Lamb Pide with Saffron and Honey

Ok, so its actually pretty difficult to pick a favorite pide recipe. This one here is a close runner up for the top spot.

This pide recipe involves cooking the lamb slowly in a savory mix of garlic, ginger, tomato and saffron, finished off with finely chopped dried apricots and a touch of honey. The saffron really shines through in this recipe, its pretty mindblowing. And the touch of sweetness from the fruit and honey are magic.

Really, its better not to choose between this recipe and the recipe for spiced lamp pide posted earlier. Just make both! You'll be famous, I promise.


Crust: (in a pinch, you could use frozen pizza dough)

• 1 tablespoon fresh yeast
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 cup warm water
• 4 tablespoons yogurt
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tsp salt
• 4 cups flour

Topping

• 1 tsp butter
• 1 lb minced lamb/goat
• 1 onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 tsp tomato purée
• 1 tsp fresh ginger, chopped finely
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1 pinch of saffron
• 1 pinch ground cinnamon
• 1 x 400 g canned chopped tomatoes
• 1/2 tsp clear honey
• 3 dried apricots, chopped
• salt and black pepper 

Crust

1. Combine the yeast, sugar, warm water and yogurt, and mix. Let it sit for five minutes. If the yeast is healthy, you should see the mixture bubble, foam or rise in this period. Do not use yeast that isn't active at this stage.

2. Add the yeast mixture, flour, salt and oil. Knead until the dough is smooth and flexible.

3. Cover the dough and let it rise for one hour, or more.

4. When the dough has risen, punch it down, knead briefly and separate it into 3 balls (or more, if you want smaller pide). Let the dough rest for ten minutes. Pre-heat the oven to 360 degrees

5. Roll the dough out into a large oval on a well flowered surface. Then, fold in the sides to shape the dough into a large boat.

6.  Place the dough on a cookie sheet and cook at 360 degrees until firm, about 15 minutes. While you are baking the dough, prepare the filling.

Filling:

1. Heat butter in a frying pan over medium heat, add the lamb and fry until browned. 

2. Add onion and garlic and cook for 5 minutes, or until softened.

3. Stir in the tomato paste, ginger, coriander, saffron and cinnamon. Stir. 

4. Drain the water from the canned tomatoes and add - cook for ten minutes, or until the tomatoes have broken down. 

5. Stir in honey and apricots and stir for two minutes. 

6. Pile this mixture onto the cooked pizza dough. Cook for 10 minutes, or until hot. 

7. Garnish generously with yogurt, chopped cilantro and toasted sesame seeds (although I forgot the sesame seeds last time, and it was still delicious.) Serve cut into wide strips.

Enjoy!

Spiced Lamb Pide

I grew up in Toronto's east end, and one thing that the city does well is food. There was a mind boggling array of delicious food in the neighborhood I grew up in, and one of my favorite places to go was a small Turkish pide restaurant (pronounced pee-daay). Pide is a beautiful, pizza-like dish, shaped like a boat and often filled with the most incredible spiced meats.

While I love my adopted hometown in Peterborough, there is a serious lack of pide to be found. This kind of deprivation leads to innovation, it seems, and I've been struggling to re-create the pide of my youth ever since. If you are lucky enough to live by a pide restaurant, go there today! You wont be sorry. But if, like me, you are on your own - here is one of my favorite pide recipes.

This recipe is for a marinated, spiced lamb pide. There's lots going on in this one - clove, nutmeg, lemon and lots of cardamom. The result is a deeply savory, crumbly lamb topping that seems to win best-of-show every time I make it. When I make this in Peterborough, I often use ground goat from a local farmer I like. When I made this yesterday for a family pre-christmas gathering I used lamb. Both are delicious.

(I think the look on my younger brothers face, top right, is especially priceless. Also, I am pleased to report that he ended up LOVING the meal. Score one for Kate.)

Spiced Lamb Pide
Makes 3 large Pide, enough to feed 4 with a salad

You'll need:

Crust: (in a pinch, you could use frozen pizza dough)

• 1 tablespoon fresh yeast
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 cup warm water
• 4 tablespoons yogurt
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tsp salt
• 4 cups flour

Filling:

• Ground lamb or goat - 2 lb
• Garlic, minced - 4 cloves
• Salt - 2 teaspoons
• Pepper - 1 teaspoon
• Ground allspice - 1 teaspoon
• Ground cardamom - 1 teaspoon
• Ground cloves - 1/2 teaspoon
• Ground nutmeg - 1/2 teaspoon
• Yogurt - 1 cup
• Vinegar or lemon juice - 1/4 cup

Crust:

1. Combine the yeast, sugar, warm water and yogurt, and mix. Let it sit for five minutes. If the yeast is healthy, you should see the mixture bubble, foam or rise in this period. Do not use yeast that isn't active at this stage.

2. Add the yeast mixture, flour, salt and oil. Knead until the dough is smooth and flexible.

3. Cover the dough and let it rise for one hour, or more.

4. When the dough has risen, punch it down, knead briefly and separate it into 3 balls (or more, if you want smaller pide). Let the dough rest for ten minutes. Pre-heat the oven to 360 degrees

5. Roll the dough out into a large oval on a well flowered surface. Then, fold in the sides to shape the dough into a large boat.

6.  Place the dough on a cookie sheet and cook at 360 degrees until firm, about 15 minutes. While you are baking the dough, prepare the filling.

Filling:

1. Mix all the ingredients together in a non-reactive bowl and set aside to marinate for anywhere from 1 hour to overnight.

2. When you put your pide dough in the over, start to cook the meat. This part is easy. Throw the marinated meat into a frying pan along with a tablespoon of butter on medium heat. Leave it on, stirring occasionally, until any liquids have cooked off.

3. When you put your pide dough in the over, start to cook the meat. This part is easy. Throw the marinated meat into a frying pan along with a tablespoon of butter on medium heat. Leave it on, stirring occasionally, until any liquids have cooked off.

4.  Add cooked meat to fill in the 'boat'. Fill the dough right to the edges. Put lots in there, you won't be sorry.

5. Garnish with slices of feta cheese, and round sliced of tomato placed down the middle of the pide. Make it beautiful. Brush the crusts lightly with butter or olive oil.

6.  Place the pide back in the oven for 15 minutes, or until the tomatoes are cooked through.

7. Remove from the oven and slice the pide into 5 or 6 strips, width-wise. I usually serve them on cutting boards, mostly for lack of any larger serving trays. But I think it looks nice too. 

(spiced lamb pide, next to a spinach and leek pide - delicious.)

Hot Buttered Rum: Warm Drinks for Cold Days

Its getting seriously cold out in our neck of the woods. The dog and I were crunching through the first serious snowfall this morning, and it gets dark at like, 4:30 in the afternoon. Agata is confined to the office typing away at the masters-thesis-that-never-ends, and I'm excited about Christmas.

This is somewhat uncharacteristic, all this holiday spirit. I happily roll my eyes when it comes to other highly corporate, monetized holidays (Valentine's Day? I would never.), but Christmas seems to get me every time. Especially the part with the tree. I love Christmas trees. I would keep one in the house year-round if I could.

I'm going to blame my parents for this one (why not?). They always had a somewhat lackluster attitude towards Christmas trees. They were game for the rest of the Christmas thing, there were always stockings, and lights outside the house, and even Christmas cookies ... but their performance around Christmas trees has been a bit spotty.

One year, Dec. 23rd rolled around, and all the Christmas trees were sold out at the local lot. My father strung a rope across the living room and had us all decorate that instead. Other years, unsuspecting potted plants would get the treatment. So here I am, a decade later and the first guy at the tree lot.

Besides Christmas trees, the best thing about the Christmas has got to be the hot, boozy drinks. I have long been a fan of mulled cider with rum and hot toddies, and I am happy to add this recipe for hot buttered rum to the list. It is deliciously rich, spicy and warming. I may never go to bed sober again.

Even better, you can make up this recipe in advance and keep it in the fridge, adding a spoonful to some hot water and rum whenever the urge takes you (which may be often). I think I'm going to give this jar to my brother, along with a bottle of rum.

You need:

3 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup unsalted butter
3 tbsp honey
1 tbsp vanilla
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground allspice
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp orange zest (optional)

1. Combine all ingredients in a sauce pan and mix until the sugar has dissolved into the butter.
2. Pour the mixture into a jar.
3. Add one tbsp mix to a mug of hot water with 1 ounce of rum. If you're feeling fancy, add a cinnamon stick.

Enjoy!

I like this.

 

 I love this poster series. I want them all. Check them out here!

Honey Lemon Moisturizer

OK, this recipe surprised me. I really, honestly, wasn't expecting it to turn out as well as it did. This moisturizer is light, creamy, lightly scented and works! The ingredient list is really simple (compare that to the back of your conventional moisturizer), and its super easy to make. Also, this recipe can be scaled up - which I recommend. You're going to want to make lots.

You'll need:

2 tbsp beeswax - I picked up a pound for $5 at my local farmers market
1/2 a cup liquid oil of your choice (I used almond oil, but you could use whatever you'd like)
A few drops vitamin E oil (optional, but nice!)
3 tbsp water
essential oils for scent - I used lemon

1. Combine the beeswax and oil in a double boiler (we used a metal mixing bowl inside a pot of boiling water), and let the beeswax melt and combine with the oil.
2. Remove the mixture from the heat and blend it, using an immersion blender. This aerates the mixture, making it fluffier. As you are blending, slowly add the water, the vitamin E oil, and the essential oil to taste (smell?). I found it helpful to blend the mixture in stages, letting it cool and firm in between blendings.
3. When the mixture has changed in colour from clear/yellow to white, and has begun to firm into a creamy texture, pour it into jars. It will finish cooling and hardening in the jars.

Enjoy!

Natural Flea Treatment - Neem Oil!

There's frost on the ground, it's not the season for fleas! Right? Can I start a petition or something? It took me forever to figure out what was making Lily so itchy, because fleas in November just didn't occur to me. But there it is.

I've always been hesitant to use conventional flea medications, for all the reasons one might want to avoid giving your house and loved ones a bath in pesticides. There is tonnes of information out there about the dangers of various flea medications.. and although I've used them in the past, I was definitely open to finding a more natural alternative.

I've been seeing a lot of natural flea shampoos out there with Neem in them, and decided to cut out the middleman and make my own. After a bit of internet research I found two options. 1) Add 4-5 drops of Neem oil to your regular dog shampoo, lather and leave it on your dog for 5-7 minutes and rinse. Repeat in 2 weeks. or 2) Create a mixture of Neem oil and a neutral carrier oil (I used almond oil, but pretty much anything would work) at a ratio of 1:10. Massage it all over your dog, with particular attention to the ears, topline, armpits, belly and groin area. Leave the oil on and repeat the application in 2 weeks.

I decided to try the second option, since I had bathed Lily just a few days prior and didn't want to dry out her coat too much. I mixed up the oils, massaged it all over the dog.. and it worked! She was obviously itching far less almost immediately, although it will take a couple of days to get rid of them all.

In addition to washing her bed in hot water, I also mixed up a Neem spray to use around the house - her bed, the couches, the baseboards - to get rid of any fleas hiding there. I mixed 4 cups of hot water with 1 tsp. liquid soap and 1 tbsp Neem oil, and sprayed it liberally around the house. I know some people can't stand the smell of Neem, but mostly it just smelled earthy to me. It's growing on me. :)

Anyways, I just thought I would spread the good word! I'm truely amazed at how well this has worked. I will never go back to commercial flea repellants again.

Vanilla Extract

Making your own vanilla extract is surprisingly simple, and its a great way to use any vanilla pods you have left over after making, say, this totally magic cola recipe. Also, its delicious.

You'll need:

3 vanilla beans
1 cup cheap vodka (rum works too, and can create a darker, more complex vanilla)
A glass jar

1. Carefully slice the vanilla beans lengthwise with a sharp knife.
2. Combine the vanilla beans and the vodka.
3. Leave the mixture to infuse, shaking occasionally, for 2 months or longer, until infused.

As you start to get to the bottom of the mixture, top it up with more vodka and an extra bean if you have one. Voila! Never ending jar of vanilla.

Kimchi Fried Rice

A while back, I posted my favorite Kimchi recipe. Well, there a million great ways to put your kimchi to work, but this kimchi fried rice recipe is my favorite. The kimchi adds a tangy sweetness and nice heat to the fried rice, and a tonne of flavour. Adding a handful of toasted chopped almonds adds a nice nuttyness, not to mention a touch of protein.

This is an easy recipe to throw together in a rush, and it can really incorporate any veggies you have kicking around. Feel free to substitute freely - I used what I had around, but be creative!


You'll need:
1 large onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic, chopped fine
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 1/2 cups kimchi
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 carrots, peeled and diced
3 cups rice (day old is best)

1 egg - can be omitted to make the recipe vegan
1/4 cup toasted almonds, chopped
1/2 cup tofu, cubed
3 cups assorted veggies, diced
          I used 1 cup garden kale, 1 cup mushrooms, 1/2 cup green onions and 1/2 cup leeks.

1. Heat one tbsp of sesame oil in a frying pan. Saute the onions, carrots, garlic and kimchi until the onions are soft. Add the tofu, and fry until the tofu starts to brown. Add the rest of your veggies. If you are using delicate vegetables, such as green onions or snap peas, hold these back until later so they are not overcooked. Stir fry for 5 minutes on medium heat, until the veggies are tender.

2. Add the rice and stir fry for 5 minutes. Add the soy sauce (I used about 2 tbsp, but use to taste), and the egg. Add any delicate veggies at this point, as well as the toasted almonds. Continue to stir fry until the egg is cooked, and the rice begins to brown. Serve!

What are your favorite ways to use kimchi? I'm always looking for new ideas!

Spiced Apple Shrub

Remember when I fell in love with shrubs? It was a beautiful time, but unfortunately it was too little, too late. I managed to get to the farmers market in time for some of the last strawberries of the season, but now I've finished all of the strawberry-balsamic shrub and the time for strawberries is long past.

This means it's time to get creative, my friends. Bring on the fall shrubs! This spiced apple shrub was a successful experiment - this drink manages to keep all of that lively, refreshing taste I love about shrubs, but the flavour is all homey fall apple pie.

Different apple varieties have a range of different 'apple' flavours, ranging in sweetness and acidity. When making this shrub, I used three different apple varieties as my fruit base, a Macoun, an Empire, and a random wild apple we had kicking around. My idea was to introduce a range of apple flavours into the shrub, and hopefully get a well rounded end product.

You'll need:
3 apples, of different varieties (you will use half of each apple - save the rest for a snack!)
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup white sugar  (or substitute)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cinnamon stick
5 whole allspice berries
1 tsp mace
1 tsp nutmeg

1. Roughly cut the apples into small chunks, leaving out the skins if the apples aren't organic (apples are some of the most highly sprayed fruits out there, and who knows how much you can really wash off..)
2. Combine the apples, spices and sugar. Mash to release the apples juices, until the sugar and apple are moist and well mixed.

3. Leave this mixture in your fridge overnight to settle.The next day (or whenever you get around to it), add the vinegar. Leave this mixture out of the fridge in a sealed jar for a week.
4. Strain out the apples and whole spices. Mix at a ratio of 4 or 5:1 with sparkling water for a cooler, or add straight to vodka for an awesome a fall cocktail!

As much as I love this spiced apple shrub, next summer I swear I will make a whole barrel of strawberry balsamic shrub. I need enough to last me through to spring.

Wild Cranberries

I find myself constantly surprised by the neighborhood Agata and I live in. It is not a neighborhood that we were particularly excited to live in, originally. We are sandwiched between several rooming houses, and anything that isn't a rooming house seems to be a frat house - lots of drinking, lots of yelling in the middle of the night, you get the idea.

But for all of that, I have come to love this neighborhood. Over the last year and a half we've gotten to know many of the folks living nearby (having a very friendly, overexcited dog doesn't hurt). We share our vegetable harvests, and the neighbors next door have saved our bikes from getting stolen on more then one occasion. We're all on a first name basis and everyone stops and chats on the sidewalk - its like a Mr. Rogers neighborhood over here, only with more facial tattoos.

One of my favorite neighborhood characters in Stan, an older single man who lives in his mother's house just around the corner. It all started, as it usually does, when Stan met my Lily, the dog. It was love at first sight. When Stan found out we were gardeners he would lean over his back fence into our yard, offering us gardening advice and cuttings from his garden.

Then he started bringing us old gardening books and leaving them on the front porch. And then a rose bush. When fall came he started bringing us pears from the trees behind his house, and he would always leave them with little notes explaining the variety and offering recipe suggestions.

The few days ago, I was letting the dog out before work and he had left us a little bag of wild cranberries that he picked out in the marsh on a recent hunting trip. They're beautiful.

I realized that, up until that moment, I had never even known that cranberries grew in swamps, let alone that they grew wild so close to where we lived. Next fall, I hope to add wild cranberries to my list of foraging projects!

In the meantime, does anyone have any inspiring cranberry recipe ideas? Stan suggests cranberry sauce, but I would love to try something really special. 

Sauerkraut

Somehow after making all those vegan cabbage rolls we still have a number of (smaller) cabbages rolling around in the pantry - which was great, because we got to make sauerkraut! When salt meets cabbage, magic happens.

You'll need:

2 medium sized cabbages (if you mix red and green cabbages, you'll get bright pink kraut!)
3 tablespoons sea salt
Large ceramic crock/two large mason jar/clean plastic bucket.

1. Finely shred your two cabbages. You can use a mandolin, or a knife (and some patience). On a recent visit to Poland, we learned that you can use a vegetable peeler to make finely shredded cabbage for kraut - so you can use that too! Save a few of the larger, outer leaves - you'll need these later.
You can add other fruits/vegetables/spices as well to liven up our kraut - shredded carrots, beets, onions, apples, juniper berries - be creative!

2. In a large bowl, toss the cabbage in the sea salt.

3. Pack the salted cabbage into your fermentation container of choice. This part is magic. You will look at your huge mound of cabbage, and you will look at your (less huge) container, and you will think 'no way this is going to fit.' It will. It will, because you will be packing it in there with a wooden spoon until it submits.

4. Pack the sauerkraut into your fermentation container until the juice from the cabbages covers the cabbage itself. The cabbage should be completely submerged in juice. No need to add water for this to happen - just keep packing it in.

5. Take some of the outer leaves you set aside earlier, and pack them snugly on top of the kraut. Additionally, we often take ziplock bags with a little bit of water in them and fit them into the crock. This will prevent too much of the juice from evaporating, but will still let the gasses escape. If you're using large mason jars, fasten the lids very loosely.

6. Check on the kraut every few days. If a bit of mold forms on top, no worries - just skim it off. If it looks like the brine is evaporating and receding below the level of the cabbage, either push the cabbage down below the level of the brine or (if you need to) add a little bit of water to top it up.

7. After a week or so, taste the kraut. It will still be pretty crunchy and young at this point, the flavors will continue to change and develop as it ages. I like kraut best after about three weeks - but keep tasting and see when you like it best!

Pumpkin Carving

We had a pumpkin carving party the other night, and I just had to post this picture of my friend Shannon's masterpiece. Its Rosie the Riveter - in all her pumpkin glory.

Agata and I teamed up to make a pumpkin styled in honour of our friend Mason. I think we got pretty close.

Happy halloween!

Stove-Top Popcorn with Parmesan, Black Pepper and Rosemary

Its been a bit of a rough week around here. First off, "fall" seems to mean "rain" this year, and the sun has been hiding on us for weeks now, and on top of that? Agata has about five weeks to go before defending her Master's thesis (yay!). All of this calls for snacks, in a big way.

I think there is a conspiracy afoot, and it has to do with popcorn. Have you been to a theater lately? They sell you popcorn for like, $7 a bag! Even worse are those little bags of microwave popcorn they sell you, so you can make your own crappy MSG-filled popcorn at home. Also, specialty popcorn machines. The whole world is trying to convince you that you need their help to make popcorn. Not true!

The truth is, making popcorn is the simplest, cheapest, fastest snack out there. Popping corn, even the organic kind, is incredibly cheap at the grocery store, and all you need to make it is a pot with a lid. It's not hard, it's not messy, and it takes about 1 minute. And even better, once it's made, you can cover it in all kinds of delicious things. Here is my favorite fancy popcorn recipe to make me feel gourmet on a rainy day.

You need:
1 cup corn kernels
1/4 cup freshly grated parmesan (or more, to taste)
1 tbsp of butter or olive oil (or more, to taste)
11/2 tsp sea salt (more or less, to taste)
1 tsp freshly grated black pepper (again, to taste)
2 tbsp fresh, finely diced rosemary (...)

Making stove top popcorn:
1. Heat up a tablespoon of butter or olive oil in the bottom of a medium sized pot on medium heat.
2. Once the butter has melted (or the oil is hot), toss in 1 cup of corn kernels and put the lid on. Shake the pot back and forth on the burner, holding the lid on tight. You should hear popping - this means you're doing it right. Keep shaking!
3. When the popping slows down, take the pot off the heat. Popcorn! At this point, you can really do whatever you want to it.
4. Add 1/4 of a cup of fine, freshly grated Parmesan, a pat of butter, sea salt, freshly grated black pepper (and I like it chunky, if possible), and fresh, finely diced rosemary.

Even with all these nice ingredients, this whole snack is still significantly cheaper then a box of Oreos, and tastes better, too. How do you all like your popcorn? Any tricks I should try?

Vegan Cabbage Rolls

Its been raining non-stop in Peterborough for almost a week now, and I felt like the house could use some cheering. We also had a cupboard full of cabbages harvested last week, and a Sunday off work, and the whole set-up just screamed cabbage roll dinner party. So that's what we did.
 

Now, cabbage rolls are generally a ground beef and rice kind of recipe, but Agata is wise in all things Polish and vegan and came up with a (delicious) solution. These cabbage rolls are not only fun to make, but they also happen to be (a non-meat variation on) Agata's family recipe.

Cabbage Rolls:
2 large onions, finely diced
1 cup cooked brown lentils
2 cups cooked brown rice
4 cups button mushrooms, diced (or, if you feel like splurging, throw some shitakes in there)
1 cup dried mushrooms, if you have them.
2 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp sea salt, or to taste
One large cabbage

Sauce:
1 can of diced tomatoes - (or approx. 5 ripe medium tomatoes)
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp soy sauce (or Worcestershire sauce, but its not vegan)

Part one - prepare your filling

1. If you are using dried mushrooms, re-hydrate them in two cups of water for ten minutes.
2. Save the mushroom water, and add it as part of the water you cook your rice in. The mushroom water is quite rich, and the flavours will really come through in your rice.
3. Fry your onions and mushrooms together until softened, and combine in a bowl with the cooked rice, lentils, sesame oil and salt.

Part two - prepare your cabbage wrappers

1. Remove any damaged outer leaves from your cabbage - do not discard!
2. Place the entire cabbage in a pot, about 1/4 filled with water. Cover the pot and steam the cabbage for ten minutes.
3. After being steamed, the cabbage leaves should come off easily and without tearing. Remove the leaves from the cabbage. As you remove the leaves, carefully shave down the cabbage spines. You do this by turning the leaves upside down (so the raised spine is visible) and carefully running your knife along the leaf removing the raised part of the spine only. The whole leaf should still be in tact, but the thicker spine should reduced.
4. Roll the filling into the cabbage leaf like you would roll a burrito, tucking the ends in.

Part three - cook the cabbage rolls

1. Line the bottom of a large pot with the damaged outer cabbage leaves (or the broken or ugly ones) removed earlier. These will act as a barrier and make sure your cabbage rolls don't burn while they cook.
2. Place your cabbage rolls in the pot - its fine to stack them if you made a lot.
3. Add one cup of water, cover and steam the cabbage rolls for 45 minutes.
4. While the cabbage rolls are cooking, combine the sauce ingredients in a separate saucepan and use an immersion blender to combine. Bring the sauce to a boil and simmer gently for 10 minutes. Remove from the heat.

Serve the cabbage rolls warm, and covered in tomato sauce. Enjoy!

Saving Seeds

Last weekend, Agata and I spent a day putting the garden to bed for the winter. It was a gorgeous fall day (the first one without rain in almost a week), and we spent the day harvesting, planting garlic, saving seeds and getting the beds ready for the spring.

Agata has been saving seeds for a few years now, but like so many tasks in the garden this was my first time. It was a remarkably simple process really - by this point in the summer most of the plants had gone to seed, and in most cases, it was just a matter of snapping off the seed pods, and carefully shaking out the seeds into a bag and labeling them. If the seed pods weren't ripe yet we brought the plant home to hang dry.

(bachelor's buttons, also known as cornflower)

For tomatoes and cucumbers, the seeds need to ferment in their own juices to mature. We saved some of the tomatoes and cucumbers that were too far gone for eating (which is what you want - huge, orangey-yellow cucumbers and overripe tomatoes), separated out the guts and seeds and left them to rot in small dishes on the balcony, keeping each variety separate. After a few days, we separated out the seeds from the fermented juice and mold by rinsing them off with water.

The seeds that are good quality are heavier and fall to the bottom, and the ones that are not mature enough or bad in some way float to the top. We spread the good seeds out on some paper towel to let them dry, and then packed them away for next year. Not pretty, but effective.

Beans and peas were easier. We made sure to save some of the beans on the vine, letting them get thick and woody and dry out. Saving the seeds just involved collecting the varieties we liked, shaking out the beans at home and spreading them out to dry and cure.

(rattlesnake pole beans and cranberry pole beans)

We tried lots of different varieties of tomatoes in the garden last year, and made sure to plant each variety far enough away from the rest that they wouldn't cross pollinate, so the seeds would breed true the next year. Of course we can't know for sure if it worked, but I wouldn't mind trying some made-in-our-garden hybrids, either.

We saved seeds from the plants that had worked well in our garden this year. I like the idea of saving the same strains of plants, year to year, as well as trying out new ones. One of the things I'm really loving about community gardening is that the garden itself will stay the same, even if we move in the spring. Planting the garlic felt like a promise - after the snow, spring will come and we can do it all over again. I'm jazzed.

(some decorative cabbage. Not edible, but pretty.)

As a side note, we're still in the market for a black tomato variety we love: any suggestions?

Awesome!

On a recent trip to North Carolina, I got sucked into a little bookstore called Internationalist Books.
This poster totally won me over. Because, you know, I like canning and making out.

This little bit of awesome in a Nikki McClure design. You can buy her stuff over at buyolympia.com

Purple Cabbage Salad

I'm a little wary of coleslaws. Perhaps it's unfair, but it's true. Maybe it's the fact that so many coleslaws are ruined by the copious amounts of mayonaise people add, (a plight shared by potato salad) but this cabbage salad won my heart. Its vegan, and colourful, and delicious. And did I mention toasted almonds? And currents? And that it lasts all week, and makes a great lunch? It's pretty much perfect, in my books.

I first found this recipe on Vegan Yum Yum - pretty much my favorite vegan cooking blog out there, although sadly, it looks like you can only access cached versions of the website. So by posting this recipe here, maybe I'm saving it from the ether?

Purple Cabbage Salad with Currants, Carrots, and Almonds

Makes 4-6 Servings

1 Small Head Purple Cabbage, about the size of a softball
4 Carrots, shredded
Sliced or Slivered Almonds, toasted
Dried Currants or Raisins
Dressing

2 Tbs Balsamic Vinegar
4 Tbs Seasoned Rice Vinegar
2 Tbs Water
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Sugar
2 tsp Maple Syrup
4 Tbs Canola Oil

Combine and mix all the ingredients for the dressing. Remove any dry looking outer leaves from the cabbage, and finely shred the rest. A knife works just fine for this, but I also like using a hand held peeler - a trick I learned travelling in Poland, where they know everything there is to know about cabbage. It shreds the cabbage much finer then you can with a knife, which is nice for those of us who don't have a mandolin. Add as many toasted almonds, currents or raisins as you like - I like lots.

Enjoy!

Strawberry Balsamic Shrub

Ok, I know I'm not the first person to say this - but I've fallen in love with shrubs.

I was a bit slow to catch on. When friends started raving about drinking fruit vinegars, I'll admit, I was doubtful. Because you know, I clean with vinegar. Drinking it seems a bit strange, right?

Let me be the first to admit that I was wrong. Shrubs are the singular most delicious thing to happen to my face in a long time. It's like drinking summer. The taste is fruity and dry, and just a tiny bit tart, and so good.

Shrubs might be the newest internet stars, but they're hardly new players. They have a long history in Europe, waaay back before summer fruits were available year 'round, before refrigerators, when people were doing everything they could to preserve the tastes of summer for the long winter ahead. 

There seem to be an endless variation of shrub recipes, using any number of fruit, vinegar, and spice combinations. Our favorite so far is a strawberry balsamic vinegar shrub, which is super easy to make and pretty much caused a revolution in my mouth. Really, its that good.

Strawberry-Balsamic Shrub

2 cups strawberries (I think we caught the very last Farmers Market strawberries. hurry!)
2 cups sugar
1 cup apple cider vinager
1 cup balsamic vinager

1. Remove the stems from the strawberries and cut them in quarters.
2. Combine the strawberries and sugar, and mash them together with a potato masher to release some of the juice from the strawberries.
3. Store the mixture in the fridge overnight.
4. Add the vinegars, and give it a stir. Leave this mixture in a sealed mason jar on your counter for a few days.
5. Strain out the fruit, and voila! Shrub.
6. Combine the shrub syrup with soda water (vodka is nice too) to taste. Serve over ice.
(I would guess that I like a 5:1 ratio of shrub to soda water, personally - but play with it and see what you like.)

 (here is our strawberry balsamic shrub, posing with a raspberry shrub - which was also delicious)

Enjoy! 

Apple Cider

So recently, it came to light that a co-garden member had made his own apple cider press, and (having pressed all the apples he could) was willing to lend it out. Apple cider is awesome - especially with cinnamon and spiced rum - and so we quickly put our name on the list, and a plan was born.


Now, someone back in Peterborough's history clearly loved apples, and to this day there are apple trees growing all over the place, if you know where to look. No one I know here buys apples in the fall. Its wonderful.

We picked up lots of apples from the ground (which traditionally, are the apples you would use for cider), but couldn't resist doing some tree climbing. The apples were smaller then the ones you would buy from the store, but they were sweet, and awesome, and free. I think we filled every bucket and pot in the house with apples - and barely made a dent in the tree. We did a quick wash of all the apples in the bathtub, and then moved into serious apple cider production.

I cannot underscore how badass this cider press is. It had two main parts, a garborator, which is used to munch up the apples into a fine pulp, and a bin, where the actual pressing happens in a few stages: a) wrap the pulp in muslin bags, maybe 5 of them. b) sandwich those bags between plexiglass sheets (cutting boards, it turns out, works too). c) put your pulp/plexiglass many layered sandwich in your large bin, and d) stand on top of the sandwich and watch the apple cider pour out. There was originally a tire jack for this purpose, but no one could figure out how to use it, so we substituted human body weight instead.

Aaand it was that easy! Apple cider = apples, mushed up and squeezed. Presto.

Ok, so it wasn't pretty. It was actually a total disaster (the awesome kind). I could barely take this photo because my hands were so sticky (and the floors, and the walls..) and there was pulp flying everywhere. Unfortunately, non of the photos I took of the pressing process even remotely turned out. It might have been the pulp, the laughing, or the copious amounts of beer we were drinking at the time. It was a pretty glorious mess. But isn't that what the best projects are all about?

In the end, we made about ten gallons of apple cider. I'm not sure why, but our cider turned out strangely velvety - much more so then the apple cider you buy in stores. It could be because we were drinking it unpasturized, or maybe it was because of our somewhat unconventional pressing techniques. Either way, I like it!

About half of the cider headed home with friends of ours to become hard apple cider, and we made some of ours into apple cider molasses (post to come!), the rest we canned in a hot water bath for about ten minutes, with two tablespoons of lemon juice - so that even in the darkest days of winter, there will be hot apple cider and rum.

Kimchi

Kimchi is one of those foods that I find most people have a strong opinion about. My father, for instance, wont be in the same room as an open container of kimchi if he can help it. I couldn't disagree more. I love kimchi.

While its easy enough to buy kimchi in Peterborough, most of the store bought kimchi I've found has fish oil in it - and I cook for enough vegans that this can be a real pain. Besides, this recipe is so good, and SO easy, there's really no reason to buy it.

You'll need:

Head of napa cabbage - about one pound
Sea salt
Water
Red chili flakes
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon minced ginger
3-4 green onions, sliced
1/2 yellow onion
1/2 ripe apple
1/2 ripe pear

1. First,  separate the cabbage leaves and chop them up, into roughly bite sized pieces.

2. Dissolve a quarter cup of sea salt in a big bowl half full of warm water, then pour salt water over cabbage leaves. Give cabbage a gentle toss to distribute salt water. Allow salted cabbage to sit for at least four hours, or overnight. The cabbage doesn't need to be covered in water - just tossed in it.

3. Give the cabbage a good rinse to remove excess salt, then transfer cabbage to a large bowl.

4. Combine a quarter cup of fine red chili flakes with warm water, stir gently with a spoon to create a red chili paste, then transfer chili paste to cabbage.

5. Add minced garlic, minced ginger, and the green onions.

6. Blend yellow onion, apple, and pear with one cup of water, then add this natural sweetener to the cabbage.

7. Put on a pair of plastic gloves and give everything a thorough toss and rubdown. You want to evenly distribute all ingredients, especially the red chili paste.

8. Transfer seasoned cabbage leaves into glass jars. Be sure to use firm pressure with your hands to push down on cabbage leaves as they stack up inside the bottle.

Transfer any liquid that accumulated during the mixing process into the bottle as well - this liquid will become kimchi brine. Some liquid will also come out of the cabbage leaves as you press down on them as they are stacked in the bottle.

Be sure to leave at least an inch of room at the top of the bottle before capping it loosely* with a lid, and allow the kimchi to ferment at least 24 hours before you eat it. Some sights recommend refrigerating the kimchi at this point to slow down the fermentation process, but we usually leave it out to keep fermenting, and eat it over the course of a month or so.

* Although its never happened to me, a reader commented that she had jar explode on her after capping a lid too tight! So I've changed the original instructions - cap loosely my friends!!

Ed: If you're wondering what to do with your kimchi, check out this recipe for kimchi fried rice!

Ketchup!

Remember that time I was talking about how my house has been completely inundated with tomatoes, and they're filling up all the bowls in the house and more just keep coming? Talk about champagne problems, right?

I only seem to be complaining though, because its forced us to think of all kinds of creative things to do with tomatoes. We canned them. We dried them. We made them into paste. We made them into salsa, and shakshuka sauce, and canned those. Last week I made tomato jam, which I forgot to document for the blog but which I not cannot stop eating. Now, there's ketchup.

I don't usually eat ketchup. (Unless, like, we're camping and then all bets are off). But this ketchup is a revelation. Its sweet and a bit spicy, and tastes like cinnamon and cloves and a million other things you can't quite place. It tastes like the ketchup I am familiar with but is infinitely better. There is way more going on in this ketchup then in your traditional Heinz 57.

And really, if you'll forgive me a rant, when you start cooking things yourself this keeps happening. You try your creation, say for example, ketchup. You pause for a moment to appreciate. Then you look back at the crap they pass off at ketchup in the grocery stores (which is all corn syrup and color) and you're like, what the hell? Maybe you feel like you've been lied to, all this time.. But I digress.

Most of the ketchup recipes we found online contained Worcestershire sauce, which as it turns out, contains anchovies and thus, isn't vegetarian. We feed a lot of vegetarians around here, so we had to stray somewhat off the beaten path.

You need:
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 large onion, chopped
10 cups chopped tomatoes
1/3 cup red wine vinegar
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
2-3 tbsp molasses
2-3 tbsp maple syrup
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 whole head of garlic, roasted
2 hot chili peppers, chopped
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp allspice
2 cloves, whole
2 tbsp tamarind paste
olive oil (to fry onions/toast spices - maybe 2 tbsp?)
2 lovage sprigs (optional, or use celery)
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp black pepper
2 tsp salt

1. Fry mustard seeds until they stop popping, add crushed cloves, coriander, cumin - remove from heat.
2. Put all the spices in a coffee grinder/food mill and grind to a powder.
3. Fry onion until lightly browned, add hot peppers.
4. Put the onions and peppers in a pot with the tomatoes, then add all of the other ingredients except for the lovage and the bay leaf.
5. Cook for 10 minutes, then blend with an immersion blender.
6. Add bay leaf and lovage/celery stalks, cook for 1/2 an hour. Remove lovage leaf/celery stalk.
7. Cook for another 90 minutes, or until it looks sufficiently ketchupy.

If you plan to can the ketchup, add it to sterilized mason jars and immerse in a hot water bath for 35 minutes (for pint jars).