The End

Well with 200 posts under my belt and a world of work in environmental activism in front of me, I'm sad to say that this is the end of the Stone Spoon blog. I think it'll still exist, lost in the folds of cyberspace, but I won't be adding anything new though I haven't stopped my search for good, healthy food.

For anyone whose interested, I'll be moving to the Post Carbon Greater Moncton Blog at http://postcarbonmoncton.blogspot.com/

Take care and happy eating!

The 200th post!!!

It's been almost 2 years since I started writing the Stone Spoon Food Blog. Alot has changed during that time. Much food was eaten. Many things were tried.

Just the other day I read back some posts and realised that this blog is like a journal in food. I read a post and it transports me back to that day or period. It's amazing the power food can have on memory. I'm sure many things would have been lost to time if not for this blog.

I don't know what my intentions are with food. I've been disenchanted with the idea of penetrating the food industry. Restaurants are a messy business and a restaurant owner does everything but the fun stuff (they mostly crunch numbers and figure out how not to get dragged under by astronomical and uncontrollable food and labour costs).

Maybe one day I'll have a little café. Or a sort of one day per month banquet where I can just make the food I want at the intervals I want. Who knows!

One thing I know is that from tracking the traffic on this blog, I have hits from around the world. I think it's great that everyone can see what's going on in my kitchen halfway across the world in a seemingly insignificant corner of nowhere. I hope my blog is useful even though I tend not to write down recipes in the traditional cookbook manner. It derives from the fact that I mostly don't follow recipes anymore. I just take the ingredients and go. Unless I'm making a dough or pastries of some sort. Those buggers are tricky.

Well here's to another 200 posts. Take a drink for me wherever you are. Cheers.

Cast-iron pan tomato, onion marmalade, walnut and blue cheese pizza

There's this Canadian celebrity chef called Bob Blumer. Bob's a bit of an excentric. But in a good way. He makes recipes like "coconut-crusted pork tenderloin lollipops" which are actually balls stuck on the tip of bamboo squewers which are themselves held in place by a watermelon. If you've ever seen his show The Surreal Gourmet you know that it gets ever crazier than that. So when I found a cookbook Bob cowrote called Pizza on the Grill it didn't strike me as odd.

I did a few pizzas on the grill this past summer but right now my grill is stuck behind a mound of snow. So the cast-iron pan was called in.

I started by preparing the ingredients. The most time consuming was the onion marmalade. For this you need to fry a mound of yellow onions in olive oil, butter and salt. You cook covered for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. You then cook another 20 minutes uncovered till the onions are golden and sweet. This is really good stuff. Almost good enough to eat on toast in the morning....almost.

I then made my basic pizza dough (see earlier posts), rolled it out, sprinkled with cornmeal and friend in some oil in the cast-iron pan. I think I was afraid of burning it but I really should have 1) let it cook a bit longer before flipping and 2) used a bit more oil. However, it worked. I cooked one side, placed the onion marmalade, halved cherry tomatoes (which were supposed to be roasted but I really didn't feel like roasting a handful of tomatoes for 2 hours in an oven...not very energy-efficient), and crumbled market bought goat blue cheese on this cooked side.

For the second side of the dough, I popped the whole thing in the oven for 15 minutes or so till the crust was golden, the cheese had melted and the tomatoes had cooked. You then sprinkle on some lightly toasted walnuts or pecans and enjoy. This is a really great combination for a pizza. Like the section in the cookbook it comes from, it's "Marvelous & Meatless".

Thanks Bob...and cowriter Elizabeth Karmel...

Fried Smelts and Buttercup Squash

The Maritimes are a wonderful place for seafood or any kind of fish really. I got a huge bag of smelts (beheaded and gutted) for only 5$. Now that's a bargain. Plus I wanted to see how adventurous I was when it came to whole fish.

First I did the easy part; the side dish. I'd never eaten buttercup squash before (not to be confused with butterNut) but it really has to be one of my favourites. I halved it, scooped out the seeds, smeared it with olive oil, butter, salt and pepper after which I roasted it in a 350 degree oven for a good 45 minutes. My girlfriend said that it's even better than potatoes or sweet potatoes or any other squash we've ever had. I have to say that I agree.

For the smelts, it was pretty simple though really hectic. First I patted the fish dry. Every single one. There were at least 30 of the little buggers. But that wasn't the hardest part. I then had to dip each one in lemon juice, shake in some seasoned panko breadcrumbs (you could also just use flour) and fry. There was alot to fry. And I kept having to add more oil. And there were burnt pieces of breading smouldering in the bottom. And there were alot of fish so after awhile I just grabbed handfuls, plunged them into the lemon juice and dumped them in the breadcrumb bag before frying them. I was getting burnt by popping oil and the whole kitchen was a mess. Plus the fire alarm was about to go off.

The juice, however, was worth the squeeze. Smelts are a nice light white freshwater fish that I find resembles the walleye from back home. Plus they're fun to pick apart since you've got to seperate the fins and the spinal cord from the meat...unless you feel really adventurous and you eat the fins...I did. Just squeeze a little lemon and enjoy. All that fish for only 5$! Someone lost money somewhere along the line.

Coffee Smoothie

Well there really isn't much to explain about this recipe. Any half intelligent person with eyes looking at the above photo and the title of this post would deduce that this is chilled coffee (leftovers from the morning), blended with sugar, cream and ice. It's as simple as that. But quite good and pretty different from it's hot morning counterpart.

PLEASE NOTE - If you give this to children, make sure to send them to the neighbours house after or something.

Chakchouka or Peppers with tomatoes and eggs

Apparently, this recipe is from the Greater Maghreb. I assume this is in Northern Africa since that is what the cookbook is; North African Cooking by Tess Mallos. There are photos of tagines and paper in purple and green. Really cool book and pretty good recipes.

This particular recipe couldn't be simpler but I did have to eat it alone since my girlfriend doesn't do bell peppers. But I got up early in the morning, sliced a green and red pepper, friend them in olive oil, added 2 cloves of garlic, 2 large chopped tomatoes, a good tablespoon of Harissa (one of the best sauces ever!), and a bit of chopped fresh parsley. You let this cook till everything's nice and tender - about 15 minutes - after which you crack an egg or two into the mix. Cook the eggs, sprinkle with paprika and eat with a nice hunk of bread.

Light, simple and delicious.

Goat Ribs

I'm being converted to goat meat. Once again it comes from my goat raising friends at "Au fond des bois". These particular delights have a nice lean quality with all the bone munching fun associated with ribs. You really have to dig your teeth in. As a bonus, you've got a nice little chunk of meat which - as the pork I've previously mentioned - is probably the tenderloin of the goat. Anyways I hereby endorse goat meat.