Smokes Like a Fish, Drinks Like a Chimney

There is something of a poetic northern-ness in a sauce made with smoked fish and vodka. Skål! 

Rose pasta sauce with smoked fish on homemade pasta.  Other than vodka, without the trimmings, is there a better way to get through the end of pantry and freezer season?

Smoked Fish Vodka Sauce with Fettuccine

2 tbsp olive oil

Use a vodka with some flavour in it, none of that invisible
stuff you bought in your teens early 20s.

10 cloves garlic, smashed (or less if you are afraid of garlic, but this really isn't overly garlicky)
2 dried red chili peppers
6 plum tomatoes, peeled and diced
4 tbsp vodka
1/4 lb of smoked char (or substitute with smoked salmon or trout), torn or crumbled into small bits
4 tbsp heavy cream
1 tbsp butter

a three-egg batch of hand-made pasta, cut in fettuccine (or wider) size


In a large skillet, heat olive oil over medium.  Add smashed garlic and chilies.  Cook, stirring, until the garlic is softened.  Increase heat to med-high and add chopped tomatoes.  Bring to a boil and reduce heat to med-low.  Stir occasionally until reduced by about a third.  Add vodka, and continue to let the sauce reduce.

Don't worry about precise chopping or mincing of
ingredients, not only will it all cook down to mush, but
you're going to blend it up anyway.

Put a big pot of water on for your pasta. (If it boils before you are ready for it, turn it down to a simmer until you are ready.)

When the tomatoes are mostly broken down and the sauce looks thick, remove from heat.  Allow to cool enough to puree in a blender.  If you are fastidious, wipe your pan clean and pour sauce back into it through a sieve.  If you can tolerate a more rustic sauce, just return the blended sauce to your skillet.

Bring back to a slow boil after adding the smoked fish, then
reduce the heat and stir in the cream and butter.  Once the
butter is melted and it's all nice and evenly combined the
sauce is ready.

Re-heat the sauce over medium. When it starts bubbling, stir in the smoked char. Cook the pasta now.  When the sauce to returns to a consistent bubble, reduce heat to low and stir in the cream and butter.  When the butter is melted and the cream is combined remove from heat.  This should happen about the same time your pasta is cooked.  Stir a wee bit of the pasta water into the sauce for good measure.  Drain the pasta and serve with sauce.

Makes 4 large or 6 moderate servings.

~~~

I like this sauce for poetic reasons as well as gustatory ones.  Although it's roots are admittedly in penne alla vodka, it's a great pasta for northern latitudes: smoked fish and vodka.  This is not a light meal, but it's not so heavy it will put you into a coma either. Good comfort food for the distressingly cold evenings we're still experiencing here.  In May.

You can almost smell the smoked char through the computer screen, can't you?  To serve, garnish with chive (admittedly, chive is, in fact, growing already) and some old hard Italian cheese like Sovrano.

We emerged from a few weeks of fog into a stretch of sunshine, so at least we're starting to build stores of vitamin D again.  Back to fog for a few days, but sun promised in the long-range forecast.  It's all a bit maddening even when the sun is shining because it looks like summer... as long as you are looking at the sky and the sea, and not at the brown hills and the leafless trees.  Yet, ridiculously, I may need to mow the lawn tomorrow for crabgrass control, but none of the desirables are out yet.*  Definitely still pantry, freezer and booze season.

*Okay, that's not technically true. The garlic is coming up nicely and just this morning our rhubarb started to leaf out.  Early flowers like snowdrops, crocus and alpine primrose are out.  But seriously, it's mid-May already.

Make hay and all that.  We'll still head out into that brilliant light, completely under-dressed for what turns out to be a very frigid coastal hike.  We'll blame the icebergs for this instead of poor planning, but we all know the ocean will be cold for months still and the chilly onshore breeze will be welcome in July.  We'll go out to garden, and be too hot with the sun on our backs, stripping down to t-shirts... until we stop moving anyway and need to pile sweaters and gloves back on.  We'll wear our sandals, even though our toes are frozen, because for two full hours one afternoon sometime last week it was warm enough to get them out and now, dammit, it's sandal season.  We'll sit out on the porch wrapped in blankets because we want to have just one beer outside.

They make really good smoked char up in Nain, Labrador.

The only real proper evidence of spring is that trout season opened on the weekend.  And although I swear the best fish for this recipe is smoked char from the Torngat Fish Producers Co-op of northern Labrador I suppose some of your home-smoked trout** would work too.

**If you want to send us some of that home-smoked trout, we'd be happy to try it out for you before you make it... you know, just in case I'm wrong...

Hurri-cake Season

When it's too windy to get any outdoor work done, there's not much left to do but make cupcakes.

Summer is for outdoor projects, but hurricane storm systems occasionally make that impossible.  Unprepared for serious indoor work, all there is left to do is bake.

Spruce Drizzle Cakes

(adapted from the pancake princess)

4 tbsp hand-crafted butter (okay, or commercial butter if you must)
3/4 c. spruce sugar (see below)
4 egg yolks
1-1/2 c. all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1-1/2 tsp salt
1 c. buttermilk (see?  might as well make your own butter...)

for the drizzle:
juice of 1 lemon
3 tbsp spruce sugar
2 tbsp icing sugar

Preheat the oven to 325F.  Grease a muffin tin/ cupcake pan (or any pan made for baking 12 little cakes).

Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.  Beat in the egg yolks one at at time, mixing until the batter is smooth.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  

Add the dry ingredients and the buttermilk in alternating additions, ending with dry ingredients.  Mix until smooth.

Divide the batter across the 12 cups in your baking pan.  Bake for 15 minutes or until done (cake is firm but springy to the touch).  Let cool for 5 minutes before removing from the pan.

While the cupcakes are cooling in their pan, mix the lemon juice, spruce sugar and icing sugar together, stirring until all the sugar is dissolved.  

Turn the still warm cupcakes out of their pan and arrange on a plate or tray in a single layer. Pour the drizzle over top.  When you eat them, feel free to dredge them in the excess drizzle that collected on the plate...

The lemony drizzle for the spruce cupcakes will drip and collect on the plate.  If I were you, I'd go ahead and soak some of that up with the cupcake I'm eating...

~~~

How to Make Spruce Sugar

(adapted from Along The Grapevine)

Infusing sugar with ground spruce is a fantastic way
to preserve spring spruce buds for the rest of the year.

1 cup spruce tips, papery caps removed
1 cup granulated sugar

In a spice grinder, working in batches as necessary, grind together spruce buds and sugar.  The spruce buds are moist and sticky, so you want to clean your spice grinder immediately after you've finished (ask me how I know... it may be months before our spice grinder recovers from an unfounded belief that somehow it would be easier to clean when the spruce sugar remnants had dried into a cement-like crust on the bowl of the grinder).  

Spread the sugar-spruce mixture onto a baking tray and dry in a 150F oven for about an hour.  If you live in a dry climate (we definitely do not), you might get away with air-drying.  

Store in a clean jar, breaking up large clumps as you fill.

This recipe is easily scaled larger or smaller (one part spruce bud and one part sugar by volume).

~~~

We're in the midst of fence-building chez The Moose Curry Experience.  This has been a long process involving measuring tapes, string, a million sketches, tearing down the old partially-rotted-but-surprisingly-difficult-to-destroy fence.  Oh, and the chatting with the neighbours about The Fence Project.  

We live in a small town.  Instead building a fence that looks exactly like what we demolished, we are building something different.  In a small town, these kinds of unnecessary changes can make people nervous.  We have enthusiastically described our beautiful mid-century modern vision to assure them it will be alright.  Somehow, this does not seem to put them at ease.  Just wait until they find out we intend to stain it blue...

We had a lot of work to get done today.  The wood is here, so holes need to be dug for fence posts.  The lawn needs cutting, the early greens desperately need thinning, the third sowing of lettuce needs doing, tomatillos need transplanting... but no luck.  

Well, not exactly NO luck.  We were lucky enough not to be in the direct line of the tropical storm formerly known as hurricane Arthur, but we are on the edge of the system. (Spring arrived too late this year, hurricane season has started too early.) 

It's windy enough that our deep and well-protected harbour is choppy.

It's really windy.  It's the kind of windy that blows around you in circles making you feel crazed.  The kind of wind that means you need a lid for the container you are attempting to fill with garden greens, lest they get swept away.  The kind of wind that means you spend a lot of time shouting "I can't hear you!" to someone who is a few feet away probably shouting the same thing.  The kind of wind that blows the dirt from your fence post holes into your mouth and nose and eyes... and, well, back into the hole.

Eventually we had to admit defeat.  Faced with no indoor jobs on the list, there was nothing left to do but bake.

There is a season, churn, churn, churn

Leave your food processors and stand mixers unplugged and make butter the hard way.  Be humbled and astounded by the mere fact of butter.

Make your own creamy pale yellow butter.  The bonus prize is all that lovely buttermilk.

The big piles of snow shoveled and plowed over the last few months have reduced themselves to piles of dirt, grit, gravel, chunks of asphalt, Tim Horton's cups, and unpaired mittens.  Forget the disappearing snow or the fact that we're getting more days above freezing than below.  Fog is the hope and promise of spring, don't let anyone ever tell you it's gloomy.  

Sure, there's still snow in the woods and a chance of flurries in the forecast, but it's been over a week since we've been able to see the sun through all the fog.  Gulls are mostly seen in pairs.  The crab boats are busy.  The garlic and rhubarb are emerging.  Moose-on-the-road reports have increased suddenly.  These are the most reliable signs of spring in this corner of the world.

A sure sign of spring: gulls are most commonly seen in pairs right now.

We had one actual nearly-warm and almost-sunny day in April.  Since then, no matter how cold it's been, we refuse to have more winter.  Joggers are out in shorts, people have stopped scraping their windshields, last year's popsicles have finally sold out of the stores.. if you don't believe this craziness, Little Red Chicken can confirm it.  Between the defiance-induced cold exposure and the population-level sugar high that comes with that mythical chocolate-egg-laying rabbit, we're giddily unhinged this time of year.  

There was a bit of Newfoundland silliness last week on twitter, starting with a quip about a butter-throwing local prison gang.  Quite frankly, it's hard to imagine a proper gang in Newfoundland's prison system.  Calling themselves the St. John's Mob makes it almost, well, cute.  I know they're probably feeling serious as all get out but it's all difficult to take seriously when their serious riot was negotiated to an end, reportedly, by the provision of two cigarettes*.  That's not even one cigarette per gang member.

*proof, perhaps, that no good can come of the no-smoking-in-prisons-rule... if inmates are willing to riot for two cigarettes, causing nearly $100,000 of damage, maybe there's a better solution to workplace health & safety issues, because, butter or not, it doesn't sound like safety increased.  

Here's something: two news stories I came across have referenced the butter throwing.  One story reports butter, another story reports margarine.  As though they are interchangeable.

Here's something else: when someone in Newfoundland says "butter", unless you ask for clarification, it is impossible to know whether they mean butter or they mean margarine.  Mind-boggling-ly, it's as though it makes no difference.

I'm not even going to waste blog space to debate the relative merits of butter and margarine.  There is nothing good about margarine (unless you have an allergy to butter or you are vegan).  Butter is superior in every way.  No contest, no question.

So I got to thinking about this unhappy state of things, where butter and margarine stand as equals.  There is something completely mucked up about our relationship to food if we treat these as two sides of the same coin.  They aren't even the same currency.  Have we become so distant from our food that we just shrug and say, "butter, magarine... whatever"?  Probably not you, dear lovely food-friendly readers, but nonetheless, I propose this exercise in getting up close and personal with our food:  this week, make some butter.



In fact, leave your food processors and stand mixers unplugged and make butter the hard way, so you can be humbled and astounded by the mere fact of butter.

How to Make Butter in 2 Easy Steps

 (+ 1 Demanding and Time-Consuming Step)

Putting a whisk ball or marble or other food safe object in your jar
means you are getting more work done with every shake.  We haven't
conducted the proper scientific experiment, but we think it makes the
 butter making more efficient.

1.  Fill a jar 1/2 to 2/3 full of whipping cream.

2.  Tighten the lid so it won't leak out.

3.  Shake it until it turns into butter.

It's that easy, even the hard way.**

**okay, you aren't quite done because you have to strain off the buttermilk, then wash and salt (optional) the butter...

We cultured our cream first by inoculating it with yogurt whey and letting it sit out on the counter overnight.  This is a completely unnecessary step for getting butter, but it will make the butter european-y in taste (tangy rather than sweet) and it prolongs the shelf-life.  Don't get hung up on shelf life though; you will use the butter before it goes off.

(Get a load of how clever this was:  we put some plain yogurt with active bacteria in a gold mesh coffee drip filter over our jar of cream and swished the jar around once in a while during the evening, then left the set-up overnight.  In the morning: cultured cream in the jar + yogurt cheese in the filter.  Use yogurt cheese like you would use cream cheese.)

Put your cream in the jar, screw the lid on tightly, and start to shake.  

After a bit of shaking, the whole jar will be white and full.

Keep shaking.  Take turns shaking.  If you have miniature humans in your house, particularly competitive ones, give them each a jar and see who gets to butter first.

Like any of us, you're a busy person.  You haven't got time to stand around your kitchen all day, shaking a jar of cream.  Especially a jar you are still handling with some skepticism.

So don't stand in your kitchen.  Take your jar of cream with you when you walk the dogs.

Miss Bella is a bit skeptical about whether this walk is actually for her benefit.

Shake the butter while you're running errands. 

Another sure sign of spring: potholes.  Take advantage of the plow-ravaged,
bumpy roads... seriously, take that jar of cream-turning-to-butter everywhere.
Just keep shaking.

If nothing seems to be happening, carefully unscrew the lid and put some sort of clean object in the jar.  Something that will move through the thick cream to amplify the effects of shaking.  (Fefe Noir has essentially zero patience, so we stole the wire ball with a counter weight out of our fancy whisk and dropped it in the jar.  Fefe is convinced this made the difference between getting butter and not.  I think we would have ended up with butter anyway, just not as quickly.)

If you are still waiting for the butter magic to happen, fire up Netflix and shake your jar while you watch Julie & Julia.  (How is it possible we'd never watched this before?).  What better movie for butter making?

Eventually, the thick whiteness will begin to tinge with yellow and start
to clump up.

For a long time, you will have a jar completely filled with white.  Then you'll think maybe you're seeing a tinge of yellow and some large air pockets.  You'll think that alternatively you may be losing your mind.  Then you'll notice a definite change of colour and it will feel more liquid again.  Then, in what will seem like a sudden shift, you will have butter.  Clumps of lovely pale yellow butter sitting in buttermilk.

Congratulations, you performed a miracle.  You made your own butter.

Then, all of a sudden, it's butter.  I don't know if Julia Child would approve
of such rustic pursuits as actually making it yourself, but she obviously
approved of butter.

The rest of it now is really tying up the loose ends.  The butter making has already happened.

Line a sieve with cheesecloth and drain the buttermilk from the butter.  Pour the buttermilk into clean containers and store in the fridge until you use it.  

Strain the buttermilk into a container for storing.  There are a million ways to
use it, and it's very difficult to buy genuine buttermilk in supermarkets.

Gently knead the butter to press out all the milk solids.  If you want to salt the butter, knead in about 1/2 tsp of salt per pound of butter... or more or less to taste.

Fill a large bowl with ice water.  Wash the butter by kneading it in the ice water, draining out the liquid and refilling with clean water, until the water is no longer milky.  Put it in a lidded container or wrap it in waxed paper or otherwise store it like you would store butter.

Washing the butter in ice water keeps it from melting from the heat of
your hands.

Use the butter before it goes rancid (a week or so if unsalted, a bit longer salted, quite a bit longer cultured, salted or not).  Never mind the shelf life, you made this butter, use this an excuse to butter everything until it's gone.

~~~

Where are my days?
Where are my nights?
Where is the springtime?
I wanna fly, I wanna fly, I wanna fly.
~ John(athan) Denver Seagull... ;)

Eggnog? What the fudge?

Sure, fudge can be for any time of year, but eggnog fudge is seasonal... and 'tis the season.

Eggnog fudge is a versatile treat: stocking stuffer, thoughtful hand-crafted gift, perfect snack for outdoor winter activity.  Go ahead and suggest a potluck hiking or snowshoeing snack with your friends or family over the holidays, just so you can win with this fudge.  Potluck is a competitive sport, right?

Eggnog Fudge

500 ml eggnog
100 ml whipping cream
200 g butter
700 g granulated sugar
2 tbsp rum
freshly grated nutmeg to garnish


Line a square baking pan with parchment paper.

Combine eggnog, cream, butter and sugar in a heavy-bottomed saucepan.  Heat slowly, stirring frequently until all the sugar is dissolved and the butter is melted.  Raise heat to med-high and bring to a boil.

Boil, stirring constantly, until it reaches the soft ball stage.  We stick to the cold water method (syrup dropped into cold water forms a ball that flattens out, but does not run, when you remove it from the water).  If you have a candy thermometer and you're confident in both the thermometer and your ability to use it, feel free to rely on it.  Either way, the boiling will take 15-25 minutes at sea-level depending on the size saucepan you are using (longer for smaller surface area).  

Remove from heat, quickly stir in the rum, then let cool for 5 minutes.  Stir until no longer glossy, pour into prepared pan.  Sprinkle nutmeg over the surface as a garnish and let cool completely before cutting.

~~~

This is an old-fashioned fudge recipe: no corn syrup; no marshmallow fluff; no condensed milk.  Is it absolutely fail proof?  No.  But it's the best fudge you'll every eat (in my biased opinion, anyway).  If you read "fail-proof" or "no fail" in the title of a fudge recipe, it's a lie, my friends.  Things can go wrong.

You use the wrong sized pot or a pot with too thin a base.  Your glass candy thermometer breaks and you can't find the missing glass.  Your metal candy thermometer isn't reliable.  Your fully-reliable probe thermometer is set in the froth rather than the liquid and accurately reads the wrong temperature.  Your cold water isn't cold enough.  Your cold water is too cold.  It's too humid. It's too dry.  You are distracted and miss the soft ball stage.  You are impatient and take it off the heat too early.  A cat gets into trouble exiting a reusable-shopping-bag-play-house and needs rescuing from the noisy laminated fabric chasing it around so you stop stirring just long enough for it to burn.  You're dehydrated from the heat in your kitchen while you try to cook eight million treats for the holidays and your judgement is compromised.

First, don't panic.  We all have to throw a batch of candy out at one point or another.

Second, don't panic.  I have made this fudge a LOT.   It only failed very rarely and always due to, uh, well, user error (that is, when I think I know better than my own recipe).  Follow the recipe, and it will work. 

Third, don't panic.  Perfect fudge is excellent for stuffing in stockings and gifting to neighbours (or teachers or colleagues).  The slightly imperfect fudge, in the rare event it happens, is something you get to keep for yourself.