Conceptualization

Rose hips along the Ridge
trail in Riverdale (Fall 2013)

This post is a long time coming. The idea behind this it is what inspired me to really think about food, and develop my own philosophy in it's regard.

I used to run along the bluffs that overlook Whitehorse, Yukon from the west. They are relatively flat, get lots of sun, and are covered with wild roses. Good place for a run, and good place for rose hip foraging in the fall.

In the fall, the wild roses turn into little pods called  rose hips, which have a nice aroma reminiscent of roses, tomatoes, and strawberries. When the temp starts to drop below zero at night, they turn sweet, and also take on a bit of cranberry tartness.

I used to eat a few while resting and one day a simple but influential concept dawned on me: Moose burgers with rose hip ketchup and sage.

Very underwhelming I know, but conceptualizing was still kind of new to me. I enjoyed cooking but I did so mostly out of cookbooks. This moment marked the first time I tried to fabricate flavour combinations in my head, and how to really do an ingredient justice.

This past fall, some friends gave me some moose, and the rose hips were the best I've seen them in the Yukon for years - maybe due to a really warm summer. I finally got around to seeing this idea through.


Rose hip Ketchup

Ingredients

- Rose hips x 1 soup bowl full
- Sugar, salt, and apple cider vinegar at ~ a 2:1:1/2 ratio.
- Water x ~ a cup.

Directions

1) Add some water to your bowl of rose hips to rinse them, and to help with the process of removing the seeds and stems.

2) Remove the stem, and gently (AND I MEAN GENTLY) squeeze the rose hip like you were getting a mint out of its wrapper. The seeds are clumped together in a little cluster like a pit, and the idea is to get it out, without braking the membrane and losing the seeds into the flesh of the fruit.

I conveniently screwed one up (see left) to show the seeds. The image to the right shows what the clusters look like if successfully removed in tact.

It took me about 35 min to get through the entire bowl. I think pushing them through some type of mesh that would allow the flesh through, but catch the seeds would make this a lot less painful.

Rose hip flesh with seeds removed

3) Add the flesh to a small sauce pot, add ~ a cup of water and bring to a simmer. Allow to simmer until the flesh breaks down and the solution reduces to the consistency of a chutney.

Once reduced, add sugar, salt, and vinegar at the ratio of ~ 2:1:1/2 a little at a time until it has the familiar sweet, tangy, and somewhat tartness of ketchup. It seems to come together a bit too after a few hours in the fridge, so don't be discouraged if it is initially underwhelming.

4) Pour into a jar or container, let it cool down and then store it in the fridge over night to let the flavours meddle into each other a bit.

Voila

Moose Burgers

Ingredients

- Ground moose x ~ 500g
- Sage x ~ 4-5 sprigs. I used fresh sage, wild sage next time!
- Salt

I don't like to jazz up the meat in a burger too much. Just meat, and salt. I added sage in this case because it was an important piece of the puzzle but I think adding it to the ketchup would have resulted in the flavours blending together over night, instead of offering the nice contract of being kept separate.

At this point, just make a normal burger: form some paddies, cook them on some heat until they are to your liking. If you have a bbq, great, it was -30 when I made mine so I just used a good cast iron griddle pan on medium-high, with a bit of oil. A lot of people like their moose cooked a bit more well-done than their beef, so if its your first time eating moose, maybe make a practice paddy and try it at different cooking times. I like mine a little medium-rare.

Turned out great! It had that deep unami flavour that I want in a burger. The tartness and sweetness from the ketchup was present enough to keep the gaminess of the moose at bay, while also allowing it to shine on a different spot of your tongue. The sage added some nice depth, but I might find another way to incorporate it next time. Like sage quick-pickled dandelion greens or something. It would seem my rule of "only meat and salt in a burger paddy" still stands.

All in all, this was a near-perfect Yukon burger for what I was hoping for. But when I have a burger craving, I'd probably tell you the same thing about a McDonald's cheeseburger so take it for what it's worth.

Ukrainian Christmas

It was Ukrainian (Orthodox) Christmas a few weeks back. I don't celebrate it religiously. I more just like to drink wine and make/eat pedaheh (Pierogi). This year I went out to my mom's place on Marsh Lake. I'm about to eat the last of the pedaheh we made on this night so I thought I'd post some pics while I catch up on some backlog from the past couple months.

Very important

Mom and I, out on the Lake; navigating our
way through "Jan's Beer trails" as they are
by the locals.

A few presents of note I received. I already owned two aprons, guess I collect them now.

Present from aunt, uncle, and cousins
in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Thanks!

Very true

Present from mom. Thanks!

This lil guy looked so innocent too.

Yea well, what can you do?

My baba's recipe for pedaheh

Me on dough duty

Mom on filing duty

Dogs (Fiona in his case) on clean-up duty

Potatoes and cheese

Sauerkraut, onions and mushrooms

Self proclaimed master pedaheh pincher

Master pincher's (mom) pedaheh on left,
kid who doesn't know beeswax (me) on right

Voila

Bigos

Fall in the Yukon

The cold weather is coming, and I'm up to my neck in cabbage so I'm making a dish that my dad recently introduced me to that is a good solution to both: Bigos. I'll let this poem introduce it for the rest of you.

Pan Tadeusz

"In the pots warmed the bigos; mere words cannot tell
Of its wondrous taste, colour and marvellous smell.
One can hear the words buzz, and the rhymes ebb and flow,
But its content no city digestion can know.
To appreciate the Lithuanian folksong and folk food,
You need health, live on land, and be back from the wood.

Without these, still a dish of no mediocre worth
Is bigos, made from legumes, best grown in the earth;
Pickled cabbage comes foremost, and properly chopped,
Which itself, is the saying, will in ones mouth hop;
In the boiler enclosed, with its moist bosom shields
Choicest morsels of meat raised on greenest of fields;
Then it simmers, till fire has extracted each drop
Of live juice, and the liquid boils over the top,
And the heady aroma wafts gently afar."

— Adam Mickiewicz, Pan Tadeusz, Book 4: Diplomacy and Hunt

Translated byMarcel Weyland

So there you have it: Bigos is essentially a hunters stew adopted from the Lithuanians? 

Most would agree it is basically a stew comprised of cabbage and sour cabbage (kapusta kiszona) and whatever else they had available to them; this usually meant kielbasa, dried or brown mushrooms, potatoes, some tomatoes, and whatever else you brought back from the harvest, hunt, and forage.

I love the idea the idea behind bigos for three reasons:

1) Waste not: People make best use of whatever they had;

2) The variance of flavours that #1 invites. No two Bigos will be the same, and because the year's crop, hunt, and forage goes into it, its a representation of your space-time (physics!);

and

3) Ideally, you keep a pot going for a week or more, replenishing ingredients as needed. Can't express how much I like this idea.

I had some farmer's sausage, and kielbasa in my fridge that I wanted to use up as well as a cupboard full of yukon potatoes accompanied by a smelly turnip. I was already more than half way to a good sounding Bigos so I grab the remaining ingredients for what I had in mind: tomatoes, mushrooms, kapusta (cabbage), and kapusta kiszona (sauerkraut).

Unfortunately I was a little late at starting my kapusta kiszona this year so I had to substitute in a simple sauerkraut I found at the store. Luckily the one I found uses the same ingredients list as mine:

I haven't changed the way I make kapusta kiszona, or sauerkraut as I call it here, but my entry about it is pretty long so here is the quick how to:

Kapusta Kiszona

1) Kapusta

2) Shred, and if you are lazy like me, keep it "rustic"

Thats "rustic" alright

3) In a jar (that was dipped in boiling bath), and add ~ 1 tablespoon of salt / Ilbs of cabbage

4) Leave it for 3-4 hours as the salt draws the liquid out. If you can't push the cabbage below the liquid level when you return, wait a bit longer, or pour in some salt/water solution ~1 tablespoon / cup. I had to add a little.

5) Rig it so the cabbage is submerged, store it someplace cool (not fridge), and come back in 6 weeks.

onto the:

Bigos

Nothing fancy about this:

Ingredients:

- Kapusta 
- Smelly turnip
- Kapusta kiszona 
- Kielbasa 
- Farmer's sausage
- Mushrooms
- Tomatoes. No need to get any fancier, but I went with some tomato conserva.
- Garlic 
- Onion
- Potatoes
- Chicken Broth (not shown)

The How-To

You've made stew before: brown the meat, deglaze brown bits with some liquid or broth. Add onions, garlic and hardy vegetables: in this case cabbage. Add tomatoes, cubed carbohydrates (potatoes and turnips), add kapusta kiszona, add rest of broth and boil it down until its almost thick enough to eat with a fork. I like to boil it down even further with this dish.

It doesn't look like much, but with a big glob of sour cream, this really hit the spot on a cold day. I made a lot and I'm looking forward to the 3rd or 4th reheating.

Saskatoon Farmer's Market

I challenge anyone under the impression that the prairies are boring and bland, to make the drive from Edmonton to Saskatoon. The prairies are absolutely beautiful with big dynamic skies full of horizon to horizon blue, or towering clouds. 

While only in Saskatoon for a short bit this time around, I managed to get a visit in to the Saskatoon Farmer’s Market. I was flipping out! What a great market!

This lady was my favourite person I chatted with at the market. She approached me as soon as I walked into the market to show me what she had. After buying her out of some beautiful heirloom tomatoes as well as some nice peppery arugula, she grabbed my hands in hers and said “thank you sweetie”. No problem Tomato lady!

Some nice bright yellow habaneros (my favourite chili at the moment) caught my eye from outside so I had to investigate. I met Fred Gittings, from Grandora Gardens, who grows a bunch of varieties right here in Saskatoon including Nagga Jolokia’s, or Ghost Chilis as they also go by in North America.

Naga Jolokia's: Serious business!

I have no idea what I’m going to do with a bag of Nagga Jolokia powder but I couldn’t resist buying some. This bag includes: 18-22 peppers dried, ground, and nothing more. They came with a stern warning of not to get them in your eye (you can go blind), and to rinse with milk if you do. As I left, he barked a final warning: “if you mess with them, they will mess with you”. Warning noted.

Many other vendors, but no other photos (sorry). But here is what I ended up with. Not a bad bounty!

Wonderful Heirloom tomatoes, arugula, basil, gold beets, black lentils, corn and wild board sausage

I like Saskatoon a whole lot, and I’m looking forward to spending more time here.

Wanting to make cook use of the heirloom tomatoes I found, I cooked up a tomato sauce that night that I think represents what I saw at the market: beautiful ingredients that are simple and not dressed up, but come from a profound love and respect for food and the place it came from.

I included a simple recipe that has become my favourite way to celebrate tomatoes.

Not much to this simple tomato sauce recipe:

1. Get a big bowl full of beautiful ripe tomatoes (The quality of tomatoes is the most important part of this, so don't be cheap, your local farmers work hard and deserve to not be haggled down).

2. Toss them in an oven safe skillet. Don't be afraid to crank up the heat. Tomatoes have a lot of liquid and can handle it. The point here is using direct heat to "pop" the tomatoes and release the liquid, which we will then reduce.

3. Coming along nicely, almost all "popped"

4. In the oven at ~ 280 for a few hours to get that tangy sun kiss, as the Italians would say.

5. Sautee a couple cloves of garlic (4-5 if you like garlic like me) in a deep pot, add the tomatoes and continue to simmer and reduce until it has an intense tangy tomato flavour. Add whatever else you would like because at this point its ready to be mixed with some nice pasta with a good amount of parmesan cheese. I added some wild board sausage, basil and arugula.

Super easy, but amazing result, trust me and do it.

Note: some weird formatting issues that I can't seem to correct, and I'm too full to do anything about it. Sorry.

G vs. GF - Pasta

I've made fresh pasta a few times and am getting past the novelty of coming up with something passable. I want to come up with a product that I can be proud to serve.

Time to start with the basics: Making regular old simple wheat pasta, and then once I have a reference point, run the crazy circus of gluten free (GF) flours and gums to compare taste, texture, and density, as well as the actual process itself.

Here is how it went down.

Ingredients

Nothing extreme here, just flour, eggs, water, and in the case of the gluten free dough, xanthan gum.
In both cases, I used a pretty simple and common ratio (by weight): 10 parts flour, 4-5 parts liquid (3-4 parts egg, and 1 part water).

For the gluten pasta (G), I used regular all purpose flour, crappy store bought eggs, and tap water.

For the gluten free (GF) pasta I used "Namaste Foods Perfect Flour Blend" which is a pretty common mix of gluten free flours and xanthan gum. I also added an extra tablespoon of xanthan gum. Gums are necessary in GF baking since they attempt to fill the role of gluten which without going into detail (thanks Alton), gives the dough some strength, ability to stretch as well as enables it to rise.

For the GF dough, I used the same crappy store bought eggs (one extra egg used) and tap water.

For the rest of this post, the format is pretty simple: wheat (G) pasta on the left, gluten free (GF) on the right:

Process

Taking pics while mixing and kneading dough by hand sucks! So there are none. I try to explain the process here  but it doesn't change for G vs. GF. Learn how to do it by hand because for kicks, but know that you can also just toss the ingredients in a food processor for a half dozen or so pulses. Onto the pics.

After kneading the dough, I made dough balls and stored each in a plastic container for an hour at room temp to allow the moisture to redistribute uniformly (in theory) throughout the dough.

You can see despite the extra egg in the GF version, the G version on the left is more moist, and closer in colour to egg yolk. Being dryer, the GF version was more fragile, and harder to work with but I am a little hesitant to add more egg as doing so really alters to texture and density.

After another short round of kneading it was time to roll it out. You can see I managed to get the G version on the left much thinner than the GF on the right (used a wine bottle). Even when using gums etc. GF dough is much more fragile and doesn't roll out well so I had to pancake it by hand.

I'm not sure if its visible from the pics, but the GF dough formed fissures along the edges, which weren't apparent in the G dough.




It was much easier to cut the G version. The added strength allows you to roll it up without cracking, and cut it like a log (left pic) as opposed to right where the dough is so fragile and prone to tearing that you are essentially cutting it as thin as possible with as little contact as possible.





Taste/Texture/Density

Hard to compare the density between the two pastas since I manage to get the G dough on the left, much thinner than the GF dough on the right but both passed my al dente test.

In terms of taste, it was like comparing white pasta to whole wheat. The white was simpler, and allowed the mild salty flavour of the butter to shine but there was a certain satisfying "whole grain-y" thing going on with the GF. My only complained with the GF is that it also had a starchy taste.


Recommendations for next time

In terms of the process, I will continue to explore gluten free flours, blends, and try out different gums to see if I can mimic the strong, stretchy wheat version that was a pleasure to work with. Some more water added to the GF dough might also be benificial.

I would also like to look into acquiring a proper rolling pin. Using a wine bottle is a cool party trick but lacks the handle that allows you to really work to dough outwards, instead of just down. I saw a vid of someone rolling out GF dough with a marble rolling pin and board combination that I want to try; the dough slid effortlessly off the low stick marble surface meaning you don't have to handle it as much which means less tearing.

In terms of taste, both were a little more present on the pallet than I would have liked. I attribute this to the dough being too thick when it was cut. Hopefully a rolling pin solves this. As I also mentioned the GF pasta was a little too present to really mix well with delicate flavours, but some acid from lemon or balsamico would perhaps cut the contrast a little as well as clean up some of that starchy taste.

-m