Fresh, locally milled flour

Posted on March 6, 2013 by admin

Arva Flour

As part of developing my sourdough bread baking skills I wanted to try to find a local source of high quality, fresh wheat flour that was as unaltered as possible. Last fall my Dad was in the hospital in London, Ontario and Chris and I drove there to see him from Toronto. During the drive we passed by the historic Arva Flour Mill and I was reminded about how my mom used to get me spelt flour from there when I was experimenting with a wheat free diet for my asthma. Being that it was Sunday and the mill was closed, I made a mental note to look them up online to see if they happened to have an online store.

Hard whole wheat and hard unbleached white flour

The Arva Flour Mill is Canada’s oldest continuously operating water powered mill, and it is owned and operated by a dedicated group of people who see the value in preserving Canadian heritage and in supporting locally produced food products. While I have not yet ever visited their store, I hope to make it there sometime soon. They do have an online store, but so far they are stocking only selected flours there. Hopefully more products will be available there soon — you can see by watching their video that they carry a wide range of milled products, beans, pasta and other dry goods, and have plans to bring in locally produced cheese and meat products.

After discovering their online store I ordered what I think is an excellent deal — their 6 bags of flour for $60 with free shipping to Ontario and Quebec (given that 6 bags totals 15 kg you cannot beat the free shipping deal). You can mix and match from three flours — hard whole wheat and hard unbleached white, as well as their Imperial unbleached pastry flour. So far I’ve baked bread and other goodies with the whole wheat and the white flour but I have yet to try baking with the pastry flour. I think however I’ll give it a try on my next pie.

What is “hard” flour you ask? It means the flour has a high gluten content, in the 12% to 14% range, and it generally produces a dough that is very elastic and holds its shape well. It’s typically used for bread baking vs. other types of baking. I’m not really a flour expert per se, but given that this flour is milled fresh and does not go through enrichment or other processing techniques, and then shipped directly, it is a more wholesome product than what you find on grocery store shelves. The flours you buy from your average grocery store are going to be highly processed, highly bleached for “whiteness” and probably have a reduced gluten content. These techniques give the product a much longer shelf life to avoid rancidness.

I also recently discovered that some of their flours are also available at the store at Evergreen Brickworks, which just so happens to be right around the corner from where our new house is. So if you dont feel you want to order a huge amount of flour online you can find this product in Toronto too.

I haven’t noticed a huge difference in how the hard flour behaves in my regular baking but with my sourdough I have noticed that the dough rises much more significantly in the overnight final rise stage than it did using regular all-purpose store bought flour. And I think the flavour of the bread is greatly improved too.

I do have to add a caveat though. My mom called me last weekend totally perplexed and asking for advice. She has been using Arva flour for the last couple months as well — my dad has some gastro-intestinal issues that mean he cannot eat store bought bread so she makes it at home, and she wanted to use unbleached flour as well, and since she lives much closer to Arva than I do, she was getting flour there. She uses a bread machine to make her dough and then allows it to rise outside the machine and bakes it in the oven. But over the last few weeks her bread results were complete letdowns — and she had tried switching out all her ingredients (except the flour) to try to figure out where the problem lay. She just kept getting hard little lumps of dough that wouldn’t rise. Normally she has problems with her bread rising almost too much. I figured her problem lay either with the bread maker (odd since she didn’t bake the bread in it anyway — its essentially being used as a fancy mixing/kneading tool), or the flour. So I suggested switching out the flour to see if that helped and voila — it did. So we can’t explain why her Arva flour went from working just fine to suddenly not, but that was her recent experience.

Sourdough bread made with Arva flour

Regardless, I have very much been enjoying this product and it makes me feel really good to do my part in helping this beautiful piece of our local, agricultural heritage alive. I can’t wait to visit the mill in person and load up on some of their other products. Chris has been encouraging me to make a rye sourdough like his Oma used to make, but it’s not easy to find really fresh rye flour, so I hope to either pick some up myself or get my mom to load up on it next time she’s there.

Roadside Chicken Marinade

Posted on February 6, 2013 by admin

So now that we’re working on trying to hire a contractor in preparation to do some renovation work on our new house, as well as getting ready to move, we’re pretty busy. Often lately we’re heading to work super early in the morning to make room in our day for site visits and other errands. I’ve switched into must-clean-out-freezer-and-have-easy-meals-ready-to-cook mode, which, I hope will have the added benefit of helping me improve my meal planning skills.

While I’m definitely working at cleaning out the freezer (all those zucchini muffins and soup I made back in the summer), I’ve also been making things to put in it. I have this habit of filling my freezer with raw ingredients, but not planning ahead what to make by taking stuff out the night before. So when I make certain kinds of meals, like Smitten Kitchen’s [awesome!!] chicken pot pie, I like to make a double or even triple batch and freeze up a few containers for future easy, no-planning-required meals.

On the weekend I picked up a large package of chicken breasts (I was all out), and decided to marinate them before I put them in the freezer, so that when I pull them out for a meal, all I have to do is cook them — not first decide how to use them.

One of my favourite marinades is one made simply with rosemary, mustard and lemon juice, with some garlic (fresh or powdered, whatever’s handy), pepper and olive oil, so I made some of that. I also love Rick Bayless’s grilled ‘roadside’ chicken however, which is made using a delicious marinade featuring orange juice, ancho chile powder and a unique blend of other Mexican flavours.

Usually I use this on a whole, spatchcocked chicken, but I’m sure it’s going to be great with regular boneless skinless breasts. For both of these I just mixed up the marinade in a bowl, coated the chicken and then bagged up the pieces with the leftover sauce and popped them in the freezer (tossing the chicken in the sauce before bagging made it easier to ensure everything was well coated before being bagged).

Recipe: Roadside Chicken Marinade

Summary: Excellent for use on whole, spatchcocked chicken and chicken pieces

Ingredients

1 1/2 tbsp ancho chile powder
1 tsp dried oregano (preferably Mexican)
Pinch of cloves
1/4 tsp cinnamon (preferably Mexican)
2 garlic cloves, minced or crushed through a garlic press
3 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup orange juice
1 tsp salt

Instructions

Combine the ingredients in a bowl. Place chicken or chicken parts in a bag and add marinade, closing bag and turning to coat. Allow to marinate several hours or overnight (or, in my case, freeze chicken and cook when you want to). Grill chicken until thickest parts reach 160 degrees F (about 45 minutes for a whole chicken).

Quick notes

Adapted from the book Mexican Everyday by Rick Bayless.

A little colour for winter

Posted on December 23, 2012 by admin

I’ve had a stock pile of beets left in the fridge, from my garden, for quite some time, along with some cabbage that needed using. I realized it’s been some time since I made borscht, so, voila!

The great thing about borscht is that you can vary the vegetable ingredients to use up whatever you have in the fridge. Got some turnip? Throw it in. Got some parsnips? Leeks? Throw them in too! The mainstays are simply the beets and cabbage. You can even add some beef or beans if you want the extra protein. This is one of those soups that’s even better the next day, so you can even make it ahead if needed. Finally, borscht also freezes nicely so pack up the leftovers for some future work or lazy Saturday lunches.

Borscht
Yield 8 to 10 servings

Ingredients:

2 tbsp butter
6 beets, peeled and shredded
2 leeks (white and light green part only), chopped
2 carrots, shredded
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 onion, chopped
1 turnip, peeled and shredded; or 1/4 to half a small rutabaga
1 stalk celery, chopped
2 potatoes, diced
2 bay leaves
7 cups beef or vegetable broth
2 tbsp tomato paste
2 cups shredded cabbage (white or red is fine)
3 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tsp granulated sugar
salt and pepper
sour cream and snipped chives or green onion tops for garnish

Directions:

In large saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Add beets, leeks, carrots, garlic, onion, turnip, celery, potato and bay leaves; cook, stirring occasionally, for 20 minutes.
Stir in broth and tomato paste. Bring to simmer and simmer gently for 10 minutes. Stir in cabbage; cook for another 5 to 10 minutes, until cabbage is softened.
Season with vinegar, sugar, and salt and pepper to taste, adding more vinegar and sugar if needed. There should be a nice sweet and sour balance. Discard bay leaves.
Place dollop of sour cream and sprinkle of chives on each serving.

Ginger-awesome

Posted on December 12, 2012 by admin

It’s that time of year. After a year of doing very little in the crafty department, I’ve been cranking it out the last couple of weeks. I’ve finished several pillows, quilted and otherwise, along with a few small knitted gifts. Of course I don’t want to post any of this until after the holidays or I might spoil the surprise!

Over the remaining week and a half I plan to make and smoke some sausage. I’ve made sausage before but will be smoking it for the first time, which is a bit of a time-challenger as there are several steps involved that need to be done over a couple of days, so planning when to do all this hasn’t been easy. And I also need to make cookies!

One of my stand bye recipes for the holidays has been a very straightforward gingerbread or gingersnap cookie that I adore. The only sweetener used is molasses, and they have a super spicy ginger punch. They store very well and are just as good after a couple weeks as they are fresh out of the oven, and, they are perfect for decorating. Frankly, you could make and enjoy these any time of year, but I usually make them just for Christmas.

Gingerbread (or Ginger Snap) Cookies
Based on the recipe from A Guide to Good Cooking by Five Roses Flour
Yield: about 5 dozen 2 inch cookies

For cookies:

1/2 cup butter
2/3 cup fancy (not blackstrap) molasses
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon

For frosting (makes 3 cups; dries hard):

3 egg whites
2 1/2 cups sifted icing sugar
1/2 tsp cream of tartar

Directions:

Cream butter. Heat molasses to boiling; cool slightly and pour over butter, mixing well.
Stir dry ingredients together; mix into first mixture. Wrap dough in waxed paper and chill 1 hour or more (I sometimes find it helpful to divide dough and flatten into a couple of discs; this makes it easier to chill and easier to roll out once it is chilled).
Roll out dough to 1/4″ thick on lightly floured surface. Cut with cookie cutters. Recombine dough scraps and cut into shapes until dough is used up.
Bake on parchment-lined cookie sheet at 375 ℉ for 5 to 7 minutes or until delicately browned (crispness of cookie will depend on how thin dough is rolled and how evenly the cookies are baked). Cool completely before decorating, if desired. Best results come from baking one cookie sheet at a time, rather than putting two sheets in the oven at once. If you’re rushed and need to bake two at a time, quickly rotate the cookie sheets halfway through baking time — not just on the levels of the oven, but also turn the pans around, to ensure they bake evenly.
For Frosting: In a large bowl combine egg whites and 1/2 cup of the icing sugar. Beat vigorously for 10 minutes; add another 1/2 cup of icing sugar and beat again. Add cream of tartar. Continue adding icing sugar and beating until mixture will hold its shape when forced through a bag or tube. Colour with food colour drops (icing thickness may need to be adjusted due to added liquid) or food colour paste, and decorate cookies with piping bags and tips. Leave out to dry for several hours or overnight.

Kitchen face lift

Posted on November 22, 2012 by admin

Chris and I have been a bit preoccupied over the last 6 weeks or so. It started innocently enough, with a broken down keg fridge. Actually, if you go that far back, the whole thing started in late July, when we declared the fridge truly dead.

The story of the keg fridge and its replacement is a saga of its own, but suffice it to say a post will come eventually, when that story is completed. Right now, a modified chest freezer is doing the beer-chilling job (more to come, trust me). But said freezer needed a home, and this led to the removal of an old corner cabinet from the kitchen, which in turn left an ugly turquoise, cabinet-shaped shadow on our kitchen walls.

Eventually we decided that we would paint. This decision wasn’t easy; every bit of renovation work we undertake in this house leads only to our own increased comfort/livability. These improvements don’t add a cent to the value to our home, as our wee bungalow would only be demolished to make way for a McMansion if we sold it. We’re considering the possibility of a rebuild at some point ourselves (not a McMansion!) but for now, that’s at least a few years off.

So… hours and hours of patching cracks and many coats of paint later, we have a bright new livable kitchen again that looks world’s better than before. Sure, the cabinets are old (don’t look inside), and the counter tops are beaten, chipped and worn; there’s at least four layers of floor (one of them carpet — yes, CARPET) topped with an ancient layer of linoleum; but the look is unified, the turquoise is all gone, the walls are smooth, the hideous light pink paint is gone, and the raw trim around the windows is finally white.

Kitchen, Before.

The panorama above works much better if you look at it using Occipital’s interactive 3D viewer. Created using the 360 Panorama App for iPhone. View the “before”.

Kitchen, After.

View the “after” in the interactive 3D viewer.

I haven’t taken the money shots with the good camera yet because we still need to finish some bits, like new switch plates, some quarter-round on the floor and some trim around the rads. I’m still figuring out what I want to display on all my hugely increased shelf space, but that won’t take me long!

The new paint makes a world of difference. I can’t believe we didn’t do this sooner (or rather, I can — it was a hell of a lot of work). I wish we had. But you know, you get used to the ugly and tell yourself eventually, eventually. Considering this room is where I enjoy spending most of my time, it was long over due for a freshening up. What a difference!

Sour goodness

Posted on November 18, 2012 by admin

Homemade Sourdough

Regular readers of my blog will note that I’ve been on a quest to achieve a good sourdough for years. First I had seemingly insurmountable issues just getting a starter going. Eventually though I managed to get a culture going.

Next, I had challenges getting a bread going that would rise. I followed numerous recipes and read up on the advice of bread guru Peter Reinhart. Eventually I came across the book Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson, and his advice to use a Dutch oven to achieve the beautiful caramelized crust that is characteristic of artisanal bread. And despite having beautiful looking bread, it lacked any real sourness.

I took a hiatus from baking bread for a long time this year, neglecting my starter in the fridge until it turned into a dark, smelly science project funk with a thick layer of hooch on top. But as fall geared up I felt inspired to try again, so over a couple weeks I woke up my starter, feeding it a few times before using it to see if it was even still viable. I’d read it was next to impossible to kill one once you had it going, so long as you kept it in the fridge. And low and behold, it was still very much alive.

Making this kind of bread is a weekend-long project. I start by making the leaven overnight on Friday night. Then on Saturday I make the dough and set it up for its first ferment stage. It’s a high moisture dough, so kneading isn’t necessary exactly but the dough needs to be turned several times while it does this first ferment stage. Then the dough is “cupped and seamed” on the counter as a means to develop surface tension on the dough, and finally, a couple of stretch-and-folds before it goes into a brotform for its final rise.

And here is where I’ve come to a revelation. The instructions I’ve followed from Chat Robertson’s book call for 3 to 4 hours at room temperature, or, you can retard the rise by putting the bread into the fridge for 8 to 12 hours, which is what I’d been doing.

But a couple weeks ago I decided to try leaving it out overnight on the counter instead of putting it in the fridge. The final rise is when all the flavour develops, and suddenly, I have the most flavourful bread I could imagine. It’s not only beautiful now, it’s sour and mouthwatering. I’ve been making it every weekend and its our new Sunday morning ritual. Speaking of which, I think this loaf is cool enough to cut now. Bye!

Garlic Scape Pesto

Posted on June 2, 2012 by admin

I’m just about finished up the last wee cloves of garlic from last year’s harvest. It’s been hanging in my basement since last summer, where it kept very well. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I have two varieties planted this year, Music and Purple Glazer.

Usually the scapes, the little flower heads that grow out and curl around at the top of the plant, come out around mid June, so they’re a few weeks early this year. I’ve picked most of them; a few of the Purple Glazer haven’t yet curled around, so I’ll give them another day or two and then pick those. Harvesting the scapes encourages the bulbs to fill out, rather than put energy into forming a flower. The bulbs should be ready to harvest later in July, once the leaves at the base of the plant begin to brown, and about half of the plant has browned and dried out a bit.

Fresh picked garlic scapes

Garlic scapes as they appear on the plant

I’ve sautéed the scapes before and served them simply with butter, but I found the texture of them a bit tough. This year I decided I wanted to try out a pesto, to accentuate the scape’s sweet, garlicky flavour.

Garlic Scape Pesto

And let me tell you, a pesto is a perfect way to use these beauties. The texture issue is completely resolved as they are pureed in the blender with some parmesan cheese, nuts and olive oil. Toss this up with some pasta, or as I did, I tossed them with some spinach and feta perogies. You could use this on pizza, crostini or use it as a sandwich spread. Delish! I have some left over and I think tomorrow I’ll make some fresh pasta to enjoy it on. It will keep for about 4 to 5 days in the fridge, or you could freeze it for future use.

Garlic Scape Pesto

12 to 15 fresh garlic scapes, roughly chopped into smaller pieces
1/3 cup shelled, unsalted pistachios (or pine nuts or walnuts, whatever you have!)
1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 to 1/3 cup olive oil

Put the chopped scapes, nuts, cheese and salt and pepper into a food processor and puree until very finely ground.
Drizzle in the olive oil and continue to puree until the mixture is well blended.
Use as a sauce on pasta or pizza, as a sandwich spread, on crostini or however you please!

Makes just over 1 cup of pesto. Adapted from Epicurious.com.

Brewing Day, and what to do with spent grain

Posted on April 26, 2012 by admin

Chris has recently taken up brewing again. He used to do it back before I met him, but he stopped because of how much work it is, and especially when you’re bottling it. Now he’s able to brew and keg the beer, and since we have a keg fridge, it’s a lot less headache.

Our friend Bruce is really the one to get him inspired again — Bruce has been brewing at home ever since he and Youngja moved into their new house last year. Chris gifted a brewing kit to Cass for his best man gift at the wedding last fall, and finally over Family Day weekend they got down to brewing their Pumpkin Spice and Christmas beers (a little out of season but oh well).

This past weekend they made a witbier, which was a hybrid kit and included brewing with grain (rather than concentrate).

I had just happened by chance to come across Love and Olive Oil’s post for spent grain applesauce muffins, which led me to Brooklyn Brew Shop’s Spent Grain Chef blog.

The site has recipes that use the grain while it’s still wet, as well as recipes using the spent grain after it’s been dried. Their spent grain pizza dough recipe looked especially interesting.

So I gave it a try — it was late and I was too lazy to make the pizza dough from scratch so I popped it into my (new!) bread maker and put it on the dough setting (this is the first time I tried this machine’s dough setting). It was overly wet so I had to add extra flour, and I think I should have pulled it from the machine earlier (it was very spongy when I pulled out the machine at the end of the dough cycle, like it had risen too long).

But I divided it up (I’d made a double batch) and wrapped each piece of dough, put one in the fridge and the other in the freezer. On Monday night we had Hawaiian pizza with the dough, and it was awesome!

I used some leftover ham I’d frozen from Easter weekend, and while the pizza was a bit salty, I can’t tell whether it was just the ham (which was salty, for sure) or the crust (the recipe seemed like it had too much salt) or both, but regardless, the crust was beautiful. If I make it again I’ll try it from scratch, and try modifying the salt content.

In the meantime, I’ve dried the remaining spent grain and hope to try those muffins soon. If I can’t drink the beer I might as well make use of the byproducts somehow!

Inspired by Korean food

Posted on April 22, 2012 by admin

I recently discovered the fabulously awesome Korean cooking website and YouTube channel of Maangchi. Maangchi (aka Emily Kim) is a friend of my friend Youngja, who I met through Chris when we first started dating. She lives in New York and apparently has a worldwide following. It’s not hard to see why either, her videos are charmingly quirky and she makes cooking Korean food seem easy-peasy!

Ever since I met Chris, Korean food has been central in our lives. Youngja’s husband, Bruce has been friends with Chris since university, and Chris has been to South Korea twice to visit them when they were living there (including for their wedding). Later they lived here in our house with Chris for a few years, and were here when I first met him. Now they live in Ottawa and we try to visit them whenever we can.

I had never tried Korean food before I met Chris, always believing it was out-of-this-world spicy and that I’d never be able to handle it. How wrong was I! Chris took my for my first BBQ experience and I was hooked. All the lovely side dishes, each one a flavour explosion, and kimchi — what a glorious form of pickle that can be made innumerable ways.

A few years ago Youngja taught me how to make my own kimchi, as well as jap chae (or chap chae — one thing about Korean food is that there are also innumerable ways to anglicize things). I don’t make it all the time but once in a while I do. The problem with kimchi is how it makes your entire refrigerator stink like garlicky cabbage. Bruce insists it makes the milk taste off. Sometimes I store it in the keg fridge since it doesn’t get opened as often and the beer is in kegs so presumably doesn’t take on the kimchi flavour. Apparently Koreans typically keep separate fridges for their kimchi — something I can totally get behind!

Yesterday I came across Maangchi’s video for making your own gochujang — the spicy fermented hot pepper paste that is a fundamental ingredient for a large number of Korean dishes. The process takes about a day to start and then 2 to 3 months to ferment in a large earthenware jar, outside in the sun. I’m totally intrigued. I’ve been dreaming about it all night. God knows what I’d do with such a huge quantity of the stuff — I assume it lasts a while (I don’t cook Korean food exclusively after all). Anyway, I’m thinking about giving it a try, although I may try to halve or even quarter Maangchi’s recipe. Either that or I need to plan to take a truckload of it to Youngja’s house next time I visit!

I wonder if they carry the earthenware jars at the Korean grocery store down at Bloor and Christie…

My favourite recipe app

Posted on April 19, 2012 by admin

There are no shortages out there of recipe apps, especially customized ones for a specific brand. I’ve tried a few of them, but my favourite is called Paprika.

Paprika is available for the iPhone, iPad and Mac (sorry Windows users!). And it uses the cloud to sync across all your devices. Found a great recipe while browsing your RSS feeds? Load it up on Paprika and the next time you’re at the grocery store with your iPhone, voila — look up what ingredients you need to buy! The app lets you download recipes directly into your own database, and many sites such as Epicurious, Martha Stewart and even Canadian Living are already enabled to download directly by the app. Many great food blogs are also optimized for Paprika. For sites that aren’t enabled, you can simply build the recipe directly by copy/pasting the ingredients, directions, yield, etc.

The app allows you to add your own photos or use ones that you download with the recipes, and it allows you to fully customize your recipe categories. You can rank recipes (by star rating or by “favouriting” them) and add your own notes with them as well. It’s also very easy to email a recipe as text with an image to a friend — and, very handy, the email will include the Paprika file as an attachment in case your friend also has Paprika, and wants to import the recipe into their database.

The app also includes features I don’t use very often, such as meal planning and shopping list building, nutritional tracking, as well as a timer feature. You can also scale recipes (such as halving or doubling) and import from a select number of other types of recipe apps. Paprika will keep your device on while you’re viewing a recipe, which is very handy when you need to keep messy hands off the device but still see the instructions for what you’re doing.

A couple months ago I MacGyvered a Griffen CinemaSeat iPad holder I had for the car so that I could also use it on my fridge. I glued 6 rare earth magnets to the back of it — now it’s perfect for keeping my counter space free of expensive devices!

I was frustrated that I couldn’t easily order an iPad holder that for my fridge in Canada (Belkin makes one but it wasn’t available in Canada when I was shopping), and I wasn’t convinced I could sew one that would leave me confident that the iPad wouldn’t fall out (this one is made of synthetic leather and neoprene). This holder doesn’t get used much unless I’m travelling, so adding the magnets makes it so much more functional. Now I use it all the time. I was using a cookbook stand for the iPad before, but that takes up a lot of space on my limited countertops, so this is a great space-saving solution. I highly recommend it!

By the way, Paprika costs about $20 CAD for the Mac; and $5 each for the iPhone and iPad. It’s totally worth it; and I’m not alone in my opinion — it’s got great ratings on the iTunes App store. Enjoy!

Diggin' the Dirt

A little gardening, quilting, knitting, cookin' and more.

Category Archives: In the Kitchen

Fresh, locally milled flour

Roadside Chicken Marinade