The BBQ made a late appearance in le jardin this summer.
And it was pleased to host a variety of sausages picnic - all were purchased from D Original Sausage Haus in Steveston (130 - 12000 First Avenue).
All D Original Sausage Haus sausages are hand made locally. The variety and names of the sausages were endless and I did not take my reporter note book with me for names.
Herr Hertha, if you are reading this, maybe you can guess what we ate bitte.
I love jardin picnics.
Und vielen dank D Original Sausage Haus.
The jardin hosted a simple, yet colourful, Spanish picnic today.
Cheese and Spanish Chicken Salad was all it took.
The cheese is probably the only Basque cheese one can find in Vancouver - Idiazabal; one I will be buying again.
The Chicken salad, unfortunately, is more difficult to reproduce. Even if I knew how to make it, I will never be able to reproduce the platter design aspect.
Enjoy the picnic's photo gallery below.
The last series of the somerville kitchen wow food festival is brought to you from our country with a perfect roast beef Sunday dinner.
Accompanied by an inventive carrots, green beans and zucchini bake with carrot oil dressing.
With fresh Chilliwack fresh boiled corn.
Carbs were present in the form of roasted new potatoes.
And more carbs in the form of popovers.
I love those ethnic Sunday dinners.
Of course, no somerville kitchen food fest will exclude Lebanon.
And it was a major Lebanese feasting extravaganza.
The Kebbeh was of course the star of the show, surrounded by Humus, Baba Ghanouj, and fried Kebbeh patties.
The Rice and Chicken cake turned out so perfectly that this production made with a whole chicken, two cups of rice and 0.5 kilo ground beef was efficiently devoured by a handful of guests.
And finally, a platter of Mehshi - stuffed grape vine leaves, stuffed zucchini and, any guesses of what else was stuffed and stacked on the far right hand side of the platter?
Cucumbers!
A Basque country style tortillas in all the colours of the rainbow were the central theme of this somerville kitchen happy party.
The temperature of the party went up few degrees with the accompanying Basque style Sangria (with not only wine but gin and cointreau - very tipsying).
Happy guests brought over more food to match the theme, so there was more than any stomach could handle. And all home made and exceptionally good.
So all clicked their glasses, their feet and had a jolly time.
Back to those Basque Country tortillas. There was the plain one of course (potatoes, onions and eggs).
But also the fancy ones with a vegetarian version with red and green peppers.
And the non-vegetarian star tortilla with ham, tuna, cheese, mayonnaise, lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers - all beautifully stacked in between the tortilla's layers.
And if you thought this was not enough, the home made gazpacho made a very elegant appearance.
Happy, relaxed, having fun, the Basque Country party spirit was beautifully transported to somerville kitchen.
Thank you CP and all the contributing chefs for making this such a beautiful evening.
As if my guest 'baba' did not work hard on the holubsti meal (read Wow Ukrainian), he continued on to make home made пиріжки.
The dough made with sour cream, with endless rolling afternoons.
So what is wacky about home made пиріжки you ask?
When the cheese and potato stuffing was consumed, the remainder dough was filled with blueberries and jardin raspberries.
The result was two platters to choose from (thank you 'baba' for not mixing them all and left it to our luck).
All were fried after boiling. Savoury or sweet, all were beyond authentically tasting (and delicious too).
Thank you again 'baba' for the meal and all the frozen left overs - anyone wants to seduce a Ukrainian dinner out of me? Make a barter product or service offer...
somerville kitchen had the pleasure of hosting a Ukrainian male version of a 'baba' to make us голубці.
(By the way, while the word 'baba' may be derogatory in Russian, it is not in Ukrainian. It simply means grandmother. In Arabic, it means daddy).
The production was majestic to say the least. "This is way too much food" I tell the 'baba'. "But this is the only way to cook it" replies the 'baba'. Well, it freezes well.
By the way, голубці (holubtsi) is cabbage roll.
Rather than being stuffed with lots of rice and a bit of meat, this was heavy on the meat and very light on the rice.
In addition to beef, the stuffing included chunks of smoked pork.
The amount of stuffing produced was humongous and it took two large cabbages to absorb it all.
Along the way, I learnt the authentic Ukranian layering of the pot - how beautiful this looked.
They were not exceptionally thick as you'd see commercially, which meant hours and hours of rolling for the poor 'baba'.
And then there were more hours of low heat cooking to produce a fantastic голубці feast.
Thank you dear 'baba' for the meal and the massive amount of frozen leftovers.
