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.

Newspaper Column - TOMATO MINT SALAD

Published in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix, 20 May 2008.

Curiosity got the best of me. I have often seen the mayor and his wife strolling the aisles of the Saskatoon Farmers’ Market and wondered, What do they buy? What does the mayor think as he wanders the market that he envisioned for the untapped potential of south downtown? How does it fit with his vision for Riversdale revitalization? And why is he always wearing a suit? Isn’t Saturday morning a bit early for a suit? Apparently not when you’re the mayor.

When I recently made arrangements to meet Mayor Don Atchison and his wife Mardele at the farmers’ market, he came dressed in a colourful pinstripe shirt and casual pants. He only wears a suit, he says, when he’s dashing to official functions and Mardele insists they stop at the market on the way. As it turns out, they are big fans of the farmers’ market.

“We always try to buy local,” says the mayor. “Mardele is a wonderful cook, as you can tell by looking at me.” It could also be his favourite sugar cookies, to which he makes a beeline the minute we walk in the market door. Mardele’s first purchase is a bunch of fresh-cut pussy willows. She is on the hunt for mint, and for that we head outside.

Since early May, many of the market vendors have moved their stalls outside onto the new paving stone patio. The big overhead doors of the market (it used to be a garage) are open to the fresh air and sunshine. People drink coffee on park benches and the lineup at Grandora Gardens is a block long. A typical summery day at the market.

“I have Middle Eastern blood in me, so I cook with lentils a lot,” says Mardele. “Lentils and brown rice and plain yogurt and a ton of mint. Mint goes in everything.” She tells a wonderful story about her grandmother’ dolmades, a Middle Eastern finger food wrapped in grape leaves. She remembers picking grape leaves with her grandmother at the Forestry Farm in Saskatoon.
“They had incredible grape vines and we would take bags and pick leaves. I was such a little girl but that memory comes racing back.”

The mayor grew up on a traditional prairie diet of meat and potatoes, fresh vegetables and oatmeal cookies. He remembers family outings to the Simpkins farm to buy vegetables in season. All these years later, he still shops from the Simpkins at the farmers’ market.

As we stroll the market, the mayor is stopped by friendly faces to shake his hand and say hello. He takes a lot of pride in the farmers’ market which, in 2007, was the first project to establish itself in the new River Landing development (followed recently by Persephone Theatre). They mayor was supportive of the new farmers’ market, not just because he’s crazy for local vegetables, but because it serves as a magnet to draw people from all over the city to River Landing, a bridge that connects the more affluent parts of Saskatoon with its poorer neighbourhoods on the west side.

He points out that the price of homes near the market has tripled. Patronage at the farmers’ market has also boomed since it moved to Riversdale. “It shows that people believe this is a healthy community again. It’s vibrant and it’s going to be even better,” he says. “The important thing is that Riversdale and downtown are joined together just as it was 102 year ago.”

The market is still surrounded by construction and traffic is congested by roadwork, but sitting on the park bench in the sunshine with the mayor and his wife, it’s easy to believe that vegetables (and cookies and mint) are vital to the future of downtown Saskatoon.

In keeping with Mardele's heritage, here's a salad with Middle Eastern overtones. For more Middle Eastern recipes with Saskatchewan ingredients, click on the label "Middle Eastern" below.

Tomato Mint Salad
2 tomatoes, quartered
1 pita bread
1/4 white or red onion
2 tbsp fresh mint
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
Salt and pepper

Slice tomatoes and pita into bite-sized wedges. Slice onion into paper-thin wedges. Toss onions with tomatoes and bread. Chop mint and stir into tomato mixture. Whisk together olive oil and lemon juice. Add a pinch of salt and pepper. Toss dressing with salad. Marinate 5 minutes and serve.

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).

Newspaper - MINT JULEP

This article appeared in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix on 15 May 2006.
I didn’t watch the Kentucky Derby nine days ago, but I did drink a Mint Julep. The Mint Julep is the official drink of the Kentucky Derby, and last year we declared it the official drink of our backyard patio in Saskatoon. A Mint Julep is a slow sipping beverage made with Kentucky bourbon, crushed ice and lots of mint. The warmth of the sun, along with the stirring action of a long spoon, slowly melts the ice and produces a refreshing minty drink perfect for long lazy afternoons in the Deep South – or Saskatchewan.

I have a big patch of spearmint in the back alley. By early May, it is poking though the ground like a forest of tiny trees, each purple stem sprouting a topknot of little round leaves. Elsewhere in my garden the chives, thyme, tarragon and sage are also coming up. I love this time of year when those first green herbs herald the start of another growing season. The very first thing I do is grab a pair of scissors, snip off the fresh tender growth and eat it.

I might toss the leaves it into a salad, mix them into scrambled eggs or sprinkle them on a chicken before roasting it in the oven. The other night I baked a Lake Diefenbaker rainbow trout, its cavity stuffed with lemon slices and sprigs of fresh thyme, served with a tarragon-flavoured sauce.

Anyone who has read this column over the course of the past year will know that I am a big champion of Saskatchewan-grown foods. For one year, my husband and I tried to eat nothing but Saskatchewan foods at our own dinner table. It was a challenge, but not as difficult as you might think. There are so many great foods produced here that we ate a rich and varied diet without resorting to Florida peaches or New Zealand lamb.

I was recently asked what foods I got completely sick of during the course of that year. I had to think about that a moment and my answer was – none. If anything, I have some new favourites like pearl barley and sour cherries, chanterelle mushrooms and broccoli sprouts.
(You can read my past columns at HomeForDinner.blogspot.com.)

Now I have a new challenge: Every day, I am going eat something that I grew or picked with my own hand (or my husband’s). Some recent examples include a fruit crumble with wild saskatoon berries, applesauce muffins (apples picked over the back fence) and lentil soup with my homegrown paprika. Which brings us back to the mint. Mint is an ancient culinary herb, woven into Greek myths and extolled by Roman philosophers. In some cultures, it is so integral to the local cuisine that no meal goes by without it.

Habeeb Salloum has written a terrific cookbook about growing up in Saskatchewan in the 1930s called Arab Cooking on a Saskatchewan Homestead. The book has a whole section on mint. He writes: "This inherited tradition of including mint in our daily menu helped immensely in perking up our meals during the Depression years. With no money to buy other herbs and spices, mint was our top food enhancer."

In 1937, Kentucky General Simon Buckner wrote a marvellous letter to a friends describing the ritual of making a Mint Julep. Here’s how it ends: "Propose a worthy toast, raise the goblet to your lips, bury your nose in the mint, inhale a deep breath of its fragrance and sip the nectar of the gods."

MINT JULEP
Place a heaping teaspoon of sugar in a tall glass. Barely cover with cold water. Add a generous sprig of mint which has been crushed in the hand. Pour in bourbon to your taste. Fill the glass with ice crushed to the consistency of snow. (I use a blender to pulverize the ice.) Sprinkle in a bit of sugar as you spoon in the ice. Top with another sprig of mint. Serve with a spoon so you can stir your drink slowly in the sunshine. I’ve made this with clear soda pop instead of bourbon and it’s good, too.

Newspaper - July - TABOULEH SALAD

Published in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, 18 July 2005

We may be far from the Mediterranean Sea, but we’re not that far from the Mediterranean diet. Many of the foods that form the diet in Mediterranean countries like France, Greece, Spain and Morocco are also grown right here in Saskatchewan.
Consider the tomato. It was cultivated in South America by the Aztecs and taken to Europe by Spanish explorers in the 1500s. Lentils are a staple food in Mediterranean countries like Egypt and France. In fact, they are now eating lentils from Saskatchewan, which has become one of the largest producers in the world.
I began exploring the Mediterranean connection more than a decade ago when I asked my mom to grow some basil in her garden on the farm. To me, basil is the essential summer herb. It goes perfectly with tomatoes and lentils and many other Mediterranean dishes. If I could have only one fresh herb, it would be basil.

I had grown it in pots on a sunny balcony, but I had no idea if it would survive on the dry windy prairie. Well, it thrived. That row of basil grew so tall I picked it into black garbage bags and gave some to all my friends. So here’s my point – eating Saskatchewan foods does not mean a meat-and-potatoes-and-coleslaw diet. Saskatchewan foods lend themselves to many culinary traditions from around the world.

This is good news, because for one full year I have pledged to serve Saskatchewan foods almost exclusively at my own dinner table. I began in mid-April, and I’m happy to report that I am eating better and healthier than ever. I am searching out new sources of food, reading labels in the grocery store and getting to know some farmers. I am even the happy recipient of gifts of food. Not long ago, my neighbor Andrea presented me with a container of frozen apple butter from her own tree. It went straight into a fruit cobbler.

Recently, I hosted my bookclub. We always have a potluck meal and since we had just read "Tender is the Night", a novel set in the south of France, I decreed that the dinner theme would be Mediterranean foods made with Saskatchewan ingredients. Before long, there was an email in my inbox: "Help! What on earth do you mean? Examples please." So I listed off some foods that we have in common – grains and lentils, tomatoes and herbs, cheese and chicken, pasta and bread, etc, etc.

My friends are real troopers. They came with excellent dishes that were – or could be – made with Saskatchewan ingredients. We had: arugula salad, lentils with fresh herbs, Lebanese tabouleh salad, French gratin of cauliflower, Greek spanikopita and Italian margarita pizza (tomatoes, basil and cheese).

Just the other night, we had our friend Ian and his mom for a nice dinner on the patio. I found a pasta recipe in a cookbook by the godmother of Italian cooking, Marcella Hazan. It called for red, yellow and green peppers, ground veal and fresh pasta. I bought greenhouse peppers from the farmers’ market, made pasta with fresh farm eggs, and substituted ground moose for the veal.

The moose came from Jeff, an avid hunter. When he heard that I was eating Saskatchewan foods, he showed up on our doorstep with 30 pounds of frozen moose. Gotta love friends like that!

Tabouleh Salad
This is the national salad of Lebanon, pronounced ta-BOO-lee. I made it with pearl barley from the Daybreak Farm at Estevan, farmers’ market tomatoes and fresh greens from my own garden.

1 cup pearl barley
1 bunch green onions
2 bunches parsley
2 bunches mint
4 tomatoes
1/4 cup canola or olive oil
Juice of 2-3 lemons
salt and pepper

Soak the barley in plenty of water until it is chewable but not too soft, a few hours. It should double in size to about 2 cups. Drain. Finely chop the herbs and onions. Cut the tomatoes in bite-sized pieces. Mix everything together and enjoy.

Week 5 - MINT JULEP

Saskatchewan Menu of the Week - May 14.

Breakfast -- Yogurt with frozen raspberries (thawed).
Lunch -- Bread with tomatoes, smoked pork and mustard.
Dinner -- Spinach salad. Mint juleps.

Mint Julep
The mint is just starting to poke up in the garden. This is a refreshing, not too boozy drink that makes the most of fresh mint.

sugar
cold water
sprigs of mint
bourbon
lots of crushed ice

Note: the ice should be very fine, like grainy snow.

Place a heaping tsp of sugar in a tall glass. Barely cover with cold water. Crush a generous sprig of mint in your hands and add to the glass. Top with crushed ice, filling the glass, sprinkling in more sugar as you go. Pour in bourbon to your taste. Top with another sprig of mint. Serve with a spoon so you can stir your drink in the hot sun, the ice melting to diffuse with the mint and bourbon. Don't even dream of serving this drink on a cool day.