Month: June 2021

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The Mustard Files: Spicy Spring Dijon

I’m a bit of sucker for interesting mustards.

In fact, it used to be I’d make a special trip to the local farmers market each spring to stock my pantry with a few variety of jars of flavoured mustards that would almost always last the year …but not much longer.

The sad part is that I’m the only one in my house who loves the yellow sauce, so I’m always buying and creating mustards for an audience of one.

Creating? You ask.

Why yes, if you can call starting with a store-bought mustard and experimenting with adding your own spices and seasonings to it to enhance the mustard experience, then of course creating.

Often I’ll spin up a little bowl of spicy mustard or curry mustard or garlic mustard to accompany a plate of bratwurst or a pan-cooked chop of some kind.

And tonight was no exception.

Recipe

30ml dijon-style mustard
4 pinches of curry powder
2 pinches of ground cumin
2 pinches of cayenne pepper
1 pinch ground ginger

This particular blend turned into a medium-spicy mix that reminded me of a trip to Berlin and eating sausages on a busy street corner from a paper tray in the rain.

Appropriate then that I served it with some local sausage and looked out the window at the evening’s downpour.

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How to Plan a Local Adventure

So you’re stuck at home during travel restrictions but still need something exciting to do close to home. I don’t know where you live, but adventure lurks nearby if you know how to plan for it.

Choose Your Activity

I needed a good excuse to keep running…

…but, last year as the pandemic restrictions ramped up, the running store (where we’d been meeting and running from) shut it’s doors. It was geographically convenient and had ample parking. Plus everyone knew to meet there on certain days and times so that we could run together.

The simple approach might have been to just keep running as we were, meeting from a parking lot, and for many runs over the past year we did. Yet, I wanted something more, and I suspected a lot of the crew might start to get bored and go off on their own plans if nothing more exciting happened.

Invent a Concept

Instead of panicking or just running solo, I decided it might be interesting to find somewhere new and interesting to run as we no longer had any good reason to keep running from a closed-up retail store. I also decided I’d like to see more of the city trails that I had never bothered to check out because they were not particularly reachable on a short run distance from that store.

I called it adventure runs.

Plan a Goal

A running adventure sounds like a self-evident concept, but in fact it encompasses so much potential… and potential for disappointment.

I was working full time (I still am) and didn’t have time nor motivation to sit down and plot out full miniature courses each week through locations I’d never spent much time traversing.

Instead I set the goal as something simple: if we ran somewhere new, down a new path, in a new neighbourhood, and saw something or somewhere we’d never seen (or hadn’t seen in a long time) then the adventure run was a success.

Pick a Starting Point

The second part of that concept was picking a good starting point.

It had to have access to trails. There needed to be enough parking (since we could not carpool during the restrictions and transit was still not running at full capacity.) Later in the summer a nearby ice cream shop or coffee stop was requested for afterwards. And of course, it had to be somewhere that felt remote-ish or like we were about to embark on some crazy adventure.

Invite Willing Participants

The gimmick then became about the mystery and the invite.

We have a group chat that has been around for years with a tight knit group of runners who have often been up for exactly this kind of adventure.

I would keep the suspense up. Eventually, as the summer progressed, folks would ask in the lead up week “where is the adventure run this week?” or “what are you planning for Wednesday night?”

The rule quickly followed: “The plan would be announced the morning of the adventure run. Keep your calendar open and check your messages.”

Show Up

On our best days we had as many as a dozen or more people show up.

I always did.

Rain or shine.

If I felt like leading a run or not, I was there.

And this morning, the first good spring Wednesday post-restrictions, I just sent out that notice once again.

Season two of the adventure runs, by enthusiastic request, start tonight.

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Pan Fried Mushrooms

I keep a cast iron pan near my barbecue for exactly one reason: my wife loves grilled mushrooms on her hamburgers.

I know very well that a well-seasoned pan atop an outdoor gas grill has a whole host of purposes, but when you have a system like this that ain’t broke… why fix it?

We eat barbecued hamburgers at least a few times per month over the summer, and without fail we slice up a couple cups of fresh button mushrooms, toss them into the blazing hot pan with a pat of butter and a clove or two of crushed garlic.

Recipe

2 cups of sliced button mushrooms
1 tablespoon of crushed garlic
1 tablespoon of butter

The fungi heat and sizzle and brown up with a rich, lovely aroma as the burgers grill up nearby, and everything is usually ready to eat just in time, as I swoop the plate full of patties into the house with a steaming hot bowl of grilled mushrooms alongside.

These go great with hamburgers, but I’ve been know to toss grilled mushrooms atop a steak, beside some grilled pork, as part of a veggie medley, or even just to nibble on their own.

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Local Flours Sours: Stoneground Whole Wheat (Part Two)

On the weekend I was delighted to have the chance to stretch my shopping muscles and visit the local grocery store, spending some time more carefully peruse the aisles for interesting ingredients.

The result was a few small bags of flour that promised to step me out of my sourdough comfort zone and deeper into the world of local ingredients. Specifically, in part one I cracked open a small bag of whole wheat flour from Strathcona Stoneground Organics and used it mix up a batch of 20% whole wheat sourdough.

Shortly after posting part one, I also discovered that this small local flour milling business has an Instagram account where (just two days prior) the proprietor had excitedly posted about now selling her flour at the very grocery store where I’d gone grocery shopping and found it profiled on an “eat local” display.

Neat.

My dough spent Saturday night in the fridge, proofed as loaves on the counter for most of Sunday, and made its way into a 450F oven late into the evening of last night. It was just enough time to let it cool on the counter, and then wait overnight before I could slice in and give it a taste.

Behold! Monday morning fresh bread and a crumb shot as I sliced up the first of the loaves for my morning breakfast toast:

Light and airy, the small addition of some freshly milled whole wheat added a very nice colour and glow to the final product. Overall these loaves each had a rich, crispy crust that cut evenly.

Sometimes I find, particularly when using 100% white flour, that the bread is light and airy but has a weak structure that collapses under the pressure of a bread knife, flattening against the board as I slice it. I imagine it has something to do with strong gluten and balanced bubbles that give a loaf a bit more heft against this pressure. I also imagine that links back strongly to the quality of the flour used.

I tried a bite of this bread plain (prior to toasting it and slathering the rest of the slice with strawberry jam!) and the wheat and the sour flavours paired nicely into a bread I could easily consider snacking on, just plain or with a bit of butter… and I probably will sneak back to the kitchen later this morning for a slice.

What’s the takeaway?

My goal was to make more effort to dabble in flour blends with my sourdough, and in particular find some local ingredients. I wrote a few weeks ago about the Gift of Bread and how sourdough is one of those near-perfect things to prepare and give to someone. I can only think that one steps a bit closer to perfection to give a loaf baked from ingredients sourced locally. And knowing that the taste and quality is made even better for the effort helps.

I’ve got a lot more sourcing of flours to do. I have a couple nearby farmer’s markets, a healthy collection of well-stocked grocery stores and small fresh markets, and who knows where else I may track down some interesting ingredients.

Now go bake some bread.