Most Halloween monsters can’t stand candy! Vampires lust for blood. Zombies chomp at the brain. Ghouls fiendishly feast on fresh and funky corpses. The bright red paprika and meaty chunks in a Hungarian Ghoulash will satisfy the most distinguished demon panging for your vital vittles. Bubble and brew a large cauldronful for your next posthumous potluck.

Hungry Ghoul Hungarian Ghoulash

SERVES 6 GHOULS 

6 slices of bacon, chunks

3 onions, diced

1 potato, grated

1 glass of red or white wine

1L Tomato purée

600g Beef or pork, cubed

1 tsp Caraway seeds

2 Tbsp Hungarian (sweet) paprika

1 Tbsp Spanish (smoked)  paprika

2 cloves of garlic, grated

¼ cup curly parsley, finely chopped

salt and pepper to taste

Sour cream, optional

INGREDIENTS

Get a large pot (preferably one that has a lid) on the stove over medium heat.

Pile in your bacon and cook it until it gets nice and crispy. Remove crispy bacon with a slotted spoon and put it on a papertowel lined plate. Make sure you leave as much fat in the pan as possible. Hide the bacon from wandering ghouls.

Chuck in the diced onion and cook until they are lovely and caramelized.

Add the grated potato and stir it all about.

Deglaze the pan with wine and use a good wooden spoon to scrape up all the crusty bits stuck to the pan.

Add the tomato purée, caraway seeds and garlic. Bring the pot to a bubble over high heat and then reduce the heat to very low. Pile in the meat and stir it all about.

It’s kind of unusual to add the meat in without browning it, but the results are a nice juicy tender meat.

Cover the pot and cook over low heat for 2 hours, stirring occasionally.

When it’s done and the meat is nice and tender and the paprika and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Let the stew rest off the heat for 30 minutes before you scoop out a sloppy bowlful of gruesome slop with some creamy sour cream and a scattering of parsley and crispy bacon.

Like most stews, this ghoulash improves overnight.

Give me a home where the bison roam and the water buffalo make mozzarella. Bison bison are the big brown beasts of the open prairie plains, but they are often called Buffalo. A true Buffalo (or water buffalo) Bubalus Bubalis is also a member of the Bovinae family indigenous to Asia, but best known in Europe for producing fatty milk used to make creamy mozzarella cheese. We can blame the French fur trappers for mislabeling the Bison, a misnomer that still to this day has folks using Bison and Buffalo interchangeably. To alleviate any naming confusion and showcase the difference between these two bohemeth bovinae here is a pizza topped with the distinctly delicious Bison pepperoni and Buffalo mozzarella.

BISON and BUFFALO PIZZA

INGREDIENTS

1 package of sliced Bison pepperoni

from Olson’s High Country Free-Range Bison or Valta Bison

2 large balls of Buffalo Mozzarella

from Lina’s Italian Market or Janice Beaton Fine Cheese

1 package of pizza dough*

from Lina’s Italian Market

500ml container of Lina’s Bruschetta or 1 cup of tomato sauce of choice

½ cup grated Parmesan cheese

PROCEDURE

If you are using the frozen dough, allow it to thaw on a parchment paper lined baking sheet for 30 minutes before topping.

Preheat oven to maximum power. Try 600˚F. If that doesn’t compute your max temperature is likely 550˚F. Either way, crank it up. Making a good pizza requires high temperatures.

If you are using the fresh dough, dust your counter top before dropping your blob down with a gentle thud. Dust with more flour and roll out your dough in to some semblance of a circle using a rolling pin or wine bottle. I try not to worry if it ends up looking like the shape of African, just make sure it is an even thickness.

Get the dough onto a parchment lined baking sheet before adding toppings.

Evenly top your pizza with either bruschetta or your favourite tomato sauce. Distribute the bison pepperoni all over the pizza. Use your fingers to tear the buffalo mozzarella into small pieces and distribute evenly all over the pepperoni. Grate the parmesan directly on top of everything, making sure everything is evenly covered.

If the oven is up to temperature, chuck the pie in the oven quickly so you don’t lose heat and bake for 15-20 minutes or until the top is beautiful and golden brown.

Remove from the oven and leave it in the baking sheet for 5 minutes to cool slightly before cutting it into wedges with a pizza cutter or a long knife.

Enjoy while the mozzarella is nice and stringy and the crispy pepperoni is pipping hot.

Try it once with this simple recipe, but next time feel free to customize with your own spin on toppings.

fresh pick

The ingredient list today requires a bit of roaming. But if you follow the Bison philosophy of roaming to eat you can start off with breakfast at the Calgary Farmer’s Market  (510 77^th Avenue S.E.) or Valta Bison (703- 23^rd Avenue S.E.) while you get Bison Pepperoni. Then hoof it up to Lina’s for lunch while you pick up pizza dough, bruschetta and mozzarella at Lina’s Italian Market (2202 Centre Street N.E.). Finally you can meander to the best pizza joint in the city for dinner (insert your address here).

And away she goes…

Shelley is the editor who brought Swerve from being a simple listings insert into a pinnacle outpost of the Calgary media landscape. She’s revolutionary visionary in the world of print media and recently won the lifetime achievement award at the Western Magazine Awards. I wondered why, only because I thought you had to be old to get a lifetime achievement award, but Shelley managed to earn it while still in the vibrancy of youth.

I have been lucky enough meet Shelley Youngblut when I used to work as a newspaper feature designer and illustrator. I was comissioned to do several illustrations for Swerve and it wasn’t long before Shelley understood I had a love of food. She suggested coming up with an illustrated food column. I shrugged it off as a lark since I wasn’t a trained chef. When she ordered it be done by the following Monday I had no choice but to come up with what has since become the Easy Cook Column.

The first recipe came out around Easter and it was very nearly a breakfast recipe for Jesus to have after three days being stuck behind a boulder. Luckily it ended up being Hot, Cross Bunny French Toast, which later appeared in Kitchen Scraps.

Working with Shelley is a unique and enlightening experience that I will always cherish. She quite simply recognises more in people than even they do and with a tiny nudge (or a wink) will draw the best out of her contributors. People will go out of their way to produce their best work for less money just for the opportunity to have their work in Swerve and to work along side Shelley.

She is now moving on to work with the Globe & Mail and although she is slotted to be the Western content editor, I expect she will soon exceed expectations of that title and we will see what Shelley will come up with next. It will also be fun to see Shelley do a little writing after spending years fostering the work of others she is sure to have a few stories to share of her own.

Best of luck Shelley!

The Tooth Fairy suggests you exercise caution during cherry season. She advises you to slow down when approaching a bowl of fresh juicy pit-filled cherries. Please enjoy this classic eggy French Clafouti dessert responsibly and make sure everyone knows you left the pits in the cherries or the TF will be left to pick up the pieces.

Whole Cherry Clafouti

1 1/4 cup flour

1/2 cup sugar, divided

1 cup cream

3 eggs

1 tbsp vanilla or almond extract

pinch of salt

2 Tbsp room temperature butter

2 pounds of fresh dark cherries, stems removed

In a medium bowl whisk together the sugar, cream, eggs, vanilla extract and salt. Add the flour, trying to whisk out the lumps but don’t worry about getting all the little lumps. They’ll soften up while the batter rests.

Cover the batter and leave it out at room temperature for 1 hour. Don’t freak out, just cause there’s an egg at room temp isn’t the end of the world. It’s going to get cooked and it’s necessary for a good batter to have a resting time so it can get cohesive.

Remove the stems from all the cherries but don’t take out the pits. It’s imperative that you leave the pits in so they can release the almondy and clove-like flavour compounds. It also helps to get your eaters to slow down when they know there are pits in this dessert.

Preheat the oven to 375˚F.

Get your baking pan very buttered up. The more butter the better. Your baking dish can be metal or ceramic. The size and shape can range from a 10-12 inch round cake pan to an 8-12 inch pie or tart pan. The important  thing is that all the cherries are in a single layer and there is enough wiggle room for just a little bit of batter to weave around them. Also make aure there a bit of room around the edges. If you use a smaller pan, just put fewer cherries in. You can eat them immediately as a consolation prize.

Pour in the batter and start placing the cherries in, leave room between and a nice 1 inch clearance around the edge.

Bake for 25-30 minutes. Obviously depending on the size of the pan this might vary. So just make sure that the center of the flan is cooked by inserting a toothpick into the middle, if it comes out clean, it’s ready.

Remove the pan from the oven and let it cool down to room temperature before serving.

Make sure to warn people about the pits or the tooth fairy will be left to pick up the pieces.

Leaving the pits in makes this dessert easier to make and the pits impart a pleasing almondy and clove-like aroma to the dessert. It could also be argued that because people have to slow down to eat the cherries, the clafouti will inevitably taste much better than wolfing it down. Leaving the pits in will save you from having to add thumbtacks or marbles…

Scarborough Fair was an annual raucous medieval festival of merriment organized to conduct a little bartering. This pleasant peasant party lasted from The Feast of the Assumption of Blessed Virgin Mary (Aug 15) until the Feast of St.Michael (Sept 29). Raise thine flagons of good-cheer beer and snarffle down a herby minced meat hand-pie whilst thou sing a classic ballad in honour of Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.

Scarborough hand pies

Makes 4 handpies, the recipe is easily doubled

Hot water crust

1 ½ cups flour

pinch of salt

1 egg

1/3 cup water

1 stick of butter, cubed

filling

150g (approx ½ cup) Spragg Meats Ground pork

150g (approx ½ cup) Spragg Meats breakfast Pork sausage

¼ cup of raisins or currants

2 sprigs each of parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme (leaves only)

egg-wash

1 beaten egg for brushing and sealing

Sift flour into a large bowl.  Make a hole in the middle and toss in the egg, cover it with some flour.

In a small pot combine the water, salt and butter, bring to a boil until the butter is completely melted.

Pour the hot water into the dry ingredients and use a table knife to mix it all together until you form a dough ball.

Gather the dough into a ball, wrap it in plastic wrap and blap it all into the fridge to chill for 1 hour.

Meanwhile prepare your meatballs.

Combine the finely chopped herbs with the meat and divide the meat into 4 equal balls. Roll them tightly.

Cut off 1/3 of the dough ball and set aside for the lids. Roll out the remaining dough until it is ¼ inch thick. Cut out 4 5-inch circles using a bowl as a cutting guide.

Roll out the remaining 1/3 of the dough ball to ¼ inch thick. Cut out 4 3-inch lids using a smaller bowl as a cutting guide.

Brush beaten egg around the edge of the 5-inch disk of dough.

Place a meatball in the center of the disk of dough and pull up the sides to form an open pocket around the meatball. Now place a lid on top and crimp the edges to seal, pinching and crimping all around to form a seal. Now poke a small hole in the top to vent and brush the tops with the remaining egg wash. If you like you can cut out some little leaf shapes from the remaining dough to place on the top of the pie. So ornate!

Pop them back into the fridge for 20 minutes to firm up.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 375˚F.

Place the pies an inch apart on a parchment lined baking sheet.

Bake at 375˚ for 15 minutes, take out the pies and reduce the heat down to 325˚F for 15 minutes or until golden brown and beautiful.

Set them on a wire rack to cool for 15 minutes before eating one with a nice flagon of ale.

For some pictures on shaping handpies, check out an older post for Plumpies

As seen in Swerve Magazine…

City Rat is constantly food-blogging about trending ingredients he orders online, bristling at the latest TV food battles and going to eat at restaurants with yearlong waiting lists. Country Rat enjoys the aesthetics of leisurely reading a cookbook in a comfy chair, ambling through farmer’s markets to pick food by smell and sharing his food with friends. City Rat wants Country Rat’s ratatouille recipe so he can blog it.

Slow roasted country ratatouille

INGREDIENTS

3 vine-ripened tomatoes, quartered

2 sweet bell peppers, seeded

4 small zucchini

2 small eggplants

2 onions, quartered

6 cloves of garlic, peeled

1 Tbsp dried herbes de Provence

Or 2 Tbsp of assorted fresh herbs like basil, oregano and parsley

½ cup of really good olive oil

sauce

1-398 ml can of tomato purée

½ cup assorted pitted olives

olive brine to taste (salty liquid the olives are kept in)

Preheat your oven to 375˚ F.

Get a large metal baking dish.

Use the size of your quartered tomatoes as a guide. Cut the sweet pepper, zucchinis and eggplant into large chunks the size of the quartered tomatoes.  Quarter the onions and place everything into a large metal baking dish in one even layer.

Drizzle on the olive oil, scatter on the herbs and whole cloves of garlic.

Toss to make sure everything has a little oil and a little of the herb sprinkling on it.

Blap it all in the oven and roast for 1 hour, tossing it all once half way through roasting.

Remove from the oven and pour on the tomato purée and the pitted olives. Mix it all up to make sure the ratatouille is nicely covered.

Crank the oven heat up to 450˚F and bake for another 15-20 minutes until the sauce thickens and the flavours all get together and love one another.

Serve in a large ceramic bowl with a wooden spoon along with pretty much anything.

John Gilchrist does it on the cheap…

The Second Edition of Cheap Eats: Calgary, Banff and Beyond is now available.

I was lucky enough to participate in it’s creation by designing the cover, without having to hustle through the gruelling task of eating at hundreds of restaurants. That monumental task was conquered by John Gilchrist, CBC Food Critic and Calgary food legend.

He outlines the arduous challenge of having to eat, write and complete a book in this Swerve article.

You can get a copy of this little green gem at local book vendors such as The Owl’s Nest, Pages on Kensington and Cookbook Co.

Wanna look good in a bikini? Quit stuffing yourself with fettuccini. Instead stuff yourself with slimming summer squash transformed into a very satisfying zucchini linguini. Or for the gentlemen you can just put a zucchini in your bikini…

zucchini linguini

Serves 6 for a taste or 4 for a course

pesto

1 bunch fresh parsley

a large handful of arugula

1 clove garlic, grated or finely minced

1 cup walnuts

zest and juice of 1 lemon

salt to taste

1/2 cup olive oil

zucchini

2 large zucchinis

pinch of salt

scallops

12 large (U-10) scallops

garnish

½ bunch of chopped fresh parsley

fresh cracker pepper

really good olive oil

To make the lemony pesto

Combine all the pesto ingredients in a food processor and blend until mixture is consistently smooth. Scrape down the sides if needed. Use what you need for the past, and save the leftovers in the fridge topped with a lid of fresh oil and some plastic on top for up to a week.

To make the zucchini pasta.

Get a good vegetable peeler or a mandoline and start trimming off long ribbons of zucchini. Once your peeling hits the zip-strip of seeds in the center of the zucchini, rotate and peel the other side until all you have is the center core of seeds. Pile a couple of the ribbons on top of each other and slice them lengthwise into the desired thickness.

Get a large frying pan on the stove and let it warm up for 5 minutes. Dump all the zucchini into the pan, scoop on lots of pesto all over and toss to coat. Put a lid on and cook for 3 minutes to warm it through.

For the scallop

Get a large frying pan on high heat. Preheat the pan for 5 minutes.

Place all the scallops on a plate lined with paper towel. Lay some more paper towel on top and pat the scallops dry.

Get a small plate with oil ready. Dip the scallops lightly in the oil before placing them into the dry pan starting at 12-oclock (clock-face location) and make your may around clockwise. That way when you start flipping the scallops you can do them in order.

Cook the scallops until the bottoms are brown and seared, about 3 minutes. Flip and continue cooking the other side for 3 more minutes. Serve immediately and don’t let your scallops get over cooked.

Discard the dipping oil.

To serve

Serve up six piping hot bowls of zucchini ribbons and top each pile with a bit more pesto and two or 3 big scallops.

Crack on loads of pepper and a drizzle of good olive oil.

Serve zucchini linguini with a martini in your bikini.

The concept of an immortality-inducing ‘golden apple’ has been woven into folklore since the ancient Greeks. When tomatoes first showed up in Europe they were small and yellow so the Italians called them golden apples (pomo d’oro) and since then they’ve been calling tomatoes of all shapes and sizes Pomodoro. Although these yellow tomatoes won’t make you live forever, your life will still be  longer and happier if you eat them. An apple a day, afterall…

Giallo (Yellow) risotto

risotto

6 cups chicken stock

large pinch of saffron

3 Tbsp olive oil

1 yellow onion, finely chopped

1 yellow pepper, finely chopped

3 cloves garlic, finely minced

2 cups arborio rice

1 cup white wine

2 Tbsp butter

4 oz Parmesa

tomato salad

4 yellow tomatoes, seeded and diced

juice and zest of 1 lemon

2 Tbsp really good olive oil

1 clove garlic, grated

1 Tbsp grainy mustard

Good pinch of salt

fried egg

4 eggs, sunny side up

3 Tbsp of butter

Start by making the tomato salad dressing. In a medium bowl whisk together the lemon juice, lemon zest, olive oil and Dijon mustard. Set aside for a bit.

Cut the tomatoes in half through the equator. Scoop out the seeds with your fingers being careful not to squeeze the flesh and turn it to mush. Dice the tomatoes and place it in the dressing, tossing to coat.

Get 2 large pots on the stove. Put the chicken stock and saffron in one and bring to a boil on high, then reduce to low heat so it stays warm.

Place the other pot over medium heat. Heat the oil, and sweat the onions, yellow peppers and garlic until soft and translucent, using a wooden spoon. Don’t let them caramelize and turn brown.

Add the arborio rice and stir to coat the individual grains with oil. Add the white wine, and stir until the boozy smell evaporates.

Add 1 ladleful of the hot stock and stir to distribute. When the liquid evaporates and the rice is no longer soupy you can ladle in more stock.

Continue this progression of ladling and stirring and ladling and stirring (about 35 minutes) until the rice is creamy and cooked through with just a little bite to it. Now add the rest of the stock so the risotto is quite soupy and pourable.

Finish the risotto by stirring in the butter and grated cheese. Remove it from the heat while you fry some eggs.

Get a large frying pan on the stove and let it preheat for 5 minutes over medium heat for the sunny side up eggs. If you have metal ring molds you can use them to make perfectly round eggs. Crack the eggs into bowls.

Add butter to the pan and once melted gently tip each egg into the pan, shaking the pan ever so slightly to make sure they don’t stick.

Season the eggs with salt and pepper and continue cooking until done to your desired egginess. Place a lid on top if you need to have you egg cooked more on top.

Serve the risotto in flat bowls or a large plate with an edge. Ideally, it should be runny enough to slowly spread out in the bowl. But if you prefer it thicker, that’s okay too.

Place an egg atop the risotto and arrange some of the lovely salad around the risotto. Swizzle around a little spoonful of the dressing.

* You can make this entire recipe using red peppers and red tomatoes.

Don’t get corralled with the rest of the herd and buy frozen lamb from New Zealand. The Kiwis rear nice lamb, but that doesn’t mean the grass is greener on the other side of the world. It’s a long flight to Calgary so keep our local free-ranging lamb grounded and don’t get fleeced on the import markup.

Support the local shepherds, it’s exhausting work watching sheep jump over fences…

lamburger

600g ground Ewenique Farms lamb, divided in 4 balls

200g St. Agur Blue cheese (or French blue cheese of choice)

1 Red pepper, sliced into strips

1 Onions, sliced

oil for frying

2 crusty hamburger buns of choice, toasted

1 ripe tomato, sliced

1 little bunch of arugula

rusty mayonnaise

½ cup mayonnaise

½ tsp smoked paprika

1 clove of garlic, grated

salt, to taste

Get started on the sautéed peppers and onions. Pop a frying pan onto the stove over medium high heat to heat up for 5 minutes. When the pan is hot, add the oil and immediately toss in the onions and peppers. Sautee until they are softened and with some nice colouring. If any part of the frying pan starts to get a prematurely burnt, just pour a little splash of water on that spot and scrape up the dark bits as they’ll mix happily in with the onions. When they are soft and lovely, transfer to a bowl and set aside.

Meanwhile, make the mayonnaise. Just mix the mayonnaise with paprika, grated garlic. Stir out any paprika lumps and give it a taste. You can add more paprika and salt if you like.

If you’re into the ol’ barbecue, have at ‘er.

If you have a cast-iron pan, it’s actually a better choice than a barbecue. Get the pan on the stove over high heat and let it preheat for at least 8 minutes to get crazy hot. You won’t need added fat if it’s blazing hot.

Flatten the meat into patties that are ½ inch larger than the bun. The patties will likely be very thin. But don’t worry you’re doing a double patty for each burger.

Toast the buns at 425˚F in the oven while you fry the burgers… watch them closely so they don’t burn!

Get the first 2 patties in the pan and cook until the blood pools on top, flip and continue cooking until done. Transfer to a clean plate.

Fry the next two patties and as soon as you flip them pile on the blue cheese and pepper/onion mixture and top with the cooked patty. Cook until the cheese just softens and the bottom burger cooks through.

Mayo-up your buns and get the hot meat in there quick. Top with a slice of tomato, some more mayo, some arugula and the top of the bun. Get some napkins and get into it.

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