The First Harvest

Now y'all may have noticed Jessie's been doing all the food-blogging, but as it turns out, I also do some cooking around here. It's easy to spend too much time cooking and zero time writing about it, but the early gardening season has me inspired to share.

Okay, first of all, check out this garden!

Everything is coming along fairly nicely, but the chard and beets are just screaming to be eaten this week! I grabbed a few handfuls, the obliging fellow I am.

Now what to do with all these beets and chard? If you're like me, you'll be happy to stuff them raw down your throat. If you're like the greater population of veggie-haters and veggie-impartialists, you might want to jazz it up a bit. Here's my favourite jazzing method.

Step 1: Herb Butter

Get some fresh herbs - whatever you have in the fridge. I used basil and rosemary.

Get some anchovy paste. You could also use canned anchovies.

Get some garlic.

And of course, get some butter.

Throw everything on a cutting board. Finely chop the herbs and garlic, then start chopping away at the butter, mixing everything together. You'll end up with something like this:

This is delicious. You could just eat this for dinner and call it a day. Alternatively, you can wrap the leftover in parchment and throw it in the freezer for next time. 

Step 2: Slice those beets

I used a mandoline and didn't bother peeling. Use what ya got, but try to keep them fairly thin (< 1/8").

Step 3: Blanch

Get a big pot of salted water boiling. You want it big enough that it doesn't stop boiling once you add the chard.

Once boiling, add the chard. Do it in 2 batches if needed. Let it boil for 1 to 2 minutes, then remove to a bowl with tongs. 

Now add the beets and let them boil for 1 to 2 minutes. Pour into a strainer once you're done.

Step 4: Make it buttery

Get a frying pan on medium-high heat. Add a bit of olive oil and a whack of your herb butter. The oil will help prevent the butter from burning.

While that's heating, take a small handful of the blanched chard. Squeeze it in your hands over the sink to get rid of excess water. Repeat with the remaining chard. This will prevent the dish from being soupy and will also get rid of some of that chalkiness chard sometimes has.

Now with the pan good and hot, add the chard and the beets. Sauté for a few minutes. We're not trying to cook it any further at this point, we just want to heat it back up and coat it real good with the butter. 

Step 5: Plate it

Top with a dollop of herb butter and enjoy!

If you didn't like chard before, you like it now. I promise.

And because the internet likes dogs, here's a bonus photo of Sammy being a good boy in the garden.

Sweet, Sweet Borscht

Those of you who have been to Prairie Cottage Perogies on the Bypass in Langley would know how delicious this borscht is because I've basically done my best to copy their recipe. I just made this for my soup club day at school and was glad to hear how much others enjoyed it too. So for my soup club friends and beyond, here's my "recipe"... Don't worry about the amounts too much - if you've ever made soup before, I trust you can gauge or eyeball how much you want.

A small pork roast (we make it without the meat sometimes too)

A few slices of bacon (we never make it without the bacon)

2 Onions

4 Garlic cloves

3 Celery stalks

3 Carrots

5 Potatoes

1/2 a Green cabbage

3 Beets 

Can of beans in maple syrup or molasses (optional - not great for you but delicious)

Chicken broth

2 Bay leaves

~ 2 tsp Sugar

~ 2 tbsp Cider vinegar

Salt and pepper

Sour cream

Fresh dill

Salt and pepper the pork roast and quickly brown all sides in a stewing pot. Then cover 2/3 of the roast with water in the pot. Bring to a boil and then lower heat to a simmer for 2 1/2 hours.

Next chop all your veggies and the bacon. We usually grate at least half of the beets and slice the rest. In your soup pot, heat up some olive oil and add the onion, garlic, bacon, celery and carrot. Cook until softened. Then add the potato, cabbage, any sliced beets, bay leaves, salt, pepper, and the stock from the pork roast once it's finished and bring up to a boil. Make sure you've set the roast aside on a cutting board to rest for 10 minutes once it's out of the stock before shredding/chopping. Once the stock starts bubbling turn the heat down to a simmer. Now you can gauge how much extra chicken stock to add in, depending on how much the stock from the roast filled up your soup pot with the rest of the veggies in it. Also add the can of beans with the chicken stock. Once you've added chicken stock, let it all simmer until the potatoes and sliced beets are cooked. Then you can add in the shredded roast meat, grated beet, sugar, and cider vinegar. You can keep it on a low simmer but you don't want to cook the meat or grated beets too much. Top each bowl with sour cream and chopped fresh dill.

Like I said, we make it without the pork roast too and sometimes it's really nice to have it a lot lighter! Hope you like it! Let us know how you make your borscht. :)

No borscht for Sammy

Asian Fusion?

This week's a bit of an anomaly. I'm on spring break so therefore have been a cooking machine because: a) I have extra time and energy and b) Rob deserves it x 100.

You may have seen the Vietnamese inspired dishes I made this week. That's all because my brother took my mom and I to The Union for dinner before the Canucks game on Monday night. (It was a good night!) Not surprising given their location, they have Vietnamese, Korean, and Indian-influenced dishes on their menu. Their Banh Mi Vietnamese subs looked so good! My mom had a Bun vermicelli bowl with lemongrass chicken. It was delicious! I haven't eaten enough Vietnamese or Korean food and clearly this had an East Van spin to it, but it was awesome and got me feeling curious and adventurous to try it out a little.

To finish off my Asian-fusion cooking week, I made a kind-of Pad Thai tonight. It was good, but I'm actually just going to share the two mini-recipes that were used in all three meals and are 100% responsible for why they were more exciting and delicious than my past boring attempts at different Asian sauces, marinades, and stir-fries. I want to share them because I know I'm going to use them over and over!


Nuac Cham: the Vietnamese dipping sauce that dressed the vermicelli bowl. Not only was this the best part of the vermicelli bowl for me, it was also my new favourite sauce to have on hand to add depth to just about everything I made this week:

• added to the lemongrass marinade for chicken/prawns/tofu (more below)
• splashed into the burger patty mixture
• added to the lemongrass sriracha mayo for the burgers (made with vegenaise)
• used as dressing for coleslaw for the burgers and salad
• added to sauce for Pad Thai

Here's the actual recipe... (If you are unsure about fish sauce, you need to get over it because that's where the depth of flavour comes from and it's delicious.)

Nuac Cham

1/2 c water
1/4 c sugar
1/4 c fish sauce
1/4 c rice vinegar
1-2 t sriracha
1 garlic clove, minced


Put all ingregients in a jar, seal tightly, and shake vigorously for a minute or so until the sugar dissolves. Make a bigger batch to keep some extra in the fridge!


Next up, the lemongrass marinade that I used on chicken for the vermicelli bowls and on tofu for the Pad Thai, and well, technically in the lemongrass sriracha mayo too. It was sooo good on the tofu!

Lemongrass Marinade

1 1/2 lbs chicken, tofu or large prawns
1/2 c finely chopped lemongrass (2-3 stalks)
1/2 c onion
2 garlic cloves
2 tsp ginger
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp ground Chinese five spice 
1/4 c oil (we use grapeseed oil - more neutral than olive oil)
*I also added a splash of the Nuac Cham

Mince lemongrass (white part), onion, garlic, and ginger, or put in a food processor. Mix in everything else and marinate protein for 30 min to 24 hours. Bake at 350 degrees until fully cooked.


Cilantro, mint, and Thai basil also get honourable mention this week for adding a trifecta of fresh flavors to all our food.

A few pics just from tonight. Because they're supposed to make reading about food better? We're new at this...

Jessie

*If you know anything about Vietnamese, Korean, or Thai food, you know more than I do, so feel free to add what you know or correct anything offensive/inaccurate I mentioned

*Links I modified recipes from this week: Everybody Likes Sandwiches and Feasting at Home

Let's Do This!

Ugh, not another food blog!!!

If that's what you're thinking, you might just want to steer clear and move along. However, we (Rob and Jessie) are hoping this site will be a little more open-ended than just more food porn. We're not really sure what our posts will look like, but we do know that we've been inspired to share some of the tidbits that result from our creativity and joy around making food - and maybe some other creative endeavors too, who knows!

We always prefer to make food for other people. It really is Rob's love language. Of course, the majority of meals we make are our weeknight dinners for two, but we often find ourselves wanting to share those too. This usually results in left-over sharing in the staff room the next day, along with excited talk of trying new ingredients and swapping recipe ideas. So really, this is just a place for us to share with more of our family and friends more often. Jessie never feels like her instagram pictures really communicate the intended message. What we really want to say is "We just tried this for the first time and it's so easy and sooo good, here's how to make it!" or "We just learned you can use _______ instead of _______ to make ________ even better for you - so simple, try it!" What we're definitely not going for is "Hey suckers, look at the delicious food you're missing out on. Bet you wish you were here!"

Oddly enough, we were inspired by Rodney Mullen, a pro-skateboarder from back in the day. In his TED talk, he spoke about the reward of sharing his creativity with a community that built on what he did and watching it become greater than what he could do himself. He said that watching the community he contributed to use his freestyle skating and tricks like the "ollie" as a foundation to completely transform the sport was more rewarding than any of the many championships he won. Holy humble pie! So here we are, far from pro's in any of our creative attempts, but inspired by the idea of contributing something we love to our community. We'll have to see if the digital medium is as meaningful as it is efficient, but we think it's worth a shot! On a much smaller scale, we want to take what we get creative with in our day-to-day and share it with our little community so you can take what you like from it, make it even better, and then hopefully share it back. Or even better, share something new so that we can learn too!

There you have it folks, our fun little mission statement.

Now all this typing has gotten us hungry, so we're gonna go make dinner! We'll see if we deem it creative enough for our first food post...


Rob and Jessie

(More current photos to come, promise)