Just a quickie (LOL!) tonight, I have a headache. (Ok… I’m
being a degenerate again…)
A new dish again today.
This time we headed to the south of France for the classic Brandade – salt cod and potato. Legend has it that the dish was invented by a
monk who was cooking salt fish for fellow worshippers. He heard a knock on the door and, realizing
that there would be many more guests for dinner, threw on a pot of potatoes to
fill out the meager pot of fish. The
rest, as they say, was dinner.
Countless cultures use some kind of salted fish, and the
countries involved in the early days of trans-Atlantic seafaring and trade have
classic dishes made with salted cod.
Portuguese bacalhau, Italian baccalà, Norwegian kilppfisk, Jamaica’s ackee and salt fish, and Newfoundland’s own
fish and brewis (now that’s hardcore staple food!) And, of course, France has its Brandade.
Chef 1 did the demo .
Uncharacteristically, the demo started late, and the Chef roared through
the demo like he’d just downed a six-pack of Red Bull. Three dishes – the Brandade, an eggplant gratin, and soupe au poisson, which thankfully we did not have to make in the
evening practical.
Chef 2 for the practical. It went really quickly – we were
in and out of there in just under two hours.
Poach the cod in milk and water, cook the potatoes in the poaching
liquid, cook up some leeks, make a garlic cream sauce, and crack out a
mushroom, tomato and eggplant gratin.
Not hard at all.
In the demo, Chef 1 encouraged us to get a little
creative. With something like the
gratin, as long as the flavours are there, I don’t think there’s really a “wrong”
way to do it. And I had the same idea
about the Brandade – it’s an assembly
thing, so I decided to freestyle.
I wonder if I got a little too cute though. Brandade
is a very traditional dish and I’m not sure my more modern plating idea was the
right one. I’d be pushing it to say that
I was inspired by VOLT ink. (the very cool cookbook by Bryan and Michael
Voltaggio) or Quay (by Peter Gilmore), but the thought of layering potato, salt
cod and leeks into a gratin dish as is traditional seemed, well… boring. In that form, it looks like what it is – a preserved
staple food stretched with a cheap and filling starch. This is what I came up with:
Chef 2’s comment: For
me, this is not Brandade.
Uhhh… okay. Fuck? He said the flavor was good, which was
nice. I thought it was a little
salty. Not sure how long the kitchen had
been soaking the cod, but it could have used a little more time, or a little
more blanching. The gratin was… well,
tomato, eggplant and mushroom. Whatever. I don’t particularly like eggplant, so I’ve
got nothing to say, really. Would have
been nice to spike it up with a little orange zest, but we work with what we
have.
But back to the degenerate thing. A few spicy jokes in the demo today (you
kinda had to be there), but found a nice little shout out to my blog from
fellow food blogger and political kindred spirit Prick With A Fork. The Prick is a transplanted American living
in Sydney, Australia and, notably, a recent contestant/victim on the popular Come Dine With Me Australia. He’s an excellent
writer with the right amount of snark, and for the second time has mentioned me
on his blog (I had been wondering where all those Aussie pageviews were coming
from!) This week he had a little fun
with my post about Chef 3’s fingering and boning of the quails. It seems that the Australian Prime Minister’s
spouse has a pervy mind, and made a little “fingering” related gaffe this
week. Why oh why can’t Canadian politics
be a little more fun?
On that note, tomorrow is our written exam, and I have a
solitary can of Kronenbourg in the fridge.
These other priorities await.
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