Author Archives: saltandserenity

The Best Thing I Ate Today in Umbria: Days 1 and 2

Yesterday afternoon we left our house in Ottawa on a purple Party Bus with 8 friends to drive
to the Montreal Airport to catch the night flight to Rome. We were meeting up with 8 more friends in Umbria for a 10 day Italian hiking and biking adventure. I thought I would chronicle the journey by reporting each day about the best thing I ate that day.

At 7:00 pm we boarded a Boeing 767 jet at the Montreal airport to fly away on our adventure. Fast forward to Friday morning, 9:45 when
we boarded a Boeing 767 jet at the Montreal airport to fly away on our grand adventure. WHAT????

No, this is not a mind bending thriller about 10 friends who find themselves in a time labyrinth, where each day they wake to the same terrifying day as the preceding one. It’s just an extraordinary tale about modern-day travel gone awry.

On Thursday night, just after everyone was settled into their seats, the airplane door closed and we all fastened our seatbelts. Suddenly, a loud whooshing noise erupted from the front of the plane. It sounded like all the air was being sucked out of the aircraft, smoke was rising and the flight attendant began screaming , “Evacuate your seats, move back, move back|!” People started running towards the back of the plane and we watched in horror as, what looked like a giant air bag, began to inflate and fill the entire galley kitchen of the plane.

And then all was quiet. Then the pilot’s voice broke through the silence to inform the stunned passengers what had happened. Apparently the emergency exit chute accidentally inflated. He asked us all to sit tight while he radioed his supervisors about next steps. Then the cell phones began flashing as all assembled attempted to document this happening.

We were asked to deplane and await further instructions. Within 10 minutes all the passengers were lining up at the boarding gate again. We joined the line, excited to be on our way again. When we got to the front of the line we were handed what looked like a boarding card. Upon closer examination we discovered that they were meal vouchers so that we could eat dinner at the airport while waiting for them to repair the plane. We all naively believed that they could just stuff the giant inflatable slide back into it’s cupboard and we’d be on our way.

We soon discovered that the exploding giant slide had rendered the plane unflyable and would cost probably $50,000 to repair. They told us that they would have a replacement plane for the next morning. We were instructed to collect our luggage, clear customs and then line up again for hotel vouchers.

Are you kidding me? Clear customs? We never left the country! So. once again we lined up and told our sad tale of woe to the customs agents and then trudged over to the airport Marriott to sleep. Little did I know that the best thing I ate all day would be the Sea Salt Miss Vickies potato chips I ate on the purple party bus.

Fast forward to the next day. I am writing this on the plane as we wing our way across the Atlantic. I told the flight attendant about our trip and my plan to blog everyday about the very best thing I ate that day. I think he felt sorry for me about the late start to our journey, because the next thing I knew he brought me a second bowl of cashews and roasted almonds. Definitely the best thing I ate all day. They were warm, fresh, crunchy and salty.

Just about to touch down in Rome, so I will be back tomorrow, hopefully with something incredible to report on culinarily speaking.

Peach Pie with Spelt Crust

5 Replies

I finally paid off a debt that had been owing for almost 27 years. I know how terrible that sounds. But let me explain. You see, I owed my husband a peach pie, well 4 peach pies if we’re going to be accurate. In the summer of 1984, I accidentally left the door of our freezer slightly ajar. It was not until several days later that I discovered what I had done. Aside from having to throw out several hundred dollars worth of kosher meat and some mushy peas, it was not really that big a deal, in the overall scheme of life’s big tragedies. Until I realized, that at the bottom of that freezer chest were the last peach pies my late mother-in-law had baked for my husband. In the summer of 1983, she had baked him 12 peach pies, to be frozen and enjoyed over the long winter. Unfortunately, she became ill and passed away in March of 1984. At that time we still had 4 peach pies left in the freezer. My husband could not bring himself to eat those last pies. They were to live in our freezer in perpetuity, sort of a frozen tribute to his mom.

I felt terrible and baked some peach pies right away to make up for the horrible mistake I made. He ate the pies but not with great joy. He smiled, said they were good, but I could tell that they just didn’t measure up to hims mom’s pies. Eventually I gave up because her damn pies grew more incredible with each passing year and I knew I could never bake anything to that would live up to that sainted memory.

I baked crisps, crumbles, grunts, cookies,biscotti, brownies, blondies, cakes, tarts, galettes, scones, hamentashen, rugelach, macarons and 43 kinds of bread, but never another peach pie… until this week, that is. I guess at some deep subconscious level, I still felt guilty about it. Plus, I wanted to show him how much I appreciate him. I mean, how many husbands take the time and care to roll towels for the bathroom like this? Plus, he has the fine motor skills of a surgeon and untangles my necklaces in 2 seconds flat. He always reads the instruction manuals and just last week he figured out how to get the new tamper proof cap off my toothpaste. How could I not bake this awesome guy a peach pie?

Peaches were at their early fall glory this week at our market.

I decided not to use his mom’s recipe but made a spelt crust instead, from Kim Boyce’s “Good to the Grain”. This dough uses a combination of all-purpose and spelt flours. The spelt flour adds a creamy colour and a nutty flavour to the dough. Kim uses a method known as fraisage to ensure a flaky crust. Kim explains how it works, “…you smear pea-sized pieces of fat into the flour to create alternating layers of dough and fat. During baking, the fat melts, creating steam that lifts up the layers of dough, creating a very flaky pastry.”

The peaches do need to be peeled, which adds an extra step, but is not difficult. An “X” is cut into the bottom of each peach and then they are slipped into boiling water for about 30 seconds. The skin slips off very easily after this.

The peaches are macerated with sugar for about half an hour and then the juices are strained off. I mixed in about 1/4 cup of Minute Tapioca for thickening, a tip I learned about from Cook’s Illustrated. Minute Tapioca is virtually flavorless, readily dissolves into the fruit’s exuded juices, and has a neutral texture, exhibiting none of the pastiness of flour or cornstarch. It can be found in the baking section of the supermarket.

After the top crust goes on, Kim recommends a 45 minute rest in the freezer (for the pie, not you!) to chill the dough and prevent shrinkage. Then the pie gets egg washed and sprinkled with cinnamon-sugar.

After an hour in the oven, this emerges.

The pie was met with much joy! The gesture was greatly appreciated and if he compared it to his mom’s pie, I certainly didn’t hear it, as his mouth was too full of pie. Flaky crust, just a bit nutty from the addition of spelt flour and juicy filling, dripping down your chin, just like when you eat a really ripe peach. Really all you could ask for in a peach pie. I think my debt has been finally paid off. What will I feel guilty about now?

Click here to print the recipe for Peach Pie.

Frozen Lemon Mint Vodka Mojito

8 Replies

Ok, so Sept 1 is probably not the ideal time to be posting about frozen lemon mint mojitos. I mean, come on you slackers, it’s back to school, back to work, time to clean out your closets , dust those summer cob webs off your brain and get serious about life again. On the other hand, maybe just one more mojito and then we can get serious about life again. After all, we still have Labout Day weekend coming up, so summer is not quite officially over yet.

The inspiration for this drink came from a popular non-alcoholic Israeli beverage. Ice, lemonade and mint are blended into a slushy brain freeze inducing concoction known as Limonata. In 2009 I had the good fortune of visiting Israel 4 times. My daughter was spending the year there and, what can I say, one of us had terrible separation anxiety issues! Each time I visited I would drink a Limonata and think to myself, “Oh, this would be so good with some vodka!” Then I would get home and forget all about it. Perhaps too much vodka?

Last weekend my sister, brother-in-law and kids were visiting at the cottage. My brother-in-law (I’ll just call him Mr B.) is a blender virtuoso. I do believe he might have been a professional mixologist in his past life. it was cocktail hour and we were looking around the kitchen for something to create. The day before we made Bellinis and I could just tell that Mr. B. was a bit disappointed with that choice. Too pedestrian and ordinary. He was itching to create.

My sister had prepared a batch of simple syrup earlier in the day and it was chilling in the fridge. I looked in the freezer and unearthed a bottle of Lemon vodka that my son and his friends had not yet discovered. Suddenly I remembered the Limonata and we got busy creating. I squeezed some lemons, chopped some mint and we were on our way.

When I handed Mr. B. a measuring cup and asked him if he would mind keeping track of quantities, he got that wounded look on his face, like when his sainted Toronto Maple Leafs lose to the Ottawa Senators. Measuring is not in the lexicon of a culinary creative genius. When I explained to him that I wanted to feature him and the drink in my blog and that I needed to provide an exact recipe to my readers he perked up a bit and forgave me for my slight. He was excited to be featured in Salt and Serenity!

Our first batch was a bit too tart. The second batch, not quite enough mint. We hit perfection on the third batch. I’m warning you, these go down mighty quickly!

Click here to print the recipe for Frozen Lemon Vodka Mint Mojito.

Battle Corn Chowder vs. Corn Vichysoisse

4 Replies

I have been meaning to post about corn soup for a few weeks now but some tomatoes and blueberries got in my way! In a battle of epic proportions (well, epic in my mind anyways!), I pitted the legendary champion, Cook’s Illustrated against fledgling culinary newcomer Gwyneth Paltrow. Yes, that Gwyneth Paltrow. Academy Award winning actress, singer, wife of Coldplay rocker Chris Martin, mother to Apple and Moses and possessor of gorgeous hair. She recently released a cookbook called “My Father’s Daughter.”

Here’s how this battle came about. When the July 2011 issue of Cook’s Illustrated came out I quickly leafed through it to see what caught my eye. I was stopped dead in my tracks by a recipe for corn chowder. You see, I love corn chowder. I used to make an incredible one, using Imagine Organic Creamy Sweet Corn Soup as the base for the soup. But then the company went and changed the formulation of the product. They slapped a big “New and Improved Taste” banner right on the front of the box! Yeah right! New maybe, but improved? Only if you happen love the taste of dirty dishwater!

So imagine my joy when I found a new corn chowder recipe. I was all set to make the Cook’s Illustrated recipe when I came across a second corn soup, a cold corn vichysoisse in the July issue of Bon Appetit Magazine. This recipe was created by Gwyneth herself, from her new cookbook, “My Father’s Daughter.” Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you will undoubtedly have seen Gwynnie making the rounds on all the daytime talk shows, promoting her book.

She has very sweet and touching memories of cooking together with her dad, and this book is a sort of tribute to her late father (Bruce Paltrow). It is a cookbook that celebrates family and togetherness. And try as you might to hate her, because she seems so perfect, she admits that her quest for perfection comes from self-doubt and insecurity. And who can’t relate to that? And I must admit, I was intrigued. After spending all that time in Spain with Mario Batali and Mark Bittman, I wanted to see what she had learned.

To be honest, I fully expected to prefer the corn chowder from Cook’s Illustrated over the corn vichysoisse from Gwyneth. To level the playing field, I immediately omitted the bacon from the Cook’s version. After all, it wouldn’t really be a fair fight if only one side got to use bacon. Everything always tastes better with bacon. And besides, we keep kosher at home, so bacon would be a big no-no in my kitchen.

I made the corn chowder from Cook’s first. They used an intriguing method of stripping the corn from the cob. Fisrt. going over it lightly with a sharp knife to remove just the kernels and then going over the cob again with the back of a table knife to remove all the pulp. Then they instruct you to put all the pulp into a clean tea towel and wring it out. The liquid that comes out from the towel is referred to as the “corn liquor” and apparently it is what gives the final soup its bright fresh CORN flavour.

The corn chowder from Cook’s Illustrated was very good, although I expected a brighter corn flavour, and to be honest, I thought the half and half cream kind of muddied the fresh corn taste I was expecting. Then I made Gwyneth’s vichysoisse. She suggests throwing the stripped corn cobs into the pot, while the soup is simmering, to add extra flavour, sort of like the vegetarian version of chicken bones I guess. The recipe calls for good quality vegetable stock. I used homemade vegetable stock, a fabulous roasted vegetable stock courtesy of Mark Bittman. I was blown away by the pure corn essence of this soup. Sweet and silky and tasting of pure late summer. Folks, we have a winner in battle Corn Soup.

You can serve it chilled with a dollop of sour cream or heat it up and just garnish it with some chopped chives. I liked it best hot.

Final score: Gwyneth 1 and Cook’s Illustrated 0.

I have adapted Gwyneth’s recipe by adding jalapeño, thyme and a bay leaf. I also added some fresh corn kernels after pureeing to give a bit of crunch.

Click here to print the recipe for Corn Vichyssoise

Click here to print the recipe for Roasted Vegetable Stock.

And, if you’re keen to create your own Battle Corn Soup at home,

Click here to print recipe for Cook’s Illustrated Corn Chowder.

Marcella Hazan’s Genius Tomato Sauce

6 Replies

So, it’s been 12 days since my last post, and lest you (Cousin Mark) think I have been slacking off, and not cooking, nothing could be further from the truth. The problem is that I have been cooking so much, there is no time left over for blogging. It’s summer at the cottage and that means lots of company, and way too much eating and drinking and fun. But, today is a rainy Sunday, and there is a lull in the activity, so I’m back to work!

I was planning to write a post all about corn, specifically corn chowder. But, then I made this:

And after that, it’s all I could think about. I was like a junkie, worrying about getting my next fix. I actually licked out the pot. This recipe has been around since 1973 but somehow it had never entered my sphere of consciousness. I am certainly not the first food blogger to write about this sauce. Jaden at Steamy Kitchen blogged about after meeting Marcella and Viktor Hazan . Deb over at Smitten Kitchen loved it best unadulterated without any grated cheese over the top. It came to Molly’s attention over at Orangette in 2007.

Thanks to the incredible crew at Food52, my life has been enriched immensely with the knowledge of this recipe. Every Wednesday, Food 52 unearths a recipe that they deem “Genius”. Columnist Kristen Miglore explains:

“There are good recipes, and great ones — and then there are genius recipes. Genius recipes surprise us and make us rethink cooking tropes. They’re handed down by luminaries of the food world and become their legacy. They get us talking and change the way we cook. And, once we’ve folded them into our repertoires, they make us feel pretty genius

Now you may be wondering, what is so genius about tomato sauce. But, I’m telling you, there is something akin to alchemy when these 3 simple ingredients come together. Just tomatoes (fresh or canned), 1 onion and 5 tablespoons of butter. That’s it! The first time I looked at the recipe I thought there was a mistake.

Where were the garlic, the olive oil, the oregano, and the basil? And, this is the part where you will have to take a leap of faith and just trust me; yes you must put in all 5 tablespoons of butter that this recipe calls for. Do not skimp on the butter, or even think about substituting margarine. I will find out about it and hunt you down!

I know that 5 tablespoons of butter seems like an ungodly amount for a tomato sauce. But if you do the math (and you don’t have to, I have done it for you – no need to thank me, it’s what I’m here for), you will se that this recipe makes enough sauce to feed 6 people. One tablespoon of butter contains 100 calories, so that makes 500 calories in butter for this recipe. But divide that by 6 and each person is only getting a measly 2 1/2 teaspoons or 82 calories from butter. A small indulgence when you consider the flavour payoff.

In what seems like a culinary sleight of hand, these three simple ingredients create a thick, full flavoured velvety sauce. It is pure and rich and luxurious. The butter gives a soft creamy note while at the same time tempers the acidity of the tomato. The onion adds a slight savory note, just hidden in the background of this sauce.

I added an additional step and pureed the sauce with a hand-held stick blender. I served it with Paccheri, a large hollow pasta, similar to rigatoni but bigger. It sort of resembles short pieces of a garden hose.
I finished it off with some grated Parmesan.

Just in case you don’t follow my advice and make this sauce right now while tomatoes are at their peak, you can still make this sauce in the winter with canned Italian plum tomatoes. You will thank me profusely.

To print the recipe for Marcella Hazan’s Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter click here.

Wild Blueberry Coffee Cake

13 Replies

On Highway 7, in Ontario, about halfway between Perth and Madoc, there is a stretch of road, about 20 kilometers long, that is dotted with blueberry farm stands, every 2 kilometers, just like this:

I know this because we drove this route mid-July every summer for 10 years, to visit our son at camp. The first few summers we drove the route there was much discussion and bickering about which of the 10 stands would have the best wild blueberries and whether we would look too eager or desperate if we stopped at the very first stand. Then, in 2006 we made a startling discovery. All the berry stands along that stretch of highway are owned and operated by one woman – Isobel Wood. She lives in the tiny town of Cloyne, and the stands are all staffed by her kids and grandkids.

Our kids no longer go to camp but we discovered we can take that same route to visit our friends, The Monkees, at their cottage in the Muskokas. So our wild blueberry tradition is safe.

For those of you who have never tried wild blueberries, it is an experience you will not soon forget. They differ from cultivated blueberries in several ways. Wild blueberries are smaller, sweeter and more flavourful than their cultivated sister. They hold their shape, texture and colour better during baking. As an added bonus, they are higher in antioxidants. And, they are more expensive! (But so worth it)

They also sell bluebery pie and blueberry jam, but for me, the main attraction is the wild blueberries.

Of course we bought way too many blueberries, so I had to bake then into something before they ended up in the compost heap. I am not a huge blueberry pie fan, although I do recall some amazing blueberry buns from Open Window Bakery when I was growing up in Toronto. I opted for wild blueberry coffee cake.

I know that blueberry coffee cake does not sound like the most exciting dessert, but trust me on this one. This cake is moist and dense thanks to the addition of sour cream. It is studded with tons of little blueberries and the topping is a crunchy concoction made from pecans, oats, butter, brown sugar, flour and maple syrup. And the crunch from the topping is still just as crunchy on day 2, should there be any leftovers.

I put together a little video showing how to prepare the crumble topping. Not that video instruction is necessary, this is a simple cake to make, but just because I am having too much fun playing around with iMovie on my new Mac!

Resist the urge to eat this immediately out of the oven. Give it at least 2-3 hours to cool. You can even make it a day ahead of time, as the flavours seem to improve. It also freezes quite well. I made it last week when we had friends visiting. Everyone was full after dinner so we each had a small piece. There was still almost 3/4 of the cake left. I wrapped it up, put it in the fridge and went to bed. When I got up in the morning only about 1/4 of the cake was left. Either I have fridge mice who know how to use a knife or someone was doing some midnight snacking. I’m not accusing, I’m just saying!

Click here to print the recipe for Wild

Blueberry Coffee Cake.

Rye Galette

5 Replies

When I started this blog over two years ago, I never imagined that it would be read by college and university students. Yet, somehow, I seem to have garnered a following among the 20 something crowd. It started with the daughters of my friends. One young woman, my god-daughter, has set my blog as her home page and was worried about me when I went 10 days without blogging. She actually called her mom to ask if everything was ok with me . How sweet is that?

Then it grew to include my daughter’s friends. She was quite proud of her mom and told her friends about my blog. I am sure they checked it out, just to be polite, because they are such nice young women!

However, I think they kept returning to the blog because they loved to read stories about my daughter and then tease and embarrass her. This was when they were in high school. Over the past 2 years they have moved onto university and have just recently moved out of residence and into their own apartments. Now they are interested in cooking, so they read the blog for recipes. And they have told their friends about it. So a big shout out to all my girls at McGill, Queens, Emerson and Ryerson!

My daughter’s best friend, spent many hours at our home when they were in high school. She loved eating at our house, especially when I made peanut butter bark, as her brother has a peanut allergy, so she couldn’t have it at home. Once she moved into her own apartment, she began asking me for recipes. She has turned out to be a wonderful cook (one minor mishap with vegetarian chili – but we won’t talk about that). She became obsessed with my galettes (free form tarts) and in May she made a Roasted Tomato and Gruyère Galette for her mom for Mother’s day and told me it was one of her proudest moments! It makes me so happy to see the next generation taking an interest in cooking and baking.

My sons, by the way, do not tell anyone their mother is a blogger. The oldest, probably for fear that his friends will read something humiliating about him, and the youngest because he can’t imagine his mother has time for anything but him!

Flushed with success at my recent venture into whole grains baking, I decided to try Kim Boyce’s Rustic Rye Dough and create a galette with that. In her book, “Good to the Grain”, Kim gives a lyrical description of this dough.

“The method for making this dough is similar to that for a rough puff pastry, a method I learned while working with Sherry Yard at Spago. It calls for letting a rough dough, made from chunks of butter and moist clumps of flour, rest in the refrigerator to give the gluten time to relax and the flour time to absorb the water. After an hour, the dough is rolled and folded a few times to create long “laminated” layers of butter throughout the dough, which give it its flakiness.”

Of course I waited to make the galette until my daughter’s galette obsessed friend was coming for a visit to the cottage. I filled the tart with spinach, corn, Asiago and provolone cheese and sliced tomatoes. The nutty flavour of the rye dough was perfect with that filling. Now of course my daughter’s friend wants to know how to make this, so here is a step by step tutorial, with video, to help her on her way.

Click here to print the recipe for Rustic Rye Dough .

Click here to print recipe for Asiago, Spinach, Corn and Tomato Galette

Beetroot and Chickpea Salad

7 Replies

I am very fortunate that I get to spend my summers at our cottage by the lake. We entertain guests all summer long and really enjoy being hosts. However, there is something so nice about being a guest every once in a while. Last weekend we got to play the role of guests as we headed off to visit friends at their cottage in The Muskokas.

For the purpose of this post, I will call our friends, “Mr. and Mrs. Monkey.” Of course, that is not their real names, but I am reluctant to reveal their identity for fear that once everyone learns what generous hosts they are, they will soon be over run with guests and will no longer have space for us.

I have nicknamed them “Mr. and Mrs. Monkey” as they share a certain personality trait with that animal.

“Tests in Capuchin monkeys showed the animals consistently chose to share food with another monkey if given the option, suggesting they are capable of empathy, the team at the Yerkes Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta found.

“They seem to care for the welfare of those they know,” Frans de Waal, director of the Living Links Center at Yerkes, said in a statement.

His team tested eight female brown Capuchin monkeys in pairs. They could choose a token that gave only themselves a treat or an option that rewarded both of them, called a pro-social option.

“The fact the Capuchins predominantly selected the pro-social option must mean seeing another monkey receive food is satisfying or rewarding for them,” said de Waal.

Our friends are indeed generous and gracious hosts, just like those Capuchin Monkeys. When we arrived, hot and tired, after a 5 hour drive, Mrs. Monkey had the Prosecco chilled and ready to open. She immediately ushered us to the dock for cocktails.

While we were in the kitchen, getting the Angus Bear Paw Burgers ready for dinner, I noticed that the fridge had a chalkboard panel where Mr. Monkee had written “Dad’s 10 Statements”. One of his rules to live by is further evidence that my friends are caring about the welfare of others.

“In life there are givers and takers, always be a giver!”

The next morning, my husband and The Monkees decided to go for a 60 km bike ride. I opted out and offered to have lunch ready when they returned. When I mentioned that I was going to go out for a power walk, Mrs. Monkee loaned me a hat, some sunblock, headphones for my i-pod (I had forgotten mine), some Bounce dryer sheets (excellent to clip onto your hat as the scent keeps the deer flies away) and a bear whistle.

WHAT??? A bear whistle? She explained that there had been a bear citing a few weeks ago so runners were advised to blow a whistle every so often to keep bears away. Like I said, she is so giving and generous. Off they went on their bike ride and I went for my walk, blowing that whistle every 30 seconds. While I did not have a bear sighting, I did attract every dog within a 30 mile radius!

After I got back from my walk and cooled off in the lake, I got to work on lunch. Mrs. Monkee had thoughtfully left the recipe out for me. I looked at the open page of the beautiful cookbook she left out for me. “Beetroot and Chickpea Salad.”

Okay, here was my dilemma. I hate beets. I want so badly to like them, because they are so beautiful, but every time I try to eat one, I gag. They have a certain earthiness that I just can’t deal with. I have tried them roasted,steamed and grilled. I have tried, golden beets, candy cane (striped)beets, and baby beets. I just can’t stand them. So, what to do? Do I accidentally throw the beets out, and say I couldn’t find them or do I just suck it up like a gracious guest and make the beet salad.

Of course I did the right thing and made the salad, beets and all. (Mom, you raised me right!) Mrs. Monkee had already gone to the trouble of roasting and peeling the beets, so all I had to do was slice them up and prepare the dressing and other salad ingredients.

The dressing was the most unusual combination of ingredients I had ever seen. Chickpeas, beets, lemon juice, garlic, mint, sugar and olive oil, all blended to make a smooth dressing. It was just so strange that I had to taste it. Say… I do like beets, well beet salad dressing,… after all. The other ingredients mellowed the beet taste and just a hint of beet was all I could taste in the dressing.

I added some water and a bit more oil than the recipe called for, to thin out the dressing. I also pureed the heck out of it so it was quite smooth. I washed some spinach, diced some celery and cucumbers and soaked some red onions to add to the salad.

The salad is topped with additional chick peas, beets and some feta. Mrs. Monkee arrived home just in time to toss.

At lunch, I politely ate around the beets, leaving a little hill of them at the side of my plate. Mrs. Monkey, politely ate the beets off my plate. After 38 years of friendship, no words were necessary.

Click here to print the recipe for Beetroot and Chickpea Salad.

Cherry Cake with Pistachio Crumble Topping

4 Replies

If you happened to be at Your Independent Grocer (or “THE YIG“, as my sister likes to call it) in Smiths Falls, Ontario, last Wednesday, at around 2:30 p.m, and you heard a crazy woman let out a gleeful scream, well, that would be me. You see, as I turned the corner, just past the pluots and nectarines, I spied a bin filled with Ranier cherries.

The Rainier cherry is the sweetest, prettiest and most pampered of cherries. Developed in 1953, it is a cross between the Bing and Van varieties. Golden to orange to pale red in colour on the outside, one bite reveals a creamy yellow flesh. They are more delicate and sweeter than Bing cherries. The season for Ranier cherries is extremely short, a few weeks in mid July, and then it’s over.

During cherry season, I eat cherries like it’s my job. During Ranier cherry season, I work overtime! I filled my cart with several bags of Ranier cherries and probably ate at least a pound of them on the drive back to the cottage. I continued to gorge on Ranier cherries for the next several days and pretty soon I was sweating cherry juice. (In my defense, it was quite humid.) It became apparent that I would have to do something with the cherries before the rest spoiled.

Tartelette’s blog came to my rescue! If you haven’t discovered this blog yet, I urge you to go on over for a visit. It is charming and filled with wonderful recipes and gorgeous drool inducing photography. She made little cherry cakes topped with a pistachio crumble. Brimming with fresh cherries and slightly flavoured with lemon zest. this cake is a wonderful way to celebrate cherry season. I made it with my surplus of Ranier cherries, but in hindsight, the flavour of Ranier cherries is so delicate, and the colour so pale, they were lost in the cake. Next time I make it, I will use Bing cherries.

Pitting the cherries is the most time-consuming task in making this cake. if you don’t have a cherry pitter, do it this way:

The crumble and cake come together very quickly. I made a 9 inch square cake, although if you have mini cake pans, it would make an adorable presentation!

Click here to print recipe for Cherry Cakes With Pistachio Crumble Topping .

Multi-Grain Corn Cakes

6 Replies

Sometimes when I finish a book,I have a very hard time starting a new one. With certain books, the characters stay with you for a long time and you are reluctant to begin a new book, because you aren’t quite ready to say goodbye to the old one. This happened to me after finishing “The Faith Club”, a true story written shortly after the horror of 9/11.

“Welcome to the Faith Club. We’re three mothers from three faiths—Islam, Christianity, and Judaism—who got together to write a picture book for our children that would highlight the connections between our religions. But no sooner had we started talking about our beliefs and how to explain them to our children than our differences led to misunderstandings. Our project nearly fell apart.”

At this point, you may be wondering if you missed something here. When did Salt and Serenity stop writing about food, and start reviewing books, and what about those multi-grain corn cakes? I actually came to make these corn cakes because I couldn’t pick up another novel quite yet. You see, I took “Good to the Grain” (Kim Boyce’s new book about baking with whole grains) to bed with me to read last week.

I have made several things from the book, and enjoyed them very much, but then I somehow got sidetracked and forgot about it. I stayed up very late reading, and in the morning I was raring to go to bake with whole grains.

In the multigrain chapter of the book, Kim gives a recipe for a multigrain flour mix consisting of whole wheat flour, oat flour, barley flour,millet flour and rye flour. I headed out to my local bulk food store and stocked up. She says to mix up a batch of these flours and keep it in the jar on the counter to use in all sorts of recipes.

I decided to adapt my regular corn cakes recipe and substitute the all-purpose flour in the recipe with this mixture.

They looked good, but the taste was bitter and the texture was leaden. Had to toss that batch. I decided to take a step back and add whole grains a bit more slowly. I played around a bit more and threw out a few more corn cakes until I finally hit upon this combination of grains:

As I was cutting the corn off the cob, I pondered the milk decision, buttermilk or whole milk?

I decided to mix up a batch of each, The buttermilk mixture (on the left) looked so much more promising, thicker and all bubbly. I had high hopes for it!

By this time, it was getting close to lunch, so I threw in a diced jalapeno pepper.

The buttermilk batch did indeed cook up higher and a bit fluffier, but I found the taste of the whole milk one have a purer corn flavour. The buttermilk seemed to subdue the corn flavour and overpower it.

At last, I found the perfect combination. This final batch, had the goodness of whole grains, the crunch from corn meal and fresh corn, the heat of jalapenos and the fresh dairy taste from whole milk. Fried in a little bit of butter, these corn cakes were crispy around the edges and soft on the inside. They disappeared very quickly.

All that was left was the mess!

Salt and Serenity

Tales from my kitchen