Easy & Eggless Chocolate Gelato

Summer + ice cream = memories.

In a bowl, on a cone, in a sandwich, alongside a fresh fruit pie or crisp, in a float or blended into a milkshake — however you serve it, it’s always smooth going down, whatever the flavour.

But I think many of us would admit to a particular fondness for chocolate.  After keeping warm with mugs of the hot stuff all winter long, there’s something particularly satisfying about cooling off with your first scoop of rich, dark, chocolate ice cream once the warm weather takes hold.

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Cinnamon Brioche Morning Buns

I needed some sweet new buns.

I’m pretty happy with my take on the savoury side of breakfast baking — but not everyone at the Pender Islands’ Farmers’ Market early on a Saturday morning wants a soft, rich bun rolled with cream sauce and topped with cheese and their choice of bacon or tomato, do they?  No.  The other half of the breakfast spectrum demand a sweeter start to their day, and most of those prefer cinnamon in the mix.

So I thought and I pondered, and I pondered and then thought some more.  My mind’s eye kept returning to the morning bun I fell in love with at Tartine Bakery (and ate every day for the week I was in San Francisco) — croissant dough rolled with brown sugar, cinnamon and orange zest and baked into a flaky, sticky mess and then rolled in more sugar.  Yum.

But I’m talking about making at least 2 batches of these every Saturday until Labour Day.  And if you know anything about croissant dough (which is prepared a lot like puff pastry), that means lots of butter beating, repeated dough folding and hours of resting and chilling in between.

Now don’t get me wrong, cause it’s not like I don’t love to work the dough — this year of no store-bought bread has taught me the love — but the bun racket at the Farmers’ Market isn’t that lucrative.  And like I’ve said before, I’m just too old to make this solely a labour of love.

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Flash-Fried Spot Prawns with Jicama Slaw

Live spot prawns off the dock are a real treat…sweet, rich, delicious…and, truth be told, a real pain in the tush to peel raw.  The connective tissue that attaches the flesh to the shell is too strong for anyone to make a neat job of it — and the last thing you want to do is mangle this treasure from the sea — the culinary gods would be displeased.

Instead, you’re better off to cook them shell on.  Some cooks twist the heads off before cooking.  I’ve seen more than a few locals take their newly purchased prawns over to the edge of the dock to give the heads back to the water before leaving with a bag of no-hassle tails.

If you delay the beheading until you get home, then you can keep the heads to make a velvety bisque.  Just know that their beady eyes continue to scan the room for quite some time after the separation.  I only mention it because it can be disconcerting to look down into the sink and have a couple of dozen eyes seemingly look back.  The trained cook in me knows that they are dead…that the movement is only reflex…the mostly buried squeamish girl in me still gets freaked out — if only for a second.

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Rhubarb Gin

I put plans on hold, in fact, I stopped everything just to bring you this gin.

It’s that important — critical, really — rhubarb season is coming to a close all around us, and yet there are still people out there who haven’t infused booze with it.

I was the same until a few days ago, when a friend opened my eyes to the light that is Rhubarb Gin.  And now I’m obliged to pass the torch, because this summertime libation is just too good not to share.

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Grilled Caesar Salad

Before I start, you should know that my Dad wasn’t cheap — quite the opposite, actually — especially if you were his youngest child and only girl.

But this isn’t a precious story about a spoiled little girl, I promise.  Instead, it’s a story of a man who never used enough charcoal.  For someone who loved food & wine as much as my Dad, his miserly approach to the barbecue always puzzled me and was a marriage-long source of summertime frustration for my mother.

She would have all of the sides & condiments out on the table, the buns warmed and all three kids sitting at the table, only to wait while my Dad brought one hot dog/burger in through the patio door at a time.  Few of us actually ate at the same time, and it must have taken at least 30 minutes before everyone had sat down to begin eating. And there was no changing him.

For the most part, those experiences led me to some pretty rampant over use of charcoal as an adult.  But every now and then, I catch myself with a piece of meat bigger than my pile of coals.  And right at that moment, when I realize that it’s going to be a long time until dinner, I often hear the whisper of a laugh over my shoulder and feel him behind me, nodding his head in approval.

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