Blueberry Grunt

  The name Blueberry Grunt may sound a little odd to those not from the Maritimes. The name actually comes from the sound that the dish makes while cooking. It is a dish of blueberries with a batter topping. As the dish is cooked, the stewing berries release steam that bubbles up through the cooking batter with a grunting sound, hence the name. For many of us the name has been shortened to just be "Grunt". At the season when blueberries are ripening, many a meal is ended with a "Grunt".
  We have never tried this meal with other berries, but I don't see any reason why it would not work with any high liquid berries. We may have to try a Blackberry Grunt when the berries are ripe in a couple of weeks.
  A Grunt can be made in two ways, baked in the oven or on top of the stove in a covered pot. This recipe is for the oven baked variety. To cook on the stove takes a different batter and cooking method and in my opinion makes a different dish.

Here is the oven baked recipe.

 Recipe
4 cups fresh blueberries(can use frozen)
1 cup white sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg

batter
1 1/2 cup flour
2 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
1/2 cup white sugar
2 Tbsp chilled butter
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg

Directions
preheat oven to 350F
Place Blueberries in a greased 9x11 casserole dish
Sprinkle with the sugar and spices

Mix Flour, baking powder, salt and sugar in a bowl.
Cut in butter
Beat egg with buttermilk and stir into dry ingredients just until moist.
Dollop the batter over the berries and sprinkle the top with a bit of sugar.
Bake for 30-50 minutes until toothpick comes out of topping clean.
Serve with whipped cream or ice cream.

Blueberry Grunt hot out of the oven with whipped cream

This is truly a dish best enjoyed hot out of the oven with the whipped cream or ice cream melting over it. It also makes a great breakfast cold the next morning and will fuel you for the day with good nutrients. Plus it so much fun to tell your friends or coworkers that you had a "Grunt" for breakfast. 

  We hope that you enjoy the recipe and it inspires you to try some of the old family heirloom recipes that are kicking around in cookbooks that are handed down through the generations. Many of these old recipes are simple and tasty and come from a time when a myriad ingredients were not available. They were quick and cheap to produce.

Cranberry Scones

  When I started to write this post, I stopped to look at what a scone really is. We here on the South Shore of Nova Scotia have a varied and intermixed history with the French, British, Scottish, German and Aboriginal backgrounds that we share and are a mixture of. When I first had a scone, I thought this is just a fancy Tea Biscuit. It is similar to a Tea Biscuit and I guess similar to Bannock from the Scottish Background. Once I looked it up on-line I was satisfied that what we make is in actuality a scone.

  We love the Cranberry Scones and find them fairly quick to make if you are in a hurry and they are soooooo good hot from the oven slathered with butter.

Ingredients

3/4 cup Craisins(dried cranberries)
1/4 cup boiling water
1 3/4 cup flour
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup yellow corn meal
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 Tbsp chilled butter
2 Tbsp shortening
1/3 cup plain Low Fat yogourt
1/4 cup evaporated milk
1 tsp vanilla

1 large egg white
2 tsp sugar

Directions
  Combine craisins and boiling water in a bowl and cover, let stand 10 min or until softened. Drain and set aside.
  Preheat oven to 400F
  Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cup, level with a knife.
  Add flour, sugar, corn meal, baking powder and salt in a large bowl
  Cut in butter and shortening until it resembles coarse meal.
  Combine craisins, yogourt, milk and vanilla.
  Add wet ingredients to dry mixture, mixing just until moistened
  Turn out on a lightly floured surface and knead lightly 4 times. DO NOT OVER HANDLE THE DOUGH OR THEY WILL NOT RISE UP AND BE FLAKY
  Pat dough into a 4"x8" rectangle and cut into 2"x2" squares (8 scones)
  Place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper
  Brush with beaten egg white and sprinkle with sugar
  Bake at 400F for 12-15 minutes

The scones can be eaten hot from the oven lathered in butter, my favourite way.  They also make a great treat to pack and take on a picnic if you are travelling.

We often have sliced cheese and fruit on the side to have a balanced meal. However you have them they are delicious and fairly quick. When we are running on a hectic schedule we find that these can be whipped up in nearly the same amount of time as a fast food meal can take at rush hour. And it is real food.

We hope you enjoy the recipe.

Falafel Sandwiches

 A falafel is probably a relatively new idea to many people, but is a staple in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisine. It is a ball made of Chickpeas and spices that is deep fried. It is used as a garnish for plates and as the base for a sandwich, which is what I am going to explore today.

      

Falafel Sandwich, Tabouleh and Greek Potatoes

   There are a number of great recipes for falafels, and they are not hard to make,  but for simplicity today we used packaged falafels that we bought at the grocery store, they are good, but not nearly as good as homemade.  Traditional Falafel Sandwich is made on a Lebanese Pita Bread, but we like ours on a Greek pita or a Naan Bread which we wrote about making a while ago. If anyone wants a recipe for falafel we can write another post with it.

The big secret to a Falafel Sandwich is the Tahini Sauce which is a Sesame Sauce. The paste is much like a natural Peanut butter in that the oil floats on top and needs to be mixed in to use it.

Tahini Sauce

1/2 cup Tahini(Sesame Paste)
3 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbsp Olive Oil
1/4 cup Lemon Juice
1 tsp finely chopped parsley(optional)

Directions

  Mince the garlic and mash it with the salt. A mortar and pestle works great but the back of a spoon against the bottom of a bowl works as well.
Add Tahini and Olive Oil and mix well with the garlic.
Add lemon Juice( one good sized lemon should give enough juice)
Don't panic here as the sauce seems to harden, the sauce will turn to a fairly dry consistency.
Add water to the mixture a little bit at a time, you want to thin it enough that it will pour off a spoon.
Add parsley and mix well.
                              
Garnish

  Diced Tomato, Onion, Sweet Pepper and Cucumber. Some Hot Peppers and coarsely chopped parsley.


  Now to put together your sandwich.
  Warm your Pita or Naan and place on a plate. Put 4 or 5 falafels in a line in the middle of the bread and mash slightly with your thumb. Alongside the falafels place rows of the vegetable garnish. Sprinkle chopped parsley over the whole thing and pour some Tahini Sauce over everything.  Fold up your sandwich and enjoy.
  You can enjoy the sandwich by itself, it is a very filling meal or you can make a Taboulleh Salad or Greek potatoes to go with it. This is a very tasty meal and the first time we had tried it was at a dinner invitation from a gentleman from Lebanon. He told us at the time that it is traditional to have a glass of cola with the sandwich and for some reason it always tastes better that way.
  If you think this is too much work to find out if you like it, try one of the Lebanese restaurants that are starting to spring up, you can get a sandwich or a plate and give it a try before you decide to buy all the ingredients. We love this meal and hope you will too.

Rhize of the Rhizomes

  OK, I know that not all mushrooms have a rhizome. But the title rolled off the tongue better than "Rise of the Mycellium" or any of the other options. And it is the title that might be the first thing to grab your attention. Kind of like the colour of the fungi in the woods are the first thing that you notice.

  The other day we went for our morning walk and almost as soon as we entered the forested track we started to notice the number of mushrooms blooming. This was shortly after the latest rain and it seems the added moisture gave the fungi community a real lift.

  We were really boggled by the number of mushrooms that we saw as we stopped to look. The variety was truly amazing. The more we looked the more we discovered, they were everywhere. Some were so tiny that you had to watch where you put your feet to avoid crushing them.

Your eye would be captured by a large yellow or red mushroom and as you looked at that you would notice a tiny, white, brown, yellow or red one peeking their heads up out of the moss or leaf mould. It was truly amazing to see so many types in such a small area.

   I truly have no idea if any of them are edible and don't honestly trust myself to read a book and feel comfortable trying a foraged mushroom. I read one time that the leading cause of death among mushroom experts was mushroom poisoning. So with my luck, I decided to give this learning experience a pass. I will stick to snapping photos and tempting the visual palette rather than the culinary palette on this topic.

   As we walk through the woods on the warm days of summer when the wildflowers are waning and colour seems to be a little harder to find. Head into the shade of an old growth forest. The shade is cooling and as you look around your feet you may start to see the colours that nature has placed in one of the more unlikely spots.

   As you look at them, see the one that caught your eye, then look around to see what you might have missed if you hadn't stopped to take a look. I  bet that there are a few more there waiting to be discovered.

   They come in all shapes and sizes, on the ground, on rocks on trees both dead and alive.

It may add a bit of time to your walk but by the time you have finished you may realize that you went further than you had planned and you are not nearly as tired as you expected to be. The frequent stops let you stay in your comfort zone for a longer period of time and being in the woods, with its quiet and relaxation may have made you much more relaxed than when you started. So get out and see what might literally be right under your feet.

In the footprints of Giants

  In the early 1900's Albert Bigelow Paine and Dr. Edward Breck along with 2 guides left the Milford House on a multi-day Journey along the waterways of Central Southwest Nova Scotia. They left from the beach behind the lodge and Paine recorded the story for posterity. It has become a classic tale of fishing and canoeing in the area.
  About 110 years later 2 men entered their watercraft at the very same beach, but here is where the similarities end.

  The greats of our book headed out in wool clothing in Birch bark canoes for a trip lasting many days carrying all of their gear with them. Our modern explorers were clothed in quick dry fabric paddling plastic kayaks carrying only a bit of water and granola bars and planning a morning outing.

Where our author of days gone by was interested in the number of trout, the modern day explorers were in search of geocaches. A geocache is a container left by another geocacher for those who follow to discover after downloading the coordinates to a GPS unit. No compasses for our modern day travellers.

Albert Paine was an artist with words, he would describe a scene and you would feel like you had seen it, you could smell the pine in the wind as he wove his story. Today we take a camera and capture all that we see for future reference, no reliance on paper notebooks to remind us of what we saw.

The author in the 1900's could travel for days to lakes that had seen so very few people as to be considered unknown. Today you can access any body of water by plane from a city anywhere in the world. Has our world been shrunk to fit the desires of outdoor enthusiasts.

  For all that has changed over the years and the inroads that we have made into the forests and lakes that were once nearly inaccessible, as you round a lake and see no sign of man you can feel yourself transported back in time and place yourself in the footsteps of the giants who came before and blazed a path into the forest. you can almost hear the waves breaking on the birch bark bow of the canoe, smell the smoke of the campfire as a shore lunch is fried. You can for a brief moment believe that you are alone in the wilderness, dependent only on yourself and your companions. You feel that you are master of all you survey.
  Then you hear the sound of a truck passing on a nearby road or hear the voices of children on a walk along the lake. You are transported forward by a century and are once again in the modern age and realize you are hungry and it is time to return to the campside and fire up the BBQ to make lunch.
  But for a few minutes you walked with giants.

Pavlova-When Ballet meets the Palate

  A Pavlova is a tasty baked meringue with cream and fruit on top. It is a very unassuming dessert with a contentious past. Both Australia and New Zealand have been arguing for about 90 years over the origin of the dish. Most agree that the dish was created for Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova on her tour of Australia and New Zealand in  1926. The difference of opinion surrounds who was the first to make and publish the recipe. I can't comment on the merits of each case, but I will say it seems to be a war with only winners as both sides bring out the big guns to make design and publish ever more tasty and elaborate versions. See, only winners on both sides.
  We made a Pavlova the other day. In the course of making a Boston Cream Pie, there were a number of egg whites left over from the pastry Cream.  I looked at the eggs and thought why not try a Pavlova to see how it turns out. Boy an I glad that I did.

Meringue Recipe
6 Room Temperature egg whites
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cup sugar

  I put the  eggs in a medium sized bowl and with a hand mixer beat the eggs and tartar sauce until frothy. Then I started adding the sugar as I continued to beat the eggs. Once all the sugar was added beat until you get a stiff peak. For those who are novices like me, this is when the mixture stays in the beaters and when you pull them out of the bowl and turn the  mixer over, the meringue forms a peak on the end that doesn't fall over but stands up on its own.
   I have a piece of parchment paper on which I marked an 11"(28 cm) circle. Place the parchment paper on a cookie sheet with the marked side down, you should still be able to see the mark through the paper. Spread the meringue inside the circle and try to keep it all the same thickness. This is a template to help make a better circle. If you don't have a plate that size to hold it when done, you can make a smaller circle.
  Place in an oven preheated to 250F and bake for 50-60 minutes, then turn off the oven and leave it inside for another hour. The outside will be crunchy and the inside will be a bit gooey. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool. It is very delicate and the outside will crack, don't worry, the cream topping will hide it and on first bite no one will notice a few chips or cracks.
  I read in many recipes that the least bit of yolk in the white will cause it to fail. I did have a bit of yolk in the egg white and had no trouble getting the meringue to whip. I would recommend trying to keep the whites as clean as possible.

 

Cream Topping
1 cup whipping cream
2 tsp vanilla
2 Tbsp Sugar

1 package Cream Cheese
1 tsp Vanilla
2Tbsp Sugar

In a bowl whip the whipping cream and vanilla slowly add sugar and whip until you get a soft peak.
In another bowl break up the cream cheese and add the vanilla and sugar and beat with a mixer until softened.
Using a spatula gently fold the whipped cream into the cream cheese to roughly combine.
Spread this mixture on the cooled meringue. This is the time to glue any broken bits back in place, the cream will hide and hold them.

Top with fresh fruit of your choice, the traditional are strawberries and Kiwi fruit, but I think almost any fruit would work.

  Store in the refrigerator.

 

 It wasn't nearly as difficult as I imagined and the end result was a tasty dessert that may have seemed to taste better as it was consumed among a group of friends around a campfire. We put the Pavlova in a cake keeper and put that in a cooler bag to take to the campground and it travelled fine.