The Yum Yum Factor

It's summer. It's a bazillion degrees out there, you are invited to a BBQ and BAM! You are asked if you could bring dessert. If it were just your own family, you would throw a fiver at them and tell them to run to the store and bring back a bag of Mr Freezies but that isn't going to cut it. There is no way you are turning on the oven, so baking anything is immediately out. You could do an ice cream thing but you would have had to start planning that yesterday and you have to transport it without it melting all over the place. You could stop at the store and pick something up on the way to the party, which is actually a perfectly acceptable option but I have a job to do here, so, for today, that is out too. That leaves a trifle. Sure, you can make all of the elements yourself if you want, but why would you want to do that in this heat? Trifle requires no special skills, no craftiness and it is almost impossible to mess up but it looks like you took tons of time...

I have partnered up with the wonderful women of The Kingston Social , in the east end of Toronto, to host a monthly supper club to bring a little of that west end fun to our neck of the woods and I am happy to report that the response has been wonderful. For our May dinner, I knew that I was going to put both of my Anova sous vide machines to work on some sirloin cap, my favourite cut of steak and serve it with chimichurri but after that, I wasn't sure. This has been a weird spring and I couldn't be sure about what would even been in the market by the end of May. I assumed that I would find lots of seasonal produce like fiddleheads, ramps, colourful radishes and everyone's favourite weed, rhubarb. 

This past summer, a friend brought me over a bag of rhubarb. I made a couple of batches of rhubarb simple syrup but I still had a few cups of chopped rhubarb left and wasn't sure what to do with it. I really didn't want to bake with it because we had just polished off the rhubarb pie ice cream and the last thing I needed was more dessert lying around the house. Pickles Why couldn't they be pickled?

The Neighbour has something like 321 siblings and out of that big group of family there are three sisters who have become known in our world as The Sisters.  Every year The Sisters come down from The Miramichi in New Brunswick to spend a week with The Neighbours and this is always a very busy, festive week full of belly laughs, lobster rolls, chips dipped in hot fudge and long island iced tea. This year, not only did they bring us a couple of HUGE clumps of rhubarb to plant in our garden, but a bag of chopped rhubarb to cook with as well. I have not been buying rhubarb this year because it has been kind of hard to find and when I do find it, it is ridiculously expensive and not even particularly nice. Come on, it's a damned weed and the grocery store wants to charge me $4 a stalk? What's next, hormone free dandelions for $9 a pound with a side of $20 organic poison ivy? Anyway, if that weren't enough good luck, another friend sent me a message that she had a big b...

I participated in a recipe contest in May sponsored by Canada Lentils called Love Your Lentils  and was pretty thrilled to learn that I came in second place. Congrats to the winner, Davine, with her Canadiana Baked Beans and to all of the bloggers who made it to the top ten.  My prize was a $500 gift certificate to Amazon.ca and man, did I shred that gift certificate like a boss. For days I shopped, put stuff in my basket and then took it all back out and started again. I even had a $500 camera lens in there at one point but my fellow Gastroposter, Libby Roach, encouraged me to get lots of smaller stuff because it would be way more fun to get a big box of treats than one little lens and she was right. When I opened that box I almost peed my pants. I don't know what I love the most yet. I finally got my Zojirushi rice cooker which I have been coveting for decades but am too cheap to actually pay for and threw in a $$ Zojirushi bento lunch contraption for The Kid sin...

Okay, we are now full on all about the rhubarb. Today I made some rhubarb simple syrup so that we can have rhubarb lemonade, rhubarb mojitos, rhubarb popsicles  and whatever other rhubarb drinks we concoct. It is a great syrup to keep in the fridge because it's prettier than plain old simple syrup and it's just got that bit of sour edge to it so it's not quite as cloying as a straight ahead simple syrup. Don't throw that pulp that you strained to make the syrup either - keep it and eat it like a compote over ice cream, in some greek yogurt, slathered on a crumpet or straight out of the jar. The rhubarb might give the simple syrup a beautiful red colour but that rhubarb mash is a pretty unappealing beige colour. Don't throw that ugly step sister out just because she isn't as pretty as the syrup though because what she lacks in beauty, she makes up for in flavour. Rhubarb Simple Syrup 3 cups chopped rhubarb (3 stalks) 2 cups sugar 2 1/2 cups water ...

Ahhh, it's rhubarb season again. When I was a kid, every house I ever lived in had rhubarb growing wild at the back of the yard against the fence. Every single house, I swear. To me, it was an edible weed and my mom would let me take a bowl of sugar out on the back porch and dip a stalk of rhubarb into the sugar and munch happily away on it, disregarding the fact that it was most likely covered in dog pee. My mom was cool like that. Nowadays, rhubarb is $4 a stalk at the market and has become super trendy and I no longer live in a house with a yard so I can grow my own wild rhubarb by the fence for the dog to pee on so I have no choice but to pay $4 a stalk for it, hopefully dog pee free at these prices. The Kid adores rhubarb so I whipped up a bit of strawberry rhubarb compote for him to eat all week however he sees fit. Beware, this recipe is a bit tart because he likes his rhubarb a bit on the sour side so feel free to add another 1/4 cup of sugar if you like it swee...

The Kid turned 13 this week. Who could have imagined that my sweet baby boy could ever turn into this tall, lanky man child complete with a dirty mustache, hairy legs, sounding like Barry White with a cold but who still likes to curl up on the floor and coo baby talk to the dog. I have been feeling like this birthday really deserves a real event to mark it. For so many, 13 is a really important birthday for young men. Sweet 16 is a girl thing to me but 13 seems to be the magic number for the boys.  We aren't Jewish, so a bar mitzvah was out of the question although he was campaigning for one. I told him that in other cultures we would have sent him alone out in the wilderness and told him not to come back until he had killed something to mark his entrance into manhood but that is apparently illegal here and would probably get me arrested in Toronto. Canadians are so uptight. Instead, I am making him prosecco risotto, mussels and creme brûlée and we got him a watch. My ...

The Neighbour made the most delicious strawberry rhubarb crisp the other night but my kid was sick and didn't get to eat any of it. He really loves rhubarb and has been talking about wanting strawberry rhubarb pie all week. I love him but not quite enough to make pie crust today in this heat but I was up to making a crumble. We found some nice rhubarb at the market and the local strawberries have been insanely sweet and delicious so we were in luck. I decided it would be safe to use Smitten Kitchen's basic recipe and just add a few tweaks because I find her baking is always pretty spot on. I added some crystalized ginger to the crumble topping and replaced half of the sugar with maple syrup in the filling but otherwise, I followed her recipe and it was really delicious. The next time I make it, and there will definitely be a next time, I will add even more ginger to the crumble because the few times I got a nice little chunk in a bite it was amazing. I also think I will pick u...