# Recipes to Trade by



## humble_pie

there's no studies on this but i wonder if there's a correlation between successful investing & good cooking.

what i propose is Recipe Monday. Here for starters is Brad's classic north African stew. It's too good to disappear in its original thread.

i've made variations of this dish for years, both in collective kitchens & in my own, but 2 ingredients - cinnamon & currants - were new to me. And they're both perfect additions. Inspired by Brad i made a version on saturday, using carrots, celery & zucchini since i had no cabbage on hand. I was amazed at how the cinnamon, which tasted so cinnamon-y at first, blended into the dish after half an hour or so. Being an outlaw cook i added nearly twice Brad's cinnamon amount, plus a good pinch of ground cardamom seed and a suspicion of ultra-hot curry powder. Also chopped dates w raisins since i had no currants on hand.

and i thought about whether richardson recently made an offer for gmp capital that was rejected because it was too low ... so now R is stalking gmp openly in the public markets ... and whether this means a higher offer may materialize ... and whether i'll buy more gmp in the expectation ...

*Brad's Tunisian Vegetable Stew*

1 1/2 cups thinly sliced onions
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 cups thinly sliced cabbage 
dash of salt
1 large bell pepper cut into thin strips
2 teaspoons ground coriander (I use whole coriander seeds and grind them in a mortar and pestle as needed)
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon cayenne (or more to taste)
3 cups undrained canned tomatoes, chopped (28-ounce can)
1 1/2 cups drained cooked chick peas (if using canned, this is a 16-ounce can)
1/3 cup currants or raisins
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
salt to taste

grated feta cheese
toasted slivered almonds

In a large skillet, sauté the onions in the olive oil for five minutes. Add the cabbage, sprinkle with salt, and continue to sauté at least five minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the bell pepper and spices and sauté another minute. Stir in the tomatoes, chick peas, and currants or raisins, and simmer, covered, for about 15 minutes until the veggies are just tender. Add the lemon juice and salt to taste. Top with feta and toasted almonds.

This is good over couscous (which takes 5 minutes to make) and makes enough food for four good-sized servings.


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> there's no studies on this but i wonder if there's a correlation between successful investing & good cooking.


Hahah! Glad you liked it.

Actually I wonder if the investment correlation is stronger between "outlaw cooks" and risk tolerance, versus "recipe-followers" and risk aversion?

I'm probably the exception that proves the rule. I know a few cookbook authors, and am familiar with the lengthy process of testing and refining that can go into a final recipe (I was an informal tester for a cookbook author once, and I remember eating the same dish about 25 times before the author was happy enough with it to put it in her book). My approach is to always follow a recipe exactly the first time I try it, because the author has done all the experimentation already and come up with a combination that seems perfect to him or her. When I find an author whose recipes I like, most of the recipes need no improvement at all from me and I continue to follow the written recipe pretty precisely. I've developed a reputation among friends and acquaintances as a great cook, but it's only because I know a good recipe when I see one, and I follow it closely.

In contrast I have some friends who always do their own thing with recipes and produce food that I usually find mediocre; I also have a few friends who are true intuitive chefs and can make a fantastic meal out of whatever's at hand with no recipe necessary -- but those people are few and far between. I wish I could be one of them, but I don't have that intuitive gift with food.

My approach to cooking might make you think I'm a conservative investor or someone who follows the instructions of an advisor, but in fact my risk tolerance is high -- too high for my own good, in fact, and I go my own way without following anyone's advice.


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## MoneyGal

Iiiiiiiinteresting. I, too, always follow a recipe "to a T" the first time I make it (and, if it's good, every subsequent time, as well). I would say my main cooking skill is being able to make a meal out of whatever is in the 'fridge. Food does not spoil in my household. 

I am a particular fan of "old-fashioned" cooking and baking. And broadly speaking, I like "peasant" food from around the world. I am also very proud that my kids like a really wide variety of foods (although they each have their own favourites!).

Here is a classic Tunisian chicken and olives tagine recipe to add to the mix.


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## brad

Speaking of recipes, here's my bread recipe, which I suppose is "my" recipe but I came up with it by combining the best elements of two popular "no knead" recipes: the Jim Lahey method (described in his excellent book "My Bread" and made popular by Mark Bittman), and the Hertzberg method (described in the "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day" book).

The result is a very simple-to-make bread, requiring about 5 minutes to set up and another 5 minutes or so of attention before baking, and it makes enough for two loaves. It'll cost you maybe $1 or $2 per loaf, which includes the cost of the energy to heat your oven. You can make it in one evening and have great bread ready to eat the next day. It keeps well and in my experience doesn't start tasting stale until 3 or 4 days later (it's rare for one of these loaves to last that long; the bread is so tasty that it gets eaten long before that).

Bread made with all whole wheat won't develop a hard crust, but tastes great. I usually use a mix of flours, mostly whole-wheat with some regular bread flour mxed in; if I want a classic French boule I use regular red-wheat bread flour and no whole wheat. Whatever you do, don't make this with plain all-purpose flour, even if it's unbleached; it won't be anything like the result you get with bread flour. If you use whole-wheat flour, be sure to use whole-wheat bread flour.

We have excellent artisanal bakeries in my city, but we've stopped buying bread from them except when I need a break -- which is only rarely because this bread is so easy to make. I've made more than 300 of these loaves to date. It is as good as the best bread you've ever eaten; my girlfriend is from France and she says it's easily as good or better than anything she's had from the best bakeries in Paris.

Here's my recipe:

6.5 cups of flour (use bread flour -- DON'T use all-purpose white!)
1.5 tablespoons instant yeast
1.5 tablespoons salt
3 cups lukewarm water

Mix the flour, yeast, and salt together well in a big bowl or pot, then pour in the 3 cups of lukewarm water and stir until there aren't any more dry spots. The dough will be ragged and sticky. Cover the bowl or pot but not airtight (ie, don't cover it with plastic wrap) and let it sit for 2 hours or as long as 5 hours.

Divide the dough in half (just pull it apart with your hands, it'll be really wet and sticky), and keep half in the refrigerator for your next loaf of bread -- it'll keep for a week or so.

Put a cast-iron pot with a lid into the oven and turn the heat to 450 Fahrenheit. (Note: if you're using a Le Creuset pot or something similar with a bakelite handle on the lid, remove the handle as it will melt at that temperature. If you remove the handle, keep the screw in the hole so the cover is airtight).

Sprinkle some flour on the half of the dough you're using now and shape it roughly into a ball. Put it on a floured surface (I use cornmeal or wheat bran) and let it sit to rise while the oven warms. Don't let it rise more than 25-30 minutes, otherwise it will spread out and you'll end up with a fairly flat loaf of bread. Sprinkle some flour or wheat bran over the top of the dough.

When the oven reaches 450 degrees, take the pot and its lid out of the oven and put the dough into the pot. Put the lid on the pot and put the pot back in the oven for 30 minutes with the lid on, still at 450.

After 30 minutes, take off the lid and let it bake another 17-18 minutes with the lid off, this gives it a beautiful dark brown colour. Remove from the oven and cool on a rack. Don't eat it warm, the texture and flavor are best if you let the bread cool fully.


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## humble_pie

hmmmn are you saying outlaw cooks manage risky portfolios w mediocre results in both ...
??
i was in a lather to prepare this mouthwatering recipe on saturday but had no cabbage; what we always include when we do this recipe in collective kitchens are carrots & most green vegs like celery, zucchini w the exception of broccoli.

cardamom is la passion du jour. Add it to something at least every other day. Coffee if nothing else.

re gmp my source tells me richardson is proceeding with well-planned, friendly & orderly merger w gmp that will go on for as long as the next 5 years, at the end of which all the various existing interests in resource extraction, commodities, grains & financial services will be incorporated into one strong publicly-traded company. I bought.

gosh this editing function is weird.
like who did that ...


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## MoneyGal

OK, new thoughts: I just sat at my desk and ate lunch: a mango and eggplant curry my mom made, topped with goat cheese, accompanied by a coleslaw I made with napa cabbage and a homemade mayo and buttermilk dressing. 

You know what: I *like* cooking (and eating). It's an added bonus for me that cooking is a (relative to the alternatives) cheap way to feed myself and my family, but honestly it is one of my main hobbies. I'd do it even if my food costs were *more* than eating prepared food. Even if my job magically provided free cafeteria food! 

I think I am just frugal by nature. It's great that I can backfill some behaviour with an "and it's frugal!" justification. But the reality is that it brings me pleasure. Other things will bring other people pleasure. Some people don't like to bring lunch from home, I am sure. But if it wasn't this, it'd be...Popeye chicken or Starbucks "artisanal" sandwiches (my closest options at work). No, thanks!

So. I am not going to chastise other people for not cooking or bringing a lunch (not that I ever really have, to be honest). As long as everyone is meeting their financial goals, who am I to say what the "right path" is? 

(p.s. This is why the "latte factor" drives me nuts. Sincerely, coffee is one of my FEW indulgences in life. )


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## MoneyGal

Humble: I buy black cardamom, green cardamom, and just the seeds. It finds its way into many if not most of the things I eat and drink, too! Have you tried making apple pie with cardamom?


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> hmmmn are you saying outlaw cooks manage risky portfolios w mediocre results in both ...


No, and I didn't mean to imply that your result with the recipe would have been mediocre, in fact it sounds perfectly delicious to me! I too love cinnamon and cardamom and have cardamom in my coffee (and green tea, too); it's also great in bread, and I often make cardamom cake. I got some black cardomom recently and have been using that in some Indian recipes that call for it; it's a completely different animal.

Lunch here today was an incredibly simple and delicious thing that I saw in Martha Rose Shulman's NY Times column last week: a piece of toast rubbed with garlic and topped with a sautéd portobello mushroom and a fried egg, sprinkled with salt, pepper, and fresh tarragon. Out of this world, and it took about 15 minutes. Finished off with a slice of good cheddar and some grapes.


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## MoneyGal

Brad! Do you work at home? I can't imagine making that in an office.


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## humble_pie

wow there are more great ideas here than i've seen in a year.
cardamom in apple pie cardamom in bread i think i'll die.

i just bought another bunch of ... parsley ?? no, shares of cpg. Am trying to sell oct calls on them. The montreal option specialist in crescent point is anal-retentive, won't bite.

also trying to sell puts in X. Maybe it's the same specialist. Not even a nibble.

montreal options are so hopeless. I guess they had vinegar for lunch.


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## CanadianCapitalist

All this talk of cardamon makes me want to make chai tea this evening. The stuff that Starbucks sells is really vile.


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## brad

MoneyGal said:


> Brad! Do you work at home? I can't imagine making that in an office.


Yes, I do work at home...I guess some of the stuff I do for cooking is impractical for many folks because of that. I've been working at home since about 1992 and I've plumb forgotten what it's like to work in a regular office!

That said, I did work in an office once where we had a full and functional kitchen, so I could have easily cooked this meal there. From start to finish (including the eating part) it took 30 minutes.

On the subject of cardamom and other spices: here's one of the simplest recipes I know, for flavoured water:

Drop one star anise into a glass of water and let it sit there. It adds a nice exotic touch and makes the water very refreshing, esp. in summer. I learned that trick from a friend of mine who lived in India and said it was a common practice among his neighbours there.


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## MoneyGal

No worries. I work in a _highly irregular_ office (and was a work-at-homer for, oh, 16 years, too).


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## Addy

CanadianCapitalist said:


> All this talk of cardamon makes me want to make chai tea this evening. The stuff that Starbucks sells is really vile.



Ohhh! Care to share your recipe? I find Chai recipes vary so much I'm not sure which ones to try!


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## CanadianCapitalist

Here's my recipe:

1 cup water
1 cup **** milk
2 tbsp black tea (Darjeeling or Ceylon or Assam)
1 tsp dried ginger (fresh ginger works too)
1 cardamon pod
1 clove (optional)
Sugar (to taste)
Cinnamon (optional)

Boil water and milk.
Add tea leaves.
Crush the ginger, cardamon and clove and add it to the mix.
Stir and bring to a boil.
Strain and pour into a cup.

That's about it. Feel free to change the recipe to your taste. I leave out cinnamon, some folks like to add black pepper, which explains the million chai recipes out there. I'd start with the basic ingredients -- ginger and cardamon -- and then experiment by adding others.


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## humble_pie

is that a great recipe or what.
i think i will drink nothing else until easter.

now perhaps some rules of the game ??

recipes only on mondays.
people can post back how their version turned out.

and everybody has to contribute a financial pippin.

speaking of cardamom & chai tea, BMO etfs have a brand-new India etf, i looked at its holdings.
about 12 blockbuster india companies, all in the form of nyse-traded ADRs.
to best of my knowledge indian stock markets are closed to foreigners, so bmo could not go to mumbai stock exchange directly.

meanwhile i hear that the new blackrock (formerly barclays) ishares India etf actually holds real indian shares, but i haven't yet gone to their website to see how & what.
i hear that ishares got around the restriction by establishing this etf in Mauritius.


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## Spidey

I showed the recipe for Brad's Tunisian Vegetable Stew to my wife and she made it yesterday. Very good - the best recipe for cabbage that I've ever come across. A nice subtle mix of spices and flavors.


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## brad

Spidey said:


> I showed the recipe for Brad's Tunisian Vegetable Stew to my wife and she made it yesterday. Very good - the best recipe for cabbage that I've ever come across. A nice subtle mix of spices and flavors.


Cool! But please bear in mind that it's not "my" recipe -- it's directly from The Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home. If you liked that recipe you'll probably like most of the others in that book -- I've cooked almost all of them over the past 12-13 years, and I've only found one or two I didn't like. The seven-minute chocolate cake is to die for...one of the best chocolate cakes I've ever had (not too rich or too sweet, just right).


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## CanadianCapitalist

humble_pie said:


> and everybody has to contribute a financial pippin.


Oops forgot to add my 2 cents. I have some familiarity with Indian markets but IMO, it's more a recipe for Bubble tea than Chai tea. One reason for the bubblishness is all the foreign money pouring into the equity markets. It's not just stocks: everything seems massively overvalued, even professional cricket teams. $370 million for a new franchise in a 3 year-old league that makes no money... I just don't get it.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repo...tch-in-indias-cricket-bonanza/article1508831/


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## humble_pie

thank you, CC. I had been wondering about that very point but am not well enough informed to have an opinion.

when you think about it, shares like potash & agrium are india-related, as they are also china-related, due to long histories of selling product to Asia.

i did look at the blackrock india ishares pages, even whizzed thru the prospectus. As far as i can make out this fund does not seem to be buying shares directly on the national or the mumbai exchanges, although they say they are, so someday i may learn how to reconcile these 2 opposing statements. What the fund holds is INDY, and this in turn appears to hold futures for the nifty 50 index of the indian NSE. Hmmmn. Obviously i still haven't gotten the picture straight ...

the new bmo india etf is a much simpler structure to understand.


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## brad

It's Monday, time for another recipe. I had a busy weekend of cooking for various guests, but nothing I made pleased me very much (except for the homemade harissa, which was out of this world and much better than any of the commercial preparations I've tried, even at Marché Adonis here in Montréal).

Instead, I'll continue with the theme of 1) Indian food and 2) unpopular vegetables. I don't have any Indian financial info to offer, but I do remember reading a fascinating article about the economic boom and the effects of sudden wealth in India recently in Granta magazine: see http://www.granta.com/Magazine/107/Capital-Gains/1. I had no idea there were so many billionaires in India.

The unpopular vegetable this time is not cabbage, but cauliflower. The recipe comes from Madhur Jaffrey, and it's very much in demand here in my house; I get asked to make it at least once a month. Everything here should be easy to find except possibly the fenugreek seeds; you may have to go to a specialty spice shop or Indian grocery store. They are a key element of this dish, so don't skip them!

Cauliflower and Potatoes with Fenugreek and Fennel seeds

1 small head cauliflower
2 medium potatoes
4 tbs vegetable oil
1/4 tsp whole fenugreek seeds
1 tsp whole fennel seeds
1 tsp whole cumin seeds
1-2 whole dried hot red peppers
3/4 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp ground coriander seeds
1 tsp salt (or a little more to taste)
1/8 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp garam masala

Discard leaves and coarse stems of cauliflower. Break head into 5-cm-long florets. Cut each floret lengthwise into very thin florets. Soak in cold water for half an hour (this is optional).

Peel the potatoes and cut into dice. Soak in cold water for half an hour (also optional; I don't see that it really adds anything).

Dry the cauliflower and potatoes in a tea towel. Heat oil in a frying pain over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, scatter in the fenugreek seeds, the fennel seeds, the cumin seeds, and the red peppers. Stir once, add the cauliflower and potatoes. Stir again and turn the heat down to medium. Sprinkle the turmeric, coriander, salt, and pepper over the veggies and sauté them for about 10 minues. Now add 1/4 cup water and cover immediately. Turn heat to very low and steam vegetables for 7-10 minutes until they are tender.

Sprinkle the garam masala over the vegetables, stir once, and serve.

This is a meal all by itself, but you could serve it with basmati rice etc. if you like.


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## humble_pie

thank you so much for the sensational recipe. What's outstanding about your recipes is that your vegetables are so minimally cooked, ie barely tender and still retaining maximum vitamins & enzymes.

recipe monday is good, don't you think, because it allows the whole week for experimentation, ingredient-gathering and so on before the Real Thing for guests starts up on saturday or sunday.

more on the theme of india. The sub-continent's nifty 50 sensex index reached 2-year record highs today. Analyst bose recommends tata motors only days after a fiery photo of a brand-new Nano engulfed in flames flashed across newswires.

http://www.bloombergutv.com/stock-m...8141/sensex--nifty-hit-two-year-highs---.html

bloombergutv.com is a partnership of bloomberg & india's own utv network. Says it has some charts & technical info from bloomberg's professional service, which none of us (probably) can afford. I am going to keep an eye on this.

i know the index is high. Nose-bleed levels. I haven't bought anything yet. I may never. But i'd pick india & brazil out of the 4 bric leaders. 

more on cauliflower. There is some phytochemical present in this vegetable that's exceptionally beneficial for human beings. Even my nutrition prof had never heard of it (a classmate had, however.) This mysterious plant component is not present in any other member of the gigantic cruciferae vegetable family, which includes broccoli, kale, cabbage, mustard, horseradish, bok choy, rapini and hundreds of others. I'll try to google what the phytochemical is. In the meantime, i never knew cauliflower was/is an unpopular vegetable.


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> In the meantime, i never knew cauliflower was/is an unpopular vegetable.


Oh well, I just meant that many people view it (like cabbage) as boring. It's white, it's bland, etc., but I find it delicious raw or cooked and in this recipe it's yellow anyway because of the turmeric ;-)

Good to know about that phytochemical. In general I think of all the cruciferae as very healthy stuff to eat. And cheap for the most part.

Mmm, speaking of cruciferae, I will have to eventually post the recipe I use for Caldo Verde, a kale-potato-and-garlic soup from Goa (the Portugese colony off the coast of India); it's a snap to make, beautiful to look at (deep, rich green) and delicious. I made it for friends a couple of months ago accompanied by sage biscuits, which turned out to be a perfect combination.


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## MoneyGal

Seconding the question about cauliflower (गोभी) (that's gobi, in Hindi) as an "unpopular vegetable." My kids love cauliflower - probably their favourite vegetable, with broccoli a close second. However, neither really likes tomatoes, a much less "challenging" vegetable! 

India and investing: I have nothing to add except to note that when I lived in India in the 1980s, there was no foreign investment: all companies operating in India had to have at least 51% Indian ownership. So, no McDonalds (we went to Nirula's instead) and lots of partnerships, like "Suzuki-Maruti."

I haven't been back in over 20 years, and I always find stories about the modern Indian fascinating. My time there was long before call centres (or cell phones! we had to line up for hours for a phone) or "the Internet." No Indian stock exchange, and only the open-cry floor trading at the Bombay stock exchange. No Sensex! I do wonder what it would be like now: I wonder if I would even recognize it. I do remember, however, someone telling me before I moved there that "the rich in India are as rich as any rich people in the world."


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## brad

MoneyGal said:


> Seconding the question about cauliflower (गोभी) (that's gobi, in Hindi) as an "unpopular vegetable."


I had no idea cauliflower was so popular! Maybe it's just unpopular with me; I rarely think of eating it. In retrospect this may be a reaction to a period of two years in my early childhood when I decided I would only eat foods that were white. I probably ate enough white food during that time to be sick of it for the rest of my life.


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## MoneyGal

I'm not sure Humble and I constitute a representative sample to establish vegetable popularity.


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## humble_pie

i think we're the vegetable vanguard.

re india. It strikes me that, out of the whole of asia, the closest political friend of the west is india, and we had better never forget that.


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## MoneyGal

Vegetable Vanguard! I'd like that as my status message, instead of "Senior Member."


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## CanadianCapitalist

Count me in as a huge cauliflower fan as well. We occasionally make aloo gobi at home. The kids love it with pita bread and I have to admit, the combo is pretty good.

I agree with Hum. Indian stocks (and pretty much every other emerging nation as well) are trading at rich multiples. Trading more on hype than value, IMO.


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## brad

MoneyGal said:


> Vegetable Vanguard! I'd like that as my status message, instead of "Senior Member."


You could create a new line of Vegetable Vanguard Funds and ETFs, to complement the carnivorous variety offered here: https://personal.vanguard.com/us/home?fromPage=portal


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## humble_pie

2 families in the vegetable vanguard suite of funds.

1) vegetable bland. Good old stuff. Dividends. Predictable. An etf.

2) vegetable spicy. Same as above, but studded all over, like a diamond-scored ham studded w cloves, with puts & calls. Skilful trading prevents assignments. Nice stream of capital gains from option sales that's equal to dividend income.


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## humble_pie

phenethyl-ITC in cauliflower has been found to inhibit prostate cancer in mice. Here is a handbook from the world health organization with extracts of cancer research into this & other tumour-inhibiting phytochemicals in cruciferae.

http://books.google.ca/books?id=r27...0CAYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=phenethyl-itc&f=false


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## humble_pie

edward chancellor of GMO partners tells why his hedge funds are shorting a chinese bubble:

http://watch.bnn.ca/#clip284100



nettle soup

famous in europe for hundreds of years, and prepared every spring by the antique gourmet society of the montreal botanical gardens to commemorate the early settlers of new france, nettle soup is made from a plant that is one of the most nutritious green-leafed choices in the whole of canada.

nettles contain more vitamins A, C & even D than spinach, far more minerals than dark green chard or kale, plus bioflavonoids that alleviate stress and rejuvenate adrenal and other hormone systems.

nettle soup was traditionally prepared in the early spring to provide pep to winter-weary north europeans.

the plant (bot: urtica dioca) is supremely neglected in today's menu because it stings. Here's how to gather nettles stingless, even bare-handed. Have an open paper bag nearby. With thumb & forefinger, pinch the tip of a topmost leaf hard (you won't be stung). With the other hand, snip off the growing tip of the plant with scissors - down to where the bright green leaves become less than perfect, perhaps four pairs of leaves down - and, still carrying the item by its pinched leaf tip but not otherwise touching it, drop this into the paper bag.

after about 6 hours, the formic acid that causes the sting will have neutralized. You can also wait until the next day. Snip off all the leaves & discard stems into the compost.

- sauté a sliced onion with minced garlic in olive oil until golden.
- add about a litre-and-a-half of chicken stock, vegetable stock or water.
- add 3 or 4 medium potatoes, scrubbed or peeled & diced or sliced.
- simmer until potatoes are tender.
- purée this in a blender/processor.

- simmer 2-3 cups coarsely chopped nettle leaves in a half-litre of water for a couple of minutes. Colour should be bright green.
- purée nettles.

- return the potato/onion & nettle mixtures to pot & reheat with sea salt & freshly-ground pepper.
- dollop sour cream, yoghurt or tsatszki plus finely-chopped fresh green herbs to garnish each serving.


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## brad

Wow, I've heard of nettle soup but never saw a recipe, thanks for posting this. My legs still remember an unfortunate hike I took in Vermont some years back, wearing shorts, on a trail that was overgrown with thick patches of nettles.

We had a seafood-heavy weekend here: I grilled brochettes of shrimp and sopressata and put them on top of slices of fresh mozarella drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper, with chopped fresh basil sprinkled over the whole dish at the end. Delicious, but a bit rich with all the fat of the shrimp and saucisson.

The next day I made a sort of gratin with Swiss chard, onions, garlic, and canned sardines, topped with breadcrumbs and drizzled with olive oil. Also delicious, even for me (I'm not a big fan of sardines in general, but this was excellent).

Tonight, salmon is on the menu; my girlfriend will be the chef so I'm not sure what she's planning to do with it.

The snow crabs are in season now, and while we didn't pick up any this weekend at the market, we will do so next weekend. I've got a really nice recipe from Mark Bittman for crab-and-pea salad that is lovely this time of year. And crab cakes are worth the effort to make as well.


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## humble_pie

ouf. A bare-legs-and-nettles combo to someone who doesn't know about the plant feels like a deadly scorpion attack. Poor victim sits there wondering if & when the heart is going to shut down, while the fire rages.

the romans had a nettles cure for arthritis. It goes like this. Strip the patient naked & thrash him with fresh-cut nettle plants. Modern botanists think the treatment may have approximated acupuncture.

2 recipes that would be great to see:

- crab-and-pea salad
- MG's mother's recipe for mangoes w eggplant ... wasn't that w goat cheese ?


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## brad

Here's the crab-and-pea salad, or pea-and-crab salad, however you like it:

http://bitten.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/featured-recipe-pea-and-crab-salad/

Could hardly be simpler, but with good peas and good fresh crab, this is delightful.


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## andrewf

Please share that gratin recipe. Do you wilt the swiss chard before you make the casserole?


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## brad

andrewf said:


> Please share that gratin recipe. Do you wilt the swiss chard before you make the casserole?


Yes, you wilt the chard. This is another recipe from the NY Times, this time from Martha Rose Shulman (recipe is at the bottom of the article linked to below):

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/29/health/nutrition/29recipehealth.html?ref=nutrition

It calls for "boneless, skinless" sardines in olive oil, something that I was unable to find, but I did find sardines in olive oil. I just took out the backbones and rubbed off a bit of the skin. It's really great; we just finished the leftovers for lunch today.

I recently got Martha Rose Shulman's cookbook on Meterranean cuisine; her take on it is entirely vegetarian. There are some very good recipes in there.

The other new-to-me cookbook I'm really enjoying is Elisabeth Luard's "Classic Spanish." I became a fan of Luard a few years ago after buying her book on European peasant cooking; she lived in Spain for many years and her Spanish recipes are authentic and inspiring. I'm going to be spending quite a bit of time with this book in the months ahead.


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## CanadianCapitalist

brad said:


> I recently got Martha Rose Shulman's cookbook on Meterranean cuisine; her take on it is entirely vegetarian. There are some very good recipes in there.


I'm going to try this book. Thanks for the suggestion. It should go well with where new money is heading these days -- the EAFE index fund.


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## humble_pie

olive oil fraud has reached record proportions in canada as importers adulterate olive oil with, in some cases, up to 50% cheaper sunflower, soy & canola oils, then slap on those alluring "extra virgin cold-pressed" labels that never state where the product has been bottled.

consumers seeking the much-publicized anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant health benefits of the monounsaturated carbon chain are being cheated twice, once in their wallets and the second time, in an insidious way, as the cheaper polyunsaturated oils fail to deliver health benefits.

susan semenak's recent series on olive oil fraud in the montreal gazette has been copied via canwest across canada.

http://www.nationalpost.com/life/story.html?id=2684736

_" ... Here at home, several Canadian importers have been fined for blending small amounts of olive oil with cheaper refined oils and vegetable oils and then slapping on labels that read "extra virgin" olive oil, making off with a tidy profit while cheating the consumer out of the heart-health benefits and distinctive flavour and quality they thought they were getting.

"Critics say weak Canadian food labelling regulations and inadequate enforcement of those laws by federal government inspectors make buying a bottle of what Homer called "liquid gold" a tricky undertaking.

" ' Olive oil is a commodity that can easily be diluted or substituted with cheaper oil,' wrote Marilyn Taylor, a spokesman for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency in a bulletin from the agency last July. 'The presence of other oils in olive oil cannot be detected by visual inspection and therefore consumers rely on the labelling.' "_

right now, the sad fact is that the majority of cheap EVOOs for sale in canada have been adulterated. A simple home test is to stick your bottle in the frig for a day or two. A 100% olive oil will turn cloudy & solid. Cheaper cooking oils such as sunflower, soy & canola remain clear & liquid when chilled to frig temperatures.

while the problem of fake olive oils, some greened by illicit bottlers with the addition of chlorophyll, is proliferating in canada in recent years, it's not new. In a 2007 article entitled "Slippery Business" in the New Yorker magazine, journalist tom mueller writes that clay tablets dating back to the time of the Roman empire bear inscriptions complaining about the adulteration of olive oil.


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## Berubeland

I just watched a similar story on Marketplace involving fish. Up to 22% of fish is mislabelled. 

This is troubling as certain types of fish are not recommended during pregnancy. The only way to tell the difference between types of Salmon for instance is DNA or the label. Farmed salmon has much higher levels of mercury than wild salmon so a pregnant woman might eat what is labeled as wild salmon which is not, with significant consequences. 

Plus by some amazing coincidence they didn't notice anyone substituting more expensive fish for cheaper fish... it was the other way around. No conclusions were made at where along the supply chain these substitutions were made. 

I can see organic food also being supplemented with cheaper not organic food.


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## m3s

There's label fraud in the wine industry as well

Someone found a way to carbon date the grapes or something to prove this.

You can pay $$ for aged wine that isn't. What a world we live in


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## humble_pie

brad are we having the portuguese kale soup for lunch today ??

i have an unusual recipe from vietnam. Maybe i'll post next week. It's for an aphrodisiac soup with sea horses. I got it from a vietnamese website i used to browse when i had couple vietnam investments.


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> brad are we having the portuguese kale soup for lunch today ??


As you wish! Here's the recipe for Caldo Verde, from Madhur Jaffrey. She says it's a traditional soup in Goa, the former Portugese colony on the west coast of India. It's a snap to make; the most time-consuming part is peeling the 12 cloves of garlic. For anyone who doesn't know how to peel garlic, the easiest way is to just smash it lightly with the side of a knife (I put the side of the knife over the clove and whack it with the heel of my hand).

4 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped into 2-cm dice
1 medium onion, peeled and coarsely chopped
85 grams coarsely chopped kale leaves
12 cloves of garlic, peeled but not chopped.
1 1/4 tsp salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper

In a large pot, combine the potatoes, onion, kale, garlic, and salt. Add 1 1/2 liters of water and bring to boil. Cover, lower heat, and simmer gently for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Put the soup through a blender (an immersion blender -- aka stick blender -- is best for this, so you don't have to pour hot soup in batches into a regular blender) until it is smooth. 

Just before serving, add the olive oil and black pepper.


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## brad

Speaking of lunch, most of my meals this weekend were good but not brilliant (a savory winter-squash-and-leek pie for supper one night, pasta with arugula and asparagus, ricotta and Parmesan the next), but the one I'll be making again soon was a lunch I whipped up on Saturday: huevos al plato con pimientos. I roasted a red pepper outdoors over my camp stove, then heated a large cast-iron frying pan, put in some olive oil, added the sliced red pepper in two portions, laid a strip of Serrano ham over each serving of peppers (prosciutto would work if you can't find Serrano ham), and then broke two eggs over each serving, sprinkled with salt and pepper, and let it cook until the yolks set.

Utter simplicity, and utterly delicious. To be authentic I would have cooked and served these in individual portions in cazuelas (Spanish earthenware dishes that are tempered so you can put them right on the stove and cook in them. But I don't have any cazuelas and don't know where to find them, so I improvised. ;-) The receipe is from Elisabeth Luard, who lived in Spain for many years.


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## humble_pie

will definitely try pimientos y huevos.

but the kale soup yikes, that recipe is killing every single vitamin with all the kale simmering. 

it's the same basic recipe as the nettle soup. It's my credo that green veggies, indeed all vegs, should be barely simmered so as to retain max freshness max vitamins max enzymes. Vitas A & C are especially light and heat sensitive, not able to survive 75 minutes non-stop boiling. A purée stage will further break down fibers & render vegetable more digestible. The thing is, we want fibers in as rough a state as we can handle, not boiled into pap, because it's now known that fibers bind to LDL & escort this out of the GI.

with kale i'd remove leaves from stems, trim stem bottoms & chop stems into potato preparation maybe 15-20 mins before potatoes are done. I'd either simmer the uber-vita-rich kale leaves couple mins separately as with the nettles or else add them to the basic soup for the last 3 or 4 minutes.


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> but the kale soup yikes, that recipe is killing every single vitamin with all the kale simmering.


Yep, I've cooked it for less time and it's been fine although the kale really needs to be tender so you get this lovely smooth soup, so yes you could strip the stems and chop up the leaves very finely so they cook quickly. 

In my view, this soup is about flavour and texture, not necessarily nutrition. I get enough vitamins from my regular daily diet to be able to burn some at the stake occasionally and not worry about missing their benefit. Still, I think all that garlic has to be good for you; the soup doesn't taste garlicy but tastes more like a soft garlic broth with the added flavor of kale and the potatoes for thickener.

I have the same philosophy about empty calories: I'm all for empty calories as long as I'm getting enough nutrition through other foods and I'm exercising enough so the extra calories aren't causing a problem.


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## MoneyGal

I have been having an all-hospital-food diet lately, sorry to say. Just home today from knee surgery yesterday. It will be weeks before I am able to stand and cook, so I am looking forward to seeing what my husband creates in the kitchen.


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## humble_pie

very best wishes for a kneet recovery.


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## brad

Hope MoneyGal's dancing around the kitchen again ;-)

After a cold, wet weekend I'm thinking about pasta and comfort food.

While I like Italian-American-style lasagne as much as the next person, if I'm making lasagne I usually do the authentic Italian variety with bechamel sauce and Parmesan, rather than the usual gobs of ricotta and mozzarella. And I make my own spinach pasta from scratch; if I have homemade tomato sauce, so much the better. It is a far bigger production than most of the meals I cook, but it's worth all the work because it's so delicious.

I always seem to make a bit more fresh pasta than I need to make the lasagne, and here's what I do with the leftover sheets of pasta the next day. It's not at all healthy with this much butter (although at least the greens are barely cooked, making Humble Pie happy!). But since I only make lasagne a couple of times per year, the same goes for this...it's a rare and guilty pleasure, but what a pleasure. I often omit the ham, you won't miss it but it's a nice touch.

Recipe is from Gabrielle Hamilton, whose Prune restaurant in NY City has long been on my list of places to try for supper. I'll get there someday.

Pasta Kerchiefs with Greens and Ham

Serves 4

8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter
4 (5-inch) square sheets of fresh egg pasta
1 cup loosely packed arugula, watercress, or other bitter greens, chopped
4 slices smoked cured jambon de Bayonne or other lightly smoked, dry-cured ham
4 poached eggs
1/4 cup shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
Balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoons pine nuts, toasted

1. Bring a large pot of water to boil and salt it. Turn the oven on to its lowest setting; warm 4 pasta bowls in it. Cook the butter over medium heat in a medium saucepan until it browns and has a nutty aroma; keep warm.

2. When the water is again at a rolling boil, drop in the pasta sheets and cook for about 90 seconds. Use tongs to fish out the pasta sheets and transfer one to each of the bowls, laying each handkerchief flat across the bowls. Leave the water on the heat and use it to cook the greens and poach the eggs.

3. Roll about 1/4 cup greens in a slice of ham, grab the bundle with your tongs, and hold in the boiling pasta water for a few seconds, until the greens wilt a bit. Drain momentarily, then place in the center of one of the sheets of pasta. Repeat, making a bundle for each serving.

4. Put a poached egg on top of each ham and greens bundle, fold one corner of the pasta over the filling, brush the edges with water and seal two corners at the top. Pour a little of the warm brown butter over each. Garnish with a little Parmigiano-Reggiano, a tiny drizzle of balsamic vinegar, and a sprinkle of pine nuts and serve.


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## CanadianCapitalist

With fresh asparagus starting to make an appearance in the super markets, we made asparagus soup last week. The recipe is from The Complete Encyclopedia of Vegetables and Vegetarian Cooking by Roz Denny and Christine Ingram. I found a similar recipe on Canadian Living:

Cream of Asparagus Soup


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## humble_pie

very nice. But didn't you find it pesky to have to fish out 1 c cooked asperge tips, one at a time, from broth w slotted spoon.

maybe steam them briefly in a little steamer propped over the broth ?
keep em greener & more raw.

(signed)
never_wilts_underfire
(a guerrilla cook)


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## CanadianCapitalist

humble_pie said:


> very nice. But didn't you find it pesky to have to fish out 1 c cooked asperge tips, one at a time, from broth w slotted spoon.
> 
> maybe steam them briefly in a little steamer propped over the broth ?
> keep em greener & more raw.
> 
> (signed)
> never_wilts_underfire
> (a guerrilla cook)


Ha! Ha! I just separate the tips when chopping and fry them gently for a few minutes in a bit of butter. No need to pick out the tips with tongs one-by-one.


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## humble_pie

this recipe is from an article dated 12 october/07 in the Thanhnien News, an online mostly-business zine i used to browse because i had purchased some units in a couple vietnamese funds.

did they work out ?

the soup: never tried it. Ose que pourra.
the funds: no.


*Goat kidney Elixir*

_Men and women seeking a little extra something in the bedroom need not look far, as Vietnam is chock full of all natural cures to lackluster lovemaking._

Reported by Thanh Tung

Goat kidneys are high on the Asian sexual enhancer list, though releasing their magic is somewhat complicated. But in love and romance, what isn’t? 

Necessary ingredients: 2 goat kidneys, 50 grams of goat marrow, and several traditional herbs including 50 grams of cau ky tu (Barbary Wolfberry Fruit), 100 kg of dam duong hoac (Epimedium Herb) 20 grams of ba kich thien (Morinda root), 20 grams of sa uyen tat le (Flatstem milkvetch seed); 50 grams of do trong bac (Eucommia Bark), 30 grams of thuc dia (Chinese Foxglove) and 4 dai tao (Chinese dates).

Cut the goat kidneys into slices. Dry the milkvetch seed in a pan. Rinse the Morinda root with wine. Mix the kidneys, marrow, wolfberry and Chinese dates (after the seeds are taken out) with 22 cc of wine.

Put the rest into a cloth bag, and boil it in an earthenware pot with water and spice for half an hour. Add spiced kidneys and marrow, and cook them all till well-done. 

If eaten from one to two times weekly for four weeks, this food is said to cure impotence, low sperm counts, and relieve backaches and weak bones to boot.

For an extra kick, cook the goat kidneys and ginger with abalone mushrooms, said to revive all drives. Eat with shallots, black pepper, and noodles for the best taste.


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## brad

When I worked at a zoo and nature museum, I was frequently disturbed at lunch out on the picnic table by a couple of maurauding goats who would jump up on the table, head-butt me off my seat, and proceed to devour my lunch. I would have happily eaten their kidneys AND their marrow if I'd known about this recipe.

This weekend's cooking consisted of stuffed eggplants (very good), a Greek black-eyed-pea salad (also very good), and a Ligurian artichoke-and-broccoli-rabe tart that was very good but way too much work. I made it last night...started at 6pm and we weren't eating it until almost 9pm as it involved many steps...making the yeasted crust, blanching the rapini and artichokes, hard-boiling some eggs, etc. My rule of thumb with cooking is that I'm willing to make a complicated recipe only if the results are worth it, and this one failed the test. It was good but not so fantastic as to warrant 2.5 hours of labor.

On the other hand, here's a recipe for a vegetable torta that IS worth the effort, which is considerably less than what I made last night although still considerable. It's from Mark Bittman's 2009 book "Food Matters."

2 medium yellow onions, halved and thinly sliced
About 3/4 cup olive oil
2 medium eggplant, unpeeled, cut crosswise into 1/2 inch slices
4 medium zucchini, cut into slices 1/4 inch thick
salt and pepper
4 cups cooked grain (see note below)
20 basil leaves
Freshly grated Parmesan

For the grain, I've tried quinoa, millet, steel-cut oats, and farro when I've made this in the past, and so far farro is my favorite. It's essentially the same thing as spelt, so if you can find spelt berries, use those. You can cook the grain a day or two beforehand and keep it in the fridge until you're ready to make the torta.

1. Preheat the oven to 400 F. Put the onions in a large dry skillet with a lid over medium heat. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions are dry and almost sticking to the pan, about 20 minutes. Add 2 tablespoons of the oil and cook until the onions brown, another 10 minutes or so. Set aside.

2. Smear 2 or more baking sheet with 2 tablespoons of the oil each. Lay the eggplant slices on one sheet and the zucchini on the other in a single layer. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and drizzle or brush with a couple of tablespoons of oil. Roast until the eggplants and zucchini are soft, about 15 minutes for the zucchini, 20 or so for the eggplant.

3. Coat the bottom and inside the ring of an 8- or 9-inch springform pan with some oil. Press half the cooked grain into the bottom of the pan to form an even crust, about 1/2 inch thick. Layer a third of the eggplant slices on top of the grain, then layer half the zucchini, half of hte caramelized onions, and some of the basil, sprinkling each layer with some salt and pepper. Repeat the layers, pressing down on each one to make the torta as compact as possible. Finish with a layer of eggplant, and spread the remaining grain on top of that. Press with a spatula or spoon to compress the torta, and sprinkle Parmesan cheese on top if you like.

4. Put the torta in the oven and cook for about 30 minutes. Let sit 5 minutes and remove the ring of the springform pan, then let cool another 5-10 minutes before cutting into wedges. Garnish with some more basil and serve.

This is quite a bit of work (mainly roasting the zucchini and eggplant), but definitely worth it. We generally serve this when we have vegetarian friends over for supper, and without exception all of them have asked for the recipe. It's really, really delicious.


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## Berubeland

I know where I'm going for lunch when I get to Montreal. 

My husband has mastered the art of creative Kraft dinner he has one recipe where he adds a can of tuna and a cup of peas. The other recipes he adds one lb of ground beef and a can of tomatoes. 

Most of my recipes are from my mom and I'm not sure she even had a measuring cup lol so posting them up here is a little like explaining warrants but here goes.

Get one bag of expensive but good baby potatoes, boil until soft enough for you by checking fairly regularly with a fork. Let cool then chop into small salad size pieces.

Then look in your fridge and find whatever veggies are in the back of the vegetable drawer and might potentially go to waste. Good examples are bell peppers, green onions, regular onions, cucumber, broccoli, cauliflower. Chop into small salad size pieces. 

Get some mayo and some vinegar basalmic is good but if you don't have vinegar even dill pickle juice will do. Add salt and pepper, and whatever spices you like to it for different versions.

Ex: Mexican flavour, add cumin, chili powder, and some chopped coriander and some jalepenos if you like to your dressing. 

You should have about a cup and half when you finish adding stuff to your dressing so it covers everything. Also taste your dressing before adding it to your salad, if it tastes horrible it will make your potatoes and veggies taste horrible too. I made a dressing once with orange juice and maple syrup that was awesome. 

Mix it all together...... wait till people are very hungry then serve.


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## CanadianCapitalist

humble_pie said:


> _Men and women seeking a little extra something in the bedroom need not look far, as Vietnam is chock full of all natural cures to lackluster lovemaking._


Darn it. Why should meat eaters have all the fun?


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## Berubeland

Yeah I feel a crisis of vegetarianism coming on myself lol


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## HaroldCrump

Berubeland said:


> I just watched a similar story on Marketplace involving fish. Up to 22% of fish is mislabelled.


Fish stocks around the world are essentially depleted.
Most of what we find in grocery stores are farmed fish.
This is esp. true for high value fish like cod, salmon, etc.
Fact that there is mislabeling of fish should not come as no surprise to anyone.
Does anyone really believe that the can of "wild pacific salmon" selling for $0.99c. a pop is really wild salmon? 


> This is troubling as certain types of fish are not recommended during pregnancy. The only way to tell the difference between types of Salmon for instance is DNA or the label. Farmed salmon has much higher levels of mercury than wild salmon so a pregnant woman might eat what is labeled as wild salmon which is not, with significant consequences.


Yes, there are problems with farmed salmon, but not the one you are stating.
If anything, farmed salmon may actually be _lower_ in mercury and PCBs than wild salmon.
The higher you go on the fish food chain, the safer it is to eat farmed fish - from a mercury & PCB perspective.
Farmed fish (esp. salmon) have many other problems though, such as artificial chemical coloring to get the pink shades.

Global warming has an impact as well because of increasing average temperature of water.
Eroding corals is another problem.
It goes on and on....

We are fast approaching the day when all salt water fish available will be farmed and not wild.


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## brad

HaroldCrump said:


> Most of what we find in grocery stores are farmed fish. This is esp. true for high value fish like cod, salmon, etc.


I didn't realize cod was being farmed (I thought they were deepwater fish only). Most Atlantic cod have been caught by trawling, which causes quite a bit of "collateral damage" to life on the sea floor. 

I use the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch iPhone app to help guide my fish choices while shopping, but sometimes everything that my fishmonger has on offer is on the "avoid" list. A retail store called "I Love Blue Sea" has opened up in California (http://www.ilovebluesea.com/) that sells only sustainably caught/managed seafood according to the definitions and guidance used by Monterey Bay Aquarium and Greenpeace -- I'd love to see stores like this in Canada as it would make a seafood shopper's life a lot easier. The carbon footprint of shipping small amounts of fresh fish to individual buyers all over the continental United States has got to be much higher than buying fish that's been shipped in bulk by air to markets, but life is full of tradeoffs. 

Despite my best intentions, last night we had Atlantic cod, cooked by steaming it over ratatouille. A simple enough dish, but complex in flavour, aided by the black olives added to the ratatouille and a generous amount of chopped basil stirred in at the last moment before serving, plus I drizzled a little olive oil over the fish when they hit the plate.

Lunch on Saturday was nice: a bed of Romaine lettuce tossed with olive oil and lemon juice, salt and pepper, topped with toast that had been rubbed with garlic and then stuck in the oven with slices of chevre on top until the chevre melted, and then I drizzled the chevre with mashed basil leaves in olive oil. Took about 12 minutes from start to finish and gave us the energy to spend the rest of the afternoon in the garden and yard.


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## CanadianCapitalist

I notice Fiddleheads starting to appear on the grocery shelves. Anyone has a fiddlehead recipe to share?


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## brad

CanadianCapitalist said:


> I notice Fiddleheads starting to appear on the grocery shelves. Anyone has a fiddlehead recipe to share?


In general I follow the rule that "any recipe that works for asparagus will work for fiddleheads," although they should probably be cooked longer to kill any toxins that might be present (there have been several outbreaks of food poisoning from eating fiddleheads, and some species are carcinogenic). See Wikipedia for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiddlehead_fern.

I'm not a big fan of fiddleheads but have eaten them a few times, usually just steamed with some butter or olive oil on top. Roasted topped with olive oil, pine nuts, and Parmesan would probably be good too (this is one of my favourite ways to eat asparagus).


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## brad

When we go to the market, usually on Saturdays, we try to buy enough food for several large meals and that usually means I'm cooking a big batch of something on Monday night so we can have leftovers for a few days.

Tonight was no exception, and this recipe really knocked my socks off; my girlfriend said "it's so good, I can't believe it." I hardly ever buy tomatoes out of season, but I make an exception for cherry tomatoes, which can be quite good even at this time of year.

Orecchiette with Uncooked Tomatoes and Arugula

(from Martha Rose Shulman's Mediterranean Harvest cookbook)

1 pound cherry tomatoes, quartered.
1 plump garlic clove, minced
Coarse salt and pepper to taste
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
1 cup chopped fresh arugula
2 heaping tablespoons chopped fresh basil
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 pound orecchiette (the little pasta that looks like ears)
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan or ricotta salata

1. Combine the cherry tomatoes, garlic, salt and pepper, balsamic vinegar, arugula, basil, and olive oil in a wide pasta bowl. Let sit for 30 minutes; taste and adjust seasonings.

2. Bring a large pot of water to a boil, add salt, and the pasta. Cook until al dente (note that the directions on Italian packages of orecchiette will often have you cook it just 11 minutes or so, which is positively crunchy; I usually let it go 13 or 14 minutes so it's a little softer to the bite). Drain, toss with the tomato mixture, sprinkle on the cheese, and serve.

We had this for supper with a glass of chardonnay from Bourgogne, outside on our porch as the sun was setting. It made for a magical evening, with geese flying overhead and the first bats making their evening rounds.


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## MoneyGal

That sounds wonderful. I *love* arugula; I am going to make that this week. 

I celebrated being able to stand for long periods again this weekend by starting to cook and bake again for the first time in about 6 weeks. I made a proper Sunday dinner of roast sirloin, fingerling potatoes and Yorkshire pudding. 

I also cooked a Puy lentil salad with roasted tomato cherries (I'm with you, Brad, on the cherry tomato thing) and feta. My eight-year-old loves lentils and requests this dish often. We ate it picnic style for dinner tonight under a flurry of apple blossoms - it was like snow! - in my back yard before going off to participate in (her) and lead (me) Brownies. 

No trading advice. I've been thinking a lot about dividend investing though and rethinking some of my long-held predispositions in this regard.


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## brad

This weekend's star recipe was a drink -- dubbed the "Biz Fizz" by its creator, Martha Rose Shulman. We're not big on cocktails; I make mojitos a few times each summer and we have a cocktail with spruce beer and vodka around the holidays, but that's it. But this one was so good that it might take the place of the mojitos.

It's very simple to make: in a champagne flute, pour about an inch of Midori, add a tablespoon of white port, and fill the glass with Prosecco. Add a few balls or chunks of honeydew melon on a toothpick for an extra touch of elegance if you like.

Here's a photo showing the lovely green colour; this would be a very refreshing drink in summer. We are not fans of champagne so don't own any champagne flutes; I made these in regular wine glasses instead. One variation we thought of would be to replace the white port with retsina, since retsina and melon is a traditional (and delicious) combination in Greece. We'll try that next time.


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## humble_pie

mollywobbles is a whimsical, appealing blog from a male Chicago paralegal with a wife, a teenage son and a recently-purchased heirloom country cottage near three oaks, michigan.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_kkaA-fajVbA/Sx8F1-EoDfI/AAAAAAAABBk/emOT5cekxvA/s1600-h/2031.Jpg

molly cooks, and he blogs, and he's a good father & family man, and he, er, knits. Molly knits, er, lace. Beautiful lace. As in shawls, curtains, blankets. It's an excellent stress reliever in the windy city.

http://mollywobbles.blogspot.com/

molly's april recipe for coffee cake is not fancy. It's not healthy. It contains no bran, flax seed or stoneground organic flour. He borrowed it from the three oaks ladies auxiliary cookbook, but he increased the nuts & the brown sugar. It looks sinfully delicious. As molly says:

_" ... I really love that all of the work occurs the night before. And I love the flavor. SO delicious. And, yes, I understand that there are some food snobs who will turn up their noses at a recipe that calls for pudding mix. Feh. This coffee cake is one of the best things I have ever made. And I now make it almost every week. It's that good."_

it's because the US can still raise up citizens like molly & his south side chicago neighbours barack & michelle that i'm not giving up on america yet.

THREE OAKS COFFEE CAKE

3/4 cup chopped pecans, divided
18 knobs of frozen white dinner roll dough
1 pack (4 serving-size) NON-instant butterscotch pudding mix
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 stick butter, melted

Generously grease a 10 in fluted tube pan. Sprinkle 1/2 cup pecans in the bottom of the pan. Arrange the frozen dough balls on top of the pecans.

Sprinkle pudding mix over dough balls. Sprinkle brown sugars and cinnamon over the pudding. Sprinkle remaining nuts. Drizzle with melted butter. 

Cover with plastic wrap and leave to rise on the counter for 8 to 10 hours or refrigerate for 12 to 24 hrs. 

Uncover and bake 350 degree oven about 35 minutes or till top is golden brown. 

Let cool 5 minutes before inverting coffee cake onto a good size serving tray. Let stand for 10 minutes before serving.


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> molly's april recipe for coffee cake is not fancy. It's not healthy. It contains no bran, flax seed or stoneground organic flour.


It does sound sinful!

I like Mark Bittman's quick coffee cake, which isn't as sinful but at least there are no prepackaged ingredients. This is very popular in my house.

1 stick cold unsalted butter, plus a little for greasing the pan
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus 3 tablespoons
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (I usually use pecans)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
3/4 cup milk

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a 9-inch square baking pan. Combine 3 tablespoons of flour, 3/4 cup of sugar, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, and 3 tablespoons of butter with the nuts. Set aside; this is your streusel.

Combine remaining 2 cups of flour, the baking powder, salt, and remaining 1/2 cup of sugar, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, and 5 tablespoons of butter, cut into bits, in a bowl. mix well with a fork until all the flour is coated with some of the butter.

Beat the egg into the butter-flour mixture, then the milk until blended. Pour half the batter into the prepared pan and sprinkle over it about half the streusel. Add the remaining batter (not as easy as it sounds, as the batter is thick and sticky, but with some patience you can do it), then the remaining streusel.

Bake for about 30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool on a rack for at least 15 minutes before cutting (this is the hardest part, because it smells so good you will want to eat it immediately).


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## MoneyGal

I have no financial advice to share but can I tell you what I made for dinner last night? 

Mains were keftedis (Greek meatballs) baked in tomato sauce; and couscous cooked in peppermint tea with roasted squash and halloumi cheese (my oldest daughter is vegetarian, this was her "main" meal). 

Sides were zucchini moutabel (a Lebanese dip usually made with eggplant) and tzatziki and olives. 

Dessert was this extremely strange Turkish-coffee-flavoured "cotton candy" that I couldn't resist at the Lebanese grocery store.


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## MoneyGal

I suppose I could work something in there about Greece....have to ponder.


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## brad

MoneyGal said:


> Mains were keftedis (Greek meatballs) baked in tomato sauce; and couscous cooked in peppermint tea with roasted squash and halloumi cheese (my oldest daughter is vegetarian, this was her "main" meal).
> 
> Sides were zucchini moutabel (a Lebanese dip usually made with eggplant) and tzatziki and olives.


Two words in response:

Wow
Yum


----------



## MoneyGal

Perhaps we two biking foodies should get together when you are in Toronto.


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## brad

MoneyGal said:


> Perhaps we two biking foodies should get together when you are in Toronto.


I thought about that! Probably not on our upcoming Toronto-Montreal bike trip, as we're arriving in Toronto late and leaving early the next morning, but on some future trip when we have more time it would be great to have a meal together.


----------



## CanadianCapitalist

humble_pie said:


> THREE OAKS COFFEE CAKE
> 
> 3/4 cup chopped pecans, divided
> 18 knobs of frozen white dinner roll dough
> 1 pack (4 serving-size) NON-instant butterscotch pudding mix
> 1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
> 1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
> 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
> 1 stick butter, melted


Perhaps this is a stupid question. Where can you get frozen white dinner rolls? This sounds like a delicious cake and I'd like to try it.


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## brad

CanadianCapitalist said:


> Perhaps this is a stupid question. Where can you get frozen white dinner rolls? This sounds like a delicious cake and I'd like to try it.


It's one of those things you only find in the Midwestern US. ;-)

Seriously, though, I'm pretty sure this refers to those dinner rolls that come in a long can, like Pillsbury cookies -- I remember eating them growing up but I haven't seen them in 20-30 years. This stuff lives on in the Midwest, along with Jello molds and other delicacies from the 1970s.

(When I lived in Vermont, my next-door neighbour was a grand-niece of the woman who invented Jello; she inherited enough to live a very comfortable life without having to work. I referred to her home as "the house that Jello built.")


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## MoneyGal

Oh, good gosh. My culinary historians group is making a road trip to the Jello Museum in LeRoy, N.Y. this weekend (but I have to skip it because I will be celebrating the 100th year of Guiding in Canada with my 27 Brownies + about 3000 more at Ontario Place.)


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## humble_pie

brad whatever happened to the dude who said " ... I'm all for empty calories as long as I'm getting enough nutrition through other foods ... "

ok spurning jello & packaged pudding is about taste not nutrition, but i still think molly's recipe would fly. Not once a week, maybe once or twice a decade.

eat your heart out for his cottage, though. And he doesn't even know yet that he's got a flowering crabapple in the side yard. Maybe we should tell him. Crabapple jelly in the kitchen in august.


----------



## the-royal-mail

brad said:


> When we go to the market, usually on Saturdays, we try to buy enough food for several large meals and that usually means I'm cooking a big batch of something on Monday night so we can have leftovers for a few days.
> 
> Tonight was no exception, and this recipe really knocked my socks off; my girlfriend said "it's so good, I can't believe it." I hardly ever buy tomatoes out of season, but I make an exception for cherry tomatoes, which can be quite good even at this time of year.
> 
> Orecchiette with Uncooked Tomatoes and Arugula
> 
> (from Martha Rose Shulman's Mediterranean Harvest cookbook)
> 
> 1 pound cherry tomatoes, quartered.
> 1 plump garlic clove, minced
> Coarse salt and pepper to taste
> 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
> 1 cup chopped fresh arugula
> 2 heaping tablespoons chopped fresh basil
> 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
> 1 pound orecchiette (the little pasta that looks like ears)
> 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan or ricotta salata
> 
> 1. Combine the cherry tomatoes, garlic, salt and pepper, balsamic vinegar, arugula, basil, and olive oil in a wide pasta bowl. Let sit for 30 minutes; taste and adjust seasonings.
> 
> 2. Bring a large pot of water to a boil, add salt, and the pasta. Cook until al dente (note that the directions on Italian packages of orecchiette will often have you cook it just 11 minutes or so, which is positively crunchy; I usually let it go 13 or 14 minutes so it's a little softer to the bite). Drain, toss with the tomato mixture, sprinkle on the cheese, and serve.
> 
> We had this for supper with a glass of chardonnay from Bourgogne, outside on our porch as the sun was setting. It made for a magical evening, with geese flying overhead and the first bats making their evening rounds.


Hmmm this sounds rather healthy. I might give it a try. Other than the pasta, it reminds me of these delicious tomato wedges they had at the Indian restaurant last time. YUM.


----------



## brad

humble_pie said:


> brad whatever happened to the dude who said " ... I'm all for empty calories as long as I'm getting enough nutrition through other foods ... "


Hahah, you caught me! I guess I don't mind empty calories but I sort of mind eating food with 27 ingredients that I've never heard of. But even there I'm not consistent -- one of my favourite sublime-meets-ridiculous food combinations is Drambuie with Oreos. And I don't want to even think about what's in Oreos!

Anyway, I am sure I would love that coffee cake; I'm a sucker for all kinds of pudding.


----------



## MoneyGal

Humble! I am doing a Chutney Sunday with one of my close friends in two weeks. We will be doing a rhubarb, melon and ginger relish; a red onion marmalade; and a red pepper and lemongrass chutney.


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## humble_pie

help ! you are killing us with these aromatic whiffs & glimpses !

MG it's been weeks since i asked for your mother's mango/eggplant recipe. This morning i was going to ask for the zucchini moutabel since i find zucc a bland uninteresting vegetable even if it is plentiful & inexpensive. Neighbour who has a cottage in upstate new york says if you leave your car door unlocked during harvest season there, you'll come back to find the vehicle stuffed with zucchinis.

now you are tempting us with aromas of rhubarb, mango, ginger, onion, sweet red peppers, lemongrass ... colours dance ... i would love a cottage painted in those colours ... a lemongrass verandah with rhubarb & rose pink rocking chairs overlooking a sky blue lake.

(alternately) (fauve version) ... pale onionskin verandah on rhubarb pink cottage beside green pines, overlooking red-and-mango lake at sunset.


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## humble_pie

*ANTI-DEPRESSANT SALAD*

have you ever inhaled the fragrance from a fresh-snipped stem of st. john's wort in may ?

it's an impossible scent to describe. It's fresh, flowery, spicy, none of the above, unique, delicious. Imagine a haunting perfume, then translate this into green, edible & delicious. There you go.

although st. john's wort doesn't like urban environments, now & then it does volunteer in downtown city gardens. You may have torn it out of your flower beds as a weed already. In its earliest stage in may, about 3-4 inches high, with tiny green leaves, it resembles thyme. If you tear off one of the leaves and hold this up to the light, you'll see the hundreds of tiny perforations that give the plant its latin name, hypericum perforatum, and also its old french name, millepertuis.

actually, those aren't perforations. They are transparent cells that may contain some or all of the famous anti-depressant phytochemicals. It's not known for certain whether these phytochemicals come from the flowers, the buds, the leaves, or from all 3 of these.

if you find it, gather a handful of sprigs. Gather also lemon balm leaves, young dandelion leaves, violet leaves, raspberry leaves from the shrub's growing tips, 2 or 3 motherwort leaves, wild strawberry flowers, wild blue violets, bleeding-heart flowers, pink-and-blue lungwort flowers, and one small growing tip of fresh lavender leaves.

strip all the leaves from the stems. Set the lavender aside. The rest should be a cupful or two. Chop coarsely into organic olive oil. A teaspoon or 2 of honey. Sea salt, freshly ground pepper. Chopping very finely - let's say mincing - add the lavender leaves. Add the strawberry, bleeding heart, lungwort & violet flowers. Toss to coat all the herbs & flowers. Drizzle some balsamic vinegar.

for the salad, you can use whatever you like. Romaine, arugula, cos lettuce, sliced raw mushrooms, mangoes, crushed walnuts. Toss with the dressing above.


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> *ANTI-DEPRESSANT SALAD*


Just reading your recipe puts me in a good mood; if I ate the salad afterward I expect I'd be positively ecstatic.

I didn't know bleeding-heart flowers were edible. My adventures in flower-eating have been pretty conventional: borage, nasturtiums, chives, daylilies, occasional violets, and lots of squash flowers (stuffed with ricotta and baked). Eating squash flowers is a good zucchini prevention strategy: for every flower you eat, that's one less zucchini you'll have to eat later.

Someday, I want to try this recipe for a lemon pudding cake with calendula blossoms, it sounds delicious:

3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose unbleached flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 tablespood grated lemon rind
5 tablespoons lemon juice
3 egg yolks
1.5 cups milk
3 egg whites, at room temperature
1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/4 cup sugar
6 tablespoons calendula petals

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a 1.5 quart baking dish or 6 custard cups. Set into a slightly larger pan, at least 2 inches deep.

In a mixing bowl, combine the 3/4 cup sugar, flour, and salt. Add butter, lemon rind, and lemon juice; mix until thoroughly blended. Beat the egg yolks until thick and lemon-colored, then add milk and mix well. Combine with the lemon mixture, stirring until blended.

In anothr bowl, beat the egg whites until foamy, add cream of tartar and beat until soft peaks form. Add the 1/4 cup of sugar graducally and beat until stiff but not dry. Fold the whites and calendula petals into the lemon mixture, and spoon into the baking dish or custard cups. Pour 1 inch of hot water around them in the larger pan.

Bake until set and top is golden brown, about 35 minutes for custard cups or 45 minutes for baking dish. Remove from water and let cool on a rack. Serve warm or chilled with some whipped cream and additional calendula petals for garnish.


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## humble_pie

another wonderful recipe. I will certainly try this. I don't have any calendula, though. What would you think of the divinely fragrant philadelphus flowers, common name mock-orange, instead. They will be blossoming in a couple of weeks. I'll check out if they have any toxic properties.


----------



## brad

humble_pie said:


> I'll check out if they have any toxic properties.


Yes, I think that's important! I was saddened to learn that borage, for example, has been shown to be carcinogenic. I used to enjoy a borage flower or two on top of the juice I made each morning -- a blend of carrot, apple, and ginger juice, and I like to think (hope) that there were enough antioxidants in the juice to counterbalance any carcinogenic effects of the borage. 

In any event, having grown up in a house with two parents who smoked like chimneys, a few borage flowers seems to be inconsequential compared with 18 years of daily exposure to secondhand smoke. Sometimes I'm surprised I've lived this long; it makes me think of Issa's haiku that he composed on his fiftieth birthday:

From now on,
it's all clear profit,
every sky.​
I love Issa, he wrote some great haiku. Here are two of my favourites (as translated by Robert Hass):

Don't worry, spiders,
I keep house
casually​
All the time I pray to Buddha
I keep on
killing mosquitoes​
A few years ago I tried my hand at a few haiku-like poems, written in English, and one of them is appropriate here as it mentions food and trading:

Trade my fresh green beans
for your plump calamari
summer squid pro quo​
And this reminds me of one of my favourite food-related poems of all, a little gem by the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer (translated by May Swenson):

Black coffee at sidewalk cafés
with chairs and tables like gaudy insects.

It is a precious sip we intercept
filled with the same strength as Yes and No.

It is fetched out of gloomy kitchens
and looks into the sun without blinking.

In daylight a dot of wholesome black
quickly drained by the wan patron

Like those black drops of profundity
sometimes absorbed by the soul

that give us a healthy push: Go!
The courage to open our eyes.​


----------



## humble_pie

re borage i wouldn't give it too much of a thought. Its toxic alkaloid - pyrrolizidine - is common in many plants. Borage belongs to same family as forget-me-nots, comfrey, lungwort (william-and-mary) and viper's bugloss, which you'll find for sale in iranian grocery stores. All these plants have medicinal properties.

the same alkaloid, pyrrolizidine, is found in money gal's joe-pye weed (eupatorium) blooming so pinkly & beautifully in her backyard photo. First nations used joe-pye weed extensively for its medicinal properties; they didn't die from it.

the cancer theory stems from the controversy over comfrey. Some authorities hold that the evidence is too slight to prove a cancer link. I do believe that the liver-damaging potential from prolonged exposure to pyrrolizidine is real, so i stay away from these plants except for brief critical usages.

colts' foot is my favourite pyrrolizidine-containing plant. It will stop a lung infection, even a serious one, in a day or two. Probably does not work so well for everyone. Said to be effective also for asthma. Although its use is generally limited to an infusion daily for 2 weeks (because of the alkaloid) i've only ever tried it for a couple of days, about once every 2 years.

here's a good page on the so-called dangers of pyrrolizidine alkaloids. You can see that the odd flower or leaf won't harm at all. However, i wouldn't deliberately put borage into a drink that i consumed daily. Once or twice a year in a large bowl of punch at a party would be nice.

http://www.itmonline.org/arts/pas.htm


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## humble_pie

philadelphia/mock-orange flowers are not toxic but they are not medicinal either. Meh.

what i'm thinking might work as an alternative to calendula would be st john's wort flowers. Starting around 20th of june through early july. These are small yellow flowers dotted with tiny spots of dark pigment, which dissolve in an edible medium such as vodka into bright cherry red. The famous fragrance of st john's wort accompanies them, so the resulting scarlet liqueur is delicious indeed.

one would steep the flowers & buds in vodka for 2 or 3 days, just enough to start the maceration procedure. Mild heat & bright sunshine are necessary, so a half-cupful of flowers plus 2 or 3 tablespoons vodka in a small capped jar would be set outside in the sun a couple of days before making this pudding. The daring might try cointreau or triple-sec instead of vodka, or a tablespoon of each. Once the scarlet maceration was underway, flowers, buds, liquor & all would be added to the recipe. Decrease milk to compensate.


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> First nations used joe-pye weed extensively for its medicinal properties; they didn't die from it.


Aye, but they didn't have today's long life expectancies either. One of the reasons cancer is so prevalent today is that we live long enough to develop it. Apart from childhood cancers and a few other exceptions, cancers tend to emerge during a stage of life that most of our ancestors never reached.

But I agree that consuming these things in moderation is probably very low-risk. Medicinal plants are a fascinating subject; I spent some time helping a researcher collect data on bear-root (Ligusticum porterii) in Colorado; he had studied uses of plants in the Ligusticum genus by native cultures in the US, China, and New Zealand, and found that they all used it for the same purposes. Whenever I got a cut (my kitchen knife skills leave something to be desired), I would put a bit of ground Ligusticum root on it and the bleeding and pain would stop within a minute or so, like magic. And bears use Ligusticum to self-medicate, macerating the root and then rubbing it over their fur or on a wound.

I like the St-Johnswort flowers in vodka idea, if you try it you'll have to let us know how it goes.


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## humble_pie

what did the bears macerate their osha roots in.
??
clever bears.

speaking of macerations i have had st john's wort flowers, buds & leaves in vodka for years. Everything turns cherry-red & smells heavenly, out of this world. Occasionally, some years, i add a few lavender flowers & some lemon balm. The real process is different from how i'd do it for your lemon pudding; that was only a brief process that i more or less thought up out loud, here on the forum, so as to start the dissolving-out of the fragrant esters, the red pigments & the phytochemicals for the dessert. Because adding raw st-john's wort flowers to the pudding recipe for 30 or 40 minutes wouldn't be long enough to start unlocking the above.

in the real process, plant material remains in the vodka or brandy medium for half-a-year or longer.

how about this: fill a mason jar with fresh raspberries. Fill again with vodka. Seal, put away for 3 or 6 months. Add a strong sugar syrup to the raspberries when you eventually pour them over yoghurt or ice cream or into a bavaroise. Even more condensed: strain off the infused vodka after 6 months & simmer this with sugar into a syrup (you'll lose the alcohol,) then pour back onto raspberries & refrigerate.

my sister makes a dynamite blackberry cordial. Fresh blackberries from the woods & fields, vodka. After 6 months, simmer everything with sugar. Strain, add that mega-proof 90% grain alcohol, bottle.


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> what did the bears macerate their osha roots in..


Haha, I meant masticate, not macerate! My brain tends to short-circuit after a long day at work.

They chew up the root and spit it out, then rub the masticated root on their fur. The weird thing is that my friend even tried giving some Ligusticum to a polar bear in a zoo; these bears have never seen bear root in their lives since it doesn't grow in the Arctic, and yet this bear did the same thing that other bears do with it. It must be a behaviour that goes way back in the bear family tree. ;-)


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## humble_pie

_haiku for a zen investor_

markets creep down
on little cat feet
they land on all fours.

(signed)
carl


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> _haiku for a zen investor_
> l


Nice! And that reminds me, if you see any good recipes for cat, please post 'em here. My stepdaughter's cat has been testing the limits of our patience (and our sleep requirements) for the past five months.


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## brad

It was the first weekend of summery weather here, so we went with the flow and ate mostly Mexican food. Last night I made tacos -- not the standard American hard-shell tacos but real Mexican tacos with small, soft corn tortillas filled in this case with shredded boneless chicken thighs (that I cooked by simmering with onion, garlic, a dried Ancho chile and cumin) topped with salsa fresca (tomatoes, onion, garlic, fresh hot chile, lime juice, cilantro), some fresh guacamole, and cheese. They were delicious and there was enough left over that we'll be eating them again tonight. I sometimes make my own tortillas (I have a tortilla press), but it's a lot of work and we now have a great supplier of fresh corn tortillas in my city so I bought a bag.

But the real star of the weekend was this roasted sweet potato salad with black beans and chile dressing. We tend to live on salads in the summer; this one requires some cooking that would heat up the kitchen, so in mid-summer I'd probably make this in the morning and let it sit in the fridge til an hour or so before supper.

I'm not sure who this recipe came from; I didn't write that down. Omit the cilantro if you're one of those unfortunates whose genes have decreed that cilantro tastes like soap.

4 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
1 large onion, preferably red, chopped
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 to 2 tablespoons minced fresh hot chile (e.g., jalapeño)*
1 clove garlic, peeled
Juice of 2 limes
2 cups cooked black beans, drained (canned are fine)
1 red or yellow bell pepper, seeded and finely diced
1 cup chopped fresh cilantro.

*Test your chiles first; 1 tablespoon may be too much if your chiles are really hot! 

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Put sweet potatoes and onions on a large baking sheet an ddrizzle with a tablespoon of the oil; toss to coat and spread out in a single layer. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and roast, turning occasionally, until the potatoes begin to brown on the corners and are just tender inside, about 30-40 minutes. Remove from oven and keep on pan until ready to mix with dressing.

2. Put chiles in a blender or mini food processor along with the garlic, lime juice, remaining olive oil, and a little salt and pepper. Process until blended.

3. Put the warm vegetables in a large bowl with the black beans and bell pepper, toss with the dressing and cilantro. Serve warm or let cool to room temperature.


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## MoneyGal

Brad - that sounds lovely. I am making some salads for the week this morning - so far made a baba ganoush (roasted the eggplants yesterday) and a non-mayo cabbage and red onion slaw. 

A friend is coming over today for my Chutney Monday celebrations - I'm sure I posted earlier what we're making: an onion marmalade, a rhubarb chutney and a red pepper and lemongrass relish. I used up my lemongrass last week making tom yum soup; I have to run off to Chinatown (always open!) to get some before she arrives. 

Hottest day of the year so far, there's actually a heat alert in Toronto! Great day to be simmering chutneys for hours.


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## brad

MoneyGal said:


> Hottest day of the year so far, there's actually a heat alert in Toronto! Great day to be simmering chutneys for hours.


The chutneys sound worth it, though.

It's hot here too and forecasted to get up to 32 tomorrow and Tuesday. No fun for me as my un-airconditioned home office is on the second floor, so when it's 32 outside it's generally about 35-36 here at my desk and I dissolve into a puddle of protoplasm. I may have to take my laptop and work in the basement!


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## CanadianCapitalist

I tried a Greek Salad recipe over the weekend. I skipped the onions and lemon and added an extra dash of black pepper for some extra bite.

Greek Salad

Quite appropriate considering the Greek contributions in all the troubles in the markets these days...


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## humble_pie

thank you brad, pretty terrific recipe. Once i prepared roasted sweet potatoes in chunks for a lunch for 30; we used quite a bit more olive oil & also sapoudré the potatoes with ground cumin & hot curry powder & also stirred up & recoated the chunks with the oil a few times during the roasting. The result was wildly popular. Somehow i've never done it since. Now this recipe is a vast improvement, so a definite incentive there.

re the cat did we not already do a thread about this poor creature. Did the spaying not help the wretched animal.

hélas there are no easy solutions.

it seems to boil down to learn to love her or send her on her way. There's little doubt in my mind which path you'll eventually choose. For both.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> re the cat did we not already do a thread about this poor creature. Did the spaying not help the wretched animal.


Spaying stopped Princesse from peeing on everything in the house, but her other habits have remained the same. Elle porte bien son nom, we are clearly her servants and she has aspirations to the throne. Fortunately she's only here for one more month and she and her owner will depart for the suburbs. One small part of me will miss her when she's gone -- the light thump at pre-dawn when she jumps on the bed and sniffs our noses to verify that we're still breathing (presumably if we were dead she would proceed to eat us instead of her cat food), the incredible six-foot-in-the-air Olympic jumps she makes when I throw her toy mouse across the room, the attack-and-disembowlment routine that she perfoms daily to the poor abused kitchen throw rug. But overall I'll be really, really happy to see her go.


----------



## brad

This weekend was really busy and I didn't have a chance to do much cooking; I did make a nice dish last night of fish steamed over artichoke hearts, red pepper, onion, and other veggies, and tonight I'm making a Greek pasta salad.

Last week's heatwave made me think of summer, and that always makes me think of this incredibly easy-to-make sorbet that has become a frequent dessert in our household. The recipe comes from Mark Bittman; he calls it "Super-Simple Sorbet" and it is exactly that. No need for an ice-cream maker; you make this in a regular food processor. Start to finish it takes about five to six minutes. Despite (or maybe because of) its simplicity, it is as good or better than any conventional sorbet you'll find anywhere.

1 pound frozen strawberries or other fruit (I've made it with frozen rasberries, blueberries, blackberries, mixed berries, as well as strawberries)

1/2 cup plain yogurt

1/4 cup sugar, more or less (to taste)

1. Put all the ingredients in a food processor along with a couple of tablespoons of water. Process until just puréed and creamy, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed. Add a little more water if necessary to help the fruit break down. Don't over-process, otherwise you'll have a smoothie.

2. Serve immediately or freeze it for later. If serving later, allow it to soften at room temperature for 10-15 minutes.


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## humble_pie

sorbet sounds amazing. Will try. Right now i don't have a blender that works & am wondering if you could rec a machine with powerful motor that would be happy grinding up lots of nuts, seeds, coffee beans, froz berries, braised meat chunks for pate and so on.

i buy em but the motors fail regularly. Last one went out melodramatically in a cloud of white smoke, scorching heat & smell of burning engine parts. 

would be grateful if you have a suggestion. Maybe it's necessary to have 2 appliances.


----------



## HaroldCrump

humble_pie said:


> sorbet sounds amazing. Will try. Right now i don't have a blender that works & am wondering if you could rec a machine with powerful motor that would be happy grinding up lots of nuts, seeds, coffee beans, froz berries, braised meat chunks for pate and so on.
> 
> i buy em but the motors fail regularly. Last one went out melodramatically in a cloud of white smoke, scorching heat & smell of burning engine parts.


Been my experience as well.
I figures that the manufacturers consciously design these appliances to last only a couple of years or so.
this is stuff you buy once and expect to use for years.
not good business for them.

We have three appliances in our household:
A coffee grinder for spices, beans, berries, etc.
A mixer/grinder Hamilton Beach brand. With this appliance, I realized that you have to go slightly higher end to get good quality and make it last more than a year.
Even if you don't need all the features and options, the higher end ones are more durable.
These things range from $19.99 to $59.99
The stuff in the $39.99 or $49.99 range is more durable and better quality.

We also have a more powerful grinder made by an offshore company called Sumeet.
We use this for more heavy duty grinding that the Hamilton Beach can't handle.
They have a retail outlet in Markham (north east of Toronto) and that is the only way to get this item.
This stuff is expensive but very useful, solid and durable.
Check out:
http://www.sumeet.net/Models/ModelsNew.htm
Location & contact:
http://www.sumeet.net/Sumeet Outlets/officesnew.htm#NORTH AMERICA

The only pain is when do you need parts or service, these guys are the only ones that can do it.

HTH


----------



## brad

I do find that a food processor works better than a blender for certain things. For example, when I had a garden I always made a huge batch of pesto to freeze for the winter, and my blender could never handle it; it would overheat and start to smoke. But making pesto is a cinch for a food processor. Purists insist that you use a mortar and pestle to make pesto, but when you're making quarts of the stuff you're grateful for a machine.

We have an ancient cheap blender but I almost never use it; instead I have an immersion blender that I use for soups and for making mayonnaise, aioli, and emulsified salad dressings. I use the food processor for just about everything else. I also have a hand-cranked Foley Food Mill that I mainly use to make applesauce; it's perfect for that as you can simply quarter the apples and cook them with their skins and cores, then just put them through the mill to make sauce.

My food processor is about 10 years old and was a cheap Hamilton Beach model; I keep waiting for it to die so I can buy something a bit more robust, but it goes on and on.

Long story short, I don't really have a good recommendation for a standard blender. I remember seeing a website where a guy showed all the things he could process with his super-rugged blender -- screws and nails, an iPod, you name it, he's blended it, but I can't remember the name of the model.


----------



## humble_pie

thank you harold & brad.

somewhere in the basement i have my grandmother's meat grinder. It was enormous, i think made for a butcher shop. You clamped it onto the side of a table with a huge C-clamp, dropped stuff into the funnel on the top & cranked by hand. As brad says, it could grind up anything. Phones, nails, bricks, lego blocks, model trains.


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## MoneyGal

Humble - that's what I use. I also have a grinder attachment for my KitchenAid mixer. I've seen the Sumeet mixers in my neighbourhood - I live in Toronto's "Little India" and I've used them while living in India. And when I made raw food for my cats, I used a professional meat grinder. Phew!

You can sometimes see the old-fashioned grinders at garage sales and thrift shops.


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## brad

There are some high-end blenders from Cuisinart here:

http://citychef.ca/xcart/customer/home.php?cat=304

I've got a few Cusinart appliances, and while they're expensive I've found them to be well-designed, well-made, and utterly reliable. 

One word of warning: avoid Viking. They make good stoves for commercial kitchens, but if my experience with their smaller appliances is any indication, quality is an issue. My stick blender was made by Viking and honestly it's a shoddy piece of junk.


----------



## MoneyGal

I have a Cuisinart blender, purchased secondhand from Craigslist ($25!) and still going strong 4 years later. We make smoothies most every morning because someone (me) is pretty out-of-it first thing.


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## CanadianCapitalist

HaroldCrump said:


> We also have a more powerful grinder made by an offshore company called Sumeet.
> We use this for more heavy duty grinding that the Hamilton Beach can't handle.
> They have a retail outlet in Markham (north east of Toronto) and that is the only way to get this item.
> This stuff is expensive but very useful, solid and durable.
> Check out:
> http://www.sumeet.net/Models/ModelsNew.htm
> Location & contact:
> http://www.sumeet.net/Sumeet Outlets/officesnew.htm#NORTH AMERICA
> 
> The only pain is when do you need parts or service, these guys are the only ones that can do it.
> 
> HTH


We went through a lot of food processors and blenders before buying a dry grinder similar to this one. We couldn't find a Sumeet here (my Mom still owns one she purchased in the 70s) so we bought something similar. It's still going strong. If you grind dried spices or roasted beans this is a must. We also have an immersion blender for making soups.


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## brad

I am a big fan of mortar-and-pestle for grinding spices. It doesn't work very well for hard stuff like cardamom seeds and asafoetida, or for coriander seeds or hot dried peppers, but for most seeds like cumin, allspice, pepper, etc. it's great and you get that wonderful smell rising from the mortar.

I repurposed my old coffee grinder to be a spice grinder for the stuff that doesn't work in the mortar and pestle.

We now grind coffee in an old-fashioned hand grinder that I got from Green Beanery in Toronto -- I don't think it makes any difference in taste, but I'm that much more awake after exerting the effort to grind the beans.


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## MoneyGal

brad said:


> We now grind coffee in an old-fashioned hand grinder that I got from Green Beanery in Toronto -- I don't think it makes any difference in taste, but I'm that much more awake after exerting the effort to grind the beans.


With coffee, for me, it's _aaaaaaaaaalll_ about the ritual. Which is why I do not have a drip coffee maker (we actually use an Aeropress). I need something hands-on.


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## Addy

We have a vitamix. I didn't like it when my husband first showed me, I thought it was a "as seen on tv" garbage appliance. But lo and behold, it's freaking amazing and I love it.

I had an old food processer that I bought at a garage sale for $5, it was cumbersome but did the trick. I freecycled it a few years ago and now miss having a food processer. I have an immersion blender, a Kitchenaide stand mixer, the Vitamix but still, some things are easiest in a food processer.

Brad do you find the pesto stays reasonably fresh over the winter? I'm considering growing basil like nuts this summer and freezing basil in ice cube tray sized blocks but I'm a bit worried about the taste being off after a few months.


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## MoneyGal

Addy I find that omitting the nuts and cheese and making sure there is sufficient oil (as in, not just freezing blocks of basil) is very successful in freezing pesto over the winter. That is, mix oil and basil only - add nuts (if you use them) and cheese later, when you are making the final dish.


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## humble_pie

_" ... we bought something similar. It's still going strong. If you grind dried spices or roasted beans this is a must."_

but CC what is "it" i do beg of you. "It" is what i need. If "it" would be a machine that's nationally sold, unlike the sumeet, then i could get it.

i was looking at reviews of coffee grinders on the canadian tire website & most of the well-known brands, even the expensive brands, had at least one reviewer complaining that machine left some beans untouched & unground, or that machine was prone to overhearting & failure. So that was discouraging.


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## brad

MoneyGal said:


> That is, mix oil and basil only - add nuts (if you use them) and cheese later, when you are making the final dish.


Ditto on that. I actually find that the nuts (I use the traditional pine nuts) are fine in the freezer as well so the only thing I omit when making pesto to freeze is the cheese. 

I've made pesto in ice cube trays and it works well; just pop the cubes out when frozen and put them in a freezer bag. I found, though, that those ice cube trays couldn't be used for anything else after -- no matter how well I washed them, the plastic had absorbed enough garlic and basil that subsequent ice cubes had a distinctively pesto flavour!


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## MoneyGal

I'm still not Brad, but HP you may find success by browsing Cayne's Super Housewares (in north Toronto, but they ship everywhere and have outstanding customer service). Try this, for example.


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> i was looking at reviews of coffee grinders on the canadian tire website & most of the well-known brands, even the expensive brands, had at least one reviewer complaining that machine left some beans untouched & unground, or that machine was prone to overhearting & failure.


Once again, Cuisinart to the rescue -- I bought my relatively cheap ($25-ish, if I remember right) electric coffee grinder from Cuisinart and it has lasted me a good six years or more. Typically the problems are that the blades eventually break; grinding coffee is hard work.

The cheaper grinders don't actually "grind" the beans but rather chop them at very high speed. Coffee snobs will tell you that this harms the flavour because the high speed generates heat and can burn your beans, and chopped beans don't have as much surface area exposed as true burr-ground beans.

Don't believe it. I've done side-by-side tests with my electric coffee chopper and the hand-cranked Peugeot burr grinder that I use now, and with a French press coffee maker I could not detect any difference. Maybe my taste buds aren't refined enough, but at any rate if there is a difference it's miniscule.


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## CanadianCapitalist

humble_pie said:


> but CC what is "it" i do beg of you. "It" is what i need. If "it" would be a machine that's nationally sold, unlike the sumeet, then i could get it.
> 
> i was looking at reviews of coffee grinders on the canadian tire website & most of the well-known brands, even the expensive brands, had at least one reviewer complaining that machine left some beans untouched & unground, or that machine was prone to overhearting & failure. So that was discouraging.


It's called Preethi Pro. We purchased it at the local Indian Grocery store. Pretty much any Indian store carries a dry grinder or can order it for you.


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## humble_pie

the internet is endlessly amazing.

12 hours ago all i knew is that quite a few people had blenders that burned out if so much as an ice cube fell into them.

now i've been browsing 2 websites - sumeet & preethi - that have robust machines designed for real grinding.

all i have to do is recover from sticker shock. They are about 200 bucks.

ha ! as racer used to say. Now one of these days i'll post my recipe for what to do with chopped dried avocado seeds. They get hard as wood. Like little wooden dice. You have to grind them.

no wonder the osterizers kept on passing out.


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## Berubeland

This is the blender you need.....

http://www.blendtec.com/willitblend/videos.aspx?type=unsafe&video=ipad


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## MoneyGal

Holy tamale. I just made the sweet potato and black bean salad that Brad posted (much) earlier - it was DIVINE. My kids and husband and I all sat and ate on our front steps in the sunshine. Thanks so much for the recipe!

Today I made some applesauce and oatmeal muffins (and roasted the sweet potatoes and onions at the same time) and I'm making tofu (for the vegetarians) and chicken fajitas for dinner tonight, along with a low-key lime and roasted peanut coleslaw. If we can find ripe avocados, those go on the plate as well. And probably some roasted corn.


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## brad

MoneyGal said:


> Holy tamale. I just made the sweet potato and black bean salad that Brad posted (much) earlier - it was DIVINE.


That was our feeling too -- I'll be making it again soon!

Roasting does amazing things for vegetables: one of my favorite ways to eat asparagus is to roast it, topped with some bread crumbs and parmesan.

Your fajitas sound delicious.

Monday's looking very busy for me so I'm going to post my recipe for the week now; I made this dish on Thursday night and it was a big hit. It's a room-temperature dish (it could be thought of as quick-pickled cauliflower), so it's good for warm or hot summer days.

This is from Martha Rose Shulman's Mediterannean Harvest book; she has a whole chapter on "little foods, starters, snacks, meze, and more," and there are some real treaures to be found there -- we could happily live on meals made from combinations of these simple appetizers and meze.

Cauliflower with Capers, Parsley, and Vinegar

1 large cauliflower broken into florets
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1/4 cup capers, drained and rinsed
3 tablespoons vinegar (the recipe calls for white wine vinegar or champagne vinegar, but I used red wine vinegar and that worked just fine)
7 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil, add some salt and the cauliflower. Cook for 5-8 minutes until just tender. Transfer to a bowl of cold water to stop the cooking, then drain.

2. In a large bowl, mix the garlic, parsley, capers, vinegar, and olive oil. Season to taste with sale and pepper. Add the cauliflower and toss together. Let marinate, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes or more before serving.

This is good with some crusty bread to soak up the marinade.


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## Sampson

brad said:


> Coffee snobs will tell you that this harms the flavour because the high speed generates heat and can burn your beans, and chopped beans don't have as much surface area exposed as true burr-ground beans.
> 
> Don't believe it. I've done side-by-side tests with my electric coffee chopper and the hand-cranked Peugeot burr grinder that I use now, and with a French press coffee maker I could not detect any difference. Maybe my taste buds aren't refined enough, but at any rate if there is a difference it's miniscule.


This largely depends on your extraction method though. Semi-auto expresso machines are EXTREMELY sensitive to the grind.

Not that this necessarily results in a bad coffee/espresso, but to get consistency, you MUST have a quality burr grinder.


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## brad

Sampson said:


> This largely depends on your extraction method though. Semi-auto expresso machines are EXTREMELY sensitive to the grind.


I believe it -- we have tried various drip methods over the years and always come back to French press for regular coffee so my chopper-versus-grinder experiments were with French press. I also suspect any flavour differences might become more apparent with lighter roasts -- my girlfriend likes dark-roast coffee, which means the roast tends to overpower the bean's intrinsic taste.

But for our coffee and our method, we've been unable to detect any difference in flavour between our coffee made with chopped beans versus burr-ground.


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## brad

I'm going to be traveling on Monday, so am posting my recipe for the week now.

I've been very busy at work lately, which means not much time for experimenting with new recipes. But I did make a very successful "tabbouleh on steroids" the other day, which consisted of chick peas, bulgur, scallions, mint, parsley, a little cinnamon, some grape tomatoes, lemon juice, and olive oil. Yum. I also decided to try deviating from my usual no-knead bread recipe to make a more traditional loaf using an Italian "biga" starter that rises for 24 hours and is then used to make the full loaf as you would with sourdough starter -- the result was no better than my standard bread but a lot more work. So I'll go back to my tried and true virtually-no-effort bread.

But the recipe I want to share this week is for Socca, which I got hooked on a few years back when Mark Bittman published his recipe for it. It's a kind of chickpea-flour pancake traditionally made in Provence and Liguria, and it is extraordinarily delicious. I make it once every month or two, it's an easy lunch or appetizer and is very popular with guests. I find it's good with a few olives on the side, and quite good dipped into aioli or hummous.

Socca (or Farinata, as it's called in Liguria)

1.5 cups lukewarm water
1 cup chickpea flour (you can find it at most health food stores; it can go rancid after awhile, so keep it in the fridge in summer)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon or more fresh-ground pepper
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Optional, but recommended:
1/2 small yellow onion, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary leaves

Pour the warm water into a mixing bowl and pour the chickpea flour in slowly, mixing to avoid lumps. Whisk the chickpea flour, water, salt, pepper, and 2 tablespoons of the oil together and then let the bowl sit covered for 30 minutes or as long as 12 hours.

Put a cast-iron or other ovenproof skillet deep enough to hold the batter into the oven and heat the oven to 450. When the oven reaches temperature, pull out the preheated skillet and put another 2 tablespoons of the olive oil into it. Stir the onion and rosemary into the batter, if you're using them, and pour the batter into the skillet.

Bake for about 15 minutes, until the socca is firm and the edges are set.

Heat the broiler, and brush the top of the socca with a little more oil if you like.

Broil the socca for just a minute or two, just long enough to create some brown spots here and there.

Cut into wedges and serve hot or warm.


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## humble_pie

what, no yeast, baking powder, soda or even a hit of wit to leaven this thing ?

i'm no slave to recipes, but i might follow this one to the dot. To see how it avoids coming out baked play-doh. Thought i'd check first, though. Nothing left out ? just flour & water ?


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> what, no yeast, baking powder, soda or even a hit of wit to leaven this thing ?


That's right! It doesn't rise, but it's not like play-doh either -- I think the secret is in the chickpea flour itself.

When you think of it, traditional Breton buckwheat crêpes don't have any leavening agent either -- this is in the same spirit although these are thicker than galettes.

On Saturday night before I left for a two-day trip, I made this receipe from Martha Rose Shulman, which was truly wonderful -- a fennel-and-leek gratin with feta:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/health/nutrition/07recipehealth.html?ref=nutrition


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## brad

I feel like I'm becoming a shill for Martha Rose Shulman, but it's just that I have been going deep into her repertoire of recipes lately and so far I've rarely been disappointed. Coincidentally, today's NY Times has a bunch of nice-looking receipes from her using "exotic" grains, including a couple of tempting variations on socca:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/around-the-world-with-exotic-grains/

I'll have to try some of these.

The menu for this weekend is looking more conventional: a Mexican chili tomorrow night accompanied by homemade corn bread; salmon done some way or another on Sunday night, probably accompanied by asparagus since it's still in season and maybe some fresh salad from the farmer's market, finished off with strawberries for dessert.

Now that strawberries are in full swing, here's my favourite way to eat them; it makes them taste like strawberries, only more so:

Take a bowl of strawberries and drizzle one teaspoon of maple syrup over them, followed by one teaspoon of good Balsamic vinegar. Stir to mix and let sit for a few minutes before eating. That's it!


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## humble_pie

somehow my greek greengrocer delivered 3 heads of locally-grown fresh green frilly leaf lettuce yesterday, each one the size of a laundry basket.

so i am improvising a dish that will cook at least one of them. I already have barely-sprouted brown quinoa waiting. And i have some caramelized onions defrosting from the frig.

i am thinking something with beaten eggs, wilt the lettuce & combine with above plus shredded cheese, bake in slow oven for however long it takes, maybe 35-45 minutes. Maybe separate the eggs first & beat egg whites stiff for a kind of soufflé.

brad don't turn up your nose i am an outlaw cook and a rogue investor.


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## Sampson

humble_pie said:


> i have some caramelized onions defrosting from the frig.


Do these freeze well? I've never heard of anyone doing this before but I imagine it would be huge time-saver.


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## humble_pie

yes, now that i'm defrosting the onions i remembered that i had cooked them with chopped fresh walnuts. So today they are pretty tasty.

the idea of cooking the extra lettuce in a combination dish was to be able to freeze the extra lettuce.

it's wonderful what canada manages to grow during her short, precious summer season.


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> brad don't turn up your nose i am an outlaw cook and a rogue investor.


Believe me, if anything I'm jealous! I wish I could be more of an improvisatory cook and admire those who can do it; I have a friend who can look in the fridge and pantry, see what's there, and make an amazing meal out of it simply by following his intuition. But when I try that it usually ends up being edible-but-forgettable. So I'm a follower, not a leader when it comes to cooking.


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## humble_pie

overheard in the backyard garden, from the neighbour's teenagers & friends who are sitting on the deck in the gathering dark.

the parents haven't been home for a week. Last night the teens threw a party outside. Noisy, but all behaved very well. Nobody screaming, nobody running around drunk, no fights. Even the music was pretty good. Loud, insistent, but intriguing. Til 3 am.

no sign of the teens all day, of course. As darkness fell they emerged onto their deck. I'm making pesto & went outside to get more basil. Snippet of conversation from young male floats over the fence.

" ... like on thursday i got my braces off ... "


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## brad

One of my high-school friends decided to throw a party when his parents were away, and he got the bright idea of having the party in the pool -- but without the water. That way if people got sick or spilled things on the floor, he could just wash it all down the pool drain and there would be no evidence. So he drained the pool, had his party, and filled the pool again; his parents came home a few days later and had no idea what had happened.

Until they got the water bill.

***

Last night our salmon-cooked-one-way-or-another turned out to be on the grill, since the forecasted thunderstorms never materialized. The salmon itself couldn't have been simpler: rinsed and dried, then the skin scored in a cross-hatch pattern with a knife, the entire piece of salmon rubbed all over with a generous amount of olive oil, and then placed skin-side down on the grill with the cover down until cooked, which took about 15 minutes.

It was accompanied by brown rice and some gingery greens -- young kale leaves fresh from the market steamed and then sauteed with garlic and ginger, with some soy sauce and dark sesame oil added at the last minute.

All accompanied by a bottle of cheap-but-good California white; it made for a lovely evening's meal out on our porch. 

My grill is about 15 years old and uses charcoal; the grill rack has two positions: 1. too close to the coals, and 2. too far from the coals. I use one of those chimney starters to get the coals going and it generates a lot of smoke at the beginning. One night in January I decided to fire up the grill for a meal to celebrate my birthday. It was about 20 below zero outside, and when my neighbours smelled the smoke they called the fire department, finding it inconceivable that anyone might be outside grilling on a cold night in winter.


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## humble_pie

it's the 21st of june. Midsummer night's eve. Time of extremes. Fire n water. Bonfires. Make a wish.

in other pyrotechnics, europe is up, asia was up, futures are strongly up. and. gold. is. up.


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## brad

I've got a big deadline on Monday that will have me working all weekend with little time for cooking, so once again I'm turning "recipe Monday" into "recipe Friday."

A few nights ago I went back to make one of my favourite summer salads: Ginger cucumber salad with scallops, recipe courtesy of Mark Bittman. This might actually have been the first Bittman recipe I tried; it appeared in the NY Times in 2004. I've made it at least once every summer since then -- it's cool and refreshing, and very tasty. This salad alone will serve as supper on a hot evening.

1.5 pounds cucumber, preferably the long thin English one
1/2 cup rice vinegar
2-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and minced or grated
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons neutral oil such as grapeseed
1 pound of sea scallops (you could substitute peeled shrimp)
1 medium onion, sliced
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
2 tablespoons sesame seeds

1. With English cucumbers, peel and slice thinly, preferably with a mandoline. With thick cucumbers, peel them and cut in half lengthwise; scoop out the seeds before slicing

2. Mix vinegar, ginger, sugar, and salt, and toss with the cukes. Let stand 30 to 60 minutes.

3. Just before serving, drain the cucumbers (I put them in a strainer). Put 2 tablespoons oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Wait a minute, then add the scallops or shrimp. Sear for about 2 minutes per side, then remove to a plate. Turn heat down to medium, add the remaining oil, onions, and turmeric. Cook until the onions soften, about 5 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, toast the sesame seeds in a dry skillet over medium heat until they are browned and fragrant, 3 to 5 minutes. Stir the onions into the cucumbers, top with scallops or shrimp, garnish with the sesame seeds, and serve.


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## humble_pie

brad i miss my monday premarket recipe.

recipes on monday morning have snap crackle & pop to launch the financial week. Far more appetizing than index futures or overseas markets.

but recipes any other day of the week are, well, just recipes.


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## brad

Sorry about that! 

In fact, despite working 25 hours this weekend, I found time to make a few meals and try out some new things, two of which are worth sharing here:

For supper Friday night I made a really delicious and easy dish of pasta, tomato sauce, sauteed eggplant, and oregano. This is another one from Martha Rose Shulman, and it reminded me that there's very little reason to buy tomato sauce when you can make a delicious simple sauce yourself from canned tomatoes in about 20 minutes.

The sauce: 

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 28-oz can of diced tomatoes (or whole tomatoes, dice 'em yourself), with the juice
1/4 teaspoon sugar
salt to taste
A few sprigs of fresh basil, and 2 tablespoons of slivered fresh basil

Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat and add the garlic. As soon as it begins to color, add the tomatoes, sugar, salt, and basil sprigs. When the tomatoes begin to bubble, reduce the heat to medium and cook, stirring often until thick and fragrant, about 20 minutes. Stir in the slivered basil and cook another couple of minutes. Add some hot pepper flakes if you like your sauce spicy.

While the sauce was cooking, I prepared the eggplants and pasta:

1 pound small eggplants
salt
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 pound tagliattelle or fettuccine
1-2 tablespoons fresh oregano
1/2 cup freshly grated Pecorino, ricotta salata, or Parmesan (I used ricotta salata, which is a hard cheese, not like the soft ricotta that you would use in lasagne)

Trim the ends of the eggplants and cut into 1-inch-thick wedges. Sprinkle with salt and allow to sweat for 20 minutes or so; pat dry.

Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the olive oil, and when it begins to ripple, add the eggplant. Cook until the edges are browned and the eggplant is softened, about 10 minutes. Add 1.5 cups of tomato sauce, stir, and heat through.

Cook the pasta until al dente*; drain and toss with the tomato sauce-eggplant mixture, add the oregano leaves, and garnish with the grated cheese.

*I've noticed that, if the indications on packages of dried pasta imported from Italy are accurate, Italians consider "al dente" to mean "hard as wood." The pasta I was using instructed me to cook it for just one minute; I tasted it at that point and practically broke my tooth trying to bite through it -- maybe that's what they mean by "al dente." It needed another six minutes or more before it was soft but still had the nice bite that I associate with my version of al dente.

The other meal I cooked was last night: panini with grilled zucchini slices (cut on the diagonal, rubbed with olive oil, and cooked on the panini grill for a couple of minutes), goat cheese spread on both slices of the bread, and a sprinkling of mint leaves. Simple but delightful.


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## CanadianCapitalist

brad said:


> This is another one from Martha Rose Shulman, and it reminded me that there's very little reason to buy tomato sauce when you can make a delicious simple sauce yourself from canned tomatoes in about 20 minutes.
> 
> The sauce:
> 
> 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
> 3 garlic cloves, minced
> 1 28-oz can of diced tomatoes (or whole tomatoes, dice 'em yourself), with the juice
> 1/4 teaspoon sugar
> salt to taste
> A few sprigs of fresh basil, and 2 tablespoons of slivered fresh basil


I agree. The pasta sauce from store shelves is just vile. We just buy canned roma tomatoes in tomato juice (with nothing else added), go easy on the salt, add a dash of chilli flakes and skip the sugar and end with excellent tomato sauce.


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## MoneyGal

My elderly neighbour wheels over several child's-wagon-fuls of tomatoes several times a summer. I process them using an Italian tomato mill and don't even have to buy tomatoes! 

(He also has many square feet of raspberries which he "doesn't like" and which my kids pick clean...not to mention the cucumbers, pole beans, eggplant, zucchini - actually, let's really not mention the zucchini...)

Editing to say this is a tangible return on my investment in the social capital of my neighbourhood.


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## brad

MoneyGal said:


> My elderly neighbour wheels over several child's-wagon-fuls of tomatoes several times a summer.


I used to have a neighbour like that myself and I did the same thing -- I made gallons of tomato sauce that I froze for use in winter. But even the quick recipe I gave above using canned tomatoes is better than just about any sauce you can buy, and for mainly one reason: fresh versus rancid garlic. Most of the commercial tomato sauce I've tried, even some of the "gourmet" varieties from President's Choice, have a rancid garlic flavour that is very off-putting.

My tomato-bearing neighbour was an elderly Italian woman who gave me tomatoes in summer in exchange for me shoveling her steps and walkway in winter. There's a tradition in Italy of rewarding hard work with a nip of alcohol, so whenever there was an overnight snowstorm, I had to be prepared: first I'd shovel my landlord's driveway and steps, and he'd wave me inside when I was done to have a small glass of his home-made grappa, and then I'd go next door to shovel my neighbour's steps and walkway, after which she would wave me inside to have a small glass of cognac. All this at 7:30 in the morning, after which I would have to go to work!


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## MoneyGal

uuuuuuuuuugh people are always trying to give me that weird rancid garlic in oil (that you buy in big jars, apparently). 

I was just saying to my husband yesterday that I seem to always have "pregnancy tastebuds" and "pregnancy olfactory sense" because I am hardwired to protect myself and my offspring from that rancid garlic smell and taste.  (Despite my youngest child now being almost six!)


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## humble_pie

hmmnn i never thought about rancid garlic.

but if you mean those peeled garlic cloves in jars of olive oil that they sell in farmers' markets & other places, nearly all herb practitioners would warn against these because the oil does not kill microbes. Now if you marinated the cloves in vodka would be a different story, the vodka would render the solution sterile.

or marinate in gin. Perhaps an aged garlic martini before lunch w brad's pasta n homemade tomato sauce. Following the dutiful early morning grappas & cognacs. Whee. And monday is only half over.


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> or marinate in gin. Perhaps an aged garlic martini before lunch w brad's pasta n homemade tomato sauce. Following the dutiful early morning grappas & cognacs. Whee. And monday is only half over.


My head is spinning just thinking about it.

Apparently the already peeled cloves of garlic packed in nothing but air in big jars are not bad. I've never actually seen those, but some supermarkets in the States carry them. Good for making chicken with 40 cloves of garlic, for example. I don't mind peeling garlic, but 40 cloves is a chore.

One of our favourite wintertime soups is a simple garlic broth, infused with saffron and a bit of pimentón, ladled over toast and a poached egg. Just inhaling the aroma is enough to nourish you.


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## MoneyGal

Brad! You just pop the whole heads in...no need to peel each clove. 

Humble: you are describing pickled garlic. And also garlic which gets YOU pickled. 

I need to make pickled watermelon rind...I was just contemplating that on my way to work this morning.


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## brad

MoneyGal said:


> Brad! You just pop the whole heads in...no need to peel each clove.


Clearly I have never made chicken with 40 cloves of garlic ;-)

I may have mentioned this before, but I went to university with a German kid who read somewhere that eating a clove of raw garlic every day was good for your health. Except he mis-translated "clove" to mean an entire head. You could walk into the library and instantly know whether he was there just by sniffing. Someone (probably a girl he was aspiring to go out with) eventually clued him in.


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## brad

Back in the 1980s when I was living near Boston, I had two friends named Chris and Chris. They were a couple, and to differentiate between them people would refer to "Mr. Chris" and "Miss Chris." One evening Chris and Chris invited me to a small dinner party they were having at their house. When I arrived, there was just one other guest, a friend of theirs from Colorado who was also named Chris. The one remaining guest showed up a little later, and she had only met one of the Chrises before, so introductions were made all around: "Hi, I'm Chris." "Hi, I'm Chris." When it came to me, I said, "hi, my name is Brad, but if it's easier you can just call me Chris."

Anyway, this recipe came from the Chris who was visiting from Colorado. It's a sort of Thai-influenced chicken salad, fairly bursting with flavour. It serves four; it's good on a bed of lettuce or cooked brown rice that's been chilled in the fridge. it's also good in pita breads for lunch.

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cooked and cut in strips.
1 medium red onion, chopped
3 scallions sliced with tops
3 slices of ginger, minced
4 tablespoons (or more) cilantro

Toss the ingredients above with the Thai vinaigrette below, and sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds.

Thai Vinaigrette

1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons hot chili oil
1 large clove of garlic, minced
1/2 cup rice vinegar (only use rice vinegar; 1/2 cup of wine or sherry vinegar in this recipe will be acidic enough to make your eyelids curl)
3 tablespoons tamari
2 dried hot red peppers

Combine the oils and garlic. Whisk in vinegar and tamari. Add the peppers. Dressing will get hotter the longer it stands.


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## humble_pie

what a wonderful recipe for a serious heat wave. It's amazing how hot spicy foods & cold beer go down so well when it swelters.

but the eyelids curl just looking at that vinaigrette recipe.

could i please ask about the 2 dried red hot peppers. Red hot peppers for me are anywhere between jalapeno (a 7 on the heat scale) and serrano (a 10.) Every august, i buy a small basket of these colourful little red and green peppers, string them on long threads, hang these in the sides of doorways, finally grind up the dried peppers together with their seeds around christmastime. One teaspoon of such ground pepper is a hand grenade in the mouth. The amount specified for this vinaigrette - 2 entire red hot peppers - would launch my house into orbit.


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> The amount specified for this vinaigrette - 2 entire red hot peppers - would launch my house into orbit.


Not if you leave them whole! 

Whole dried red peppers just give off a bit of their heat in a marinade...think of it as pepper tea. I used to grow Thai Dragons in my garden and I am still making my way through the final big batch that I dried about 10 years ago. They are pretty firey, but as long as they're left whole when put in the marinade it won't set you ablaze.

Edited to clarify that "whole" really means whole -- with the stem on if possible so no seeds can escape, or else if they're already cut at the top just empty out the seeds.


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## humble_pie

but why would we throw away 2 perfectly good dried red hot peppers after extracting only a suspicion of their fire by marinating them whole in a vinaigrette. Wouldn't it be more frugal to grind em up & use only 1/8 or 1/4 tsp for this recipe while keeping the rest for future conflagrations


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> Wouldn't it be more frugal to grind em up & use only 1/8 or 1/4 tsp for this recipe while keeping the rest for future conflagrations


Sure -- that's the difference between someone like you who uses his head and someone like me who follows recipes blindly like a sheep. However, I do think marinating a pepper provides more of its flavour and perhaps less of its heat than using the ground pepper; there's already some fire in this vinaigrette from the hot chili oil. If you leave the peppers in it will indeed get hotter the longer it sits, but this salad never lasts long because it's too delicious.

I personally don't mind discarding the whole peppers because 10 years after drying my last batch from the garden I still have about 80 Thai Dragons left; they should last me at least another 10 years.

I have a number of recipes that call for whole dried peppers like this, including my favourite dal soups. The pepper is removed at the end of cooking and can be reused if you like.


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## brad

Now here's my kind of fast food:










I sliced up a nice ripe tomato, laid some pieces of fresh mozzarella on top, went out to the porch and picked four basil leaves from the potted plants out there (carefully washing them to remove cat piss), sprinkled with salt and pepper, and drizzled with olive oil. It took longer to eat it than it did to prepare, and on a hot day like today this was all I needed for lunch (with an apple for dessert). Yum!


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## MoneyGal

Brad - you should try this with grilled halloumi cheese...I belong to a cheese CSA and get my halloumi from them.


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## brad

MoneyGal said:


> Brad - you should try this with grilled halloumi cheese...I belong to a cheese CSA and get my halloumi from them.


Great idea! I do sometimes grill these tomato slices with cheese (or stick them under the broiler), but today's too hot for me to consider cooking anything. Tomorrow, though, I'm planning to fire up the grill and grilling some peppers and eggplant, and I'll make some chermoula to put over the eggplant (one of my favourite flavour combinations). The grilled peppers will be used in various dishes for the next few days.


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## MoneyGal

brad said:


> I'll make some chermoula to put over the eggplant (one of my favourite flavour combinations)


Hee. Charmoula is my screen name on most of the forums I frequent. And I used to run a blog called Saucy Little Eggplant. Those are my two favourite (food) things in the world.


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## brad

MoneyGal said:


> Hee. Charmoula is my screen name on most of the forums I frequent. And I used to run a blog called Saucy Little Eggplant. Those are my two favourite (food) things in the world.


More evidence that we were separated at birth, sister. 

My virtuous apple-for-dessert wasn't enough, and I feel an undefeatable hankering for a hot fudge sundae. I've been knocking down deadlines all day in my un-airconditioned second-floor office (where it's currently 34 degrees C), so as soon as the next one is past me I'm heading down the street to the ice cream parlour--which also happens to be one of my city's nicest cheap Lebanese restaurants.


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## brad

When the weather is hot and there’s some stale bread in the house, I know gazpacho will be on the menu. There are appoximately 83,237 ways to make gazpacho and I’ve tried quite a few of them over the years, but the approach I’ve settled on is traditional: just tomatoes, stale bread without the crusts (softened in water then squeezed dry), garlic, a tiny slice of red onion, some paprika, a little sherry vinegar, and enough water to reach the consistency you like. You have to peel the tomatoes, which involves boiling water and inserting them for 30 seconds or so to loosen the skin, but otherwise there’s no cooking involved, just a quick pass through the blender or food processor. In some parts of Spain, gazpacho is served over ice in glasses as a drink.

We had it in little blue bowls, while nibbling on celery dipped in roasted-garlic hummus, slices of tomato and roasted red pepper drizzled with chermoula, and cubes of Saint-Fidèle cheese (Québec’s version of Gruyère and even better to my taste buds). 

Cold soups are wonderfully refreshing in summer: think of the traditional Middle Eastern cold yogurt soup with cucumbers, a cold puréed melon-and-berry soup for dessert, or this one, one of my long-time favourite easy 15-minute summer recipes, a chilled Moroccan-style tomato soup from The Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home. It’s actually similar to some gazpacho recipes I’ve tried, but the cinnamon and cumin take it in a fresh direction:

2 medium tomatoes, diced
1 stalk celery, minced
1 scallion, finely chopped
1 quart chilled tomato juice
1/4 cup chilled orange juice

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced or pressed
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

2-3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Tabasco or other hot sauce to taste.

Combine the tomatoes, celery, scallions, tomato juice, and orange juice. In a small skillet over low heat, warm the olive oil. Sauté the garlic, cumin, paprika, and cinnamon for a minute, being careful not to scorch them. Stir this spice mixture into the soup and add lemon juice and Tabasco to taste. Serve immediately or refrigerate until ready (it gets even better after a few hours or a day).


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## humble_pie

aaahhhhhh yum. There is no better way to start the financial week.

the way you write up your recipes, brad, makes them mouthwatering. And the helpful tips about how to skate by a challenging step in each recipe add real value ... hmmmnn ...

... do we see a cookbook shaping up ... a collection of recipes interspersed with the best & most helpful financial tips chosen from the different topics each month ...


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> ... do we see a cookbook shaping up ... a collection of recipes interspersed with the best & most helpful financial tips chosen from the different topics each month ...


Good idea...food and money, two of life's essentials...although imagine the hassle of negotiating the royalty payments to all the various cookbook authors!

I do enjoy writing up these little summaries; I'm grateful to you for creating this topic and providing the opportunity.


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## humble_pie

yup royalties would make it impossible.

i wasn't thinking about a hard version to be sold, too many cookbooks already.
just mumbling out loud about a web version where people could find a great recipe & a financial pippin in one visit.
come to think of it there's one already up & running, it's called canadianmoneyforum.


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## CanadianCapitalist

I have a break from work coming up and would like to try some of the recipes listed here. Since, it is a bit of a chore surfing through the thread, I've collected the recipes in one place here.


Brad's Gazpacho Recipe
Brad's Tomatoes with Mozzarella and Basil
Brad's Thai-inspired Chicken Salad
Brad's Easy Pasta with Tomato Sauce, Eggplant and Oregano
Brad's Ginger cucumber salad with scallops
Brad's Socca (Chickpea flour pancakes)
Brad's Cauliflower with Capers, Parsley and Vinegar
Brad's Super Simple Sorbet
Brad's Roasted Sweet Potato Salad with Black Beans and Chilli Dressing
Brad's Lemon Pudding Cake with Calendula Blossoms

Brad's Mark Bittman Quick Coffee Cake
Humble Pie's Three Oaks Coffee Cake
Brad's Biz Fizz Cocktail
Brad's Orecchiette with Uncooked Tomatoes and Arugula
Brad's Vegatable Torta
Humble Pie's Goat Kidney Elixir
Brad's Pasta Kerchiefs with Greens and Ham
Brad's Goanese Kale soup
Brad's Mark Bitten Pea and Crab Salad
Humble Pie's Nettle Soup
Brad's Cauliflower and Potatoes with Fenugreek and Fennel seeds
CC's Chai Tea
Brad's Bread Recipe
Brad's Tunisian Vegetable Stew
Humble Pie's Anti-Depressant Salad


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## MoneyGal

Oh CC that is AWESOME! 

I'm sorry to be such a big tease about posting what I'm cooking and never posting recipes (my mom, a vegan, is coming to visit this week and I may finally get that eggplant and mango curry recipe...although truth be told I pretty much never use recipes). 

Also: let me just express, with a few tears of laughter, my amusement at the idea that 1. book royalties in Canada can be negotiated and 2. that they would amount to anything worth bickering over.


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## brad

CanadianCapitalist said:


> I have a break from work coming up and would like to try some of the recipes listed here. Since, it is a bit of a chore surfing through the thread, I've collected the recipes in one place here.


Wow, thank you for doing that! I forgot all about humble's Goat Kidney Elixer; I'm going to go out hunting for goat kidneys this afternoon. Seriously, though, it's great to see all those links in one place; it'll save people a lot of browsing through endless posts.

I still feel a bit uncomfortable seeing my name attached to these recipes since almost none of them are "Brad's" but rather "Mark's," "Martha Rose's," "Madhur's," "Chris's," "Moosewood Collective's," "Terry's," etc. and merely tested and delivered by Brad, but as long as I keep making these disclaimers I guess my conscience will remain clear.

Looking down the list, with a few exceptions this is almost like a food diary of what I eat when I'm not eating hot fudge sundaes.


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## humble_pie

MG it's not the royalties laughable fiction though they may be, it's the fact that we'd have to deal with each publisher's miserable rights & permissions department & this would kill us. It's ok about your recipes, though, it seems you don't do recipes & you don't do inv advice; but i'm willing to bet that you do do windows.

brad only a brave man or woman would try the goat kidney elixir ... the original article had several other recipes for vietnamese aprodisiacs with rare animal & fish parts like sea horses.

as for the conscience it should remain clear as a bell. Your recipes are fleshed out & studded with fascinating tips, hints & stories, and they always acknowledge the source, so i'm sure the original authors would be pleased & complimented. In fact molly with the Three Oaks Ladies' Auxiliary coffee cake and its commercial pudding mix has never been heard from since; i suppose either he drowned in the praise or he was mortally wounded by the critiques.


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## brad

Continuing on last week’s theme of cold soups, here’s another favourite: the Melon-Berry Swirl. This is a dessert soup, a genre I haven’t encountered very often. It’s just the ticket to polish off a meal on a hot summer evening, though it could also work as part of a light lunch. I’m tempted to try it for breakfast sometime.

This recipe came from the first “foodie” I ever met: Terry Blonder (now Terry Golson), from her first cookbook, called “For Goodness’ Sake.” I was her taster/tester for many of the recipes that she developed for that book, and this soup is one I’ll never forget. The recipe here will serve five to six people.

Melon-Berry Swirl

2 pounds of melon meat, preferably yellow or green in color (eg., canary or honeydew) 
1 teaspoon frozen apple juice concentrate
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
2 teaspoons lemon juice
3 tablespoons minced fresh mint leaves
2 cups berries (raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, or blackberries all work well)
1/3 cup yogurt
A few whole fresh mint leave for garnish

Purée the first six ingredients and leave in the fridge to chill
Purée the berries, lemon juice, and yogurt, and chill that as well (but keep separate from the first items above)
Just before serving, pour the melon mixture into soup bowls, filling them no more than two-thirds full.
Pour some of the berry purée into the center of each of the soup bowls
Create a swirling pattern by quickly stirring the two purées together with one or two swipes of a spoon. Garnish with fresh mint leaves.

Taste. Swoon.


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## brad

Since I'll be out next Monday, I'll make today a two-for-one day. Here's another simple-and-divine 20-minute summer recipe, with apologies to the vegetarians here.

This is grilled lamb and fresh figs on rosemary skewers, courtesy of Mark Bittman. Just thinking about it reminds me of the first time I had it, on a hot July evening two years ago when we had some visitors from France. We accompanied it with slices of carrots and red peppers with hummus to dip in, and a nice bottle of Dolcetto d'Alba.

Approx 1 kilo boneless lamb shoulder, cut into chunks
10-20 fresh figs
Rosemary branches*
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary

*You can find short rosemary branches at grocery stores, or if you or anyone you know grows rosemary you can use fresh-cut ones. I cut lengths about 15-18cm from my big 20-year-old rosemary that grows in a pot on our porch.

1. start a charcoal or wood fire or heat a gas grill; the fire should be pretty hot. Use a wooden or metal skewer to punch holes in the lamb chunks and then thread them onto the rosemary branches. You'll strip off most of the leaves in the process, but they'll get stuck in the lamb, infusing it with their flavour. Thread the figs onto separate rosemary branches (don't mix lamb and figs on the same branches because the figs grill much more quickly than the lamb).

2. Brush the lamb and figs lightly with olive oil, season with salt and pepper. Mix together the lemon juice, garlic, and minced rosemary and brush some of this mixture onto the lamb and figs.

3. Grill, turning skewers as each side browns, taking care to avoid flare-ups. Cooking time should be from 6-10 minutes if you want medium-rare lamb, and 4-5 minutes for the figs. Meat will continue to cook a little after you remove it from the grill -- you don't want to overcook lamb chunks because they become dry and lose much of their flavour.

The combination of lamb, rosemary, garlic, and the grilled figs is sensuous and sensational, a heady combination of smells, textures, and tastes.


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## humble_pie

what is a palourde royale ? is it a prairie clam ? Chef Tri stops laughing long enough to say this one's from vancouver and he learned how to turn it into sushi from japanese cooks ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrtyIqSzoYI


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> what is a palourde royale ? is it a prairie clam ?


That's a geoduck, pronounced "gooey duck," a giant clam found on the West Coast: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoduck

I never knew the French name for it; palourde royale sounds much more appetizing. I still don't know if I could bring myself to eat it, though.

There's a song about digging geoducks, which you can (sort of) hear here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibhf0X8jCOc


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## humble_pie

brad you have to go look at this video it's hysterical. The 2 journalists are bowed double, speechless with laughter. Tri is a sushi master, but there's no pretence of a learn-how session here. It's the wackiest, funniest cooking video i've ever seen. If you don't think you'd eat a gooeyduck now, even when it's dressed up as palourde royale, believe me, you never, ever will, not after you see these 3 minutes.

on another note, your 2 recipes yesterday were sensational, wonderful, perfect. There are probably a lot of things one could barbeque or even roast in an oven on long sprigs of rosemary. I am impressed that you have kept your rosemary shrub going for 20 years. Are there tips to getting it to survive the winter indoors ? Do you cut it back at the end of the season & then put it under a special grow-lite starting in february or march ?


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> I am impressed that you have kept your rosemary shrub going for 20 years. Are there tips to getting it to survive the winter indoors ? Do you cut it back at the end of the season & then put it under a special grow-lite starting in february or march ?


I don't do anything special for the rosemary, I just keep it in a sunny window all winter and don't water it too much. I spray the leaves with water every now and then; when it was smaller I used to put it in the shower once a month. The other thing I've learned is that rosemary hates to be repotted; I almost lost this plant twice after repotting to bigger pots. It's starting to look a little pot-bound now and I may need to pot up again to a larger size but we'll see. It was really lovely until some teenage hoodlums ran up on our porch a year ago and kicked it off the porch onto the ground...a few of the main branches broke and it has never regained its former magnificence. It flowers every year in early spring, sweet little blue flowers.

I did watch the video, pretty hilarious.


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## MoneyGal

Do you keep it in a sunny window *indoors* (like an indoor porch)? Or do you keep it outside on your (unenclosed) porch all winter? I've never successfully overwintered a rosemary tree. I have a fantastic one right now and it always makes me sad to lose them.


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## brad

MoneyGal said:


> Do you keep it in a sunny window *indoors* (like an indoor porch)? Or do you keep it outside on your (unenclosed) porch all winter? I've never successfully overwintered a rosemary tree. I have a fantastic one right now and it always makes me sad to lose them.


Nope, I just keep it by a south-facing window in our living room, which gets sun for part of the day. We do keep our house pretty cool in winter, which I think is part of the secret -- we usually drop the temp to 15 at night and no more than 19 or 20 during the day.

When I lived in Vermont I tried keeping another rosemary plant outdoors in the garden all year round. It survived some pretty cold winters with no protection other than the snow (it looked dead but sprouted new leaves in spring), but then we had a 40 below zero cold snap and that killed it off.

Rosemary is one reason I wish I lived on the British Columbia seacoast. I have a friend in Mt. Vernon, Washington, who has a rosemary tree in her backyard that's about 15 feet high! Mine's only about hip height.


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## brad

Here's the rosemary when it was looking its best about three years ago; it's the plant in the foreground on our porch:










It would be a lot bigger after 20 years if I kept potting it up to larger pots, but repotting is so traumatic for it that I've kept it in this same pot for at least 8 years now. I use quite a bit of rosemary in cooking, so the plant is always fairly trimmed back.


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## kcowan

In a home swap in San Diego, we found that they had Rosemary as a hedge!

They also had a big flowering bush that was a geranium...


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## humble_pie

humble hoped to have a peck o pickled watermelon rind.
hum was horrified to hear you have to simmer the rind cubes in brine first.

it seems sacriligious to file recipes when brad's not here, but my pickled watermelon rind turned out to be the best pickle ever. I think it's the first simmering in brine that makes the difference.

peel watermelon rind & chop into bite-sized chunks.
simmer in salty brine just until tender.
i always use that coarse gray sea salt from brittany "le paludier."
according to my prof it has some 60-70 minerals in about the same proportions as are found in healthy human blood.
if you think about it, mammalian life emerged from the sea.

chill rind chunks in their brine in frig overnight.

next day, drain chunks & add to syrup of vinegar & sugar, about 2 cups each.
cinnamon stick, 2 cloves, ground pepper, few crushed seeds star anise, good pinch garam masala.

taste while simmering & remove cinnamon stick when sufficient flavour develops.
simmer until chunks are translucent, it takes longer than you'd think.

the day after that, madre de dios there was still another fresh half-watermelon in the frig.


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## brad

Humble, I have fond memories of pickled watermelon rind: my stepmother canned a large batch of it one summer when I was a kid and it reminded me of summer all winter long. My girlfriend is from southern Brittany and her nephew used to work in the salt lagoons collecting fleur de sel; we have a never-ending supply of it.

The iconic summer vegetables are coming out in force now, and we made good use of them this weekend. We had a couple of classic summer meals: barbecued skirt steak on Friday night topped with chimichurri sauce and accompanied by corn on the cob and boiled new potatoes; the rest of the corn was used on Saturday night for a corn, tomato, and lobster salad. On Sunday night I made a Greek gratin of cauliflower, tomatoes, kalamata olives, pine nuts, and garlic, topped with feta cheese and breadcrumbs. Dessert was a no-bake blueberry cheesecake with wild blueberries that had barely survived the bumpy bike ride home from the market.

Lunch on Saturday was this tofu-and-celery salad drizzled with homemade hot chil oil: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/dining/04mini.html. I spotted the recipe on Friday night and knew I had to make it. Bittman says “All I can tell you is that there isn’t a person I’ve made this for who hasn’t loved it.” He’s right. The cool crispness of the celery is offset by the soft bland tofu, and the hot chili oil breathes fire and life into it all. The chili oil is far better than any commercial chili oil I’ve tried; it’s very hot, but has a complexity that’s missing from the commercial varieties -- when you look at the spice mix that’s used to make it, you’ll see why. Slices of fresh ginger, a few star anise, Szechuan peppercorns, coriander, cumin, lots of dried red pepper flakes, etc. I didn’t have time to nip over to the Asian market to find pressed tofu or Chinese celery, so I used extra-firm tofu and plain old celery; it was great. I’ll try the more authentic version next time. This chili oil uses a base of peanut oil rather than the more typical sesame oil; I found a bottle of unprocessed peanut oil that made the whole house smell like peanuts the moment I opened it. 

The lobster salad was an expensive splurge. I was in Boston the previous weekend and had hoped to have lobster while I was there, but when I sat down at the restaurant and got ready to order one I had sticker shock. Almost $30 for a small lobster! When you know what they cost at the wharf in Maine, you can’t bring yourself to pay prices like that. I went to the market here in Montreal this Saturday and saw pre-cooked lobsters for less than half that price, so I got two and used them for the salad to get my lobster fix. I didn’t get live ones because I didn’t want to make the last hours of their lives even more miserable by enduring the bicycle ride home. 

The salad was simple enough: I cut the corn from the cob and sauteed the kernels in a little olive oil and sprinkled them with fresh thyme, salt, and pepper. I cut the tomatoes into eighths and drizzled them with olive oil, lemon juice, and salt and pepper. Each plate got a helping of corn, topped with tomatoes, and then topped with lobster meat, with a little lemon juice, lemon zest, and parsley sprinkled over all. Delicious. The Boston mobsters can keep their lobsters.


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## humble_pie

i have got to get some a them sichuan peppercorns.

aka prickly ash.

http://not-a-foodblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/ma-po-tofu.html


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## brad

Yes, they are the stars of this chili oil. It's worth watching the video of Bittman (in the link I posted above) making this oil and the salad that goes with it -- he adds a few things that aren't in the published recipe, and also lets you see what you should be looking for if you want to find pressed tofu. There will be a lot of chili oil left over, which you can use to make more of this salad, the Thai chicken salad that I posted a while back, or many other dishes.


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## brad

Another two-fer today, because I’ll be out next Monday on a bicycle somewhere between Toronto and Montréal.

*Stuffed Squash Blossoms*

When I was a neophyte gardener back in the 1980s, I remember planting something like six or seven zucchini and yellow squash plants, all of which produced prolifically during the summer and I couldn’t even begin to keep up. Every now and then I’d spot once of those monster zucchinis that had escaped my notice, growing to half the length of my leg.

Eating squash blossoms is a good way to limit the number of squash you’ll have to eat later, and helps avoid zucchini burnout (or the scenario mentioned by humble pie awhile back where you wake up in the morning to find that a desperate gardener has deposited a basket of zucchini at your doorstep in the middle of the night like an abandoned baby).

Here’s the recipe I usually use for squash blossoms, which you can sometimes find for sale at farmers’ markets if you don’t grow them yourself or know someone who does. With the butter and ricotta it’s pretty rich (if you’ve ever tried making your own ricotta you’ll understand why low-fat ricotta was invented), but it’s a delicious treat and one we look forward to every summer. This is from Renée Shepherd’s lovely set of two little cookbooks called Recipes from a Kitchen Garden.


12-15 fresh squash blossoms
1 pound ricotta cheese
1 medium onion, very finely chopped
1/2 cup toasted almonds, finely chopped
1/2 cup freshly grated Asiago or Parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon ground pepper
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons fresh, finely chopped basil
2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley
2 tablespoons melted butter (you could substitute olive oil here).

Preheat oven to 350 Fahrenheit. Mix all the filling ingredients together except the melted butter. Stuff the squash blossoms carefully, don’t overfill. Drizzle the melted butter over the blossoms and bake in the oven for 15 minutes.

*Jim Lahey’s Irish Brown Bread*

I’ve spent a fair bit of time in Ireland, and have fond memories of brown bread at breakfast or tea. It’s next to impossible to duplicate that bread on this side of the pond, just as you can’t make a cup of Barry’s or Lyon’s tea here that tastes as good as the tea does there. There must be something in the water.

Irish or not, this brown bread is, as a friend of mine from Québec City proclaimed when I gave him a slice, “une merveille.” Full of flavour and just the right texture, it’s perfect for breakfast or an afternoon snack with tea.


2 1/4 cups of bread flour (be sure to use bread flour, which develops more gluten than all-purpose)
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon wheat bran
1/4 teaspoon instant dry yeast
1 1/4 cups of dried currants
1 cup Guinness at room temperature
1 cup well-shaken buttermilk, at room temperature
Flour or wheat bran for dusting

In a bowl, stir together the flours, salt, wheat bran, yeast, and currants. Add the beer and buttermilk, and mix with a wooden spoon or your hands until you have a wet, sticky dough, only about 30 seconds. Cover the bowl, let sit at room temperature for 12 to 18 hours, until the surface is dotted with bubbles. (You could speed this process by adding more yeast but the resulting bread will be far less wonderful. Trust me.) Drink the remaining 8 ounces of Guinness 

When the first rise is complete, dust a work surface with flour and scrape the dough out onto it. Lift the edges of the dough in toward the center and nudge or tuck the edges to make it round. Don’t knead it and don’t add more flour to make it stiffer like a conventional dough! Dust a tea towel with lots of flour and lay it over the dough and let rise for 1 to 2 hours until it has almost doubled.

Preheat the oven to 475 degrees and place an empty but covered 4 1/2 to 5 1/2 quart heavy pot (e.g., a cast-iron dutch oven) on the center rack. Let the pot sit in the oven while the oven heats -- you want that pot to be sizzling hot. 

Once the oven and pot have reached 475 degrees, remove the pot from the oven, take off the lid, and carefully place the dough into the pot (the dough is still pretty wet and sticky, you almost have to pour it in). Put the lid on and bake in the oven at 475 for 30 minutes.

Take off the lid and continue baking until the bread is a deep chestnut colour but not burnt, about 20-25 minutes more. Remove the pot from the oven and use a spatula or pot holders to lift the bread out of the pot and put it on a rack to cool. Wait for the bread to reach room temperature before slicing into it.

This sounds like a lot of work, but it all goes quickly except the 12-18 hour wait. I usually start the dough just before going to bed so it’s ready for cook around suppertime the next day. Twelve hours is the bare minimum you want to wait: the tiny amount of yeast ensures that the the gluten will develop slowly, allowing the dough to gain flavour and complexity at the same time.


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## humble_pie

another pair of fabulous recipes. I don't bake (baking is chemistry, you have to follow the recipe precisely, so quite frequently outlaw cooks don't bake.) But that irish bread looks out of this world. It must be the currants & the guinness that make the difference.

speaking of comestibles being anonymously left at your front door during the night, there is a story about a couple having a contentious divorce. They lived in cornwall, in england, outside a small village.

he had an extensive prize wine collection. The fire was fierce & the fur was flying. One night she took all his wine bottles and ...

... i was telling my daughter this story. Her face fell. "Oh, no, she didn't," my daughter begged ...

... of course not. What the incensed wife did was, she packed all the bottles into her car and drove around the countryside all night long, depositing one bottle upon each and every doorstep. Around 3 am she drove back through the village square. She still had 4 or 5 really choice bottles left. There was a fountain in the middle of the square. She parked, took the remaining bottles, waded into the fountain & lodged them snugly around the base of the sculpture. Then she went home.


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> What the incensed wife did was, she packed all the bottles into her car and drove around the countryside all night long, depositing one bottle upon each and every doorstep. Around 3 am she drove back through the village square. She still had 4 or 5 really choice bottles left. There was a fountain in the middle of the square. She parked, took the remaining bottles, waded into the fountain & lodged them snugly around the base of the sculpture. Then she went home.


Perfect.


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## humble_pie

brad it's recipe monday you might be out biking along the st-lawrence. And all this rain must be inspiring frequent stops in local diners & roadside coffee shops. Now that trajet from toronto to montreal is not known for fine cuisine esp not in small ontario towns.

when you get back won't you please entertain us with a story about the worst meal or snack you had on the trip.

no poutine jokes svp.

what i want to hear about is food that's quaint & gross like some of those old-time ladies' church committee recipes. The kind with shredded cabbage pigs trotters cinnamon candy hearts pickled gherkins & diced marshmallows in bright pink Jello.


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> what i want to hear about is food that's quaint & gross like some of those old-time ladies' church committee recipes. The kind with shredded cabbage pigs trotters cinnamon candy hearts pickled gherkins & diced marshmallows in bright pink Jello.


We're back! Despite all the rain and big storms in other places, we managed to have fine weather the whole way except for the afternoon we cycled into Picton -- and even that was just a steady drizzle. 

I wish I had some entertaining "bad food" tales to tell, but probably the worst meal we had was take-out pizza and canned beer for supper on our longest day (from west of Brockville to east of Cornwall, 128 kilometers), and some supermarket sandwiches we had for lunch on days when we weren't sure we'd pass through any towns with cafes around lunchtime.

We stayed in B&Bs and all our breakfasts were great. Picked up some fresh Ontario peaches at a roadside farmstand early on in the trip. By far the best meal we had was in Kingston -- the owner of the B&B there recommended that we stop at Olivea for mojitos (it was Mojito Monday -- buy one, get one free) and then go to Chez Piggy for supper. We had a lovely time at Olivea, and when we got to Chez Piggy we found that nothing on the the menu really appealed to us, so we went back to Olivea and ate there. It was great.

I'll have a recipe to post tomorrow!


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## humble_pie

ontario rocks !!

how do fresh ripe peaches survive in a panier. Could you remove stones, add sugar & lemon juice & have a nice purée by day 2 ?

hope your knee is surviving well.


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> ontario rocks !!
> 
> how do fresh ripe peaches survive in a panier. Could you remove stones, add sugar & lemon juice & have a nice purée by day 2 ?.


Hah, that would have been a good thing to try! They actually remained relatively unblemished as long as we kept them in the top of the bag; they were cushioned from the bumps by all the stuff below them. We finished them off in a couple of days; they were delicious. 

We carried too much stuff -- a lesson for next time -- I was carrying 19 kg and my girlfriend carried 16. But we had to be prepared for rain, heat, and cool weather, all of which we had, plus tools, spare tubes, etc., mapbooks for the Waterfront Trail and Route Verte, energy bars and dried fruit, etc., it all added up. I had to bring my heavy pedal wrench, because we needed to remove the pedals before putting the bikes on the train. Going up hills with all that weight was a challenge, but we only had to walk up two really steep gravel trails that we probably couldn't have ridden up even with unloaded bikes.

My knee is untroubled by biking, fortunately! 

It was an awesome trip -- challenging but fun, and the B&Bs were a nice reward at the end of the day. We especially enjoyed visiting Port Hope, Cobourg, Bloomfield, Picton, and Kingston, and are already scheming to return (by train or car this time) for a long weekend.

We had a chance to try some Ontario wines as well and were impressed: the "Organized Crime" Pinot Noir 2007 is every bit as tasty as our favourite French Pinots. Apparently 2007 was an especially good year for wine in Ontario. The "Organized Crime" name is a jeu-de-mots based on an old story of two feuding Mennonite congregations, one of which tossed the other's church organ down an embankment.


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## brad

There’s always a hint (sometimes more than a hint) of autumn in August, and this past weekend in Montréal gave such a foretaste: cool, drizzly, damp. Just the right weather for a comforting soup, a fine excuse for me to cook up a good dal.

This recipe for a south Indian dal with vegetables, called Sambar, is from Madhur Jaffrey. It’s more complicated than most of the recipes I like to use, and has quite a few ingredients that might be hard to find if you don’t have an Indian market anywhere nearby, but the result was so delicious that I’d say it’s worth the effort to find the ingredients and go through the steps.

Cook some rice to go with this at the same time; you’ll see how it’s served below.

*Sambar*


125 grams toovar (arhar) dal -- if not available, yellow split peas are a fine substitute.
2 tablespoons vegetable oil (use ghee instead if you like)
1 generous pinch of ground asafetida
1 tablespoon whole coriander seeds
1.5 teaspoons whole cumin seeds
1 teaspoon whole fenugreek seeds
2 whole cloves
10-12 whole black peppercorns
1 2-centimeter length of stick cinammon
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2-3 tablespoons grated coconut, roasted if you like
1/2 teaspoon whole black mustard seeds
1 medium onion, halved and thickly sliced
6 radishes, trimmed and thickly sliced
1 medium tomato, peeled and diced
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1-2 tablespoons tamarind paste
3/4 to 1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1 fresh hot green chili, finely chopped
1 teaspoon finely grated fresh ginger
2 tablespon finely chopped cilantro


Rinse the dal and put in a pot; add just under a liter of water and bring to the boil. Turn heat to low, partially cover, and simmer gently until the dal is very tender, about 1.5 hours. Stir every now and then during the last 10 minutes or so to prevent sticking.

Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a small, heavy frying pan over medium heat. When hot, put in the asafetida, and a few seconds later add the coriander, cumin, fenugreek, cloves, peppercorns, and cinnamon. Add the cayenne pepper, stir once, and remove from the heat.

Put the contents of the small frying pan into an electric blender and blend until you have a relatively smooth paste. You might have to add a little water. Set aside.

In a 2-3 liter pot, heat the remaining tablespoon of oil over medium heat. When hot, put in the mustard seeds and wait for them to start popping (it should just take a few seconds), then lower the heat and put in the sliced onion and radishes. Sauté for 3-4 minutes. Now add the paste from the blender and stir for a few seconds. Add the cooked dal, the diced tomato, turmeric, tamarind paste, salt, and sugar. Add more water if necessary to get a thin soup-like consistency. Stir well and bring to a boil. Cover partially, lower heat, and simmer gently for about 10 minutes.

Add the green chili, ginger, and cilantro. Simmer uncovered for another 2 minutes.

Take a bowl and make a little hill of rice in the center (I used brown rice; basmati rice of course would be good here). Ladle the sambar around the rice so the “summit” of the rice hill shows above the soup. Serve. 

Madhur Jaffrey recommends accompanying this meal with papadum on the side and Indian-style buttermilk to drink (ordinary buttermilk diluted with some cold water and sprinkled with roasted, ground cumin seeds, a little salt, and some cayenne if you like).


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## CanadianCapitalist

brad said:


> There’s always a hint (sometimes more than a hint) of autumn in August, and this past weekend in Montréal gave such a foretaste: cool, drizzly, damp. Just the right weather for a comforting soup, a fine excuse for me to cook up a good dal.
> 
> This recipe for a south Indian dal with vegetables, called Sambar, is from Madhur Jaffrey. It’s more complicated than most of the recipes I like to use, and has quite a few ingredients that might be hard to find if you don’t have an Indian market anywhere nearby, but the result was so delicious that I’d say it’s worth the effort to find the ingredients and go through the steps.


Or you could just buy Sambar powder  Seriously, nobody makes sambar from scratch these days. The spice mix will already include all the spices mentioned. You can speed up the process even more if you have a pressure cooker. You can cook the rice and at the same time, add the lentils in a separate bowl and place it in the cooker. You should have rice and lentils in less than 30 mins. 

Other vegetable options for sambar are: potato, eggplant (excellent) etc. Also, brown or basmati rice doesn't go well with sambar (IMO). Short-grained rice (such as Jasmine) is better. Just rinse rice a couple of times before cooking to make it less sticky.


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## humble_pie

good grief brad what happened Out There On The Road. An iron marathon bike trip means an iron marathon kitchen trip ?

i might try this in steps & parts. That part about the oil-toasted spice paste sounds great for starters. Could be used on lots of things.

have to look up asafoetida & tamarind.


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> have to look up asafoetida & tamarind.


The word "foetid" is tucked inside "asafoetida," and that pretty much sums up how it smells -- a young friend of mine describes it as smelling like belly-button lint. I'm not sure how much flavour it actually adds; I think it's believed to aid digestion, and is certainly optional here. It comes in powdered or chunk form -- I have the chunks and I just pound a chunk to bits in a mortar and pestle and then grind it down to a powder. The smell doesn't bother me anymore.

The tamarind paste does add something, but it can be hard to find -- it was in fact the only thing on the list that I didn't have already in my pantry and I had to go to a few shops before I found some.

There are a lot simpler ways to make a dal -- you can just cook the dal (the dried peas), and when they're done you can heat some oil on a skillet, drop in a couple of hot red peppers and some cumin, let them sizzle a few seconds, and then pour them into the dal. But this Sambar with vegetables is a more substantial meal and I really loved it -- we almost polished off the whole thing in one sitting.


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## humble_pie

ok the black mustard seeds.

everybody with a garden has got those newly-invasive garlic mustard plants by now. The ones we're supposed to weed out & destroy. The ones with delicious green leaves & sprays of tiny edible white flowers for salads in may.

their seeds are black. They are a true mustard. One year i harvested half-a-cup of seeds. There must be a trick to separating the seeds from the pod skins & chaff, but i don't know the trick. Tried everything. Sieves. No. Putting some seeds in pie pans & gently trying to blow the chaff away. No. (Seeds blew away, too.) Pluck by hand. Unbearably slow. After 3 days of sporadic effort every tme i passed by the kitchen table, i wound up with aforesaid small amount of seeds. Nice, plump, dry black seeds.

next, to simmer or not to simmer for table mustard. Most mustard recipes said to grind the seeds raw. One said to simmer first. I thought of those expensive whole-grain dijons you can buy; their brown grains look simmered to me. So i simmered. Maybe 35-40 minutes.

then ground w vinegar, olive oil, breton salt, pepper, teaspoon honey.

in the end i obtained less than half-a-cup of mustard. It had only taken me 4 days. It was mustard fit for a king.

i'll never do it again.


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## humble_pie

while waiting to see if brad will post another blockbuster recette du lundi, here's an appealing food development that a wise elected city councillor introduced this year in my district. Instead of planting annual flowers in its large ornamental raised flower beds that are scattered around the muni, the city instead planted edible herbs & vegetables. What's more, the city encouraged residents to harvest & graze from said crops.

yesterday i passed by a magnificent raised planter sized about 80 square feet in a tiny sitting area next to the main street. It was a nano-farmette. In it were growing ultra-healthy purple basil, sage, thyme, oak leaf lettuces, tomato plants, tiny red pepper plants, red-flowering nasturtiums (good in salads), a few enormous sunflowers waving their golden discs in the sun, and an unknown green-leafed herb with small crimson flowers but no particular special taste.

people had been snacking on the lettuces & the basil plants, but nothing was over-picked. On the contrary, the bounty of the large planter appeared to be virtually ignored.

the lettuces & the basil were already bolting, so i plucked a small stash of leaves. Also some nasturtium flowers because there were hundreds. What i liked about the experience was the whimsical, random sense of a shared community. Strangers passing by, taking a little for themselves with care & appreciation, being grateful, leaving a lot for others.


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> What's more, the city encouraged residents to harvest & graze from said crops.


That's awesome!

I will indeed post a recipe, but a little later--we've had company all weekend and they're leaving this morning, and then I have to catch up on some work. I'll post something later today...


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## brad

Okay, here's my recipe for today. Much simpler than last week's!

I’ve had so many fresh summer vegetables lately that I overdosed on them and can’t face eating another tomato, eggplant, or summer squash right now. It won’t be long before I’m eating them again, but in the meantime I thought I’d share this refreshing salad, which can be made any time of year. It’s an excellent lunch; we’ve also had it for supper as it’s quite substantial, and it’s a great dish to bring to pot-lucks or to make for parties. The dish comes from Mollie Katzen; I lifted it from her website (www.molliekatzen.com), where she has posted a nice collection of recipes free for the taking.

*Fennel Salad with Grapes, Olives, and Dried Figs*


1 small head of Boston lettuce, cleaned and dried.
1 medium fennel bulb, sliced very thin (if you have a mandoline, use it for this)
1 1/2 cups red seedless grapes, cut in half.
About 15 oil-cured or Kalamata olives, pitted and sliced
5 or 6 dried figs, cut into small pieces
Extra-virgin olive oil to taste
Salt and pepper to taste
Lemon juice to taste
1/2 cup blanched, slivered almonds, lightly toasted
A small piece of hard cheese (Parmesan, Pecorino, or Asagio), shaved into thin slices with a vegetable peeler.


Tear the lettuce into bite-sized pieces into a bowl. Add the fennel, grapes, olives, and figs, and toss.
Drizzle 1-3 tablespoons of oil and toss until everything is coated; sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper, toss again. Refrigerate until serving, but no longer than 1 hour.
Just before serving, drizzle in about a tablespoon of lemon juice and sprinkle in the almonds and cheese shavings. Toss and serve.


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## brad

Now that the dust has settled a bit from the weekend and some urgent deadlines at work, I wanted to run through the meals I made for our guests in case anyone wants these recipes; I’ve sketched them out below but can provide more detail if anyone wants it.

Our guests arrived later than expected on Friday night and told us to have supper without them, so I postponed the meal I had planned and instead whipped together a couple of pannini for myself and my beloved, made from zucchini slices and red pepper slices, oiled and grilled first on the pannini grill, then placed on oiled bread slices with layers of basil, a little garlic, and shredded Gruyère cheese. I don’t have a huge number of gadgets and appliances in my kitchen, but the pannini grill is one I don’t regret -- it can be opened up to grill all kinds of things indoors in winter, and also can be used as an extra griddle to cook eggs, pancakes, etc., when you’re cooking for lots of people.

On Saturday morning I made blueberry waffles (the waffle iron being another kitchen gadget I find indispensable) -- I normally make them with buttermilk, but not having any and being too lazy to make buttermilk substitute (by adding vinegar to milk) or walk to the store to get buttermilk, I made them with regular milk and they were just as delicious as ever. I used half whole-wheat flour in the recipe, but because I separated the eggs and beat the whites to a froth the waffles were light and crisp, not heavy with the whole wheat. The secret to good blueberry waffles or blueberry pancakes is to avoid mixing the blueberries into the batter but instead sprinkle them over the batter just after you’ve poured it into the pan or waffle iron. Otherwise the batter has a tendency to turn blue and watery.

For lunch we went to one of my favourite Montréal restaurants, La Faim du Monde, on St-Denis in the heart of the Plateau district. They make an awesome Indian thali (a relic from their early partnership with Pushap), which one of us had, and they have a wide selection of delicious vegetarian dishes in Mexican, Asian, and Continental themes. Dessert was the sublime gourmet soft-serve ice cream across the street at Au Festin de Babette.

Before we left home to go to the Plateau for lunch I made gazpacho so it would be nice and cold, and the flavours melded, in time for supper. We had the gazpacho as an appetizer; the main course was barbecued “pizzas” topped with a simple zucchini slaw and marinated roasted red peppers, ribbon-slices of basil leaves, and slivers of Parmesan. I call these “pizzas” in quotes because I made them once at a family reunion and my nieces informed me in no uncertain terms that these were NOT pizzas as they knew them. “Where’s the tomato sauce? Where’s the mozzarella?” I felt like Sergeant Lewis being admonished by Inspector Morse: “That’s not beer, Lewis!”

Anyway, these “pizzas” are very simple: you just make some yeasted dough with flour, salt, yeast, and water (again I used half whole wheat), let it rise, punch it down, let it rise again, then divide into the number of pizzas you want, roll out the pieces into rounds, and throw them on the grill. They puff right up in about a minute, like pitas or any other grilled flatbread, and then you flip them over and cook the other side. They’re ready in about three minutes, and then you put on the toppings. The zucchini slaw was just grated zucchini with a few teaspoons of lemon juice, some salt and pepper. I roasted the red peppers beforehand and covered them with a tablespoon or two of olive oil, some Balsamic vinegar, a little salt and pepper, and let them sit for a few hours, then drained them before putting them on the pizzas.

Pizza or not, these things were a big success, which was no surprise as everyone I’ve ever made them for -- except my nieces -- seems to love them.

Dessert was the super-simple sorbet; I’ve posted that recipe here before.

I was too disorganized to think of anything for breakfast on Sunday so instead I rode my bike to the bakery and picked up a bunch of croissants and chocolatines. Lunch was a grazing meal of raw vegetables dipped in hummus and baba ganoush, along with some leftovers.

Supper was an experiment for me: I’ve made the traditional Spanish tortilla many times -- it’s a sort of onion-and-potato frittata that I top with pimentón -- but Martha Rose Shulman’s Mediterranean Harvest cookbook has a bunch of variations on the tortilla and I figured I’d try the one that appealed to me most, which contained roasted eggplant, some red pepper and zucchini, tomato, and basil. I added some aged Manchego cheese and my usual sprinkling of pimentón on top -- it was a light meal but a delicious one, accompanied by a simple salad on the side.

It wasn’t until the weekend was over that I realized that I hadn’t served our guests any kind of chicken, fish, or red meat all weekend. They aren’t vegetarians and neither are we, strictly speaking, although we eat meat so rarely these days that I simply didn’t think of it when I was trying to figure out what I’d make for them this weekend.


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## humble_pie

no need to worry about retirement income brad.

just aim to open a high-end gourmet b & b.


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## humble_pie

off the topic of brad's delish weekend but more on the awesome free herb-and-vegetable gardens in my community ...

although this could also go under Frugality, since any municipality anywhere in canada could stop spending budget money on expensive annual flower purchases for its civic show-off beds & start growing edible plants for local citizens instead.

what i observed is that the nano-farmettes packed with colourful herbs & vegetables, including purple basil, sunflowers, red peppers & waterfalls of red nasturtiums, are far more visually appealing than those sterile, regimented little rows of begonias, petunias or geraniums that one usually sees in civic public places.

in other locations the muni is growing spectacular red chard & encouraging citizens to harvest a few leaves now & then.

it seems my muni got the idea from a UK village called todmorden that has gone all-out for urban farming in every tiny plot & pocket.

http://www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/

municipal horticulturalist tells me that nearby residents are weeding "their" farmettes ... some anonymous benefactors have added coriander & italian parsley ... it's a rave alright.


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## humble_pie

_" ... just aim to open a high-end gourmet B & B."_

hey you'd be booked solid with cmfers.

no advertising, marketing budget necessary.


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> no need to worry about retirement income brad.
> 
> just aim to open a high-end gourmet b & b.


Haha, thanks for the vote of confidence! It's too stressful to me, though. I enjoy cooking for a few friends, but the pressures of timing everything to come out at the same time, meal planning, etc. are too much for me. I remind myself of Bill Buford, who described his similarly frazzled home cooking style near the beginning of his book "Heat," an entertaining account of his foray into the cooking business under the iron thumb of Mario Battali.

Every winter I cook some meals for a group of about 10 friends in Vermont (it's a board meeting for a nonprofit I'm involved in, all of us on the board take turns cooking meals but I end up always doing at least one or two of the suppers), and I can tell from that experience that I'm not cut out for it.

On the topic of municipal farmettes -- the idea really appeals to me although I guess I'd want assurances that the soil isn't contaminated first. I remember reading that a number of Montréal's community gardens have turned out to be on contaminated soil...it must not be fun to hear that after spending years growing and eating one's produce from those gardens. I myself won't eat any of the edible things growing in our yard -- mint, chives, nasturtiums, etc. -- because I haven't had our soil tested yet. We have an old house and I bet there's quite a bit of lead in the soil around it from decades of flaking paint before it was renovated.

But as long as those assurances are met, I think the idea of replacing the useless beauty of flower beds with the useful beauty of vegetables and greens is a splendid one.


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## humble_pie

yes, it's good to know what we're cut out for, what not.

perhaps not to put the idea completely away ?

my figs may be completely off base but 2 guests @ $200/night each incl dinner for only 2 nights per week might turn into a gross of 40k per annum ... surely one could net 20k from that & still be able to hire a cleaning lady/kitchen help ...

hey you'd need one million bucks @ 2% @ ING to generate 20k per annum.

and we cmfers would be ever so much more interesting to have around. Esp when you could shoo us out after a 2-night booking.

re the municipal edible farmettes. They only did this in large concrete raised containers where all soil was replaced this spring, before the edibles were planted. Pollution from passing traffic is a concern; they advise citizens to thoroughly wash all produce.

we don't have leaded gasoline anymore but there is still the question of fallout pollution from traffic gradually working its way into nearby soils. I've thought fair amount about this problem. I think it takes more than one year - possibly as long as 5 years - to pollute new clean soils that are directly exposed to heavy nearby traffic. Many years longer when urban farmettes are located in new soil beds, far from busy streets.

contamination from old flaking lead-based paints is a real issue. I wouldn't be too concerned about the odd mint or nasturtium flower, but i would not grow vegetables in a regular inner city plot, i'd have to build a raised container with new soil. Some of the montreal community gardens were situated in amazingly poor choices. There's a big one built right over the decarie expressway. Duh.


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> my figs may be completely off base but 2 guests @ $200/night each incl dinner for only 2 nights per week might turn into a gross of 40k per annum


You have a point there. And the fact that my girlfriend is passionate about wine and has a natural talent for pairing the right wine with the food I cook could make for a winning combination. She's actually contemplating switching careers to go work at the SAQ and I've been encouraging her. Our friends who visited this weekend don't drink any alcohol and we abstained as well, no hardship for us as we normally only drink on weekends anyway so we hardly missed it.

I don't think there are more than 4 other people who read this thread, though, so in terms of CMF participants I think we're talking a rather limited population. Besides, MoneyGal's clearly an experienced enough cook that I'd feel intimidated trying to cook for her anyway! ;-)

And here's to raised beds -- if I ever do put in a little potager in our tiny plot of land, that's how I'd do it -- raised beds with fresh organic topsoil. Have you ever seen Elliot Coleman's book Four Season Harvest? He grows vegetables all year round in Maine, and I have it in my head to apply some of his techniques to allow me to grow cold-hardy vegetables all winter here under cold frames.


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## brad

Last week was so hot, all I could make was salads. But these were satisfying full-meal salads: roasted eggplant salad with feta, sliced red onion, red pepper, and a tomato, served over cold couscous; a simple chicken salad dressed with olive oil and lemon juice, mixed with olives and other goodies; an Iranian salad of tomatoes and cucumbers with olive oil, lemon juice, cumin, and other spices; and another olive-oil-dressed chicken salad, this one with artichoke hearts and red peppers (I poached two boneless chicken breasts in some homemade chicken stock I had in the freezer; one breast each went into the two salads).

Then the weekend and the cold front hit, and I decided to get ambitious and cook a savory Greek pie of zucchini, zucchini flowers, herbs, and feta as my farewell to the summer squash season. It turned out to be one of the best meals I’ve ever made. 

It took a bit of time and effort, but I was in the mood for it and we had a friend from France here this weekend so I wanted to do something special. I served it with a simple salad of greens; dessert once again was the super-simple sorbet, a reliable hit with guests.

The Greek pie is another one of Martha Rose Shulman’s terrific recipes from her Mediterranean Harvest cookbook; she calls it Zucchini and Herb Pie. There’s some mint and oregano here in addition to dill, but dill is the dominant taste. You need to make an oil-based pie crust, but it takes only 10 minutes (and is far less fussy than a buttery dessert pie crust); the recipe for the crust is below.

*Zucchini and Herb Pie*


3 pounds zucchini (I used a mix of green and yellow squash), ends trimmed
Salt
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 large onions, finely chopped
5-6 squash blossoms, finely chopped (if unavailable, 1 medium chopped carrot will work as a substitute)
1 cup finely chopped dill or fennel leaves
1/2 cup chopped fresh mint leaves
1/2 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
Leaves from 5 to 6 sprigs of fresh oregano, finely chopped (optional)
7 ounces (about 1.5 cups) crumbled feta cheese
2 large eggs, beaten
Freshly ground pepper
Top and bottom pie crusts (recipe follows, below).


Grate the zucchini on a box grater or using the grater of a food processer. Place in a large colander, salt generously, and let drain for an hour, pressing down occasionally to squeeze out the liquid. After an hour, wrap the shredded squash in a kitchen towel and wring dry. You want the squash to be as dry as possible otherwise you’ll have a soggy pie. Put the zucchini in a large bowl (there's a lot of it).
Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a large skillet over medium heat and add the onions. Cook until tender, add to the zucchini in the bowl (don't cook the zucchini; it'll cook in the pie). Add the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil, the chopped squash blossoms, herbs, feta, eggs, pepper, and additional salt to taste. Stir well.
Heat the oven to 350 Fahrenheit. Oil a 10- or 12-inch pie or tart pan. Divide the pie dough into two equal pieces, roll out the first piece to a circle 2 inches wider than the pan. Line the pan with the pastry and brush with olive oil. Scrape in the filling. Roll out the remaining dough to the size of the pan and place on top; press the edges together to form a lip around the edge. Score the top in a few places with a knife, and brush with olive oil. Bake for 1 hour, until the pastry is golden. Serve warm or at room temperature.


To make the crust: 


2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (or 1 1/4 cups all-purpose and 1 cup whole wheat flour).
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar, lemon juice, or ouzo
3/4 cup water


In a bowl, mix the flour and salt. Make a well in the center and pour in the olive oil, vinegar, and water, and mix with a fork just until the dough comes together.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for just a minute until smooth. Cut the dough in half, press each half into a circle about 4 inches in diameter and dust lightly with flour. Wrap tightly in plastic and place in a plastic bag. Let rest for 1 hour at room temperature or up to 3 days in the fridge.


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## brad

I live with a woman who grew up by the ocean, which means seafood is on the menu frequently in our house. Last week I made one of our perennial favourites: a simple and delicious Portugese pasta dish with mussels, chorizo, and tomato. The recipe is from Mark Bittman; the most time-consuming steps are taking the skin off the chorizo (easily done by slitting it lengthwise and then peeling) and cleaning the mussels. And neither one of those takes much time -- this dish takes little more than a half-hour from start to finish. It’s easily made on a weeknight, and unless you have a big family to feed it’ll provide leftovers for a few days.

I never used to buy whole-wheat pasta as I found it gummy and heavy, but progress marches on and there are some wonderful whole-wheat pastas available today, both dried and fresh. I don’t think they’re 100% whole wheat, which explains their lightness, but there’s enough in there to give them a lovely complex flavour you just can’t get with regular pasta. I spotted fresh whole-wheat linguine at the market last week and snatched it up for this dish. It was divine, its nutty flavour complementing the mussels and chorizo beautifully. I’ve also used squid-ink pasta in this recipe with great success, but it’ll work just fine with plain old grocery-store spaghetti or linguini.

*Mussels, Portugese-Style, over Pasta*


1/2 to 1 pound linguiça, chorizo, or other hard sausage
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic, chopped
4 or 5 plum tomatoes, cored and roughly chopped (or used canned, with the juice)
1/4 cup shredded fresh basil
1/2 cup water (you won’t need this if you used canned tomatoes with their juice)
About 3 pounds mussels, rinsed and debearded
1 1/2 pounds linguine, spaghetti, or other long pasta


Bring a large pot of water to the boil
Remove the skin from the sausage and chop into 1/4” pieces
Combine the olive oil and sausage in a large, deep pot over medium heat and cook, stirring, for about five minutes. When the sausage begins to brown, add the garlic and cook 1 or 2 minutes longer, stirring occasionally, then add the tomatoes and basil. Cook until the tomatoes soften, a few minutes. Add the water if you’re not using canned tomatoes, stir, add the mussels, cover, and raise the heat to high.
Salt the boiling water and cook the pasta until it is tender but firm.* Continue to cook the mussels, shaking the pot occasionally, until all of them are open; this will only take about 5 minutes. Drain the pasta, place in a very large serving bowl, pour the mussels and sauce over it. Garnish with more basil if you like, and serve.

*Look at the package to see how long the pasta needs to cook, and time it accordingly...you will probably need to start cooking the pasta before you put the mussels into the sauce.


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## humble_pie

once, in a multi-starred restaurant on the south shore of the lower st-lawrence, i had scallops from les Iles de la Madeleine. They had been harvested that morning, flown in that afternoon, cooked that evening. They were so sweet one would swear they were sugary. Ooh là. Never before. Never since.

which reminds me. Every now & then, on the lower st-lawrence, in the gaspésie, in charlevoix county, one finds these amazing little 5-star restaurants. In the middle of nowhere. Nothing outside except rocks, grasses & wild roses. Nothing between them & the north pole except pine forests & the open sea. But invariably they are packed to the gills with the most elegant of diners. Women dressed in summer silks. Men in ties. Artists, songwriters, journalists, judges, members of parliament. There's a name chef & food to make a strong man weep.

is brittany like that. I've never been. Somehow i imagine haunting, rocky outposts, gurgling salt tides, women with mermaid eyes, tristan & isolde floating over the sea.


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> is brittany like that. I've never been. Somehow i imagine haunting, rocky outposts, gurgling salt tides, women with mermaid eyes, tristan & isolde floating over the sea.


Such poetry at an early hour, I'm impressed!

Alas, Brittany isn't known for particularly fine cuisine, it's more the stick-to-your ribs style of plain and hearty food for fishermen, heavy on the salted butter. Probably the most iconic Breton dish is the buckwheat crêpe, typically filled with eggs, ham, sausage, cheese, etc. and accompanied by a glass of cider. Brittany is also noted for its desserts -- a sort of buttery shortbread virtually identical to the kind made in Scotland, and the kouign-aman, a rich buttery pastry. Brittany does have plenty of oysters; the native species mostly died out some decades ago and were replaced by Japanese imports that are cultivated now, but the small native oysters have been reintroduced and you can start to find them for sale in the markets. I love them, but they don't love me, and after being violently ill for four days around Christmas on our last trip there I think my days of eating raw Breton oysters may be over.

The haunting rocky outposts and gurgling tides are certainly there, as were Tristan and Isolde, Cesar, and even King Arthur, if you are to believe the legends. We visited Merlin's grave (one of several Merlin's graves to be found in various Celtic lands...either the magician managed to clone himself or bits of him ended up being scattered about).

It's a magical place; my girlfriend is from the Golfe de Morbihan, which has a mild microclimate and is less cliffy than the rest of Brittany; you can see palm trees and sandy beaches there. It's overrun with vacationers from Paris in the summer and a virtual ghost town in winter, which is when we like to visit.

One of our rituals when going there is to stop at the beautiful old village of St-Armel to pick up some gochtial at the incredible bakery there -- all their breads are excellent but the gochtial is like nothing I've tasted anywhere else: it's a sort of combination of bread and brioche, a big round loaf rich in flavour. We devour it for breakfast with butter and jam.


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## brad

*Really Great Applesauce*

Apple season is in full swing, and I try to take full advantage of it, eating apples out of hand, making apple pies and crisps, and making applesauce. When I lived in Vermont, my landlord “gave” me seven apple trees, telling me I could do what I liked with them, so I had a lesson in pruning from a friend of mine who works all winter pruning in the orchards, and after I pruned my trees I had a bumper crop of apples the following autumn. My landlord had a cider press, powered by an old washing-machine motor, so I invited a bunch of friends over to pick apples and make cider. It became an annual event. Friends who had their own apple trees brought bushels of apples to put them through the cider mill, and we made many gallons of cider.

Making applesauce might seem like a lot of work, but if you have an old-fashioned hand-cranked food mill it’s a breeze. You don’t have to peel or core the apples beforehand; you just cut them in quarters and throw them in a pot. Cook them down, run them through the food mill, and you’ve got a beautiful pink-hued sauce. It’ll be pretty tart, though, unless you add some sweetener.

I walked into the home of a friend in Vermont many years ago and was greeted by the irresistible smell of this particular applesauce, the recipe for which she kindly passed on to me. She called it "really great applesauce," so that's how I wrote it down in my notebook. It was originally published in Chris Schlesinger’s excellent “Thrill of the Grill” cookbook. It takes less than 10 minutes of effort and is by far the best applesauce I’ve ever tasted.

*Really Great Applesauce*


10 Baldwins, Macs, Cortlands, or Paulared apples, quartered.
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/3 cup sugar*
1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon allspice

*This sauce is often on the verge of being too sweet for me; if your apples are sweet, use 1/4 cup of sugar (or even no sugar at all; the maple syrup and orange juice may be enough) and then add a little once it’s done if you think it’s too tart.

Mix all ingredients in a big pot, bring to a simmer, reduce heat, and simmer slowy for 30-40 minutes. Put through a food mill to strain out the apple seeds and skins.


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## humble_pie

thanx as always for another amazing recipe.

the best applesauce i ever had in my life was made in a collective kitchen few years ago. Someone had bought a bushel of cortlands from an orchard. We had a couple hand-cranked food mills. As i recall, we added nothing. Certainly no sugar, and i believe no spices either. Maybe a shot of lemon juice or orange juice & a scrape of their zests.

the applesauce was pink & marvellous.

the problem with apples that you buy is that the non-organics are heavily sprayed throughout their growing cycle & immediately after picking they're subjected to a waxing preservation process that includes a fungicide. So one really has to peel them, imho.

even the so-called "organic" apples often seem to be waxed. And some of the dormant oil procedures used in the late winter/early spring even in organic orchards leave a toxic petroleum-derived residue in the buds.

bottom line is, before i'd cook an apple peel i'd pretty much want to have grown the fruit myself.

there was nothing i could say to the collective kitchen, though. Sometimes we have to bow to the majority. Fortunately the apples had that whitish bloom that suggests they had never been waxed. We washed em all. Peels & seeds went into the cauldrons just like you say. Peels certainly caused the beautiful rose colour, probbly added to flavour as well.

last week i was in the country looking for staghorn sumac berries. They make a fabulous dark red syrup, which can progress to fabulous jellies, pies & sorbets. Dried & crushed, with a tart, lemony taste, these berries or their levantine cousins are what you buy in middle eastern grocery stores to make zataar & other recipes.

but alas we were about 2 or 3 weeks too late. There's a mother insect who lays her eggs in sumac buds early each spring. All summer & fall the insects grow, populating the interiors of the glowing red sumac berry cones with increasing amounts of black dot-like droppings. If you manage to harvest the cones just when they are ripe but before the insects overpower them - around late august or before labour day - you can rake off the clean red berries from the exterior of each cone with the tines of a fork. But if you are too late, as we were, the insect colony has grown too large & there are not enough clean red exterior berries left. 

now nancy hinton, celebrated former l'eau à la bouche sous-chef and now chef de cuisine at her own gastronomie forestière restaurant northeast of montreal, has written about gathering sumac berries in january. Madre de dios. By january the towering red cones would have to be 95% black insect ess aitch eye tee inside, or else perhaps the staghorn sumacs around her rustic restaurant are somehow not infested, although everywhere else in quebec they are.


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> As i recall, we added nothing. Certainly no sugar, and i believe no spices either. Maybe a shot of lemon juice or orange juice & a scrape of their zests.


I have to admit I often go back to that basic approach when making applesauce for myself, but the "really great" recipe is what I serve to guests and my girlfriend, who loves it. I cut out the sugar and syrup once and she noticed.



humble_pie said:


> even the so-called "organic" apples often seem to be waxed. And some of the dormant oil procedures used in the late winter/early spring even in organic orchards leave a toxic petroleum-derived residue in the buds.


When I lived in Vermont there was an IPM (integrated pest management) orchard across the river in New Hampshire that commissioned a study by the University of Massachusetts to test their apples versus organic ones bought at Bread and Circus (now Whole Foods Market). The organic apples actually had more pesticide residues than the IPM apples! The researchers think it was because the organic orchards were located close enough to conventional orchards that there was a fair amount of pesticide drift on the wind, something I've been exposed to myself when walking by orchards when they were being sprayed.

Friends of mine won't eat apples with the peel on unless they wash the apple with soap and water. I edit a periodic US government report on children's environmental health issues, and one of the indicators my clients have developed tracks pesticide residues on produce. In 1999 about 80 percent of apples tested by the US Dept. of Agriculture's Pesticide Data Program had detectable levels of organophosphate pesticide. In 2005 that number had dropped to less than 50 percent, but that's still a long way from zero. Apples have much higher levels of pesticide residues than other common fruits and vegetables.

I know all this and yet I still eat apples and applesauce, but I tend to eat them seasonally.



humble_pie said:


> last week i was in the country looking for staghorn sumac berries.


 I used to make sumac-ade when I was a kid - like pink lemonade. And we used to pop the berries in our mouths and suck on them...a little furry, those berries are, but the flavour is great. I didn't know about those insects, though!


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## humble_pie

perhaps the parasitic sumac insects weren't so prevalent when you were a child ? They really made the cones last week look repulsive close up. There be a small clump of red berries, then a big black blotch of insect crud spilling out of the berry cone, then another tiny island of not-yet-infested red berries, and so on. I tried raking the red berries, but they were too few in number to bother with. Next year i'll know to get to them earlier.

brad could i please ask you for your advice on apple trees. Some friends just bought a house with large garden that includes a mature crabapple tree. The crabs are fairly wormy ... garden had been neglected for at least 5 or 10 years ... they managed to pick enough clean whole crabs to make a bit of wonderful crabapple jelly ... it's their first garden ... they were pretty shocked at the worms.

you say one should prune in winter ... makes sense ... before buds form ... does one prune out new growth from the previous summer or old limbs (my guess would be old limbs.) Also did you ever use or hear of a homemade dormant oil treatment prepared with canola oil, liquid soap & water & sprayed on in late february or early march ... this is supposed to be enough to repel the mother insect before she lays her eggs that will become the larvae/worms ... i also read that it's thought that even this harmless-sounding recipe can impart a toxic residue to the fruiting buds ...


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> you say one should prune in winter ... makes sense ... before buds form ... does one prune out new growth from the previous summer or old limbs (my guess would be old limbs.)


In general you prune out the suckers (the long, usually vertical-reaching thin branches), which are easy to spot once you know what they look like. That part's easy; the harder part, which is a skill and an art that takes time to develop (more time than I had in the five years that I lived with my apple trees), is judging which of the older branches to cut and where to cut them. In general you want to increase the amount of sunlight that reaches all the remaining branches, so you're trying to "air out" the tree and make it less dense. Because I didn't really trust my judgment in this area, I mostly just removed suckers and cut only a few of the older limbs. But even that had a huge effect on yield. I didn't spray my trees at all and they were really wormy as well; I'm sure the cider was full of additional protein, but they didn't affect the taste.



humble_pie said:


> Also did you ever use or hear of a homemade dormant oil treatment prepared with canola oil, liquid soap & water & sprayed on in late february or early march ...


This sounds familiar to me; I never used it but I will check with my pruning mentor, who has since gone on to become an organic agricultural inspector in Vermont and is very knowledgeable about such things. I'll let you know what he says!

EDIT the next morning to add that I heard back from my friend and he said he's seen contradictory information on the toxicity of this mix and he's not sure who to believe. He's looking into it further, to satisfy his own curiosity, and if I hear anything more from him about it I'll post it here.


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## brad

I love salmon, despite the fact that the best-tasting and most sustainable variety (wild-caught from Alaska) is pretty much impossible to find in my city and I’m usually stuck with having to buy the coastal farmed stuff. It still tastes good, but the environmental impacts and potential health risks of salmon farming bother me enough that I don’t buy it very often. You can find “organic farmed” salmon for sale in the fish markets, but I have no idea how those fish are raised. 

I’ve got tons of delicious salmon recipes, but this one’s my standby on busy weeknights; I’ve made it so often over the years that I can recite the recipe from memory. The original source is Terry Blonder Golson’s cookbook “For Goodness’ Sake.” She calls it “fish en papillotte.” You could make it with another kind of fish, but I find salmon goes beautifully with this combination of flavours.


1 filet of salmon, large enough to serve two people
1 clove of garlic, peeled and crushed
1 medium carrot, chopped
1/2 sweet red pepper, chopped
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon ground coriander
Salt and pepper to taste
Parchment paper


Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Tear off a piece of parchment paper and fold it in half. The parchment should be long enough so that the salmon filet will fit inside it with room to spare.
Open the folded parchment paper and put the crushed garlic inside along the folded edge. Sprinkle the chopped carrot and red pepper on the bottom half of the parchment paper and lay the salmon filet on top of the vegetables. Spoon the lemon juice over the salmon, then add salt and pepper and the ground coriander on top.
Fold the top half of the parchment over the salmon and seal the edges all around by folding them several times and creasing with flat of a knife.
Place the packet into a baking dish and put in the oven. Cooking time will depend on the thickness of the filet, but I usually find it’s done in 30 minutes or so. This is one fish dish where you don’t have to worry about overcooking, because the sealed packet holds the moisture in and you won’t end up with dry fish even if it does get overcooked.

This is good with rice or crusty bread on the side. The Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home cookbook has a series of similar fish-in-packet recipes, using aluminum foil instead of parchment paper; they have French, Asian, and Greek versions, each with different combinations of herbs and vegetables.


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## brad

When I was a kid, my stepmother would occasionally serve Brussels sprouts with supper. I dreaded them: they were invariably boiled to death, making them taste horribly bitter, and their smell had overtones of my high school gymnasium locker room after a long game of basketball. It was decades before I could bring myself to eat Brussels sprouts again; one autumn day I saw a basket of them at a farm market and remarked to a friend that they looked “almost edible.” On a whim, I bought them, and when I got home I sautéed them in olive oil. They were delicious.

Roasting is my current favourite way to eat Brussels sprouts, which are available fresh now in the markets. It brings out their nutty flavour and makes the outer leaves crisp while the inside remains tender. The recipe is dead easy; the ingredients here are from Mark Bittman and the timing is from Molly Katzen -- Bittman uses a hotter oven and cooks the sprouts until they are almost black, which is fine but I prefer them a little lighter.

*Roasted Brussels Sprouts*


1 pint Brussels sprouts (about one pound)
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, to coat bottom of pan
5 cloves garlic
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar


Heat oven to 425 degrees. Trim the bottoms of the sprouts and cut them in half, top to bottom.
Oil a baking sheet or a cast-iron skillet that can go in the oven, and place the sprouts in one layer, cut side down. Add the garlic to the pan as well, and sprinkle everything with salt and pepper.
Cook, shaking the pan occasionally, for 15 minutes or so, until the sprouts are browning and tender.
Taste, add more salt and pepper if necessary, stir in the balsamic vinegar, and serve hot or warm.


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## Berubeland

My mother also insisted on boiling vegetables to death. Thank god she also supplied a cheese sauce which served to mostly disguise the taste of the brussel sprouts. Also I had a great dog who would eat anything that happened to drop off the table...I was a messy eater  perhaps as a coping mechanism for my parents rule that anything you didn't eat would be served back to you until you ate it. 

I choose to steam my veggies in the microwave, this requires a little experimentation for quantity vs time. Depending on what you're serving you can add in a bit of oyster sauce or a bit of ginger, some garlic, teriyaki sauce or whatever else suits your fancy.


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## brad

Berubeland said:


> Depending on what you're serving you can add in a bit of oyster sauce or a bit of ginger, some garlic, teriyaki sauce or whatever else suits your fancy.


This makes me think that it might be fun to try stir-frying Brussels sprouts. I made a really good stir-fry last night of julienned carrots and red peppers with tofu, a light sauce of sherry, soy sauce, and toasted sesame oil, some white pepper, a bit of salt and a dash of sugar, some ginger, garlic, and scallion. 

I forgot to mention that I won't be posting next Monday as I'll be away.


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## humble_pie

here is an updated index to the recipes in this thread, following CC's index of the past summer.

there may be some duplication of entries with CC's index in the early months below; and some other recipes may be missing. My apologies to all if this is the case.

brad's Lemon pudding Cake with Calendula Blossoms 17may/10
http://www.canadianmoneyforum.com/showpost.php?p=23878&postcount=82

humble's Berry & Flower Syrups & Cordials 18 may/10:
http://www.canadianmoneyforum.com/showpost.php?p=23985&postcount=88

brad's Sorbet with Berries 31 may/10:
http://www.canadianmoneyforum.com/showpost.php?p=24695&postcount=98

brad's Cauliflower with Capers, Parsley and Vinegar 6 june/10:
http://www.canadianmoneyforum.com/showpost.php?p=25079&postcount=119

brad's Socca recipe 11 june/10:
http://www.canadianmoneyforum.com/showpost.php?p=25306&postcount=122

brad's Ginger Cucumber Salad with Scallops 25 june/10
http://www.canadianmoneyforum.com/showpost.php?p=26162&postcount=133

brad's recipes for Tomato Sauce and Eggplant with Pasta 28 june/10
http://www.canadianmoneyforum.com/showpost.php?p=26331&postcount=135

brad's Thai Chicken Salad Chris, Chris & Chris 5 july/10:
http://www.canadianmoneyforum.com/showpost.php?p=26664&postcount=144

brad's Fast Food 7 july/10
http://www.canadianmoneyforum.com/showpost.php?p=26860&postcount=149

brad's Lamb, Figs & Rosemary on skewers 19 july/10:
http://www.canadianmoneyforum.com/showpost.php?p=27651&postcount=163

humble's Pickled Watermelon Rind 26 july/10
http://www.canadianmoneyforum.com/showpost.php?p=28171&postcount=172

brad's Stuffed Squash Blossoms and Jim Lahey's Irish Brown Bread 9 august/10
http://www.canadianmoneyforum.com/showpost.php?p=28967&postcount=176

brad's Sambar 23 august/10
http://www.canadianmoneyforum.com/showpost.php?p=29850&postcount=183
but see also CC's comment on Sambar 23 august/10
http://www.canadianmoneyforum.com/showpost.php?p=29873&postcount=184

humble's Wild Garlic-Mustard Seed Mustard 27 august/10 
http://www.canadianmoneyforum.com/showpost.php?p=29892&postcount=187

brad's Zucchini and Herb Pie 6 sep/10
http://www.canadianmoneyforum.com/showpost.php?p=31034&postcount=198

brad's Mussels Portuguese Style 13 sep/10
http://www.canadianmoneyforum.com/showpost.php?p=31630&postcount=199

brad's Really Great Applesauce 20 sep/10:
http://www.canadianmoneyforum.com/showpost.php?p=32316&postcount=202

brad's Baked Salmon in Parchment paper 27 sep/10
http://www.canadianmoneyforum.com/showpost.php?p=33020&postcount=207

brad's Roasted Brussels Sprouts 4 oct/10:
http://www.canadianmoneyforum.com/showpost.php?p=33616&postcount=208


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> here is an updated index to the recipes in this thread, following CC's index of the past summer.


I think the goat elixir is missing ;-)

Thank you for doing that, humble! For one thing it'll help me keep from repeating myself; I sometimes worry that I'm posting a recipe I've already put up here.

I'm trying to post recipes from a few other sources these days so I don't get in trouble with the copyright police for posting lots of recipes from one or two books. I'm also trying to focus on simpler, non-intimidating recipes after the Sambar experience. 

(I made two pretty complicated dishes this past weekend that I won't post - a vegetarian moussaka with potatoes, artichoke hearts, and zucchini, and a meal-in-itself Tuscan soup of pinto beans, farro, cabbage, onions, garlic, etc., with a tomato sofrito mixed in during the final minutes of cooking. We've got company from France with us for the next three weeks, so I expect I'll be doing a lot of cooking and trying out some new recipes.)

My current idol, Martha Rose Shulman, recently came out with "The Very Best of Recipes for Health," a compilation of her recipes from the New York Times; I put it on my wish list for the holidays and am looking forward to that one.


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## humble_pie

_Thanh Nien News October 2007_

*Men and their partners seeking a little extra something in the bedroom need not look far, as Vietnam is chock full of natural cures to lackluster lovemaking.*

_Reported by Thanh Tung _

When it comes to enhancing male sexual stamina, doctor Nguyen Cong Duc from HCM City University of Medicine and Pharmacy says that traditional medicine offers a slew of recipes that seek to strengthen what many consider the source of sexual dysfunction: the kidney.

Here’s what he and other doctors recommended to a Thanh Nien reporter in search of new strength:

_*Oysters*_

Many oyster dishes such as oyster porridge, roasted oyster, or mustard oysters can increase sperm counts and ease the premature-climaxer’s worried mind.

Of the oyster aphrodisiacs, oyster porridge is believed to be the healthiest, as well as most effective.

But too much of this high protein food can be counterproductive. It is advisable to eat it only once or twice a week.

*Sea-horses*

One of Vietnam’s most popular folk solutions to “kidney weakness,” men often eat sea horses when they know they’ll have a night alone with the wife.

But beware, though many believe that drinking the infamous sea horse wine will turn any pipsqueak into an all-night Romeo, many doctors say that a drunken Cupid often misses the mark, as would-be Casanovas sauced by the sea horse may be more likely to watch the Arsenal game at a bia hoi (Vietnamese draft beer bar) than some quality time with the missus.

Alcohol is one of the most well known causes of - not cures to - impotence.
But for those who obtain from libations, an autumn-caught sea horse can often facilitate better blood circulation when eaten, says Doctor Nguyen Cong Duc. Anyone familiar with the love act knows that circulation is crucial to inflation.

Sea horse becomes an efficacious sexual enhancer when roasted yellow, minced and mixed with hot porridge or honey. It is best consumed three to five times per week.

*Turtles*

Eating Trionychid turtles is often conducive to sexual enjoyment.

The Trionychid turtle recipe includes 1 kg of turtle meat, 10 kg of the tradition-al herb dong trung ha thao (Cordyceps), 20 grams of red apple, a little white wine, onions, ginger and garlic. Stew them all in a liter of water, and enjoy the love potion.


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## brad

Now I know why my sex-crazed friend Guillaume is currenty spending three months in Vietnam.


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## humble_pie

happy canadian thanksgiving everybody, wherever you are.

brad said he'd be out of town this weekend, so i dug up a classic recipe that he published in july (ouf) (it involves baking in an oven) (welcome idea now that the weather has turned cool.)

Sweet Potato and Black Bean Salad with Chili Dressing. It's an all-ltime great. Deserves the double billing.

about sweet potato salad, brad writes:

" I'm not sure who this recipe came from; I didn't write that down. Omit the cilantro if you're one of those unfortunates whose genes have decreed that cilantro tastes like soap."

4 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
1 large onion, preferably red, chopped
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 to 2 tablespoons minced fresh hot chile (e.g., jalapeño)*
1 clove garlic, peeled
Juice of 2 limes
2 cups cooked black beans, drained (canned are fine)
1 red or yellow bell pepper, seeded and finely diced
1 cup chopped fresh cilantro.

*Test your chiles first; 1 tablespoon may be too much if your chiles are really hot! 

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Put sweet potatoes and onions on a large baking sheet an ddrizzle with a tablespoon of the oil; toss to coat and spread out in a single layer. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and roast, turning occasionally, until the potatoes begin to brown on the corners and are just tender inside, about 30-40 minutes. Remove from oven and keep on pan until ready to mix with dressing.

2. Put chiles in a blender or mini food processor along with the garlic, lime juice, remaining olive oil, and a little salt and pepper. Process until blended.

3. Put the warm vegetables in a large bowl with the black beans and bell pepper, toss with the dressing and cilantro. Serve warm or let cool to room temperature.


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## brad

Thanks, humble, for re-posting that recipe -- it’s one of the tastiest ones up here.

As it happens, the night before humble posted the recipe for sweet potato-black bean salad, we were eating another of my favourite sweet potato dishes for supper. We spent the holiday weekend in Parc Aiguebelle, a small-but-stunning provincial park in the Abititi-Témiscamingue region of Québec. I cooked the filling for these quesadillas at home in advance and brought it up with us, along with the cheese and tortillas, and we enjoyed them with a few bottles of beer in the warmth of our cabin overlooking Lake Lois, watching beavers swimming in the water below and listening to a couple of gray jays making a racket in the birches.

The recipe is from the Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home, which has several delicious quesadilla recipes in addition to this one. A quesadilla is essentially Mexico’s version of a grilled cheese sandwich, although there’s usually quite a bit more than just cheese in it. From start to finish this recipe takes about a half-hour, so it’s a good easy supper during the work week.

*Sweet Potato Quesadillas*


1.5 cups finely chopped onion
2 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
4 cups grated peeled sweet potatoes (about 3 medium-size sweet potatoes)
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon chili powder
2 teaspoons ground cumin
A generous pinch of cayenne or other dried hot pepper
Salt and black pepper to taste
1 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese


8 tortillas (8 to 10 inch)*
Salsa
Sour cream

*I usually use the big flour tortillas and fold them in half over the filling so I can cook two quesadillas at once in my skillet, but if you have the small corn ones you can use those as well: just make your quesadilla sandwich-style, with one tortilla on the bottom and another on top, without folding them. In fact I think this is the traditional way of making quesadillas in most of Mexico.


Saute the onions and garlic in the oil until the onions are translucent. Add the grated sweet potatoes, oregano, chili powder, cumin, and cayenne, and cook, covered, for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently to prevent sticking. 
When the sweet potato is tender, add salt and pepper to taste and remove the filling from the heat. Spread some of the filling and about 2 tablespoons of cheese on one half of each tortilla, and fold the tortilla over. Cook the tortillas on a lightly oiled skillet for 2-3 minutes on each side, until the cheese is melted and the filling is hot.
Serve immediately with salsa and sour cream on the side.


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## brad

Sorry for the lack of a post this Monday, I was away again.

When our visitors from France were here, I treated them to a full Thanksgiving supper, topped off with my favourite recipe for pumpkin pie, which I'm posting here now in time for Halloween. It's actually a combination of pumpkin and apple, and the "drunken" aspect of it is entirely optional but adds a very nice touch. I'm no good at making buttered pie crusts, so my girlfriend took care of that part and I did the rest, but a store-bought crust will do just fine. You could also use pumpkin pie spice in place of the mix here, but because pumpkin pie spice tends to get used only once or twice a year, chances are the stuff in your cupboard has lost its flavour. So I prefer to grind the spices fresh myself (except the cinnamon and ginger). This recipe is from Renee Shepherd.

*Drunken Apple-Pumpkin Pie*


1 unbaked 9-inch pie shell
1 cup cooked and mashed pumpkin or winter squash, well drained
1 cup thick, chunky applesauce (to make your own, see my previous recipe posted here)
2 eggs
3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon allspice
1/8 teaspoon cloves
1.5 cups half-and-half
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup pecans
2 tablespoons rum


Preheat oven to 425 F
Prepare pumpkin and applesauce. In a bowl, beat together the eggs and sugar until light. Mix in the pumpkin, applesauce, flour, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, half-and-half, and vanilla, and blend thoroughly. Pour into pie shell, and place the pecan halves attractively over the top of the filling.
Bake in the lower third of oven for 20 minutes, then reduce oven heat to 350F and bake 35 minutes longer, or until the filling is firm and a knife inserted a couple of centimeters from the edge comes out clean
Cool on a wire rack. At serving time, warm the rum in a small container suitable for pouring (I put it in a pyrex measuring cup and microwave for about 5 seconds). Light the rum with a match and pour immediately while flaming over the pie. Serve with ice cream or whipped cream.


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## brad

We never ate kohlrabi in my house when I was growing up, so as an adult I had no idea what it was, what it tasted like, or what to do with it. But in late summer and autumn you can find kohlrabi aplenty in farm markets, and one year I ran across this interesting-sounding recipe in a seed catalogue (from Shepherd's Garden Seeds). I decided to try it, and it knocked my socks off; I've been making a batch every autumn for the past 15 years or so. I'm sure there are plenty of other good things to do with kohlrabi, but this is so tasty I haven't bothered to look further.

*Pickled Kohlrabi*


3 kohlrabi, peeled, sliced 1/4 inch thick
2 large carrots, peeled, cut into sticks and parboiled for 3 minutes
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 bay leaf
3 large sprigs fresh dill

Pickling mixture:

3/4 cup white vinegar
1 1/4 cups water
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon mustard seed
1/2 teaspoon dill seed
1/4 teaspoon red chile flakes
1 teaspoon salt


Mix the kohlrabi and carrots and pack in a 1-quart glass jar along with the garlic, bay leaf, and fresh dill. 
In a saucepan, combine the pickling mixture, and heat while stirring until it boils and the sugar dissolves.
Pour the boiling mixture over the kohlrabi, filling the jar completely. Cover the jar. When cool, refrigerate for 3-4 days before using to let the flavours blend.


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## brad

On Tuesday night I decided to be adventurous and make spanakopita from scratch; it's more work than I usually want to do on a weeknight, but it was well worth the effort. Here's the evidence:










The most labour-intensive bits were stemming the spinach and cleaning the leeks; the rest of it went pretty quickly. Recipe is from Martha Rose Shulman, another brilliant dish from her Mediterranean Harvest cookbook.

*Spanakopita*


2 1/4 pounds fresh spinach, stemmed (you could probably save yourself some trouble and use frozen spinach here)
2 tablesppons extra virgin olive oil, plus a bit more for brushing the phyllo
3 large leeks, white and light green parts only, washed well and thinly sliced
1 bunch of fresh flat-leaf parsley, leaves chopped
2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
1/4 cup chopped fresh dill
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves (or 3/4 teaspoon dried)
3 large eggs, beaten
6 ounces feta, crumbled
Salt and pepper
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
12 sheets of phyllo dough
1 egg white, lightly beaten


Wilt the spinach in a large nonaluminum frying pan over medium-high heat with the water left on the leaves after washing. Transfer to a colander, rinse with cold water, and press out as much water as possible. For extra credit, wrap in a towel and squeeze out even more water. Chop fairly fine and set aside.
Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy skillet over medium heat and add the leeks. Cook, stirring often, for about 10 minutes, until the leeks are softened and beginning to brown. Add the spinach and stir until the spinach is coated with oil.
Scrape the spinach and leeks into a large bowl. Stir in the parsley, rosemary, dill, thyme, eggs, feta, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.
Brush a 10-or 12-inch tart pan with olive oil and layer in 7 sheets of phyllo dough, placing them not quite evenly on top of each other so that the edges overlap the sides of the pan all the way around. Brush each sheet with olive oil before placing the other.
Scrape in the filling, fold the edges of the dough over the spinach mixture, and brush with olive oil. Layer five more sheets of dough over the top, brushing each sheet with olive oil. Stuff the edges into the sides of the pan. Brush the top with beaten egg white. Pierce the top of the pie in a few places with a sharp knife.
Bake for 45-50 minutes, until the top is golden brown. Serve hot or at room temperature.


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## humble_pie

is that photo luscious or what. Now we know what to try to aim for. Although i for one will never arrive at such perfection.

remarks in no particular order ...

- for a minute there i thought spanakopita from scratch meant you were going to make your own phyllo too. Ouf.

- would i be permitted to add to step 3 to beat the eggs in the bowl first, then add everything else ... avoid extra kitchen cleanup.

- when i was a child my grandmother knew a dynamite woman politician (rare in those days) who had a chinese cook in her mansion on cedar avenue. His pies always had the most interesting fluted edges. Normally we flute with a fork or our fingers, but his pie rims sported an unusual design that nobody could figure out. And he refused to say.

one day the politician happend into her kitchen where cook was bending over an unbaked pie crust & fluting with the stump of his long pigtail ...


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> - for a minute there i thought spanakopita from scratch meant you were going to make your own phyllo too. Ouf.


Hah, that would be too much even for me. I can tell just by handling the stuff that I would have no patience for making phyllo; I have a hard enough time making pasta without getting flustered.

Ugh on the pigtail fluting technique, that's gross!


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## humble_pie

i don't think it's too gross, myself. When you think about it, people who live together develop a certain harmony at the energetic or sub-atomic level. They grow immune to each other's germs & bacteria. Together they share all the same protons, electrons, neutrons & ions of the common environment.

when you consider this household, and all the dishes streaming back & forth from the kitchen all day long, this lady probably had a greater atomic & energetic exchange with her cook, in the course of a 24-hour period, than she did with her husband ...


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## brad

I have some scallions left over in the fridge that were bought for another recipe, and whenever I am thinking of what to do with a few scallions my mind inevitably lands on miso soup. 

Homemade miso soup is a cinch to make and tastes as good or better than what you get in a good Japanese restaurant or sushi bar. It’s a two-part process, but together the two parts take less than half an hour.

First you make the dashi. I’ve used several recipes for dashi over the years and have settled on this one, but I provide an alternative, more complex and flavorful dashi below.

Basic dashi requires only three ingredients, one of which is water, but the other two may be unfamiliar if you’ve never done any Japanese cooking: kombu and bonito flakes. Both are readily available at most health-food stores or any Asian grocery. Kombu is dried kelp. If you’ve ever kept tropical fish, bonito flakes will remind you, both in appearance and smell, of the food that you sprinkle over the top of the water in the aquarium to feed your fish.

*Dashi* (also see recipe for alternative, richer dashi below)


1 piece of kombu, 10 to 15 centimeters long
1/2 cup of dried bonito flakes


Combine the kelp and 8 cups of water in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Don’t allow it to come to a boil; as soon as it’s about to boil turn off the heat and remove the kombu.
Immediately add the bonito flakes and stir; let sit for a couple of minutes and then strain.

*Miso Soup*


4 cups dashi
1/2 cup light-coloured miso*
1/4 cup of chopped scallions
100 grams (4 ounces) silken tofu, diced

*There are many types of miso; the dark-brown miso can be used in soups but the flavour is too strong for many people. In Japanese restaurants they usually use the lighter blond-colored varieties of miso. Miso will keep for a year or more in your fridge, even after you open the container, so I always have some on hand.

Heat the dashi, but don’t let it boil. When hot, put the miso into a large bowl and ladle a half-cup or so of dashi over it and stir to form a smooth paste. Pour the miso paste into the soup, add the tofu and scallions, and let it sit on the heat for a couple of minutes to warm up the tofu. Serve.


*Alternative, Richer Dashi*

I got this recipe from one of Madhur Jaffrey’s cookbooks; it’s lovely, tastes healthy, and fills your kitchen with appetizing aromas while you’re making it.


8 dried shiitake mushrooms
6 scallions
2 carrots, trimmed, peeled, and each cut into three sections
1 piece of kombu, 10-15 centimeters long
2 teaspoons tamari or soy sauce
1 teaspoon mirin
1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil


Rinse the mushrooms quickly. In a small pot, combine the mushrooms, scallions, carrots, and about 4 cups of water. Cover and simmer gently for 30 minutes. 
Put the kombu in the pot and simmer for one minute. Turn off the heat and strain the stock through three layers of cheesecloth. Add the rest of the ingredients to the stock, and stir to mix.


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## brad

It’s funny how you can live with another person for years and think you are familiar with all their likes and dislikes, and then they surprise you. After a decade of eating my food, my girlfriend announced the other day that she really doesn’t like tomato sauce. We are frequent pasta eaters and I’ve made countless dishes with tomato sauce, not knowing that she was enduring rather than enjoying it.

So on Sunday night I made homemade pansôti (ravioli filled with a heavenly mixture of greens, herbs, ricotta, and nutmeg) topped with Ligurian walnut sauce. I won’t go into the pansôti recipe as it’s way too much work unless you have a lot of time and patience, but the sauce was easy enough and is very versatile. In addition to having it on pasta, you could spread it on bread and stick it under the broiler for a minute or two, or use it as a sauce on top of chard, beets, or other vegetables. 

This is yet another great recipe from Martha Rose Shulman’s Mediterranean Harvest cookbook. It’s similar to Tarator sauce, which is used in Turkish cooking.

Unless you’re planning a feast, you might want to cut this recipe in half; the sauce only lasts three or four days in the fridge and it’s best eaten fresh anyway.

*Ligurian Walnut Sauce*


1 garlic clove, cut in half
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons bread crumbs
1 3/4 cups shelled walnuts
3 tablesppons freshly grated Parmesan
2/3 cup fresh ricotta cheese diluted with 2 tablespoons warm water


Put the garlic in a blender or food processor and chop.
Scrape down the sides, add the bread crumbs and walnuts, and process to a paste.
Scrape into a bowl, stir in the Parmesan, salt, and ricota, and blend well. Gradually stir in the olive oil until smooth. To use as a pasta sauce, thin it down to the desired consistency with some of the pasta cooking water.


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## humble_pie

another 5-star recipe.
just reading it i'd say it works great.
and my grocery has walnuts on special this week so i'll get to try it soon.

for your very first recipe long ago - the one that started this thread - i purchased my first ground coriander seeds.
i'm a person who reacts strongly to fragrances & tastes so i have to admit these became an addiction.
heavenly.
sublime.
occasionally while waiting for a pot to come to the boil i'll open the jar just to inhale a sniff & bliss out.
now i can't recall how i ever lived my life BC. Thank you brad.


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> for your very first recipe long ago - the one that started this thread - i purchased my first ground coriander seeds.
> i'm a person who reacts strongly to fragrances & tastes so i have to admit these became an addiction.


I love that smell too. I grind my own from whole seeds, but it's a messy process because the shells tend to create chaff (I use a mortar and pestle; it works a lot better in an electric spice grinder but I'm a stubborn guy).

Another smell that will send you to heaven is freshly ground allspice (quatre épices in French). Coriander, cumin, cardamom, and allspice are four of my favourite kitchen smells. There is a wonderful spice store at the Marché Jean-Talon called Olives et Épices, and sometimes I buy spices there just because they intrigue me...black cardamom for example is one that I bought a few years back on a whim and then had to hunt to find recipes that use it -- it smells and tastes very different from green cardamom.


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## MoneyGal

One of my peak experiences in life was having a private tour of the botanical gardens on St. Vincent. Cinnamon bark (I had only seen cassia to that point, in India), nutmeg trees, and fresh cloves from a clove tree. I had jam made of nutmeg fruit. (I also saw many amazing flowers but the spices - particularly the nutmeg tree - were what really stood out for me.) 

Brad - in Hindi, black cardamom is known as "Moti Elachi" - big or "fat" cardamom.


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## brad

MoneyGal said:


> One of my peak experiences in life was having a private tour of the botanical gardens on St. Vincent.


Wow! I have a box of curry leaves here waiting to be used; I do have recipes that use the leaves but haven't gotten around to trying them yet. But I love smelling the leaf. And the Hindi name for black cardamom is apt, as those pods are really big. And what a strange smell!

Asafetida is another strange one; the fresh powder is truly putrid so I use the chunk asafetida instead and break off little pieces with a hammer. How anyone discovered that something that smells so horrible could be used in cooking is beyond me.

My brother-in-law in France discovered that the best way to ensure that one gets a private train compartment without paying extra is to bring a large, stinky cheese on board with you and leave it next to the radiator in winter, or leave it in an open paper bag in summer.


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## brad

I can go for months without eating red meat, not out of any conscious desire to avoid it but simply because it doesn’t occur to me. Meat has never been a big part of my diet, and it doesn’t interest me very much. But I’ve learned to obey my cravings when I get a taste for meat, and when a friend of mine in Vermont mentioned last week that he was making lamb stew for supper (in his case, from one of his own lambs) I couldn’t get my mind off it. So on Friday night I prepared a simple Irish stew. There must have been something in it that I needed, because afterwards I was filled with energy and a sense of well-being; I didn’t get sleepy until well past my usual bedtime.

There are dozens of ways to make Irish stew; I like this simple approach from Mark Bittman. We accompanied it with a salad of mâche, dressed with olive oil and vinegar.

*Irish Stew*


2 tablespoons olive oil
2 pounds cubed lamb (from the shoulder is best, you can usually find it already cubed if you don’t mind paying a little extra)
1 onion, chopped
1 pound of potatoes (the long, thin fingerling potatoes are perfect here, you don’t even need to peel them. If using larger potatoes, peel and cut them up into chunks.)
1 tablespoon minced garlic
3 or 4 sprigs of fresh thyme
1 cup of red wine or stock
Minced fresh parsley for garnish


Put the olive oil in a heavy pot with a lid, and turn the stove to medium-high. When hot, add the lamb chunks a few at a time, removing them as they brown and seasoning them with salt and pepper as they cook. When they are all browned (ths will take 5-10 minutes), pour or spoon off the excess fat and add the onion. Cook until tender, then add the garlic and cook another couple of minutes.
Add the wine or stock, along with 1/2 cup of water and some salt and pepper. Bring to the boil, return the lamb to the pan, turn the heat to low, and cover. Cook at a steady simmer until the lamb is tender, about 60 to 90 minutes.
About 30 minutes before the lamb is done, add the potatoes.
Garnish with parsley and serve.


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## humble_pie

morning brad. My mother, who was partly irish, used to put one or two whole allspice berries in irish stew.

the story goes that her grandfather the irishman attended a wedding in the auld countree that was held on board ship. He got stinking drunk & passed out. When he woke up she was asail on the north atlantic, bound for canada.


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> morning brad. My mother, who was partly irish, used to put one or two whole allspice berries in irish stew.


Thanks for that suggestion...given my penchant for allspice I'm surprised this hadn't occurred to me.

My ancestors on my father's side were Irish as well, from Co. Cork; I think it was my great-great grandfather who came over to this side of the Atlantic. My mother's side of the family was French, from Alsace, and they were all glass-blowers by trade. I tried my own hand at glass-blowing once, making a wine glass. I blew a perfect bubble on the first try, and my mentor was astonished. "Nobody does that!" she exclaimed. Hah, I thought, it must be in the genes. I used a pliers to pull out the stem, and then made the cookie (the round part at the bottom of the stem). Everything looked perfect, and my mentor was floored, she'd never seen such a good first attempt, but then I assembled the pieces and pushed too hard on the stem as I was attaching it to the cookie. The stem and the goblet buckled and the resulting glass looked pretty much like a toilet bowl. We fired it anyway and I keep it as a reminder to avoid becoming too confident in myself. It holds whiskey perfectly.


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## humble_pie

re the allspice you know the rule here, don't-accept-financial-tips-from-anonymous-internet-forums.

btw i think it was only one berry per stew.

re your tipsy glass. When the drinker declares that the glass is straight, he's had enough whiskey.


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## brad

Back in the 1970s and early 80s I spent many of my weekends hiking, canoeing, and camping in the Adirondacks, the largest park in the contiguous United States. I was fascinated with the place, and spent hours in the library poring through back issues of Adirondack Life magazine. This recipe for maple johnnycake appeared in the Spring 1974 issue, and I copied it down; I’ve probably made it 100 times since then. Johnnycake was one of the staple foods in early America, and is still made frequently in New England. It's pretty similar to southern corn bread.

*Maple Johnnycake*


1 cup sifted flour*
1 cup cornmeal
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup melted butter

*I often use a mix of flours, such as white, whole wheat, soy, buckwheat, etc., but try to have at least 1/2 cup of wheat in there to provide the right texture.


Preheat oven to 400 Fahrenheit. Sift the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, salt. 
Mix in eggs, milk, syurp, and then the melted butter. Pour into a 9” square buttered pan.
Bake at 44 for 25-30 minutes; cut up while hot.


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## humble_pie

er, the cornmeal ?


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> er, the cornmeal ?


Oops! It goes in with the flour and other dry ingredients in step 1.

Good cornmeal, by the way, has a limited shelf life; I keep mine in the fridge in summer so it doesn't go rancid.


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## brad

There are all kinds of rules about paella, most of which are safe to ignore unless you’re from Spain. Strictly speaking, paella must be made by a man (if it’s made by a woman it’s an arroz), must be made in a paella pan, must be cooked outdoors, and must be served before sundown in its cooking pan with guests around it in a circle grabbing bites with their hands or lettuce leaves. And then there are all the conflicting restrictions about what it can and cannot contain. Rice and saffron are pretty much the only constants; beyond that you’ll find various recipes with onions, pimentón (smoked paprika), tomatoes, shrimp, chicken, rabbit, mussels, chorizo, etc., and you’re guaranteed to find someone who will proclaim angrily that a true paella would never contain at least one of those ingredients.

I’ve been making paella for years, but last night’s was the best ever. I based it in part on a traditional paella recipe from Elisabeth Luard (who lived in Spain for many years), and in part on a version from Mark Bittman (who knows a lot of Spanish chefs). Among the heresies I committed were 1) I used a cazuela instead of a paella pan, because I don’t have a paella pan (a cazuela is a tempered clay cooking dish), and 2) I finished it off in the oven, which is Bittman’s method. It was wonderful.

I’ve made vegetarian paellas, but last night’s wasn’t one of them: it had chorizo, chicken thighs, and mussels. In addition to the requisite saffron, I added two teaspoons of pimentón, that wonderfully smoky Spanish paprika. Between the heat added by the chorizo and the flavours contributed by the saffron and pimentón, this paella had a rich, complex warmth that was the perfect counterpoint to the chill of a Canadian winter day.

*Paella*


3.5 cups stock or water (water is fine)
1 pinch saffron threads
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, minced (enough for about 2 tablespoons)
salt and pepper
2 cups paella rice or Arborio rice (these are short-grain rices)
2-4 chicken thighs, either bone-in or boneless
8 ounces Spanish chorizo, sliced
2 teaspoons pimentón or other paprika
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup diced canned tomatoes or tomato puree.


Put the stock or water into a pan and add the saffron threads. Warm it on medium or medium-low; it doesn’t have to boil but should be hot.
Preheat the oven to 450 Fahrenheit.
In a paella pan or other large flat ovenproof skillet, cook the chicken in the oil over medium-high heat until deeply browned on both sides, then add the onion and garlic and cook until soft. 
Add the chorizo, paprika, wine, and tomato puree, and bring to a boil; cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until most of the liquid is gone. 
Add the rice, scattering it evenly into the pan, and stir to get it coated with the remaining pan juices.
Add the warm saffron-infused stock or water (the saffron threads can go in with it, no need to remove them). 
Put the pan in the oven and bake undisturbed for 10 minutes. Then put the mussels on top and put back in the oven for another 5-10 minutes.
Check to see if the rice is dry and tender; if so, remove from oven and let sit for 5-10 minutes before serving.


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## brad

A simple frittata is one of my staple fast-food lunches -- quick, easy, healthy, and delicious. I made this one for lunch yesterday and it was fantastic. Frittatas are also a foolproof alternative to omelettes. I've always been intimidated by omelettes (if you want to see the Zen master of omelettes, Jacques Pepin, watch here -- he makes it look so easy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57afEWn-QDg).

This frittata with peas, mint, and goat cheese is from Mollie Katzen.

*Frittata*


4 large eggs
3 tablespoons fresh goat cheese, crumbled
2 tablespoons minced fresh mint leaves
salt and pepper
2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons finely minced scallion
3/4 cup peas (defrosted if frozen)
1/2 teaspoon minced garlic


Preheat the broiler.
In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs until smoth, then stir in half of the goat cheese, along with all the mint, a pinch or two of salt, and a few grinds of pepper. Set aside
Place an ovenproof skillet over medium heat, add the oil and swirl to coat the pan. Add the scallion and peas, along with another pinch of salt. Saute for about 2 minutes, then stir in the garlic.
Pour in the egg mixture and let it sit stil over the heat for about 30 seconds, then gently lift the edges with a spatula and tilt the pan in all directions to let the loose egg move toward the edges. Allow to sit for 5 minutes over the heat, until just about set (the top will still be runny).
Sprinkle on the remaining cheese, then transfer the pan to the broiler for about 2 minutes until the top is golden (watch carefully so it doesn't burn).
Remove the pan from the broiler and let the frittata sit for a minute or two to set. Serve hot, warm, or at room temperature.


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## humble_pie

no christmas icon is as easy to prepare as traditional plum pudding flaming with brandy, with a crystal bowl of hard sauce to hand round at the table. A store-bought plum pudding is fine. The hard sauce can be made days ahead & stored in the frig.

*Hard Sauce*

- 1/2 to 3/4 pound unsalted butter (depends how many at your xmas dinner)
- 1-2 cups icing sugar.
- pinch of salt. 
- 2-3 tbsp brandy OR 1-1 1/2 tsp mix of vanilla & almond extract to flavour.
- (optional) (just before serving) sprinkling of nutmeg or grated orange rind

let butter reach room temperature in mixing bowl. Beat until pale, fluffy & very light. Add salt while beating.
add icing sugar gradually while beating.
test degree of sweetness from time to time & stop when taste is sweet enough to suit your family.
add brandy or vanilla/almond extract mixture to taste.
chill the hard sauce in frig for at least several hours. Overnight is fine. Extra hard sauce will keep at least a month in frig.

to serve, pile the hard sauce in a fine crystal or glass bowl. Somehow, when it comes to hard sauce, glass looks better than china. Sprinkle nutmeg or grated orange rind on top if you like.

to serve the pudding. Open foil wrapping at the top. If not already wrapped in foil, then wrap the pudding, leaving top open.
steam pudding for 30-45 mins depending on size. The pudding is already cooked, so this steaming is just to heat it.

warm 1/3 cup brandy in small pot.

unwrap pudding & place on platter. A garnish of holly on top is traditional. One can also place snippets of holly, or a few cedar branch tips or other unsprayed greens or flowers around the pudding. This year my christmas cactus is blooming gang-busters, so i'm thinking to use pink christmas cactus blossoms. They're even on the list of edible flowers.

pour the warmed brandy over the pudding & light with a match. Carry the flaming xmas pudding to the table. Hand round the dish of hard sauce as pudding is served to all.


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## brad

_Note: This will be my last regular Monday posting of recipes; it doesn't mean I won't ever post something here again, just not every week._

It's a tradition in many cultures to eat a meal of beans on New Year's Day; it's supposed to bring prosperity to the new year. My mother died when I was young, and my father (a busy executive in New York City) hired a Polish housekeeper to make our meals and keep the house shipshape. Every year she made us kielbasa and lentils for New Year's Day, in the Polish tradition, and I've always associated that meal with the beginning of the year. In the southern United States the traditonal New Year's meal is a dish made with black-eyed peas called Hoppin' John.

The recipe below is for a warm black-eyed pea salad, from Martha Rose Shulman. She serves it every year on New Year's Day; it has southwestern flavours, and she serves it with cornbread (which is also the traditional accompaniment to Hoppin' John).


1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 pound black-eyed peas, rinced and picked over to remove stones
1 bay leaf
1-2 teaspoons salt

For the dressing:


1/4 cup red wine vinegar or sherry vinegar
1 garlic clove, minced
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1-2 teaspoons cumin seeds, lightly toasted (optional) and ground
salt and pepper
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 large red bell pepper, diced
1/2 cup chopped cilantro

To make the black-eyed peas, heat the oil in a large, heavy soup pot over medium heat. Add the onion. Cook, stirring until tender, about 5 minutes. Add half of the garlic and cook, stirring, until the garlic is fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the black-eyed peas and two quarts of water, bring to a simmer. Skim off any foam from the surface; add the bay leaf and salt. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes. Taste and add more salt if desired. Add the remaining garlic, cover, and simmer, until the peas are tender but intact, about 15 minutes. Remove from heat and drain through a colander or sieve set over a bowl. Transfer to a large salad bowl and reserve 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid. Discard the bay leaf.

To make the dressing and salad: whisk together the vinegar, garlic, mustard, cumin, salt and pepper to taste in a small bowl. Whisk in the reserved bean broth and olive oil. Taste and adjust seasonings. Stir the dressing into the warm beans, then add the bell pepper and cilantro. Serve warm or at room temperature.


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## humble_pie

before the year is out ...

i'd like to thank brad for a vast collection of personally-written recipes that amounts to a tiny, perfect little cookbook.

i haven't tried more than a quarter of them. I tend to serve what They Will Eat. They do accept new dishes, but only at a leisurely pace. So there are enough wondrous recipes in brad's collection to last me nearly a decade. By which time even the teens will have moved out, i sincerely hope.

i especially appreciate the individual commentaries with each recipe. How this step is difficult, or that other step sounds more complicated than it really is once the cook gets started, or where to buy unusual ingredients.

early monday mornings won't be the same now. The spice will be gone from overseasmarkets&spotoil&spotgold&futures.

bravo, and thank you again.


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> bravo, and thank you again.


Thanks for the thanks! And thanks for starting this thread in the first place, and for encouraging me.

I've really enjoyed it, and will contribute more recipes in the coming year, but it'll be easier for me if it's not on a regular basis. Next year is shaping up to be the busiest year of my life so far, and I already have enough daily and weekly deadlines to meet that I'd rather post recipes on an ad hoc basis. 

Happy New Year!


----------



## Spidey

Saw this recipe for Kidney Bean Stew on the food network and thought I'd give it a try. My wife and I loved it, but our finicky kids were not as impressed. 

This flavourful stew is filled with fiber and protein, and is delicious to boot. Try it tonight!

Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes
Yield: 4
Ingredients

* 2 tablespoons grape seed oil
* 2 tablespoons ginger, finely chopped
* 2 tablespoons garlic, finely chopped
* 1 tablespoon fenugreek seeds
* 2 tablespoons cumin seeds
* 1 teaspoon dried rosemary
* 1 tablespoon garam masala
* 2 bay leaves
* 1 teaspoon dried oregano
* 1 teaspoon turmeric
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 2 tablespoons tamarind pulp
* 1x14 ounce can crushed tomatoes (1 1/2 cups)
* 1 cup diced sweet potato
* 1 cup water
* 1x14 ounce can kidney beans, drained (1 1/2 cups)
* 2 small seedless oranges, peeled and cubed


Directions

1. Place the oil in a dutch oven or large pot over medium-high heat. Add ginger and garlic and cook for 2 minutes. Add fenugreek seeds, cumin, garam masala, bay leaves, oregano, rosemary and turmeric and stir and cook for about 2 minutes. Add tamarind pulp, tomatoes, sweet potatoes and water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until potatoes are tender, about 7 to 9 minutes.
2. Add kidney beans and oranges and cook for 2 minutes to heat through. Turn the heat off, cover with a lid and let sit for 10 minutes. Remove bay leaves and serve.

http://www.foodnetwork.ca/recipes/Vegetables/recipe.html?dishid=11397

P.S. I substituted Worcestershire sauce for tamarind pulp. (Tamarind pulp is one of the main ingredients in Worcestershire sauce.)


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## humble_pie

i stopped by my favourite purveyor of wild edible foods in the big farmers' market last week.

i'm about as knowledgeable a picker of edible & medicinal plants from the forests, fields & hedgerows as they are themselves; but 2 of the products i bought had the edge over anything i've ever tasted.

one was a tiny jar of pickled daisy buds. Wow are these ever interesting. Tart & peppery. Nothing but organic cider vinegar, sea salt, pepper, field daisy buds.

the 2nd was even more amazing. Milkweed flower syrup. Anybody hiking in the country in late june will see milkweeds in bloom. Huge dusty rose blossoms in panicles. Some cooks egg-n-crumb em or egg-n-batter em, then deep-fry or fry like broccoli flowers.

but this cook pepares a huge cauldron of plain syrup. Brings it to the boil. Add a touch of vinegar, simmer maybe 10 minutes. Then add a pailful of fresh milkweed flowers, cover, cut the heat. I'd macerate overnight, but first i'd want to check out the mildly toxic properties of the flowers. After all, birds don't eat em. Only the monarch butterflies do, which is why some city folks grow milkweed plants in order to attract the beautiful monarchs.

so i don't know how long this cook macerates her milkweed flower syrup, and the knowledgeable person managing the food stall at the market wasn't quite sure, although he's worked in her kitchen. We agreed it would have to be at least an hour or 2. Sometimes flowers become bitter & impart a bitter flavour to a maceration (steeping) medium, so length of time in macerating milkweed flowers in syrup before draining would be a crucial detail to learn about.

the result came in a tiny bottle of pale pink heaven. The taste is impossible to describe. Roses & indian sweetgrass, with a hint of fresh young bark. It's the essence of a magical sunny june day, at high noon, deep in the countryside, in canada.


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## MoneyGal

Oh. My goodness! That sounds truly wonderful. 

These days I am eating pickled pumpkin and salsify and green beans, waiting for the weather to warm up so I can do watermelon rind and rosepetal jam etc.


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## brad

Wow, I never would have thought of doing anything edible with milkweed. I' accidentally ingested a bit of raw milkweed latex when I was a kid (I was weeding them out of a patch of garden and a bit of latex squirted out and hit me in the mouth -- it was impossibly bitter.

It's true that milkweed toxic to most animals (there's a famous series of photos of a blue jay eating a monarch butterfly and vomiting afterward), but most animals don't cook it 

I am enjoying my first real go with Community Supported Agriculture; an entrepreneur set up a rooftop farm here in Montréal, large enough to supply food for 1,000 people, and I'm one of them. Each week I get a basket of picture-perfect lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, aubergine, herbs, bok choy, etc., and so far I've managed to use it all up before the next week's basket is ready to be picked up.

I have a great recipe for pickled bok choy that I almost used for the batch I got last week, but decided to stir-fry it with tofu instead and it was delish.


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## MoneyGal

I've done CSA for a few years now (actually - more than 10, when I add them up) - this year I am participating in a new (to me) CSA that focusses on heirloom vegetables. First delivery is Monday! She is also delivering eggs, grass-fed beef and daffodils.


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## brad

I always shied away from CSA because I didn't think I'd be able to keep up (kind of like having a subscription to the New Yorker), but also because I was used to looking at recipes and then shopping for the ingredients. This way the ingredients come to me first and I have to figure out what to do with them, which actually turns out to be a lot more enjoyable and creative than I expected. But these are early days for me in the CSA experience -- we'll see how I feel six months from now!


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## MoneyGal

It helps if you eat 10-15 servings of vegetables per day, as we do...


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## brad

MoneyGal said:


> It helps if you eat 10-15 servings of vegetables per day, as we do...


Yeah but in my case there are only two of us 

I'm certainly eating more salads since I joined the CSA, since we get two gorgeous big heads of lettuce in each basket along with a generous helping of tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers. We now have salad at least once if not twice a day instead of 2-3 times/week in the past. No complaints, I love salad, and of course there are a million other things to do with cukes, tomatoes, and peppers as well. Last night I made panini with tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, basil, and brie, and for tonight I'm eyeing a concotion of roasted eggplant, tomato, and feta.


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## humble_pie

i suspect MG means 10-15 servings of vegetables. per. day. per. person 

on a serious note, i had no idea there is any urban farmer capable of feeding 1,000 people every single week from rooftop gardens. That is the most interesting thing i've heard all week.

the potential of all this freaks the mind. Architects say that the main reason rooftop gardens can't be installed on most buildings is because of the load. Most flat-roof structures can't support the load. And retrofitting the structure is apparently prohibitively expensive.


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## humble_pie

i have noticed that most people recommending mega servings per day have broad definitions. Like a bloody mary can be one serving ...


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## brad

humble_pie said:


> i suspect MG means 10-15 servings of vegetables. per. day. per. person


Yep, that's what I assumed she meant too. We have always come pretty close to that when you consider what a serving size is -- we have been near-vegetarians in my household for years, although we do eat quite a bit in the grains department due to my breadmaking habit.



humble_pie said:


> on a serious note, i had no idea there is any urban farmer capable of feeding 1,000 people every single week from rooftop gardens. That is the most interesting thing i've heard all week.


This is Lufa Farms: www.lufa.com

It's a huge greenhouse on a commercial building, and this is only the first of many they envision installing here in this city and ultimately others. It's pretty exciting stuff and so far they seem to be doing everything right (with a few of the usual startup hiccups). Everything is grown in a greenhouse, but it has zones for cool-loving plants, hot-loving plants, and everything in between. It's great to have fresh local tomatoes in Montreal in May, and while they are undeniably hothouse tomatoes they taste much better to me than any conventional hothouse tomato I've ever eaten. Still not as good as field-grown but very, very close. The eggplant I received yesterday is so picture-perfect I almost don't want to eat it.


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## MoneyGal

humble_pie said:


> i suspect MG means 10-15 servings of vegetables. per. day. per. person


I actually do. 10-15 servings per day per adult, and 10-15 kid-sized servings for the kids. One of my kids will just eat lettuce by the handful (and she's not the vegetarian!). Plus we feed lettuce to a giant pet snail


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## MoneyGal

I avoid grains and soy, and I'm lactose-intolerant, so I really just eat vegetables, some fruit, and fish and meat. 

I usually do 2-3 servings of vegetables at breakfast, another 1-2 servings for a snack, 4 servings at lunch, one more serving in the afternoon, and then 4-6 servings at night. (I should have said "fruits and vegetables" but I only do 1-2 servings of fruit per day.)


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## Zara Mari

Wow, you guys actually measure those sort of stuff. I don't even know how many vegetable or meat I eat in a day. Well, I know for sure that I don't really eat that much vegetable. It's not like I don't like them but meat products are just easier to cook and prepare. are there any fast food out there that are meant for only vegetarians?

I know I should be eating a lot of healthy food. Considering my lifestyle. Awake in the evening and asleep at night.


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## MoneyGal

I don't measure in the sense that I don't cut food up or weigh it. 

A serving of lean protein = the size of my fist (about 4 oz.)

Vegetables at each meal = as much as I can fit in two cupped hands

then one thumb of fat (cheese, oil, avocado, nuts) and I'm done. 

So really I just use my hands to measure. I only eat grains or fruit after weight training, and that's just usually a bit of cooked grains like couscous or an apple.


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## brad

Speaking of recipes, last night's supper was super-easy and delicious:

I sliced up an eggplant, salted and let the slices drain for an hour, then patted them dry and brushed both sides with olive oil. Grilled them for 3 minutes on the panini grill (you could use a regular grill or you could broil them), then topped each slice with tomato sauce and sprinkled feta cheese over the sauce. Stuck them under the broiler for 2 minutes until the cheese started to melt, then garnished with chopped parsley. We had a salad of lettuce, tomatoes, cukes, spinach, and basil on the side. Yum!


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## Toronto.gal

humble_pie said:


> there's no studies on this but i wonder if there's a correlation between successful investing & good cooking.


I can't believe I haven't visited this thread before [I love cooking].

Now I wonder too; I have to do a lil research on this and get back to you.


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## Toronto.gal

I'm back with my research, lol. 

*Waffles and Investing.*

"We identify several classes of waffle failure: (1) Early exit resulting in an undercooked waffle; (2) Late exit — resulting in a burned waffle; (3) Systemic Waffle Iron failure/stickiness. We demonstrate that these three conditions also arise in investing (early exit/late exit/no exit); and may be a metaphor for Goldilocks and the Three Bears."

http://onehonestman.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/waffles-and-investing/

No empty calories here, I mean no calories, so eat up!

*Hungarian Palacsinta:* is a famous fried crêpe dessert from Hungary. It is traditionally filled with either apricot or strawberry jam, rolled up, and sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar on top. However, you can choose to add your own filling such as fresh fruits, cottage cheese, or even pudding.

*Ingredients:*

A. For the batter:

4 eggs
1 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
2 tbsp of granulated sugar
3 cups milk
1 tbsp oil

B. For the filling:

1/2 cup fruit jam or sauce

C. For the topping:

Confectioner’s sugar, for dusting
Chocolate sauce or syrup

*Directions:*

1. Using a large bowl, add the eggs and beat with a hand mixer on low speed; add the flour, sugar, milk, and oil while continuing to beat.
2. Using a frying pan, heat 1 tsp of butter on medium heat.
3. With a soup ladle or measuring cup, pour enough batter in the pan to cover about 2/3 of the area. Swirl to cover the rest of the pan immediately.
4. Once the edges of the batter begin to curl or lightly brown, flip over. Heat for additional 1 – 2 minutes.
5. Slide palacsinta out of the pan and into a flat plate.
6. Fill with your choice of jam or sauce. Roll palacsinta carefully and sprinkle with sugar on top.

Repeat by adding butter for each batter poured into the pan. Serve warm.

*Bon Appétit!* [or jó étvágyat, I think]. 










Source: http://thehungariangirl.com/2009/04/03/palacsinta-hungarian-dessert/


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## dubmac

*Lime (No Bake) Cheesecake*

With all the market mayhem this week & Father's Day coming up, I have a recipe that I hope will help make the weekend a little nicer. This is a no-bake cheesecake..nice Spring dessert. I have few dessert recipes - but his one is my "howitzer" . Anyone can make it. Nice "zing" to it, tart, sweet...etc.

Lime (No-Bake) Cheesecake

1.5 Cup Graham Cracker Crumbs
0.25 cup sugar
6 Tbsp Butter (melted)

9 in spring-form pan

1 env gelatin
0.5 cup sugar
0.5 cup rum
1 Tbsp lime peel
0.5 cup lime juice (about 3-4 limes needed)
4 eggs (separated)
16 oz cream cheese
0.5 cup sugar
250 mL whip cream

Combine gelatin and ½ cup sugar in saucepan. Stir in rum, peel, juice. Beat egg yolks blend into rum-gelatin mix. Cook over med heat stirring till thickened (8 min). Remove from heat. Beat in cream cheese till smooth. Beat egg whites till foamy. Then beat in remaining sugar. Beat till stiff peaks form. Whip cream to soft peaks. Fold in whites & cream into rum-gelatin mixture. Turn into crust. Cover and chill in refrigerator for 3 hrs.


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## Toronto.gal

*Hungarian Chilled Sour Cherry Soup - serves 4-6*

Party time!










Ingredients: 

500 g (1.1 pound) sour cherry (fresh or frozen, pitted)
2-3 cinnamon sticks
4-5 tablespoons of sugar
6-7 pieces of cloves
pinch of salt
1 cup sour cream (or cream) to thicken
1 tablespoon of flour
and optionally: 100 ml (1/2 cup) red wine

Preparation:

1. Add the cherries and the sugar to 1 liter (33.8 ounces) of water in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and add the cinnamon sticks and cloves to the cherry soup. Cook it for about 10 minutes or until the cherries are soft.

2. In a medium-sized bowl add the sour cream, the flour and a pinch of salt to a cup of the hot cherry liquid and mix until smooth. Add the mixture to the cherry soup. Carefully simmer for about 5 minutes without boiling. 

3. Optionally, add the red wine to the soup to give the cherries a special flavor.

4. Remove the cinnamon sticks and the cloves. Let it cool down and put the cherry soup in the refrigerator until chilled. Serve cold on a hot summer day.

Bon appétit! (Jó étvágyat!)


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## humble_pie

*milkweed flower syrup*

yesterday i was up to no good as usual in the countryside, stalking the wild asparagus & other edible & medicinal wild plants in my favourite haunts.

i was gathering the usual flowers, buds & leaves when i came upon a magnificent stand of milkweed just coming into full flower in a clearing. I had forgotten the pale pink bottle of exotically-flavoured milkweed syrup that i'd purchased in the farmers' market & raved about in a message posted upthread. I never did get the recipe for it.

a wonderful aspect of hunting for wild edibles is that one never knows what one is going to find. Even when you locate a spectacular field half-full of one desirable plant, it's quite likely that the following year the plant will be gone. Nature moves them around.

the timing is crucial, too. There's usually only a window of opportunity of 1 or 2 days to harvest the plant material. Flowering plants, for example, have to gathered just as they come into flower. Forget about mature or fading flowerets. The wild enthusiast wants buds & just-opening flowers only. This means that quite often - unless you live in the country & cruise the fields every day - the wild foods gatherer gets to his desired crop just a bit too early, or just a bit too late.

but always, there is one plant in abundance, in spectacularly perfect condition, just right for picking, on the very day one goes hunting. It's always a surprise. I always think of it as a gift from the Great Spirit.

so yesterday, as soon as i saw the milkweeds, i knew that this was the great spirit's offering for canada day weekend. I snipped off a bag full of tall stems with flowers attached, avoiding the first-opened older umbel at the bottom of the stem & going for the perfection that was higher up.

the white milky sap that brad described as so disagreeable promptly began leaking out. The bag full of cuttings had a mysterious fragrance that i didn't really care for. It was floral, but with a deep musk, almost a hint of animal presence. All the way home we could smell it in the car.

i was too tired late last night to process more than the most urgent plant material, so i left the milkweeds in their bag. When we got up this morning the house was filled with this unusual fragrance. Floral, with musk.

i still don't have a recipe - i'm an outlaw cook - but this morning my large pot of milkweed flower syrup is going fabulously, just fabulously. I simmered up a syrup maybe 3 litres of water, 3-4 cups sugar, something like 3-4 tablespoons vinegar because i like tart. Then i dropped in about 3 cups of milkweed flowers snipped even off their umbels, so as to incorporate as little of the sap-oozing stem as possible.

the big question was/is how long to simmer & how long to steep or macerate after the heat gets turned off. I'm playing it by ear. After about 25 minutes simmering i noticed no change from 20 minutes, but still no bitter taste, so took the pot off the heat. Now it's covered & steeping. It will take 3 hours to cool down, but i'll keep testing every 20 or 30 minutes. If at any moment i detect a bitter taste developing, i'll strain the syrup off the plant material pronto.

and OMG is the stuff ever gorgeous. I mean, it is so much better, so much stronger in flavour & darker pink in colour, than the pale bottle that i bought. In fact it is a deep rose colour. The musky hint is vanished. Instead there is that indescribable taste crossed between wild roses & indian sweetgrass, with a hint of shredded young green bark. It's high noon in a wild meadow at midsummer, anywhere in canada.

happy canada day weekend to all.


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## dubmac

Humble...very cool that you have this venturing spirit. Methinks you should pass this (your writing on milkweed) onto Harrowsmith magazine for publishing. See http://www.harrowsmithcountrylife.ca/contact_editors_guidelines.htm. My mum has a similar adventurous side - collects wild berries, spins her own wool, makes dyes for scratch, tapestries etc. I plan on having her read this passage of yours...happy friday


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## humble_pie

how very kind of you, black mac. I am thrilled to think your mom might possibly read this.

as for publishing, thank you for your cheery thought. But this raw draft would have to be turned into an article ... deal with editors ... revisions ... blah blah ... now we're getting into real work ... uh oh, stuff gets serious ...

a joy of posting on a blog like this is that there are no editors, no bureaucracy, no work whatsoever. I still have not gotten over the shock of being able to think a quirky thought, having it run through my fingers & out into the world ... & then ... what look like real people ... somewhere ... actually read it ... & maybe they ... even ... post back.


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## Toronto.gal

humble_pie said:


> having it run through my fingers & out into the world ... & then ... what look like real people ... somewhere ... actually read it ...


Of course we read it & enjoy it very much...merci bien!


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## brad

I too enjoyed your account of stalking the wild milkweed syrup. I spent an afternoon once with the late Tom Eisner, widely referred to as "the father of chemical ecology," which doesn't say much about this lovely man, but he spent much of his lifetime investigating the chemical defenses of insects against predators, and the insects that exploit the toxic qualities of milkweed were among his favourites. How anyone figured out that it could be made edible is beyond me; same goes for other spectacularly bitter or toxic plants like Jack-in-the-Pulpit and rhubarb.

On Friday night I didn't feel like spending much time cooking, but I had a lot of veggies in the fridge that needed to be eaten before they got past their prime. So I came up with this:










These are grilled zucchini slices (3 minutes on the pannini grill); I sliced them and brushed them on both sides with olive oil, topped them with salt and pepper, and that's it.

The green chunky sauce is garlic-scape pesto. I had a dozen garlic scapes, not something I ordinarily buy but they were included in my weekly Community Supported Agriculture basket so I needed to do something with them. I chopped them up, added about 1/4 cup of pine nuts, 1/4 cup of grated Parmesan, the juice of a lemon, and about 1/2 cup of olive oil (I would have used more oil but I was running low). Put it all in the food processor and 15 seconds later I had pesto.

It tasted just as good as it looks.


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## humble_pie

brad ! you have morphed into an outlaw cook.

or at least you have let your inner outlaw peek out for a taste of pesto.


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## humble_pie

*less than poaching*











those who survived near death by boiling last week in eastern canada might appreciate under-poaching as a way of cooking delicate foodstuffs so they'll never turn tough.

here's sub-poaching, not necessarily in a nutshell, but certainly in a steam bath:

http://www.playingwithfireandwater.com/foodplay/2010/01/thai-shrimp-cocktail.html

*thai shrimp cocktail*

_I've always poached shrimp in the conventional way: in a pot of simmering court bouillon ... 

Recently, I was shown a different method by a culinary student at the restaurant, who learned it from another chef. His way is with residual heat. Instead of cooking the shrimp in the simmering broth, boiling broth is poured over the shrimp that's been spread out in a hotel pan. The pan is immediately covered tightly with plastic wrap and set aside. Depending on the size and quantity of the shrimp, it takes 10-15 minutes until they are perfectly cooked. What I like about this countertop cooking is that they are never tough or overcooked._

in the comments, Upstart Kitchen says that the sub-poach technique is the same for poaching chicken:

_Love the residual cooking - sort of similar to poaching chicken by bringing it up to a simmer, covering the pot, and letting it sit for 45 mins or so. _

would work for fish, too. No idea how long. For salmon, maybe 20-25 mins ?


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## andrewf

Sounds like rudimentary sous-vide. I think I would do it with sous-vide (you can do it with a Coleman cooler, a BBQ thermometer and some ziplock bags) just from a food-safety perspective. You ought to be able to achieve similar results.


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## brad

I've always cooked hard-boiled eggs in a similar way: I put them in a pot of cold water, bring the water just to the boil, and turn it off, removing it from the burner if it's an electric stove. In about 10 minutes you have perfectly hard-boiled eggs and you never get the cracks and leaks that you get when you drop eggs into boiling water.

Speaking of "residual heat," there was a spoof cookbook published in the 1980s or 90s showing how you could cook meals (in aluminum foil) in the engine compartment of your car. Cooking times were given in distances, as in "put it in at Greenwich, it'll be done by New Haven."


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## MoneyGal

Torte de blettes is on the agenda for today (in addition to all the other cooking I will do for the week ahead, a couple of lamb dishes and some chicken wings because I have out-of-town guests -including pre-teen boys - and want to give them "normal" food) - I have SO much chard these days.


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## humble_pie

heya heyo on recipe monday - by mistake the supermarket sent me a large bag of unshelled sunflower seeds. Does anybody have a good method for shelling em. Would appreciate.

google tells me the time-honoured method is to crack the husks with the teeth & then spit out the (quite considerable) shell pieces while nibbling on the kernel. I am so not going to do this.


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## HaroldCrump

humble_pie said:


> heya heyo on recipe monday - by mistake the supermarket sent me a large bag of unshelled sunflower seeds. Does anybody have a good method for shelling em. Would appreciate.
> 
> google tells me the time-honoured method is to crack the husks with the teeth & then spit out the (quite considerable) shell pieces while nibbling on the kernel. I am so not going to do this.


A few options:
- Mix in a fruit smoothie
- Grind in a food processor and mix in flour or smoothie
- Plant them all around the house...it's a little late for sunflowers but they might come up next year


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## brad

I use my thumbnail to split open the husks and get at the seeds. But with a whole bagful your thumb will start to hurt after awhile. You could hire a squirrel.

Birds attack sunflower seeds one of two ways: the seed-eating birds (finches, sparrows) put them in their beak and bite down repeatedly; the primarily insect-eating birds (chickadees, titmice, nuthatches) hold the seed between their feet and peck at it. You could adapt one of these approaches -- try putting the seeds in a bag and rolling over the bag with a big jug filled with water, or a bicycle, or something that will break the hulls. It'll also break some of the seeds, but at least hulls and seeds might be separated.

I wonder how the factories that process hulled sunflower seeds do it.


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## humble_pie

what great suggestions. Never would have thought of em.

plant out the seeds for sunflowers next summer. Hire a squirrel. Place each seed between the big toes & peck at it (this must be an adaptation of downward dog). Bicycle over the seeds while balancing a large glass jug of water.

google led me to one of the most astonishing "books" i've ever seen. It's a 1917 doctoral dissertation that presents a transcription of the stories of Buffalo Bird, a plains cree elder born in 1839, as she told how her people grew, harvested & cooked their food, exactly as they had done for ten thousand years.

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/buffalo/garden/garden-III.html

it's the purest & most detailed account of first nation life before the white man that i've ever seen. Sunflower seeds, corn, squash & beans are treated in detail, from first sowing in the spring through harvesting & preparation of the food for winter storage.

in the corn page - so lengthy as to be a little book in its own right - is an exquisite description of the women of the nation singing to entire fields of ripening corn. This was never a question of warbling a little tune or two as they passed a field. It was a matter of singing all day, all night, during the ripening weeks leading up to harvest, while sitting upon specially constructed wooden platforms built high over the cornfields, so as to watch out for corn thieves. Both bird thieves & human thieves, including naughty little boys from the same clan.

Buffalo Bird said that corn thus sung to always grew better.

young girls, especially, had a duty to sing to the corn from the watch platforms. Of course, where the young girls were, the young warriors soon congregated, so many of the cornfield songs were playful or teasing chants to the warriors.

back to the sunflower seeds still in their shells. Buffalo Bird said to parch em, one handful at a time, in a clay pot. So i'm thinking a slow roast might substitute, followed by smashing em slightly (in a thick sack, outside, with a hammer, upon a garden rock), followed by soaking em in a pot of water because google said the husks will float. All this is not nearly as much work as Buffalo Bird had to put out to to create her sunflower seed meal.

failing everything i could just empty the sack of unshelled seeds into the compost heap.


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## humble_pie

squirrels are not interviewing well. It's the universal sense of entitlement. Demanding half-hour paid breaks plus 40% ownership.

planting em out looks like the best option. Roasting parching hammering soaking grinding option sounds too much like the stone age.


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## brad

If you plant them out, at the end of the season you could hire goldfinches, they're less demanding and more reliable than squirrels. You'll get plenty of finches at harvest time, and in the meantime while they're in flower you can paint them like Van Gogh.


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## humble_pie

recipe monday even though it's labour day. Haven't tried this recipe yet but i think it sounds marvellous. Plus, it's a natural Braderiffic.  Super fresh ingredients. Two exotic items (fresh curry leaves, fresh turmeric root) to bicycle the hell for to procure somewhere in the city.


_*Roasted curried cauliflower *_

David Lee
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Sep. 02, 2011 9:00AM EDT

http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/01314/webst-0903-inth_1314523cl-8.jpg

Because this recipe has few ingredients, buy them as fresh as you can. (In Toronto, I pick up my fresh curry leaves in Little India – another reminder of the markets of Mauritius.) As for the method, it’s easy as anything, making this versatile year-round dish a go-to: You can serve it hot or cold, for dinner or lunch, as a side or even on top of a salad.

Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cooking Time: 15 to 20 minutes
Ready In: 30 to 35 minutes

*Ingredients*

1 head cauliflower, broken into small florets
3 2-inch pieces fresh turmeric, peeled, finely grated
1/2 cup loosely packed curry leaves
Kosher salt
Olive oil

*Method*

Fry curry leaves in 1/2 an inch of olive oil until crisp. Strain leaves and mix turmeric into leftover oil. In a large bowl, crumble fried curry leaves over cauliflower and pour in turmeric and oil mixture. Stir well, season with kosher salt then lay out on baking sheet. Roast at 400 F for 8 to 10 minutes or until browned and cooked through.

_Chef David Lee is co-owner of Nota Bene in Toronto._


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## brad

We're actually growing curry in our rock garden this year, so fresh curry leaves can be had by walking out the door. Fresh turmeric is more challenging, though. I have some dry root turmeric in a jar and I hammer off a chunk of it every now and then and grind it up in my mortar and pestle; I've never seen the fresh root anywhere.

This recipe looks yummy and similar to the cauliflower recipe I posted awhile back that uses fenugreek. The cauliflower in the markets right now is picture-perfect.

Our supper last night was authentic Mexican tacos -- made with soft corn tortillas, filled with my homemade salsa fresca; shredded chicken thighs that were poached in water with a dried Ancho chile, cumin, an onion, and a few cloves of garlic; cubes of avocado; shredded lettuce; and topped with gratings of Mexican queso fresca cheese.


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## humble_pie

who knew that curry could be grown here. I thought it had to come from india. Can you tell us more. Do you raise it from seed or buy young plants in the spring. Is it a disease-resistant plant or is it fussy. Sun or semi-shade. Any tips gained from experience.

and most of all, how does it taste & how do you cook with it.

i'm so excited about the prospect of growing my own canadian curry that i haven't even googled yet to see what plant looks like ...


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## brad

It grows here but doesn't survive the winter. We bought our plant at the Jean-Talon market in early spring and put it out in our rock garden, which gets full blistering sun all day. It has grown pretty well and even put out flowers. It tastes, well, like curry but ours doesn't have a very strong flavour. I honestly haven't used much of it because I've never tested the soil in our rock garden and don't trust it; it's not far from the house and the road and likely has a fair amount of lead, both from the days of lead house paint and the days of leaded gasoline. So most of what's in our garden is for looking, not eating, even the strawberries (although we eat a few of those too).


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## humble_pie

quick google shows me there are true curry trees or shrubs (murraya koenigii) whose leaves are used for cooking in india & sri lanka & there's another plant from an entirely different botanical family (helichrysum italicum) which is also called a curry plant. This one could grow as far north as canada as an annual in a warm sunny spot such as a rock garden. We wouldn't be able to support the tropical curry tree outdoors, though.

this website - seems to be from famed kew gardens in london - says the true curry shrubs can be grown in pots that summer outdoors, get taken in to sunny windowsills in winter. I imagine if one had one of these shrubs-in-a-pot one could keep trimming back the leaves & growing tips so it would remain small & plant-size. If one were lucky the result might be something like your big potted rosemary plant.

seems like a lot of work to try for the true curry potted shrublet murraya k. Assuming one can even find a young plant for sale. Wondering if the flavour would be worth it.
_
" Although called "curry plant" it has nothing whatsoever to do with the mixture of spices used in Indian cooking, nor with the curry tree (Murraya koenigii)."_

http://www.kew.org/plant-cultures/plants/curry_leaf_landing.html


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## brad

Thanks, that probably explains why ours doesn't have much flavour. Real fresh curry leaves are supposed to be incredibly aromatic; I've only found the dried ones, which have no smell or flavour at all, worse than dried basil. There are enough Indian grocery stores in town that I imagine some of them must carry fresh curry leaves and I'll have to try that.

I'm worried about our potted rosemary, by the way; it hasn't had a good summer and is looking pretty spindly these days...it would be shame to lose it after all these years but I'd be surprised if it makes it through the winter given its current state. I'm going to try cutting it back to see if that helps.


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## humble_pie

i feel bad about your magnificent rosemary. All plants do have a natural life & she had a good one, being so much appreciated. Perhaps she's declining now.

i have a flowering shrub planted by my great-grandfather possibly as long as 90 years ago. Photos show it was certainly growing in the yard 60 years ago. I can't bring myself to accept that possibly its life is over. In the internet i read that the average age of these shrubs is 20-30 years, so the fact it's even still alive is a bit incredible. It's a philadelphus, a mock-orange that flowers in june. Unbelievably fragrant, once a giant white mountain of blossoms, one could smell its perfume several houses away. Now it's a poor fifth of its former size.

but i was able to clone it a few years ago. It was a greenstick cutting (just pick a strong good stem & try to root it.) I'd gone to no end of trouble taking wood stem cuttings, burying them in cool sand all winter, the way you're supposed to do, et patati et patata, but the following spring when i planted them out, not a single one grew.

the cloned mock-orange is doing fabulously. It flowers now & grows lustily. So i am wondering if you could grow some new rosemary plants from a few greenstick cuttings.


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## andrewf

Rosemary is not the most vigorous plant in the world. You're probably best off going to your friendly neighbourhood garden centre and buying a rosemary plant.

Rosemary is one of the plants I used to grow. You can grow it from cutting, but we grew it from seed. 

I have worked with millions of plants. I don't get sentimental about too many of them. My mom has a ponytail palm that is older than I am. She keeps trying to kill it, and I keep rescuing it. It's an heirloom now, and I expect it to be handed down eventually .


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## MoneyGal

From my kitchen this afternoon: that's fresh curry leaves (in the bag), plus fresh turmeric (and some ginger for scale). 










By chance I had curry leaves on hand, and my husband had just bought a huge head of cauliflower. I went and spent $0.39 for double the fresh turmeric (_haldi_) I needed for this recipe. I'll post a review when it's made and eaten.


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## brad

andrewf said:


> Rosemary is not the most vigorous plant in the world.


No, but mine has survived for about 15 years now. I moved it here to Canada with me from Vermont. The main thing I learned is to avoid repotting unless absolutely necessary; each time I potted up as the plant got larger, it nearly died from the experience...I think they just don't like having their roots disturbed. It's been in the same pot now for about 8 years, which might be why it's not doing so well anymore ;-) But I think if I were to repot it now, that would kill it for sure.


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## humble_pie

to moneygal ... i don't have the ingredients on hand, not even the cauliflower, so am looking forward to your review of the recipe.

looking at your photograph, i was puzzled at first by the luminous veined criss-crossed background under the ginger pieces. Until i realized it must be an antique wooden cutting board, veined from decades of use. I have a couple like that, they date back nearly a hundred years.

plus i never knew one could buy raw turmeric root. Now i'm sold on the idea. I think i will like it as much as i do the ground coriander that brad introduced to this forum long ago.


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## humble_pie

buying a new rosemary plant in this city is easier said than done. The reason is that all - i mean 100% - of the rosemary plants for sale here are the non-culinary variety that contains a lot of menthol. Most folks here don't understand, so they buy these heavily mentholated rosemary varieties & think they're raising the real thing.

there are a few outstanding cooks in this burg who do know the difference. I don't know where they procure their rosemary, but when they teach their classes they tell their students not to use the metholated varieties.

brad's plant being old plus having come from vermont long ago may mean that it's a true culinary rosmarinus officinalis. It will be extremely difficult to find another one like it, ie no menthol. Which is why, if it's really a rare & precious culinary rosemary, it might be neat to try to propagate more plants from greenstick cuttings.


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## MoneyGal

Well, the cauliflower was good, but not outstanding. 

By chance the farmer who supplies most of our summer produce came by when we were eating dinner - we were eating potatoes from her plus an heirloom carrot salad from her and a blade steak from one of her neighbours. It was a treat to connect the farmer and the table like that. 

That cutting board is a butcher block one of my neighbours was throwing! out! It is one of my prized kitchen tools.


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## marina628

brad said:


> I've always cooked hard-boiled eggs in a similar way: I put them in a pot of cold water, bring the water just to the boil, and turn it off, removing it from the burner if it's an electric stove. In about 10 minutes you have perfectly hard-boiled eggs and you never get the cracks and leaks that you get when you drop eggs into boiling water.
> 
> Speaking of "residual heat," there was a spoof cookbook published in the 1980s or 90s showing how you could cook meals (in aluminum foil) in the engine compartment of your car. Cooking times were given in distances, as in "put it in at Greenwich, it'll be done by New Haven."


Brad
This was manifold cooking and I can tell you with great experience you can cook a great BBQ Chicken dish driving from Brampton to Port Perry ONTARIO ,My husband found this book and it was so funny stopping in traffic and as people would cross the car they would smell the food and give the weirdest look ha.


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## marina628

I wish you could all come to my house for a meal , my housekeeper makes the best Butter Chicken and she makes the naan from scratch then makes this eggplant dish on the side ,it is heaven .I have had Butter Chicken in all the good places but hers is so yummy!


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## andrewf

Is that an invitation, marina? I'll bring a bottle of wine.


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## CanadianCapitalist

I find the cauliflower recipe very strange. Powdered turmeric is a common ingredient in Indian cooking but fresh turmeric is quite unusual. Fresh turmeric is mostly used for cosmetic purposes and religious rituals, not cooking.

I very much doubt brad's curry tree is the one used in Indian cuisine. We tried propagating it with cuttings but it just doesn't like our Northern climate. 

Couple of quick tips about curry leaves: Only a few leaves (say 5 or 6 for four servings) are initially fried with oil (1/2 cup is overkill). The leaves are typically not eaten but picked out of the plate and thrown away.


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## CanadianCapitalist

Baked Portobello Mushrooms

I learnt this recipe from a colleague. It's super easy to make and it is a big hit with the kids.

Ingredients:

5 large portobello mushroom caps (Costco sells this in a package for $3.99)
Olive oil
Grated mozzarella cheese
Seasoning
Toppings - diced tomatoes or green/red bell pepper

Brush mushrooms with olive oil.
Place mushrooms gill side up in a baking dish.
Place toppings and cheese on each mushroom.
Sprinkle seasoning (I usually skip the salt).
Bake at 375F for about 15 to 20 minutes.


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## brad

Yeah, my curry is the plant, not the tree, and while it smells good I don't get much flavour from it. 

Speaking of portobellos, I still never get tired of my simple 10-minute lunch: fry a portobello mushroom in a little olive oil and put it on toast that's been rubbed with garlic, top with a fried egg and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and fresh herbs (my favourite is fresh tarragon, which goes magically well with eggs).


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## Toronto.gal

Speaking of turmeric [powder], I used it for the first time when making a 'Paella' [a Spanish dish] and it left my skin/fingernails stained for days; apparently I used too much of it. 

And yes, as CC said, it is used as a beauty aid also, but gosh, after what it did to my hands/nails, I would not try it on my teeth; the Paella tasted very good though! 

http://www.beautyandgroomingtips.com/2007/03/turmeric-as-beauty-aid.html


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## andrewf

humble_pie said:


> buying a new rosemary plant in this city is easier said than done. The reason is that all - i mean 100% - of the rosemary plants for sale here are the non-culinary variety that contains a lot of menthol. Most folks here don't understand, so they buy these heavily mentholated rosemary varieties & think they're raising the real thing.
> 
> there are a few outstanding cooks in this burg who do know the difference. I don't know where they procure their rosemary, but when they teach their classes they tell their students not to use the metholated varieties.
> 
> brad's plant being old plus having come from vermont long ago may mean that it's a true culinary rosmarinus officinalis. It will be extremely difficult to find another one like it, ie no menthol. Which is why, if it's really a rare & precious culinary rosemary, it might be neat to try to propagate more plants from greenstick cuttings.


Here is a US-based store that sells one variety said to be particularly nice as an herb:

Tuscan Blue
http://www.thegrowers-exchange.com/Rosemary_Tuscan_Blue_p/her-ros02.htm

I'm not sure which cultivar is commonly used commercially. All cultivars are R. Officinalis, however.

Brad, what growing media do you use for containers? If you use peat-based media, over time the pH tends to drop. Peat is naturally quite acidic and is amended with lime to raise the pH. Over time the lime is leached out. Rosemary likes a pH of 7 -7.8, while most commercial soil mixes are probably sold with a pH somewhere in the 6.5 range. So you could try testing the soil and/or amending with some lime, etc.

If the peat you started with is too acidic, it might also explain why the plant is stressed when repotted. I never grew mature rosemary, but it never really complained about being transplanted. It doesn't like to be too wet!


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## brad

Toronto.gal said:


> Speaking of turmeric [powder], I used it for the first time when making a 'Paella'


I would think saffron is what you would have used in paella, not turmeric! I always use saffron and a bit of pimentón (smoky paprika) in my paella.

Andrewf: good idea on checking the pH of the potting soil; I haven't repotted the rosemary in ages so I can't remember what kind of potting soil I used back then.


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## MoneyGal

Here's my go-to herb resource in Canada: 

http://www.richters.com/

Looks like they have over 20 varieties of rosemary. Their shipping is excellent - my sister used to live very near them so I went all the time.


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## marina628

Andrew ,
We have homemade Indian every Tuesday for lunch and today is Tuesday ! My FAVORITE QUICK Yummy fix is saute mixed peppers and sweet red onions in olive oil and salt then i mix it with goat cheese and stuff it in a flat bread.You can add Chipolte sauce or Balsamic syrup to it as well .We just take Balsamic vinegar and brown sugar and heat it up in fry pan and make our own.Seriously we should all try to get together sometime ,our cottage closes end of October so we will be lost on weekends.I must warn you all though I am married to the nicest man in the world ,you guys will see that after 5 minutes and then about 5 minutes after that you will say OMG she is so lucky to have that guy ,how did such a nice guy end up with a ***** like her lol


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## Toronto.gal

brad said:


> I would think saffron is what you would have used in paella, not turmeric! I always use saffron and a bit of pimentón (smoky paprika) in my paella.


I followed a recipe; it said to use 1/2 teaspoon, but I used 2 spoons because my serving was for 12 instead of 6, so I should have used 1 spoon, not 2.  

I'll use piros paprika and/or saffron next time, thanks for the suggestion.


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## humble_pie

yes richter's herbs in goodwood, ontario, just east of toronto, is the summa of canadian herbal nurseries. In fact it was in richter's catalog some years ago that i first read the defining sentence that said menthol or pine-fragrant rosemary is not suitable for culinary use.

lo, after all these years here is the same entry. Pine Rosemary. Same plant, same words. Not sure why they keep offering it or who would buy it; but perhaps it makes a good bordering plant, releasing turpentine-retsina-pine-rosemary scent whenever someone brushes past.

it's strange that nurseries around montreal keep on offering nothing but the high-menthol plants. Richter's has many rosemarys & all of the others are presumably culinary quality.

*PINE ROSEMARY*

_*Rosmarinus angustifolia P Z8-10*_

Strong pine scent; fine, needle-like leaves. Not suited for
culinary use; but available for adoption as a miniature living
Christmas tree! West Indians make a tea with milk.


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## andrewf

I don't think that is what is commonly cultivated, at least from what I've seen in the GTA. The rosemary we see here has broader leaves, whereas that looks more feathery.


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## humble_pie

back to the curry, i'm thinking that chef David Lee was using 1/2 cup of the little plant helichrysum which brad says has faint flavour.

whereas CC is talking about the real thing, leaves from the curry tree murraya k, which are so strong that only a few leaves will do a whole recipe ...


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## CanadianCapitalist

humble_pie said:


> chef David Lee was using 1/2 cup of the little plant helichrysum...


It's possible but I've never seen helichrysum used in Indian cooking. I'm pretty sure Chef Lee is referring to murraya tree because it's used is pretty much every savory dish.


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## andrewf

I eat helichrysum seeds all the time (sunflower). Though I think brad was talking about a different species. There are hundreds of species, and within species, there may be many cultivars. Ie, Dogs are a single species with hundreds of 'cultivars'


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## MoneyGal

italicum or angustifolium. 

You'd never cook with it.


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## humble_pie

MG did you use the entire half-cup in your recipe ?


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## MoneyGal

Yeppers. I LOVE LOVE LOVE curry leaves. My local "ethnic" grocery store is used to the अंग्रेज़ी (English person) coming in and buying हिंदुस्तानी (Hindustaani) food.

(Just ask Four Pillars; I went to dinner with him and ordered in Hindi last week.)


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## andrewf

I'm curious how you learned Hindi, MG.


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## MoneyGal

I lived in India as a teen (and studied Hindi before and after living there) and have retained 1. a lifelong fascination with India, and 2. enough Hindi to sing along with Bollywood movies and order food in restaurants.


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## daddybigbucks

I have no idea what this huge thread is about....

but im guess cooking inexpensively?

My garden went crazy this year and i got tomatoes coming out of my ears.
good thing i love the little fruits.

My favorite right now is bruschetta on crackers

light blend garden tomatoes and onion
Add a crushed garlic clove and some olive oil.
Some malt vinegar (or stinky vinegar as my kid calls it).
add little salt, some pepper and basil/oregano to taste
Let sit for a hour, then strain thru some cheesecloth.

and serve.

not my pciture but looks the same


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## jamesbe

Friday is here, I can't wait to make these again. 

Last weekend I wanted to have some crepes. So I could go to the restaurant and spend $15 for a couple of crepes ... or I could try making them. I never made crepes in my life. Made these and they were HANDS DOWN the best crepes I ever ate.

I filled them with various breakfast toppings (jam was a little rich, nutella way too strong and dulce de leche hands down the BEST food I have ever eaten.

Here is the recipe.
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup water
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract (optional)
1 teaspoon of sugar (optional)

Mix the wet incredients together, pour in the floor, whisk it together with a fork. Heat pan to medium spray with some cooking spray. Spread about a laddle (1 cup) of batter and spread it around to fill the pan.

Enjoy they are amazing!


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## Causalien

Just found this thread.

I am an avid amateur chef myself. Currently tackling the reproduction of McDonald's fries and my aim in cooking is to be able to cook and excel 10 dishes:

Duck (mastered)
Bread (Intermediate)
Spaghetti and sauce (mastered)
Chawan Mushi (Newbie)
Beef Wellington (Newbie)
Fries (Newbie)
Sous-Vide steak (Intermediate)
Sushi (Intermediate)
I am still picking the last 2 dishes on the menu.


But here's a Recipe that I have already fully tested. May not be the exact way they did it at "The Social" in Ottawa, but close enough in taste.

Name: Duck

-Put Duck leg in slow cooker half submerged with Coca Cola and cook at low for 2 hours, or until the skin begins to melt.

-Take out duck legs and put on individual ceramic bowls. 
-Take some of the coca cola/fat soupe from the slow cooker and add it in the ceramic bowls until the duck legs are again half submerged. 
-Spread some of the juice on the skin then sprinkle breadcrumbs and assorted ground spices to your taste on the skin. 
-Put the duck and bowls into top shelf of the oven and broil until golden brown. Approx 10 minutes for me

Serve.

The thing that wowed me about Social's duck is that the skin is hard while the rest of the duck meat melts in your mouth. The contrast is exquisite. Might not be anything great in your eyes, but I had fond memories of this.


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## humble_pie

*wild greens pesto*

it's wild bitter greens pesto season & i have been gathering wild garlic-mustard, dandelion & nettle leaves along with the odd sprig of bergamot & lemon balm.

some olive oil, chopped garlic, ground seeds - walnut or sunflower are fine - doesn't have to be pine nuts - plus a splash of balsamic vinegar & what comes out of the food processor is a heavenly, bright green pesto fit for a king.

the other night i served a fine carbonara to the offspring. Liberally laced with pesto. The day's harvest from the backyard had been huge. It seems to me that all the plants are doing fabulously well this spring, after the mild winter.

they tucked in with gusto. I made the mistake of telling them what it was. Forks clattered down on plates. Two pairs of eyes, one blue-gray, one chocolate brown, regarded me with horror.

did this come from our backyard, said one. Eeeeuuuuuww.


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## Rusty O'Toole

I want to revive the pineapple upside down cake! This was a favorite of my childhood that I had not made in 20 years. So a few weeks ago I made some. When I mentioned it to my friends the older ones said " I haven't had pineapple upside down cake in years" the young ones said "what is pineapple upside down cake".

So here is an old favorite if you have heard of it or not.

Make a sauce of brown sugar and butter cooked together. Spread the sauce in a cake pan. Lay slices of pineapple in the sauce. Decorate each slice with a maraschino cherry in the middle. Mix up your cake batter and pour over the pineapple. White cake or yellow cake mix or your favorite cake recipe. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes.

Take it out of the oven and let cool for 10 minutes. Then invert the pan onto a cookie sheet. Voila, pineapple upside down cake!

If you want a real recipe there are lots on the internet and Youtube. I'm not Julia Childs I just like cooking and eating.


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## humble_pie

yay ! pineapple upside-down cake, an oldie but goldie. Everyone should have one.

also date squares. Also from my childhood, a soufflé-lemon-cake with lots of eggs, butter & grated lemon rind that came out of the oven well-baked around the edges & mid-portion but divinely runny & extra bitter in the centre. Unfortunately we have lost the recipe.


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## Plugging Along

I just had to post bout the most wonderful find. 

TRUFFLE SALT. I know it was not frugal, but not a bank breaker $20 for a small bottle but it is making everything taste like a million dollars. 

A little goes such a long way, I have put it on steak, potatoes, spinach, and popcorn. It adds such a nice flavor. If I still ate French fries I would do that too. I am loving this stuff.


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## MoneyGal

I am WAY into salt and usually have about six varieties on the go! Right now I'm also using fennel pollen as a seasoning, which was $26 for a teeny, tiny bottle.


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## Plugging Along

I have to ask what does fennel pollen taste like. I don't think I have ever heard of that.


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## brad

Here's what we had for lunch on Saturday:










Carrots and peppers with store-bought baba ganoush and homemade Turkish flatbreads. Delicious and almost too pretty to eat.

The flatbreads were easy: I made a bunch of them and froze them; whenever the mood strikes we pull them from the freezer and pop them into a 400 degree oven for five minutes or so, right on the rack and sprinkled with a bit of water first.

Soft Turkish Flat Bread (from Martha Rose Shulman)

2 tsp active dry yeast
2 cups lukewarm water
1/4 cup yogurt
1/4 cup olive oil
5 to 6 cups flour (I used a mix of bread flour and whole wheat flour)
1 tablespoon salt
1 egg, beaten
1 tablespoon nigella seeds (don't leave these out, they really add to the flavour!)

1. Stir together the yeast and water in a large bowl. Add the yogurt nad oil, and stir in 2.5 cups of the flour. Cover and let sit for 30 minutes to 1 hour.
2. Add the salt and remaining flour, one cup at a time, until you can form a ball with the dough. Knead for 5-10 minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic.
3. Form the kneaded dough into a ball and put into a lightly oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let it rise for about an hour and a half, until doubled in size.
4. Put a baking stone or baking sheet on the lowest rack in the oven and heat oven to 450 Fahrenheit. 
5. Divide the dough into 4 pieces and shape each into a ball, then roll out or press the balls into ovals or circles. Brush each on top with the egg glaze and sprinkle with nigella seeds.
6. One or two at a time, put the bread on the hot baking stone or sheet in the preheated oven; cook for 8-10 minutes.


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## Nemo2

Looks good......my lady makes naan & pita breads, and will add the Turkish flat bread to the list.

Thanks.


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## humble_pie

does anyone here make their own mayonnaise? would u have suggestions about tasty items to add to homemade mayo?

they say that once you have made your own mayonnaise at home, in the blender or the food processor, you'll never again go back to store-bought. That is what they say & now that i've tried the home version, i swear it's true. 

what i was after was the certainty of using a top-quality organic olive oil that i could choose myself. Commercial mayo is made from commercial chemical-treated canola, soybean oil, who knows what.

so far, to my homemade mayos i've added mashed fresh garlic, green/red chard leaves, hot curry powder, cayenne pepper, pinch of ground coriander, horseradish, caramelized sliced onions, tarragon, sea salt. Not all at once, perhaps 3 or 4 related items per mayonnaise recipe. So far, the green chard mayo - it had curry & caramelized onions - seems to have been the winner.

experimenting further, i could try adding anchovies, crumbled bacon, chopped tomato after straining out the tomato juice, basil, wasabe, salicorne, sea vegetables. The base of every mayonnaise recipe is always a good whack of dijon mustard, so mustard is always present.

there are countless mayonnaise recipes in the internet. All very similar. Basically its 2-4 tablespoons prepared dijon mustard, salt & pepper, some vinegar (maybe 1/4-1/3 cup) plus 2 egg yolks - a minority of recipes say one whole egg - in the blender. Process until egg has whipped up & incorporated some air. Maybe 3 minutes. Then drizzle in while processing, very slowly, 1-1 1/2 cups olive oil. Apparently the trick is adding the oil extremely slowly so it will emulsify properly.

what i do first is mash the garlic in a mortar, then process it with the leafy fresh greens, herbs, spices, horseradish, onions & mustard. Because i want these items pureed & i find that if one adds too much liquid with them at the beginning (ie too much vinegar & oil right away) then they don't really puree but remain as fairly large bits, which is not the smooth texture that i'm seeking.

does anyone else have adventures in mayoland? i'd love to hear.


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## Plugging Along

HP. How ironic that you posted this. I have been researching on ow to make my own mayo. My only concern is the raw eggs and I have young kids. 

Did you use regular eggs or do anything special to reduce semonella?


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## brad

I too love homemade mayo -- I make it using a wire whisk, no blender or food-processor required, although if I were adding all those other ingredients I could see where something like that would come in handy. I guess I'm a minimalist when it comes to mayonnaise: aioli is as far as I've strayed from simple plain mayo with nothing else in it. But I share Plugging Along's concern about raw eggs and salmonella. The risk is very small if the eggs you use are kept refrigerated and if you buy from a farm or store that keeps its eggs refrigerated. It's also best if you rinse the eggshell well, especially for free-range, organic, or home-laid eggs, because the salmonella bacteria are just as prevalent on the shell as inside. I break my eggs the Jacques Pepin way (tap on the table), which minimizes the risk of the shell contaminating the inside but depending on how hard you tap you can still get plenty of shell in contact with the inside. So I rinse my eggs well.


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## humble_pie

hi guys, thankx for mentioning the salmonella concern. There are no under-15s here but i might hesitate to make this for youngsters under, say, 8 or 10 years. Washing egg shells before cracking is a good tip.

i did use a raw egg yolk in one recipe, a whole egg in the other. So far, no consequences, but maybe i should stop playing russian roulette.

here's a link to a procedure for pasteurizing eggs in a microwave. It's well-explained i think, even to the point of saying how the addition of acid (lemon juice or vinegar) raises the temperature at which the yolks will actually cook, so it's possible to microwave them above 140F to kill bacteria while not yet cooking the eggs.

http://culinaryarts.about.com/od/eggsdairy/ht/pasteurize_eggs.htm

i've also seen internet recipes for coddling the eggs while still in the shell. These would not reach as high a temperature as the microwave procedure, i'm guessing.

i haven't seen any mention of substitute thickeners such as psyllium or carrageenan, but i'll continue to search. I might even experiment with psyllium, i've used it successfully in recipes. The colourless, tasteless ground seed or husk is a demulcent that will swell in liquid to form a gel.

since the mayonnaise i like is heavily spiked with mustard, garlic, herbs & spices, the substitution of psyllium gel for egg yolk should not make too much of a difference in quality. Although i'm one who believes there's nothing really as good as l'oeuf original, nature's perfect food.


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## humble_pie

i'm truly embarassed to tell this story, but here goes.

i was put off making home mayonnaise years ago by an attempt that went ghastly wrong. I'd been cleaning, had absent-mindedly left an open bottle of Pine-Sol on the kitchen counter. Ya'll know how it's that olive-oil coloured liquid in a one-litre or smaller bottle ...

yea. I had all the mayo ingredients going nicely in the food processor & began drizzling in the olive oil. Oh, my, how it emulsified beautifully! thicker & thicker climbed the mayonnaise, higher & higher in the processor crucible! even the pale yellow mustard colour was perfect! 

soon, the sharp acid smell of Pine-Sol began wafting around the kitchen.

this experience put me off making homemade mayonnaise for years & years. I have to say, though, that the soapy foaming agents in Pine-Sol, whatever they are, would probably be perfect for eggless mayo ...


----------



## brad

Pine-sol mayonnaise would probably go really well with a glass of retsina, and maybe some spruce gum for dessert. ;-)

I've had comparable (but less toxic) mishaps with wine and olive oil: for a while we were buying olive oils in bottles that were shaped a bit too much like wine bottles. And during supper as more wine was drunk, the distinction between the two bottles on the table would sometimes become blurred, so that on a couple of occasions we used the wrong bottle to top off a guest's wine glass.


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## Plugging Along

:tongue-new: lol for the pine sol. That sounds lemony fresh and acidic enough, peRhaps not so tasty.

I found a couple of ways to pasteurize eggs buts I have to admit I am a little nervous as I have on multiple occasions food poisoned my family (pre kids mostly). 

I also found a recipe that uses eggs whites, and I do have pasteurized egg whites out of a box, so I may start with that. 

I will let you guys know how it goes. I have the most wonderful olive oil and argan oil that was imported in from morrocco that I have been waiting to try this with. Also, I make infused oils with garlic, peppers, sundried tomatoes. Have you tough of trying infused oils.


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## humble_pie

Plugging Along said:


> Have you tough of trying infused oils.



yea olive oil infused herbs are very tempting but, speaking of food poisoning, we got a big warning in herbology class & i have seen this warning repeated many times ...

although it's true that many vendors in the huge Jean Talon market here in montreal sell big jars of peeled garlic cloves in oil, especially at this time of year.

the problem is that oil, unlike vodka, brandy or other hi-proof alcohols, has no bacterial or fungus-killing capability. In other words, anaerobic bacteria can thrive & breed in those oil-submerged garlics & herbs. There wouldn't necessarily even be a smell or a discoloured sight that could warn a cook that something was wrong.

preserving media are alcohols such as vodka, brandy; also vinegars with at least 5% acid content; also strong sugar syrups. Glycerine is also a preserving medium but i am not sure why or how, since i've never used it.

even with a sugar syrup, i'd much rather simmer the fruit, berries, bark slivers or herbs in a sugar solution in order to extract the flavour and/or medicinal properties, then i'd refrigerate the resulting syrup & consume quickly. Although it would be OK to sterilize the bottle or bottles in a canning process for longer-term storage, i imagine.


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## Plugging Along

Just wanted to give you an update. 

I made my first and second mayo today. The first batch was way too runny, so I had to throw it out. Hence, I had to make the second batch.

I used pasterized egg whites from a carton, mustard, lemon juice, and then I used some of the oil from the jar of garlic, some ok from the sundried tomatoes, regular cold pressed morrocon olive oil, a little advocado oil, some fresh basil and oregano. I used my hand blender which left a few little chunks of basil, but it tasted amazing. 

My spouse was recently diagnose with extreme hypertension, so we have been cutting out sodium and unhealthy ats. This was perfect.


Thanks for the inspiration.


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## humble_pie

ah, runny. The trick i believe is to always start with a significant amount of dijon mustard plus the egg yolk or yolks plus a sufficient splash of vinegar to get the level up above the bottom processor blade. Then process until the egg is fully beaten, nearly double in volume (if the egg were alone, it would be pale yellow.)

i'm not sure exactly why but i'm convinced it's one of the properties of well-beaten egg or egg yolk to assist in emulsification.

after that point is reached, one starts adding the oil, veree slowlee. Alternate w adding the rest of the vinegar, also slowlee.

i made a Classic Brad early this am. Nothing except mustard, egg, vinegar, olive oil. Not even any salt or pepper, i wanted to see how sharp the snap from the vinegar would be. OK the last 1/3 of vinegar was a good balsamic.

it took all of 6 mins. It had snap. It was so thick you could stand up peaks, same as in whipped cream. I loved it.


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## brad

Mmmm, you've got me craving homemade mayo now!

Actually I think the secret to emulsification is that "adding the oil veree slowlee." Almost drop by drop, stirring or whisking all the while. At some point emulsifcation begins. I make my salad dressings this way, often with no mustard in them at all, and they all emulsify when I add the oil slowly. If I pour it in, they stay runny. If I drip it in, in a very thin slow stream while whisking, they emulsify.


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## humble_pie

brad u are absolutely right about slow whisking the vinaigrette. There is a fantastic cook in my family. One of those once-in-a-lifetime cooks, everything she makes is mouth-watering & there is nothing she cannot master, no matter how complicated. OK she has had a few failures in her lifetime, but probably they can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

when i was a teenager she showed me how she made a vinaigrette in the bottom of her wooden salad bowl, before adding the greens. Plenty of mustard to start, she said. My vinaigrette is as thick as mayonnaise, she said.

what i find these days - now that my romance with mayonnaise is blooming - is that my mayos are indeed somewhat thicker than any perfectly-emulsified vinaigrette i could whip up. This i attribute to the thoroughly beaten egg.

next step: hollandaise, béarnaise. Brad, do you make these sauces? so daunting, so sublime.

PS just read your message again. I draw the line at No Mustard. Mustard is, well, a must. On the channel/la Manche ferry boats, my kids would look at the lifeboats & lifebuoys along the railings & ask me What is a Mustard Station?


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## brad

Speaking of mustard, it's even easier to make your own mustard than it is to make mayo, and very cheap. Here's a recette from Mark Bittman:

1/4 cup yellow mustard seeds
1/4 cup brown or black mustard seeds
1/2 cup water (or red wine if you prefer)
1/2 cup sherry vinegar or any other vinegar that has at least 5% acidity)

Put it all in a jar that you can seal tightly, shake and let sit for a day or two. Then put it in a blender. It will be grainy (you can't get it as smooth as true Dijon). Put it back in the jar; it'll keep in the fridge for a few months. This makes about 1.5 cups of mustard.

Experiment with adding herbs -- tarragon or rosemary. You can also add things like horseradish, molasses, cayenne, roasted garlic, mangoes, etc. -- let your imagination run wild.


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## brad

Sorry, our threads crossed...I have made béarnaise but that and hollandaise are a little too rich for my tastes. I mostly make béchamel, which I use for homemade lasagne, in the traditional Italian style. That's pretty easy, and it doesn't get very thick.


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## humble_pie

brad said:


> Speaking of mustard, it's even easier to make your own mustard than it is to make mayo, and very cheap. Here's a recette



i did make mustard once. It took me all day & cost me several hundred virtual $$ in labour & time for a couple of ounces ...

i started with the brown seeds from those wild mustard-garlics that are invasively overwhelming every dogpatch & forest glade in eastern canada right now - you probably have some in the garden? they're in the air, everywhere.

being a rookie with no handy knacks, it took me forever to separate the seeds out of their dried pods. When i blew gently - trying to scatter the chaff, while the heavier seeds were supposed to remain in their plate - alas the seeds began blowing away as well.

it was well past noon before i'd managed to painstakingly assemble half-a-cup of glossy chocolate-coloured mustard seeds.

what i wanted was that mooshy texture which the best seedy dijon mustards have. Most recipes said grind up the seeds when they are dry & raw. A couple of recipes said simmer the seeds in vinegar first. Simmering spoke to the intuition, so there was nothing for it but to simmer while tending the pot until (i thought) a couple of test seeds could easily be chewed. By this time, what with reading all the recipes & consulting a friend who lives on an organic farm where they make their own everything, it was 3 pm.

once cooked, the mustard seeds progressed to regular blending, add oil, more vinegar, salt, pepper, etc. I do think that sherry is a fine idea.

on that day, by suppertime, i had a small quantity of a beautiful amber-coloured million-dollar mustard.


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## humble_pie

in herb class we made our own horseradish. It was to die for. Same idea, except the horseradish root was, of course, completely raw. Chopped root, blender, oil, vinegar, salt, pepper.

i used to have a friend with a farm that grew horseradish. They are these giant floppy ungainly plants, at least 6 feet tall, not really suitable for a city garden. They didn't gather the roots, in fact didn't respect or care for their horseradish plants at all. I was the only person who was interested. When i asked if i could dig up a couple of roots, they were ecstatic. 

eventually they sold their farm & moved away. Ever since, whenever i'm in the country, i keep an eye out for a place with horseradish plants.


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## brad

Ouch on your mustard experience! Of course you can just buy mustard seeds at any grocery store or herb and spices shop. Making mustard using the recipe I posted above takes about 5-6 minutes of effort, measuring out the seeds, water or wine, and vinegar, and then throwing it all in the blender a day or two later. Sherry vinegar is expensive, but any other decently acidic vinegar would work here.


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## humble_pie

the other day the well-established purveyor of japanese foodstuffs in my neighbourhood had a special table out on the sidewalk. It was covered with packages of large, somewhat flat, reddish-beige mushrooms. A handwritten sign said Matsutake 2013 Have Arrived.

inside, i picked up a small package for $14.50.

how do you like to cook them, i asked the proprietor, a japanese-canadian whose family has owned & operated the same specialty grocery store for 2 generations.

my host, who is normally samurai-stoic with reserve, closed his eyes, moaned helplessly, fluttered his eyelashes in an expression of ecstasy. You can cook em any way you like, they are so delicious i can't begin to describe, he said. His nostrils were quivering. These are wild from northern BC, we only have them for about a week around this time of year, he added.

i took my package home, washed off the mud, sliced & sauteed a large shroom in butter as an initial experiment. It tasted like nothing. Nothing at all. There was no taste, period.

a day went by. It occurred to me to put the remaining mushrooms in the compost. But i didn't, because $10 straight into the compost seems pretty cuckoo.

tonight we had the remaining matsutake. Once again, they were tasteless, so i added a scant tablespoon of excellent dark artisanal miso, bought from the same store. It turned the famous shrooms into slightly rubbery tasteless morsels sautéed in butter & drenched with excellent miso.

has anybody had any luck cooking these or other exotic mycorrhizal fungi?


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## none

http://honest-food.net/2012/12/19/matsutake-mushroom-recipe/


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## humble_pie

yea i read that article, along with a raft of others, as soon as i got the matsu into my kitchen. He's the author who goes on & on about cinnamon flavour.

but what flavour? those shrooms were tasteless. They could have been playDoh.

the only thing i can think is that all flavour had been lost during a fairly long lapse of time between the initial harvest in northern BC & the final appearance upon a grocer's sidewalk display in quebec.

this in turn suggests to me that the shrooms had been sprayed or bathed in some kind of preservative, to help them survive a long journey.


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## none

Or perhaps your tastebuds are destroyed from a lifetime pf salt, hot peppers & hops, I dunno.


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## humble_pie

taste buds & sense of smell are superb
on a par with option picking


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## Plugging Along

If I remember, my parents woudld serve them over a bed of garlic sauted wilted pea shoots/water cress. The mushrooms would sliced, lightly stems, put n the bed of greens and then topped with a light gravy made with soy, Garlic, water, and corn starch.


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## none

humble_pie said:


> taste buds & sense of smell are superb
> on a par with option picking


*option _*pickling*_.


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## humble_pie

a win/win fresh food story:

a couple years ago the supermarket in my area began offering, during the winter months, mouthwatering & ultra-fresh green specialty vegetables such as bok choy, chard, basil & rapini grown in the dominican republic, then fast-flown to montreal. 

these were all attractively packaged as product of les Fermes Trudeau, with a local address. Attractively priced, too.

yesterday i bought the biggest, freshest, most magnificent head of green chard i've ever seen. I wasn't surprised, taking off its rubber band later, to find a little tag saying that it, too, came from les fermes Trudeau, this time locally grown in beloeil, quebec.

on a clear day, looking south from the summit of mount royal in downtown montreal, one can easily see beloeil, in the fertile st-lawrence river valley. I looked up les Fermes T in the internet.

what a lovely story. Here's the owner, Gérard Trudeau. A chartered accountant & former high ranking civil servant with the montreal urban community government, he retired to the ancestral Trudeau farm property 30 years ago to found a fresh herb empire. At the time, most consumers' ideas of "fresh herbs" meant a sprig of parsley, nothing more.

not long afterwards, Gérard bought farm property in the dominican republic, where he now has more than 100 employees, in addition to roughly 60 employees on the quebec farm.

meanwhile, the whole of north america gradually went basilic over basil, bok choy, coriander & chard. Today, the enterprise is successful, fresh organic green quality remains supreme, his 2 sons are taking over, the business grosses north of $10 million, Gérard himself is busy mentoring young quebec farmers, supply probably cannot keep up with demand for his product. He was recently named an international business councillor to the president of the dominican republic.

http://affaires.lapresse.ca/une-ide.../01-4392220-les-fines-herbes-de-m-trudeau.php

this video is in french, but all can see what an appealing person this is, how modest, how gentle, how focussed he is on maintaining excellence in all his products, something that is probably difficult to achieve because they, the products, are all so perishable.

Trudeau's worst memories? the customers who, for some reason, are not satisfied. He recounts how all his attention then focuses on figuring out what he must do to cure the issue & keep the customer.

what a pity this business is privately owned by a close family. I would buy shares in a business like this in a heartbeat. A business where everything, from the garden gate to the balance sheet, is a near-perfect Eden.


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## humble_pie

flabbergasted. Sorry. The video failed to load.

i couldn't find any video source button. This sometimes happens when the creators (la Presse, in this case) want to jealously guard their copyright & prevent internet copying. The link in the previous post is to the laPresse article with video embedded; except that now the video is expunged.

so much for trying to praise sweet, accomplished older gentlemen. He reminded me a bit of our Nemo here in the forum. Too bad la Presse is so anal-obsessive about its creations.


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## humble_pie

video seems to be working. Take a look, he's a sweetie, tell me if he doesn't remind you of our Nemo.

one fascinating detail. Gerard Trudeau got his fresh-winter-greens idea while vacationing in the dominican republic a quarter-century ago. He learned that the charter aircraft that transport the tourists from quebec to DR promptly turn around & fly back north empty. He set up a system to piggyback chilled containers of fresh green herbs & vegetables on those empty planes at low cost.

i'm left wondering what the world does with all the leftover tourists who get left behind to wilt in the dominican republic, though.


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## Marguerite Gilmore

Very interesting topic and discussion...


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## Marguerite Gilmore

Deear Brad! If you work at home then give me a solution. Actually I want to work at home how to do this?


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## humble_pie

at risk here of polluting this venerable finance forum with more "shout-y" but i can't help posting this prize:

http://www.pastrystudio.blogspot.ca/

she is a beauty commando, she favours outlaw pastries fortified by mother Nature, her cakes, pies, tarts, creams & desserts are beyond exquisite, as in lord. take. me. now. into. thy. life. after. death.

i don't know who she is & she's not telling. She sounds like she's in san francisco & indeed this is an american-sounding blogspot. But look at that IP addy, it's canada!

the only regrettable factoid is that truly superb die-for desserts sometimes require a lot of work ...


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## Toronto.gal

Anything at all with the word 'nougat' in it, and I'll definitely give it a try, so I'll start with the 'simple & versatile' Pistachio Cake with Nougat Cream.

So I was reminded of the soft white nougat bars [torrones in Italian] that are 2 die for [not so much the brown & crunchy type].









Great recipes!


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## PuckiTwo

humble_pie said:


> http://www.pastrystudio.blogspot.ca/
> 
> +1 Best non-financial CMF link of the year


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## Plugging Along

Just thought I would post this the season for all those yummy fruits and great deals.

I have purchased 15 lbs of blue berries, and have started freezing them for winter use, but in the meantime made a a fruit salad and a cobbler.

We were invited to go an acreage and pick cherries and as a family we ended up 15 lbs of fruit for free. I have made my first batch of freezer jam. I will be making a whiskey BBQ sauce tommorrow night, and then have find more recipes to preserve this fruit. If any one has ideas for Nanking cherries, let me know. 

Next week it will be Saskatoon berries.

I think this fits in the frugal section too.


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## Plugging Along

I didn't even look at this link until I posted. There are some great cherry recipes . Guess what I may do during the evenings.


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## humble_pie

plugging tell us about nanking cherries & saskatoon berries, how they taste. Are the nankings like ordinary bing cherries, which i think have pretty much lost all of their flavour? at least the store-bought ones.

as for saskatoons i have no idea what they are like.

i have a specialty wild berry here in the east. I bet you've never heard. Sumac berries each:


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## Plugging Along

I just finished pitting my last bucket of cheeries today. 

Nanking cherries are much smaller than the bing cherries, and much more tart. They have a beautiful bright fire engine red color. They have taste, but more like a sour cherry, I think crab apple crosses cherry. They nankings are extremely juicy, I was quite surprise how much juice was float on the bottom after pitting them. 

I have made the following with my 15 pounds
A freezer jam, it with my first experience with pectin. I didn't reach how sugar was required, so I will be making my regular no pectin jam with them later. I froze some pitted for this purpose
Cherry lemonade, it was fantastic. Fresh lemon, fresh cherry, and honey that came from the farm that we got the cherries from. My kids love it, I do do
My favourite was Nanking cherry BBQ sauce, it was low sodium and a little on the tart side, but it was Perfect for the ribs I made during the week. It was like Caroline BBQ (vinegary but good)

For Saskatoon berries, we got thunder stormed out today. They are like across between a blueberry and current. They are have a less sweet taste than the blueberry, but have a lot of flavor To them. They are much firm so I find it holds up very nicely in cooking and baking. I find they have more tooth than blueberries, and my kids prefer them because they don't egg mushy. Even out of the freezer, which I do a lot of.

As for bing cherries, I did stock up at the super market, and bought 20 today for freezing. You are right, they are not as flavourful as the ones in farmers markers. When we started our vacation in back they had the fresh crest on cherries, and they were sweet, huge, and juicy. I did buy $30 worth, and we ate them for the whole trip. I will spend a little more those ones when I season. 

I have heard of the sumac berry, however, I always thought it was a spice. Can you eat them fresh?


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## humble_pie

plug you are the berry goddess. I'd go for that nanking cherry lemonade, the cherry jams sound good too.

the way you describe those saskatoons, a saskatoon berry pie must be out of this world? 

dried crushed red sumac berries are indeed an ingredient in za'atar, a spice used all over the middle east. It's popular these days in north america. Although sometimes za'atar contains only dried crushed green herbs such as thyme & oregano plus rosebuds or rose petals.

i prefer za'atar that's mostly sumac, though, along with ground thyme & fresh rosemary. You can tell when you buy it, za'atar with sumac will be dark red.

my all-time favourite sumac berry recipe is a simple sumac syrup, from which sorbets, jellies & even cough medicine can be made. Cooks first rake the fresh fuzzy red sumac berries off the berry cones with the tines of a fork. Don't go too far, it's best to rake the top layers of berries only. 

the low-growing sumac trees - or maybe they're shrubs - grow all over eastern canada. The berries are ripe just about now.

me i simmer sumac berries in water with a standard volume of sugar for 20-30 minutes. Can add lemon zest. Cool & strain. The dark red syrup has a unique & delicious flavour that puts it squarely in the tribe of marvellous northern canadian wild red berries, except that it doesn't resemble any of the standards, ie it's not like raspberry or red currant or blackberry, it's impossible to describe.

from the syrup, one can make a variety of recipes. Jellies. Sorbets. One can also combine with 180 proof grain alcohol for a heavenly cordial.

sumac berries were used by eastern woodlands first nations to treat coughs & colds. They, in turn, taught the early settlers of new france. Even today, some families in rural parts of quebec still make sumac berry cough medicine.

according to this wikipedia article, crushed dried sumac berries in za'atar are an awesome source of anti-oxidants.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumac

last but not least, crushed sumac berries macerated overnight in cold water are said to make a delicious lemonade-tasting drink with all of the medicinal properties intact. I've read first nation recipes saying that some native american women today are making quantities of this sumac berry lemonade in their washing machines.

possibly those nanking cherries, with their juices that run so freely, might be perfect for washing machine lemonade?
.


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## Plugging Along

HP. Wow, that sounds great with the sumac. I only began a little wile ago looking in sumac because my daughter play date was allergic to it, so I didn't know what it was and rigorously started investigating it. The fresh berry sounds great, and I would like to try it, maybe not while my daughter's friend is over.

I live Saskatoon berry pie, i don't bake well myself, but the u pick we get the berries from, makes them to go, and they are so good. The berries are flavourful and firm without being over powered by sugar. The jam I make with it is just boiling 2 cups of the berries with 3-4 tbs of sugar until they are broken down, then I quickly use my hand blender, and add a few berries stir in some vanilla, and it's great. 

I have to admit you have stumped me, what is a washing machine lemonade?


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## humble_pie

interesting ... plugging you don't boil your berries as long as i do, i'm going to rethink my approach because i'm probably overdoing it. Your way would give a much fresher taste i believe.

re sumac berry lemonade made in large quantities in washing machines, i'm stumped too. But the practice might be widespread at first nations banquets & festivals. Whenever many gallons of fresh berry beverage have to be catered for hundreds of people.

taking a wild guess, i think something like this might work. Fill machine with cold water & stop. Dump in maybe 15-20 pounds berries with some sugar. Stir a bit. Don't agitate the machine, but leave berries to macerate in water overnight.

next day, move the evacuation hose so the machine will evacuate into pails. Be ready with enough clean pails. Run the wash & spin dry cycle. I'd select a delicate cycle with an extra-long agitation, not a short agitation. I'd be prepared to collect & keep the sumac-ade after the wash cycle. I wouldn't let the preparation run a 2nd time through a rinse cycle because that would dilute it too much.

theoretically speaking, the pressed berry residue should end up in the lint basket. Either that or the house could suffer a serious plumbing crisis.

i've been to pow-wows where they served fresh strawberry juice to 800 people. It was a delicious beverage made from fresh real strawberries, alright. It wasn't anything bottled or canned. Now i'm wondering, how did they manage to whip up 500 litres of the ultra-fresh bright red stuff that morning? were a lot of washing machines busy humming on the reserve during the am?


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## Plugging Along

Sorry, I wasn't clear in my post, I actually boil my berries for a long time until they are thick, I meant I don't do much more than that. I am guessing they boil for at least 30 minutes, but I don't know, I go by look

I have a high efficiency washer, so I don't know if I would like to try it . However, think they would be juicy enough for it too work, I would think one would want to remove the pits some how as they small and you don't want someone swallowing, I liked leaving the skin on so that would have to be staring out too in a shine machine. 

We do shaker lemonade sometimes, so I would think that is the same idea except we do it for one serving instead 900. The kids like it, I will cut a lemon, squeeze into my martini shake, add a little honey, snore super ripe berries, or soft ones, and ice, top off with a little water, and let the kids shake and dance around. They think it's awesome, and it is pretty good, it feels fresh.


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## humble_pie

go shaker lemonade for kids! apparently martini shakers have made a comeback for adults as cocktail shakers, no dancing around ...

2 more rules for washing machine berry lemonade:

- no berries with pits. Only soft berries like sumacs, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries are OK. No nanking cherries or any other kind of berry with pits.

- take socks & other laundry out of the washing machine before starting the lemonade operation.


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## Plugging Along

Lol.... That is the advantage of a martini shaker I have never had to remember to take out the socks =)


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## Plugging Along

I just had my next summer harvest cooking marathon today. Someone gave me 40lbs of tomatoes. 

I just made the most amazing roasted tomato sauce, and then used it as a base for a smoke tortellini tomato soup. 

Tommorrow, I am going to make a tomato salad, and salsa, maybe some bruschetta. I still expect I will have 30 or 40 tomatoes left over.

What are some of your favourite tomato dishes.


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## humble_pie

lol i brought home 3 giant field pumpkins.

2 are still standing outside on the porch. One i brought inside because i thought it could be cooked, i was imagining pies & a tasty dish or 2 like baked squash, no effort at all.

it is the pumpkin that never stops. It's taken over the kitchen. Large baking dishes have sweetly glowed inside the oven all afternoon. Big pots of chunks are still simmering on the stove top. The sinks still overflows with chunks waiting to be peeled & cooked. The frig is already stocked with containers of pumpkin, some with salt, pepper & onion, some without. These latter are supposed to be for the pies.

by rough estimate it looks like 10 or 12 pies, if i get that far.

because the pumpkin was so heavy, i left it in the inside vestibule, cutting big strips off & carrying them to the kitchen. Just now i went to see what was left.

omg. at least half the raw vegetable is still sitting there.


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