icecreamandknishes

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Green Barley Risotto With Peas and Asparagus

It’s asparagus season and I always look for new ways to cook it.

Risotto is a classic Italian dish where Arborio rice is carefully cooked in a pot and stirred as liquid is slowly added to it, along with different ingredients to create a creamy texture. One more or less has to attend to the risotto during the approximately 20 minute cooking period which discourages many modern busy cooks from making it.

You can also make risotto with barley and there are two bonuses, one - you don’t have to stir it so often to get a creamy consistency and two - barley is an inexpensive grain.

This is local cooking - the chives even came from my garden - you can’t get more local than that!

Local foods taste better because they are fresher. 

The recipe I used is by Claudia Roden, who has released a new cookbook, Mediterranean. Claudia Roden is one of England’s top food writers. She moved from Egypt to England as a child. Her family was expelled because they were Jewish and Claudia has written extensively about Sephardic cooking. She is recognized as introducing Middle Eastern food to the British. 

This is certainly a good recipe to add to your cooking repertoire.

Get cooking.

Recipe (click here)

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Wild Leek Season!

During a few fleeting weeks in the spring we get to enjoy the bounty of mother nature. It is wild leek or ramp season. 

Allium Tricoccum, is a member of the allium family which includes onions, chives and garlic. 

Wild leeks grow in the forest and across north east North America, and need to be sustainably harvested because they take four years to reproduce and flower. 

You can see the dirt covering the bulbs in the above photo. As I open the bag the unique scent of wild leeks wafts upwards, I am reminded how far removed we are from where food comes from. This is no pristine mixed bag of lettuces that you open and eat, these alliums need careful cleaning and trimming. Not just rinsing but trimming them first, and putting them in a bowl of water and changing the water until it is clean and there is no soil residue left in the water.

Once cleaned they are ready to eat and comes the next challenge - what to cook?

Wild leeks can be eaten raw or cooked. They can be made into a pesto and even pickled for preservation.

The first dish I made was to cover a fillet of fresh local rainbow trout with wild leeks. I chopped up the white bulbs and lay them on the fish, then covered it with the greens and baked it.

Wild leeks were one of the first foods in the spring that the Indigenous people ate and this way of preparing the fish was one of the dishes they made.

The greens were dry and I should have wrapped the fish up in a parchment paper bundle. I served with it fingerling potatoes topped with a garlic lemon aioli.

And that was the start of my weekend festival of wild leeks. 

What else could I make?

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Onion and Artichoke Tart

Clearing the refrigerator, or “cooking from inventory” creates an opportunity to use ingredients you many not normally think of putting together.

Onion and Artichoke Tart is a recipe from Mary Berry of The Great British Bake Off fame. This veteran of the food world has published 70 cookbooks and appeared on numerous television series and shows. She has a calm positive manner about her and knows how to make a recipe approachable.

I do try to keep frozen puff pastry on hand so this gave me a starting point on deciding what recipe I would make. Mary Berry’s recipe uses mushrooms, which I didn’t have but I did have some fresh spinach and Feta Cheese that needed to be used up. I used milk instead of the cream called for in the recipe and dried oregano as my herb. 

And I gave my long rectangular tart pan some exercise. 

A fancy lunch was born. Why not?

Get cooking.

Recipe (click here)

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Pineapple Upside Down Cake

A fresh homemade cake is a wonderful thing.

This is a retro style cake which deserves a second look. You can even say the fruit makes it healthy!

Perfect for tea time. Mother’s Day is coming up. This is an easy one bowl recipe.

I used chopped pineapples, you can also use crushed or take the time to decorate it with sliced pineapple. It’s from a can, the work is done for you.

I’m even sending a link to a recipe which uses a cake mix. Easy or what?

Get baking.

Recipe (click here)

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Brunch of the Future

Restaurants Canada Show (RCShow) returns live and virtual at the Enercare Centre in Toronto on May 9 - 11 2022. 

Last year it was held as an online event, and two years ago was the last time it was held live, the last live event I attended, leaving me with happy memories of the world as we knew it.

Needless to say the pandemic has been particularly difficult for the hospitality business. It is not only the financial devastation of having businesses shut down five times, but also the emotional turmoil and stress it caused. Hospitality people are social beings and this was taken away from them.

Restaurants Canada staff worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic to let the governments know what challenges their businesses were facing.

As part of the promotions for this year’s show I attended a RCShow virtual event called Brunch of the Future, featuring Donna Dooher, owner of Toronto’s Mildred’s Temple Kitchen. When Donna first opened her restaurant she helped  turn Toronto into a brunch city. She explained that brunch fits more into the life style of young people.

Donna is an active member of Restaurants Canada, she cares deeply for the business.

Liam Dolan, past Chair Restaurants Canada and Donna Dooher, March 2020, RC Show 

Donna explained how difficult it was during the pandemic. During the first shut down they were told it was for two weeks to “flatten the curve” and those two weeks dragged into five weeks and more while bills and rent had to be paid, with no revenue coming in from customers.

Donna credited her young staff with coming up with ideas on how to survive, including online Zoom corporate cooking lessons and offering different take out and delivery options, and they started using QR codes, one of which is included on the package with the pancake mix to get further instructions to make the pancakes. 

Mildred’s Temple Kitchen offers ready made meals for take out, or you can order items from the pantry including meal kits that you could heat up and cook yourselves. Donna said she sent out meal kits across the country. 

I was sent a Pancake Essentials Kit, which Donna demonstrated how to make the pancakes online (including a bottle of prosecco - what is brunch without a mimosa or Caesar?)

(Photo Mildred’s Temple Kitchen)

Along with the Pancake Mix, Wild Blueberry Compote, and Organic Maple Syrup allows you to create an in home restaurant brunch experience. 

One of the secrets of making pancakes is not to overmix the batter. The best pan to use is a cast iron pan. An ice cream scoop produces a round pancake. Unfortunately my ice cream scoop wasn’t up to the job and I didn’t have perfectly round pancakes but I prepared all the fixings and a glorious meal was had.

Restaurants Canada is looking to the future, as people return to indoor dining  and trying to help the industry adjust and thrive.

Continue to support our restaurants, either by dining in or ordering take out. And don’t forget to get the meal kits!

Thanks Restaurants Canada and Donna Dooher, my husband and I are busy brunching away. 

RCShow 2022 (click here)

Mildred’s Temple Kitchen (click here)

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Strawberry Rice Brulee

Rice pudding is a classic old style humble dessert. I found a recipe that makes it oh so twenty first century with the addition of some fancy brulee on top of the pudding and strawberries to the mix.

Old school rice pudding has raisins, and you could use those too!

For a touch of food history I will add that in the Middle Ages rice pudding would have been a luxury dish as rice was imported and very expensive. Sugar was even more costly and wouldn’t have been used at all. So its origins aren’t so humble at all.

Time for a revival. We need all the comfort we can get.

Get out your kitchen torch and get cooking. (You can use the broiler if you don’t have a torch.)

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/strawberry-rice-brulee

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Muffin Latkes

It's Hanukkah, a Jewish festival that last for eight days, is a Festival of Lights, and also a festival of foods fried in oil. 

Food often has symbolism in different religions and at Hanukkah the oil symbolizes the ritually purified olive oil which was used to light the Menorah in the Temple of Jerusalem. During the second century BCE the occupying rulers of Israel, the Seleucids, (Syrian Greeks) were forcing the Jews to assimilate and abandon their religion. Judah Maccabee led a revolt and that is when there was only enough purified oil to light the Menorah for one day. It lasted for eight days until new oil could be prepared.

Therefore foods fried in oil are eaten to commemorate this miracle. Donuts, fried in oil and latkes (potato pancakes) are favourite Hanukkah treats.

These potato latke muffins use oil, still retain the spirit of the holiday while containing a lot less oil than fried latkes do. They are also easier and faster to make.

I did not strain the potatoes in a cloth towel as called for in the recipe and the muffin latkes came out fine. Straining the grated potatoes removes excess water. I simply cooked them a bit longer. 

Try some Muffin Latkes. They are good year round.

Recipe (click here)

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Apple Sauce

Nostalgia is one of the current food trends, we seem to be looking backwards towards more idyllic times.

When I think about my grandparents, I can still see clearly in my mind many decades later a dish that they enjoyed which grossed me out as a child.

It was a fruit compote, stewed dried fruits with the ubiquitous prune as the hero ingredient. I didn’t know as a child that the dish that regularly appeared at their table was a dish to keep them regular.

I still don’t find it very appealing but another cooked fruit that I enjoy is applesauce. It tastes much better home made and you can control how much sweetener, if any, you put in it. 

I can also make a small batch, perfect for two or even one person.

I peel about 3 apples, cut out the core and cut them up. Put them in a small sauce pan, squirt about half a lemon over them, add about 1/4 cup water, bring them to a boil, and then reduce the temperature and cook them at a low simmer until they are soft and can be mashed up. Stir to make sure mixture doesn’t burn or stick to bottom of pan. Taste to decide if you want to add any sugar. If you like you can sprinkle some cinnamon in. You can also make cooked pears the same way.

Eat them as they are, add them to a cake, or yogurt and enjoy the fruit.

The apple sauce would stay fresh refrigerated for one week. 

Get cooking. Enjoy the fruit of your labour. (bad pun alert)

[icecreamandknishes]

Red Cabbage With Roasted Cippolini Onions

Winter salads are everything,and provide a pleasant change from the same old lettuce creations. Red Cabbage With Roasted Cippolini Onions is an excellent example. 

You get to enjoy the pleasing crunch of red cabbage, the sweetness of shredded carrots while relishing the tang of the balsamic dressing. The cippolini onions are roasted to perfection, giving forth their caramelized goodness.

Goat cheese adds protein and a needed counter to the sweetness of the onions.

The recipe I based my salad on contained chicory and fresh thyme which I did not use. I also replaced the walnuts with toasted sliced almonds and pumpkin seeds.

I also added some red wine vinegar to the dressing for added kick.

We are entering the darkest days of the year, so brighten them up with some interesting vegetable creations.

Red Cabbage With Roasted Cipollini Onions Recipe (click here) 

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Rogue Reads - Steel Fear

Some of the good things to come out of the pandemic have been the online events connecting all of us in new ways.

Although this is a food blog, I will share my other passion with you, mystery and crime books. I am always reading them.

In August I “attended” Rogue Reads, a monthly online event run by Rogue Women Writers, who are a group of highly accomplished writers of thrillers, mystery, and suspense. 

These monthly events bring together different authors who tell us about their new publications and we get to meet them and learn about them.

I love hearing these talks with mystery writers, I find it very interesting to gain insight into how the books are written and get a glimpse of the personalities of the authors.

And I won a book! Steel Fear by Brandon Webb and John David Man. Published by Penguin Random House. 

Steel Fear takes place on an American aircraft carrier. An aircraft carrier holds 6,000 personnel, it is really a small enclosed town, sailing across the oceans, filled with people, weapons and aircraft.

Brandon Webb is a former Marine Seal and served on the USS Kitty Hawk and the USS Abraham Lincoln. 

His experience helps give us a birds eye view into the comings and goings on an aircraft carrier. 

Brandon explained that there was an actual serial molester event on the USS Lincoln in the mid 1990′s when he was serving on it. That inspired him to write the book along with author John David Mann. Steel Fear is the sixth book they have written together.

The authors spent two years researching the book.

It is definitely a page turner, a real thriller. I was given a good insight into life on an aircraft carrier, where every inch of space in the huge ship counts and a how many different types of people and jobs are needed to make them run.

How can a criminal hide in such a setting? Well I’m not giving anything away.

Expand your world of mystery writers and check out Rogue Women Writers. And visit in person or online Toronto’s only independent book store dedicated to mysteries, Sleuth of Baker Street. The owners have a vast knowledge of the genre, are very helpful guiding you, and their website is full of excellent recommendations. 

Rogue Women (click here) 

Sleuth of Baker Street (click here)

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Kale Chips!

As this weird year draws to a close food trends are getting much more attention than ever. Supply chain issues abound, and many are still hesitant to eat inside restaurants. 

But plant based foods are still on trend and Kale is on the menu.

Kale Chips are an excellent snack. 

I have not had success making them myself and basically gave up until I was told about this recipe that works. The secret is to carefully rub olive oil into every leaf. It worked! I can now make Kale Chips forever!

Try it. 

Kale Chips Recipe (click here) 

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Lemon Tiramisu

Freshen up your life with Lemon Tiramisu. You can buy many of the components, including lemon curd and Italian Lady Fingers and assemble it, making life a bit easier.

Using lemon instead of the traditional coffee makes an interesting change for this dessert. Limoncello is often used but since I don’t have any I made the lemon syrup as called for in the recipe, let it cool down and added a dash of vodka.

I also used ricotta instead of mascarpone for a lighter dessert.

I plated it individually but you can also put into a freezer proof container and freeze it, then serve it as a frozen dessert.

Try something new. 

Recipe (click here)

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Stuffed Tomatoes

This month’s recipe from the Dundurn Recipe Challenge is for Stuffed  Tomatoes.

The recipe comes from The Canadian Housewife’s Manual of Cookery, published in Hamilton in 1861, location of Dundurn Castle. It was compiled by Henry and Elizabeth Richards.

Every month a new recipe is revealed in the Dundurn Recipe Challenge. Yes, Canadians do have a culinary history and it is fun to explore it and learn about it.

                                                    *****

Stuffed Tomatoes.

18. Scoop out the inside of a dozen large tomatoes, without spoiling their shape.  Pass the inside through a sieve, and then mix it with grated bread, chopped sweet herbs, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.  Stew well with a laurel leaf, or two peach leaves.  Remove the leaves, and stuff the tomatoes with the mixture, tying a string round each to keep them in shape.  Sprinkle them all over with rasped bread-crust.  Set them in a buttered dish, and bake them in an oven.  Take off the strings, and serve up the tomatoes.  Egg plants may be cooked in the same manner.

I didn’t have any bread to grate so I used a modern product, Panko bread crumbs. And the tomatoes were firm enough that they didn’t need to be tied together to hold their shape.

These Stewed Tomatoes would be a good accompaniment to any meal.

It’s tomato season and baking the tomatoes enhances their flavour. So you know, get cooking.

 Dundurn National Historical Site (click here)                                        

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Corn Time

It’s your friendly reminder to get yourselves to a farmer’s market and pick-up some fresh corn. 

This is one of Canada’s great crops, brought here by the Indigenous People thousands of years ago. As global warming warmed up the planet ending the last ice age about ten thousand years ago, Indigenous people brought corn with them as they slowly moved north across the Americas. 

Corn is one of the Three Sisters, Corn, Squash and Beans that sustained Indigenous people.

Modern day corn is bred for sweetness satisfying our never ending quest for sweet.

I go to my favourite farmer’s market, Reesor’s Farm Market in Markham, Ontario. The corn is picked fresh.

This season they are growing the Awesome variety which is as awesome to eat as its name.

The farmland around Reesor’s is being gobbled up by housing divisions so get out there while you can.

Enjoy simple food, at its peak of perfection.

Reesor’s Farm Market (click here)

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Cheddar Cheese Crackers

I’m always on the lookout for a new cracker recipe.

In our busy lives baking crackers from scratch is probably not in the top ten priority list, most probably not even in the top 100. That is until you have baked your own crackers for the first time and realize just how good they are. 

This recipe comes via Taste Canada, the Canadian cookbook awards non profit organization. 

In 2020 Rosie Daykin won gold for her cookbook Everyday Recipes Offering the Comforts of Home. Rosie Daykin owns the Butter Bakery & Cafe in Vancouver. 

These crackers are addictive. I didn’t have the black sesame seeds the recipe called for and substituted white sesame seeds and poppy seeds.

I used Cows Creamery 3 year old cheddar for the cheddar cheese. Cows Creamery is one of Canada’s top dairy product producers and is located in Prince Edward Island. The 3 year old cheddar is very strong and I used only one cup of it, and reduced the butter by about 2 1/2 tablespoons. The texture of the crackers came out fine, even after the changes. If you use a mild cheddar I would recommend sticking to the original recipe instructions.

This turned into a cross Canada baking adventure with a recipe from British Columbia, cheese from Prince Edward Island and a home cook from Ontario.

It’s time to get baking.

Recipe (click here)

Butter Baked Goods Ltd. (click here)

Taste Canada Awards (click here)

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Mini Blueberry Muffins

It’s blueberry season. Blueberries have lots of goodness in them and turn a muffin into something special. Wild blueberries are being studied for their health benefits,

Mini muffins make a perfect bite sized treat and can be easily frozen.

And their beauty can be enhanced with my tchotchke collection.

Get baking.

I’m sending a link to the recipe I used, but I made several changes based on the comments, added vanilla, double the amount of blueberries and lightly sprinkled some sanding sugar on top to catch the light in the photos.

Recipe (click here)

The website Wild Blueberries has good information about the health benefits, and lots of recipes for wild blueberries. (click here)

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Lunch

It was a dark and gloomy day. Time to cook lunch. I made a Beet and Goat Cheese Salad, using a Bon Appetit recipe that calls for the beets to be steamed. Most recipes call for beets to be straight out boiled or baked. They came out very good.

I added chopped green onions and lemon juice to the recipe and skipped the spicy paprika. 

And what else would go good with the salad than freshly baked focaccia?

The Kitchn has an excellent recipe for no-knead skillet focaccia. Baking it in the skillet made it a culinary delight. I sprinkled poppy seeds, sesame seeds and diced green onions on top. I used double the amount of yeast, using two teaspoons instead of one. It worked and the dough had a shorter rising period than the recipe called for. 

With a little tender care for maintenance cast iron skillets are amazing cooking tools. 

Although our lockdowns are slowly ending life isn’t completely back to “normal” yet. We still have to eat don’t we?

Get cooking.

Beets With Goat Cheese (recipe here)

No Knead Skillet Focaccia (recipe here)