Lex Culinaria

Fresh Blackberry Gelato

My new boyfriend says hello.

He says, he is honoured to ply you with fruity, creamy icy treats in order to win you over.

That is how he won me over.

Cakes and I bought a punnett of fresh fresh fresh blackberries at the farmers market the today, and I got a chance to test drive the new man in my life. I am so glad I saved myself for him instead of going with that cheap white-plastic floozy I just about settled for because I couldn't find a decent ice cream maker for miles!

I was rewarded with, not only a teriffic (and good looking) ice cream maker, but as a bonus, the obligatory ice-cream maker recipe booklet incluided was pretty darn good. I'm very much looking forward to making the cranberry sorbet, and treating my mother to a surprise dose of the pumpkin pie gelato!

Honestly, mum...it's pumpkin pie flavour, I swear. I promise I won't tell you lies and then listen to you rave about the fantastic pumpkin pie icecream and roll about the floor laughing with Heat because it's really peach ice cream. I promise.

I used Cuisinart's Red Raspberry Gelato recipe and substituted blackberries. It was divine - although the balckberries make rather more juice than the recipe anticipates so you could use some of the extra for a sauce if you like as it is very thick - you'll have to add sugar to it though as it is quite tart.

You can find all Cuisinart's ice cream recipes at www.cuisinart.com

Apple and red wine braised pork shoulder

This is a further instalment in the free farm-fresh meat series. It's a different take on pairing applesauce with pork. I use no sugar in this sauce as the apple juice is plenty sweet, even without added sugar. It's another great braise, more traditional than the two Asian inspired braises I did in July, but equally as good. Leave it to me to be braising meats in the dead of summer, after an entire braise-less winter... but there you go. I am a culinary conundrum.

I served these babies on top of little stacks of pommes anna (thin slices of potato, brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt, baked in a 400F oven in a single layer for 30 minutes) and baby zucchini coins, sauteed lightly in olive oil. The zucchini was fresh and local and so young it was intensely zucchini flavoured and sweet. Nothing like those giant bland supermarket varieties. The potatoes were this seasons as well...so fresh the skin just rubbed right off, and for $3 for a 5 lb bag from the local farmer's market...who can argue?

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1.5 kilogram pork shoulder, bone in
• 2 large or 4 medium onions, sliced (about 4-5 cups sliced)
• 1 + 1/2 cups unfiltered, unsweetened apple juice
• 1 cup dry red wine
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• cracked pepper

heat oil in large frying pan over high heat until smoking. Sear pork on both flat sides, until well browned, about 4-5 minutes each side.

Place pork in slow cooker and turn to the high setting.

While the slow cooker is heating up, fry onions in hot pork-y oil until golden and caramelized. Deglaze pan with apple juice. Pour apple juice and onion over pork in slow cooker. Add remaining ingredients. Add enough water so that the pork is completely covered, but only just. Cover with slow cooker lid and cook for 4-6 hours.

When the meat is thoroughly cooked, remove it from the slow cooker and turn slow cooker off. remove juice, with onions to a large frying pan and boil over high heat to reduce juice to about 1/2  to 1/3 volume. While juice is reducing, remove fat from pork and use two forks to shred the meat into small chunks. Taste the reduced juice to test its strength. Once it is as strong as you like it, return the pork to the pan and toss to coat with the reduced juice. Serve over rice or potatoes or polenta to soak up the delicious sauce.

I Am a Slack Tart

I have been so slack for the last six weeks. Summer is evaporating right before my eyes, and Cakes and I have been working steadily on the house. I had bronchitis for a few weeks and work's been a bit of a bear too ...So I've just not had the time or energy to be as good with updating my blog and getting to emails as I should be.

Also, it does not help that I have been spending an inordinate amount of time with my new boyfriend. Shh. Don't tell Cakes. He doesn't know, although I suspect he is beginning to wonder whether something is wrong...  I can't help it. I am in love with a new man. His name is Cuisinart and he is shiny and sleek and best of all...feeds me ice cream. I have the feeling that he and I will become quite close over the next few weeks...

If this were any other venue, I'd make amends to my friends for my irresponsible absence by bringing a huge batch of chocolate chip cookies to share...but alas. Hard to do over the internet.

Instead, have my heartfelt apologies and rest assured, over the next few weeks I will be posting, just not as frequently as I had been in say, June. We'll return to our regular programing schedule in September!

Anyone who sends me their address...I will mail you your cookie. Seriously.

Capsicum and wild rice soup

I know it looks like carrot soup, but trust me, it isn't. I made it with organic orange peppers (capsicum). I have a standard recipe I use for creamy vegetable soups. I first made it in tenth grade (1987 for you math buffs out there!) and I love this recipe, although the circumstances under which I discovered it were, to my young mind, profoundly tragic. In fact, I thought it was the end of the world. I was doomed to a life of misery.

I'd invited two of my closest girlfriends over for a sleepover on a Saturday night and I wanted to make a special supper for them. Mum sat me down with a bunch of cookbooks and magazines to pore through, but the recipes I wanted to use came out of an advertisement for the Canadian Butter Association in Reader's Digest. Each of the recipes: Golden carrot soup, pan fried white fish and caramelised oranges with ice cream, featured, in a central role...you guessed it, butter. I seem to recall my mother scanning over the recipes and proclaiming that, all together they called for a pound of butter. She asked whether I really wanted to make them and I said yes. So I did. My 14 year-old self couldn't have cared less about eating a pound of butter.

I cooked and cooked and chopped and stirred all day Saturday. Ceri and Jennifer were supposed to come over at six pm. At six thirty there were not still there. Nor were they at seven. I finally called Ceri's house. They weren't there. I called Jennifer's house. Jennifer came to the phone and told me in the nasty, cruel manner employed only by 14 year-old girls and certain bitter celebrities, that they had decided that three was too many people to be friends and that they were not interested in being mine any more and so would not be coming over. My little heart was crushed. I cried for days.

The soup was damn good though. Still is.

Although the original recipe called for carrots, I make it with far less butter these days. I may have much more stable 30-year old friends now, but alas, less of a 14-year old's metabolism. I use the same basic recipe for any vegetable cream soup - asparagus, capsicum (bell pepper), fresh garden peas, mushroom, zucchini - the list could go on interminably. I vary the seasonings and spices as well: dried cumin and fresh corriander with the carrot, dill and a bit of fetta with the capsicum... I also occasionally throw in some extra wild rice (as here), or barley or something after the pureeing stage if I want something a little more filling.

Creamy capsicum and wild rice soup

1 tablespoon butter

• 1 large onion, sliced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 750 ml chicken stock
• 2 cups water
• 4-5 cups chopped capsicum
• 1/3 cup uncooked white rice
• salt, pepper
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
• 1 cup cooked wild rice (optional)

Melt butter in a large (about 4-5 litres) heavy-bottomed saucepan. Cook and stir onions and garlic in melted butter until soft and slightly browned. add the remaining ingredients, excpet the fresh parsley and wild rice. Bring to a biol, cover, reduce heat and simmer for 35 minutes, or until vegetables are very tender. Use an immersion blender to puree the contents of the pot. If you don't have an immersion blender, you can do this in a regular blender, but be sure to do it in very small batches and remeber to keep your hand very firmly on the lid. If you fill the blender more than 1/4 full, or forget to press down on the lid, the contents will probably blow the lid off and you will end up with scorching hot pureed vegetable all over yourself and your ceiling.

Once the soup is pureed, add the parsley and briefly pulse the blender (whichever kind you happen to be using) to cop the parsley more finely into the soup, but no not allow it to puree, or it will make your soup an unappetizing muddy green colour. Add the cooked wild rice. Serve with a dollp of cream, sour cream, buttermilk or creme fraiche...or just by itself.

Chinese braised pork hocks

 

 

A while ago I posted that I had come into possession of some mighty fine pork hocks and had no idea what to do with them. Several fantastic readers sent in some fantastic suggestions. Given that I have a quite a few pork hocks at my disposal, I'll try to make a few of the recipes over the next little while.

I just couldn't get past my love of the bison spare ribs I made a few weeks ago. So I decided to try a similar approach with the pork hocks. To my mind, they could probably use s bit more cooking time than the bison got as the meat was not as tender. I've accounted for that in the recipe below, but, if you've got the time and you are using a slow cooker, I'd just let them go all day! The worst that can happen is that the meat will just fall off the bone, which is probably better that having to burn yourself pulling hot pork off a scorching bone with your fingers!

Like the bison, this flavour is intense and rich with the flavour of the rice wine and soy sauce. For me, the words "pork hocks" conjure up images of the deep south -- collard greens, corn grits, a rocking chair on the porch, a dusty old pickup truck, biscuits and gravy....So I thought I'd pair the spareribs with grits instead of rice. The grits definitely have a corn taste to them, but in texture, they closey resemble a firm-grained, yet sticky rice, so worked well with the Chinese-flavoured sauce. I was fresh out of collard greens, so employed some orange capsicum and snow peas sauteed in a splash of rice wine to take on the role of understudy to collard greens.

I also wanted to experiment with the different flavours of rice wine, as I used only one specific kind in the bison recipe. Here I use a blend of two very different brews.

I must say that, when I opened the package, I was quite relieved to see that the pork hocks did not have feet attached to them!

Serves 4

• 2 pork hocks (about 4-5 pounds), rinsed well
• 1 cup light soy sauce
• 1 cup dark salted rice wine
• 1 cup clear rice wine
• 1/2 cup palm sugar
• 1/3 cup sliced ginger
• 4 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 onion, sliced
• 1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
• 4 star anise
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 3 1 inch pieces of orange peel, pitch removed

Put the pork hocks in a slow cooker (or a large pot on the stove top) together with all the other ingredients and add sufficient water so that the liquid covers the meat completely. If you're using a pot on the stove top, gently bring to the boil then and turn down to simmer. Simmer the pork hocks for at least 2 hours, or longer if you have the time. If you're using a slow cooker, allow to cook for 6 hours from the time you put all the ingredients in the pot.

Remove the cooked pork hocks to a plate to cool slightly. When cool enough to touch, use your fingers to work the flesh away from the bone, use your fingers to clean the meat of the skin and as much of the sticky jelly as you can . Discard the bone, jelly and skin. Set the meat aside.

Strain the stock and bring it to a boil, allow to boil rapidly to reduce the stock to one third of its volume or more. taste the stock during reduction. If it is not strong enough for your liking, reduce it some more.

Once the stock is strong enough for your taste, place the pork meat pieces in it and warm them in the stock for 5 minutes. Serve pork over grits or rice and drizzle the reduced stock over the top.

$91.64

Is exactly how much I spent on six, yes six, spanky new cookbooks that were on sale at Chapters today. I love that Chapters always has a huge table full of remaindered cookbooks. Sometimes its full of boring crap, but occasionally you can find something really cool for very cheap. Take, for example, this copy of Stephanie Alexander and Maggie Beer's Tuscan book that I bought for $9.99!

Or this sweet compendium of 200 bitsy bitesy foods for $7.99! I already made the mini polenta muffins out of it, which were just perfect for our midafternoon, impromptu backyard picnic.

Or this jewel, betwixt the pages of which lurk all manner of strange and wonderful recipes. For example, I can't wait to make the Sausage Filled Prunes or the Spam and Pickle Loaf! (just kidding) I swear I should have been a fifties housewife. I could have satisfied my love for gelatin in all sorts of colourful ways with frozen veggies and lime jello! Who knew you could make a whole filling family meal out of spam, Bisquick, apricot jam, mustard and cloves? Or that you could make a passable substitute for a crown roast of lamb by slitting hot dogs and standing them upright around a mound of sauerkraut?

I did pass up a copy of Strange Foods, but I think I will have to go back and get it, despite the photos of barbecued baby mice. I really just want to see what the hell they cook in the chapter entitled "Urine".

The best chocolate cake in the world

I realize this is an enormous claim. This also happens to be an enormous cake. No word of a lie. It must be 6 or 8 inches high and 2.5 kilos at least. And stellar tasting.

I was thinking (I do that sometimes) that I would like to have a very nice present for my friend ALH, who was called to the Bar for the very first time last week. When I was called to the Alberta Bar, ALH and CRW bought me lunch which included the traditional Third Bar Call Chocolate Cake with Red and Green Sprinkles. By the third time you get called to the bar, you're a touch less idealistic and a touch more jaded than you were the first time, so red & green sprinkles are plenty festive. As this call was ALH's first, I thought something more flashy was in order. I broke out my precious container of little silver ball thingies. These are not the crap ones you get at the grocery store. They are the real thing. Imported from Britain and everything. The little silver ball thingies are not what made the cake special, although they were pretty festive looking. What made this cake special was the incredible denseness and moistness of it. I have never had such a dense and moist cake before. Even 5 days later, when we recycled the last of it for ALH's birthday, it was still perfect and fudgy and moist.

I used this recipe from Epicurious and made the following adjustments to it:

• substituted sour cream for the buttermilk
• added 3/4 teaspoon very good quality cinnamon
• doubled the vanilla
• used organic eggs, oil, milk, flour and cocoa

Additionally, I used this recipe for frosting instead of the ganache which, in my opinion, would have made this cake far too rich to eat. This frosting uses less butter than traditional frosting and always gets rave reviews no matter what I out it on. I made the exact amount called for in my pistachio cupcakes post and it was the perfect amount to fill and frost the cake without having to glob on a huge thick layer.

The addition of coffee and cinnamon gives the chocolate a real depth that wouldn't you otherwise get. The oil provides the basis for the amazing moistness.

Earl Grey and Satsuma Jelly

I couldn't decide which I liked better for IMBB this month - Green Jasmine Tea or this most smashing organic Earl Grey tea I found at Planet Organic and which smells like perfume! If I could stuff a teabag in my bra or hang one from my ear so that I smelled like this tea all day, (and not feel like a moron) I would. It. Smells. That. Good.

What better way to enjoy such a beautiful bouquet, than with a simple slice of toast. Tea and toast have been friends for a very long time, so maybe it's time to spice up the marriage. Try something new. Maybe tea would like to be on top? This tea jelly is perfectly aromatic, tangy and Earl Grey-y. I know it sounds weird to put tea on top of your toast, but trust me!

I used gorgeous organic satsumas I found for this, but any kind of fragrant orange will do.

Ingredients

• 1 cup water
• 4 tea bags (if you have very strong smelling bags, otherwise, I'd use closer to 8)
• 4x1 inch pieces of orange peel, white pith removed
• 1/4 cup orange juice
• 1.5 cups sugar
• 1 envelope pectin

Boil water and steep tea and orange peel in it for 10 minutes. Squeeze dregs of tea out of tea bags into pot, fish out orange peel. Put tea in saucepan along with sugar and orange juice and bring to the boil. Add pectin and boil rapidly for 1 minute. Skim off any foam and pour into hot jam jars (2 x 250 ml). If you want to keep the jam a while, process the jars in a water bath for 20 minutes. If you're going to refrigerate it and eat it fairly quickly, I wouldn't bother with the processing.

 

Wig-Wags, Squeeze-a-Cheeze and bacon in a can: Childhood Memories meme

Another late night at work and I realized that I have about 8 posts in various stages of drafting, including this one!

Clare tagged me for this about a frillion years ago and I have just now managed to get off my lazy ass to do it. Clare, if send me your address I will post you something yummy as an apology!

I reckon most, if not all, food bloggers have incredibly strong memory associations between food and childhood, and it's kind of nifty to find out these sorts of random things about people. You never really know your fellow food bloggers. You only ever see a small side of who they are. It's memes like this that tell the real story.

This simple meme has only one question:  What are 5  foods from your childhood that you miss?

This meme also replicates a little differently from other memes. Replication works as follows:

Remove the blog at #1 from the following list and bump every one up one place; add your blog’s name in the #5 spot; use HTML to link to each of the other blogs in the list.

1. Secrets & Lies
2. Do or Do Not
3. BeautyJoyFood
4. Eatstuff
5. Lex Culinaria

Food Number One: S'mores

What more ubiquitous Canadian campfire food is there? None. No trip to the cabin was complete without a hefty supply of marshmallows, chocolate and graham crackers. I seem to recall that we must have eaten these every night, although I'm sure my sensible mother would have insisted we not consume so much sugar on nightly basis. Sometimes we'd make banana boats or baked apples in foil instead, but my favourites always were and always will be smores. Gooey, hot marshmallow, melty melty chocolate and crispy, grainy graham crackers. I recall one night in particular, sitting in my pink flannel nightgown in front of the cast iron stove in our cabin. It was raining outside and I couldn't have been more than 10 or 11. I was toasting my marshmallow in anticipation of some tasty smore-making, when my marshmallow caught fire. Instead of doing the smart thing and blowing the flame out, I decided to wave the marshmallow toasting stick around to put the flame out. Picture this: cute young blond-headed girl, sweet pink "ltittle-house-on-the-prairie" nightie, flaming ball of molten sugar  flying through the air and landing in her hair. Followed very quickly with screams, both hers and her mother's, and a wild flapping of arms and tea towels to try to put the flames out. My scalp was pink and sore for days. I still love smores though. That's a testament to the strength of my devotion, I tell you.

Food Number Two: fresh caught pan fried perch

Another cabin food. Heather and I and our step dad would go fishing and inevitably come back with a few perch. Jim and Heather would fillet them (I wasn't old enough to use the filleting knife) and Jim would tease me by making me pick up the heads, with spine attached, by the eyeballs. Gross. Mum would dredge the fillets in very thin layer of dry pancake mix and then fry them quickly in a little butter. Heaven. The fish was so fresh and sweet. And with so little in the way of preparation, the real flavour of the perch came through.

Food Number Three: baby sour-cabbage Holubtsi

My Ukrainian grandma never knew when to stop feeding us. "You're too skinny. Here, eat!", was a common greeting. No word of a lie. Like something straight out of a sitcom. Most of her food I liked, quite a bit of It I loved. A few things I detested (nachynka? blech!!! Beet borscht? barf!). But the tiny little sour cabbage, rice and onion rolls that were as big only as your thumb were brilliant. Also a feat of cutting edge physics to get a thick, rubbery, sauerkraut-ed leaf of cabbage to roll up that small and stay rolled. At Christmas dinner, I could forgo the turkey, the ham, the potatoes....if it meant more room for these babies. Seriously fart-inducing though they are. I suppose no more so than turkey.

Food Number Four: Wig-Wags

What happened to these confectionery delights? We used to buy them down at the confectionery booth at the local swimming pool. When we were small, maybe 7 or 8, a whole bunch of us kids on our street would get a few dollars from our mums and wander down to George Ward Pool a few blocks away and spend a hot summer day basking in the sun, swallowing deadly amounts of chlorinated water, splashing around, becoming red-eyed, belly flopping and raiding the confectionery stand for wig-wags and Popsicles.  Almost everyone I know remembers these chocolate covered braided toffee miracles, but no one can recall when they stopped being made. Every once in a while I hear a rumour that you can still get wig-wags in some remote part of the Southern States or some such nonsense. I've never been able to track them down. I reckon I'd pay a fair bit to relive that sticky-toothed part of my childhood. I kind of wonder whether my own (eventual) kids will ever have the luxury of the carefree childhood that came with those wig-wags. It seems as if seven or eight is a bit young in these times to allow your child to walk the four or so blocks, across a busy street, to the pool. It saddens me that you can't get wig-wags any more. It saddens me that you can't let an eight year old go to the pool with her friends any more either. What happened to childhood? Did they stop making that when they stopped making wig-wags?

Food Number Five: bacon in a can

Another cabin food. Because we'd go to the cabin for weeks and weeks at a time (it seemed like that anyway), and because we only had a gas powered generator, we couldn't keep a lot of refrigerated things, so mum would buy this bacon in a can. It was very thinly sliced, and came like prosciutto, separated by tissue paper, all rolled up into a tube-shape and canned with some sort of jelly-liquid (kind of like canned ham, I suppose).  This bacon was so thin, it got unbelievably crispy. I think that's where I developed my love of crispy bacon. Sometimes, as a special treat, mum would relent in the face of my persistent whinging, and buy some to cook at home so that I could pretend I was at the cabin. Like a lot of food memories, I reckon it was more about the circumstances than the food itself.

Bonus Question: What is one food that you never ever wish to have again from your childhood?

Cheese and Bacon flavoured Squeeze-a-Cheeze. I just can't contemplate it without feeling queasy.

----I guess I've left this so late, I can't imagine that there's anyone left who's not done this yet.... so I'll just leave it open to whomever reads this and wants to join in the fun! You can nominate yourself!

DMBLGIT scores

As I have received a number of requests for individual scores, here is a table showing the tally for each photo, broken down by eatability, aesthetics and originality.

Download dmblgit_chart.doc