What’s Stu Cooking

Rice Krispies Treats are a great introduction to cooking and my son Sam really enjoys making them. With only a few simple steps they’re quick and easy to make even for the shortest of attention spans.

You can have your Tarte aux Pommes and Creme Brulée, I’ll take Rice Krispies Treats any day!

I picked up a couple of pheasants from the farmers market on Saturday and had a dig around the web for a good recipe. This recipe for pheasant casserole (pot roated pheasant, really) looked just right as I didn’t want to mask too much of the game flavour. Some people seem to think that you need to heavily marinate and sauce this bird because of it strong flavour, but my family and I disagree. Pheasant has a wonderfully rich taste.

The recipe turned out fantastic, I only tweaked it a little bit:

• Add 3 cloves of whole garlic along with the shallots.
• I left out the redcurrant jelly because I didn’t have any.
• I toasted the roux, as I am prone to do, and added rosemary, thyme and bay leaves along with some cracked black pepper to the roux instead of the bouquet garni. Toasting the herbs like this, especially the rosemary, makes them nice and nutty and allows them to dissolve into the sauce.
• About half way through remove the cover and if the sauce left in the pan is not thick enough reduce it.

This made very rich and savoury sauce for spooning over the pheasant at the table. I served it with a black/long grain/wild Canadian rice and some steamed broccoli.

If you’re not one for game, you might try Pot roasted pheasant with cider and calvados, I haven’t, but it looks plenty good.

I’ve had a hard time of finding fish and seafood cookbooks that have the right level of complexity to match my cooking style. Fish, in my opinion, should be fixed simply enough so as not to confuse its delicate flavour, but with the right ingredients and subtle touches that compliment and make the dish interesting. I’ve seen far too many cookbooks that please the eye but are almost entirely unusable because of the sheer complexity of the recipe and rarity of ingredients. And I have a book or two with traditional, local recipes that aren’t too shabby, but on the other hand they don’t provide much inspiration.

Last year my son picked out a cookbook as a birthday present, A Feast of Fish, and it’s been about the only fish cookbook I’ve been using ever since. The book is wonderfully illustrated with excellent photography and not only do the recipes inspire, but you can actually find the ingredients in the supermarket if you don’t already have them around the house.

The photo above shows my interpretation of the Grilled Halibut with a Sweet Pepper Cream and Tapenade. Instead of grilling the fish I rubbed some olive oil into the cut sides, seasoned with salt and pepper and seared it in a smoking hot cast iron skillet. I left the cream out of the sauce (a fish stock and wine reduction with the peppers added at the end before whisking in the cold butter) and roasted the pepper rather than fry it, but otherwise I kept to the recipe which is not something I do very often. I highly recommend that you follow the link buy this cookbook (no, it has nothing to do with the fact that I have just added Amazon affiliate links).

The fish was served with roasted fennel and a mash made of 1 carrot, 3 parsnips, butter and a dash of mixed spice.