Archive for November, 2010
All this talk of the Okanagan (have you heard? we’re giving away a trip!) reminded me of my trip out to Kelowna in October that I’m pretty sure I completely forgot to tell you about. I went to tour some orchards that are a part of the BC Tree Fruit co-operative (owned by 800-plus BC growers), and spent the day tooling around orchards, past wineries, wondering why I don’t hop on a plane for the 45 minute flight more often.
Among the people I met that day were Sally and Wilfrid Mennel, certified organic farmers for over 30 years and the couple who discovered the Ambrosia apple about twenty years ago, right there among rows of Jonagold trees in their orchard in the Similkameen valley. “In so far as I’m somewhat negligent in my weeding, it survived,” Wilfred told me. We must be kindred spirits, except that most of the time I’m negligent with my weeding because I have no idea what’s weed and what’s not, and don’t want to accidentally cull the good stuff. Also, I don’t like bending over and risking plumber butt for the neighbours.
Anyway. As you can imagine it’s a rare occurrence for an entirely new fruit to just sprout – and survive – on its own. McIntosh apples showed up in Ontario back in 1810, and Granny Smiths were discovered in Australia in 1868, but generally new varieties are developed by horticulturalists, many of whom spend their careers attempting to create new apples with little success. And then Sally and Wilfrid just go and find one, literally in their own back yard.
They let it grow, and after a couple years the small sapling began to bear fruit. The apples it produced were fine, crisp and sweet, with a honeyed flavour and aroma – Wilfred named it Ambrosia – food of the gods. Once the existing tree had matured, they took a few scions – twigs with buds intact – and grafted them to new root stock to see if they could grow more of the apples. Friends and neighbours began planting new trees in orchards around the Okanagan to ensure they would grow in varied conditions. The trees thrived, and so the Mennels took on the task of introducing a new and completely unknown variety of apple into a world of Spartans, Gala and Red Delicious.
Ambrosias are low in acidity and slow to oxidize, meaning that once sliced the apples hardly turn brown. I came home on the plane last night with a bagful of them, freshly picked, and started slicing them up for W’s kindergarten snacks – their colour hardly turned over the course of the morning. In the kitchen an Ambrosia can take the heat, holding its shape in pies and other baked goods. The coolest part – it’s still a complete mystery where they came from – the Mennels’ best guess is that a nearby Golden Delicious had something to do with it. But this season, BC Tree Fruit expects to sell just under 15 million pounds of truly Canadian Ambrosia apples, all grown on trees with the same parentage – what Sally and Wilfrid call their chance seedling.
Don’t you just want to read that story to your kids before bed?
(They put the words on the apples by putting letter stickers on them while out in the orchard, still growing, before they turned red. Cool huh? Tattooed apples!)
Apple or Pear Fritter “Doughnuts”
1-2 tart, firm apples, such as Ambrosias, or ripe but firm pears
Batter:
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/4 tsp. baking soda
enough milk or water to make a thin batter
canola oil, for frying
powdered sugar, for sprinkling
Slice your apples (unpeeled) into rings about 1/4″ thick and cut out the cores from the middle, making a ring. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cornstarch, baking soda and enough milk or water to make a thin batter – it should have the consistency of thin cream.
In a wide pot, heat an inch or two of canola oil over medium-high heat until hot but not smoking. (You’ll know it’s ready when a scrap of bread held into the oil bubbles around it.) Dip a few slices of apple at a time into the batter, coating them completely, then gently slip into the oil. Cook a couple at a time for a minute or two, flipping with tongs as necessary, until golden. (If they are cooking too quickly, turn the heat down – if it’s taking too long, the oil may need to be hotter. Don’t crowd the pot, or it will bring the temperature of the oil down.)
Remove with a slotted spoon and transfer to paper towels to drain. Once cool enough to handle and eat, sprinkle lightly with powdered sugar. Makes lots.
November 29 2010 | dessert | 20 Comments »
I’m going to leave you with a little breakfast idea, as it’s Sunday night and I’m setting in for a long night of finishing assignments that are due Monday morning (flashback to high school! I see a pattern here!) and I’ve got so much to catch you up on I don’t even know where to begin. And I still haven’t finished telling you about New York. Hell, I’m pretty sure I still need to fill you in on our summer trip to Tofino that was back in July.
I was invited to be part of a dinner club tonight – friends of a friend have been meeting monthly to share dinner together for 8 years. 8! Years! It was incredibly cool to be a part of, and the menu was amazing – the theme was celebrity chefs, and everyone chose a dish from one of their favourites. I didn’t bring my camera, thinking as I was leaving that -besides the risk of dropping it whilst carrying a bottle of wine and my Le Creuset full of boeuf bourguignon for five blocks- it might be rude to show up for dinner at the home of people I’ve never met with camera in hand to document it. I wound up regretting it, of course, and taking a bunch of sub-par photos on my blackberry. I will tell you all about it, but don’t want to be stingy and rushed because I need to still get some coherent words out that will actually be published in the newspaper and for which they are paying me actual cash money, and I like to try to not hand in crap.
Instead, I’ll jump the gun and share what I’ll be having for breakfast tomorrow, because it’s almost officially morning now anyway, and I do think that oats shouldn’t have a monopoly on the warm breakfast cereal market. Quinoa takes slightly longer to cook, but has the benefit of added protein and is higher in fibre. Cooking it in milk makes it extra creamy, almost like rice pudding. It’s great to cook a big batch of to dip into and reheat for a few days.
Breakfast Quinoa
1 cup quinoa
2 cups milk, plus more for serving
2 Tbsp. brown sugar or maple syrup
1/4-1/2 cup raisins or other dried fruit or berries
1 cinnamon stick
Rinse quinoa well in a sieve and put it in a medium saucepan with the milk. Set over medium heat and bring to a simmer. Turn the heat down to low and cook, stirring often, until most of the milk has been absorbed.
Stir in the sugar, and add the dried fruit and cinnamon stick. Cook until the rest of the milk has been absorbed, the quinoa is soft and the mixture is thick. Serve warm.
November 28 2010 | breakfast | 7 Comments »
Peeps! You can make them yourself, then float them in your hot chocolate! Yes, I do lie awake at night thinking about this stuff. Some girls think of George Clooney – I’m counting Peeps.
It’s just marshmallow goo, spooned into a zip-lock bag and squeezed out through one corner. Easy. In fact, once you have the bagful of creamy marshmallow (made with plain gelatin simmered into hot syrup with sugar and water, whipped with corn syrup until it has the same consistency as meringue) you could squeeze it out into letters, numbers or any shape you like. You could, I imagine, toss them about in finely ground coloured sugar while they’re still tacky to complete the Peeps effect, but I love the way they resemble whipped cream as they melt on top of hot chocolate. You can flavour them with vanilla or peppermint or coconut or cinnamon or anything else you think would go well with chocolate. (And if you want to go dairy-free, use coconut milk in your mug.)
Homemade Marshmallows
Sure you can always pick up a bag, but marshmallows are fun to make yourself, can be flavoured any number of ways – try adding peppermint or coconut extract – and are far more delicious than the packaged kind by virtue of being homemade. Bonus: you can shape your mallows into letters or shapes by spooning the mixture into a zip-lock bag and piping it out.
3 pkg. (3 Tbsp.) plain gelatin
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
2 tsp. vanilla, mint or coconut extract
icing sugar, for dusting
In a small bowl sprinkle the gelatin over 1/2 cup water. In a medium pot, combine the sugar and another 1/2 cup water and bring to a simmer; add the softened gelatin mixture and stir until fully dissolved and hot to the touch.
Pour into a large bowl (if you have a stand mixer, use it with the whip attachment), add the corn syrup and vanilla and beat on high (if you like, drape a kitchen towel overtop at first to catch splatters) for about 10 minutes, until the mixture cools and increases in volume until it has the consistency of meringue – billowy and white, and forms soft peaks.
Pour into a 9”x13” pan lined with parchment or foil and dusted generously with icing sugar, or spoon into a large (or small) zip-lock bag, snip a large piece off one corner and pipe shapes, letters, swirls or Peeps onto a piece of parchment or silicone mat or an icing sugar dusted sheet. Let cool until completely set and if you need to, cut into squares using a sharp knife sprayed with nonstick spray. Makes lots.
I also, since they’re in the picture and all, need to share with you my favourite oatmeal cookie recipe. They’re made with half canola oil and not a ton of brown sugar, and yet they’re as sweet as I’d ever want them to be, with a great texture. I made them this spring in Tofino – this time I added a handful of coconut, too.
Dad’s Chewy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
a good shake of cinnamon
1 large egg
1 tsp. vanilla
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups old-fashioned oats
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup raisins or other dried fruit
1/3 cup coconut (optional)
Preheat the oven to 350°F. In a large bowl beat the butter, oil, brown sugar and cinnamon until creamy; beat in the egg ad vanilla.
Add the flour, oats, baking soda and salt and stir until almost combined; add the raisins or other dried fruit and stir just until blended. Drop large blobs on an ungreased baking sheet and bake for 12-14 minutes, until set around the edges but still soft in the middle.
Makes 1 – 1/2-2 dozen cookies.
Of course now that I’ve given up on the whole Free Stuff Fridays actually being on Friday, I arranged for a kick-ass prize today. So just a heads up: you may want to click on the free stuff tab up there – this one has a $750 price tag!
November 27 2010 | beverages and cookies & squares | 15 Comments »
I KNOW!!
I’ve weaned myself off of that late afternoon cup of coffee. With this.
Oh wait, I also had some of this.
This one’s just plain old hot chocolate, straight-up. That white creaminess on the top, by the way? aren’t dollops of whipped cream – they’re (melting) homemade marshmallows. Which yes, I know, are oh-so-very Martha. And to be honest I don’t have the patience for the cutting and the dusting with icing sugar (I can never cut them cleanly, and wind up a total mess with marshmallow goo stuck to me and less-than-Martha looking mallows all over my kitchen. And myself. And the floor. And the dog. Black-haired dogs and sticky freshly sawed-apart marshmallows do not mix.)
So I discovered if you just drop spoonfuls of the marshmallow mixture onto parchment paper or pipe it out from a zip-lock baggie (in which case you can make Peeps!) it’s far easier and less labour-intensive, and you don’t need to dust everything with icing sugar nor cut them into neat cubes afterward. And in your mug, they look like whipped cream.
I digress. Back to the PEANUT BUTTER HOT CHOCOLATE. (It doesn’t have to be salted, if you’ve had enough of the salted sweet stuff. But it does have to be peanut butter.) In New York we went to a place called the Shake Shack. (Aside: BEST BURGER OF MY LIFE, HANDS-DOWN.) It was an outdoor burger joint, in a little park across the street from the Flat Iron Building, and although they have those heaters on poles distributed among their tables, it was chilly. A sign beside the ordering window read:
Salted Peanut Butter Hot Chocolate
Baby It’s Cold Outside
$3.25
Sold.
As if the burgers and frozen custard (!) weren’t stupendous enough, this ranked among the top two – possibly one – hot chocolates of my life. It wasn’t terribly salty, nor sweet, not overwhelmingly peanut buttery. It was thick and foamy and intense and wonderful. And this morning I figured out how to make it.
Oh no.
Peanut Butter Hot Chocolate
If you want it salted, add a pinch of flaky sea salt at the end.
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup cocoa
1/4 cup water
3 cups 2% or whole milk
2-4 Tbsp. creamy peanut butter
3 oz. bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped (Lindt 70% cocoa or Bernard Callebaut – you can get nibs or flakes from Bernard Callebaut they work great)
In a saucepan, stir together the sugar and cocoa to get rid of lumps; stir in the water until smooth, then whisk in the milk over medium-high heat. Heat until steaming. Remove the pan from the heat and add the peanut butter and chocolate. Let it sit for a few seconds, then blend it with a hand-held immersion blender. Or for individual cups, divide the chocolate among the cups and pour the warm milk overtop. Whiz with one of those little frothers to make it very smooth and foamy.
P.S. You don’t really need a recipe for this – you can just lob in a spoonful of creamy peanut butter into your regular (real!) hot chocolate. But whizzing it with a hand-held immersion blender makes all the difference, emulsifying and frothing it up into something much better than the sum of its parts.
November 23 2010 | beverages | 40 Comments »
It seems people want to know how to do this, and so I thought I’d share. Yes, I know Canadian Thanksgiving is long gone. But I tend to get caught up in the hoopla over Thanksgiving when it shows up in the US – it seems to be a far bigger deal there – and with all the snow and the holidays coming up, I think US Thanksgiving is better placed than right after back-to-school, weeks before Halloween. Maybe I need to start celebrating both. Why not?
But – brining. It’s far easier than it sounds – it’s really just an enormous marinade for your turkey – you let it bask in its pot full for a half or whole day before you cook it, and it plumps it up, infusing it with flavour and adding moisture and tenderness, just like any other marinade. I walk you through it and posted a nice apple-rosemary brine recipe over at Family Kitchen.
(No, that’s not me in the photo. All I want for Christmas is a waist.)
November 23 2010 | leftovers | 9 Comments »
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