus, une fête de plus au tour des plaisirs de la table - pourquoi pas?

Vous pouvez visionner mon menu ici sur le site http://jardinssauvages.com/index.php?nom=menu&res=m&m=31canada10, ou en bas de la page.

Pour réserver, SVP appelez 450-588-5125

Cheers, Santé

 

Menu

31Juillet, 2010

*‘Canada Food Day’ *

 

Crevettes nordiques au gingembre sauvage, salicorne et caquillier de mer, gourganes, oxalis et menthe

 

Soupe au choufleur et fromage ‘La Moutonnière’, pesto de persil de mer, pétales de monarde

 

Salade de pousses sauvages, oeuf et jambon de canard (pourpier, marguerite, arroche, hémérocalle), tomates cerises et polypore fumé, vinaigrette carcajou-chia

 

Cerf du domaine, sauce houblon à la salsepareille, champignons sauvages, polenta à la farine de quenouille

 

Option : Assiette de fromages Québécois,

chutney et pain maison (100g pour deux personnes, supplément de 7.50$ par personne)

 

Sandwich de crème glacée au thé des bois, biscuits de meringue aux fleurs de mélilot,

bleuets sauvages, sirop de thé du Labrador

 

Thé, café ou tisane maison

 

Apportez votre vin

75.00$ taxes incluses, service en sus

 

Votre hôte et spécialiste de plantes sauvages: François Brouillard

Votre chef : Nancy Hinton

 

* Une fête nationale de produits du terroir www.foodday.com

 

 

Cough syrup meets dessert

 

When winter and flu season come around, we often brew up a batch of François’ special tisane to boost the immune system and diminish cold symptoms.  Featuring wild ginger, Labrador tea and tusselage flowers (coltsfoot), it is quite alright.  Sometimes we throw in some calendula.  Citrus and honey are natural additions, even a splash of rum - much better.

 

It’s hardly tried and true, but that’s because we rarely get sick - thanks to all the wild stuff surely.  Maybe also because we don’t have kids and live in the country.  This year however, that throat-chest cold that went through my circle of friends in Montreal made it to St-Roch.  So I took down the pots of dried flowers and weeds and made a batch of herbal tea.  I also did the chicken soup thing, and pumped up the garlic and chilli dosage in everything, no problem.  I never got sick - as in stay-at-home or work-less-than-50-hours sick, but the scratchy throat lingered.  There is only so much tisane a girl can drink.  Bored, and because everyone else around me was sick, my ears perked up when François got talking about the ancient remedy for cough syrup with wild ginger. 

 

So I made one.  A light cane sugar and water solution that I infused with a ton of wild ginger (this is expensive cough syrup).  And then I threw in some lemons for good vitamin C measure, and at the end just to steep, some Labrador tea and that awful tusselage, following the tisane trio.  Because I happened to be making wild strawberry-sweetgrass coulis at the time, I added some pulp to my syrup just to give it that familiar red colour and fruity taste.  Otherwise, elderberry would have been a good choice, with its inherent anti-viral properties.  Next time.

 

The final product was tasty, somewhere between medicinal and delicious like dessert.  I know that if I left out the coltsfoot and lemon rind bitterness, it would swing all the way to dessert.  In any case, this is the best cough syrup you will ever taste.

 

I am no sweet tooth, and have never been able to ingest cough syrup; ask my mother.  As a kid, it took several people to hold me down in order to get a tablespoon of the stuff in my mouth, as with fish pills.  But this wild, gourmet stuff, I could potentially slurp.  When my throat was acting up this week at work, I just walked into the cooler and took a swig, no fuss.  Other staff members, whether feeling under the weather or not, followed.  (Don’t worry, not directly from the mason jar).  Intrigue, delight!  We were even passing it around by the teaspoon to curious clients.  The general consensus is that it works too!  It certainly soothes the throat, but it could very well be the novelty or the yumminess - the oh so powerful placebo effect kicking in. Not that that is so different from any over the counter medication, I reckon.  So why not go the delicious route with home made cough syrup that doubles as dessert?

 

Come to think of it, that’s my solution to everything..  I’ll take oranges over Vitamin C pills, and fish and greens over omega 3 pills any day.  A diet big on fruits and vegetables, garlic, ginger and chilli, wild plants and mushrooms with all their phytochemicals and anti-oxidants, on top of small portions of natural protein and fats.. It’s all the doctor ever ordered, and so easy to follow.   Good shopping and cooking is all any of us really need. 

Ok, and an occasional rest.  A hit of ‘cold potion’, tisane or cough syrup made with love can only be bonus when there is a killer bug going around.

 

I often used to make a ‘cold potion’ in other kitchens I worked, for the cooks as soon as anyone seemed to be coming down with something.  Because the reality of kitchen life is that there is seldom question of taking the day off – you generally have to be on your death bed to acceptably bail on your team.  In any case, the idea of a ‘cold potion’ just ignited the cook in me - the inherent desire to concoct something good for others.  For staff meal, it was time to get creative with a garlicky, gingery, spicy stir-fries heavy on the veg and greens, or a hearty chicken soup.  More practical was a liquid potion, easy to down on the line (there’s not always time for a meal).  Rummaging through any restaurant walk-in, you find the necessary components for a decent remedy or two.  The starting point for any magic healing beverage, hot or cold requires pulling out the ginger, citrus and honey. Ask the bar tender for a hit of hard stuff and/or ginger ale and you’re set.  There are always other tasty, nutraceuticals (Chocolate! Nettle! Mushrooms!) one can throw in.  Now I have a full arsenal of extra wild stuff to add to the mix. 

 

Cold season is actually, kind of, almost fun. 



Coups de Coeur this summer so far..

 

Some expressions are just better in French. How do you translate ‘coups de coeur’?

Highlights-Favourites-Flings of the moment-Things I have a soft spot for right now?

 

That’s one upside to living in Quebec; we get to dip into the other language for effect, and everyone understands. So anyway, these are some of the things that tickled my fancy and got me excited this summer - the stand-outs. Some are new, some revisited, and not only in the ‘wild and edible’ realm.

 

Summer is a time of many loves, and my infatuations evolve much more rapidly than the seasons (see previous post:  http://soupnancy.squarespace.com/blog-journalessays/2008/2/6/falling-in-and-out-of-love.html), I could never name them all. Of course, there are annual repeats and constants; I fall in love with sea parsley, cattail and elderberry every year at the same time, and I never stop loving sea spinach, sweetgrass and olive oil year round. In season, Quebec strawberries and Nordic shrimp are givens, as are chanterelles and black trumpets, and just about every other mushroom when their time comes. In parallel to the wild stuff being foraged at the season’s peak, there is the market’s bounty - the fresh radishes, peas and fava, all the baby vegetables, followed by the first ground cherries and ears of corn, the tomatoes and squash - all guaranteed highs.   

 

 Amidst the regular flurry of beautiful summer ingredients, there are still always surprises - some item that got overlooked last time around or something arrestingly new.. Thanks to the wealth of Quebec’s artisans and the dynamic food world around us today, new products and sources of inspiration are endlessly sprouting up too.

 

My new and improved nose has only been a help, I have to say; with every bite or sniff, there seems to be an exclamation mark more than last year. When it comes to the wild greens being so marvellous, maybe that’s the rain and not my senses. In any case, here is my list..

 

On the wild front:

•  Milkweed, the broccoli and the flower: I never paid this wild edible much attention, never got excited about it; now smitten, I wonder why. I’m learning that with the wild stuff, like with getting to know any foreign ingredient, sometimes it’s a matter of time. It so happens that the first milkweed shoots are inarguably tasty and very much like asparagus. I always liked the broccoli for flavour, but found them mushy after the necessary cooking - until this year when I uncovered the way they were meant to be served, in tempura (once blanched). The next stage in the plant’s life is even more enticing, the flowers -so aromatic, intensely floral but with green notes, versatile in either savoury or sweet. I made a kick-ass syrup, a granite, and a vinegar. The delicate buds don’t last long, so we had to act fast; but for a time, they also made a spectacular garnish.

• Day lily buds fresh as opposed to pickled. This year I didn’t pickle any in the caper like fashion (although that’s good too), preferring to serve them in salads and as a vegetable, just blanched and dressed, allowing the crunch and subtle floral/ vegetal/truffle flavour to shine through, along with the fresh petals and oniony dried pistils of course..

 

• Wild celery: the stalk makes a sipping straw that imparts a potent celery taste, and the dried flowers once pulverized make a natural celery salt (with no added salt) – both perfect for bloody caesers. Add a dash of crinkleroot paste, and you have one wildly delicious, sexy version of the classic cocktail!

 

• Mugwort, my ‘pizza plant’. I coined the phrase when I first met this plant years ago, because at its best, it smells like pizza, or actually more like fougasse (a mix of olive oil, herbes de provence). I was very curious initially about using it as an herb, but then lost interest because every time I tasted it afterward, it was either bitter or bland. This is the first year that it is as truly flavourful and interesting as that taste memory. The funny thing is that it tastes different in each spot it grows on our property, highlighting how important the ‘where, when and how’ of how a plant is harvested affects its properties (the amount of sunlight and water, the soil, the weather ; François says even the time of day picked). Sabline is another example, in that it is actually edible this year – so gorged with water, the clean cucumber taste is there, without excessive astringency. Yes, I was happy to rediscover the humble mugwort, but this is not an important green in our arsenal; in fact it is considered more of a medicinal plant, and being a cousin of absinthe, it’s probably best kept that way.

 

• Juniper! Although I have always had a ready stash of the berries(frozen), that are so much better than the bought dried variety, I still manage to forget about them all the time. But, these days, I’m having a hard time making a sauce or marinade without them. Especially alongside the wild berries coming in now, with wine or game meats in a sauce, juniper really blends in well, lending a definite ‘je ne sais quoi’. An experienced palate might detect it, but most people just say ‘yum’, even if they don’t like gin. In a gelée with blackberry atop a mousse de foies de volaille and foie gras, customers accused me of injecting drugs in the recipe, they couldn’t get enough.  

 

• Sarsaparilla.. I always loved root beer, and I once loved Porto (now too sweet for me), and this native berry tastes like a fruity combination of the two; when used in a sauce or coulis, or as a flavouring, it adds those delectable notes and depth. I bet that would be good with foie too.

 

• Wine caps (Strophaire à anneaux rugeux) - A noble mushroom variety new on the menu. Introduced to us by fellow mushroom fanatics, I was intrigued, and found them to be so dainty, nutty and delicate. Apparently they grows in wood chips, madly springing up the year after the ice storm, and are cultivated too - no worries, not dangerous. I have to find out more, and am not sure whether we could have enough to put on our mushroom menu anyway, but I’m pretty stoked about this newbie.

 

• I met the Canada lily for the first time (François says it’s rare in these parts) – what a remarkably beautiful flower – not edible though!

 

Some Quebec cheeses worth getting excited about..

 

 

• Tomme d’Elles de Charlevoix, Maurice Dufour
• le 1608, the now so popular Charlevoix washed rind cheese made from the heritage Canadienne breed of cow http://www.fromagescharlevoix.com/fromages/1608.htm
• l’Etoile Bleu de St-Rémi, my new favourite blue cheese, sheep’s milk
• Terre Promise, which I’ve talked about before, but it’s only gotten better (from the makers of Victor & Berthold, La Racam, Le Fétard) http://www.lanaudiere-guidetouristique.com/La-plaine-agricole/Fromagerie-Du-Champ-a-la-meule/
• Tomme de Grosse Ile  http://www.fromagesdici.com/www/tomme_grosse.asp

 

Other ingredients:

 

 

• Highwood Crossing Canola oil : I fell in love with this oil at l’Eau à la Bouche years ago, but was reminded of it recently thanks to a newspaper article in the Globe.. Referred to as Canada’s EVO because it is cold-pressed, fresh and incredibly flavourful, this is a distant relative to the bland, processed canola oil that is so common. A finishing oil, to be used like the best extra-virgin olive oils, it has a fresh, buttery, nutty flavour, with sunflower seed and subtle sesame notes. I just ordered a 20L tub in the mail. Even with shipping charges, this is a good deal for the quality. http://www.highwoodcrossing.com/index.html

 

• Pettinicchi olive oils and vinegars: I have long been a fan of these products too, and it is forever exciting when our order arrives for the year, albeit with an ouch (but it’s worth it).. His chilli oil adorns just about every dish I make at home, and is one major reason I could never go completely local. http://www.pettinicchi.com

 

• Terre Sativa herb salt, and I’m only thinking about because I’m running out.. I don’t use this at the restaurant where I have every fresh herb on hand, but at home, it’s a staple. http://cld.portneuf.com/upload/cld.portneuf/editor/asset/Terra%20Sativa%20fiche%2006.pdf

 

 

My ‘coup de coeur’ starter dish of the summer uses all three of the above.. This is a salad that I ate every night at home this summer – little cucumbers and radish slices with Terre Sativa herb salt, black pepper, and chilli oil. Some times I added fresh cheese, or chopped egg or olives, and now I’m slowly moving tomatoes and corn into the mix, while the radishes fade out. Sometimes I change up the oil and vinegar (I have too many favourite oils and vinegars..). You have to love summer for how simple good food can be.

 

 

• La Ferme Quebec-Oies: Specialized in everything goose: foie gras, confits, terrines and etc.. I tasted their galantine d’oie (at the Marché du Vieux in Quebec City) and was won over. Clean goose flavour, sooo delicious! (lafermequebec-oies°videotron.ca, 418-826-0942) 

 

 In the kitchen

 

 

• I found a renewed interest and respect for agar.. (I love that it’s Ok to drop the second ‘agar’ now) Years ago, when agar was so very cool, mostly because it was a novel, vegetable source of gelatine that could withstand some heat, I went crazy with it. Only to ditch it eventually, concluding that it was a sub-par gelatine for my uses, and always grainy. It took a couple of years and a class in NYC to find new uses and rekindle some respect. I’ll always be more traditional and tend towards sheet gelatine or eggs for my preparations or any mousse, but I’m a little less biased today. Agar can make a nice liquid gel when you want a scoopable/shapeable sauce, or a vinaigrette with texture. And to set a braised mixture or terrine that you want to serve warm, it is pretty nifty.

 

• Bamboo steamer. This is a tool I don't call on much, but it came to the rescue when my homemade ravioli were bursting in a boiling water bath and I was in the juice. Sometimes, when you want intense but gentle heat, steaming is the way to go.

 

• My new favourite tool –a mini slotted spoon. Not holy like a Mac knife or microplane, but still, very useful in the kitchen, especially for plating. I also have a wide, flat topped spoon that is great too for controlled, neat portioning and saucing. Knives are mentioned all the time; the most neglected of important tools in the professional kitchen are spoons (for tasting and serving, slotted or wood, of all shapes, big and small)!

 

 Dishes, some hits:

 

Customer favourites

 

• Cream of Lettuce soup with cucumber, fava bean and bee balm salsa – who would have thought? Usually any soup with mushrooms or wild greens, potato and bacon is a hit.. But with no meat and based on lettuce?? Quelle surprise.
• Scallops. Every scallop dish, whether seared, in ceviche or sashim, it appears you can't go wrong. Paired with wild ginger and sea greens, they especially make for swooning. . No wonder every other restaurant is serving them too, and fish mongers can’t keep up. Bad sign.
• A lobster bisque (Thai style) with sea spinach and cattail (I don’t think it was the wild things here that were winner, more like that heady mix of lime, coriander and coconut milk, and good bisque base of course).
• Strawberry and sweet-grass! Although sweetgrass is like vanilla or almond, good in just about every dessert, this particular pairing soars. I made a shortcake, a pavlova, sorbet and granite, used the mix in coulis, compote and jelly – all lip-smacks and smiles.
• Venison, braised or roasted: I take venison for granted because we have the farm on the property, and so I cook it all the time.. While I don’t want to put it in the starring role every week because I need to change things up, I see that people love it. I think the uninitiated expect venison to be gamey, and so are charmed by the subtle, savoury, better-than-beef quality of the meat. It doesn’t matter if I serve it with a crinkleroot mustard sauce, a wild grape balsamic, a wild mushroom sauce, it’s always a hit. And no matter how creative I like to get, I know I could make a fancy Shepard’s pie every week and customers would be happy. If said rustic dish wasn’t getting as tired as crème brulée in the food world, I might make it more.

 My favourites

 

• Consommé, wild ginger or mushroom. I realize this is more of a winter dish and maybe I’m ‘in’ because I hadn’t made it in months. But it always excites me more than the customers anyway, who seem just as happy with a typical soupnancy purée type soup, which is so much less work. Why do I bother? Because I like a good broth. Because consommé is cheffy (something you don’t do at home). Because it’s pretty. What I especially like about consommé is the layers of flavour - the idea of boosting my duck broth with extra umph through what I put into the clarification raft like mushrooms or ginger, flavours that you can’t see, but come through strong and clean and clear, pure elegance.
• Crinkleroot French toast (this was a true personal fave); I used it to sop up escabeche but I see it with fresh tomatoes or tomato confit; now, I’m just waiting for the tomatoes…
• Ham and cornbread salad. I love ham and put a lot of love into making it. Customers appreciate it in any given dish, but rarely understand how much work is involved, what special ham it is. Like with the cornbread salad, which is something I have been making since I was a catering young one, I could be using couscous and few would notice. People say yum, but I know the cornbread was for me, more than for them. I tell myself it probably would be less 'yum' if the ham and couscous were store bought.

 

  Eating oysters throughout summer.

 

 

I think this is the first summer that I eat oysters on a regular basis, no matter how oyster-loving we are. Like for most people our age, oysters have traditionally been a fall and winter thing. Even though there has been a good supply for years now in the R-less monthes, and it is better than ever now with the rise in popularity of oyster bars and such. I’m thrilled because they go awfully well with hot weather and sparkling wine, especially our east coast Virginicas. Regardless of how often I try the ‘others’ like the Pacifics or various exotic varieties, I can’t get into that flabby taste; I need the salt, and cold water tang of Malpeques like Coleville Bay, Raspberry Point, Glacier Bay and co..

BTW, An informative and entertaining book on oysters for amateurs and fans, or anyone curious about oysters: Geography of Oysters by Rowan Jacobsen. www.rowanjacobsen.com

  

 

 

Restaurants

  

 

• I hardly dined out much this summer, but there was Bistro-Bar Chez Roger, one of François’ favourite spots (by the same chef team as Kitchen Galerie) that I recently got to know: Solid haute bistro market-fare (oysters, terrines, tartares, short-ribs, fish and chips and much more) with good wines, and a great vibe. http://www.barroger.com/

 

• Tartare table-side! Like in the good old days. And this one was GREAT! At L’Auberge Le Baluchon in St-Paulin, LaMauricie: where the true country setting is beautiful, spa and such comforts included, and there is a refreshing social conscience attached (as far as promoting local producers and Quebec in general, recycling, respecting nature, fair-trade - even healthy and allergenic diets are considered here, poor cooks). The service is earnest and abundant (more than fine tuned); there is a lot to like about this place. Although the food was mostly mediocre for the price, I had that super (REALLY!), nostalgic tartare at night, and in the morning, the best ham sandwich I’ve had in ages at their Eco-café on Berbere bread. Even with just a few things right, because they were SO RIGHT, this Quebec tourist attraction left me with a major sweet spot.

 

 

A piece of writing that I thought was fabulous, The Case for Working With Your Hands, by Matthew B. Crawford, A New York Times Article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html

 

 

  

Books:

 

• Apples to Oysters, A Food Lover’s Tour of Canadian Farms, by Margaret Webb There isn’t much true Canadian food writing out there, outside the cookbook, travel and special interest genre.. Here is a uniquely personal account of a cross-country eating tour that celebrates the best of Canada with a focus on a few great artisans more Canadians should know about, who are producing real, good food. http://www.margaretwebb.com/

 

• Eating at Church, A book of Recipes from Aylmer & Eardley United – Ok, this is hardly a coffee table cookbook and probably of interest to few in the new jet-set world of foodies. But I liked this modest little book mainly for the historical/sociological aspect, because it is typical of thousands across the country in decades past, when the church was so all important in most Canadian lives. I include it here mainly as a reminder of another kind of cookbook, one that isn’t big and glossy or promoting a chef, restaurant or new diet.. For me, it also offered up a slice of nostalgia because I feel like I gobbled up my fair share of this food as a child, not only at buffets in the church hall, but at my parents’ friends homes – hot cross buns, deviled eggs and bean casseroles, recipes that use soup mix and cream cheese, ham spread and jello, cranberry punch and trifle of all kinds - all infused with loads of personality and a sense of community.

 

• François Chartier’s Papilles et Molecules  I find this stuff fascinating, even if I don’t think it’s so important. Breaking down the flavours in food and wine to chemical components and matching them doesn’t seem to turn up so much more than what we already know from experience or instinct. Granted, there are a few surprises that surface from the mix. In any case, it is gleefully refreshing, even comforting to have science confirm things you already know. And it is inspiring to be led down a different path, say when it comes to rosemary and Alsatian wines.. New ideas open up, only because of his different approach. This is hardly a complete work, but it is ambitious all the same; he has surely done a lot to kick off a whole other branch of wine and food pairing… Even if I know this is not a book I will pick up again and again, I value it now for the novelty, for the odd brainwave it inspired, for all his research. www.francoischartier.com

No - No Julie and Julia!  Haven't seen it yet. 

 

I am interviewed on the Cuisine Canada blog:

http://cuisinecanada.wordpress.com/2009/03/27/member-qa-nancy-hinton/

Cuisine Canada has a new blog, http://cuisinecanada.wordpress.com/, and I will be contributing as a voice from Quebec on an occasional basis. I believe strongly in their mission to promote our rich and diverse Canadian cuisine(s), to create an exchange between food professionals across our vast country, thereby strengthening our Canadian culinary identity. Here is my first post: http://cuisinecanada.wordpress.com/2009/02/24/how-to-beat-the-winter-blues-in-quebec-with-food-of-course/

 

I hardly want to added to the recession talk but ignoring it would leave me with a big, fat elephant in the room. Despite a sluggish winter in the restaurant business, I opt to remain hopeful in reflex to the annoying, aggressive media doom and gloom, but mainly because looking around, I can’t help but notice that food obsessed Quebeckers are surviving remarkably well. So there.

 

 

The thing is, food is an upper, an elixir, the perfect weapon or escape for troubled times. When it comes to food, you have to be pretty hard up or down right pessimistic to not find some kind of silver lining, something fun or creative to do, cook and eat, some way to beat the winter blues, especially here in Quebec. We have a joie de vivre clientele that doesn’t really want to let up. We have so much good food. Even the tomatoes don’t taste so bad in winter anymore thanks to competitive greenhouse operations. I must say I might be having a more difficult winter without my put up tomato sauce and all my preserves, but still. There is always the wonderful world of Quebec cheese, and what could be better on a cold winter night than a cheese fondue? Maybe a cassoulet or a venison roast with wild grape must and juniper, a wild mushroom and barley soup, cold oysters with chilli and lemon, or hot steaming mussels with crinkleroot mustard cream, pain de ménage toasted on the wood stove and a salad with Mirabel lettuce and Pierre André Daigneault’s special greenhouse greens.. I’m still not finished with the fall squash, root vegetables and potatoes, and there are still terrific Quebec apples available..

 

In winter, I don’t think we should beat ourselves up too much about a few imports anyway, for the right products that is (no snow peas from China). We have to have some fun and a touch of the exotic can go a long way in lifting the morale. It is in the off season that I tend to explore the odd exotic ingredients (jicama, tonka bean..), and I will use olives, citrus, truffle and such more than usual, because it’s the only time I feel I can; in summer I have more local abundance than I know what to do with, so it wouldn’t make sense.. I look forward to the winter for that, as well as for any moments to get caught up on inventory, back-logged projects and experimentation.

 

You see, WITH FOOD to face the winter blues, we have a fighting chance, nothing is ever as bad as it appears, and everyone has a trick or two up their sleeve. And fingers crossed. One foot in front of the other, one dish a time, and next thing you know it’s maple season and spring, a new bounty of ingredients, a fresh source of cheer as colours and crunch flood readily back onto our menus.. By then, hopefully, the looming monster of economic hell will be less frightful, even a thing of the past. If we can survive the winter, ‘he’ doesn’t stand a chance against us and summer food, the farmer’s markets, the ‘terrasses’, the jazz festival.. So there! Hang on, and Bon Appétit!

 

 

 

It isn’t over yet!!

Montreal en Lumière (The Highlights festival):

• The guests: http://www.montrealhighlights.com/volets/table/invites_en.aspx
• The events: http://www.montrealhighlights.com/volets/liste_eve_en.aspx?volet=table
• Cheap treats: http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/prices+amid+High+Lights/1274492/story.html

Our duck festival – two weekends left!

www.jardinssauvages.com

I am so sick of people talking to me about foie gras..

 

I seldom eat it, I serve it on special occasions, I am a fairly ethical chef in general.. Why me? And enough already anyway.

 

I don’t love it, I don’t hate it, I don’t have a problem with it really, probably because I grew up in the French influenced province of Québec where food, tradition and indulgence (joie de vivre) are deep rooted in the cultural fabric.

 

But apparently many people (not around me, but on line) do have a problem with it. So, maybe we should all stop serving it. No matter how traditional or yummy it is to many people. Even if it is not any more inhumane than most of the meat we eat, perhaps it is something that we should rethink. But that largely comes down to the vegetarian –meat eating debate the way I see it. And this is a sub-sub-sub category. Like I have said before, foie gras is a luxury, specialty item, consumed by few, largely produced by small family style operations. In other words, a blip on the scale of our omnivorous dilemmas - nothing compared to the crass, mass produced chicken in cages, the corn, petroleum and antibiotic fed beef, the equally antibiotic ridden and environmentally destructive farmed shrimp and salmon, the un-fair trade coffee, chocolate, and every other industrial thing the vast majority of the western population consumes daily in huge quantities. If you saw how your factory farmed chicken breasts or snow peas or shrimp or chocolate bars or T-shirts were produced, you would be horrified - for the health risks, for environmental concerns, for the slave labour and so much more.. altogether far worse than a few ducks that naturally gorge by design, being fed an excessive amount of corn.

 

 

 

So, just when I thought I’d heard it all on this subject, I got a call alerting me to a contest for making faux foie gras!

Making faux foie gras, the contest: http://www.peta.org/FauxFoieGrasChallenge/

 

I couldn’t be less interested. I don’t even understand.

 

First of all, how do you make vegetarian foie gras? I’m a cook, not a lab scientist. This is obviously a call to those anti-foie, creative molecular gastronomy dudes (I wonder how many of them are out there?) or maybe agribusiness food science geeks. Such a task calls for ‘meat glue’, emulsifiers, stabilizers, all kinds of chemicals no doubt, and then maybe some fatty vegetable like avocado, some chicken bits, who knows, who cares.. It recalls the once novel but ultimately HUGE aberration that was Margarine, and industrial, processed food in general. The idea of manipulating elements, concocting seductive pseudo-foods marketed for convenience and profit, like all those trans fats and refined sugars - think the biggest mistakes of the last few decades. The opposite of real food! I’m against it.

 

If you don’t want to eat foie gras, then don’t. If you don’t want to eat meat then don’t. I don’t get this contest, or any of that fancier vegetarian restaurant fare that embraces the concept of making foodstuff look and taste like meat. If you want to eschew meat, then vegetables, grains and legumes are good enough on their own. You can make them tasty without shaping them into meat and crustacean shapes with chemical help, less manipulation is better anyway. I eat vegetables all the time, I rarely eat meat, I know. But I also know that a little meat is probably a good thing. Not only does your body tell you so, but read this when you get a chance .. http://soupnancy.squarespace.com/im-a-natural-born-killer/

 

 

All to say I’m not too sure why I’m getting so much attention from both pro and anti foie crusaders; the few times I’ve spoken about it, I feel like I made my stance clear. http://soupnancy.squarespace.com/blog-journalessays/2007/7/22/foie-gras.html

It seems that I was diplomatic enough to have encouraged all kinds of people to write to me, and many yahoos who don’t seem to have gotten what I was saying. No, I don’t think they ever read any of it. They just saw a site where foie gras was being debated and so wanted to insert their propaganda. If they post it on my site, I leave it. If they send it to me as an email, I delete it. I’m willing to engage in dialogue, but with them, there is no dialogue, they have their mind made up, they assume I do too; with no arguments, with an aggressive ‘like it’s so obviously bad because it’s cruel’ kind of attitude, they so turn me off. I would let their words rest on my site if they had the guts to do so, just not in my personal inbox. Like I said before, I would like to see what’s in their fridge and cupboard before taking them seriously -if they are those two-faced unconscious people who eat mass produced chicken breasts from Costco and have never spent any time in nature, haven’t met a hunter in their life or a seal outside a PETA video, never think about where their own food comes from, but then are against foie production - no it doesn’t add up, and I can’t deal. I’m just so tired of that debate.

 

I have our duck event coming up, so I will be serving foie gras. After that, I don’t know, we’ll see. But it’s going to come down to being more about what my customers say than what these guys say. I have my finger out in the wind, I am flexible, but at this point, it seems that foie makes Quebeckers happy, they’re not quite willing to give it up as a special occasion, celebratory kind of thing. And without any moral high ground I feel solid on, I am willing to accommodate them, at least once a year.

 

The funny thing is that when it comes to fish, I’m quite a bit more opinionated, I don’t leave it up to the customers at all. I have been avoiding over fished species for years, to the surprise of any fish monger I came across, I was causing a ruckus 5 years ago .. But it’s because to me, especially now, that is much more black and white as an issue; we have devastated our waters with undeniable detriment to the planet, and it’s currently an incredibly neglected cause. Fish as we knew it no longer exist, thanks to trawlers, greedy governments and their indiscriminate technology (ours too), and uninformed eaters of course. The marine eco-system has long collapsed. We have no choice but to choose to eat from the bottom of the food chain and to research the particular sustainable fisheries, anything else is truly criminal or just insane even health wise.. (‘Bottomfeeder’ by Taras Grescoe is a must read BTW). Thankfully, oysters are still good. As long as we have oysters, who needs foie gras. But seriously, we have to be more worried about our fish than our ducks. And I have better things to do than try to simulate foie gras, thank you.

May all your joys be pure joys,

And all your pain champagne.

A New Year’s toast, from a card Ange gave me years ago.. I love it. Then again, I am partial to champagne. And joy. Joy and Champagne, Champagne and Joy, they go together.

 

On a more serious note is the following quote, a long lost one that I had been meaning to dig up since Thanksgiving.. still appropriate months later - timeless in fact. I figure that before we get to looking ahead, hoping and wishing, and making new year’s resolutions, or soon enough caught up in the business of life in 2009, we might as well hold on to a minute of holiday cheer to be thankful.

 

‘If the only prayer you ever say is Thank you, that will be enough’.

1260-1328 (Meister Johann Eckhart)*

 

It’s a good thing to remember all year don’t you think? A noble new year’s resolution of sorts on its own.

 

So yes, I start this year off feeling thankful. Even as the abundance of fresh and local ingredients has dwindled to nothing, I am thankful I still have so much to work with. Even as business slows, and the phone isn’t ringing off the wall, the reservation book so easy to navigate for a change, I feel thankful. Not only for days off like a normal person, but for all the food we put up, for the staff we’ve held on to, for all my friends and family, for the small, flexible nature of our business, for our simple life in the country, for nature’s beauty and bounty. Each season brings a different backdrop, a new playground and a breathtaking view; now with the river iced up and the trees snow laden, another spectrum of sights and smells is there to envelope and inspire us.

 

Even in the dead of winter, it seems easy here to keep plugging along, there's time to catch up and test out some tricks.  Customers seem more joyous than ever. Cooking feels especially good in the winter somehow, so much more about hearth and restoration than ingredients, more primal, urgent and gratifying in the cold, with the hefty appetites, only the die-hards showing up - who knows, can't put my finger on it exactly..  I guess there are the slow braises, the welcome warmth of the stove and the steaming pots. I relish the alone time in the kitchen, the brainstorming, the puttsing -such luxury, and on the flipside, how clean my hands get doing my own dishes..

 

I just feel thankful for what we have, and that I can still do what I do. And I am optimistic that people will forever be looking for something fine to eat, for an occasional walk on the wild side.. If not, I’ve got a list of rainy day projects to attack, François has a lot of cross country skiing to do. No, I’m not worried about us, but I do worry, mainly about all the worrying knats polluting the atmosphere.

 

I despise all the naysayers, the rampant predictions I keep hearing about how many restaurants will bite the dust in 2009 - Shut up already. No doubt, some will fall, there are already too many restaurants in Montreal for the market, but these are hard-working people losing their shirts, shirts that are already worn thin. And there will be no bail out packages here. It makes me sad. But at the same time, I have faith in cooks and restaurant people in the long haul; we are a resilient type, we can deal with some rough times. And we generally don’t have a ton of stocks and bonds and savings to lose, just another job to find at worst. There is always honest work to be found, some niche to carve out for the determined ones that want it.

 

Nonetheless, I do hope that this economic doom and gloom doesn’t get the best of us as a whole. My tour of the annual ‘best of 2008’ and ‘top trends & predictions for 2009’ type foodie lists turned out to be less amusing and more depressing than usual, likely because the word ‘frugal’ came up far too often. Although I am hardly extravagant, I embrace ‘smart’ and ‘sensible’ and many ‘frugal’ type activities like home cooking, recycling and sustainable agriculture, I hate ‘frugal’. There is no fun in ‘frugal’. Certainly many of us, no matter how fortunate we are, will have to buckle down to some degree, at best less champagne or prime rib or shoes, at worst, real stress in providing basic needs .. Still, I wish the media would stop screaming wolf, telling us we should freeze and be frugal, that we should stop going out and eating good food and doing anything remotely frivolous or fun.

 

Pull out the crock pot and buy vegetables instead of TV dinners - yes, stop hanging out at the mall –yes.. But worry-worry, fret-fret, hibernate and forget about the lamb chop or the artisanal cheese, don’t dare smile in face of the monster around the corner –no way! Give me 100g of Tomme des Demoiselles – yes , a kg of Kraft Cheddar - no. Take me out to a fine restaurant once please, instead of 5 dinners at Cockadoodledoo Mega Chicken Chain, you know the one on every other corner. We can figure out what fat we can trim all by ourselves, and I know there is plenty there, but it’s largely not on the plate anyway. We spend a smaller percentage of our income on food than any country in the world. There are lots of ways to survive and even have a little fun, no need to panic.

 

We can buy less crap for one. Maybe we’ll even be forced to work less or for less, and consume less all around. I see that as a good thing, a chance to slow down, to reassess, to gain perspective, to value what we do have and can purchase, to appreciate a treat for a treat, to find joy in the simple things. We can always spend our money better, no matter how little we have. As the economy slows and businesses collapse, I am cheering for the good guys to survive - the small, unique, ingenious, authentic and earnest entrepreneurs, over the big, soulless, corporate purveyors of marketing imposed disposable junk. Quality over quantity. Less can be more. In times like this, when there is less than ever to go around, it seems even more important to vote with your dollar.

 

I’ve never been one to live in fear. I will always be a Babette, willing to spend my life’s savings on people, a good meal and a good time, for better or for worse. I might lose sleep over a lot of things in 2009, but I vow that the economy will not be one of them.

 

Whatever lies ahead for you, if and when you’re trimming the fat, don’t forget that fat makes us smile, fat keeps us warm in winter, that there is such a thing as good fat. A little fat goes along way, carries a lot of flavour and makes other fancy flourishes secondary.

 

Here’s to fat and champagne (Cava will do) and refusing to be afraid of the future,

Here’s to 2009!

*I need to double check this source; for some reason, I always thought it was Voltaire..  Regardless of the source, the message is a universal good one.  I seem to remember it being tied to God and religion (or the lack thereof in the debate), which makes it even more meaningful and powerful, transcending all beliefs, a human crux. 

The Green Pan- An early X-mas gift from a friend put one of these babies in my hands. I would never have bought into the marketing at first sight, but how happy am I to have it in my kitchen now? Very. (Thanks Rach!)It’s a non-stick fry pan without the toxic properties at high temperatures, with a significantly lower carbon footprint in production and life. I’ve tried it with eggs, fish, duck, beef, veal, vegetables.. all with great results. At low heat, nice sweating and heat control/conductivity, and most importantly, at high heat, a good sear with little fat required, no muss no fuss, no sticking, easy to clean. I don’t know how it would stand up to commercial use, but for the home, there is no doubt that this is a winner. Buy one for the cook in your life (or for yourself). Available in most kitchen stores, I also saw it at Zone. www.green-pan.com

 

Green pans aside.. in order to reconcile holiday gift giving and my principles of sensible consumption, I put a little work into my shopping and think hard about my purchases in attempt to be as ethical, green as possible all without being too rigid, still keeping the fun alive. For me that means a lot of cooking (because that’s what I do), and besides, I think the best gifts are home cooked or hand-made, something hand crafted by a local artisan, or at least unique and meaningful in some way, preferably not mass-produced in China. Fortunately, quality and taste usually go hand in hand with the local or fair-trade, artisanal, and sustainable choices.. So here are my suggestions mainly along those lines..

 

In the home cooking category, you can always volunteer to host/make X-mas dinner - now there's the hugest gift of all, especially for a weary Mom (my Mom is exempt for the rest of her life). The next best bet is baking, making classic shelf stable sweets like cookies, that way you can get it out of the way the week before the madness. Apart from truffles, traditional shortbread and gingerbread, I once made fortune cookies (with food jokes inside), all kinds of trippy flavoured chocolates, spice mixes, spiced nuts, buttercrunch and brittle, hot sauce.. I always dig into my mason jar preserves for housewarming gifts, I religiously make a zillion game meat tourtières, some foie torchon for the usual suspects, as well as miscellaneous other treats. This year Iwill be making big batch of cassoulet (François' request), some soup of course, and who knows what else. Customers will be taking up most of my time this X-mas, so that might be it, we'll see ..

For those of you hitting the stoves:

See Canadian Living Christmas book or site, Gourmet magazine, Martha Stewart or Ricardo X-mas issues. Fine Cooking also has a great holiday baking guide out. There's also a wealth of ideas to inspire you online:

Bon Appetit’s Blog envy: A great holiday recipe roundup from popular blogs http://www.doriegreenspan.com/dorie_greenspan/2008/12/blog-envy-a-great-holiday-recipe-roundup.html

Canadian Living - 9 cookie recipes http://www.canadianliving.com/food/menus_and_collections/cookie_recipes__in_cookie_heaven.php

All kinds of holiday recipes and tips at Gourmet http://www.gourmet.com/recipes/holiday

Gingerbread cookies http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/001633gingerbread_man_cookies.php

 

 

 

For those of you purchasing gifts in Montreal:

 

 

There’s Dix Mille Villages on Monkland (or on St-Denis) for hand-crafted, fair-trade gems such as pottery, wooden toys, X-mas ornaments and trinkets. http://www.tenthousandvillages.ca

 

 

La Maison Verte for the ideal housewarming gift, stocking stuffer or more: essential oil based gifts for her, ‘Les Chocolats de Sandra’ fair trade locally made chocolates, Café Rico coffee, and miscellaneous green items to turn someone on to the options out there, be it cleaning products, clothes or bamboo.. You can even shop online now. http://www.cooplamaisonverte.com/

 

Salon des Metiers d’Art at Place Bonaventure up until this week-end, for an overwhelming assortment of Quebec arts and crafts http://www.metiers-d-art.qc.ca/smaq/

 

The Jean Talon Market for gourmet edibles, many gift baskets to be had. Philippe de Vienne’s shop (Olives et Épices) is an unbeatabe place for foodie gifts. As is Quincaillerie Dante on the periphery.

 

Quebec made gourmet gift baskets online http://www.clindoeilgourmet.com/

 

A good bottle of wine is always nice, jamais de trop.. Many people won’t spend on a bottle for themselves, so I find this to be a nice treat. But splurging is not necessary, I tasted a fantastic local sparkling cider, perfect for the holidays and only 5% alcohol: Domaine de Minot, available at Marché des Saveurs. La Face Caché also has one out in a sharp package, I will be trying that one this weekend..

 

 

 

101 Produits Quebecois à découvrir http://www.editionsgoelette.com/site.php?detail=295

 

Or see my smart shopping page for tips on local food and arstisanal goods, online eco-guides.. http://soupnancy.squarespace.com/smart-shopping/

 

And More Shopping Online:

 

 

For Charity, A BRILLIANT idea: 

Unicef Gifts of Magic https://www.shopunicef.ca/ec/Portal.aspx?CN=32C5B8993DA5&MN=B2039D949889&LN=EN

Order a sugar shack special at the Endless Banquet, buyraffle ticketsor donate to the UN food program.. http://endlessbanquet.blogspot.com/2008/12/menu-for-hope-5.html

 Send a gift in support of the David Suzuki Foundation http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Donation_Centre/ecards.asp?tr=y&auid=4339335

 

Liquid Smudge - My mom introduced me to this ambient spray called ‘Liquid smudge’ that is revitalizing, peace and harmony inducing, the supposed cure for all ailments.. Sounds like a bunch of ‘n’importe quoi’, but it does smell amazing; it’s a mix of essential oils.. www.invocation.ca

 

In the Junky but fun category:

 

Lee Valley tools for miscellaneous gadgets for the men in your life (or for spice boxes and the original micro-plane if anyone you know doesn’t have one – no brainer!)

 

Gifts for Bacon lovers

http://www.seriouseats.com/2008/12/bacon-lovers-gifts-guide-holidays.html

 

 

Then there’s always BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS:

 

Books I’ve come across recently that I highly recommend:

The Devil’s Picnic, by Taras Grescoe (and Bottomfeeder, his latest)

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan (not new, but I think everyone should read it and it’s an easy read)

Brain fuel, by Joe Schwarctz – fun for any curious mind

 

Cookbooks:

La Cuisine et le gout des épices, Ethneé et Philippe de Vienne

Anita Stewart’s Canada

 

(Only for cooks):

Under Pressure, Thomas Keller

Ma Gastronie, by Fernand Point republished

 

Canada’s top ten cookbooks http://www.thetelegram.com/index.cfm?sid=192802&sc=85

 

For Kids:

There’s a barnyard in my bedroom, David Suzuki – bringing nature into our urban landscape for perspective, also ‘The Salmon Forest’

Whining and Dining, by Emma Waverman and Eshon Mott – cooking for kids, with real food and enough flavour for adults

 

If there ever was an artisan to support.. There’s this Algonquin guy my mom met who writes books for kids (in English/French) and (English/Algonquin), beautiful and informative for a kid from here I would think (examples: ‘Where is the wolf?’, ‘Strange spring’)

Jean Denis Coté is his name, to order:

jdcote07ågmail.com, http://www.aaao.ca/cote.htm

 

Market treats

One major bonus about my François des bois being at Jean Talon market (besides him being out of my hair) is that he comes home every day with something great to eat. He’s always been good at that, but now it’s not just greens. He is so conveniently close to a dazzling array of fresh ingredients, some sources that we know and love already, among others that he is discovering by the day.

Gaspé style cooked lobster from AtkinsI would never think to buy my lobster cooked, but François convinced me that this guy at Atkins really knows how to cook lobster and he cooks hundreds a day (big ones!), in highly seasoned water in the Gaspé style (with sea salt and seaweed) – and he was right, it’s pretty damn good. Visit Les Delices de la Mer on the south side of the specialty aisle. The lobster kiosk is across from the main store, which is also a good source of fish, scallops and shrimp in season. They aren’t just purveyors of fish, they are actual fishermen and family here..

nutmeg from Philippe de VienneKnowing how much I love spices, François brought me some nutmeg from Philippe de Vienne’s shop (which has been a gaga place of mine since it opened years ago). I carried my jar of 'noix du paradis' around for days, taking a sniff every now and again, even sleeping next to it. The nutmeg was still in its shell so it shook like a rattle and smelled like malted chocolate, vanilla and spice. When I cracked one open, the most fragrant little nutmeg ball was revealed, which grating became a pure joy - I’ve never tasted nutmeg like this. I finally understood the subtleties in difference between mace and nutmeg, having the juxtaposition in my face. I honestly could not stop grating or smelling it or talking about how much I loved it. You could tell François was pleased with his buy; he may as well as given me a diamond ring.

Philippe de Vienne’s Olive et Épices is THE store for olive oils, spices and beautiful kitchen knickknacks/gifts. His other store, La Depense a few doors down is also an interesting stop for curious minds, and a good source for specialty and ethnic dry goods. Say, gram flour or Israeli couscous..

I feel fortunate to have a steady supply of dry ham (proscuitto) from the Cochon tout rond (whose stall is right next to François’), whom I’ve already mentioned here at least once; I also love their chorizo. Their proscuitto has become a staple in our fridge, amazing as a part of a late night charcuterie/cheese platter in lieu of dinner or in a salad, pasta, or atop pizza.

François loves his veal chops, and that means regular visits to Veau de Charlevoix (Charlevoix veal), pricy but worth it. On another night, it could be organic suckling pig from Pork Meilleur; both these are in the specialty aisle.. Fermes Nord-Est close by has small production natural meats too, such as bison, beef and chicken.. François has yet to bring some home - we can’t be eating meat every night after all, but I have visited their farm, met them and know I can recommend them.

He’s also regularly coming home with a new cheese he’s discovered either from Qui Lait Cru or Fromagerie Hamel.. His latest buys were meant to impress me, and they did, but thanks to Yannick I already knew them.. There was the new Baluchon Reserve from Ste-Anne de la Pérade and the Bleu d’Elizabeth from the townships, as well as my beloved Alfred de Compton, his default addition to make sure I was pleased, I guess.  There is also the Tomme de Marechal and the La Moutonnière farmer's sheep's milk cheeses who have stalls of their own in the specialty or organic aisle (Le Clos Vert, Le Soupçon de Bleu (a creamy blue), and the classic La Moutonnière bleu (which I prefer).

For the organic milk he likes, he goes to a little Produits du Terroir shop in the specialty aisle, next to the olives place. He brought me delicious fresh yogurt in a glass jar from there too that I used in a panna cotta that was so exceptionally tasty, I figured it must be the yogurt.  About those olives next door - delish! Especially the goat cheese stuffed green ones.   

Being the fruit lovers we are, we have our spots for fruit even off season (we lose locavore points here). Of course, I put up our rhubarb and wild berries for use at the restaurant, but I do enjoy the odd fresh berry in the morning off season, and well, François power eats fruit all the time. We get most of our seasonal fruit in the country, but in between, a few good sources at the market are key; especially at this time of year, where it’s summer just about everywhere else - it’s hard to resist the taste of a good melon, cherry or pear when it’s been so long.. François is very fussy about his fruit, and takes much care in selecting each piece (he is very good at sniffing out that perfect melon). He likes Eric Lecuyer ‘Le King’ on the north side of the second aisle for a reliable assortment of berries; in season, he has everything from blueberries to currants to ground cherries. For mangos, melons, pears and apples, he likes Trottier, that famously long established family of apple growers, and apparently they usually have good Quebec tomatoes too. They have a few locations around the market, the main one being in the main cross aisle.

At the moment, Jacques et Diane Remillard are selling potted plants, herbs and such in the third aisle, but at the height of summer, they will be in their regular space in the second aisle selling their vegetables and herbs.. They are old friends of François’ and a favourite source of harvest vegetables for us.

Then, there are the farm fresh eggs form Chez Petrin that arrive daily; they also sell honey, maple, and strangely enough (but very useful to know), the beans for cassoulet, all varieties of dry beans in fact.

Once and a while, the women in François’ life get treated to a bouquet of fresh flowers from Chez Daniel, but I like the more frequent wild ones just as much..

There is always the Marché des Saveurs for Anicet’s honey and Cuvée du Diable honey wine, which I love to cook with since L’Eau à la Bouche, or for some other Quebec product I need for a menu, be it cider or Quebec style porto.. Of course, they have much more than booze, it being THE place to shop for Quebec ingredients and gifts, to bring visiting friends, or when you just want to discover or rediscover some new Quebec product.

Perhaps François is so good at surveying the market because he’s not at his stall; I suspect that the girls (Isabelle, Marie Claude and Stéphanie) are doing the bulk of the work while he schmoozes.. You have to understand that he spent much of the nineties here as a farmer who also happened to sell some weird, wild things on the side (which is where Normand Laprise discovered him), so he knows the market, the long established businesses, the family farmers from the peddlers (as he calls the distributor/sellers who don’t know farming and get all their stuff at the Marché Centrale). As a result, he can spot the ruses, the sheisters, the places I now know I should NOT shop at..

Now that’s a real forager for you - as good at the market as in the woods.. François du Marché meets François des Bois - Lucky me.

François and all his foraging greatness aside, there is more to the market than what HE likes.. I like Birri (and so do other people I know who are serious about their food) for all their specialty veg and herbs. I remember the day a couple of years ago when I happened upon their stall (in the first aisle, center), which was spilling over with a variety of beautiful eggplants and squash laid out in their glory.. Granted it was late summer abundance, heirloom tomatoes and all, but I spent over an hour there fondling the stuff, walking off with more than I could carry, elated by the freshness and beauty of my original finds.

There’s the mainstay Capitol, one of my friend Barb’s favourite spots for meat, cheese and miscellaneous dry goods. Of course, she is dating an Italian guy, but he’s a cook and she’s a market regular.. I second that it would make a handy épicerie if you live in the area, especially if you’re into charcuterie, cheese, antipasto and pasta (who isn’t?). She also claims that the new pizza place (Venizzia) on the northwest side of the market is amazing, can’t wait to check it out.

I can’t help but mention Pain Doré; even if they can be spotty, and seem to have suffered as a brand in expansion versus the compounding competition. Everyone seems to prefer Premier Moisson or some artisanal bakery but if in the vicinity, I still gravitate towards Pain Doré for a ham sandwich or a baguette. Maybe it’s nostalgic since I once long ago ate a Parisien (ham, butter and dijon ) with great satisfaction daily. They don’t make it quite the same anymore and now the sandwiches seem to always be made in advance (?!), but the memory lasts.. Or maybe it’s just because I like their bread. I swear I do. It’s happened that I’ve been in some far off restaurant in a village in the Charlevoix or in the Laurentians and loved the bread; where do you get your bread, I ask? Every time, Pain Doré, mademoiselle.. It hasn’t happened lately, but still, I’m loyal.

And being the sucker for books that I am, I have a hard time not dipping into the cookbook store when at the market.. Anne Fortin’s store at the east entrance to the new wing reminds me of a French version of the cookbook store in TO in feel, with its small quarters stacked with a rich and wide array of titles and topics for the serious food book lover.. Digging is required, but many gems are to be found, in both official languages.. She has also opened a used-bookstore nearby, L’Occasion Gourmande (366 rue de Castelneau Est, 514-759-9143).

One last treat from the market is the TV show upstairs, Des Kiwis et des Hommes, a Radio Canada morning food/variety/talk show (that thankfully replays late night) hosted by the lovable duo, Boucar Diouff and Francis Reddy. They have a weekly host chef cooking, as well as other guests including artists, politicians, activists, interesting people all round, and for an hour and a half, they hang around the kitchen and chat about current events, sit at the table to attack a philosophical topic of the day or talk about music; they regularly tour the market and visit farmers, they clown around and stop to offer food for thought.. It’s an eclectic show that does border on cheesy at times, but definitely grows on you. I am mostly fond of it because it takes place at the market and exudes that market spirit, alive with the pulse of the people and food in all its diversity, throughout the ups, downs and intricacies of real life. They entertain and remind us of the good things in life at our fingertips in the heart of the city.

In short, I hope I've given you enough good reasons to visit the market, Jean Talon in particular, today! 

C’est parti! The season is off to a booming start..

 

crinkleroot, daisy, ramp leaves, live-forever, cat's tongue

violet, dog's tooth, spring beauty

 

 

 

 

 

 

first morels

The fiddleheads have been coming in by the potato sac, officially kicking off the season of wild edibles. We have enough wild greens to make a kick-ass spring salad mix: live-forever, violet leaves and flowers, daisy, cat’s tongue, spring beauty, linden, ramp leaves.. I have stinging nettle to make soup, day lily sprouts, some wild ginger and crinkleroot to play with too.. We’ve spotted the first morels (still in the ground, properly guarded). C’est parti! The cooler is overflowing; it’s time to get infusing, pickling, drying, blanching and putting up, embarking on the oh so familiar, constant rush of the growing season, which is all about trying to keep up with processing the pickings amidst serving customers. This is also when menu planning becomes so fun, even difficult because there is so much to work with.. I launched spring with an elaborate menu for the first two weeks of May, but because it was set before reality hit, my next menus sing spring to another degree because I’m living it now (and I don’t have a camera on my ass day in, day out). I was so inspired by my time in the woods for the first picks, I am buoyed by all the green and the signs of the local abundance to come, spring is in definitely in my step.. The first roadside stands selling local asparagus have appeared too, an essential part of spring, and I’m pumped because I’m done teaching, ready to devote my time to wild times at Les Jardins Sauvages.

 

crab salad farcie

tartare, wild ginger, day lily, dog's tooth

stinging nettle chowder, my ham, boletus froth

spring mesclun, fried Blackburn cheese, wild grape balsamic

lamb, almond rosemary crumble, mixed veg

 

 

 

    

 

 

Big news! François des Bois goes to the market!

As of Victoria day week-end (or la Fête des Patriotes, ie. this week-end), François will be at Jean Talon market from Thursday to Sunday selling his wild edibles. His stand will be next to the Cochon tout rond in the specialty aisle. He will have fiddleheads, wild spring mesclun mix (the greens mentioned below), edible wild flowers, eventually more greens and wild mushrooms (following the season) as well as his 'new and improved' line of products (mustards, oils, salts, vinaigrettes etc) and flavoured butters. I might even make some soup and sous-vide dishes at some point..

It’s all very exciting. Of course, it means more volume, work and organization, and that I need to be at the table champêtre all the time, but François loves the market; it is where he belongs (when he’s not in the woods), and most importantly, more people will have easy access to wild edibles. Chefs can stop by and stock up.  Generations of Quebeckers can rediscover the traditions and flavours of their ancestors in eating wild greens, and give their immune system a boost in the process.

He won’t be selling anything that isn’t abundant, or that he doesn’t know where and how it was picked. Things like wild ginger and crinkleroot will not be available because although we use them, the government has them on their endangered list. François alleges that this is false (clear in our forest); when picked properly (ie.not pulling out the roots), they actually prosper, but still he doesn’t want to cause controversy or create a demand that would encourage twits to go harvesting carelessly. In some cases, eating a species keeps it alive, in other circumstances, popularity can be detrimental (think ramps in Quebec ).

   

 

 

                                                     

                       

nordic shrimp, asparagus, radish, cat's tongue and dog's tooth

quail salad, fiddleheads with sesame

Piglet loin, fiddleheads with ham, Rassambleu potato cake, cider sauce

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See my ‘What’s cooking’ posts for spring recipes: featuring crab, shrimp, asparagus, fiddleheads, asparagus..

http://soupnancy.squarespace.com/whats-cooking-recipes/

And this week's menu http://soupnancy.squarespace.com/menus/

 

 

 

 

Good bye winter food

This weekend, I’m in spring cleaning mode. After my maple menu which was heavy on roots, duck, ham, beans and maple of course, I’m ready to move to lighter fare, even if spring isn’t fully here yet (it’s snowing outside). Nonetheless, there is reason for optimism. The river ice broke last weekend to a loud thundering boom, causing customers to run out and witness icebergs crashing down, alongside the resto amidst the river swell. It looks like the worst is over and we might avoid major flooding after all. François has already picked a few flowers and sprouts (just to show off) despite the huge snow banks on the property. He’s convinced that spring will happen quickly, and that it will be a good one because the ground never froze completely with all the insulating snow, and the slow seep meant the earth stayed gorged with water. He is especially excited about what that promises mushroom wise. To prove his point, he showed me a handful of plants that stayed green all winter, as well as day lily bulbs that are already 6 inches long and white as endive beneath the snow.

The snow is slowly but steadily melting, but in the meantime, I will have one last go at the winter stuff. I’ve cleaned out my freezers and walk-in, removing the last of our stored roots, as well as any winter left-overs. I have 6 grey bins of sous-vide bags and various containers of soup, sauce and ice cream to unload. It’s all good stuff, but I need to move on. Solution: time to throw a party. On an off night when there is no hockey game, of course. It will be a ‘Spring Cleaning Buffet’ for staff and close friends of les Jardins Sauvages. Free food, BYOB, a campfire – a winning recipe for a good time, and a therapeutic, formal good bye to winter food for me. Friends will be happy and my fridge will be ready for the arrival of spring things. I will joyfully cook and eat cassoulet, tourtiere and the like for the last time this year, providing a symbolic shift to spring and summer cooking for me.. Ça va faire du bien.

 

One last winter feast, my spring cleaning menu

Mixed charcuterie: Duck rillettes, Foie gras torchon, smoked duck, veal tongue

Mixed pickles, preserves and mustards

Sausage, olives and spiced nuts

Cured fish platter: cured brochet, char gravelax, smoked cod

Smoked salmon mousse on toast

Tomato crinkleroot bruschetta

Mixed greens with house vinaigrette

Asian style vermicelli salad with asparagus and egg

Gnudi with sea spinach, parmesan and rosé sauce

Game tourtiere

Cassoulet with my homemade sausage and ham

Venison ragout

Crepinettes of duck confit, gizzard and liver stuffing

Roasted root vegetables with gremolata sauvage

Root vegetable and wild greens gratin

Chocolate elderberry mousse cake

Pecan maple tarts

Buche

Various wild flavoured ice creams and sorbets

I had to throw a few tomatoes and greens in just to balance this meat-heavy stick- to- your- ribs menu ; I hardly want anyone to get killed in this rite of passage from winter to spring. Loosen the belt buckle, crack open the wine, and let’s go. One last winter binge and I’ll be officially ready for spring.

 

While in spring cleaning mode, I'll unload the last of my winter pictures too..

a wild deer spots me

Moments before the ice broke

François making tire for the kids

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

creamy pea and nettle soup

pea and nettle soup with smoked ham and maple sap foam

char, cured and smoked with root veg remoulade and pickled buds

 

 

 

 

 

 

Quail, wild ginger maple sauce, sesame soba noodles and quail egg (poached in maple sap)

Balsamic-Maple glazed duck, mini cassoulet

just about the last of the root veg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A pretty winter soup: beet, cabbage and foie gras ravioli

cooking ham

rabbit two ways, root veg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

venison, wheatberry mushroom risotto

 

melting the snow

Looking ahead to spring:

My menu this week (April 19th) shows a lighter touch, a whiff of spring in the air.  I am planning a full fledged spring festival menu for the two first weeks of May.  You can also view that here; I will be announcing it this week.

http://soupnancy.squarespace.com/display/ShowFiles?moduleId=1746648&directoryId=244758&SSScrollPosition=0

My friend Nathalie was going on nostalgically about shelling peanuts and it struck a chord.  More than just Peanuts: 

http://foodwithapoint.squarespace.com/journal/more-than-just-peanuts.html 

I would have left a comment there if I could have, instead I'm posting here.. 

Her peanut post resonated with me because I've been through the same over the years in rediscovering the most basic of things.  It is really kind of crazy that we've forgotten that peanuts normally need to be shelled, that chicken breasts come from a whole bird, that oranges and chocolate come from hard labour afar and so therefore should be a treat.. (not so with our parents, who we thought were so backward). 

This is all because we're now used to life in the fast lane where we want everything easy, convenient (and paradoxically more expensive..)  Then again, as her story attests, it doesn't take much to wake people up..  Cracking open some nuts, making something in the kitchen from scratch, visiting a table champêtre where you see your meal from farm to table, all to realize a basic truth beyond nostalgia - that that's the way it was always supposed to be. (And very similar to what our parents or grandparents knew). 

People wouldn't be so fat if they had to shell their own nuts or deep fry their own potatoes, and they would surely eat less meat if they were close to the process (ie raising or hunting the animals or at least paying the fair price for wholesome meat).  So like she said about peanuts, I encourage people to slow down and do the old school thing, but all round..  When every bite is more earned (because you worked for it) or more meaningful (because you made it from a family recipe or got the ingredients from artisans you know), or just more fresh (because you peeled the nuts yourself or got your meat or veg from the farm), for sure it will taste better.  Then, it's not even about nostalgia or romanticism, it's better because it's the real thing. 

I can't imagine how anyone who stops long enough to think or taste would want to live life any other way.  And certainly, the more that people choose to eat real food, the less difficult it will be to live life that way, even in the city.  I'm not saying it's the end of the world if you buy a few déjà shucked nuts because you're on the run or for a recipe, but only realizing that it shouldn't be the norm is something.  We have the luxury here to not be always thinking about where our food comes from, but I don't think it should ever be too far from our thoughts - it's just not natural, ethical or tasty.

BTW, François, like my Dad, has always eaten nuts out of the shell, a nut cracker always handy.  One of the reasons I love him.

Falling in and out of love with foods..

Amy Sherman’s post about a fellow blogger Breaking up with Butternut made me chuckle. http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/blogs/editor/2008/02/breaking-up-wit.html?mbid=rss_epilog It’s nice to know that other cooks and foodies go through the same thing as me.. I too left the butternut for a short time when I met all his super exciting cousins, but I came back.

I fall in and out of love with vegetables all the time. I just have too many loves to pay due respect to all of them regularly. I have my annual affairs with seasonal veg like sea asparagus and corn, and during the growing season, I switch lovers every other day. Then there are the new discoveries regularly coming into the picture to vie for my attention, while the humble steady friends inevitably get brushed aside or even dumped.

In winter, I settle down and have a chance to revisit with old friends. Lately, I have rekindled ties with cultivated mushrooms after being so caught up with the wild varieties for close to a decade. This year I’m back to my old roots (celery root and parsnip), not bowing down to the Jerusalem artichoke whenever he enters the room, and now that I’ve met ‘the potato guy’, I will never ever forget about potatoes again. I recently picked up again with peanuts, pine nuts and cashews (in that order) after being so devoted to the almond for years. With my fresh coco, fava and edaname put up for the winter, I had almost forgotten about dried beans, which are perfect for a winter cassoulet, accompaniment or hearty soup. I’m still in a lBasmati phase, while Jasmine and an Indonesian long grain I once loved wait in line, the short, medium, black and sticky way at the back, almost forgotten. If I didn’t make the occasional risotto for clients, my carnaroli might be history.

I go through the same routine with vinegars and oils. I fell out of love with balsamic vinegar ages ago, favouring a good sherry vinegar or cider vinegar, until I was charmed by a certain one that I began using everywhere. I was then inspired to make my own simile version with wild grapes, and I’m back to using all of my favourite vinegars equally; they each have their specific role in my life. The same goes with finishing oils, sea salts, spices and herbs, meat and fish –all foodstuffs in fact, even wines and restaurants. I dabble here and there, changing favourites in cycles, adding new ones, ditching others. There is temptation everywhere, and a little promiscuity and experimentation with new kids on the block is a necessary part of a culinary life worth living. Some infatuations fade fast, others linger on to become a part of the family. I have less room in my pantry and on my menu than in my heart, so the less versatile, less than stellar ingredients must get the boot.

Industrial chicken and beef are long gone, never to be missed. Flavoured vinegar, caper berries, avocado, pine nut and hempseed oil, as well as most exotic fruit were all once bright, shiny and enticing, but didn’t last long in my kitchen. Asparagus is only beautiful for a month or two of the year, I easily forget about it the rest of the year. But I could never break up with the tomato (only move from variety to variety or from grower to grower). I can’t imagine ever leaving the Muscovy duck for another bird, or French shallots for any other allium. Wild ginger and crinkleroot (wild horseradish) will be with me forever, but so will regular ginger root and horseradish; they are so different, I need them all. Most edible flowers no longer hold much appeal except for nasturtium and elderberry. Sea spinach, chanterelles and porcini I will always hold dear. No matter how eco I try to be, I can't imagine ever letting go of my lemons, my roasted almonds or my favourite olive oil. 

No matter how good you have it, monogamy can get boring. Because my everyday is all about cooking with wild and local ingredients, I can occasionally be easily seduced by something common and bland like Boston lettuce, or some exotic imported treat (like a Roquefort or Comté..as opposed to a Quebec cheese) for a short fling.. It’s the greedy ‘grass is always greener’ phenomenon mixed with endless curiosity and appetite.

Of course, I can’t help but be intrigued by something new I read about or taste. Ruth Reichl was talking about this mini tangerine that Alice Waters brought her that made my mouth water. Heirloom varieties of bean, apple or tomato make me dreamy, as I imagine an even better bean, apple or tomato than the ones I know. As if I need more pig love, I’m dying to try true gianciale, an Italian cured pork charcuterie that is key to Pasta Allamatriciana which I’ve unwittingly always made with bacon or pancetta. Apparently in the Middle east , India and Greece , they eat a form of salted, dried yogurt – sounds yummy; how different from feta is it I wonder? VJ Vikram makes a braised goat dish with ajwain and kalongi curry, which I’ve never heard of – now there’s something to explore.. Then there are all the ‘molecular gastronomy’ powders and techniques that I’ve barely experimented with. You see how many thoughts of new tastes have me twitching?

There are new things on the market all the time, and more foodie talk circulating than ever about ‘new this’ and ‘must try’ that. So it’s only normal that so much breaking up is going on, that old favourites are being forgotten in favour of the latest flavour. Even if I’m still a bit of a ‘gidoune’, I think I’m on an opposite path, a slightly more loyal one. I’m obviously still into travelling and evolving taste-wise, but I’m less and less interested in food gossip and slower to jump on the new food trend bandwagon than before. I haven’t even tasted Kobe beef yet if you can believe it. Part of my slowing down has to do with more time in the country and my locavore leaning, part of it is just growing up. I’ve already had many adventurous eating and cooking years and too many flings. Sea urchin, tomatillo, Meyer lemon, smoked paprika, bison, goose liver, agar agar, tonka bean and molecular gastronomy are all examples of prior relationships that although fun, turned out to be fleeting. I might be happy to meet up with them again for a brief encounter, but I can live without them, mainly because I have enough right here to explore and keep me stimulated.

And so with time, and so much coming back to exes after break-ups, I have come to value my closest, dearest companion ingredients the most, and learned not to take them for granted. I have gotten to know myself, have grown more selective and am less likely to be wooed by what’s new, trendy, rare or expensive. I wouldn’t break up with home-grown boletus for truffle or morels just because the food snobs deem them superior. I wouldn’t substitute Nordic shrimp for any other more ‘noble’ crustacean, or snow crab in season for any other crab just because ‘they’ say it’s bigger and better. I am fiercely loyal to our Atlantic Malpeque style oysters, regardless of how many flashy Pacific and European stars are touted on menus about town. I don’t care to taste another kind of salt, I have my five favourites, more than enough for all purposes, and if I want to add a flavour, I will do it myself thank you. After flirting with every kind of basil or mint out there, I’m back to the classic peppermint. I don’t need another thyme besides the English one. I’ve realized that for every twenty things that come out, one might potentially have staying power.

You only find true love by really living, which means trying and tasting with an open mind. Luckily with food, many lovers are allowed, and they will always have you back after a tryst with some young hot thing. In any case, the really good things, whether old or new, stand the test of time and continue to charm for years. While some come and go, others become as essential to your well being as air, water, sleep and coffee in the morning.

Meet my new buddy Mac.

Mac

We've been together for 3 weeks now and I can't tell you how much I love him.  He's changed my life.  He's an 8" chef knife but with dimples.  He can do just about anything but heavy work, he's not great at boning, but since he came into the picture, I've barely touched another knife.  Slicing and dicing veg, carving meat, sushi - he kicks ass with super smooth style.  He's Japanese in origin, western in style, swift and light but very comfortable, with a hard, thin razor sharp blade.  I wasn't into Japanese until now.  No one touches him but me and I put him to bed in his box every night, which is something else for a brute like me.  Let's hope it lasts (the edge, us)..  And that he doesn't chop my finger off.

At the Mercy of Nature

Wild mushrooms drive the point home

September 17, 2007

 

shaggy mane

lepiote lisse

lepiote élevée

larch boletus

 

In this era of climate change, more of us are starting to wake up to the notion that we are at the mercy of nature. This is something that farmers, winemakers and foragers have always intimately known, and so the best have learnt to respect nature and work with it the best they can. With every season, they find new optimism and pick up a few new tricks, never quite knowing exactly what’s in store. I admire them.

These days, my life as a chef with a set of principles relies increasingly on the bounty in our backyard. With the growing season peaking, this has not been a problem for some time. Now however, the thermometer is dropping and we have a menu event featuring 20 odd kinds of wild mushrooms just weeks away, and so my anxiety with regards to what nature will provide in the last breaths of summer is climbing.

Mushrooms are more unpredictable than anything. I reckon therein lies the spell they hold on foragers and mushroom lovers alike. They are so beautiful, delicious and impossibly difficult to get to know well, always playing hard to get. And no matter how many books you read, or how much time you spend in the forest, you are always one careless step away from being a goner.

That is, if you can find them. This has been a dreadful year for most wild mushroom varieties in and around Montreal . Further north in the Laurentians and in the Mauricie, they seem to have had marginally better luck. Pickers in the Charelevoix and the Gaspesie on the other hand, can’t keep up.

I have plenty of chanterelles and pine mushrooms, a good amount of lobster mushrooms, and assorted boletus. But I’m still waiting for substantial quantities of hedgehog, porcini, puffball and fairy ring.. The oysters, the blue-foots, among others have yet to come into season.. Will they? Will we find them? If anyone can locate them, my François can, but he can’t be everywhere at once and the clock is ticking.. He seems confident that nature will cooperate, but I can’t help but wonder, having witnessed by now how magic mushrooms can be indeed.

 

I hear people ‘in the know’ speculate about it having been too hot, not humid enough, the winter too harsh, but that all we need is one good rain and then some nice weather, blah, blah, blah.. It seems to me that no one really knows much. Seasoned pickers tell stories about their hits and conquests in big, but if you listen long enough, the tales of disappointment and puzzling misses inevitably follow. How year after year, they had a fruitful fairy ring or porcini patch in a particular spot that they carefully checked, and then poof, no more. How the common varieties are coming out in the wrong order, novel unfamiliar species being spotted here and there, reports of a certain beloved mushroom now on the skull and crossbones list.. Just look at the books: they all say something different about a particular mushroom, if you can even identify anything at all amidst the multiple styles of classification, the complex jargon and poor photography. Against my bookish ways, I’ve found the surest backbone in anecdotal knowledge, knowing that generations of the same family have picked and eaten a certain variety growing in a certain place for years without malaise. And when it comes to my customers, I play it safe. But still, the wild mushroom remains elusive.

 

So to me, the wild mushroom seems to be the perfect metaphor for the mysterious ways of nature as we live them. It’s a food we can hardly understand, that we can barely cultivate. We’re seduced by it, but scared of it. It’s one of the last examples of nature exercising its power over us. We’ve dabbled just about everywhere we could in our natural landscape, but just when we think we understand something, we try and exert control, at which point nature eventually surprises us. For example, super bugs and antibiotic resistant bacteria, global warming and climate change, industrial food and obesity, to name a few..

Being in mushroom desperation mode, I am in my own personal face-off with Mother Nature and I must bow down and acknowledge the fact that I can’t control the outcome too much. Being so involved with planet earth and the unknown makes me feel like I’m living life in its essence, but it’s exhausting for a worry-wart like me. It would be so much easier to tone down my menu and just order up what I need from miles away.  All I can do is be organized so that I’m ready for anything, and I need to do what I can to liberate François, the real forager, so that he can go out and gather whatever Nature has decided to give us. I need to change my menu according to the finds. But mainly in the mean time, I need to have faith.

There is still a thread of the city girl in me that wants what I want now, nice and conveniently clean and ready to use, but it's wearing thin. Going on eight years in the country now, cooking with the seasons and frequenting grounded types, I've changed into someone who values everything but, and chooses to be at the mercy of nature; it's almost a religion.  My tie to nature, my new reverence for it, and associated requirement for faith all remind me of exactly that. I think this is the closest to feeling ‘God’ that an agnostic can muster. Not unlike what I sensed studying the upper echelons of calculus and biochemistry. To be wowed by a beauty you have the slightest grasp on, to sense a governing omnipresence that you deem in your best interest to worship, to feel like a small part of something much larger and more magnificent, to feel the need to have faith, and to feel better for it.

Even if it’s all about ‘fancy’ food here, living this dance with nature feels important and necessary as a human bean in the grand scheme of things. I also can’t help but feel closer to our ancestors who devoted most of their waking hours to securing their food at the mercy of nature.  And I feel like I've shed a childish or superficial layer or two. 

I lose that connected feeling when in the city too long. I love the city - the people, the stimuli, the freedom, but it can also be decadent and unhealthy. Besides having too many places to go and too many indulgences at my fingertips, it’s more about how easy it is to lapse into a detached state, where I feel grateful and awed less often, more impatient and preoccupied with things that don’t really matter, like traffic. I know it’s time to get back to the country when I forget to stop and smell the flowers, when it makes equal sense to eat a mango as it does an apple in September, or to use a small tree’s worth of firewood without seeing that empty space.. Or when I’m too far to know if Nature is giving me a bounty of mushrooms to cook up..

 

puffballs!

cèpes (porcini)

François et les chanterelles en tubes

lactaires delicieux

pieds de mouton (hedge hog)

armillaire (pine mushroom)

Stéphanie et les lobsters

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you are interested in our wild mushroom dinner event at La Table des Jardins Sauvages starting October 18th, please visit www.jardinssauvages.com, or view the menu here  http://soupnancy.squarespace.com/recipes-/ and call 450-588-5125.

Enclosure

What Leonard taught me about food

September 3, 2007

Leonard Cohen taught me this about cooking:  Do not judge.  Just do your thing.  Try and please the person on the receiving end, the consumer of your art, whoever he or she is without any expectations of appreciation.

I think I do this naturally most of the time, but I needed to be reminded that this is the way it should be all the time.  It struck me as I was driving home listening to Leonard after a night of cooking for a bunch of yahoos, feeling exhausted and less than satisfied. As I cruised down the empty country roads, I got to rehashing the night and analysing the food, the customers, my performance and feelings. I pondered the importance of the target audience. Is there such a thing as cooking over people’s heads? And should I really care who I’m cooking for - if they’re doctors, farmers, hairdressers, foodies or among the food challenged? Don’t I just love to cook? Don’t I just love to make people happy? Which is most essential? And when it comes to experts, do they really know better anyway?

As I hummed along to ‘Everybody knows..’ and let all these ideas half consciously swirl around in my head, a certain clarity soon emerged about why I cook, and about the relationship between artist and audience, between host and guest in general. As usual, a few minutes with Leonard made me feel much better.

In the restaurant business, it is commonly accepted that most of the time, we are really cooking for a small segment of the population with our flourishes and fancy ingredients. Let’s say that 5 or 10% of your customers really know food and can tell the difference between Quebec lamb and New Zealand lamb, between consommé and a broth. Even fewer can understand the inspiration, the time involved or detect any complicated technique you pulled out of your hat..

Most chefs worth their salt naturally aim high anyway, wanting to select top notch ingredients and try new things regardless.. Like true artists, they worship beauty, are forever doing their best to push personal limits, and like true nurturers, they want to please no matter what. And it usually pays off if they’re good. Others cut corners and cook to the lowest common denominator, figuring it is a waste to spend resources cooking over the guests’ heads.

Cooks cuss clueless customers all the time. I don’t like to, and I feel like I’ve grown out of that, maybe thanks to the fact that I’ve largely been graced with good customers. But when cooking for a gang of country bumpkins on a bender like tonight, I too get the feeling I may be wasting my time and energy getting too elaborate with primo ingredients and all that extra TLC and professionalism. I couldn’t help but think that I could have served them slop and still gotten all those sloppy kisses as departing thank you’s.

Then again, my relationship with Leonard Cohen’s music made me realize that it is still possible to be touched profoundly by something without understanding every nuance. If I can listen and feel so much in his music despite my musical handicap, then there’s a good chance that some of the culinary inept crowd can thoroughly appreciate a gourmet meal without verbalizing it just so. (Not that I think I’m a Chef like Leonard is a poet by any means btw..)

They might not appreciate it exactly like someone in the business, or like a foodie might, understanding all the little details, but differently - based more on an overall impression, a more sensory or emotive response. ‘Is it yummy or not, did it move me or not?’ When I think of it, there can even be more magic that way.

I always loved music intensely because it elicited such an unexplainable, joyous response in me, precisely because I didn’t understand much about it and never had any musical talent. It was elusive and magical, beyond my reach, and thus so powerful. But a calibre musician would probably think that I could not fully appreciate his or her music, as an experienced chef might feel dismayed by an ignorant guest who doesn’t understand his or her food. I certainly don’t catch every little clever riff or innovation in a tune, but I couldn’t feel more pleasure or enjoy live music more than I do. Likewise, I know plenty of people (I can think of ex-boyfriends here) who love to eat but couldn’t care less if they taste the provenance of the olives or the perfect balance of flavours; they just know that it tastes great, and couldn’t be happier with their food.

Extra knowledge can heighten the experience no doubt, adding layers of appreciation, but it can also take away from the emotional response in the intellectual processing of it, which is why a connoisseur can be so much fussier and more difficult than a neophyte.

Whether it’s music or soufflé on the menu, I think that it all comes down to genuine interest and openness on the part of the recipient, and then skill and generosity on the part of the artist/giver for a successful communion. If you are attentive, eager and grateful of the offering as a taker, you are validating the product, which matters most to the giver. If he/she delivers and you like it, pleasure ensues. But you can like it intensely in a singular way, or the intensity can come from many levels of stimulation, all adding up to something equivalent. No matter how much you know, it’s all about how much you can have fun.

That’s really what it’s all about right. We all know that the best customers are the ones who are having fun no matter how damn smart or cultivated they are. But because fun is so different for everybody, obviously, we should refrain from underestimating the customer, and just be happy when they’re happy, and bothered if they’re not. Even if some ungrateful or uneducated eater thinks you just pulled the dish out of a drawer, they are still entitled to enjoy it however they like. They can ask for it well done or eat it with Baby Duck, while the couple at the next table is doing wine pairing with the finest from their cellar.

My own experience with snooty waiters dismissing me because I look young or perhaps poor, at least not like any kind of a connoisseur, just reinforces the notion of how crucial it is to be non-judgmental for me. And I can be a worthy Leonard Cohen fan too, like Joe Shmoe can be a worthy Ducasse fan. I will strive to do my best as a cook no matter who is at my table, as long as I hear laughter and mmm’s and ahh’s. Anything more is just bonus.