Sun Dried Tomato and Roasted Pumpkin Seed Pesto

SUN DRIED TOMATO AND ROASTED PUMPKIN SEED PESTO
Ingredients
½ c pumpkin seeds
1 tsp sea salt
¾ c grated Parmesan cheese
1 c sun dried tomatoes in oil (Preferably Allessia Sun Dried Tomatoes. Reserve oil)
6-8 fresh basil leaves, sliced thin
1 clove of garlic, minced
½ c oil from reserved from the sun dried tomato

Method
1. In a dry fry pan roast the pumpkin seeds. Toss regularly. They roast quickly so keep your eyes, nose and ears on them. For doneness they will swell a little (like tiny balloons) and you may notice small wisps of smoke from the pan; you don't want to smell burning but a pleasant nutty aroma; lastly, listen for them hissing lightly and popping.

2. Put everything but the oil in a food processor and pulse to blend. Then slowly add the oil until you get a nice paste. Stop and scrape down the sides as needed. If there isn't enough reserved oil to get the pesto to a consistancy that you're happy with use extra virgin olive oil (or pumpkin seed oil, the light green variety not the brown as it's bitter)

Roasted Vegetable and Black Kale Soup

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it,

and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth
seeking the successive autumns.
- George Eliot (1819–1880)

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
- J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)

Our October yard has begun hoarding piles of golden leaves. As I watch from my kitchen, our neighbour's black kitten, Moe, steals among the piles in search of something more appetizing than gold. I love Autumn. I love the smells, sounds, colours, and tastes of this sensual season and am inspired to spend more time in the kitchen than usual. Rich, sweet and earthy Fall flavours are pure, primitive comfort after being outside sweeping the leaves off my porch. Autumn is the season of Crockpot cooking, big pots of homemade stew or soup served with thick slices of crusty homemade bread. The evenings arrive earlier and darkness beats me home from work, what could be better than stepping into the kitchen and heating up a big bowl of hearty soup? I would think nothing, but I watch as kitten Moe chases a big grey squirrel along the fence-tops into the distance. To each her own.

What I cook is partially dictated by what we get in our weekly organic produce delivery. Mama Earth Organics is a wonderful resource, delivering an array of seasonal organic (and mostly local) produce to our porch. Most of the dishes I make in a week are an answer to a question inadvertently created by the friendly people at Mama Earth, the question is—what are you going to cook with this? The soup below was today's answer to Ontario fresh garlic (huge cloves) and field tomatoes, Swan White Acorn squash and Black Kale (from Pfenning's Organic Farms). The difficulty for me was finding a way to counter the usual bitter taste of kale. Normally, I would have cooked the kale with smokey bacon and broth in the style of Southern mustard greens, but Autumn suggested soup to me. I went online and read that roasted vegetables and beans could balance that bitterness with their mix of savoury and starch. Obviously I had to add some double smoked bacon (Cumbrae Farms) to the mix because I love that smokey flavour in soup. According to my wife Leah, this was the correct answer. So here we have it and I share it with you. Happy Autumn, happy Fall, happy harvest. Enjoy.

ROASTED VEGETABLE AND BLACK KALE SOUP
Ingredients
3 medium carrots, peeled and quartered lengthwise
1 large tomato, quartered
1 large parsnip, peeled and quartered lenthwise
1 large sweet onion, cut into 8 wedges
1 small Swan White squash, peeled, seeded and cut into half inch thick wedges
5 big garlic cloves (6 small), peeled
2 rashers of good quality double-smoke bacon, cut into lardons (optional)
1 tbsp olive oil 6 cups or more of low sodium chicken broth, divided
1 tbsp tomato paste
4 cups of finely chopped black kale, stems removed
2 tbsp parsley leaves, chopped
3 large fresh thyme sprigs
1 bay leaf
1 19 fl oz can of white kidney beans, rinsed and drained

Method
1. Preheat oven to 400F / 200C / Gas Mark 6. Oil a rasting pan and arrange carrots, parsnip, squash, onion, tomato and garlic on sheet. Toss with a little more olive oil and sea salt and fresh ground pepper. Roast vegetables until they are browned and tender about 45 minutes, stirring ocassionally. Once finished removed from oven and allow to cool a little while.

2. Cut the squash parsnip and carrots into a half inch pieces and place in food processor. Add tomatoes garlic cloves and onion and puree until smooth. Pour a half cup broth onto the baking sheet; scrape up any browned bits. Transfer broth and vegetable puree to large pot. Add 5½ cups broth, kale, thyme and bay leaf to pot. Bring to boil. Reduce heat. Simmer uncovered until kale is tender, about 30 minutes.

3. At this point fry the bacon in a frypan until nicely browned and pour out onto a paper towel to removed excess grease.

4. Add the reserved carrots, parsnips and squash along with the beans, bacon (if used), tomato paste and parlsey to the soup. Simmer 8 minutes to let the flavors get friendly with one another. At this point feel free to add more broth to soup if it is too thick for your taste. Season with sea salt and fresh cracked pepper. Discard thyme sprigs and bay leaf.

To Serve
Garnish with some freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

Roast Goose with Apple Sausage Stuffing, Cumberland Sauce and Sweet Potatoes

ROAST GOOSE
Ingredients
1 goose (4.5 kg/10 lb)
sea salt
freshly cracked pepper
5 freshly ground allspice berries apple sausage stuffing (recipe below)

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 425F / 220C / Gas Mark 7

2. Season the goose, inside and out, liberally with the sea salt, pepper and allspice.

3. Stuff the bird with your stuffing (This will add moisture and help to flavour the meat). Sew up the vent with a trussing needle and kitchen thread. Use the needle (or a fork) to pierce the skin all over which will allow the fat to render out during the roasting. Place the needle almost parallel to the skin so it is the skin, not the meat, that is pricked.

4. Pour a glass of water into the bottom of the pan to stop the released fat from burning. Place the goose breast-up on a rack in the roasting pan. Stick it in the oven. After 30 minutes turn the oven down to 350F / 180C / Gas Mark 4. Using a baster, transfer most of the fat to a bowl (the amount of fat that is rendered off during the cooking will boggle the mind).

5. Return it to the oven. Baste every 15 minutes or so with the drippings. Remove excess fat to the bowl.

6. At the 2 hour mark (very, very carefully) check the temperature in the thigh and breast. USDA recommends cooking whole duck or goose to a safe minimum internal temperature of 165 °F as measured using a food thermometer. Check the internal temperature in the innermost part of the thigh and wing and the thickest part of the breast.

N.B. - Goose fat gets ridiculously hot, do not use a plastic baster as it will melt. Metal or silicon is your best choice.

APPLE SAUSAGE STUFFING
Ingredients
1½ med onion
1 lb pork sausage (about 3 big links, removed from the casings)
2 Granny Smith apples (or another tart type)
½ tsp caraway seeds
3 tbsp minced sage
1 tsp sea salt ½ freshly ground pepper
8 slices whole wheat bread, dried and broken up
¼ cup toasted and chopped walnuts
¼ cup toasted and chopped cashews
¼ lbs unsalted butter (I like uncultured), melted
2 large eggs, beaten lightly
½ cup (approximately, maybe less) low sodium chicken broth

Method
1. Over a medium-high heat, cook the sausage. Break it up as it cooks until it's completely cooked and lightly browned.

2. Mix the first ten ingredients together in a big mixing bowl.

3. Pour the melted and eggs over the mixture and toss together until you a a moist mix.

CUMBERLAND SAUCE
Ingredients
½ c red wine
½ c beef stock
1 shallot, minced
1 c red currant jelly (if none on hand raspberry will do)
2½ tbsp slivered orange peel
½ tsp freshly ground ginger
½ tsp Dijon mustard
juice from 1 orange
juice from 1 lemon
pinch ground cloves
pinch cayenne sea salt and freshly ground pepper
2 tsp cornstarch

Method
1. Heat everything together (except cornstarch, salt and pepper) for 5 minutes.

2. Mix the cornstarch in a little water and add to sauce and stir to thicken. Salt and pepper to taste.

OVEN ROASTED SWEET POTATOES
Ingredients
4 boiled Sweet Potatoes
½ Walla Walla Onion, in wedges
2 garlic cloves, sliced
3 tbsp goose fat couple of sprigs of thyme
1 tbsp white balsamic vinegar sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Method
In a large bowl, combine sweet potatoes, onion wedges, garlic slices, fat and thyme sprigs and toss well.

Place vegetables in shallow roasting pan. Bake in 425F / 218C / Gas Mark 7 oven, turning frequently, for about 30 minutes or until vegetables are soft and golden brown.

Add pecans during the last 10 minutes of baking. Drizzle with vinegar. Season with salt and pepper.

To Serve I put the stuffing down on the plate first and then top with slices of the roasted goose. Around the plate I scatter the roasted sweet potatoes and then drizzle the Cumberland sauce over the top.

Home-Made Peanut Butter

“If you can't control your peanut butter, you can't expect to control your life.”

- Bill Watterson (1958-)

To answer the famous query of who got chocolate on whose peanut butter? I would say the Aztecs. Just a hunch. Anyway, I'm not going to get into the silly question of who invented peanut butter as it seems to revolve around who patented it first and ignores the people like the Aztecs who made a paste of peanuts centuries before the patents were forwarded in the late 1800s. There are peanut "butters" being eaten around the world and poor dogs in kitchens in faraway countries are probably slobbering like mad, tongue working to get at the dollop stuck to the roof of their mouths by mischievous owners.

Peanut butter is one of those products that is cheaper to buy than to make. Home-made peanut butter is so good I am willing to pay the extra and really, what am I missing? Partially hydrogenated palm oil? Preservatives? No problem. This recipe is so versatile that it really needs only your attention to detail and taste-buds. After making it once you should be able to alter it to your liking.

Ingredients
3 cups of roasted nuts (whatever rocks your boat, I've done dry-roasted peanuts, hickory-smoked almonds, etc)
2 (or more) tbsp of light oil (I like to match the oil with the nut, peanut oil for peanuts, hazelnut for hazelnut, and so on)
honey, to taste

Method
Put the nuts in a blender and pulse to start breaking them down. Add a little oil and pulse some more. Repeat until you get the desired consistancy. I like to let it puree for a while to really get a smooth result, but stop earlier if you like it chunky. I always finish with a little honey to round off the saltiness. I suggest putting a tiny amount of honey, taste, and repeat until you get a balance you're happy with.

Chili Blanco

"From morning till night, sounds drift from the kitchen, most of them familiar and comforting....On days when warmth is the most important need of the human heart, the kitchen is the place you can find it; it dries the wet sock, it cools the hot little brain."

- E.B.White (1899-1985)

"Food is not about impressing people. It's about making them feel comfortable."
- Ina Garten (1948-)

The idea of making chili has been on my mind a lot lately. My wife and I love Stagg's Steak House Chili. It is a love unconditional. But we rarely keep pre-made food at home, I would prefer to make something rather than buy it. As a culture we are moving further and further away from cooking the basics, forgetting that food always tastes better home-made. The food companies that claim their pre-prepared things are better than you can do yourself are snake-oil salesmen. There's a ridiculous Clubhouse commercial where a woman claims that the brand's Gravy Mix and turkey drippings are better than making it from scratch, how stupid do they think people are? They just spent hours cooking a turkey for loved-ones and they blow off good gravy for powdered? It's sad if people are. This is not to say that there are some products, Stagg's recipe for Steak House Chili for one, that are exceptional. These rare, shining examples are the ones that make me want to cook--to create a version at home that is as good, but most likely better than the dish than inspired it.

On the way to work this morning I could see the trees starting to change colour along the Don valley. The cooler weather and shorter days are coming. During this time of year I can't help but think of all those comforting autumn foods, and the best of all in my mind is chili. Chili is chunky comfort. So I got home and makd a batch of chili blanco (or white chili, also known as chicken chili). As I've been searching through chili recipes trying to find a version close to Stagg's, I've come acros a few for chili blanco. It is one of those recipes that you can taste the dish just by reading the ingredient list and every version tasted good. What makes it such a great and simple recipe is that you use precooked chicken (those rotisserie jobbies you see in the grocery store works great, or that leftover bits from yesterdays roast chicken) and the rest of the ingredients are mostly canned stuff that I usually have in my pantry. So what I give you is the version I came up with, which is made from scratch. And nothing is better than scratch.

CHILI BLANCO
Ingredients
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, peeled and diced
1 yellow bell pepper, seeded and chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tbsp minced fresh jalapeño chile
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp ground white pepper
1 can (398 ml) cream-style corn
1 can (125 ml) chopped green chilies
2 1/2 cups low sodium organic chicken broth
1 can (540 ml) navy beans, drained and rinsed
2-3 cups shredded cooked chicken
1-2 cups shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
Sea Salt and fresh ground White Pepper

Method
1. Add onion and cook until tender.
2. Mix in garlic, jalapeño, green chile peppers, cumin, oregano, and ground white pepper. Cook together to let flavours mingle.
3. Add bell pepper, navy beans, cream-style corn, chicken broth. Bing to a boil then reduce heat, cover, and simmer, stirring occasionally, about 10 minutes.
4. Stir in chicken. Season with salt and pepper. Stir in the Cheddar cheese and serve immediately. A dollop of sour cream would go down a treat.

To Finish
I topped the finished dish with sour cream and sprinkled over a pinch of Ancho Chili Powder. It serves between 4 to 6.

Bakuteh & Chili Dipping Sauce

I love coming across a dish I've never heard of. More than that, I love cooking a recipe from another country and having my house come alive with aromas unfamilier and beautiful. Aromas that, for others far away, would remind one of the kitchen smells of childhood. That's the magic of cooking, the power to evoke the smells and flavours of others in your own kitchen. Flavour combinations completely foreign but delicious. At the wheel of your stove it takes you only a short time to arrive in Rhône-Alpes, Louisiana, or even Malaysia (as with this dish). When I came across the recipe for bakuteh I mistakenly thought it was a Korean dish called gamjatang (Pork Bone Soup - my mistake will be evident below). Gamjatang is one of my favourite soups of all time, along with French Onion Soup and Japanese Fish Broth. But this is not gamjatang, it is a more herbal dish, less spicy, but just as hearty. I decided that it needed to be tried. After a couple of weeks of reading though the many different versions I came up with this one. There were a few changes that reflected my kitchen pantry such as using ginger instead of dang gui (also known as female ginseng) which I couldn't find. I also used fresh cremini mushrooms in place of dried shitake, because that is what I had.

OK, now the history. Bakuteh, usually translated as pork rib (or bone) tea, is a herbal soup that is very popular throughout Southeast Asia. It is widely believed to have been created in the Klang Valley in Malaysia which is still famous for its many bakuteh restaurants. The story goes that the dish was invented in Port Klang for workers in the early 20th century, "to supplement their meagre diet and as a tonic to boost their health." Traditionally served for breakfast as an "invigorating tonic" to begin their day.

Recipes vary but essentially the dish is made with pork (or chicken in a version called Chikuteh) simmered for a long time in a complex broth of herbs, spices (including star anise, cinnamon, cloves, dang gui, and garlic) and dried shitake mushrooms for a touch of earthiness. Additional ingredients may also include offal, other varieties of mushroom, lettuce, and pieces of dried tofu. The usual accompaniment is rice or noodles, chili sauce to dip the pork in and often youtiao (strips of fried dough) for dipping into the soup. Various kinds of Chinese tea are also usually served with the belief that it dilutes (or "dissolves") the copious amount of fat consumed in this pork-laden dish. The numerous variants of bakuteh reflects geographical location. There are three types of bakuteh; the most common variant is the Teochew style, which is light in color but uses more pepper in the soup; the Hoklo (Hokkien), who prefer saltier food, uses more soy sauce (resulting in a darker soup); the Cantonese, with a soup-drinking culture, add medicinal herbs to create a stronger flavoured soup.

For the BAKUTEH
Ingredients
500g pork ribs, cut into 2' lengths
225g pork loin, diced
3-4 garlic cloves, peeled and lightly crushed
2 cinnamon sticks
5-6 star anise
1-2 tsp goji berries (wolf berries)
12 cremini mushrooms, brushed clean
250 ml dark soy sauce
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp sugar sea salt and fresh ground pepper

Method
1. In a large pot place the pork ribs, pork loin, garlic, cinnamon, star anise, goji berries, mushrooms, and spice bag (see below). Cover with 10 cups of water and bring to a rolling boil.
2. As it heats remove fat and foam that forms from the surface. Stir in th soy sauce, fish sauce and sugar. Partially cover and seduce the heat, simmer for 2 and a half hours.

Season with sea salt and freshly ground pepper.

For the SPICE BAG
Ingredients
5 cloves
1 tbsp dried orange peel ground (recipe follows)
1 tsp each of black peppercorns, coriander seeds and fennel seeds

Method
1. Lay out a square of cheese cloth and put all the ingredients in the middle. Pull the corners together and tie the pouch with some butchers twine or string.

For the CHILI DIPPING SAUCE
Ingredients
Juice of 1 lime
3-4 tbsp Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce
3 garlic cloves
1/2" piece ginger, peeled
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp sea salt

Method
1. In a small food processor or blender grind the first 4 ingredients together, then salt and sugar to taste. Serve in individual bowls for each person.

BAKUTEH & CHILI DIPPING SAUCE
To serve
Divide the loin and ribs between 4-6 bowls and ladle the hot broth over the top. Serve with individual condiment bowls of the Chili dipping sauce for the pork.

N.B.- This is one of those magical soups that is even better the next day, after the flavours have a a chance to get together and cuddle a bit. This is a personal thing, I haven't seen anything online saying this is wrong but I have also noticed that all the pictures I've seen of bakuteh seen very clear (or "tea-like" if you will).

Slow Cooker Apricot Preserves

First off, some history. The Chinese associate the apricot with education and medicine. Interesting. According to English folklore, it's considered good luck to dream of apricots. Seriously? Hmm. Apricots were used by the Australian Aborigines as an aphrodisiac, brewing a special tea using apricot stones and crushing the fruit and smearing it all over the erogenous regions. Wow, yikes.

OK, anyway, I don't know what to make of any of that. From what I've read I can tell you that the apricot was cultivated thousands of years ago in China. The Latin name for it is Prunus Armeniaca, or Armenian Plum, it was known in ancient times in Armenia having been brought along the Spice Road. It's introduction to Greece has been attributed to Alexander the Great, and Lucullus (Roman General, and one of the early food enthusiasts) is said to have exported trees to Europe. We have apricots here in North America thanks to the English settlers who brought them to the New World English colonies and to the Spanish missionaries who carried the seedlings across to the west coast. Today almost all production is in California.

I bought myself a slow cooker at the end of last year so that I could cook a venison stew. I had no idea it would become such a staple in our kitchen. My wife regularly makes an amazing apple sauce, slowly rendered down to a delicious puree. I like to sprinkle orange zest-infused sugar over the top and eat it straight. But I had yet to use it to do pulled pork. I have no smoker, no barbecue, and no wok. I knew you could do a pulled pork in the Crock, but never thought to try. Until now. I looked around and found a couple of recipes for an apricot pulled pork sandwich. They sounded amazing. All the recipes called for apricot preserves and I decided that, being this was a long weekend I would make my own preserves as well.

The recipe for preserves, or marmalade, is simple. Ridiculously simple. The main ingredient was the thing that stopped me up. Dried apricots. I couldn't decide whether to use standard dried apricots which keep thier lovely blushed flesh colour due to the application of sulphates in the chemical drying process. Or would I go with naturally-dried mother Earth-lovin' apricots which are much darker and muddier in colour but have, to my tongue anyway, a nice caramelly note to it. Being that my preserves would be used in a barbecue sauce the finished colour wouldn't be important. It really came down to how much I love the earth and how important the health of my wife was to me. I got my organic, recyclable shopping bags and walked to the grocery store. Beautiful blue-black Grackles sang and flew all about me. Every dog that saw me wagged its tail. What a great day. I got to the organic food aisle and was confronted with the prices of naturally produced dried apricots and decided that a little sulphite wouldn't be too harmful to my wife and I. The rain that started on the way back to the house was light, but a little cold.

In the end, use what you're happy with. The finished preserves are really delicious, as they say in Turkey, "bundan iyisi Şam'da kayısı" (literally translated, the only thing better than this is an apricot in Damascus)


SLOW COOKER APRICOT PRESERVES

Ingredients
8 oz dried apricots, medium dice
1 fresh peach, medium dice
2 cups freshly squeezed orange juice
1 tbsp orange zest (roughly, I used a little more)

Method
Put all the ingredients into you slow cooker. Cover and cook on low for 4 hours until it. it will get wonderfully thick as it cools. If you feel it's still too liquidy remove the lid and cook an hour further. Remember that it will continue to thicken as it cools.You can refridgerate it for up to a week, if it lasts that long.