Phyllo fanatics' fresh fixation

Sometimes, the very thought of phyllo pastries (made of phyllo dough, filo, phyllo pastry leaves, börek, pâte phyllo, etc) makes my arteries preemptively clog up, or my blood pressure spike.

Often in Greek and Middle Eastern traditions, each fine layer of fragile dough is slathered with melted butter or oil to make them crispy, often resulting in rich, flaky, rich and deliciously full-bodied, and buttery rich (my heart just hiccuped writing that).

However, at Melina's Phyllo Bar, your heart can rest easy: the pastries here are ace, and perfectly crispy without being overly oily.

Following our intense ninja vampire-hunter training, my buddy Leo and I headed over to this cozy shop in the armpit heart of Mile-End to fill our tummies.


[Leek pie (prasopita), it's vegan, but all Greek to me! Wakka-wakka....]

Here, phyllo pastries are treated like members of the royalty — adored as the centre of attention, yet unassuming and delicate; both the savoury and sweet fillings are tasty. The phyllo is slightly thicker than store-bought phyllo, but if you've ever tried to make phyllo, you know it's the work of a demon spawn... Joanna, the amazors co-proprietor, says it's a secret recipe for which she pretty much has exclusivity —  and not made commercially, so suck it to all those creeping restaurateurs looking to try to muscle in on Melina's phyllo. She's got two armed ninja bodyguards watching over her!


[Spanakopita: feta and spinach and half-eaten, thanks to Leo.]


[Background: photo collage of Melina Mercouri, the modern muse of Greece and also shop's inspiration. Oh, and Leo in the foreground, burping.]


[Leo tried to hide the entire bougatsa (semolina custard pastry) in her mouth from the prying eyes of pedestrians on Parc avenue. It worked.]

After the pastries are all hidden in your stomach, you can chase it all down with a variety of espresso-based drinks. I chose to wash my phyllo pastries down with a Greek soda concoction called Ivi (owned by Pepsico, of course); Melina's is the first in this province to carry this product.


[Ivi uncarbonated orangeade, a taste of nostalgia. Remember when you had school events, and they always served that orange drink from the giant yellow and red drink dispenser cooler from McDonald's? That's what Ivi is, and it brings a tear to my eye.]

Chow and Leo ninja-refuelling rating for Melina's = 4 ninja stars.

Melina's Phyllo Bar
5733 ave. du Parc
(514) 270-1675 

Hanging out with my pal Char Siu

Everyone who knows Char Siu knows that there's no fooling around when it comes to barbecue. Steve Raichlen doesn't hold a candle to char siu (sorry, Mr. Raichlen).

Char siu, or Chinese barbecue pork 叉燒 (literally "fork roast" but can also mean "stabbing burn"*) is scientifically proven to be everyone's second favourite meat, and is eaten year-round, in steamed buns (bao 包), in sandwiches, topped on ramen, or stand-alone (not only at Chinese New Year).

Contrary to tradition, the beautiful roast red colour on char siu is often a result of red food colouring, the CHEATERS way of getting that awesome colour. Cheaters, as we know, get turned into pillars of shame, and end up on Jerry Springer with illegitimate twins.

The REAL way of getting the red is using red fermented bean curd which lends to the flavour and the red colour without artificial colours. You can also be a lazy doof and buy the jar of char siu marinade which doesn't taste as good. Up to you if you want to be a doof.


[This is how I roll. The medium-fatty pork loin version of char siu.]

As is customary for enterprising Asian food mart merchants, CNY foodstuffs prices are jacked up prior to the holiday. I wasn't about to pay $10/lb for a sliver of delicious barbecued pork, so I made my own from pork loins. The loins were, IMO, not fatty enough for my taste but plenty good on flavour. Opting for more of an authentic roast, I hung the char siu to roast in the oven, just like the big boys do!


[Suspended animation: char siu roasting on makeshift hooks in my convection oven. Looks weird, but so do bodybuilders.]

Chow's Char siu 
Marinade (for ~3 lbs pork)
1 Tb (15ml) light soy sauce
3 tsp salt
4 cloves garlic
1 Tb (15ml) chopped ginger
2 stalks green onions
1.5 Tbs (22ml) five-spice powder
3 Tb (45ml) honey, corn syrup, or maltose
2 cubes red bean curd
1 Tb (15ml) rice wine


Glaze
1 Tb (15ml) honey

1. Salt your meats and let it sit at least 30 min. This is always important
2. Meanwhile, combine all ingredients for the marinade.
3. Score your meats (optional) by making very shallow slits perpendicular to the grain of the meat, as so.
   [I was told that scoring cross-grain on one side of the loin would keep it from curling. Who cares about it curling when it all goes into your stomach!]
4. Marinade your meats in the marinade (minimum 4 hours, recommended overnight in fridge, while letting warm up to almost room temperature prior to cooking).
5. If roasting in a tray and rack, first cover the rack in aluminium foil, pierce a few holes in the foil, and then lay down a few chopsticks at intervals on the foiled rack. Lay the meat over the chopsticks so that it is basically propped over the foiled rack.
   If you roast them hanging, make sure you place a tray at the bottom of your oven to catch the delicious char siu drippings which will be lost to you forever because it's no longer edible.   
6. Roast for 25 to 30 minutes in total for a 3lb roast, testing at 20 minutes for doneness. When near done, paint the honey glaze all over the meat (flip if required). 
7. When done, remove from oven and let sit for 10 minutes. Slice thinly and eat while your gluttonous family members are still watching television. 

* When I was subjected to Rorschach tests, I always saw demon dophins. 

Deep-fried Lunar New Year treats: Crispy Sesame Flower aka Dragon Cloaca

It's that time of year again, where old and young Asian kinfolk bring together their bickering over a family supper table. Yes, it is Chinese New Year today.

Aside from the traditional gut-busting home-cooked Chinese gastronomy the eve, there is also no shortage of Chinese tradi-superstitions, to which I don't really adhere; here's a shortlist of some CNY buffoonery:

• Cleaning your house on the new year (that's what domestic helpers are for).
• Avoiding the use of scissors or knives (so all haircuts happen before CNY mean barbers and salons gouge clients for 10x the normal fee).
• Eating as many sweets as you can stomach before your teeth fall out.
• Giving money in the form of red pockets is auspicious, especially if they're for me. 

However, stupidstitions aside, here's one deep-fried tradition I did honour for year 4710, or the Year of the Dragon: crispy sesame flowers (脆麻花, cheoi mah fah). They resemble nothing less than the anus of a dragon (mostly because my handywork is sub-par... sue me). 

[Crispy sesame flowers; definitely not flower-shaped, rather, they're like three-dimensional Möbius strips.]

The recipe is the same as the one used for Smiley Face Nuggets with a slight variation: a smidgen less sugar and the addition of one cube of red fermented bean curd (南乳, "southern fermented bean curd") for each cup of flour used.

[Red fermented bean curd. Again, the Western translations here are stupid; ridicule liberally.]


[Before the magic red fermented bean curd is mixed in the dough.]

Once mixed in (you might need a bit more flour), roll it out, cut into 2-inch strips and like a plastic surgeon, make an incision in the middle parallel to the long edge, and then thread one end through the incision. Deep fry the flipped dragon anuses doughthings until golden, and drain on paper towels.

[Rolled out and ready to go.]

A recipe using (1) one cup of flour will yield about 2.5 cups of deep-fried biscuits and raise your LDL cholesterol by 20 points.

Gung hei fat choi 恭喜發財! 
(P.S. My resolution this year is to clean my potty mouth. So far, it is not happening.)

Tourtière abberation by Chow

Whatever I'm going to write now about tourtière will probably receive some eyebrow-raising and some harsh poo-pooing from any bonne dame de région* but maybe not...!

This is a tale of the birth of a French-Canadian meat pie that was born out of wedlock and raised with love; this is the Chow tourtière made from pork, potatoes and chicken hearts.


[Diminutive version of the meat pie designed for loggers.]

Chicken hearts, though they might be the ugly duckling of the meat world, are (as Subordinate Chow put it) "the most tasty meat in the world until someone told you it was chicken hearts."

Traditionally served as a sleep-inducing meal (réveillon) on Xmas and New Year's eves, it is a perfect sedative for holiday church masses (if the actual mass doesn't put you to sleep first). Les québécois were pretty resourceful folk back in the day, and used whatever meats were local and available to them to make tourtière. (Perhaps I might not be off the beaten track after all.)

This aberration tourtière involves stuffing a double pie crust with a mix of ground chicken hearts and ground pork, with diced potatoes, onions, salt and pepper, herbs (thyme, bay leaf, oregano) baked in a deep dish pie plate (or double the recipe and bake in a cast iron Dutch oven for that extra authenticity no one really cares about unless it means more food).

[Keep the meat and meat grinder cold and your work will be cut out for you.]

The fact that there are not only one but two types of tasty animals in this dish means it's twice as tasty; my math is good.

(Take heed, vegetarians and vegematarians: skip the dead animals and use ground hazelnuts, seitan, ground chickpeas, lentils, TVP (textured vegetable protein), chopped mushrooms, and/or caramelized onions, or combination of all of them.)

May 2012 bring you new tidings of glee in the form of good food and drink! Now for the REAL new year celebrations...

* old bat from Quebec boonies.

Holiday cheer: butter up your days with shortbread biscuits

Cookies (or biscuits as they're called on the other side of the pond) are one of the reasons why Xmas was invented. Forget the religious business – Xmas is a vehicle for consumption of alcohol butter.

[Single batch of petticoat-shaped cookies.]

Full of buttery goodness, shortbread is originally a Scottish blessing made of pretty much just butter, oatmeal flour and sugar. Nowadays, one uses plain flour or mixed with oatmeal flour.

[Buttery proof is in the paper bag]

Taking off from the America's Test Kitchen recipe for perfect shortbread, you can clog a few arteries with a single recipe, or double it to induce a few heart attacks.

[ATK suggests how to properly bake them properly – notice the top one is still slightly wet in the middle... big no-no... I ate it anyways.]

[The middle piece! Or what's left of it.]

Happy butter season to all!

Try this: Hagelslag – the serious chocolate sprinkles

Hagelslag, according to the Dutch, is the reason bread was invented*. Bread, you see, is the vehicle for conveying hagelslag, chocolate sprinkles for grown-ups (though they do make kid versions).

It's ideal for people who want to relive the youth they never got to experience because their moms were scatterbrained anti-sugar fascists!

[Box of assorted hagelslag. The best is the original one and the pure chocolate one and the golden one.]

Around 1936, some enterprising Dutch man by the name of Gerard de Vries at the Venz chocolate factory decided to revolutionize the consumption of chocolate in the form of sprinkles – which, by the way, can only be called hagelslag if it's 45% chocolate or more, otherwise it's labelled chocolate-flavoured hagelslag.

Butter up your bread (or toast, though it might be frowned upon) and sprinkle hagelslag generously on top and eat with a grin: the butter is the binding agent that unites the world.

[I might go to hell for putting hagelslag on toast but it's totally worth it.]

Take it from the Dutch: chocolate sprinkles are serious business – about 14 million kilos of business annually, on 850 million slices of bread.

* Totally could be made up.

Baked bread so good, you can hide stuff in

Sometimes when you least expect it, you can learn something. In this case, I learned something revolutionary from the talented local photographer, Mr. Simoneau when I went to help him dispose of bodies learn desktop publishing crap – I learned that you can make [expletive]ly fantastic bread with very little kneading and patience.

Let's call it Fancy Bread for Lazy People.

I was in complete denial that this would work and boy was I ever schooled!


[Still hot in the Dutch oven]

The NY Times piece that first revealed this technique says that all you need is:

• 3 cups +/- (~750ml) of flour (mix and match)
• 1/4 tsp (1.5ml) instant yeast
• 1-1/4 tsp salt (6.5ml) (I found 1 tsp was sufficient)
• 1-5/8 cup (385ml) water
• Cornmeal, more flour, or wheat bran for dusting
• Big bowl
• A Dutch oven or something similar with an oven-proof cover. They're on sale this week at Canadian Tire, so you have no excuse unless you live in an armpit.
• Patience (also available at Canadian Tire for $12.99) 

The secret, Mr. Simoneau says, is magical unicorn saliva. But I think it's the humidity that gets trapped in the preheated pot for the first part of the cooking process.


[Mr. Simoneau making his olive version, where he reduced the salt by about a quarter. Please ignore the yelling face he is making at me.]


[A 50% whole wheat bread with black sesame]

Oh, btw, I said you can hide stuff in the bread; I tried hiding Pee-Wee in it while baking and it worked out quite well (wouldn't you say?).


Thanks, Mr. Simoneau for the great tip! And thanks to Pee-Wee for being such a good sport.