Growing, Cooking, Sharing

ah-nyuh-LAHT-tee… really? Agnolotti or priests’ caps… you choose.

thebestcook — Mon, 14 May 2012 03:25:16 +0000

agnolotti Pronunciation: ah-nyuh-LAHT-tee Notes: Italian for “priests’ caps,” agnolotti are small, stuffed crescents of pasta. A specialty of Italy’s Piedmont region, they’re great in a broth or pasta salad…

On May 11th it was my parents 50th wedding anniversary. It was also Don’s 49th birthday. Our whole family… all 8 (plus 1, so 9 to tell the truth) of us headed to Harrison Hot Springs Hotel for an evening of good food, good dancing and a just an all round good time.

On the menu was an Agnolotti. As I am the resident foodie, when one person in our party did not know what it was… I could explain that it was almost like ravioli except in crescent shapes. Agnolotti starts with a circle instead of squares as in ravioli. Its easier to make but has more waste because you cannot use up the portions in between the circles.

With Don headed out on a boat trip for a few days, I took the opportunity to ‘flour’ up the kitchen. And what a better item to make than these crescent-shaped stuffed pasta. For the filling I used some swiss cheese, honey ham, red onion and arugula. I bound it with bread crumbs and bit of water.

I used a crystal glass that had a fine rim to make the perfect circles, I put a small amount of filling on half, circled the edges with egg wash and then sealed. I think I will cook them with burnt butter and sage sauce…. With the left over ‘wasted’ pasta, I made some spaghetti. I also used my very cool pasta rolling-pin that Char made me.

And the most ironic part of the Agnolotti on the menu was that when the entrée came… it was ravioli……

Icewine Marshmallows… or should I say Marsh…mellow…?

thebestcook — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 18:19:16 +0000

My friend Carla Johnson, who hails from the greater Toronto region, is a fabulous writer and public speaker. When she was growing up her mother would add wine to the food that was being cooked and her Mennonite Granny, suitably horrified, called it ‘cooking with sin’. hee hee.

Fast forward a generation and Carla pens a book that weaves recipes and stories together in a wonderful tale. Cooking with Sin is born.

Occasionally Carla links to one of my recipes if it includes alcohol. Recently on her facebook page she had a link to a recipe for Icewine Marshmallows. This intrigued me. I had never thought about making homemade marshmallows…. why would I? We don’t consume that many of them but as I am always on the hunt to expand my cooking repertoire… I decided to give it a go. I have to admit I am not that much of a fan of icewine… I know, here in BC we make fabulous icewine… we have the perfect climate in our grape growing regions. Well I did have some icewine on hand, so it seemed like a very good idea to use it to try this out.

I had never made candy of any sort but had the most important tool….the candy thermometer. When I started the process, I was a bit nervous….but really… how hard could it be? So I dove right in. Marshmallows are basically sugar… and more sugar…. oh yah and corn syrup…. Guess this is why they are not that popular around here.

First off you soak the gelatin. This is to be done in a stand mixer… I didn’t think I had one of these… I know… why wouldn’t I have a stand mixer? Well I don’t do much baking and so it never has been a priority. What I did find out is that my food processor has an attachment to turn it into a small stand mixer… and when I say small… I mean almost too small for marshmallows that is. It was quite funny. Marshmallow goop that expanded and took over the machine.

But I am getting ahead of myself, first you have to cook the sugar, more sugar and the corn syrup and get it to what is called a ‘soft ball’ ?? and what do you know… these exact words are on my candy thermometer! Goat yogurt never gets this hot so I always have ignored the wording on it. Now I know.

It was definitely an interesting test. When the recipe says, use oil to coat the pan….they are not joking. When the recipe says coat the square marshmallows by dusting with icing sugar…. they are also not joking. Marshmallows are best described as ‘self sealing.’ When they are cut, they become un-cut if you don’t remove them from the pan. And the end result? They texture and taste was EXACTLY like a marshmallow…. well actually a marshMELLOW with icewine added to it…. Enjoy!

Original recipe

Icewine Marshmallows

Jason Parsons, executive chef at Peller Estates, says it can be challenging to cook with icewine, but if chefs are mindful of the alcohol content, they should be OK. Makes 12 squares.

Ingredients

3/4 cup Icewine
3 envelopes Unflavoured Gelatin
3/4 cup Water
2 cups Granulated Sugar
2/3 cup Corn Syrup
1/4 tsp Salt
1 tbsp Vanilla
Icing Sugar (to taste)

Methods/steps

Place Icewine in a small saucepan over medium heat.
Simmer until reduced to 4 tsp, watching closely to prevent scorching; cool.
Pour half a cup of water into mixer bowl, sprinkle with gelatin and let stand 10 minutes to soften.
Combine remaining water, sugar and corn syrup in a small saucepan, bring to a boil then boil vigorously for one minute.
Stir into gelatin mixture with the salt.
Beat with whisk on high speed for eight minutes.
Add vanilla and reduced Icewine and continue beating two more minutes.
Transfer mixture into 9-inch square pan lined with oiled plastic wrap, using an oiled spatula to spread evenly.
Allow to set several hours in a cool but non-refrigerated area.
When firm, remove from pan, cut into squares with a lightly oiled knife and coat each square in icing sugar.

Blood stain on your new shirt? no problem…really, no problem at all.

thebestcook — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 23:30:52 +0000

This is just a random post. Do you know how to remove blood from clothing? It always amazes me when I can successfully remove it. I learnt my lesson a few years back, I cut my finger just before going on holiday… I actually tend to do this quite frequently, I think the distraction factor of an imminent holiday makes me careless in the kitchen. Last February I actually went as far as slamming my thumb into my car door… yes, the car door I use most days and close successfully. And had to then go to Hawaii with stitches and finger rubbers…. oh yah, it was all very attractive. And no I did not take pictures… I was too mad at myself.

Anyways, a few years back I cut my finger in the kitchen, got the blood on a pair of grey jeans I needed to take with me to Europe. And then I didn’t do what I normally do and tried something new and then I ruined the jeans. I went as far as bleaching them, then I went to the store that sold clothing dye and tried to dye them back to the correct colour. Ok, what was I thinking? I was completely out of my mind. The end result was that I changed the colour scheme of what I was travelling with and re-packed. This was all on the DAY WE WERE LEAVING. Insane.

So I never waiver from this method now. If you get blood on your clothes, take them off… then run cold water over onto the stain and let the stain soak in cold water. It has to be cold. This even works on blood that has set. I know cause I just tried it. I had blood on a shirt that I didn’t realize had blood on it until I took the shirt out of the closet to wear again. After a few hours, the stain was almost gone. Then I just squirted some Oxy Clean Baby stain remover on it while it was still wet and the blood was completely gone. This was on a baby blue shirt.

I use Oxy Clean Baby stain remover because I want to believe that anything with the word Baby on it is gentler on me, we and the environment. I may be out to lunch on this but as we use a lot of stain remover on Don’s shirts for the necks…I feel that maybe its gentler on his neck the next time he wears the shirt. And we all know that not all the soap residues wash out of our clothes…. or do we? Soap doesn’t wash completely out of clothes. That’s why people with soap allergies have issues… there is only so much rinsing a washing machine can do.

And there you have it, a random blog on getting blood out of clothes.

Lemonade from lemons, Bouillabaisse from the open freezer door?

thebestcook — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 20:02:29 +0000

I admit it… I once again left the upright freezer door open. I know, I need to slow down and make sure I shut it without anything hanging off the door to prevent its sealing… I have done it before…and not just once before… For me this is like blasphemy. Losing food because of bad actions. One year I had freezer issues 3 times. First our little 20 year old 2 cubic chest freezer threw in the towel… actually she threw in the motor… and I didn’t open the freezer for probably a week. By then, I had wine. I used that particular freezer for fruit and veg. Don’s dad found me crying in the freezer room because we had spent so much time freezer everything and now it was all gone! I replaced the little one with an upright that has an alarm on it… but that only works if you actually hear the alarm. At least the next time, I didn’t lose the whole freezer. Then I left the meat freezer open. It doesn’t have an alarm. I lost about 1/3 of the meat that time. Now I don’t cry… I usually just swear and get really mad and stomp around. And vow to not be so careless.

Fast forward to yesterday and the meat freezer had been open overnight. I have gotten a little smarter, I put things that aren’t as affected by warmth in the areas of the freezer that lose coldness first when the door gets left opened. Might as well play to my weakness. Tonite’s dinner was determined then. My parents are coming over for an Easter meal so now we are having pork blade… it was one of the items that thawed. Actually half of it did.

We were going out last night to friends place for dinner so instead of making this last night, I made the best of the lemons I got handed and today’s lemonade was Bouillabaisse with scallops and shrimps.

Awhile back at the hairdressers I read a magazine that had what sounded like a fabulous recipe for the seafood soup. I googled it when I got home, made some adjustments and now have a fantastic recipe for Bouillabaisse. Here is the recipe from the magazine:

2 cups dry white wine
900 ml container of chicken broth
236-mL bottle clam juice
1 tbsp butter
1/2 cup coarsely chopped cilantro
1 Spanish or red onion
3 jalapeno peppers
1 small orange grated rind.
1 tsp fennel seeds
1/2 tsp each dried thyme leaves and salt
1/2 tsp saffron threads,
1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes
1 lb mussels
1 lb sea or bay scallops
1 lb fresh or frozen large uncooked tiger shrimp
1 cooked lobster

The adjustments that I made are: I used crab stock because I had some frozen. I replaced the clam juice and chicken broth with the crab stock. I used 4 frozen whole tomatoes from last summer’s garden. I just removed their skins and cut them up a bit. I didn’t have jalapenos, so I used dried chilis. I had cilantro and forgot to put it in. I used some shallot and red onion. I used lots of thyme and twice as much orange rind. I also only used shrimp and scallops.

Chop the onions and saute in butter. Meanwhile heat the stock etc, when simmering, add the softened onions and butter. Add everything but the seafood. Bring to a good simmer and cook for 5 -10 minutes for flavours to blend. Turn down heat and add seafood. If using mussels, start by only adding them and cooking until they open. Then add the rest of the seafood and only cook until opaque.

This will keep in the fridge for 2 days. It is actually a better dish the next day.

Happy Goat Yogurt and Happy Husband…

thebestcook — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 01:55:52 +0000

I try not to make a huge focus on this blog that Don is a person with celiac disease. But the long and short of it is… Don can’t tolerate gluten. As I love to cook and experiment, this rarely poses any problem for me. As gluten is a protein, a lot of celiacs also cannot tolerate cassein, which is the protein in dairy… and to be more precise..its cassein from cow sources only. We discovered that Don can tolerate goat dairy the best. This makes sense because goat milk is far more similar to human milk and so can be much easier digested than cow.

With celiac disease… you have a bad gut.. and you have a bad gut A LOT of the time. As we all know, bacteria found in yogurt is beneficial to the gut. So some where a long the way, we started making goat yogurt for Don. It started out with his Mom making it for him and eventually reverted to me. The problem with goat milk… is that its naturally homogenized… actually it’s not a problem.. its one of the reasons it’s so much better for humans. But the problem when making yogurt is that its hit and miss with getting the yogurt to thicken with this natural homogenization it has going on. Finally I spoke to someone at the Happy Days Goat Dairy and they explained it to me… I thought that I was doing something wrong. So now, I add a half packet of gelatin to the process and it’s just enough to make the consistency right.

So here is the process:

1 litre of Goat Milk

3 scoops of powdered goat milk powder

1/2 packet gelatin

Agave syrup to taste

lemon extract

yogurt starter

I start by adding the milk to the pot along with the powder and gelatin. Keep whisking until all the lumps are out, this will be easier as it starts to warm. I turn it on to simmer. Keep whisking and insert the candy thermometer on to the side of the pot.

It’s not supposed to boil… its supposed to get just to boiling point. I usually get distracted at this point and then I have boiled on goat milk all over the range…. this is why I only turn it to simmer…. the boil isn’t so violent when this happens. Once the temperature of about 200 is reached, I remove from stove and immerse in the a sink of cold water…. I also add the agave and lemon extract now.

Now I cool it down to about 105 – 110 degrees. You don’t want it to be any warmer because then the yogurt starter will die and if its any cooler…. well I am not sure what happens scientifically… but it doesn’t turn out either. Once the correct temperature is reached, you add the starter to a little bowl and add a soup ladle of warm milk to it. You whisk this like crazy, then dump it back into the main pot…. then you whisk like crazy again. Then you pour it all into the little yogurt containers and put in the maker for 10 hours or so.

There are a few variations…. if you save a bit of the yogurt from your last batch…. this is your starter. If you don’t, you can purchase starter… and then start saving it each time. I just skim off 2 tbsp from one of the containers and put into a cute little Tupperware container. When you save the starter… the yogurt turns out a bit different from when you use commercial starter… I have not figured out why, but as Don describes it, its more ‘chewy.’ I was using starter out a package until just recently when I ran out, then I saved some yogurt and it worked so now I just do it this way…plus its cheaper.

You can add any flavour extract you like… or none at all. We find that because goat milk is stronger in flavour than cow milk, the agave and extract cut a bit of that strong flavour out. I experimented with vanilla but Don didn’t care for it. You could also use honey or sugar for a sweetener.

Rolling in the dough with Farmer Sausage Rolls….

thebestcook — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 16:05:53 +0000

Ok… I don’t usually post this close together. Well last night I made an old time comfort food. Don is STILL away on the REIN road, so I decided to make some mini sausage rolls. The recipe was given to me by my Mom a long time ago and I think her sister, Auntie Alice, gave it to her.

Where we live we have a local butcher named Remple who makes THE BEST farmer sausage ever. There are many a dispute among the Mennonites who is actually the KING of the Farmer Sausage, but my loyalty is with Remple. There is just nothing quite like it.

So here is the recipe passed to me by my Mom.

Farmer Sausage Rolls

This is a very rich dough and is what makes this so nice.

I don’t cook the sausage ahead of time and it turns out.

You can make them as small or large as you like.

I use a large area on my island for rolling out the dough

and just skim the knife down the dough and make

columns the width of the sausage and just roll them and

cut them as I go …. and then place on a cookie sheet.

3 3/4 cups flour

1 lb butter or margarine

2 cups cottage cheese

In blender, blend cottage cheese until it is very smooth

Cut butter/mar into flour

Mix smooth cottage cheese with flour mixture

Put dough in fridge for at least 15 min or overnight

Cut farmer sausage pieces into desirable size for the

size of sausage rolls you would like

If sausage is fatty, render it down by frying it a bit, cool

Roll out dough quite thin

Place cooled sausage onto dough and use knife to cut

pieces and roll up sausage, seal edges well they like to separate.

For golden rolls, brush with beaten egg

Bake 400 F oven until done, about 20 minutes

Dry spell…or a spell of dry weather….would definitely prefer the latter.

thebestcook — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 20:26:34 +0000

So I had a dry spell. I guess this is what my husband calls writers block, fortunately as an author he doesn’t often have it…. but regardless… I had one and I had guilt over it. I had full intentions of writing more in the New Year. But January 1st came and went and the only blog post I put up was a picture of Char and I cooking on New Year’s Eve in our chef’s outfits. Which turned out very great btw. At 2:30 am when we were still dancing, we realized we should really go to bed or we reckoned the next day was going to be more than tough.

So I apologize to all my avid followers… heehee… all 5 of you? Here finally is a post and its about nothing. Recently I cleaned up the pictures on the hard drive of this computer. It was full and all my various food pictures were struggling to fit. When Don gave me that great Canon at Christmas 2010… all the pictures got a lot larger. Seemed a shame it have such a great camera and take pictures the size of a small point and shoot camera.

I discovered I had purchased an external hard drive and forgot about it. I decided that no time like the present to sort out how to attach it to this computer and then….. what turned out to be the arduous task of moving 10000+ pictures over to it. To improvise I also had to find a USB hub, which I also had kicking around. The problem with ‘old’ anything in computer world is that also means ‘slow’ The little box kept popping telling me that if I used a high speed USB, things would be better. Well I had all the time in the world….

I will explain, 2 weeks ago I got the worst influenza I have ever had. I had nothing but time on my hands as I slowly recovered. Today, 2 weeks later I FINALLY could go back to Bootcamp and be pathetic and short of breath. Anyways that’s another story…. I slowly dragged all the picture files over to the external drive. Then after I got them all over there, I tested my ‘screen saver’ picture rotation. We discovered a few years ago that you could put pictures onto a screen saver rotation and then you would actually get to see all your holiday pictures that you forgot you took. Once I was assured it would still run through the holiday pics, I deleted them off the hard drive… meanwhile praying that I didn’t inadvertently delete anything I couldn’t live without.

Really, what was a I worried about. Just because its was external I didn’t believe it was as ‘safe’ as the hard drive on the computer… the hard drive that is accessed every day and bombarded with Temporary Internet files and a variety of other strange things from the internet. Who was I fooling? The external hard drive just sits there and occasionally makes a sound as its accessed. And that’s it.

So after all was said and done, I got a huge amount of space back on my computer hard drive. Now I can proceed to fill it up with useless information that will just further confuse and irritate me in the future when I have to figure out how to get rid of it. But such is human nature… that’s why Storage businesses are so prevalent and why Storage Wars is such a popular show… human beings just can’t seem to deal with things in the present… they have the ‘need’ to hold on to stuff for that inevitable rainy day.

And on that note, here are some of the pictures that I found I have on my now-external hard drive. Enjoy!

Happy New Year

thebestcook — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 01:19:33 +0000

Chef Connie and Sous Chef Char

I wish you all the best in 2012 !

Triple B… and Gluten Free… Beer Braised Beef becomes a take away meal

thebestcook — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:06:51 +0000

Finding time to get together with friends can sometimes prove challenging when everyone’s schedules need to converge to make it happen. We made arrangements last month with new friends who have recently moved into our neighbourhood. The lady of that house has just recently found out that she needs to eat gluten-free… after years of struggling with a bad stomach, at 40, cut out gluten and the symptoms cleared up. So when we coordinated on a day, I offered to bring the main meat dish for the meal.

We just filled the freezer up with this years side of beef. We love knowing where our food is coming from. We are very fortunate and grateful to have the ability to raise our own cattle and then get the satisfaction of exceptionally great tasting cuts all year.

Our friend Carla Johnson, has written a great book called ‘Cooking With Sin…Great recipes dipped in alcohol and wrapped in a wonderful story…’ She also has a blog, http://cookingwithsin.com/wp-content/themes/cookingwithsin-newtheme/images/headerad.png.

I know… you are wondering where I am going with this… well Carla wondered if I had a great Gluten Free recipe that featured alcohol (that’s the Sin part of her book!) and whether I could give with her one so that she could share it on her blog. I got to thinking that I could combine my homegrown beef with a some beer, get a nice hearty winter meal AND a blog post at the same time.

I decided to take an existing recipe and adapt it to Gluten Free. The recipe also called for it to be cooked in a crock pot and that the beef be cut into stew sized chunks. I did neither. I did use the slow cooker setting

on my oven, but I hadn’t left quite enough time for that so I ended up finishing it on top of the stove. In the recipe I won’t put the stove option as this step would actually make the recipe more time-consuming and most home cooks are looking for ease these days. Not everyone is interested in slow food…

Beer Braised Beef (Gluten Free)

5 slices thick bacon, diced

3 large onions, halved and sliced

2 tbsp brown sugar

1 tbsp cider vinegar

salt

black pepper

vegetable oil

3-4 lbs round steak, 3/4 inch thick cut in desired portion sizes

all-purpose celiac flour or other GF flour

1 bottle, 12 oz, of GF beer or ale

1 cup GF beef stock or other stock or water.

2 tsp dried thyme ( I used more than the original recipe)

Cook the bacon dice until crisp and transfer to paper towels and set aside. Add onions to drippings and cook over medium heat for 15-20 minutes, until soft. Sprinkle brown sugar over onions and increase the heat to medium high and cook onions until they are golden, about 8 minutes. Add vinegar, salt and pepper. Transfer the onion mixture to your baking dish. Large enameled oval roaster works well.

Sprinkle the beef with a bit of salt and the flour. Heat the oil in a large skillet and brown the beef on both sides. Transfer the beef to the roaster on top of the onions. Add the beer and stock to the heated pan and scrape up the brown bits, reduce the liquid a bit, then pour it over the beef in the roaster. Top with the bacon and thyme.

Cook in a 350 over, approx 2 hours. Check after 1.5 hours for desired tenderness. Alternately, you could slow cook for about 8 hours or braise on the top of the stove for about 1.5 hours. More stock would be needed for stove top braising.

When I checked my beef about an hour before we left, I realized that I had not left enough time to use the slow cook setting in my oven. I have a VERY large All Clad straight sided Saute pan so I transferred the beef and liquid to it and braised it on the stove top. The result was great and the liquid cooked down nicely.

The flavours in this dish are considered Flemish… or Belgian… so our friends cooked up Belgian frites(twice cooked) to go with it. I must say the combination was fabulous. Will definitely be adding this one to the cooking roster and with the deep fryer that I hope to be getting for Christmas… I am sure you will be seeing a future post when I start experimenting making fries….yum.

Toronto… the centre of the universe… or is it? Maybe its Orangeville.

thebestcook — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 01:43:06 +0000

Earlier in fall, I went on a road trip to the wonderfully concrete and highway heavy Toronto. I don’t usually go along with Don, but decided to this time as there were some very cool extra events planned.

Our friend Rodney Hough (http://readysetlaunch.ca/about-us), arranged for me to cook at his former restaurant One99 in Orangeville (http://www.one99.ca/) They have a program at the restaurant where wannabes from the public can come and cook with a chef for the afternoon and part of the evening…. then they feed you a fabulous meal(and wine) This dinner had been a while in the making… I don’t often get to Toronto. When I do, I sometimes see Rodney, sometimes not. He and I have been conversing about all things food related for a number of years now. And then finally, our schedules converged and we had a date.

I spent the afternoon hanging out with Chef Roger and we made a variety of dishes. Then for part of the dinner service, I cooked with Chef’s Mike and Craig and got to serve out some mains. Mike is the Executive Chef and Craig, his brother, is the Sous Chef. The team at One99 is exactly that….a team. They respect each other and all get along famously. The experience was fabulous and hopefully they will have me back one day to do it again.

Vension tenderloin 'wrapped' in a mousseline of shrimp and scallop

Vension tenderloin ‘wrapped’ in a mousseline of shrimp and scallop

-mousseline usually means that its bound with egg whites, but in this case we kept everything very cold, bowl, crustaceans, blade, then pureed in spurts to bind the proteins. Then we ‘wrapped’ the mousse onto the outside of the tenderloin piece, held on with caul fat. After assembled, put all back in the fridge to keep together. Upon an order, its baked in the oven until rare and served, cut in 3, on some Spaetzle with vegetables.

Spaetzle

1 pound of flour
5 eggs
¾ cup water
1 teaspoon salt

Spaetzlebrett

…and you need a Spaetzlebrett! This is the way its made in Germany. I must say, labour instensive but oh so fun…. (http://germanfood.about.com/od/potatoesandnoodles/ss/spaetzle.htm) …. so instead of going into the long winded way we did it… here is a link to what we did. ( I know, I cheated, but I was so busy at this step that there are no pictures)

After the we pulled it out of the water, we put it on large, parchment lined pans and put a little oil on it to prevent sticking. Then it was all put in a fridge drawer and single portions were pulled out as needed… sauteed with some butter and you have it. A few blanched, then sauteed veg and the dish is ready.

Slow cooked Duck legs

Some of the other items were, smoked harvest vegetable soup, wasabi crusted tuna, mussells, duck…

Serving up Mussells

I had a blast doing this and hopefully will get to do it again in the future.