Excerpted : The News from Lake Dirty Dishes
May 23, 2003 Montreal The Friday before last was squid and fish night. We started with a squid and tomato soup-stew style dish, which was followed by red snapper baked in rock salt and green beans and saffron rice with pistachios. People seemed happy enough with the second course, but the timing was off and I thought everything fell 2-3 minutes on either side of being done. Part of the timing problem was having to peel a bunch of apples and stuff them with raisins and nutmeg and red wine so they could bake while we ate the fish. They were good, but if I did it again I would use port and dates or maybe prunes. They were also really just there to serve as an bridge (which shouldn't be interpreted as anything but a fancy way of saying excuse) for cheese (Victor & Berthold and a Pied de Vent) and the real dessert which were profiterolles au chocolat. The former doesn't sound too crazy after fish but it was hard to imagine the latter. By the time dessert rolled around, we'd lost Leguminosae and Erythronium leaving me and Philemon and Papaveraceae and the bottle of limoncello (the bottle of grappa having been emptied in to the Princess's birthday cake a few weeks earlier; I am still trying to train friends from Montreal to drink the stuff, but meeting with little success.) The profiterolles were the surprise of the night because the worked. I had made them earlier in January and not really knowing what I was doing thought they'd be good made the day and kept under wrap. They were tasty but I was unaware that they also begin to collapse about 4 seconds after you take them out of the oven. So this time I made them from scratch and owing to general insecurity and the fact that I was good and liquored by now, convinced myself that I had somehow screwed up the batter. I'd forgotten that the batter can be fairly liquid and that they puff up in the oven, so I baked some indelicately large profiterolles which were tasty and puffed up right fine in the oven. It is just as well really since no one was up for a second round of the things. Amazingly there was still beer in the fridge at the end of the night. Sometime in the next couple weeks, I'll do squid night again but try to keep things simpler this time. Baked stuffed squid, with potatoes fried in bacon fat and homemade mayonnaise (aside from the fact that it only keeps for ~3 days and that I don't even like the stuff very much, it boggles the mind that people buy the stuff!) Some sliced tomatoes with dill and a light salad. I might try making ice cream the old-skool way (like the 17th century) where you don't actually spin the container but just plunge it in a big bucket of salt/ice for a couple hours before serving. We'll see. Thursday was Papaveraceae's book launch and she and Philemon and I went to the Pied du Cochon for a quick bite before the Big Event. The restaurant is worth the price you pay but it's not cheap and it is busy being written up as the "place to go" in all manner of newspapers and magazines. I took Oenothera there for her birthday. Since then I've wanted to go back just as they open their doors, in the evening, to sit at the bar and have a beer and the onion soup and watch the kitchen staff and leave before the night's rush begins in earnest. Which is pretty much what we did, or I did anyway. Papaveraceae decided to do more 'research' for an upcoming article and started ordering a bunch of little things from the apperizer menu like heart-attack in a bag (pork rinds, I think) and a plate of meats including deer tongue (surprisingly good) and Cromiski (sp?) de foie gras. The latter are usually talked about anytime the restaurant is reviewed. They are die-sized cubes of foie gras that are deep fried in some magic way that they are solid and crispy on the outside but the foie gras has been liquified on the inside, but no so that it burns your mouth. Philemon ordered ceviche which despite the rule against ordering fish in a meat-place (does it count if it's a pork place?) was delicious. I had the onion soup which was just what I wanted and a good thing because it provided me with enough substance to soak up all the beer that was to follow. Papaveraceae was not so fortunate but still managed to sound chipper and friendly as she answered questions on the one of the radio call-in shows the next day.