• Sweet Potatoes (other methods use Tumeric for the bright orange color)
• Onions
• Olive Oil
• Carrots (also adds to the color)
• Curry Powder
• Chicken Stock
• and Coconut Milk

It is really cheap to make (<$10 for about 6L) and freezes well. I know some people who add lentils to the soup. I have, but don’t notice any difference. If I’m looking to inject some protein, I’ll poach some white chicken meat and then put it in the soup to further stew. I like to drizzle a little EVOO on top with a dash of fresh lemon juice.

Ingredients:
1 2 1/2 pound pork butt
2 tablespoons jerk seasoning paste
1 batch mango and banana relish (see below)
12+ large tortillas (lightly toasted/warmed)

Directions:
1. Rub the jerk seasoning all over the pork.
2. Place the pork into the crockpot/slow cooker and cook on low heat for 8 hours.
3. Remove the pork and shred with 2 forks.
4. Place the pork back into the liquid in the slow cooker and cook, without the lid, until the liquid has reduces to a thick sauce, about 20 minutes.
5. Assemble wraps with pulled pork, jerk spice reduction to taste and mango and banana relish.

Mango and Banana Relish

Ingredients:
2 large mangoes (peeled, stoned and cut into small pieces)
2 bananas (peeled and cut into small pieces)
2 tablespoons orange marmalade
1/4 cup red onion (chopped)
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 tablespoon parsley (chopped)

Directions:
1. Mix everything.

1. Put can of Carnation canned milk in a pressure cooker (or three. Trust me, you’ll want re-enforcements!)
   
2. Add water (as per pressure cooker directions). Can should be submerged.
3. Seal pressure cooker
4. Turn on the heat (as per pressure cooker directions).
5. Bring to a boil and then bring the temperature down. 40-50 minutes.
6. Release steam and safely open the pressure cooker. Let the can cool down and then open it up and know what ‘sex in a can’ means.

DON’T YOU DARE USE ‘LITE’ CREAM. YOU USE THE FULL FAT VERSION DAMN YOU AND LICK IT UP. LIFE IS SHORT! EAT IT UP!

To take away his thunder, I wanted to share with you a recent conversation where he came to my house and begged me for my Sicilian potato recipe. Should this come to light in court, I want everyone to know that he approached me, not the other way around.

Paul:

“Please  Fletti, give me your precious potato recipe. I will offer my third and forth borns to you in return.”

Me:

“Paul, we have known each other many years, but this is the first time you’ve come to me for counsel or for help. I can’t remember the last time you invited me to your house for a cup of coffee, even though my wife is date-night babysitter to your two children. But let’s be frank here. You never wanted my friendship. And you feared to be in my debt. I understand. You found paradise in the company of my smoker. You had a good trade, you made a good living. The police protected you and there were courts of law. So you didn’t need a friend like me. Now you come and say “Chris Fletti, give me justice.” But you don’t ask with respect. You don’t offer friendship. You don’t even think to call me “Godfather.”

You come into my house on the day I make my Sicilian potatoes and you ask me to show you the recipe. Rovers, Rovers, what have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully? If you’d come to me in friendship, your  old three-hour potato recipe that ruined your confidence in making mashed potatoes would be suffering this very day. And if by some chance an honest man like yourself had trouble with a recipe, then these would become my troubles as well.  These recipes that challenge you would learn to fear you.

Some day, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day, consider this recipe a gift of my very special skills.”

I really believe that Paul and my relationship went to a new level after this conversation. He now knows why they call me the godfather of the spud. This is a really simple recipe (plus I got to break in my new Le Creuset.)

• 5 big russet potatoes
• lots of Parmesan cheese
• onion, sliced, and fried until sweet and slightly brown
• salt, pepper, olive oil
• 2 cups of low-sodium chicken stock

1. Olive oil in the casserole dish. Bottom and sides wiped to prevent sticking.
2. Using a mandolin (if you don’t have one, stop this recipe, go get one, and come back), slice up the 5 potatoes after you peel them
3. One layer of potatoes
4. One layer of onions
5. Cheese sprinkled
6. Salt & pepper and a drizzle of olive oil
7. Repeat steps 1-6 two more times.
8. Pour chicken stock on top
9. Push down with all your might
10. Wrap tightly with tin foil and then stick the lid on top
11. Bake at 375 degrees for 1hr 20min
12. Remove lid and tin foil
13. More cheese and back in the oven until its brown (about 15 minutes)

That’s how we do it Godfather style. Part of you will think about getting naked when you eat this. Don’t fight it. Also don’t stand too close to the open oven door. These potatoes are delicious. Next time I will use bacon fat rather than olive oil and 1 lb of bacon in this seems about right. Watch for future posts. If you are going to ‘swim with the fishes’ and you need to choose a last meal, make this one of the sides.

Note: I can’t stress enough the importance of mise-en-place. Simply put, having all your ingredients ready to use before you start. If you are doing your prep as you cook, you won’t enjoy it as much. Photo proof below.

Potatoes

Mise-en-place

Lovely cheese love

Spuds after the mandolin

Layered with care.

Layered on top of each other

My baby’s first run at cooking. Isn’t she beautiful.

Time for a close up.

All in all, yes, Paul got my recipe. Yes, he learned from the master of the potato. Yes, he will sleep with the fishes if he ever says that this was his recipe.

I had his potato recipe when we were working a contract in the old Think Tank days. It took three hours and it was…memorable. Let’s leave it at that.

Now as a Catholic, I get the biscuit = body of Christ and the wine = blood. That’s all straightforward. But did one have to be Jewish in order to make one of these sweet eggy loafs?  I googled Challah and saw about 1,000,000 recipes. Okay, Nikita was right. But which one should I choose. Long story short, here is the one I chose, the dough looked like shit when I first made it. You have to let it rise, then rise again, then braid it, then let it rise, then bake it. Jeeze! It takes less time to learn Yiddish!

Anyway, I stuck with it and I was rewarded with an unbelievable end result. Here is the recipe and to follow that, the picture evidence of my creation:

Yield: 2 loaves

5 1/2 – 6 c. flour

1 T dry yeast

1/2 c. sugar

1 1/4 t salt

6 T vegetable oil

1 1/2 c water plus 2 t

1 egg

——-

1. In a small bowl (#1), put yeast, 1 T sugar, 1/4 c water. Mix and let it stand for 15 minutes or until it bubbles.

2. In bowl #2 put all dry ingredients: flour, salt, sugar; mix them well.

3. In bowl #3 put all wet ingredients: water, oil, egg, and the yeast mixture after it’s bubbled; mix them well.

4. Mix everything together to make the dough. If the dough is too sticky, add a little flour until you can handle it. Use your hands to mix and press the mixture until it forms a ball of dough.*

5. Cover with a towel, and let the dough stand in a warm place for an hour or an hour and a half until it doubles in size. (It wasn’t doing it for me so I warmed the oven to 150degrees and stuck the dough in there for 30 minutes.)

6. Punch the dough to let out the air bubbles (this is the fun part!).

7. Let stand for 10 minutes.

8. For traditional-style challah, separate dough into six even pieces, roll each piece into a snake either between your hands or on the table, and make two braids. Turn the ends under so they look pretty. You may need to keep a little flour out to keep them from getting too sticky. Or, weave them into any design you like. Place them on greased and floured cookie sheets.

9. Beat one egg in a small bowl. Brush both braids with egg. Let them stand half an hour, and then brush with egg again. If you like, sprinkle with poppy or sesame seeds after the second egg wash.

10. Let rise for an hour or an hour and a half until the loaves double in size. Be patient!

11. Heat oven to 375F. Bake for 22-26 minutes or until the tops turn golden.

—

This bread makes the world’s best French Toast. We had it for breakfast Saturday morning and it was out of this world. Make it. Follow this recipe. And bless Nikita for opening my eyes to this lovely baked good. Cost of production: $2.50 a loaf.  Make two and you save yourself $10bucks. As a good friend, I brought a loaf to Paul, but his family lie in waiting. When he left for work they tippy-toed into the kitchen and left him mere scraps to sample. It is sad, but a cautionary tale. Bad things happen to good baking.

Note: If you look closely in the last picture (view of the cut loaf), you can see the ‘Last Supper” on the bottom right hand side. On the upper left is a relief of ‘Jonah and the Whale’ and on the bottom left is the ‘state of Texas’ and the ‘oldest Jonas brother riding a pony’.

The scapes were pickled in a brine that had a 5% salt content (50 grams or 1/4 cup of kosher salt to 1 litre of water), along with some fresh tarragon and a tablespoon or so of a modified pickling spice recipe that is also included in the book.  You could instead use a commercial pickling spice, or just make up your own using a combination of spices such as peppercorns, coriander seeds, mustard seeds, ginger, cloves, allspice, bay leaves, cinnamon sticks, etc.  The key point here, though, is the magical 20:1 water to salt ratio of the brine itself.  This provides a salt solution that is mild enough to allow the good bacteria to go about its business of creating the lactic acid necessary for a successful pickle, while at the same time strong enough to keep the “bad” bacteria away.

It would normally take about a week to pickle the scapes (or just about any other vegetable) if you kept them out on the counter (uncovered) during the fall, winter, or spring (at least in Vancouver).  However, the recent warm days have presented somewhat of a challenge.  According to Ruhlman, it is important to ensure that: (a) the pickles are completely submerged in the brine; and, (b) the room temperature is below 23 degrees Celsius.  If not, you are clearing the way for the “bad” bacteria to take over.  So, like an  obsessed soccer/hockey mom/dad, I was constantly ferrying my pickles around the kitchen, from the counter, to the fridge, and back, while paying close attention to the long-term weather forecast, for the better part of two weeks. At this point, you should reboil boil and cool the brine in order to stop the fermentation process.

My newly pickled friends are now ready to enjoy.  I tasted one last night.  I would describe them as vividly green, lightly salted, mildly sour, and with a spicy, garlicky kick.  In other words, a perfect accompaniment for the Classic Caesar.  Last week was also the end of the BC Spot Prawn season.  I picked some up for the Caesars, along with a few extra pounds to freeze for future use.

The Caesars did not disappoint.

And so, the time has come to say goodbye to both the mysterious & unwieldy garlic scape and the sweet king of prawns.  Farewell, dear friends, and godspeed.  I take a measure of comfort knowing that I will be enjoying your preserved goodness for some time to come.

Ruhlman put up a post about cherry pie and I thought, “It’s time to break your bad habits Fletti and get your ‘bake-on’. I followed his recipe and here are my diary pictures:

The dough. Followed the directions, but buzzed it in the food processor to mix and then wrapped and chilled for an hour.

I think if you own a cherry pitter, you are a knob, so I pitted these with a paring knife. I stained the hell out of my fingers, but baking is a blood sport people. Get in there and get it on like Donkey Kong!

Okay, the crust on the bottom of the pie was gold, but the top crust pulled out the inner wimp in me. I didn’t know how thin to roll it so I erred on the thick side. Please note my lattice work. No simple pie top for me. I want you to see the love through the dough windows. I didn’t use a pastry wheel to make the lattice pieces because having a pastry wheel also makes you a knob. I’m all about getting in touch with my rustic side of pie craft.

After an hour, this is what the bad boy looked like. The crust was nice and light, if a bit heavy on the top. The crust had a nice flakiness to it. I’m not talking a “One Flew Over the CooCoo’s Nest” flaky, more of a John and Kate Plus Eight type flaky. We whipped up a little cream and did a big piece of this. As I normally think that more is more, I had a second piece and started feeling a bit off. Note to self, one piece of pie before bedtime. I didn’t use lard anywhere in the recipe. It is basically Michael Ruhlman’s recipe from his blog here.

Recipe:

12 ounce flour
8 ounces butter
4 ounces ice water
5 cups sour cherries, pits removed
1-1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup corn starch

Cut the butter into the flour, mix in the water just till a dough forms (don’t over work it).  Chill the dough. Roll out three quarters of the dough to fill a pie dish, save the rest for the lattice crust.

Combine the cherries, sugar and cornstarch and toss.  Pour the mixture into your pie shell, lay your lattice over this and pinch the edges to form an appealing rim.  Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes then reduce the temperature to 350 and conintue baking for another hour or until the filling is thick and bubbling.

If you aren’t following Ruhlman, start. He is the reason Paul and I started making our own Bacon, talking more openly about food, and probably played a role in this blog forming. He is a great food writer, I’ve read all of his food books, and we will be giving away a copy of his new book Ratio, in an upcoming contest. We are also going to start a new feature called “Chewing the fat with…” and are going to look to see if Ruhlman will answer some questions for us. Make this pie and you’ll be surprised with a great result from your efforts. Now that I have ‘broke my cherry’ sort of speak, I’m going to look to do the recipe with peaches, apples, and I see this crust holding a Guinness Beef Stew in the fall.

I thought for a moment that this might be a vegan dessert. After all, I was only using sugar, flour, cheeries, corn starch, and water. How the hell could something be so good if not one thing with a face contributed an ingredient. Then it struck me. BUTTER! Butter was used. That came from something with a face. Thank the lord we had some animal product in there.

Life is good. Eat it up!

Then I found it. Risotto. I love all types, made with all stocks, and with all ingredients. Having recently found a way to make risotto in 7 minutes, with my lovely pressure cooker, I am as happy as a pig in …..you know what. Anyways, one of the things I like most about risotto is the leftovers. Left over risotto makes risotto cakes, fried in brown butter, and magic in a ball. Some posers will batter their risotto balls with flour-egg wash- breadcrumbs to give them a more homogeneous look. I say, NO! I will not apply a burka to my risotto balls. I think your balls should be shown in a natural light (pun intended).

Here is how I do them:

1. Take your leftover risotto and form it into little cakes. I like the size of fish cakes or crab cakes. At this point, you can stick a piece of cheese in the middle of it if you like a little creamy surprise inside. I have also been known to put pancetta, bacon, or another nugget of piggy love in the middle. In these ones I didn’t because I had bacon already in the risotto. Once you have formed them, put them on a wax paper lined plate and stick in the freezer for 15 minutes.
   
2. Take your favorite frying pan and slop some butter and EVOO into it. Oil brings up the burning temperature and butter provides the flavor. You want to let the butter brown a bit so you get the nutty taste out of it. I like a medium-high heat so the risotto fries in the oil rather than soaks it up.
   
3. Put the cakes in the frying pan and DO NOT TOUCH THEM. They will start to crust if you don’t piss around with them. If you try to move them around, check them, swish the oil, you are going to screw them up. No touching little beaver!
4. After 8-10 minutes, flip them. Do this gently so as not to break them. You need to caress them like a nervous lover. Whisper sweet nothings into its little ricey ear and do the flip.
   
5. Leave them alone again for 8-10 minutes. It is worth the wait!
6. Then I turn off the frying pan, lift the little love biscuits onto some paper towel and presto. I should note that the cheese in side gets molten hot. You bite into them because you are a little piggy and you are going to burn the hell out of your mouth.

Who would have known that 7-minute risotto and risotto cakes would be just what the doctor ordered. If you have ever had thoughts of twins, look no farther. Double your pleasure double your fun!

1. Took 1/2 bacon, cut into lardons, and rendered out the fat until I had nice little bacon bits. This was all done in the pressure cooker with the lid off.
2. Bacon bits out, chopped onions and garlic in. Cook for 2 minutes.
3. 1/2 cup of white wine to get the bits off the bottom of the pot. City folk call this ‘deglazing’.
4. Stir in 2 cups of rice.
5. Add 4 cups of chicken stock. Stir everything together.
6. Seal pressure cooker, bring up to pressure, reduce heat and let work for 7 minutes.
7. At 7 minutes, release the steam and take off the lid when it is safe to do so.
8. Stir in a cup of frozen peas, bacon bits, and cheese (the more the better).
9. Let it sit for a couple of minutes and serve.

It is true that it took 7 minutes to cook. All and all from bacon to plate was about 25 minutes. Easily half the time and 90% less work than normal. I love my pressure cooker!

What you need:

• 1/4 pound of home-cured bacon (or as much as you can fit into your skillet).
• Some good, thick-sliced homemade bread.
• Organic Garlic Scapes (optional unless you want this sandwich HeartSmart™ certified).

What you do:

• Cook the bacon over medium-low heat until all of the delicious fat renders out and the bacon starts to crisp up (20 minutes).
• Just before the bacon is ready, add the trimmed garlic scapes, season with a bit of salt, and continue to cook in the rendered fat.  Set aside.

• If you happen to have any bacon fat left over, consider yourself blessed, and then strain and refrigerate it for future use.
• Grill the slices of bread in a little of the remaining bacon fat.
• Assemble the sandwich: Layer the bacon on your grilled bread and top with the garlic scapes (if using).
• Take your sandwich to a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed.