Sift together all dry ingredients. Cut the butter into the flour mixture with a pastry blender or your fingers until it resembles small peas. After zesting your lemon and orange, juice them into a small bowl and measure out 1/3 C of the juice, reserving the remainder for another use or recipe. In a small bowl mix together the egg, lemon and orange zests, 3 T of the sugar, citrus juice and buttermilk.

Add to the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Gather into a ball and place in a buttered 8″ cake pan. Press lightly into a disc and sprinkle with 1-2 T of the remaining sugar. Bake at 375°F for 35 minutes or until lightly browned and firm to the touch.  Let rest for 10 minutes, and then slice into wedges with a bread knife and serve with butter and jam and/or honey.

In a small food processor, purée the yellow onion, ginger and garlic with just enough water (1-2 t) for it to form a thick, smooth paste. Heat a large heavy-bottomed pot on medium-high with a little oil. Add in the whole cumin and fennel seed and toast until just fragrant. Add in the onion-garlic-ginger paste and cook 1-2 minutes. Add in the curry powder and cook until fragrant, 1-2 minutes, being careful not to scorch any of the spices.

Grind your toasted coconut in a spice grinder and add to the pot. Add in the tomatoes and clam juice and bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and cook for about 20 minutes until the ground coconut is fully hydrated.

Meanwhile, rinse your lentils in several changes of cool water until the water runs clear. Cook for 10 minutes in boiling water with 2 bay leaves. Remove from heat and add 1 t kosher salt to the water and let sit for 5 minutes. Drain and add the lentils to your soup pot along with your coconut milk and yoghurt, if using.

Add your carrots and cook for about 12 minutes. Then add the peppers and pea pods and crab. Cook until the vegetables are until just barely tender and still have crunch. Remove the pot from the heat and add in the cilantro and scallions and 1 t or more of the garam masala. Serve with lemon/lime wedges and top with extra toasted coconut if desired.

Serves 6

In about 3-4 C of water, cook the lentils along with the aromatics for about 10-15 minutes until just slightly underdone. Remove from the heat and salt the water generously and let sit for 20 minutes.  When ready to use, drain, remove the aromatics (except red pepper flakes) and add to pot.

• 5 large cloves of garlic
• 3″ piece of peeled ginger, coarsley chopped
• 1/2 yellow onion
• 1/2 t kalonji (nigella) seeds
• 1/2 t cumin seeds
• 1/2 t fennel seeds
• 2 t of your favourite curry powder, or more to taste. I like a Madras curry powder.
• 1 qt tomatoes (home canned if possible)
• 3/4-1 C of either cream, half & half or plain yoghurt, or a combination of those, to taste (optional)
• 1 t garam masala*
• chopped fresh cilantro for garnish

Purée the garlic, ginger and onion with a little water until a thick, smooth paste forms. Toast the whole spices in some ghee or oil in a heavy-bottomed pot until toasted, 1-2 minutes and then add in the curry powder and cook about 30 seconds until brown. Add in the garlic-ginger-onion paste and sauté until very thick and reduced by at least half. Add in the tomatoes and cook until the juices have reduced somewhat. Next add in the cooked lentils and continue to cook until the lentils are quite soft. Check for salt, and stir in the garam masala and cream/yoghurt and remove from the heat. Serve over rice and top with chopped cilantro and more garam masala if desired.

*I prefer to make my own garam masala (and often curry powders) from whole spices. Whole spices are extremely inexpensive when purchased either online or in a Indian (or similar) grocery store in bulk. I keep my whole spices in glass jars in a cool pantry and they last for years. I keep a large variety of spices that are useful for Indian, SE Asian, Mexican, and many other types of recipes on hand so I can toast and grind them fresh when I need them. The flavour is far superior to store-bought spices and it is way cheaper.

• 4-5 lbs very ripe (home grown, heirloom) tomatoes in any colour you want, peeled and chopped.
• 1 C raw sugar
• 1  1/2 C white wine vinegar
• 1 T sea salt
• 1 head garlic, peeled & chopped fine
• 2  1/2 T fresh ginger, peeled & chopped fine
• 1-2 dried red chillies, pounded in mortar & pestle (or 1/2 – 3/4 t red pepper flakes)
• 1/2 t  fennel seeds
• 1/2 t cumin seeds
• 1/2 t fenugreek seeds
• 1/2 t allspice berries
• juice & zest of one lime

Place in 1/2 pint or smaller mason jars. Yield: approximately 2 pints

Blanch your tomatoes: Bring a large pot of water to a boil, drop the tomatoes into the water a few at a time for 30-45 seconds and then immediately place them in a ice bath. This makes the tomatoes incredibly easy to peel (and it’s incredibly difficult to peel tomatoes if you don’t blanch them first.)

While waiting for the water to boil, zest and juice the lime and prep the garlic and ginger. Process the garlic and ginger into a smooth paste in a food processor. You will probably have to add some water for it to form a smooth consistency.

Pound the spices in a mortar and pestle, or do what I did and put them in a plastic ziploc bag and pound on them with a heavy rolling pin. You want the spices to be bruised and release their flavour, but not ground or crushed too much. Even though they’re whole, with all the cooking we’re going to do to them, the spices will essentially melt into the sauce.

Place all ingredients in a large non-reactive pot. You want lots of space so that when it bubbles up when thick it doesn’t splotch all over the place.  Warm on low until the sugar dissolves and then bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. Cook for 1 1/2 – 2 hours until desired thickness has been reached.

Wwhile the ketchup is simmering prepare jars & lids for hot water bath processing. Process full jars for 10 minutes.

While this recipes says this is a ketchup, I’d say it tastes more like a tomato chutney. Which means it’s still fantastic on all the things you might use ketchup on: potatoes of all kinds, eggs, burgers, hot dogs, etc. It’d also be a fantastic sauce for meats on the grill, especially chicken or pork.

Toss the beef with 1 1/2 T of flour and 1/2 t each of sweet and smoked paprika. Brown in a large cast iron pot/dutch oven in 2 batches to prevent overcrowding. Remove and deglaze the pot with some of the red wine, adding the liquid to the set-aside beef. Sauté the onions until well browned and then add in the garlic, mushrooms, peppers/chillies and caraway seeds. Cook on medium-high until the mushrooms and peppers start to soften and brown a bit. Remove and set aside. Deglaze with the rest of the red wine and add in the tomato paste and paprika. Cook until the tomato paste thickens up significantly and begins to caramelise and darken. Add in the tomatoes, beef broth and reserved veggies, beef and bay leaves. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer and cook at least an hour or until the beef is very tender. Thicken the sauce with 1-2 T of flour mixed with cold water and then added slowly to the liquid, adding more flour if needed to thicken the sauce. Cook until thickened and then remove from the heat. Whisk in the sour cream. Serve with buttered spätzle or other egg noodles and garnish with fresh dill.

Mix all in a pitcher or punch bowl and serve with sliced citrus pieces.

Cut the cheeks off the mangoes and scrape the flesh out with a spoon and place into a bowl. Chop the pineapple into 2″ chunks and add to mango. Juice the lemons and sieve the juice to get rid of any seeds or large bits of pith. In 2-3 batches, add the fruit to a blender and add in 1/3-1/2 of the lemon juice to each batch. Purée until very smooth. Pass the purée through a fine mesh sieve to extract the mango and pineapple fibres, using a large spoon to push and stir it around to extract as much juice as possible. You should end up with less than 1/4 C of fibrous pulp and around 3-4 C of thick purée. Add in the sugar, corn syrup and salt and whisk until totally dissolved. You shouldn’t need to heat this at all to get it to dissolve.

Chill in the freezer, stirring every 30 min or so until very cold: 30-32F. Place in a ice cream maker and churn until the paddle won’t turn any more. Place in freezer and freeze for a couple hours to firm it up. It is very important that your purée be as cold as you can get it w/o it freezing before starting to churn it if you have the kind of ice cream maker that contains a frozen pack and isn’t self-freezing because your sorbet won’t freeze before the ice pack gets too warm if you don’t.

*or whatever mango you can find. I used these as they’re more flavourful, have a smaller pit (and therefore more fruit) than standard mangoes. They’re ripe when they’re dark yellow-orange and slightly wrinkled skin.

Slice the onions as thinly as you can possibly manage and place into a large, non-reactive bowl. Add salt and sugar. Juice citrus over the onions and then add just enough white wine vinegar so that the onions are just barely covered with liquid. Stir well, cover, and set out at room temperature for 3-4 hours. Drain and serve, reserving the lovely pink liquid to pickle/dress more onions or any number of vegetables: jicama, carrots, cucumbers, kohlrabi, etc.

Serve as the topping to any sandwich, on tacos, alongside or in coleslaw, on fish, in a green salad, and so on. This is also great with any citrus: orange, tangerine, kumquat, even grapefruit.

Mix together the cream, milk, corn syrup and half the sugar in a sauce pan. Add a split vanilla bean pod scraped of all the seeds, the crushed anise seeds and the orange zest and extract if using. Heat on medium-low, stirring intermittently. Remove from heat once the mixture has reached 175°F. Pass through a fine sieve to remove the orange zest and anise seeds, retaining as much of the vanilla caviar as possible. Remove the vanilla bean.

Beat the egg yolks with the remainder of the sugar. Temper by slowly adding 1 C of the hot cream mixture to the yolks and whisking until incorporated. Add this back to the rest of the hot cream and return to the stove-top. Heat up to 180°F until thickened, whisking constantly so it doesn’t stick. If you do get a few bits that are thickened too much, you can pass this again through a sieve.

Immediately pour into a bowl and let sit on counter until no longer steaming, about 10-15 min. Transfer to the freezer for 1 – 1 1/2 hours until well chilled.

Place chilled custard in ice cream maker and churn for 30-45 minutes. Place in freezer container and freeze for at least 2 hours before serving. Makes approximately 1 quart.

*By using some corn syrup instead of all sugar, we interfere with the formation of large ice crystals and consequently the ice cream has a smoother texture.

Marinade:

3 lemongrass stalks, white parts only
3 coriander roots, or 1/2 bunch of coriander/cilantro including stems
1 1/2″ piece of galangal, peeled. Replace with ginger if unavailable, or use both.
4 garlic cloves
4 shallots
zest of 1 lime, juice of 2
sriracha or thai chillies to taste
1 T coconut cream (from top of coconut milk can) to help a paste form. A little vegetable oil will also work.

Place all in a food processor and blend until a fine paste forms. Rub thoroughly onto chicken wings and then add 1 C coconut milk and stir to coat well. Let sit overnight or at least 2 hours.
Grill on medium heat until well browned and slightly charred on each side, about 15 min. per side. Do not over cook or you will dry out the meat. Feel free to baste the wings with the remaining marinade as they grill, making sure you cook them thoroughly to avoid any contamination.

Though these taste great on their own, you could also make a peanut sauce to dip them in.

Serves 6-8