We live at the heart of one of Montreal’s snobbier restaurant districts. Pied de Cochon is closer than the nearest grocery store. Our home suits us perfectly, and we have no complaints, but it’s never quite felt like a neighbourhood. What we get in snobbish niche we lose in variety. Most of the restaurants of the restaurants are of a type—French—and they tend towards a need for reservations. We’re missing the accessible, good quality local place you can head out to at a moment’s notice, when the fridge is empty, inspiration doesn’t hit, or you forget to turn on the timer and burn your supper.
As much as I stand by it, my opening statement does reveal my own snobbishness. It’s that there’s a lot of a certain calibre of a certain type of restaurant here, the kind I want to eat at (the kind I want to eat at but can’t always afford), and that they tend towards French. It’s not that there aren’t others, just none that we’ve clicked with. Truthfully, we’re in the heart of bring-your-own-wine land, and we’ve got no lack of choice. It's just that there’s a big gap between the good places and the mediocre.
We finally stopped at one of the local Greek options late last week. We won’t be going back, but we took our leftovers with us and nothing went to waste. It was just too close to what we could buy at the store, and we’d been seated in a tight patio section so raucous it made conversation difficult. It left me craving the taste and vibrancy of a good greek salad, lemon and chicken brochettes.
You can’t get away from tomatoes this time of year. They’re often the first thing seen, if not peaches, when you walk into the bigger grocery stores, and I’ve been obsessing over them.
I love a roast chicken, too. I did our three-pounder with an onion stuffed in the cavity along with garlic and a few sprigs of thyme. I rubbed the bird with butter, salt and peppered it and tucked some more garlic and chopped thyme under the skin. When I took it out midway to baste with its own juices, I added some thinly sliced lemons to the top of the thing to keep it moist. It turned out well, but chicken really just cooks itself, with a nice hint of the lemon.
The salad was a bit more involved, I’ll admit it, but not that hard (mostly since Rujira’s in charge of the bread and crusts in our division of labor). I have a recipe section on my Flipboard news aggregator, and it draws pretty randomly from a few blogs. One of the ones that pops up regularly is How Sweet It Is, and it’s often pretty great for ideas. A recent post was for a salt and pepper heirloom tomato tart with whipped feta (http://www.howsweeteats.com/
I figured I could take this and move it a step closer to Greek salad land with little trouble.
For the crust, pulse 2 cups of all-purpose, 1 tablespoon of sugar and 1 teaspoon of salt until combined. In another bowl whisk a large egg, 1 teaspoon of vinegar and 1/4 cup of ice water. Add 3.4 cups of cold unsalted butter to the food processor and keep pulsing until you’re left with coarse crumbs. Pour the liquid mix over the flour and keep on pulsing until the dough comes together. Take it out, wrap it in plastic and refrigerate for half an hour.
Preheat the oven at 400 and take the dough out of the fridge. Roll it out until it fits your pan. Press it down and poke holes in the crust with a fork. Bake for about 20-25 minutes, until golden. Ours shrunk quite a bit, so the sides weren’t as high as I’d like, so don’t trim it too aggressively.
Let the crust cool before assembling the salad.
The cheese spread was about 1/3 cup of softened cream cheese and about the same of feta, crumbled. I added this and a splash of olive oil and whipped it in the food processor. You spread this with a spoon and your fingers onto the pie crust.
Adding to this base, you build up as high as you’d like with thinly sliced tomato, cucumber, red onions and black olives. I used a mandolin for everything but the olives, and then topped it all with some fresh basil and my Joe Beef Country Salt Blend. A drizzle of good balsamic and olive oil finishes it off. As usual, there was way to much to eat.
The salad kept for a tasty breakfast the next morning, but best to invite friends over and just finish it all right then and there.
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