Egg suppers

Current favourite: Souffle!




From a Dutch (as-big-as-a) baby pancake recipe, courtesy of Orangette, which goes a little something like this:
1/4 milk
2 T. butter
4 eggs
1/2 cup flour

Mix together. Pour into a cast iron and bake at 425 for 20 minutes max. Remove from oven. Sprinkle with fresh parm and s&p. Or, if it's for breakfast, drizzle with lemon juice and icing sugar.

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They weren't kidding

When i went hunting for some recipes with which to use the preserved lemons I had made, i came across more than a handful that named them the "secret ingredient". After this tagine, there is no longer any doubt in my mind. Not capers, nor caraffe olives or saffron...it was these humble lemons that put the salmon right over the top:

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Curry

Few meals bring me as much contentment as thai curry. Quick to make, wholesome, involving nearly every vegetable - tatsoi, cabbage, carrots, sweet peppers, brocolli, asian eggplant, green onions, thai basil - in our crisper and equally comforting as leftovers, enjoyed in the grass on a mild fall day.

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Eily made lunch!

A delightful plate of broccoli florets, apple and cucumber slices which he served us -- me with my feet up at the cottage.

He instantly began thinking ahead "...i wonder what i'll make for dinner?"

I could get used to this.


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Spring popsicles

Strawberry puree in a new silicone mould we're trying out.





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Onion confit

I left 2 pounds of onions roasting in the oven today (something i can't do mid-summer), with some dried cherry tomatoes (leftover from a garden we had two houses ago) and some herbs. They turned out so sweet, i slathered them on italian bread and devoured it. Then, we grilled some chicken and vegetables and gathered it all together, including the confit, with freezer pesto, fresh arugula, and homemade tomato sauce, and topped it with caraffa olives (a recent delicious discovery from london ontario) and a few cheeses. It was pretty much a crowd pleaser.



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Dosas

Dosas are a blend of fermented lentils and rice which are fried like pancakes. Similar to the teff batter called for in Ethiopian injeras, it can take several days for the mixture to ferment and be ready for frying.






This recipe was adapted from one i found in Alive magazine which used whole grain brown rice, instead of white, and red lentils. The rice and lentils aren't cooked but soaked in water and lemon juice, then finely blended, and left to ferment. Dosas are fried in coconut oil.
















We filled them with potatoes, peas, mustard, turmeric, and chilies.
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Scratch that

I used to think, after a year of testing out the theory in central France, that creamed leeks were unmatchable. I have recently had this opinion swayed....by a simple batch of braised leeks. They are phenomenal.

2-3 leeks
1/3 cup olive oil
3/4 cup shallots or onions
fresh thyme
1/4 cup sherry or white wine
1 cup chicken stock
salt and pepper

Heat skillet. Add half the olive oil. Cut leek stalks in half and braise on both sides for 5 minutes each. Salt and pepper generously while doing so. Place in baking dish. Add remaining oil to skillet. Toss in shallots and thyme. Saute with sea salt for 5 minutes. Add sherry and reduce. Add stock and bring to a boil. Combine onions with leeks. Bake for 30 minutes on 400.

Pot au Feu in progress

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Empanadas

A new addition to my mental collection of good foods to freeze. These were filled with stewing beef, tomato sauce, leek, peas, and a pinch of cheddar, and turned out to be a perfect hand-held snack and not at all too doughy.





Empanada pastry:
2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup soft flour
Salt
1/2 cup butter
1 egg
1/3 cup cold water
1 T vinegar

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Radicchio salad

1 head radicchio, quartered and dry-roasted in a skillet
1 cup fennel, sauteed
1 cup thompson raisins
1 orange or 3 clementine
1/2 cup roasted walnuts
Splash of balsamic
2 splashes of olive oil
1 teaspoon dijon
Salt & pepper




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Stars and lights, stuffing and ice

Making sesame stars with the boys

I've never liked stuffing...all that soggy bread and dried fruit, i don't get it. So when it came to Christmas, the first chez nous in three years, we decided to skip the big turkey and each picked a dish instead, and i chose stuffing. (Me and it have to do right after all.) The recipe i found had dried ciabatta, sauteed leeks and fennel, artichoke hearts, spicy sausage, chilies, and orange zest.

We had it with spaghetti and drumsticks, and for the first time, it wasn't all that bad.

We finished our Christmas meal with lemon ice, an old food & drink recipe that involved lemon juice, sugar, eggs, whipped cream, and double/triple churning. My favourite way to make ice cream - no need for an ice cream maker...it turns out just as fabulously by hand.

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Boerenkool

Dutch food is infamously bland, but tonight it felt entirely comforting.

Boerenkool - literally "curly kale" - is mashed potatoes mixed with cooked kale and served with smoked sausage. I altered it by adding minced garlic as well.

Boerenkool has it's own set of condiments, including pickled onions, applesauce, cider gravy, pickles, and hot mustard.


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Occasionally, i dream about the perfect pot roast. Something about the tenderness of that meat just gets to me. I had been planning one since before Gabe was born as a sort of post-acid reflux celebration. Well, too much anticipation i guess. Or the wrong cut of meat. It was a rump and it turned out as leathery as an old shoe. Even after a day of slow roasting. Thank goodness for the gravy. And the red wine.




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Apple sauce

We bought a couple bushels of organic spartans, half of them windfalls for making sauce.

Eily's remembering how much he likes it and Gabe will soon be consuming container fulls.





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A good deal

I made this dress for a friend of mine.



And she gave me the recipe for the best indian chilies around. Actually, she made us a delicious spread and then we bugged her for all the recipes.





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mango chutney

my only two preserving goals this year, in addition to the standards, was to make more pizza sauce (a la orangette) and to make a chutney that didn't taste like vinegar. i thought if i didn't can it and freeze it instead, it wouldn't need any vinegar at all.

i used the leftover peaches, cooked them down, mashed them up, and blended them a bit. then added sugar, chilies, ginger, garlic, and salt to taste. the fastest preserving project to date.

natural pectin

i hate gelatin. but every time i want to give a dessert a thicker consistency, i'm stuck. i've tried agar agar, which besides being really expensive, also hasn't been too successful. This time, I tried natural fruit (citrus-based) pectin, which is most commonly used for thickening jam without adding sugar. It worked really quite well, creating a fabulously stiff mousse for blueberry potted cream and giving form to fruit juice. not quite like jell-o but without the horse hooves so 5 stars!

eggplant in the summer

i found a recipe, when making a batch of tandoori veggie and lamb skewers this afternoon, that reminded me so much of a summer version of eggplant curry - or bhurta. we put spoonfuls of it on naan bread for dinner. it definitely had more colour than its winter counterpart, but it didn't last for a photo op.

eggplant salad:
roasted eggplant (i still had some left in the freezer), coarsely chopped
2-3 tomatoes
scallions or spring onions (i used purple scallions)
vegetable oil
1 t. ginger
1 clove garlic
1 T. garam masala
1 T. gr. coriander
1 T. gr. cumin
salt and pepper
chopped cilantro

chevre chaud

buttercrunch lettuce from the farm, roasted walnuts, baguette broiled with goat cheese rounds, drizzled with olive oil, sherry vinegar, spring onions, and dijon.