Sleep deprived and with a second batch of chicken pho broth simmering under my better half's watchful eye, I ducked out to the ByWard Market two hours before our guests were scheduled to arrive for Thanksgiving dinner. Before you think this my deserting the kitchen to frivolously go shopping, Jenn and I decided to serve a Mongolian-style Hot Pot this year using the aforementioned broth. The meat, seafood, and vegetables had already been sliced and layered in between plastic film, ready for "service." I needed to re-stock the fridge, every piece of produce spoken for for dinner.

Here's what $20 CAD got me at the ByWard open air market, which was bursting with Autumnal vegetables that October weekend.

$20 of produce

Tomatoes, Russet Apples, and Uncured Red Onions
The majority of this produce was purchased from the Rochon Farms stall, my favourite local farm. Rochon also has a stall at the Ottawa Farmer's Market at Lansdowne, Gerard Rochon sitting on the board of that farmers' market.

Besides incredibly fresh tomatoes, apples, onions and carrots, I also picked up a pint of vegetables dreaded by many children at Thanksgiving.

Brussel Sprouts
Chosen for their tight and firm heads, this pint of brussel sprouts ran me $3.

Taking some inspiration from fellow local foodie @spoonsie, Ottawa's Bacon Princess, I cooked them up with bacon and onions.

Bacon and Onion Brussel Sprouts
The bacon was standard single smoked breakfast bacon, sourced from Saslove's Meat Market, $2.46 worth (approximately a half dozen rashers).

To make "Spoonsified" Brussel Sprouts, boil a pot of salted water (preferably kosher). Carefully add the brussel sprouts and cook for 10 minutes. Remove them to an ice water bath to cool. This "shocking" process will give the sprouts a brilliant green.

Chop the bacon and render them in a pan set to medium low. Essentially, slowly cook the bacon at relatively low heat to draw out its fat. When a couple tbsp of drippings "comes out", turn up the heat to medium and crisp the bacon.

Remove the crisped bacon bits, draining them of their drippings and set them aside. Pour the bacon drippings into another pan. Alternatively, you could do what I did: reserve the drippings, de-glaze the pan with some water, dump out the water, wipe the pan, and replace the drippings.

Halve the brussel sprouts and dredge the cut side in a very thin layer of corn or rice starch. Place them in the pan of bacon drippings, the brussel sprouts cut side down and the bacon drippings heated on medium to shimmering.

Carefully, placing the brussel sprouts in the bacon drippings.

Fry them in the bacon drippings for 1.5-2 minutes.

Frying to crust the brussel sprouts

Remove the brussel sprouts from the pan once a crust forms and the sprouts heat through. For a pint of sprouts, this will take two batches. You may need to supplement the bacon drippings with vegetable oil.

When all the brussel sprouts have been crusted, de-glaze with a medium chopped onion and sautee until coloured.

Assemble everything, chopped onion, crisped bacon, and crusted brussel sprouts together and serve.

The resultant brussel sprouts take on a bacony flavour while remaining earthy, crisp, and green. The onion and bacon add savory. They disappeared quickly...

As for what happened to the rest of the produce, the carrots and onions were sweated and the tomatoes roasted for a sauce.

Roasted Tomatoes

Roasted Tomato Sauce
The russet apples...Well, I'll leave that for another blog.

Particulars:
Saslove's Meat Market
50 Byward Market Square
(613)241-9266

Growing up with an Asian diet, I first came across beets as a teenager in the salad bar of a really bad Chinese buffet that soon after shuttered its doors. The beets were pickled, strongly tasting of vinegar, and something I very much regretted trying.

Years later I would come across British field to plate enthusiast, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, on an episode of River Cottage, re-acquainting himself with pickled beets. He, a former chef, lamented that the majority of his fellow countrymen's first and last taste of beets came from bottles. A bottle in hand, he retrieved a slice, took a bite, and demonstrated, rather viscerally, why. Then, he proceeded to challenge his restaurant's chefs to to come up with novel ways to prepare freshly grown beet root (beets in the British vernacular). Together, they innovated candied baby beets, beet root ice cream, and beet root brownies.

Last summer, with beets newly in season, I was fortunate enough to try a chocolate beet cake at a local Ottawa vegetarian restaurant, the Table (1230 Wellington St. W).

Chocolate Beet Cake
Made from organic beets, spelt flour, semi-sweet chocolate chips, baking power, baking soda, olive oil, and vanilla, it reignited my curiosity. Quite the revelation, pairing dark chocolate and beets, I would have appreciated the beet root shredded much finer. It had the texture of a carrot cake, holding the raisins of course.

Here is my take on Whittingstall's beet root brownies, taking from my lessons learned at the Table:

1. Red beet's sweetness complements well dark chocolate.
2. Chocolate cake or brownies are not carrot cake, so the beets need to incorporate well into the batter, almost disappearing, contributing flavour not texture

Beet Root Brownies

Recipe

Three Bunches of Baby Beets, Costing $5 from the Local Farmers' Market

Healthy Beet Greens, cut from the Baby Beets

Mis en Place

Finely Shredded Roasted Beets

Sugar and Egg Mixture, Whipped until Lightened

Batter After Gently Incorporating the Flour Baking Powder Mixture

Brownies after 40 Minutes Baking and Tested

Cooled and De-Panned

Done

Served

What you'll need:

• 228 g semi-sweet chocolate (originally called for 250 g)
• 232 g butter (originally called for 250 g)
• 230 g granulated white sugar (originally called for 250 g)
• 3 large eggs
• 230 g finely shredded roasted beets (originally called for 250 g)
• 140 g cake flour (originally called for 150 g)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• One pinch (approx. 1/2 tsp) of kosher salt.

There are two reasons I modified Whittingstall's recipe from the Channel 4 website. Firstly, I discovered that 2 sticks of butter (all I had) weighed 232 g, forcing me to re-adjust the other weights. Secondly, the recipe called for self rising flour. I had none, so I had to make my own.

Also, there is no traditional 20x30 cm brownie pan in the foodiePrints kitchen. However, we have a round cake tin with a diameter of 23 cm. Taking into account its surface area (415.46 square cm), the cake tin is narrower than intended (600 square cm), so the amount of leavening and cooking time had to be adjusted. My brownies would be taller.

Regarding the semi-sweet chocolate, if using blocks of chocolate, shave the chocolate using a serrated bread knife and a mallet. The chocolate needs to melt evenly. Else some will scorch during heating, before everything melts. Scorching, essentially overcooking chocolate, causes it to separate into its individual components, producing somewhat burnt flavours.

Prep:

1. Take a little over a dozen baby beets, because they are more tender than mature beets, and roast them for an hour in a sealed alluminium foil package with a splash of canola oil in an oven preheated to 350F. The baking process softens the beets and loosens their skins.
2. Remove them from the oven and let them cool until warm, but handle-able.
3. Take a tea towel that you don't mind being stained red purple and gently rub off the skins of the beets and set them aside.
4. When cooled, shred them using the fine tooth side of a box grater. Be careful! In all seriousness, should you cut yourself, you will not notice until cleanup.
5. Weigh out however much shredded beets is necessary for the recipe. This is the beauty of a mass-based baking recipe. They scale up or down well.
6. Line your cake tin bottom with parchment paper, cut to fit.

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 350F
2. Float a metal mixing bowl or sauce pan over a larger pot of boiling water on an element set to medium low and gently melt the butter. This setup is called a double boiler. It is used to gently heat ingredients using temperatures no higher than the boiling point of water. Tip: Cut the butter into pieces for quick melting.
3. Once the butter is melted, remove the bowl or pan from the heat and add the chocolate chips, letting the residual heat melt them. Not all the chips will melt.
4. Return the butter and chocolate mixture to the boiling water sparingly to completely melt the chocolate, stirring often until it forms a uniform suspension. Once the chocolate completely melts, the resultant mixture will take on a sheen. Set it aside.
5. Add the white sugar to 3 eggs in a separate mixing bowl and beat with an electric egg beater or stiff balloon whisk (my favourite) until emulsified. The mixture will lighten.
6. Add the chocolate and butter to the sugar and egg mixture, again beating the mixture until inform.
7. Add the finely shredded beet root to the mixture.
8. Sift in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Sifting even pre-sifted flour aerates it, thus permitting it to incorporate easier with wet ingredients. Because wheat flour and water easily develops gluten, over mixing a cake batter produces a "chew" more sought after in bread recipes. In our case, the brownie will toughen.
9. Gently fold the flour into the mixture until it just combined
10. Let the mixture rest for 3-5 minutes.
11. Pour it into the prepared pan and bake for 20 minutes at 350F.
12. After 20 minutes the top will begin to crust over. Check for done-ness every 5 minutes thereafter by inserting a bamboo skewer into the center of the brownies. When it comes out with only a small number of moist crumbs, the brownies are done. For me, it took my oven 40 minutes to bake the brownies.
13. Remove the brownies from the oven and allow them to cool for 5 minutes.
14. De-pan to a flat surface and allow to cool completely.
15. When cool, cut the brownies with a straight edge knife and serve.

One urban culinary legend has it that brownies were first baked when a cook neglected to add leavening to a chocolate cake.

The beet root brownies that came from this recipe were indeed dense, moist, and highlighted the unusually good pairing of beet root sweet and dark chocolate.

I brought the freshly baked batch to work. There, I enjoyed greatly letting my colleagues and former co-workers taste the brownies before telling them that almost a dozen baby beets went into the batch. Everyone thought the magical ingredient was fruit.

Next, I plan to bake a better chocolate beet cake...

After a brief trip to the ByWard market yesterday, I discovered that it is mid-October and the fall harvest is still with us, even with the evenings growing more frigid. I passed by the same vendor who sold me the beets I used to make a wonderful salad several weeks ago. His stand was still replete with baby beets. He was having difficulty trying to convince a family to try his wares. I stepped in, purchased another dozen and mentioned that roasted they go wonderfully well with cooked barely, red onion, and feta in a salad. He replied, "Perhaps it's the cook and not my beets." I looked at him then the family and said, "It's the beets." "You will find none fresher or sweeter." Then, I went to find a supply of local plum tomatoes.

The recipe for the salad was recommended to me by a tweep who goes by the handle @kaitli. A true foodie, she found me a novel way to use up the pearl barley I had picked up from the Wellington Herb and Spice (1310 Wellington Street West) in the Wellington Village.

The recipe hails from thekitchn.com, under "fall kitchen cure."

Here is my take:

Baby Beet and Barley Salad

Recipe

Five Dolla's of Local Produce

Uncooked Barley and Roasted Beets

Sweating a Chopped Red Onion

Salad, Just Assembled

What you'll need:

• 18-20 baby beets (tips on how to pick good beets)
• One red onion
• Approximately a cup of pearled barley (NOT instant barley)
• 4-5 strands of green onions (aka: scallions)
• 1 1/2 tbps lemon juice
• 1 tpsb olive oil

Why baby beets? Baby beets may be less sweet, but I find them much more tender and better for salads. More mature beets can be substituted, but will need to be cut into smaller pieces.

Method:

1. Don't bother peeling raw beets, it is a somewhat risky proposition. Instead, drizzle with olive oil, salt, and pepper and roast in a pre-heated 375F until a fork can penetrate each beet somewhat easily (approximately 50 minutes to an hour). This loosens the skins.
2. Then, take a tea towel, preferably one you don't mind staining red, and rub off the skins of the beets while they are still warm from the oven but handle-able. Work carefully as red beet juice stains everything a crimson purple.
3. Set the beets aside to cool and quarter them into wedges. The salad will be served at room temperature.
4. While the beets are roasting, bring 2 cups of salted water up to a boil on medium heat and deposit the barley into it. I find a pinch or two of salt to 2 cups of water will do. The salt will season the barley.
5. After adding the barely, bring the water back up to a simmer, turn the heat down to medium low and simmer for 45 minutes. Monitor the pot closely, it may require adding some water to keep the barley submerged. When cooked, the barley will soften. Cooking longer will soften the barely further. For this salad, I prefer a risotto-style texture.
6. Afterward, finely chop one large red onion and sweat at medium heat in a metal skillet (or heavy bottomed pot) with a splash of oil and a pinch of salt. The sweating will concentrate flavours.
7. When softened and any liquid cooked off, remove and let cool.
8. Chop the scallion for garnish.
9. Place the oil and lemon juice into a container and mix to emulsify. This is essentially a dressing.
10. Gently assemble everything together and serve. The beets will more than likely bleed, colouring the barely.
11. If you fancy a savory and sharp taste, crumble several 2" cubes of feta into a serving, mix, and enjoy.

This salad is a wonderful mixture of fresh flavours and textures: sweet and earthy from the beets, crunch from the onion, fresh green flavours from the scallions, bright flavours from the lemon, and a pleasant chew from the barley. It all goes together well.

BTW, this salad makes a good accompaniment to lamb, especially a lamb stew.

Before beginning, I must apologize for my extreme tardiness. I had hoped to finish this entry last month, but things are always a little unpredictable in the teaching world. After a busy month, I have finally found time to catch up on this entry. So here goes the long-awaited follow-up to my first entry on this year's Feast of Fields.

As promised in my previous post, here are some more pictures from the event.

Feast of Fields Setup:
Tacked up to the front entrance was a large banner, specifically printed for this year's event.

Welcome Banner

Here are farmer-chef teams, setting up their tables before the event opened.

Setup

Here are the enormous rows of dish and drink ware Don and his team of volunteers lined up for attendees. They disappeared within minutes once the public was let in at noon.

Dishes for Attendees

Advance ticket holders eagerly waiting in line for the event to open

In the remaining minutes before opening, many chefs put final touches to their dishes.

Chef John Taylor of Domus working on his tomato crostini topping

Farmer-Chef Team Dishes:
Warning: What you see below may make you hungry!

From the Alpenblick Farms ~ Ballygiblin's Restaurant & Pub team,

Something Mexican-inspired

From Ashton Naturals ~ Thyme & Again Creative Catering,

Farm House Smoked Apple Sausage with Home-made Ketchup

From Dobsons Grass Fed Beef ~ DISH Catering ,

Braised Beef on Baby Leek Custard and Maple & Black Pepper Shortbread

From Battle River Bison ~ Sweetgrass Aboriginal Bistro,

A colourful and savory salad sprinkled with sesame seeds and bison

One serving

From Champignons Le Corpin ~ Wellington Gastro Pub,

Hot chili with corn bread

The following is a typical plate attendees were served:

Plate of 3 dishes
On the left, smoky braised beef on a taco from Ashton Glen Farms/Imperial Food & Beverage. At the top, braised lamb from The Amazon's Garden/Knox Fine Dining. On its the right, a house-baked fennel seed bread with onion and garlic confit topped with shaved milk-fed veal from Eliden Farm/Serendipity

At the entrance to the food tent were organic and locally grown melons

Incredibly fresh, sweet, and juicy

Then there was the ice cream...

Pascale's Ice Cream
Perhaps the most popular attraction that day was the chance to sample the best all-natural ice cream, Pascale's Ice Cream. What makes her ice cream so special? Well, aside from the fresh, local, and high quality ingredients she uses, there are the flavours.

Flavours for Sampling

Flavours of tubs for sale

Here are pictures of Pascale's lineups. They did not end.

Two hours after opening

An hour before closing

In my opinion, an outdoor festival is a great success when you find yourself in an exciting atmosphere, surrounded by happy families and laughter. Such was the case at this year's Feast of Fields. Throughout the afternoon, I saw many smiling faces and heard many people talking about the amazing foods they had eaten.

Not only was I surprised by the number of children attending, but also by how excited they were to try all kinds of different foods. Can you imagine children eating horseradish with beef? Or happily gobbling down beets? These children sure knew how to eat!

Take for instance the large and beautifully displayed table outside the food tent that was surrounded by children all afternoon.

Growing Up Organic
Curious, I walked up to the table and met Tracey Guptill, a programmer working for Growing Up Organic. According to a brochure she gave me, Growing Up Organic (GUO) aims to "teach youth about organic agriculture." It "increases accessibility to organic foods and inspires youth to farm organically though its summer farm camps, work experiences, building school yard gardens and community programming." GUO is also attempting a school salad bar program this fall, which it hopes to give students, who may be "limited" due to "social and financial" challenges, opportunities to experience new and fresh foods. It strives to help children learn to make healthy food choices.

Kids really do eat their vegetables!

The gang at Growing Up Organic

With each passing day, autumn is coming closer to an end. At Ottawa's farmer's markets, you can still taste the best of the fall harvest. If you haven't checked out the latest produce yet, I hope these pictures inspire you to go.

For those of you who follow me, you may have seen some unusual Twitter activity from me early Saturday morning, last week. Not only was I awake, but I was a nervous wreck. The sound bites Amrita Singh recorded of me, meandering about how to pick harvest vegetables, were then about to air on CBC Radio1's Town and Out.

They aired.

Early as it was, some of my friends on and off Twitter tuned in and congratulated me afterward. One of my neighbours even slipped this lovely note under my door later on that morning, assuming rightly that I had gone back to sleep.

Lovely Note
Others, listened to my sound bites when the interview was put online. That's when a number of people started asking about my Autumn tomato sauce recipe.

Well, it is a roasted tomato sauce, whose specifics I am not quite sharing. As I told Amrita, there are two reasons:

1. I am not done tinkering with it.
2. I need something to fall back on in case the career I've made in information technology doesn't pan out.

I did however share some pictures of last year's batch on foodiePrints.

That blog entry and many of its fellow "autumn"-tagged entries were gathered together for a brown bag lunch I volunteered to speak at with my former shop in my previous organization.

At that lunch, I also did a double blind test, pitting my roasted tomato sauce against one from Loblaws' President's Choice brand, called "Fire Roasted Tomato." That bottled sauce is still available at Loblaws and Loblaws Superstore.

My batch was made with in season and vine-ripened plum tomatoes Jenn and I lugged home from the Parkdale Market.

Roasted Tomatoes

Simmering the Sauce

Bottled

Unbeknownst to me, a colleague portioned out the sauces in two identical containers. The containers were labeled, but the labels obscured.

Portioned Sauces

They were then served with unsalted soda crackers and my boardroom assembled shop chose which they liked best.

Put to the Test

The final results:

Voting Sheet

"A", the left hand side one, turned out to be my sauce. My colleagues actually found "B" to be more artificial tasting with a much less robust tomato flavour. One former colleague even said that "B" tasted almost metallic. Another, said that "A" was one of the best sauces she had ever tasted.

While the sample size of my shop is much too small to be statistically significant, my intention was to demonstrate that tomato sauce as good if not better than purchase can and should be made at home.

I'm starting this year's batches this weekend.

Update: For posterity, here is a screen capture of foodiePrints on the CBC website.

foodiePrints on CBC