Slow Food Saskatoon Boreal Feast Event

I didn't post about this earlier because I was in the midst of planning and executing the event. dee Hobsbawn-Smith and I just co-hosted a six course, small plates dinner, matched with wine, to celebrate Michele Genest's new book The Boreal Feast. Michele honoured us with her presence, and we cooked recipes from her book for the event.

I haven't done any catering or hosting of large events for a couple of years. But I knew I wanted this event to happen, and I jumped at the chance to offer both my help and my house as a venue.

My house isn't very big, but we'd hosted up to 45 people before, so I figured 30, for a 'stand-up' dinner, would be manageable.

It wasn't until the Monday before the event, after it had sold out, that I wondered at my own sanity. Why did I think it was a good idea to sell tickets to an event at my house, for 30 people, potentially strangers? It was too late to do anything but wonder and make sure I did my best to make it a success.

And of course, I remembered, it IS Saskatoon after all. In any group of 30 people, I'm bound to know at least a couple of them.

So the menu was this:

Welcome course
Modernist Celery & Olives, Grilled Halloumi, Hakan Sarkaker's Thin Bread, Smoked Saskatchewan Whitefish Spread, Juniper Aioli
Served with dee's Market Sangria

First Plate
Toasted Sunflower Seed Soup, Finnish Pulla Bread
Served with Torreon de Paredes Reserve Chardonnay

Second Plate
Buckwheat Blini, Walnut-Mushroom Filling
Served with Melipal Malbec Rose

Palate Cleanser
Endive, Daikon & Kohlrabi Salad with Walnuts and Cranberries, Cranberry Vinaigrette

Next Plate
Goat sausage with juniper and blueberries, Turnip Gratin
Served with Medeiros Red wine

Sweet Plate
Five cookies (spruce jelly thumbprint cookies, Kolakakor, Smoked labrador tea shortbreads, wild cranberry biscotti, sugar cookies with candied lemon)
One meringue (rosewater and rose petal!)
Coffee, tea

The wine was recommended by Doug Reichel of Fine Wines Saskatchewan, and matched beautifully with the food. dee's son Dailyn, a pastry chef at NOtaBLE in Calgary, fell in love with the Medeiros, so I sent him home with a bottle.

Speaking of Dailyn, thank all the gods that he was there. Reflecting back on the night, I couldn't imagine having pulled it off without him. He was dressing salads, dishing soup, grilling halloumi and goat sausage and washing plates, while dee was plating dishes, orchestrating the courses and doing the last bits of seasoning, and I was playing hostess and telling people where to put their coats, pouring wine, and setting out the cookies and coffee. Had we not had three sets of hands, we either would have just made it work, or eventually someone would have taken pity on us and offered to wash a round of plates. As it was, everyone got to enjoy their evening, and Dailynn had fun grilling and cutting vegetables, since most days he is baking bread.

I'm delighted to now have a copy of The Boreal Feast and I have a couple of favourite recipes from the evening, and others I can't wait to try. I was enamoured with the magical elements of both Harkan Sarkakar's thin bread (it's just seeds, mixed with cornstarch and boiling water, and then you bake it in a low oven for a long time. It makes a sturdy, seedy cracker that I will be making again) and the cream of sunflower seed soup (it starts out as seeds floating in broth, along with onions and roasted garlic, but then you purée it and it turns into this velvety, buttery, silky and comforting cream soup. Amazing!).

I'm also fascinated by the prospects of harvesting spruce tips next spring, and using them as a fresh herb, or drying them for later use. I can just walk out into my front yard and pick them off our massive spruce tree, which I now see as having renewed purpose.

My night was made when a woman who was born in Finland tasted the Pulla bread that originates in Finland. She proclaimed that dee and Dailyn had done it perfectly, and that it brought a tear to her eye, remembering her mother's Pulla. At that moment, I decided it had all been worth it.

And what was the 'it' that had all been worth it? It wasn't too serious. I'd done worse before, like hosted something like that on my own. In that case I wouldn't have been quite as ambitious with the number of courses and what was in them. I'd be doing a lot more make-ahead/serve yourself kind of stuff, rather than plating every course. dee, you amaze me!

Most of my work had to be done on the Saturday, and it involved shopping, baking the thin bread, cranberry biscotti, turnip gratin and sunflower soup (vegetarian and with chicken broth). That didn't seem like much until I realized that it was 2pm and I hadn't finished my shopping, and that the thin bread (for which I was making four batches) required an hour and 20 minutes in the oven.

I quickly revised my plans for a date night with my husband (lucky thing we had gone out on a whim the night before) and advised him that we would be ordering in while I waited for stuff to come out of the oven.

The cooking took place between 4 and 11:30pm on Saturday, which left me time to play league volleyball from 9-noon on Sunday, and then get right back into prep work. Sunday was a long day, but an overall success once people got over their initial discomfort with the close quarters, and began visiting with the other guests.

I did know about a third of the people there, and now I know the rest of them! We got great feedback, Michele got to sell a pile of her books, and we wrapped up the night with Dailyn our saviour doing the king's share of the cleanup (if the king were to do cleanup, that is) and then having a glass of wine or liqueur (Michele's cookbook has several liqueur recipes as well, and I lined up my own collection of fruit liqueurs for her to try) and putting our feet up for a few minutes. We crawled into bed around midnight, and my mind stopped spinning around 1:30.

While it was a gratifying experience all around, I have to say that until my kids are older, I won't be able to do this very often. My parents graciously looked after my kids for the weekend, even though G had a nasty cold and barfed in their car on the way back to the farm. While I enjoyed the unbroken rest that came with not having the boys around, I missed them.

While I couldn't have kept the house clean, accomplished my to-do list and kept my sanity with the kids around, D was not convinced that he should be missing a party where food was happening. So I think next time (because yes, there WILL be a next time. I am compelled to do these kinds of events), maybe we'll find a different venue, so that my family has somewhere to be while I help with the cooking.

In the meantime, we're enjoying our mini-family reunion as well as the leftovers. I have cookies and buckwheat blini galore in the freezer, and some halved lemons are now being preserved for some Moroccan adventures to come. We had sunflower seed soup for lunch, and I spread some of the juniper aioli on some jackfish fillets and broiled them for our dinner, served alongside the turnip gratin (which the kids rejected outright—although D ate two servings of jackfish), and leftover salad fixings. I will be eating pulla bread until it is gone. It is just so good with a bit of butter on it!

But the cooking never stops. In the midst of final cleanups, I turned some slightly old goat milk (the kids drink it, but they were away for the weekend, and it was a little too 'goaty' by the time they returned) into ricotta, and I fried some leftover halloumi for G as a mid-afternoon snack. Tomorrow I will be turning some turkey stock and curly endive that I found at the Farmers' Market into Italian wedding soup, and I have volunteered to bring Halloween cookies for both boys' parties on Friday.

I decided that I should make some kind of decorating cookie in the hopes of using up some of the orange sugar I bought for the boys' birthday cupcakes. I have a pumpkin cookie cutter, so then decided that I should make cookies that contain actual pumpkin. Bless the inter web, someone thought of it before me. So I'll be making pumpkin gingerbread cookies, shaped like pumpkins, for Friday. That's how we roll.

Foodie Book Review #3: An Everlasting Meal

A close foodie friend recommended I read An Everlasting Meal. When I was stocking up on foodie books at a recent visit to Powell's Books in Portland, I picked up a copy. I don't know what to call it: a love affair with food, a lifetime reference, a life-changing read...all of those fit the bill.

Tamar Adler has cooked with Gabrielle Hamilton, Alice Waters, and several other famous American chefs, and she manages to combine thrift with a passion for cooking and eating, something I've never really experienced before, at least not in such a way that was so committed to both using every scrap of food and thoroughly enjoying it at the same time.

I get that. I absolutely LOVE turning a chicken carcass into stock, and picking off all the bits of meat to use for soup. I love reducing a fat, healthy bird to nothing but a tiny pile of bones, knowing that we have enjoyed several meals from it, and that the animal did not die in vain. I petition my dad constantly to save organs and soup bones from the animals he butchers. And I love transforming leftover rice into a pie crust for a quiche, or rice pudding for tomorrow's breakfast or dessert.

But I had never considered half of the ideas in Adler's book for stretching vegetables, beans, broth and meat into amazing and flavourful meals--like turning stems, leaves and cores of brassicas and dark leafy greens into pesto (although I did take great joy in making radish leaf pesto from my garden this year, so I wasn't that far off), or turning fresh pea shells into stock for pea soup. I will have this book on my recipe shelf from now on, and I'm pretty sure it will become studded with sticky notes, to mark my favourite ideas and recipes.

I have already made her recipe for White Bolognese (inspired by Amanda Hesser, but calling for homemade beef stock rather than beef bouillon mixed with water), which, it turns out, is the whole food version of my mom's classic "hamburger goop," otherwise known as ground beef fried with onions and celery and then bound together with a can of condensed cream of mushroom soup. Using real beef stock, Italian sausage, porcini mushrooms and fresh cream makes it WAY more delicious and even more comforting, which I hadn't thought possible.

Besides some creative approaches to food in general, Adler's approach to sharing food continues to work its way into my mind. She argues it doesn't matter what you serve, as long as you serve something. It's the coming together for the meal that gets your guests excited about a dinner party, more so than the menu itself. She encourages you to offer something—anything—the moment your guests arrived: radishes with butter and salt; celery and carrot sticks with crackers and butter; warmed olives, or stale bread toasted and drizzled with oil and herbs. It got me thinking more creatively about what I have in my pantry and refrigerator that people can eat. Suddenly, the options seem much broader than they did before I read the book.

She also suggests making dishes that allow the host to relax with her/his guests, a lesson which I have yet to learn, since my approach was to redesign my kitchen so that my guests could sit and have a drink while watching me cook. She encourages involving your guests in the preparation of the meal, again, something I need to practice. This quote is echoing around in my head: "Only remember what is plainly and always true: the act of serving fulfills itself. It doesn't matter what you serve."

So my cooking resolution is to try not to be so rigid in what and to whom I serve. I'll embrace the idea of creating meals with what I have available, without running to the store for that one ingredient that will perfect a specific recipe. I'm pretty sure thinking this way will make me a more creative—and relaxed—cook.

Foodie Confessions; Planning Father's Day Brunch

It must be my status of "lapsed Catholic" that requires me to confess my "sins" (usually only considered sins in my own warped view of reality) to everyone whenever I commit some sort of transgression. Because food is a primary focus, any time I break one of my own self-imposed "rules", I feel the need to shout it to the world.

So yesterday I was planning Father's Day brunch, which I will be hosting for my in-laws. When I asked my husband what he would like me to make, he had two requests: a classic version of the wife-saver, "French Peach Brunch" and, "Meat would be good."

I am also notorious for asking for my husband's input and then ignoring him. I didn't quite ignore him this time, but I did request that instead of using canned peaches in the French Peach Brunch, that I adapt it to use fresh rhubarb. He was okay with that.

I have entirely given in to his meat request. So here's the menu, then the confession:

Homemade Elk Sausage (ground elk meat mixed with an equal amount of ground pork, seasoned with brown sugar and salt and pepper, and formed into patties)
Baked Eggs and Mushrooms in Ham Crisps (I have made this a few times before, and it's lovely. It uses fresh tarragon, which is abundant in my herb bed, and I have a plethora of small fresh farm eggs that will work perfectly in twos, and not take too long to set)
Toasted Brioche from Christie's Bakery
Rhubarb Baked French Toast (I'll post the recipe after I work on adapting it)
Fruit Salad
Tea, coffee, juice

I was looking this over, and while it is already pretty full, I felt like it was missing something—something that involves potatoes. I went on line and searched through Epicurious's hash brown recipes, and stumbled upon on of my guiltiest pleasures: hash brown casserole (please note, though, that my family recipe is not the one on Epicurious, but rather this one).

And here is my confession. I am making it for Father's Day brunch. Why? Because I a) I love it, even though I know it is a fat-filled mess of mostly processed food, and I virtually NEVER buy canned soups; b) my guests will be universally appreciative; c) it is a good excuse to feed my occasional trashy food cravings, so that they stay in check.

I know there's nothing really wrong with cooking the occasional hash brown casserole. I just feel guilty, as a fairly militant food snob, giving in to the urge to make a dish that is SO not whole, fresh food. But hey, you can't deny your roots, and every once in a while, a can of cream of mushroom soup or Cheez Whiz (my other guilty pleasure, which my husband has banned from the house, since D was asking for it on his toast in the mornings, and since I no longer have pregnancy cravings as an excuse for buying and consuming it) has to cross the threshold. Now, I will go do my penance by baking bread, cooking beans from scratch and making my kids fresh fruit popsicles.

As an aside, I gave in while in the grocery store checkout line and picked up Canadian Living's Special Cookbook Edition on Summer Entertaining. My first flip through made me think I'd made a mistake, since most items seemed pretty familiar. But I've spent more time with it now, and it has worked my way into my meal plan this week in several ways. Tonight, to go with our grilled elk steak, I am trying out Dilled Potato and Grilled Corn Salad as well as Asparagus and Mixed Greens Salad. There are several more recipes that I'll be trying over the next few weeks, and I will share as I make them.

Happy Father's Day, to all the dads out there. I hope you have an excellent, meat-filled day (if that is your preference, of course).

Foodie Book Review #2: The Art of Living According to Joe Beef

My book-recommending librarian friend strikes again, ordering The Art of Living According to Joe Beef: A Cookbook of Sorts for me to borrow from the library. I started off flipping through it, thinking it looked kind of fun, and very much a restaurant that I will put on my bucket list for the next time I travel to Montreal. But the recipes (such as Lièvre à la Royale—taking two days and involving a rabbit, a hare, a veal trotter, caul fat, foie gras, truffles, and the reserved blood of the hare, among other things) weren't something I would be likely to try at home. 

At least not at first glance. As I looked through more carefully and got sucked into the stories and history of Montreal, and the playful voice of the whole thing, I stumbled across some real gems. For example, in their subsection titled "Tall Tales, Taste and a Few Theories" (all three of which I am a fan) they describe why the Big Mac is so popular (according to them, it is a perfect balance of salt, fat, sugar, acid and bite)—and then set out a series of simple recipes that combine the same perfect balance of flavour.

This will in no way convince me to go out and buy a Big Mac, since my farm upbringing (and lifetime access to real, healthy beef) has spoiled me forever for anything from McDonalds. I have never been able to enjoy it, even as a child. I always wanted to, because you're supposed to, but I was always disappointed in how it tasted. But I digress.

It was the chapter titled "The Smoker", backing on to the next chapter, "Building a Garden in a Crack Den," which got me totally hooked. They actually provided their plans for a homemade smoker (something my dad has built), and tucked in the middle of a book that uses all manner of meat, fat and foie gras, is a gorgeous chapter outlining their monthly garden harvest schedule and a recipe for Jerusalem Artichokes with Ketchup. 

And in the middle of that chapter was a revelation to me: Herbes Salées—salted herbs! I had never considered preserving my herbs in salt, but there was a recipe that explains how. In cold climates like Saskatchewan, this is pure gold! Apparently this is a traditional Quebec recipe. Quebec! You've been holding out on the rest of the country! And they store in the fridge for up to a year. I have currently been sneaking out to my herb patch for thyme, since it is merely frozen but not covered with snow. This won't be the case forever, though. I'm so excited to get at my herb bed next summer. I have to plant chervil...

Their booze and dessert chapters also got me thinking. The dessert recipes confirmed my attachment to Panna Cotta as a great quick and easy dessert (if your dinner guests give you a few hours' warning, so it can set), as well as sparking my interest in Eclairs and a cake called Marjolaine, a multi-layered confection of hazelnut cake, ganache, and vanilla and hazelnut buttercreams, that looks absolutely amazing. I may have to make it, very soon. My birthday is coming...

I'm getting more and more into the book as time passes. It's lying open next to me and I just discovered a totally doable recipe for "Onion Soup Sauce," described as "tasting like an extraction of the essence of onion soup." I gotta go. Gotta get back to the book.

Dumpling Madness

Today I made 100 beef empanadas, 100 blue cheese shortbreads, and then, in a fit of madness, decided to start on the pork potstickers that I plan to take to a girls' night tomorrow. Why I am making potstickers fast on the heels of 8 dozen empanadas, I have no idea. It's times like this that I realize why I felt a kinship with Julie Powell when I read Julie & Julia (the feeling ended when she imploded in her sequel, Cleaving).

My long suffering husband entertained the kids most of the day while I slept in, then started cooking, and kept on cooking right through to dinner-time (dinner was leftover picadillo filling from the empanadas, on top of pizza dough, topped with feta cheese). I remained cheerful, but I can't deny a touch of insanity, since it is past midnight and now I'm writing about food instead of going to sleep...

Odd Bits: A Surprise Only a Foodie Could Love

One of my oldest friends orders books for the public library. She, being a foodie herself, enjoys encouraging my own foodiness, and will occasionally come across a cookbook that she thinks I'll like. She then puts it on order on my library account. I then get a call from the library, saying the book I requested has arrived. When I get there, I discover that I haven't requested the book at all, but rather it has been requested on my behalf by my thoughtful friend, who is so far two for two in nailing the kinds of books I'd like to read.

The first one was The Flavor Thesaurus, a collection of 99 essential flavours, and a discussion of how those flavours work together, with examples of chefs who have used them and/or recipes where they have been used together. I immediately fell in love with it, and tried to renew it, but it had already been requested, so I had to return it before I could finish with it. I haven't yet gone out and purchased my own copy, but I'm definitely going to—it's a book I will use as a resource, I'm sure. 


The second is Odd Bits: How to Cook the Rest of the Animal, by Jennifer McLagan, author of Bones: Recipes, History and Lore and Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient. I have only flipped through Bones, but loved the idea of the book. When Odd Bits turned out to be my "library gift," I couldn't wait to dig into it. In fact, I couldn't resist flipping it open while stopped at a light on the short drive home.

I know I'm at risk of alienating myself from my vegetarian friends by getting into this, but I regularly have 'odd bits' in my freezer. My dad delights in passing on some of the more obscure meats that he ends up with from butchering his own animals, and friends will often line me up with their weird meat connections. Until this evening, I had a beef heart, beef liver, soup bones, chicken hearts, and pork hocks in my freezer, along with the usual hamburger, chicken, sausage, steak and so on. The heart is no longer in the freezer, because it has been transformed into a gorgeous Moroccan braise with dates and preserved lemon, served over couscous, thanks to McLagan's beautiful book, and most importantly, thanks to my girlfriend, who saw a cookbook with raw pig's feet on the cover, and thought of me.

I'll be inviting my girlfriend over for Sweet and Sour Pork Hocks with Savoy Cabbage and Capers to thank her.

New Foodie Read

My most recent reading indulgence is Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton. I'll keep you posted. I've heard great things!

Foodie Book Review #1

I just finished a short, quick, melancholy yet beautiful read: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender. It's sort of the opposite premise to Like Water for Chocolate: a young girl suddenly gains the ability to taste the people and places linked to the food she eats. So she tastes the health or lack thereof in the animals, the factories behind processed food, and the emotions and personal situations of the people who cook her food. At first I was ready to write it off as just another junkfood for the mind kind of book, but when I finished, I was awash with feelings of bittersweet melancholy that were absolutely...delicious. A sad, yet hopeful book. Worth the read for anyone in love with foodie novels.

Hey readers! Anyone have any foodie book recommendations? I will start compiling a list of others that I like and I'll share soon!