Butter tarts are delicious. If you haven't tried one you need to. I've been eating them my whole life, and have just assumed everyone knew what they were. A mixture of butter, brown sugar, corn syrup,  maple syrup, and egg are poured into a flaky pastry and baked. There very sweet and addictive. Butter tarts are considered one of the few recipes that originates in Ontario. They are similar to the American pecan pie, the French tarte au sucre, and the Scottish Ecclefechan tart. So much so, that I find it hard to see what makes the butter tart a unique Canadian recipe, except that they are incredibly popular here, and are found everywhere. Some families even put butter tarts out for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve in place of cookies.
Even in Ontario there doesn't appear to be any specific recipe that people can agree on as authentic. Some tarts have a firm filling, while others are runny. Many people add raisins, others add nuts, and some add both. The crusts vary from family to family and some recipes use a crumbly shortbread style crust, while others use a more firm and flaky pâte brisée. Here is a CBC Radio show that has a panel of guests discuss what a butter tart is. http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/lifestyle/food/my-canada-includes-tourtiere/what-makes-a-great-butter-tart.html

Wellington County in Southwestern Ontario has a Butter Tart Trail where you can travel on a self guided tour of the area's most popular places to try butter tarts. Personally I like my butter tarts to have a translucent softness that barely holds it's shape,with some nuts on top. The toasted nuts help cut some of the sweetness. The recipe I use is from Canadian Living Magazine with the addition of maple syrup and pecans in place of raisins.

• 1-1/2 cups (375 mL) all-purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp (1 mL) salt
• 1/4 cup (60 mL) cold butter, cubed
• 1/4 cup (60 mL) lard or butter, cubed
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tsp (5 mL) vinegar
• Ice water

Sometimes when you travel as a chef you end up in places you never expected. I had never heard of Ullapool before I took a job as the sous chef of a small boutique hotel there in 1989. I found the job posting in an employment office in Glasgow, and took the position on a whim. A week later I was in the west highlands of Scotland, working in a town with less than 1000 people.
Ullapool is a pretty little place with quite a large fishing port, and is a popular tourist stop in the summer.

I can't believe I lived here once

After spending a couple of days settling in and figuring out what my job entailed, I set out to explore Ullapool's nightlife. I wasn't the only foreigner in town, but a new face is immediately noticed and I was soon drinking and chatting with locals at the "Calley". I eventually ended up on a pub crawl of every place in town. After last call I made my way home along the main street and came across a group of teenagers drinking and playing guitar around a fire on the beach.
I joined in and had a great time for a while, when one of the girls asked me if I knew how to swim. I bragged a lot and told her I used to be a top swimmer in Toronto in high school, so she challenged me to a race across to the nearby pier. I accepted and we stripped down to our underwear and ran into the loch. I swam about 20 feet before the over powering smell of diesel and fish stopped me and I looked back to see everyone standing on the shore laughing! Despite how beautiful Loch Broom is, it's still a fishing port and not a place to go swimming near the pier. I was covered in a thin coating on oil that stung my eyes and I smelled of gas for 2 days. Needless to say, I was well known in town by the next morning.

One of the dishes we made at the hotel was cullen skink, a traditional smoked haddock, leek and potato chowder which is popular all over north Scotland. It is a great flavoured hearty soup that I recently used as the base for a fish special in my restaurant. Baked cod is placed on a thick cullen skink sauce and topped with a poached egg and horseradish mousseline. The smokiness of the soup works great with the cod, with the egg making the dish richer, and the horseradish adding sharpness.
There are many variations of cullen skink, but this is the recipe as I remember we made it in Ullapool.

I'm working at a Polish bar on Roncesvalles in Toronto. It allows me to experiment with a cuisine which is often ignored in contemporary restaurant kitchens. Italian, French, Japanese, Latin, etc, are all well represented in various forms around the globe but, Polish, Ukrainian, and the cuisine of the Baltic states tend to be the reserve of neighbourhood restaurants serving traditional food to locals looking for an authentic taste of their homeland. The restaurant is not quite as traditional as most Polish places in the area, so I can play around with dishes like pierogi or cabbage rolls and create my own interpretations.
Pierogi are popular all over Northern Europe. They have different names eg. vareniki in Russia or
pirukad in Estonia, and have various shapes, but tend to have the same 4 or 5 traditional fillings. Meat, cheese, sauerkraut, spinach, or fruit. I bought some smoked mackerel and decided to do something with a French Languedoc twist. "Smoked Mackerel Pierogi with Swiss Chard in a Sundried Cherry Walnut Beurre Noisette".

   Stjerneskud is probably the most decadent and popular type of smørrebrød in Denmark. Various types of seafood are piled high on a piece of french stick with egg, asparagus and Marie Rose sauce to create an open faced sandwich masterpiece. "Sterneskud" means shooting star in Danish. No one seems sure of the origin of the name or why it's called "shooting star", but my guess is that like a shooting star it's spectacular when presented to you, and gone in an instant!

Some kro are over 600 years old

In general smørrebrød in Denmark is bought at a shop and taken home, but sterneskud tends to be the specialty of a kro the Danish equivalent of a country inn. Like inns in England the history of kro in Denmark date back many centuries. In 1396 Queen Margrethe dictated that there should be a kro every 40km along the roads in Denmark to accommodate travellers. 40 km being the distance a horse could travel in one day. These inns were known as kongeligt privilegerede landevejskroer and they had special rights such as distilling snaps and brewing beer, but were restricted to allowing only travellers to eat and sleep on the premises.
Nowadays kro are the kind of "nice" place you take your mother to on her birthday, and some, like the Michelin starred Søllerød Kro, take traditional Danish cuisine to new heights.

some components of stjernskud

Sterneskud has many variations, but a few things need to be on there to be authentic. Both a piece of breaded fish and a piece of steamed fish need to be present as well as shrimps, egg, and caviar. Most people consider Marie Rose sauce to be a  necessary component. Mine includes crayfish and asparagus as well.




1. slice of buttered french stick
2. small amount of baby greens
3. fried haddock and steamed sole
4 ladle of Marie Rose sauce
5. pile of shrimp and crayfish tails
6. boiled egg
7. 2 types of caviar
8. asparagus
9 garnish with lemon, dill and a whole steamed crayfish
Note: In Denmark fish is breaded in rye bread crumbs adding a unique flavour to the dish.


 

Before I was a chef, certain food was easily understood. Roast beef was a cut of beef roasted. Boiled carrots, grilled fish needed no explanation. Other foods were a mystery. Pastrami and corned beef in particular were fascinating to me. It's delicious, but what is it? It looks like meat but is salty ,sweet, spicy, and a strange red colour no matter how long you cook it. My mom would buy it sometimes in these little boil in the bag portions from Shopsy's. It was a treat and I loved it. As a teenager if we were at a movie or something I would pick a Druxy's  deli sandwich over a Big Mac whenever I could. In 1986 I moved to Kensington market and started cooking school. I began to learn things. I began to understand deli.

Kensington Market through the ages

Kensington market was the coolest place ever for a young chef student. In the 80's they still sold chickens, rabbits, and pigeons alive in cages. Exotic fruits and vegetables lined the streets with dried beans, spices, and coffee. Compared to North York it was like being in a strange foreign land.  At lunch time I could get great cheap food in Chinatown, then buy Portuguese sausages, Jamaican hot sauce, and cowpeas to experiment with. There was also Switzer's the last of the Kensington delis.

Old Kensington Market

Starting in the 1920's Kensington Market was the centre of the Jewish community in Toronto and much like New York or Montreal kosher delicatessens opened up to serve the community. Shopsy's and Switzer's were two of the better known delis, but there were several others. As time went on newer immigrants moved in and much of the Jewish community moved north where a new generation of delis opened up around the area of Bathurst and Lawerence.

Some delis in Toronto

Switzer's was a great retro experience. Diner style booths and lunch counter. Faded autographed pictures. I don't remember the food very well, but the atmosphere was exciting. When I graduated and started making more money, I started hitting the north Toronto delis and worked my way though the menus. Corned beef at Pancer's, knish and latkes at Marky's, matzo ball soup or frankfurters and beans at Yitz's. It was all pretty great, but I still don't get gefilte fish.


So what is pastrami, and why is it associated with the North American Jewish community? Pastrami is a variation on the Romanian word pastramă which indicates something that is preserved. Some of the first Jewish immigrants to New York were from Romania and they brought the recipe for this cured and smoked meat with them. In Europe this process could be applied to lamb, pork, goose, or almost any meat. It was a natural way to preserve foods before refrigeration. In America beef navel or brisket was a cheap option and the modern Americanized pastrami recipe was developed. A common occupation of Jewish immigrants was to sell prepared foods from pushcarts, and selling pastrami in a sandwich was a logical and popular choice.

New York pushcart at the turn of the century

German immigrants had already established Delikatessen, shops which sold prepared foods and delicacies like liverwurst, pickled herring, prepared vegetables, and cold cuts. Soon the concepts merged and the modern American deli was born. Pastrami on rye became a New York staple, and delis like Katz's and Carnagie's became internationally famous. The idea spread and delis started popping up wherever large Jewish populations settled. Montreal in particular has a strong and unique deli heritage and Montreal smoked meat is a famous variation on pastrami.


Whether my recipe for pastrami is NewYork style pastrami or Montreal smoked meat style is debatable. I use the whole brisket as in Montreal, but the brine is sweeter like the New York style. Maybe it's Toronto style pastrami. I don't know, but its good.

brisket brined for 11 days

The recipe for pastrami starts the same way as corned beef. A raw whole beef brisket is brined in a salty sweet aromatic liquid for many days until it is preserved and pickled. At this point the meat is simmered until tender for corned beef. I brined my brisket for eleven days and used some more unique spices such as star anise and cloves in my mix, as well as sodium nitrate, a preserving agent which keeps the meat its pink colour after cooking.




For pastrami a dry rub is applied to the corned beef and it is smoked for several hours. The traditional rub for pastrami is coriander seed, black pepper and garlic. I added black mustard seed, brown sugar and smoked paprika to my rub.
 

pastrami brisket smoking

I have a Bradley smoker at work so I used the apple wood bricks to smoke the brisket for about 3 hours, then slow roasted it in the smoker without bricks for another 8 hours. The first time I tried making pastrami I smoked it the whole time it was too strong, so I cut back the smoking time. Depending on the smoking method you use, the length of time to smoke will vary greatly, but the brisket will need approximately 12 hours of roasting at around 180°F to be cooked and tender.

spices for pastrami rub

The finished product was great. Maybe a bit crumbly and salty at the thin end of the brisket, but in general it sliced and tasted as good as pastrami at any deli I've been to.

rachel sandwich with homemade pastrami

Reuban sandwiches are a deli classic with corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and thousand island dressing. A Rachel sandwich uses pastrami instead of corned beef and coleslaw instead of sauerkraut.. I served it as a special and I sold the entire brisket in one night. I saved the crumbly bits that were left over and made smoked meat poutine the next day. It's a Montreal late night specialty of french fries topped with cheese curds, pastrami and gravy. Zane Caplansky of Caplansky's Deli is one of the chefs keeping the deli tradition alive in Toronto and has his own version of smoked meat poutine using smoked meat gravy that he serves in his food truck roaming around the Toronto area. Here's a link to a short video:
 http://www.toromagazine.com/lifestyle/food/1dbbd7c7-49a4-9684-05b3-943d35b762c0/Caplanskys+Smoked+Meat+Poutine/

Everybody knows the game was fixed kid, so stop being so smug

Portioned from a large bowl at the end of dinner, a whole almond is hidden somewhere in the mix and the lucky person to find it receives a special gift. The fun is to hide the fact that you have found the almond as long as possible so that people will keep getting second and third helpings in a futile attempt to find the almond and claim the prize. In practice, a whole almond is always slipped into the youngest child's dish, and often two prizes are given. The child's gift and the "real" winner.

The cherry sauce is an important element to the dessert. ready made sauce is easily available in Denmark, with the Den Gamle Fabrik brand being one of the most popular. Some families like to buy the imported amaena cherries in liquor from Italy to be extra fancy.

nisser being nisser

When making risalamande a portion of the risengrød is reserved to make julegrød. Much like the tradition of leaving milk and cookies for Santa in North America, julegrød is left out on Christmas Eve for the nisse. A nisse is a gnome like spirit that protects farms and children from bad luck in Denmark. Apparently the nisse has a bad temperament and needs to be left julegrød to guarantee he doesn't kill your livestock and plaque your children. So I guess the bad luck the nisser (plural) are protecting the family from are the nisser themselves!

 

På loftet sidder nissen med sin julegrød is a traditional Christmas song and translates as " The nisse sits in the attic with his julegrød" Here is an old recording of the song from 1954.

 

The recipe I used for risalamande is from Arla Foods in Denmark It worked really well so I've translated the recipe to English.

Risalamande for six

 

On Sunday, Oct. 16th, more than 28,000 people and 100 of the best chefs in Canada gathered in Honeywood, Ont., to participate in Foodstock, a pay-what-you-can food festival meant to raise awareness about the impact the proposed quarry will have on local farmland. The event was organized by the Canadian Chef Congress and Stop The Mega Quarry.

Babi Guling from Ibu Oka photo by suanie

First you rub the skin of the pig well with a mix of turmeric, salt, and water until it is bright yellow.

Fill the cavity of the pig with the stuffing and sew shut with bamboo skewers.
place on a wire rack over a drip pan and roast in the oven at 400 degrees for about 2½ to 3 hours.
One of the most important parts of the process is basting. You need the water of about 4 coconuts or the liquid of 4 cans of coconut milk. If using coconut milk keep the cans in a refrigerator for about an hour and open the cans from the bottom. This will leave the coconut cream in the can and give you the liquid. Baste the pig with the coconut water every 15 minutes until the pig is done.



I couldn't believe how red and crisp the skin turned out!


I cooked some jasmine rice and fried it with the drippings from the tray along with some chopped kale, chilies and green onions. and served it with cucumber coriander and chopped peanuts

The end result