All Butter Pie Crust

My wife’s grandmother always makes pie crust with lard, and my mom used to make it with a combination of vegetable shortening and butter, but I prefer just a plain all butter crust.  As long as you don’t handle it too much, it comes out pretty much perfect every time.

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups white flour
• 1/2 t salt
• 275 g unsalted butter, well chilled and cut into 1.5-2 cm chunks
• 1/4 – 1/2 cup ice water, added by tablespoon

Pulse the flour and salt a few times in a food processor until mixed.  Add the butter and pulse a few more times until the mixture forms pea sized pieces.  Add water a tablespoon at a time while pulsing the food processor, until the mixture starts to come together.  Dump the mixture out onto a board or countertop and pull together into a ball.  You can sprinkle a bit more water onto any crumbly bits if necessary.  Cut the ball in half and  pat out into a 1 inch thick round.  Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour.

To roll out, place one chilled round on a floured surface, or better yet, some waxed paper or baking parchment.  Dust with flour, and roll out turning and flipping every few passes, and dusting with more flour if it starts to stick, until your circle is large enough to fill your pie plate.  Transfer carefully to the pie plate, add your filling, roll out the top crust, and cover.  Trim the overhang around the edge of the pie plate, crimp the crust, and cut steam vents in the top.  Bake.  Eat.  Have another slice.

For filling, I’m partial to apple or peach.  For an apple pie, core, peel and slice 4-6 apples, depending on size, toss with a couple tablespoons of corn starch, 1/2 cup of sugar, and a couple tablespoons of cinnamon.  Maybe add the juice of half a lemon if the apples are really sweet.  For peach, blanch and peel 4-6 peaches, halve to remove the pit, then slice.  Add a bit of sugar if you need it, and 2-4 tablespoons of flour or cornstarch, depending on how ripe and juicy the peaches are.  Bake at 425 for 10 minutes, then reduce to 350 for another 30-45 minutes, until the crust is golden brown.

This recipe makes enough dough for one double crust pie – halve for single crust recipes, or freeze half for later.

If you need to pre-bake (for single crust pies), prick the crust all over with a fork, cover it with aluminum foil and fill with dried beans, rice, coins, or pie weights.  Bake at 185 c/375 f for 15 minutes.  Remove weights and foil, and bake for another 5-10 minutes until golden brown.

Gluten Free Fudgy Brownie Recipe

There’s nothing better than homemade brownies.  I know, I know, box brownies are easier, but I think they taste like the box they came in.  Homemade brownies are a bit more work, but definitely worth it.  I like mine pretty moist and fudgy, and I need to make them gluten free, so here’s a simple recipe that’s been adapted for gluten free flour (actually, given that there isn’t much flour in a good fudgy brownie recipe, this is pretty easy – just reduce the amount of flour a bit, and don’t worry about whether it has any xantham gum).

One note on gluten free flour: there are a lot of different kinds.  For baking sweet things, make sure you stick with one that doesn’t have Gram or Chickpea flour in it – I like Dove’s Farm’s plain white, which is a blend of rice, tapioca, buckwheat, maize and potato.  Gram flour has a very distinctive, slightly metallic taste that is OK for savory dishes (and generally goes away if you cook it well enough), but can be not so nice in sweets.

Ingredients:

• 300 g unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 300 g bittersweet chocolate, chopped fine
• 100 g unsweetened chocolate, chopped fine
• 2 cups white sugar
• 1 T vanilla extract
• a pinch of salt
• 4 large eggs, at room temperature
• 2 large egg yolks, at room temperature
• 200 g gluten free white flour
• 1 or 2 bars of white chocolate, broken into large chunks, or a few handfuls of big white chocolate drops (optional)
• 1 cup of pecans or walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 175 c/350 f

Butter a 9 x 9″ square or 13 x 9″ rectangular pan.  The smaller pan will need a bit longer to bake, but will give you thicker brownies.  I like the smaller size, and I use a flexible silicone pan set on a cookie sheet.  Line the bottom of the pan with baking parchment, and butter the parchment a bit.  If you leave the parchment long so it hangs over the ends of the pan, you can use it to lift the brownies out.

Melt the butter in a medium heavy saucepan.  When melted, turn off the heat and dump in the chopped bittersweet and unsweetened chocolate.  Let it sit until the chocolate is melted, then stir to mix.  Allow the mixture to cool a bit.  Whisk in the sugar, then vanilla and salt.  Whisk in the eggs, then the egg yolks, one at a time.  It’s important that the eggs are at room temperature, or the mixture may separate.  If the eggs are cold, drop them in a bowl of warm water (from the tap – you don’t want them to cook) until they’re warm.  If you do this, make sure the eggs are dry before you crack them into the chocolate – water and melted chocolate are a very bad combination.  If the mixture does separate (because of cold eggs, not water – if it’s water, you’re out of luck… start over), you can dump it into a bowl and use a hand mixer to bring it all back together – not ideal, but it’s worked for me in the past.  Once the eggs are worked in, add the flour and mix until just incorporated.  Add the white chocolate chunks and or nuts, if you like, and fold in to distribute evenly.

Turn the batter into the prepared pan and put it in the oven for 30 – 45 minutes, depending on your oven and whether you’re using a square or rectangular pan.  The brownies are done when a toothpick comes out with a few crumbs (not wet batter, but not totally dry either), and the top of the brownies is cracked a bit.

Let the brownies cool, then lift out of the pan onto a cutting board and slice as big or small as you like.  Enjoy!

This recipe can also be halved, but make sure you use the smaller pan.

A Weekend in Dublin

I took my wife to Dublin for a quick weekend trip for her birthday a couple weeks ago.  It ended up being a bit of a literary weekend, plus we had a couple of really great meals.

We landed at about 10:00 Saturday morning, took a cab to our hotel to drop our stuff off, then went for a wander before lunch.  We stayed at La Stampa hotel near St Stephen’s Green - reasonable rates, nice room but a bit of a party crowd.  If you plan to be out late in the evening, I recommend it, primarily because it’s reasonably priced.  If, like us, you’re used to being in bed by 10 or 11 (or like to be able to take a shower without sitting in the bathtub and spraying water from the handheld sprayer all over the bathroom), you might want to find a hotel with a bit better noise isolation between the rooms…  We walked up Grafton Street to Trinity college – Grafton Street could be High Street, Anytown, UK, but Trinity college was pretty cool.  Some really interesting buildings, plus the Book of Kells – one of the oldest known illustrated books in the Long Room at one of the libraries.

After Trinity College, we stopped into Books Upstairs - a great independent bookstore that’s stuffed with great books at great prices.  If we’d had more space in our luggage, we’d have bought a lot more books.  I picked up Nicholl’s biography of Leonardo Da Vinci (something I’ve wanted to read since I saw The Last Supper on a business trip to Milan this past summer), and Kris found a book of Irish poetry.  If you like into books like we’re into books, this will be one of your favorite places in Dublin.  As an aside, we were amazed at how many bookshops there were in Dublin – I know we were close to a university, but it seemed like there was a bookshop on every block.  Not that we minded.

From Books Upstairs, we made our way over to the Dublin Castle.  The Castle has a great round tower and some interesting, brightly painted buildings, but the real gem is the Chester Beatty Library just outside the castle grounds.  We’d never heard of him, but apparently he was an extremely wealthy American-born mining engineer turned industrialist who really really like books.  He managed to assemble one of the finest, if not the finest collections of ancient manuscripts and illuminated texts in the world.  Before he died, he endowed the Chester Beatty Library to house his collection.  It’s an incredible collection of books, scrolls, manuscripts and other oddments – lots of snuff bottles, an amazing suit of Japanese armor, some carved rhinoceros horns.  Well worth a visit.

By this time it was getting close to 2:00, and I’d booked a table at a restaurant on the other side of the Liffey: The Winding Stair.  The restaurant is above a bookstore of the same name, which has a pretty narrow and extremely eclectic offering.  The restaurant is the real prize.  It’s a light filled space with big windows overlooking the river.  Bookshelves line the walls, wide pine planks cover the floors, and conversation fills the air.  The food is simple and very well done, using locally sourced ingredients.  We started with a bowl of fabulous, creamy fish chowder and some courgette pancakes topped with flat mushrooms and some melted crumbles of really strong cheddar.  The cheddar would have overwhelmed the delicate pancakes and mushrooms if not for a little dollop of herbed craime fraiche on the side that somehow managed to pull all of the flavors together and bring them out to play.  For our main, we shared a steak with herb butter and chips.  The chips were perfect and the steak was excellent.  We had a couple glasses of wine – they have an nice variety by the glass, and a solid wine list that’s not too overwhelming.  Lunch was pretty expensive – about a hundred euros, but all of the restaurants in Dublin seem like they’re pretty expensive.  Overall, this is a fantastic restaurant – great atmosphere, friendly but unobtrusive staff, and excellent food.  if you want to go, book a table, because the place was full from the minute we arrived for our late lunch until we left a couple of hours later.  They must have turned away half a dozen walk ins.

After lunch, we walked up towards O’Connell street, but couldn’t get out of there fast enough – nothing but shopping and crowds of tourists.  We headed back to our hotel, got settled in, and went to see if we could find a gallery – we’ve been looking for a piece of art for our anniversary for the past 6 months.  We found one gallery, but didn’t like anything.  It’s a little hard to pay 800 or 1000 euros for a painting when there are about 300 paintings by the same artist stacked around one gallery…  even if we had liked his stuff.

We wandered through a couple of pubs, I had the obligatory pint of Guiness and a glass of Irish Whiskey (not Jameson, I’m ashamed to say, given that we were in Dublin where the distillery is), and had a light dinner at Tiger Bec’s.  Don’t bother – ordinary Thai food at overconfident prices.  We decided to call it a night, and aside from having to call and complain about the noise from the room upstairs at 3:00 in the morning, had a restful night.

Sunday morning we ordered coffee, toast and pastries from room service, got crumbs all over the bed, and packed up to head home.  Our flight wasn’t until 5:00 though, so we had plenty of time to do a bit more exploring.  Since we didn’t have a car, we decided to do one of the bus tours to see a bit more of the town than we could cover on foot.  It was a beautiful sunny day, and we pretty much had the bus to ourselves.  We saw the sights, chuckled at the driver’s well-practiced jokes about the local sights, and say a bit more of the town than we could cover on foot…

Nothing really opens in Dublin (except the Guiness plant, of course) until the afternoon, so we got off at the North end of O’Connell street to find the James Joyce house.  We found it. It was closed.  We headed down to Merrion Square, where Oscar Wilde grew up, and wandered around the park to check out the artists selling their work around the outside.  Saw a couple of things we liked, but didn’t end up getting anything.  from Merrion Square, we walked back over to our St. Stephen’s Green and walked throught the park – a lovely green space in the middle of the city.  If the weather had been a bit warmer, we’d have been tempted to get a picnic and sit by one of the ponds.

We ended up having brunch at a place called Hugo’s on Merrion Row, just off the west corner of St. Stephen’s Green.  This turned out to be an excellent decision.  The food was good, the atmosphere was cozy, and they had a great jazz quartet playing in the middle of the restaurant.  A glass of Prosecco to start and a bowl of roasted red pepper and fennel soup to start, then a simple but well done grilled chicked salad and another steak with green peppercorn sauce and chips.  I had to request a second order of chips that were cooked enough, but they came out just right, and the peppercorn sauce was almost as good as my own.  I know, I know, two days, two steaks – I should’ve been a bit more adventurous.  The steak was really the only thing that appealed to me at Hugo’s – I just didn’t feel like breakfast.  But I definitely should have had the venison at the Winding Stair.  Oh well.  Next time…

After lunch, we walked back to Grafton Street to pick up a few tchatchkies for our girls and various other relatives, picked up our bag at the hotel, and hopped in a cab for the airport.  All in all, a great trip.  Next up… Barcelona.

Tuscan Ragu

I just made a really delicious meat ragu, served over egg papardelle.  When we were in Tuscany last fall we had some fantastic Pici pasta with a rabbit ragu at our inn’s restaurant, and this is my attempt at something similar.    We stayed at the Locanda dell’Amorosa, an inn about 40 km from Siena, just outside a fairly grubby industrial town named Sinalunga.  Aside from Sinalunga, everything about the Locanda dell’Amorosa was incredible – as you can see from these pictures.  We had a lovely room with a view out over vineyards and rolling hills.  It’s a working farm and produces its own wine.  It has a great restaurant.  It has a beautiful pool (although it was a bit chilly for swimming when we were there).  And it’s in the middle of the Chianti region of Tuscany, about half an hour’s drive from Siena, Montepulciano and Pienza.  It’s a bit further to San Gimignano, but still an easy day trip.

Pici is the local pasta - kind of like a really thick spaghetti, often served with a simple ragu.  So this evening I wanted to try to make a ragu sauce like the one at the restaurant.  My wife has decreed that rabbit shall not enter our home, so I made do with pork sausage and some pancetta.

To make enough sauce for two people (as you’ll see from the quantities of ingredients, it’d be easier to double this and make enough for four…):

• Half a carrot, diced
• Half a rib of celery, diced
• Half an onion, diced
• 3 Italian sausage (200 grams)
• 100 grams Pancetta or thick sliced bacon
• 3 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1/3 cup good red wine (I suggest a Montepulciano d’Abruzzo)
• Half a can of chopped tomatoes (200 grams)
• 1 teaspoon chile flakes
• salt and pepper to taste
• A sturdy, long pasta, such as Pici, Pappardelle, or Fettucini

Pour a slug of good olive oil into a medium sized heavy pot (I use a cast iron Le Creuset), and heat over medium heat.  When the pan is hot (but not too hot), add the carrot, celery, and onion.  Cook for 8-10 minutes, stirring regularly, until softened but not browned.  Add the sausage and pancetta.  break up the sausage into crumbly bits – it helps if you take the casing off.  Just run a sharp knife across the sausage, lengthwise, to cut the casing, then peel it off.  Continue to cook over medium heat, breaking the sausage up as it cooks, for another 10 minutes or so.  Clear a space in the middle of the pot, then add the tomato paste.  Stir it in the middle of the pot for a minute or two to caramelize, then mix it all together.  Pour in the wine, mix well, and let the liquid cook off – another few minutes.  Add the tomatoes and chili flakes, and mix well.  Cook for a few more minutes, until the sauce is the desired thickness.  Taste and add salt and pepper to taste (most tomotoes have lots of salt added, so taste the sauce before you add any more).

Boil a large pot of water, add the pasta, cook until done, drain, and serve with your sauce.  Grate some good fresh parmesan or romano cheese over it.  I’m still working on a hunk of romano we brought back from our trip (I think we bought it in Pienza – a perfect little Tuscan hill town, founded by and named after Pope Pius).

I steamed some asparagus and served it with butter, more romano, and a squeeze of lemon juice.

And if you’ve never been to Tuscany… GO!!!

Pears in Puff Pastry

Happy New Year!  Let’s hope this one’s a bit easier than the last…

Last night we made one of my favorite party meals – cheese fondue (the traditional kind, with Gruyere & Emmentaler in white wine).  Then to top off the evening, I made an old standby dessert: Pears in Puff Pastry with Caramel Sauce.

I first had this dish at a restaurant outside State College when I was in business school – I don’t even remember the name of the place, but I managed to recreate the dessert.  It’s fantastically decadent and pretty easy to prepare.  Last night I used a couple of perfectly ripe Comice pears, which were perfect, but pretty much any of the softer varieties of pear would work well.

For the Pears:

• 2 ripe pears, cored and peeled
• 2 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
• 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons Grand Marnier
• Ready to roll puff pastry (make sure it’s the all butter kind, not the margarine kind!)
• 1 egg, beaten

Preheat oven to 400 f.

Mix together the butter, sugar, and Grand Marnier in a small bowl – you can just mash it all together with the back of a fork.  Peel and core your pears, set aside.  Roll out your puff pastry into two squares, about 8 inches on a side.  Place one pear in the center of each square of puff pastry, then stuff the core of each with half of the butter and sugar mixture.  Fold the puff pastry up and over the top of the pears, pressing together to seal it up into a big dumpling. Make sure you seal the pastry up well – when I made these last night, the pastry came apart at the seams and fell down into a nest around the pears.  They still tasted great, but they weren’t quite as elegant as usual.

Place the pears in a baking dish, then brush the outside of the pastry with the beaten egg.  Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the pastry is golden brown.

While the pears are baking, make your caramel sauce:

• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/2 cup heavy cream

Pour the sugar and water into a small heavy saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat.  Reduce heat to medium and simmer until the mixture turns a medium caramel color (6-8 minutes) – do not stir - swirl the syrup gently to mix.  Pour the cream in slowly – it will bubble up, so be very careful.  Cook for another minute or two over low heat, stirring constantly, then allow to cool to serving temperature.  You can also make the sauce ahead of time, then warm gently before serving.

If you don’t feel like making the caramel sauce, you can buy it in a jar and heat it up gently before serving.  Just make sure to get real caramel sauce, not caramel topping.

Chicken & Wilted Spinach Salad

I made a really nice salad this evening, and I want to write it down before I forget what I did.  It turned out to be a really nice mix of sweet and sour, with good contrast of textures from the wilted spinach, chicken, and crunchy cornichons.

For the salad:

• 200 grams or so of fresh spinach (a small bag, or half a large bag)
• 1 teaspon of minced garlic
• A slug of good olive oil
• 1 cup of leftover cooked chicken breast, cut into bite sized pieces
• A few good, sour cornichons

For the dressing:

• 1 teaspon of grainy dijon mustard
• 1 teaspon orange marmalade
• salt & pepper
• 1 teaspon dried Italian herbs
• Red chili flakes to taste
• Good olive oil
• Red wine vinegar

First, make the dressing.  Mix everything but the olive oil and vinegar in a small bowl and whisk together to mix well.  Drizzle in a couple of teaspoons of olive oil and whisk well.  Add a bit more (totalling maybe a couple of tablespoons), whisking, until you get a thick paste – the olive oil will be well emulsified by the mustard, so your dressing won’t separate.  Add a couple of teaspoons of vinegar and whisk well.  Taste, and add more vinegar until you get a good balance of sweet and sour in your dressing.

To assemble the salad, heat a drizzle of olive oil in a large skillet (large enough to hold all of the spinach together), then add the garlic.  Let the garlic sizzle for a few seconds, then dump in all of the spinach.  Mix the spinach once with the tongs or a large spoon, then add in the chicken and the cornichons.  Mix again to try to get the spinach evenly wilted – you don’t want to cook it, just wilt it a little.  Your total cooking time should be no more than a minute or two.   Turn off the heat and pour the dressing over the spinach and chicken.  Turn it over a few more times in the pan, then serve in bowls.  This amount will serve one as a main, or 2-3 as a side.

Salsa Crude & Margaritas

There’s nothing better on a late summer afternoon than a dish of fresh salsa, some chips, and a margarita.

Salsa Crude (Pico de Gallo)

This recipe is an easy, classic chunky tomato salsa, posted at the request of my friend Robin for his daughter Felicity.  It’s great by itself with corn chips, or as an accompaniment to fajitas, grilled steak or fish.  Enjoy!

Ingredients:

• 1 lb/500g fresh, ripe tomatoes
• 1/2 a red onion
• 1 Jalapeno pepper, seeded & deveined
• 1 clove garlic (more if you like)
• Half a bunch of fresh cilantro/coriander
• 1 or 2 limes
• Salt & Pepper to taste

 

The first thing you’ll want to do is seed the tomatoes.  Cut the tomatoes in half, cutting through the circumference (i.e. not through the stem).  Cup half of a tomato in the palm of your hand and squeeze gently.  If the tomato is really ripe, the seeds should squeeze out of the cavities between the fleshy parts pretty easily.  If the tomato is a bit firmer, you may need to scoop them out with your finger.  Don’t worry about bruising the tomatoes – as long as you don’t squeeze too hard, it won’t matter.  You’re going to chop them up anyway.

When you’ve seeded all of the tomatoes, chop them up – however coarse or fine you like – and throw them into a mixing bowl.  Then finely dice the red onion and the jalapeno and add to the bowl.  Mince the garlic and add it too.  Pull the leaves off the cilantro, chop them coarsely and add to the bowl.  Cut the lime in half and squeeze it into the bowl.  Mix it all up and give it a taste.  Add salt and pepper if you like.  If it’s a little dry, or not tart enough, squeeze in the other lime.

If you want it hotter, you can add another jalapeno, or use something hotter (like a habanero).  You can also make this in the food processor if you want a smoother salsa.  If you do, it’s even more important to seed the tomatoes.  The seeds are bitter if you chop them up in a food processor – a few are OK, all of them will ruin the salsa.

Classic Margaritas

If you feel like going all out, why not make some margaritas too?  Fresh squeezed lemon or lime juice, a little simple syrup to sweeten it up a bit, good tequila and some Grand Marnier are all you need.

Put 1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat.  Stir occasionally until the sugar has all dissolved (this should only take a few minutes), then remove from the heat and allow to cool.

Squeeze half a dozen medium sized lemons or limes. Mix in your simple syrup to sweeten the juice to your taste.  Go a little on the tart side, as the Grand Marnier is pretty sweet too.

Fill medium sized margarita glasses, wine glasses, or tumblers with ice.  Add 50 ml of your favorite tequila, and 25 ml of Grand Marnier.  Top off your glasses with the sweetened juice, give them a good stir, add a lime wedge, and drink up.

Margaritas are traditionally served in a glass rimmed with salt – I don’t usually bother because it’s kind of a nuisance, but I do like the contrast of sweet and salty, if someone else is doing the prep… If you want to give it a try, pour a few tablespoonfuls of salt into a flat dish or saucer.  Take a lime wedge and run it around the edge of the glass to wet the top centimeter or so, including the rim, then turn the glass upside down and swirl it around in the salt.  You should get a rim of salt sticking to the lime juice.  Fill with ice and mix drinks as above.

If you want a more elegant presentation, mix a batch of drinks in a cocktail shaker filled with ice, shake well, then strain into martini glasses.

Finally, a note about tequilas: there are three major classifications of tequila…

1. Silver – This is young, unaged tequila.  It is colorless, and has the lightest, crispest flavor.  Good in margaritas.
2. Reposado – tequila aged between 2 months and 1 year.  This tequila generally has a straw color to it, and has a bit more flavor.  Also good in margaritas – maybe add a bit more tequila, a bit less grand marnier to bring out the flavor of the tequila.
3. Anejo – tequila aged more than a year.  Anejos are darker in color (some will look like scotch) have the most flavor, and may be drowned out by the other flavors in a margarita.  A good tequila anejo is nice by itself (but please don’t shoot it with salt and lime).

Not too long ago, you could pretty much only get Jose Curvo silver or gold (blech).  Now, there are literally hundreds of different tequilas available.  I’m partial to El Tesoro myself, although I think it was recently bought by Fortune Brands company.  Sauza and Herradura are also good bets that are widely available.  If you find yourself in a store that carries a wide variety of smaller brands, try something expensive – you’ll be surprised how good it is.

Pesto Crusted Crispy Skin Salmon

This recipe is a simple and delicious way to prepare salmon (or any other firm fleshed fish – halibut is great this way too).  All you need is a few salmon fillets, salt & pepper, olive oil, and basil pesto.

Preheat your oven to 180C/350F.  Rinse the salmon fillets, pat them dry, and season well with salt & pepper.  Heat an oven proof non-stick frying pan over medium heat.  Make sure the pan is good and hot (flick a drop of water off your fingertips into the pan - it should dance and sizzle), then pour in a good slug of olive oil.  Place the fish fillets skin side down in the frying pan.  Cook them for about 5 minutes – you should see the color turn down around the skin, and the edges of the skin should start to brown a bit.

Transfer the pan to the pre-heated oven – DO NOT FLIP THE FISH – to finish cooking.  It should take about 7-10 minutes more, depending on how thick the fish is, and how well done you want it.  After about 5 minutes, take the fish out of the oven and spread a teaspoon or two of basil pesto over the top of each fillet, then return the pan to the oven for the last few minutes.  The pesto will brown a bit and add really nice flavor to the fish.

Take the fish out of the oven, transfer to plates, and serve immediately.  The skin should be nice and crispy, the pesto slightly brown, with a bit of a crust.  Serve with whatever sides you like.

A note about salmon: I tend to feel a bit guilty about eating salmon, what with the collapse of the pacific northwest salmon fishery and the horror stories you hear about antibiotics, antifungals and mercury in farm rasied salmon.  So while I don’t normally subscribe to the “organic is best” school of thought, I look for organically grown salmon from farms off Scotland – I don’t think the organic means much, as I don’t think there’s an official classification for organically farmed fish, but I’ve heard that the Scottish farms don’t overpopulate their holding pens, and don’t use all of the antibiotics.  Who knows whether any of it’s true, but it makes me feel better, and I think farm raised fish is about the only option for substainable fish stocks (never mind the Alaskan adds saying “there’s plenty out there”).

Kong

I had an excellent meal in Paris this week at a restaurant called Kong.  It occupies the top two floors of the same building as Kenzo (very mod clothes that would probably make me look ridiculous, if I could afford them) on Rue Pont Neuf.  I was in Paris on a business trip, saw a brief writeup on the place in a magazine, and asked the hotel to book me a table. 

From the Pont Neuf, the restaurant looks like a big greenhouse, or maybe an upside down salad bowl sitting on top of the building; from the the inside, it offers fantastic views over the river.

Decorated by Phillippe Starck, the bar feels like some very hip (and wealthy) 28 year old’s living room.  It’s a bit darkand a bit industrial, but still comfortable. Clear acrylic panels between booths are lit from below and have faces printed on them.  Makes you feel like someone’s watching you (with a slightly disdainful eye, of course – this is Paris after all).  The face theme is repeated throughout the restaurant, on monitors in the dining room and on the backs of the acrylic Ghost chairs used at many of the tables.

After dark, you don’t get the same views, but the dimly lit restaurant offers a romantic setting in keeping with Paris’ reputation.  As I was dining with a work colleague, romance wasn’t on my mind (sorry Perry – I’d rather have been dining with Kris…) – I was more focused on the food.

The food was great.  We started with a mixed entree platter of spring rolls, black perch tartare, artichokes poivrade, seared tuna, and california rolls.  Everything but the tuna was fantastic.  The tuna was a bit fishy and not particularly flavorful.  For mains, I had Chilean Seabass (Bar du Chili) with black rice.  Perry had a Filet de Beouf with peppercorn sauce and fries.  My fish was perfectly cooked, and served with an interesting (miso based?) sauce.  Perry’s steak was good, if fairly ordinary, but he said the fries were great.  The food was well prepared and the nicely sized portions were presented very simply.  We split an excellent bottle of bordeaux that went well with both dishes.  A lemon tart and pannacotta with strawberries rounded out the meal.

All in all, a great meal in a great setting.  Expensive, but not over the top.  Well worth a stop next time you find yourself in Paris.

Summer Berry Cobbler

There is no more irresistable summer dessert than a simple berry cobbler, served hot from the oven with some good vanilla ice cream.  Here’s an easy recipe that you can adapt to whatever fruit happens to be in season.  This recipe will serve two, but is easily doubled or tripled for larger crowds.  You can make it in one big dish to take to a picnic, or individual ramekins for a more sophisticated presentation.  With a little practice, you can pull this together in about 10 minutes, plus 20 for baking.  You can also make the dough a bit ahead of time and keep in the refrigerator until you’re ready to assemble the dessert.

Preheat your oven to 375 F/190 C.

• 1 1/2 cups summer berries (any mix of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries you like)
• 1 tablespoon white sugar (adjust depending on the sweetness of your fruit)
• 1 tablespoon Grand Marnier
• 1 teaspoon corn starch

Mix the filling ingredients together and put in a small baking dish – a 6 in. ramekin works well.  You can also divide between two 1 cup ramekins if you want to make individual desserts.

Place the following ingredients in the bowl of a food processor:

• 1/2 cup white flour
• 3 tablespoons white sugar
• 1/2 stick chilled butter
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder

Pulse these ingredients a few times until combined, but don’t overdo it.  The dough should be the texture of course cornmeal.  With the food processor running, add 2 tablespoons of heavy cream.  As soon as the dough starts to come together, maybe another 10 seconds, stop the blade and scrape the dough onto a clean cutting board or counter top.  Pull the dough together into a ball, gathering up any loose crumbs.  Pull off chunks of the dough and place on top of the berry filling – cover well, but not completely.  If you leave some gaps, the berry juices will bubble up through and caramelize on the crust.  Brush the top of the dough with a bit more heavy cream, and sprinkle with granulated sugar.

Place in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes, until the top has puffed and is golden brown. 

Serve immediately with vanilla ice cream or heavy cream.  If you’ve made it in individual ramekins, you can poke a hole in the top and drop in the ice cream.  It’ll melt and blend with the berries and give you a lovely blending of temperatures and textures.

This recipe adapts will to any kind of fruit, but as the crust is extremely delicate, I think it’s best with soft fruits.  Try a mix of rhubarb and strawberries – cut the rhubarb into chunks and simmer with a bit of sugar and grand marnier until the rhubarb starts to soften.  Then mix in the strawberries before topping and baking.  Peaches or apricots are also great in this dish, and you can add a few nuts too, if you like.  Slivered almonds or crushed hazelnuts go really well with orchard fruit.

One more note: I find it easier and less of a mess to just make the dough in a bowl with a pastry blender.  If you don’t have one, you can probably find it in your local grocery store for about 2.99.  They usually have a simple wooden handle with 7 or 8 stiff parallel wires running down below the handle in a semi circle.  You mash the wires through the flour and butter mixture until you get course crumbs (you’ll probably have to scrape the butter off the wires a couple of times), then add the cream and mix and gather with a spoon or your hands.  Use the same basic process for pie crust or crumb topping.  I find that this method gives me much better control than the food processor – it’s very easy to overdo it with the food processor and end up with a tough pastry crust.  You also have only one bowl and the pastry blender to clean, rather than the food processor blade, bowl and top, and you don’t have to put the food processor away afterwards.