La Gourmandesse

As I mentioned in the Peach Buckle post, I am a big follower of the blog Smitten Kitchen. I’m going to take the risk of looking like a blog stalker, and re-post another one of Deb’s masterpieces. And then I’ll give it a rest for a while, I swear. It’s just that there’s so much great local fruit around lately, and Deb just keeps giving me delicious ways to use it up!

I love blueberry muffins. My mom used to make huge batches when I was little and our family would devour them in a few days. Her recipe was called “Helen’s Blueberry Muffins,” I can still see them written out in her recipe notebook. I don’t know who Helen was, but she made a good muffin.

However, the muffins I made today have blown Helen’s out of the kitchen. They are a masterpiece of a muffin. I think they’d be great with peaches or raspberries too.  I followed the recipe pretty much to the letter, so I’m going to be lazy and just give the link to Perfect Blueberry Muffins.

I am usually rushed when baking, but today since I am procrastinating from all the things I should be doing, I decided to go all out with the hand mixer and the sifter.  Actually following the recipe produced the fluffiest muffin to ever come out of my oven.

The only changes I made were to add a drop of vanilla to the wet ingredients, a squirt of lemon juice because I didn’t have a lemon for zest, I used 3% plain yogurt and I baked them in a 6 cup muffin tin. Deb’s recipe made 9-10 medium muffins, so I went for 6 monster muffins. They were perfectly done at 25 minutes.

Moist muffin perfection!

Fresh baked peach buckle.

This recipe is my first foray into the world of Smitten Kitchen. I’m sure that many food bloggers already know about this bible of a food blog, but for those who haven’t seen it, I highly recommend the site. It is one of the only food blogs I read on a regular basis; the photography is great and the recipes are always fresh, in season and creative.

A few weeks ago, a Nectarine Brown Butter Buckle was posted, and I decided to actually try one of Deb’s recipes, rather than just ogle them online. Luck would have it that I ended up with some extremely ripe Ontario peaches just as I was invited to a dinner party. This smelled so divine baking today that I’m surprised Kevin was able to leave it alone long enough to get it to the dinner party!

I decided to leave out the brown butter part and change the nectarines to peaches. The comments online were that the taste wasn’t much different, and  I am supremely lazy when it come to baking. And cooking, really. I hate it when any recipe has many steps…..make this…set aside to cool…etc, etc. Usually I just skip the whole thing entirely.

Also, all I had was an 8 inch round cake pan, and the recipe called for 10 inch. I attempted to cut the ingredients down by about 1/3. So, here is my version of a buckle (also known as a tasty cake with fruit in the middle and streusel on top).

If you have a 10″ pan or prefer brown butter, I would suggest using the original recipe.

Peach Buckle

Peach pinwheel.

This version fits an 8″ cake pan.

Cake

1 stick butter (1/2 cup), melted
1 cup all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp  salt
Pinch of cinnamon
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
4 medium peaches, sliced
1 tbsp lemon juice

Streusel

2 tbsp butter
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup all purpose flour
Pinch of cinnamon
Pinch of salt

On goes the streusel.

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Start with the cake batter: Melt the butter, mix in the rest of the wet ingredients. Add in dry ingredients and stir well. I used the same bowl for all of it. Less dishes, less steps = happy me.

2. Grease baking pan. Spread batter in the pan and top with sliced peaches. Make a pretty pattern in you like.

3. Mix together the streusel until it is crumbly, you can do it in the cake batter bowl to save dishes. Pour over the cake batter and peaches to cover. Some peaches and batter will still be visible.

4. Bake at 350F for 40 minutes. It will be done when the cake springs back when you poke it, and the cake isn’t jiggly when you shake it.

It was a hit at dinner, we served it with some vanilla ice cream and the tartness of the peaches, the mildness of the cake and the sweet of the ice cream were a great match.

I reduced the sugar a bit in my version, which was great when paired with ice cream. You might want a bit more sugar if you plan to serve alone. Also, I found the cake the tiniest bit dry, so perhaps a bit more milk in the recipe, or baking 35 minutes. However, I may just be being picky, because Kevin said the moistness of the peaches went well with the texture of the cake.

Sweet roasted root veggie perfection.

A few weeks ago, our CSA veggie box contained some particularly fat & sassy beets, and the first carrots of the year. I love roasted beets, and the carrots were crying out to join their purple cousins in tinfoil on the barbeque.

Peeled and ready for chopping.

Seasoned with S&P and garden herbs.

Simply chop the beets and carrots roughly, toss them in olive oil and chopped garlic, sprinkle with salt, pepper, fresh rosemary, oregano and thyme, and pop this all into a tinfoil package. It can go on the BBQ for 45 minutes over indirect heat (one burner on high, the other off, package over the off burner) or in the oven for 1 hr at 375F.

And there you have it- simple, healthy, tasty and local.  And this cooks up just beautifully while steaks occupy the other side of the grill!

I’m going to confess right off the top: this is not my invention. I can take no credit for my friend Laurel’s genius creation, and only hope she takes no offense at the “lazy” moniker. I only mean that is easy to make (and to drink). Heck, even drunk people can do it.

For the version pictured above, we threw a bunch of wild raspberries and blueberries in a jar, and topped those off with some sliced strawberries. Next, a bottle of cheap red went in, home made will do. Add to that a bottle of prepared Sangria wine, I can’t remember which brand we used but I have to assume they all contain some wine, some booze and some fruit juice. When you’re ready to serve, mix that together with the secret ingredient- Orangina! Who knew this cute little bevvy, the one I ordered so politely on 8th grade French fieldtrips, would come in so handy later in life.

This combo produces the perfect blend of fruit, wine, booze and fizz.  It disappeared pretty quickly, and we started topping it off with more wine, some orange juice, and even a scoop or two of lemonade powder when the going got tough. As long as there is fruit at the bottom of the jug, you’re obligated to refill.

Once you’re suitably tipsy, play some sort of board game that makes people reveal what they really think. We recommend True Colours……it’s fun any time, but so much more so with a glass of Sangria by your side.

Make-shift berry container full of the "fruits" of our labours.

Few things are more fun and tasty to me than growing something myself and devouring it. Case in point, my recent penchant for tomato and cheddar sandwiches, with tomatoes courtesy of my patio garden. Living in a city for most of my life, I’d almost forgotten that sometimes tasty things grow wild, waiting to be discovered by birds and bears.

The berries soak up the Sangria.

Imagine my enormous pleasure at discovering mother nature’s gift to us on a recent cottage weekend in eastern Manitoba. I’ve never seen so many wild blueberries and raspberries. It was a reminder of what these fruits used to look like before we engineered them. The blueberries were so tiny, they were hard to spot, and the raspberries were perfect and so delicate you needed your softest touch to capture them.

Wildberry pancakes on the vintage cottage stove.

Braving hungry mosquitos and nasty black flies, we collected many cupfuls over the weekend. I think the cottage road was picked clean before our departure. These tiny treats made for several Sangria adventures and a stack of berry pancakes that rapidly evaporated from the breakfast table.

When was the last time a walk in the woods produced a bounty for your table? I very much enjoyed my reminder that there’s nothing more “local” than sneaking berries straight from the forest floor.

Week 3 CSA Share

Kevin & I joined a community shared agriculture (CSA) program this year and were very happily surprised to get our first share at the beginning of June. My post about our lack of a garden and which farm we chose can be found here.

It is week 3 of the 22 week season, and I must say our fridge is overflowing with greens!  We have bok choy, leaf lettuce, spinach and mixed mustard greens vying for attention in the crisper as I write.  It’s hard to decide who to devote your attention to, especially as not all the greens have a terribly long fridge life.

Gigantic salads seem to be the order of the week. I think we’ll see how far we can take this before we can’t stand to look at another leaf. Luckily the greens were accompanied by radishes, small turnips, kohlrabi and green onions to make a salad a bit more interesting. I never would have thought a turnip would be tasty in a salad, but these are crisp and sweet, nothing like the bitter mash that is inevitably served at holiday dinners.

It sounds like the share will evolve over time, and not always be so “green.”  I’m looking forward to the appearance of carrots, beets, and peas.  We’re also growing some treats on our back patio: tomatoes, red peppers, spinach and every herb you can imagine.  So far the basil and mint have gone wild.  My next post should be about pizza and mojitos! Going local on those will be no problem.

Cheers to many tasty summertime salads to come!

Spring salad with baked salmon fillet.

Today on my walk home from work I decided to pretend that I am a chic European housewife who grabs her delicious fresh food from the market daily. Unfortunately I don’t live anywhere chic and European, and it’s too early for the farmer’s market. So I took my chic and European self (I am a Dutch/British mutt, after all) to Metro and began to ponder dinner options.

My wandering took me past the salad ingredients and the fish counter. Soon my basket was piled with fresh arugula, green beans, new red potatoes, blackberries and salmon fillets.  I decided to concoct a version of a salad that my Oma used to make for my mom, and my mom has made for me. I’m not sure if it’s Dutch in origin, or just happened to be made by my Dutch Oma, but regardless of heritage it is fresh and tasty.

You start by boiling the green beans and potatoes until just tender, and then give them a bit of time to cool down. I keep it simple, a bed of arugula, some blackberries thrown in for a sweet-tart kick, place your green beans and potatoes artfully on top of that, and finish with a dijon vinaigrette.

The vinaigrette is a take off on my friend Chloe’s mother’s recipe. Gisele is from the south of France and makes the BEST vinaigrette ever (as I imagine all French women must).  It’s just 2 parts oil, 1 part vinegar, 1 part dijon, and a dash each of sugar, salt and pepper.

Tonight I baked some salmon fillets and placed them on top of my salad masterpiece. We paired it with a VQA Riesling (Trumpour’s Mill from the Grange), and I must say the combo of European flavours made me feel very ready for the open air markets that spring promises.  Now if only I had some travels to the Continent to muse about while I digest…

Image from Root Radicals CSA- July 2009 weekly share

For years now, I have wanted to belong to a community agriculture program. Last year, Kevin and I tried our hands at growing some tomatoes and herbs on the patio, but were dissatisfied with our limited space to grow food. We have since moved into a house with even less space to grow veggies (unless we planted some lettuce between our parking spots), and decided this year to take the plunge with a farm program.

After searching the web for local programs, we settled on Root Radicals Community Shared Agriculture, based from a Gananoque farm. For $400, you get a weekly share for the 22-week growing season, delivered to several pick up locations in the Kingston area. There will be several work bees throughout the summer that we hope to volunteer at and get our gardening fix for the year. I think a full share may be a lot of produce for Kevin and I, but hopefully it will force us to get all of our recommended servings of vegetables and give us the opportunity to share with friends.

The first delivery is slated for mid-June, and I don’t know how I will contain my excitement for the next 3 months.  I’m already thinking of future posts about the virtues of kohlrabi, kale and garlic scapes (all of which I have no idea how to prepare).  I look forward to expanding my vegetable bubble, and on this grey March day I am already thinking about all the crunchy green salads to come.

Kingston has been particularly cloudy these last few weeks, and I woke up to find myself in need of some culinary sunshine.  This recipe for mango salsa is a take off on a veggie side dish my friend Laurel taught me after a trip to Central America. Very simple and extremely tasty!

Mango Salsa

Fresh mango salsa

Ingredients

• Half of both a red and yellow pepper
• Half a cucumber
• Half a sweet onion (could use red onion)
• 1/2 clove garlic
• 1 mango
• 1 lemon
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Dice all veggies and mango into similar sized pieces. Mince garlic. Put all of this into a bowl or resealable container.
2. Cut lemon in half and squeeze both halves over the veggie and fruit mixture. Add salt and pepper (just a dash of each).
3. Mix together and allow to marinate 3-4 hours before serving.

This makes quite a bit of salsa, about 3-4 cups. If you need more, just use whole peppers, onion, etc. You could also add some diced jalepeno pepper for a bit of zip, or add some fresh parsley or cilantro for some extra green.

Salad with grilled steak and mango salsa

I like to serve this salsa as part of a salad with marinated, sliced steak. I take a cheap-ish cut of steak, marinate it all day in the fridge with a splash each of soy sauce, red wine vinegar, olive oil and some minced garlic and ginger.  Then I grill it, slice it and throw it on some mixed greens with the salsa spooned over top.  You can use the juices from the salsa as a salad dressing.

Mmmmmmmmm………can’t wait for dinner!