Venison Tartare with Warm Bone Marrow Drippings
Seared Foie Gras with Rice Pudding and Warm Date Marmalade
Quack and Track: Duck Confit and Beef Tenderloin
Noah’s Ark: The Infamous Mixed Grill
Twenty-four years old on the patio of Ronnie’s—my favorite bar of all time. I miss you so much. Damn you, sobriety.
Andrew and Jennifer
Shamez
The new La Palette
Melissa and Jennifer
I took a $10-per-hour pay cut to work at La Palette. That’s how badly I wanted to work there. It was a ragtag team with only three cooks on weekends and two during the week, and if you were lucky you had one dishwasher during your shift who was typically one of your buddies doing it for beer money. This cook named Ben was supposed to show me the ropes. He asked me if I knew how to make soup. I asked him what kind of soup. He told me that they needed a soup of the day, so any kind. I know how to make soup, you fucking idiot. I just spent the last three years of my life working at one of the best French restaurants in Canada, you hippie fucking loser.
Mike Harrington, one of the chefs at Le Sélect, and Shamez Amlani, one of the bar managers, both left Le Sélect to open La Palette before I started. All I heard about them is that they opened up this bohemian, punk, magical bistro in Kensington Market. One story was that they had in the vast, deep, dark belly of Le Sélect, in the wine cellar, a cigar box full of magic mushrooms that they would dose each other with constantly. I always tried to look for it when I was working or to see if they forgot about a few of them. Who knows if it was true. All I knew is that I wanted to work for these guys one day.
Unfortunately, Mike left before I started there to open La Palette in Mexico—a bed and breakfast. I didn’t meet him until my last year at the restaurant. During my time at La Palette, Shamez was my boss. He was emotional in the best and worst ways. He loved you, and he would take care of you, shower you in absinthe and vintage punk records; then he would verbally assault you if you ran out of one single slice of Morbier for the cheese plate.
Shamez stood up for himself and what he believed in. Before bike lanes were a civic issue, he and his merry men and women would be out on the streets, in ski masks, spray painting bike lanes around downtown Toronto and trying to get the lanes officially adopted. He started what became Pedestrian Sundays in Kensington Market. I enjoyed working for him. Every year Shamez would get a car from the dump, paint it white, leave it in front of the restaurant for a week for the neighbors and anyone visiting Kensington Market to sign, and then march it to the front of city hall as an act of protest. One time, when we were drunk and in the restaurant’s patio late at night, Shamez pulled up in the annual car and stood on the hood, yelling about how much he hated them. Shamez was an anti-car man. My buddies and I ran up to the car and started hitting it. I punched through the window and blood started squirting out of my forearm. I went to the basement of La Palette, pulled out as much glass as I could, and taped it up with duct tape. I think that was on Trish’s birthday. I love you, Trish.
I got to meet so many great people: Maria, Jennifer Castle, Dave Clark, Andrew Artedio, Lenny Miller, Kungfu, Kelsey, Michael J., Brook, Shelly, Joe, Missy, and Sam Higgs, aka Mudman—a tree-hugging, white Rasta guy who really is the best even though he has dreads.
At La Palette, we were allowed to have drinks but had to keep a tab on a piece of paper behind the bar. Many times I would work two weeks and end up owing more than my paycheck. On Saturday nights we would hang out at the restaurant after service and party until four or five in the morning, get a few hours of sleep, and then come back in for brunch at eight. Service started at ten. We would finish the last orders at three in the afternoon, wrap up our stations by 3:30, and then get annihilated on the patio. Summertime was the greatest thing.
One time me, Kungfu, and Lenny were drunk on the patio drinking fruli beer. We were all annihilated. The cooks for the Sunday night service came in and started cooking. All of a sudden they came out to have a cigarette. What we didn’t know was that this fucking idiot cook, Kevin, put on a pot of duck confit and it overflowed and caught on fire.
A friendly neighbor ran across the street and told us, “Your chimney is on fire.” We ran into the kitchen and saw a flaming pot of duck confit. We tried everything: We threw a bag of flour on it. We turned the gas off. We poured boxes of salt to try to extinguish the flames. Nothing worked. While we were inside trying to put it out, Shamez grabbed our only fire extinguisher and somehow got onto the roof without a ladder and sprayed down the chimney with all his might.
Nothing was working. We had to get this flaming pot of duck fat off the stove. As a last effort I wrapped kitchen towels around my arms and picked up the flaming sixteen-liter pot that held fifty duck legs with fat. Luckily I didn’t burn myself because I’m so stealthy—or maybe it was the luck of a day-drunk cook.
I ended up working at La Palette for about two years, until my mind was crushed and my body was broken. What I learned there was that a restaurant is a real living organism of the people working in it. La Palette was high octane: It was a live wire of drugs, emotions, and alcohol. Plus Artedio, the most legendary server of all time, was notorious for leaving mid-service to grab a bag of coke or heroin because he claimed it was the only way to treat his hemorrhoids. And he had on his forearm a classic Snoopy tattoo with the phrase “stay positive” beneath. Needless to say it was time to move on.
Venison tartare is tossed simply with Dijon mustard, shallots, good olive oil, the zest and juice of a lemon, a few cracks of black peppercorns, and some really good sea salt. Then cover that mound of venison tartare with warm buttery bone marrow drippings.
At La Palette we served horse tartare. People would come for this dish like fiending crackheads to their dealers. Once customers tasted that raw horse, they went mad for it. I know eating horse is controversial. People fear what they don’t understand. These beautiful, smart, strong animals are often raised for the purpose of eating, much like beloved cows, pigs, lamb, rabbits, goats, chickens, turkeys, quails, trout, deer, wild boar . . .
There are so many variations of tartare, and everyone has their favorite. I like mine simple, so the meat can shine.
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SERVES: 6
PREP TIME: 1½ HOURS
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4 (2-inch/5 cm) pieces bone marrow
1 sprig rosemary
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 pound (455 g) venison tenderloin
2 tablespoons peeled and finely diced shallots
2 egg yolks
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard, plus more as needed
Tabasco sauce
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
1 handful chopped flat-leaf parsley
Good olive oil
Kosher salt
1 loaf good sourdough bread, sliced
Cornichons, for serving (optional)
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Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). In an oven-safe pan, roast the bone marrow until the fat is fully rendered, 15 minutes. Add the rosemary and garlic and roast 20 more minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and pour the warm marrow fat into a small saucepan; reserve. Discard the bones.
Cut the tenderloin into thin slices against the grain, then pile it together. You should slice the meat and make little stacks of 5 slices. You should have 6 piles; each pile is a portion. Line up these little stacks on your cutting board. Then julienne those stacks and dice. Place the meat on a paper towel–lined plate and place in the fridge, uncovered, for up to 1 hour. In the meantime, prepare the rest of the recipe.
Remove the meat from the fridge and place in a bowl. Add the shallots, egg yolks, mustard, 7 splashes of Tabasco, lemon zest, half the lemon juice, and the parsley. Now drizzle enough olive oil to make it look like a glistening Arctic glacier. It shouldn’t be swimming in oil, but it should be enough to make it loose and yet still together. It should have the consistency of an oozing, warm egg yolk. Gently stir until combined but not mashed. Keep the meat moving, using your spoon to dig into the yolks, breaking them into an oozy mess that coats the meat. Keep stirring until it becomes one mass; taste. Add salt if needed; if it needs acid, add more lemon juice; if it needs tang, add more mustard.
Grill the bread and season with salt. (Charred bread is best for venison tartare.) Spoon the tartare on the bread and cover it with the warm, buttery bone marrow drippings. Serve with a cornichon, if you feel like it. Enjoy this beautiful meat the way it should be: raw!
We used canned snails from Burgundy for this dish at La Palette. I had never even seen real snails until I went to Paris for the first time. I love canned, but there’s just something about fresh grilled snails with popping butter and good bread. The first time I made this at the restaurant I used cooking wine, which was pretty shit and super salty. It really fucked up the dish. I hate cooking wine: It’s one of the worst things about restaurant cooking. By the time you reduce cooking wine, it would be super salty, so you would have to add so much acid that would fuck up this dish. Anyway, we would braise the snails for twenty to forty minutes, then pour them onto a baking sheet with cooked-down mirepoix and reduced wine, then, once cooled, place them in deli containers. When an order came in, we would place five snails with some of the reduced wine and mirepoix into one of those ceramic escargot dishes, place some roasted cremini mushroom caps on top, and pour a little clarified butter over it. Then we’d put it in the oven until it was popping and spitting all over the place. We would serve it with a weird roasted red pepper–feta relish with a chiffonade of basil. I’m not sure if that’s fusion, but it was a fucking weird time in 2005. The following recipe is different from what I just talked about; no disrespect to the red pepper relish, but we’re just gonna make snails on toast.
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SERVES: 4 TO 6
PREP TIME: 30 MINUTES
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2 (125 g) cans Escal Burgundy snails
¼ cup (60 ml) canola oil
6 tablespoons (85 g) unsalted butter
3 shallots, peeled and diced
1 carrot, peeled and diced
½ bulb fennel, trimmed and diced
1 stalk celery, diced
6 cremini mushrooms, caps diced and stems sliced
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 cup (240 ml) Madeira wine
1 cup (240 ml) dry red wine
1 bay leaf
4 sprigs thyme
1 bunch tarragon, chopped
1 bunch parsley, chopped
1 bunch chervil, chopped
1 baguette, split and cut into 6-inch (15 cm) slices
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Rinse the snails under cold running water for 1 minute. They will smell like farts and grass, I find, which is a kinda chill smell.
Set a heavy medium saucepan over medium heat. Pour in the oil and add 2 tablespoons butter. Add the shallots, carrot, fennel, celery, mushrooms, and garlic and cook until translucent, 5 to 10 minutes.
Stir in the tomato paste and cook for a few minutes. Add the snails, the Madeira wine, red wine, bay leaf, and thyme. (Tie the thyme sprigs together with twine so you can pull them out easily after braising.) Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and cook until the sauce is reduced by half, 10 to 15 minutes. Remove from the heat. Add 3 tablespoons butter and toss in a handful of the tarragon, parsley, and chervil.
Set a cast-iron pan over medium heat. Butter the bread slices and toast in the pan until golden brown on each side.
Spoon the snails over the bread, letting the sauce pool and fall over the sides. Enjoy!
This is the ultimate winter meal, or eat it whenever the fuck you want to. I love savory, sweet, and fatty. I love foie gras. I love rice pudding. I love dates. This dish is inspired by my time at La Palette. We could get away with serving foie gras with anything we liked. Put that fatty mouthwatering slab of duck liver on a dirty-water hot dog, and I’d still eat it. This dish has a warm-on-warm-on-warm mouthfeel. It tastes like a dream of you birthing yourself into a warm bath of maple syrup filled with thousands of little mermaids kissing your body at once. Well, that is what this dish does for me. Make sure you buy foie gras from a trusted butcher and that it’s the highest grade.
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SERVES: 8
PREP TIME: 45 MINUTES
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FOR THE FOIE GRAS:
1 whole lobe foie gras, cut into 1½ inch- (4 cm) thick slices
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
FOR THE RICE PUDDING:
1 cup (200 g) short-grain white rice
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup (240 ml) milk
1 cup (240 ml) heavy cream
½ cup (110 g) packed brown sugar
½ cup (120 ml) marshmallow fluff
FOR THE DATE MARMALADE:
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
½ teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon ground allspice
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
12 whole Medjool dates, pitted
¼ cup (60 ml) apple cider vinegar
1 cup (240 ml) Madeira wine
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
FOR SERVING:
1 cup (240 ml) good maple syrup
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
Freshly ground black pepper
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Cook the foie gras: I don’t like scoring foie gras before I sear it, but you can crosshatch the top and bottom if you’d like. Season the slices with salt and pepper. In a dry medium pan set over medium-high heat, place your foie gras a few slices at a time; do not overcrowd the pan. The foie gras will smoke and start rendering fat very quickly, so please don’t turn your back on it. Once it is a golden dark brown, flip it. The edges should be nice and crispy on both sides, and the centers should have the consistency of melting butter. Remove to a paper towel–lined plate. Let it rest as you would steak, poultry, pork, or any meat.
Make the rice pudding: Rinse the rice under cold running water. In a medium pot, combine 1½ cups (360 ml) cold water, the butter, salt, and rice; bring to a boil. Cover the pot and turn the heat down to low; cook 10 minutes, then remove from the heat and let sit 10 minutes.
In another medium pot set over medium heat, place the milk, cream, and brown sugar; cook 8 minutes, reducing the liquid by half. Add the cooked rice and stir until nice and creamy. Add the marshmallow fluff, which is what puts this rice pudding over the top. Stir it in only a little—don’t fully incorporate the fluff so you can have these little marshmallow pockets, which are ridiculous!
Make the date marmalade: In a medium pot set over medium heat, melt the butter, then add the cloves, allspice, and cardamom. Cook for just a minute to open all the flavors, then add half the dates. (I leave them whole so they have more texture when they break down.) Add the vinegar; let it reduce 1 minute. Add the wine and lemon juice. Cook 15 minutes over low heat and let it turn into a beautiful sticky marmalade. Add the remaining dates and just a little water if the marmalade becomes too tight. Then right at the last moment, add the lemon zest.
To serve: In a small pot set over medium heat, warm the maple syrup (don’t bring it to a boil). I hate when people serve room-temperature syrup—it should always be warm. Spoon some rice pudding into a bowl, add a few tablespoons of date marmalade, and top with a slice of seared foie gras. Pour 2 tablespoons maple syrup over it, and sprinkle with a dusting of cinnamon and a few cracks of pepper. Trust me on this!
La Palette was the first restaurant in Toronto to serve horse. This came with controversy and responsibility. We often had protests out front because of this. Shamez Amlani, the co-owner, loved when the protesters came. We would offer them tea and even sometimes a plate of sliced horse tenderloin, upsetting the protesters even more. Horse is a type of meat that can easily be questioned: Where does it come from? Are you eating an old racehorse, an old farm horse, or a horse that was put down for a broken leg? Our horse came from a farm in Quebec; they were slaughtered in Indiana and then brought back to Quebec for consumption.
The French and Italians have been eating horse for centuries. And it is worth every bite. I’m a firm believer in, if you eat meat, why not all meat? The flavor is right between venison and beef—sweeter than beef and softer than venison. Shamez named this dish “Quack and Track” to draw attention, and it is still on the menu some seventeen years later. For my version I paired sweet and crispy duck confit with juicy rich beef for an amazing yet nonsensical pairing. I always said that people had to have La Palette’s version if it was their first time at the restaurant. It is so iconic. It is so good. We served it with a jam demi-glace made with Bonne Maman blackberry preserves, potato gratin, and seasonal vegetables.
I would often watch from the kitchen when I knew someone was trying horse for the first time. If people braved through all the smoke and mirrors and dug into this ruby of precious meat, they were in for a meal of a lifetime. One bite, and they would be hooked. People would often come back within the week for a second helping. Working at La Palette made me think outside the box—cooking French food and the way I lived my life. It had a huge impact on how I cooked at my future restaurants. Fuck the rules and what people think.
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SERVES: 4 TO 6
PREP TIME: 2 DAYS PLUS 3 HOURS
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FOR THE DUCK CONFIT:
½ cup (125 g) kosher salt
1 cup (200 g) granulated sugar
Zest of 1 orange
8 cloves garlic, peeled
½ bunch flat-leaf parsley
½ bunch thyme, leaves picked
4 duck legs
4 cups (1 L) duck fat
FOR THE BEEF TENDERLOIN:
2 pounds (910 g) beef tenderloin
Canola oil
Kosher salt
A few sprigs thyme
A few sprigs rosemary
2 cloves garlic, crushed
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
FOR THE BLACKBERRY DEMI-GLACE:
1 shallot, peeled and minced
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 ounces (60 ml) sherry
2 tablespoons blackberry jam
1 cup (240 g) demi-glace
1 pint (280 g) blackberries, chopped
Freshly ground black pepper
1 lemon
Unsalted butter (optional)
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Make the duck confit: In a blender, combine the salt, sugar, orange zest, garlic, parsley, and thyme leaves; blend until the mixture turns bright green and is fully incorporated.
Trim any loose skin from the duck legs with a paring knife; the skin should just cover the flesh. Place the legs flesh side up, skin side down in a glass casserole dish and rub the salt-sugar cure completely over the legs. Cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge 24 hours.
Rinse the duck legs in a sink over a colander to catch all the herbs (so you don’t mess up your plumbing). Pat the duck legs as dry as you can.
Preheat the oven to 250°F (120°C). In a heavy-bottomed enameled Dutch oven over medium heat, warm the duck fat until it is a yellowish gold liquid. Place the duck legs in the pot and completely submerge them in the liquid. Cover and roast in the oven 2 hours.
Remove from the oven and let stand until the duck legs are at room temperature. In a smaller oven-safe dish, line up the duck legs in two rows, with the legs up. Pour enough duck fat over them to cover the meat, then place in the refrigerator 24 hours. Setting the duck legs for this amount of time makes such a difference in taste and texture.
Make the beef tenderloin: Cut the tenderloin into 6 medallions, about 5-ounce (140 g) each. In a medium cast-iron pan over medium-high heat, pour ¼ inch (6 mm) of oil, completely covering the pan to allow for even browning. Season the steaks with salt. Lightly sear the steaks three at a time so you don’t overcrowd the pan. You don’t want a hard sear; you want a light sear. You want to roll the meat around like a baby bear rolling a groundhog. Add 2 tablespoons butter and paddle the meat from side to side, top to tail.
Add the thyme, rosemary, garlic, and butter. It will froth and bubble. Place 3 of the steaks at the ten o’clock position in the pan and leave enough space for the butter to flow over the steaks while you baste them using a spoon. Cook 5 to 6 minutes and baste about 1 minute per side; place the steaks on a plate and let them rest. Repeat with the remaining steaks; pour the warm herbed butter over all the steaks.
Make the blackberry demi-glace: In a medium saucepan set over low heat, sauté the shallot in the butter until translucent. Next, add the sherry, blackberry jam, demi-glace, and blackberries. (You don’t want to burn or reduce it any further.) Add a few cracks of pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice. You could add a knob of butter to round it out.
To plate: Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C). Take the duck confit out of the refrigerator and place in a nonstick pan. Put in the oven and cook until the duck confit gets crispy. Remove from the oven. Plate one duck confit with one of the beef tenderloin. Cover the beef with the blackberry demi-glace and let pool on the plate. I like serving it with my favorite starch and vegetables.
This was the biggest headache ever and that’s why I’m not going to write this recipe. We had the smallest 12-inch- (30.5 cm) wide half-broken grill at La Palette, and we grilled all our meats for the mixed grill. We had elk long loin, horse tenderloin, wild boar tenderloin, caribou tip meat, ostrich loin, venison back strap, musk ox, water buffalo strip, bison flank, lamb rack, rabbit loin, and sometimes moose.
We would make 2 to 3-ounce (55 to 80 g) medallions of the meat, chops of the lamb, and chops of the wild boar. We had a list of all the meats on the menu, and you could pick three from the mix, or all of them if you wanted to be a savage. Shamez, the restaurant’s co-owner, would love to push people into getting Noah’s Ark, the infamous platter of all the grilled meats. So just think for a second: We had this great little bistro that had about forty-five seats inside and fifteen seats on the patio, and a small broken grill. Imagine getting an order that looked like this: 2 steak frites, 1 horse tenderloin, 1 cassoulet, 1 bouillabaisse, and 3 mixed grills.
At La Palette we had only one cook making all the mains, one or two doing cold appetizers and dessert, and hopefully a dishwasher on Friday and Saturday nights. Now, we didn’t have fridges in the hot section, so every time we got an order, we had to memorize two or three orders at a time and run around the corner to the sunken walk-in refrigerator (yes, the walk-in was sinking into the Kensington Market earth). We’d grab all the proteins out of the fridge, then run back and place them on the seasoning trays, organize the pans, brush the grill, and start cooking. We’d throw the cassoulet into a pan, the duck confit into the oven, and start warming the broth for the bouillabaisse, making sure to leave the fish and shellfish in the walk-in until the last second. We’d start grilling the steaks for the steak frites, and once they came off, we would line up the proteins for the mixed grill, so that we wouldn’t mess up the order. Then we’d gather all the starches and sides and veggies. It was a nonstop dance and shuffle like no place I’d worked before or after—it was complete chaos every single day and night! But it worked. We would go to the market each day and buy fresh seasonal veggies like asparagus, bok choy, garlic scapes, pattypan squash, runner beans, green beans, and fresh tomatoes. Potts—an eccentric, classic Toronto vegetable vendor—has the best produce in the market! It was the only place that actually used farmers. People won’t want to hear this, but every single market buys all the same imported produce from the Ontario Food Terminal. Potts would work directly with all the best farmers, which made it easy to get great vegetables that we could usually just pan-fry quickly with some lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, and salt and pepper just to keep our heads above water.
Anyway, most important, we had better not have overcooked or undercooked the mixed grill, because if Shamez picked up the plates and then walked back to the kitchen with crazy eyes, we knew something went wrong, and that’s when the wheels would come off! He would lose his cool and call us all kinds of names! He loved to call me a fat cokehead, but I really didn’t care because I drank pretty much for free, and I was a fat cokehead, so that was a smart diss, Sham! Someone ordered the wild boar, medium, and the ostrich, rare, so why the fuck is the bison medium-well? He’d say, WTF happened, and then I’d say I don’t know, I cooked what was on the chit, man! And then we would have to re-fire that person’s mixed grill or try to save it by cooking the undercooked piece again or re-cooking a fresh piece to replace an overcooked piece. It was so fucking rat-fucked. All this shit happened three or four times a night. It was confusing to begin with—like why the fuck would anyone want to eat twelve different meats at once, and why the fuck wouldn’t we have a proper grill that could cook meat properly? Holy fucking fuck, this place broke my brain.
