I was very excited to get a copy of Jennifer McLagan’s latest cookbook, Bitter, A Taste of the World’s Most Dangerous Flavor, in the mail this week. I’m a big fan of hers, and love cooking out of her three previous books, Bones, Fat, and The Odd Bits. She’s done a very good job of getting people to try new things with ingredients we just don’t use that much in our every day cooking.
Jennifer is traveling from Toronto to Vancouver and Victoria to promote her new book. On Friday the 23rd of January she’ll be doing a special event at The London Chef in Victoria. On Monday the 26th, her dinner event at Barbara-jo’s Books to Cooks in Vancouver is sold out, but you can still meet her before dinner for an ‘Apero’ at the store. Details are here.
Fennel, onion, chile, coriander and beer.
I’m interviewing Jennifer on Friday for a special podcast I’m planning a little later on, but I couldn’t resist cracking open the book and trying a couple of recipes this weekend. I prepared Mussels in Beer from page 61, while Ramona took on a salad from page 12, Curly Endive with Miso and Chile Dressing. I cleaned the mussels of their beards while sautéing some chopped onion and fresh fennel together along with a hot chile pepper and a tbsp of coriander seeds, and then added a nice glass of Stella Artois beer before adding the mussels.
Curly endive and miso/chile dressing
Ramona’s curly endive recipe looked a little strange at first because you end up cooking the endive, so I guess you could call it more of a side dish than a salad, but it served a great role as our vegetables for the evening, along with some home made frites! Garlic, ginger, a hot chile pepper and the miso were stirred in along with a chopped red bell pepper, which all developed a very tasty flavour profile.
Weekend Chef comes through again!
So, curly endive, mussels, crusty baguette and frites fresh out of my little deep fryer made quite a great meal, and I’m not bitter about it at all! Watch this space in the days to come for the podcast with Jennifer as she reveals her passion for what she calls ‘The World’s Most Dangerous Flavour’.
Lovely article Don…but WHAT IS that world’s most dangerous flavour? Can you reveal this to us who cannot make it to the events you mentioned for one reason or another?
Pretty please?
Always enjoy your words and experimentation s!
Ghenia
I thought it was clear…but BITTER is the most dangerous flavour in the world. I’ve amended the post to include the entire title of the book.