The start of BBQ season

 We started BBQ season just right with this super easy and tasty feast, I was inspired by some fabulous produce from the St.Lawrence Market of fresh plump favas and wild garlic ... truly one of the best things I've eaten in a while!

It's also the first time I do chicken hearts on the grill, and I must say I'll never go back to cooking them any other way. This method was recommended to me by a friend and it's just DELICIOUS!

Enjoy!

Grilled Fava Beans

Detailed recipe here

Toss the fava beans in their skins with olive oil and salt.

Heat your grill to a medium heat and grill the beans, flipping once to char both sides. The objective is to maintain a medium heat and allow the beans to steam inside the shell, they should be tender and easy to pop out of their skins.  Squeeze with lemon and enjoy!

Chicken hearts shishkebob

Chicken hearts

Worstershire sauce

Salt

Olive oil

Toss, and marinade briefly. Skewer on presoaked wooden skewers of metal skewers and grill until done.


Wild Garlic

Brush with oil and season with salt

Grill until soft. Remove the garlic from the grill and add to a bowl, seal with plastic wrap. You need to let these steam to tenderize.
Before eating remove the outer layers and eat the soft insides, season with more salt if needed.


Grilled Artichokes:

Follow the instructions here and enjoy!

Throw a couple of lemon halves on the grill too, they're perfect for squeezing over this feast

Leg of lamb: Super easy boneless leg of lamb, preseasoned from New Zealand spring lamb and simply grilled on medium (350 F) on the BBQ for about 35 minutes.

Easy Lamb Pie

One of my favourite recipes that I learned from my mum is to simple add raw spiced meat onto bread, be it a rustic spread out dough, already baked flatbread, or puffy pita, like the greek kind and I've been making these more and more because it's kind of a two step recipe with two ingredients and who doesn't love that!

You might have seen these mini pitas in early 2013 when I made these while my windows were being installed, I did a video on it too.
On busy weeknights I do a lot of flat open faced pitas where I put the spiced (its' much better with onion I think!) ground lamb or beef onto a pita and bake until the meat is done and the juices have soaked the bread beneath, it is so good!

This is a rough recipe to make your lamb "sausage" or spiced ground meat, it's better if you let it marinade in the fridge for at least a day

Raw ground lamb

Finely minced onion and garlic

Salt & Black pepper

Chopped mint

Lemon zest

Lemon juice

Arabic 7 spice (optional) 

Sumaq (optional) 

Focaccia breads

Cut the breads horizontally, either all the way through or leaving one side attached slightly

With a spoon stuff the raw ground spiced lamb into the bread and spread it out, keep it a nice even layer but be generous because meats shrink as they get cooked. 

Wrap the sandwiches in parchment lined foil and bake on 400 on the top shelf of the oven until the meat is done, you may need to flip them so one side of the bread doesn't get too crispy. 

There is enough fat in the lamb that you dont need any oil, if you're using beef then you may need some olive oil. 

The objective is just to get the meat cooked and the bread to stay soft.  

Remove from the oven and serve with a salad! 

Enjoy!

Strawberry Rhubarb pull apart Bread

For National Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Day I wanted to do something a little different, and since I was so taken by the delicious and tender dough from the Polish fruit pastry pies I made a couple of years ago I knew this was what I was making!

The inspiration for the style of bread art just came through browsing the net and seeing an interesting savoury Hungarian bread made in this fashion, definitely going to be doing something savoury with this cool design.

Strawberry Rhubarb pull apart bread

Dough - Using a Jagodzianki Polish recipe by Ania's kitchen

Mix the following and set aside for 20 minutes:

1/2 cup of lukewarm milk
1 1/2 tsp of instant yeast
2 tbs of white all purpose flour
2 tbs of white granulated sugar


Mix the following in your kitchen aid bowl:

2 cups of white all purpose flour
1/3 cup of white granulated sugar
Pinch of salt

Have these handy:
2 eggs
1 tsp of pure vanilla extract

1/4 cup of melted butter, cooled


In to the bowl of your stand mixer add all the ingredients for the
dough (flour, sugar, salt, eggs, vanilla) except melted butter. Add proofing yeast mixture and mix with a paddle
attachment until all is well combined. Add melted butter and mix for
another couple of minutes.


Spray with oil and cover with a kitchen towel. Let rise until doubled
in size ( around 2 hours).



Filling:

Roasted Strawberry and rhubarb

1 cup rhubarb, chopped
3 cups chopped strawberries

Sprinkling of sugar

Lay out the fruit in a single layer in a glass baking pan (like a lasagna pan) and bake on 425 F until they're all syrupy and roasted/caramelized. Keep an eye on it so it doesn't burn.

Once it's done it'll be pretty mushy like a jam, add more sugar, enough to your taste and a squeeze of lemon juice (about 2 tsp)

Set aside.


Assemble:

Sprinkle the dough with a little bit of flour and knead with a dough
attachment until the dough is smooth and elastic. (around 5 minutes).
Transfer the dough on to your working surface sprinkled with some
flour. Knead it few more times and then divide it in two and roll into two circle on a parchment paper.

Spread the rhubarb strawberry mix onto the first round without going too far onto the edge, kind of like making a pizza, leave a rim.

Put the other round on top gently and seal the ends all around.

Cover with plastic wrap and allow it to rise for 20 minutes.

Now place a glass as your guide in the middle and start cutting strips like the rays of the sun around the whole dough, use a sharp knife to cut through the dough nice and neatly.

Begin pulling one piece slightly and twisting twice clockwise or counter clockwise depending on your preference. Lay the piece back down and begin with the next until all of them are twisted.

Beat one egg and brush over the entire top, then sprinkle some sugar.

Bake on 360 for 20 minutes, be sure to check so the bottom doesn't brown too fast, you may need to double up on baking trays.

Rosemary EVOO hair treatment

So a couple of weeks ago I made the fresh rhubarb mouth wash that was featured on the Dr.OZ show from Bryce Wylde and Frankie Flower's new collaboration book on health and plants.  This blend of rosemary and Olive oil is meant for preventing hair loss by increasing the blood flow to the roots of hair and scalp. 

Not that I'm balding I figured why not give it a try!  For those of you who don't know, I've suffered from psoriasis from an early age and it still remains to be on my scalp so from time to time I will do a warm EVOO hair treatment, and when I saw this I figured why not throw some rosemary in and see how it goes!

Recipe:
1/2 cup EVOO - don't be afraid to use the good stuff - Warn it in a small sauce pan on low for just a few seconds until you can stick your ringer in and it feels warm to touch.  This way it absorbs in the scalp much easier.

A couple of sprigs of fresh rosemary, remove the leaves and leave the stalk behind.

Blend it all in a blender until it looks like the following:

At this point I would strongly suggest running it through a fine sieve to get rid of all the woody rosemary or else it will make the biggest mess in your bathroom.  Use the strained rosemary/evoo mixture and put it all over your hair.

How long until you'd wash it off?  Well, I usually do my EVOO treatment for about 2 hours minimum so just wrap your head up and forget about it.  It's best to do on not so clean hair, so whenever you're closer to showering and maybe on a weekend.

Afterwards you'll smell like rosemary, which is nice!

If you have any leftover in your blender, maybe you wanna make some rosemary evoo potatoes or something ;)