October & November offer us our last opportunity to enjoy the local harvest.  Late season wintergreens, squashes, cabbage, brussel sprouts, apples and root vegetables are all in abundance.  October and November are great months to make stews, soups, and casseroles, and we wanted to share some of our favourite recipes – some of them specifically for the slow cooker.

Our retail store is overflowing with produce delivered daily by our farmers.  Today’s haul includes Kobacha Squash from Songberry Farm (pictured above) and mountains of Kale from Juniper Farm.

Squash & Fennel Soup

Note:  The basic recipe is very versatile, and you can easily adapt this recipe to accommodate different vegetables.  Some examples are Potato & Leek, Carrot & Ginger, Pumpkin, Sweet Potato, Jerusalem Artichoke etc..  If you want to add some depth of flavour, the root vegetables can be roasted beforehand.

Ingredients:

Olive oil or canola oil
1 medium white onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 pounds of winter squash (preferably organic)
3 heads of fennel
1 cup white wine
4 cups or vegetable chicken stock
1 pinch thyme
1 cup whipping cream
Salt and pepper

Directions:
1:  Peel and chop squash into 1 inch pieces.

2:  Wash and slice fennel.  Sauté onion and garlic in oil until transparent, about 5 minutes. Add fennel and sauté until tender.  Deglaze with white wine and cook until wine is almost evaporated.  Add squash and stock.  Simmer on low for 10 minutes, until squash is tender.  Taste for seasoning.
3:  Add cream and remove from heat and cool. Blend in batches in a blender until smooth.  Add more water/stock if necessary to achieve the desired consistency.  Re-heat until warmed through and serve.

Serving Tip – for an elegant starter to any special meal, soup can be served in shooter glasses, and garnished with things like bacon bits, ground nuts, fresh herbs, etc.    This is how we served them recently at the Red Apron 5^th anniversary celebration at the Urban Element in September.

Beef & Barley Soup – Slow Cooker Recipe

Serves 4 to 6

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 pound stewing beef, cut in 1/2-inch cubes
1 large onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 medium carrots, diced
3/4 cup pearl barley
1 bay leaf
1 tsp dried thyme
6 cups beef broth
1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
pepper, to taste

To Prepare:

Heat olive oil in large skillet over medium heat. Add onion to hot oil; cook and stir until onion is tender, about 4 minutes.  Add garlic and thyme, salt & pepper.   Transfer to Slow Cooker.  Brown beef in skillet and transfer to Slow Cooker.  Add remaining ingredients to Slow Cooker and cook on LOW in Slow Cooker for 6 to 8 hours.

Curried Lentil Stew – Slow Cooker Recipe

Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

1 cup of dried French lentils, soaked for 2 hours or overnight, and drained
1 large onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 28 oz can of diced tomatoes, with liquid
1 14 oz can of coconut milk
1 cups water, OR stock
2 large carrots, diced
1 large sweet potato, peeled & cubed
½ cup raisins
1 ½ tsp curry powder
½ tsp ground cumin
1  tsp ground ginger (or 1 tsp fresh grated ginger)
¼ tsp ground turmeric
1 ½ tsp salt
2 cups chopped fresh spinach

To Prepare:

Sauté onions & garlic.  Place all ingredients (except spinach), in the Slow Cooker and cook on the LOW setting for 7-8 hours, or until the lentils & sweet potatoes are tender. Fold in chopped spinach.  You can garnish this dish with chopped fresh basil, cilantro or parsley, plain yogurt, diced avocados, chopped green onions or goat cheese.

Moroccan Chicken Stew

Serves 4

Ingredients:

½ cup dried chickpeas, soaked overnight and drained
4 carrots, peeled and diced
2 large onions, diced
8 pieces chicken thigh, bone in, skin on
½ cup raisins
1/2 cup dried apricot, coarsely chopped
2 cups chicken broth
2 tbs tomato paste
2 tsp flour
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 ½ tsp ground cumin
¼ tsp ground turmeric
1 1/2 tbs fresh grated ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Salt and pepper to taste

To Prepare:

Sauté onions & garlic in skillet on medium heat.  Toss chicken pieces in flour, salt & pepper and add to skillet to brown on both sides.  Place all ingredients in the Slow Cooker and cook on the LOW setting for 7-8 hours, or until the chickpeas are tender.

Serve in bowls with couscous and garnish with chopped nuts, cilantro and/or yogurt.

It’s a mere 30 paces from our deck to the beachfront, which is really what these weekends are really all about.  Long lazy days are spent swimming, fishing and kayaking. Evenings are spent around a roaring fire, laughing, discussing and generally enjoying being together as a family .

What is most enjoyable to me about these weekends is that we choose to cook over an open firepit. Most Saturday mornings, after drinking a pot of campfire coffee, we drive to the Combermere Farmers Market and source out the ingredients for that nights dinner.

The market is not yet in full swing and the variety of vegetables is lean (growing season is slightly behind Ottawa’s). Nonetheless, we have been able to piece together some memorable meals.

Recently, our Saturday night ‘Farmer’s Market’ feast consisted of delicious ‘Schulist Family Farm’ grassfed beef T-Bone steaks.  We also purchased a pound of organic shiitake mushrooms from Henry at the ‘Aldergrove Mushroom Farm’ booth. After adding local organic asparagus to our basket and some of the world’s best butter-tarts, we were ready to head back.  A quick detour into Killaloe for a bottle of Bonneterra Organic Cabernet Sauvignon and we were set.

Escaping for the weekend always rejuvenates and prepares me for the busy work week that follows. This is truly our little piece of paradise!

It’s so easy and oh so delicious! Make sure to carefully wash and dry the herbs!

1 3/4 c. organic basil (from Roots and Shoots)
1/4 c. parsley
1/3 c. hemp seeds (Stone Farm)
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed (from Jambican)
3/4 c. Sheep’s Milk Nettle Pecorino cheese (Canreg Station)
1/2 tsp. Salty Don’s smoked maple salt
1/2 c. hemp seed oil (Stone Farm)

Pulse everything EXCEPT THE OIL together in your food processor until they are finely minced but not a paste.

Put in a bowl and mix in the oil.

You can freeze it in ice cube trays if you have leftovers, serve it with a pasta salad, grill it on chicken or fish, make potato salad, eat it from the spoon or use your imagination.

These events can sometimes be compared to sale day at Filenes Basement, with participants kicking, punching, and elbowing their way to the best goods.  But ours was quite civilized, although it did include mulled wine and spiked apple cider!

Who knows where this tradition started.  Many cultures share a history of community baking. The ruins of Pompeii show evidence of public ovens where people brought their bread to be baked and through the ages communities all over the world often shared public ovens which would be fired up daily, or weekly.  These ovens became a community gathering place, where stories were told, problems were solved, and women found companionship and support.   I like to think that this is the root of the Cookie Exchange.

Our staff work hard to put great food on the table for our clients and this time of year is especially busy.  It doesn’t always leave us a lot of time to do our own preparations for the holiday season. So a few Sundays ago we gathered to bake.

Many pounds of butter, chocolate and flour later – we went home to stuff our cupboards and freezers with a selection of tasty treats.  The favourites of the day were Justine’s Millionaire Shortbread cookies which took top prize for the most intricate and exciting cookie with layers of shortbread, chocolate and dulce la leche…mmmmm…  Jo-Ann’s Peanut Butter Chocolate Balls were the easiest no-bake kid friendly.  We all enjoyed his Peanut Butter Oatmeal cookies too!

Season’s Greetings!

The process, I must tell you, is quite labour intensive.  First, we start with premium Ontario Duck Legs – which are slowly braised in a mixture of figs, white wine and aromatics for 2 hours.

When they are cool enough to handle, the meat is carefully stripped from the bones and set aside, while the bone and juices are dumped into a large stock pot and simmered for a day – to reduce to a rich, flavourful sauce.

For our first batch we started with 70 Kilos of duck!

Meanwhile, batches and batches of Pie Crust dough was made – using butter, lard, organic flour and local eggs.

Many cultures have a traditional food that resembles a meat pie in some way but the Oxford English Dictionary traces the first use of the word “pie” as it relates to food to 1303. In the Middle Ages, pies were the specialty of patissiers.