Almost a month ago, I had a conversation on twitter about the various dishes that can be made with pine and spruce, from short bread to mayonnaise and beer. The "Mediterranean Cooking in Alaska" blog even has a recipe for candied spruce or pine tips.

Here are images of evergreen tips at two levels of maturity:

Tips, too old to harvest

Younger borderline harvest-able tips
Unfortunately, my better half and I found these tips towards the end of the season, late May. The majority were at the later stages of maturity. Eventually, they will harden, expanding and forming new needles.

A tweep who goes by the handle @kitchenmage introduced me to a recipe for a Douglas Fir Sorbet. Next spring, I will attempt it with foraged evergreen tips.

The recipe comes from former Chef Jerry Traunfeld of the Herbfarm. It follows:

Recipe
What you'll Need:

• 3 cups Water
• 1 cup Sugar
• About 1 quart fresh Douglas Fir branch tips, washed
• 3 Tablespoons freshly squeezed Lemon Juice
• 1/2 cup Champagne (optional)

Method:
Heat the water and sugar in a medium-sized saucepan. As soon as it comes to a full boil, drop in the fir branches. Stir to submerge them, then cover and remove from the heat. Let the syrup steep for 30 minutes. Pass the syrup through a fine strainer and stir in the lemon juice and champagne. Freeze in an ice cream maker.

Source: rickandrob.com

I never thought anything edible could be made from evergreens.

Update: Just got a tweet from Ron Zimmerman (aka: @Herbguy), chef/proprietor of The Herbfarm Restaurant, stating that old Douglas Fir needles work too.

Herbguy Ron Zimmerman May 30, 11:16 PM
Act. old Doug Fir needles work 2: RT @foodiePrints: omething about spruce & pine tips with a recipe to try next year: http://is.gd/KkJu

Chef Zimmerman is an avid twitterer and a pleasure to follow. BTW, he was featured in May's issue (2009) of the Rachael Ray magazine: http://twitpic.com/6bjyw. It may be the only issue of that magazine I ever buy...

A little under a year ago, I found that the local mega-mart, the Real Canadian Superstore, started selling what looked like cross bred sweet bell and jalapeno peppers. These little peppers were too cute to pass up, so I bought a package and carted them home without any preconceived idea about how to prepare them. That is, save for halving, seeding, and adding them to a salad. After much thought, I decided to stuff them with a half recipe of cevapcici mince. My successful cevapcici recipe was itself cross bred, adding an Asian ingredient (chestnut powder) to a decidedly Balkan dish. Essentially, I tried to mimic stuffed peppers that would normally be found in Chinese buffet houses, only edible.

I also stuffed quartered full-size green bell pepper to see if its thicker flesh made any difference in keeping the stuffing in place.

Here's what transpired:

Mini Sweet Peppers

Washed

Halved, Seeded, and Stuffed

Ordinary Green Bell Pepper, Stuffed, and Cooking

Cooked and Served Stuffed Peppers

It was a disaster. While I had coated the outwardly facing filling with tapioca starch, moisture from the cooking peppers prevented the entire device from holding together. There is a reason that Mediterranean recipes for stuffed peppers use a mixture of cooked meat and rice. This mixture is stuffed into hollowed out peppers, not halved ones. The stuffed peppers are then braised in tomato sauce, not sautéed in a non-stick pan.

Regarding the stuffed peppers from Chinese buffet houses, perhaps there's a layer of starch between the flesh and the meat, trapping the moisture, and forming a glue. Me, I want nothing to do with gluing meat to vegetables.

Fast forward 11 months. Today, I spent some time wandering the flickr photostream belonging to a user who goes by the handle jessrawk. There, she posts delectable vegan dishes including cabbage rolls and shepherd's pie. Finding her on twitter, I asked what soy ground meat product she recommends.

Here's a proposed recipe to address my previous set back:

1. Take 7 medium bell peppers, preferably red, 1/2-3/4 lb of Yves Ground Round (either original or Italian), 1 cup of steamed long grain rice, 2 cloves of garlic, one small onion, and whatever herbs you prefer. I'm thinking a handful of cilantro, both stems and leaves.
2. Finely chop the pepper, garlic, onion and cilantro stems. Salt and sweat in 3-4 tbsp of olive oil until translucent on medium heat.
3. Add the ground round to the vegetable mixture and cook for several minutes to let the meat take on some flavors.
4. Mix the meat mixture, rice and roughly chopped cilantro leaves together. Season to taste with kosher salt. Set it aside.
5. Cut the tops off the remaining peppers and hollow them out. Stuff them with the mixture, re-topping them afterwards.
6. Place the peppers into a slow cooker and add 1 cup tomato sauce (preferably homemade). Cook on high until simmering. Switch to low and simmer for an hour.

Definitely going to try this before the temperature rises too much to use the slow cooker...

Why am I putting together essentially a vegan dish? It's a healthful option to beef, which in large amounts has been demonstrated to be detrimental to your health. Besides, I've never cooked with soy ground meat and the results jessrawk has produced show that vegan ingredients have come a long way.

That's "spiked ice" drinks, not "spiked" iced drinks. According to a gallery on the newscientist.com website, freezing water with few dissolved salts, like distilled water, can cause the resultant ice to form the following phallic protrusions, called "ice spikes."

Good morning icicle!
Source: Photo by Andrew Bradbeer c/o newscientist.com


Birds beware
Source: Photo by Anne Davis c/o newscientist.com


Thick and spic...I mean spiky
Source: Photo by Andrew Leng c/o newscientist.com


Spiked Cube
Source: Photo by Christian Willenborg c/o newscientist.com

No, these protuberances aren't the result of an as yet unidentified force in nature, called "hormonal thrust." The following is an explanation from the 221st news issue from planet-science.com:

as the ice freezes fast under supercooled conditions, the surface can get covered except for a small hole. Water expands when it freezes. As freezing continues, the expanding ice under the surface forces the remaining water up through the hole and it freezes around the edge forming a hollow spike. Eventually, the whole thing freezes and the spike is left

For clarity, here is an illustrated diagram from woosk.com

Ice Spike Formation

Why is distilled water water? Again, from woosk.com,

Most ice cube trays produce a few spikes, but usually only if distilled water is used...We measured the probability of ice spike formation as a function of salt (NaCl) concentration in distilled water, at a fixed temperature of -7C...Very little salt is needed to kill the ice spikes. All tap waters contain relatively high concentrations of various mineral salts, so apparently different impurities have different effects on ice spike formation.

According to newscientist.com, this may be because dissolved solids in the water tend to concentrate at the tip of a growing ice spike and inhibit its growth. A research paper from the California Institute of Technology provides much more detail.

Personally I've never encountered the phenomenon before and I live in a city where the temperature sinks to -40°C during 4 months of the year. Though, because we are exposed to prolonged periods of snow, the city coats our roadways with salt, sometimes with reckless abandon.

Now, if you want to make your own, and I do, here is a recipe from newscientist.com.

Recipe

Ice Spike How To
Source: newscientist.com.

Prep:

1. Find some distilled water.
2. Find a plastic ice cube tray. Metal conducts heat too well.
3. Pre-cool (set) your freezer to -7 °C.

Method:

1. Fill the ice cube tray with the distilled water.
2. Place the tray in the freezer.

Happy ice spiking!

And yes, because this is a recipe that I've not tried, it's going into the ExperimentalEats category.

In today's morning rush to get to work, I forgot to cobble together a lunch. As such, noon saw me visit the salad bar restaurant in the food court. There, I picked up a small rectangular clam shell and added two small blocks of unidentified white cheese, a slice of poached chicken, two spoonfuls of a quinoa salad, two spoonfuls of avocado salad, and a tong full of spinach salad (spinach leaves, dressed with salt, served with thinly sliced red onion). Price: $4.75

Like my better half, I rarely eat salad and prefer my greens cooked. That is, unless they accompany a sandwich. When it comes to spinach leaves, I prefer they be slightly wilted in a hot pan with a tablespoon of a neutral oil (e.g. canola), a pinch of kosher salt, and two finely chopped cloves of garlic. No fuss. No muss.

I am however, open to new recipes to broaden my spinach repertoire. Here are two preparations that I have gathered, but have not yet tried.

The first recipe makes a Classic Mandarin Orange Salad. It was given to me by a wonderful lady named Margaret. I do not know her nearly well enough to call her Marg as her friends and co-workers do. What I can say is that she is extremely healthy and runs marathons on a whim. She is also well respected and highly spoken of by her colleagues.

The picture is of a prepared spinach salad, using a similar recipe from tasteofhome.com.

Margaret's Classic Mandarin Orange Salad
Dressing
What you will need:

• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 2 tbsp white vinegar
• 1 tbsp granulated white sugar
• 1 tbsp dried parsley
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• few drops of tobasco

Method:
Place all ingredients in bowl and whisk to combine.

Salad
What you will need:

• Handful of slivered almonds
• 2 tbsp of granulated sugar
• 2-3 stalks of celery
• 2-3 stalks of young green onion (aka: scallions)
• 1-2 lb of prepared mixed greens
• 1 can mandarin oranges
• One batch of dressing (above)

Method:

1. Place a fry pan on medium heat and add both the slivered almonds and granulated sugar to the pan
2. Cook the almonds in the sugar until the sugar melts and the almonds are coated
3. Place the slivered almonds into a large bowl
4. Slice the celery and green onion finely. The reason they are not prepared before hand is because the almonds need time to cool. Else, they may wilt the greens.
5. Add the sliced celery and green onions to the bowl
6. Add the mixed greens to the bowl
7. Drain the mandarin oranges and add them to the bowl
8. Toss gently
9. Slowly drizzle the dressing over the salad and dress conservatively. Do not worry if there is leftover dressing. It should sit well in the fridge.
10. Serve

I was fortunate enough to sample this salad (made with a mesculin mixture) at a Canada Day barbecue two years back. I remember the sweet and sour flavors playing extremely well with the peppery greens. The celery and slivered almonds gave every odd bite a nice crunch. According to allrecipes.com, young spinach leaves can substituted for mixed greens in similar salads.

And here is something from an oddly rendering web page, belonging to Chef Wolfgang Puck: fried spinach leaves.

According to my director's former assistant, fried spinach leaves are Asian and she had them last at a Chinese restaurant. While I've seen chefs on the food network deep fry basil leaves to use as garnishes, I have never seen deep fried spinach. Apparently, it comes out very crispy and flavourful.

Deep Fried Spinach Leaves
What You Will Need:

• 1/2 pound young spinach leaves
• neutral oil for deep frying (e.g. canola oil)
• Kosher salt for seasoning

Method:

1. Clean the spinach leaves well, drain and dry thoroughly. Running the spinach through a salad spinner would be ideal.
2. In a high walled stainless steel pot, heat about 3 inches of a neutral oil to 375°F.
3. Add spinach in batches.
4. Submerge each batch with either a slotted spoon or oriental spider and fry for approximately 1-2 minutes
5. Remove when the spinach darkens
6. Gently place the spinach on a wire cake rack over newspaper to drain.
7. Season with salt to taste and serve immediately.

Sometimes, I really wonder what goes through the minds of product managers and marketing executives when I come across products like Mr. Goudas' canned "Potatoes Roasted With Lemon and Dill."

Please don't get me wrong. I think Mr. Goudas' is a good brand both for its sheer variety of product offers and its economical prices. My own pantry is replete with Mr. Goodas branded staples: one bag of dried green split peas, one bottle of dried red chilies, one bag of long grain white rice, two cans of chick peas, one can of kidney beans, and one can of cannelloni beans. I generally purchase Mr. Goodas products from Food Basics or Zellers, where entire aisles are seemingly dedicated to Mr. Goodas.

Mr. Goudas also runs a website called flyermall.com, which hosts scans of the week's store flyers. It includes flyers from many of the large chain grocery and department stores and several of the smaller ethnic chains. I visit the site often as prefer not to receive flyers by mail.

I was on flyermall.com when I discovered the canned roasted potatoes product in an advertising banner. Curious, I clicked on the banner and came to a recipe page. The recipe involves taking 4 potatoes, cutting them into 1 inch pieces and baking them in an oven proof baking dish immersed in a mixture consisting of 1 cup of water, the juice of 1 lemon, 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, 4 cloves of chopped garlic, and 2 tbsp of fresh dill. Presumably, cooking the potatoes at 375 degrees F until tender will simultaneously cook off the majority of the moisture from the wet mixture, leaving the oil and the aromatics to crisp and flavor the potatoes. Afterwards, the recipe broils the potatoes until "coloured."

What does this recipe have to do with a canned product? Well, you can purchase the same dish "ready-to-eat" in a can. The only difference is that liquid was added to enable sterilization. Happily, "the liquid may be consumed or discarded." "The choice is yours."

If you're like me and you value your potatoes for the texture you get from cooking them in specific ways, the following recipe may interest you more than canned roasted potatoes. It originated from an online forum. I made some modifications, based on Alton Brown's Baked Potato recipe from the Food Network website. I've yet to try it, but the principles makes a lot of sense.

Recipe

Stuff You'll Need:

• 4 russet potatoes
• canola oil to coat
• large grained salt, like sea or kosher salt
• shredded cheese
• butter
• sour cream
• crumbled bacon pieces
• finely chopped green onions or chives

Method:

1. Preheat an oven to 350F
2. Wash the potatoes well, scrubbing under running water. However, leave the skins on.
3. Prick the skin of the potatoes with a fork 8-12 times. Be sure to distribute the holes evenly as this will allow steam to escape, during the baking process
4. Place each potato in a bowl and coat with oil and sprinkle with salt
5. Set the potatoes directly on the middle rack of the oven and bake for an hour or until the skins are crisp and the flesh is soft. During baking, you may want to place a sheet pan or baking dish directly below the potatoes to catch any drips
6. Switch the oven to broil
7. When baked, let cool for five minutes
8. Carefully split each potato in half and scoop out the flesh into another bowl, leaving a 1/8" layer of potato in the skins
9. Run the flesh through a ricer or mash gently with a fork
10. Add sensible amounts of the remaining ingredients to the potato mash and mix thoroughly. The original recipe was vague with measurements: 1 tbsp butter and 1 tbsp sour cream per potato.
11. Place the mixture back into the skins
12. Place the stuffed skins onto a baking sheet and broil until the cheese melts and the topping colours
13. Serve hot