Go to meals - Pan Roasted Salmon and Rosti

I love exploring new dishes and recipes but on weekdays when you are working or on a Friday night, after a long week, I prefer to go to my tried, tested and true meals.  Its meals that are simple to make, without fuss and where each bite brings us a sense of relief and comfort.  K and I have a few of these dishes and over time, I'm hopeful I can share all of them with you.

So first up is K's favorite, Pan Roasted Salmon and Rosti.  This is very simple to make, quick and requires minimal prep.  I'll try and focus on timing and sequence of things and help you understand when and how long to do tasks so everything is ready at the same time.  The key to being successful anytime you cook is the mise en place, means 'everything in place'.  This refers to all the prep involved before you actually do the cooking.  So washing, cutting and prep meats and vegetables and getting everything together in one place before you cook. If you are well prepared it makes cooking much easier and allows you to time things more effectively.

Having said that, let's start with the ingredients.  There are 4 components to this meal - the salmon, the rosti, a green, and a dill sour cream.  For the green, I typically just use arugula because I like it and simple to make but you can substitute that with any veg or green salad.

The mise en place

Recipe for 4 people
Ingredients:
Component 1 - Salmon
4 Fillets Salmon
Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper

Component 2 - Rosti
2 Yukon Gold Potatoes
Knob of butter (don't use margarine, if you want to make this lower fat, use olive oil)

Component 3 - Salad
1 lb Arugula
Lemon
Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper

1 small container Sour Cream
Fresh Dill
Lemon Zest
Worcestershire Sauce
Tabasco
Salt and Pepper



Follow this in sequence:
Preheat oven to 350
Wash and dry arugula in strainer
Peel potatoes and shred potatoes in cheese grater
Zest one lemon in a bowl and reserve lemon for later use
Finely chop up a small hand full of fresh dill (should come up to about 3 tablespoons after chopping)
Mix chopped dill, lemon zest, sour cream 3 dashes of Worcestershire sauce, 2 dash of Tabasco together and season with salt and pepper to taste - set aside
Drizzle salmon with a bit of olive oil and season with salt and pepper

Heat cast iron skillet to medium heat (if you don't have a cast iron skillet, use a heavy bottomed fry-pan)
Add knob of better to skillet and put shredded potato in.  Spread out the potato in the skillet evenly.  Let this fry as you move to next step.

In the mean time, heat up a second oven-safe fry pan to medium high heat.  Add olive oil to the pan and lay the salmon down skin side up. Fry for about 1-2 minutes or until golden brown.
Flip the salmon and then immediately put the fry pan into the oven - bake for 6 - 8 minutes depending on the size of the fillets. I like my salmon medium - so if you like it cooked more a couple of minutes longer.
Next, using a flat cutting board, lay it on top of the skillet with potato rosti, flip the skillet over and leave the potato on the cutting board.  Add another knob of butter (or olive oil) and carefully slide the uncooked side of the rosti back onto the skillet. Cook for another 8 -10 minutes until cooked through and golden brown.

Take the salmon out of the oven once its ready and leave it in the pan to rest for a second.
Mix the arugula with a squeeze of lemon, olive oil and salt and pepper.
Remove rosti from the pan and cut into 4.
Plate arugula, salmon and rosti and serve with dill sour cream (good for both salmon and potatoes.)
If you do try this out, be sure to let me know how it turned out.  Enjoy!

Runny Gravy and the "Best Wings in the City"

I had the rare pleasure (actually not so rare) of going out for a nice lunch with K and baby A yesterday.  It was great because it gave us an opportunity to cross one off our 'list'.  You see, we have a list of food establishments we would like to visit before we move back to the suburbs in the summer.  After living downtown for 2 years, we finally caved and bought a house in Vaughan so Baby A will have more room for her forays around the home.  (Sorry for the tangential direction I took this post, back to the food...)  Anyways, I love cooking and cook a lot at home so we tend to dine out less.  That being said, we probably eat out or order in once a week for convenience's sake.  Now that we have a 9 month old bundle of energy in our laps, we tend to order in more than we eat out.  We have our favorites like Enoteca Sociale, Pizza Libretto, Pho Tien Thanh, Golden Turtle and now the newly found Khao San Road for dinners and School, Mildred's and Le Select for brunch.  The problem with having favorites is that you continue to gravitate to them because they are your favorites.  And since there are only so many times you can go out - not to mention limited dollars to spend - you end up missing out on many other great establishments.

We've had our fair share of visits to some of Toronto's top restaurants but there's a list of spots that are not necessary fine dining or fancy, but infamous for one reason or the other, that K and I want to try before we move ourselves out of the downtown core. I won't go through the entire list here, but I'll give you some examples.  The Real Jerk at Queen and Broadview is legendary for serving really good Jamaican food for the last 28 years.  They are closing down within the month because the building has been bought and they have been given notice to move. I can't let myself live knowing I didn't taste some down right dirty (in a good way) jerk pork from a Toronto institution, so that made the list.  Then there's The Wheatsheaf, serving Toronto since 1849 and self-proclaimed oldest pub in Toronto and home of the "Best Wings in the City".  What? "Best Wings in the City"?  Just up the street from me, the spot I drive by almost everyday?  The best wings?  Sorry for the double take but anything deep fried gets my mouth watering but wings are on a whole different level.  I LOVE WINGS!  Is that clear?  I LOVE WINGS!  And naturally, The Wheatsheaf is (was) on the list.  It comes as no surprise to you then that I was thoroughly ecstatic when K suggested we visit this fine establishment for an easy Friday lunch.

I'm not a restaurant critic and I'm not going to turn this into a review.  But here's my two cents.  I go to a bar/pub expecting to eat bar/pub food. I have a taste for refined cooking but also like to indulge in greasy everyday grub, bar foods no exception.  After all, there's a time and place for everything. So when I go to a bar/pub, I have slightly different expectations than if I went to Lucien or One.  So with that said, I will have to say I was both underwhelmed and disappointed. 

The food in general was not that bad.  We had calamari dinner with Greek salad (do the Greeks call it Greek salad and what makes a salad Greek? If lettuce comes from California, tomatoes come from Ontario and feta comes from a tub, can it really be Greek?  I digress), lentil soup, fries with gravy and an order of the "Best Wings in the City".  Calamari was good, perfectly cooked, well seasoned, lightly breaded and had a nice light crunch.  The 'greek salad' had a bit too much dressing for my liking but was passable.  The lentil soup came cold but otherwise tasted like lentil soup you would expect from a bar.  Now the wings.  The wings came piping out. They were large roaster sized wings.  They were fried perfectly, without batter and had a very nice crisp to them.  The were moist and juicy and I have to admit, as wings, they were fantastic.  But every wing needs a sauce and I'm sorry...for all the good the wing did, the sauce was utter failure.  I ordered medium since K doesn't share my fondness for hot and spicy.  The spice level for the sauce was right for medium but it was very sweet and ketchupy.  Now I spent my early adolescent years in Thorold and St. Catherines which is a stones' throw away from Buffalo.  Cross-border wing runs was an integral part of my early food experiences.  So to get this sweet ketchupy sauce for what would have otherwise been a really good win was a complete disappointment.  I'm a purist, give me that butter vinegar hot sauce that has made buffalo wings so famous. Different strokes for different folks and I guess I'm just a Duff's kinda guy.  But that was not the worst of their transgressions.  Fries and gravy is a Canadian thing. Its really hard to screw up fries and gravy.  I mean, can you imagine the Brits screwing up fish and chips?  Or the french screwing up croissants?  I know I'm in a watering hole so I will forgive the fact that the fries were frozen.  But the gravy that came with my fries was runny like soup stock.  If I dip my fry into gravy and the gravy slides off of the fry, guess what?  The gravy needs some thickening.  It needs to stick to the fries.  Gravy should not share the same consistency as water or au jus.  We all know that fries and gravy is not the healthiest thing to eat, so we don't eat it that often.  Which is why when we eat it, we expect it to satisfy a long enduring craving.  But this was the disappointment of the week.

I know it may seem petty to whine about wing sauce and gravy but mastering basics turns ordinary into extraordinary.  Look, I'm sure the Wheatsheaf is a fine establishment.  The service was friendly and quick.  But 'Best Wings in the City' is a little ambitious and the overall experience was a little underwhelming.  Ah well, just because we have a list, doesn't guarantee everyone on the list will be good.

My Inaugural Post

Why hello there and welcome to my new blog. I have never written or managed a blog before so be patient as I work out the kinks.  For those who know me, you know that I love food - all kinds of foods.  Refined foods, street foods, Italian food, French food, Chinese food....as long as you can safely digest it, I love it. Not only do I love food and visiting some of the best restaurants our city has to offer, I'm also an avid home cook.  I tend to post many pictures of my food creations to Facebook. Some of the comments I receive assume that I have a special culinary skill set but the reality is, I've never really been professionally trained.  Admittedly, I have been around food all my life and enjoy cooking. I've had a more than my fair share of practice time but I would say most of the dishes I cook at home are easy, accessible and focuses seasonal market inspirations. 

Both K (my wife) and I love Italian food and will have pasta at least once a week. I have a Chinese background so that figures prominently into our diets.  But you will find many different kinds of food in my day to day cooking.  I find inspiration from recipes but never cook off recipes.  Cooking to me is about intuition.  Recipes can guide you but when you cook at home, it will make life much easier if you can quickly adapt to what's in your pantry versus buying a package of something for a recipe when you won't likely use that ingredient again. 

K doesn't cook much but I don't mind.  I hate cleaning and that's her contribution to dinners at home, so I think we have a pretty good deal going here.  I'm here to share everyday home cook meals with anyone who is interested.  From time to time, I will post our culinary adventures outside of home and periodically, I may use this as a forum to vent on all kinds of crap that bother me.  If you are looking for fancy schmancy refined cooking techniques, this not the place (although I will have some of that here and there).  I'm hoping to post at least twice a week but we'll see how that goes.

In the meantime, here's some pics from the New Year's Eve meal I put together.  Enjoy!

 Our first course started with a platter of fresh PEI oysters and massive shrimp (u12 count).  Not much I need to say about that.  But for those who care, I steep my shrimp to get optimal texture and flavor.  I start with a pot of water, add a bunch of kosher salt, some black peppercorns, a bay leaf and a wedge of lemon.  I bring that to a boil and then throw my shrimp in.  I cover the pot, take it off the heat and let it steep.  How long? It depends on the size of shrimp.  For these massive ones, I steeped it for 6 minutes, then took it out and threw it in an ice bath right away to stop the cooking process.

 One of our favorite food items at the Lo household are crostinis.  We love them and make all different kinds.  For our second course, we had a crostini with roasted eggplant and red peppers, fresh buffala Mozzarella, walnut pesto and crusty calabrese bread.  The key to this is fresh ingredients.  Everything bought at the market and everything fresh.  It's all about the ingredients, oh and really really good olive oil.  I brush my calabrese bread with a garlic oil I made.  Eggplant is slow roasted in olive oil.  Peppers are broiled and peeled.  Pesto is uber simple - just puree toasted walnuts, parmesan, basil, garlic (i like to poach the garlic cloves for a minute or 2 first), olive oil and salt and pepper.  And if you are too splurge, splurge on the cheese and the olive oil, you won't regret it.  Its absolutely fantastic.

 Third course was our beef course. Beef carpacio with arugala, shaved grano padano, and pickled shallots.  Again this dish was uber easy to make. The thin slices of beef is sweet and velvety. I like the peppery contrast of the arugula, saltiness of the grano padano and the tartness of the pickled shallots.  And of course, really really good olive oil.  Start with a really good piece of meat. I used an 8 oz Canadian AAA filet.  I put that in the freezer for 2 hours. In the meantime I quick-pickled the shallots with white wine vinegar, a bit of dijon mustard and S&P.  After 2 hours, I take the filet out of the freezer, cut it into thin slices. I put each slice between 2 pieces of saran wrap and pound the slices of beef flat with a heavy fry pan.  Take a handful of arugula and toss it with a squeeze of lemon wedge and drizzle of olive oil.  Lay that on top of the beef, shave some grano padano and top arugula with some of the pickled shallots.  Season with salt and pepper and drizzle with really good olive oil.

 Next course we had was the French Laundry's version of Lobster mac'n'cheese.  Admittedly this is not a simple dish.  Thomas Keller's recipes tend to be made up of 5 other different recipes.  It's pretty complicated and definitely not a beginner's dish.  But if you can do it, it is luxurious, rich and so damn tasty.  Here's a dummy version of how I did this.

First I took 2 x 1&1/4 lb lobsters and steeped it (similar to what I did with shrimp above).  De-shelled the lobster and set the meat aside.  Took lobster body and shells and made a lobster broth with tomatoes, carrots and tarragon.  I let a 3 gallon pot reduce to about 2 cups of broth.  I strain this and add a cup of heavy cream. I reduce that by 1/3 again and strain it again. 

For the parmesan crisp, I just shave some fresh parmigiano-reggiano onto a silpat (about 2 teaspoon/crisp) and put it into a 325 degree oven for about 8 minutes.  Take it out, let it cool and put in a dry sealed container until ready to use.

For the lobster, I whipped up some beurre monte (for simplicity sakes, you can just used melted butter or clarified butter) and kept it at 175 degrees.  This ensures the lobster doesn't get over cook and is tender and buttery.  I poach the lobster in the beurre monte for a few minutes until its cooked.

To assemble the dish, I warm up the lobster broth, cook the orzo, add to the lobster broth, add a dollop of mascarpone cheese to make the 'macaroni' part of my dish.  I top it with my butter poached lobster and parmesan crisp.

Finally, our last course was a chocolate pot du creme.  This creation actually belonged to my wife K who got this recipe from the newest Iron Chef Zackerian while he was a guest on 'The Chew'.  It was rich, creamy and super chocolately. 

Hope you enjoyed the first post and be sure to come back for more.