Silver Spoon

For Christmas, I got a gift card from mom for Chapters. I had to go to the mall on Thursday to return something and thought that I while I was there I would look to see if I could find something at Chapters that sounded appealing.
I looked at novels, craft books, the sales shelves and nothing really popped out at me.
And then I went to the cookbook section. There many books popped out but there was one that really grabbed my attention.
The Silver Spoon. I had heard a review of it on the CBC last year and it sounded pretty good. I believe that it had been compaired to the "joy of Cooking" except for Italian cooking. Bill had also been expressing an interest in doing some more ethnic cooking. So the Silver Spoon it was.
And it fits nicely on my cookbook shelf.

When faced with recipes from a different part of the world, you can expect to find some ingredients that you have never heard of before. But I really never expected to see Beef Cheeks as one of them. I never realized that they were a part of the cow that one ate.

 And by beef cheeks, they mean the cheeks on the front part of the cow, not the back end. Apparently they are quite tough and stringy, no surprise with all of the chewing that a cow does. But when cooked correctly they are wonderfully flavourful. I don't know that I will ever actually try this recipe, but if ever presented with beef cheeks, I will know where to look to learn how to cook it.

Octomom

In our house, when we cut open a pepper and find those funny little growths inside, we call them baby peppers.
The other day I cut open this orange pepper and found not one or two babies, but eight!
I couldn't resist the octomom comment with all of the media hype surrounding that poor, misguided woman.
The pepper was headed for a sauce.....
I chopped up the babies and chucked them in the sauce too!

Happy Mothers Day to all you mothers.

To answer a few questions

Mamoo: The pickles are on the shelf in the kitchen. For those of you who have never been in my kitchen, the shelf is a shelf made specifically for holding your canning jars. It was a cast off of a friend and I was happy to take it. What doesn't fit on the shelf, gets put back in the boxes that the jars came in and they are tucked under the bed. Some people have sweaters under their bed. I have pickles.

Teyani: Thanks! And yes we do use them all winter and spring and summer until they are gone. The banana/ crimson hot mix is so delicious that they sometimes get snacked right out of the jar. Sometimes they get placed on a slice of cheese before being devoured. They also make appearances in hamburgers and sandwiches of all types. The juice gets used up for marinades and salad dressings.
The kids around a jar of dill's is reminiscent of lions around a downed zebra. Actually it is more like piranhas around the proverbial cow. They even eat the dill and peppercorns. And can do it in about 15 minutes flat.

The hot pepper recipe is the same basic recipe that I use for dills.

3 cups vinegar
3 cups water
1/3 cup pickling salt

bring to a gentle boil and scoop in a couple of cups of sliced hot peppers of your choice. Let heat for about 1 minute and transfer with a slotted spoon to jars. The reason that I do this is to soften the peppers a bit so that they will pack more efficiently. They will settle a bit and you can top them up with pepper rings until the peppers are about 1/2 inch from the top. Continue until you have enough full jars for a batch. Ladle the pickling liquid into the jars. I usually use a sieve to catch the excess seeds. Wipe rims. Put on softened snap lids. Apply screw bands.Process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Christine: Most ripe crimson hots were made into pickled peppers. We used to freeze some and make a wonderful hot sauce, but we have found that the hot sauce wasn't getting eaten as much as it used to be, so we stopped. There are still some in the freezer from last year. A lot of the peppers that were in the pepper cookies were green crimson hots as well as the smaller and unripe bananas.
And I have found that the chopped peppers take up a lot less space!

I would also like to note that not all of my produce is in my possession anymore. When I ran out of jars, I put out a call at work asking for mason jars. I offered one jar of pickles for 6 empty jars. I actually had quite a few responses. One woman also offered to buy her pickles from me instead of the lady that she had been buying them from. Which lead to one of her neighbours wanting some Lady Ashburnhams too. Some have also been gifted out. And more will be going out the door at Christmas time. But most of the dills will be staying to be consumed by the children.

Done Done Done Done Finished

Did I mention that we were done? As in ALL DONE with the canning, pickling, and preserving.
The last to go was the peppers.
One of the things that I do with the smaller peppers is make what I call "pepper cookies". I'm sure you all know of the frozen cookies that come in a roll and when you want to make them, you haul them out of the freezer hack off a few and chuck them in the oven. I make rolls of peppers that are the same concept. First they get chopped in the food processor and laid out on wax paper.
Then they are rolled into a cylinder with the ends tucked in to try and prevent spillage.
Then the tray gets put in the freezer and when solid, put in a ziplock bag. Any time that I want to use some hot peppers in soup, sauce, chili, whatever, I just hack some off and drop it in. It slices surprisingly easy for something that is frozen.

And now a note from Bill......


The Ants are Done

Well, Flick and Atta were at it again this weekend. The last of the pickling is over for the year, and I'm glad to see the end of it.


And I think we surpassed last year's count by a wide margin. Here's the tally for the season's efforts.

Pickles

Beets 6 jars
Dill 105 jars
Bread & Butter 22 jars
Lady Ashburnham 39 jars
Jalapeño Peppers 21 jars
Banana Peppers 41 jars

Salsa 5 jars
Green Tomato Relish 7 jars

Jams

Blueberry 8 jars
Elderberry 16 jars
Strawberry 11 jars
Carrot Cake 12 jars
Peach 5 jars

The grand total is 298 jars. Those are the ones that "snapped". There were a few that didn't snap properly after processing and they were consigned to the fridge and eaten straight away, so the "real" total would be over 300. And we will run out of some of these things rather quickly, especially the peach, blueberry and strawberry jams. Next year we'll be more organized and it's likely to climb even higher as more fruit jams get added to the mix.

And this says nothing of the sun dried tomatoes and sauce we made and are making still. We have about 6 one-litre jars of sun dried tomatoes, and a bit of well reduced seedless tomato sauce, and I think we'll have to make more of the sauce because there are still two big boxes of tomatoes ripening in the kitchen. There are some other vegetables too, but more of them are eaten fresh.

It's a big effort to put all of this food down, but it does taste good in the winter. Especially the banana pepper rings. The commercial ones aren't cored so you get lots of slices with hard bits of stem and core in them. We core ours. I think they put pectinase in theirs too, because our juice is viscous while theirs is watery. We use every drop of our pepper juice as marinade for chicken, which gives it a wonderful flavour, especially when barbecued.

Change my name to Peter

As in .....Peter piper picked a peck
(including jalapeno,
crimson hot, and banana peppers)
of pickled peppers.
This is of course a small sampling of the jars and jars that we pickled last week. First we did the crimson hots and banana peppers and the I switched to jalapeno. And you can see from the middle jar that the switch over happened mid jar. And there are more to come.

For those of you who are interested in pickling your own hot peppers.....

3 cups vinegar
3 cups water
1/3 cup pickling salt

bring to just boiling point
spoon sliced peppers (Bill does all of ours by hand, but if I have to do them, I do them in the food slicer) and let simmer 1 minute
scoop out of pickling liquid with slotted spoon into clean jars and pack lightly
ladle pickling liquid to within 1/2 inch from top of jar
wipe rim and apply snap lid and screw bands
put in boiling water bath for 10 minutes
let cool on counter on towels
remove screw bands and wipe jars

Guess what I made!

My favorite!

Fruit experimentation

I had to go to the grocery store yesterday (big surprise, eh?) and Mira opted to come along and see what fruit she could find. Liam decided to tag along.

Mira didn't find anything new to tickle her fancy so she picked up a very ripe mango. And after doing some research peeled the seed out of the case so that she could try her hand at growing a mango tree. The seed is rather large as you can see. For scale, that is a quarter.

Liam found a granadilla. And a google search later, we found that it is a relative of the passion fruit. Yet another bag of frog spawn. Mira quite liked the little villi like things that held the seeds. I actually liked the flavour better than the regular passion fruit.

And today is planting day for tomatoes and a few other things. We will soon be over run with green things!

Dragon Fruit

Mira has been facinated by the look of dragon fruit for quite some time. The other day, Bill went to the grocery store and Mira gave him some money (and a drawing) with instructions to pick one up for her. He came back with a nice looking one, but we were all shcocked at the price. $7.70.
In any case, she cut it open and while we didn't quite know what to expect, we certainly didn't expect this!

It had a very lovely but very subtle flavour and I am in love with the colour combination! She saved some seeds in hope of growing one, but after doing some research and finding out that the plant that the dragon fruit comes from is a cactus and a rather large one at that, I think her propagation dreams have been put on hold. Thankfully.

Making samosas

First, I would like to appoligise to those of you who have read this ( or part of this) before. Bolgger is being a bit if a prat.

Here in Fredericton, there has been a craze happening. It started a number of years ago at the Farmers Market in the historic downtown. It was the humble samosa. For those of you who have never had one, they are a pastry that is filled with spiced meat or vegetables. The first to introduce the humble samosa were the Patel family. They made a variety of samosas of both vegetable and a variety of meats in a range of spiciness. After a number of years as reining supreme in the samosa market, a new competitor emerged. Samosa Delight. Their samosas were a little different. The pastry was thicker and (some say) the samosas were of a better flavour. I remained undecided. Then one day, Patel's samosas were no where to be seen. The whole family had gone to India for a wedding and were not expected back for three months. That was the chance that Samosa Delight was waiting for. They surged ahead in the customer favour (because they were available) and Patel's samosas were left behind. Three months is a long time to go without the wondrous samosa and many converted. Patels came back and many of their loyal followers returned to their folds, but eventually, Patel's faded away. That left Samosa Delight as undefended champion of the field. And that was when "The Samosa Wars" began. Apparently, Samosa Delights success did not go unnoticed by their neighbours at the Farmers Market. The reason for this was that Samosa Delight's customers were willing to stand in an ever increasingly long line for a taste of these wondrous creations. Which, in turn, blocked the access to their stalls, at which point, the offended stall holders complained to the Market Authorities who decided to put a stop to all of this commercial success.

The Samosa Delight vendors were banished from the interior of the market and left to fend for themselves in the great out doors in what is known to Farmer's Market goers as "Fast Food Alley". Which is basically a venue for Donors, Bear Paws ( pastry's really) various Chinese and Greek Cuisine, and lately Kettle Corn (which is a pop corn that is truly THE best popcorn that I have ever tasted!!!) Their loyal customers will STILL line up, outside people! for some times as long as 45 minutes to get the wonder called "the Samosa".

Us? Well, we are not such a people that will stand in line for any more than 5 minutes tops. I have always been this way. I remember in my early 20's walking away from " The Hill Top", then the hottest bar in town, because there were more that 10 people in front of me. No. Possible. Way.

So, If I am at the market before 7 am (which seems to be the only time to avoid a line up) I just pass the line by and think "Maybe next week".

Until this week when Bill came up with the brilliant idea of making our own samosas. So here is our experiment in samosa making. There really are a ridiculous amount of samosa recipes out there.

Rolling out the wrappers. This looked like it would be a serious Pain In the Ass until I suggested the pasta maker. What a wonderful invention. Heaven sent really.
Here is two samosas ready to be wrapped. We made both chicken and vegetable. Yum.
Here are many, many samosas that are ready for the oven. We decided to brush them with olive oil and bake them instead of going with the normal deep frying method, because, really, does my butt need to be any larger?
And here they are all ready to consume along with a coriander hot sauce. They are not quite as good as the Samosa Delight ones but this is only the second time that we have tried them and I am sure that we will come up with a wonderful alternatively. The vegetable one's have already been proclaimed far superior and the filling may even make an appearance on the table as a vegetable during one of my "Indian Curry Nights" that start to show up this time of year.

Long live Indian cooking. So Yummy!

Woah Nelly!

Well! That was a busy day! Saturday is usually market day for me, but not today. Last week, I had a bamboo basketry workshop to go to and I had so much fun that I decided to have fun this weekend too.

First came the Farmers Market. I was there early enough to stand in a small (10 people) line for samosas. There is a lot of history that is attached to the samosa vendors at the Farmers Market. They actually made National news in Canada because there was a fight between the Samosa vendors and the market managers. The samosa people were/are so successful that other vendors complained that their customers were blocking their stalls and the samosa people were eventually kicked outside where they have set up shop in a trailer. For now. They have said that they will probably not occupy the space in the mid-winter because being an outside vendor in January is a rather painful experience.

But I digress.

After my purchasing at the farmers market (I did get a few other things) and did a bit of socializing, I made my way to the place where my market takes place and had a coffee and did a bit of socializing there too.

Then it was back home for a bit and then S came and picked Mira and me up and we went off to a fiber farm that started out as a rescue farm and has ended up as much more. The farm is run by Kim, who is also a nurse and has 3 kids and is pregnant with a 4th. The woman astonishes me! She is one of those people who has managed to find a way to stretch the number of hours in a day and has the energy of 6 of us lesser mortals.

Here are two of her three rams. They are all of different breeds and of course she knows all of their names. They are like her children.
Then we went on to see the ladies of the house. She had Corridales and Shetlands (of many different colours) and Jacobs. And here my brain hit overload. I know that she has other types, but I couldn't tell you what they are to save my life. I couldn't even count them. I'm going to guess that there were about 20 or so. Including the babies.Sooooo cute!
And speaking of cute.... here is one of her Pygora goats. This little fellow is a few months old. She also had Angora goats. I can't begin to describe my reaction to these little guys. All I can say is "I want". I want a few of these goats. ME! Who has enough kids and responsibility and not enough room. I will have goats in my life some day. Not for a number of years. And not until we live close enough to someone responsible enough who is willing to trade critter care so that we can each get a bit of a vacation in the summer. I am not willing to give up our time at the lake, but I want fiber goats.
And she also had an alpaca. I want one of these guys too. This fellow gave Kim three garbage bags of fleece this year. And of course the first thing that ran through my mind was "Baa baa black alpaca, have you any wool?" Apparently, he also bites. She said that he never used to bite until she got word that there was a lady alpaca that she could have. She told this guy (sorry, I forget his name) that he was going to get a wife. Told him all about her and then a few weeks later, the man that had the lady alpaca told Kim that he wasn't going to sell her the gal and Kim told her man, and shortly thereafter, he began to bite. Coincidence? You decide. And I haven't mentioned the rabbits and chinchillas.
Here is part of her fiber room. More continues around the corner and .....
Into the front hall. Right about here my mind stopped working altogether. And my allergies kicked in. She likes to spin "in the grease" and most of the fiber that she had was straight off of the critter. And my allergies really let me know that raw fiber is not a good thing for me to be around in such massive quantities. I bought a sample pack of bits of different types of cleaned processed roving, and some processed mohair roving.

Then when we got home, mom came and took us apple picking
We got quite a few. The kids and I picked 3 1/4 bushel baskets. Mom picked 8. And them Liam asked about the apples on the ground. The lady that ran the orchard said that the ones on the ground were free. So Liam, Mira, and Simon ran off and picked a couple (or three) grocery bags of windfall Macintosh. In about 3 minutes. Some were given to my brothers Belgian horse team (only a few) and the rest will be made into sauce (or hard cider, if we get our act together). This is one of the times when I am actually glad that Liam is a bit of a scavenger. Small boys, eh?

Then it was back home where Bill had been working on chili all day (among other things). Last night it became a family effort to deal with all of the tomatoes at hand. I had suggested a chili for today and the idea received unanimous agreement. Last night we washed, peeled, seeded (or de-seeded) and chopped any tomato that was in any way, shape, or form compromised, and boiled all of their little carcases in a large pot. Today the simmering continued all day and the volume was about half by the time Mira and I returned from the fiber farm. When we returned from apple picking, it was almost ready. Tonight, supper was a wonderful thing.

Yet Another Thing to do with Tomatoes

I have been being very creative here. But not necessarily in a crafty sort of way. I have made some more stitch markers seeing as I have found an outlet in town for them. And I have been taking an absolutely wonderful bamboo basket workshop from a bamboo master Jiro Yonezawa. It is wonderful to feel such inspiration. I hope to be able to steal some images from Linda's camera to do a blog post on it. Tomorrow is the last day and my mind is working overtime with possibilities.
So maybe I have been more creative than I first thought.
But today. Today my best creativity happened when I came home from work (I did work this afternoon). I had decided to use up yet more tomatoes and make an uncooked pasta sauce for supper tonight. I don't know if any of you have ever heard of putanesca sauce, but (if stories are to be believed) it originated in Italy and was a favorite of , ahem, ladies of loose morals. In other words, ladies of the evening. The story says that these ladies would eat a pasta (we are talking Italy here) that was rich in garlic, olives, and anchovies, and would have breath so foul that they would not have kiss their .... clients.
No clients here, and seeing as we all ate the sauce, no kisses have been spared.
So enough of the history and on to the recipe.....

Uncooked Tomato Sauce

14 black olives - pitted and chopped coarsely
3-5 cloves of garlic - chopped or crushed
1 medium red onion - chopped finely
1 red pepper finely diced - optional
1/4 cup fresh parsley -finely chopped
1/4 cup fresh basil - finely chopped
1 tbsp fresh thyme
a few dashes of Louisiana hot sauce
1/4 cup olive oil - I use extra virgin
2 tbsp white wine vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
6 - 8 - 10 -12 tomatoes - it just really matters how many tomatoes you need to get used up quickly. They should be chopped and drained through a strainer for a few minutes.

Mix everything together in a big bowl and serve over cooked pasta. I usually put a bit of olive oil in the pasta and spoon the sauce on each plate. This makes enough for all 6 of us using about 450 g of pasta so scale as you need to. Or just spoon the left over sauce on some bread that had been brushed with olive oil and toasted under the broiler.

oops. Almost forgot to mention the freshly grated parmesan cheese that gets sprinkled on the top of the pasta (I am sure that it will work equally well with the bread)

And I also want to say that as with a lot of recipes, this is infinitely mutable. You don't like olives... leave 'em out. Add and subtract as you want. Just make sure that it never sees a burner (with exception to the pasta of course) and all will be well.


Both Bill and I expressed a desire to have a camera when we sat down to eat tonight. The colours were marvelous.

How does your garden grow?

The September edition. Things are really taking off in the garden. Or taking over in the case of the squash. That mound below is squash. And it is about 6 feet high. My mother and I put a cage of sorts under it so that it would have somewhere to go. It climbed the cage, and went through the peppers and into the row of basil.
Within this mass are two types of squash. First up is Akehime. It is a baby sized Japan winter squash. They are about the size of a small cantaloupe. Very cute. I keep peeking in and testing the skin to see if they are ready.
Next is the Fairy squash. The maturity of these says 90 days and I hope that they make it before the frost. We had a rather cold night earlier in the week with temperatures hovering just above freezing. And then yesterday was way up in the 30's ( that would be 90's for all you south of the border). The weather has become rather unpredictable. Both of these squash came from David who didn't get a chance to harvest his garden this year because of a sudden move to Scotland!
And here we have one of the 4 rows of tomatoes. Or maybe it was 5 rows. In any case, the tomatoes are so loaded with fruit that they have knocked over their cages. I hauled up the cages and pounded stakes in about a month ago, but they fell over again. Good enough, says I, stay where you want. So now in order to pick some tomatoes, I have to haul up the cages and pluck the ripe ones from underneath. And there are A LOT of tomatoes coming on. In fact, when I was out there last Thursday, I had and old Eagles song running through my head. Does anyone remember "Hotel California"? That part when the word say "And I was thinking to myself, this could be heaven or this could be hell". I guess that it is all just a matter of perspective. When I was pregnant with Mira 13 summers ago, we planted many, many tomato plants. 40 some I think. Among them were some cherry tomatoes. That grew and grew and grew until they were taller than I was. And they grew out and out and out until that one section of the garden was one mass of tomatoes. I dubbed it "tomato hell" and refused to go in. I would pick from around the edges but not venture in to the heart of tomato hell. 7 months pregnant and a wee bit tippy, I was afraid that I would go in, fall over and not be found until the frost killed the plants. Bill, tomato lover that he is, thought that it was heaven. Except that he was working in another city and had over an hours commute each way. Which left him little time to be in the garden. Needless to say, many tomatoes died in tomato hell that fall.
Thursday I picked about a bushel of tomatoes and I didn't even make a dent.

I also have been dealing with cucumbers in the usual way. Almost every meal has is accompanied by a plate of sliced, lightly salted cucumbers. A few jars of dills have been made but due to having 38 jars leftover from last year, only a few. For some reason, the kids have seriously slowed down in their dill eating. Even though they were given free rein on the pickle shelf. This year, I decided to try something new. Well, old, but new to me. I have only made bread and butter pickles once before and didn't really care for them. I have a mustard allergy and so had to modify the recipe a bit but I still didn't like the Zesty Bread and Butter Pickles from the Bernardin cookbook. Utter failure. So I never made them again. Until this year when I found this recipe on Kansasa's blog. She claims that they are the best bread and butter pickles ever. And I would have to agree. I just left out the mustard seed and they turned out fine. Better than fine. One of my original jars didn't seal and quickly got snacked away. So I made another 8 pints. Kansasa also has tutorials for various good ol' down home cooking goodness. And access to a neighbours fruit orchard that makes me green with envy. Especially the apricots that she makes into Apricot Brandy! Not to mention the slickest way to clean a fish.

I think that I have to go eat some tomatoes now.

Happiness is....

I....

Indian Food.

I have been experimenting with cooking Indian food for a couple of years. I have to admit that at first the meals were few and far between. But since January, when I switched workdays from Friday to Tuesday, thus freeing up my Friday afternoons to do a little cooking, I have been experimenting more. Last night's meal was proclaimed the best one yet. I wish that I had pictures, but, alas, I do not.
I started humbly with one recipe book. "Curries Without Worries " by Sudha Koul. Pretty basic. Perfect for the beginning curry cooker. There are a couple of recipes that have become standard with almost every curry meal that I make. One is Orange and Cucumber Raita designed to cool and refresh the palate. And the other is Mahavir Ka Cachumber Ka Salaad, which is basically a simple salad made of cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, cilantro, lemon juice, and salt. Divine. And such a hit that I make this regularly with some additions like red peppers, grated carrot, chickpeas, basil, and any vegetable that isn't nailed down.
The second book is one that my sister sent from Scotland for Christmas one year. "Madhur Jaffrey's Illutsrated Indian Cookery". This is just a wonderful book full of wonderful recipes. It has a very good recipe for Naan Bread that has also become a staple on my curry nights. I have tried a few other Naan Bread recipes, but this one is the best. Although I did like the grated onion that was in one of the other recipes. Maybe next time I will remember to add it.
The last book is one that I picked up from the library. "The Dance Of Spices-Classic Indian Cooking for Today's Home Kitchen by Laxmi Hiremath." This book's offering on the table last night was Chicken Breasts in Korma Sauce. I thought that it might be a wee bit too hot for some of the more delicate palates in the house, but it was declared a wonderful success. By all. This book is eventually going to end up on my cookbook shelf.
The last item on the table was rice. Plain for those that prefer it, and curry/butter/green onion rice for the rest of us.
One other thing that I have to say about cooking Indian food is that I am amazed at how many dishes I go through. There are so many things to be chopped and set aside, spices to be blended and ground, things to be sliced and marinated. It is also quite time consuming. There are a few things that can be made early and set to chill in the fridge thankfully, and I find that blending all the spices that go into a dish at one time saves a bit of time too, even if it does dirty yet another bowl.
Because I kept up with all of the preparation dishes while I was cooking yesterday, after supper, there were only the eating and serving dishes that needed to be washed. I declare my self done and put a committee of three to work at cleaning up the kitchen while I settle into some cuddle time with Nicole. A wonderful way to end a meal.