A nifty trick I picked up at Looshaus, a hotel and restaurant in Kreuzberg, Lower Austria.
Pick evergreen “buds” (the small bundles of new needles that appear in late spring), simmer them in simple syrup (1:1 water to sugar), and transfer the whole mess into glass jars. The syrup takes on a fantastic, minty, pine flavour, which the Looshaus chef says gets even better with a few months storage. Strain the needles out before using the syrup.
Some ideas for usage:
sauces for game meats (think: evergreen gastrique)
ice cream
in sparkling water (beer flavoured with young spruce needles was once common in Canada…)
pork brines
The same process can be used for other common backyard plants, like dandelion … Continue reading.
At left is the first harvest from the yard, largely rhubarb and dandelions.
Describing dandelions as “edible” is misleading. The term suggests that they should only be eaten in survival situations. (Would you ever describe spinach, or cheese, or pork, as merely “edible”?)
In reality, dandelions are a treasured leafy green in several European cuisines. They even have an entry in Larousse. Some excerpts from that article:
“the English name is derived from the alternative French name dent-de-lion (literally ‘lion’s tooth’, referring to its serrated leaves)”
“Wild dandelion leaves should be picked before the plant has flowered…, when they are small and sweet.” This line confuses me a bit. While our dandelion leaves are definitely better when small and
In January, Lisa and I bought a house in McKernan. The backyard was a gift that spring has recently unwrapped for us. Over the last couple weeks we’ve discovered that the previous owners of this house were active gardeners who established a mass of edible perennials.
Following are the edible plants that are appearing in our yard. If you think we’ve misidentified anything, please let me know. (We’re new at this…)
I just had my mind blown. While Lisa and I were collecting sap from our maple trees, Judy was doing the same from a birch tree in her backyard in Spruce Grove. She just brought over some of her birch syrup. I had a spoonful. I’m reeling.
I mentioned that our maple syrup has a distinct fruitiness that I’ve never come across in commercial syrup. Judy’s birch syrup tastes like fruit juice – like pear juice, I would say – and it finishes with some of the green, nutty flavour of the fresh sap.
The birch syrup is very thin, nowhere near as thick and sticky as store-bought syrup. The flavour is remarkable. I don’t know exactly how I’ll … Continue reading.
This is one of my favourite ways to showcase my maple syrup. A simple oat cake is baked, then cut into squares and cooled. The baking dish is then filled with hot maple syrup, which the cake soaks up like a sponge. Essentially a lazy man’s pouding chômeur (a lazy man’s poor man’s pudding?)
Even though maple syrup is popularly described as a “Canadian” ingredient, I consider it a highly regional specialty within Canada, as it’s only made on a large scale in Eastern Ontario and Quebec. In contrast to the sugar maples that grow down east, the maple trees around Edmonton produce less, and less sweet, sap. Birch and elm can also be tapped for sap, but they have even lower yields.
These facts notwithstanding, I have a perverse obsession with maple syrup (one of my favourite desserts of all time is pouding chômeur) as well as an abstract, academic nostalgia for the ingredient. Granulated sugar is one of the few highly refined products that I use regularly, and I’m interested in … Continue reading.
This is one of my favourite rabbit recipes, and I think a great way to kick off Easter dinner. This is essentially a rabbit confit, made into a rillette. First I break up my rabbit. Then I take all the meaty bits and marinate them for twenty four hours in the following, adapted from Ruhlman’s Charcuterie. Rub every kilo of rabbit with:
20 g kosher salt
1 star anise
1 garlic clove
1 green onion, minced
5 g crushed fresh ginger
zest of 1/2 orange
2 crushed black peppercorns
After a day the meat is rinsed and patted dry, then covered with lard and gently cooked in a 180°F oven overnight. The cooked meat is cooled slightly and pulled … Continue reading.
The food commonly eaten on Easter Sunday is rich in symbolism. The ingredients and dishes are rooted in two traditions: the Jewish Passover dinner, or Seder, and the pagan springtime festival of renewal and fertility. Easter food shows how these two traditions have combined to form our current concept of the holiday.
Bread and Wine
Growing up, Easter Sundays began with a church service that re-enacts the last supper of Christ, which was a Seder. The first “meal” that we ate on Easter Sunday was therefore a meager one: the sacrament of communion, an unleavened wafer and a sip of red wine.
It is said that when the pharaoh freed the Hebrews, they fled Egypt so abruptly that they didn’t … Continue reading.
St. Patrick’s Day, now one of the kitschier holidays we celebrate, has been completely divorced from its origin. March 17 is actually the Catholic feast day for St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. The details of St. Patrick’s life are often debated, but for my purposes the popular traditions and stories are more important than the historical facts. It’s the legend of St. Patrick that has informed the beliefs and practices of Catholics for more than a thousand years, so in a sense the legend is truer than whatever the truth is.[1]
Patrick was probably born in Scotland, but at a young age he was captured by pirates and sold into slavery to an Irish chieftain. He escaped, … Continue reading.
As I mentioned in my description of Lent, a 1966 papal decree changed Catholic fasting practices, but when my mom was little Fridays were still fast days. Meat was forbidden, but fish was allowed. This is why in 1963 McDonald’s added the Filet O’ Fish to their menu – so that Catholics could eat there seven days a week.[1]
There aren’t any McDonald’s in Webbwood, Ontario, so in my mom’s house, Friday dinner was always macaroni and cheese, usually with fish cakes. Her family observed these meatless Fridays for decades after 1966. In fact when I was growing up, I had macaroni and cheese for dinner every Friday. We also had this meal on Ash Wednesday. No food … Continue reading.
The personal website of Edmonton chef Allan Suddaby
A nifty trick I picked up at Looshaus, a hotel and restaurant in Kreuzberg, Lower Austria.
