Thick Spicey Tomatoe Ham Vegetable Soup

How many words can be used to describe x country skiing at the Black Foot? I am tired of high praise words like heaven, paradise, nirvana, amazing etc. With deep snow, groomed tracks, boreal forest studded with balls of snow and even the occasional moose, friends to x county ski with, I keep thinking 'life does not get better than this'. Why would I vacation in Arizona or Hawaii or Vitoria BC when I have this paradise (chose a word) 45 minutes from my home?

Recently I had the opportunity to spend 4 hours x country skiing and when I came home, I had this soup/stew. Basically I began the soup with 1 tbsp of oil and slowly sauteed 1 chopped large onion in the oil, added 4 stalks of celery, 5 minced cloves of garlic and then 8 cups of chopped vegetables and water to cover. The ones I had in the fridge that day, included: carrots, squash, turnip, one half shredded cabbage, green and red peppers, 3 potatoes and one minced jalapeno pepper with just a few seeds. For protein I added 2 cups of preboiled chick peas (prepare in advance using the over night soaking method or bring to a boil and then cover and let sit for an hour then freeze in 1 or 2 cups packages) and two cups of cubed baked ham. For flavour, everything was tied together with a can of spaghetti sauce, Hunt's Thick and Rich, spicy red peppers and chilies. The pot of soup was brought to a boil, and then simmered about 30 minutes. After tasting the soup, I did not add any other seasoning. To serve the soup, I cushioned a tablespoon of pesto (see my November, 2010 post) in a dollop of yogurt. Soul satisfying soup, thick crusty peasant bread, sore muscles - heaven. One more thing, be sure to share and give some away. That too is heaven.

Cherpumple

If you have over twenty-five people for a pot luck you need big food items like a turkey or full ham, lots of sour cream baked hash browns or cabbage slaw. When I saw the recipe for Cherpumple credited to Charles Phoenix the American authour and pop-cultural humorist, I knew I just had to make it for our annual Christmas party. You take prebaked pies, cherry and apple in my case, and enclose them in cake batter and that's it. It was simply delicious. When I explained how to make the recipe, listeners would say, "you mean you put a baked pie into the batter?" Foreign thought.Charles Phoenix coined the word Cherpumple because he used a CHERry pie, in PUMpkin cake batter and an apPLE pie. You could use a blueberry pie, raisin pie or any other filled pie. I choose to go with the original. I had two concerns: first I did not have a 9 inch layer baking pan and secondly, I hoped I would be able to find the 8 inch pies at SuperStore. I never buy these pies and did not know if they would be available. My neighbour and friend had the 9 inch pans (believe me you have to have the pan this size) and SuperStore had the pies.

First make the cake batter.

21/2 cups of all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/4 cup milk
1 cup pumpkin puree
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 8 inch baked apple pie
1 8 inch baked cherry pie

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease the 9 inch cake pans. Sift together the dry ingredients. Set aside. Beat the butter, slowly add the sugar (his recipe called for 1 and 1/2 cups of sugar but I decreased it to 1 cup). Add the eggs one at a time. In another bowl, mix the milk, pumpkin and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients alternately with the wet ingredients. Spread one quarter of the batter into a cake pan. Invert one of the pies onto the batter. Remove the foil pie plate. Spread another quarter of the batter on top of the pie. Cover the pie completely. Repeat this with the second cake pan. Bake for 40 minutes. Cool.

Frost with Truffle Cream Cheese Frosting
1/4 cup butter
1 8 oz package of cream cheese
3 cups of icing sugar
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla.
1 cup white chocolate melted in 1/2 cup whipping cream, chilled

Beat the butter, vanilla and cream cheese together till fluffy. Slowly add the icing sugar and drips of cream. Just to add flavour and because I already had melted white chocolate (about 1 cup)in 1/2 cup of whipping cream left over from a batch of truffles I had made, I added this mixture to the icing. Now we are talking about being out-of-this-world. I do not know what I liked best - the cake or the icing.
Everyone had a piece of the cake and thought it was terrific. It is terrific because it is an 'out-side-of-the-box' type thinking cake. Innovative and over the top.

Almond Macaroons

I am always looking for recipes that are gluten free and of course macaroons are a very safe cookie given they have no flour of any kind. I made them yesterday but had another sweeter than cookie dough experience, because I made them with my two year old grand daughter. She stood on the large dining room chair and insisted that she also wear her apron since I was wearing mine. Her apron is brightly coloured,looks like the front of a Ukrainian doll and was hand sewn by a baba in the Ukraine. "Dolly apron, please", she insisted. We then washed our hands. We were ready. First 2 large egg whites were whipped till frothy in the mix master. She slowly poured in one cup of sugar. Most of it landed in the mixing bowl. When this was blended, she stirred the batter while we took turns mixing in 1 and 1/2 cups of ground almonds. She kept moving the mixing spoon to her left and then to her right hand because she is not sure yet which is her dominant hand. Meanwhile I lightly oiled the cookie sheet. When the batter was mixed (she allowed me to do some final stirs), I dropped the batter on to the cookie sheet with a tsp spoon and she found the right whole almond for each cookie and pressed it firmly into the center. Ten minutes in a 400 degree oven produced a wonderful cookie, crisp around the edges and soft in the center. We each ate two cookies and put the rest in a cookie tin. There is a saying that food flavoured with a mother's love is like no other food and I would have to add that food flavoured by an eager two year old is a memory maker of outstanding flavour.

Pepper Pound Cake

Sarah, whose mother is East Indian, made this cake for a lunch we were having this past summer. Why mention the nationality? The cake is Maya Kaimal's recipe who wrote Curried Flavors. She published this recipe in Food & Wine in 1999. So I think Sarah has an in on Indian food. At the lunch we were discussing Sticky Ideas by Heath and it may have been this topic, or the people, not sure, but what stuck with me was the flavour of this cake. I loved it. So I made it. However, my cake was dry compared to Sarah's. Sarah's cake had a fine crumb, was moist and had a buttery texture. It coated your mouth like good chocolate can. Sarah said she had inverted the hot cake and half fell out so essentially it was a disaster. Heads up for me, instead of calling Sarah, I called the Blue Flame Kitchen and a delightful but young helper tried to help me. Every question I asked her, she would run to some one (something?) else to find the answer. We concluded that my eggs may not have been large enough, that perhaps I put in too much flour and/or over baked it. I know you are suppose to scoop up the flour with a measuring cup and then level it with a knife but some times I am a bit hasty. We had another lunch this week, this time we discussed A Whole New Mind by Pink. Sarah again brought the Pepper Pound Cake and the recipe. Again I was struck by the flavour and the texture of this cake. The recipe is worth trying.

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3 cups of flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 pound unsalted butter at room temperature
21/2 cups sugar (I used 2 cups of sugar)
5 large eggs, separated
2 tbsp honey
1/1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp salt
finely grated zest of one lemon
1 cup buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Butter and flour a 10 inch bundt pan. Sift the flour with the baking powder into a medium sized bowl. In a large bowl, beat the butter with the sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg yolks one at a time, then honey, pepper, ginger, salt and lemon zest. Mix the dry ingredients alternating with the buttermilk. Beat the egg whites in a glass or stainless steel bowl until firm. Fold into the cake mixture one third at a time. Scrape batter into the bundt pan. Bake for one hour and 10 minutes (note do not over bake). Cool the cake for 20 minutes and then unmold onto a rack. This cake is best if it is eaten the day it is baked.

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I hope that your cake will be as good as Sarah's. It is well worth the effort. For presentational effect, serve in a puddle of strawberries or raspberries or unadorned on nice plates. I would post a picture, but it is all gone.

Cashew Hummus

This past summer I discovered a great cook book, A Year in Lucy's Kitchen by Lucy Waverman. Since my library is over flowing with cook books, I signed it out from the library. It was not a random choice, I had read a review of it under the banner of cookbooks you will want for Christmas. I marked each appealing recipe with a sticky note. Usually I will not find more than five recipes per book that look interesting, novel or repeatable. However, with this book when I was finished reading it, looked like a yellow sticky forest. I showed the book to one of my friends who said I should return the book to the library with the stickies in tact to see if others would recognize superior recipes. We had a great laugh. I returned the book sans the sticky notes and went and bought my own copy. What I realized was, it is worth buying cook books by great cooks. So many cookbooks are written because they can be, to raise a profile of a restaurant, bring attention to an issue like healthy eating or ethnic flavours, or to raise funds for an organization. The question is, how many cookbooks are actually written by exceptional cooks. I think Lucy Waverman is one of those cooks. This particular cookbook also has a value added feature. There are wine pairings and menu suggestions. After having attended Jennifer Cockrall-King's Food and Wine Writing class in Penticton, I have a new respect for wine pairings. It truly makes a difference. For this dish the wine pairing is fino sherry.

Please note, this is not the original recipe. I decreased the oil from 3/4 to 1/2 cup and balanced the consistency with the chickpea water and made a few other tweaks. Play with the flavours. You can increase the cumin, decrease the garlic or add less salt but when you do make these changes and the result is very good, record the change.

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>1 cup dried chick peas soaked over night and drained. This was the first time I did this and the flavour was superior to using canned chick peas, I wondered why it had taken me so long to adopt this method. In fact I made 8 cups of chick peas in my slow cooker and froze the ones I did not need.
2 cups of water
1/2 tsp dried red chillies
1 bay leaf
2 spring of thyme. I grew thyme in my garden and have a use sip lock bag in my freezer
1 cup unsalted cashews
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tsp chopped garlic
2 tsp ground cumin
salt for flavour

Bring to boil the chick peas, bay leaf, red pepper chillies and thyme in the water and then simmer for 40 minutes. Drain chick peas saving the cooking water, combine with the rest of thee ingredients and puree in the food processor. Add the chick pea cooking water to thin the hummus to the desired consistency. Serve with a variety of crackers. This is a gluten free dip and so I tend to use gluten free crackers. I love the flavour of the cumin with the cashews. Usually when I think of hummus, I taste oil, lemon and garlic in my mouth. A great combination but this one is a definite rival!

Romaine with Oranges and Pecans

This is one of those salads that you just want to have second and third helpings. In fact I will just have half of this salad for a meal. The recipe comes from one of the Best of Bridge cook books. For the salad part shred two heads of romaine lettuce toss with 1 cup toasted pecans add 2 peeled and sliced oranges Dressing. Combine the following in a blender 1/4 cup red wine vinegar 1/4 cup sugar 1/2 cup oil 1 tsp salt 1/2 sliced red onion 1 tsp dry mustard 2 tbsp water Although the recipe does not call for it, I also slice thin rings of red onion into the salad.

Magic Pesto

I love pesto. I make it with parsley, coriander, or basil or some times a mixture of herbs. Which ever herb you choose, ensure it is fresh. I pour one third cup lemon juice and two thirds cups olive oil into the blender, add 3 to 4 cloves of garlic and stuff the blender full of fresh, washed herbs. When it is the colour of a green goddess and there are no strands of green in the mixture, just tiny bits of green, it is blended enough. Then grate at least one cup of Parmesan cheese into the mixture. I have also added ground almonds for people who are allergic to cheese. I ladle the pesto into small containers. Label them and place them in the freezer. I use the pesto for every thing - it is great layered with sun dried tomatoes and goat cheese in a clear glass bowl as an appetizer, I toss it on all vegetables, potatoes or pasta. For salmon, mix 1/2 cup of pesto and 1/2 cup mayo and spread it on the salmon before barbecuing. Delicious.

As my friend Jan said, it is just magic!