Pig out
I remember Martin Picard declaring to his friend Anthony Bourdain (in the Quebec episode of No Reservations): "Tonight I will keel you." To which Bourdain added: "these are words I don't take lightly." Picard proceeded to keel Bourdain with one spectacularly rich and extravagant dish after another, ending with the palate cleanser of a whole roasted suckling pig, bisected snout wrapped in 24 k gold leaf. "You can eat it and the day after you're shitting gold," Picard told his guest. I vowed ever since that someday somehow I would visit the scene of the massacre.
Thirteen years later and there I was. standing in front of Picard's Au Pied de Cochon, one of the pioneering restaurants that helped put Montreal on the international culinary map. A relatively quiet little joint: storefront of glass and wood folded aside to let in light and air; street deck with tables and--love this--planters full of herbs: rosemary, cilantro, so forth. Peered a little closer at the cilantro: some of the stems have been cut. They're not just decor, the herbs were being used.
We pored over the menu. No we couldn't order everything: I hadn't the budget (24k gold leaf!) or liver or arteries. Needed to be selective, so I gave up ordering the cured fig and boudin tart or the mapu tofu and foie gras (Tofu and goose liver? The textures are so similar--was that the point?), settled on one relatively unusual starter and four classics. Drinks were a mojito, a lemonade sweetened with maple, and two glasses water.
I'd noticed a big basket at the bar heaped high with what looked like boulders. The waiter took one boulder, sawed it in half into wedges, served it to us--turns out they were bread with a finger-tappable crust, burnt almost, inside a pillowy crumb; with a ramekin of butter one can almost make a meal of it. "Careful," I said to my dining companions. This was a pre-emptive strike; the actual meal had not yet begun.
The assault proper began with poutine, the Quebecois classic of heaped french fries with gravy and cheese curds (basically chunks of squeaky cheddar) given a Picardish upgrade with even larger chunks of seared foie gras. The fries still had some crisp, the gravy was the richest I'd ever had (and I've had a few, round Montreal and Toronto and a few travesties in the United States, even whipped up a version in my own kitchen)--turns out yes they incorporated foie into the gravy, hence the incomparably creamy texture and depth of flavor.
Tartare temaki followed, served on a little tree stump. Crisp cone stuffed with sushi rice, a peacock fantail of lettuce leaf, fried string potato streamers, a quail egg crowned for easy pouring, flaxseed as light garnish, and raw chopped red meat. Pour the raw egg on the meat, toss shell aside (of course), bite. Crisp nori and potato strings, tender rice, lean well-seasoned meat (it could have been beef or even tuna with its irony flavor but it wasn't), raw egg (arguably the best steak sauce ever) for fattiness.
O did I mention that the full name of the dish is 'tartare temaki de cheval?' Apparently available all over Europe, South America, Asia, even the Philippines (of course), only we fry it and dip it in vinegar. The Japanese like it raw; so does this place. The quail egg was a simple yet decadent touch.
The server then presented a knife with a thin blade, wicked sharp, bright plastic handle. I gripped it with one hand and looked about for something to stab.
Came the canard en conserve. We stared at the can printed front and back with funny cartoons. Were we supposed to puncture the can? Fortunately the server arrived in time with a can opener, explaining as he opened the tin that it's half a duck breast, balsamic reduction, garlic, cabbage, carrot, celery, onions, and two sprigs of thyme stuffed into a can, boiled some twenty-seven minutes.
The server upended the can over a plate of toast and carrot puree: the contents landed with a soft plop. We stared at it: didn't look like a lot and it didn't look appetizing--a slice of meat, a whitish roll of fat, a large slice of foie, dark gravy.
Turns out this may have been the single heaviest dish of the meal. The breast was a rare red, the way duck breast should be served--like prime steak. How could they boil this for 27 minutes and not leave the meat overdone? That I'm guessing is where the precise cooking time and temperature plays a role. The sauce was sweetly understated and a little tart, nice counterpoint to the almost overwhelming richness.
The foie had become both yieldingly meltingly tender and startlingly resilient in the can; when I tried to slice it the foie embraced the blade--like jello only a jello that wouldn't cut, just swelled and slithered away. Had to chase it round the plate and pin it down with a fork before it surrendered and allowed itself to be dismembered.
In the mouth the foie just...faded, leaving a trace of butter on the tongue. The memory still haunts me weeks later.
The fat was fat; the knife blade bounced even harder off its mottled sheen than with the foie. Gave up; the biggest dish of the meal was arriving. "You, I--later," I promised the slice of duck lard.
Finally the pied de cochon, the restaurant's signature dish (this and the duck): an entire pig's foot, partially deboned, stuffed with pork shank-and-foot meat, braised with mushrooms, onions, garlic, rosemary, pork stock, white wine, baked till the skin was crispy, then topped with two honking huge slices of seared foie.
The meat was falling-apart tender; you could taste the earthiness of the shrooms, the deep funk of foie and pork stock, the crisp tartness of the wine. I swear they coated the skin with a spicy breading, though the Food Network recipe says nothing; Picard still keeps some secrets.
At that point it hit us like a baseball bat to the gut: we were as tightly stuffed as this foot we were attempting to eat. And yet we wanted more: the sauce of both canard and cochon was addictive, like liquefied crack; I was tearing off pieces of boulder--sorry, bread--and sopping it in the sauce.
We foolishly opted for dessert. Pouding choumer was invented by women factory workers during the Great Depression in Quebec, made out of stale bread and maple caramel. Unlike the other dishes, the restaurant didn't seem to have fiddled around with this at all, basically a cake batter drowned in maple and cream, then baked till the cake rises up out of the thick sauce and browns. Was it delicious? It was cake in maple and cream--does the sun rise in the east?
A question comes to mind: Au Pied de Cochon opened in 2001; the Bourdain episode aired in 2006. Do Picard's dishes retain their stature some thirteen years later? Restaurants are notorious for depreciating quality, but based on my own experience the service here was excellent--the server was attentive, patiently explained each dish, regularly cleaned our table of crumbs--and the food was memorable. If they do not have the same meteoric impact they once had on the Montreal dining landscape, they certainly did on my belly.
Epilogue: A week later I broke open the leftover containers: basically a chunk of pork shank in sauce, a roll of duck fat in its sauce, and half a boulder. Warmed the boulder in a toaster oven, microwaved the others.
Whaddaya know? The food was if anything even more delicious. The sauce had melded the flavors deepened the funk become more pronounced. The roll of duck fat I managed to slice thin with a serrated knife (note to serial killers and carnivores: fat and skin cut easier when the blade's serrated) and laid on a slab of boulder, like lardo on bread. Gorgeous bite of food.
Mark Twain once wrote: "In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better." Picard served us a barrel of food; the magic ingredient turned out to be the passage of days. Things went much much better this time around.
First published in Businessworld, 7.11.19
sometimes the leftovers are the best parts
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