Mashed Cauliflower & Potatoes

Mashed cauliflower was something I had to try just to see if I could possibly like it and if anyone I knew and loved could possibly like it as well. Cauliflower is one of my least favorite vegetables to eat. Its always the vegetable that gets left behind on vegetable platter and at my age I can't eat it raw anymore. If I do eat cauliflower I like it as a soup and preferably pureed.

Since I like my cauliflower in a soup and pureed and after looking at images of mashed cauliflower every where on the Internet so I decided to give it a try. But I couldn't go completely with just cauliflower and those I love, they love their mashed potatoes so its a big risk. I mean I risk them looking at me sideways, they will wonder if I have turned granola eater and why have I replaced mashed potatoes with mashed cauliflower, a vegetable that gets left behind on vegetable platters for a vegetable that everyone knows and loves, the potatoe.

So I paired the cauliflower with a couple of potatoes and it was actually good, I mean it was really good. And those I love ate it up. Not too sure they will do that again but I will cook and serve this dish again, if only for myself.

Mashed Cauliflower and Potatoes

1 head of cauliflower 

2-3 potatoes 

salt & pepper 

chopped parsley 

butter or olive oil

Method:

Wash and cut cauliflower into medium even sized pieces and peel and cut potatoes the same size as cauliflower. Boil potatoes first for about 10 minutes and then add cauliflower to the pot and cook until cauliflower is done. Mash and season with salt, pepper, parsley, butter or olive oil. I poured a little extra olive oil on top of the mashed cauliflower. 

Oxtail & Barley Soup

Since I started this blog I have made several different soups. Very few have made it to the blog. Native families love their soups and they will make a soup out of European dishes such as bangers & mash. My grandfather made a soup with bangers, potatoes and onions or a very soupy gravy made with bangers and onions served over mashed potatoes. My husband makes excellent Menudo, he loves his tripe, he also makes a soup only a Native person can really love and that's dry meat soup. Soups are popular they remind you of your grandmother, mother, family gatherings, feasts and ceremonies. 

Oxtail & Barley soup is a family favourite so when I was making this soup for this blog I had to photograph the soup in the evening using the lighting in the kitchen. While I am trying to find a good lighting source the soup pot was being attacked. My mother ate the rest of this soup for breakfast the next day. This recipe was adapted from the cookbook, Odd Bits: how to cook the rest of the animal, by Jennifer McLagan, and is inspired by Vietnamese Pho soup. 

Oxtail & Barley Soup

3 lbs of oxtails (I used 2 packages of oxtails)

12 cups of water

2 star anise

1 cinnamon stick 

2 1/2 large onions 

1 carrot

2 celery stalks 

3/4 cup of barley

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F. Season your oxtails with salt & pepper and layer in a roasting pan and cook until brown, about 30 to 40 minutes. Once oxtails have been removed from the roasting pan add the onions to the roasting pan and broil until a very dark brown. If the edges of the onion is burnt that's OK. 
2. Place brown oxtails to a stock pot filled with 12 cups of cold water. Add star anise and cinnamon and bring to a simmer. 
3. Once the onions are browned, deglaze the roasting pan on the stove with either some water or red wine and add the onions and the roasting pan juices to the stock pot. Simmer for 3 to 4 hrs.
4. Dice carrot, celery and 1/2 onion. 
5. After 3 to 4 hrs, strain the oxtails, onions and spices from the broth. Add the broth back into the stock pot and skim broth of any excess fat you don't want. Replace Oxtails back into the rich brown broth with 3/4 cup of barley and cook until the barley is done. 
6. Barley usually takes anywhere between 30 to 40 minutes to cook you can add the diced vegetables with the barley if you don't mind softly cooked vegetables and in soup I don't think it matters, but if you like a little crunch to your veggies then add the veggies 10-15 minutes once the barely is cooking. 

Wild Rice Porridge with Coconut Milk

This recipe is adapted from the cookbook, that I ordered online, from Amazon, Original Local: Indigenous Foods, Stories, and Recipes from the Upper Midwest, by Heid E. Erdrich. The books, I bought two, finally came in yesterday. I ordered the cookbook, Original Local because of the many recipes that highlight an important Ojibwa food source, wild rice.

So far I have learned a few things about wild rice. Wild rice that is hand harvested by Ojibwa people with canoes is called manoomin, meaning "good seed," and is very different in texture, flavor, and appearance than cultivated wild rice. Cultivated wild rice is harvested using air boats by non-Ojibwa companies and/or people. Cultivated wild rice is shiny in appearance, curls when its cooked, and has a different texture, taste and aroma. Meaning cultivated wild rice is not as good as original manoomin. Most Canadians and Americans who do not live by the Great Lakes areas or river systems that grow wild rice so we buy mostly cultivated wild rice.

The wild rice that I used in he following recipe is cultivated wild rice from a Canadian owned company called Canoe, that harvests lake shore wild rice by air boat. Although, the author and cook, Heid Erdrich recommends that you should not use cultivated wild rice in her recipes. I choose to use what is available to me knowing that the recipes I make and the rice that I use may not be as flavorful as manoomin and cooking times will be off.

Wild rice is also a super healthy food, I found out that 1 cup of wild rice contains, 6.5 grams of protein, is loaded with B-vitamins, zinc and magnesium.

Wild Rice Porridge with Coconut Milk 

2 cups of cooked wild rice

1 can of coconut milk, reserve 1/2 cup 

1/2 teaspoon of allspice or cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1/4 cup of maple syrup-I used 2 tablespoons

1/4 chopped dried berries (cranberry, blueberry, cherry etc) or use raisins

1/4 cup chopped hazelnuts, walnuts, pecans, almonds, toasted

1. Using a medium saucepan, combine rice, milk, allspice or cinnamon, salt and vanilla. Over medium heat simmer until mixture begins to thicken, remove from heat. 
2. Next stir in maple syrup and berries and serve with chopped nuts and more coconut milk. 

adjustments:

like any porridge you can add flax seeds, chia seeds or serve with fresh seasonal berries, a sliced banana or shred an apple on top. 

Elk Bullet Soup

Bullet soup reminds me of my childhood when my parents were still together and the life we lived along the Rocky Mountain range in Alberta. There is nothing gourmet about Bullet soup its simplistic Cree comfort food. There are many different versions of bullet soup among Cree tribes but the bullet soup my grandmother made consisted of ground wild meat such as deer or moose seasoned with salt and pepper and cooked with onions and potatoes. It was a family tradition of ours that we cooked and ate Bullet soup New Year's Day. 

Although bullet soup is a simplistic dish with only three main ingredients, plus a little flour, and some salt and pepper, it was not easy recreating the dish. I asked my mother to help me cook the first batch of bullet soup, she was eager to help and wanted to cook it on New Years Day. We used ground hamburger and too much water. The soup tasted of disappointment and left us feeling empty. We never finished the soup instead we threw it out. So much for recreating a family tradition that was long ago forgotten. 

Recreating bullet soup that my grandmother use to make meant digging up memories of another time and another life before my parents moved us away from the Rockies into a bigger town and eventually they divorced. I was my mother's daughter, not his, so when she left so did I. I had to remember that I called my step-father's parents my grandparents. So I began to remember my grandmother's kitchen. My grandparents were the last of their generation to use a wooden stove. I could see my grandmother standing over the wood burning stove, her hands covered with flour as she drops the seasoned meatballs made of deer or moose into a large stock pot, with steam swirling about her arm. My grandfather, my dad and uncle are sitting at the table waiting and watching while my mother and my aunt assist my grandmother. Everyone is talking, smoking and laughing. 

With those memories at hand I gave it another try and this time I thought of my grandmother and focused on her flour covered hands and decided to use less water, I also decided to embellish the recipe by adding carrots and celery and using the bone marrow butter that I made to season the soup. With some prayers and some patience the bullet soup was a hit with my mother and I. It gave us the comfort we were seeking and as we ate the soup it brought back the memories we tried to forget of a life lived long ago with my step-father and his family.  Some memories in spite of the pain are really worth remembering. 

Elk Bullet Soup 

I used 3 lbs of ground elk meat 

4-5 cups of water or vegetable stock

1/2 cup of seasoned flour 

salt & pepper

1 whole onion

1 carrot

1 stalk of celery

2-3 potatoes

bone marrow butter/or marrow bones

1. Bring 4-5 cups of water to a boil in a soup pot. 
2. Chop the onion, carrots and celery (small sized pieces)
3. Season the ground elk meat with salt and pepper. Take a handful of the chopped onion about 1/4 cup and add to the ground meat mix together and shape into small meatballs and roll in seasoned flour, do not knock off the flour before you place in the pot. The flour thickens the soup. 
4. Once the water is at a boil, turn the heat down, water should be simmering as you carefully place meatballs into the water with the vegetables (marrow bones if adding) and let simmer for an hour. You can add diced potatoes into the soup and cook until potatoes are done. 

You will notice that water/vegetable stock will reduce and thicken as the soup is cooking and some of the meatballs may come apart that's supposed to happen. If the soup is too thick add more vegetable stock. Season soup with bone marrow butter just before serving, if you used marrow bones you can skip using the marrow butter, depends on your tastes. 

Adjustments:

You can season the soup as you like, I have only embellished the family recipe by adding bone marrow, carrots and celery. You can also use regular lean ground meat although, grass fed beef would be better. 

Edited

Since posting this recipe I have learned that Plains Cree were not the only ones to cook this soup. Ojibwa tribes also cook this dish. The word bullet is a phonetic pronunciation of the French word boulette meaning "meatball" and was a cooked and eaten New Year's Day amoung many Ojibwa tribes such as the people of Turtle Mountain in North Dakota.

Bone Marrow Butter

I found this recipe in a cookbook called Le Pigeon. The bone marrow butter has a rich distinctive flavor. I highly recommend you use it when cooking eggs and its great in soups. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have over the past week

Bone Marrow Butter 

8-10 marrow bones 

2 tablespoons of butter room temperature (original recipe called for 1/4 cup)

 The marrow bones I bought from the local butcher shop were 3 inches in length I ended up using 10

1. Preheat the oven to 350, place the bones in a shallow roasting pan and cook for 15 minutes.
2. After 15 minutes take the bones out of the oven and allow to cool. Once bones are cooled take a knife and remove marrow from the bones and place in a food processor along with any of the  excess grease from the marrow bones. Add the butter and puree until combined.

Breakfast Maple Sage Sausage Patties

I bought the cookbook, Beyond Bacon: paleo recipes that respect the whole pig, by Stacy Toth & Mattew McCarry. When I saw the word bacon in the book title I was immediately interested in the book. The cookbook is not only just about pork recipes that utilizes the whole pig but the authors also stress the importance of buying locally grown meats that are fresh and raised humanely.

Before I began experimenting and cooking with the recipes in the cookbook, it was important to me to try and find a butcher shop that sells organic meats. Organic was never a part of my vocabulary growing up and throughout my adulthood its only recently that I use  the word, but what I mean is finding a butcher that buys pigs and cattle that are local, feed according to what the animal is genetically meant to eat, humanely raised and butchered. I was lucky to find one and its expensive. However, I am happy to say that the ground pork I used in the following recipe is locally raised, free of growth hormones and has not been shot up with antibiotics and humanely butchered.

Breakfast is the most important meal according to my husband. When I first met my husband, I used to eat for breakfast: plain omelets, poached eggs on rye, yogurt with granola and a banana, with lots of coffee. I was teaching so I never had time to cook a large breakfast with bacon or sausages. My husband changed that, he cooks a huge breakfast because the next meal we eat is supper. I did notice that there is very little snacking between breakfast and supper. I actually lost some weight.

My husband and I love our bacon, but he also really likes his breakfast sausages and sausage patties. The patties he buys are so highly processed I can no longer taste the meat but they are his favourite. Now when he met me I was eating yogurt and granola for breakfast, I still do on occasion, so he is suspicious of my cooking and anything that I make that is healthy. These homemade breakfast patties are healthier than the processed sausage patties he is used to eating but I am pretty sure he will eat these because its meat and you can taste the meat.

Recipe is adapted from the cookbook, Beyond Bacon, "Maple Sage Breakfast Sausage Links."

Breakfast Maple Sage Sausage Patties 

1 lbs of ground pork

11/2 to 3 tablespoons of maple syrup (depending on how sweet you like your breakfast sausages)

2 tablespoons of fresh sage finely chopped (original recipe calls for 2 teaspoons but I misread the recipe and I liked the 2 tablespoons of fresh sage)

1 teaspoon of garlic powder

1 teaspoon of sea salt

1 teaspoon of fennel seeds ground

1/2 teaspoonn of coriander ground

1 teaspoons of peppercorns ground

Instructions: 

1. If you have whole fennel seeds, peppercorns, coriander grind them. Then combine all the ingridents in a bowl and allow to sit for at least 10 minutes. I think you can make this a head of time. 

2. Shape the meat into patties and cook. 

I tested these patties on my mother, her husband and my son. I used the 3 tablespoons of maple syrup and the only complaint I recieved was in reference to the maple syrup, it was too much, but we ate them all.