Relauch of the Blog in England

Good Morning,

It is early in the day here in Oxford and this is more of an update than a blog post.  I apologize; I had meant to continue writing as I left Canada to further my education a couple of weeks ago.  In my defense, I did not for two reasons: first, there was little time to sit down and type and second, I really had little to write about in terms of food.  I have not been able to read, watch, or construct anything to do with food recently.  Being ever so slightly settled in here, I thought I would write and express my desire to keep working on this blog in the coming months and years I am here in England.

I did want to share some pictures of the last meal I made in Canada, hopefully as a fitting farewell to my home country and province.  It consisted of dry-aged Alberta beef in the form of New York strip steaks with pomme puree, oven-roast garlic mushrooms, and balsamic-glazed baby carrots from the garden at the place we were staying.  I did my steak just on the cooked side of blue rare and the quality of the cut held up very nicely to that.  Something definitely that will be missed in England.

In hindsight, I apologize a bit for beginning reviews of food shows found on Canadian television as I don’t really have a way of following them here.  There is lots of good food TV here, but I have yet decided whether they are worth writing about.  I plan to keep posting, but much of the content will probably be about historical food because I have some incredible resources in that area here.  So please continue checking this space.

The Salmon Salad of Mr. Cooper, Chief Cook to the Late King

I apologize once again for missing a day.  I received some news yesterday that was quite exciting and which means that by next week the blog will be coming to you from a new continent.  But more on that in the coming days. Unfortunately, the entry for yesterday got forgotten in the rush to begin the process of leaving.

 

The topic for yesterday which becomes the topic for today is an Early Modern salmon salad.  I tried my hand at filleting a salmon a while ago and had a fair numbers of scraps left over, which I ended up freezing.  I had seen a recipe in an old cookery text for a salmon salad and thought it would be an interesting way to test some old cookery and use up the fish.

 

The recipe I had seen was from one my favourite texts, The Art of Cookery Refin'd and Augmented by Joseph Cooper, “chief cook to the late king,” published in 1654.  The instructions read:  

How to make a Sallet of Salmon.

When the fresh Salmon is boiled, mince it small with Apples and Onions, then mix it with Oil and Vinegar, a little Salt and Pepper; sippit [mostly likely meaning cut up small] it, and serve it up. Pickled Herrings are excellent with the same ingredients.

In my modernization attempt, I could not bring myself to boil the salmon, so I steamed it in chunks.  If I were to make this again and had whole salmon or larger pieces, I would steam the whole then break it up. Steaming it in pieces left the salmon covered with the milky white residue that you get with fish sometime.  I ended up with:

            About 3 cups of cooked salmon pieces

To which I added:

           

            1/2 of a medium onion, sliced thin

 1 slightly unripe Golden Delicious apple, cored and roughly chopped (a Granny Smith would probably work very well)

I found another topic for further research when I wondered what kind of oil Cooper would be referring to in 1654.  Olive oil was a regular import in the period but whether he meant that or something local I don’t yet know.  I decided on:

            3 Tbsp of vegetable oil

along with:

            2 Tbsp of Apple Cider Vinegar

             ½ tsp salt

            2 grinds of pepper

 

The sweet and sour, the crunch of the apple and onion and the seasoning accompaniments, even with salmon that wasn’t the best, made this one of my favourite Early Modern recipes to date.   

 

Local Review the Second - Tres Carnales

It never rains but it pours, as one version of the saying goes.  I don’t know whether two reviews in a week constitutes a pouring but that is what you are getting, as I was able to try out a second of Edmonton’s newer eating establishments today. 

Tres Carnales, like Drift, opened up last summer just as I was leaving Alberta for a bit and I did not have a chance to try it out before.  With an ethos of fresh, local-produced and but authentic Mexican street food and slightly edgy atmosphere, it is certainly different from any restaurant that I experienced growing up around here.  Walking through the doors, in the bottom of an office building just north of Jasper on Rice Howard Way, I was reminded of a Mexican take on one of my favourite establishments of my younger days, Da-De-O on Whyte.  The décor was a mix of Frida Kahlo, luchadores and Día de los Muertos imagery with heavy beats of Spanish-language hip-hop resounding.  

In honour of Mexican Independence Day tomorrow, there was special menu but this being my entire party’s first visit, we opted for tacos.  Ordering from the counter and then picking our seats in a dining room already crowded just after opening, we waited a very few minutes for ours order of house-made Guacamole Y Totopos  and Salsa Y Totopos to arrive.  Both were bright and clearly fresh (miles away from the bottled salsa an Alberta boy grew up with;) I found mine a tad subtle and added the some Mexican hot sauce that was at the table. 

The tacos were not long in coming; I had ordered el Pescado and my wife got Al Pastor.  Taco Al Pastor, from my understanding, is cooked a little bit like what we in Alberta call a donair.  Tres Carnales makes them with pork and the meat was still juicy with a sauce that carried a little kick.  Served with onions, cilantro and lime, the most revelatory accompaniment was a sauce that, to my palate, was made with a medium chili and pineapple.  Sweet, with a spiciness that plays as a second note, it might have been my favourite thing about the meal.  There were four small tacos in the $10 order.

 

I got three medium fish tacos made with red snapper for the same price.  These were piled high with a breaded piece of fish, cabbage slaw, a bit of salsa and radish.  The texture contrasts were nice: the crunch of the slaw and breading against the fish and soft tortilla.  The sauce on the cabbage, slightly spicy again, was good and so was the taste of the fish.  Tres Carnales’ website says that all of their protein, except their seafood, is raised locally and I could maybe taste or at least smell that, as there was this ever so slight fishiness in the snapper which authentically comes from the Gulf of Mexico.  That is splitting some very fine hairs as it tasted very bright and different, at least for me.

Overall, a quality and unique food experience in Edmonton.  One note, our visit was partially a catch-up with someone, but the amazing atmosphere in Tres Carnales does not necessarily lend itself to such conversations.  Thanks for reading and cheers.

Mrs. Wooley's Bread - the Finale and Meat Men Three

This will be a Friday night entry with a couple of topics: first, a review and some pictures of Mrs. Wooley’s 17^th century Bisket Bread and, second, some thoughts on episode three of Meat Men.

So if you remember the continuing saga of the bread instructions in Hannah Wooley’s The Accomplisht Ladys Delight, then you will recall that her recipe calls for the bread to be sliced, sugared and dried in the oven, two days after baking.  Last night was the two-day mark, so I worked my way through what were by then two fairly crusty loaves.  I tried some at this stage and despite being very dense and highly spiced with fennel and coriander, it was was surprisingly edible, especially if you like aniseedy-type flavours.

There were no temperature instructions for drying the slices, so I put the oven on the lowest setting and let them sit through the evening (about 4 hours,) then turning off the heat, I allowed them to sit in the oven overnight.  What I got was the consistency of biscotti, though not as good unfortunately.  The spices had intensified even more and for this modern palate they needed more sugar (if they were going to be like biscotti.)  Having said that, they’re designed to “keep…all the Year” and they just might.  The strong flavour also could mask any staleness, mould or critters that they might collect in storage.  Those Early Moderns, always thinking.  Overall though, this was probably more of an academic exercise than a culinary one.

Meat Men part three was decent if unmemorable.  The focus was another custom burger mix and this time Pat LaFrieda Meat Purveyors had the challenge of matching, with their mechanical process, a burger that an eatery called Resto made by hand.  The prize was the being the supplier for all the restaurant’s meats.  After two failed attempts, Resto threw another test at the gourmet butchers: they wanted a Mangalitsa pig for a VIP customer that night.  (The Mangalista is a heritage woolly breed of pig that was bred first by Hungarian Royal Archduke Jozsef in 1823.  They are prized for their fat, which can be whipped like butter.)  Pat finally delivered the burger recipe and delivered the pig, carrying it in whole through the dining room.  He seemingly impressed the client.  One thing that was informative about the burger mix in the episode was that it included pork fatback for flavour, something very bad for you that you should probably try some time.  There was also this side plot about trucks and Pat Sr. which had very little to do with meat and to be honest I didn’t pay much attention. 

Food Truck Local Edition - review of two sandwiches from Drift's Mobile Eatery

I apologize; a bit of illness means this is going out this morning rather than last night.

I had the opportunity a couple of days ago to eat out and since I haven’t written a review for a while and never in this forum, I thought I would share my thoughts. 

By eating out, I mean outdoors from a food truck, which I thought fit nicely with my continued riveting coverage of The Great Food Truck Race.  The truck is question is Drift Mobile Eatery, which is parked most weekday lunchtimes at 107 Street and Jasper.  Being downtown to conduct some noon business and walking my wife back to her work, which is very close, the Eatery was a convenient choice.  It is relatively new, having started up last summer; this was precisely when we were getting ready to leave to Toronto for a bit and so Drift is pretty unknown to us.

The menu is sandwiches, made with some very good local ingredients, and fries, accompanied by a soup of the week and cookies.  But, like most of the new and slightly upscale food trucks, they have a pretty decent website and you can read about all that there, or below, if you so desire.

 While the Jerk Chicken seemed very popular, we both opted for pork: mine was the Braised Pork Shoulder with swiss cheese, bacon, pickles, cabbage and grainy mustard and my wife’s was essentially a Pork Belly banh mi on a small bun (pickled carrot and daikon, cilantro, chili mayo).  Service was good, friendly and quick, helped, according to my wife, by a line that was quite a bit shorter than normal. 

We decided to sit and eat in the lobby of my wife’s work but the size, at least, would have facilitated eating and walking.  There was a sign on truck that said there had been a recent and sudden change of bakery, which might be unfortunate, as the bun was my least favourite part of the sandwich.  It was a bit dry, which meant by the time I was done I had a lot of crumbs to clean up. (Something to consider if “mobile” is a part of your concept and your name.)  The interior of my meal had, as the pork’s accompaniments would indicate, a kind of central European flavour profile.  The braised shoulder itself was subtly flavoured which I was okay with, as it let the meat (which was obviously of very good quality) speak for itself.  My wife’s pork belly (of which I had a bite for the purely scientific purpose of this blog) was sauced and flavoured a lot more but I think that also worked very well.  The cabbage, pickle and mustard on mine were nice but maybe too prevalent: as I got to the centre of the sandwich, the unctuously starring pork got lost.  My last bite, whether due to improper spreading or my eating style was nothing but mustard.  On the other hand, the bite had of the Pork Belly was very balanced: the banh mi pickle was there for some crunch and sourness and there was definitely cilantro but not too much.  

 Braised Pork Should (top) and Pork Belly (bottom)

Overall, I think the Belly was better sandwich but I certainly enjoyed my Braised Pork.  $7.50, in today’s market, with those ingredients was pretty decent.  I would have loved to have more meat on my sandwich but I know that meat is expensive and good meat is very expensive, so I would have settled for a little less cabbage, pickle and mustard.  On the bun, maybe Drift’s owners might consider not grilling it, which dries it out that little bit more.  That all said, it is nice to have some very delicious and different food, very conveniently coming of a truck here in Edmonton.