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The Kitchen Shelf

Recipes
Tomato-Walnut and Cilantro Bruschetta
Based loosely on muhammara, a classic Turkish relish, this spread is spectacular on simple grilled bread as a lunch or an appetizer. It works equally well as a sauce for grilled or roasted fish. In corn season, add a handful of grilled or roasted corn kernels; in pepper season, add diced roasted peppers. Serves 4. From Foodshed: An Edible Alberta Alphabet (TouchWood, 2012.)
Summer Cobbler with Buttermilk Crust
After making this favourite almost daily in my restaurant, Foodsmith, I now take this freezer-friendly cobbler to potlucks, year in and year out. In the summer, I use fruit fresh from the market. In the winter, I use frozen fruits and berries, or apples and pears enlivened with simmered dried fruit.
Spatchcocked (Grilled/Roasted Butterflied) Chicken
From The Food Lab by J. Kenji López-Alt. Butterflying equalizes the cooking time needed for breast meat and legs.
Sourdough Chocolate Cake
When I couldn’t visit friends willing to adopt my sourdough starter extras and couldn’t stand the idea of tossing out the discard when I made bread, I went hunting for ways to use up my excess starter. This is adapted from a recipe I found on the King Arthur Flour website. Yes, it has two toppings. Make both.
Sourdough Bread
Three ingredients. Magic. This is days in the making, but worth the wait. For best flavour, use locally raised flours. (I use Red Fife flour for no more than one-fourth of my total flour.) I use a scale (in metric) when I make bread for the best results. Adapted from Chad Robertson’s Tartine.
Sheet Pan Supper
This supper has endless variations, and is ideal for all of us who adore vegetables. I use it to cook up a variety of vegetable dishes simultaneously, with or without a protein roasting on top.

dee’s Writing Life
Winter Vegetables
Our golden retriever, Jake, is lying at my feet, waiting while I write. He won’t let the clock slip past eight AM in midwinter without getting up and nudging me. Sure enough, on the stroke of eight he’s beside me, his beautiful head in my lap, insisting we get moving. Time to get outside, throw a ball and run around.
Celebrate! Add Carrot Pickle to Your Festive Table or Gift Boxes
All month I’ve been pestering Mom for stories. You’d think I was five again. But no. Truth is, we’ve been in closer proximity than usual. She’s recovering from glaucoma surgery, which has eliminated lifting, bending over, or carrying anything heavier than a supper plate. So I am at her house, lifting, bending over, and carrying.
Fishers and Farmers
Early fall, and I am on a West Coast holiday with Mom, revisiting the foods, places, and faces of her youth. Mom is a retired dryland farmer, and like me, she misses the ready access to fish and seafood that we enjoyed during our earlier coastal life while Dad was in the Canadian Air Force. So on this west coast vacation, we eat west coast fish every day – wild sockeye salmon, halibut, tuna, spot prawns, ling cod, rockfish, sablefish.
Water
Dave is mourning the passing of the lake that almost surrounded our house for seven years. It covered fifteen acres at its peak, in fact a large slough, but ‘lake’ dignified what was a difficult situation. And now he mourns its loss.
The Alchemy of Sourdough Bread
Gluten and wheat intolerance has been on my family’s radar for decades. My sister Lee gave up eating all wheat-based foods in her early twenties after a childhood and teenager-hood filled with bellyaches and gastrointestinal distress. Fifteen years ago, my own body started to experience similar negative reactions to bread.
Cheese and Virtual Rescue Missions
Life in a pandemic takes its toll in many ways. One of the noticeable changes is how we spend our leisure time. No trips this year – not that I was actively planning, and not that I go often, but I’d love to see Europe again. I want to see Asia, too, and Australia, Africa, South America, more of North America. But not under these conditions. Not now.
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