Magazine!

For one of my college classes we have been tasked with creating a magazine on the subject of our choice.
Obviously I'm choosing food.
Look forward to updates, all of the content will be my own and hopefully mirrored here!

Flavoured oils

There's something so nostalgic about flavoured oils. They definitely aren't a new aged thing, they were extremely popular in the 70's as decorations, in the 80's home cooks began to use them more regularly, and the 90's saw most "fine food" shops carry the products in mass quantity. I very specifically remember going into Julian Graves in Scotland when I was a teenager and seeing an entire wall full of flavoured oils. By comparison, these days very few food stores carry a great number of the oils and those that do limit their stocks to garlic and chili oil.
This is partly because of the recent trends towards natural foods and foodies seem to prefer the taste and concept of naturally flavoured oils, nut oils for instance, and the need for infused oils is dropping. The flavour imparted by an infused oil like garlic oil does indeed pale in comparison to rubbing a food with garlic, and I agree there's very little reason to use them anymore but I still enjoy making them and I do indeed enjoy using them... sometimes.
Another reason the usage of flavoured oils dropped off was because of the discovery that their shelf life is considerably shorter than unflavoured oils and there is an increased risk of botulism in most oils. That, coupled with the inability of most oils to be refrigerated and the usefulness of flavoured oils is drastically altered.
There are several rules to follow when making, storing, and using flavoured oils.
Firstly, use a sterile container. For this the only suitable substance is glass. It is extremely easy to boil glass for a couple of minutes to kill any bacteria, try and do that with plastic and by the time the plastic cools enough to fill the bacteria have already returned. Metals on the other hand have two perceived disadvantages, firstly they will contaminate the flavour of the oil and give it a semi-rancid taste after long term storage, secondly there is a risk that it can discolour oils flavoured with ingredients like garlic or herbs. That really only leaves glass.
Secondly, heat your oil before storing. This will, once again, kill any bacteria in the oil or ingredients to be infused, and will actually help impart more flavour into your oil. This is especially true with garlic, which was seemingly born to carry botulism.
Third, store your oils properly. This is true for more than just flavoured oils. All oils should be kept in cool dark places, not refrigerated (unless otherwise specified), and always be kept in an airtight container. Failure to do so will make your oils rancid extremely quickly, and rancid oil is both incredibly disgusting and potentially very dangerous for you.
Fourth, know when to throw things out. Again, not just true of oils. If you've had that bottle of truffle oil for six years, throw it out. I don't care how much you paid for it, throw it out. No oil will last forever, try not to keep any oil longer than 6 months. To prevent wastage buy oil in small batches.
Fifth, be aware of the smoking point of the oil your using. Again, this applies to oil in general. The smoke point is the heat at which a fat begins to smoke, a sign that it is beginning to break down chemically and start to taste downright funky. All oils have a smokepoint, you can easily look them up online or in many cookbooks. Try not to heat oil beyond these points, it destroys flavours.
If you do those things you will effectively remove any of the dangers of using flavoured oils.

Flavoured oils are wonderful as simple salad dressings, great for dipping foccacia in, or great for cooking meats in (again, avoiding the smoking point).
To begin your flavoured oil endeavor choose a flavour that you like to infuse the oil with. Popular flavours include garlic, chive, chili, and then of course nut oils, which aren't actually infused (most of the time).
Secondly choose your oil, good oils for most infusions include safflower, peanut, vegetable, or canola oil. Anything neutral really, though there is a time and a place for stronger oils. I personally enjoy garlic infused olive oil, for which I use a virgin grade olive oil which has a slight flavour which won't overpower the garlic.
I generally heat my oils slightly to help the flavours merry and then bottle them. When using herbs you can even blend the herbs with the oil, strain through cheesecloth and then bottle to impart maximum flavour, though I wouldn't use it for cooking.
And do not discount sweeter flavoured oils, a great oil for very lightly dressing fruit salads in is an oil infused with orange peel studded with clove.

If you're interested in making your own infused oils I would recommend going to your local kitchen supply store, picking up a few bottles and spiggets and playing around. You may actually enjoy it.

Donair Pizza?

I am trying Donair Pizza for the first time today. Details to follow :P

Butter Chicken

Why is it that Butter Chicken has exploded in popularity so much? I see it everywhere and it just so happened to coincide with my own discovery of butter chicken. It's weird.
For those of you unaware, Butter Chicken is a mixture of spices stewed with tomatoes and some kind of dairy product to make a creamy, spicy curry like product in which is served chunks of Tandoori chicken. It is traditionally served with naan (a popular Indian flatbread) and basmati rice.
New York Fries, for instance, now has a Butter Chicken poutine which sounds interesting, but I have an inkling that it might be disgusting. I'm not sure.
The availability of premade spice blends for the sauce is increasing as well, safeway now has no less than 5 different types of mixtures, and other supermarkets (including Co-op and Superstore) have even more.
If you haven't tried it already I would urge you to now, before McDonald puts it on a piece of crispy chicken and makes a Butter Chicken McMini. Though I'm not gonna lie, I'd eat that.
Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Quack.

Lately I've been thinking about how I can spice up my Christmas dinner, I had a conversation (in great detail) with one of my coworkers about a very, very tasty Italian inspired meal.
Have you ever had duck? If not consider yourself lucky; duck is extremely easy to do badly. Duck can be greasy, tough, and generally overcooked by the average cook. Instead, a good duck should be medium-well, drained of most of the fat and deliciously tender. That's not easy, it involves scoring the skin just so, without cutting the meat, searing it at just the right temperature so that the duck doesn't burn before you've rendered most of the fat, and finally making sure that you cook it for just long enough.
Michael Smith has an excellent take on how to do duck, if you're interested.
Anyway, the thought was to cook duck for Christmas Dinner instead of turkey or any other fowl.
Duck isn't strictly Italian, but it'll do. Seasoning the duck with a little bit of salt and pepper and searing it off nicely will impart all the flavours you need, no additional spices or herbs required.
Once you've successfully rendered all of the fat out of a few duck breasts (rendering the fat really is the most important thing when cooking duck) the thought was that if you toasted some good rye and sourdough bread cubes in a small amount of the fat (SMALL AMOUNT, no one wants a mouthful of grease) and then added some mirepoix (finely diced onion, carrots, and celery) as well as some garlic, you would have a very tasty mixture. Throw in some Italian herbs, notably sage and a touch of oregano, and lastly a very small amount of diced stewed tomatoes, if you aren't using san marzano tomatoes I suggest you slap yourself, and you'd have a damn good panzenella salad.
Or at least that's what we were thinking. If I ever try it, I'll let you know.

Musings of Rose

I have internet again!!! WOOHOO!
Anyways, I made another cheesecake a few days ago, and tried something a little out there which I thought I'd mention. Instead of vanilla extract in the cheesecake I instead added about 1/4tsp rose flavouring, which I found at my local East Indian Market, and put it on a brownie crust... cut into squares, top with half a strawberry and drizzle with white chocolate and you've got a bite size treat which is fantastic for entertaining or just for a small snack.
Seriously, sooooo good! It was like romance in a bite, I'll definitely be making it again, except next time I think I might top with a marzipan rose instead, just for added effect.

Lynn Crawford.

For the record Lynn Crawford has, and always will be, one of my greatest idols of the cooking world. Her belief that food is an expression of art, and that Chef's are artists, is an embodiment of everything that I stand for. I believe that beauty should be worked into everything you do, it's in my writing, in my eloquence when I talk, and in the food that I create. But of all these ways of creating beauty, food is by far the most powerful. Food is subtle in ways that words and speeches could never be, each layer is like getting hit with a tiny bullet, you are inexorably effected by each tiny flavour and in this, food is powerful. Lynn and I share this belief, and so it was with no small amount of humility and sheer awe that I met Lynn Crawford, at my school this afternoon. Executive Chef of the Four Seasons in New York, having worked with some of the worlds most talented professionals, Lynn was awe inspiring, to say the least.
Lynn had such energy and such passion, traits that are undeniably linked. She draws energy from her passion, and it's obvious that she cares about food the way few other people can say that they care. "Go to bed with a cookbook" she says, and you can tell that it's that kind of passion which had driven her to the places that she's been.
There are so many things to say about this encounter, so many messages to convey that she had for the students at SAIT. But I won't bore you with all of them, oh no, you should go out there and live them for yourself, go meet her and see what she has to say! If you care about food that much, it won't be hard.