From Word To Word

I harvested my garlic scapes today, along with a whole bunch of chives, and enough mint to get my mint patch under control.  My problem is that I grow garlic on a mass scale, something like four hundred plants, so I end up with far more garlic scapes than any one family is likely to use, even in a family as extended as mine.  The scapes do not dry well, becoming tough and fibrous, and though they last quite well if they are kept cool, they become dry and unusable long before I can use even a small portion of them.  I looked to the internet for ideas on how to preserve them, but it was mostly useless.  There were any number of recipes for garlic scape pesto, which can be frozen into ice cubes and thawed throughout the year, and I have made this kind of thing before, but I can only eat so much pesto.

So, I determined to see whether I could adapt the idea of the frozen pesto cubes, only without the pesto.  I roughly chopped the scapes, put them in a blender with some olive oil, ground them into a paste, and put them into ice cube trays.  This approach worked well, but I found that I was using a fair amount of olive oil to get the moisture content high enough for a smooth paste, so I tried adding a little water instead, and found that this was a much better option.  The scapes pureed better, froze more solidly, and will probably last longer in the freezer.  They do tend to stick in the ice cube trays a little, but some warm water on the back of the trays gets the cubes free quite quickly, and then they can be bagged and kept in the freezer until needed.

By the time I was finished experimenting, I had settled on proportions of something like two tablespoons of water for every quarter pound of roughly chopped scapes, but this will likely differ a little depending on how fresh and how moist your scapes are.  My suggestion is just to add water in small increments until the paste is smooth, and to pour off any excess water that collects in the bowl.  It should not take long to find proportions that work for you.  Of course, if you do not have four hundred garlic scapes that need processing, and you are not interested in finding some just to make garlic scape ice cubes, you can always come over and sample mine sometime.  I assure you, I have more than enough for everyone.

As my children have already posted, our family visited Loonsong Garden while we were on Manitoulin Island this past weekend.  Loonsong is a farm that grows organic cereal crops and grinds whole flours.  It also grows vegetables for a local Community Shared Agriculture program.  My mother first introduced us to Loonsong at Christmas, when she brought us four of their flours as a Christmas gift.  My wife, who has begun breadmaking much more seriously, has really enjoyed using them, particularly the Red Fife Wheat flour, which has a really beautiful flavour.

Red Fife, as the owners of Loonsong will tell you, has a story of its own that is well worth telling.  Myth has it that Red Fife began as a single hat full of grain sent on to Canada from Glasgow, and that the whole first crop was destroyed by rust except for a single plant that must have been an accidental hybrid of some sort, and that this single plant was the parent of all Red Fife grown today.  It was robust enough to thrive in the sometimes difficult Canadian climate, resistant to rust, and did not require nitrogen rich soil to grow, so it was used to breed many new variations.  These newer strains and other wheat varieties were often bred for higher yields, however, so the original Red Fife was gradually replaced, until there was little of its seed remaining.  Only in the last thirty years or so has it become used more widely again, especially by organic farmers for whom its resistance to rust and ability to grow without chemical fertilizers are highly desirable, despite its relatively low yields.

The flour that Loonsong makes from Red Fife is also distinct from commercial flours in that it is truly whole grain.  Most flours include only the endosperm, the carbohydrate heavy part of the wheat seed that provides nutrition for the growing wheat germ until it can grow leaves and photosynthesize for itself.  Commercial whole grain flours include the bran, the outer coating of the seed, which adds needed roughage but not much nutritive value to the flour.  Loonsong’s flours, however, include literally the whole wheat seed: the endosperm, the bran, and the germ.  The benfit of this is that the flour contains the many nutritious oils and proteins of the germ, but at the cost of a shorter shelf life, since these oils will make the flour go rancid more quickly, so whole flours do need to be refrigerated

Loonsong’s whole grain Red Fife flour is really beautiful.  It is far more nutritious than most flours, and it is delicious, with a flavour that is mildly suggestive of nuts.  It also makes great bread, though it is too heavy to be used in most bread machines.  It works best in old-fashioned recipes, since many of these recipes were made with hand ground whole flours in mind.  The following is one that we have been enjoying lately:

Jaya’s Bread

Mix 2 cups of stone ground whole wheat flour, 2 cups of rye flour, and 2 cups of unbleached white flour.

Warm 1 pint of buttermilk and 1 cup of water to about 30 degrees Celsius.  Stir in 2 tablespoons of brown sugar, 1 tablespoon of dark molasses, and a dash of salt.  Stir in 2 rounded tablespoons of dry yeast and let it proof.

Gradually add 4 cups of the  flour to the wet ingredients to form a stiff batter.  Add 3/4 cups of melted lard or shortening and knead until the dough is smooth.  Let the dough rise to about double its size.

Knead in the remainder of the flour.  Let the dough rise until roughly double its size.  If the dough is too sticky, add unbleached white flour until it reaches a good consistency, as much as 4 cups.

Beat the dough down and divide it into three parts.  Shape each part into a loaf and place in a loaf pan.  Let the loaves rise to about double their size.

Bake at 350 degrees Celsius for about an hour.  Remove the loaves from the pans and let them stand until cool.

The result is a heavy, nutty, whole wheat bead that is great for almost any purpose, but best, at least in my opinion, when sliced thickly, toasted lightly, and eaten with nothing but butter.

If you would like to know more about Loonsong and their products, you can phone them at <705-368-0460> or email them at <loonsong@vianet.ca>

I have just had another request for my Bev Stroganov recipe, so rather than keep writing it for people individually, I thought I might just post it here where I can direct people as I have need.  This is one of those recipes that I first made when I still lived in my parents’ home and have been experimenting ever since.  I very rarely make it exactly the same twice, but the following is the gist of the dish.

Bev Stroganov

Make a paste with three tablespoons of ground mustard, three or more teaspoons of ground pepper, two teaspoons of sugar, a pinch of salt, and a little water.  The paste should be wet enough that it is smooth but dry enough not to be runny.  You can experiment with different varieties of mustard here, but I would recommend that you use preground mustard or use an electric grinder rather than a mortar and pestle for your whole mustard, just to be sure the mustard is ground finely enough to make a good paste.  Let this paste rest at room temperature.

Thinly slice four or five cups of yellow onions into rings.  Thinly slice a pound or so of mushrooms.  I use brown mushrooms most often, but I have used shitake and oyster mushrooms also, so experiment as you like.

Take a two or three pound fillet of beef.  Cut it first across the fillet into rounds that are about a quarter inch thick.  Then cut each round into quarter inch strips, this time cutting with the grain.  This process will make strips of beef that will be tender and easy to chew.  If you cut the stripe so that they go with the grain with both cuts, you will just get long bits of whole muscle that will be much less tender.

Heat a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil in a heavy skillet over very high heat.  Wait until the oil begins to haze over the pan.  Add the mushrooms and onions, then immediately reduce the heat to low.  Cook for twenty or thirty minutes, stirring occasionally, until the vegetable have softened, then drain them through a sieve and set aside.

Heat two or three more tablespoons of oil in the skillet over high heat until the oil is hor but not smoking.  Add just enough meat to cover the bottom of the skillet and brown it, then transfer the meat to a bowl and set it aside.  Repeat this process until all the meat has been browned.  Stir in the mustard paste.  When it is well combined, stir in four cups of sour cream.  Cover the mixture and cook until the sauce is well heated.  Taste the mixture and add mustard, salt, and pepper as necessary.

Serve over egg noodles or, if you want to be a little more authentic, over thinly sliced and very crisp French fried potatoes.

I have had a bunch of Spy apples sitting around for the last week or so.  They were meant to become pie filling, but the pumpkin pies went further than I thought they would, so the apples have remained, unneeded and unloved, on top of the refrigerator.  Something had to be done with them before they went bad, and that something, I decided this evening, was that I would make stewed apples, one of my favourite holiday recipes.  I know that it is not yet December and that I should still be resisting the onset of the commercially prolonged Christmas season, but it was an emergency, and this way you all get the benefit of a recipe that you can use when Christmas actually comes within reasonable celebrating proximity.

Stewed Apples

Melt half a pound or so of butter in a good sized stock pot.  Add the finely chopped peels of 8 or 10 clementines or the zest of 4 or 5 large oranges.  Add several sticks of cinnamon, several roughly cracked whole nutmegs, and two dozen or so each of whole cloves and whole allspice.  Saute this until the peel has had time to soften and the pot starts to smell amazing.

Add 8 or 10 pounds of cooking apples, peeled and sliced.  Cooking apples are those that resist falling apart when you cook them.  Northern Spys are a great choice because they have so much flavour.  Cortlands are good too because their flesh does not brown like most apples.  Ida Reds are another of my favourites.  Add enough brown sugar to sweeten the apples, but not enough to overwhelm them.  This will differ according to the tartness of the apples you are using.  Use your judgement, but err on the side of too little.  Simmer everything, stirring frequently, until the apples begin to soften.

Add two or three cups each of raisins and dried cranberries.  Keep simmering.  As the raisins and cranberries rehydrate, you will likely find that you need to add some fluid, again depending on the apples.  Apple cider is a safe choice, but rum works very well also.  You could also use orange juice, cranberry juice, or whiskey.  Feel free to experiment, but add the liquid gradually.  You want the mixture to be moist but not swimming.

When the apples have softened and the dried fruit has rehydrated, remove the pot from the heat.  Alternatively, you can also choose at this point to add a healthy dose of heavy cream and cook everything a little longer.  Either way is good.  You may eat it immediately after it is finished, but the flavours will only intensify if you leave it cooling on the stove overnight or let it rest even longer in the refrigerator.  It is great both cold and reheated, both as a breakfast or snack in itself and as a topping for cake or icecream.  I have never tried to can it properly, but it lasts quite a long time in jars in my refrigerator, and it tastes like Christmas whenever you happen to bring it out, even in November.

Tomatoes were not one of my garden’s successes this year, for the second year running.  I did manage to plant them away from the walnut trees this time around, and neither of my two remaining chimneys fell on them, which is a definite improvement over last year, but I started growing them from seed too late, and I had the seedlings in a place with too little light, so I had to plant them out before they were ready, and then everything was compounded by a summer of too little sun and and too little heat.  So, though I have a reasonable tomato harvest, almost a bushel, it is entirely green.

Now, I know that green tomatoes can be fried, and I have attempted this dish in the past, but it is only possible, for me at least, to eat so many fried green tomatoes.  I have also made green tomato chutney in past years, but not everyone seems to like this as much as I do.  So I have been doing some experimenting, and I thought I might share the results.

Green Tomato and Sour Cream Pasta Sauce
Slice a fair number of green tomatoes into slightly larger than bite sized chunks and dice two yellow onions.  Saute the tomatoes and the onions in olive oil.  Add a little sugar and keep cooking until the mixture begins to caramelize.  Add just enough white wine to deglaze the pan.  Add a handful of chopped fresh tarragon.  Add a healthy doze of freshly ground black pepper.

Reduce the pan to low and add enough sour cream to produce the consistency that you want.  I just used a tub of sour cream from the supermarket, but I would wager any money that homemade stuff would be far superior if you have the time to make it.  Add salt to taste.  Put over pasta.

The green tomatoes work really well in a recipe like this because they have the tomato flavour but do not melt like ripe tomatoes,  so they can be caramelized and still keep some structure to them.

Green Tomato Salsa
There are many recipes for green tomato salsa drifting about the internet, but none of them were what I wanted, so I combined and manipulated some of them to my own purposes.

Mince four cloves of garlic, two or three seeded jalapeno peppers, 2 yellow onions, six or eight green tomatoes, and a cup or so of fresh cilantro.  When I say mince, I mean mince.  It should not be chunky.  It should be just this side of puree.

Add a few tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, a dash of sugar, a dash of salt, and freshly ground pepper to taste.  Let it sit, at least for an hour or two, preferably overnight or even longer, so that the tomatoes can pickle.  If it seems a little dry as you are about to serve it, add a little more cider vinegar.

Between these two recipes I have used up a fair number of my green tomatoes, but if anyone wants to share a favourite recipe, I am sure that I will have the chance to try it eventually, if not this year, then the next time my garden cannot list tomatoes among its successes.

Okay, I may have just created the single best food I have ever eaten.  If you like blue cheese, you may want to start taking notes.

Take a chunk of blue cheese, any of the stronger varieties will do.  The more blue veining, the better.  Mix this with about an equal amount of cream cheese.  If at all possible, make this real cream cheese rather than the stuff you buy as a brick in the supermarket.  Stir in half and half cream until the cheese becomes smooth rather than chunky.  Set this aside.

Chop ten or twelve slices of bacon into bits.  Get it from a butcher, and make sure that it is thick meaty bacon.  Fry it until it is crispy, then remove it from the bacon fat.  Mince a half a bulb of garlic and saute it in a little of the bacon grease.   Chop a handful of fresh chives.  Add the bacon, garlic, and chives to the cheese micture.

Mix everything thoroughly.  Put it about an inch deep into ramekans or a cassarole dish.  Bake at 350 degrees until it gets nice and bubbly.  Eat it in whatever way you usually convey dip to your mouth.  If you do not love this, courier it to me.  I might even pay your postage.

I often get requests to share recipes with people, but I can very seldom provide what people want. They expect precise ingredients and measurements, where I prefer to work in approximations. The difficulty is that the recipe book and the television cooking show have accustomed us to the idea that a dish must be reproducible time after time, that this kind of consistency is one of the signs of a good cook. Now, I should say that I do not entirely disagree with this assumption in certain situations. A professional kitchen, for example, needs to have this kind of consistency in order to be successful, and the ability to produce it is a skill that a good cook certainly requires. I would suggest, however, that most circumstances do not require a dish to be precisely the same time after time, and that a certain variety can also be a mark of a skillful cook, as a way of expressing creativity and personality.

So, though I will share the following recipe by popular demand, I am leaving it intentionally a little vague, not only because I did not actually measure anything as I was making it, but also because I hope you will find room in it to express your own culinary personality.

First, cube some potatoes, a little smaller than bite-sized, and boil them until just tender. A fork should go into them, but they should not be mushy. Drain them and run cold water over them to stop the cooking process. Reserve them for later.

Second, saute a chopped onion in butter until it sweats, and do use real butter if at all possible. Add a healthy amount of finely chopped garlic. Add some roughly cut red peppers. Add some roughly cut green, leafy vegetable: I used carrot leaves, but spinach or kale or something similar would work too. Add cubed ham, or you could use bacon as well, but make it something salty and smoked and flavourful, because boiled chicken breast is not going to cut it here. When everything is well cooked together, remove from the heat and add to the potatoes.

Third, make a bechamel sauce (melt butter; add flour and stir until it just begins to change colour; add milk, stirring constantly, until the sauce achieves the consistency that you want), but add a strong dose of mustard powder to the flour stage. Add salt and pepper to taste. Mix the sauce into the potatoes.

Fourth, mix the potatoes well and put in a large shallow roasting pan. Grate a sharp cheddar cheese over the top, liberally. Cook at 350 degrees until the cheese looks good and bubbly. Eat it.

This will not win you any culinary awards, but it will make you friends and taste great and expand your waistline, all of which is more to the point.

I am not certain that the world needs another recipe for beef stew, but I did something by accident today that has received such high praise that I might as well record it somewhere.

The first part of the accident was that I happened to have a fair amount of sausage drippings that were left from another meal, so I used them to saute the sliced onions, crushed garlic, minced ginger, and diced tomatos.  When they had softened, I fried the beef in the mixture, then stirred in cubed potatoes, carrots, turnip, and squash.

The second part of the accident requires some explanation.  I hate the texture of liver, but I also hate just trashing anything, so a few weeks ago I experimented with making some beef liver stock.  Since this stock was already in the house, and since the stew seemed a likely use for it, I added two cups of it to the pot rather than use plain beef stock.  When everything had come to a simmer, I added celery salt, parsley, bay leaves, and thyme.

Two hours later, the tomatoes and the squash had melted nicely, so the broth was very thick.  The beef was tender, and the root vegetables were still mostly whole but soft enough to mash with a spoon.  The sausage and liver flavours were beautiful.  Now, if only I would have had a draught stout to go with it.

I have had several requests to provide a recipe for the apricot brandy with mulled cider that I have now mentioned twice.  The problem is that I rarely have recipes as such.  I have ingredients, and I have ways of preparing them, but I do not really measure anything, and I seldom make the same thing twice, so it is not always easy to describe exactly how I have made something.  Here, however, is my best approximation of a recipe, along with similar approximations for two other hot drinks that I like to make.

Mulled Apple Cider and Apricot Brandy
Pour apple cider into a pot.  Make certain that it is real apple cider, not the unreasonable facsimile of apple cider that is most often available through the supermarket.  If you can see through it, if it does not have sediment on the bottom of the bottle, if it is made any further distant than a hundred miles from you, or if it has preservatives of any kind, it is not apple cider.  Find a farmer’s market.  Find a local farmer.  Buy good cider.  It will be worth the effort.

Add cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, and roughly cracked whole nutmeg.  The fresher the spices, the better.  This means that they need to have been shipped well.  Look for a reputable dealer.  Try not to buy the little bags from the chain grocery stores.  These spices usually taste like they are older than you are.

Bring the cider to just short of a boil and simmer until the taste is as strong as you like it.  Remove it from the heat.  Add apricot brandy until it bites back a little.  I am no expert on brandies.  I just use what I find in my local liquor store.  If someone knows better, feel free to educate me.

Hot Chocolate
I include hot chocolate for the simple reason that I am so horrified by the canned stuff that I am on something of a crusade to convert people to the homemade varieties.  I am not sharing a recipe.  I am proselytizing.

Pour milk into a pot and bring it to just below a boil.  It should go without saying that it be whole milk, but I will say it anyway.  Make it organic if you can.

You have two options at this point.  Either grate unsweetened chocolate or add cocoa into the milk. In either case, make sure the chocolate is very good quality.  There are few products where there is a greater difference between high quality and low.  The milk should now be a nice brown colour and thicker in texture.  It should also taste strongly and bitterly of chocolate.

Add confectioner’s sugar to taste.  Resist the culturally inculcated tendency to add too much.  The goal is not to make it sweet.  The goal is to make it slightly less bitter.  The chocolate taste should not just predominate, it should entirely dominate.  You are making hot chocolate, not hot sugar.

Those who are a little adventurous can add crushed red chilies at this point. I think the chilies taste fabulous, but not everyone agrees with me.  Be warned.

Hot Milk Toddy
Pour milk into a pot and bring it to just below a boil, like the hot chocolate.

Add the same spices as the mulled cider and simmer.

When the spices have steeped, add rum or whiskey, whatever your preference.  It may seem a waste, but do use something reasonably good.  The rum will give a warmer, sweeter taste, the whisky a drier, sharper one.  If you are using whisky, avoid any of the seaside single malts.  The salty, medicinal taste does not mix well with the milk.  Choose something with a more balanced flavour.  I like the 15 year Dalwhinnie, but I have also used more standard selections like Glenlivet and Glenfiddich.

If you have trouble with any of the instructions, you can always come by for some personal instruction.  I will be more than happy to accommodate.