The Funky Kitchen

“Hello keyboard my old friend…

I’ve come to speak with you again”"

I’m so sorry for the radio silence as of late; summer just has a way of running away with you, doesn’t it? It is good to be back.

What have all of you out there been up to these glorious days? Anything delectable going on in your kitchens? The have been a truckload of tasty things coming and going through here, and I will endeavor to get them all up here in the coming days. The glut of gorgeous summer produce is upon us, and when I’m not maintaining a sprint just to try to keep abreast of things, I’m trying to enjoy it to the utmost.

Last weekend came with a family reunion, next weekend we’re off to Saskatoon for a wedding, and this weekend Mister is out of town with his family. I started missing him the moment he left, but I’m taking this lonely opportunity to catch up on things on my to do list. Also, I treated myself to some pistachios. Mister’s nut allergy is not so bad that we can’t have them in the house, but I feel so guilty indulging in a snack that I cannot share. It was a nice treat, though, the time between makes them seem extra special.

To jump right back into things from my absence, I bring to you a simple summery salad. Take the vegetables you have handy, you don’t need to use exactly what I use here (though it was a phenomenally tasty salad), just bung in the produce you have in the kitchen, and dollop on some creamy tart dressing. It is perfect for a hot day, you don’t need to turn the oven on even for a minute.

Stacked Summery Salad

100 g mixed greens

1 bell pepper

1 tomato

1/2 a Long English cucumber

handful cremini mushrooms

handful carrots

handful snap peas

1/4 of leftover roast chicken

• Wash all of the produce well.
• Tear the lettuce manageable sized pieces and tumble into your serving bowl.
• Cut the pepper in half, removing the stem, seeds and gills. Slice into 1/2 inch slices and then cut those all in half to shorten them. Layer these on top of the greens.
• Break your snap peas open, so that the peas are exposed, and layer on. Snap peas give a salad such a lovely crunch and sweetness; I also find them a point of visual interest amongst the other vegetables.
•  Slice the mushrooms thinly and place them overtop the snap peas.
• Cut an inch or so off of the cut end of the cucumber and retain for use in the dressing. Slice the remaining cucumber into thin quarter rounds. I left the skin on, but feel free to peel it off. Add the cucumber to the salad.
• Slice the carrots very thinly, or run them through a mandoline, so that you are left with paper thin little rounds of crunchy sweetness to sprinkle over the salad.
• Remove any skin from the chicken, and then shred it into coarse strands with your hands. Top the salad with it.
• Serve with the following tangy dressing, or the dressing of your choice, alongside so that people can add as much as they like.

Tzatziki-esque Dressing

• Measure out your labneh into a bowl sizable enough for some mixing.
• Put the minced garlic into the lemon juice to start infusing its flavor out.
• Grate the cucumber section finely, and squeeze out as much of the cucumber juice as possible with your hands.
• Put the garlicy lemon juice, and grated cucumber into the labneh, and grind in a little pepper.
• Stir to combine into a claggily thick dressing.
• Use on salad or with cold leftover chicken.

This dressing is very thick, almost like a dip, but it gives a lovely creaminess and tang to what you eat it with. Bon appetit!

Our house is one hundred and two years old this year. We have had it for just under a year, and have been living here only since Christmas. Yay for renovations! Less than 1% of the time this house has been standing has it been ours. I wonder about the people who were here before us often.

Did they love our awesome little house as much as we do now? Have any previous occupants been as scared of the basement as me? What were they thinking when they drywalled over the window in the bathroom?

We find hints about previous people living in our house often. When Mister checked out the attic we found a stack of ladies magazines from the 50′s (recipes from which will one day follow). Someone at our house must have enjoyed a game or two of marbles, because when we pulled off the deck, which was in a mostly decrepit state, we found a gaggle of marbles underneath. Mister jackhammered out and pulled up the cement sidewalks around our house, because they all channelled water towards the house rather than away, and we found some very interesting objects used as rebar, including two chairs, a trailer hitch and electrical stove elements. The people who lived here before us certainly were resourceful, but also must have been at least a little bananas. Drywalling over windows, partially converted knob and tube electric systems, amputations to support beams and patio stones sandwiched between layers of concrete using furniture for support have not made fixing up the house easier, that’s for sure. What were they thinking, who were they, where are they now?

It was a stupendously hot day the day that Mister and a few friends got most of the sidewalk removal done, so I got out our ice cream maker and made them a treat. This is a recipe from the veritable ice cream queen and fellow intrepid culinary adventurer, Trish.

Banana Ice Cream

(recipe from Trish)

3/4 Cup brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 Tbsp lemon juice
3 bananas
1/4 tsp nutmeg
3 Cups coffee cream

• In a large bowl, mix together the brown sugar, salt and lemon juice.
• Peel the bananas and cut them into one inch pieces.
• Force the banana, a few pieces at a time, through a fine mesh sieve using the side of a metal spoon. This will be a laborious process, but it is very worth it.

• Scrape the banana puree from the underside of the sieve into the bowl, mixing to combine it with the sugar mixture.
• Add the cream, stirring to blend.
• Pour directly into an ice cream maker and freeze until desired texture is reached (~20 minutes).
• Place in the freezer for about an hour in a resealable container, so that it will harden up a bit for better scooping.

I have had an idea of blushing pink cherry madeleines knocking around in my head for a while. I am a little bit gaga for madeleines, as you may or may not have guessed, so I have been working on making this intangible idea into a palpable, edible cookie.

The first attempt made use of dried cherries, because I did not have any fresh in the house. They were very tasty, the cherry flavor was there, but they were not blushingly pink. They were brown. Though they were good to eat, the brown cherry madeleines did not meet my goal visually.

these are definitely not pink

Fast forward a few weeks, and there were fresh cherries in the house so I needed to try again. Everything was going great:

and then I added the baking soda. And my blushingly pink cherry madeleines turned purple-blue!

where did the pink go?

So, in conclusion, madeleines are like hydrangeas. When they grow in acidic soil they flower pink, when they grow in basic soil they flower blue, and when they grow in neutral soil they flower white. I doubt my madeleines would be white if they were a neutral mixture, though.

Cherry Madeleines, Iteration II

1/4 Cup butter

1/2 tsp vanilla

2 eggs

2/3 Cup cherries, halved and pitted

1 Tbsp lemon juice

1 tsp lemon zest

1/3 Cup sugar

3/4 Cup flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

• Heat the oven to 425° F.
• Brown your butter, and then mix in vanilla. Remove from heat.
• In a bowl, beat the eggs until frothy, and then add in the sugar.
• Prep the cherries by cutting around the pit longitudinally, twisting to pull the halves apart and then removing the pit.
• Blend the cherries, lemon juice and lemon zest into a puree.
• Mix the puree into the egg mixture.
• Combine the flour, baking soda and salt, and then add them to the egg mixture.
• Slowly add in the butter.
• Grease your madeleine pan generously.
• Drop the batter by the spoonful into the shell shaped indentations, filling about 3/4 full.
• Place the madeleines in the preheated oven, and immediately turn it down to 375° F. Bake until puffed up and golden brown (~10 minutes, a toothpick inserted into the middle should come out clean).

These madeleines were alright, but they were the wrong color and a little bit lackluster in flavor. My plan of attack for Cherry Madeleines, Iteration III: leave out the baking soda, because the egg will likely leaven the madeleines enough on its own. Maybe combine fresh and dried cherries, because the fresh cherries do not have the same concentration of flavor as the dried ones, but the fresh ones have the color that the dried ones lack, as well as having certain flavor notes that are lost in the drying process. Oh the joys of recipe development