Chicken stew with parsley dumplings

The weather in Calgary is cloudy again today, and cold. At this late date in April, I think we may just as well skip spring altogether and head from winter right into summer. The only good thing about the unseasonably cool temperatures, as far as I’m concerned, is that I can continue to cook comfort food. Admittedly, I’m beginning to tire of meals centred around onions and root vegetables but since it doesn’t look like we’ll be seeing too many local veggies in markets any time soon, I’ll have to content myself with soups and stews until our salad days arrive once again.

One of my favourite in-between season comfort foods is chicken stew with dumplings. It’s not quite as heavy as beef stew but still hearty enough to fight off the chills a cold, wet spring evening can bring. The aroma of chicken and dumplings bubbling gently on the stove takes me right back to my grandmother’s kitchen. (My grandma just turned 95, by the way, and she's a super senior still cooking chicken stew and going stong! I like to think it's all about the comfort food she eats!)

Dumplings are also one of those throw-back-to-another-era-supposedly-bad-for-you treats you don’t make every day. (but please see reference to grandma, above, for proof they can't be all that bad for you!). After such a long winter here in western Canada, we deserve a bit of pampering, especially at mealtime. So, bring on the Dutch oven, I say, and make the best of the lingering low temperatures.

Chicken Stew with Parsley Dumplings

For the stew:
3-4 chicken breasts
1 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 celery stalks, sliced thickly
2 carrots, roughly chopped
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
2-3 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 cup chicken broth
2 bay leaves
2-3 tsp fresh thyme, chopped
½ tsp each salt and pepper
2 potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
1 cup frozen peas
3 Tbsp flour
¼ - ½ cup heavy cream

For the dumplings:
Cheat and use Bisquick mix. Follow the directions on the package for preparing the dumpling mixture and add 2 Tbsp of chopped fresh parsley at the end of the process.

Preparation:

Cut the chicken breasts into bite-sized chunks. In a Dutch oven, heat oil over medium heat, cook celery, carrots, onion and garlic until onion is softened, about 5 minutes. Stir regularly to prevent garlic from burning. Add chicken broth, bay leaves, thyme, salt and pepper to the Dutch oven. Add ½ cup of water (you’ll have to eyeball this). Bring to a boil. Add chicken, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 20-30 minutes. Add potatoes, re-cover and simmer 5 to 10 more minutes. Mix flour with 1/3 cup water and whisk into stew. Add cream (optional). Leave the stew on simmer.

Prepare the dumpling mixture and then, using a large spoon, drop the dumpling batter by spoonfuls into the simmering stew (you should get 5 -6 dumplings). Cover the stew and cook according to Bisquick directions, or until dumplings are plump. Resist the urge to keep lifting the lid of the Dutch oven at least for the first 10 minutes the dumplings are cooking! Serve immediately, and remember to discard the bay leaves.

Quick Faux Pho

My friend Gayle is an industrious blogger who astonishes me with her ability to produce thoughtful, well-written posts – often with amazing photos – on a regular basis. Check out her blog and you won’t be disappointed.

While Gayle’s blog looks plump and well-nourished, this blog, in comparison, is starving. Sometimes, my inability to nourish it amazes me. I was feeding it well last year while self-employed but now that I’ve gone back to work full time, gastronomicalmeesh.blogspot.com is suffering pitifully from neglect. I feel so guilty. It’s a bit like having an electronic goat tied up out back that requires constant grazing. I'm just waiting for the e-police to fine me for cruelty to a web-based communications tool, and foster my blog out to some kind, food-loving computer geeks!

If brought before a blog judge, I’ll have no excuses. Just sheer laziness. And lately, I’ve been guilty of that in the kitchen, too. Last weekend, I was craving a big bowl of steaming noodle soup to chase away the chill of a late winter’s day but was too lazy to really put the necessary effort into digging out all my exotic Asian ingredients. Instead, I decided to whip up a quick dish of what I like to call Quick Faux Pho. It’s the sluggish cook’s take on a classic Vietnamese soup. There’s nothing quite like a big, hearty bowl of Pho to warm you from the inside out. This recipe, adapted from Chatelaine magazine, takes almost no time to make. It’s a great way to use up leftovers and odds and ends in the fridge, and sounds a lot like quid pro quo when you say it fast. I don’t know why this makes me giggle – but it does. I’m hoping my energy to blog returns soon. Until then, I’ll share this recipe with other neglectful cooks and bloggers.

Quick Faux Pho for One

1 ½ cups of chicken or vegetable broth
½ cinnamon stick
½ tsp grated ginger
1 small star anise
¼ tsp sugar
¼ tsp hot chili sauce
1 clove minced garlic
½ cup chopped cooked chicken or ½ cup cubed firm tofu
1 cup sliced mushrooms (shiitake are best but cremini work, too) sliced.
Thin rice vermicelli noodles (in a pinch, spaghetti will work, too)
1 green onion, sliced on the diagonal
Handful of fresh mint or basil, roughly chopped
Juice from ½ a lime
Bean sprouts (optional)

In a large saucepan, bring broth, cinnamon, ginger, star anise, sugar, chili sauce and garlic to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer about 5-7 minutes. Remove and discard cinnamon and anise.

While broth is simmering, add some vegetable oil to a frying pan. Add mushrooms (and tofu if using) and cook, stirring often, until tofu is golden at the edges, about 5 minutes. Add broth, and chicken if using. Bring to a boil. Stir in noodles and boil gently until noodles are tender. Stir in onions and mint. Serve immediately topped with bean sprouts. Squeeze lime over top.

This cheese stands alone

The remote and picturesque hamlets along the north shore of the St. Lawrence River, east of Quebec City, are steeped in the lore of early Canada but no story captures the imagination quite like the tale of Hercules of Charlevoix. Legend has it that Jean-Baptiste Grenon was so strong, he resisted being hanged by General Wolfe’s troops through sheer brute force. In frustration, they finally gave up and let him go, earning him a place in the history books and the nickname Hercules.

Grenon’s feat of daring and strength continues to be celebrated in a regional cheese named after him. Produced by the Labbé family in the quaint village of Baie-St-Paul using milk from a small herd of 30 Jersey cows, Hercule de Charlevoix is not strong in taste. Aged for 18 months, it has a mild, creamy but complex flavour, with hints of nut and lemon, and a silky texture. It is like a European mountain cheese in style and could easily hold its own to a Gruyère or Comté. This cheese stands up well to ham in a sandwich and matches well against mustard on crusty bread. It would pair nicely with pears and honey, too but to really evoke the spirit of Jean-Baptiste, I recommend eating this unique Canadian cheese alone.

Wild About Mushrooms

To forage for mushrooms on the forest floor is to connect with your inner wild pig because to find these elusive treats you must get down on the ground, your eyes and nose pointed earthward, and get dirty. Very dirty.

The prey you are stalking may be silent and still but hunting them requires as much skill and patience – maybe even more – as it takes to bring down big game.

In your porcine state, you will happily spend hours mutely scrambling down misty hillsides and through damp woods, carefully rooting under fallen leaves and nosing into dark crevices – all in your quest to coax these masters of camouflage out of their subterranean lairs.

You will brave insects, incur stings and scratches and stare down all manner of woodland creatures and creepy crawlies. You will willingly embrace rot and decay because mushrooms are nature’s necrophiles – and wherever there is death on the forest floor, you will find them thriving.

Deep in the woods, your primitive animal imagination will thrive in a fairy world of toadstool rings, a magical place where fungi’s modern scientific labels are discarded in favour of more whimsical identifiers such as hawk’s wing, cow’s nose, witch’s butter, chicken of the woods, slippery caps and flames of the forest.

You will find mushroom hunting a largely silent endeavour, broken only by the occasional grunt and groan that is, until you find what you’re looking for and then you will hear your primal yell echo off the surrounding rocks and trees.

There are few activities that bring out the primitive hunter-gatherer in us more than foraging for edible fungi and you will want to devour the earthy fruits of your labour soon as possible. For this reason, wild mushrooms are best enjoyed at the edge of the woods, if you can manage it, prepared as simply as possible on a Coleman stove and served picnic-style.

If you absolutely must wait until you get home, spread your haul out on a tea-towel, on the kitchen counter, and leave it for an hour or so to give all the tiny creatures residing in fungal gills and folds a chance to crawl away into the corners of your kitchen. My friend Kerry taught this very effective 'shroom cleaning method! After that, simply brush off any large chunks of remaining soil or forest matter and start cooking. Whatever you do, don’t go all hygienic and try to wash the mushrooms thoroughly. This will ruin them and, considering the primal effort you put into obtaining them, any concerns about swallowing a bit of dirt would be a bit silly at this point.

Whether you’re eating mushrooms out in the woods or at home, there is one critical rule of safety you should always adhere to: never eat a wild mushroom you can’t confidently identify. Only a few hundred of the world’s thousands of varieties of fungi are actually edible. Some of them are seriously harmful and eating them can lead to a swift, painful death which ranks wild mushroom dining up alongside sampling fugu is an extreme gastro-sport. This definitely helps explain why so many mycological societies darkly call their end-of-season member soirees "survivors" banquets.

In my more adventurous foraging days, I lost my nerve a couple of times while staring at a seemingly innocent shroom and second-guessing my identification. Of course, this doesn’t stop folks like me from going a little hog-wild and heading out into the hills every season.

When I get a good batch, usually of chanterelles, eating them fried up in olive oil and butter and served on toast or tucked into a fluffy omelet is usually enough to satisfy me until I can cook up the rest of my haul in more involved dishes such as soup, risotto or a rich sauce for roast beef, poultry or game. My measurements for the following dish aren’t very exact because I eyeball the ingredients in my rush to get my wild mushroom fix.

Mushrooms on Toast

1-2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
10 -12 ounces mixed wild mushrooms (chanterelles, porcini, matsutake, oyster, etc.) roughly chopped
1 tsp garlic, minced + 1 whole clove garlic, sliced in half
1 tsp fresh thyme, roughly chopped
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 – 2 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp medium-dry sherry
Slices of sourdough or other crusty bread.

In a large frying pan, heat the oil. Add the mushrooms to the pan, making sure not to crowd or layer them. Toss the mushrooms to coat with oil. Add garlic and fresh thyme and toss again. Add a pinch of salt and ground pepper. Sauté gently for 3-5 minutes. If mushrooms begin to dry out, add a bit more oil. Add the butter. When it is melted, stir to incorporate. To finish, add the sherry. If you would like the mixture to be creamier, you can toss in a couple of tablespoons of water, or chicken broth if you have it handy, and let mixture simmer for 1 or 2 minutes longer. Adjust salt and pepper as necessary, to taste.

Note: mushrooms are very accommodating and you can make variations on this dish by adding shallots instead of garlic, substitute dry white wine or the juice of half a lemon for the sherry, throw in a handful of chopped Italian parsley and/or a few red chili flakes like Jamie Oliver does in his book Jamie at Home.

While the mushrooms are cooking, slice the bread into thick pieces. Rub one side of each piece with the slice of garlic. Toast the bread lightly under the grill (or over the stove if you are preparing this outside). If you don’t want toast, you can leave the toasting step out. Put each slice on a plate, spoon the mushrooms over them, let out a big snort and start scarfing them down!

Apples

Apples, Byward Market, Ottawa, Fall 2008

Macaron Madness in Paris

I’ve decided that if Paris were a pastry it would be a macaron. This revelation hit me recently while looking through photos of my trip to France in May where I worked my way through at least a dozen of these dainty confections.

Some would argue that the architecturally complex millefeuille or the decadent éclair are more sweetly symbolic of the city of light. Others might consider Proust’s sentimental madeleine a more apt gastronomic parallel. I disagree. Paris and macarons are a natural match.

For one thing, macarons, like the French capital, are gaily coloured and full of rich flavours. If there is a confection with joie de vivre, it is the light and airy macaron. And this little cookie is also packed with sex appeal. Don’t believe me? Just try walking past a display of these treats without being seduced into eating one.

Macarons are believed to have been invented in Italy in the 8th century and should not be confused with the American coconut-based cookies known as macaroons. Macarons are a delicate mixture of egg whites, icing sugar, granulated sugar, almond powder and colouring sandwiched together with jam or cream.

In this sense, macarons resemble the inhabitants of Paris in that they are thin-skinned and crusty on the outside – and ever so slightly intimidating -- but once you break through their brittle outer shell, these tasty pastries, much like Parisians, are all intense, gooey sweetness and love.

Despite the plethora of online content devoted to the subject of making your own macarons, the other thing they have in common with Paris is that it is impossible to recreate the real thing at home. There is just no substitute for the experience of eating a fragile arôme de Rose-flavoured macaron on the sidewalk outside Ladurée on the Champs-Élysées – just as nothing matches a visit to the city of Paris itself.

Another attribute that Paris and the macaron share is that both lend themselves easily to innovation. Each season, the city’s patisseries compete with each other to introduce new macaron fillings and ever more unusual and exotic flavour combinations. These often reflect new global gastronomic influences proving that the even the most classic of French confections, like Paris, continues to evolve and grow while retaining all the charm and taste that keep those who love it coming back for more.

Macarons now come in a seemingly limitless array of colours and flavours. Nowhere is this more apparent than at Ladurée, the venerable Parisian pastry shop and café where Pierre Desfontaines, in the early 1900s, first thought to take two almond meringues and fill them with silky smooth ganache to create what today, in essence, is a really classy Oreo cookie. Ladurée is Mecca for macaron-crazed fans in Paris. It offers dozens of flavours including the basics (and best sellers) chocolate, vanilla, caramel and pistachio plus seasonal flavours like anise, basil lime, lily-of-the-valley and white chocolate. Ladurée’s original flavours this year included cotton candy, apricot ginger, orange saffron and strawberry poppy flower.

Filmmaker Sofia Coppola is said to have been so inspired by the jewel-toned hues of Ladurée's macarons that she used them as the colour palette for her film Marie Antoinette. Macarons hadn’t yet been invented when Marie was queen of France, but if they had, my guess is she would have reconsidered her edict to "Let them eat cake” in favour of this addictive little creation.

My new favourite destination for macarons is the Patisserie Sadaharu Aoki on the Left Bank. The Japanese-born chef is a fusion master who has been shaking up the Parisian pastry scene in recent years. His sweets may look like classic French confections but they taste decidedly different. Aoki’s unique treats are infused with Asian flavours that include matcha (green tea), yuzu (citrus), sesame and sweet red bean paste. He also produces hazelnut, raspberry, chocolate, orange and other more conventional-tasting macarons favored by traditional palates.

But the award for most inventive macarons must go to legendary patissier Pierre Hermé. I arrived in Paris just as his wasabi and grapefruit macarons were making their debut. They join his other intriguing flavours of olive oil and vanilla, rose, and chestnut, and his best-selling chocolate and passion fruit. At Christmas last year, his seasonal macaron collection of black truffle, balsamic vinegar and chocolate foie gras sold out quickly.

There is no telling what intriguing taste combinations Aoki, Hermé and the other pastry chefs of Paris will come up with next. It seems macarons, like the city that made them famous, are limited only by the imagination.

Sucre à la crème

I went back to Ottawa for a few days last week and found that the brilliant canopy of scarlet and canary leaves I’d walked under near my mom’s house in late September had collapsed to the ground into deep, brown heaps. With the best of fall over in eastern Ontario, I had to content myself with afternoon walks in tepid sunlight and listening to the strangely satisfying sound of fallen leaves crunching under my feet.

I found more comfort in a big slab of sucre à la crème that my mom brought home from the office one day. Sucre à la crème, or sugar cream in English, is a traditional fudge from Quebec. The little squares of pure cream sugar, sometimes flavoured with a hint of maple, are a rich, sweet but simple treat that really seems to suit the cool fall season. Luckily for me, the wife of one of my mom’s colleagues, Louise Perron, excels at the art of making sucre à la crème. She regularly sends batches of it to the office to satisfy the many sweet-tooths on staff – including my mom who manages to bring home some to share…most of the time. Louise’s recipe is prepared in the microwave, making this the ultimate quick sugar fix.

Sucre à la crème Louise

1 cup soft brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 Tbsp butter
1 cup 35% cream
1 tsp pure maple extract (or vanilla)

In a large microwave-safe bowl, stir together the brown sugar, white sugar and cream. Microwave at full power for three minutes. Stir the ingredients and microwave at full power for another three minutes. Stir the ingredients again and microwave for another three minutes. Add the maple extract (or vanilla) and the butter. Using an electric mixer, beat the mixture for around two minutes. Check the texture and beat more if needed.

Pour the mixture into a square glass baking dish and allow to set. This recipe does not call for the mixture to be refrigerated but many others do, for around 1 hour or so. When set, you can cut this into squares to serve but Louise suggests leaving the sucre à la crème in a block until just before you are ready to serve, or eat, it because it will keep fresh longer.