This past month I visited ‘The Cookery” in Picton, Ontario and along with my sister made some delicious food for the day! There were 4 other people joining us and our humble chef and teacher had an amazing menu planned: Barley Days Dark Ale Soup, Apple and Butternut Squash Soup, Tailgate Chili, Beef Bourguignon, Spiced Cheddar Biscuits and Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes. MMMM comfort food! After touring the restaurant style kitchen (our workstations) and perusing the herb garden outside, we were ready to get our hands dirty. (mostly making biscuit dough!) We paired off and got to work.

Here I am standing next to the chef in the herb garden - which produced a lot of herbs for November!

I chose to make the Apple and Butternut squash soup; it was very easy to make and had simple ingredients. Squash, apples, onion, garlic, celery, apple juice and vegetable stock… oh, and a whole cup of butter! The hardest part was waiting over an hour for the squash to roast in the oven. We had a gigantic 6 pound squash to work with – regrettably I only have a picture of the resulting soup which was my favourite dish of the entire day. I had a lot of fun using the restaurant’s industrial sized hand blender. (or “whizzy toy” as Titli Nihan would call it.)

The cheddar biscuits were spiced with Cayenne, not only did they had a spicy aftertaste but they left beautiful flecks of red in the otherwise plain biscuits. These baked up rather quickly in the double wide convection oven.

By the end of the afternoon we were all tired and excited to try out all the food we managed to make! There were tons of leftovers for everyone to bring home. I’m definitely making that soup again!

I’m a huge fan of Japanese curry roux, such as Kokumaro or Golden Curry. I would usually make this meal in the fall or winter because it’s very filling and warm; although I found myself making it a lot this summer after I discovered some new ‘secret ingredients’ that made the curry that much better! The 2 extra ingredients I added were Honey and Coconut Milk. They made the curry very rich and delicious. (It was by no means healthy, haha!) Here are the ingredients I bought for this particular curry which is now my favourite:

1 lb. Ground pork, (ground veal is also pictured but wasn’t used), 2 Medium potatoes, 1/3 large Daikon radish, 1/2 zuchinni, 1/2 onion, garlic, ginger, green chili, honey, coconut milk, nishiki rice.

1. Chop Everything up!

2. Add the onion to a pot, then garlic & green chili. Add the meat. when browned add the rest of the vegetables to soften them up. At this point I added about 4 blocks of curry roux along with the honey, 1/2 cup of coconut milk and some water to cover everything. Let it simmer until thickened nicely. This will yield a large amount of curry which is great for leftovers.

Serve generously with hot rice. yum yum!

(Okay, maybe a few words) Hello Bloggie. Time really does fly. Summer is gone and fall is here!

Halloween is approaching, you know what that means!

I’m quite an avid reader of many food blogs, especially Japanese food blogs. While catching up on a few, I ran into a post by Hiroyuki – Staying with my Parents/両親の家に泊まる where he posted photos of his parents garden as well as 3 different kinds of bento his family ate that day. It’s funny how a certain item can bring back memories. I was instantly remembering my favourite bento I had while in Japan in 2008.

I shared this (very large) bento with a friend while we were on the train to Ama no Hashidate. I bought it for 850 yen in the Kyoto train station just before catching the train so it was very convenient! The price was very reasonable considering the size of the bento, there was so much food that we didn’t finish it between the two of us. If we could buy this quality of food in Canada at train stations that would be amazing. I would make this at home but some of the ingredients are so hard to find, especially shishito peppers.

My favourite drink at the time was this Royal Milk tea and of course my friend got a beer!

I’m glad we ate this lunch on the train as the ride was quite long, I remember switching to a local train at one point. We were smart and took an express train on the way back. All of these memories of my visit come flooding back as soon as I remember a food that I ate or a place that I visited. I think it’s time to plan another trip soon! Of course, the view of Ama no Hashidate was definitely worth the long train ride from Kyoto.