Farm fresh eggs

I've been meaning to brag about this for the last nine days, but time got away from me.

At long last, after a summer of frustration, I scored a dozen eggs straight from a farm! We're very fortunate that the university has its own farm; one of my favourite things to do from June through September is to go to the farm market on Saturday morning. It opens at 9, and I'm usually there by 8:40 or so. I still end up in a queue, but that's usually early enough to get a good selection.

Except for the eggs.

These always sell out quickly, typically within the first 15 minutes of the market. One Saturday in June I almost got a dozen, but someone skipped the queue (big no-no!) and grabbed the last dozen just as I was reaching for them. (I hadn't immediately realised that she had skipped the queue and gave her the benefit of a doubt; once it became obvious what she had done the others in the line around me were horrified, one even spoke to the market manager about it, and I chastised her on the way out. And, yes, I saw her do the same thing again a few weeks later.) So it was a moment of major delight when I managed to get a dozen - and not even the last dozen! - the Saturday before last.

But have I done anything with them yet? Sadly, no. I came down with a cold the day after buying them and still feel ill. (It just isn't fair, being sick whilst nine months pregnant.) I haven't had the energy or will to bake anything, or even make a nice eggy meal. Although, maybe a frittata would be nice...

Der kuchen ist fertig

I guess it is a continental trait, but Werner is especially partial to fruity desserts. I found the recipe for this blueberry cream tart in a recent column by Lucy Waverman for the Globe and Mail, and it looked like something he'd really appreciate.



There were numerous substitutions for this first attempt. For one, rather than make the pastry called for in the recipe, I used homemade pastry I had earlier frozen. (I'm tired and learning to cut corners.) I didn't have a lime, so I used bottle lime juice. (Oh, the shame!) And since I had neither blueberry nor pomegranate juice, I used plain old OJ. (I figure it will add to the citrusy flavour.)

The pastry, despite being docked and then blind baked while weighted, puffed up, so there wasn't quite as much space for the cream filling and blueberry topping as I would have hoped. Oh, dear. Whatever shall I do with the leftovers?


The recipe: Blueberries and Cream Tart
Source: Lucy Waverman, published in The Globe and Mail Style section, Saturday, September 2, 2006, page L9.
Note: I have reorganised the recipe a little, so the instructions for each component follow the respective ingredient list.

Blueberries and cream are a fabulous combination. For the pastry, use unsalted butter if organic or trans-fat free shortening is not available.

Pastry:
1½ cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
1/3 cup unsalted butter, cubed
2 tablespoons organic shortening, cut in pieces
3 tablespoons cold water
1½ teaspoons white vinegar or lemon juice

Preheat oven to 425 F.

Sift together flour and salt in a large bowl. Cut in butter and shortening until the mixture resembles coarse bread crumbs.

Combine water and vinegar or lemon juice in a separate bowl. Add enough of the liquid to gather pastry into a ball (you may need more or less depending on the humidity) and knead together gently.

Roll out pastry to fit into a 9-inch fluted tart tin. Place pastry in tin, and line with parchment paper or foil and fill with pie weights or beans to the top. Bake for 15 minutes, remove paper and weights and bake for 8 minutes longer or until pastry is dry and pale gold. Set aside.

Filling:
4 cups blueberries
1/3cup blueberry or pomegranate juice
¼ cup sugar
1 teaspoon grated lime rind
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon lime juice

Combine 2 cups blueberries with ¼ cup blueberry juice, sugar and 1 teaspoon lime rind in a medium pot. Combine remaining 2 tablespoons blueberry juice with cornstarch to make a slurry. Set aside.

Bring blueberry mixture to a boil and add cornstarch slurry. Cook until slightly thickened. Remove from heat. Stir in remaining 2 cups blueberries and lime juice. Set aside to cool.

Cream:
1 cup mascarpone
¼ cup whipping cream
¼ cup sugar
1 teaspoon grated lime rind

Combine mascarpone, whipping cream, sugar and remaining teaspoon lime rind in a small bowl. Stir until uniform. Spread into prepared pie shell. Top with cooled blueberry mixture.

Serves 6 to 8.

Kitchen accident!!

No loss of blood (or digits, for that matter). But I did just nick the kitchen faucet with the tip of my 8" Henckels chef's knife.

The tap is a little worse for wear. The knife was unharmed.

Leftovers

Ah, turkey leftovers. Some find they seems as though they'll never go away, but I find them to be a bit of a latent treasure. For starters, there's nothing like slices of roasted turkey breast on homemade bread, ideally with dressing and some potato salad and mustard salad.

Oh, right. I haven't baked any bread lately, and the last loaf from the last batch was eaten last week. (Bad planning on my part!) And I didn't make dressing with this turkey, nor do I happen to have any potato or mustard salads in the fridge. But I do have part of a baguette. So yesterday for lunch I made a pseudo-Waldorf salad sandwich for lunch: a hunk of baguette, onto which I spread a mixture of chopped turkey, chopped walnuts, chopped (freshly picked local organic!) apples, and Miracle Whip. (Yes, I like Miracle Whip. Does that mean I'm not really a foodie?) It was delicious. Admittedly, my pregnant tastebuds might have a different sense of yumminess than your tastebuds might have, but I really enjoyed it, and will have it again for lunch today.

What to do with the rest of the leftover meat? Well, we ate it for supper last night strictly as leftovers from the night before - just reheated, along with all the side dishes. I could make and freeze some individual turkey pot pies; I did that with the leftover Christmas turkey, and they were a hit. I think I have some homemade pastry in the freezer, so it wouldn't be much more work than making a turkey stew. Ah, that's what I could do! I could make a stew for supper tonight, and the rest could become individual pot pies! Or I could make a turkey divan, if I can find a recipe.

And now I'm working on turkey stock. Got out the 'cauldron' (my 14l Paderno stock pot), plunked in the turkey carcass and 4 or 5l of water and am now waiting for it to come to a boil. Then I'll add carrots, onions, celery, some thyme and black peppercorns, and spend the day babysitting the stock as it simmers. I'll freeze the stock and save it for risottos, soups, and the like.

Come to think of it, that means I could bake some bread today... I've got to be here anyway...

Gobble gobble

Yesterday, we cooked a turkey dinner for friends. Yes, really, we. We BBQ'ed the turkey, which meant that, despite the rain, Werner spent the afternoon running in and out to monitor the temperature. (I've promised him that, the more inclement the weather, the better grilled food will taste.)

It was ambitious, given that I'm just about 9 months pregnant now. But the bird turned out beautifully. (I wish preggie brain hadn't struck, as I had meant to take a photo of the meal. Ok, preggie brain and preggie hunger, too. I admit it.) It was cooked right on the grill, not the rotisserie, and we used a drip pan to catch the drippings, which I turned into gravy. Served with scalloped potatoes, dragon carrots (they're red on the outside), and dragon's tongue beans (varigated ivory and purple), all from the university's organic farm, it was a good choice for an early autumn/not Thanksgiving meal. No cranberry sauce, and no dressing. (Although I did really miss the dressing.)

For dessert? Berlepsch apple and cranberry pie, served with whipped cream.

I have a goodly amount of leftovers, which will sustain us for a couple of days. (That will make up for all the effort yesterday!) I guess I could make a few turkey pot pies for the freezer. And once I get some celery, I will make some stock from the carcass. Turkeys just keep giving and giving.

The recipe came from Canadian Living's 2006 BBQ Best cookbook, and also available on their website. Very different from the usual approach to turkey, but simply delicious. The herbed butter kept the meat moist and flavourful.

Mmmmm... I think I'm ready for a turkey sandwich for lunch!

Ich koche gerne

I'm in the midst of the big pre-baby cooking push. After planning this for ages, now that I'm huge and exhausted and very definitely heavily pregnant, I'm finally knee-deep in it.

On Monday, I trekked out to Superstore. I go there three, maybe four times a year to stock up on basics. The stores are huge, and all a fair distance from our home, but offer President's Choice products and reasonable prices. Oh, and not just groceries, but all sorts of housewares, too. So after making up a monstrous grocery list (yes, using a spreadsheet), I drove out to the Richmond store. I still feel something between embarrassment and horror when I think that I spent three and a half hours there...

But I stocked up on lots of staples, some baby things (from diapers to retractable shades for the backseat windows of our car), a laundry basket, cheeses, meats, and I'm not even sure what else. One thing I'm sure of, though, is that I set a record for the total. Considering all that I picked up, the total was reasonable, but it still came as a shock!!

After spending an afternoon there (and, on my way to the store, two hours at Ikea), I was exhausted. My feet and ankles, perpetually swollen as it is, ballooned out to frightening new dimensions. My back ached, and even my knees felt stiff and sore. The drive home seemed especially long, and when I got home, I put all the perishables away but left everything else in the car for the time being.

On Tuesday, the great cooking marathon began. First, I made meat sauce for lasagna. I also prepared the spinach and cheese filling for cannelloni. Both of these I refrigerated, with plans of completing the dishes the following day. I made turkey chili, packed it into containers and froze it, and prepared a double batch of bolognese sauce. (By this time I was too exhausted and sore to portion out and freeze the bolognese, so it too got refrigerated and was later frozen in 2-cup portions in ziplock bags.)

Wednesday, I made pasta noodles. For my last birthday, Werner gave me a pasta roller attachment for my Kitchenaid, and I thought homemade pasta would be best for the lasagna and cannelloni. This, sadly, was my downfall. Oh, it all turned out deliciously, but like everything else it took far longer than I anticipated and left me knackered and aching. I got three good-sized lasagnas finished and in the freezer. As for the homemade noodles, really, I had nothing to prove; I could have bought ready-made noodles, but I just really like homemade noodles. Besides, if I'm going to go through all the motions of making homemade, nutritious meals for later on, it makes sense to make them as homemade and nutritious as possible. (One corner I did cut: I bought pre-shredded mozzarella for the lasagna, so at least I didn't need to spend any time slicing cheese.)

I got all the noodles made and cooked yesterday. The noodles for the cannelloni I layered in tea towels, which I rolled up and refrigerated overnight. Today I stuffed and rolled the noodles for the cannelloni, made up a quadruple batch of sauce, and froze five foil containers of cannelloni.

I'm really tired and swollen and everything aches. If you've called and left a message on our machine these last few days, I'm very sorry that I haven't called back but I'm just too knackered to hold a normal conversation.

Now that the big batch of cooking is largely done¹, I'm resting up. I have lots of things to do which don't require me to be on my feet, and I think I'll be focussing on those for a while. That, and having some quality time with the Phoebecat, who has been rather disgruntled with me for spending so much time in the kitchen, and who now is curled up on the couch, right next to my cankles.


¹ I still have a few more things to make (cod au gratin, for one, and hopefully some bread), but I think most of the stockpiling has been completed. If Bärchen decides to be born tomorrow, I would be pretty much satisfied with the volume and variety of homemade meals I've been able to stash away for the early days of parenthood.

Putting up for later

At last, perhaps I have finished all my preserving for this year? (And maybe next year, too?)



From left to right:

• Strawberry jam
• Strawberry rhubarb jam
• Peach jam
• Strawberry-balsamic-black pepper jam (top); Honey-spiced peaches (bottom)
• Apricot jam
• Strawberry lemon marmalade
• Strawberry lemonade concentrate
  

And for a few artistic photos, courtesy of Werner: