If you missed quick pickles on Breakfast TV this morning, here’s what you missed….

We made Pear and clove, Peach and ginger, Prune and spices, Sweet peppers and rosemary.

Quick pickles are a fast way to get pickle flavour without having to break out your grannies rusty canning equipment. These are not a true preserving pickle, but they will last for 2-3 weeks in your fridge and they are super easy to make in small batches so it won’t feel like a hassle to whip up a bunch.

The simple  ratio is easy to adjust to suit your taste whether you crave salty pickles, sweet pickles or extra sour pickles. Plus you don’t have to limit your choice of pickling items to cucumbers. There are tonnes of yummy fruits and veggies just begging to be a quickie pickle.

Here is the basic recipe…

Quickie Pickles

2 cups water

1 cups vinegar or acid

1 Tbsp salt (double if you want salty pickles)

1 Tbsp sugar (double if you want sweet pickles)

spices of choice (dried or fresh herbs, spices or any kind of tea)

1½ cups of diced, sliced or broken down vegetable/fruit

Procedure

Bring all the ingredients for the brine to boil until the sugar and salt dissolve. Let it steep for 10 minutes.

Place the vegetable/fruit in a large heatproof bowl. Pour the brine, straining out the spices if necessary, directly over the vegetable/fruit to cover.

Wrap the bowl tightly in plastic wrap and allow pickles to cool to room temperature before refrigerating. Will be good to eat in an hour and will last in the fridge for 2-3 weeks.

Here are the rest of the recipes from the show….

Pear Pickles

2 cups water

¾ cups white wine vinegar

¼ cup sherry vinegar

1 Tbsp salt

2 Tbsp sugar

3 cloves

1½ cups of diced pear

Procedure

Bring all the ingredients for the brine to boil until the sugar and salt dissolve. Let it steep for 10 minutes.

Peel and dice the pear quickly as the pear will oxidize. Place the diced pear in a large heatproof bowl. Pour the brine, straining out the spices if necessary, directly over the diced pear to cover.

Wrap the bowl tightly in plastic wrap and allow pickles to cool to room temperature before refrigerating. Will be good to eat in an hour and will last in the fridge for 2 weeks.

Serve with crackers and really good stinky blue cheese.

Peach Pickles

2 cups water

¾ cup white wine vinegar

¼ cup white balsamic vinegar

1 Tbsp salt

2 Tbsp sugar

2 slices of fresh ginger

zest of ½ orange, removed in big strips using a peeler

1½ cups of peeled and diced peach

Procedure

Bring all the ingredients for the brine to boil until the sugar and salt dissolve. Let it steep for 10 minutes.

Place the peeled and diced peaches in a large heatproof bowl. Pour the brine, straining out the spices, directly over the peach to cover.

Wrap the bowl tightly in plastic wrap and allow pickles to cool to room temperature before refrigerating. Will be good to eat in an hour and will last in the fridge for 2 weeks.

Scoop some pickled peaches on a round of brie before it goes in the oven to get all good and gooey.

Peck of pepper Pickles

2 cups water

½ cup white wine vinegar

½ cup red wine vinegar

1 Tbsp salt

1 Tbsp sugar

2 tsp dried rosemary or oregano

1½ cups of small seeded sweet peppers

Procedure

Bring all the ingredients for the brine to boil until the sugar and salt dissolve. Let it steep for 10 minutes.

Place the seeded peppers in a large heatproof bowl. Pour the brine, straining out the rosemary, directly over the seeded peppers to cover.

Wrap the bowl tightly in plastic wrap and allow pickles to cool to room temperature before refrigerating. Will be good to eat in an hour and will last in the fridge for 2 weeks.

Serve pickled peppers with all your favourite antipasto meats and cheeses or as a garnish on a pizza or a bowl of pasta.

Prune Pickles

2 cups water

¾ cups red wine vinegar

¼ cup balsamic vinegar

2 Tbsp salt

1 Tbsp sugar

2 sticks of cinnamon

2 cloves

6 black peppercorns

1½ cups of prunes

Procedure

Bring all the ingredients for the brine to boil until the sugar and salt dissolve. Let it steep for 10 minutes.

Place the prunes in a large heatproof bowl. Pour the brine, straining out the spices, directly over the prunes to cover.

Wrap the bowl tightly in plastic wrap and allow pickles to cool to room temperature before refrigerating. Will be good to eat in an hour and will last in the fridge for 2 weeks.

Serve these prunes with nice sizzling, dripping roasts or patés.

If you are all the way down here you get a bonus… MORE QUICKLES HERE and HERE

With big forest fire clouds looming overhead it was hard to tell if the BBQ would get rained out. But the weather held and the nice over cast sky made for perfect food shot lighting. Snap, snap, snap…

Thanks to Vincci from Ce ci n’est pas un food blog for organising the event and for all the food bloggers who showed up under suspicious weather. It was lovely to see the assortment of nibbles on offer.

Purple Salad

fresh garden green lettuce

a lovely bunch of untreated purple pansies (which are edible)

some pea tendrils

snippets of dill fronds

Vinaigrette

1 cup neutral oil such as canola or light olive oil

1/4 cup  red wine vinegar

just a splash of balsamic vinegar

1/4 cup black currant syrup

1 spoonful of mustard (grainy or dijon)

Sprig of rosemary

splash of worchesttertershershire

pinch of salt

crack of pepper

Place all ingredients in a jar with a tight fitting lid and shake it all up until smooth. Let it rest for an hour or overnight to get mellow.

To make salad properly get two bowls. One for mixing one for serving.

Place some dressing in the bottom of the mixing bowl and add lettuce. Toss gently with your fingertips. Reaching down around the outsides and lifting from the middle while you wiggle your fingers allowing the leaves to fall gently back into the bowl. To add more dressing sprinkle around the outside and toss more with your hands to coat.

Pick up a nice springgy pile with both hands and place in the serving bowl using your finger tips to prop it up and give it some height. Drizzle on some more dressing to serve and top it with the beautiful edible pansies and springy pea tendrils and dill fronds.

Later on Sunday night I made a similar salad with roasted beets, crispy oven crisped prosciutto and quickie pickled cherries for the ladies at Soup Sisters. More details on Soup Sisters and a recipe when I can get a photo…

Sweet and sassy Cassis

Cassis (French for Currants) is a dazzling vision of beauty when she’s sparkling at a poncy party decked out with clusters of opalescent white pearls, luminescent red rubies and deep black jewels. She is refined and sophisticated in the form of a jelly or syrup in a creamy dessert or a sparkling cocktail. While she can be light on her toes, this sassy vixen can also contend with the beastly heavy-footed game meats.

Cassis Delice

This recipe falls somewhere between a panna cotta and a Bavarois. So I went ahead and named it a Cassis Delice because it’s got a poncy French vibe and it’s delicious.

2 cups of whipping cream, whipped to soft peaks

½ cup water

1 packet gelatin

¼ cup black currant jelly or syrup

¼ cup icing sugar

Garnish (Choose one)

A drizzle of black currant syrup

A scoop of black currant jam

A shot of Cassis cassis as desired

Place the water in a small  bowl and sprinkle on the gelatin to soften. Meanwhile place the black currant jelly in a small pot and boil until it is liquid and bubbling. Pour the hot liquid black currant into the bowl with water and gelatin. Stir with a whisk, ensuring the gelatin is completely dissolved. Leave the mixture to cool down for 10 minutes in the fridge.

Now get a large bowl and a clean whisk. Whip the cream until the whipped cream is firm (not lumpy and chunky or you will be pretty close to making butter). Add the icing sugar and mix it all in.

Scoop some of the whipped cream into the bowl with the gelatin and whisk it together until smooth. Now return that mixture to the large bowl with the rest of the whipped cream.  Use a whisk to fold in the purple liquid until there are no streaks and the mixture is still light and fluffy.

Divide the mixture amongst 6 clear wine glasses or somesuch fancy serving vessel. Place in the fridge for 2 hours or overnight until the mousse sets up firm.

If you are serving to extravagantly poncy adults top it with Cassis liqueur, for a more respectable crowd try the black currant syrup, for breakfast top it with black currant jam.

gets along with

Bison, cream, chocolate, cinnamon, cloves, duck, game meat, mango, orange, sweet fruit, soft creamy cheeses, venison.

fresh pick

These little sweet and sour berries are loaded with colour and flavour. Pick out large clusters of firm berries. Currants come in black, red or white. The darker berries pack a stronger flavour.

It’ll take you about an hour to fill up a 4L pail ($12) at Kayben Farms 5^th Annual Black Currant Harvest Festival on Saturday August 28. Check out kayben.com for other U-Pick times. Bring the kids, they have a crazy-cool Adventure Park. Enjoy Jo-Jo’s yummy black currant whims at the Café.

quickeat

Make your own currant syrup by rinsing 1 pound of currants. Bring currants  (stems and all) to a boil in a large pot with 2 cups water and 1 cup sugar. Mash it up really well using a potato masher to release the precious juices. Pop a lid on top and boil for 30 minutes. Strain the mess through a fine meshed sieve using a potato masher.

Chill the syrup and keep it in the fridge for a month or two.

Use the syrup to fancify French Toast, fortify dark beers and super-fly a float using sparkling water and a scoop of vanilla icecream.

tidbit

Black currant stains on clothing are there to stay. The only solution is to simmer the rest of the garment in a pot with black currant syrup. Rinse thoroughly and let dry before you style your new purple blue jeans.

Skinny Dipping video.

Cowboys eat unhealthy stacks of flap jacks while their adversaries eat green, stay lean and get mean. There isn’t much a competition if the cowboy only has to stay on for 8 seconds. If you want to get the big bull advantage you’ll need to step your game up with one of these detox shakes before (or after) Stampede. Get the steer out of your rear and get it in gear.

Green Bull Energy drink

Makes enough for 2 unless you want it all to yourself

1 oz. shot of wheat grass juice (fresh or frozen, see sourcing below)

1 avocado, peeled and pitted

1/2 english cucumber, peeled and seeded

1 kiwi, peeled

1 1/2  cups white cranberry juice or white grape juice

1/2 cup of ice

1 small handful of cilantro leaves (optional)

Here’s a fair warning before you get going. Wheatgrass is full of health benefits, however it can also have some health issues concerning mold and mildew. Buying fresh wheatgrass means you need to check for mold and mildew which can lead to an upset tummy or worse. Use your juicer to extract the juice or simply buy wheat grass juice by the shot.

In a blender, combine the wheat grass juice, a peeled and pitted avocado, peeled and seeded cucumber, peeled kiwi, white cranberry juice and the optional cilantro.

Put a lid on the blender and turn it on low, gradually increase the speed and blend until nice and smooth.

Add the ice and continue blending until totally smooth.

Serve it nice and cold in a clear glass.

More on wheatgrass…

gets along with

apple, basil, beet juice, cilantro, coconut milk, cucumber juice, lemon, honey, most sweet fruit juices, yogurt.

Sourcing

If you have a juicer you can get live wheatgrass at specialty health shops like Community Natural Foods or the Farmer’s Market. It comes in small hydroponic planter boxes with tightly packed blades of grass like a little bunch of turf.

Since wheatgrass is consumed raw it is important to make sure there is no mold or mildew around the roots which can be quite dangerous and give you a devastating bug or at the very least rough and tumble tummy rumble. When in doubt, throw it out.

Get freshly juiced wheatgrass by the shot at juice joints like Jugo Juice (jugojuice.com) and Booster Juice (www.boosterjuice.com). It tastes the way it looks, so get ready to chase it with something tastier.

OR You can pick up of wheatgrass ice cubes at Planet Organic and Community Natural Foods. Convenient portions of wheatgrass juice frozen and ready for use.

quickeat

Make a green tzatziki. Add some wheatgrass juice to yogurt with lots of cilantro, a grated cucumber (squeeze out the excess juice), a clove of grated garlic and a bit of salt. Use it like a sauce to mellow out spicy curries or for dipping warm pita bread.

tidbit

A one ounce shot of wheatgrass is the nutritional equivalent of 2.5 pounds of garden fresh veggies. It’s packed with the full range of vitamins, antioxydants and green chlorophyll which is the first consumable conversion of sunlight energy.

Celiacs need not worry. Wheatgrass is the first stage in the growth of a wheat plant, but until it sprouts wheat berries it remains gluten-free.

Piggy-up cowboy and mosey down to Charcut to see these inspired Stampede windows while you munch on some Pig’s head mortadella or some real pork rinds.

I’ve never done window paintings before. So I was nervous to take on the job of painting the massive windows at my favourite Calgary eaterie Charcut. It’s not nervous-excited, it’s nervous-poop-my-pants…

What happens if they suck, what happens when they don’t wash off and they need to replace the glass, what happens when I’m banned from the restaurant and can’t eat the house-made merguez sausage and saffron tomato or the Pig-head mortadella?

The paint will hit the window tomorrow. Swing by and you’ll see me with brush in shaky hand trying my best to transcribe these sketches onto the windows of Charcut.

The Calgary Stampede is thundering this way for another 10 days of crazy cowboy shenanigans. Expect to see lots of cowboy hats, pancakes and livestock… plus some farm animals.

The krazy kids over at Knifewear have come up with a wonderfully offensive shirt of a horse with all the cuts written in Japanese and Cheval (the French word for Horse) in the bottom corner. I like it!

The box of limited edition shirts arrives on July 8, just in time for the July 9 start of the Stampede.

Pick one up for $20 … seriously Kevin? Only 20 bucks?

Sometimes the best ideas hit you when you are stumbling drunk.

So when the Breakfast TV crew drunk-texted and asked me to come on the show to make French Fries and Mayonnaise I knew they would probably need liquoring up again for the Mayo show.

I arrived at 5:30 am to a round of drinking games (every time a C-train passes, you take a shot) and after an invigorating brawl outside (won by Rob) we whipped up a batch of fries and mayonnaise to soak up the excess. Andrew gets pretty grabby when he tips back a few…

I joke, I joke… sort of.

Here’s the clip.

And here are the recipes for 8 kinds of mayonnaise. If you are lucky enough to have 9 lives you’ll have one spare after you’ve tried all of these killer mayos.

Mayonnaise

These are so incredibly easy, just combine the ingredients in small bowls and serve with a spoon to garnish. Make all of them or choose a couple and double up the recipe. Serve the mayo with fries or plop it on a burger or sammy, heck you could even toss it with some warm boiled potatoes for some deluxe potato salad.

Homemade mayonnaise

1 egg yolk (room temperature)

1 tsp of Dijon mustard

1 cup of canola or vegetable oil

Acid to taste (lemon juice, vinegar, etc)

Salt to taste

Start with a clean bowl, and vigorously whisk the egg yolk and Dijon mustard together. Continue whisking steadily while very carefully adding the olive oil 1 drop at a time—try pouring oil into a spoon, then adding the oil drop by drop from the spoon into the bowl. This will start the emulsion, and it should begin to thicken and start looking like mayonnaise. Continue to whisk, drizzling the oil slowly and in a very thin stream this time. When half the oil is incorporated you can pour the rest in a little faster than before (but not too fast).

The result should be a thick, gloopy mayonnaise.

To thin out the consistency and brighten up the whitness, whisk in the lemon juice or vinegar and don’t forget to season to taste. Transfer to a smaller bowl add your flavour choices from the list below, cover and place in the fridge while the flavours develop.

1. Guacamayo

1 cup mayonnaise

½ avocado, mushed up very smooth

1/2 jalapeno, seeded and very finely minced

½ tsp sundried tomatoes, minced

zest and juice of 1 lime

pinch of chili powder

pinch of salt

2. Smoking pepper

1 cup mayonnaise

chipotle sauce, to taste

2 cloves of garlic, grated

zest and juice of 1 lime

pinch of salt

3. Honey mustard

1 cup mayonnaise

2 Tbsp mustard of choice

2 Tbsp honey of choice

pinch of salt

4. rusted red brick

1 cup mayonnaise

½ tsp sweet paprika

¼ cup finely chopped pimentos (roasted red pepper)

pinch of salt

5. Sauce Gribiche

1 cup mayonnaise

1 hardboiled egg, finely minced

2 gherkin pickles, finely minced

1 shallot

10 capers, roughly chopped

1 sprig parsley, finely minced

3 chives, finely sliced

pinch of salt

6. Sunny Lemon

1 cup mayonnaise

juice and zest of 1 lemon

½ tsp of tumeric or yellow curry powder

½ clove garlic, grated

pinch Saffron

pinch of salt

7. Sushi mayo

1 cup mayonnaise

½ tsp wasabi paste or powder

1 tsp finely minced pickled sushi ginger

2 tsp yuzu juice (or lemon juice)

pinch of salt

8. Dirty Roasted Garlic Aioli

½ mayonnaise

4 cloves of roasted garlic

¼ tsp balsamic vinegar

pinch of salt

There’s a bake sale this weekend in Calgary at 148 10 Ave NW (Old Ant Hill Fabrics building). Sat, June 19th 10am-6pm and Sun, June 20th from 11am-5pm.

Not only will you be able to pick up some primo baked goodies, you’ll also be able to meet some of your favourite local Calgarian Food bloggers as we take turns running the booth.

I’ll be there on Saturday from 2pm to 4pm… which is a perfect time to pick up something sweet before you head home for teatime. If you make it down at other times, you’re sure to meet some of my buddies Julie from Dinner with Julie, Cheryl from Backseat Gourmet, Lauren from Celiac Teen and event organiser Vincci from Ceci n’est pas un food blog.

And the table will be packed with offerings from more than a dozen Calgary food bloggers like Calgary Restaurant Examiner, The Celiac Husband, Chocolate & Ginger, ChowTown, The Crazy Kitchen, Dan’s Good Side, Eat in Calgary, Food Mamma, I Love Alberta Beets, Live, Love, Laugh, EAT!!!, Scrumptiously Fit Food,  Vegedible, Vlad’s Gonzo Food Blog.

I’ll be making some cheeky little Flower Pot Brownies baked in adorable little flower pots. Before you rush down for the wrong reasons you should know that there is no actual ‘greenery’ in this recipe.

The recipe will be here Sunday, but if you want to try them before that come down and grab pick one up… I’m only going to have a cool dozen up for grabs and they’ll go fast so get on down…