Psychadelic Slaw

There are plenty of foods that are associated with summer. Coleslaw is without a doubt one of them. I have unquestionably made coleslaw in the dead of winter, but truly it is a perfect side to any meal when the heat is on and the sun is up. It is crunchy, tangy and acidic, maybe even with a hint of sweetness. Typically  coleslaw balances out many flavours that are likely to come off your barbeque. I prefer an oil and vinegar base to my coleslaw dressing as it tends to hold up to warm days better than a mayonnaise dressing. Food poisoning ain't never impressed no female, and you won't get any sympathy if she's sick, too!!

This summer slaw is a personal creation and the dressing is quite simple. My inspiration behind the dressing was the vinegary slaw that you might find on a toastee or a steamee from a deli or La Belle Province in Montreal. I admittedly have a weakness for hot dogs, especially with crunchy, tangy coleslaw on them. Now for the vege part, I suggest you get creative with whatever is in your fridge, but I like to use an array of vegetables that all offer bright, contrasting colours to make your creation as sexy and visually appealing as possible. It's all about the show.

You will need:

- a head of cabbage (go for the purple stuff, or mix it up with a bit of purple and green)

- carrots

- onions of some variety (sweet, white, red, green, whatever you got or like)

- fresh flat leaf parsley

- colourful sweet peppers

- cider or rice vinegar

- vegetable oil

- caraway seeds (and ground coriander seeds add a nice flavour too)

- garlic (minced or chopped finely)

- ground mustard powder

- whole grain mustard and dijon mustard
- Sugar

To start this process off, you want to prepare the salad part first. So remove the outer leaves from your cabbage heads. Now using your sharp-ass-knife, cut the head of cabbage in half. Start slicing the cabbage as thinly as possible, and toss it in a big mudda of a bowl. If you have a food processor, cut the cabbage into big chunks and jam them down into that luxury machine with a slicing blade in it.

Using a cheese grater, shred up as much carrot as you would like. I dig the way the orange just pops off the purple so I get pretty nasty with the carrots, using about one full carrot (not that baby carrot shit) to a half head of cabbage. If you got knife skills, thinly slice your onion, or if you're lazy just grate the onion. Them amount of onion, also up to you! I like a zesty slaw so I use around a full medium sized onion per half head.

(We got lazy and grated the onion)

Cut the top and bottom of your pepper off and throw a slice right down one side vertically. Scrape out all the guts and slice that mother as thin as you can (think matchsticks), then attempt to do the same with the bottom. Compost the top, and throw the peppers in the bowl. Red peppers are my personal favourite to use, again thinking about visual appeal.

(No red peppers, but thankfully had yellow)

Now for the dressing. Mince (chop finely) the garlic and get it in the saucepan over medium heat with the vinegar, oil, sugar, a tablespoon of grainy mustard, a few generous pinches of ground mustard, caraway seeds and coriande and rock it up to a light boil. Whisk to incorporate all the ingredients. Get a spoon in there and taste a bit to make sure its not too oil/vinegary/mustardy, and adjust measurements if need be. Take some logs off the fire and let it simmer for about 3 minutes then transfer right into the bowl. 

Now for my favourite part. Toss that salad and toss it well. Don't bother with any fancy utensils, just get your hands right in there. Season with salt and pepper, garnish with some thinly sliced green onions and chopped parsley, and throw it in the fridge for a couple hours to soak all that tastiness in. If you don't have the time to let it sit, prepare this first and let it sit while you make the rest of the meal. Proceed to serve with everything. Especially Hot Dogs.

(Special thanks to Mallory for putting up with me while I tried to not boss her around the kitchen, as well as being my hand model!)

make dough. make bread.

A close friend and associate of mine has often mused over his ideal living situation. A personal oasis based on his love of seclusion (disdain for humanity) and appreciation for natures bounty (fueled by rampant conspiracy theories involving evil corporate conglomerates hijacking our blood stream by tainting our food with chemical laced corn and soy).

Whilst taking some time to indulge ourselves in the fantasy of living in an 'off the grid ' setting, involving solar panels, a well, many fruit trees and a few farm animals to supply your food (think Thoreau but with salt and butter) I decided to find ways in which I could draw myself away from convenient so-called necessities that support companies with values that disagree with my own.

I tried hunting in the city but squirrels are quick and rats are fucking gross. The pigeon I did catch wouldn't stop convulsing and i lost my nerve and ran away. I set up a rain barrel to collect water but no sooner did the clouds part then the chemical cocktail contained in my resevoir turned putrid and eroded the barrel.

Feeling glum and out of ideas, I turned to my instinctual passion for cuisine. A fairly staple item that is bought and consumed in most households is bread. Its convenient, nutritious, filling, and if you have two pieces and you stuff shit in the middle then you have a sandwich (see: food of the gods). I have minor training in how to prepare bread but my knowledge was of a more traditional sort and involved planning a few days ahead and appropriating natural yeast by fermenting flour over a few days. I'm trying to shed the grid here not be a maurder so I enlisted a baker friend and have compiled what I deem to be the easiest and most delicious "generic" bread recipe I could. It involves about 9 minutes of labour, and takes a total of two hours between resting and baking. This procedure will yield you two fair sized loaves that will see any household through a hungry week.

Youll need:

1125 grams (app. 7 cups) of flour (go all A.P if your into wonder bread, rock 25% whole wheat if you want nutrition

30 g salt (1.5 tbsp iodized table salt)

22g (1.5 tbsp) white sugar or honey

87 g (slightly under a quarter cup) butter

30 g (3 tbsp) instant active yeast

600-900 ml water (it varies depending on relative humidity where you are as flour is a diarrhetic)

So now youve got your business together, youre gonna start combing. Take a little flour and the (cold) butter and put it in the a food processor just long enough to incorporate (10-20 seconds) add this back in with the rest of the flour and then combine all your dry ingreidnts in a big dutty bowl good for mixin (see: popcorn bowl). Make a well in the centre and add about 200-300 ml of water. Stir your fingers around gradually incorporating flour into the mix. As it gets real thick add a little more water, about 50 ml at a time.

Continue mixing and lessen the amount of water you add until you've brought everthing together. It will be stiff in the sense that you can't draw a finger through it, but it should still be sort of slouchy. It will also be fairly sticky. Essentially when it looks like dough it is. I implore you to trust your instinct on this one. Holler at me if it doesn't turn out. But it will. Once you've reached this stage let the dough rest for 5-10 minutes with a damp cloth over top.

After its been allowed to rest (presumably you blazed in the meantime, or cracked a beer so you should be feeling chill) dump it onto a lightly floured work surface, preferably a clean one. Now you begin to knead. Essentially your going to fold from the back to the front, and then do a quarter turn. Continue this process well keeping your hands well floured and the work surface lightly floured. Its good to go light with the flour because you dont want large quantities of unincorporated flour getting in yo' bread. That's bullshit.

After about 7-10 minutes you'll notice your dough acquire a light sheen, s well as appearing to stretch over itself on the surface (literally stretch marks will appear). Stop kneading, start resting. the dough. drop it back into your bowl and either lay a damp cloth over the bowl or put the whole thing in a clear garbage bag and tie it off. Its gonna party for about an hour, during this time the yeast will consume the sugar and produce gas which will cause the dough to expand. Simultaneously the gluten will relax. Leave it for about an hour till it doubles in size. Don't fuck with it, don't poke it. Don't even think about it. What dough?

After a successful chill period you'll be so close to done that a little bit of stoke is allowed. Not too much yet you haven't really done anything. Grab the dough out of the bowl and squeeze the shit out of it. You'll feel all the air popping out. Take your reduced size ball and divide it into two or three depending on how big of loaves you want (consider that it will double in size). form them into loaf-y shapes. I chose something traditional called a 'boule' but i'm gnarly. Just make it loaf-like and don't over think it. For a laugh shape it like a dong. Send me the pictures. Let the loaves rest for another 30 min under a damp cloth.

If your a bit fancy you can egg wash it and it will come out shiny. I put a few slashes in the top cause it looks good and lets it rise better. About a quarter inch with a sharp ass knife will do (If you don't have a sharp ass knife then get one. Stop reading this and get one now. Nothing you'll ever read on here matters with a dull ass knife).

Let it bake on a lightly oiled tray at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes. Rotate half way through to get an even cook cause if your oven is like mine then it sucks. You'll know it's done because a)It looks done b) it smells done c) it doesn't feel super heavy for its size and d) when you tap the bottom it sounds hollow. Let it rest for at least a half hour. The bread is still cooking inside so get your greedy little fingers out of there. In the meantime go churn your own butter or collect honey from a beehive, these are necessary accouterments to your freshly baked bread. To store launch it in a freezer bag and let it chill in the fridge, slice as necessary or freeze half if your slow with the bread consumption.

I know this seem kind of heavy to a novice cook but its really not that hard at all. Expect to suck the first time, by the second time you'll do alright and by try number three you'll be a fucking master of the ghetto loaf. The excellent thing about this is if you bake on a sunday it will rock you all the way to the next sunday. Get a little routine going and start shopping for mountain cabins.

Double Stuff

Remember when you first discovered the double stuffed oreo? Or perhaps more recently, when a friend first introduced your innocent little mind to the McGangBang? (http://tinyurl.com/a2dmlc) You probably heard the critics, stating the "too much icing" or "disgusting amount of meat". But as a proponent of all forms of delicious, you stayed true to your palate, and argued that too much of a good thing can be even better.

Well my friends, I accidentally stumbled upon my own gourmet, pork-inspired rendition of the double stuff Oreo.
With full intention of stuffing two individual pork tenderloins, I lacked the meat span (if that even makes sense) to close the tenderloins up. A friend who I have recently shared a few amazing meals with suggested I make a sandwich-like creation and wrap the two tenderloins together, with all the stuff inside.



It couldn't have turned out better.

Here's what I used:
- Two pork tenderloins
- Bacon (a half pound to stuff with, and a half pound to eat as you cook and drink a few too many cocktails)
- A bunch of green onions
- Goat cheese (sorry Dan, I know you have a hate on for Goat cheese, but it's delicious)
- Salt & Pepper (as with pretty much any recipe)

Now for how to wrap it all into one delicious creation.
Pull the pork out, let it rest a bit at room temperature and trim the little bit of fat off. In each tenderloin, cut a slit lengthwise to open it up, but not all the way through, making it a flatter more easily stuffable piece. This technique is called "butterflying" but I think they should change it to "lipping" because it looks more like a pair of lips than a beautiful little butterfly.

While it's resting, slice up some bacon into 1 or two inch long pieces and fry it all up. Discard most of the fat and add in a few spoonfuls of goat's cheese once the bacon is cooked to soften it. Cut up a few green onions and mentally prepare yourself for the party that is about to happen on your cutting board.

Salt and pepper each tenderloin, inside and out. Add some goat cheese & bacon mixture to the area where you made the cut in the pork and top with a fair portion of green onions. Do it for both tenderloins, and then bind them together. Use your butcher skills to tie them together with some twine.

Set your oven to 350. Poor a bit of that bacon fat into a roasting pan, and drop your creation onto the pan. I lost track of time when I cooked it but roughly 30 minutes should do. The bacon fat will keep constant heat on the bottom and if you're quick enough with the stuffing, the still-hot bacon on the inside will help get some even heat distribution too.
Don't you dare overcook that shit! People have bad opinions about pork because of that old school thinking that it is dangerous to eat if not totally overcooked. You're not working with chicken here and health standards have improved since World War II... Medium is a totally acceptable way to serve pork.

I was planning on serving this with some fruit salsa (chopped pineapple, peaches and cilantro) but the pork so tasty on its own that we made the salsa our desert. Serve it with some in-season vegetables or a simple salad and you're money.

-dave

SPATCHCOCK!!!

Flat out, this is one of the tastiest meals I've had all summer. I'm not always a huge proponent of chicken, but this is mostly because of boneless, skinless chicken breast. It's the "healthy" meat and its lean and tasteless and dry and boring, and I got fed a ton of it with steamed vegetables during the week as a kid when my mom didn't have time to make something delicious. A whole bird though, bone-in, skin-on, that's my shit. Some people may be intimidated by this, but really it's a simple thing and super easy to cook and the result can be spectacular with just a bit of care. Now, since it's the summer time, one might not want to be stuck in the kitchen, but on the patio with a cold beer and friends. Cold beer, friends and patios are congruent with barbeques. One may think that cooking a whole chicken on a barbeque is a difficult task and they need a fancy grill with a rotisserie or something like that. Well, you could do that, or you could bust out this easy-to-do and highly impressive technique that I will divulge in mere sentences. Daniel taught me this skill last summer, and I've been stoked on it since. It's called spatchcocking, and it's basically flattening the chicken so it grills relatively quickly and easily. Anyone pick up on that pun I threw in at the beginning yet? Har har.

In order to spatchcock a bird, you need a good pair of kitchen scissors or shears. You can use a heavy knife but I find it much simpler to get in there with scissors. With the chicken laying breast side up, simply flip it over so now the backbone is facing up. Using the scissors cut down from one opening to the other right along the side of the backbone, then repeat on the other side of it. No you have a spineless bird. Open the bird up and flip it back over and proceed to push down on the breasts to flatten the chicken. I like to cut off the two little flaps of skin right at the bottom cavity (where the legs are), as these are just fatty and tend to cause flare ups on the grill. Now rinse your spatchcocked bird and pat it dry with some paper towel, season generously with salt and fresh cracked pepper. And say spatchcock as much as you like.

Now to get this bird tasting sexy, you're going to need a few essentials, so along with the chicken itself, throw these on your shopping list if you don't have them kicking around the kitchen already. And if you don't these are some staples that you should.

-ground cumin
-chili powder
-shallots (small onions that have a sweeter flavour)
-garlic
-butter
-maple sizzurp (the real shit)
-dijon mustard
-fresh lemons
-Sailor Jerry's spiced rum

Heat your grill up to medium high heat. Meanwhile, on the stove top over medium low heat, melt a couple spoonfuls of butter in a small saucepan. Throw in some chopped up shallots, garlic (just smash it with the side of your knife), a few generous pinches of cumin, as much chili as your desire, and grate some of the rind from the lemon right into the pan. Things are gonna start smelling awesome, but you gotta be careful not to brown the butter. Now take a swig of the rum, and proceed to pour some right into the pan. A few shots will do, but the more the merrier. Let the concoction form small bubbles on the top and stir it around a bit. You want to make all the alcohol evaporate so you get the tasty, sugary, sweetness from the rum. Give it a quick taste and add more butter if necessary. Now swirl in a bit of maple sizzurp, and half a spoonful of dijon. This will round out all the delicious flavours. Give it another taste, to make sure its still good. Take it off the stove, grab a silicone basting brush (if you don't have one, you can get these mad cheap, and they're super duper handy), a pair of good bbq tongs, and head back to the grill. And pour yourself a damn drink already, that rum won't drink itself.

You don't want to scorch the chicken, so you will have to turn off one of the burners on your grill, and adjust the other according to maintain the heat. If you have a 3 burner grill, I'd suggest shutting the middle off. Make sure your grill is good and oiled so your chicken won't stick to it and get all gnarly looking. Before throwing the bird on the grill, season both sides with some cumin, chili and chopped garlic. Now throw it on the grill and let the heat to the work. Every 10 minutes or so splash some of that delicious sauce on it. The butter in the sauce will help achieve a nice golden brown colour. You should rotate the chicken throughout the cooking process to ensure it gets cooked evenly, and close the lid when you're not slapping some sauce on or rotating the bird. About 15-20 minutes into the grilling, I like to flip the chicken, breast side down, right onto the direct heat so you get some sexy grill marks. Flip it back onto the indirect heat, and keep that thing going until the juices run clear if you cut it with a knife. The whole cooking process takes about 30-40 minutes depending on how big your chicken is. The breasts usually cook faster than the legs, so take the chicken off the grill and throw on a cutting board to rest up. Using a knife, seperate the legs/thighs by cutting between the joint, then throw them back on the grill (direct heat) and cook them to you liking. This part isn't necessary, I just find leg and thigh meat a little slimy, and I like to cook it a little longer to get it a little drier, plus it brings the flavour of the meat out more.

Your bird has been resting up now and the juices have redistributed; it's ready to cut. With a big knife (or scissors) cut between the breasts, separate the wings if you want, and I like to cut the breasts in half so every one gets some white meat. Serve with some grilled veggies, and some leafy greens and you got yourself a sexy summer meal that will definitely impress the ladies. When this deliciousness was created, we served it was some brown rice concoction Dave made, and a rad fruit and grilled veggie salad that had some rum in it, too. More to come on that later. Pop open a bottle of chilled vino and enjoy. Thank me later.

-justin

Are You Dedicated?

What is Dedicated to Deliciousness? Basically it is a tribute to all things delicious. We use the word as a culinary equivalent for awesome, because essentially that is what it means. This blog will chronicle all the delicious things that its creators and contributors have experienced, whether it be at a restaurant or created by their own minds and hands. The sole motivation behind this is to break down something that is extraordinarily delicious and may appear to come off as complicated, to simple formulas that the average bro can handle, in an easy to read conversational context.

Who are the dudes behind this raddness? Well, we are three bros brought together by our enjoyment of good drinks, better food and the best times. Daniel is the culinary professional. A cook by trade, he is the man who coined the term dedicated to deliciousness in a series of emails related to the pursuit of gastronomic excellence. He works at one of Toronto’s top restaurants and despite his humble manner, he is on his way to a very successful culinary career. Dave can be described by his friends as the wine guy. He discovered his thirst for wine and came into the food world when he worked as a waiter, while completing his university degree in management at University of Ottawa. Now he hustles the 9-5, but will never say no to good food, good wine and friends. He can also make a killer gin cocktail. Justin perfected the home chef roll. While his roommates were in the library hustling books, Justin was hustling in the kitchen striving for perfect grades. Currently he resides in the British Virgin Islands as a sailing coach, but he also has been moonlighting learning to do crazy things with rum.

We want this blog to reach out to anyone who appreciates deliciousness, but has no time for the pretentious. Maybe they want to impress a certain lady friend, maybe they’re looking for something new to make for a dinner party (impress a certain lady friend), or maybe they’re just tired of eating the same old shit and want to expand their culinary horizons. That’s what we’re about.

Dedicated to Deliciousness.

-j.