4 September 2010 by pat.

It’s time to test out my hypothesis that the apple & blue cheese tart recipe can be made, with appropriate substitutions, with almost any fruit.

Today I went to the St. Lawrence Market, and found these beauties at the farmers’ market.

SO:I’m substituting:

• peaches for apples
• fresh goat sheep cheese for gorgonzola
• lemon thyme for thyme
• toasted sliced almonds for walnuts

I’ll be making it tomorrow. The woman who sold me the peaches told me to keep them in a paper bag in a warm place until tomorrow to ripen them up a bit more for the tart.

Posted in Food - farmers' market, Food, recipes, Food | 3 Comments »

19 June 2010 by pat.

Mmm. I bought another cheese two to three weeks ago. Have slowly nibbled at it.

Tonight, after not eating any for about a week, I decided it was time to have some on crackers to go along with some Argentinian rosé. It’s gotten wonderfully runny: I had a half a cheese left, and it pretty much collapsed on itself. The flavour is excellent. I love the combination of cow/goat/sheep flavours, and agree with the reviewers who find it mushroomy and a little like creme fraiche. There’s still some left for tomorrow.

I’ll have to take some to the next party I attend.

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24 May 2010 by pat.

Here it is! Silk screened on both sides with the shop’s logo.I like the orange reverse on the stitched handles. And the fact that the handles are long enough to sling it over my shoulder.

Lots of space in it for things. Two bottle-shaped pockets and a central divider. I shopped at the Market yesterday, and it held a basket of potatoes, one of carrots, one of parsnips, three bunches of asparagus, a bottle of olive oil, two of wine, 5 heads of garlic, 3 hunks of ginger, a pound of mushrooms from Phil’s, and some more of that wonderful cheese that I bought last week.The bags are only $5.00, and very roomy.

Posted in Food - farmers' market, Food | 5 Comments »

19 May 2010 by pat.

I’m a sucker for a good cheese! I was looking for one last week, before having Oliver and Melissa over for dinner. I went to Chris’ Cheesemongers: actually, it was funny how I ended up there. I was next door, at the organic Golden Orchard, buying some zucchini and cucumbers, and told the cashier how much I love using my LCBO partitioned bag for shopping. One of the cheesemongers was right behind me, and promptly told me that if I liked that bag, I’d like the ones they sell at Chris’ Cheesemongers even better: longer straps, better compartments, larger size!

Nothing would do but I had to have one of those bags, so I went next door with him, and told him that, in addition to the bag, I wanted a mild cheese to serve at the start of dinner. We started with a pretty uninspired camembert (I think that was my suggestion) and by the third cheese, he had talked me into this, which I had a runny taste of.

Let it come to room temperature, and enjoy the delicate flavour. I served it with some rosemary and sesame flatbreads and some almonds.

It’s made of a combination of goat, sheep and cow milk. I’m eating the last of it as I write this. The taste of goat and sheep is there slightly, giving it more character than a straight cow’s milk cheese frequently has. It’s imported from Tuscany, $19.95.

Posted in Food - farmers' market, Food, processed, Food | 1 Comment »

19 April 2010 by pat.

Fixed up the water thingie in the back yard again so it’s flowing freely (catkins from the male cottonwood tree just to the south had blocked the water intake). Sat outside quietly for about an hour and a half to take pictures of migratory birds. (They’ve been uploaded and added to my Backyard Birds set at Flickr).

Came inside and wanted a grilled sandwich for a late breakfast.

Got out some cheddar that I bought from Montfort at the north Farmers’ Market at the St. Lawrence Market on Saturday. A hunk of side bacon, oven roasted, came from Witteveen’s in the south market, the baguette was from Future Bakery, and the dijon… well, I had that already in the fridge.

Assembled the sandwich, heated up the cast iron frying pan with a little olive oil and butter, and put it on at a medium-low heat, bacon side down.

Carefully turned it to be cheese side down, watched the cheese melt, removed to a plate.That was good. Now I’ll have a cup of chamomile tea while I go through the bird pictures.

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16 April 2010 by pat.

More and more people are becoming vegetarians and vegans. When I read the linked article, I understand more of them.

I’m still doing what I can to purchase my meat from small organic establishments: Witteveen at the St. Lawrence Market on weekdays, the farmers who sell pig, goat, and lamb at the north market on Saturdays.

Please don’t buy meat from CAFOs. If you haven’t seen Food, Inc., watch it. Read some of the books that have been written in the last few years (including Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food).

Oh — that link: Tom Philpott’s Grist.org.  Michael Ruhlmann pointed to this article in a tweet today.

Posted in Food - farmers' market, Food, SOLE food | 1 Comment »

20 February 2010 by pat.

Last Friday I bought a fair amount of meat from Witteveen’s in the St. Lawrence Market. I still had the three lamb loin chops in the refrigerator tonight, so I had to use them for dinner.

Tonight’s dinner was simple: lamb chops grilled on a cast iron grill pan, with some steak spice rubbed into them, and kale and asparagus.

For the meat, I brought it up to room temperature, seasoned it, and then tossed it onto a cast iron grill pan that I had lightly oiled and brought up to about a 4 (out of 10) in temperature. The oil was smoking, I put the exhaust fans on, and cooked the chops for 10 minutes a side — which is about double what I give them in a flat cast iron pan. The raised grill lines impart a lovely pattern on the meat, but it does mean that most of the meat is not in contact with the heat source, so it takes about twice as long to cook.

For the veggies, I cleaned and prepped, and only cooked them while the chops were resting. Kale, torn to bits and microwaved for 2 minutes; asparagus microwaved for 45 seconds. (I wish I could remember where I bought the asparagus because it’s the grittiest asparagus I’ve had in at least 10 years. I spent 5 minutes washing 5 measly stalks, and it was still gritty.)

I had some heliodoro rosemary cheese from Alex Farms in the fridge that I knew would pair well with the lamb and would be very tasty on the greens. It had been there a while, and had gotten quite hard. The vegetable peeler, my first choice of tool, wasn’t up to the task. Absolutely no go. I might as well have tried to peel the bricks on my house. Forget about picturesque white curls sitting on the greens!

Next, I tried ye olde box grater. Hah. Even more useless than the vegetable peeler. The cheese just rode down the outside of the grater like it was on ball bearings. Pressure on the cheese caused it to break into some pieces, but no grating happened.

Then, Lee Valley to the rescue. Pulled out the microplane, which used to be sold for woodworking purposes, until the Lee family discovered that chefs were using them. Man, does that thing bite into things! I can imagine what it would do with wood, because it certainly did the job with my (almost) petrified heliodoro. It turned it into lovely light little gratings, as you can see.

Posted in Food - farmers' market, Food, recipes, Food, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

12 December 2009 by pat.

OMG.

I was there, at the St. Lawrence Market, in Scheffler’s. Just to buy some cocktail pumpernickel bread. And then I saw it.

Something I’ve not seen before.

Something that combines some of my favorite flavours.

Blue Haze cheese. It starts life in Quebec, then is brought to Ontario for finishing. Google blue haze cheese. The first three items that come up are about this cheese. This Globe and Mail article has details.

What makes it special?

It’s smoked blue cheese.

It combines those wonderful smoky flavours with those wonderful blue cheese flavours.

Doesn’t that just make you salivate? Taste it. It will make your toes curl.

Betty & Sandy: yes, you’re going to taste it Saturday night.

Posted in Food - farmers' market, Food | 1 Comment »

9 November 2009 by pat.

It’s that time of year again. Thinking about creamy mushroom soup.

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9 November 2009 by pat.

Was great fun.

We started with olives and spicy cheddar spread and two varieties of Evelyn’s crackers, which I bought at Scheffler’s Deli at the St. Lawrence market. There were some olives stuffed with cheese, some kalamatas, and the winner of the night (for the olives) was definitely the ones stuffed with lemon. Really a wonderful flavour, and good firmness.

I had bought a can of lemon-stuffed olives back in late winter at The Olive Pit, and while they were OK (in martinis!) they were a little on the soft side.

The munchies were accompanied by a really nice bottle of Thirty Bench Small Lot ‘Rose’ VQA vintage 2008, which was lovely and tasted like the last gasp of summer. It’s a really small lot wine: the label states that only 326 cases of it were produced.

From there we moved to a salad that Betty made that included mixed greens, dried apricots, blue cheese, and walnuts, all perfectly wilted under a hot vinaigrette. At this point we got into the Chateau Saint-Germain 2007 Bordeaux superieur, which carried us through the main course, too.

For the main, we had a cassoulet. Unlike the last one I made that just about blanded me to death, I put a lot of flavour in this one. I started with a really spicy chorizo sausage from The Sausage King that I browned in the Dutch oven and then put aside, then put into the same pot onions, shallots, garlic, and celery and sautéed until everything was nice and glistening and transparent where appropriate in the duck fat that I had used to cook the sausages. I added a can of organic diced tomatoes, bouquet garni, bay leaves, thyme, and salt, and brought to a boil. Then, the 400g (dry weight) of white northern beans that I soaked overnight. Added about a litre of water (enough to cover the beans) and simmered for two hours.

Next stage, I removed the celery, bouquet garnis, thyme, and bay leaves, and cut the sausages into bite-sized pieces and put them in the bottom of a large enameled casserole, on top of squares of pork skin from the pork belly (cooked for two hours the night before), which lined the bottom of the pot. Added sliced goose breast (from Thanksgiving dinner) and big cubes of pork belly. Put the beans on top, and into the oven for an hour and a half, covered. Then put bread crumbs and melted butter over the top and broiled until toasty brown.

And that was that course.

Dessert consisted of the apple-pecan-blue cheese tart. I made my own pate brisee and used whey butter in it, which I think added good flavour, but I could have completely omitted the salt from the recipe (which I had cut in half because the whey butter was salted). I used a blue Eremite cheese this time, which worked well.  The tart was served with a really lovely 10 year old Port that Sandy and Damir brought: Warre’s Otima10, a Port house since 1670. Delicious port!

After dinner, it was time for games: Wii Sport Resort is lots of fun, lots of giggles, and I obviously should never be given control of a small watercraft.

Eat well!

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7 November 2009 by pat.

Beans cooking with

• spicy chorizo sausage,
• diced tomatoes,
• onion,
• shallot,
• garlic,
• celery,
• bay leaves,
• bouquet garni,
• and a couple of sprigs of thyme
• (and about a tsp of sea salt).

Definitely not going to be bland like the last one!

Comes off the stove at 3, and then I’ll try to pile it into my ceramic dish (hmm. will it fit?) together with pork belly and goose breasts. On to cook for another two hours at 4 (I don’t think we’ll need it before 6). Finish with some panko breadcrumbs and melted butter.

Bought some really interesting butter yesterday at the market (funny, I had just read about it on a blog within the last week). Whey butter. Someone said it had more flavour to it.  I’ll find out today, both as it tops the cassoulet, and as the butter ingredient in the pate brisée that will surround the apples, thyme, maple syrup, and blue cheese.

Posted in Food - farmers' market, Food, recipes, Food | 1 Comment »

8 October 2009 by pat.

Thanksgiving weekend is coming, up here in The Great White North.For about a year, I’ve been predicting that, over time, goose is going to replace turkey in a lot of homes for holiday feasts.

Why do I think this?

• They haven’t been overbred to produce birds that can’t even stand up at maturity.
• Return to older, heirloom foods is going to, at some point, focus on older breeds of birds. The turkey was once a vigorous flying bird. Alas, its export to Europe and then return to North America may have given it a bigger whiter breast, but sure didn’t improve its flavour.
• Epicureans are rediscovering animal fats — especially organic, grass fed animal fats (much higher in the Omega 3s that you want).
• Smaller families means we don’t need as much meat as on these monster turkeys. A goose (or for a couple, a duck) will do it.
• Dark meat. ‘nuf said.

So, I hanker for a goose (don’t think like that!).

I was late to the market today, and took a quick look around my fave meat vendor’s stall, Witteveen’s Meats — alas, no goose. I know that there was frozen goose at one or two of the others — I was hoping to buy fresh. I may have to go there at lunch tomorrow to check out the other vendors (DeLisio, Whitehouse, and La Boucherie).

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6 October 2009 by pat.

While purchasing ingredients for the ill-fated cassoulet, I went in search of a confit of duck legs (yes, I could have confitted them myself, but thought I’d save some time).Whitehouse Meats at the St. Lawrence Market has some cute little packages (alas, not transparent) of confit of duck. When I asked one of the butchers what the package contains, I was told it held two duck legs. For $12.99, I thought that seemed fair.As I was preparing to add it to the pot of beans, I discovered that there was only one leg in the vacuum-sealed pouch. Beware of buying food you can’t see!

Posted in Food - farmers' market, Food | 1 Comment »

14 June 2009 by pat.

Ranjit does beautiful things with a scanner and fresh farmers’ market produce.Some of my favorites: eggs and radishes, greens and onions , tomato, mushrooms & greens, alliums. And he photographs, too: Death Valley

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26 May 2007 by pat.

Withrow Park, a breezy walk from home, is starting an organic farmers’ market today. It will be held weekly throughout the summer.

I went first thing this morning (hmm… I thought they might open before the advertised time of 10am… nope).I could have made some purchases there that I made at the St. Lawrence market on Friday. There were beautiful bunches of basil, fresh local organic lettuce, and fresh local organic asparagus from Kerr Farms.I bought some rhubarb to stew up, and a spicy sundried tomato pesto made with hemp seed instead of pine nuts (it tasted good on a little piece of cornbread). Also got some organic green tea (can’t believe that was locally grown, somehow).There was lots of other produce, fresh bread from several sources, and fruit and veggie and herb plants, and some flowering annuals, too.I bought 4 different types of tomatoes, since I didn’t get seeds started this year:

• two San Marzano plants (it’s a paste-type tomato, used for sauces)
• two Roma (another sauce-type tomato)
• two Black Cherry
• two Caspian Pink

and I got two basil plants. So this afternoon (after 3pm) I’ll grab a cab down to the spit with some tools, my plants, and some seeds, and get things in the ground.

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