Ginger Garlic Lamb Shoulder Stew

Ginger Garlic Lamb Stew

Ingredients:

- 1.162 kg boneless lamb shoulder  (about 2.5 lbs)  

 Excess fat removed and cut into 2 inch cubes

- 2 tbsp butter

- 1 tsp good olive oil

- 5 large cloves garlic, minced

- 1 piece of ginger, about the size of a man's thumb - minced

- Salt & black pepper (it will cook down so do not over salt!) You could always adjust later

- 2 tbsp Tomato paste - I used half a jar of San Marzano Passata 

- Juice of 1/4 of a lemon (or some kind of acid like a balsamic vinegar)

Directions: 

Heat a heavy bottomed wide pot on high heat, add the butter and brown the lamb pieces on all sides. Turn the heat down and add the minced garlic and ginger then when fragrant add salt, black pepper, tomato and lemon juice/vinegar.  

Add enough water to cover the lamb, drizzle the olive oil and simmer on low under lamb is tender (keep topping it up with water if needed)  It takes about 3 hours. 

In the last hour and when it's tender continue cooking to remove most of the liquid until it's a nice thick flavorful stew. Check for salt and adjust seasoning if needed. 

Enjoy with couscous, rice, pasta or as you see here some Freeka! 

Pink Grapefruit & Olive Salad

Simple Grapefruit black olive salad: 

- 1 Pink or ruby grape fruit

- Small handful Black olives or kalamatas

- Drizzle of Good olive oil

-Squeeze of Lemon juice

- Sprinkling of sea Salt

Cut both sides of the grape fruit off using a sharp knife then place one of the cut sides down on the cutting board. Use the knife to cut strips of the peel off the grape fruit working from top to bottom curving the knife around the grapefruit, rotate the grape fruit so that you manage to remove all the peel.  

Now slice the grapefruit horizontally into medium slices. Place them on a plate.

Using the side of your knife squash the olives on the cutting board and remove the pits. Chop the olives into smaller pieces.

Lay the olives on the grapefruit, drizzle with olive oil and a squeeze of lemon juice.  Just before serving add a sprinkling of sea salt.

Black olives can be bitter, and grapefruit too to some folks but the combination of the two bitters somehow cancels it out and it's quite refreshing.

Enjoy! 

Easy Healthy Changes

Recently I've incorporated some healthy foods into my diet, and I'm excited to share them with you all!!  These days there is so much info out there that it's hard to really keep track of it all and incorporate everything that's "Good and healthy" into one's diet so I've decided along with the lemon water which I posted last year to add  a couple of more foods that are easy to consumed on a daily basis or at least a couple of times of in a week !

Starting with this awesome oil I picked up from our very own St.Lawrence Market here in Toronto, it's a rich pumpkin seed oil extracted from the pumpkin seeds that grow high up in the Austrian Mountains.

When I opened the bottle the aroma just hit me, it's so intense but not bitter and it tastes AMAZING! Check out the colour, you'll know it's good for you just by looking at it!

I received a pamphlet with my bottle to read all about the health benefits, and it's absolutely a must for men as well to ward off prostate cancer, so if you have the means to find some of this stuff  please give it a try.

It's a great dipping oil, or you could take a tablespoon before bed as the man from the shop advised me, he claimed you'll never need to take multivitamin again!

(his words not mine, and I'm not telling anyone to stop taking their vitamins!)

Next up: The walnuts! Rich in omega 3 and one of my all time favourites! I wrote about them in this post here back in Autumn  

Just don't forget to soak them a couple of hours before eating.  If you enjoying having a snack while watching your favourite tv show in the evening then as soon as you wake up set some of these out in a bowl on the counter (I store my walnuts in the freezer) and top them up with some cool water and by evening they'll be ready, just drain and enjoy!  So crunchy, so good!

This one is actually two tips in one, but we'll start with the vibrant olive oil.  Lately I've been learning quite a bit about olive oil from a fabulous local shop that opened up in the GTA (General Toronto Area) by the name of Olive That! They claim to sell the freshest olive oil on earth, it's stored in large stainless steel barrels and you're able to sample all their fresh olives oils before buying (wouldn't an olive oil tasting be a fun thing to do with someone special or a bunch of girl friends?! ) 

Some of the crucial information I've learned about olive oil is that it should be treated more like a juice (juice of an olive fruit) and it has a shelf life of between 6-8 months. It also MUST have a crush date (when the olives were crushed) to understand and estimate the shelf life of the oil, stores are supposed to be able to provide you with all that information and if not then DON'T BUY. 

This really makes me rethink where I'm buying my olive oil and already I've stopped purchasing it from regular supermarkets. 

On to the next healthy food, yogurt or greek yogurt. Studies have shown that consuming yogurt before a meal will prevent fat from being stored in parts of the body (especially the abdomen) - this was mentioned on the Dr.Oz show a while ago.

In our Middle Eastern diet we eat a lot of yogurt already, from breakfast to strained yogurts, as well as a yogurt drink which is just watered down yogurt with a pinch of salt. Perfect accompaniment to the main meal of the day!  

From yogurt to kefir.. in case you're worried about not getting enough probiotic ( like me, always forgetting to take pills and really don't keep track of how much yogurt I'm eating on a regular basis) thankfully there is a solution: Kefir!

I heard that Kefir has 3 X the probiotics of yogurt and taking 1 tbsp a day is all you need.  I bought a container and took a tbsp a day for an entire week, at that point it ran out and now I'm about to pickup my third container next time I'm at the grocery store.

Such an easy tip that has put my mind to rest regarding consuming enough probiotics, and while you're at it give a couple of drops to your pets too (dogs/cats!)

I'm in the process of researching Kefir and even considering purchasing the kefir grain cultures to turn my own milk into kefir, much more economical!  Head over to Cultures of Health if you want to learn more about Kefir and how to make it.

Before reaching for the pasta, or even rice try switching it up with Freeka, it's a Middle Eastern green wheat that has had the husks burned off and this process infuses the grain with a smokey and delicious flavour when cooked.  It's dry, and you can find it almost anywhere now since it's taken off so well over the last year! 

We talk a lot about quinoa too here, and I've incorporated buckwheat flour as well as spelt and even kamut flour into my pantry so far.  

Spelt flour is fabulous in cookies and breads and the other day I threw 1/3 cup of kamut flour into my regular  pancake recipe, it was great! 

We all know all about the health benefits of fish, and unfortunately those of us who don't live near the ocean or have access to fresh clean fish don't always meet our dietary requirements (I'm very guilty of that) 

Growing up we ate fish on a regular basis, it was a family affair where we all sat together picking the flesh from the bone and constantly being reminded by our parents to "Be careful of the small bones". When our tummies were full of the delicious fish everyone had to wash up really well or else our hands would smell fishy for the rest of the week! At the end of the ritual my mother would bring out a tall glass bottle of a lemon "cologne" that my father used to buy from his trips abroad and we'd all line up to get a couple of drops sprinkled on our palms which we'd rub vigorously together. 

Here in Canada fish was almost always frozen, and very expensive. Luckily there are options though, since most people prefer the nice convenient fillets whole fishes or lesser favored options like mackerel and sardines were decently priced and that's what we bought from time to time. 

So my last tip is to eat more fish, more of those healthy oily fishes (try to avoid anything with a high mercury level) and since we're all living in a time now when our oceans are unstable please try to seek sustainable options. 

I hope you enjoyed this post as much as I enjoyed writing about these foods. 

A.Vogel BioSnackySprouts Challenge

Look what arrived in the mail!!!

Stay tuned - Between June 20th and June 30th I'm participating in the A.Vogel biosnackysprouts challenge! So get ready everyone..  On June 20th, Let's start sprouting!!

Feels like Spring

When the lilacs bloom it feels like spring time! These are my mother's favourite flowers and I'm always so envious of people who have them in their yards because I rarely get up close to these gorgeous buds however today I spotted some wild ones growing REALLY close to my home so I ventured out with gloves and a scissors and collected this bouquet.

Just loving them!

Here are the spring time plantains from - of all places - the driveway!!  After the rain fall these little guys just popped up so I collected them before they became tough or contaminated.  Plantain is another weed, you've probably seen it and it is an acquired taste (bitter and fibrous) but with a little garlic and butter they were quite tasty (and of course healthy!!)

- 2 cups tender plantain leaves (plucked from a nice clean path in your yard or foraged in nature)
- Knob of butter (drop of olive oil)
- 1 garlic clove
- Salt & pepper to taste

Water or stock

Heat the pan, add butter and olive oil, saute garlic until fragrant and then sautee your greens. Season and add water (or stock) and simmer until tender.

Enjoy!

Hinote Sushi - Mississauga

Salmon and Tuna sashimi with wakami salad form Hinote Sushi in Mississauga, really enjoyed it!

Foraging for edibles: Part 2 - Dead nettles

I know the subject of wild edibles, foraging and eating weeds can be tricky, you want to make sure you are properly identifying the plant and not poisoning yourself in the process which is why I'm keeping these posts as simple as I can, and doing one green per post so that you're not getting mixed up or confused.

Today I'm cooking with the Dead nettle, and this variety is not like your stinging nettle, which means you can touch it and pick it and it won't hurt you.  Stinging nettle is used as well in cooking/medicinal and tea preparations but we'll talk about that another day.

This variety of dead nettle, known as "golden anniversary". It grows in my backyard close to the ground and seems to cover the flower beds.  I'm not sure who planted it or where it came from but it is edible and here I'm using it in a German gnocchi like dumpling recipe.

Bubespitzle:

Ingredients:

1 and a half large russet potato, boiled and set aside to cool and "dry up"

150 g  flour + more if needed

2 large eggs (set out on the counter, at room temp) 

Pinch of salt

Grating of fresh nutmeg

Peel russet potatoes and add the yellow flesh to a large mixing bowl. Add remaining ingredients and knead into a dough. This is best done by hand, even though things can get a big sticky. If it’s too sticky, add a bit more flour.

To form tear off small bits of dough, a small balls, and then place in between your palms and begin rolling your top palm outwards away from you, the ball should turn into a long shape and then set aside until all of them are ready to go into the pot.

Boil a large pot of salted water on the stove top.  Add the dumplings and they're done as soon as they begin to float.  Drain and set aside. After letting them dry off a bit, brown in a pan with butter or vegetable oil.

For the nettles, wash them and chop finely like an herb on the cutting board.

- 1 bunch nettles

- 1 small knob butter

- 1 small clove garlic, minced

- Salt and Black pepper

Heat a saucepan and add the butter, sautee the garlic until fragrant on a medium low heat and add the nettles at this point. Cook until they're tender and wilted like a spinach.

When ready to serve add the dumplings into the sauce and sautee, you can add a little bit of the starchy boiling water to form a "sauce" and then check for seasoning and serve immediately.

Oh and feel free to check out my previous foraged edible post on dandelions