patrick Food Journal

The title of this post has a double-meaning. First, I've decided I already distribute my time between too many blogs and something has to give. This will be my last post in the journals for the time being. I have no idea who (if anybody) reads this, but if you're still interested in following along, I'll be posting the occasional food bits at my personal blog, This Candy Store of Ours, which covers just about anything under the sun that interests me.

Also, one last time, I'd like to share some pizza with you. I recently received a visit from family and decided to host everyone for an evening of pizzas. It's something I finally feel I've learned to do well and it seems everyone had an exceptional night. I made 6 different pizzas, each with a variation of toppings. Kate will be happy to know there wasn't a single slice of pepperoni in sight.

The dough was prepared a day early and so were many of the toppings. This worked out wonderfully, giving the red peppers, for example, time to marinate in olive oil and lemon juice for the night. The tomato sauce I made was a very simple preparation of tomatoes, onion, and oregano. Here's what we had...

Pizza #1 featured a basic tomato sauce base, topped with mozzarella, anchovies, and olives. After it came out of the oven, I finished it with some chopped arugula. Obviously the anchovies aren't for everyone, but those who liked it sure seemed to like it a lot.

Pizza #2 was the vegetarian serving. Again, I started with a tomato sauce base and topped it with mozzarella, roasted red peppers, and parmesan. After baking, I finished it with some fresh leaves of basil, directly from our patio plants. This one could have spent an extra minute in the oven, but it was great anyway.

Pizza #3 featured a basil pesto base, topped with cubes of roasted chicken, roasted red peppers, and bits of parmesan.

Pizza #4 turned out to be the favorite of the night. I started with a base of caramelized onions and freshly chopped rosemary, topped with gorgonzola, parmesan, and pancetta. It was a refreshing change from the simpler pizzas and offered a complex combination of flavors.

At this point in the night, I started taking requests. Some people wanted more chicken and others more anchovies. So I did a half-and-half of the two.

Finally, for pizza #6, I did an encore of the onion/rosemary/gorgonzola/pancetta pizza. What can I say, it's a winning combination.

Cheers, thanks for reading.

Summer is really the only time of the year I crave salads, but it's easy to become bored with the same old stuff if you don't try something new once in a while. Fortunately, salads are incredibly flexible, allowing a great deal of room for creativity. You want there to be a variety of textures and flavours, you want it to taste good, and you want it to look presentable. But beyond that, the sky is the limit.

After a trip to the farmers' market last weekend, I had some great-looking local spinach, comb honey, onions, and a chunk of beef tenderloin that I wanted to put to use. I decided to make a hearty lunch salad and I have to say I was quite pleased with the results.

I cut thin slices off the tenderloin that I rubbed with harissa, salt, and pepper. I set this aside while I prepared everything else. The salad itself included the spinach, some iceberg lettuce, mint and basil from our patio plants, sliced onion, avocado, cherry tomatoes, and kalamata olives. I made a simple dressing using the comb honey, lemon juice, and a pinch of salt that I drizzled over the other layered ingredients. I briefly charred the spicy steak in a hot grill pan and layered it onto the salad in slices. I topped it all off with a bit of crumbled feta.

I have to admit, my experiments with salads don't always turn out as well, so this one was a particularly welcome and delicious surprise. It's given me a taste for more salad adventures in the days to come.

Our local farmers' market has been overflowing with awesome produce these last few weeks. All the good stuff is coming into season and I'm finding it harder to carry all those good things back to the car by myself. After getting a taste for fresh peas two weeks ago, I grabbed an even bigger portion of them last weekend. They're addictively delicious straight out of the pods, but I was determined to also use them for at least a few cooked dishes as well.

So I've been trying out a variety of pea dishes. One night, it was a hearty pasta tossed with peas, bacon, garlic scapes, and carrots. Another night, I cooked them in a little chicken stock with chilis, garlic, and onion, which was great alongside some steak tacos. At this point, I had been keeping a massive bag of peas in the kitchen for nearly a week and it was time to use up the rest of them.

I solicited my wife's help to shell all the remaining peas. Once again, I cooked them in a bit of chicken stock, this time with basil, mint, rosemary, and a small onion. To round out the dish, I added some cooked pasta and topped the peas with bacon, seared scallops, parmesan, and a tiny bit of gorgonzola.

My wife was not a big fan of the gorgonzola and even I have to admit that it was a bit on the overwhelming side (it seemed to be a particularly strong variety), but I'd nevertheless consider this a success.

I revisited the pizza this weekend for the first time in a few months. Long story short, it was easily my most successful attempt so far. With the help of some new ingredients and knowledge from Peter Reinhart's American Pie, I've made a significant leap from where I was when I last wrote about pizza.

For the dough, I tracked down some Italian tipo "00" flour, which is not very common around here. I replaced the traditional rising yeast with instant and cut out the addition of oil to the dough itself. Using only my wet hands, I mixed a dough that was significantly lighter and more elastic than what I'd achieved in the past. Although I still had to cut corners in the amount of time I allowed the dough to rest, stretching the dough out by hand was effortless and the resulting crust cooked beautifully, with a crispy exterior and a light interior.

I stuck with most of the toppings I usually turn to. In addition to a sauce I put together quickly and mozzarella, I prepared a roasted red pepper, some roasted garlic, and plucked a few basil leaves from the plants on our patio. The new element here was the pepperoni, which I sourced from a nearby farm that prepare and butcher all their own steroid/hormone-free meats.

Finally, I made sure to give the pizza stone lots of time to heat up. The last time I attempted pizza, I was using an oven with incredibly unreliable gauges and you never knew exactly what you were going to get. This time around, the heat was consistent and fast-acting, resulting in some superbly cooked pizzas.

Cooking a perfect steak is one of those kitchen tasks I've always been somewhat anxious about. Inevitably something always goes wrong -- it's overdone, it's barely cooked on the inside (but burned on the outside), the steak is great but I covered it in a gross sauce, it's under-seasoned, I cooked it well but the meat sucks... The list goes on. It seems so simple and something that should be easy to perfect. Last weekend I gave it another go and I think it was my most successful attempt yet.

I picked up a big chunk of rib eye from a local farmer that I cut in half to make two impressive steaks. I'd guess the larger one was close to two inches thick (the one in the picture).

I started by patting the steaks with salt, pepper, and some chopped rosemary from my patio. I wanted to keep things simple. I started the steaks off in a flat stainless steel pan in some hot oil. After a few minutes, I moved them over to the hot griddle pan I had just used for those potato slices you see and popped them into the oven. Meanwhile, I deglazed the first pan with some red wine and let that reduce a bit. I let the steaks rest for another moment and then plated everything, topping the steak with the pan juices and a knob of garlic butter. And it was great.

One thing I could've done differently would be to aim for piece of meat that wasn't quite so lean. This one had very little fat through it, which would obviously affect the end result. I really can't complain though; this was a solid 8/10. I'll have to see how the results differ next time. If anyone has any other tips to try, I'd love to hear them.

Pasta has been a longtime favorite in our house, so I'm always on the lookout for new things to do with it. A recent post on Michael Ruhlman's blog prompted me to realize that I had never made my own Carbonara before, even though it's often a favorite of mine at restaurants. After a quick round of research, I knew how I wanted to approach this, and a mere 20 minutes later, I had the pasta on a plate and ready to eat:

To my surprise, this is one of the most satisfying and yet least work-intensive meals I've made in recent memory. The basic elements of the Carbonara are ultra simple, but I made several additions to satisfy my mood that particular day. A traditional approach, for example, doesn't include tomatoes, or much else in the way of vegetables for that matter.

Here's how this came together (I made two portions)...

1. Put on a big pot of water for your pasta (lightly salted, as always). Cook your pasta for two as usual. If using fresh pasta, you'll want to start the pasta a little later -- timing is important.
2. In a small bowl, mix together 1 large egg, 2 tablespoons of cream, 2 tablespoons of freshly grated parmesan, and season the mixture with salt and a good helping of freshly ground black pepper. A little heat is really nice in this dish, so don't be shy with the pepper.
3. Cut up two (or more; I might do 3 next time) slices of bacon into small bits and heat those in a pan with a little olive oil. The better the bacon, the better your pasta will turn out.
4. When the bacon fat is starting to turn liquid, add a finely chopped shallot and give it a few minutes to sweat and turn translucent. The bacon should be nearing crispness about now as well. You don't want any of this to burn, so keep an eye on it.
5. Add a 1/2 cup of wine to the bacon/onion and let it reduce. A white seems ideal, but I used a rose because that's all I had on hand. This turned out to not be such a bad thing.
6. When the wine is mostly reduced, add 1 large clove of garlic (finely chopped) to the pan and a few chopped tomatoes. You don't want either of these in the direct heat for too long, so don't add them unless you know your pasta is just about cooked.
7. Drain the pasta and return it immediately to the hot pot. Add the egg/cream/cheese mixture and the bacon/onion/garlic/tomatoes to the pasta and toss it all together. The heat of the ingredients is what cooks the egg, so everything needs to be hot.
8. Plate the pasta and be sure to add another generous helping of freshly grated parmesan and black pepper. I also dressed this one up with some dried parsley -- it doesn't add much to the flavor, but hey, isn't that green pretty?

I'm still on a bit of a breakfast kick. I bought a waffle maker not long ago. I don't know why I've been craving waffles so much, since I didn't eat them often before. In a way, I see the waffle as one of those foods that's like an empty canvas, begging me to make something beautiful out of it. I gave it my best shot, and for a first time experiment, I think I did an okay job:

Okay, so it looks a little more like a dessert than a breakfast, but at least I managed to pack some fresh fruit in there. Maybe I shouldn't mention that maple syrup was also added after this photo was taken. Dang... too late. The whipped cream contains the innards of a whole vanilla bean as well as a dash of Fragoli wild strawberry liqueur to give it some color and flavor. To tie it all together, I also added tiny bits of chopped strawberry right into the waffle batter, which was otherwise based on the standard Joy of Cooking recipe.

The only thing I didn't consider was that the recipe made way more waffles than two of us could eat in one morning. It's a good thing that waffles are easy to reheat; you can store them in the fridge and pop them in the toaster when you want warm waffles. I ate a lot of waffles that week.

Last week I read an article where the author suggested that fondues had become unpopular in the 80s and 90s -- essentially my entire life, since I was only born in the early 80s. I wasn't aware of this, since fondues were fairly common in my family growing up. I'm not sure how accurate or meaningful this author's observation is, since I assume it applies more to restaurants than the home; nevertheless, I think fondue-avoiders are really missing out on a great experience. I say this not just because of the food, but especially because of the unique atmosphere that comes with fondue and other slow-paced meals.

My wife and I had Raclette last Friday and it's a similar experience. For those not familiar, Raclette is actually a particular cheese of Swiss/French origin, similar in texture to Fontina, but with a slightly stronger flavor. A Raclette meal consists of melting this cheese and eating it with a variety of different foods spread out before you; potatoes are a common accompaniment, as are pickled vegetables and various charcuterie. The modern version of this involves a tabletop contraption that lets you melt your cheese as you dine.

The fun is in creating new combinations of the items on the table while you wait for your cheese to melt. This gives you time to talk to your company, savor your drinks, or steal an olive from the provided bowl. All of this contributes to a casual and relaxed meal that puts the emphasis purely on enjoyment rather than simply stuffing your face. Even better, every plate is a little different because it's dictated by your mood up to the minute, as well as the ingredients you happen to have on hand that given day. What you see in the photo above includes: boiled potatoes, steamed broccoli, roasted red peppers, Calabrese salami, Prosciutto, sliced Bosc pears, pickled onions, Kalamata olives, and a small bowl of dry roasted peanuts for snacking.

The only wrinkle in our plan was that I prepared too much food. We had made tentative plans with friends, but the scheduling didn't work out, resulting in quite a few leftovers. Fortunately, Saturday morning breakfast came to the rescue. The lone leftover potato was chopped and fried, while the sliced Raclette, salami, broccoli, and roasted red pepper ended up inside my omelette.

(Promoted from the diaries - K)

Lately I've been working harder to make sure I eat actual breakfasts. I used to be one of those people who has nothing but a cup of coffee until noon, but that routine quickly took its toll on me. My body fought back with screams of heartburn and swords of indigestion. Okay, so you have my attention, body. I'm listening. I've never exactly been a "morning guy." That's the first thing I would have to work around if I wanted to make sure I had time to put together something that would get me through the early hours of the day. The second challenge was finding some new foods I liked, since variety is a high priority for me. I get bored easily.

To start, I discovered oatmeal. Not the instant stuff; that never really did much for me, since it always seemed to be either too mushy or too dry. I've become fond of the chunky steel-cut type. It takes a little longer to cook (about 20-30 minutes), but you can do a lot with it. I like cutting up some dried dates or other fruit to put in it. On other days I'll just mix in a little maple syrup and have a banana on the side.

Another current favorite is eggs, and again, this is a food that opens doors to numerous variations. You can boil them for a simple, elegant meal; you can fry them; you can poach them; you can scramble them. Scrambled eggs used to be my least favorite option, but I'm starting to come around. For starters, they're one of the quickest and easiest methods. Even better, it's a good way to use up small leftovers, like that lonely tomato you have sitting around, or the little bit of chopped onion you didn't use the night before. Have a tiny nugget of cheese left that you're not sure what to do with? Grate it over your eggs!

This particular morning, I was inspired by the simple combination of a sweet red pepper and spicy chorizo. I chopped up both into small cubes, fried them in some butter, and added the prepped eggs a few minutes later (2 eggs, whisked with a dash of cream). A little seasoning in the form of salt and pepper was barely even necessary, since the chorizo already added a fair kick in those departments.

One key to scrambled eggs is to avoid overcooking them. It happens very easily and the dried out texture this produces can be sort of unappealing, even if the browned color is nice to look at. Moist, but not runny; that's what I aim for. In less than 10 minutes, you have a pretty decent meal to start your day with. Here's another variation: a smaller portion of eggs, this time with tomato, accompanied by bacon from the local farmer's market, fontina cheese, and a banana.

(Promoted from the diaries - K)

I'm not really big on recipes. I can't remember the last time I followed one exactly as written. I make substitutions, additions and subtractions on a whim, relying on my intuition to guide me towards a meal that will satisfy me. Last night I decided to make gnocchi for the first time ever and I fused together several recipes to make it happen. The last issue of Food and Wine intrigued me with a recipe that added the extra step of frying the gnocchi after cooking to brown them a little. However, the same recipe also called for what seemed like a ridiculous amount of eggs, so for the dough, I turned to Jamie Oliver, who uses a mere single yolk in his recipe. Also, not having semolina flour around, all-purpose would have to do for this time. The uncooked gnocchi:

So where else did I stray? For one, I also threw some basil leaves in with the cooked potato as I pureed it into a fine (and incredibly sticky) paste. When it came to frying the cooked gnocchi, I also added pine nuts to the pan.

After that, the rest was all my own doing. Once the contents of the pan had browned nicely, I threw in a bowl of chopped tomatoes and garlic that I had waiting, along with a little salt, pepper, and oregano. Just before removing it, I squeezed on some lemon juice, and served it all onto plates. As a last step, I tore some basil leaves over the gnocchi and topped it with asiago.