Eat More Kale

The amazing Tricia Sedwick of the urban farm and garden project, World in a Garden, educated, entertained and fed us as part of the Eat More Kale workshops.

If you missed this one, somerville kitchen is holding one with Tricia Sedwick next Saturday May 4 - click HERE to register.

Held at one of the Choices Market facilities (key supporters of World in a Garden), Tricia told us about the varieties of Kale, its nutritional value and all the delicious and easy foods you can make with it.

I learned about the different nutrients of kale eaten raw versus cooked (both methods are nutritious but in different ways), the tastiness of kale buds, the edibleness of its flowers and how to let it go to seed to grow a kale forest.  

As part of the fun, we learned about Happy Planet's Grow More Food promotion as we used their cartons to plant our own kale to take home to le jardin.

And most important we tasted kale foods.

The kale smoothies were sweet and sour, great tasting and beautifully coloured.

This included, in addition to lots of kale, apple cider, lemon juice, honey, bananas and ginger. 

Delicious and refreshing.

And we tasted the made from scratch this morning kale chips.

Tricia makes those in her dehydrator. 

I am yet to try making them, but I can see myself getting addicted to them.



Thank you Tricia and World in A Garden for this great workshop.

And my dear readers, there are still some tickets available for the next workshop at somerville kitchen so join us and learn about kale, try some foods (including more than just kale chips and smoothies), support an amazing food growing project, and walk away with kale seeds. Click HERE to register.

Cooking 101

somerville kitchen's wedding gift to a newly wed young couple today was a 3-hour Cooking 101 course.

The couple arrived enthusiastic about cooking and willing to learn. They rolled their sleeves, picked up the course's notes, put their intimidation about cooking aside and the fun begun.

Basics of meat and chicken, chopping vegetables, spicing, baking and frying. They also learned about salad dressings and home made pasta sauce.

They made some burgers and experienced different ways of making eggs, having their own omelettes and scrambled eggs with burgers for breakfast.

Lunch followed breakfast an hour later with an on-site chicken vegetable stir fry that they made (from marinating the meat, to the three basic steps in stir fry - base flavours, meats and vegetables - to making rice).

Later that night, I received a picture of their dinner.

This included a meat loaf and mashed potato that they put together during the class and took home (yes, one can produce all of this in three hours).

What was emphasized most during the class was not the techniques of cooking but eliminating the intimidation of cooking. Let's get comfortable with mixing things together, with getting our hands dirty, having fun in the kitchen and not be afraid of spices as they walked away with samplers of each of the six Rick's Rubs. 

And let's not forget dessert. 

Those are not the easiest to make, but with a bit of yogurt, blueberries, whipped cream and some creativity, fun desserts can be made to impress the most pretentious guests.

Wait, there was also cake making. 

From a cake mix, a cake was baked, creamed and beautified with sprinkles and carried home by the student bakers for a fun after dinner dessert.

All had fun and the newly wed walked out with not only their own made dinner and dessert but with spices, bay leaves, recipes and cookbooks.

Congratulations again CaD and here's to a long fun home cooking life together.





Click here for the three available cooking classes so far at somerville kitchen.  Contact somervillekitchenwindow@gmail.com to arrange any cooking classes and workshops for your upcoming occasion.

Contestant Winners Enjoy Lebanese Brunch Cooking Class

Last month I ran a contest to increase blog traffic - Win a Lebanese Brunch Cooking Class.

Today, four winners enjoyed learning, making and eating "a wonderful array of culinary firsts", according to one attendee.

To get all brains focused, we kicked off the class with making "Turkish" coffee. 

One of the key lessons about making Turkish coffee is to ensure that it does not boil over the stove. To get the point across clearly, I succeeded in boiling it over!

We were now all set to proceed to the first course - Sahlab. 

A breakfast drink, a starter of fancy Lebanese salons' brunches; this is milk cooked with salep flour (you can read all about this at Wikipedia's link). 

Easy to make, but you need to find the authentic brands (look for Sahlab, Salep, or roots of orchids mascula on the ingredient list). We made and drank it hot, sprinkled with cinnamon.

We then moved to learning the techniques of making Manakeesh.

While a detailed recipe and instructions on how to make it are on the blog (see Sunday Home Made Manakeesh entry), nothing beats getting your hands dirty (literally) pounding the zaatar and oil mix into the dough.

We baked and ate them hot. Great work "girls", they turned out excellent.

Everyone was then put to work one way or another. One poor contestant was stuck with squeezing lemons on somerville kitchen's cute hand squeezer that can do one lemon well, then becomes completely dysfunctional.

Lemon was used to make Foul Moudamas - fava beans dressed with a lemon, olive oil, garlic and salt. We sprinkled chopped parsley on it. Some even experimented with it on top Manakeesh. 

But nothing made the participants more proud of themselves than their perfect Lebanese Baked Omelette. Packed with shallots, parsley, diced zucchini and green peppers.

It must be your excellent chopping, buttering and whisking!

No Lebanese brunch is complete without Kanafeh. There are two versions, one that you can see at Breakfast in Toronto (my favourite), but difficult to make. The other is easier, using shredded dough (Kataifi).

Hands were busy buttering the baking dish, buttering the dough, layering it all. It baked as we cleaned up and geared up to end our learning and feasting.

Kanefeh was drizzled with Kater (Lebanese sugar syrup) and it was enjoyed hot from the oven; served with cafe blanc. This is hot water with a tiny bit of sugar and a tsp of orange blossom water - the ultimate in Lebanese brunch sophistication.


As one participant put it "Wow!!! Great brunch menu! Lots of great flavours!! A very enjoyable way to learn and taste new things!"

All had fun, all were well fed and everyone walked out with a little care package: a can of Foul Moudamas, an envelope of Sahlab and the full recipes of all we cooked.

Thank you all for coming, being great sports, having a big appetite and making this a fun day.

Special thanks for the pictures "girls". As I was busy running the workshop, the participants were helping documenting our fun day.

And glad to hear you enjoyed your time; after all you deserve it, look at the traffic you generated in October - the highest ever with close to 2500 visits in one month. Thank you!

Cooking Class Party @ somerville kitchen

somerville kitchen was approached to put together a cooking class for a birthday party, and what a great idea that was.

A full menu with recipes, ingredients to buy and material to bring was sent to the participants last week.

Today, 7 young girls showed up with their groceries, aprons, positive attitude to learn and cases of beer and ciders to start the party at the class.

And full four hours of fun begun.

First of all, birthday hats came out (including one for the instructor/chef - moi). The birthday girl had her own special handmade hat (but that did not prevent her from working hard throughout the class).

Arabic dance music blasting, drinks poured and gulped, making 8 vegetarian Lebanese dishes, with each girl choosing a dish to lead its preparation, was on its way.

Mehshi Warak Ateh was the kickoff. The leader delegated stuffing prep then they were shown how to roll the leaves.

They were amazing - they picked up on the skill of rolling grapevine leaves in 3 seconds and within less than 15 minutes a large pot of vegetarian stuffed vine leaves was ready to start cooking.

Then they all got busy making Loubieh and Bamieh bi Zeit (green beans and okra cooked with onions, garlic and tomatoes) Moudardara, and Eggplant Fatteh.

Once those got cooking on the stove, we moved to making authentic humus, followed by the salads of Fatoush and Tabouleh.

The most fun these participants had, believe it or not, was learning how to grill pita bread for the Fatoush and Fatteh.

I got them paranoid about how quickly it may burn so they watched the oven like hawks. And they were so proud of how perfect their grilling was.

Four hours later, everything was packed, final questions answered, and they took the food back to the party house for four more hours of drinking and feasting. 

Here is their feedback

"you are such a gracious host, it was a lot of fun. The food was absolutely amazing and you know everyone enjoyed it when all went home with doggie bags".

For information about such events for your upcoming birthday, office or holiday party, please contact somervillekitchenwindow@gmail.com. 

Contest Winner Cooking Live at somerville kitchen

Back in October (see October 8 entry -  And the Winner Is...) Empress was the winner of a one-week-menu contest. Her prize was to spend a Saturday cooking her favourite meals from the blog. And today was that Saturday where the Empress, along with the runner-up, joined me for a day at somerville kitchen. This is what was waiting for them:

The menu Empress chose included:
- Humus (see Lebanese Feast)
- Mehshi Warak (see Mehshi Warak)
- Rice and Chicken Cake (see Lebanese Feast) 
- Mom's vegan lentil soup (see Mom's Vegan Lentil Soup) 

The two ladies got busy very quickly squeezing lemons, chopping onions, cutting potatoes, preparing the meat, and rolling vine leaves. 

They were also taking notes, asking questions, drinking wine, munching on Empress's authentic Hungarian Kaposta Testa (see October 25 entry Moody Monday) and having fun.


Four hours later, and prior to them leaving with full meals to wrap up and serve at their own homes, we settled for tea and Anita's lemon and chocolate cupcakes. You now see why it is worth keeping an eye on somerville kitchen contests!

Thank you both for the fun and all you brought with you.