The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 34

yy yyjyy yi.i .111,1, B2 FOOD THE GAZETTE montrealgazette.com WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012 THE SANDWICH CLUB Mitraillette takes comfort food to a new level if- A weekly series dedicated to anything that fits on a piece of bread. We deconstruct a different sandwich each week from Mexican tortas to Lebanese pita kebabs to lobster guedilles and tell you where to find Hand what goes into making it open for display purposes.) The North African-style sausage of spiced ground lamb and veal is supplied by the Plateau's charcu-terie central, La Maison du Roti. The sauce (D) they call American at Frite Alors! is made of mayonnaise, paprika, garlic, green onions, onion and harissa. The chain's most popular house blend, it brings in some sharper notes and smoothes out the starches. Taken altogether in one bite, the mitraillette is cozy and carby, with some tangy bass notes.

While not initially convincing, the combination grows on you. The secret: It's more like the news. This month, Europe got its first taste of Frites Alors! when Quebec-based Cholesterol Plus launched a location in Lyon, France. The homegrown resto chain, which began in 1991 on Pare counts 10 franchise; operations in Montreal and three more off-island for; now. Frites 680 Catherine St.

514-508-! 0609, fritealors.com 'ifmlk V' easy to come by at snack bars in Belgium. The name means machine gun, maybe because of its long shape, maybe because it packs a load or maybe because it looks like a shot-up mess. Either way, the key ele SARAH MUSCRAVE GAZETTE CASUAL-DINING CRITIC Mitraillette, $11.50 at Frite Alorsl downtown The crown jewels of local quick-food chain Frite Alors! are its french fries, or Belgian fries to be more precise frites are a point of pride and proprietorship in Belgium. Paying homage to the food's origins in that country, they're done old-style at the restaurant: blanched and cooled before being dunked into hot beef fat to crisp up, rather than the more health-conscious veggie oils more commonly used in fryers these days. "We're one of the greasiest fries on the market, and we don't exactly hide that fact," Maxime Collard, owner of the two-year-old downtown Frite Alors! location, says.

You'll find the namesake The mitraillette sandwich at Frites Alors! features merguez, lots SOLUTION DINNER IN A Recipes from six grandmothers, with love German cookbook features homey favourites, like chicken soup and goulash a frites offered for dipping in a range of seasoned mayos, holding down the fort in poutine, and stuffed into a sandwich called the mitraillette. Although relatively unknown here, the order is DKTOURMALINE chili pepper and a little ground recipe. 6 O'CLOCK of fries and a sharp sauce in a ments are meat (originally sausage), fries and some form of sauce. The bread: Half a baguette (A). The spread: Fries (B) are strewn all over this sand HURRY man called Anton, takes its flavour from a chili pepper and a little piece of ham that is boiled, ground and blended with the other ground meats.

Serve with mashed potatoes and kohlrabi. You can skip the chili and replace the ham with more beef, if you wish. An appealing and useful book. 6V2 cups cold water 1 bay leaf 200g raw country-style ham in one piece 1 day-old slice of bread or a roll, in crumbs Vi cup milk 1 large onion, finely chopped 1 small, dried, chili pepper, crumbled 500g mixed ground beef, pork and veal Ricotta This comes from Smitten Kitchen, and suggests a one-half cup of whipping cream if a full cup is too much. Just be sure to make up the difference with whole milk.

3 cups (750 mL) whole milk (3.25 per cent) 1 cup (250 mL) whipping cream V2 tsp. (2 mL) coarse sea salt 3 tbsp. (50 mL) freshly squeezed lemon juice In a large pot, mix together milk, cream and salt. Heat until the mixture reaches 190 stirring every so often to French. Daytime classes last two hours for $65, the evening class is three hours for $95.

Topics, dates and times: Christmas desserts, including the Christmas log, Dec. 1 at 9 a.m., Dec. 16 at 10 a.m. and Dec. 20 at 10 a.m.; Christmas hors d'oeuvres, Dec.

4 at 10 a.m. and Dec. 17 at 6 p.m. To register, call the school, located at 8900 Leduc No. 40, at 450-656-6161, email: infoaculinaire.com, or visit aculinaire.comboutique.

baguette. wich like shrapnel, and some of them get tucked into the fold when the two sides are brought together. Beneath them, two merguez (C) are lying in wait. (In our photo, the sandwich has been cut 1 teaspoon salt Vi teaspoon pepper 1 large egg, beaten 3 tablespoons pork fat or clarified unsalted butter Bring water and bay leaf to a boil in a medium saucepan and boil ham for an hour. Remove ham and let cool slightly.

Use a coarse disc of a meat grinder or a food processor to grind ham. Soak bread crumbs in milk, then squeeze out the milk. Combine in a bowl with onion, chili pepper, ground meat and ham, salt, pepper and egg. Use your hands to mix ingredients well. Shape mixture into small patties.

(This can be done several hours in advance and refrigerated, covered.) Heat pork fat or butter in a large, heavy frying pan over moderate heat. Cook patties for about four or five minutes a side until golden brown and crisp on the outside. Serve hot. keep it from burning on the bottom. Remove from the heat and add the lemon juice.

Stir, gently once or twice, and then let sit for five minutes to let the curds and whey separate. Line a large sieve or colander with two or three layers of cheesecloth and place over a bowl. Pour the mixture into the sieve and let it strain for at least an hour or more. depending on how firm you like it. (I stopped draining mine around one hour and 15 minutes.) It will also firm up more once refrigerated.

Eat immediately or put in an airtight container and re frigerate. Makes a bit more than 1 cup. Deli cuisine renewed New York chef Noah Ber-namoff, who owns the Mile End Deli delicatessens in New York and Brooklyn, will talk about the comeback of the Jewish deli and how to make perfect latkas, Saturday at 2 p.m. at Appetite for Books. Former Montrealer Bernamoff, author with his wife, Rae, of The Mile End Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, $32), will talk about his enterprises and sign copies of his Meat Balls Toni Style Serves 4 to 6 Just as the weather cools off comes a warm, welcoming cookbook of recipes collected from grandmothers in Germany.

Called Grandma's German Cookbook, it's by two women in Hamburg. Linn Schmidt and Birgit Hamm, writers and food lovers, sought family recipes from six grandmothers (DKTour-maline, $24) known for their cooking. The recipes range from chicken soup to mushroom goulash, and from smoked pork loin with sauerkraut to a tempting assortment of cakes. This recipe, from a vinegar to heated milk (or a combination of milk and cream) and then straining off the curds. (There are also a million variations, using more or less milk and cream, using different ratios of acid or using vinegar instead of lemon juice.) The taste is rich and creamy, smooth and luxurious a recipe that's end belies how little effort went in.

Serve this on slices of toasted bread drizzled with honey or some extra virgin olive oil. Grind on cracked pepper or stir in herbs. Use in recipes that call for ricotta. Or simply eat it plain. Sandwich suggestions? restoagogogmail.com BEST BUYS JULIAN ARMSTRONG Leave the lettuce use cucumbers and endives in salad Make salads this week with Florida cucumbers, Quebec endive and Mexican hydro-ponic tomatoes, all foods in top shape at low prices.

Lettuce, coming mostly from Arizona, is hit-and-miss as to quality Observant shoppers may find brown butts and ribs on iceberg. Leafy types are in better condition. Produce prices overall are expected to be reasonable because U.S. supplies, ordered during the run-up to the U.S. Thanksgiving food frenzy last week, are plentiful, while home cooking has dropped back to normal.

The best vegetable buys are in Quebec cabbage and root, vegetables, and that should be the case for many weeks, to come. Enjoy fresh Quebec, carrots and beets right now. while quality is at its best. Strawberries are best avoided this week because California's crop is in short-supply thanks to cool, wet weather. Melons and pineapple continue to be a good buy So do navel oranges and Florida grapefruit.

Most of the latter are juicy and sweet, whatever their size. Buy Clementines from, the Mediterranean in small amounts and not in boxes with the yellow colour concealed under orange netting. Much of this fruit has been picked under-ripe. Later pickings will presumably improve. California grapes are more expensive now that they are coming from storage.

Peru-; vian grapes are beginning to' I arrive. book. Price, including hors; d'oeuvres and a glass of $40. Call the cookbook located at 388 Victoria Westmount, at 514-369-2002 fe reserve. I To reach Julian Armstrong with your food questions, ideas and comments, i email her at julianarmstronglgmail.com or send an email to foodmontrealgazette.com Just say homemade ricotta cheese! Ground beef gets a lift from a ham in this German meatballs GWENDOLYN RICHARDS POSTMEDIA NEWS I've bought my fair share of ricotta in my time from my local grocery store.

It's good enough, especially since most of the time I'm simply folding it into lemon ricotta pancakes for Sunday breakfast. One day, a friend and I made homemade ricotta in advance of friends coming for dinner. The recipe was laughably easy: heat milk, add lemon juice, watch it curdle and then strain. And yet it was unexpectedly exciting to watch the curds and whey separate with just a bit of acid thrown into the Tune in to the Christmas spirit by taking a cooking course for the festive season. Both the Academie Culinaire in Old Montreal and the new Brossard cooking school, Atelier culinaire in the Quar-tier Dix30 shopping centre, are offering single-session courses, most of them in French.

On Saturday, Dec. 1, Academie Culinaire will offer three different courses: making edible Christmas gifts, a hands- mix. Even more pleasing was to unfold the cheesecloth after the whey had drained away from the curds and see the mound of thick, creamy ricotta. That recipe was good, but I've since found one that is made even more decadent with the addition of a full cup of whipping cream. Technically, this may not be considered real ricotta, which in Italian means "twice cooked" and is made from whey the byproduct of making other cheeses.

But when searching for ricotta recipes, almost all now use this method of adding an acid lemon juice or dinner on course, at 9.30 a.m. and demonstration courses on a complete Christmas season dinner menu at 9.30 a.m., repeating Dec. 3 at 6.30 p.m. and Christmas appetizers on Dec. 1 at 1.30 p.m.

How to make a gastronomic Christmas dinner largely in advance will be the topic of a $105 demonstration course in English Dec. 16 at 1.30 p.m. The same course will also be given in French Dec. 9 at 1.30 TABLE TALK JULIAN ARMSTRONG p.m. and Dec.

10 at 6.30 p.m. Foie gras, how to buy, prepare and serve it, will be the topic Dec. 2 at 1.30 p.m. at a demonstration course in French. To register, call the school, located at 360 Champs de Mars at 514-393-8111, or 1-877-393-8111, email: info academieculinaire.com, or visit academieculinaire.com.

At the Brossard school, a series of demonstration courses will be offered in.