Archive for June, 2010
I realize this is far from a June weekend sort of a recipe – but remember those bazillion baggies in my cupboard? I’m chipping away at them. Starting with the figs.
This weekend is the Food Bloggers’ Bake Sale in support of Calgary Meals on Wheels (at the Market Collective in the old Anthill building in Kensington -148-10 St NW- Saturday 10-6 and Sunday 11-5 – admission is $2 or a food bank donation) – I baked a half dozen Blueberry & Ginger Banana Loaves, Cranberry, White Chocolate & Macadamia Nut Cookies, Brownies for a Crowd, Kettle Corn (that everyone ate while watching the World Cup), some Sponge Toffee (that I burnt all to hell) and these squares. Everyone knows and loves date squares (affectionately known as Matrimonial Slice for their popularity at weddings and showers in the fifties). Turns out they can take on any number of fillings; here cranberries are cooked down with dried figs to a thick jam, then spread in between layers of crumbly oats, butter and sugar. It really smacks of fall and back to school. No matter.
Fig-Cranberry Oat Squares (Matrimonial Slice)
Base & topping:
1 cup all-purpose or whole wheat flour, or a combination
1 cup oats
2/3 c. packed brown sugar
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/3 cup butter, chilled
Date Filling:
1 250 g (8 oz.) pkg. dried figs
2 cups fresh or frozen cranberries
3/4 cup sugar, white or brown
3/4 cup orange juice or water
Preheat oven to 350°F.
In a small saucepan, combine the figs, cranberries, sugar and orange juice over medium heat. Bring to a boil and simmer, stirring often, for about 10 minutes or until the berries burst and the mixture becomes thick and jamlike. Remove from heat and set aside.
In a large bowl, combine the flour, oats, brown sugar, baking soda and salt. Add the butter and mix with a fork or your fingers until the mixture is well combined and crumbly. (Alternatively, the mixture can be pulsed in a food processor until well combined.) Press half the crumbs into an 8” x 8” pan that has been sprayed with nonstick spray.
Spread the filling over the crust, and sprinkle with remaining crumbs, squeezing as you go to create bigger clumps. Bake for 30–35 minutes, until pale golden and bubbly around the edges. Cool in the pan on a wire rack. Makes 16 squares.
Speaking of food (and aren’t I always?) I have a good food read to give away for Free Stuff Friday – a copy of Tara Austen Weaver’s The Butcher and the Vegetarian, an excellent summer read. (Hey, if you do see summer, can you send it over? Thanks.) Congrats to Jill, who got that bowl filled with cookies, and Erica, who I got to hang out with at GalleryCalorie last weekend!
What I’d really like to know is: what was for dinner last night?
June 18 2010 | cookies & squares | 37 Comments »
It’s almost midnight. All I can summon is a haiku:
grown in BC
the chefs at Rouge transform it
good food makes me happy
Quail egg and bacon hash and sangria.
Fiddlehead souffle.
Oysters.
Duck.
June 17 2010 | leftovers | 6 Comments »
I wish I could take credit for these, but alas – they are the brainchild of Jen at Chocolate & Ginger. She came up with them to sell at the Food Blogger Bake Sale taking place this weekend at the Market Collective, happening this weekend in the old Anthill building in Kensington (148-10 St NW) in support of Calgary Meals on Wheels. It runs on Saturday 10-6 and Sunday 11-5 – admission is $2 or a food bank donation. We chatted about it on CBC this morning, and so I made these to bring in – bacon is a breakfast food, right? – and made a great number of people very happy.
I’ll be at the bake sale on Saturday from 12-2pm flogging our wares.. not quite sure what I’ll be making yet. Possibly maple sponge toffee. Or brownie pops. Or maybe some good old pound cakes and loaves. W and I bought mini pie tins, and now he’s all revved up to make little pies. So there’s that. Except that once we make them I may not be able to part with them. I get attached that way.
It’s quite a lineup of food bloggers on board – it was dreamt up and organized by Vincci of Ceci n’est pas un food blog, and besides myself she rounded up Pierre of Kitchen Scraps, Jen of Chocolate & Ginger, Dan of Dan’s Good Side, Vlad of Vlad’s Gonzo Food Blog, Lauren of Celiac Teen, Claire of I Love Alberta Beets, Zoey of Vegedible, Chelsey of The Crazy Kitchen, Fareen of Food Mamma John & Nancy of ChowTown, Cheryl of Backseat Gourmet, Peter of The Celiac Husband, Liz of Truffle Mutt, Andrea of Live, Laugh, Love, EAT!!!, Heather the Calgary Restaurant Examiner and Bonnie of Scrumptiously Fit Food.
Phew. That took a lot of energy. I need a cookie.
So have you heard of Mo’s Bacon Bars? I had heard of them, but not tried one – they are Applewood bacon + alderwood salt + deep milk chocolate – 82 g (or thereabouts) for $10. Fortunately I’m not rich enough to become addicted. (You can find them at Savour in Inglewood and the Cookbook Company on 11th Ave.) Jen had the brilliant idea to turn them into a cookie.
I imagine you could chop up a Mo’s Bacon Bar into any chocolate chip cookie dough, but this is a good one. Crispy edged, soft in the middle. (If you’re looking for a sort of chocolate chip cookie tutorial, I posted one over here today.)
Chocolate & Ginger’s Applewood Smoked Bacon Chocolate Chunk Cookies
recipe courtesy of Jen at Chocolate & Ginger – thanks Jen!
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup packed light brown sugar
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs, at room temperature
2 cups chopped toasted walnuts or pecans
1 Vosges Mo’s bacon bar (with applewood smoked bacon, alderwood smoked salt and deep milk chocolate), chopped
1 70% dark chocolate bar (ie Lindt/Valrhona), cut into rough small chunks or 1 1/4 cup dark choc chips works too
In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt.
In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or like me, with a bowl and wooden spoon), beat together the butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar, and vanilla just until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time until incorporated, then stir in the flour mixture followed by the nuts and chocolate chunks.
On a lightly floured work surface, divide the dough into quarters. Shape each quarter into a log about 9 inches long. Wrap the logs in plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm, preferably overnight – or freezer for couple hours to speed up.
Position racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven; preheat the oven to 350°F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
Slice the logs into disks 3/4 inch thick and place the disks 3 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. If the nuts or chips crumble out, simply push them back in.
Bake, rotating the baking sheets midway through baking, until the cookies are very lightly browned in the centers, about 10 minutes.
Let the cookies cool on the baking sheets until firm enough to handle, then use a spatula to transfer them to a wire rack.
June 15 2010 | cookies & squares | 15 Comments »
I know, sounds scary, right? I was a little nervous, too. My approach to any bison cut (beyond ground) is to do them low and slow – in the slow cooker, even – to make sure they don’t dry out. They’re so much leaner than beef, but so flavourful – the low and slow method is pretty foolproof. And you can’t beat a good bison bourguignon.
But. It’s not exactly braising (oven on for three hours) season – it’s barbecue season. And the reality is that an actual bison is 10% premium steaks, 40-45% roast type cuts – the remainder of the meat is trim (ground), which goes toward burgers and sausage, which practically sell themselves. Roasts are the hardest thing for producers to market because most people don’t know how to cook them, or don’t want to spend the time. Who makes pot roasts anymore?
Next to ground, roasts are the most economical cut of bison and also the leanest. Bison has 1/4 the fat of beef or pork – it’s even leaner than skinless chicken or turkey. And it’s wonderful, flavourful meat – every time we have bison (which is more often than beef these days) Mike shakes his head and declares it far better. It isn’t that far off, really – most people wouldn’t know the difference. And yet even though it looks like beef and tastes like beef – the cuts are even named the same way – you can’t treat it exactly like beef in the kitchen. You’ll be fine with ground bison and sausage, but steaks and roasts need about a third less cooking time. And keep in mind the shape, rather than the weight – a long, thin roast the same weight as a round one will cook more quickly.
This beautiful little bundle of roast beast came from Peter and Judy Haase at Buffalo Horn Ranch – wonderful people and advocates of environmentally responsible and sustainable agriculture. Check out their website for more nutritional info, cooking tips and to order their well-raised bison – they make free deliveries in Calgary if you order $100 or more – a great way to stock up for summer.
Bison Roast on the Grill
1 3-4 lb. roast (I used eye of round)
canola oil
salt and pepper
Pat the roast dry, then drizzle it with oil and season with salt and pepper. Preheat the barbecue to high, and when it’s good and hot (the dial will register around 600 degrees) throw it on, sear it on all sides, then turn off one side – the side the meat is on – and leave the other one on. Throw some soaked wood chips in if you like, and close the lid. Cook for about an hour, until a meat thermometer registers 130ºF. Place on a cutting board, wrap loosely with foil and let rest for 20 minutes before slicing thin – it will go up five degrees or so as it rests. Slice thinly to serve.
In other news, if there was a Hoarders – Kitchen Edition I could be a candidate. Remember how I said I was going to start using up the food I already have? The roast came from the freezer, and I gutted one cupboard and consolidated several dozen little bags of beans, grains, nuts, seeds, dried fruit and bits of things – turning all unidentifiable flours into a big bag of pancake mix and taking an inventory of everything else, divvying some of it into jars. It was one of those little jobs I got right into for the first half of (taking everything out and going -aha! I have mung beans/unflavoured gelatin/sundried tomatoes/dried-out marshmallows/too many figs!) and then completely lost interest in when about a third had been neatly reorganized back in the cupboard. I’m now avoiding the kitchen altogether and starting to cook in the dining room, where there’s actually some horizontal space.
One Year Ago: Asparagus Cauliflower Vichyssoise
At the Family Kitchen: Strawberry-Rhubarb Cobbler Cake
June 14 2010 | bison | 11 Comments »
Sorry, I know this isn’t new nor earth-shattering, and I’ve offered up banana bread recipes before. But we spent this morning at the park eating warm banana bread studded with melting chocolate pieces, a great way to wrap up a bit of a nutso week. We decided, since our house looks like someone picked it up and shook it and I had absolutely no desire to rectify the situation, to have a potluck brunch at the park. It was great. There was cinnamon sticky biscuits, and cherries, and cheese, and devilled eggs. The kids ran and played, and none of us had to do dishes afterward. This may be a new Sunday morning tradition until the first snowfall starts cooling down our brunch.
Since I always have a glut of black bananas in my freezer, I threw a few into a bowl of hot water to quickly thaw, and made the standby two minute potato masher banana loaf that has become a near-daily ritual around here. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll have the batter mixed up before the oven is preheated. I toss all manner of ingredients into these loaves, since everything goes so well with banana – nuts and seeds, coconut, dried fruit, chocolate – I always add a glug of flax oil too boost omega 3s (a teaspoon has as much as a filet of salmon!) and let me tell you, banana bread is pretty spectacular toasted with peanut butter with coffee first thing in the morning.
Two-Minute Banana Bread
3 very ripe bananas
1/2-3/4 cup sugar
2-4 Tbsp. canola, olive or flax oil
2 large eggs
a big splash of vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour (I usually use half all-purpose, half whole wheat, oat or quinoa flour)
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
a handful of chopped walnuts, chocolate chips, raisins, coconut, fresh or frozen blueberries (optional)
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
In a large bowl, mash the bananas, sugar, oil, eggs and vanilla with a potato masher – don’t worry about getting all the lumps out. It will look sort of cottage-cheesy.
Add the flour, baking soda and salt and stir until almost combined; add any additions and stir just until blended. Spread into a buttered 8”x4” loaf pan and bake for 50 minutes, until golden and cracked on top and springy to the touch.
(GalleryCalorie was a spectacular success yesterday, by the way! A long day-almost 12 hours of sun and fun, between setup and teardown. It was so great to see some of you there. We ate and drank our way up and down 17th Avenue, and partied in the park afterward. I brought my camera, but left it on a bench and forgot to use it. You’ll just have to come see for yourself next year!)
June 13 2010 | bread and breakfast | 17 Comments »
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