FoodFunk.ca

Some pizza on the back deck with Alexandra.   The sauce was made with some fantastic local tomatoes.

A friend of my dad’s works at an aquaculture site in Digby and recently handed over this beauty, a roughly 10 lb Atlantic Salmon, which I then quickly inherited.   I ended up scaling and washing it, then portioning it into three filet steaks that we had for supper one night (fabulous), and the rest is to become gravlox, using a recipe I found at a great site called foodwishes.com.

The salmon, all portioned up.  Beautiful fish and great fresh flavour.

And the final product!  Smoked salmon, made with smoked paprika instead of and expensive smoker!   Wonderful stuff.  Special thanks to foodwishes.com for the recipe.  Try it yourself!

One of Alexandra’s lunches.  A bowl of homemade chili (yes, she’s three years old and loves chili) and a fresh corn on the cob.   Local corn has been wonderful for a good month now.

Another of Alexandra’s favourites, a plate of chicken wings we had with a bunch of crisp local vegetables out on the deck.   Can you see the crunch?

Some Southern-U.S. inspired, slow-cooked pork ribs that I treated myself to on my birthday.   Delicious!

A fresh strawberry from when they first started to appear about a month ago.  At one point, we were pounding through a good pint a day of some kind of berry.  Raspberries and blueberries followed the strawberries.

And last but not least, a smallmouth bass I caught recently at a nearby lake.   This one was a bit small so it’ll be dinner for someone else in the future.  Nice fish though, and a hell of a fighter!

In the summer, I like to keep it simple.

I don’t want to spend a whole lot of time in the kitchen when the weather is nice as it’ll only be that way here in New Brunswick for what seems like a heartbeat.

Sure enough, it’s now almost mid-August and we’re finally seeing some decent weather after one of the wettest Julys on record.

Thankfully the nice weather coincides with the availability of some great local produce.  We’re now seeing local onions, potatoes, garlic, and even peppers among some of the recent additions to local small markets.   Fresh and local means great flavour and fast cooking times, which fits perfectly with my desire to get out of the kitchen as fast as possible and out onto the back deck with dinner.

Here’s a simple pasta that makes use of some fresh garlic, onions, tomatoes and bell pepper, all items I just got yesterday out of my dad’s garden in Digby.  Combined with the briney goodness of black olives and the heat of some dried chilies, this makes for a fast and fabulous pasta.  Feel free to add other vegetables such as zucchini (great right now too) or even cured meats like prosciutto to this.

Spaghetti with tomato, bell pepper and hot chile

Dried spaghetti for two

Extra virgin olive oil

1 small onion, peeled and finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped

1 tomato, seeded and chopped

1/2 small red or green bell pepper

5 black olives, pitted and chopped

1 small dried chile, finely chopped (or more to taste)

Pepper to taste

Bring a large pot of generously salted water to the boil and drop in your pasta.  While that’s cooking, heat a fry pan over medium-high heat and add a tablespoon or so of olive oil.   Add the onion and saute for a minute or so, then add the garlic.  Saute for just a few seconds and add the tomato,  chopped pepper, black olives and hot chile.   Stir and saute until the pasta is ready.   Add a few tablespoons of the pasta cooking water to the sauce if it cooks down too dry.   Drain the pasta and toss in the pan with the sauce, adding a little bit more olive oil and pepper to taste.   Plate it up and get outside!