FoodFunk.ca

Well, I’m sick as a damn dog.   Runny nose, aches, pains, and coughing up one-pound blocks of lung butter.
I’ve got a full blown cold.   I picked it up in Ontario, by the way.  A nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to inhale there.
Thankfully, I have the cure for the common cold.  Whenever I start to feel that building pressure in my sinuses, I break out the chicken and chilies.   To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what the active ingredients are in both of these magical foods, but it works.   Once you’ve consumed my magical elixir, your cold, which in a normal person lasts seven to 10 days, will be gone in 48 hours or less.
The key active ingredient in the chicken is not just the whole chicken but more specifically in the collagen of the bones, so this takes some special action to get at it.  The chicken is first simmered whole to cook the whole bird, then the meat is removed (now you’ve got some great chicken for sandwiches or chicken pot pie, etc.), then the carcass is put back in the pot for the long, slow extraction of the boney goodness.  Combined with the magic of garlic and chilies, this is a three-pronged attack on any cold or flu bug.
As an added bonus, this elixir also provides natural male enhancement, unlimited energy and reverses hair loss.  Call now – operators are standing by!



Chicken and chili broth

1 whole chicken, about 3 or 4 pounds
10 – 15 dried chilies
1 head garlic
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black peppercorns

Rinse the chicken and place in your stock pot.   Slice the chilies and knock out all the seeds (you don’t need the heat, just the magic of the chili itself).  Add the chilies to the pot.  Slice the head of garlic so you have two halfs with all the cloves exposed, then toss that in the pot. Cover the whole thing with several inches of cold water and season with the salt and whole black peppercorns.   Place the pot on the stove on high heat until it just comes to the boil.  Reduce heat to medium low and simmer gently for an hour and 15 minutes, skimming off any scum that accumulates on the surface during that time.   Remove the chicken from the broth using a wooden spoon or tongs.  Drain well and place it on a serving platter.  Let cool for 15 minutes or so, then remove all the skin and meat from the legs and breast, adding bones back into the pot as you do.   Place the now-meatless carcass back in the pot and continue simmering gently for another hour or more.   Strain the stock well through cheesecloth.   There are two good methods to de-fat the stock.  One is to do it in batches with a gravy separator, or you can just put the strained stock in a bowl, cover it and put in the refrigerator until cool and the fat will be solidified on top.  Use your stock to make a clear broth consommé (if you’re really not feeling well) or a good old classic chicken soup, as below.

Chicken noodle soup

1 teaspoon vegetable oil or reserved chicken fat
1 stalk celery, finely diced
1 small carrot, peeled and finely diced
1 small onion, peeled and finely minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
A couple of tablespoons of tomato paste
1 litre (4 cups) chicken broth
3 bay leaves
1/2 cup chicken meat, chopped in small dice
1/2 cup dried soup noodles
salt and pepper to taste

Heat your soup pot over medium heat for several minutes then add the vegetable oil or chicken fat.   Add the celery, carrot and onion and gently sauté for five or six minutes.  Add the garlic and sauté another minute.  Add the tomato paste and stir in.   Saute for a couple more minutes then add the chicken broth.  Add the bay leaves, chicken, soup noodles and season with salt and pepper.  Simmer gently until all vegetables and noodles are tender, stirring occasionally.  Discard the bay leaves and serve.

By Mike Hawkins

Last week a sommelier friend of mine gave me five bottles of Shiraz wine with the instructions that because each of them had already been opened and sampled, I was to consume them within three or four days.
Otay.  Mishun accomblished…*hiccup*.
Do you see stars?
Anyway, I found ways to pound through the wine by cooking with it.  On one night in particular, a half bottle of Shiraz got me thinking, “hey, what could I do with this other half of a bottle of Shiraz?”
So after drinking it, I decided to open another bottle and make some supper.   I was in no shape to drive anywhere for any ingredients so supper was going to have to come from food on hand.   I had a few vegetables on hand and a bunch of frozen stuff.
Hmmm….hiccup….there’s some stew beef in the freezer.  Three bucks worth.
I was in no shape to do anything fancy so I slapped a pot on the stove, cut some onion and garlic, opened a can of tomato paste and off I went.   A pinch of thyme, a pinch of rosemary, my usual “gobs” of pepper and supper was well on its way.   The sauce proved to be so flavourful I felt I needed to do little else but just drop the frozen beef in and let stew until tender.
That would, of course, take a couple of hours at least so what was I going to do during that time?
Once again, mishun accomblished…..*hiccup*.
Using a number of techniques I actually learned while sober, the result was a dish that was pretty spectacular for such a lazy and cheap recipe.   The beef was fork tender after a couple of hours and bathed in the most beautiful, velvety thick sauce.   Served up with some garlic mashed potatoes – another super simple dish that’s greater than the sum of its very few parts – this was really a dish fit for a king, or at least someone more accomplished than this cheap drunk bastard.
If you have to go out and buy wine (who does that?), there are plenty available under $12 that are great for drinking and drinking and drinking and cooking.   I recently picked up a Las Moras Shiraz (Argentina) for $9.99 for example.  Nice wine!  Get cooking!

Cheap Drunk Bastard Beef Bourguignon

2 slices of bacon
2 tablespoons butter
1 onion, chopped as safely as you can while somewhat corked
1 stalk celery, chopped (see onion above)
4 cloves garlic.  Just smash them.  Just smash them.
1/2 of a 5 oz can of tomato paste
1/2 bottle of Shiraz or other full bodied wine, plus lots more to drink
1 lb stew beef.  Go cheap or go home.  Frozen solid is just fine.
Hefty pinch of dried rosemary and thyme
Salt and black pepper to taste
Water as needed.
Optional – chopped green onions, chopped mushrooms

Heat a large, high sided fry pan over medium heat for several minutes.  Lay in the two slices of bacon and let cook until just nicely browned.  Remove the bacon and let cool for a couple minutes.  If you can manage not to eat them, break them up and set aside until later.   Add the butter to the pan, then the onion and celery.   Saute gently for a good five minutes until softened.  Add the garlic, then the tomato paste.   Stir well and fry for two or three minutes until the mixture is really fragrant.  (Frying the tomato paste really makes a big difference in the dish and it’s what saves you from having to brown the beef, so don’t skip it.)   Pour in the half bottle of wine and stir well until smooth.   Lay in your frozen beef and coat it with the mixture.  Let simmer for a good 10 minutes until it’s thawed and starting to break apart.  Add in the bacon bits to the pan.  Season well with rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper.   Reduce heat to medium-low.   Let simmer for another 20 minutes or so, then start ladling in some water to keep it from reducing too much.   The idea is to braise, not boil. After two hours or so, the beef should be nice and tender.  Add water as necessary so you have a wonderful, thick gravy.  Serve with garlic mashed potatoes.

Atlantic Canada is not really known for its food.  Some people coming to the region for a visit tend to pack a lunch if they’ve been here before.

We have to admit we do some weird stuff here.  Cinnamon, and I think allspice, are prominent spices in the tomato sauce that goes onto many pizzas in this region.  Among the most popular lunches is a peculiar wrap sandwich called a donair, a kind of cheapened gyro filled with a pseudo-meat that is served with a rather sweet gloop that’s a lot closer to a cake icing mistake than any kind of traditional garlic sauce.   We’re also huge on deep fried food, which of course means we tend to be huge.

Yeah, anyway, pack a lunch.

One saving culinary grace in this region is our ability to make a really great chowder.   Our diet may revolve way too much around Toonie Tuesday at Taco Bell, but it seems just about everybody around here has some great tips on making a great seafood chowder.   I recently had a bowl of fresh chowder at the Snug Harbour Restaurant in Liverpool, Nova Scotia and once again was floored by the natural ability here to make great chowder.  The Boardwalk Restaurant over in Digby, Nova Scotia makes an absolutely killer chowder too.

So here’s how I slap mine together.   My recipe uses a myriad of tips that I’ve picked up over the 11 years I’ve been out here (I’ll note though that I’ve been the son of Nova Scotia-born parents for all of my 39 years).  This is a soup that eats like a meal of course and goes great with any kind of biscuit,  bread or cracker product you can get your hands on.

Since it’s such a popular dish in Atlantic Canada, all places that sell fish here always stock “chowder mix” an economical mix of scrap bits of all kinds of fish they may be selling.  The good mixes will have nice large chunks of everything from Atlantic Salmon and haddock to ocean scallops.  Watch for ones though that tend to dump pre-cooked shrimp in with the raw fish.   Those little things become little rubber pellets once re-cooked with the raw fish.  Also, always pick through your mix to find any bones.  Chowder mix pieces are often bits that are first cut off a large filet before the filet to be sold is de-boned.  You don’t want to catch one of those in your gums!   Go through your mix to cut larger chunks down to a size that’ll fit on a spoon as well.

So now that we’ve talked about the fish, let’s get to the most important ingredient in any seafood chowder:  bacon.   Don’t skimp on this ingredient.  The smokey, rich flavour of a very good quality bacon is one of the main base flavours of your chowder.  Source the good stuff.

One ingredient I’ve recently started to make use of is clam juice.  This is typically sold in 250 ml bottles and a great value for only $1.69.  Along with the bacon, this adds great depth and wonderful flavour to your chowder.

Seafood Chowder

3 or 4 slices good bacon, finely chopped

3 tablespoons butter

1 large onion, finely chopped

1 stalk celery, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2 or 3 Yukon Gold (or other high starch pototo such as Idaho or Russet) poatoes, peeled and chopped into small dice

250 ml bottle of clam juice

3 cups water

4 bay leaves

1 lb mixed seafood, de-boned and cut into small bits

1 cup cream (18 per cent milk fat, known here as “coffee cream”).

pinch of thyme

salt and plenty of fresh cracked black pepper

Start by heating a large soup pot, preferably stainless steel (not non-stick) over medium high heat, then adding the bacon.  Stir and fry the bacon until it’s nicely browned.   Pour off all but about a tablespoon of the fat that accumulates.  Reduce heat to medium and add the butter.  Add the onion and celery and saute gently for about five minutes until the onion is nice and soft.  Add one (just one!)  clove of the garlic and stir for a few seconds.   Add in the potato, the clam juice, water and bay leaves and bring the mixture to a rapid boil over high heat.  Keep the heat at medium-high and boil it hard for 10 minutes.   This helps to release starch from the potato which helps to thicken the chowder later.  Reduce heat to medium-low and add in the seafood.  Simmer very gently for five to eight minutes.   At this point, the chowder can be cooled and stored until you’re ready to finish and serve it later.   When ready to serve, add in the cream, a pinch of dried thyme, a very finely minced clove of garlic and salt and pepper to taste.   I personally like a chowder that has that rich flavour of fresh garlic (not too much though) and is very peppery.   Bring the pot just to a steaming hot (don’t let it boil) temperature over medium-low heat, about ten minutes.  Remove and discard the bay leaves.   Serve with bread, biscuits or crackers and a side donair.

What a great time at Pepper’s Pub last night.  This was taken as I finally started to wind down after a four-hour marathon of hard groove in front of a packed house.   Now, I’m going to get back to cooking. 

I'm thinking next year my costume will be something other than "The Invisible DJ". A few too many people bumping into my table but it was a great time anyway.