Weekend whirlwind

Another wild and burly weekend. I bopped about from craft fair to beachcombing (you never know what these storms will wash up onto the shore) to my back garden to some knitting to Gabriola Island with some friends for more craft fairs, beachcombing and a couple of awesome nurseries where I saw the most gorgeous eucalyptus tree (koala not included) and then back home for more knitting.

It was also the arrival of the Beaujolais Nouveau . Since BN is not a local wine, I decided that for every bottle of BN consumed, we would have to consume a bottle of local wine. I chose Blue Grouse’s Gamay Noir since it uses the gamay grape that the BN are made from. As much fun as the BN is, I blissed out on the summery tones of the Blue Grouse wine. Build on the fertile slopes of the Cowichan Valley, Blue Grouse vineyards puts out some of my favorite wines. Their Black Muscat is the perfect intense red wine to go with your favorite dark organic chocolate. Thanks to its great location and soil, the vineyard doesn’t use fertilization or irrigation.

We celebrated wine, local and not so local, with a couple of intimate dinners and a couple of not-so-intimate dinners. Here’s what we had for one of our dinners:

Local buffalo sausage, caramelized onions, roasted veggies and a butternut squash gratin. Pretty much everything was grown locally from the sausages to the veggies to the cheese in the squash. The caramelized onions are your basic recipe of sliced onions brown in butter and braised slowly. I used a glass of Blue Grouse wine to deglaze and braise the onions. Yep, it was divine.

The veggies included local purple & golden carrots and Saanich potatoes tossed in EVOO and dumped into roasting pan. The sausages were simply browned and then tossed on top of the veggies to finish cooking. The butternut squash gratin was leftover roasted squash dumped into a pan with some EVOO, Little Qualicum’s raclette cheese and a couple of cloves of roasted garlic. I drizzled some balsamic vinegar over it once it was done.

Everything roasted away in the oven at 350F for about a 40 mins while Kevin and I watched Harry Potter’s Goblet of Fire and drank too much BN and Blue Grouse’s Gamay Noir.

Here’s what we had the following morning to quietly move us into the day:

Blueberry pancakes with blueberry/blackberry syrup and scrambled eggs. I finally have started dipping into my hoard of frozen blueberries picked from a local u-pick this past summer. A sweet, summery visitor to our breakfast table, along with very egg-elicious scrambled eggs courtesy of Cedar Valley Poultry. This picture is Kevin before he stuffs that huge chunk of egg into his gullet.

I also roasted up a batch of local hazelnuts. These are from Foote’s Hazelnut farm in Chemainus.

They have a stand open on their hazelnut farm. Just go along the Island Highway to the big yellow and green Antique barn building on Henry Rd and turn in. Follow Henry along it’s mellow, winding limb for a couple of kilometers until you get to the green metal gate. Push the button for an ‘Open Sesame’ (or Open Hazelnut in this case), drive on through the orchard. You’re aiming for the big, brown house in the back. The hazelnuts are by the front door and it pretty much runs on the honor system.

I’ve found Foote’s hazelnuts also at the Quist meat market in Duncan. Nanoose Edibles also carries local hazelnuts.

To roast, simply dump the nuts onto a baking sheet in a single layer and toss into a 350F oven. After 10 mins, give the pan a shake and return it to the oven for another 5 or so minutes. Let the hazelnuts cool and then crack away!

They can be kept unroasted and in their shell for a few months in paper or mesh bags on the shelf or a couple years in a sealed plastic baggie in the freezer. Considering that hazelnuts in the stores are going for $1.50 to $2 for a 100 grams, buying them this way is a great deal. Especially since nuts go rancid once shelled, these are also tastier.

Warning: Ramblings about knitting ahead!!!

I’ve started on another sweater. I know I just finished one but I’m waiting for my lovely mum-in-law to drop off yarn for her sweater so until then, I’m working on this:

It’s the sleeve for what I’ve named the Midsummer’s Nights Dream sweater. I’ve been wanting to do a MsND sweater for ages. Here's the yarn I'm using:

The colouring is going to make it more of a Tri-seasonal Night’s Dream sweater but I can live with that.

My design ideas have taken several turns from a lace weight cardigan with bell sleeves (what the heck was I thinking? I can barely knit a lace weight dishcloth) to a cape and vest combo to an updated version of EZ’s Moebius sweater. Over the summer, I picked up a batch of Phildar Auteil yarn that struck me as very MsND sweaterish and decided to let the yarn tell me what it wanted to be. The yarn was uncooperative all summer long and wouldn’t confess it’s innermost desires. So I threw it into the darkest corner of my yarn stash and hoped imprisonment would loosen up its tongue.

While finishing up my kimono shrug, I heard whispers and sly riddles coming from that corner of the yarn stash. Or maybe it was the end-of-the-project itch. When you’re near the end of something and part of you is delighted that it’s finally going to be finished but the rest of you is wondering ‘What will I knit next?’

Finally the yarn betrayed its intent and I began doodling out scratchings and scribbles. So far I have a lot of scratches and scribbles in my knitting journal. I still have no idea what the body of this is going to look like. I’m hoping a couple glasses of Cherry Point’s Bete Noire will give me the inspiration I need when I get to that point.

I’ve usurped this construction idea from Knitty.com. Simple design of tubes and there’s no seams! Yippee!

Of course, leave it to me to completely morph a simple and brilliant design into a monster of mayhem. As you can tell from the above picture, I’m not working the sleeves in a tube. I’ve decided I want the sleeves to decrease down into a leaf point at the wrists. Yes, a leaf point. Right over the top of my wrists. I don’t know how I’m going to do it. I don’t even know where the idea came from. I blame it on that 2nd glass of Beaujolais Nouveau. That will teach me to drink non-local wine.

I know that I could be working the sleeves on dp needles and be able to maintain the tube structure of the sleeves. However I hate working with dp needles. Also, there’s a high chance of my forgetting to count my rows, or mess up the decreases (or both) and turning this lovely pattern into a briars patch.

I am 2/3^rds through the 1^st sleeve. I haven’t done a swatch. I have no idea if I have enough yarn for this. On the good side, the yarn is machine washable and I’m loving that Aran pattern. It looks like dragon scales from certain angles.

I’m also playing with the idea of doing most of the torso with ribbing. Maybe a twisted rib. Not sure how I’m going to play the remaining two colours together. Maybe something intarsia, maybe I’ll just do panels. Not sure.

One of these days, I’ll actually design a whole sweater BEFORE I start knitting it.

Yeah, right.

Anyways, we’ve having our friends Karin and Dave and his parents over for a curry dinner tonight. Karin is coming over early for a refresher course on how to make naan. I have to make sure the house is in some sort of civilized order. I also have this annoying thing called a job I should get to...

Later,

Jen

Feed me!

(insert lame ethnic cooking comment or Dr. Seuss rip-off here)

Most chefs, professional or in-home, love getting invited to dinner at other’s people’s homes. This is different than going out for dinner at a restaurant, which is fun but not the same.

I relish being on the receiving end of a home cooked meal. Sometimes I’m just tired of cooking for everyone else, even for myself. Really, there are times when I’d rather sit back, read, knit, go for a paddle, join a friend for a climb, hang out, goof off and then show up at the dinner table and have a home-cooked meal waiting for me. I know it’s hard to believe but really, there are such times ;)

Sometimes I get tired of my own cooking and am hungry (pardon the pun) for someone’s spin on a dish. Recipes are a great vehicle into a family’s history and a culture. I learned to make many dishes by infiltrating friend’s kitchens, along with learning a great deal about them.

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been invited to other people’s dinner table this year. Most of those times have been at my in-laws, who are great cooks.

This lack of dinner invitations is a common problem amongst kitchen savvy folks. It’s a pattern that a social circle falls into. The one kitchen compatible friend gets branded the ‘chef’ of the group and everyone just shows up at their place for dinner by default. Though a few of us are arrogant oafs, most chefs make lovely dinner guests. Just keep the wine bottle away from us ;)

I’ve been told by my culinary neophyte friends that they’re afraid to invite me over for fear of what I’d think about their cooking. They fear that I’d be dictating a scathing review in my head, silently nitpicking at their dishes, muttering to myself about how the carrots are bland and that the pasta is overcooked. I’m horrified that they would think I would behave so. Part of this inferiority complex is fed by the assumption that what I cook at home is complicated (it isn’t) and that I am privy to chef-jedi secrets (I wish). If anyone is going to appreciate a home cooked meal, it would be a chef. Who better to know what you went through to put together a meal than someone who has to do it every day?

To remedy this, I’ve been offering to teach my friends or family how to cook in hopes that they will feel confident enough to invite me over for dinner. I’ve had some great successes with my Vancouver circle with a trio of vegan ronins, the love child of Nigel Slater and Nigella Lawson and a spatula-wielding knight who wooed his lady with 4-course meals. However, on the island I haven’t had much success with this plan.

This has all changed now that our dear friends Karin, Dave and the 5 furry kids have moved into Nanaimo. I’ve known Karin since our Squamish days and she’s been gleaning cooking lessons from the beginning. I spent this past weekend at their place, teaching her how to make everything from Pad Thai to sorbets to preserving. It’s finally paid off ;)

Last night, I got invited to their place for dinner. A real dinner invitation. We made plans earlier in the week and everything, as if we were grown-ups or something. DH was invited too but wasn’t feeling too social. I think his new SOCOM 4 game had more to do with his absence than any anti-social tendencies.

So off to their new home I went. I was greeted at the door by their 5 furry kids and the enticing aroma of dinner cooking. Dinner was a beautifully roasted local free-ranged chicken that they picked up from the Shady Mile market and some local veggies roasted right in the pan.

Dessert was a duo of sorbets, a coconut lime and a cranberry. The cranberries were made with a batch we picked up from Yellow Point cranberries. A simple and elegant way to end an equally simply and elegant meal. Bravo!
We even had dinner companions:











(the cat version of college kids all piling into a telephone booth)

For dinner, I picked up a bottle of Ortega wine from Zanatta vineyards in the Cowichan valley. All the grapes used for their wine are grown in their Glenora vineyard. It was a fruity and rich white wine that paired well with the chicken. I could see it going really well with a Thai green curry or the pan-fried halibut with pesto gnocchi we had last week

(Thanks Pete for the halibut. I was awesome!).

BTW, I picked up the wine at North Gate beer and wine store, across from Superstore. It’s got a great selection of local wines and ciders.

I also found Volume 2 of my favorite red wine, Bete Noire (Black Beast) by Cherry Point Vineyards. This local red is a bit rough and bloodthirsty, with a deep fruity finish. In other words, a great wine snob repellant ;) I think red wine ought to be a bit bloody and carry itself with a bit of a swagger. Anyways, how could you resist a name like Bete Noire?

Hosting a dinner party doesn’t have to be an ornate affair. You don’t have to make everything from scratch. Sometimes it’s just a matter of assembling a dinner. On the island we have a great selection of locally made cheeses. Everything water buffalo to cow milk cheeses to fill your cheese plate. Nanoose Edibles carries a great line of smoked albacore tuna and salmon for an appetizer and locally made dressings for your salad. There are prepared jams and jellies for folks to nibble with crackers. Check out Golden Maples Farm at a Christmas craft fair near you. She makes her products from fruits and veggies grown right on her own farm. She even has lemon and lime trees growing in her greenhouse!

For dessert, pick up a Grandma’s Country pie from the Nanaimo Sausage House on 3018 Ross Rd (behind the County Club mall). They have a sour cherry pie that is getting quite the following. Their blackberry pie is on the top of my list. They have a range of pies from berries to pumpkin to lemon meringue. You can contact them at Grandmascountrypies@shaw.ca and place your order. While you’re at the Nanaimo Sausage House, pick up some sausages. They make them right there on the premises and it shows. We’re fans of the hot pepperoni and their smokies are DH’s favorites and that’s saying a lot. They also carry local cheeses and free-ranged eggs.

The main course can simply be a simple soup, a roasted chicken or fish. Heck, I’ve served scrambled eggs and toast for a dinner party.

For larger dinner parties, hold it as a potluck. Better yet, host it as a 100 Mile Diet potluck and have folks bring in their favorite locally-grown dish. Before you start the meal, have everyone introduce their dish and where they got the ingredients. This is great way to share and learn who your local growers are.

Have a tasty day!

Jen

Booze and a Fast and Dirty Stew

Well, the Nanaimo 100 Mile Diet Challenge Week is over. So, how it did go for you? What did you do? What wonderful culinary discoveries did you make? Enquiring culinary minds want to know.

I’ve heard folks have been hosting 100 Mile Diet potlucks and parties. Some have pledged to try one new local item a week. There are even some people that are hard-core 100 milers that are aiming to eating only foods grown within a 100 mile range. That’s awesome to hear! Of course, this is just the beginning. Next, we're aiming for a 100 Mile Thanksgiving. I'll post more info on that once I get my crap together.

One of my biggest recent discoveries was the local booze industry. Vancouver Island has some pretty fine wines and ciders. Unfortunately, the government liquor stores don’t carry any Vancouver Island booze. Fortunately for us, there are a couple of beer and wine stores in Nanaimo that are spirited enough to carry them. Black Bear Liquor Store, North Gate Liquor, Wellington Hotel Beer & Wine, Wheatsheaf Beer & Wine, and the Jolly Miner store are some of the Nanaimo beer and wine stores that carry Vancouver Island booze.

Cherry Point vineyards in one of the highlights of out of Cowichan Valley. They put out a great table white called ‘Coastal White’ which is a blending of Vancouver Island grapes. Their Bete Noire (Black Beast) 2005 is my favorite wine discovery for the year. Deep and complex, a bit fruity to keep all the wine snobs away. The wine comes with a great back story that reaches back in history to 1552 in Hungary. Winemaster, Simon Spencer, is planning on putting our three volumes of this wine. Each volume will continue on with this mythical black beast of a wine. The vineyard is now out of the first volume of this wine and so grab whatever you can find at the wine stores. They will be releasing a new batch of wines within a month or two.

There’s no barley grown here on the island, so no locally grown beer. I’ve heard rumors of island barley experiments but nothing on tap yet. There is cider though. And good, cider. Not the candy apple cider that you used to get drunk on and throw up all over the backseat of your boyfriend’s Impala. Grown up cider made from undiluted apple juice from the wonderful apple orchard that surrounds the Merridale Cider House. Everything from a traditional dry cider to a champagne-style cider is made on the premises. My favorites so far are the Scrumpy Cider, a sharp, dry cider made from crab apples and no sugar, and the Merri Berri which is a sweeter cider mixed with local berries. The ciders have a clean, crisp taste and none of that murky aftertaste that other ciders that have sulphur dioxides or are made from concentrated juice have.

They also make an apple cider vinegar but are out of stock at the moment. Never fear, many local apple orchards are making an apple cider vinegar. I picked up a bottle of First Fruits Farm Apple Cider Vinegar a few weeks ago at the Duncan farmer’s market. At $3 for a 16oz bottle! It’s an organic, unpasteurized cider that needs to be diluted before using, it’s so strong. They also do a milder vinegar with Jonagold apples. BTW, farmer’s markets are brimming with local organic apples. Last I checked, they were going of a dollar a pound and not a single mealy Red Delicious in sight. Instead, there’s a variety of apples that you probably never have heard of before but should get to know better. The farmers selling them will also be able to tell you which ones are best for pies, sauces and just eating. Westwood Orchard on 170 Westwood Road off of Jinglepot Road has been suggested as a great local orchard. I think I may have to give them a visit some time this week.

Speaking of vinegar, I have had some folks asking me about locally grown balsamic vinegars. So far, I’ve only sussed out one locally grown balsamic vinegar, Venturi-Schulze Aceto Balsamico. This is true, traditional balsamic vinegar with no fruit concentrate, no caramel colouring, no blended wine vinegars. This is true artisan vinegar. The sort of thing that the Foodies swoon over. A little goes a long way. You can order up a bottle from their website. MacLean’s Foods also carries the vinegar.

Marley Farms is also making fruit vinegars. They make a blueberry and a kiwi vinegar from fruits grown on the island. I picked up a bottle of each from the North Gate Liquor Store on Metral, just off the Island Highway. The vineyard themselves are out of the vinegars, so pick a some up while you can. A new batch won’t be released for a few more months yet. The blueberry vinegar is light and makes a great vinaigrette. You could also use it to tang up a chicken or pork dish. I’ve drizzle a bit over baked fruit.

So last night, to celebrate the end of the Nanaimo 100 Mile Diet Challenge Week, Kevin and I had an intimate 100 Mile Feast. With veggies and fruit from the Nanoose Edibles produce box and local farms, South African boerwurst sausages from Quist Meat Market in Duncan, and Cherry Points Bete Noire we had quite the meal.

I made a South African version of my Fast and Dirty stew recipe that tastes like something that took hours to make. Here’s the fast & dirty instructions. You can use any fresh sausage. Piper’s Meats has a whole line of sausages made with locally grown grain-fed beasts.

Fast & Dirty Sausage Stew:

1 to 1 ½ lbs fresh sausage

1 onion – chopped into big chunks

2 cloves garlic –crushed and chopped coarsely

2 cups tomatoes chopped in half or quarters

2 carrots –peeled and cut into bite size chunks

2 sweet bell peppers – chopped into chunks

1 stalk of celery – chopped

1 cup of good red wine (I used Cherry Point’s Bete Noire but you can use whatever wine you’re planning to drink with the meal. You have to drink wine with this stew. It’s the rule. I don’t make the rules. That’s just how it is. If you’re going to be a snot-nosed rebel and not use wine, you could use cider or a good stock)

Fresh herbs – ripped/ chopped right before serving

Also – a few glugs of oil, salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 350F. In a heavy oven-proof pot, heat up the oil and then brown the sausage on both sides over med-high heat.

Toss in all the veggies, pinch of salt and let the veggies get a bit of colour.

Dump in the wine (or whatever liquid you’re using) and scrape up all the caramelized goodness that’s stuck to the bottom of the pan. Throw the pot into the oven for 30-40 mins.

Since you’ve got the oven going anyways, you might as well wash up a bunch of potatoes (I used locally grown Peruvian Purple potatoes last night). Cut them into smaller pieces of needed. Toss them onto a small roasting pan with a drizzle of oil and a sprinkle of salt and slide those in beside the stew pot in the oven. You could just toss the potatoes into the stew pot too. They would help thicken up the stew. I just wanted nice crusty roasted potatoes last night so I did them separately.

I also threw in some unpeeled beets wrapped up in foil to roast beside the potatoes and stew. You might as well use the heat and roast up stuff for the next few days. Cooked beets keep a week in the fridge and can be used in so many ways. I’m thinking of making a fast and dirty borscht sometime this week.

Once the timer goes off and the stew is done, turn off the oven and pull out the beets to cool. I just leave everything else in until serving. I blanched up some local organic green beans for a side dish with the beets. Once the beets are cool enough to handle, you can peel them by simply slipping the skin right off. I do it under the tap of cold water to help the process and prevent my fingers from looking like Carrie’s after the school dance. I had some homemade pesto to accompany the side veggies.

A quick blueberry vinaigrette with Marley Farm’s blueberry vinegar and some oil would also go well with beets and green beans. One part vinegar to one part oil. Some dried herbs and a smidgen of Dijon mustard is all you need. Mix it up. Yep, fast and dirty.

Upon serving, cut/rip the fresh herbs into the stew and season according to taste. I used only basil and oregano since that’s all I have left in my garden.

For dessert, we had the last of a rhubarb and apple crumble that I had made a few nights back. Basically a bunch of rhubarb chopped into ½ inch slices and apples ( I used Brambley Seedlings and Gravensteins) chopped into 8ths. Altogether about 6 cups of fruit. A tablespoon of cornstarch and a 1/2 cup of local dark fir honey. You could also use regular sugar. I prefer organic cane sugar because adds a nice deep, caramel flavour. A heavy pinch of cinnamon, some ground ginger were also tossed into. Mix everything up. I chopped up a bunch of hazelnuts and tossed those as my crumble topping. Baked in a 350F oven for 30 mins. Drizzle more honey if you want it sweeter. Or top it with some local fruit syrup or jam. I popped a couple of blackberries I gathered.

So good. I’m having leftovers for lunch. I’m such a lucky kid!

Happy Eating!

Jen