nosegarden. fresh with dannotations. » cooking

cast iron at work

danno — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 07:00:00 +0000

Title 1: making potato cubes into hash

Title 2: making tofu into tasty lemongrass tofu (slightly burnt)

lentil burgers? that’s bulghur not vulgur

danno — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 05:23:42 +0000

Every time I make lentils I make too many. Perhaps it is because they swell and cook to twice their dry size. Instead of overwhelming soups, or making crazy green lentil curries…I blitzed them up with egg and them added in finely chopped and sauteed aromatic veggies. Some panko & bulghur to add texture and there is a light lentil burger.

Move over gardenburgers in the freezer. I have a food saving way to keep some frozen patties in the freezer for whenever. Less cheese too.

(p.s. I know they don’t look so appetizing, but bare with me they were tasty)

slow sandwich

danno — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 01:38:07 +0000

I spent a great deal of time last November into December creating my very own sourdough starter. It involved essentially letting some Organic Local Red Fife Wheat (from the Flour Peddler sold at the East Van Farmers Market) and yeast from the skins of some local Ambrosia apples rot and ferment, then slowly adding bread flour until the paste I created started to bubble. Feed, dump, feed, dump, rot, feed, dump, feed, dump.

Several attempts at creating a loaf resulted in under performing yeast. One big reason may be the amount of chlorine in the water I was using. I’ve posted pics of the experience, as well as some very dense loaves of bread here. Fail.

I have since dumped plans at creating my sourdough bakery :-), but I did want to at least make a sandwich, so here we go (warning: it’s got meats).

Same process as with the sourdough starter, but with instant-rise bread yeast… create a loaf of Montovana-style bread.

Salt and roast a boneless leg of lamb from the Winter Farmers Market (Jay Springs Lamb), and then use a mandolin to slice it as thin as lunch meat. Then season with a little more salt.

Cut two slices, toast them, rub dijon mustard on one side and an assortment of sweet roasted peppers. Take the other side and dab on a garlic aioli or mayo and an assortment of hot pickled peppers. Marry the two with a pinch of the lamb lunch meat and…

Bam! You gots a slow sandwich. My favourite of 2010 so far!

pantry raid: Kosher for Passover Egg Noodle Tuna Casserole

danno — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 01:18:05 +0000

I’ve been dying to try some local canned tuna for months. Since August actually, I’ve had this premium can of Thetis Queen albacore tuna from the Main Street Station Farmers Market.

One thing we’ve been working on is to use up (or donate) shelf-stable food on a regular basis to keep our pantry “fresh” (as a pantry can be) by rotating dry goods.

This week, in the back of the pantry, we came across some Kosher for Passover Egg Noodles (probably from Passover last year). You take some tuna and some egg noodles, and even though it’s made with matzah instead of semolina flour… the end result was tasty and comforting. The only downside was that the egg noodles turned out to be more like rice noodles, so some imagination had to be used to transcend rice-matzah noodles into a country home classic. I kept the base of the casserole dairy free, using a combo of cream of mushroom soup and veggie stock with a roux to thicken. Addition of some smoked cheddar and sweet paprika and we had a smokey comfort tuna casserole…nice!

The tuna was amazing. The photos don’t do it justice, but you could tell that they canned the tuna in its own juices instead of filling the can with saline or crumby soy oil. I recommend it, although I doubt the tuna will be in the pantry as long again.

Here’s a shot of the tuna can.

Now that’s a solid piece of tuna! Mean! mean!