Canada’s Queen of Tarts

Here is my recipe for butter tarts as discussed on my Food Sleuth report on Q with Jian Ghomeshi on CBC Radio One which aired June 29, 2009.

The following are the two best butter tarts I found after much sleuthing in Toronto and vicinity:

Liver come back to me!

Liver and brussels sprouts are two underdog foods that top most lists of unpopular fare. Here are two recipes that should convert even the most adamant haters.

Chicken Livers Provencal
Inspired by a dish from chef and cookbook author Jacques Pepin.

This is how the rhubarb crumbles

Spring is rhubarb season and time for me to bake as many crumbles as is humanly possible - the best way I know to wow guests with its wondrous contrast of taste and texture.
This recipe is in my book Dish using apples (delectably tart Northern Spys are ideal) which you can, of course, substitute. Add cranberries and/or a little lemon juice to them for a tangy touch, if desired.
The topping is cookie-like and adds the perfect caramelized, crunchy crown to the fruit. I can’t claim this is original - I found it in talented pastry chef Regan Daley’s book The Sweet Kitchen.
I use a rectangular 10 x 7-inch ceramic baking dish about 3 inches deep.
You will thank me for this so, in advance, you’re welcome!
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup cold butter, cubed
About 1/4 cup granulated or brown sugar
5 to 6 stalks rhubarb (about 4 cups), chopped
Preheat oven to 350F.
In large bowl, combine flour, oats and brown sugar. Add butter. Cut into mixture using wire hand pastry blender or two knives, until it resembles very coarse crumbs. Using fingers, mix until it forms a ball.
Place rhubarb in even layer in approximately 4-quart ovenproof pie or baking dish; sprinkle with sugar. Arrange crumble topping over it, closing any gaps.
Bake in oven about 1 hour or until bubbly and topping is a rich caramel brown.
Serve warm with vanilla or other favourite ice cream.
Makes 6 to 8 servings.

What’s cooking in Melton Mowbray?

MELTON MOWBRAY – It’s tough keeping up with Dr. Matthew O’Callaghan as he strides purposefully across the cobbled square in the centre of this lovely historic town, population about 24,000, located in the heart of Britain’s East Midlands.
Wearing a jaunty beige mini-version of a cowboy hat he bought in New Zealand, my guide for the day has been a town councillor here for 12 years and is a man with a mission.
This is boldly illustrated by a brand new sign he proudly pointed out at the vintage train station where I arrived after a scenic hour-and-a-half ride from London with one change at the nearby city of Leicester.
It reads: “Welcome to MELTON MOWBRAY
Rural Capital of Food
Home of Stilton Cheese
Melton Mowbray Pork Pies”
O’Callaghan has been splashed all over the news in this country as he tirelessly campaigns to put Melton Mowbray on the culinary map and is on the front page of today’s local paper pictured beside his latest coup: that train station sign.
What’s more, he has impressive credentials.
He’s a doctor of chemistry specializing in soils who has worked in Belgium, Japan and Costa Rica. He’s chairman of both the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie Association and the Melton Mowbray Food Partnership.
He speaks five languages and has an agile mind packed with facts about history, agriculture, science and food.
His goal is “to make the people in Melton Mowbray proud of their heritage and history.”
And history here is plentiful. It’s a largely medieval town that features well-preserved buildings, including the famous Anne of Cleves pub, assorted churches and the odd castle, all dating back to this period.
Located on the river Eye, this place was inhabited in much earlier days by the Romans. But, as O’Callaghan explains, his plans for his beloved burg to become a food destination are rooted in the recent past and what he sees as a rosy future.
His main aim is to eliminate what had been, until recently, high unemployment. “We had mad cow, agricultural problems and the closing of an army depot,” he explains.
But he traces a key cause of the once sluggish economy to Margaret Thatcher. Faced with miners’ strikes and mine closures across the country, she tried to revive her image in the 1980s by opening a coalmine in resource-rich Melton Mowbray.
“The shafts were in the wrong direction,” O’Callaghan says, adding: “It blew the towers and the mine closed.”
His clever plan - one that has helped reduce unemployment to 1 per cent - involves promoting and protecting the town’s two internationally celebrated foods: Stilton cheese and the Melton Mowbray pork pie.
To check them out at the source, we walk past an array of vendors with barrows selling everything from leather handbags to fresh fruit to stop at Dickinson & Morris: the town’s oldest and most popular food shop where they’ve been making pork pies since 1851.
Ironically, O’Callaghan is a vegetarian. However, he’s a passionate champion of the region’s famous meat pie, the history of which is fascinating.
In the Middle Ages, kitchen utensils were unavailable to the average cook. Instead, a paste of flour and water was shaped around ingredients to be eaten, then discarded after cooking. Eventually, fat was added to the flour/water mixture forming an edible crust and the pie we know today.
There’s a dazzling array of cheeses and round pork pies in the display case before us at Dickinson & Morris. The latter range in size and style. Some have no top crust but come with a topping of chutney, apple, cranberry or Stilton.
However, all have the mandatory features: An uncured grey-coloured filling seasoned with just salt and pepper; a heavy-duty, crunchy crust, and bone stock jelly between meat and crust that keeps the pie stable and stops it from wobbling.
That trait makes it ideal for one of its traditional uses – as portable food for hunters who flock to this region for their controversial sport. Among them are Prince Charles and sons William and Harry.
Stilton has had trademark protection since the 1960s.The Melton Mowbray pork pie’s E.U. designation is due to be signed and delivered any day. This means pies bearing this name must be made according to the authentic recipe and come from this area.
As O’Callaghan and I sit down to a delectable lunch of perfect pie and a crumbly wedge of pungent Stilton, I offer congratulations.
Back in London, the food is disappointing in comparison. Meals at several restaurants recommended by Evening Standard restaurant critic Fay Maschler in her annual round-up are mostly underwhelming and crying out for salt.
That is, until our dinner at York & Albany, celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay’s new restaurant co-owned and operated by his chief protégé: chef Angela Hartnett.
In fact, the food, service and ambience at this Camden Town dining spot is the best I’ve enjoyed in the U.K.
It seems that rambunctious Ramsay knows how to put his money where his mouth is. If you’re there, try the perfect Pumpkin Risotto and luscious Rice Pudding with Prune Armagnac Compote.
As for Melton Mowbray’s famous pie, various versions are sold in many supermarkets, British food shops and specialty butchers in Toronto. Making them at home is not an option.
However, incorporating wondrous Stilton cheese in soup or salad - not to mention serving it after dinner with crackers and fresh fruit - is. Here’s a dish that features it in a wonderful way.
Stilton Pear Salad
Perfect as a dinner party starter, this appeared in Gourmet magazine in 1992; I found it on super food web site: www.epicurious.com.
Dressing:
2 tbsp white wine vinegar
½ tsp dijon mustard
¼ cup olive oil
Salad:
6 cups mixed lettuce
1 large or 2 small ripe pears, halved, cored and sliced
About 1 cup crumbled stilton cheese
½ cup pecans, toasted, cooled and chopped *
Whisk dressing ingredients in small bowl until combined.
In large bowl, toss greens with half of dressing. Divide among four plates. Arrange a quarter of pear slices on top of each. Sprinkle stilton and chopped pecans on top. Drizzle each salad with remaining dressing.
Makes 4 servings.
*To toast pecans, cook over low heat in dry skillet about 4 minutes or until aromatic.
marion@marionkane.com

Martha cooks crustaceans

MIAMI – This year’s recent South Beach Wine & Food Festival was a royal occasion, in more ways than one.
“Viva Espana!” was a culinary celebration and key theme headed up by the King and Queen of Spain at this four-day, non-stop, over-the-top annual event packed with noisy parties, glitzy grazing and back-to-back cooking demos by celebrity chefs.
Sponsored by the Food Network and Food & Wine magazine among others, this star-studded feast on the beach is never dull.
This year, things got off to a controversial start when famous New York chef Mario Batali introduced Spain’s King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia at a swanky gala dinner.
Angry at exuberant diners who would not listen when it was his turn to speak, Batali chided them vociferously with the f-word, three times. His and their unruly behaviour was likely the result of alcoholic beverages that flowed freely throughout the sold-out festival.
However, Martha Stewart – the come-back queen of cuisine – was all regal elegance, serenity and charm when I met her two days after the Batali debacle for a one-on-one interview in the green room adjoining one of the giant tasting tents erected on the sand in the heart of South Beach.
Dressed casually in tapered beige pants and a grey T-shirt with matching cardigan, she was a different – and much nicer - woman than the one I’d met in Toronto earlier in her career.
Stewart’s rise to fame began in 1982 with the publication of Entertaining: a glossy coffee-table tome that launched her as an arbiter of taste for homemakers.
By 1987, she was well on the way to becoming a brand and revered guru on the topics of food, home décor and gardening. That year, I interviewed her in Toronto where she was promoting her second major book: Weddings.
That Martha Stewart was imperious, uptight and humourless. She lived up to her reputation as a control freak perfectionist who was driven to the point of obsession. In a nutshell, she came across as a brilliantly capable over-achiever touting a sanitized though stylish lifestyle rife with pastels.
Many, like me, had a love-hate relationship with this fiercely ambitious woman whose career continued to soar in the 1990s.
Then there was the infamous criminal case. In 2004, she was convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury in a stock market scandal. Five months of prison followed; so did five months of home confinement and two years probation.
In a Christmas message from jail, she issued a compassionate plea for rehabilitation and prison reform to help women whose lives were “devoid of care, devoid of love, devoid of tranquility.”
As she stretched out her hand and fixed her dark brown eyes on me in the green room that day, I knew this was a kinder, gentler woman than the perfectly-coiffed blonde babe with the forced smile on the covers of her early books.
She was eager to tell me about her new projects.
No longer allowed to be its CEO, she is still “deeply involved on a day-to-day basis” with Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. She owns a radio channel, is still the marquee writer for Martha Stewart Living magazine, is developing a housewares line for Macy’s, promotes “healthy aging” with Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and has an eco-flooring company called FLOR that makes recycled carpets.
A favourite project of hers is The Martha Stewart Show that airs on Fine Living and on day-time CBC television. It is entertaining and authoritative as per Stewart’s mission: “I want to promote and provide the best how-to information for homemakers ever.”
An avid reader and detail hound who sleeps about five hours a night, she told me this: “I’m very picky, quality-conscious and research-oriented. I’m visual and creative. People trust me – I’m them. If I like something, they seem to like it.”
What Stewart doesn’t like is the trend to reality food shows on TV.
“They drive me nuts,” she says. “I know where the enjoyment comes from but I hate the sloppiness and demeaning aspect.”
I mention Gordon Ramsay. She doesn’t respond directly but does say this: “The violence doesn’t interest me. I don’t have time for schlock art.”
Top-notch chefs like Americans Daniel Boulud, Eric Ripert, Rick Bayless and Jean-Georges Vongerichten, she adds, do interest her. So does Type-A British chef and molecular gastronomist Heston Blumenthal.
She also has plenty of time of time for Emeril Lagasse: the lively New Orleans chef who virtually launched the U.S. Food Network in the early ‘90s with his ebullient behind-the-stove performances.
The two have long been buddies and last year, while he took a hiatus from the spotlight, Stewart bought all Lagasse’s assets except the several restaurants he still owns.
That evening, Stewart was emcee of a tribute dinner honouring Lagasse. She lauded him for being an educator, a passionate foodie and a man who loves to embroider, then announced they had plans to go deep-sea fishing later that night.
Listening to our congenial host, I mused that prison had gently humbled her. And, at age 67, she may be more proof that wisdom comes with age.
Stewart demo’d these recipes after our interview. They are from her super new book Martha Stewart’s Cooking School (Potter; $52).
Boiled Lobsters
Stewart advises looking for lobsters that are “not only alive but lively” and purchasing them no more than a day before serving.
Coarse salt
4 lobsters (about 1½ lb/750g) each
Melted butter
Lemon wedges
Fill large stockpot three-quarters full with cold water. Bring to boil. Add a generous amount of salt, at least ½ cup in a 4-gallon/15-litre pot.
Plunge in live lobsters head-first. Cook, uncovered, until they turn bright red, 8 to 14 minutes, depending on size. With tongs, transfer to platter. Let rest until cool enough to handle. Serve with melted butter and lemon wedges.
Lobster Rolls
Shelled meat of 4 cooked lobsters
2 tbsp mayonnaise
½ tsp chopped fresh chives
½ tsp chopped fresh tarragon or chervil
1 tsp fresh lemon juice
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
8 split hot dog buns
2 tbsp melted butter
Cut lobster meat into small chunks. Add to bowl. Stir in mayonnaise, chives, tarragon, lemon juice, salt and pepper.
Brush hot dog buns with melted butter. Cook in hot skillet until golden brown. Spoon about ½ cup lobster meat into each bun.
Makes 8 rolls.

Miami must-eats

The annual South Beach Wine & Food Festival took place this year from February 19-22 in Miami.
As usual and even in tough economic times, this glitzy, pricey, never-dull four-day event sponsored by, among others, the Food Network and Food & Wine magazine, was sold out.
Attended by more than 30,000 people and founded by a fellow called Lee Schrager in 2001, it is the biggest culinary celebration of its kind in North America.
Watch this space for news on my interview with Martha Stewart at this annual fest - an event I’ve attended for the past five years.
She and famous New Orleans celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse, who are friends and business partners, were front and centre this year.
Martha hosted a tribute dinner honouring Emeril who has been on hiatus for a while. My theory is that his health hasn’t been too good. I say this judging by his bloated appearance. However, he was in fine form at a lively cooking demo during which he wow’d the crowd with his clever antics.
Here are a few spots you should definitely try for specialties I’ve sleuthed when in South Beach:
Devito, 150 Ocean Drive: Yes, you guessed, this is Danny Devito’s restaurant and one of the newer spots on the Ocean Drive strip. I recommend lunch - it’s extremely reasonable - and trying the lobster bisque and/or one of their amazing main-course salads. They serve you delicious, free antipasti and portions are large. The comfortable armchairs on the on the covered patio are a plus.
Joe’s Stone Crab Take-Away, 11 Washington Ave., is a casual cafe and take-out emporium adjacent to the veteran and always-packed restaurant of the same name. This is the perfect place to sample a slice of the best Key Lime Pie I’ve found in the Miami area.
Martinez, 4000 NE 2nd Ave. Located in the Design District - about 20 minutes from by car from South Beach - this is the newer of two Miami restaurants owned by talented chef Michelle Bernstein. I found the welcome warm and ambience extremely pleasant. The tapas dishes featured here were uneven but I would definitely return for the beans with duck sausage and divinely creamy flan (the Latino version of creme caramel) made from her mother’s recipe.
News Cafe, 800 Ocean Dr., is a 24-hour landmark on the South Beach restaurant strip known for its hearty breakfasts, excellent Churrasco Steak and delicious bread pudding. It’s the best place I know to people-watch from a sidewalk or patio table as the friendly staff wait on you. This is where Gianni Versace had his last morning coffee on the day he was murdered - a rather grim claim to fame.
Puerto Sagua, 700 Collins Ave. A couple of blocks from the News Cafe is this cheap-and-cheerful, bustling Cuban eatery. Always busy, it’s a great place for grilled fish, a sandwich or - my favourite - the roast chicken special ($7.95 as I write). This filling meal is a large piece of succulent chicken accompanied by a large mound of white rice, sticky fried plantains and a bowl of black beans. The staff are friendly and efficient.

Martha my dear …..

It took a flurry of e-mails and phone calls between publicists and p.a’s but I finally obtained an audience with Martha Stewart: one of the most powerful women (up there with Oprah, methinks) in North America and now the come-back queen of cuisine.
She was one of the stars at this year’s annual South Beach Wine & Food Festival: a four-day feast on the beach that took place from Feb 19 to 22.
Like everything in Miami - home to the SUV, boob-jobs, tanned abs and obscenely large restaurant portions - the event was a non-stop, over-the-top wing-ding. Celebrity chefs cooked up a storm, the King and Queen of Spain attended celebrations of Spanish food and there were all manner of before- and after-parties at swanky hotels like the Raleigh and Delano. Needless to say, the booze flowed freely.
But meeting Martha was a pleasant, easy-going surprise.
I interviewed her in Toronto in 1987 when she was beginning her rise to stardom with publication of her second glossy book called Weddings. It followed her first book Entertaining which came out in 1982 and to which she is currently writing a sequel.
Known as a perfectionist, control freak and over-achiever, Martha attracted a loyal following and her fair share of enemies during the ’80s and 90s.
I had a love/hate relationship with this homemaking doyenne, finding her imperious and cold in person. Also, I disliked her message that women can do anything - even sand-blast a house as she did in full gear on one of her TV shows - in the name of creating the perfect home.
But the Martha I met in South Beach this year during our 20-minute, one-on-one conversation was a gentler, kinder woman.
Maybe spending 5 months in prison from 2004/5, then being confined to her home with an ankle bracelet for another 5 months - this resulting from convictions of illicit behaviour on the stock market - has, it seems, humbled and mellowed her.
Whatever the reason, she was affable, polite and even warm as we chatted in the fest’s green room before her cooking demo during which she made sweet-but-simple green and potato salads to go with the lobster she’d boiled. During the demo, she showed a social conscience by asking the audience to buy these crustaceans as the recession has hurt lobster fishermen and processors badly on the East Coast near where she lives.
Her current projects include a radio channel, a line of housewares for Macy’s, a TV show (shown in Canada on CBC), a line of eco-flooring made from recycled carpet and her stalwart magazine Martha Stewart Living.
Her new book, Martha Stewart’s Cooking School, is a kitchen bible that offers step-by-step techniques for everything from making vegetable stock to carving a turkey. I highly recommend it.
She told me she wants to teach budding cooks the basics. She likes to learn and loves to teach. Hence her low opinion of TV reality shows (Gordon Ramsay, step right up) that are “schlock, demeaning and sloppy.”
Martha even spoke out in favour of rehabilitation in a Christmas message during her prison stay - a stay that seems to have elicited compassion and humility in a woman who showed little of either some years ago. Then again, she is 67 years old and they say wisdom comes with age.

Gordon, Angela paint Camden Town red

U.K. - In January, 2009, I wound up my annual trip to London to visit my mother with dinner at Gordon Ramsay’s newest restaurant York & Albany located at 127-129 Parkway in my favourite neighborhood, Camden Town.
After lack-lustre meals at longstanding vegetarian eatery Manna - bland fare that cried out for seasoning and meat - and the newish Market - bland modern British fare that cried out for salt and oomph - it was a godsend to discover a place in this trendy, gritty part of the city that had all the elements needed for a wondrous meal out.
Our welcome by manager and hostess was warm. The ambience in the downstairs dining room (I highly recommend requesting this rather than the much noisier room upstairs) was womb-like with red tapestry walls, red velvet chairs and curtains, and red table-coverings under glass that exuded a retro coziness aptly described by one British reviewer as “early bordello.”
But it’s the food that takes the cake.
Ramsay’s partner and chief protege Angela Hartnett is in charge of the open kitchen, also downstairs.
She and her team have mastered the tricky task of creating food that’s packed with taste and texture, is unpretentious but imaginative, and is reasonably priced.
A starter of Pumpkin Risotto laced with melted gorgonzola is sublime. Likewise for entrees Roast Chicken with Bread Sauce and Sea Bream with Shrimp and Cucumbery Butter Sauce.
But the high point of our dinner was Rice Pudding with Prune and Armagnac Compote: a divine confection served warm that melded, sweet, smooth, tangy and tart in what is possibly the best dessert I’ve eaten.

Beautiful Bolognese

I can’t think of a dish more soothing or suitable for frigid winter days than Spaghetti Bolognese. So when I recently invited friends over for a casual Saturday night supper, I set aside an afternoon three days ahead when I was at home writing to simmer this wonderfully satisfying sauce with ground meat and tomatoes as its base, giving it time to simmer for several hours and then mellow before the dinner party.
I combined a couple of recipes I’ve tried to come up with what I feel is the definitive version.
This makes enough for at least 1 lb/500g of pasta, probably with some left over.
Bolognese Sauce
Use all ground beef if you wish. Imported Italian canned tomatoes work best, if possible San Romano.
3 tbsp olive oil
1 lb/500g ground beef
1/2 lb/250g ground pork
1 tsp kosher salt, or to taste
1 medium onion, chopped,
2 medium carrots, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup milk
Two 28-oz/795 mL cans tomatoes
1 tbsp dried basil
1 tsp dried oregano
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in large heavy saucepan over medium-high heat. Add beef, pork and salt; cook, mashing with potato masher and stirring with wooden spoon at intervals, until browned, about 5 minutes. Transfer to bowl.
Reduce heat to medium-low. Add remaining olive oil to saucepan, then onion and carrots. Cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Add garlic; cook about 2 minutes more.
Return beef/pork mixture to saucepan. Add wine; cook over medium heat until almost evaporated, about 5 minutes. Add milk; cook until almost evaporated, about 5 minutes. Increase heat to medium-high. Add tomatoes, basil and oregano. Bring to boil, stirring; reduce heat to very low and simmer, partially covered, 3 to 4 hours or until sauce is rich and thick. Add salt and pepper.
Serve over spaghetti or other pasta. Pass grated Parmesan and/or Romano cheese on the side.
Makes 6 to 8 servings.

Recipe Mistakes

A recipe mistake can be downright dangerous.
Take the case of Aunt Vertie’s Sugar Cookies: a confection that appeared in a 1991 issue of Gourmet.
Unable to find wintergreen extract, the magazine’s testers substituted wintergreen oil in that recipe: a substance sold in some pharmacies to treat sore muscles.
Although the small amount called for - a quarter of a teaspoon - is not considered toxic, Gourmet’s editors were concerned that, if a larger amount was used in error, it could be harmful to a person’s health.
The result: they sent letters to 750,000 subscribers warning them of the potential problem.
A year later, a recipe in Great Cakes (Ballantine Books) by well-known American baker Carole Walter, included the poisonous plant lily of the valley in a list of edible flowers that could be used as a garnish.
The publisher recalled all copies of the book, then corrected the egregious error in new editions.
Most mistakes in recipes simply result in failure.
Infamous among these was the confusing prescription for the aptly named Chocolate Nemesis in the first edition of the River Café Italian Kitchen (Ebury Press) by U.K. restaurateurs Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers.
Named “cake-gate” by the British press when the book came out in the early ‘90s, vague instructions for this popular dessert at the duo’s London restaurant resulted in what was described by one cook as “a floppy cow pie”.
Gray’s unhelpful response to what she called “a challenging cake” made the problem worse. She responded: “It’s a recipe you need to make a couple of times before you get it right.”
Bodacious British TV celebrity cook and cookbook author Nigella Lawson may be lovely to watch but her recipes don’t always yield luscious results.
The Chocolate Orange Cake in the first edition of Feast (Knopf Canada) required beating butter with sugar in its method but did not list butter in the ingredient list.
After a much-publicized brouhaha, this typo was corrected and the new recipe is butterless.
It’s no surprise that the most glaring mistakes are in baking, a fact noted by Alison Fryer who has been manager of The Cookbook Store in downtown Toronto since it opened 25 years ago.
“Baking is far less forgiving than cooking,” Fryer notes. “It’s chemistry and you can’t fool around with that. There’s no room for error.”
She describes the incidence of mistakes in cookbooks as a cycle that’s gone in waves.
“In the early to mid-‘80s, recipes weren’t tested as well,” she says citing the famous Silver Palate cookbooks as “a classic example of caterers writing a cookbook.” She mentions “some of the cookie recipes where reducing large to small quantities just didn’t work.”
During that era, she reckons 30 to 35 per cent of cookbook recipes did not work.
In the 1990s, she explains, “We moved into a phase when cookbooks were more painstakingly edited. Recipes were well-tested and the number of mistakes dropped to about 10 per cent.”
She insists there’s a “methodology for recipe-testing and most cookbook writers had begun to understand this concept.” Also, “Publishers didn’t want to make changes when a book was re-printed.”
At the end of that decade, however, there was a new hazard.
“With the rise of technology, we see that not all word-processing programs are created equal,” she adds. The result: “Lines would be dropped. Things that should have been a tablespoon became a teaspoon – fractional measurements have long been a problem.”
Happily, says Fryer, “We’re back up to about 20 per cent.” Not so happily, she notes, “We Canadians tend to blame ourselves first when a recipe doesn’t work.”
She cites books by Chris Kimball and his team at Cook’s Illustrated magazine as reliable. “Their recipes are tested about 30 times. They have the resources. It costs money to test recipes.” I especially recommend The New Best Recipe (America’s Test Kitchen) – a definitive book by those diligent cooks.
Here are some other recommendations for trustworthy sources on which Fryer and I agree.
Anything by my late mentor Julia Child, especially The Way to Cook (Knopf) or Italian food maven Marcella Hazan.
“Early Martha Stewart books had kinks in the recipes but her new books on baking, cookies and Great Food Fast (Living Magazine) are really good,” says Fryer.
She also cites the Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker (Simon & Schuster), the Bon Appetit Cookbook (John Wiley & Sons) and tomes by Canadian cooks Bonnie Stern and Rose Murray.
Fryer offers this advice: “Invest in a scale to weigh ingredients for baking.” I’ll add this: When baking, use measuring scoops for dry ingredients. Scoop flour etc. from its container, then level surface with a knife.
It turns out I’m not immune from mistakes, even after 30 years in the biz. Having discovered that the Sticky Toffee Pudding in my book Dish (Whitecap) is flawed, I revamped it and came up with a winner.
Sticky Toffee Pudding
Brodie’s self-raising flour is sold in most supermarkets. I bought bulk pitted dates rather than the solid block.
8 oz/250g pitted dates
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup boiling water
1/3 cup butter, at room temperature
½ cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup plus 1 tbsp self-raising flour
¼ tsp ground cinnamon
2 tbsp plain or mocha yogurt
Toffee sauce:
½ cup brown sugar
1/3 cup butter
½ cup whipping cream
Preheat oven to 350F. Grease 8-inch/2 L square baking pan.
In shallow bowl, place dates in single layer. Sprinkle baking soda on top. Pour on boiling water to cover. Let sit 10 to 15 minutes or until slightly softened. Add to food processor with about half of liquid; reserve remaining liquid. Process until dates are in small chunks. Add reserved liquid.
Cream butter and sugar in electric mixer until combined. Add eggs, flour and cinnamon. Mix until batter is smooth. Add date mixture. Stir to combine. Stir in yogurt.
Add batter to baking pan; smooth top with knife. Bake in oven 30 to 35 minutes or until springy to touch and tester comes out clean.
Meanwhile, make Toffee Sauce. In saucepan, cook sugar, butter and cream over low heat until slightly thickened and brown, about 4 to 5 minutes.
While hot, poke holes in top of pudding with skewer. Slowly pour over Toffee Sauce.
Place pudding on baking sheet a few inches from broiler. Broil about 3 minutes or until bubbly and caramelized.
Serve warm with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream or crème fraiche.
Makes about 8 servings.