Quick Pickled Radishes

Pickled turnips are a traditional accompaniment to falafels, but they take two weeks to make, and I started mine too late to go with the falafels I made. Instead, I made some quick pickled radishes, which have a similar although more pungent flavour.

They should keep for about a week in the fridge. Serve them with falafels, along with other pickles and olives, or with grilled meats.

12 to 18 servings
20 minutes prep time, plus time to marinate - 4 hours to overnight


300 grams (2/3 pound) red radishes
1 small clove garlic
1 slice raw red beet, if you have it

2 tablespoons Sucanat or dark brown sugar
2 teaspoons pickling salt
1/2 cup white vinegar
3/4 cup water

Wash the radishes, trim the ends and cut them in halves, or quarters if they are large. Peel the garlic and cut it in half. Pack these into a clean 1 quart or litre canning jar, with a slice of red beet if you can. This will give a brighter pink colour to the radishes, but isn't absolutely required.

Put the remaining 4 ingredients into a small pot and bring to a boil. Pour the hot brine over the radishes and close up the jar. Let cool, then store in the fridge for 4 hours or longer before serving.

Falafel

Falafel are surprisingly easy to make; they just take some advance planning as you will need to soak the chick peas. Do not make the mistake of using canned chick peas. The result will be soft and mushy. Proper falafel should have a bit of sandy, gritty texture and crunch.

Normally they are deep-fried, but pan frying works perfectly well and uses a lot less oil.

I put good big handfuls of herbs in these, and they came out a bit on the green side, but there's nothing wrong with that. I also used Korean red chile for my chile. You may notice I call for it quite often. That's because a year or so back I bought the smallest packet my local Korean grocery had - one pound! I'm still working my way through it, but it's a very nice middle-of-the-road chile, not too hot, but nicely flavoured and with a good bite. Although mine is probably milder than it was... adjust whatever you use to its strength and your preferences.

24 patties (8 servings)
4 1/2 hours - 30 minutes prep time


Make the Falafels:
2 cups dried chick peas

1 large onion
4 to 6 cloves of garlic or garlic scapes
1/2 cup parsley
1/2 cup cilantro
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons cumin seed
2 teaspoons ground red chile (not cayenne!)
OR 2 small dried red chiles

1/2 cup chick pea flour

oil to fry

Put the chick peas in a pot with water to cover generously, and bring them to a boil. Turn them off as soon as they do so, and leave them, covered, to soak for 4 hours to overnight. Drain them.

Put half of the drained chick peas in a food processor, along with half of the peeled onion, coarsely chopped, half of the peeled garlic or coarsely chopped garlic scapes, half of the parsley and cilantro and half of the seasonings. Process until everything is finely chopped. You will need to stop and scrape down the sides several times.

Sprinkle 1/4 cup of the chick pea flour over the mixture, and blend it in. Turn the mixture into a mixing bowl, and repeat with the remaining ingredients.

Form the mixture into small balls, or small flat patties - easier if you are not deep-frying.

Deep fry the falafel balls until a dark golden brown, or do what I do: pour about 1/4" of oil into a skillet and heat over medium-high heat. Cook the patties on both sides until well browned. This takes just a few minutes; as you can see by my photo I had a hard time keeping on top of them.

Drain on paper towel and serve with pita bread or over rice, with salad and tahini sauce.

Tahini Sauce:
1/2 cup tahini
the juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 cup water (about)

Work the lemon juice into the tahini until evenly blended, then thin with water, a few tablespoons at a time, until the consistency is like rich cream.





Last year at this time I made Summer Pasta and Salad with Goat Cheese and Blueberries.

Peas & Cabbage

No recipe, it's finely-shredded cabbage and snow peas steamed together and served with a dab of butter. I was just amused that I made this, because in the winter one of our most common vegetable dishes consists of pale winter cabbage livened up with some frozen peas. It's a whole different animal at this time of year, with everything so richly flavoured and intensely green. Yum!

Strawberry Shortcake

I've noticed a Very Bad Habit developing out there in the world lately (not the first sign on decay I've seen there, nor the worst, to be sure) of people serving strawberries, cream - and angel food cake, or sponge cake, or whatever - and calling the result shortcake. Nope, sorry. No dice. Shortcake is made with biscuits. You can do one giant one, if you like, and cut it, but it's got to be a biscuit.

One of the great things about shortcake is that it isn't terribly sweet, so that the berries and cream stand out all the better. The people who use some sort of fluffy cakey stuff instead of biscuits are usually also trying to short-change you on the strawberries and cream part, you will note. As usual with simple but successful dishes, you've got to have quality and freshness. You can make a concession to the fact that this is dessert by putting a fairly token amount of sugar into the biscuits, but even that is not really traditional.

6 to 8 biscuits; do with them what you will
45 minutes - 30 minutes prep time


Make the Biscuits:
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup sunflower seed oil
1/4 cup buttermilk
2 cups soft whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons sugar (optional)
1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter a baking sheet, or line it with parchment paper.

Cut the butter into small dice, and put it in a mixing bowl with the oil and buttermilk.

Mix together the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt, and stir this mixture into the butter etc. Stir well, until it forms a good, definite ball. You may need to give up with the spoon and mix gently by hand. Do not over-mix, but the flour should all be worked in.

I then find it simplest to pat the dough out on the baking sheet into a rectangle about an inch thick, and cut it into smaller rectangular biscuits. Spread them out and bake for 12 to 15 minutes, until lightly browned.

Let cool completely, or even just partly.

In the mean time...

Prepare the Strawberries & Cream and Assemble:
Rinse, drain and hull however many strawberries you think you need. If you are making 6 shortcakes, I would not think 2 quarts would be too many. Slice them if they are large. Mix them with a tablespoon or two of sugar and set them aside.

Beat stiff however much heavy cream you are prepared to indulge in, with a few tablespoons of sugar again, and a bit of vanilla if you like.

Cut the biscuits in half and cover the bottom piece with strawberries and cream. Put the top half back on, and add more berries and cream.





Last year at this time it was Paprika Sautéed Cauliflower.

Celebratory Pig-Roast at Monforte Dairy's New Home

On Sunday afternoon we went to Stratford to see Monforte Dairy's new site. It wasn't the new site I thought it was; it was a new new site. The previous site fell through at the last moment, but fortunately this one was available. We arrived a little late; the parking lot was already very full and a game of croquet was being played on the front lawn.


The building was previously used as a bakery, and presently consists of a front shop and offices,



and a large back warehouse/workspace. Banners had been hung and a happy crowd was digging into fresh crusty bread, remarkable thin and crunchy crackers, and cheese. Lots of lovely cheese.



There was an opportunity to buy several different kinds of cheese.



A pair of musicians provided background music.



Ruth Klahsen, the cheesemaking force behind Monforte Dairy gave a brief report on progress in re-starting Monforte Dairy. Things are looking good... over $200,000 in the bank and close to 500 subscribers!



After that, it was time to eat.



This sort of pig-roasting set-up is often available to rent in small-town Ontario. I don't know, maybe you can rent them in Toronto too, but I never saw one until I hit the country where they are quite popular. This pig came from a farmer (David Martin) who has been using the whey from Monforte cheese to feed his pigs.



Once it was cooked, pig-surgery was performed (I kept expecting someone to stick out a hand and ask for a clamp) and then the guests fell to.



There was also a wide selection of salads and desserts brought by the attendees; plainly dedicated foodies all, judging by the quality. Overall, it was a very pleasant evening and it was exciting to see how Monforte Dairy is shaping up. To find out more about what's happening, see the Monforte Dairy website. It's by no means too late to subscribe for a great deal on what promises to be some great cheese.

Pan-Fried Trout

Pretty basic stuff, panfrying trout. Very satisfying, though. Simple things often are.

I like arepa meal better than cornmeal for this - plus you can make arepas, which is not to be sneezed at - but it may be hard to find. Most of it is P.A.N. brand from Venezuela. Once in a while you can find some that is milled here though. However regular cornmeal is perfectly acceptable if you can't get arepa meal.

2 servings
15 minutes prep time


2 250 gram (1/2 pound) trout fillets (500 g/1 lb total)

1 large egg
1/4 cup arepa meal or corn meal
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon medium chile powder or paprika
OR other seasoning as desired

1/4 cup sunflower or other mild oil for frying

Rinse the trout fillets, and let them drain. I prefer to skin them, if possible, but there is no reason not to leave the skin on.

Break the egg into a shallow bowl or plate, and beat lightly. Mix the meal, salt and seasonings in a second bowl.

Put the oil into a skillet large enough to hold the fish and heat it over medium-high heat, until hot.

Meanwhile, dredge the fish, first in the beaten egg then in the meal mixture. Lay the fillets in the hot frying pan and cook for about 4 to 5 minutes, until the meal crust is lightly browned. Turn just once; and cook for 3 to 4 minutes more.





Last year at this time I made Strawberry Cream Cheese Parfaits.

Berry Fluff

Confession: I'm saying 4 servings, but you are looking at the entire recipe in 2 bowls and yes, we ate the lot in one sitting. As desserts go we could have done much worse I suppose. This is pretty light.

I think it would also be very good made with raspberries, which should be coming up soon. Strawberries are pretty much over for this year, which is a bit disconcerting, considering they really just started. However, the local strawberry farmers are saying that they got about 1/4 of the expected crop this year - the worst in a long, long time. Hopefully the raspberries will be better. Also, if you do use raspberries, you may want to add a tad more sugar to the purée - they can be noticably more strongly acidic than strawberries.

Corelation is not causation, of course, but I notice that I started this blog at the beginning of strawberry season three seasons ago, and every single one of them since has been terrible. I can't help feeling faintly guilty.

4 servings
2 hours including chill time - 20 minutes prep time


Make the Strawberry Purée:
2 cups (1/2 quart) strawberries
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon tapioca starch
tiny pinch of salt

Clean and hull the berries. Mash them in a smallish pot with the sugar, starch and salt. Bring slowly to a boil, stirring frequently, until the mixture thickens and the starch clears. This will be right about the time it reaches the boil. Remove it from the heat and allow to cool thoroughly, in the fridge for preference. Allow about an hour for this.

Make the Swiss Meringue:
1 extra-large egg white
1/4 cup sugar
1/16th teaspoon cream of tartar

When the strawberry purée is pretty much chilled, start this mixture.

Put the egg white, sugar and cream of tartar in the top of a double boiler. Heat over medium heat, beating constantly with an electric mixer. When the egg white is stiff and glossy, about 4 minutes, remove it from the heat and continue beating for another 4 or 5 minutes.

Create the Strawberry Fluff:
2 cups (1/2 quart) strawberries
- in addition to the above 2 items

Wash, dry and hull the strawberries. Cut them in halves or slice them if they are large.

Fold the strawberry purée, half at a time, into the Swiss meringue, and spoon the mixture into serving dishes alternately with the sliced strawberries. Return them to the fridge until serving time.





Last year at this time Strawberry Cream Cheese Parfaits in the same engraved glass dishes, which I bought at a church jumble sale for the shocking price of $1 each. Since they are from the 1940's or 1950's I guess somebody thought they were worth charging "top price" for - and I bit.

Broccoli, Feta & Pasta Salad

Things have been a bit hectic around here this week as we have had company. Sometimes that increases the amount of cooking going on, and sometimes it decreases it. This was a decrease-cooking visit over all, which is why there hasn't been much posted.

However, I also saw the first Ontario broccoli of the season this week and snapped it up. When it came time to put it into a meal though, there didn't seem to be a lot of other ingredients hanging around the house. As usual, that calls for pasta. I do wish I had had a tomato or a bit of red pepper to add some colour to the salad, but I didn't. I'm putting it in the recipe though, because it really should have been there.

4 servings
30 minutes - 20 minutes prep time


Make the Salad:
1 small head of broccoli
1 medium-small zucchini
1 medium ripe tomato OR 1/4 red bell pepper
150 grams (1/3 pound) feta cheese
200 grams (1/2 pound) pasta

Wash the broccoli and cut it into bite-sized florets. Wash the zucchini and cut it into 1/4" slices. Cut them in half across if they are large. Dice the tomato or red bell pepper, and finely dice the feta cheese.

Put a large pot of salted water on to boil for the pasta. Add the pasta and cook it for the recommended time. When there are 4 minutes left for it to cook, add the broccoli to the pot. When there are 2 minutes left, add the zucchini. It may be necessary to cook the pasta for a minute or two beyond the recommended time, as adding the vegetables lowers the temperature of the water. However, when it is cooked, drain it and rinse it in cold water until cool. Drain well. Toss the cooled pasta and vegetables with the tomato or red pepper, the feta cheese and the salad dressing.
Make the Dressing:
1/3 cup minced chives OR 2 green onions
1/4 teaspoon salt
black pepper to taste
1/4 teaspoon dried red chile flakes
1/2 teaspoon rubbed basil
1/4 cup sunflower seed oil
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Grind the pepper and chile flakes. Mix all the dressing ingredients together in a jar or small bowl.





Last year around this time I made Pea & Cauliflower Soup, Moroccan Spiced Lamb Patties and Unbaked Strawberry Pie, which I'm pretty sure I've already mentioned, with all due modesty, is a truly great pie.

A Worm in the Apple

Garlic scapes again! These ones are growing in my garden, with shallots behind them that are about to bloom. This is some of the good news from our garden. Unfortunately, we have discovered that our soil is very poor. It's acidic; somewhere between pH 5.25 and 5.5, and very low in all the nutrients. Rude people might call it sand.


The solution - or at least the only way to ameliorate it - is to amend the soil with lots and lots of compost and manure. Mr Ferdzy has built a little compost complex using found materials.


Another crop which is producing right now are the snow-peas, although they are not growing very high.


The other thing Mr Ferdzy has been scrounging are plastic bottles to try to water some plants at the roots. For a while we were taking walks at dusk on recycling night and returning with our arms full.


We are growing two sets of tomatoes. The further set are ones we bought, and are likely to produce some fruit if it ever warms up. The closer ones are ones we grew from seed, and they are struggling, between the poor soil and the fact that we started them off with water from our well, which turned out to be full of salt, which they hated. (Our peppers hated it so much they didn't even bother to come up.)


These are our root-vegetable beds. They are doing the worst of any of our beds, with not even the weeds doing well. We've given them up for this year - no carrots for us.


The potatoes, on the other hand, are doing really well. Not only are the plants very high and bushy, they presently have beautiful flowers. These blue ones are the nicest, I think, although some are pink or white.


And to close, here's a picture of Mr Ferdzy weeding the asparagus. It's in bondage because without all the 5' high weeds to hold it up it is inclined to flop. Because we can't remove the roots and clear the bed, it's the one that has more weeds than any other bed. We also need to patrol daily, as asparagus beetles have started to show up.

After some thought, we have decided on the Worst Weed in our garden. We considered giving that honour to various plants: bladder campion, which has 4' deep roots; twitchgrass, wild lettuce, purple vetch which all spread by underground runners; and the one to which I have given the prize; horsetails. They spread by underground runners as well, and if you miss a small bit, it reproduces at a phenomenal rate. The roots are tough and wirey, yet somewhat slimey, and after you pull out as much as you can they are back in less than a week; maybe a day or two if the weather is amenable.

Chimichurri (With Garlic Scapes, Natch)

No sign of the garlic scapes running out yet! I bought a bag at the St. Jacobs market a week or so ago for $5 which I thought was expensive, but it turns out there must have been close to 50 scapes packed in there. A bargain, actually. And now mine are ready to be harvested.

Chimichurri is generally regarded as an Argentinian sauce, although versions are found throughout South America and into Central America. At its most basic, it consists of parsley, garlic, vinegar and oil, although it seems no two cooks make it the same way and practically none of them would make such a stripped-down chimichurri except under direst necessity. Thus you should certainly feel free to adjust quantities up and down, and to add or omit ingredients. Cilantro, fresh oregano or basil are often used in addition to the parsley. Tomatoes and fresh chiles have been known to show up in it. When garlic scapes are out of season, use garlic cloves instead.

1 cup sauce or marinade, about
15 minutes prep time


1 cup parsley
3 to 5 garlic scapes
a small handful shallot greens, chives, or a green onion
1 tablespoon rubbed oregano
1 teaspoon dried hot chile flakes, more or less
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
black pepper to taste

3 to 4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
3 tablespoons sherry, wine or cider vinegar
1/3 cup sunflower seed oil

Wash and drain the herbs. Put them into the food processor with the seasonings, and process them until they are very finely chopped, verging on puréed. You will need to stop and scrape down the sides several times, no doubt.

Add the liquid ingredients, and blend again, until emulsified.

Use to marinate meat, poultry, fish, tofu or vegetables which are to be grilled, reserving a good quantity of it to be passed as a sauce. Or pass it as a sauce without marinating anything first. Boiled potatoes or steamed rice will soak it up nicely, or use it as a dip or topping for bread. I'm thinking that the left-overs from the lamb chops and zucchini will end up on a bean salad as a dressing.





Last year at this time I made Buttered Minted Peas with Rice.

More from Three Men in a Boat

Now that it's summer, it's time to go camping (or boating). Things have not changed all that much from the 1880's, when Jerome K. Jerome wrote "Three Men in a Boat".

"To return to our present trip: nothing exciting happened, and we tugged steadily on to a little below Monkey Island, where we drew up and lunched. We tackled the cold beef for lunch, and then we found that we had forgotten to bring any mustard. I don't think I ever in my life, before or since, felt I wanted mustard as badly as I felt I wanted it then. I don't care for mustard as a rule, and it is very seldom that I take it at all, but I would have given worlds for it then.

I don't know how many worlds there may be in the universe, but anyone who had brought me a spoonful of mustard at that precise moment could have had them all. I grow reckless like that when I want a thing and can't get it.

Harris said he would have given worlds for mustard too. It would have been a good thing for anybody who had come up to that spot with a can of mustard, then: he would have been set up in worlds for the rest of his life.

But there! I daresay both Harris and I would have tried to back out of the bargain after we had got the mustard. One makes these extravagant offers in moments of excitement, but, of course, when one comes to think of it, one sees how absurdly out of proportion they are with the value of the required article. I heard a man, going up a mountain in Switzerland, once say he would give worlds for a glass of beer, and, when he came to a little shanty where they kept it, he kicked up a most fearful row because they charged him five francs for a bottle of Bass. He said it was a scandalous imposition, and he wrote to the TIMES about it.

It cast a gloom over the boat, there being no mustard. We ate our beef in silence. Existence seemed hollow and uninteresting. We thought of the happy days of childhood, and sighed. We brightened up a bit, however, over the apple-tart, and, when George drew out a tin of pine-apple from the bottom of the hamper, and rolled it into the middle of the boat, we felt that life was worth living after all.

We are very fond of pine-apple, all three of us. We looked at the picture on the tin; we thought of the juice. We smiled at one another, and Harris got a spoon ready.

Then we looked for the knife to open the tin with. We turned out everything in the hamper. We turned out the bags. We pulled up the boards at the bottom of the boat. We took everything out on to the bank and shook it. There was no tin-opener to be found.

Then Harris tried to open the tin with a pocket-knife, and broke the knife and cut himself badly; and George tried a pair of scissors, and the scissors flew up, and nearly put his eye out. While they were dressing their wounds, I tried to make a hole in the thing with the spiky end of the hitcher, and the hitcher slipped and jerked me out between the boat and the bank into two feet of muddy water, and the tin rolled over, uninjured, and broke a teacup.

Then we all got mad. We took that tin out on the bank, and Harris went up into a field and got a big sharp stone, and I went back into the boat and brought out the mast, and George held the tin and Harris held the sharp end of his stone against the top of it, and I took the mast and poised it high up in the air, and gathered up all my strength and brought it down.

It was George's straw hat that saved his life that day. He keeps that hat now (what is left of it), and, of a winter's evening, when the pipes are lit and the boys are telling stretchers about the dangers they have passed through, George brings it down and shows it round, and the stirring tale is told anew, with fresh exaggerations every time.

Harris got off with merely a flesh wound.

After that, I took the tin off myself, and hammered at it with the mast till I was worn out and sick at heart, whereupon Harris took it in hand.

We beat it out flat; we beat it back square; we battered it into every form known to geometry - but we could not make a hole in it. Then George went at it, and knocked it into a shape, so strange, so weird, so unearthly in its wild hideousness, that he got frightened and threw away the mast. Then we all three sat round it on the grass and looked at it.

There was one great dent across the top that had the appearance of a mocking grin, and it drove us furious, so that Harris rushed at the thing, and caught it up, and flung it far into the middle of the river, and as it sank we hurled our curses at it, and we got into the boat and rowed away from the spot, and never paused till we reached Maidenhead."

Stir-Fried Fish with Snow-Peas, Mushrooms & Garlic Scapes

I was particularly excited to make this dish, as it contains our very first crop of snow-peas, as well as garlic scapes. They are still pretty small, and could have used a few more days on the vine but I couldn't wait. I'll try to be more patient with the next batch.

If you can't get fish, chicken breast or thighs would work fine as well. They might need a minute or two more in the pan.

2 servings
20 minutes prep time


2 cups snow-peas
8 to 10 garlic scapes
8 to 10 button mushrooms
2 tablespoons peeled, minced fresh ginger
1 450 gram (1 pound) fillet of whitefish

1 tablespoon corn starch or arrowroot
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons soy sauce or tamari

2 tablespoons sunflower seed oil


Wash the snow peas and remove the stem ends. Rinse the garlic scapes and cut them into pieces about the same length as the snow-peas. Clean the mushrooms and cut them into quarters. Peel and mince the ginger.

Skin the fish fillet and cut it into strips about 2 cm (3/4") wide.

Mix the starch, water and soy sauce in a small bowl.

Heat the oil in a large skillet or wok. Add the garlic scapes, and several tablespoons of water. Cook for one or two minutes, tossing the scapes occasionally, until the water is evaporated. Add the ginger, the fish pieces, and the mushrooms. Continue cooking, turning the contents of the pan about (be a bit careful - the fish is fragile) until the fish is opaque, and the mushrooms lightly browned and softened; about 2 or 3 minutes. Add the snow peas, and mix them in well. After another minute or so, stir up the contents of the small bowl and pour it around in the pan. Continue cooking and turning until the sauce thickens; about one minute.

Serve over steamed rice.





Last year at this time I made Chinese Green Onion Pan Bread and Chicken Broth & Miso Soup with Veggies.