Recipes Trending

This was experimental, and Im a little worried that it may be a weapon of mass tastebud destruction, but for those who dont mind playing chicken with their sinuses and have a lot of cayenne or other hot chiles, it may be worth a try.

I dont know what will happen to the heat level in this stuff as it sits. I can tell you that right now, this is probably about 20 years supply because it will need to be doled out by the 1/4 teaspoonful. Yes, this stuff is HOT. You have been warned.

I have to say that I think my recent plan of washing my hands with toothpaste when I have been handling hot chiles really works. I had only one latex glove (must buy more) so I used it on my left hand and held the knife with my right hand. Still, these chiles were hot as hades and I didnt have so much as a twinge afterwards. I cant believe I didnt get so much as a speck of capsaicin on my hands, so Im going to suggest that you wash your hands with toothpaste right after handling hot chiles - but for pitys sake, wear gloves too. Leave the toothpaste on your hands for a minute or two before rinsing it off, and really work it in.

6 125-ml jars
1 hour prep time


1 1/2 cups diced carrot (1 large)
1/4 cup water
200 grams (2 cups chopped) fresh red cayenne chiles
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup sugar
1 cup vinegar
3 heads garlic

Put the jars into a canner with water to cover, and bring them to a boil. Boil for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare the sauce. Peel and dice the carrot, and cook it in the water, covered, until tender. While that happens, cut the stems from the cayennes and cut them into 1 cm slices. (Wear gloves!) Add them, with their seeds, to the carrots. Add the salt, sugar and vinegar.

Separate the heads of garlic and peel the cloves, and add them to the pan. Cook for about 5 minutes. Put the lids and rings in a pot covered with water on to boil for 5 minutes.

Remove the contents of the pan to a blender, and blend until smooth. Pack into the prepared jars and seal with the prepared lids and rings. Return the sealed jars to the boiling water bath for 5 minutes. Remove and let cool. Test for seals, and label.

The holiday party season seems to have already started around here, and I have already had a hankering for some good bean soup with lots of flavour but not too rich, to give myself a break from too many "treats". So here it is. These were the Blue Lake dried beans from our garden, but any white bean will work well; the usual pea or navy bean being just fine.

Good tasting yeast (you can get it at Bulk Barn) is a bit of a secret ingredient for soups, sauces and gravies when you want to go vegetarian. Its flavour is rather chicken-like. The leftover hard rinds from Parmesan cheese should always be saved, well wrapped and stashed in the freezer, for vegetarian soup making as well. Like soup bones, they lend their flavour to the broth then are taken out and discarded. At that point they are likely tasteless fatty blobs of no interest. But the soup they leave behind is fabulous.

8 servings
2 hours cooking time - 30 minutes prep time


2 cups dried white beans
4 cups chopped leeks
2 cups chopped carrots
6 to 8 cloves of garlic (1 head)
2 tablespoons mild vegetable oil
75 to 100 grams (3 to 4 ounces) Parmesan cheese rinds
2 tablespoons good tasting yeast
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 teaspoons savory

Rinse the beans and remove any bad ones. Put them in a large pot with water to cover them generously. Bring to a boil, then turn off the heat and cover the pot. Let rest for a few hours, then repeat the process. After three or 4 times, the beans will be mostly cooked.

Rinse the leeks, trim and chop them. Rinse them again, and drain well. Peel and chop the carrots. Peel and mince the garlic.

Heat the oil in a large skillet and cook the leeks and carrots, until softened and reduced in volume; about 6 or 7 minutes. Add them to the beans. Top up the water to be sure the soup is of a satisfactory thickness. Add the Parmesan cheese rinds, yeast, salt, pepper and savory.

Simmer for 30 or 40 minutes. Stir regularly to prevent sticking. Remove the cheese rinds before serving. As ever, bean soup is much better the second and subsequent days than the first.




Last year at this time I made Schchi; Russian Cabbage Soup. 

On Sunday we took a tour of local farms put on by Savour Stratford Perth County Culinary Week. Our first stop was Augusts Harvest, where we were greeted by owner Warren Ham. He explained that they grow about 10 acres of garlic, about 10 acres of shallots. Hes been growing garlic for 21 years, and this year is his first with a general vegetable CSA, for which he grows 60 varieties of vegetables.


We started out in his barn/shed where much of the action is taking place at this time of year. The machinery above is used to remove the outer layer of dirty skin from the garlic heads, leaving them smooth and clean. Cases of packed garlic surround the cleaner.



Warren showed us his garlic curing device; garlic is put in chipboard box, and as the moist warm air rises from it, it is pulled out by the fan on top.

Warren explained that the garlic they grow is allium longicuspis, a very ancient form. It has fewer cloves than more modern varieties of garlic, having only 4 to 6 cloves. It is, in fact, our old friend "Music". Did you know that fresh garlic has a higher sugar content than grapes?! I didnt.


Next to the curer sacks of garlic cloves await planting. Cases of processed garlic products line the shelves behind them. The garlic heads, by the way, are all cracked (broken apart) by hand. Machinery exists to do this, but a lot of it gets bruised and damaged. Its planted by hand too, for the same reason. However, it can be harvested by being undercut and lifted mechanically. It then is left to cure in the field for 10 days before coming in to be cleaned, finished in the box curer, sized and crated. Much of it is sold to the local Korean market.



Ive spoken a bit about garlic bulbils on the blog before. Garlic is interesting in that it does not flower or produce seeds. Garlic is normally propagated by breaking the heads into cloves and planting the cloves in the fall. Like daffodils, they will form roots in the cool late fall and early winter weather, then go dormant until the spring. In the early summer, as they grow, the clove of garlic will expand and split into more cloves of garlic, ultimately forming a new head.

However, this vegetative reproduction (cloning, basically) means that any viruses or stubborn fungi or bacteria the cloves pick up over time tend to get reproduced as well, and over a few years the garlic can really deteriorate. You can solve this problem by sending sound garlic to a laboratory to be reproduced through tissue culture. However, there is an easier and cheaper way to revitalize your garlic.

While they dont produce flowers, garlics do produce a long, looping flower stalk, generally known as a scape. Usually these are removed. This achieves two things; the plants energy is redirected to produce a larger head of garlic in the ground, and the scape can be sold as the tasty delicacy that it is. However, if the scape is allowed to develop, in the fall the garlic will be topped by a head of little bulbils - tiny garlic cloves, identical to the cloves growing underground except in size. Because they are above ground and not in contact with the soil, they do not accumulate the problems that the underground cloves and heads may suffer from.

So, every few years some of the garlic is allowed to form bulbils. The bulbils are planted, and the first year they form a single round clove of garlic. Thats what is in the bushel basket in the photo above. These will be planted again, and next summer they will form heads of garlic. After 4 years of planting, the garlic will be fully mature and can be treated as usual.



Once we had been shown the process that the harvested garlic goes through, we went out and looked at the garden. Augusts Harvest also runs a CSA, and rows of peppers, tomatoes, Jerusalem artichokes and other vegetables were still there, although the brassicas had been harvested.


Warren Ham was a prairie boy originally, and he still grows a favourite fruit of his childhood - Saskatoon berries. The shrubs have been moved recently, so are still quite small.


Theres all those squash we saw at the Garlic Festival the day before. Beyond them, the garlic fields are full of mustard. The mustard is grown until the seed pods begin to ripen, then it is plowed into the ground. The strong mustard kills some of the pests of garlic, in particular nematodes and, I would think, acts as a green manure as well. I was chatting about this with Warrens lead hand at the garlic festival, and Im going to try the simplified version he was recommending; mixing powdered hot mustard seed with water and watering it into the soil. Im going to try this around my turnips and rutabagas, which are somewhat prone to getting worm damage. It might work and even if it doesnt, I will have only lost a few pennies worth of mustard and a little time, and no harm will be done to the soil.



However, its an action-packed day so its time to get back on the bus and head on to the next farm...