Green Salad

This is how I felt tonight.

So we made tomato sandwiches.

Well, we had sliced tomatoes with mayo on stone ground wheat thins.  And I grilled some steaks, which we sliced and put over the top.  Yum.

But dinner needed something... green.

How about salad?

Sure... what's in the fridge?

Um... broccoli, fresh ginger, green onions, and mini cucumbers.

So I made a green salad.

Chop them all up and mince up a little fresh ginger.

Stir in a spoon full of mayo, sprinkle a little salt, and SHAZAM!!!

Green salad.

Who said you had to invite actual leaves for the salad to be green?

Loaf

I invited myself over for coffee. She is a new friend I have only hung out with twice before. But there I was, Sunday afternoon, standing in her kitchen telling her I would come over for coffee on Wednesday.

Well, if I'm going to invite myself over, I may as well bring something along to share and eat. I did after all volunteer her to host me.

But what can I make? She cannot have wheat or diary, so creativity is required to make something.

Loaf. I can stir in nuts, seeds, and dried fruits along with spices to make something incredible.

RECIPE: Loaf

Ingredients

2 cups flour (or chickpea flour)
4 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
nutmeg
green cardamom
1 can coconut milk (or 1 1/3 cups milk)
5 large eggs
vanilla
nuts, seeds, dried fruit

Method

> mix the dry ingredients

> no, there are no quantities for the dry spices - use a bunch, like a teaspoon of each - or whatever you have that will be yummy with the nuts, seeds, and dried fruit (cinnamon, ginger, pumpkin pie spice, chai spiced tea, etc.)

> mix the wet into the dry (eggs, coconut milk, and vanilla or other extract)

> stir in half of the nuts, seeds, and chopped dried fruit you want in the loaf

> split the batter between two lined or buttered loaf pans

> sprinkle the remaining nuts, seeds, and fruit over the tops of the loaves

> bake at 190°C or 375°F for 35 to 40 minutes or until golden brown and a toothpick comes out cleanly when poked in

Enjoy with butter, jam, or toasted with maple syrup!!

Tomato Sandwiches

My plan for today's lunch was a tomato sandwich. Nothing fancy - leftover sliced tomatoes from dinner last night and artesian bread we picked up over the weekend in Calgary.

The bread was stale. The slices were all rock hard. What was I to do?

There are other leftovers in the fridge… I could just throw the bread out and eat other leftovers instead.

Wait a minute.

Throw out artesian bread... are you kidding?

And then I realized I could make a simple French salad for lunch: tomatoes with croutons. It's called something awesome in French that sounds way better than my English version.

But hold on…

Make your own croutons? That sounds complicated.

What's complicated about it? You have bread, an oven, oil, salt, and garlic - you don't need anything else.

Just chop up your two slices of bread into crouton sized bites and toss them with a little olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic and that's it. Put them onto a lined cookie sheet and roast at 180°C or 375°F for five minutes or until they are golden.

Set the timer for this or you will burn them like I usually do.

Chop the tomatoes into bite-size pieces and any other vegetables you want to add - cucumber, red bell pepper, onion, capers, olives and feta would all be amazing with this.

Then adorn your vegetables with a dollop of mayonnaise and heavenly heaping of homemade croutons.

Voila! Lunch is served. So much better than just a sandwich.

Knish: Roasted Garlic Mashed Potato Goodness

As usual, I was running a few minutes behind when I rushed into Starbucks on a beautiful day in early September around noon. The boys were at their second day back to school and I was meeting a wonderful lady from the local Jewish Temple.

We had a lovely roving visit about all kinds of things for over two hours - it was delightful.

In preparation for the Jewish-inspired lunch that took place after church on September 30th, I needed some culturally appropriate guidance and insight. This coffee date would shed light on my path into culturally appropriate fare.

Near the end of our conversation about food, my new friend's eyes lit up with delight as she started explaining this delicious Jewish treat called "knish". Bread dough with mashed potatoes inside. There were strict instructions, it was difficult to pull off, but INCREDIBLE and culturally appropriate.

But it would be far too difficult to pull off for our purposes - I mean, feeding 200+, scratch making the dough, and then forming them all by hand? It could not be done.

Sounds delicious.

Sounds like a challenge. A challenge I wanted to take on and execute.

I wanted to make knish and make it well. Make it delicious. Make it memorable.

Here is what we made.


RECIPE: Knish with Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Ingredients:
garlic confit
2 lb potatoes, cubed
1 package phyllo pastry
olive oil for brushing

Method:
1. make mashed potatoes (wash & cube the potatoes and toss them in a pot, fill with water until just covering the potatoes, boil until tender when pierced with a fork, drain from the hot water)

2. you can either add milk and butter as usual (heat them first so your potatoes do not become gluey) or you can just add roasted garlic from the garlic confit - either will work

3. now it's time to get out the phyllo; free it from the plastic, but keep it rolled; slice the roll into 4 equally sized portions

4. put away 3 of the four rolls of phyllo and roll out one so all the sheets are in a stack

5. put about 1 tbsp (I got an ice cream scoop for this) at the top of the sheet

6. now fold over the top corner into a triangle, then follow it all the way to the bottom of the sheet

7. once you reach the bottom of the sheet, brush the phyllo with olive oil or garlic oil from the garlic confit, seal the packet, and lay it on a sheet pan

8. repeat until you're out of potatoes or phyllo

9. bake at 210ºC or 400ºF for 10-14 minutes or until golden brown

It is a little fiddly, but worth the work in the end.

This can be adapted for any number of fillings. It is a wonderful thing to stuff with cheeses as it becomes cheese and cracker. I enjoyed these full of sun dried tomato hummus or made with puff pastry instead of phyllo (think biscuit).

You could pre-make these and freeze them on a sheet pan then put them into zippered baggies once they are frozen solid for baking just a few at a time. I also then write the temperature and time it will take for them to cook on the bag.

Kosher Salt & Mint Crusted Leg of Lamb

When our church announced we would be moving locations for Sunday mornings to a Jewish Temple, we knew we wanted the first church lunch there to be inspired by the Jewish culture.

Clearly, lamb would HAVE to be on the menu.

After some research, we found an amazing local farm with fresh lamb available weekly. To order your own, go here.

RECIPE: Kosher Salt and Mint Crusted Lamb

Ingredients:
1 leg or shoulder lamb roast (with or without the bone)
1 large bunch of fresh mint
1/3 cup kosher salt
2 tbsp kosher salt
up to 1 cup olive oil

Method:
1. in a blender, blitz the mint, 1/3 cup kosher salt, and add olive oil until the mixture blends into a thick, liquidy mixture

2. place the lamb roast and the mint mix into a ziplock bag and allow to marinate for one day

3. once you are ready to cook the lamb, preheat the oven to 190ºC or 375ºF

4.  place the lamb in a roasting pan and pour over the remainder of the marinade then sprinkle 2 tbsp of kosher salt over the works

5. roast until cooked through - the FDA suggests a temperature of 145ºF or 63ºC

6. slice the roasted lamb and serve in the roast drippings