What to Eat with Jardin Chard?

The jardin chard is loving the warmth of the past few days and is overgrowing its allotted jardin space quickly. 

So I went around and cut off all the different leaves throughout the jardin.

And to my surprise, I seem to have grown every chard stem colour available.

There were the red, the pink, the orange and the yellow. They looked so beautiful, I just wanted to admire those colours.

I spent too much time admiring my chard that I was running out of time to cook anything useful. 

To the rescue came frozen Tourtieres from The Butcher (more details at Discovering West 10th Foods entry). Heated up in the toaster oven and were ready to eat, packed with quality meat and tasting like they were just beamed up from La Belle Provence.

Back to the chard, they were fried in some olive oil along with garlic and lemon juice and served nicely next to Les Tourtieres.

The joy of le jardin!

Boys Will Be Boys

Two boys bored on a hot afternoon. 

Two boys decided to climb snow peas stalks and look for a giant.

One boy was too heavy to climb up and almost fell off the stalk.

Two boys decided to play another game.

Let's have a contest to see who can find the most snow peas, one said. 

Let me get us two bowls so no one cheats, said the other.

One, two, three, go!

These snow peas are very difficult to find.

When the cat meowed, one bowl had five, one bowl had two.

The winner was happy he won, he hates losing in games.

Sfoof, Cookies And.... A Scarf

Today, someville kitchen is one month away from its one year anniversary (or blogoversary as my buddy Mr. Puddy calls it). Before I bore you with statics, I want to share a sweet somerville kitchen story.

At the end of May, I featured Sfoof (see Sfoof Entry). At the end of that feature, I included the following:

Too lazy to try this? Make a barter offer and I will bake some for you - eshmun@shaw.ca -

And a follower that I have not met until then took me up on it.

This follower wanted to treat an older Lebanese neighbour of hers who has been here for a long time and misses the food from his country. She offered to make me a scarf in return for a tray of Sfoof for her neighbour.

The Sfoof seem to have been a hit with the neighbour who said they tasted just like home.

In return, I got an extremely elegant handmade wool scarf - grey with coloured specks in it.

You know who you are, thank you very much again and it was a pleasure meeting you in person.

Anyone else looking to barter something for Sfoof, offer is on for another month.

And the gifting did not stop at Sfoof.

Two months ago today, I ran a contest inviting readers to publicly follow the blog and win cookies (see Follow the Blog, Win Cookies).

In the month of May, somerville kitchen followers increased by 42% percent. Which meant dozens of cookies delivered throughout the city. There were peanut butter cookies (see Cookie Factory) and chocolate cookies.

A new follower who liked the cookies so much took this picture and tagged it on somerville kitchen Facebook page (search for somerville kitchen if you want to be our friend on Facebook).

Given the popularity of the contest, it is back on - any new public followers in the month of July will get a jar of cookie.

Thank you all who have been following somerville kitchen for the past 11 months and making it a fun community. The traffic has been increasing by 10% every month with close to 1800 page views in May alone. Look for exciting novelties on the one year anniversary coming up and please keep following. Stories, comments and inquiries are welcome at eshmun@shaw.ca

Can't Forget About 4th of July

Given that I was given the day off, I could not ignore the 4th of July. It needed its own celebration and flag cake.

This was a brownie base covered with cream, blueberries and raspberries. Looks good methinks.

This whole idea of flag cakes (see the Canada Day one at Canada Day in Red & White) came from Ina.

Yes, the one and only Barefoot Contessa Ina Garten, introduced to me via a cookbook as gift from one of the somerville kitchen fans (you know who you are - thank you again).

Ina has the most interesting cooking ideas, I am discovering, including those flag cakes. Hers is a more tasty recipe for a sour cream vanilla cake as base. But I have been cooking all weekend and needed to be lazy, so brownies it was. 

Ina also lists a full 4th of July dinner menu including Tuna Tartar, Tequila Lime Chicken and Sagaponack Corn Pudding. Again, I needed to be lazy, so the Tequila Lime Chicken it was.

A really easy recipe. Chicken is marinated overnight in a mixture of Tequila, garlic, lime, and jalapeno peppers. It is quiet intense and you could see the chicken turning white as it soaked in all those ingredients.

The chicken is then grilled. Amazing how all those strong flavours, once absorbed by the chicken, come out very subtle in the taste. The chicken was tender and charred nicely from the outside given the alcohol.

And no, I did not finish the rest of the Tequila bottle as I waited for the chicken to cook.

Given the almost heat wave we were having, somerville kitchen moved again to le jardin, learning from the talented Replacement Chef (see Know It All Borscht). 

Potatoes were roasted, jardin lettuce was picked and mixed with a lime-olive oil dressing and a nice 4th of July outdoor picnic was enjoyed. 

Thank you Ina, Thank you book gifter.

Canada Day BBQ in Red & White

An end of Canada Day BBQ weekend with food in red and white to make up for the lack of red and white in the guests' attires.

A flag angle cake designed manually with strawberries and cream was the adorable highlight of the evening.

The rage of the summer at somerville kitchen, halloom sails, were dressed up with tomatoes for the occasion. 

Babushka Kitty Sez's call yesterday for more borscht was repeated by a guest's charming cat star acting as Babushka... (see end of yesterday's post - know it all borscht).

 

And the full pot of borscht was emptied into the guests' tummies, dressed up with sour cream.

A fancy sausage bar with red (hot red Italian sausages) and white (chicken and cilantro sausages) grilled to perfection...

...and served with fancy buns and the fancy bar's condiments featuring Stilton cheese, pickles, bacon bits, jardin lettuce, german mustard, harissa sauce, chilli sauce, ketchup, and cwikla (beets with horseradish).

We cleansed our palates with a fresh beets and Stilton cheese salad dressed with fresh jardin mint and olive oil.

And when the flag cake was fully consumed, another one in the shape of the aromatic Colac Secuiese Romanian tube dessert was served with fresh local strawberries.

 

Know It All Borscht

Replacement Chef moved somerville kitchen into the jardin to prepare an authentic Borscht. I followed like a paparazzi taking pictures and recording comments.

If it grows in a Saskatchewan garden, you throw it in. But you never include pepper, broccoli, tomatoes, or zucchini.

The hard vegetables (carrots and turnips as opposed to cabbage) get cooked first. And a good Borscht has to include cabbage; maybe not beets, but definitely cabbage.

These vegetables don't have flavour, so you have to inject flavour with lots of onions, garlic, salt and pepper.

The onions should be diced well. Stringy onions are no good for the soup. Onions are cooked in vegetable oil, you know why? And I guessed right - there was no olive oil in Saskatchewan when Ukrainians first came en masse to the province. 

Appropriately, music by the talented Ukrainian Zeellia was playing making the experience even more authentic. 

The jardin kitchen was set up with the portable cooking range (see Somerville Camp Upgrade) making the event 100% jardin-based.

The ingredient that no one remembers is vinegar. This cuts the sweetness of the beets and adds flavour. The most disgusting Borscht is one with no vinegar.

The beets are divided into two batches. Some are treated like hard vegetables and they are cooked first. Those should be cut into stripes.

But given that the heat destroys the colour, the rest are put at the end to keep the colour vibrant. Those are cut into small dices. 

Dill are also like beets, they are put in first and then at the end again.

You use chicken broth and chicken bouillon cubes. Those make the broth thicker. The broth has to be &@#*@! intense.  

And it sure looked intense when it was all done.

The red colour was so natural and beautiful. It tasted just perfect as far as I was concerned (well, nothing is perfect according to replacement chef). 

Now what to do with all this Borscht? Babushka Kitty Sez came to the rescue...

Thank you replacement chef!

Canada Day Cooking with Cats

Cats spent all morning running around with the Canadian Flag so I had to indulge him and prepare a full scale Canadian Meal.

So I picked up my favourite Canadian cookbook that I have had since the 90s - Anita Stewart's Country Inn Cooking featuring recipes from Inns and Bed & Breakfasts from coast to coast.


Lamb Stew with Sherry from The Sherwood Inn, Muskoka, Ontario

A simple recipe where lamb pieces are marinated in sherry and garlic for half a day. They are then sprinkled with salt, pepper, caraway seeds and flour, fried with onions, then simmered in the marinade for an hour.

Very tender, somewhat sweet tasting, and filled the kitchen with beautiful aroma for Canada Day.


Potatoes Romanoff from Victoria Village Inn, Victoria-by-the-Sea, P.E.I.

Not low in cholesterol for sure, but it is a holiday and feasting is on the agenda.

A simple bake of mashed potatoes, mixed with an egg, garlic, parsley, cottage cheese and sour creme and sprinkled with Canadian Cheddar cheese. All are baked until the cheese is melted and golden.

The owner of the Inn, with the name of Anne, apparently serves this recipe frequently to enhance the taste of what she refers to as a bland vegetable.

It is boiled cucumber that is then cooked with butter and dill. 

Not sure this enhances the taste of cucumbers, but it was worth the fun.

Bannock from Salmon 'n' Bannock Bistro, Vancouver, BC

Discovering something called Bannock and reading up on it couldn't have been more of a Canadian thing to do on Canada day.

The recipe from the Bistro was very simple and all worked smoothly and in less than 15 minutes.

They were nice, fluffy, a bit sweet. But are they supposed to be served with savory or as a sweet treat?


Overall, a fun meal to make. The potatoes were the highlight. I'd rather eat the cucumbers fresh and next time the Bannocks may have icing sugar sprinkled on them or served with sugar syrup (now that is probably not very Canadian, eh?)
 

This is a view of the jardin sky from the cat's point of view sitting on the picnic table the end of a nice warm Canada Day evening. Happy Canada Day. More celebrations coming up throughout the weekend, stay tuned!