I’m sitting at Ezras wine bar just up the street from my place, reflecting on the last two secret pickle supper clubs. I am left feeling really good about things. The first supper that we did in January went pretty well, but there were certainly problems with operations and getting the food out with the quality level that I felt was needed. I was a sad chef.

The first event took place on a freezing cold night of January where they will, at the Fair Trade Jewelry Atelier on Parliament. Our kitchen, based in the next unit over, made my condo feel like a palace. It was the ice cream shop kitchen that consisted of two electric burners and one small convection oven and a sink. We (Simon and I) would start each course, and then I would come running out, smash my knee on something in the alley, pop into the room and start a lecture about food. Out of breath, I would rip through some powerpoint slides really really fast, run screaming back into the kitchen, remembering not to smash my knee on anything. We’d finish the food, throw it in a hotel pan (which we had no good way of heating up to keep the food warm) and fly back to the dining area where our plating station was ready with nice cold plates for our once hot food. lather, rinse and repeat until done. Needless to say I would have liked things to be different.

My wife and I stopped by the atelier a week before the last event to check out the space and chat with Ryan about the upcoming dinner. I was concerned that we didn’t sell this out, that the last dinner maybe didn’t go well. Ryan talked me down though, my wife said “I TOLD YOU”, and then we moved on to brainstorming. Ryan made a few good suggestions about using the space more effectively. I had not considered making such radical shifts in plan, assuming Ryan would not be into it. And after seeing the photos of the CanLit event, it’s clear he is willing to let that space get super crazy.

For the second event, we changed it all around. We moved the kitchen out of the neighbors ice cream shop and built an ad hoc kitchen in the front windows of the shop. We put up posters of the event to let people know what we were doing. We got portable burners and an a small oven which really did the trick when we had to get the food out. All of a sudden, we had hot plates. And hot food not 10 feet from the guests. And a completely interactive experience where guests could come up, take pictures, and ask questions and see what we were doing. It also allowed me to talk about the food and the origins of each dish and the region in general. And we did the dinners with a smaller staff which helped keep the prices in line. It was like night and day.

The food turned out really good. And I was a happy chef again.

As we do more and more of these dinners, they will get tighter and tighter. Alexa is in her groove with getting the word out and is doing a kick ass job with literature and supporting info. Ryan and I have some pretty neat – dare I say revolutionary – ideas about future dinners. Stay tuned and watch this space.

The Next Secret Pickle Dinner will be a multi-course vegetarian dinner with wine pairings. This will NOT be the kind of food you have seen before in Toronto. It will be contemporary, revolutionary and just plain awesome.

I make this all the time – its really kick ass. I read it in a Pierre Herme cookbook a while back, but have modified the process to be a little safer – less likely to overcook. His recipe calls for you to flash the tart for 11 minutes in a hot oven, but there is too much room for error here. I’ve lowered the temp to 325 and added a couple of minutes to the final bake time. I also add nutella to the chocolate layer which makes it extra lovely.



CRUST:
285 g butter
150 g confectioner’s sugar
100 g finely ground blanched hazelnuts
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
490 g flour

Method
Set oven on 375 or 350 convection

Cream butter. Add sugar, hazelnuts salt and vanilla extract. Slowly mix in the eggs and continue mixing until smooth. Add the flour and mix to combine, should be no more than a minute. chill in fridge for 1 hour.

Remove from Fridge. Flatten dough, push it into a tart pan, and cover the base with parchment and pastry weights (I use dried cannelli beans). Bake for 20 minutes or until half cooked.

FILLING Layer 1:
200g Nutella

FILLING Layer 2:
150g bittersweet or semisweet chocolate
200g unsalted butter
5 egg yolks
50 g sugar
150g chopped hazelnuts
100 g nutella

METHOD:
Drop oven to 325 convection.

While the crust is cooling, spread the 200g of nutella (use what you need) to cover the bottom of the crust. Let cool.

Meanwhile, melt the chocolate and butter over a double boiler. mix together using a rubber spoon until smooth and incorporated. Add the vanilla, sugar and eggs in batches, mixing carefully to combine but not whip. Fold in the 100g of nutells. Pour into the tart shells and let cool slightly.

Bake at 325 convection for 10-12 minutes until the top is dull. If you start to see bubbles form on top, remove the tart from the oven immediately. Serve cool, not cold.

Piedmont dinner is upon us. Wines have been acquired, and menu has been finalized. I’m personally looking forward to returning to one of the best places I have been – Northwest Italy. We are all about sharing, and I think we can say we have a pretty killer six course meal coming up for those who could make it out to Cabbagetown.

Our menu as it stands:

Artichoke tart with bagna cauda
Vitello Tonatto
Risotto al Barolo e Funghi
Bollito Misto alla Piemontese
Misto de Formaggi
Torta di Nocciole

For those of you who signed up, looking forward to seeing you! If you couldn’t make it, we’ll be announcing the next one soon!

http://www.secretpicklesupperclub.com

More details to follow!

I’ve put the recipes for anything complicated into a PDF document for everyone.  Alot of the guests were asking for these, and I hope they are useful.

In some cases, the recipes are approximate, as I don’t measure things too closely for this kind of food – its more of a “feel” approach.  So make sure (with the exception of the pastry course) that you taste for salt and acidity levels.  These recipes might need a little more or less vinegar.   Salt is based on how you like it too, so season little by little and taste until you like it.

Email me if you have any questions or see any spelling errors.

Secret pickle recipes

Sources

Depasquale brothers – Near Islington and Queensway

St Lawrence Market – Church and Front st

Pimenton – Mt Pleasant Ave

For the record, I very much enjoyed last night’s dinner for “Society of the Secret Pickle”.  In fact, it was a kick-ass event in my book.  That is the way a party should be thrown.

It’s one thing to cater a dinner party – I have done many. “Order-prep-transport-setup-cook-serve-clear-repeat-clean-breakdown-go-home” is how I felt when I worked for someone else. Working for myself, and especially with the launch of Little Kitchen, I have had the pleasure of being able to interact with my guests more directly. I meet fascinating and engaging friendly people, understand their likes and dislikes around food, and generally have a great time. The first Secret Pickle dinner, “A tasting tour of Spain” was no exception.

Researching the dinner, as it was based on more traditional rather than interpretive ideas, was a great exercise as well. I’m kind of a “Spain-eophile” anyway, so it wasn’t as much “work” as curiosity. Coming up with a good way to present it was a bit challenging. I think I have some good ideas on how to improve my delivery for the next one.  I’m thinking “Charades”, “Name that mystery meat you are eating” game, or acting out each dish through interpretive dance (don’t laugh, I actually had to do that for a table when I was working in Portland).

All that being said, it was the guests that made the party. Meeting people and talking with them about food and cooking is really a large portion of what keeps me going. It was great to connect the names with the faces and personalities. Its great to see people from as far away as Montreal coming out for the dinners and for Birthday celebrations. I could tell people really enjoyed themselves; not just from the food, but also from the excellent wines and the hanging out parts.

It is the biggest reason for my love of open kitchens : dialog.  Seeing people enjoying the food  and talking with them about food is a great experience. I only wish I had more time to spend with the guests. I will ensure that future events should allow for this. Some cooks prefer to hide in the kitchen, away from the guests. I want to cook AND hang out.

The staff was kick-ass. I love working with professionals who know what they are doing. Love it.  They are difficult to find, but when you do, you hang onto them. I am looking forward to working with Simon (until he opens his own place – stay tuned) and Toby – who could run his own place. And the organizers – Ryan, Gerry, Cybelle and Alexa – really pulled the non-food stuff together. What a great event this turned out to be.

Recipes are forthcoming.  Presentation (in its entirety) is here. If you have any questions about that or the dinner, shoot me an email.  I’m looking forward to the next one.

“It’s the winter holiday season, kids. That’s right, all the super important holidays are upon us: Christmas, Chanukah (not really that important in the big scheme of things, but many days of it), the First of Muharram, Kwanzaa (VERY big in California), Masa’il, Sharaf, and lets not forget Tohji-taisai! ”

“That’s right, kids. And there would have been even more if David Koresh and the Branch Davidians were still around. But that was a long time ago, and we need to move on”.

For every one of these holidays, there are people who don’t have the holiday dinners that you and I take for granted every year. Some of these families don’t have much food at all. Now, Holidays are one of the most important times of the year for families to be together. This is a time when they should be focused on each other..not on worrying about what, if anything, will be on the table.

Check out HOHOTO.ca, the Toronto-based, crowd-sourced charity event to support the Daily Bread food bank. They need donations. And ut really doesn’t take much. A small donation that you might normally spend on pumpkin-spiced lattes in a week can give a family a great meal.

Please help. Support hohoTo and make a better December for a needy family.

People often ask me about my pastry. “How did you get it like this?” is something I hear time and time again. I try to make my own pastry for all my food. Phyllo dough is an exception because store-bought is better than what I could make at home.

So here is a list of my top ten “things to keep in mind when making pastry”.

1. Have clean and DRY equipment. It’s amazing what a drop of fat will do when you try and whip egg whites. Or a drop of water when you are going to make molded chocolates. You don not want to throw out $10 worth of ingredients because there was a “little drop of something” in the bowl. Get them super clean and super dry before starting.
2. Choose the appropriate pastry recipe. If your filling is super sweet, don’t use a pate sucree – it will just be a big mass of sugar – use a pie dough or something with more fat and less sugar. Likewise if your filling is going to contain alot of eggs and minimal sugar, go with a sweet dough.
3. Have your eggs and dairy at room temperature. Eggs whip better when they are warm. Mixing cold cream with warm melted chocolate for mousse or pastry cream will just create a mess when the chocolate seizes up.
4. Do not overmix your pastry dough. Once the dough comes together, STOP MIXING! All you are doing at that point is making pasta dough, and your pastry will come out brittle and hard.
5. Sift dry ingredients. Its not just to get uniform distribution in the liquid, but it helps ensure your leaveners are evenly distributed throughout your pastry.
6. Use more Butter. While shortening makes your pastry feel good, butter makes it TASTE good. I don’t use shorteneing very often, I use butter, and oil for certain vegan pastries.(You might also consider duckfat, porkfat or beef tallow for savory dishes, but make sure you add a little water.)
7. Use decent, and absolutely FRESH ingredients. Not using organic flour probably won’t wreck your pastry, but if there are moths flying around in the bag, time to order new flour!
8. Be careful when par-baking pastry shells. If your recipe calls for you to put your pastry in the oven to bake it part way, make sure its only part way. Sometimes people bake pastry until its done, only to realize the tart goes back in the oven for another 30 minutes. Uh oh!
9. Use moisture barriers. Brush the bottom of your tart shells with some egg york or a thin layer of melted chocolate (make sure it’s a THIN layer). This helps keep the pastry dry if you use a wet filling like pastry cream.
10. Know the basic ratios. 1+2+3 cookie dough will get you far. So will 4+2+1 for pie dough. There are a few key ones, and knowing them is a simple and effective way to ensure you have properly scaled a recipe. These ratios are available in good scolarly pastry books (“Baking at Pastry at the CIA”) and some home-based books (like Michael Ruhlman’s book “Ratio”).
11. Get a substitution list. Books like Cookwise are wonderful references to have handy if you are out of something or can’t find a certain ingredient. No cake flour? Use .8 parts AP flour and .2 parts cornstarch. No AP? 1/2 bread + 1/2 pastry.
12. Experiment! There are lots of different ways to make even the same ingredient. Try a couple out and see what you like.

I picked up this recipe at the CIA, where we spent 3 weeks under a super-great chef named George Higgins. The ingredient list is a bit longer than a standard recipe, but I think its worth the extra effort.

Corn Muffins hot and ready!

Makes 24 Standard sized (5 oz) muffins.

Ingredients
(wet)
1 pt buttermilk
4 large eggs
4 oz honey
4 oz melted butter

(dry)
9 oz AP Flour
4 oz Sugar
4 oz corn meal
4 oz Masa Harina (Corn Flour)
pinch Baking Soda
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/4 tsp Salt

Optional: 4 oz butter, sliced into small cubes

Method

1. Pre-heat your oven to 400F.
2. In a large bowl, combine the wet ingredients
3. In a second large bowl, sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder. Next add the remaining dry ingredients.
4. whisk the Dry ingredients into the wet ingredients
5. (Optional) take your muffin pans and add small cubes of butter to each pocket (if your pans are not non-stick, make sure you grease them as well). put the pans in the oven for 10 minutes to melt and brown the butter.
6. Pour the muffin batter into the muffin tin pockets, filling each one almost to the top. Bake until the muffins are cooked through, about 15 minutes (you can check with a toothpick).
7. Pop them out, rip them in half, spread some butter across and enjoy!