vegetarian

Inspired Red Currant Cobbler

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

Sometimes you have an idea that simply works.

We have a large quantity of red currants in the freezer from last summer, so we regularly enjoy red currant desserts. Usually, we make crisp with them, but tonight we wanted something different.

I decided to make a cobbler, but I wanted something different from a plain biscuit on top—something sweeter, and with a bit more flavour to complement the intense sour of the currants.

In a stroke of inspiration, I remembered a biscuit recipe in King Arthur Flour’s Whole Grain Baking book. I’ve never made the recipe, but I’ve often looked at it. It pairs cornmeal and maple syrup, and I was pretty sure those were the perfect flavours to go with red currants.

I was right.

The result was perfectly balanced, cake-like, and absolutely delicious (and would probably be excellent with frozen cranberries, if you don’t have red currants).

Combine in a shallow baking dish:
3/8 cup sugar
3 cups frozen red currants

Set aside while you make the biscuit.

Combine in a medium mixing bowl:
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup wholemeal flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Cut into the dry ingredients until the consistency of coarse crumbs:
80 g (5 Tbsp) cold butter

Combine in a small bowl or measuring cup:
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup maple syrup

Add the liquid to the dry ingredients, mixing until evenly moistened. Pat out the dough into a shape to fit neatly over the fruit in your baking dish. Poke steam vents into the dough. Bake 30-40 minutes at 190ºC (375ºF). 

*Like any baked fruit dessert, this gets quite bubbly. Mine boiled over onto the bottom of the oven—you may want to set the dish on top of a baking sheet to avoid a mess in the oven.

Reprise: Summer Soup

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

I usually blog about summer soup when we make it. It’s a major point in the garden calendar and deserves a mention at that time.

I’ve never said a word about it during the winter, but this is when it is most appreciated.

Yesterday we all got home late from work and school. It was dark and cold. We were tired and hungry. I was crashing into a miserable head cold I’d kept at bay all day by sheer force of will.

And there was the summer soup, waiting to welcome us home and usher us into summer, if only for a brief time. I heated up a jar of edible summer, and we sat down to eat within minutes of arriving home.

I took a spoonful and shut my eyes. Tomato, zucchini, green beans, corn and soy … all the flavours of summer soothed my raw throat and pounding head. The heat of sun-ripened jalapeños and Thai chilis warmed my sinuses and eased my congestion. For a short time my winter cold was forgotten in the glory of a summer’s day.

I harbour no illusions—summer soup won’t cure my cold, nor will it lessen its severity and duration. But it certainly can make my illness more bearable.

And so again I sing the praises of summer soup, and am thankful for the family effort that makes it possible to ease a cold and enjoy the summer sun in the heart of winter.

Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Porcini

/ Robinne Weiss / 6 Comments

We had excellent porcini gathering this year—we discovered a new foraging location which is apparently overlooked by others. So we were faced with the delightful problem of what to do with so many mushrooms. We dried a lot, ate a lot fresh and still had more.

My husband found a recipe for pickled porcini. I was dubious and encouraged him to make a half-batch, just in case it was no good.

The process was strange—he sliced and salted the mushrooms, patted them dry, boiled them in vinegar, partially dehydrated them, and then packed them in a jar with a flavourful marinade to age.

They looked revolting.

Yesterday we tried them.

I’m not too proud to say I was wrong—totally wrong.

They are amazing—chewy, tangy, and bursting with intense mushroom flavour.

We cut them small and sprinkled them on a potato pesto pizza where they positively sparkled. I can’t wait to try them in all sorts of dishes, or simply slapped whole onto a cracker.

My only regret is that I convinced my husband to make a half-batch.

Apple and Quince Pie

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Sometimes inspiration strikes and it’s glorious.

That’s what happened yesterday afternoon when I decided I had to do something with the remaining apples and quince before they went bad.

I wondered…was apple quince pie a thing?

A quick glance at the internet told me it was, and confirmed my suspicions that the quince needed to be cooked before being put in the pie.

So, making it up as I went, I created this absolutely stunning pie. It was fabulous warm with whipped cream, but I think it was even better at room temperature the following day. More work than your average apple pie, but this isn’t your average apple pie.

4 cups sliced quinces
4 cups sliced apples
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp nutmeg
2 Tbs flour

Pie dough for a single-crust pie

Topping:
2/3 cup flour
2/3 cup walnuts, finely chopped
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
5 Tbs butter, melted

Place quince slices in a medium saucepan with a few tablespoons of water and cook gently until soft (5-10 minutes). In a bowl, combine apples, flour, sugar and spices. Stir the cooked quince into the apple mixture. Roll out your crust and place it in a pie plate. Combine all the topping ingredients in a bowl and mix with a fork until crumbly. Pour the apple mixture into the pie crust and top with the topping. Bake 50 minutes at 190ºC (375ºF).

Summer Soup 2019: proof we really are nuts

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

The family made our annual Summer Soup on Sunday. 

I think we definitively proved we have no self-control when it comes to gardening or cooking. In spite of me reducing my garden area this year, and despite the knowledge that our son is leaving home in a week (and won’t be around to eat this year’s soup), we managed to make even more than usual.

We filled all three of our big stock pots, and it took from 7.30 am to 9.00 pm to pick, chop, and process all that soup.

We had soup for dinner, I put a meal’s worth of soup in the fridge, and there are 28 beautiful quart jars full of soup lined up in the cupboard. 

Summer Soup is full of potatoes, carrots, soy, green beans, zucchini, tomato, sweet peppers, hot peppers, onions, garlic, sweet corn, beet root, basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary, and celery. The only thing not from the garden is the salt. It’s a burst of summer goodness for the cold days of winter. It’s a quick and delicious meal when we all come home late. 

But it’s more than preserved vegetables. It’s a whole-family team building exercise. After a dozen years, it’s a family tradition. Each soup-making session brings back memories of early years, when the kids’ help was more of a hinderance. They took enormous pride in their work those years, reciting the vegetables they’d cut every time we opened a jar.

Now they’re both accomplished cooks, and their help allows us to go way overboard on soup-making. They’re less vocal about it now, but I think they’re still proud of their part in Summer Soup.

As I’ve mentioned before, anyone can make soup, but it takes a family to make Summer Soup.

Crazy Cake Season 2019

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I’ve been remiss. Crazy Cake Season is two-thirds over and I haven’t posted a single cake blog!

I admit, it’s because I felt this year’s cakes weren’t as good as previous years. In part, the kids asked for challenging subjects for their cakes: slime moulds (daughter) and a 3-D map of Wellington with all the buildings (son).

I resisted the urge to create a big pile of dog vomit slime mould for my daughter’s cake, and instead created a log covered in slime moulds of various species. Mexican paste worked well for the stalked fruiting bodies, and a little gum arabic glaze made them glisten like the real thing. All in all, it was a successful cake (she was able to identify most of the species, so I got points for biological accuracy, at least), but it wasn’t a cake with a lot of visual appeal for most people.

The Wellington cake was trickier. A map of Wellington? In cake?! I opted for a Wellington-themed cake, instead. Mexican-paste letters created a passable replica of the iconic Hollywood-style Wellington sign. A Mexican paste whale tail rises over the choppy waters of the harbour, and a replica of the Beehive proves you can actually make that building uglier than the original. The map? Well, I did try to create a map of the neighbourhood where my son will soon be living, but my icing wasn’t behaving well (it was a very dry 30 degrees C in the kitchen, and it was variously melting and crusting over), and that bit was quite a disaster. The end result wasn’t something to feast the eyes on.

But in the interests of full disclosure, here they are: this year’s lacklustre cakes. The good news is that they tasted great! The slime mould log was a lemon curd jelly roll that was one of the most flavourful cakes I’ve ever made, and perfect for summer. And the Wellington cake was a reliably delicious spice cake recipe with a beautifully soft texture. So, regardless of their look, they were enjoyed by everyone.

One more cake to go in Crazy Cake Season!

Happy Coincidences = Amazing Results

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I wanted to bake brownies the other day. I had my heart set on my usual brownie recipe, with chocolate chips and walnuts added.

But when I went for the cocoa, there was none. Oh no!

But there was a large bar of really nice dark chocolate … I used the chocolate instead.

Then, we were almost out of walnuts. Darn!

I rifled through the cupboards. Plenty of raisins, but that wasn’t what I wanted. Only a few dried cranberries, but that flavour would be nice. I remembered that dried gooseberries tasted a lot like dried cranberries, and we had plenty of those. As I reached for the gooseberries, I noticed a little jar on top of them.

Dried raspberries. When we dried them, I had no idea how I might use the crunchy little nuggets that resulted.

Now I knew exactly what they were for. I tipped the whole jar into the brownie mix, along with a generous quantity of chocolate chips.

The result is the most divine brownie I think I’ve ever made. The high-quality dark chocolate makes the bar decadently rich, and the dried raspberries provide sparkling, intense bursts of fruit flavour that lingers long after the last crumbs are eagerly licked off the plate.

And to think I would have settled for an ordinary walnut brownie …

Lucky thing I was out of cocoa and walnuts!

Gazpacho–Cool Food for a Hot Day

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Gazpacho depends on good quality tomatoes. Only use the best.

While many of you in North America are shivering in the cold, we’re sweltering in the heat here. Our daily highs are in the mid-30s (the mid-90s F). After dripping sweat all afternoon, the idea of cooking is unappealing.

So we resort to hot-weather foods. Fortunately, the garden makes this easy. One of my favourite cool dinners is gazpacho—a cold vegetable soup. I think there are as many variations on gazpacho as there are cooks, but here’s my version. Serve with crusty bread and butter for a more substantial meal.

5-6 medium tomatoes (about 10 cups, chopped)
2 medium cucumbers
1 small red onion
handful fresh basil
1 clove garlic
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 tsp salt
black pepper to taste

Peel and coarsely chop the cucumbers. Process in a food processor until finely chopped (not pureed). Remove to a large bowl.

Core and coarsely chop the tomatoes. Process in a food processor until finely chopped. Remove to the bowl with the cucumbers.

Finely chop the onion and basil (I find this easiest by hand, but it can also be done in the food processor). Add to the bowl.

Crush the garlic and add to the bowl, along with the vinegar, salt, and pepper.

*Optional—add a finely chopped jalapeño or a dash of hot sauce.

Mix all ingredients together and chill 2 hours before serving. If you’ve got no time to chill it, add crushed ice to the soup.

A Passion for Pickles

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I’ve blogged about pickles before. How could I not? I love pickles. I plant pickling cucumbers only every other year, to prevent me from becoming the Crazy Pickle Lady, but this year is a pickle year.

Our favourites, without question, are dills. I made seven quarts of dills last weekend, and this weekend I put up another nine quarts. Plenty more to come before I’m finished pickling.

I can most of my pickles in a water-bath canner, so they last two years. But the canning process leaves them less crisp than I like, so I also make fresh pickles to eat right now. They’re crisp and sour, and super easy to make.

For a 1-quart jar, you’ll need:
1 kg pickling cucumbers, washed and cut in half lengthwise
1 head fresh dill
1 small red chilli (fresh or dried)
1 clove garlic, cut in half
1 bay leaf
1 cup vinegar (white or cider)
1 cup water
2 Tbsp coarse salt
3 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp mixed pickling spices (you can buy commercial, but I make my own mix to have on hand, see below)

Combine vinegar, water, salt, and sugar in a saucepan. Tie the spices into a cloth bag (or use a stainless-steel tea ball) and drop it into the vinegar mixture. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes.

Shortly before the vinegar is ready, fill your jar with hot water (from the tap is fine, but make sure it’s as hot as you can get it). Let it sit for a few minutes, to ensure the jar is hot. This step minimises the risk of heat stress cracking the jar when you pour boiling liquid into it.

When the jar is warm, pour out the water. Drop the dill, chilli, garlic and bay leaf into the jar, and then pack the cucumbers in tightly. Try to arrange them so the cut sides are not pressed against one another—you want the pickling liquid to penetrate the flesh. Remove the spice bag from the simmering pickling liquid and pour it over the cucumbers, covering them completely.

Allow to cool, and then store in the refrigerator for 3-5 days before eating.

If you have leftover pickling liquid, save it in a jar, and just heat it up to make your next batch of pickles.

Pickling spice mix (makes about 1 cup):
6 Tbsp whole mustard seed
3 Tbsp whole allspice
6 tsp whole coriander seed
1 tsp whole cloves
3 tsp ground ginger
3 tsp red pepper flakes
3 bay leaves (crushed)
3 cinnamon sticks (crushed)

A Trifle More Christmas Baking

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Okay, so I wrote the Christmas Baking blog post a couple of days ago, and then this happened. We picked another mountain of fruit this morning, and it happened to be a bread day. My original plan was to bake a pie, but my husband agitated for a trifle, but without the custard, which he’s not fond of.

So into the baking rotation went a lemon cake. Once it was cool, I sliced it and layered it with fresh fruit (strawberries, raspberries, black currants and blueberries), raspberry sauce, and a mixture of cream cheese, whipped cream, sugar and vanilla (inspired by this trifle recipe, but I measured nothing, and ignored most of the directions).

Just making it made everyone smile. Eating it … Oh my! I think I have a new favourite Christmas dessert!