The very first wild raspberries and Saskatoon berries in our yard
are ripe this weekend. How wonderful wild berries are; they are
smaller but so much more intensely flavoured than commercial
cultivars.

And the leaves make a nice addition to tea and herbal tisanes, both
hot and cold.

We also found a little patch of Labrador Tea growing in the back
yard that we had not noticed before. We will definitely be
harvesting it.

We had a young great niece stay with us over the weekend as the rest
of her family were travelling but she flew back to Yellowknife early
on her own for a summer job start-up in the morning.

I usually start off Saturday brunch with a large loaded omelette and
had bacon, ham and sausage on hand but it turns out that the girl
doesn't like pork! So I made a vegetarian potato and onion omelette
with double cheese instead. A sad little porkless omelette.
(Actually it was pretty good.) I garnished it with a mixture of
radish and cilantro leaves and flowers which was both pretty and
tasty.

I recently discovered another artesanal cheese from one of Quebec's
many independent cheesemakers at Loblaws. Those guys are so small
that they couldn't supply every store all the time but selected
stores will carry one at a time on a rotational basis. (Yellowknife
is 15% Francophone, mostly from Quebec, so we get to have one of
those select stores.)

I Googled it after I purchased it ... Cendre des Pres (Ash Meadows)
Cheese is produced by the Domaine Feodal Dairy by Guy Dessureault
and Lise Mercier in Berthierville, which is a town between Montreal
and Trois-Rivieres on the north shore of the Saint Lawrence River

They originally made a raw milk cheese but today's commercial
product is made with pasteurised milk. They make other cheeses as
well.

It is a soft cheese with a white bloomy rind, much like Camembert,
that gets streaked with brownish spots when aged. My sample was
extra brown as I bought it at half price after the sell by date and
didn't get around to sampling it for another 2 weeks. It had an
aroma of mushrooms, sour cream, butter and honey and a slightly
sweet taste.

There is a line of blue-grey maple wood ash running through it that
gives it an unusual flavour. The same technique is used by Fritz
Kaiser, the Customs Officer semi hard cheesemaker who I wrote about
earlier.

It is said that the tradition of ashed cheeses in France comes from
the method of preserving a small batch of milk curds overnight by
covering it with a layer of ash and then adding more curds on top
the second day. Not an issue any longer with refrigeration but the
tradition of ash layered cheese remains today with a handful of
cheesemakers. Additionally, the ash is basic and neutralizes acidity
during ripening. The ash used is totally edible.

This weekend I also roasted the first of our two legs of lamb. I
rubbed it with olive oil and then a spice blend of black pepper,
mustard powder, garlic and mint leaves. (The next one is going to
get a rosemary treatment.) I popped it into a cold oven on a rack in
an uncovered roaster with 2 cups of water in the bottom. (I never
pre-heat the oven except for some tricky little delicate baking
items, just adjust the timing, to save on power.) I set it for 450 F
which took 20 minutes to achieve, continued for 20 more minutes
before reducing the heat to 325 F for 45 minutes and then checking
it for doneness and basting it every 15 minutes until I hit 130 F
internally. I then let it rest for half an hour as the oven cooled
down. It turned out a lovely medium. While it rested I made two side
dishes. One was stewed lentils seasoned with cumin and chile paste,
the other a cabbage salad. Not cole slaw with mayo but a mixed
vegetable salad with a vinaigrette: shredded cabbage, diced onion,
celery and cucumber, grated carrot, chopped radish leaves and a
vinaigrette made with olive oil, vinegar, pickle brine, pepper,
summer savory and mustard powder. Everything went very nicely with
everything else.




Cheers

Jim


... Given enough thrust pigs CAN fly a little bit.

___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
* Origin: Fidonet Since 1991 www.doccyber.org bbs.docsplace.org (1:135/392)