Summer Cooking Class – Grilled Fish

Though the growing season got off to a cold and rainy start, it was summer in the kitchen of Local Source Market, as we kicked off our summer cooking series on Monday night.

The evening’s menu included grilled arctic char with herbed aioli and roasted asparagus, arugula and radish salad, and a fair trade chocolate hazelnut brownie cake garnished with strawberries and whipped cream.  Yum!  Ten of us bustled around the kitchen preparing the meal.   Local farmer, Amy Lounder of Avon River CSA, joined us for dinner, to talk about Community Supported Agriculture and her farming operation.

Sourcing sustainable seafood can be challenging; however, we’re fortunate to have the Marine Issues Committee staff just down the hall from us at the office.  The original recipe called for trout, and they suggested a sustainable farmed arctic char as a good substitute.  It was delicious!

Because its been such a cold season, zucchini isn’t yet widely available, but there is still asparagus, which went well with the fish.  Arugula and radishes are also plentiful right now, and strawberries are just beginning.  The key to local, seasonal eating is learning to cook with what you have and adapting your recipes to what’s available.

GRILLED FISH WITH HERBED AIOLI

6 fillets arctic char

olive oil

sea salt and pepper

Brush fish with olive oil and sprinkle salt and pepper. Grill 2 minutes with skin side up, then turn and grill 3 to 4 minutes. Pan sear: mix of oil and butter in medium to med-high pan, timing as above.

NOTE

General rule for cooking fish is 8 minutes per inch [measured at thickest area].  However, the fish will continue to cook when you take it off the heat, so remove from heat source at 6 minutes and keep warm while serving veggies and preparing plates.

ROASTED VEG
1 zucchini, halved, per person AND/OR
4 to 6 spears of asparagus
olive oil
sea salt and pepper
lemon wedges to serve
alt: crushed garlic [1 clove per person]

Brush zucchini with olive oil and sprinkle salt and pepper. Grill 3 to 4 minutes
each side [or roast 8 to 10 minutes in 400º oven.] When cooked, cut into 1/2
inch slices.
NOTE
If using asparagus, break ends off, brush with olive oil, add garlic, and grill
or roast 6 to 8 minutes, turning half way through.

HOMEMADE AIOLI

2 garlic cloves, crushed

2 egg yolks

1 tsp [5 ml] Dijon mustard

1.25 c [300 ml] olive oil

a squeeze of lemon juice

1 tsp [5 ml] lemon zest

1/4 tsp [1.23 ml] anchovy paste [optional]

1/4 c [50 ml] flat-leaf parsley

1. Put the crushed garlic cloves and egg yolks in a blender with Dijon mustard, blend to a paste and then with the motor still running add the olive oil in steady stream to make a thick mayonnaise.

2. Transfer to serving bowl. Add a squeeze of lemon juice, anchovy paste, and parsley and stir until mixed. Season well.

ARUGULA AND RADISH SALAD

DRESSING

1 small shallot, minced

1 rounded tsp [5 ml] Dijon mustard

1/4 c [60 ml] grapeseed oil

1 tbsp [15 ml] virgin olive oil

1/4 c [50 ml] balsamic vinegar

1 tbsp [15 ml] red wine vinegar

1/8 tsp [0.6 g] salt

freshly ground pepper

Small handful of arugula per person. 3 or 4 large radishes per person, with head and tail snipped off, sliced thinly. [or 8 to 10 small radishes, halved or quartered.] Cucumber is also great with this mix.

Wash and dry arugula. Arrange in serving bowl.

NOTE – Arugula will go limp when tossed with dressing, so add dressing only when serving. Let sit dry in serving bowl until ready to serve, then serve each plate and add dressing and radishes as garnish.

CHOCOLATE HAZELNUT BROWNIE CAKE

5 tbsp [75 ml] unsalted butter

6 oz [175 g] bittersweet or semisweet chocolate

1/2 c [125 ml] shelled hazelnuts

1 c [225 g] cane sugar

2 large eggs

1 tsp [5 ml] vanilla

GARNISH

1 c [225 g] whipping cream

4 tsp [20 g] sugar

1 tbsp [15 ml] Grand Marnier or other liqueur

1 tsp [5 ml] orange rind

5 or 6 mint leaves

1. Line 8 or 9 inch cake tin with foil. Grease with butter or oil.

2. Break chocolate into small pieces and put in an oiled bowl on top of simmering water until melted. Set aside to cool.

3. Toast hazelnuts on cookie sheet at 350º until lightly browned, 5 to 6 minutes. Let cool and crush into small pieces.

4. In a large bowl, whisk together sugar, eggs, and vanilla until smooth. Using rubber spatula, fold in hazelnuts and melted chocolate until incorporated. Pour mix into tart pan and bake at 350º until toothpick inserted in centre comes out with moist crumbs clinging, about 20 minutes. Let cool to room temp. on rack.

5. Garnish: In mixing bowl and using whisk or electric mixer, whip cream, sugar, liqueur, and grated orange rind until firm peaks form.

6. Pile cream on top of cake and garnish with mint leaves.

Spring Greens at the Truro Farmers Market

Last Saturday Marla, Libby and I hopped in the car and took a little road trip to Truro to put on a little cooking demo on Spring Greens at the Truro Farmers Market.   It was a windy and overcast day, but the rain stayed away and the lovely people of Truro welcomed us with open arms.

This was the first time we’ve done a cooking demo at a Farmers Market, and it went swimmingly!  We made the garlic spinach dip mentioned in an earlier post  but used baby beet greens from Casson Family Farm instead of spinach.  Aside from the dip turning pink from the stalks, it tasted pretty much the same, and the crowd ate it up with some delicious bread from Kuchenstube and baby carrots from the Dueck Family Farm.  The farmer who sold us the greens made a suggestion to add some honey, so our second batch tasted a little different from the first batch!  This recipe definitely has a lot of potential for variations – if we would have had some fresh herbs, it would have changed the flavour yet again.  Definitely a ‘keeper recipe’!

For our second demo, we cooked up a big batch of ‘Lemon Loves Beet Greens’ that Marla blogged about a couple of weeks ago with mature beet greens and some swiss chard.  People were interested to see that you needn’t boil this stuff to cook it – usually the water left on the leaves after washing it is enough to steam them and leave all the tastiness intact.

One of our favourite moments was when the little girl who was watching us cook up the beet greens tried the first sample of the finished product with a great big grin on her face.  She then held up her fork to her mom, and got HER to try beet greens for the first time!  She wasn’t the only kid who was lining up for a sample, either.  A lot of people stopped by and chatted about their favourite ways to prepare spring greens, and picked up our recipe hand-out sheet to try them out at home.  When we were packing up to leave, we heard that all the farmers had sold out of their beet greens by noon!  How great is that?

Happy Libby with her greens and honey!

It was a great experience to go to a new market in a town other than our own, and we had a great time meeting new people and exploring the unique things for sale.  (All three of us each went home with a big bag of Marsh Grass, aka Goosetongue – but that’s the subject for a whole new post!)

Yours in Food,

Alison

Winter Veggies & Creative Cooking

The latest installment of the Thinking Inside the Box column from Jennifer Publicover, member of Avon River CSA.  Avon River is now signing up members for the fall.

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I like to throw my consumer dollar behind local sustainable agriculture, organic practices, the lowering of transport greenhouse gas emissions, and the preservation of valuable farmland. Food is intrinsic to life itself; there are so many good reasons to pay attention to food – and yet, with all that foreknowledge, the most meaningful reason for me crept up on me by surprise as I signed up for a half share of a winter root-crop CSA.

We in our household putz happily around in our own little urban vegetable patch, visiting every day in warmer seasons to see what might be available for supper. However, we have neither the ambition nor the time to look towards winter storage at this point, which is why I am glad to have a friend in the CSA business. I met Amy Lounder of the Avon River CSA through traditional music circles – she is a talented fiddler and I am a flute player. I admired her chutzpah as I watched her set up her new farming enterprise. When the bags of produce and preserves started to role in, it was great fun to rummage and see what surprises she had in store for us each week. Sometimes they contained wacky and wonderful items to which I’d never really been exposed before, but after figuring out how to use them, I quite liked them. It felt great to fill up on such healthy and delicious food and serve it to my children. My kids also got into the spirit, helping out in the kitchen, coming along on the pick-up trips and meeting “our farmer” Amy. The fact that our farmer was a woman was an added bonus as far as I was concerned; in generations not long past, a farmer was often assumed to be a man and the woman of the household was known as the “farmer’s wife” rather than a farmer herself.

These are all great and fairly typical outcomes when one signs up for a CSA share. What is not so typical is that I have celiac. I cannot digest wheat, nor anything containing wheat gluten, which strikes out a huge share of commercially prepared food. Not only are conventional baked goods and pastas off limits, but such mundane flavouring items as ketchup, soy sauce and mayonnaise are often made with either white vinegar or gluten derived from wheat. As the celiac crept slowly upon me in my thirties, I first had to figure out what the problem was and then learn new ways of eating – which I am still learning. There are ways of baking with other non-wheat grains, but it takes skill and experience to produce something edible that does not have the consistency of styrofoam. This is why wheat and wheat gluten are so pervasive as ingredients and additives, as it is the gluten which makes for the pleasing texture. I am also one of those celiacs with an accompanying secondary lactose intolerance, although I can take enzyme tablets to aid in the digestion of milk products – but no such pills exist yet for the digestion of gluten.

In the early stages of my gluten-free journey, I was relieved just to have figured out what to avoid in order to stay healthy, as it is no fun to double over in pain after eating a plate of pasta. I learned to read labels and ask questions. However, it was also a bit daunting. It was downright depressing to remember the taste of all the different foods that I could never again enjoy. I have a slender build to begin with, and it has always been a challenge to keep my weight up. I could no longer eat impulsively; I always had to think it out first. My busy lifestyle and the demands of feeding my children came before looking after myself much of the time, when I should have been learning to make my own foodstuffs from scratch. Eating was no longer pleasure; it became a chore to consume just enough to keep me going, regardless of what it tasted like… until the vegetable surprise packages started rolling in.

It became a fun game to figure out how to use up all these legumes and tubers so that they would not go to waste from week to week, a challenge that kick-started me into taking pleasure in preparing my own food again. I decided to not mourn the things I could not have but to celebrate the things I could have instead – a metaphor that can extend into other areas of life too, including some of the choices we make in favour of sustainability. I do still enjoy some gluten-free baked goods, but my diet has shifted away from them and more onto vegetables, fruits, proteins, and the grains and starches that I can have. I have great respect for vegetarian philosophies but feel that I cannot afford to limit my nutrient intake any further, and so I try to source my fish, meat and eggs intelligently too. I would love to see more wheat-alternatives grown locally; for example, quinoa is a South American staple that is becoming a new North American crop too. It is an extra challenge for some one like me, with dietary limitations, to eat as locally as possible; but participation in a CSA has been an important part of that process and also a very positive step towards better health – for my children, for the local economy, for the environment, and last of all, for me.

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If you are a CSA member and would like to write an article this blog, please email Marla.  If you are looking for a CSA to join, see the directory of Atlantic Canadian CSAs on the ACORN website.

Getting Kids Acquainted with Real Foods

A lot of parents have a hard time getting their kids to like ‘real food’.  Food marketed towards children is usually loaded with fat, salt and sugar and highly packaged in brightly coloured plastic that promises oodles of fun.  Products geared towards kids are getting more and more over the top all the time – just check out this video:

As if we needed ways to make processed wieners easier and ‘more fun to eat’!

Once a kid is hooked on this stuff, it can become more difficult to successfully introduce them to food in a more natural state.  Edie Shaw-Ewald writes about the challenges of raising kids to love real food in the Spring 2011 edition of ‘Our Children: Halifax’s Family Magazine’ and believes it’s important to re-connect kids to the idea that food comes from somewhere – whether it’s from a tree, the ground or a factory, which can help motivate them into making better food choices.  Kids also have a greater chance at building a good relationship to ‘real food’ if they are involved with its production somehow.  If you have a garden, have them help you out or give them a row of their own to take care of.  When you’re cooking, have them help you with the simple prep tasks.

All these ideas are great but it can still be hard to convince kids to eat certain veggies.  This weekend I was testing some spinach recipes for an upcoming demo at the Truro Farmers Market, and I found a few that just might make ‘eating your greens’ a little more palatable for kids.  Here are a few recipes to try out – let us know how your kids liked them!

Garlic Spinach Dip 

2 Tablespoons garlic (about 5 cloves)

8 cups fresh spinach (cooks down to about 1 cup)

8 ounces Foxhill Quark or light cream cheese

¼  cup milk

Dash of salt, dash of Tabasco

1. Sauté garlic in 1 tsp oil until soft.

2. Chop the spinach, then add to fry pan one handful at a time as it wilts, adding a little water as needed to prevent sticking.

3. Move the spinach to a blender, and add the remainder of ingredients.  Cover and blend until smooth.  (Alternately, place all ingredients in a small deep bowl, and mix with a stick blender).

Tastes great as is or heated through and served warm!  Garnish with chopped tomato or shredded Monterey Jack cheese.  Serve with tortilla chips, toasted pita wedges, or fresh veggies.

 Spinach ’n Cheese squares

3 eggs

1 cup milk

1 cup flour (use a combination of white and whole wheat flour)

1 tsp baking powder

2 ½ cups (1 lb) of cheese

½ pound (7 or 8 cups) chopped fresh spinach  (If you’re using cooked spinach, use about a cup and a half).

1.  Mix together the first four ingredients, and then add the spinach and cheese and mix well.

2.     Press into greased square baking pan.  Bake in preheated oven at 350F until knife comes out clean, 30-35 minutes.

Quick Weeknight Meal

While I love to linger over a pot of deliciousness bubbling on the stove, the reality is that most nights when I come home from work I am STARVING! I find myself raiding the cupboards for crackers or chocolate chips or anything to tie me over until I can get dinner on the table. Sometimes, however, you stumble upon a simple, perfect, fast meal – 0ne that you can get on the table in 20 minutes.

Last night was just such a meal: Mushroom & Asparagus Omelette with Steamed Beet Greens.

The brilliance of omelettes is their flexibility. If you have eggs, vegetables and ideally (but not necessarily) cheese, you can make an omelette.

First, heat your pan to medium. Then chop your veggies. I used 2 mushrooms, several chopped stalks of asparagus and a green onion. Use what’s in your fridge – peppers, spinach, zucchini, grated carrot, whatever. I always overfill my omelettes. (It’s a culinary flaw, but vegetables are good for you ) If you are using cheese that needs grating, do that now. You don’t need a lot. I happened to have soft goat cheese on hand, so I skipped this step. Beat 2 eggs, or 3 eggs to make a bigger omelette to share. At 4 eggs things start to get unwieldly. Just make two omelettes at that point. Add salt and pepper and any other herbs you like. (I like basil or dill.)

Saute your veggies. Remove from pan. Add a pat of butter. When the butter starts to foam, pour in the beaten eggs. Flip when cooked on one side. Add veggies and cheese and fold over. Remove from heat. Voila!

I also made “Lemon Love Beet Greens” (from Eating by the Seasons).
1 bunch beet greens
2 tbsp butter
juice of one lemon
1 tbsp local honey

Wash and stem the beet greens.  Steam briefly in a covered pot.
In a separate pot, melt the butter.  Add the lemon juice and honey.  Cook over moderate heat to a light syrup.
Combine the beet greens with the syrup and heat through.
Serves 2

This was my first time using this recipe.  It was delicious!  I will be making this again.

Within 20 minutes of arriving home,  I was sitting at the table. Ahhhh….

Do you have a favourite week night meal, you’d like to share?

Yours in food,
Marla

Vegetables of spring, unite!

As the sun finally makes it way out from behind the looming rain clouds, spring vegetables from Hutten Family Farms have been shinning strong in CSA boxes for weeks. With the arrival of shelling peas it was time to bring them together with their garden comrades, the radish.

Radishes usually find themselves entertaining parsley on the side of your entrée but cooking them can yield some interesting results. No more is the bitter snap of the breakfast radish but at last a whisper of sweetness.

Flax Crusted Haddock with Spring Vegetables, Quinoa and Honey Dijon Dressing
Serves 2
250 g Haddock Filets
2 tbsp Flax Seeds
½ c Quinoa, Cooked
2 tbsp Parsley
2 tbsp Toasted Almonds
1 Small Handful Arugula, Chopped
4-5 Radishes
¼ c Shelled Peas
1 Small Carrot, Make Paper Slices Using a Vegetable Peeler

Dressing
1 tbsp Dijon Mustard
2 tbsp Honey
1 tbsp Shallot, Minced Fine
¼ c Apple Cider
1 c Sunflower Oil

To make the dressing simply combine all in a mason jar and shake. Use only what you want, the rest can be stored in the jar in the fridge.
Spread the flax seeds on a plate and lay out the haddock on one side, covering with flax seeds. Heat a frying pan with a little butter and add the fish, flax side down.
When it starts to get golden in color, 2-3 minutes flip the fish and finish cooking for about 3 minutes.
Fill a small pot with water and add the radishes. Bring to a simmer until the radishes are almost cooked. Add the peas and carrot slices and cook for no more then a minute. Strain and mix with the quinoa, parsley, almonds and dressing.

Mason jar dressings are so easy to make, fill ¼ with vinegar and the rest with oil; add some flavorings and shake. They’ll last in the fridge for about a week and just as easier to make then just a few servings.

5 Spice Rhubarb Crumble And Sweetened Whipped Quark
Serves 4
1 CSA Bunch of Rhubarb Cut Into 2 cm Pieces
1 tbsp 5-Spice Powder
½ c Brown Sugar
1 tsp Corn Starch

Crust
1.5 c Oats
½ c Butter
¼ c Flour
¼ c Brown Sugar
1 Pinch Salt

Whipped Quark
¼ c Quark
¼ c Whipping Cream
2 tbsp Icing Sugar
½ tsp Vanilla Extract

Toss together the rhubarb, 5-spice, cornstarch and sugar until well combined. Fill up a small baking dish with a minimum 3 cm thickness.
Knead the flour and butter together until course. Mix together with the oats, sugar and salt. Cover the rhubarb with this topping and place in an oven at 350oF. When the crust is golden brown and rhubarb juice is bubbling take it out and cool.
While crumble is cooling, whip the cream until it starts to get thick. Toss in the quark, sugar and vanilla and keep whipping until its thick and would look good on some warm crumble. Apply to some warm crumble and enjoy!

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Jon Geneau is a member of the Hutten Family Farm CSA.  If you’d like to send in a submission to the Thinking Outside the Box column, please contact Marla.  For a list of CSAs in Atlantic Canada, visit the ACORN directory.

Lunch and Learn: Food Security

I just came back from a great Lunch and Learn session at the Seaport Farmers Market that was co-ordinated by the Women’s Community Space at the YWCA.  The meeting was designed as a community-based brainstorm session to discuss access to nutritious food in NS.  It was a great opportunity to share experiences and ideas on how to strengthen food security in Nova Scotia from diverse groups all over the province.

Lil from The Wooden Monkey started us off with a rousing talk about the importance of food sovereignty in Nova Scotia and spoke passionately about the importance of eating REAL food that is grown in Nova Scotia in a sustainable way.

We eventually broke off into small groups to discuss the issues around food security that sometimes get neglected in larger discussions.   Increasing confidence in our community’s food skills, and looking for ways to increase accessibility were common threads in most of the group discussions.  It was really inspiring to talk to people across different communities to realize that we all want to work toward the same goals.  I came away from the meeting with a lot of enthusiasm about planning our own canning and preserving workshops with the EAC this summer.

What does food security mean to YOU?  What kind of food skills do you want to gain in order to strengthen your own food security in your community?

The first CSA drop off of the season!

Beets greens, tiny yellow zucchini, baby turnips, radishes, red currant jelly, swiss chard, lettuce… Rupert has just delivered the first CSA boxes of the season to the Ecology Action Centre office.  This is my first vegetable CSA box, and I’m quite excited.

Rupert Jannasch and Heather Johnson of Ironwood Farm have been farming for many years, but this is the first year of their CSA.  Ironwood Farm is located at the mouth of the Avon River in Hants County.  You can check out beautiful photos of the farm on their website.

The cold, rainy spring has meant that the season is off to a slow start.  Rupert told us that he had hoped that the beans would be ready and the zucchini more plentiful.  I’m not concerned – they’ll come when (if?) the sun comes out – I’m already thinking about dinner.

The greens could be made into a quiche, or perhaps a stir fry with peanut sauce.  Yesterday at a catered lunch meeting, I had a delicious sandwich made with cheddar, peach jam and homemade bread.  Could I recreate it with the red currant jelly?  (It had never occurred before yesterday to me to put cheese and jam together.)  Or maybe I’ll keep things simple and make a hearty salad with the greens, adding some other odds and ends already in my kitchen, like asparagus, grated carrot, nuts, boiled egg, maybe some cheese… Oh, the possibilities!

Yours in food,
Marla

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Do you have a subscription to a CSA?  Want to write about what you’re making?  Drop me a line.  We’re always looking for submissions to our Thinking Inside the Box column.

Early Summer in the Garden: Waiting for Veggies

For the gardener, this time of year is full of anticipation.  Most of us have spent the last few sunny weekends putting our plants into the ground, and now there isn’t too much to do except wait, water and weed.  It looks like the weather is taking care of the ‘watering’ just fine, and (in my garden anyway) the weeds in the veggie gardens haven’t really shown up yet – which just leaves WAITING!

My early kale and lettuce haven’t been doing too well outside, but I started some arugula in a pot in my sunroom that’s just gorgeous right now, and is about the only fresh thing from my garden that I’ll be able to harvest for a few more weeks.  A few precious leaves add something special to my meals and helps to whet my anticipation for the harvest to come. 

One of my favourite arugula inspirations so far has been this twist on pork souflaki.  I marinated some of my pastured pork I blogged about last week in garlic, lemon juice, rosemary and oregano for a couple of hours and then grilled it on the BBQ with a few skewers of peppers.  When they were done, I lay a thick bed of fresh arugula on a warmed pita, and placed the grilled meat and veggies on top.  I wanted to drizzle some homemade tzatziki sauce on top, but I was out of yogurt, so I used Caesar salad dressing instead.

Voila!  Souflaki, spring style!

Ethical Meat

The title of this post could be seen as an oxymoron by many.  There are many good reasons to cut down on meat consumption, and many have decided to cut it out of their diets completely.  For the rest of us who still enjoy eating meat, it can be tricky to do it in an ethical and sustainable way. Large scale agriculture and the economies of scale they are able to achieve has allowed us to get used to inexpensive meat in our supermarkets, and these low prices have helped to push many meat producers out of the province.  It’s almost impossible to discern where your supermarket gets its beef and pork, and what kind of living conditions are provided for the animals.

Luckily for us in Nova Scotia, we have a lot of farmers dedicated to raising animals in pastures and fields rather than locking them into overcrowded barns.  Our markets are full of farmers that are proud to tell you about the way they raise their animals and who believe that their humane methods contribute to the best tasting meat you can find anywhere.  Many of them encourage making the trip down to their farm to see first hand how their animals get to live.  Nova Scotia Agriculture also holds a Farm Day each September where many farmers across the province open up their farms to the public in order to increase our connection to the food we eat and the people who produce it.

Last September on Open Farm Day, I was impressed by all the beautiful heritage breeds of livestock and poultry at Bob and Matt Ottenbrite’s Grass Roots Farm in South Rawdon, and when I was planning my yearly bulk pork purchase this winter, they were some of the first farmers on my contact list.   I’ve been interested in charcuterie and fresh sausage making for the past few years (hey, every girl needs a hobby, right?) and was looking for someone willing to sell me unusually large cuts of pork so I could try some more complicated curing projects like prosciutto and capicolla. My visit last fall assured me the meat I was going to buy would have come from animals that had a great life.

This particular farm focuses on raising heritage breed animals, and had extraordinarily good looking poultry and cattle as well!  The Tamworth pig pictured above is an old English breed which is adapted to living outside in our climate, likes forest foraging, and generally tends to be better at mothering than breeds designed to grow very quickly.   And just as importantly for the connoisseur, this pork tends to be a little more marbled than supermarket stuff, so it’s MUCH more flavourful, and easier to cook without drying out.

There are too many restaurants and producers that produce or sell ethical meat to list here by name, but don’t be afraid to ask about where your meat comes from, and how the animals were raised. You will be rewarded with some tasty meat if you try to seek it out!