Sitting around the table last night with gusts of strong breath coloring our domestic atmosphere, Amy and I were considering the profound effect garlic has on Spanish cuisine, and we wondered aloud whether any other national cuisine makes such abundant and varied use of the perfumed rose. Certainly, French and Italian food incorporate garlic with spectacular results, as do Greek, most other Mediterranean cuisines, as well as Chinese and Indian, but if there’s a cuisine that, to us, is characterized by garlic, it’s Spanish.

All of which is great, unless you happened to be sitting next to us this morning on the subway, as last night we ate two of the most highly odoriferous dishes in the Iberian canon – patatas a lo pobre and pollo al ajillo. The humble, peasant roots of both these dishes (the former translating as poor man’s potatoes) rely heavily on large quantities of garlic to elevate the otherwise prosaic ingredients to a higher plane. The garlic somehow acts both as a spice and an acid, flavoring the dish while simultaneously cutting through and balancing the olive oil.

We recommend you make enough of both these dishes to share, not just because they make delicious tapas-style small plates, but because you’ll want to surround yourself with similarly pungent folk to avoid people covering their faces and shuffling away down the train as if you had the plague. On the other hand, you do far worse than gain a little extra personal space in this congested city of ours. Maybe we’ve hit on a smart new commuting tactic?

Do you ever wish you had a secret power? I don’t mean like some stupid superhero who can fly, make it rain, or look great in a unitard. I mean like a gerbil’s ability to store tasty bits in its cheeks for later, or a tiger’s ability to eat 30lbs of wild boar at a single sitting, that kind of thing. No? Hmm, well, I do, and sometimes, in my more reflective moments, I find myself wishing I was blessed with a gizzard. After all, would not my diet be expanded and my ‘intestinal transit’ made smoother if I possessed a specialized second stomach that enabled me to grind up and enjoy commonly indigestible foods?

Having recently questioned a sample group of poultry, reptiles and fish (the only three genera of animals that possess gizzards) about this, I can tell you that 9 out of the 10 chickens surveyed credited their gizzards with giving free reign to their more fibrous dietary proclivities. In the course of my survey, I also learned that while addiction and dependency issues brought on by knowingly being bred for slaughter are a big problem for young roosters, the greater worry among concerned hens is the utter disregard for their gizzards demonstrated by the carnivorous public.

“That’s my son’s (second) stomach they’re throwing them away!”, cock-a-doodle-doed one plump mother of 700 chicks, while another squawked that, “they (humans) should be so lucky to have a gizzard of their own. Ingrates!”

Chastened by these plaintive cries, and encouraged to make a salad we ate at a fabulous gastropub in Lille, France, over New Year’s, we recently explored the potential of confit-ing chicken gizzards. We found that nothing could be easier and more delicious, nor could this preparation be more suited to making the best out of what is a potentially tough part of the giblets.

We served our gizzards and some similarly confit’d chicken livers over a green salad with some boiled eggs, just as we had eaten it in Lille, but an alternative preparation typical to the Dordogne region of France, especially the town of Perigeux/Perigord, serves the gizzards over a lettuce salad with walnuts and croutons, which would be just as good, no doubt.

Chicken and Waffles.  Two foods that many obsess over individually but wouldn’t even think to pair together.  Why, I wonder?  Have you ever dipped your crunchy piece of bacon into your pancake syrup, even if it’s accidental?  How about some fabulous thai sauces that have that sweet sticky flavor paired with some fried calamari?  What about any dish with sweet, salty and crunchy combination?  If you’re a nonbeliever, please, believe.  One taste of Chicken and Waffles and it quickly gained a top 10 spot on my “Death Row Last Meal” list.   You know you have one too.

The history of the beginnings of Chicken and Waffles is a perplexing one.  No one is really sure of its origins.  One of the original theories claims that Thomas Jefferson brought a waffle machine to the US from France in the 1790’s, thus beginning a waffle craze (even though the Pilgrims brought it to the New World back in the early 1600’s, we guess Tommy really sparked the interest). Soon after, being embraced by the African American community, Chicken and Waffles began appearing in cookbooks (although, curiously, it did not appear in the first cookbook written around 1880 by a Black former slave called What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking by Abby Fisher).  The Pennsylvania Dutch (the first Germans to have settled in the US) have been pairing chicken with waffles probably before Thomas Jefferson was a twinkle in his mother’s uterus.  Instead of frying their chicken pieces, the PA Dutch version uses shredded pieces of boiled or roasted chicken on top of waffles and top it with lots of creamy gravy instead of hot sauce and syrup.  You may think this either looks like sick on a waffle or, possibly, chicken pot pie over a waffle. The final and most common origin is that Chicken and Waffles began in the 1930’s during the Harlem Jazz hayday, specifically at a place no longer in existence called Wells Supper Club. When the Jazz musicians walked into Wells after a long night of playing, they wanted a combo of dinner and breakfast (dickfast?  dinfast?) and the staff created the crispy, crunchy, salty, sweet combo we love today.

Clearly we’re not the first to try making chicken and waffles at home.  I still remember drooling over our friend Heather’s version almost a year ago.  After our fun maple syrup taste-test, we figured it was the perfect time to make something we had wanted to make for a long time.  This experience also gave me a chance to finally give that damn supposedly amazing Thomas Keller fried chicken recipe a whirl.  I combined his recipe with some tips from Serious Eats supposed “Best Fried Chicken Recipe”.  The result?  Damn ass good.  If I could be guaranteed to not gain weight or get a major cholesterol problem, I could possibly eat this every day.  This recipe is hands down worth the time and effort if you’re going to bother doing your own fried chicken. Please, take my word for it – it was perfectly cooked, perfectly crunchy, and very, very moist inside.  If you don’t try the chicken and waffles, please use this recipe for some damn good fried chicken.  Make it with a side of  Lipitor.

PS: How awesome does that old Herbie Hancock album cover look against this “set”? I laugh every time I look at those gold medallions on his neck. By the way, we’re cheap – that’s one of Jonny’s shirts as our “faux country” tablecloth.  We’re professionals, folks.  Real professionals.

Those with even a basic understanding of food history probably know that the hamburger as we know it today is an American adaptation of the “Hamburger-style steak” which originated in the now-German city of Hamburg, and was brought to this country by immigrants from Schleswig-Holstein. Demonstrating typical cunning and salemanship, all the Americans did was make this dish portable, and, having done so, they set out to make the world obese and diabetic by drowning these wildly popular sandwiches in hydrogenated fat and salt, and selling them for $1 each.

A marginally less successful, but somewhat healthier, tactic was adopted by Italian immigrants in Argentina, who, when they found that chicken was viewed with only slightly less disdain than fish in their new country, modified their recipe for pollo alla Milanese to include the ubiquitous Argentine beef. Like shooting fish in a barrel, once launched these new breaded and fried beef cutlets quickly became a hugely popular alternative to a steak across Argentina – a country that, since it, statistically, eats more beef per head than anywhere else on Earth, was likely crying out for alternative ways to serve their national dish.

Known as milanesas, they can be found in one form or another on menus and in grocery stores throughout Buenos Aires: most are beef, though chicken and veal (de ternera) are also typical, and they come in a variety of arrangements, the most common of which seems to be alla Napolitana.  This latter dish consists of a breaded cutlet topped with prosciutto (or cooked ham), melted cheese [cuartirola (sic) [Quartirola Lombarda] or Port Salut] and a splash of chunky, crimson tomato sauce, and is often served with fries (papas fritas). Not many people know this, but it is not, in fact, named for Neapolitan-style pizza, or the way the dish is served in Naples, rather it is so-called because it was first served in Jose Napoli’s, now-defunct, Buenos Aires Pizzeria Napoli establishment in the 1930s.

Indeed, this dish, remarkably similar to the French poulet cordon bleu, can be found throughout much of South America, and, in Chile, an almost identical dish is served as Milanesa Kaiser, or simply Escalopa, reflecting, perhaps, more the original central European roots of the dish in the Austrian Wiener Schnitzel, than its later variant the Lombardian cotoletta alla Milanese. In fact, such is the popularity of this technique of breading pounded meat and then shallow frying it, that you can find similar dishes throughout much of the western hemisphere with the wonderfully decadent Southern dish of chicken fried steak being perhaps the best known in this country.

And, resembling the frankly magnificent “chicken parm” sandwiches found in almost every pizza joint in the north-east US, the milanesa also sometimes appears in sandwiches in Argentina. As we had recently received some delicious samples from Napa, Ca., company GL Mezzetta, from their new (to the north-east US) Napa Valley Bistro line, including a jar of tomato sauce and one of peperoncini (pickled hot peppers), with the challenge of using them to create a contest-winning sandwich, we decided to use them to build ourselves a delicious, gut-busting torta de milanesa alla Napolitana.

An hour later, full and sporting messy red-sauce mustaches, we began to wonder how come milanesas do not seem to have had quite the same bloating effect on the Argentine population as the hamburger has in America…

Mezzetta Napa Valley Bistro Products
Tomato Basil Pasta Sauce
Altogether this is an excellent jarred sauce and beats the pants off its competition. It’s pleasantly chunky; the wine provides a nice rounded flavor and doesn’t overpower the tomatoes with too much acid; and the small pool of olive oil that had settled on the top of the sauce was a good sign, showing both that it included olive oil and that it wasn’t fully emulsified with stabilizers or other preservatives. Other bonuses for a jarred sauce include the clear listing of “fresh” ingredients on the label, rather than their dried or powdered counterparts commonly found in regular, generic bottled pasta sauce. Our only complaint, and this is a matter of personal taste, is that it was slightly too heavy on the oregano. If you’re a fan of oregano in your pasta sauces though, this is probably the finest jarred sauce you can find.

Make That Sandwich
If you’d like to enter your sandwich to the GL Mezzetta Make That Sandwich Contest, click here and read the guidelines and other small print, and submit your entry. The grand prize is $25,000!! Good luck, happy sandwich-making and buen provecho!

A few years ago, my local favorite Thai take-out royally f’ed me. Ok, I’m exaggerating a bit. Have you ever had a restaurant you used to love and then horrible customer service just made you reconsider your obsession with them? Did you feel personally offended because over the course of many, many years of patronage (meaning you felt like you single-handedly kept their sorry arses in business?), they ruin the love affair with a few bad decisions? Maybe you wouldn’t want me as your customer but I usually have a “three strikes you’re out” rule but that one bad day, the day I was a bit hungover and desperately needed the sweet and salty taste of some Thai food, my local joint let me down big time. I responded with a few mean reviews on our Brooklyn/NYC online restaurant review websites. Then I vowed I would never, ever return again… no matter how bad I wanted that delicious Penang Curry. And guess what, I did it. To this day I have never returned. When I want to stand my ground, I do. But I have finally realized that my business did not keep them open and they continue to thrive locally. Whatever…

During my hiatus from the local Thai restaurant, I did learn to make some Thai-inspired dishes at home. One is this fabulous calamari salad. What I love the most about this is that it is the perfect mix of healthy and unhealthy. Yes, you have to fry some calamari, but it’s laying on a bed of napa or savoy cabbage and some other veggies. I guess you could make this with some grilled calamari if you want to really go healthy (or if you just hate to fry). It’s super easy to make and actually makes a nice meal.  I had a nice bottle of thai sweet chili sauce, but you can also make your own very easily.

So, lately we’ve been experiencing a certain degree of apathy with regard to food. Maybe it’s the time of year or the grind of work, either way, it’s not a great place to be for us, and hopefully somewhere we will leave soon. Nonetheless, sometimes inspiration can strike, and delicious, seasonal citrus fruit can be the spark.

Now, I use the word inspiration somewhat liberally here because really, all this dish is, is lightly fried monkfish medallions over a mix of Israeli and regular couscous. The “inspired bit”, if you will, is the sauce, an olive oil, tangerine, and Marcona almond emulsion.

Fried Monkfish Medallions with Mixed Couscous & Almond Sauce

Ingredients

• 1lb monkfish tail, sliced into 1 inch (2.5cm) medallions
• 3oz Israeli couscous
• 3oz regular (or flavored) couscous
• 1 large bunch white chard or escarole (chicory)
• 2tbsp golden raisins
• 6 tbsp whole marcona or other whole large almonds (1 tbsp chopped)
• 3oz your best extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tangerine, supremed, and juiced
• 1 handful good black, or kalamata, olives
• 3tbsp flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
• 12 oz vegetable or chicken stock
• 1 egg, beaten
• 4tbsp plain flour
• juice of 1/2 lemon

Recipe

1. Cook couscous with stock according to directions on package, or eyeball it if you’re feeling fancy.
2. In a blender grind all but 1 tbsp almonds, before drizzling in olive oil and tangerine juice. Taste and correct seasoning accordingly.
3. When couscous is cooked, stir in parsley, olives and remaining lemon juice. Correct seasoning if necessary.
4. Heat a frying pan to medium-high and add 2 tbsp regular olive oil
5. Sprinkle with salt and a squeeze of lemon juice, before dredging monkfish medallions in flour and egg.
6. Gently fry monkfish until golden brown on all sides, and remove to a cooling rack.
7. Add another tbsp olive oil to pan and add chard. Sweat until limp before adding golden raisins, tangerine segments and the chopped almonds.
8. Arrange all these delicious elements artfully on a plate before wolfing it down with a chilled Albarino.

What’s originally from India, can be green or yellow, starchy or sweet, is consumed throughout West Africa, the Caribbean, and Central & South America, and (best of all) can be used to mimic a phallus in hilarious kitchen antics? Yes, that’s right, it’s the plantain – aka banana plantain, cooking plantain, beer banana, bocadillo plantain, tostones, maduro, patacon, chifle, dodo, etc. – and like almost all the best kinds of foods (to us at least) it is most deliciously prepared deep-fried.

Throughout the Caribbean, Central America and the northern half of South America, starchy green plantains, aka patacones or tostones, are one of the principal components of almost every meal, and, depending on where you are and who is doing the cooking, you’ll find them sliced into rounds (Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic), cut on the bias to make wedges (Honduras, Cuba), or sliced length-wise into, well, long, um, sausages (Venezuela, Colombia, Jamaica, Trinidad)…Typically, the plantain is fried once before being lightly flattened (in some places this is done with a special tool, but we used a meat mallet or rolling pin to good effect) which gives more surface area, exposing more of the starch to oil, and hence creating crispier patacones/tostones. Then, it’s tipped back into the fryer and cooked until crispy and golden on all sides.

In many places, nothing more is done to it and it’s eaten just like that, maybe with some salt or sliced avocado. In Haiti, Dominican Republic and Cuba they are often dipped in criole/creole/criollo sauce and eaten with chicken or shrimp, whereas in Venezuela and Colombia they often go into sandwiches with meat and vegetables. Let’s face it though, they’re good anyway you like them. They’re like potato chips on steroids and will fill even the hungriest belly in double-time.

After eating them prepared in a similar way at a restaurant near us in Brooklyn, we spread our patacones with mashed avocado, but then gilded that lily adding sauteed onions, our world (ie: home) famous black beans, crumbled morcilla (blood sausage) and chunks of chorizo. A little squeeze of sour cream and hot sauce finished things off. If you can’t find, or won’t eat morcilla, it would still be delicious with just chorizo, but we can imagine topping patacones with shredded chicken, roast pork, shrimp, fish, or anything you like really. Half a green plantain each made a decent “light” dinner, but these would make fantastic finger-food at a party if you cut them into bite-sized pieces. Viva el patacon!

In honor or one of our commenters (Elra), we thought it would be helpful to actually post a recipe instead of posting an idea of how to make this. So, here ya go:

PATACONES (serves 2 as a meal and 4 as an appetizer)

Ingredients:

• 2 green plantains 
• enough peanut or veggie oil to fry
• lime
• salt

Optional toppings:

• Our “famous” black beans
• Smashed avocado with a bit of lime or homemade guacamole (avocado, lime juice, cilantro, bit of garlic)
• Sauteed onions and green peppers (saute some sliced onions and green peppers in some olive oil w/ a bit of lime juice and salt for about 8 minutes until semi-soft)
• Sauteed chorizo and/or morcilla sausage (again, slice chorizo into small pieces and crumble morcilla into similar small pieces, then saute in until warm and a bit charred – about 6-8 minutes)

What to do:

1. With a sharp knife, slice the plantain skin lengthways downwards about 1/2 inch deep.  Do not puncture the plantains, you only want to make it easier to remove the skin.  Remove skin.
2. Slice the plantian in half lengthways (from top to bottom).  Heat up oil. Fry each half of plantian for about 1-2 minutes then remove to drain on a paper towel.  Let cool for a moment.
3. Grab your mallet or tostonera, flatten the plantain as best you can until it is about 1/4 of an inch thick.  We basically just smashed ours with a mallet, but be kind of careful not to hit too hard because you don’t want it to split. Once they are all flattened, fry again until golden brown, the time will be determined by how hot your oil is.
4. Remove from oil and allow to drain on paper towels. Sprinkle with some salt and a squeeze of lime juice and top with your favorite toppings!

Note: prepare for a very long read or click here to skip forward to the recipe.

In the same way that there is probably some truth in the Chinese claim to have invented the noodle that became the ubiquitous Italian pasta, the origins of the archetypical British dish of fish n’chips seems to stem from Sephardic Jewish and French Protestant immigrants to the UK. In the mid-18th century, fishing trawlers became large enough to catch significant numbers of North Sea bottom-feeding white fish and domestic railroads expanded so that much of the UK began to have cheap and regular access to this fresh bounty. Also at this time, the potato-cooking skills of French Hugenot immigrants and the fish-frying traditions of Southern European Jews came together in what was to be a lasting and wildly popular marriage.

The French fry had been invented years earlier when the poor had first ventured to cook this new world tuber - originally only thought good enough for animal feed – and these techniques have continued to be refined to this day. Jews immigrating to the UK and other areas of Northern Europe having been expelled from Portugal and Spain brought matza (matzo, matzoh, matsah,) with them, which they knew to be an excellent coating for fish when ground or crumbed. Combining these two techniques with the endemic British passion for beer and deep-frying, resulted in one of the most famous exports from the British Isles since limey sailors began spreading a horrifying variety of VDs in port cities the world over. 

Today’s fish n’chips (depending on where you go) still closely resemble the original ideas found in Portuguese fried fish dishes pescado frito, in which strips of fish are dunked in a light batter of water, matzo flour and salt, then rolled in crumbed matzo before deep-frying in a cauldron of hot oil. In fact, the Portuguese are sometimes credited with having introduced this technique to Japan where it developed into the extremely delicious tempura style. In the UK, beer was often added in place of water to the flour (typically plain flour nowadays, rather than matzo) and salt, with the resulting batter being richer, but somehow lighter, frothier and more golden colored.

The British habit of “chipping” potatoes into larger batons than the continental Europeans, and now the Americans, and only frying them once, appears to just be a local habit. Some have suggested that the UK picked up on an early potato-cooking technique and kept it while the more culinarily-advanced French and Belgians continued to experiment with thinner-cut potatoes and double-frying, so that they perfected the golden and crunchy frites of today. I prefer to think of the British technique to be based not on ignorance, but on textural appreciation. For why have a crispy deep-fried fish and pair it with something else crispy? Why not pair it with something softer and more unctious?

My Life with Fish n’Chips

Anyway, fish n’chips became incredibly popular in the UK and its colonies around the world, with the chip shop still a fixture on virtually every town’s high street in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. For much of my youth, growing up in provincial England, it was one of only two choices for cheap, take-away/out food – the other being the uniformly foul and greasy hole that was the Golden Lantern Chinese take-out, so fish n’chips played an important role in our Friday night social traditions. After choir practice at our local church, we’d often hit the chip shop for a “slap-up” dinner of cod & chips with mushy peas, and bread & scrape (sliced white bread with lard), all washed down with our weekly soda allowance – a can of Lilt (a pineapple and grapefruit flavored soda).

Mr. Chips, the snappily-titled chip shop in my Cheshire town was universally known as just “the chippy” and, correspondingly - demonstrating some terribly enlightened feelings towards the town’s tiny, but most obvious, ethnic population - the Golden Lantern, was referred to as “the Chinky”. Subsequently, this ordinary little town has gentrified virtually beyond recognition, with all manner of ethnic restaurants elbowing aside these two bastions of atherosclerosis. However, echoes of these former times can still be heard in local parlance. Sadly, the Golden Lantern is gone, replaced by Slow Boat and Treasure Village, which now, demonstrating how times have changed for the better, are referred to as “the Chinese”; Mughli, an Indian restaurant, is either ”the curry house” or “the Indian”, and Est! Est! Est! is “the Italian”.

Fish n’chip restaurants still play a significant role in British gastronomic and cultural life. As with many countries, the UK has recently undergone a revolution in its food traditions, returning to basics and local ingredients and striving for sustainability. This has led to a re-evaluation and revival of many traditional dishes, including the hugely devalued fish n’chips. With North Sea cod stocks (like cod almost everywhere) having crashed due to overfishing, some traditions have had to change, and now other white fish are used including hake, halibut and haddock in its place, but the typical methods of beer and matzo batter, quality malt vinegar, fine sea salt and first-class British potatoes cooked in beef tallow (beef lard) are emerging again, much to my delight.

We’re heading to London to visit my new nephew in a couple of weeks, and will be hitting up arguably the finest chip shop in the capital, Fryer’s Delight in Holborn, which you will be the first to hear about right here in these pages. To date though, the best fish n’chips I ever had was at a very dodgy-looking chippy in Fleetwood, Lancashire (NW England, about 1.5hrs north of Manchester). Overlooking the grey and miserable-looking Irish Sea, I ate perfectly fried, golden cod, soft and salty chips and deliciously thick marrowfat mushy peas. It was a glorious, all-English experience.

But don’t think that fish n’chips only comes with mushies – oh no, variations abound in dressings. While the traditional is the simple sea salt and malt vinegar with a side of tartar sauce and M.P’s, others include, parsley sauce, brown gravy, curry sauce, garlic sauce, piccalilli, mayonnaise, Henderson’s relish, Worcestershire sauce, pea wet or pea’s water (liquid strained from peas during the creation of mushy peas) which is often free, baked beans, cheese or cheese curds, coleslaw, ketchup, chilli sauce, thousand island dressing, salad cream, chip spice, brown sauce, and summer savory (turkey stuffing & gravy), to name but a few.

Ever striving for the traditional in our take on the dish, we went with a pale ale batter, beautiful Atlantic cod (yes, i know it’s unsustainable, but our fishmonger doesn’t sell haddock or hake) thick cut chips, homemade mushy peas, homemade tartar sauce and, perhaps excessively, homemade curry sauce – my wife being a huge fan of dipping sauces. In fact, all of them are fiendishly easy to make, but as with most simple dishes, the key is high quality ingredients. Old potatoes and a shitty piece of fish even when perfectly fried will still taste like a turd. Similarly, beautifully fresh potatoes and cod fried in rancid old oil will be a disaster. Make sure you buy everything as fresh as possible. Fresh potatoes have very few “eyes” and yield a nice sheen of liquid when peeled, and fresh cod or haddock (hake is fine also) will have wonderfully shiny skin and nice firm flesh. If it’s already flaky and soft do not buy it, instead sharply reprimand your fishmonger for having the temerity to sell such tat.

Fish n’Chips with Mushy Peas, + Tartar and Curry Sauces (serves 2-3)

Gentle readers, please sympathize with me, for I, like a man who’s been dining exclusively on centipedes, have the bitter taste of defeat in my mouth. That this humiliation and defeat arrived, to twist a metaphor, at the hands of nothing more sinister than a pig’s foot, has only served to exacerbate these feelings of embarrassment and self-loathing.

Those of you already somewhat familiar with our body of work here at We Are Never Full may know that we are always ready to face down even the hardiest gastronomic challenges, frequently with all-to scant regard for liver, waistline and coronary arteries. It’s a kind of culinary cockiness and machismo that, strangely enough, we find so odious in TV food tools like Guy Fieri. I sincerely hope that this foolish trend, which continued during our recent trip to Montreal, has no lasting repercussions on our health.

Having heard about the restaurant Au Pied de Cochon (literally, at the foot of the pig) and its joyful, some may say reckless, use of duck and pork fat (& offal) in the preparation of traditional French and Quebecois dishes, plus several unique heart-stopping creations, we figured that it sounded like the kind of place we should visit.

“…a green salad tossed in warm, duck-fat vinaigrette and topped with a fritter of trotter mush…”

The red sign near the entrance cautioning patrons to be careful on the greasy floor should have been taken as warning, as should the glazed and listless gazes of departing patrons. Heedless, we proceeded to order the sliced tongue and the crispy PDC salad as starters. The former, which was beef tongue, sat nicely in our comfort zone. Meltingly tender and served with a butter-finished veal stock sauce and garnished with sliced cornichons for a texturally-satisfying crunch. We were intrigued by the latter when the waiter explained that it was basically a green salad tossed in warm, duck-fat vinaigrette and topped with a fritter of trotter mush. Yes, that’s right – the nerves, cartilage and natural gelatin from the pig’s foot, mashed together and seasoned, then breaded and deep-fried. Not a salad for dieters, but amazing tasting, wonderful mouth-feel, with the prince of vinaigrettes.

That we had ordered mains after this was our first major mistake, and the second was that one of them happened to be the pied de cochon with foie gras. (The fact that the other was a large tranche of foie gras with a side of poutine (more on this in a later post) barely registered.) Few are the times in my life that I have had a plate of food put in front of me and I have suddenly felt weak, timid and overawed – even at the most trying times I usually soldier bravely on before leaving the table bloated and sweaty – but, on this occasion I was defeated the moment I was served.

“…like the governor of a provincial state thrust into the spotlight of CBS News … I was suddenly way out of my depth and performed pathetically, embarrassing myself in the process.”

Never before have I even seen a plate of food that large for one person, let alone been prompted to eat it. It was gigantic. The pigs foot was large – maybe a foot long - and deep-fried, though that of itself caused little consternation as it was mostly bone, and was topped with a 4oz slice of seared foie gras, again, excessive, but perhaps not fear-inducing exactly. What really intimidated me was that the trotter sat on an inch-deep bed of creamy mashed potatoes and between two foot-long trenches – for that’s what they were – of button mushrooms and spinach in a cream and butter sauce. I would estimate there were two 6oz boxes of button mushrooms plus a cup of cream on the plate, and the whole thing must have weighed about 5lbs and could have served six adults. What was I to do in the face of such magnitude?

You’re right, I could have plowed in and tried to eat it all, and then admitted defeat gracefully later on. I could also have harangued the waiter for not giving me any idea of what a fool I was making of myself, but frankly, my spirit was broken. You see, I’ve always managed to perform creditably at the table before, even if I have ultimately been overwhelmed, but, like the governor of a provincial state thrust into the spotlight of CBS News for the first time, I was suddenly way out of my depth and performed pathetically, embarrassing myself in the process.

As these photos attest, I was barely able to make a dent in it, and in truth, it was my wife who ate the lion’s share. I had been psyched out and failed to regain my composure. Some would say, with good reason, that it was a shameful waste of food, but I prefer to think of it as a lesson in humility.

Indeed, chatting with the maitre d’ later on over calvados (one of the few things that can cut through thick layers of duck fat) I learned that this was Martin Picard, the owner’s, dastardly plan for this dish, — that no-one who orders it leaves unscarred. Everyone is dominated by it and no-one gets anywhere near cleaning their plate. So confident are they at Au Pied de Cochon of their ability to manifest gluttony so vaingloriously that they number every deep-fried pig’s foot they serve. Mine was 5141. So from now on, like a retired GI with a talisman made of shrapnel, I shall wear that number with pride and humility, in place of a hospital bracelet during the bypass surgery I expect to now need.

Au Pied de Cochon
536 avenue Duluth Est
Montréal, QC H2L 1A9, Canada
(514) 281-1114

Check out some other posts you might enjoy:

• Thursday, It’s Gloria Day
• Quickest Meal to Make… Ever – Pasta con Tonno
• Authentic Tortilla Soup
• South African Hot Toddies

We recently invited you to tell us what your top five flavors of potato crisps/chips are, and we were, frankly, amazed that so many of you did. Not only that, we were surprised by the variety of flavors you selected. It seems that there is a wide world of taste out there and we are not alone in our obsession with salty, potato snacks.

So, preamble over, because there were such great flavor suggestions, the decision was tough, and there are three categories: honorable mention, close but no cigar, and, the one, the only, the champion top five. Bear in mind that only the champion wins the package of British crisps.

Honorable Mention:
Joanne @ Frutta Della Passione
Heather @ Gild the Voodoolily
Melissa @ moe.org
and Fuji Mama

Close but No Cigar:
Maybelles Mom (solid flavor selections and the extra note about eating Lays while posting was a nice touch)

Champion Top Five:
Choosy Beggar Tina (exhibited good knowledge of British gourmet sandwiches with the “chippie” aka chip sarnie, aka chip barm, aka sandwich of french fries, to endear herself, and followed up with great overall choices, but the all important no. 1 choice – my all-time favorite flavor – salt & vinegar.)

1. Ketchup
2. Smoky Bacon
3. Old cheddar and red onion
4. Lime and black pepper
5. Sea salt and malt vinegar (kettle cooked, please!)

Congrats Tina, we’ll be in touch to arrange the crisp transaction very soon!