After posting about the opening I decided that I would go and have dinner there the same night as I realized that my chef-pal Mario would probably oversee the launch for a couple of weeks. It’s always interesting having an opportunity to speak with a chef who’s opening a new offshoot of his/her brand and I was curious to hear about the impetus for this specific restaurant and what his expectations were. And it only took me a  week to post about it.

As with Madre, Mario elected to stay away from the downtown core and move into other regions of the island. This time, he’s chosen Ahuntsic. Ahuntsic – not exactly the first neighborhood that comes to mind when I think of where I want to go and have meal but successful restaurants have managed to establish themselves in Rosemont and Villeray, so why not Ahuntsic. I do know that the restaurant was already getting a thumbs-up from me even before setting foot inside because apart from the fact that there is plenty of parking (with my getting a spot right in front), the parking is free.

Free is always good but free parking in front of the restaurant turned out to be particularly important as the evening went on, because the the torrential rain and hail that oh, came down about an hour after my arrival would have really sucked had I needed to go feed the meter or trudge back to the car after dinner (the precipitation did flood the Acadie circle [again - but that's not particularly difficult since they forgot to add a drainage system during its reconstruction]).

Anyway, À Table follows similar styling cues as Madre and Raza before it; a certain mimimalist esthetic in a long narrow room with the kitchen set up in the back. Like Madre, À Table is less formal than Raza and has uncovered wood tabletops and a smilarly-sized kitchen that diners can look into. Unlike Madre, À Table’s kitchen is fully open with one station actually jutting out of the kitchen space.

À Table’s concept is that the brigade also does the service, which is similar to what is found at local competitor Kitchen Galerie and David Chang’s Momofuku ko. The restaurant was staffed by a team of five: Mario, his executive sous-chef Rodrigo Flores, and three in the brigade who I didn’t recognize. One – Yasmine – has worked with Mario at Raza, so the team had good familiarity with his flavor and presentation habits.

Brigade as service had me expecting a round-robin service as each member of the brigade would handle something different during the meal but the odd thing, which I think had a lot to do with opening week and my being there, was that Mario elected to cook my meal and Rodrigo doing complete service honors. I think that’ll change in the future.

Like many bistros across the Big Croissant, the menu is scribbled on a chalkboard to offer both flexibilty and cost savings (since you don’t have to spend time printing menus). They’ve elected to use a big one installed over the entryway to the kitchen, which is pretty much visible from every table in the eatery. The handwriting makes me suspect that Yasmine drew the short straw to climb the ladder to write out the offering.

Dinner

Week 1′s inaugural menu consisted of:

• ceviche de thon
• soupe froide de mais
• salade de jicama et tomates
• carpaccio de canard
• filet mignon
• omble de l’artique et caviar (uh, I think that should be omble chevalier)
• pétoncles  pôelés
• risotto aux crevettes
• gateau chocolat, glace dulce de leche
• peches caramelisees, mousse orange/fenouil

So: four starters (ceviche, soup, salad, duck), four mains (beef, fish, scallops, shrimp/risotto), two desserts. Small to keep things manageable but pretty fancy (at least for that part of Ahuntsic) and somewhat surprising in terms of its use of some pretty expensive ingredients on launch menu (filet, scallops and tuna don’t grow on trees). Well, if you’re going to launch, put out your best.

I went for the following:

Carpaccio de canard (panais, amarillo, gingembre): that’s the description that was listed on the board. Little surprised to see parsnip since I equate the things with an autumn/winter offering, but I’ll get to it as it served a purpose. I thought this was the best dish of the evening. The parsnip was served warm as a rough purée (I got an intact parsnip tip that was either intentionally included or managed to escape the food mill – textural element I guess) and were overlaid with slices of very rare seared duck which had been sauced with the aji amarillo and ginger sauce. So, the duck warms up and cooks a bit more from the heat of the parsnip, and stays cool but cooks from the acid of the aji amarillo sauce. Microsprouts, edible flowers, haricots verts and lightly-pickled onions and brussel sprout leaves (the man loves his brussel sprouts) finished dressing the plate. So, we have a plate that has sweet (parsnip), savory (duck), acid (onions, sprouts, aji amarillo) and spicy (aji amarillo). I recognize all of Mario’s Nuevo Latino influences but there’s a Vietnamese intellectual twist here.

Risotto aux crevettes (persil, parmesan): a spicy surprise with grey shrimp, parsley oil, shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano and vegetables; I’ve included a photo of Mario spending the 20-odd minutes stirring the rice to make the risotto from scratch. The rice still retained a nice bite to them and the overall dish had the desired creamy unctuous cheesy consistency expected of a risotto. The dish arrived with the grey shrimp finishing off their cooking from heat of the rice; they were sweet and had that nice underlying umami. The same brussel sprouts are intended to help cut some of the richness but I’m not convinced they were necessary here. The spicy surprise? Chile has been added to it, which gives a slightly tingly aftertaste. This was the dish to order for those with really big appetites: the portion size was very generous in terms of the amount of risotto, the shrimp and the shavings of cheese.

Omble de l’artique et caviar (quinoa, avocat, encre): A nice piece of fish and a fish that I’ve been playing with. The fish arrived with a nice crispy skin that carried a slight buttery taste, and the fish itself was cooked to a nice medium which retained the delicate nature of the char. Nice fluffy quinoa, and textural and savory elements from the mullet roe, the avocado (guacamole) quenelle and the vegetables. As I said, the man loves his brussel sprouts and they’re on the fish as well, but they do work well here as the acid brightens the fish. I would have liked to have just a bit more of the broken ink vinaigrette because that really boosted the savoriness of the dish.

Soupe froide de mais (chair de crabe, pdt): I didn’t eat this but I mention it because I actually wanted to have this for dessert (it’s cold and savory). Unfortunately, they ran out. Boo… hiss… Them’s the breaks of cuisine du marché as the style generally implies limited quantities of everything and it’s not like I identified my dessert selection when Rodrigo took my order. I should have though, as I heard it was really good.

Pêches caramelisées, mousse orange/fenouil: The dessert that I wound up going – slices of caramelised peaches nestled underneath a foam of orange and fennel. Peaches are in season so always a good thing when it comes to market cuisine. Never would have thought that orange and fennel would work together but they kept it in check and it was primarily orange with an anise-y aftertaste. The slivered almonds and filberts added crunch and structure to what would have otherwise been a glass of squishy-soft and liquid.

Wine

Like the other two restaurants, the list is predominantly South American (mostly Argentine) but there are also two reds from Spain and Australia (!) makes an appearance with Yalumba’s Viognier and a Pinot Noir from Scotchman Hills. Reds and whites are available by the glass, but one has to ask what’s currently on offer since that’s not listed on the list. Pommery’s single-serving Pop! also made the list here, so I’ll have to tell them ahead of time to have a silly straw available if Ronny wants to go on her next trip to Montréal.

The house cocktail remains the pisco sour. I declined as I’ve been staying away from pisco since that unfortunate evening with the Colombians and the Peruvians a few years back in Bahia.

I think the list is going to change fairly quickly as they received their liquor license a few hours before opening night. I don’t know what the list will ultimately look like but as À Table deviates more from Nuevo Latino than Madre does, I expect it to eventually offer more regions but not necessarily a whole lot of private imports.

I would have liked to have a Grüner Veltliner since those pair with almost everything and have a nice crispness for summer, but went with a servicable Santa Julia Chardonnay.

Impressions

I have to admit that I’m somewhat of a masochist when it comes to restaurant openings. There’s always something that isn’t quite ready: at Pintxo (day 7) it was the menu and very shaky service, at Madre (day 3) the tables weren’t ready yet and the wine offerings can be charitably described as ”anything palatable we could grab at the Masson SAQ because the liquor license arrived 10 minutes before close” (and that on the day I showed to boot), and that steakhouse in Collingswood (11 days)… it was everything. I elected to risk another opening as I knew that Mario was going to be overseeing the kickoff and wanted to have him tell me his vision and expectations of the new eatery.

Going on day 2 had me dodge one major bullet – the air conditioning was installed and working whereas it hadn’t been fully operational on opening night. I felt this launch was smoother than Madre’s and most things will eventually iron out as they settle in. About the only two things apart from the weather than hampered them on day 2 were:

• no oven – they opened without yet receiving their oven, which isn’t a bad thing given this summer’s hot/humid nature; the flip side is that their own sweet potato rolls won’t be available until it’s installed
• coffee; they’ll need to work on that

That aside, once they get comfortable with the new layout, learn the idiosyncrasies of the neighborhood clientele and figure out what will work best from the market for the neighborhood, I anticipate good things for them, likely to the point where getting a table as a walk-up will probably only work on Tuesdays (so sue me for being lazy and not wanting to call in for a reservation).

What’s going to be of particular interest is Rodrigo Flores, who is tabbed to helm the restaurant. This kid cooks very well, and has demonstrated his ability to handle pressure at both Raza and Madre. While his immediate professional culinary influences have come from Mario’s Nuevo Latino references, his familial background is Mexico and Catalunya. I am hoping that he will bring in Mexican and Catalan elements into his offerings as he further develops À Table.

Successful launch, and people will go, but now the next question for me becomes, will LC uh, “borrow” my Québeçois Latino opening line for her column?

I actually received an out-of-the-blue recipe request from none other than Dr. McHappy.

For those with short memories and in need of a dose of omega-3 fatty acids (and perhaps a couple of rounds of bridge), Dr. McHappy was the one who asked for me to do a molecular gastronomy demo last XMas, which eventually resulted in the creation of the radish sandwich.

This time around, Dr. McHappy asked specifically for recipes but with the caveat that they be low-cost (hey! I can most certainly do low-cost; I just choose to add foie gras to everything) and easy/quick to prepare. And the magic ingredient for which she wants recipes? Those tasty members of the order Teuthida: Squid. Ika (actually that would be イカ). Calamari. 烏賊.

I know why: she’s  is currently walking about trying to transfer information but chances are excellent that she won’t see any demo I care to run this coming XMas period because there’s the little matter of the baby bump that will stop being a bump and shortly become a bundle well beforehand [aside: it's a really small bump - about the size of a small watermelon the last time I saw her]. So, recipes instead.

There is of course the somewhat sticky situation of not having actual recipes since squid to me is a great high quality protein that I can use pretty much anywhere. So rather than recipes, perhaps cooking methods and some ideas as to how to serve?

Eat it as sushi/sashimi

Excellent stuff as it has a slighly sticky yet crunchy consistency which tastes of the sea. Incredibly simple too since it boils down to a practice session for knife skills with one’s yanagi to place intermediate cuts into the piece of squid to make it easier to bite into.

My favorite is kanoko-giri (spotted-fawn cut) but matsukasa-giri (pine-cone cut) and naruto-giri (spiral cut) are equally applicable depending on visual and plating requirements.

An even simpler alternative is to just take that yanagi to make “squid noodles” to serve solo or perhaps with a steamed new potato. Mmm…

Oh wait – two problems here:

1. one needs *really* fresh squid, which is a perennial supply concern when it comes to the Big Croissant
2. Dr. McHappy’s baby bump means no raw seafood for her

Oops.

Boil/Steam

Yeah… that’s the ticket. Delicious, simply cooked squid that’s rapidly cooked under steam or at full rolling boil in salted water for a matter of seconds so that it’s still delicate. And the knife cuts really apply here (specifically matsukasa-giri). The squid can be served warm though it would still continue cooking so probably best to blanch in ice water to stop the cooking process and keep the squid tender. Once refreshed, it can be served:

• alone; with julienned fresh ginger, spring onions and a soy and sesame oil dipping sauce (great accompaniment to white rice)
• alone; drizzled with ponzu (nice clean app)
• as topping for cold noodles like hiyashi chūka (冷やし中華)
• as a component of a seafood salad (along with shrimp and scallop) and a nice light slightly citrus-y vinaigrette made with say Meyer lemons and a good-quality Spanish olive oil
• as the precursor for escabeche/ceviche/tiradito (see below)

I’ve also eaten squid prepared this way in a sandwich with a nice crusty roll, aioli and lightly-pickled cucumbers.

Since I didn’t have a nice crusty roll, aioli and lightly-pickled cucumbers handy for this particular post, I made an alternate squid sandwich with guacamole, tomatoes, red shallots and cilantro on a toasted mini-pita. Mmm… extra tentacle-y goodness.

Sauté the things

Another quickie since it doesn’t take a lot of time to cook (it takes more time to prep). Score the squid (matsukasa-giri is best if you can manage it) and cut into pieces. If heads are available, cut the heads in two.

Only a couple of ideas to start with, but the prepared squid can then be cooked in:

• vegetable oil with some minced grey shallots, and serve on arugula (the squid will wilt the leaves)
• vegetable oil (canola, sunflower) over high heat with fresh julienned ginger, garlic, spring onions and some chile peppers for an Asian style (add a touch of soy sauce for color if you want)
• butter over medium-high heat, adding fresh peas or fava beans right at the end of cooking and finishing off with a bit of soy sauce for color (this was a dish I had at a Japanese restaurant)

For a stir-fry that has a bit more to it, have a small bit of thinly-sliced pork (filet works well) and a selection of mixed vegetables which have been cut to the same size (e.g. ginger, garlic, green and red pepper, white onion, button mushroom, baby corn, water chestnut). Partially cook the squid, then remove from heat. Bring the same pan back up to heat and partly cook the pork, then remove from heat. Sauté the mixed vegetables (starting with aromatics then densest vegetables) until they are partially cooked, then return pork to the pan. Continue cooking until pork is almost completely cooked, then return squid to the pan. Adjust seasoning and serve immediately.

Grill!

Mmm… I love squidsickles. They were my favorite snack when cruising any of Taipei’s night markets because they were savory spicy chunks of protein goodness on a stick.

Grilling requires access to a very hot grill. A konro burning binchō-tan charcoal would be ideal because it produces an incredibly hot grilling environment, but good konro units start at a couple of hundred $ and binchō-tan sells for $50/bag. Propane grills with infrared burners are another alternative, but you can also get excellent results with a cast-iron grill pan that’s been given enough time to heat up (e.g. put the thing on an induction hob on “high” for 5 minutes and watch what happens).

Cut slashes through the squid hood without cutting through the hood. Pat the squid dry with paper towel. Grill until it is just cooked, remove and serve.

Japanese/Taiwanese grilling options could include shio-yaki (salt-grill; sprinkle with salt before grilling), or finishing with a glaze made of soy sauce, mirin and sake (watch for flames) or one of the special barbecue sauces.

There is of course absolutely nothing wrong with serving the grilled squid with a light sprinkly of salt, some Spanish olive oil and lemon. Café Ferreira used to serve grilled squid with tomato sauce (also nice, but the sauce has to be really good but not overpowering).

Plain-grilled squid also makes for a great sandwich or an interesting variant of the proverbial fish taco (you’ll need soft tortilla, a good salsa that’s preferably made from scratch and other toppings like lettuce and avocado).

Stuff the things with morcilla de Burgos

Did I ever mention that the Spanish are probably the best charcutiers in the world? While the French, Italians and Germans (among others) can make some fine product, the Spaniards’s charcuterie skills have them standing hoof and snout above all comers because they simply worship pork (one of my happy things to do is sit quietly and eat Jamón Ibérico de Bellota).

Anyway, everyone who does pork charcuterie makes a version of a blood sausage, whether it be called boudin noir, black pudding, blutwurst or mustamakkara. The best-known from Spain is morcilla de Burgos, and not only is it tasty in its own right, whether served in a bocadillo or as a tapa with pimientos, it’s great as a stuffing for squid hoods.

So here’s how you do it:

Get some sausage (if you can’t get morcilla de Burgos, try boudin noir but avoid British black pudding) and cook it. Once cooked, let cook and then dice into small pieces. Mix with a small amount of sautéed onions and breadcrumbs and then loosely fill the squid hoods with the mixture. Fasten the openings shut with a toothpick and either sauté them quickly in a pan or grill them until the squid is cooked through but still tender (this takes no more than a couple of minutes). Serve immediate with a small amount of a fresh tomato sauce.

Stuff the things with something else

Then again, North Americans as a whole are not exactly big fans of blood sausages, even if it were morcilla de Burgos. Squid hoods are squid hoods and they’re ideal for stuffing so long as they’re not overpacked (squid shrinks when cooked).

A sausage alternative is to use chorizo (either a Spanish or Portuguese one) in pretty much the same manner. A fancier way to do this version is to cook the chorizo, reserving the rendered oil. The squid is stuffed with a cooked rice and onion mixture (+ aromatics of your choice) and very finely-diced chorizo before cooking, but the finished squid is topped off with chorizo foam or air (you’ll need an immersion blender or an iSi whip and a little bit of soy lecithin to make this) .

A sausage-free version would be to stuff with a seafood rice mix (rice, onion/shallot, peas, the minced squid tentacles, some minced shrimp).

A very expensive version of this would be to stuff the hoods with shrimp paste: make some shrimp paste (whole shrimp and either a small food processor to pulse or a thick cutting board and a couple of cleavers) and mix with a brunoise of blanched vegetables of one’s choice (carrot, celery, water chestnut, jicama, pistachios, mushroom etc). Fill the squid hoods and seal with a toothpick and steam hoods until cooked (anywhere from 4-10 minutes depending on size and quantity of filling). Serve hot, or let cool and serve in slices. There is a variant of this which also adds salt duck eggs, but I generally don’t use them unless I know that the eggs aren’t from mainland China (I still have a phobia about their QC for food).

Make caldo de mariscos

Rick Bayless has a recipe for caldo de mariscos which he presented in his “Mexico One Plate at a Time” series on PBS. This is a freeform version I’ve made in the past which can be adjusted depending on the volume and available ingredients:

• 1 kg squid, cleaned and cut into pieces
• 500 g new potatoes (grelots), steamed
• 1 tin tomatoes, diced (I like using whole tomatoes)
• 1 onion, minced
• several cloves garlic, minced
• 1 kg mixed seafood (fish cut into cubes, shrimp)
• epazote (a Mexican herb, which can be omitted)
• oregano
• lime
• cilantro
• minced onion for garnish

Make a squid stock by simmering the squid in water until tender. Remove the squid from the stock (retain) and adjust to have approximately 3L final volume. Sauté the minced onion and garlic in a separate pot. Add the tomatoes, epazote (if using) and oregano; stir and continue cooking for a few minutes. Add the squid stock and bring to a simmer. Add the new potatoes, seafood (dense fish first) and the reserved squid. Continue cooking until seafood is cooked. Adjust for seasoning and serve with lime, cilantro and fresh onion.

Ceviche and escabeche

You can’t really make a squid ceviche or escabeche starting with raw squid but you can do it with cooked squid. I’m not a huge fan of escabeche but I do like Peruvian ceviche/tiradito and I am particularly fond of the purist version, which consists of only five ingredients: lime, salt, fish, chile and onion.

• Make the marinating fluid with lime juice (mix of green limes and key limes), minced chile (traditionally ají amarillo but Thai chile or cayenne chile can substitute), white or red onion (not sweet onions!), and salt to taste. The proportions depend on personal taste and the volume depends on the quantity of squid to be prepared.
• Boil/steam squid until it is almost cooked (this can take less than 1 minute), and shock with ice water to halt cooking. Mix the squid with the marinating fluid and let sit (the exact time depends on how “cooked” one wants the squid, but I’ve done 10-30 minutes)
• Remove the squid and serve immediately (e.g. a martini glass with some bibb lettuce). The marinade can be filtered and served alongside as a leche de tigre shot.

Eat it as hot pot

• I guess the only real challenge with this apart from doing all the prep that’s required is being able to survive the eating experience during the summer (Taiwanese hot pot restaurants are heavily air-conditioned). One needs a hot pot (an portable induction unit with a paella pan works great as does an electric skillet), chicken broth (or kombudashi), and well, stuff to eat including squid.

Other potential hot pot ingredients: squid (hoods and heads) whole shrimp whole scallop and clams fishballs ganmodoki thinly-sliced meats tofu in cubes shiitake and enoki mushrooms Chinese cabbage (e.g. napa) spinach glass noodles

This is pretty simple: while the broth in the hot pot simmers, add pieces of whatever one wants to cook in the broth. Once cooked, remove from the broth, dip and eat. Once finished, the glass noodles can be added to the remaining broth to finish the meal.

The classic dipping sauce is made with a raw egg and one’s taste with soy sauce, sesame oil and Bull Head-brand satay sauce (maybe some Lan Chi chili paste too) but that raw egg is a problem if one is preggers. It can be substituted for pretty much any kind of other dip that doesn’t involve “raw” (ponzu is nice with fish).

That aside, the discussion I had earlier on the practical and artistic aspects of menu planning has me going back and re-evaluating the my earlier endeavors under similar criteria. Turns out I don’t do so well. The menu progression that I created and executed a few years back happens to be one of only three that does work: it “makes sense” and doesn’t have any gustatory jolts along the way.

The “Baie Comeau” was a meal I was asked to make for someone actually from Baie Comeau (no, not Brian), but with constraints which I uncharacteristically accepted to work with rather than my customary “don’t worry about your dietary quirks because I’ll serve it anyway” approach:

• no tentacles
• no tentacle suckers
• no squishy or chewy animal bits
• no cucumbers
• no legumes/pulses
• no melons

Not sure why I said yes. Some were related to difficulty in digestion but none were in the religious or death-inducing categories that I would pay attention to. There was something I just set aside outright after thinking long and hard about it, because I heard “balle au nez”. What I did ignore completely was the suggestion that maybe I could make cinnamon and chile jumbo prawns with mango chutney and Chilean sea bass with caramelized onion mashed potato and pancetta. Those elements are just so… 2005.

The first menu

• quail-sickle

Okay, so it was a very short start.

My original idea for quail never got off the ground but no one ever likes the idea of presenting a little bird on a stick. I mean, the technique works with squidsickles, why shouldn’t it work with quail? You can even get them off the konro that way in Japan and Taiwan.

The second menu

I actually shopped for this menu, which in hindsight 2 years later would have been really cool with some octopus suckers incorporated into the amuse-bouche:

• Strawberry gazpacho with shrimp
• Lobster and foie gras
• Ikura and peas salad
• Duck
• Strip steak
• Cheese
• Some kind of pineapple-based dessert

Foie gras is one of those things that’s always available in Québec (and with no dose of PETA), and since it’s duck foie gras, duck is also readily available. Ditto cows. It was also early summer so Québec lobsters were full and plentiful.

The second iteration ran off the rails pretty quickly after that. That strawberry gazpacho?  It was actually a great idea from my pal Amy as it met all the criteria of being a refreshing early summer dish. The unfortunate situation with à la minute shopping is that there’s always the outside possibility that one hits a pothole, or in this case, fruit mold on pretty much all the strawberries I found at the market (that I distinctly remember). Lots and lots of fruit mold.

The ikura and peas got scratched by the major requirement for fresh peas and fava beans, neither of which were available at the time I was shopping. At this point things were starting to resemble a shopping “fail” I had on Granville Island (also back in 2005; I created two menus to cook for friends and couldn’t find ingredients for any of it).

The eventual menu

• Tsukemono
• Lobster with spring vegetables
• La panolplie des asperges! (cuz it sounds classier in French)
• Chinese 5-spice roast duck
• Strip steak
• Cheese
• Pineapple

The interpretation

Tsukemono : This was more of a ración size but it made for an interesting saladō kickoff. Click the photo to expand. Top right: yama-imo with shoyu glaze (soy, mirin, sake) to demonstrate the love of nebaneba shokuhin (slimy foods). Middle: black tomatoes with komochi konbu (herring eggs on kelp – though I could have glued on the eggs if I had some transglutaminase, I didn’t because it’s actually bought this way). Top left: takuan (daikon rice-bran pickle; generally you buy this unless you happen to own a daikon farm). Bottom right: red carrot shiozuke (salt pickle).

Lobster with spring vegetables : Well, the lobster made it onto the menu. Québec lobster is supposed to be identified by claw bands that say “aliments du Québec” when you visit your local grocer or fishmonger. In all honesty the one I got was a 650 g /1.4 lb female with white claw bands with no writing on them so I have no idea where they nabbed it. This is a variation of something that I made during the Omelette Atonement (another menu experience), but with a couple of minor adjustments, notably in that everything tastes better with some foie gras on it. I’ve also included snap peas, red carrots (at $2.49 for six micro-carrots you better believe I’m going to include them), Québec green asparagus and Peruvian white asparagus. Sauce was a nigori sake reduction. Plating? Blech – composition needs work because it’s visually unappealing.

La panoplie des asperges! In hindsight this is slightly atypical of me since I don’t normally make a standalone vegetable dish because it encourages less-desirable behavior (you know, vegan-ism) but early summer also means local asparagus and I lucked out and found some wild asparagus. If you look carefully past the long pepper, you can see the regular green and white spargle underneath (actually spargle stalks – I used the tips for the lobster). Also finished off with the nigori sake to offset the slight bitterness.

Chinese five-spice roast duck : I remember at the time that I had been visiting Asian grocers on my quest to find bentō ingredients and was constantly passing by the roast ducks. I really like those ducks but getting one wasn’t suitable for this meal because I wanted to actually make one just to say I can. I wound up buying a magret, which may or may not have been the smartest thing to do because one magret costs about as much as a whole roast duck but at least this way there was less stuff left over. The magret itself was dusted with five-spice, long peppers and salt, put into a sous-vide bag with some butter for 3 hours at 57ºC/135ºF and then finished in a pan with a little bit of butter. What was roasted was the skin: crocheted onto a cake rack, roasted for 7 hours at 60ºC/140ºF and then finished off with hot oil and the blowtorch. I didn’t have time to make pancakes and didn’t want to serve just a pile of scallions so it was a microgreen salad with a Meyer lemon vinaigrette and some streaks of hoisin cut with mirin and sake.

Strip steak : A summertime favorite for a lot of people is steak off the grill served with sautéed onions and mushrooms. I have no grill (still saving deposit bottles for that Napoleon PT600RBI with the ceramic infrared burners) but I do however have an induction burner and I do have a grill pan. I decided to use the grill pan for something else. So, one 5 cm /2 inch-thick 680g / 1.5 lb strip trimmed striploin, one frying pan and just a little bit of butter for that Maillard reaction deliciousness. Served with caramelized onion purée (that goo on the plate; made with caramelized onion, demi-glace and nigori sake) and pied bleu and girolle mushrooms that were sautéed in the leftover foie gras fat (and just a little bit more butter).

Cheese : La Sauvagine, a mild soft-crust cow milk cheese from St-Raymond-de-Portneuf in Quebec, and an ash-covered Valencay goat cheese from Poitou in France.

Pineapple : yeah, pineapple – one of the three options within my dessert repertoire. Originally to be another implementation of the chest-clutching buttery roasted pineapple goodness, but it transmogrified into grilled pineapple because I wanted to see what a Le Creuset grill pan coul do. What I found is that the iron content in this grill pan allows the induction unit to heat the thing to over 329ºC/625ºF (gee, does it sear?). The pineapple pavé was marinated in soy sauce and mirin before grilling and it’s served on a sauce made from the leftover marinade, nigori sake, pineapple juice, honey and piment d’espelette. The basil does indeed go well with it (it wasn’t an afterthought).

Photos

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Notes

As I said, this is one of exactly three menus progressions I’ve made which worked harmoniously – no jarring flavors, good transition from dish to dish, no outliers. So what did I learn from this? Nothing at the time, but 2 years later, that I was actually quite lucky that it turned out the way it did. Especially the pineapple.

When I look at this now, I could have had several fails, notably with the tsukemono and the duck as they’re the most overtly Asian elements of the meal. What saved them was probably starting with the tsukemono to reset the palate, and a very restrained use of five-spice for the duck.

It is also a continuing reminder that have to work on oh, plating since everything looks tired and dated. Except when asparagus is involved - that’s just like one really bad basketball game gone wrong.

High-quality protein is always good, but when someone actually catches the fish and then delivers a cleaned fillet in pristine condition, it stops being ”good” and becomes “don’t screw up” because opportunities to play with such rarities are few and far between. It has been a while since I last had lake trout (like oh, 2+ decades) and its very delicate flavor and texture obviates a lot of cooking techniques and stongly-flavored ingredients.

Low temperature poaching in oil was a possibility, but temperatures were pushing 30 and I didn’t need to add to that by turning on an oven for the better part of an hour. Steam oven? Yeah! Oh wait – I don’t have one (boo…). Okay – back to multi-step preparations.

I actually developed this recipe as an offshoot of some fish discussions with my pal Amy, and while I never posted my interpretation of her recipe ideas, I did do some stuff with the arctic char I broke down for that development (see here, here and here).

Trout and char are both delicately-flavored salmonids so a little finessing of my omble chevalier dish begat the following:

Ingredients

• Trout fillet (preferably a lake trout or salmon trout for the size and special taste)
• mixed mushrooms (I had shiitake, shimeji and king oyster)
• new potatoes (grelots); approximately 3 per serving
• dashi (I was using shellfish dashi that I had made previously; standard katsuodashi would work very well too)
• small knob of fresh ginger, peeled and sliced thinly
• sweet white onion cut into brunoise for garnish (approximately 1 tablespoon)
• orange bell pepper, but into brunoise for garnish (approximately 1 tablespoon)

Preparation

Skin the fish and trim the fillet into an appropriate portion size (approximately 100-125 g). Salt and pepper both sides of the fillets and then carefully pan-roast in beurre noisette until just past medium. Remove from pan and tent with foil; fish will continue to cook while it rests.

Steam potatoes until tender.

Heat dashi until simmering, and add ginger slices. Allow to infuse for several minutes, then add mushrooms. Slowly poach mushrooms until just cooked. Adjust dashi broth for seasoning with salt, pepper and soy sauce (Japanese or Taiwanese for flavor profile and color).

Service

Cut the new potatoes in half on the bias and plate cut side down. Remove mushrooms from dashi and plate over the potato. Strew the onion and bell pepper brunoise around the potato and mushrooms. Blot the fish to remove excess oil and discharge. Top the potato and mushrooms with the fish. Strain the dashi and spoon the dashi over the fish.

Serve with a mid-weight Pinot Noir (I had a 2007 Oak Bay Family Reserve Pinot Noir from the Okanagan), a lighter Chardonnay that isn’t overly oaked, or a Tokaji .

Notes

And there you have it: la truite saumonée avec les champignons asiatiques, grelots et le dashi parfumé au gingembre (lake trout with mushrooms, new potato and ginger-scented dashi). Thanks Emmanuel!

As an unrelated aside, making this dish today is one prime example of why LED lighting and induction cooktops are the only way to go when designing any kitchen (new or reno). 28ºC with a humidex pushing things into the mid-30s and having to work with a stovetop that throws heat really made it a bit of a challenge.

What’s different is the technique, as most French applications break the skin and lay the bird flat, while Chinese applications leave the bird whole, using a technique quaintly called “the glove method” (see my original eGullet post).

Why am I scribbling about an old post I did on a bulletin board? Lead-in: I need something to lead into the blah-blah about the anniversary of the Buttter Event and I’m already late on that one.

Anyway. Martin Yan can take the skeleton out of a duck with a cleaver in under one minute using this method. I don’t do this as often but I do know that I can generally debone a chicken in under five minutes and just over 20 if I have to stop and take photos.

The stuffing can be whatever is required for a particular dish; for this particular demo, I ground some pork loin and flavored the mince with mirepoix and lobster mushrooms that had been rehydrated in white port. Since the back of the bird generally doesn’t have any meat, the purchase and use of additional chicken breast gives a rounder overall shape.

Photos

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Notes

Deboning poultry is always a good way to test/demonstrate one’s knife skills, and I think mine are pretty good as I can zip through birds without too much difficulty. The glove method can be used on any bird, though it’s easier with medium-sized ones like chickens and ducks rather than something too small (quail are the worst) or too large.

The resulting bird is a different way to prep a showcase dish, and it’s always good for laughs at carving time, especially when you don’t tell anyone that you’re doing a homage to Mortal Kombat’s Sub-Zero.

And yes, I did burn the freaking roast.

It’s pronounced “meal-a”, with the “a” pronounced as it is in “apple”, and it’s essentially a century-old German company whose products are designed by overachieving anal-retentive engineers. Most people know them for vacuum cleaners and dishwashers (the LaPerla is the best on available bar none) but they happen to make other stuff too, like kitchen appliances and laundry machines including a rolling iron platform. It’s all good stuff since their wares are seriously over-engineered for those “just in case” failsafe scenarios.

Miele happens to have a Miele Gallery Showroom in the greater Montreal area now, which is great because it’s entirely dedicated to their products. Since Miele doesn’t have its own retail presence, that means these galleries are designed to just show off the hardware and how the individual items can be installed and grouped together. Sort of a “kick the tires and open the hood” kind of place for high-end appliances but without the hassle of someone flitting around trying to make commission. Neat concept. What’s not so great is the location, since it’s in Laval. Laval I guess is okay. Going to Laval on a weeknight from the southern apple fields? Not fine.

Apart from showcase stuff, the Montreal Gallery does have a fully functional demonstration kitchen available for hire for private functions that happens to be equipped with:

• H4882BP MasterChef Series single oven
• H4892BP2 MasterChef Series double oven
• H4080BM MasterChef Series speed oven
• DG4080 MasterChef Series steam oven (all four of them)
• ESW4822 MasterChef Series warming drawer
• CS1223 I CombiSet Program induction wok unit
• CS1012 G CombiSet Program gas cooktop
• CS1421 S CombiSet Program salamander
• CVA4062 Built-in Coffee System
• DA5000D Classic Series 42-inch island hood
• KF1911 Vi MasterCool Bottom-Mount Fridge/Freezer
• G2832SCi LaPerla dishwasher (did I mention it’s the best dishwasher currently available?)

I got an invitation to the Gallery’s inaugural cooking demo which I thought was pretty cool as I wanted to see how the steam oven and the CombiSets work in a “live” environment (with food and stuff). So what was on the demo menu?

• Mesclun salad with lemon vinaigrette serve with a goat cheese stuffed phyllo
• Salmon and asparagus paupiette, basmati rice with crunchy vegetables and fish stock white butter sauce
• Caramelized bananas with salted caramel and roasted almonds

So what happened? I saw that I generally have better knife skills and overall mise en place: I chopped red and yellow bell peppers. I peeled and trimmed one asparagus shoot. I rolled asparagus in salmon fillets (twice, but others took my paupiettes, leaving me with some less-than-stellar exemplars). I used the induction wok (weird – I don’t normally use a wok, but the CombiSet is fast). I declined using a blow torch on some banana, primarily as I already own a blowtorch and go medieval on a variety of foodstuffs. I plated. I confirmed that I really hate working with phyllo. Really, really hate working with phyllo.

It wasn’t a huge demo of everything the kitchen was equipped with but everything was used except the salamander CombiSet. Too bad, but I got to watch the broiling platform rise up from its base and go back down (whee!).

All in all, a really nice time especially after a pretty harsh drive from the southern apple fields (remember my Road Warrior reference? just like the photo, but in springtime). The recipes were nice if a little tame but they could be adapted to larger gatherings. Except for the phyllo (erk).

Unfortunately, there was a bit of a down side to the evening as I left the Gallery thinking ”dang - I so need that DG4082 MasterChef Series steam oven with the straight door handle.”