Which potatos to use when?

There are 3 basic groupings of potatos:

Russet/Idaho/Brown (dry and fluffy when cooked)
-Loose their shape most quickly
-Ideal for baking
-Bad for soups/stews
-Good for mashing


Yukon Gold/Yellow (medium)
-Loose their shape less quickly than Russet, more quickly than Red Bliss
-Ideal for mashed potatos

Red Bliss/Mane Whites/Waxy (maintain shape)
-Best for morning hash browns
-Ideal for soups and stews

Store in a paper bag in a dark, cold space far away from onions.
Keep in mind that their rottenness spreads, so if you toss the bad guys, your more likely to hold on to the good ones for longer.

Hot tip for those who have 2nd homes or leave home for extended durations

Have you ever been in the situation where you leave your country house only to return to lumpy milk? Well, this is a very obvious sign that the power went out for several hours while you were away. Should you not have such obvious signs you may be in jepordy of eating putrid foods.

The solution?

Freeze a small amount of water in a plastic cup then place a coin on top of the frozen water.

When you return after many days away, check to make sure the coin is on top of the water and not frozen at the bottom. . .

If you're in a pinch, you could always place a coin on an ice cube tray, (if your organized enough to have one filled and ready to go ;)

Smoking

Salmon

Salmon runs around $6/pound
Smoked salmon runs around $28-30/pound

Is the work/smell/mess worth the price difference? Probably Not. But, it could be fun for some.

Create a dry brine by adding salt, sugar (part white, part brown), pepper, all spice, bay leaves, mase/Nut Meg, cloves. Find a container large enough to hold the fish flat. Cover the bottom of the container with the brine. Lay down the fatty Atlantic salmon, cote with scotch. Cover with more dry brine. Cover with a tray/cutting board and more weights (large cans). Place in fridge for about a day. The liquid will seep out of the fish and the brine will turn to liquid. The fish will turn hard like a board. This is when it’s ready for the smoker.

My dad highly recommends the Bradly Smoker. You have to make a special kind of box with a cleaner hose in order to cold smoke the salmon. Hot smoking will create a whole different texture (cooked salmon) what you want is cold smoked salmon.

FYI – Lox is cured through salting smoked salmon is cooked through smoking. Lox will have a stronger flavor and smoked salmon has a more subtle taste.

Seafood

Clams

If they’re open when you get them home- they’re dead. If you cook them and they stay closed- they’re dead. DON’T EAT THEM.

The smaller the better A.K.A they’re sweeter.

For all mollusks (clams, muscles, snails, oysters, …) you want to eat them as soon as they open if not they’ll get chewy. The alternative is to cook the shit out of them for an hour or two in a stew or chowder but you don’t want an in-betweener.


Shrimps

To increase flavor of the shrimp: Create a brine by boiling a pot of water, mixing in salt until diluted and some crushed garlic. Add ice cubes to the water so that the water is cool and doesn’t cook the shrimp. Dump in the shrimp and leave for around 30 min.

Shrimp and Lobster

The best way to cook shrimp and lobster is to bring a pot of water to a rolling boil. Remove it from the heat and drop in your tasty treats. The shrimp, depending on size should take 2-5 min. and the lobster closer to 15-20. Test one shrimp by cutting it open. If it's still too translucent, give it more time. Test the lobster by cutting into a claw. If the meat is runny, drop it back in keep on waiting.

Products

Baking Soda needs to be mixed with an acid in order to react (examples of acids: tomato, lemon, orange, vinegar, butter milk, sour cream…)

Baking Powder contains baking Soda but it also “brings the acid to the table” however it usually contains small quantities of aluminum (which can leave a bad taste in food).
FYI – there are brands of baking powder that leave out the aluminum. It will be clearly marked on the box.

Empire Turkey is the best turkey you can buy. It’s kosher and has been “Koshered” which means it’s been pre-brined or at minimum, salted and washed. (see Brining below)
Salting, draws blood out and exchanges liquids for seasoning and cleaning purposes.
“And a little prayer never hurt”.

Roast Beef Au Jus- Swiss Knorr gravy for institutions. Comes 10 cans to case. You can only get it from swiss knorr whole sale retailers. This quantity will lasts a life time.

Sauces

Adding a touch of nutmeg to sauces with creams just about always is a good idea.
On the subject of nutmeg, you should always buy the little nuts and grate them vs. buying the powder which looses it’s potency much faster.

Baking

Much more to follow, but to get ready:

UUmmm… I just had an amazing scone. Candied ginger, lemon zest and blueberries. Wow! That was a lot of work, however, this is the most delicious scone I’ve ever had. If you’re interested in the recipe he got it from the food network website.

OR - better yet, use this guy:





Preheat oven to 420 F degrees

10 oz biscuit flour (sifted)
4 oz sugar
2tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
zest 2 lemons or oranges
4 oz frozen butter pieces
---------------------------
1/2 sour cream
1/2 cup milk

Blend dry with butter using fingers, keeping butter in the size of green peas.

Fold in 1 1/2 Cups of blueberry's that have been frozen and coated with sugar as soon as the colour starts to run, stop. You can also add candied ginger.

Spread out on parchment paper covered baking sheet as a round blob. Spread melted butter over the top and sprinkle a generous coat of large grain, raw sugar (demarle sugar). Place in hot oven. Wait 5 minutes, turn down oven to medium heat, (350ish). Bake another 20min or until center is at 180 degrees. Take out and wait 20 minutes. Enjoy.

* Biscuits flour can be replaced for self rising flour and take out the sodas.

* Leave sugar out and you have biscuits.

Bread

Flower:
Bread Flower – 4g protein per ¼ cup
All Purpose – 3g Protein per ¼ cup
Soft Summer Flower – 2g protein per ¼ cup
Self Rising Flour - comes with salt and baking powder

**** If you’re going to go to the trouble of making bread with self rising flour make sure your flour is not too old because it’ll loose its rising potency.

**** You can’t use self rising flour if the recipe calls for yeast.

Simple Bread Dough:

Flour (1,000g) (King Arthur is the best)
1 % yeast (10g)
2% salt (20g) – Celtic salt is ideal
65% Water = French bread
75% Water = Ciabada bread (go with bread flower)
50%-55% Water = bagels

Adding sugar to the dough elongates shelf life

Adding oil increases flavor but decreases crust crunch

Cooking Temps:

Flour, water, salt, yeast: Cook at 500/550 degrees then lower to 400/450 degrees (Fahrenheit not Celsius) after steaming.

With fats, sugar or eggs: needs to be closer to 400 degrees

In order to increase the rising power and the crust crunch – (French style breads)

Before preheating your oven place a cast iron skillet at the bottom of the oven. Right before you’re going to add the bread, carefully add a boiling cup of water to the pan. This creates steam which keeps the crust from forming in an ultra hot oven allowing the dough to rise quickly. You want the oven steamy in the begging and dry in the end. You can get this by cracking the stove with the end of a spoon for the last 5 min. This creates an extra crispy crust.

FYI - Cast iron can get hotter then you can heat it. You could place it in the middle of a camp fire and it wouldn’t crack. BUT if you put cold water in it, you could crack it.

“Ear”- the hard crust at the top of the bread (achieved by lightly slicing the dough sideways before placing in hot oven) This allows the bread to grow quickly without tearing.

Pasta

Pasta should be kept simple. Its not about the sauce, its about the pasta.

Pasta is a big one of my dad’s passions so he’s got many a strong feels on the matter.

Generally, the way to go with pasta is to boil the pasta (with enough salt that the water tastes like very salty soup) until it’s just about done- SAVE A CUP OF SALTY PASTA WATER. Drain (but do not cool with cold water).

Stir Pasta as soon as you dump it into boiling water to reduce sticking. Stir a hand full of times within the first 30 seconds and you should be good for one minute time frames after that.

Add the pasta to your sauce in the same fry pan. If the pasta seems too dry, add some of the pasta water. Continuously stir until pasta is done.

These are all the ingredients that made it into the pan along with some olive oil: garlic, cilantro, tomato and caned clams (the liquid before the actual clam bits to prevent them from overcooking).



Some people like to add some olive oil to the boiling water when cooking pasta however all this does is prohibit the sauce from sticking to the pasta. Unless someone can make a good case of why someone should waste the olive oil, I say take a pass!


Poor Mans Clam Pasta for four
Cherristone clams are large and cheep!
Place four to five Cherri stone clams in a shallow dish with a couple inches of white wine. Cover the pot and bring to a boil. As soon as a clam opens even a bit, remove from pan and let cool. Once all the clams are removed, use a mesh strainer to remove sand, (or just be gentile when and poor into a separate bowl). Place aside.

Saute thinly sliced garlic, onion, oregano (rubbed into the pan with your hands to infuse flavor), red pepper flakes, largely chopped tomato (ideally- plum tomatoes: with seeds and middle part removed). Add clam and wine liquid, mix. Add your almost finished pasta and cook with sauce until your desired consistence.

Use the liquid as the sauce with garlic, plum tomatoes, cilantro and slivers of the clams.

Treasure Hunts on Pirate Island

Friday Nov. 14th

7:00am - Just got back from dropping Shelly off at the airport.

We “did the town” yesterday. I felt like I was on a treasure hunt for cool people. We started in the antique store. . . isn’t that where people go when looking for treasure?

That woman sent us to another store for “fun stuff”, the woman in the “fun stuff” store has kids who live in New York city/Brooklyn and are involved with movies and music… I was on a trail. I also caught her mention that her husband surfs to I asked if she could give me any advice on how to get up and . . . surfing. I was sent to go see Tom across the way at Café Karibu. I met Tom, Steffane and little Tom jr. who was no more then 6 years old working away in the café, cutest little kid! After 15 minutes in there I found out that their going to start brewing their own local beers, their the most vegetarian friendly place I’d found on the island,,, and their looking to hire. Sweeet!

From there we went back to my old watering hole, The Green Turtle. I met Jimmy who’s been retired since he’s 35, (he’s now 47) and is looking for a girlfriend. (I told him I was too... but not loud enough for anyone to hear except myself). I also met Chris who offered his 2 cents when I was inquiring about the possibilities of setting up a night of dancing catered by moi, with my records, “records are from 1967” Jimmy slurred to my right. “You should try sliders”, Chris yelled from down the bar.
Right, Sliders, I saw their sign on my way into town, “We now have dancing!” it read. We'll have to make a stop off before heading home.

Shelly’s highlight of the day was having a homemade ice cream "downtown" people watching. We saw about 9 people. . . none of them seemed close to cool.
So we hoped in the car and headed to Sliders which is located right on the beach. “Right, beach, that’s more my style, I’m feeling it”

“The tiki bar?” We were asked by about the 10th guy we’d seen that day in a Hawaiian T-shirt, (who still wears those? The Island should start a Save the Hawaiian T-Shirt Foundation- I’ll get on it as soon as I get the recycling program up and running). Turns out the dancing they have is in the range of 30 to 60 yr..closer to the 60 mark then the 30 mark. Ohhhh…k. I was told to talk to Shane's girlfriend who runs the nightly entertainment. She plays acoustic stuff, “a big variety, anything from Jack Johnson to Van Morrison” (just me, or is that not really a range? Maybe I’m just too much of a Techno head). I’ve got a date with whatever miss guitar/singer/song writer’s name is on Saturday. I’m going to head over for some of that dancing. . .

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
I walked into Sliders Saturday night at 10:15 and what looked kinda like the manager asked if he could help me:
"I was told you have dancing?"
"Yes but you just missed it"
"Oh..k, I was told the woman who's in charge of entertainment would be here?"
"Yes, she was, but she just left. And we're now closed"
"Rigghtt... o.k. Do you know when I could find this young woman?"
"Try tomorrow at 3:00"
So, I went home, played my own god damn records and sent out drunk e-mails. Apologies to my recipients.

-.-.-.-.-.--.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
Sunday at 3:00 I had a partner in crime...my dad.
I saw Shane so I went up to him to say hi and inquire about his girlfriend,
"She should be here around 4:00"
My dad wasn't sure if he could hack the band on stage playing Dave Mathews covers for an hour but we moved to the bar and that was that.
I met Casey (with her clip board) around 4:15 and approached her about the idea of playing some electronica records,
"we're shutting down the music until March. And I'll have to come see you play somewhere before we can book you"
"Right,... well, that's kind of tricky because there's not a lot of places I think I could play"
"Try the Palace" (a teeny bopper bar in town that is TOTALLY not going to dig minimal techno).
"or even a house party"
"But I don't have any friends" It just slipped out. I couldn't resist since a house party seemed so unrealistic at this point. And I thought that maybe she'd have pity on me.
"You will, people here are real friendly" she assured me...
"Let me know I can come see you play!" :)
Dead End

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Mon. Nov 17

Today I went to drop my CV off at Cafe Karibu and I met Andreana and Jordan. They actually seemed very chill. They are employees who were done for the day sitting in the garden area having a smoke. I played 21 questions with them to try and get a feel of what young people on the island do and the answer is not much. Hang out together. They said they'll call me the next time they do something because, "We're out of things to talk about so anything new you can say will be of interest." I told them to look at my CV and have questions prepared for the next time we meet.

I went into one of the surf shops to inquire about surfing and I met the new owner, Rob. He's like, totally a surfer dude, dude, like totally. Good news is that this time of year is a good time because the waves are small and "glacy" like, not ruff. Cuz that's totally not what you want to be learning on. ;) Sweeeet. I'm on it
Yunai. I'm on it.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
Wed. Nov. 19

Yay! One of the cool kids called me  Jordan invited me out to the bar because some of the staff from Café Karibu were there. This was around 10:00. I asked how long they’d be hanging out because I had just started into a cream of Jerusalem Artichoke Soup. He told me they’d be there until at least 12:00. Pppeerfect, I thought. I can get down with this. I’ll let them get some drinks into them so that I seem that much funnier/cooler/hotter, whatever. I rushed the soup and finished up around 11:00. I got to the bar around 11:30 and found Jordan right away.
“Great! You made it. I was about to give up on you. I’m the only one left.”
Eer k. 12? maybe not.
Turns out that although it’s been a while since Jordan has left the States, he has left and done a LOT: Africa, Italy, Austria, Budapest, France, a few others.
I found out that he plays the drums and has a set up ready to go jam spot… but no one to jam with. He also is really into music (who isn’t these days?) and we immediately found our overlap. After a PBR “tauly” (16oz) we went to hang in his jam space and he played some awesome DJ Shadow vs. Cut Chemist. We bantered on about music for a good hour or so and around a respectable 2:15 I headed home.

P.S- Never try and rush soup. I may be down a good soup but I’m up a fun night… I think it’s worth it.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Nov. 30

I went down to West Palm to celebrate Thanksgiving with my Grandmother in “the Village” . . . Century Village. By around 9:30 at night all rooms were taken with snoring bodies so I hit up the local sports bar. Sens were taking on the Maple leafs and it was a hell of a game so when a girl came up to me during the last minutes of a tied game and said that she thought that she knew me, I told her that if this is the only place she’s lived, it was unlikely that she knows me. I ordered a second beer because I was stuck in the olden days when overtimes took a 20 min brake before starting and as soon as the beer showed up the shootouts were rolling and soon there after the game was over. I moved seats to watch some football and finish this new beer I was now “stuck with”. It just so happened that this new seat was next to the girl who had approached me earlier. We started talking and when I told her my name she about jumped out of her seat! “I do know you” she yelled. I sat back and waited because I knew this would be a good one. “I met you in Fernandina beach (the next town over from where my dad lives) about 2 years ago.” Turns out we bonded over the beer selection at the local watering hole two years back. We traded numbers and so she was walking around with my name and number in her cell phone until she deleted it not long ago.

She lives about 3min from my dad but was in West Palm to celebrate thanksgiving with her parents. Kate’s had a baby in the two years since I’ve seen her, little Dustin is destined to be a surfer. She’s 31, married, extremely hyper and uber-friendly.

Erb

The best way to keep fresh herbs (cilantro, parsleys, mint, dill, …)

Cut an inch of the stems and place in a glass of water (half full) – always be an optimist ;)

Wet a paper towel and squeeze out water. Cover the herbs completely with the wet paper towel. Change the water every few days and the paper towel whenever you see that it’s drying out. This will extend the life of the herbs enormously.

Should turn out looking a little something like above image.

Soups

Most Chinese soups are made with a chicken broth (EXCEPT Pho Soup).

Generally, chicken base goes better with beef than beef base.


How Long Should I Leave my Soup Cook?

An important thing to know about soup is that you shouldn’t boil the crap out of it. Once you bring it up to a boil, you should lower it to a light simmer – a couple bubbles per second. Place a lid and it will boil a bit more but nothing too hyper.

Veges are done in 20 minutes (Maria’s grandmother would disagree with this bit, she’d say a couple hours is the way to go)
Fish should be no more then 20 or 30 minutes
Beef and Chicken take more like an hour
You can always take the meat off the bones and put the bones back in (that’s where the real flavors at) Beef bones can give off flavor for 2 – 5 hours depending on size.

Meat

I know so little about cooking animal, this knowledge may be basic to many meat eaters.

Prepping Red Meat or Pork Before Cooking – Before putting a piece of meat, expectably fatty cuts, on a fry pan, scrape the “slime” off the sides with a fork because that picks up bad odors and other crap you don’t want to taste.

Fond - The caramelization created when meat juice cooks on a fry pan.
It’s not un common for chefs to cook meat 90% on one side to get that fond and just deal with it being cooked uneven.

Resting Meat After Cooking - After cooking red meat you should let it rest just a few minutes so the blood redistributes and evens out.

Brining-

If you’re making meat for company you may think about this technique. You need to plan a couple days in advance so don’t get too excited for tonight’s dinner. This technique will make your meat saltier, juicier and give it a nice crisp crust.

Find a container which will hold the meat submerged in liquid (bird, beef, pork).
Eyeball the amount of liquid it would take to submerge the meat completely (better to have more then less). Don’t let the raw meat touch the water because you’re going to want to taste it, because, “if you fuck the brine, you’ll have wasted a lot of time, money and you’ll have a shity diner”.

Add salt (one cup per 1 gallon- about 4 liters), garlic, bay leaves any other seasonings, (pork and chicken take up to half a cup of sugar per gallon). There’s no science here so you can be creative. Boil the liquid until solvents dissolve. Taste the brine- it should taste like very salty soup. Not un-edible soup, just overly salty).

Put your liquid in the fridge until it’s cold (put in ice cubes to help speed up the process)
Once it’s cool, put your meat in it. Leave alone, drum sticks can be left four hours but birds and big cuts of meat should be left over night.

Take it out of liquid, pat dry with paper towels, leave it in the fridge uncovered until it’s dry.
Cook in oven as usual (time and heat various on meat and size).

You always want meat to be as dry as possible when you cook it.

What’s the Point of this Blog?

I’m going to attempt to kill two birds with one stone and we’ll see how it goes:

One stone is to keep friends and family updated with my where a boots.
The second is for me to keep track of all that I’m learning down here, particularly in the kitchen. Hence, Cookin’ with Cass: A look into the world of what’s cooking in the World of Cass.

I’m not going to talk about recipes, those are easy to find. I’m going to keep track of the “inside” knowledge stored within my fathers head. He just kinda cooks and rambles so my challenge is to keep this knowledge somewhat organized. Again, we’ll see how it goes.

“I know a LOT about cooking, however 15% is complexly wrong. I just don’t know which 15%.” - My Dad


My Dad and his wife Jewell in the boqueria Market in Barcelona - Spring 2007

Road Tripping it Down to Jacksonville

Leaving Johns loft feels so long ago.

I looked into my laptop bag and found remnants of my last night with Bianca, Sid, Eva and Lohdee. It just made me realize how long it’s been since I left the city. . . and now here I am, in Amelia Island Florida, once again.

View Larger Map

I’m glad I broke the trip up, always another adventure to get ready for: driving to Philly, (surviving the arrival into town was nothing I could have prepared for). I arrived into West Philly, University City to be exact, at 11: 00p.m on November 4^th 2008. The moment in history when Barak Obama was announced the victor of the 2008 U.S Presidential Election. I had tears running down my face. Not for the same reason so many others were crying in the streets- and they were. But because I had returned to the city where, “it had happened”, I lost Maria. The process was a long and drawn out brake up and one could argue that it happened on my grandmothers porch in Brooklyn, or in Collegeville PA or Conchehocken PA or Montreal or even Barcelona for that matter. I guess there’s no one pin point where one could say, “that was the moment where I lost Maria.” With that said, my body felt that it had returned to the scene of the crime. Many distractions in Montreal and yes, New York was hard too, but there was a whole lot of cathartic action going on in Tyrel (my Tercel) as I watched people gallop, leap and scream in the streets with joy.

As soon as I saw Shelly I told her, “you need to help me re-associate this city”. And thanks to her, Matt, Ashly and few others, I did. I had good times in “haunted spots”. I didn’t go into Conchehocken (although I did drive by) I certainly didn’t go out to Collegeville, (that would have been somewhat sadistic). I can save those spots for another time.

While in my head I thought I had 11 days for the Philly/NYC venture I guess I never really properly looked at a calendar because in actuality it was closer to 6. This was broken up between: a New Kids on the Block concert with Matt (NO, I didn’t meet them and the seats were terrible in comparison to the previous concert); watching an Ottawa vs. Fliers game (Ottawa won and I was not popular for cheering them on); having lunch with my cousin in Manhattan; visiting my other cousin (Stacy, who came to Mtl. for the New Kids concert) in New Jersey; spending the day with Andrea at the Guggenheim and in Williamsburg Brooklyn; venturing the Village with Dana and her possey; wondering the streets of Manhattan (at my pace for a change); chugging back PBR’s in a B.B.Q Pork/jock bar with Dana + others; hitting rocks with hammers out in Ringing Rocks PA (a national park where a quarry of rocks with abnormally high mineral content provide endless entertainment for those with hammers in their hands- B.Y.O.H) and basically chilling with Ashley (one of Shelly’s roommates who was in actuality one of my heroes of the trip- she came home the night of the election and offered me beer after my 9 hour drive).

The drive was pretty easy going. I was pulled over by a cop for talking on my cell phone (which I wasn’t ! and he kept me just a little extra longer because his records showed my car being registered to a “Sherman” ? He asked if I had any hockey bags of marijuana in the vehicle and I couldn’t resist to tell him that there was in fact a hockey bag in the car but it was filled with stinky equipment- can you believe he asked me to show it to him? I had to get out, open the trunk and show him my putrid smelling

equipment that Bill had refused to drive back to Montreal from Philly for me earlier in the year.)

The only other delay I had along the way was at a gas station in up state New York where a man in his 40’s stopped me to talk about politics for like 20 minutes. Let’s just say, he wasn’t too pleased at 11:00 pm later that night.

The drive from Philly to Florida with Shelly was much smoother sailing. We slept in a town called Raily North Carolina- it’s in the “College Belt” or something like that. BUT!!!!!!!!! Someone in that fucking town keyed Tyrel!!! My hood is now keyed! I guess there is a POSSIBILITY it happened in Philly but I spent a lot of time with Tyrel packing him up two days ago and as soon as we walked out of the used book store in Raily I noticed the markings right away… not cool. Shelly sais not to love inanimate objects like cars and I hear her on that, but, this is Tyrel we’re talking about, TYREL. No one should mess with Tyrel.

I had some amazing authentic Mexican food thanks to Shelly (who didn’t eat because she wasn’t feeling well :( and still isn’t: (. Then, just a couple hours ago I was treated to dinner and a beer by Nielle’s parents who met us just outside Savannah Georgia. Nielle is one of Shelly’s best friends and was my goalie last season who brought us to the Gold Meddle position so many of you heard about. So, basically, I owe Nielle big.

Ringing Rocks: