Prairie Kitchens - Beaver Stroganoff

As you throw another steak on the BBQ, consider the pioneers.

Their summer diets were largely vegetarian. With no refrigerators or freezers, it was impossible to butcher a pig or a cow as most of the meat would quickly spoil, and the chickens were better kept for eggs. The answer: wild meat.

In 1882, the Baines family arrived from Manchester, England, and would have starved on several occasions if not for wild meat. Fred Baines, who was a child at the time, recalled that "badger was an oily strong nauseating meat, it took a strong stomach to handle it. Personally, I prefer skunk or muskrat."

Of course, wild game fed prairie families for millennium, primarily the bison, but also beaver, rabbits, moose, prairie chickens, geese, gophers and the aforementioned muskrat and skunk.

Beaver was long considered a delicacy, but not by everyone. Artist Paul Kane didn't much like beaver when he travelled here in 1846: "It is a fat, gristly substance, but to me by no means palatable; the rest of our party, however, seemed to enjoy it much. The tongues were decidedly delicious; they are cured by drying them in the smoke of the lodges."

I wanted to taste the pioneer experience for myself. Thanks to a friend, I acquired a piece of beaver, cleaned and frozen, which I cooked in a traditional recipe for beef stroganoff, a staple of Hungarian settlers. It was amazingly delicious with local chanterelle mushrooms. If you don't have beaver, substitute beef. :)

Beaver Stroganoff
1 lb meat, trimmed of fat
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp butter
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
1 tsp paprika
Salt and pepper
1 cup chopped mushrooms
2-3 cups beef broth
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 cup sour cream

Boil beaver in water for 20 minutes. Remove and cool. Slice meat against the grain into thin strips.

Heat oil and butter in a large skillet. Cook onions until soft. Add meat. Sprinkle with paprika, salt and pepper. Sauté until meat is no longer pink.

Add mushrooms, 2 cups broth and Worcestershire sauce. Cover skillet and simmer two hours or more, adding more broth if needed, until meat is tender.

Before serving, stir in sour cream. Bring to a light bubble and remove from heat. Serve on noodles.

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

I'm enjoying a daily cup of chaga tea. I've read that it will cure many ailments, but I'm mostly enjoying the woodsy flavour. One sip and I think instantly of waking up on a spruce covered island somewhere north of La Ronge.

My friend Curtis (who picked this chaga in northern Saskatchewan) told me to grate the chaga before boiling it, but it's hard to grate, so I've been plunking the whole chunk in a pot of water and boiling it whole. I wonder how many times I can boil it before I boil out all the goodness? And the taste of the forest...   

Healthy cup of tea?

If you can identify this chunk of stuff, you're probably healthier than I am!

It's chaga, a fungus hacked off a birch tree somewhere in Saskatchewan. It was given to me on a recent trip to Ness Creek by my friend Curtis, who's collecting and exporting Saskatchewan chaga. According to Curtis, his America buyer says it's the best chaga on the market.

Chaga (as it's called in Russia) is said to be extremely high in antioxidants and, therefore, good for whatever ails you. Curtis says it cured his arthritis.

He instructed me to scrape off some chaga (it's very hard) and infuse it to make a powerful tea. I hear the kettle whistling...

You can contact Curtis through facebook.

Soup Week 15 - Moose Sopas

My New Year's resolution is going strong despite the sudden arrival of summer!

This week's soup is Moose Sopas. Orignally, it was called Beef Sopas, but since I made it with moose roast...

I found the recipe in an old Saveur magazine but you can now find it online.

Soup Week 10 - Venison and rutabaga

Well, it was more like a stew -- which is just a soup thickened with a bit of flour. With homemade baking powder biscuits. Courtesy my hubby.

Stop and smell - er- eat the flowers STUFFED ZUCCHINI FLOWERS

This article first appeared in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix on 27 August 2007.

Summer is not over yet, so there’s still time to stop and eat the flowers. That’s right – some flowers are just as lovely on the palate as on the nose. Just imagine, if they look pretty in the garden, how charming flowers can be in a salad, sprinkled on strawberry shortcake or stirred into a sauce.

Take, for instance, those little carnations called pinks. Recently, I made devilled eggs for a backyard party and topped each one with a pretty pink. It turned an ordinary appetizer into a conversation piece. I also throw pinks into green salads, along with tiny tangerine marigolds, peppery nasturtiums and beautiful blue borage flowers. Perhaps the radishes and arugula in your garden are past their prime? You can get a second harvest from them – a harvest of flowers. In fact, the flowers of many herbs and vegetables are edible, such as the flowers of basil, scarlet runner beans and summer squash.

A couple of summers ago, I ventured into the Nesbit Forest south of Prince Albert to pick wild rose petals with Marie Symes-Grehan, who turns them into lovely pink jellies and syrups. We picked the rose petals in the morning, after the dew had lifted, dropping them into soft cotton bags and later, we sorted out the leaves and broken petals on Marie’s big kitchen table. That evening, she made a batch of jelly full of suspended pink petals. Marie sells her syrups and conserves under the label Lily Plain Summer, which are particularly popular at the Granville Island Market in Vancouver. (http://www.lilyplain.com/).

Rose petals have a long tradition in Middle Eastern cuisine for flavouring syrups and pastries. Edible flowers were also popular in Victorian times but fell out of favour until now, when they’re making a comeback on swank dinner tables from London to L.A. The list of edible flowers includes some popular garden varieties such as pansies, day lilies, roses and tulips, this latter described on one website as tasting of “sweet lettuce, fresh baby peas.” A word of caution: Not all flowers taste good and some are not good for you. Please do your own research before experimenting with edible flowers, and never eat a flower from a flower shop or one that may have been sprayed with a chemical.

My favourite culinary flower is the zucchini. In Mediterranean cuisine, they may be stuffed and deep-fried, laid decoratively on top of a quiche or stirred into risotto. Pick them in the morning when they’re open so it’s easier to remove the stamen or pistil inside the flower. Sometimes, I pick baby zucchini when the flower is still attached and cook them together. This also cuts down on the number of giant zucchini to contend with later. As always, I try as much as possible, to set my table with the foods of Saskatchewan and that includes flowers – both in a vase and on my plate.

DEEP FRIED ZUCCHINI FLOWERS
1 slice good dry bread
1 cup milk
2 tbsp chopped fresh basil
2 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
Fat 1/2 cup water
Scant 1/2 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
6 zucchini flowers
Canola oil

Cut the crusts off the bread and tear it into small pieces. Cover the bread with milk and soak 30 minutes. Drain and discard the milk, squeeze out the bread and mix it with the basil and cheese.
Meanwhile, stir together the water, flour, baking powder and salt. Add more water if needed to reach the consistency of a thin pancake batter. Let sit 30 minutes.
Carefully spoon a bit of the bread mixture into each flower. Twist the tips of the flower to close.
Heat the oil on medium high. Use enough oil so the flowers will float and not stick to the bottom of the pan. When the oil is shimmering, roll the flowers in the batter, drain excess and drop into the oil. Do this in batches so the flowers don’t stick together. Brown on both sides and remove to a paper towel. Sprinkle with salt and enjoy.

A hare in the kitchen - HASENPFEFFER

Sue and I met in a parking lot to exchange the goods. She gave me a wild hare and homemade Thai sausage. I gave her some frozen wild blueberries, homemade pasta sauce and fresh koubassa. Then I went home and cooked. Sue's husband Vance makes an old German recipe called Hasenpfeffer - peppered hare. It compares closely to a similar recipe in Time-Life Foods of the World: The Cooking of Germany. Here's my version, a combination of both recipes.

Hasenpfeffer
½ pound bacon, finely chopped
1 rabbit (3-5 pounds)
salt and pepper
¼ cup flour
½ cup onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 cup wine
1 cup chicken stock
1 tsp homemade jelly
1 tsp fresh rosemary, chopped (or ¼ tsp dried)
1 tsp fresh thyme, chopped (or ¼ tsp dried)
2 tsp lemon juice


In a stovetop casserole, cook the bacon until crisp. Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towel.

Cut the rabbit into serving pieces. Sprinkle with salt and a generous amount of fresh ground pepper. Coat the meat lightly in flour. Add the meat to the hot bacon fat and brown on both sides. (You may have to do this in batches.) As the rabbit is done, transfer it to a plate.

Remove all but 2 tbsp of bacon fat from the pot. (If there is less than 2 tbsp of fat, add butter.) Sauté onion and garlic until soft. Pour in the wine and chicken stock. Bring to a boil on high heat, scraping up the bits on the bottom of the pan. Add the jelly, bay leaf, rosemary and thyme. Return the bacon, rabbit and its juices to the casserole. (I also added the blood which had pooled in the bowl while the rabbit was thawing.) Cover the casserole tightly and simmer 1 hour. Check the meat for doneness, and cook another ½ hour if necessary.

When the rabbit is done, remove to a serving plate and keep warm. Taste the sauce. It should be good and peppery; add more pepper if needed. Remove the bay leaf. Simmer until the sauce is reduced and thickened. Add the lemon juice. Serve the rabbit and sauce over egg noodles or boiled potatoes.

If you can't beat 'em eat 'em

Yesterday, I dug up all the tender young dandelions in the garden and mixed them into a lettuce salad. It was the best. Now, if you can believe it, I'm actually waiting for the chickweed to come up. As obnoxious as it is a weed, it is delicious when young. What weeds do you eat?

If you need some incentive to eat your weeds, consider that dandelions are better for you than many salad greens we plant in our gardens. Chickweed is also good for you. Both are high in vitamin C and some trace minerals. Some grocery stores are now selling dandelions as gourmet salad greens. (Although I bet no grocery stores in Saskatoon!) But why pay for something you grow for free? (PS: don't eat weeds from a lawn that has been sprayed.)

By the way, the Saskatoon Farmers' Market is now selling local greenhouse lettuce, cucumbers, green peppers and tomatoes. (Get there early if you want tomatoes.) So, cut the miles on your salad and buy locally.

Post vacation blues - MUSHROOM AND LENTIL SOUP

Everyone from Saskatchewan who goes on a warm vacation in March is hoping to return home to spring. Ha! On the last day of our vacation, we awoke to soft breezes and palm trees and landed home in a complete whiteout. How depressing.

We had very little food in the fridge, but darned if I was venturing back out in that cold. However, I had picked up a stray copy of the Ottawa Citizen in the Vancouver airport and found this recipe for a curried soup. It was the perfect antidote to a wintery day in March. It’s chock full of Saskatchewan ingredients and, with slight modifications, I had everything on hand.

CURRIED MUSHROOM LENTIL SOUP
While the recipe calls for fresh mushrooms, I used chanterelles from La Ronge that I sautéed in butter and froze last summer.

1 tbsp. vegetable oil
1 onion chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp. ginger root, minced
1 lb. mushrooms, sliced
2 tbsp. curry powder
1 tsp. dried thyme
1 cup lentils
1 cup pearl barley
8 cups chicken broth

Heat the oil in a large pot. Sauté the onions, garlic and ginger until soft. Add the mushrooms, curry powder and thyme. When the mushrooms are wilted, stir in the lentils and barley, coating them well with the onions and spices, and cook until all the moisture is gone. Add the chicken stock (or water). Simmer until the grains are cooked, about an hour, adding more liquid if the soup gets too thick. Season with salt and pepper to your taste. Serving option: sprinkle with grated parmesan cheese.

You little tart - LINGONBERRY MUFFINS

Lingonberries (a.k.a. low bush cranberries) are so fresh -- even when they're frozen. They keep perfectly. They're small, tart, bright red and you don't have to thaw and pit them before cooking. I've been experimenting with Saskatchewan lingonberries now that I can buy them at the Saskatoon farmers' market.

LINGONBERRY MUFFINS
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 scant tsp. grated orange rind
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1/8 cup fresh squeezed orange juice
1 + 1/4 cups milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup frozen lingonberries (low bush cranberries)

Sift together the flours, baking powder and salt. Stir together the orange rind and sugar; add to flour. Whisk the egg with the orange juice, milk and vegetable oil. Pour the liquid ingredients into the flour mixture, add the lingonberries, and stir just to mix. Spoon the batter into a 12-cup muffin tin. Bake at 350F. for about 20 minutes.

My Christmas Goose

Well, I cooked my goose this Christmas! Yes, we had a Christmas goose. It was the first time I ever cooked a goose – and a wild one at that – and it turned out fabulously.

I found a recipe online attributed to Mario Batali. It called for goose breasts rolled with a stuffing of apples, potatoes and caraway seeds. The proportions of the recipe were all wrong – unless your goose is a giant – but I adapted it for my modest sized wild white goose. Very very good. (I won’t put the recipe here. If you google it, you’ll get a zillion hits.) Now that I’ve had one go at it, I plan to create my own goose recipe which I will post once I achieve success.

I served our Christmas gooses with Dolgo crabapple jelly (a gift from Boris and Anne) and a wild rice salad. (See recipe at November 20, 2006.) Thanks so much to my hunting friends Sue and Vance who provided the Saskatchewan goose. They also gave me some ducks and venison, so it will be a wild time in the ol’ kitchen this winter!

On the Air Waves - MOOSE SOUP

This afternoon I was on CBC Radio for my food column Home on the Range. We talking about one of my favourite Saskatchewan foods - wild game. We had a good discussion and the phone lines were buzzing. I mentioned that I had a favourite way of preparing moose. So, here it is...

MOOSE SOPAS
Sopas is Portuguese for soup. I adapted it from Saveur magazine. Originally, this recipe was made with beef in large quantities for a church dinner. However, it is terrific with moose. You’ll need a piece of muslin or a tea ball.

1/2 tsp whole allspice berries
1/2 tsp whole coriander seeds
1/2 tsp whole cloves
3-4 pound moose roast
4 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
2 bay leaves
1 large onion, peeled and chopped
1 cup tomato sauce (I used 1/2 cup sauce and 1 cup tomatoes)
1 cup tomato paste
1/2 cup red wine
1/4 cup ketchup
1 tsp cinnamon
Salt to taste
3 cups water
Day-old French or Italian bread, sliced
Chopped mint for garnish

Secure the allspice, coriander and cloves in a piece of cheesecloth or tea ball. Put this bag of spices in a large pot with the meat and everything else but the bread and mint. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 5-6 hours, stirring occasionally, until the meat is very tender.

Lift out the meat to a large plate and shred it with two forks. Discard the spice bag. To serve, place a piece of bread in the centre of a bowl. Scatter on a handful of shredded meat. Pour on a ladle or two of broth. Sprinkle with mint and serve.

Water off a duck’s back – DUCK WRAPPED IN BACON

I went duck hunting on Saturday for the first time. It was perfect weather – if you’re a duck. Rain, rain and rain. I went with Sue, who hunts for food, and Katherine, a new hunter, to a pond near Perdue, Saskatchewan. I was dressed in my husband’s waders, with boots so big I was tripping on the barb wire fences we crawled through. We sat beneath a stand of young willows in a patch of wild mint and waited for the ducks to fly by.

Well, the ducks weren’t flying. So we gabbed for an hour or more, never fired a shot, and walked back to the house to warm up. However, we were not without a duck. Sue’s large munsterlander (a hunting dog) caught a young mallard duck. Back at the house, Sue cut the breasts off the duck, smothered them in Cajun spice and BBQd them to a charred rare. It was so good.

But the best part was lunch. We met up with a group of hunters at the Saskatoon Gun Club for a lunch made from wild fowl – coot cassoulet, crane wraps and best of all, Sue’s BBQd duck in bacon.

SUE’S BBQD DUCK IN BACON
Marinate fresh duck breast overnight in Italian dressing. Cut the duck breasts into small, thin strips. Lay half a piece of bacon flat and put a slice duck on top.
Add a piece of hot pepper (jalapeno or pickled chili) at the end and roll all together. Fasten with a toothpick. Grill only as long as it takes for the bacon to cook, and serve!

Week 39 & 40 - SASKATOON BERRY PIE

Saskatchewan Menu of the Week -- 14 January 2006

Breakfast -- Leftover Saskatoon Berry Pie.
Lunch -- Leftover pasta.
Dinner -- Leftover roast chicken and coleslaw

My husband seems to think pie is an inappropriate food for breakfast. Cake, he's fine with, and I must admit leftover chocolate cake with my morning coffee is delightful. But this morning I walked groggily into the kitchen and there staring at me from the counter was a wedge of saskatoon berry pie, leftover from a family dinner last night. I waited until he was out the door and I very leisurely enjoyed that piece of pie.

If you are interested in making a saskatoon berry pie, you must first secure a source of saskatoon berries. These grow wild in Saskatchewan and I learned to pick them from a very young age. Nowadays, some orchards are growing saskatoons and you can even buy them frozen in the Co-op grocery store. Outside of Saskatchewan, it is called a June berry or a service berry, but I don’t hear about people using them for pies. (Correct me if I’m wrong.) Here, they become pies, jams, syrups, sparkling juice and even covered in chocolate.

To make a saskatoon berry pie, mix four cups of berries with 1/2 cup sugar, 2T of tapioca and a dash of salt. If the berries are frozen, let them thaw a bit to blend with the sugar. Sprinkle in 1 tsp of almond extract. Spread into a pie shell. Place a few dabs of butter on the berries and cover with the top crust. Brush the crust with milk and sprinkle with sugar. Bake the pie at 450 degrees for 15 minutes, then turn it down to 375 degrees for about half an hour.

Week 29 - MOOSE (OR BEEF) SOPAS

Saskatchewan Menu of the Week -- 29 October 2005

Breakfast – Pancakes.
Lunch – Chocolate bowtie croissant (from Christie's Bakery)
Dinner – Raw carrots. Yellow pea 'fava' on bread. Moose Sopas. Ice cream with cherry sauce.

MOOSE (OR BEEF) SOPAS
Sopas is a Portuguese beef stew. I found the original recipe in Saveur magazine. I tried it with beef and moose. I actually prefer the moose, but the beef is good, too. The coriander, tomatoes and mint were from my garden. The moose was a gift from our friend, Jeff, an avid hunter.

You’ll need a piece of cheesecloth or a tea ball.

1/2 tsp whole allspice berries
1/2 tsp whole coriander seeds
1/2 tsp whole cloves
3-4 pound moose roast
4 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
2 bay leaves
1 large onion, peeled and chopped
1 cup tomato sauce (I used 1/2 cup sauce and 1 cup tomatoes)
1 cup tomato paste
1/2 cup red wine
1/4 cup ketchup
1 tsp cinnamon
Salt to taste
3 cups water
Day-old French or Italian bread, sliced
Chopped mint for garnish

Secure the allspice, coriander and cloves in a piece of cheesecloth or tea ball.

Put this bag of spices in a large pot with the meat and everything else (but the bread and mint). Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 5-6 hours, stirring occasionally, until the meat is fall-off-the-bone tender.

Scoop out the meat to a large bowl and shred it with two forks. Discard the spice bag.

To serve, place a piece of bread in the centre of a plate or bowl. Scatter on a handful of shredded meat. Pour on a ladle of broth. Sprinkle with mint and serve.

Newspaper - August - PASTA WITH CHANTERELLE MUSHROOMS

This was first published in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix on August 22, 2005.

One of the mysteries of my childhood was the mushroom. Primarily, mushrooms came in a can and I was not too fond of their rubbery gray texture. But every now and then, my dad would come into the kitchen with a handful of fresh brown mushrooms he had just picked in the farmyard. They smelled so wonderful cooked in butter, and he took great pleasure in eating them.

I did not enjoy them due to the simple fact that my mother forbade it. While she was reluctantly resigned to losing her husband to a poisonous mushroom, she was certainly not going to expose her children to a similar fate. I never learned where they grew or how to identify them. As far as I knew, every wild mushroom was a potential killer and best left underfoot.

As an adult, I had been quite happy to buy mushrooms in the grocery store – until now. Since April, I have been supplying my diet almost exclusively with foods produced in Saskatchewan. If I wanted to eat mushrooms, I would have to find a local source.

Fortunately, Saskatchewan’s forests are teaming with edible mushrooms. Some are among the most prized mushrooms in the world, where they sell for top dollar in foreign grocery stores. Unfortunately, they rarely make an appearance in our own groceries. Why? Perhaps because we are unaccustomed to cooking with a wrinkled morel or an orangey chanterelle. Perhaps there’s more money in selling a pine mushroom in Japan for $100 a pound.

Since I am a) thrifty, b) willing to try something new and c) a pretty good picker, I decided to go into the forest and collect the mushrooms myself. I needed a guide so I called Gerry Ivanochko, the mushroom specialist at Saskatchewan Agriculture in La Ronge. Gerry is studying the potential for selling wild Saskatchewan mushrooms to the world – Is it more profitable to cut the pine trees for things like fence posts, or leave the trees and harvest the mushrooms that grow underneath?

Armed with some buckets and a knife, Gerry led me and my friend David, also an avid picker, into the Jack Pine forest where the ground is covered with soft reindeer moss and dotted with mushrooms of various kinds.

"None of these mushrooms will kill you," Gerry assured us. "But some of them might make you sick."

Before long I was on my hands and knees cutting a young chanterelle out of the moss. The chanterelle mushroom is prized in European cooking for its lovely apricot colour and great taste. We also collected pine mushrooms, which are harder to spot on the forest floor. In Japan and Korea, they are considered a great delicacy imparting manly vigor, longevity and good health.

In spring, especially a year or two after a forest fire, morel mushrooms are picked in abundance. Gerry says the wild mushroom business brings about $1 million into Saskatchewan every year, but there’s potential for at least five times that.

Along a gravel road through the forest, a buyer has set up a tent to purchase the mushrooms directly from pickers. According to our guide, some of these mushrooms will be on dinner tables half way around the world in just a few days. It took a lot less time to reach my dinner table! This pasta recipe is good with any edible mushroom, but of course, I like it best with chanterelles I just picked myself.

You might check the stores for dried Saskatchewan morels, which are being packaged and sold by Northern Lights Foods of La Ronge. For more mushroom recipes, check my food website at homefordinner.blogspot.com.

PASTA WITH CHANTERLLE MUSHROOMS
Melt 1T of butter in a saucepan and sauté 2 chopped shallots until soft. Add 1 pound of sliced mushrooms and cook until the liquid evaporates. Add 1T lemon juice and 2T port (or other sweet wine). Bubble a few minutes and add 1 cup of cream. Season with salt and pepper. Simmer until the cream thickens, about 10 minutes. Serve warm over fettucini or other cooked pasta.

Week 17 - PINE MUSHROOM AND BARLEY RISOTTO

Saskatchewan Menu of the Week -- 10 August 2005

Breakfast -- Scrambled eggs with chopped tomato.
Lunch – Open-face cheese, tomato and basil (toasted).
Dinner – Pine mushroom and barley risotto. Fried fish. Raw kohlrabi.

PINE MUSHROOM AND BARLEY RISOTTO
I picked these mushrooms myself near La Ronge. They are a great delicacy in Japan where they are eaten by men for verility. (A young mine mushroom has the same shape as a certain male body part.) The pearl barley came from the organic mill at Daybreak Farm of Estevan.

Melt 2T butter is a saucepan. Sauté 1C sliced mushrooms. (I used pine mushrooms I picked near La Ronge, but any mushroom will do.) Remove the mushrooms and set aside.

Add 1C pearl barley and stir until the barley is coated in butter and starting to stick to the bottom of the pan. Pour in 1C warm broth. (I used homemade chicken stock). Cook, stirring occasionally, until the liquid is absorbed. Add 1/2 C white wine and cook until evaporated.

Continue adding broth, one cup at a time, until the liquid is absorbed and the barley is creamy and just tender to the bite. Season with salt and pepper. Return the mushrooms to the barley before serving.