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

Nonetheless, the skate and its delicious wings are definitely worth appreciating. A comparative rarity on menus this side of the Atlantic, skate wing is fairly common in French bistrots and used to be a regular on the menus of fish restaurants across the UK, but the common and white skates are now critically endangered in UK waters and are officially listed by the Marine Conservation Society as “fish to avoid”. In the Americas, almost the reverse is true, at least for the time being, as meatier fish tend to dominate fish menus at the expense of the more delicate white fish, the Pacific coast from Mexico to Alaska is full of the big (or giant – it can grow up to 8 feet in wingspan!) and longnose skates which make for some fine dining.

Skates are a cartilaginous fish in the ray family (you know, stingrays, manta rays, etc.) which is linked comparatively closely (in evolutionary terms) with the shark family, meaning that they are relatively slow breeding and give birth to live young, and are therefore more susceptible to overfishing than the more prolific egg-producing gill fish.

But don’t let this put you off trying skate. Just make sure to ask your fishmonger where the skate he’s selling comes from, and if he doesn’t know, make him find out for you. All good butchers know the provenance of their meats, so why should fishmongers not be as knowledgeable about their wares?

When purchasing skate, make sure it’s fresh and without any ammoniacal odor, as for some reason I could find no explanation for they tend to go off faster than normal white fish. Also, you should ask your fishmonger to remove the “bones” from the skate for you. This makes it easier to cook and eat because the wings contain a fan of bones that can otherwise be a chore to remove with a knife and fork.

The classic preparation is pan-fried au beurre noisette, or with a brown butter and caper sauce, which adds richness and acid to what is basically a flaky white fish, but because for us a fish meal tends to be a cathartic measure (albeit an enjoyable one) designed to make us feel healthier, we combined our pan-fried skate wing with a salad of finely-sliced fennel, fennel tops and tomato, and some steamed asparagus with a simple vinaigrette. However, feel free to also enjoy it in the typical manner as a little fat not only helps the fish remain moist, it brings out the best flavors of the delicate skate flesh.

Pan-Fried Skate Wing with Fennel & Tomato Salad (serves 2)

Ingredients:

1 whole skate, bones removed (8-10oz, uncooked)

1cup regular (not extra virgin) olive oil, or canola/vegetable oil

1 fennel bulb, sliced finely. Reserve fennel tops and chop finely also.

1 large tomato, diced

1/2 fresh corn cob, boiled and kernels removed

3tbsp good olive oil

1tbsp lemon juice

1tsp smooth dijon mustard

3tbsp plain flour

salt & white pepper to taste

Recipe:

Put fennel (including tops), tomato and corn into a non-reactive bowl and mix well with vinaigrette. Allow to sit and steep for at least 30minutes or as long as overnight.

Heat oil in a frying pan to medium-high, around 350F.

Dust skate with flour and season with salt. Pat off excess and gently lay in the hot oil until nicely browned and crisp all over (2-3mins per side, approx.)

Remove fish to a plate and gently pat dry with paper towels. Dress with the fennel salad and add an extra splash of olive oil to moisten the whole thing a bit, then serve.

Check out these other posts you might enjoy:

Orecchiette with Sausage and Kale

Lebanese Food in A Small Brooklyn Kitchen

Another Easy Meal – Tortilla Soup

Something’s Fishy ‘Round Here: Livornese Fish Stew (il cacciucco alla Livornese)

The Italian region of Liguria is famous for its dramatic landscape of mountains plunging into crystal clear waters, and narrow terraced fields leading down to tiny, colorful villages precipitously perched on the edges of cliffs of which the Cinque Terre (five lands) of Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore in La Spezia province are the most famous. It’s a region of hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters, though the rugged terrain creates many tiny sub-regional micro-climates, and driving through it, you can go from dry scrub oak and wild thyme to olive groves to chestnut forests and back again in half an hours’ journey.

So it is that Ligurian food, like all Italian regional cuisine, reflects the landscape from which it comes, and because of this much of the local food has traditionally come from the few plants that are able to withstand the poor, dry soil, the salty air at low altitudes, and the cold at higher elevations, supplemented by seafood and, occasionally, game and poultry.

**Sorry for interrupting your reading, but I had to find a place to put this picture in. No lie, we passed this goat going about 45 mph in the Ligurian countryside and I thought I was hallucinating. I made Jonny reverse about 1/4 of a mile down a very winding, thin road to find out if I really was on drugs. This Gandolf-looking creature was smiling from behind a very primitive and small barn about 5 inches off the side of the road. I fell in love at that moment. He looked mythical!

In her recent paean to the Liguria of her ancestors, The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken, author Laura Schenone recalls that while things have changed in modern times, for millenia the fortunes of most of the region’s inhabitants have been directly related to the availability of chestnuts from which many staples were made — including the ubiquitous gnocchi and pasta.

Another plant that grows very successfully in Liguria’s poor soils, as they do a few hundred miles west in the rocky garrigues of Provence where they remain the principle diet of many peasant farmers and, indeed, their livestock, is the chick pea (ceci/garbanzo), and like the chestnut, Ligurians pound the dried cecis into a flour which they use to make a kind of flat bread found nowhere else in Italy save certain parts of Sicily (which is deep fried chickpea dough often used in between bread or as a snack called Panelle – we hope to make this version soon), farinata. The French have their own version of this called Socca, but today we will focus on farinata. Farinata is a kind of street food found in Liguria and can often be treated like pizza as it is often cut into wedges and can come with various toppings like onions.

While we were in Genoa last summer, we saw farinata in bakeries all over the city but, curiously, found that it wasn’t offered in restaurants, though it was probably because of the glut of delicious seafood and various pesto preparations we gorged ourselves on rather than this reason, that we missed out on trying farinata in the region of its origin. Not to be denied though, we sought out some chick pea flour (yes, I know, if weren’t such post-modern bourgeois slacker-tourists we would have pounded our own from dried beans…) at a wonderful gourmet grocers in Park Slope and proceeded to use the wonderful invention that is Babelfish to translate any number of recipes on Italian websites to find out how to make it authentically. If you can not find chickpea flour in your local grocery store, check out some health food shops, Indian and/or Middle Eastern specialty stores. Chickpea flour is a key ingredient to many Indian and Middle Eastern foods.

Regular readers will know that we strive to find and make the most authentic preparations we can, but you will also know that this kind of research often leads to the unfortunate conclusion that there is rarely only one “authentic” version. Referring again to Laura Schenone, who describes farinata as almost like a chick pea flour focaccia – crispy on top and soft and chewy underneath and baked in a wide, shallow pan in a brick pizza oven, we found that this conflicted with our recollections and other recipes we had come across for thinner, almost completely crispy flatbreads. In fact, what we discovered was that the longer the cooking time and the less batter you add to your skillet, the crisper the farinata. Like, duh, right? For a more baked polenta-like consistency underneath with a crisp top, I would recommend pouring enough batter so that it is 1/2-deep and cooking our recipe for 1/2 the time, possibly finishing it off under the broiler for a few minutes. The recipe below will be for a crispy version of farinata – one that almost can crack like a cracker.

**Window shopping in Genoa – check out the farinata being served in the upper right-hand corner

We would like to try the softer version so we can decide which we prefer. Regardless, we thoroughly enjoyed the crispy, thinner and darker bread with its nutty, salty flavor that we made and are enthused to attempt the latter as soon as possible.

Typically, farinata is eaten either alone or dipped in good Ligurian olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt, whereas we decided to use it almost as a canvas for a rather overly decorative carpaccio of zucchini (courgette) with pine nuts, shaved pecorino, and lemon juice. We encourage you to make yourself a farinata or two (preferably not in the hot months as we did, unless you have a good AC!) and eat it anyway you like, reminding yourself, yet again, that peasant food made from humble ingredients is almost always good, and because that’s often all there was/is to eat, it has to be.

CRISPY FARINATA (LIGURIAN CHICKPEA FLATBREAD) WITH ZUCCHINI CARPACCIO SALAD – (makes about 1 12-inch farinata)

Ingredients for farinata:

• 1 1/4 cup of chick pea flour
• 1 1/2 cups of water (maybe a bit more to get the consistency somewhere between whole milk and lite cream)
• 1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil (or enough to cover your pan)
• plenty of freshly ground black pepper
• 6 sage leaves, thinly sliced
• 1 teaspoon of chopped rosemary (optional)

Ingredients for zucchini salad:

• 1 large zucchini, sliced into paper-thin slices using a mandoline
• 1 ripe roma tomato, sliced into small dice
• 2 tablespoons pignoli nuts (pine nuts)
• 1 scallion (spring onion), sliced into thin rings
• 3 tablespoons good extra virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon whole grain mustard
• 1 salted anchovy filet
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• pinch of salt and black pepper

What to do:

1. Sift your chickpea flour in a bowl and add your salt, pepper, sage and rosemary. Stir generously.
2. Slowly add your water, whisking the whole time allowing everything to be incorporated (again, you want the batter to be about the consistency of whole milk/light cream).
3. Allow your batter to rest for at least 1 hour or as long as overnight.
4. When you are ready to cook, preheat your oven to 425 degrees. If any foam has surfaced on your chickpea batter, remove with a spoon.
5. Pour olive oil into your 12-inch baking pan – preferably a cast iron skillet. You want the olive oil to generously coat the bottom and sides of your skillet.  Add your batter until it is about 1/4 of an inch  if you want it super crispy or  1/2 inch deep if you want it thicker and possibly softer.
6. For a crispier farinata, bake for about 30 minutes. Check on it, though, as ovens differ and you do not want the batter to burn! If you want it a bit softer, I would recommend baking for about 15-17 minutes and then finishing it under the broiler for a minute. Allow to cool before cutting!
7. Slice zucchini into very thin, long slivers using a mandolin or a very sharp chef’s knife and thinly slice/dice your other veggies. Arrange everything on top of your farinata and sprinkle with pine nuts.
8. Using a mortar and pestle, pound the anchovy and the mustard together and squeeze in the lemon juice and then mix well. Immediately before serving, whisk in the olive oil to make the vinaigrette. Season with salt and pepper and drizzle all over the zucchini carpaccio and farinata.

Check out some other posts you may enjoy:

• BEET AND RICOTTA FILLED RAVIOLI WITH BROWN BUTTER AND POPPY SEEDS
• ITALIAN-STYLE SLOW ROASTED PORK SHOULDER WITH SALSA VERDE
• FUSILLI WITH SALSA DI NOCI AND MUSHROOMS (WALNUT PESTO)
• European Roast…? (Why Coffee Tastes Better There)
• Drink of the Month: Vin Santo (May, 2008)

With over 61,000 pizzerias in America, how many do you think have really got it right? My guess is about 100. I’ve had some really, really, really shitty pizza in this country (Colorado!? San Francisco!!?) I’ve had some really, really shitty in my own neighborhood of New York City! I still have yet to find a place that really rivals the pizza I’ve eaten in Italy, until now when I realized I can make it myself in the comforts of my own home.

There’s place called Franny’s here in Brooklyn that is one of those annoying, overpriced and over-trendy but packed every night. When we finally decided it was time to see if it lived up to the hype, we were totally disappointed. When I eat something as simple as pizza, I don’t feel like dealing with a pretentious, trendy, annoying hipster attitude or staff. I don’t feel like being charged $16 for a pizza the size of a medium-sized plate and leave hungry. We ate reasonably-priced pizza at Isabella’s Oven, but the crust just didn’t quite do it for us. So, we decided to take matters into our own hands. We will never eat thin-crust pizza around New York City again. There’s no reason. For $20 worth of ingredients, a $15 pizza stone (genius, will never live without it – GO BUY ONE NOW), a $9 bottle of Chianti and my ipod, I can have a better, less expenisive, tastier and more relaxing culinary experience in my small Brooklyn kitchen then going to any of those shit-house, wannabe, up-their-own-asses Italian-style pizza places up the street (sorry, I think you’re finding out my true feelings on Frannys). Remember folks, there’s a difference between the type of pizza we’re going to show you how to make here and the many delicious New York City Pizzeria’s I love and adore (Lombardi’s, Arturos, John’s, Pino La Forcetta, Grimaldi’s, Di Fara, Totonnos, etc. etc.).

In fact, if you don’t feel like making pizza dough from scratch, go ask your local pizzeria for some fresh dough. More than likely, they’ll sell it to you. Just make sure it’s simple – nothing more than flour, yeast and water. No crazy bits of roasted garlic, no honey, no nothin’. The other thing that you must, must have, as I mentioned earlier is a pizza stone. This is KEY to making the best pizza at home. Third thing you must have is a really, really simple sauce recipe. Naturally, I recommend using my sauce recipe - it’s simple and delicious – just make sure you simmer it much longer than what is called for. The sauce should not be very wet, but more concentrated. Fourth is space to roll your dough out and a bit of muscle. I can’t toss friggin’ pizza dough in the air for the life of me so I spend my time rolling and rolling and rolling this pizza dough till it FINALLY does what I need it to do – roll out thin. Finally, you need a hot oven. If your oven has a hard time making it past 425 degrees, this may not work as well for you. You need to whack it up as high as it goes (550F+) and allow the pizza stone 20 minutes to heat up before you heat up the dough. Follow these simple instructions and you’ll have perfect pizza every time.

Here’s pictorial of all the pizza’s we’ve made recently to give you some ideas of toppings, most recreated from ones we ate while in Italy. Immediately following the picture you will find a really great recipe for pizza dough from Jeffrey Steingarten’s book It Must’ve Been Something I Ate. Buon Appetito!

Pizza with Cipollini Onions and Tonno

Pizza Romana (Pizza w/ Capers and Anchovies)

White Pizza with Mushrooms, Leeks and White Truffle Oil

Pizza with Anchovies and Cabrales (or Gorgonzola)

Bresaola, Arugula and Parmigiano Pizza

Pizza Romana (Capers and Anchovy) with Cracked Egg on Top

So, hope your mouth is watering and now YOU will think about a new pizza with toppings you love! Check out how to make pizza dough below.

PIZZA DOUGH ALA JEFFREY STEINGARTEN (an adaptation)

Ingredients:

• 6 to 6 1/2 cups of flour

• 1 1/2 tsp instant or active dry yeast

• 1 tbsp. plus 1 teaspoon salt

• 3 1/4 cups cold water

• 1/2 cup cornmeal or semolina flour

What to do:

1. In the mixer bowl of your food processor, stir the flours, yeast and salt together. Pour in the water and stir vigourously with a wooden spoon until everything comes together into a “shaggy dough”.

2. Put the bowl on the mixer and attach the beater – not the dough hook. This dough is too wet for regular kneading. Mix on low speed for a minute then beat on high speed for 3 1/2 minutes, scraping down the beater and bowl halfway through.

3. ***Steingarten explains the way to knw when your dough is perfect: With well-floured fingers, pull off a piece of dough about the size of a walnut and roll it in flour. You should be able to stretch it with the fingers of both hands without breaking for at least 3 inches across.

4. Scrape the dough out onto a heavily floured work surface. Fold one side over the other and allow to rest for 10 mintues. After 10 minutes, cut dough into 4 equal pieces and shape each piece into a ball and place each in a well-oiled bowl to rise until double in size – about 3 hours. ***NOTE: Steingarten likes to then put his dough balls in the fridge for an hour… if you have the time, do so, otherwise, I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary.

   

5. Preheat your oven to as high as it can go (at least 500 degrees!) and allow the pizza stone to heat up for a half hour to one hour.

6. On a well-floured surface, pat each dough ball into as flat of a circle as possible. Stretch it by draping the dough over your fists, knuckels up, passing it from hand to hand until it reaches about 12 inches. ***NOTE: This is the thing, do not despair at this point if it’s not going as perfectly as you want. This is not as easy as Steingarten says. With practice, it’ll be easier. But, we give the fist to fist way a try for a bit, then bust out a well-floured rolling pin and litterally attack the dough with our pin until it gets as thin as we need it to be. We like it to be about 1/2 a centimeter thick when we first cook it on the pizza stone.

   

7. ***This is where I do things a bit differently than Steingarten. Using oven mits, take your pizza stone out of the hot, HOT oven. Scrape your pizza dough off your floured surface and place on the hot stone (it will begin to cook immediately) and place back in the oven for two minutes or until there is a tiny bit of color on the surface and edges of the dough. Remove from oven and place back on your work surface. It will be ‘stiff’ but not fully cooked.

8. Depending on what type of pie you are making (red pie, white pie, olive oil and herbs-brushed pie), put down your ‘wet’ ingredients first (ie: tomato sauce). Don’t put too much on, just a thin layer for taste.

   

   

9. Add your toppings (go light like the italians! you don’t need to have 2 inches-worth of toppings to make this pizza taste good) and then your cheese (get low-moisture mozzerella and fresh buffala mozzerella that’s as low-moisture as possible – the moisture in the cheese could moisten your crust and cause it to be too wet and heavy).

10. Add the topped pizza back to your pizza stone and put back in the hot oven for 4 to 7 minutes, making sure all the cheese is melted and bubbley and the crust has some color to it. Remove from oven and allow to rest for a moment before biting in.

    

***If you’re interested in learning how we made any of the pizzas you see pictured above, let us know. We don’t mind posting the recipes. For the most part, you can kind of get a feel for the recipe by looking at the picture and the title of the pizza. But, we’re here to help. You’ve gotta give these thin-crust pizza’s a try!

Regular readers will know that we are big fans of the phenomenon that is cabrales cheese (non-regular readers should read this post before proceeding any further with this one, as it’s important to know the ingredient you’re dealing with) but we’ve yet to include it in any of our cooking. Here was an opportunity to incorporate perhaps the world’s wildest cheese into a dish so cunning that, to mix a metaphor, you could cut yourself on it.

Seriously, you might think I’m exaggerating here, but quite apart from that not being what we do here at We Are Never Full (we keep it real, believe), I am not exaggerating one bit. This was the best salad I’ve had in a very, very long time. And, while we wouldn’t normally insult your intelligence by pretending to tell you how to put a salad together, we’re asking you to bear with us here and read on. You’ll be glad you did.

We’ve decided to submit this recipe to Kalyn at Kalyn’s Cooking (a most excellent blog) for her Weekend Herb Blogging series. This time around it’s being hosted by Jugalbandi, so head over there before 3PM today to submit yours!

Ensalada de Cabrales (for 2 people)

Ingredients

1 large apple – gala, fuji, granny smith, golden delicious, but not McIntosh type

2oz strong cabrales or your favorite blue cheese

3 hazelnuts (shelled, roasted, but unsalted)

1tbsp good cider vinegar

3tbsp your best olive oil

1 tsp finely chopped chives

salt & black pepper

Recipe

Peel and core apple, then using a mandolin (if you have one, otherwise your trusty chef’s knife will suffice) slice the apple to a uniform thickness of about 1/4 inch (1/2cm)

Arrange apples on serving dish however you like and crumble over the cheese. Feel free to use more, but you easily be over-generous with cabrales, so beware.

Combine oil, vinegar, salt & pepper (as a vinaigrette) and spoon liberally over apples and cheese.

Then, take your microplane grater or the fine side of your box grater and grate your hazelnuts. Sprinkle this “hazelnut salt” followed by the chives over your salad and serve immediately.

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• SWEET ANISE-FLAVORED SALMON IN A POUCH (SALMON EN PAPILLOTE)
• CLAMS WITH WHITE WINE AND CHORIZO
• WINE-BRAISED LAMB SHANKS WITH ROSEMARY AND THYME IN PRESSURE COOKER GNOCCHI DI PATATE WITH A BROWN BUTTER, SAGE, BREADCRUMB SAUCE
• Fabada: A Mortal and Corporal Sin – But Worth It!
• Jamon, Jamon
• Vermut (Vermouth): Rediscovering an Old Classic