Category: Recipes

Mexican Inspired Fritatta Made with Emu Egg, Delish!


I was wandering through the Halifax Market the other day and saw the coolest thing I have seen in a long time.  I reached out, grabbed it, paid for it and then looked in my hand and said, what am I going to cook with an emu egg.  Yep thats what it is like to be me.

I did some reading and found out that the flavor is a lot like chicken egg, maybe a little less flavorful.  The whites don’t set as fast and from a health standpoint they are free range and very nutritious.  One emu egg is equivalent to about 10 to 12 chicken eggs so  what ever I made had to be a larger dish.

Taking all of this information I decided I wanted to make a really flavorful fritatta.  Mexican flavors.  That called for some homemade chorizo sausage, fresh cheese curd and savory cilantro.  Here is how it all came together:

Ingredients:

1 Emu Eggs (10 to 12 chicken eggs)

1 Onion chopped

3/4 of a pound of Homemade Chorizo

1/2 cup Fresh Cheese Curds

1/2 handful fresh Cilantro – chopped

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper – fresh ground

1/2 tsp paprika

2 medium potatoes boiled (until just fork tender) and chopped (1 cm dice)

2 tbs grape seed oil

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees

Heat an oven proof pan over medium high heat, add in 1 tsp of grapeseed oil when the

oil is hot add in the chorizo sausage and cook until it starts to brown, remove and drain on a paper towel.  Add in the potatoes and a pinch of salt and a couple turns of pepper into the pan (in the oil left by the chorizo) and fry them off until they start to brown and get crispy, then add back in the chorizo, and then onions, if need add another tsp of oil.  Cook unit the onions start to soften and get some color.  While this is cooking:

Crack your emu egg (or chicken eggs) into a large bowl and whisk until frothy,  Add in the chopped cilantro, 1/4 tsp of salt. 1/2 tsp pepper and 1/2 tsp of paprika.  Whisk until combined.  Add this directly into the pan with the potatoes, chorizo and onions.  Remove from the heat and top with the fresh cheese curds.

Place in the oven and cook for about 10 minutes.  At this point the eggs should have set, if not check it every couple minutes.  It should be firm to the touch but a little runny on top.  When it reaches this stage, turn on the broiler for about 3 minutes until the top firms up and starts to get a little golden color.  You want to watch the progress of the dish and not depend on time.  Eggs should not be over cooked, you don’t want rubbery, hard brown eggs, and that can happen very quickly.  This dish builds flavours in each component and to provide an overall flavorful dish.  Each component is seasoned and this is very important in a fritatta or you can end up with some parts that are very flavorful and other parts that are bland.  I enjoyed this and hope you do as well.

Thanks to my local suppliers for making this breakfast possible:

Emu Egg :                      The Dutchman Cheese

Fresh Cheese Curd:     Fox Hill Cheese House

Onions/Potatoes :     Noggins Corner Farm Market

Cilantro:                        Riverview Herbs

Homemade Chorizo Sausage – A Mexican Treat


I have a few recipes I want to share with you that use chorizo sausage.  Fresh chorizo is a key ingredient in mexican and south western American cooking.   It adds great richness and flavour to dishes and I really enjoy it.  As with all ground meat products I prefer to know what I am eating.  For this reason I make most of my sausage meat at home, though there are a couple providers a the Halifax Market I trust and am hoping to visit to watch them in action.

I have already put up recipes for making homemade breakfast sausage and italian sausage.  Chorizo is just another variation of that.  The base is a good ground pork and then add some amazing seasoning and allow to sit over night.

Ingredients:

1.5 pounds of ground pork (Berkshire pork of you can get it)

1 Tbsp Paprika

1 tsp sea salt

2 cloves of chopped fresh garlic

1 tsp cayenne pepper (increase or decrease based on your desire for heat)

1 tsp cumin (toast the seeds in a dry pan then grind for best results)

1 tsp oregano

1 tsp mexican chili powder

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1.5 Tbsp White Wine

In a large bowl spread out the pork as thin as possible.  Sprinkle half the spices over the pork, mix well.  Spread out again and repeat.  Mix well.  Add in the white wine and stir.  Cover and refrigerate for a couple hours, overnight is best.

This fresh sausage can be use in any recipe calling for chorizo.

Special Thanks to my local supplier Active Life Farm for providing me with amazing Berkshire pork and fantastic local garlic.  They made this Chorizo special.

Corned Beef, An Flavour Treat using Local Beef


Salt meat has been around for centuries, it has been a very long standing traditional method of preserving meat.  Corned Beef is actually salt beef, the corn comes from the type of salt (corning salt) used to cure the beef.  What we call corn actually got the name because the kernels are the size of the salt used to corn beef.  No wonder I couldn’t find the corn it when I was a kid.  I looked pretty hard.

So with freezing, refrigeration and other modern preservation methods why would we salt beef.  Taste of course.  As the salt is drawn into the beef it also draws in water and any favours dissolved in it.  This means that using the corning method we can infuse beef with moisture and well as flavor.  Commercial corned beefs are loaded with nitrates which are needed to preserve the meat.  When made at home you can leave this out, you wont get the pink color but you will get all of the taste and it wont last long enough to go bad.  Canned corned beef… yeah well we wont go there.  I will not criticize the use of nitrates, if we want commercial cured meats this is needed, but find someone who uses it in moderation.  However mystery meat in a can, yeah lets not.

Corned beef is made from brisket.  Brisket a cut from between the front legs, in the chest area of the cow.  It support more than half the weight of a moving cow so the amount of connective tissue requires it to be cooked in a very specific manner to keep it tender.  It needs to be cooked low and slow and if possible in a moist environment.  Another method of cooking brisket is smoking it for hours at a low temperature.(which I will leave to my good friends at Boneheads BBQ until I can get a smoker).

I got my beef for this recipe from Getaway Farms in the Annapolis Valley.  They are a great local option for grass fed beef.  Their beef are free range in the summer and they take special care in how they preserve the grass to feed them in the winter.  They are so proud of how they treat and feed their animals they even had a bag of the grass they feed there cows at the market for me to smell.  It was like spring in the middle of winter.  This beef is more lean, and much better for you than grain fed factory beef, and the flavor is amazing.  It made great corned beef.

When choosing your beef you want it to be sure it is fresh, deep red and you want the fat cap trimmed back.  You want a good amount of lean surface area, don’t trim all the fat but much of it.  If the beef is previously frozen or really oxidized (brown) I would not try to use it for this.  Too much risk of existing bacteria.  You want fresh beef.

Here is how I make my Corned Beef:

You will need:

One Piece of Beef Brisket (3 – 4 pounds)

Dry Rub

3 Cloves

5 pepper corns

2 tsp coriander

1 tsp mustard seed

1 allspice berry

Take the above ingredients and dry toast them in a skillet until they warmed, do not burn them.  Place them in a spice grinder with:

6 red pepper corns

1/2 tsp dried red chillies

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp thyme

1/2 tsp sage.

Grind until all spices are broken up and then spread evenly over the entire brisket.  Wrap in cling wrap and place in the refrigerator for 4 hours.

Once the beef is in the refrigerator you need to make the brine.

In a large dutch oven combine:

20 cups of water

2 cups course salt

1/2 cup of brown sugar

1 tsp mustard seed

1 tsp black peppercorns

10 whole cloves

10 juniper berries

2 sticks of cinnamon broken in half

1/2 tsp mace

1 tsp red pepper

1 tsp ginger

2 tbsp corriander

1 bulb of garlic cut in half

Bring the mixture to a boil and stir to dissolve all the salt.  Then allow the mixture to cool to the point where you can put it into the refrigerator.  Do not put the meat into this mixture until it is cold.  You do not want the beef stewing in warm water, this is really not safe and could cause food-born illness.

When the mixture is cold and the beef has rested with the dry rub for 4 hours place the beef into the brine.  The brine needs to cover the beef.  If it down not put a couple bowls on top of it to weigh it down.

Let the beef sit in your refrigerator for 7 to 10 days.  No it will not go bad, that is what the salt is for.  I will however absorb all of that amazing spice and flavor making the best corned beef you have ever had.

After the 10 days remove the meat from the brine and discard the brine.  Rinse the beef under cold water to clean off the excess salt.  Now put the beef in your dutch oven with the following:

3 carrots rough chopped

3 stocks of celery rough chopped

1 Onion pealed and rough chopped

1 bottle of beer (I used Garrison Jalapeno Beer.. amazing)

4 or 5 sprigs fresh thyme

Water to cover the corned beef by an inch.

Heat 1 tbsp of grape seed oil in a pan, sear off the brisket on all sides.  Then add the rest of the ingredients.

Bring to a boil then simmer over low heat for 2.5 to 3 hours or until fork tender. Remove from the water and let cool.  Then you can slice it across the grain for sandwiches, cut it into chunks for hash or use it in any of your favorite corned beef recipes.  I really enjoyed this one.

Thanks again to my local providers:

Brisket: Getaway Farms

Garlic: Active Life Farms

Herbs: Riverview Herbs

Beer: Garrison Brewery

Caramelized Apple Cake with Quark Frosting


Every now and again I ask my readers via Twitter to challenge me with a recipe that they would like to see done.  I find it interesting to see what my fellow foodies desire to eat and then challenge myself to cook it using primarily local ingredients in a creative manner.

Amy works at Fox Hill Cheese house and she said she wanted to create a birthday cake for her to bake this weekend using Fox Hill’s Quark and Yogurt.  I had to make it seasonal and add some flare so I decided to use the Quark (a less rich cream cheese/ricotta like product very popular in Europe) to make a filling for between the layers and flavor it will an apple caramel sauce.  The yogurt will add richness and moisture to the cake and I have used cinnamon to tie all of the flavors together.

I was going for a balance of flavour, a cake that has a nice balance of sweet, spice and sour.  I love the sour flavor from creamed cheese and quark has the same taste.  I also like the crunch and sour provided by the apple.  The cinnamon in each element provided a nice bridge.  I hope you enjoy as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 1 – Almond Brittle

I like a little crunch in a cake to break up the soft texture of the frosting, filling and cake.  For this recipe I made an almond brittle then ground it up in a food processor and then used the crushed brittle in the caramel, filling and to dust the sides of the cake.

Ingredients:

1 cup almonds

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

Lay the almonds on silicon mat or piece of parchment paper in a baking sheet in a single layer close together.  Combine the sugar and water in a pan and bring to a boil over high heat.  Then turn it down and boil until it reached 295 degrees on a candy thermometer.  Be very careful with this mixture it is very hot and can burn severely.  Pour the hot syrup over the almonds to cover them and let them sit until they harden and are cool.  Be very careful it will look cool before it is.  When it is cooled break it up and crush it in a food processor.  Set aside to use later.

Step 2 – Sheet Cake with Fox Hill Yogurt

Ingredients:

3 cups of flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 Tbsp Cinnamon

1 cup unsalted butter (room temperature)

2 cups of sugar

1 tbsp vanilla

3 large eggs (room temperature)

2 cups of plain yogurt (room temperature)

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees

Prepare a 17 x 11 x 1 inch sheet cake by greasing and flouring the bottom and all sides.  After you grease it just dust it with flour and shake off the excess.

Sift together your dry ingredients into a large bowl and set aside.

In a separate large bowl (I use a KitchenAid Mixer) add in the sugar, butter and vanilla.  Beat this on high for 3 to 5 minutes until light and fluffy.  This is a critical step to getting a light cake.  The sugar builds little tunnels of air to the butter adding fluffiness.  You will want to scrape down the sides of the bowl two or three times during this process.  You want to do the serious beating before you add your dry ingredients.  If you beat it after you add the flour you will build gluten and end up with a tough dry cake that has those tunnels through it.  You don’t want any part of that.

Now that you have fluffy butter and sugar you want to add the eggs.  Break the eggs into a small bowl.  You always do this, if you add them directly into the butter and sugar and you lose a piece of shell it is a bugger to get it out of the batter.  Add the eggs in one at a time until each egg is incorporated.

Now we will add the flour and yogurt.  This is the point where we want to keep the mixing to a minimum.  With the mixer on low add in 1/3 of the dry ingredients stir until incorporate.  Then add half the yogurt and scrape the bowl and mix in.  Add the next third of the dry and then the rest of the yogurt and ending with the dry stirring and scraping after each step.

Pour the batter into the prepared sheet pan and bake at 350 for 20 to 30 minutes.  It should start to brown a little and a toothpick inserted should come out clean.

Allow the cake to cool for 15 minutes then invert it onto the bottom of another sheet try and cool for at least an hour more.  It needs to be totally cool before your assemble the cake.

While the cake bakes and cools you can complete the rest of the parts.  Note: I used half of this cake for the birthday cake.  The other half will be cut up and frozen for trifle at another time.  I got 10 slices an inch thick and as large as my hand.  If you want more cake use the whole sheet cake and double the following steps. (you will have enough brittle)

Step 3 – Apple Cider Caramel Sauce.

Ingredients:

2 cups apple cider

1/2 cinnamon stick

1/2 vanilla bean (2 tsp vanilla)

1/4 cup of brown sugar

2 Tbsp Butter

Put the cider in a small pot, add in the cinnamon stick and vanilla

and boil till it is reduced by half.  Add in the sugar and butter and return to the boil and cook until starts to thicken so that it coats the back of a spoon.  About 5 min.  Allow to cool to room temperature.

Step 4 – Fox Hill Quark Filling and Frosting

2 Cups of Fox Hill Quark (you could use half and half ricotta and creamed cheese)

5 Tbsp of The cooled caramel sauce

Whip the quark until it is light and fluffy, add in the caramel and beat until incorporated.  Oh yum!!!  (I have used quark on bagels before but it is the most amazing ingredient for frostings and fillings.)  I will be playing with this food!!!

Step 5 – Caramelized Apples

5 small macintosh apples pealed and sliced into wedges

2 tbsp butter

1 tbsp brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

Melt the butter in a frying pan and add in the brown sugar, stir.  Add the apples and sprinkle the cinnamon.  Cook until the apples soften (there should be a little crunch left).  Allow them to cool.

Assembly:

Cut the cake into 3 equal pieces widthwise and then in half lengthwise.  If you are using the whole cake do not do the lengthwise cut.  Take one of the pieces on the bottom of your cake plate and top with quark filling, dust with the almond brittle and then a single layer of apples.  Put the next cake section on top and repeat.  Top with the last section of cake.  Apply a layer of frosting on the top.  Layer the apples on top overlapping them leaving a 3/4 of an inch around the edges.  Frost the sides of the cake.  Then apply a layer of the crushed brittle around the empty edges on the top of the cake and then press on the sides. Drizzle the top with caramel sauce.

If you have any left over brittle it would be a great ice cream topping, and left over quark could be used on toast or a bagel.

 

As always thanks to my local suppliers:

Yogurt and Quark: Fox Hill Cheese House

Apples: Noggins Corner Farm Market

Apple Cider: Suprima Farm

Cinnamon: JamesLea

Eggs: Elmridge Farm

Apple Cinnamon Hot Oatmeal


Have I mentioned I love oatmeal.  Yeah I thought so.  I am working to change my eating habits in a sustainable way.  I believe when it comes to food we have 2 needs, the need for nutrition and the need to gain pleasure from the food we eat.  Many will argue that the pleasure is not important, but the fact is if we are not satisfied with the food we are eating we will eat food we should not.  Diets do not work, if they did the diet industry would not have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to convince us that their diet is different.  If a diet worked those of us that need to lose weight would flock to it.  The results would speak for themselves.  Diet foods??  Sorry, again those are produced for the most part produced by companies playing on our need to lose weight, filled with a lot of processed food that just gives us false hope.  

I did a blog on oatmeal showing why it is a good answer to food confusion.  Getting back to the food that we are meant to eat in as natural a form as possible will show us results.  Making sure this food needs not only our nutritional needs but our need for flavor will give us a complete, sustainable food lifestyle that no diet or processed diet food ever can.
Here is one of many oatmeals that I enjoy in the morning.  Yes it is a carbohydrate, yes I put sugar in it and yes I use whole milk.  None of this is bad in proper proportion.  Carbohydrates are the fuel we need to give us energy, morning is the time for this, I would not recommend this meal for a bed time snack.  Having a good breakfast kickstarts our metabolism and the oatmeal provides a nice slow burn that will carry us to lunch.  Oatmeal is a blank canvas, play with it, add flavours you like and enjoy.  This recipe makes about 3 servings for me.
 
Ingredients:
1 cup apple cider
1 cup water
1.5 tsp cinnamon
1.5 tsp vanilia
1/3 cut chopped pecans
1/4 cup dried currents
1/2 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp maple sugar
2 cups oatmeal
1 apple diced.
To start the oatmeal make a flavorful broth with all of the items but the oatmeal and diced apples. Heat it until is start to steam and then add in the oatmeal.  Bring to a boil and stir until it reaches the consistency that you want.  This is a matter of choice but it takes about 5 minutes to get to where I want it to be. 
Add in the diced apples and serve.  I like to add a little milk or yogurt to mine.  This breakfast gets me through my morning.  I hope you enjoy.
 
Thanks to my local suppliers:
 
Oats :                     Speerville Mills
Milk :                      Fox Hill Cheese House
Apples:                 Noggins Corner Farm Market
Maple Sugar:       Coulis Divin
Cinnamon:           JamesLea Bio foods International
 

>Cardamom Pear Waffles with Drunken Pear Chutney


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I admit it, I got inspired while looking at the selection of dried fruit carried by Noggins Corner at the Halifax Seaport Farmer’s Market.  All locally grown (apples, cranberries, blueberries and pears).  I bough several bags and already blogged the apple muffins and cranberry cookies and now I needed to play with the pears.  I wanted something a little different for breakfast today and kept thing about at my three bags of dried pear chips.  Step one is to think about what to rehydrate them with, hmmm amaretto yeah sounds good but sweet, ahh cut it with some white wine, yep that sounds good.  I decided to add in some dried currents and cardamom and make a little sweet chutney.  Now what to eat it with.  I saw a tweet from suzie the foodie aka @suzieridler about being out of maple syrup and thought hmmm how about waffles with a light coat of peanut butter and dried pear chutney.  That was all it took to create a great breakfast.  I have a nice sour cream waffle recipe that I decided to kick up with some cardamom and amaretto and make that to go with my dried pears.  Below is the result:
Ingredients:
Dried Pear Chutney
3 bags about 1.5 cups of dried pear chips
1/2 cup amaretto
1/2 cup white wine
8 whole cardamom pods
Cardamom Pear Sour Cream Waffles
1 1/2 Whole White Flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
2 large eggs
1 cup whole milk
2 tbsp amaretto 
1 cup real sour cream*
1 tbsp pure vanilla extract
1 tbsp honey
3 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
In a pot on low heat put in the ingredients for the dried pear chutney.  It takes an hour or so to rehydrate these so allow the time or do it the night before.  When all of the liquid is absorbed remove the cardamom pods and chop up the pears.  Reserve to top waffles.
To make the waffles sift together the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl and mix well.  Ensure the dry ingredients are mixed well because we won’t stir much after we add the liquid.  
In a separate bowl whisk the eggs then add in the milk, sour cream, amaretto and vanilla.  Melt the butter and add in the honey stir to combine then add to the other wet ingredients.  This will help combine the honey to the cold liquids.  If you add it directly it wont want to combine. 
Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir until combined.  Do not over mix this will build gluten in your batter and result in tough waffles.  
Add enough waffle batter into a preheated waffle iron to cover the bottom and close the lid.  Cook until the steam starts to slow, take a peak the waffles should be golden brown.    This batch will make 2 – 4 square waffles.
I like these waffles with a little peanut butter and topped with the pear chutney.  They are soft and warm and the cardamon provides the perfect compliment to the pears.  
Thanks to my local suppliers: