Buttered Eggs

The herbs in my garden are perfectly abundant. This recipe won't make much of a dent in the herb proliferation, but the herbs do make the dish!













Buttered Eggs
4 large eggs
salt and pepper
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp cream or half-and-half
1 tbsp mix of parsley, tarragon and thyme, finely chopped

Scramble the eggs lightly and season with salt and pepper. Melt the butter in a frying pan on medium low heat. Pour in the eggs. Cook the eggs slowly, lifting and stirring with a spatula, until they are just cooked. (The liquid will be set but the eggs will still be quite moist.) Remove from the heat. Stir in the cream and herbs. Tip the eggs into a serving dish and set aside to cool. Spread the buttered eggs on rye bread or toasted baguette.

Sources: herbs from my garden; eggs from the farmers' market, Dairyland creamer (made with Saskatchewan milk); Red Fife flour (for the homemade baguettes) from the Loiselle farm.

Tarragon days

Tarragon comes up quickly in spring, so it's one of the first culinary herbs in my kitchen after a long winter. The flavour of tarragon goes well with eggs and tomatoes, so why not combine them for a fresh-from-the-garden breakfast?

 

 

2 big farm eggs, scrambled

1 spring of tarragon, finely cut

Salt and pepper

1 small tomato, chopped

 

Mix egg and tarragon. Season with salt and pepper. Warm a small skillet on medium low heat. Cook the eggs, turning with a spatula to keep them light and fluffy. When the eggs are half done, but still quite moist, add the chopped tomato. Cook until the tomato is warm and the eggs are cooked. Sit by the garden and eat! Local factor: 99%.

Newspaper - PASTA PRIMAVERA WITH FIDDLHEADS AND ASPARAGUS

Published in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix on 15 June, 2009

I love “free” food. By free, I don’t mean no money down. I am referring to food that grows locally, year after year, with no help from human hands. Last month, I wrote about rhubarb, that favourite perennial vegetable that grows so prolifically on the prairies. Rhubarb is a “free” food because it comes back every year with no fuss and bother. Once it’s in the ground, it’s unstoppable.
This month, I’d like to pay homage to two other “free” vegetables that come up from one year to the next with no human intervention—asparagus and fiddleheads. In my garden, rhubarb really is free, but asparagus and fiddleheads are two “free” foods for which I am willing to pay, not having a source of my own.

Fiddleheads are the small tight curls of wild baby ferns before they unfurl in the spring. The name, I am told, refers to the decorative scroll at the end of a fiddle, which it resembles. Two weeks ago, I received a shipment of fiddleheads on the bus at $8 a pound. Not exactly free to me, but free for the picking to anyone inclined to go out in nature and get them. In this case, it was the folks at White Fox Gold, from an area north of Nipawin.

Given the distance, it is considerably cheaper for me to buy these “free” fiddleheads than to go out and pick them myself.

When I arrived at the bus station to pick up my fiddleheads, I discovered a dozen boxes on their way to various restaurants in Saskatoon, so it’s apparent that many local folks have been able to enjoy this “free” spring vegetable, too. Another favourite “free” spring food is asparagus. Once you plant asparagus, and get the bed going, there’s not much left to do but reap the harvest year after year. I don’t have my own asparagus patch, so I buy it at the Saskatoon Farmers’ Market. I saw fiddleheads for sale at the market, too.

One of my favourite “free” foods is the wild saskatoon berry. In fact, I love just about any “free” fruit. Last year, my friend Marlene knocked on a stranger’s door and asked if she could pick his plums, which she could see hanging thick in his back yard. He graciously invited her, and therefore me, to help ourselves. Later in the summer, I may go out and pick wild morel and chanterelle mushrooms. Or, I may opt to buy them. Whether I decide to pay for the gas, or pay for the mushrooms, I am excited about the prospect of procuring these “free” summer foods. I’m a big proponent of eating locally, which for me, includes the “free” food that Mother Nature so generously offers. All the better when it really is free.

Incidentally, the historic Marr Residence in Saskatoon holds a Rhubarb Festival on the long weekend of August (Sun. & Mon.), so we can all pay homage to this hardy “free” food planted by the pioneers. You’ll find more Saskatchewan summer food festivals listed here.

This pasta recipe is made with fresh vegetables as they become available in season (primavera is Italian for first green), also made with asparagus, peas, zucchini, red pepper, eggplant, broccoli, etc. In this version, I precooked the fiddleheads because it is recommended to neutralize the bitterness and mild toxins in raw fiddleheads.

Pasta Primavera
12 fiddleheads
2 tbsp butter
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 chopped onion
2 chopped garlic cloves
12 asparagus, chopped
2 medium carrots, shaved with a vegetable peeler
2 large ripe tomatoes
1 tbsp fresh chopped parsley
1 tbsp fresh chopped basil
salt and pepper to taste
500g bowtie pasta

Bring a pot of lightly salted water to boil. Add the fiddleheads and cook five minutes. Drain.
Melt butter with 1/4 cup olive oil on medium heat. Add onions and garlic. Sauté, stirring, until soft. Add the fiddleheads, asparagus and carrots (or other vegetables of the season). Cook until vegetables are tender.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta. Drain, reserving 1/2 cup pasta cooking water.

Season vegetables with salt and pepper to taste. Add cooked pasta along with the tomatoes, herbs, pasta water and 1/4 cup olive oil. Toss and heat until tomatoes are soft. Serve hot straight from the pot.

Finally, herbs from the garden - CHICKPEA TOMATO SALAD

Supper was a mix of fresh and dried herbs. I picked the tiniest handful of mint, parsley and cilantro in my garden. However, I marinated the lamb with a blend of dried Greek herbs from Deb's of La Ronge. It's a flavourful mixture that comes in regular and law-salt. It was a gift, so I don't know where to buy it. If you're interested, you'll find Deb's contact info here.

Chickpea Tomato Salad

1 cup canned chickpeas, drained

3 green onions, sliced

1 garlic clove, chopped finely

2 tomatoes, chopped

8 slices of cucumber, quartered

2 tbsp herbs (parsley, mint, cilantro)

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tbso fresh-squeezed lemon juice

salt and pepper to taste

Mix everything well before dinner so the flavours blend.

Signs of spring - RICOTTA CHIVE PIE

Yes, the chives are up! So I did what any fanatic kitchen gardener would do – I snipped them off and ate them. Not right then and there in the garden, but later that day, baked into a Ricotta Pie. I also included a few little thyme leaves from the garden, some rosemary from a plant on my kitchen table and some store-bought parsley.

RICOTTA CHIVE PIE
3 tbsp. breadcrumbs
butter for greasing pie plate
4 eggs, room temp.
1/4 cup flour
1 tbsp. fresh chives and other herbs
1/2 tsp. salt and a dashe of pepper
2 cups ricotta cheese
3 slices of crispy-cooked bacon

Oven 400 F. Grease a deep pie plate with butter and sprinkle with breadcrumbs to coat the surface. Shake out excess crumbs. Separate the eggs, beating the yolks lightly with the flour, salt, pepper and herbs. Stir in the ricotta cheese and the bacon. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold into the ricotta mixture until it is loosely mixed. If it’s too stiff to mix, add a bit of cream or milk. Spread into the pie plate, smoothing the top. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a brown crust has formed and a knife inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Soup for a snowy day - ZUPPA del CONTADINA

The first snow always catches me off guard. The lawn chairs were still on the patio! So it’s a good day to make Zuppa del Contadina (Peasant Soup), a tomato soup we made frequently the winter we spent in Italy. Since we have a ton (only slight exaggeration) of tomatoes ripening in the basement, the ingredients are on hand. However, my herbs were under a crust of snow. No matter, sage and oregano can stand the cold. I got out the broom, brushed them off, and snipped a few sprigs for the soup.

My current Saskatchewan food goal is: Every day, eat something I picked with my own hand. So, on the first unoffical day of winter, I have succeeded to do just that.

ZUPPA del CONTADINA

4 tbsp olive oil
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 carrots, peeled and chopped small
2 stalks celery, chopped small
About 12 ripe tomatoes, or a 500 g of canned tomatoes, chopped
a few sprigs of fresh herbs such as parsley, oregano and sage, chopped
salt and pepper
1 litre of soup stock (I used chicken stock)
day-old country bread, toasted

Heat the olive oil in a soup pot. Sauté the onion and garlic until soft. Add the carrots and celery. Cook until tender. Add the chopped tomatoes and herbs, and simmer until they start to cook together. Sprinkle on some salt and fresh pepper. Add the stock, bring to a boil, then simmer on low for an hour or so. Adjust the seasoning to your taste. To serve, place a piece of toasted bread in the bottom of the bowl before spooning on the soup. PS: I like to remove the seeds from the tomatoes before adding them to the soup. Cut the tomatoes in quarters and use a small spoon to scrape out the seeds. Then chop them into smaller pieces for the soup.

Newspaper - PASTA PRIMAVERA

This article appeared in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix on 19 June 2006.

The other day, my husband pointed out that neither of us had a cold last winter. This is quite unusual. He usually gets a doozie of a cold once a year and I might lose a couple days of productive work. As well, I usually suffer a real about of depression come March when it seems that winter will never end. But this year I didn’t feel one iota of blue.

Why not? We didn’t get flu shots. We didn’t take happy pills with our morning oatmeal. So, what changed? In think it was our Saskatchewan diet. For more than a year, we have been making a concerted effort to eat almost exclusively the foods of Saskatchewan at our own dinner table. Could these local foods be better for our health?

Let’s consider vitamin C. Vitamin C reaches maximum levels in fruits and vegetables that ripen on the vine. Over the past winter, we primarily ate Saskatchewan-ripened fruits and vegetables including apples, cherries, saskatoon berries, strawberries, pears, tomatoes and red peppers, maximizing our vitamin C. As well, vitamin and mineral content is highest in foods that are freshly picked, since nutrients diminish with time and processing. We ate Saskatchewan fruits and vegetables when they were in season or quickly froze them for winter freshness.

Studies show that many fresh vegetables from the grocery store have fewer nutrients than they did in the 1960s. This is because commercial varieties have been bred for their uniformity and storability at the expense of nutrients and taste. Local fruit and vegetable growers are more likely to choose plant varieties for their goodness rather than for their ability to look pretty after travelling 2,000 km in the back of a truck.

Many vitamins and minerals boost the immune system so it can fight off germs. These include: vitamin E, abundant in whole grains and canola oil; zinc in meat, eggs and beans; carotenoids in carrots and spinach; and selenium in mushrooms (just to give a few examples).

Omega 3 fatty acids are terrific for fighting depression and disease. They are found in flax, nuts and leafy green plants. Fish that eat seaweed and algae are a good source of omega 3 fatty acids. So are wild game, bison and cattle raised on diets of grass, not grain. At our house, we eat almost exclusively pasture-raised or wild meat from Saskatchewan including chickens, beef, bison, moose and fish. We buy eggs from a farmer who lets his chickens peck in the grass. These eggs have way more omega 3 fatty acids and vitamin A than eggs laid by hens kept inside a barn. That vitamin A also helps to fight a cold.

The B vitamins are good for mental health and are found abundantly in the whole grains Saskatchewan is so famous for. Also good for depression are the magnesium in cabbage and folate in lentils. Perhaps all that coleslaw and barley soup we ate this winter were good for my body and my spirit. All this talk about colds has left little room to mention the long-term anti-cancer benefits of saskatoon berries and sour cherries, the healing properties of honey and yogurt, and the cholesterol-lowering advantages of oatmeal. All in all, our Saskatchewan diet didn’t just taste good, it was good for us, too.

Take advantage of the freshest disease-fighting vegetables with this terrific and easy pasta dish. The word ‘primavera’ means ‘first green’ and we can never eat enough of that!

PASTA PRIMAVERA
Melt 2 tbsp. and 1/2 cup of olive oil in a pot. Sauté a chopped onion and some chopped garlic. Then toss in a whole bunch of vegetables in bite-sized pieces. For example, green beans, asparagus, zucchini, spinach, snap peas, carrots, sweet peppers and fiddleheads. Season with salt and pepper. Meanwhile, cook the pasta (I prefer bowties or rotini with this dish). When the vegetables are cooked but still crunchy, toss in the drained pasta along with several chopped tomatoes and a couple tbsp. of chopped fresh herbs like parsley, basil and cilantro. Add more oil if necessary so the pasta is nicely moist, adjust the salt and cook until the tomatoes are warm.

Greens coming out of my ears! - PERSIAN EGG PIE

This morning for breakfast I had yogurt with saskatoon berries. There -- I fulfilled my daily requirement to eat something picked by my own hand. I picked those saskatoons last summer at Last Mountain Lake. For supper, I tried a new recipe that I call a Persian Egg Pie. It's adapted from a recipe that I found in "Flatbreads and Flavours" by Naomi Duguid and Jeffrey Alford. Eventhough this dish originates in Iran, it's made with ingredients found here in Saskatchewan.

I met Jeffrey and Naomi a few years ago when I interviewed them for a radio documentary about homemade bread for the CBC program Ideas. They're my heroes - travelling the world, collecting photos and recipes, and writing fabulous cookbooks. If I were stranded on a desert island with a well-stocked kitchen, this is the cookbook I would want to have with me. In that cookbook, this dish is called koukouye sabzi.

PERSIAN EGG PIE
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1.5 cup spinach leaves, shredded
1/2 cup finely chopped green onions
1/2 cup finely chopped parsley
1/2 cup finely chopped cilantro
2 tbsp. finely chopped dill
8 eggs
1/2 cup pine nuts
2 tsp. all purpose flour
1/4 tsp. baking powder
2 tbsp. plain yogurt
salt and pepper and vegetable oil

Mix together all the chopped greens. In another bowl, beat the eggs and pine nuts. In a cup, mix the flour and water to a paste. In another cup, mix the yogurt and baking powder.

Stir the flour paste into the eggs. Stir in the yogurt mixture. Season with salt and pepper. Pour this egg mixture over the vegetables and herbs and blend well.

Heat a cast iron skillet on low heat. Add the vegetable oil and swirl it around the bottom and sides of the pan. Pour in the egg mixture. Put the skillet in the oven (325 degrees F) and bake about 35 minutes, until the eggs are set in the middle. Serve warm or cold, as an appetizer or a light meal with bread.

Week 49 - STUFFED ONIONS

Saskatchewan Menu of the Week - 18 March 2006

Breakfast - Yogurt with cherries.
Lunch - Baguette and ham sausage.
Dinner - Green salad. Stuffed onions.

STUFFED ONIONS
I found this recipe in a French cookbook from the library. My husband loves it and it has been a regular on our dinner table ever since. I usually use ground pork or a mix of ground pork and beef.

4 large white onions
1 cup cooked ground meat
2 tbsp. chopped chives
2 tbsp. chopped herbs (parsley, thyme, rosemary – whatever you have on hand. If using dried, cut the amount in half.)
1/2 cup grated Gruyere cheese (or other robust hard cheese)
1 hard boiled egg

Cut a slice off the top of each onion about 1/2 inch thick. Peel the onions and boil them whole in water about 30 minutes, until cooked through. Drain the onions and set aside to cool enough to handle. Using your fingers, gently remove the inner layers of onion, leaving a stable exterior wall about 1/2 inch thick.

Mix the meat, herbs and half the cheese. Add salt and pepper to taste. Separate the whites and yolk of the hard-boiled egg. Mash both separately. Add the whites to the meat mixture. Spoon the meat mixture into the four hollow onions. Top each one with egg yolk and the remaining cheese, dividing evenly among each onion. Bake in a greased pan at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Newspaper CHICKEN CACCIATORE

This column first appeared in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix on 19 February 2006

One of the crazy food words that keeps popping into my head is Catch-a-Tory. Perhaps this is because we just had a federal election. When I was a kid, somebody’s mother made Chicken Catch-A-Tory and I thought it had something to do with the federal election of 1974. Funny what kids think! In 1974, the Liberal party under Pierre Trudeau won a majority government, catching a few seats from the Tories. So, it made obvious sense to me that this dish was named in anticipation of Tory defeat.

In the U.S., a Tory was someone who sided with the British in the American War of Independence, and youngsters there learn that Catch-a-Tory had something to do with catching the enemy. This is just a joke, of course, because it’s not really Chicken Catch-a-Tory. It’s Chicken Cacciatore, which I discovered years later means "hunter" in Italian. So, correctly translated, the dish is called Chicken Hunter-Style.

In Italy, a dish that is "hunter" style includes tomatoes, mushrooms and herbs. While it is most popular nowadays with chicken, it is also a great way to prepare rabbit, lamb and wild fowl. I can just imagine the burly Italian "cacciatore" out for a day of pheasant hunting, filling his pockets with lusty oregano and thyme from underfoot, and picking a handful of wild mushrooms on the walk home. Since hunting takes place in autumn, tomatoes would be ripening on the vine. Add a few cloves of garlic, and there you have the makings of a delicious supper. Best of all, this dish can be made entirely from foods grown in Saskatchewan.

Since last April, I have been focussing all my kitchen energy on local Saskatchewan foods. I am always looking for new and wonderful ways to prepare the great bounty this province has to offer. I spend endless pleasant hours poring over cookbooks from France, Italy, Germany, Mexico, the Middle East and even Japan, searching for new ways of preparing local ingredients. It’s proof that a Saskatchewan meal doesn’t have to be meat and potatoes. After all, if our farmers are growing food to feed the world, we might as well see what the world is doing with it.

Pasta is a great example. Canada is the biggest producer of durum wheat for pasta in the world, and 80 percent of that is grown in Saskatchewan. A good portion is exported to pasta makers in places like Italy and the United States. To ensure that I am eating Saskatchewan durum wheat, I buy only pasta that is made in Canada. My personal favourite is Primo pasta because it states clearly on the label that it is made with Canadian amber durum wheat. (Many packaged foods don’t say where it’s made or where the ingredients come from, in part because the manufacturers don’t want you to know. They don’t want you basing your food purchases on local preferences – unless, of course, they are local and proud of it.)

Chicken cacciatore is an old recipe with many variations. Here’s mine...

Chicken Cacciatore
Cut a chicken into serving pieces. If you’re buying chicken pieces, choose those still on the bone. In a big cast iron frying pan, heat 2 tbsp. of vegetable oil. Sprinkle the meat with salt and pepper. Brown the meat on all sides in hot oil. Remove chicken from pan.

To the oil add 1 onion, 1 green pepper and 2 cloves of garlic, all chopped. Sauté until soft. Pour on 1/2 cup of dry red wine and simmer until it is almost evaporated, scraping up any brown bits in the pan. Add a mix of herbs to your taste: basil, oregano, thyme and/or rosemary. Return chicken to pan.

Add 10 chopped tomatoes from the garden, fresh or thawed. (Or 1 can of tomatoes and their juice.) Lastly, toss in a handful of chopped mushrooms. (I use chanterelles picked last summer near La Ronge.) Cover and simmer on low for 2 hours. If it gets dry, add some water. Adjust salt and pepper as needed. Meanwhile, cook spaghetti or other long pasta. Serve the cacciatore sauce on the pasta with a piece of chicken on the side.

Week 21 - RATATOUILLE

Menu of the Week -- 9 September 2005

Breakfast – Baguette with tomato.
Dinner – Corn-on-the-cob.
Dinner – Baked trout. Ratatouille.

RATATOUILLE
This dish is a taste of southern France. (Pronounced rat-a-TOO-yee.) It’s good hot or cold. It can be served as a side dish or as a salad with crusty bread. And best of all, it has zucchini! (Did I mention that zucchini is my favourite summer vegetable?) Try ratatouille next to a grilled pork chop or serve with Ricotta Pie (recipe at Week 9). In some versions of this recipe, the vegetables are each cooked separately and mixed together just before serving.

1/2 cup olive oil
a few cloves of garlic
2 pounds of vegetables including: onion, eggplant, red pepper, tomatoes and zucchini (about equal amounts of each).
1T fresh thyme and basil (or lesser amount of dried)
salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a skillet. Cook the sliced onion slowly until soft. Slice and/or chop the other vegetables and add to the skillet (except zucchini). Cook until the vegetables release their liquid. Turn up the heat and boil off most of the liquid. Add zucchini and herbs. Simmer until the zucchini is cooked. Season with salt and pepper to taste. To serve, drizzle with olive oil and garnish with basil leaves.

Week 4 - HERB FRITATTA

Saskatchewan Menu of the Week - May 13.

Breakfast - Oatmeal porridge with maple syrup.
Lunch - Chicken soup with homemade bread.
Dinner - Herb fritatta and a baby lettuce salad.

Herb Fritatta
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp fresh chopped chives
1 tbsp other fresh herbs (thyme, parsley, rosemary, etc.)
6 eggs
1/4 cup ricotta cheese
water
salt and pepper

Melt the butter in a non-stick pan on medium low heat. Sauté the chives until soft. Add the other herbs and wilt.

Stir the eggs with the ricotta cheese, a dash of water, salt and pepper. Pour the eggs into the pan with the herbs. Do not stir. Cook, lifting the edges to allow the eggs to run underneath. Cook until the egg mixture in the middle of the pan is no longer runny.

Place a large plate over the pan and flip it, so the fritatta is on the plate. Then slide it back into the pan. Cook briefly until the bottom side is cooked and starting to brown.

Sources: Bennett eggs; herbs from the farmers' market.