Prairie Kitchens - Kvass

On summer days, I recall my mom baking in the early morning and airing out the house before it got hot outside. In pioneer times, she might just as likely have moved the kitchen outside. Summer kitchens were a cool antidote to wood stoves and long hot days.

At the start of summer, the kitchen supplies were moved to a shed or lean-to where meals were cooked and eaten. Sometimes the summer kitchen had its own wood stove, but often the heavy cast iron stove was also moved out from the house.

In the cookbook Taste of Time (published by the Saskatoon Council on Aging) Eva Hazelwanter reminisces about the summer kitchen on her Doukhobor family farm near Petrofka Bridge.

She writes, "each summer pots and pans, etc. were moved a short way down the hill to the summer kitchen. It was a log structure with a corrugated tin roof that turned beautiful colours in the rain. Here we cooked and ate in the hot sun and escaped to the cool big house at night."

Today's equivalent might be the backyard barbeque. However, we might also imitate the Doukhobors and serve a refreshing cold cucumber soup called kvass. When the Doukhobors came from Russia in 1899, they were vegetarian so, no doubt, they had a broad repertoire of cold, vegetable dishes prepared with the bounty of their own prairie gardens. According to Eva, kvass was served for lunch with a plate of fried potatoes.

Kvass
2 tbsp grated onion
1/4 cup fresh dill
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups grated cucumber
2 tbsp vinegar or lemon juice
2 cup water

In a bowl, mash together onion, dill and salt until the salt is dissolved and the juices run. Add cucumber, vinegar or lemon juice and water. The soup can be eaten immediately or refrigerated for an hour to let the flavours chill and meld. Before serving, stir in enough ice cold water to make a thin soup.

Do you have an ethnic recipe transplanted to Saskatchewan? Tell me! Send me a comment and follow at Twitter.com/prairiefeast.

(This article first appeared in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix.)

Delivery service - LENTIL AND CUCUMBER SALAD

There was a bit of a bottleneck at our house this week. Marc Loiselle dropped by with a bag of Red Fife Wheat, just as Al Bennett arrived with 20 dozen eggs and a whole bunch of ground beef. I had to do some tricky rearranging in the freezer, because the next day Karen Dale delivered six chickens. Well, I could only get five into the freezer, which meant we had chicken for supper. I just love it when the grocery store comes to me!

LENTIL AND CUCUMBER SALAD
2 cups cooked lentils
¼ cup green onions, thinly sliced
¼ cup fresh cilantro, chopped (or parsley)
1 cup diced cucumber
¼ cup crumbled feta cheese

Dressing
½ tsp each cumin, coriander, mustard seeds and peppercorns
2 tbsp vegetable oil
½ tbsp balsamic vinegar
½ tsp salt

Mix together the lentils and other salad ingredients. Dressing: toast the whole seeds in a dry frying pan. Grind in a spice grinder or mortar. Mix with the other dressing ingredients and stir into lentils.

Hanley Bread Series #3 - FATTOUSH

This is the third installment in a series of receipes using the free bread "reward" for filling up at the gas station in Hanley, Saskatchewan.

Fattoush is a bread and vegetable salad. In the Middle East, it would be made with pita bread, but this is Saskatchewan, so I made it with the free loaf I got for filling up at the gas station in Hanley. The cucumber, lettuce, bell pepper and tomatoes came from the Saskatoon Farmers’ Market, and the mint was from my garden.

Cut four slices of hearty day-old bread. Remove crusts. Toast and cut into cubes. Chop the vegetables: cucumber, bell pepper (red, green or both), lettuce, parsley, green onions and mint. Include as much as you like of each one. Make a dressing of ¼ cup olive oil, ¼ cup lemon juice, salt and pepper. Toss all the vegetables with the dressing. A few minutes before serving, toss in the bread. I served this salad with a ground lamb 'pizza' called Sfeeha (see 30 April 2007).