An Inauthentic Flammekueche

Lately, I've been really trying hard to steer clear of cheese. As much as I love it, it just doesn't seem to love me. And when cheese goes... well... I've tried to love pizza without the cheese, but I just haven't been successful.

Enter the Alsatian dish: Flammekueche.

Flammekueche (or Flammekuchen in German) roughly translates into baked in fire... which means you're required to get that oven piping hot. It's a thin crust, topped with fromage blanc (or, in my inauthentic case, full fat sour cream), onions and cooked bacon.

I like mine with a beer crust.

Beer. Bacon. Shallots. It's a winner based on those ingredients alone.

Flammekueche

(adapted from bonjourlafrance.com)

serves 4-6

Ingredients

2¼ cups all purpose flour, divided
¼ cup warm water (100º-110ºF)
1 tbsp granulated sugar
2¼ tsp active dry yeast
1 tsp kosher salt
¼ cup dark beer
6 tbsp milk

1 cup sour cream
½ tsp kosher salt
¼ tsp freshly ground black pepper
3 pinches ground nutmeg (crucial to the dish)
3 slices bacon, chopped into ¼"-½" wide strips
4 large shallots, peeled and thinly sliced

Directions

1. In a large bowl, mix together ¼ cup flour with water, sugar and yeast. Set aside for 30 minutes, or until bubbly. Stir in remaining flour, 1 tsp kosher salt, beer and milk. Turn ingredients onto a lightly floured surface and knead until you have a smooth, elastic ball. Place in a greased bowl, turning dough all over to coat. Cover with a tea towel and set aside in a draft free location, and let rise for 1 hour, or until doubled in bulk. Punch down and let rise again for 1 more hour.

2. Meanwhile, with a rack in the middle, preheat oven to 475º and line your largest square baking sheet with parchment paper.

3. In a bowl, stir together sour cream, salt, pepper and nutmeg. Set aside

4. Heat a skillet over medium heat and fry bacon until crispy. Remove bacon and drain off all but ½ tbsp fat. Fry shallots in fat until golden and brown, about 5 minutes. Remove from pan and set aside.

5. Roll dough out on a lightly floured surface until  as thin as you can manage to transfer. Transfer to baking sheet, cover with tea towel and let rest for 5 - 10 minutes.

6. Spread sour cream mixture over surface of dough, leaving a ½" border on all sides. Sprinkle with shallots and bacon. Fold up sides of dough.

7. Bake for 15 minutes, or until bottom is golden. Let cool on rack for 5 minutes before cutting and serving.

Best enjoyed with beer, in my opinion.

Potato-Beer Bread

Moist, hearty and a great accompaniment for soup. This is another Beerbistro recipe, but let me tell you, the writers of the cookbook made some serious mistakes with this one. I'm a pretty decent bread maker (I do it a few times a month), so I could tell when things weren't going right. So, here's their ingredients with my instructions.

Ingredients

16 oz flour
1 tbsp sugar
½ tbsp salt
2¼ tsp active yeast (one package)
½ lb potato, cooked and mashed (about two small-medium sized ones)
2 tbsp softened butter
2/3 cup beer
½ cup buttermilk

Directions

In the bowl of an electric mixer with the dough hook attachment on, mix together flour through yeast. Keep mixing on low and add in the butter and the potato.

Add the beer and buttermilk to the bowl, turn the speed up to high and let it do its thing for 7 minutes. Over this time, I added about a ½ cup more flour to the dough to keep it from sticking. It should form an elastic ball that comes away from the sides of the bowl.

Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled bowl. Cover with a tea towel and let it stand in a warm, draft-free location for about 2 hours, or until the dough has doubled in size.

Punch the dough down. Remove from bowl, shape as desired and place on a greased baking pan. Let sit for another 15-20 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 350º. Bake loaf for 45-55 minutes, or until internal temperature reads 190º (use an instant read thermometer for this).

Let cool on rack.

My first attempt with mussels

Until this past year, I haven't been a shellfish person (shrimp and scallops were okay, but anything clammy or mussely were no goes). And, although I enjoy eating dishes with shellfish in them now, my love affair has more to do with the sauce on the dish rather than the shellfish itself.

But, over the past while, whenever we've been going out, Phil has ordered mussels - usually ones in the most gloriously flavourful broth.

My love of the broth is what's turned me on to eating mussels myself. Truthfully, you could probably just give me a hunk of bread and a bowl of the sweet liquid (and give all the actual mussels to my husband) and I'd be happy.

We were resolved to try cooking mussels at home, and so selected the easiest looking recipe in the Beerbistro cookbook.

I hit up the St. Lawrence Market for mussels. You know how much they cost me? 6$ for 2lbs (which amounted to two very generous servings). We'd probably pay 2.5 times that amount per person if we were eating out.

Mussels. They're my new favourite cheap protein.

They also make for a delicious and quick dinner.

Today's recipe!

How to Store Mussels

Interesting fact: mussels can stay alive out of water for several days. They abhor plastic wrap and stagnant water. In fact, they'd rather be stored dry, sitting in a strainer over a bowl in the fridge, covered with a damp tea towel and ice.

True story.

When I first read that, I was convinced that I'd read something wrong, but a trip to google taught me otherwise.

In a strainer. Covered with damp tea towel and ice. No water. Got it?

Preparing Mussels

I wish I'd taken a picture of this process! Our mussels were already gorgeous and cleaned, but if yours aren't, you need to do a few things.

Debeard the mussels. That means, pull the vegetal fibre that is dangling off on side towards the hinge of the mussel. It should come right off.

Remove any barnacles with a sharp pairing knife.

Discard any cracked mussels or ones that don't close all the way when sharply tapped with a knife. No one wants food poisoning, right?

Okay. You're ready to go.

Mussels with Beer and Cream

Ingredients

2 tbsp butter
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 lbs mussels, cleaned
½ lemon
6 tbsp beer (preferably a Belgian White)
¼ cup whipping cream
3 tbsp parsley

Directions

In a large, shallow skillet, melt butter (do this over as high a heat as the butter can handle). Throw in the garlic and sauté for about a minute until soft and gloriously fragrant.

Add the cleaned mussels to the pan and toss around to coat with all the delicious garlic butter.

Squeeze the lemon half over the mussels (be careful to do this onto your palm, so you can catch any seeds) and cook for 30 seconds.

Add the beer and cream. Shake the pan again. Cover and cook for 3 minutes or until the mussels start to open.

Remove the lid, add the parsley and let boil for another minute, in order to reduce the sauce.

This pan is probably too small for the purposes, but you make do with what you've got!

Discard any shells that have not fully opened.

Divide mussels between bowls, and pour the broth over top. Be careful when you get to the last ¼ cup or so. I used a spoon at this point so as to avoid the little bit of grit the mussels had expelled when they opened.

Serve with lots of crusty bread.

Insert one happy husband here:

Beer Ice Cream

It's basically ice cream. Except, with beer.

Okay, so for this recipe, you'll need an ice cream machine. Buy yourself a cheap one. It's worth it for this recipe alone! I've adapted this recipe from the Beerbistro cookbook.

Ingredients

1¼ cups whipping cream
5 egg yolks
½ cup granulated sugar (approximately - I used about 2.5 oz)
½ cup + 2 tbsp beer* (see note)
5 skor bars, crushed

**note** You cannot just use any old beer here. If you use a Keith's or Budweiser, you might as well just throw the whole recipe in the garbage. You need something like a stout, with a sweet, almost banana-y profile. A doppelbock would be perfect here. I used Aventinus Weizen Eisbock. In spite of that being an extra strong beer (12%), the ice cream set perfectly.

Directions

In a bowl, whisk together egg yolks and sugar. They should go from bright yellow to a pale yellow as you whisk them.

Before

After

See? Different colour. Now, set those aside, while you pour the cream into the saucepan and heat over medium high heat until boiling.

Whisking constantly, slowly pour the hot cream into the egg mixture. You HAVE to do this slowly. If you don't, you'll end up with scrambled eggs. 

Return the mixture to the pan and, stirring constantly, heat until it's thick enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon.

Remove from heat and stir in beer. 

Now, according to my ice cream maker's directions, you're supposed to put the whole thing the fridge to cool before adding it to the ice cream machine.

I'm an impatient person. I dumped the whole thing in still warm and let the machine go to work.

It took about a ½ hour for the ice cream to set up to about a soft serve consistency. At this point, turn off the machine (taste for awesomeness) and dump in the skor bits.

YUM. I was so impatient, I didn't even bother to get better light for this shot!

Stir together until the chocolate is incorporated into the mixture, but do it quickly! You don't want it to melt!

Dump the whole thing in a container, and put in the freezer for 3 hours to firm up. Because of the alcohol content, this won't be as solid as a regular ice cream.

That's right, beer & skor ice cream

Eat and be amazed. Serves... well... I guess that depends. I'd say it makes enough for 6-8 small servings. This is quite rich, so you don't need tons of it.

Mmm. Beer.

Have I mentioned the Beerbistro? If I haven't told you about it in person, let me explain to you why I love this place.

Brace yourselves.

Everything is made with beer. No. Seriously. I mean everything.

Pizza? Stout Crust
Sour cream? Has Gueze in it .
Ice Cream? They call it Beer Scream.
Bacon? Cured with beer.
Salad dressing? White beer & truffle oil.

They have a cellar with 200+ bottles of beer... some of which cost hundreds of dollars. It's beertastic!

Last night, Phil and I got together with another one of my friends from high school and her husband. They live (relatively) near by (and by that I mean an hour+ by car or train), and it's always good to see them. I've known my friend since grade 9! Back then, she wanted to be a doctor. And guess what? Unlike just about every other teenager who wants to be a doctor, she actually is one! You have no idea how proud I am of her for sticking to it.

I'm digressing. Later this week, I'll be whipping up a batch of beer scream (or strawberry beer sorbet), but for now you'll have to settle for a lunchtime recipe that doesn't involve beer at all.

What? I needed to detox. All those beer samplers add up, you know?

Don't be turned off by the word detox. The salad is really good!

C'mon. You know you want some. Look at those gorgeous olive oil dressed beans. Parsley! Lemon Rind! Capers! Sea salt!

It's a total winner.