Michael Symon's Live to Cook_ Recipes and Techniques to Rock Your Kitchen - Michael Symon [15]
Serves 4
Crêpe Batter
½ cup fresh or thawed, frozen corn kernels
½ cup all-purpose flour
2 large eggs
½ cup whole milk
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
½ cup coarsely chopped cored and seeded red bell pepper
½ cup coarsely chopped cored and seeded green bell pepper
¼ cup coarsely chopped scallion, white and green parts
Canola oil, for sautéing
Barbecue Duck Confit
1 cup shredded Duck Confit or filling of your choice
1 cup Coffee Barbecue Sauce
½ cup sour cream
Combine the corn, flour, eggs, milk, salt, pepper, bell peppers, and scallion in the bowl of a food processor and purée until smooth. Cover and refrigerate for 2 to 4 hours.
Pour a film of oil into a 7- or 8-inch sauté pan over medium heat. Ladle in about 2 tablespoons of batter, and cook it until it’s slightly browned. Flip the crêpe and continue cooking for another minute until it’s cooked through. Transfer to a plate and repeat to cook the remaining crêpes, stacking them on top of one another. You should have 4 to 6 crêpes.
Preheat the oven to 400°F.
Wrap 2 or 3 tablespoons of duck confit with a tablespoon of sauce in each corn crêpe to make a cylinder. Arrange the crêpes, seam side down, in a baking dish. Bake until heated through, about 10 minutes. Divide among four plates and garnish with a little sour cream.
The Power of the Pierogi
Once word of mouth began to spread about the food we were doing, more and more people were asking us exactly what kind of food we served. Liz said, “Michael, what should I tell them?”
I didn’t know. “American?” I suggested.
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know, Liz, it’s influenced by all kinds of things. I’m just doing the food I like. What is it? It’s Midwestern food. Tell people it’s Midwestern cuisine.”
Liz stopped and stared at me. “What are you f—ing crazy? We’ll be out of business in a week! What the hell does that mean?”
She’s always been more sensible than me, but we stuck with Midwestern anyway and today refer to it as heritage Midwestern.
There’s no real consensus on what Midwestern cuisine is. I am happy to say that—due to recent interest in local ingredients and the great ones we have here, from mushrooms to fish to berries—Midwestern food no longer carries such a stigma. The Midwest is a mix of Eastern and Northern European, Russian, Mediterranean, African, and Indian immigrants. Cleveland is a melting pot. And I have always cooked to the Cleveland I knew, and what I loved, which is food that has a lot of Mediterranean influences, but also Eastern European influences. I still think of Lola as being more closely related to Eastern Europe on my dad’s and my granddad’s side, and its younger sister restaurant, Lolita, as being more closely linked to my Greek and Italian mom.
The question for me was how to cook the food I cared about and get my conservative city to accept it and like it. Almost always I did this by sort of meeting them halfway. When I got to the Caxton after Giovanni’s in 1994, every restaurant in town had fried calamari on the menu, and people who came to the Caxton expected to see it. But every restaurant in town did the same old calamari and marinara sauce. I love ginger and thought that would be a cool way to flavor the calamari. I ended up soaking it in ginger ale and tossing it in flour mixed with dried and pulverized gingerroot, and served it with a green onion aioli. It was delicious, it made my customers happy, and it made me happy.
The key to success, I eventually learned, is to present new or unfamiliar ingredients in a familiar setting, so that