Smoking Loon Cabernet Sauvignon
California, United States
LCBO 55517
$14.95
Aromas of blackberry, cassis, and warm spices. Also, there is an overall oak quality to the wine that adds to the earthiness of this Cabernet. Dry and medium-bodied, with woody flavours and red berries.  Pair with grilled vegetables, sausages, meats, and pizza.

Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc 2009
Malborough, New Zealand
LCBO Vintages 35386
$18.95
This white wine is fantastic on its own, perfect for the deck and summer patio parties. Pair with grilled chicken, salads, and appetizers. Lively and smooth, with grassy and fruity aromas. The LCBO describes the flavours to include gooseberry, passion fruit, nettle, and citrus.

Huff Estates South Bay Vineyards Rose 2008
VQA Prince Edward County, ON
LCBO Vintages 63982
$16.95

This is a vibrant Rose that offers notes of pink grapefruit, and tastes of strawberries.  This wine makes a nice pre-dinner drink or serve with a light lunch or brunch.

Last Thursday’s meal contained the most spectacular dessert – a Decadent Chocolate Cupcake.  We made these cupcakes using an old recipe that contains an unusual ingredient that became a popular baking ingredient about 30 years ago – mayonnaise.  I am sure that it was Kraft or Hellmans that first thought this one up, but it make sense when you think about it.  Real mayonnaise is essentially an emulsion of eggs, oil and a bit of vinegar. I am sure this recipe was born out of necessity, when some creative cook ran out of eggs for her chocolate cake.

Mayonnaise Chocolate Cake

2 cups flour
1 1/3 cup of sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
1 1/2 cup buttermilk
1 cup mayonnaise
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup chocolate chips (we only use organic fair trade Cocoa Camino chocolate)

Whisk the wet ingredients in a bowl.  In a separate bowl sift the dry ingredients.  Combine wet and dry ingredients and mix well until combined.  Add chocolate chips.  Pour into 9″ round cake pan (well oiled) or in 24 lined muffin tins.  Bake cake in a 350 degree pre-heated oven for 25 minutes.  Test for doneness.

The dough recipe is quite simple – just flour & water.  After it has rested for some time, the dough was cut into small, uniform pieces and rolled into a ball, then flattened.  Two pieces of dough were placed one on top of each other with a generous layer of sesame oil in between.  These two pieces of dough were then rolled out in flour to form a ‘pancake’

The pancakes were fried on a dry griddle for about 1 minute each side until they puffed up in the middle.  When they were removed from the pan, it was possible to separate the one pancake into two because the oiled layer in the middle.  It was all quite fascinating!

Here is the recipe:

Makes 12

1 3/4 cups (8 ounces) unbleached flour
3/4 cup boiling water
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
1 teaspoon salt

In a bowl, mix the flour and the boiling water. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured board, gather it into a heap, and knead it until smooth, about 3 minutes. Cover with a towel and let it rest for about 1/2 hour.

With your hands, shape the dough into an even cylinder about 12 inches long. With a sharp knife, preferably serrated, cut the roll into 1-inch pieces.

Lightly flour your palms and use them to flatten the pieces into 2-inch rounds. Brush the top of each round generously with sesame oil. Lay one round on top of another, oiled sides together. Flatten the pair together with the heel of your hand. Continue until you have 6 pairs.

With a floured rolling pin, roll each pair into a thin pancake about 7 inches in diameter, flipping the pancake over now and again to roll evenly on both sides. Stack the pancakes as you finish rolling them.

In an ungreased cast-iron skillet or nonstick pan over medium-high heat, cook the pancakes one at a time. Heat one side until it becomes less opaque and starts to bubble slightly, and just a few brown spots appear, about 1 min. Flip it over and cook it until a few light brown spots appear on the other side, about 30 seconds.

While the pancake is still hot, pick it up, look for a seam to grab, and separate it into two very thin pancakes. Stack them on a plate as you go and wrap them in foil to keep them warm and prevent drying. If not using right away, refrigerate until ready to use.

Jacqueline Cooks Soup!

This past weekend Jacqueline from the Red Apron was the featured Chef at the Ottawa Eco Fair.  This event celebrates green living ideas, products and services.  While there Jacqueline prepared an Heirloom Tomato Soup using heirloom tomatoes that we purchased from Bryson Farms.  This simple soup is a taste of summer, and we will be preparing a similar soup next week at Bonappetit!

Many people asked Jacqueline for the recipe, so by popular demand!

Roasted Garlic and Heirloom Tomato Soup

1 large or two small head garlic
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp olive oil
2 large onions, sliced
8 cups tomatoes, fresh or frozen, skins removed.  You can also use canned tomatoes, but the quality is very important!
1/2 cup red wine
salt
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp sugar
1/2 cup whipping cream or cashew cream – See note (optional, but scrumptious)
fresh basil, parsley and chives, finely chopped

Roast garlic by wrapping it in foil and baking it a 350 oven for 35-40 minutes, until very soft.  Cut off the top and squeeze the garlic out into a bowl.  Heat the olive oil at med high, and when shimmery, add onions and 1/2 tsp of salt.  Saute onions, stirring every minute or so, until they are brown and very soft. Add minced garlic and cook another two minutes on medium, stirring constantly. Add wine and stir to scrape up the caramel from the onions.  Cook one more minute.

Add tomatoes,balsamic and sugar and a bit more salt, and heat through. Use the hand blender to blend until smooth or put it in the food processor. If it’s thick,  add a little stock or water.  Adjust seasoning. Add cream or cashew cream, and heat through to serving temperature.  Serve garnished with a generous portion of minced herbs.

Note:  To make cashew cream, blend raw cashews with the same quantity of  water in blender until it resembles cream.

Many childcare centres operate with little budget allotted – or consideration made – for the food the children are eating.  Joanne’s desire to provide the children with a rich understanding of the importance of quality, nourishing ingredients, and also to educate them on the relationships between their personal health and the health of the environment and their communities, made this a project we had to be part of.

Each day the children eat the same types of food we prepare for our regular clients.  They enjoy a variety of organic whole grains (pastas, rice, couscous and barley).  They devour a healthy vegetable soup once a week, the type of soup changing from one week to the next – they have tried everything from gazpacho (not their favourite) to sweet potato & curried coconut (a big hit!).  They celebrated Chinese New Year this year with a feast of Long Life Noodles with Lucky Chicken and Greens. Each Friday throughout the warmer months, they receive a picnic-type lunch, which they take to the park to enjoy.

Many of the parents from Acorn visit our store, searching out their child’s favourite soup or muffin, but since all of the food is custom-made for the Centre, we rarely have the exact same item in our retail store.  So, to satisfy the needs of those hungry kids, we are sharing the recipe for the muffins we provide each day.  The recipe was created so that we could provide a moist and tasty, dairy-free and egg-free (Vegan) muffin.

So, by popular demand, here is the recipe.  This recipe makes a large batch (40-50 muffins).

3 cups        organic whole wheat flour
¾ cup        organic cane sugar
1/3 cup       oat bran
¼ tsp          salt
½ tsp          cinnamon
½ Tbsp      baking soda
½ Tbsp      baking powder

Mix all the dry ingredients together

3 cups         water
1 cup           oil
4 cups         fruit (frozen berries, chopped apples, etc.)

Note:  we have made a wide variety of combinations using this base recipe.  For banana muffins, we mash in 4 ripe bananas, and still add the chopped fruit.  We have made them as well with date puree.  They were fantastic!  You can also mix up the dry ingredients and keep the mixture in an airtight container, so when you want a small batch of muffins, you can just scoop out 1/4 of the dry ingredients, quarter the wet ingredients, mix, scoop into greased muffin tins and bake in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes.  Test for doneness. Enjoy!

Today's Very Berry Muffins

Our relationship with Savour Ottawa has resulted in many excellent buying agreements with farmers and producers in the area.  Each year, Savour Ottawa and Just Food host the Chef-Farmer Meet & Greet, which we have attended each of the last 3 years – including this week!

The Meet & Greet is a fantastic event that has has been the beginning of many of our long-term relationships with cherished farmers and producers, including Ken Stewart from Fitzroy Beef Farmers, Colin from Jambican Studio Gardens, Bill from Heavenly Honey, and the list goes on.

This year ’s event was particularly fruitful.  We met the owners of the Fromagerie Les Folies Bergères, who raise sheep for milk, using the milk to make a selection of spectacular cheeses.  We decided to introduce their Fou Fou Feta (a creamy, smooth traditional Greek feta) to our select in-store assortment of outstanding local and regional cheeses. 

The crazy couple (their own description) who own and operate the Fromagerie produce a full line of lovely cheeses, and over the next few months we hope to introduce more of their products into our store.

We also met up with the Glengarry Cheese folks from Lancaster, who make an enticing assortment of cow’s-milk cheeses using milk from neighbouring family farms.  We sampled their blues, their washed rind cheeses, their semi-soft and bloomy rind cheeses, and their variety of Dutch- & Welsh-style pressed cheeses.  Since our space is limited we had to select one.  Our favourite was their Aged Lancaster, a beautifully aged, firm cheese that fills the mouth with its rich, round flavour.  Some decisions are hard to make.

We met a lovely woman from Donegal Farm in  Eganville who raises Organic & Heritage breeds of sheep, cows and pigs.   We talked to the folks at Trillium Meadows who raise red deer & wild boar.  We talked to Bill Barkley from Barkley’s Apple Orchard and placed an order for Apple Cider Vinegar and Apple Jelly.  We tasted some lovely wines from the Domaine Perrault, who grow their own grapes in Navan!  And we placed our first order with Andrew from Major Craig’s Chutney.

Starting with recipes from his great-great grandfather (Major Craig), Andrew has developed a line of four exciting chutneys, each loaded with local ingredients.  Two of his chutneys have received the Savour Ottawa stamp of approval, which assures that either the major ingredient or at least 50% of the ingredients are sourced from local growers and producers.

The most interesting of Andrew’s four chutneys was the Winter Butternut & Beer Chutney, made with local apples, butternut squash and Beau’s Lug Tread Ale.  Doesn’t get any more local than that!  My favourite, though, was the Date with Cranberry Chutney, made using Upper Canada Cranberries.  This chutney paired marvelously with a nice sharp blue cheese.

It was a great day and we are truly excited about our new food partners.

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!

You are supporting a local business – a local business that in turn makes it a priority to support other local businesses.  Your Red Apron meals have a huge local and organic component – every day.  Each day you are supporting the 13 people who are involved in getting your meal cooked, packaged and delivered to your door.  You are also supporting people like Rob & his Family from Songberry Organic Farm.    Rob grows organic vegetables which we use in our meals on a regular basis.  Today, Rob delivered 100 pounds of Delicata Squash which we will turn into something nummy later this week.

Jasmine from Songberry enjoying an Organic Delicata squash

Tonight 150 of our customers are enjoying a vegetarian meal.  We try to put a vegetarian meal on the menu at least once every two weeks, in an effort to raise awareness about the benefits of eating more vegetables and less meat.  What we choose to eat is one of the biggest ways we can have a personal impact on the environment.  Since the production of meat uses up a lot of resources and a vegetarian diet consumes a lot less land and water, one of the best things we can do to impact climate change is reduce the amount of meat in our diet on a daily or weekly basis.  If every North American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetarian foods instead, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off the roads.

See what a difference one person can make can make!

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.

The Holiday Season is fast approaching and with it –  our social calendar begins to fill up.  If you are hosting a open house or cocktail party, we have some suggestions for simplifying your entertaining.

• In our retails store we carry a selection of oven ready flatbreads.  Baked in the oven or grilled on the BBQ, these elegant flatbreads make a wonderful appetizer.
• Denis’ gourmet sausages can be cooked, sliced, and served on cocktail skewers with Henderson’s Mango Chutney or Redhead Pantry Tarragon Mustard.  Our selection of sausages includes Thai Salmon, Cajun Turkey, and Turkey Merguez.
• Throughout the month of November we will be preparing our Seasonal Meat Pies.  We are re-creating our very popular Bison with Sweet Potato & Cranberry, our Duck with Fig, and this year we are introducing Lamb with Apricot & Pine Nuts.
• If you are planning a dinner party, remember that our weekly fresh meal menu can be ordered for as many people as you are serving.  This is an easy way to present a complete sit down meal, without having to shop or cook.   Thursday menus between now and Christmas have been designed with an eye to Holiday entertaining, and feature entrees like ‘Cider Braised Lamb Shanks’, ‘Bison Meatballs’, ‘Confit of Ontario Duck’, ‘Kerr Beef Brisket’, and ‘Caroline Style Pulled Berkshire Pork’.