On the Lamb: Be a naysayer of storebought meatballs—make your own variety!

Lamb Burger on Homemade Focaccia Bun

Now, there was a story with legs. The four-letter Swedish furniture chain fell into the soup of ill-repute recently when it was discovered their meatballs contained horse-meat. Frankly, I would have expected more imaginative leftover fillers from the minimalist monopoly’s morsels; orphaned nuts and bolts, packaging, wood chips, customer hair tufts, torn up instructions, etc. Fortunately, no little ponies were sacrificed on this side of the pond in the equine fiasco so Canadian and American meatball lovers were spared the horseplay. Whew!

So, for those of you who want to lasso a few decent recipes to make your own meatballs and avoid the dicey dilemma of accidentally wolfing down unknown ranch meat or road kill—read on.  As we all know now, meatballs can be made with any meat…or nuts, grains or veggies.  My favourite filler is lamb. 

Lamb meatballs are easy to make, flavourful, very forgiving and make a wonderful last minute fast-food option when pulled from the freezer, ready-to-cook on a busy weeknight. Alongside a green veggie and salad and voila, supper is served. Watch how prettily they pose on a perch of pasta with a mild parmesan sauce, or on a pizza sliced up with rounds of goat cheese, cherry tomatoes and mint leaves. Try grilling lamb meatballs on metal skewers and serving with a little dollop of tzakiki and a fresh Greek salad to round out the show. For another great twist, add cooked lamb meatballs to your favourite soup.

Here are a few recipes to get you started. Many of these lamb meat mixtures can be used for lamb burgers too! Simply shape the meat into burgers, grill and serve with homemade Focaccia buns, recipe also below.

Lamb Meatballs with two variations

1 cup finely minced onions

2 garlic cloves, minced

2 tbsp butter

2 lbs ground lean lamb

2 eggs, beaten

¼ cup panko breadcrumbs or fine breadcrumbs

Pinch of salt

¼ tsp black pepper

Variation 1)

1/8 tsp each of celery salt, powdered ginger, cardamom, and curry powder

Variation 2)

¼ cup chopped olives

1 tsp freshly grated lemon peel

¼ tsp allspice

Sauté onions and garlic in butter, covered until soft. Do not brown. Combine lamb with egg, breadcrumbs, parsley, salt and pepper. Divide into two portions. To one add the celery salt mixture. To the second portion add the live mixture. Chill one hour and then form into one-inch balls. Place in a shallow baking dish (do not crowd them) and bake in 400F oven for 15-20 minutes, turning once. If serving as an appetizer, serve with toothpicks and dips of your choice. Personally, I like Tzatziki. For some reason, I cannot make Tzatziki because it makes my eyes very itchy. I can however eat the store-bought versions. Shshshsh…that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

Minted Lamb Meatballs

1 lb ground lean lamb

1 egg beaten

2 tbsp panko or fine breadcrumbs

2 tbsp each chopped fresh mint and parsley

½ cup chopped blanched spinach or Kale or Arugula (well drained) PS: Blanched means, placed in boiling water and then quickly drained and rinsed in cold water.

Pinch of salt

 ½ tsp cumin

¼ tsp pepper

Combine all ingredients and mix well. Chill for one hour then form into one-inch balls. Place in a shallow baking dish (do not crowd them) and bake in 400F oven for 15-20 minutes, turning once.

Makes about 48 meatballs

Other possible variations to add to ground lamb for meatballs include:

1/4 cup chopped figs (soaked in warm water, drained) OR

·        ½ cup sun dried tomato dressing and 1 tbsp Cajun seasoning OR

·        ½ cup honey mustard and tbsp. cumin OR

·        ½ cup honey mustard and 1 tbsp Garam Marsala OR

 Try rolling lamb meatballs in ½ cup unsalted cashews or pistachios before baking or grilling on the BBQ. MMMM!

Focaccia Bread or Buns (using breadmaker and oven) Makes two medium focaccias, one large focaccia or 12 buns

1 1/3 cups water

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp white sugar

3 1/3 cups Flour

2 1/4 tsp Breadmaker yeast

Measure these ingredients into the breadpan. Select the dough cycle and press Start. When dough is ready, preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease two pizza pans or baking sheet and sprinkle with cornmeal. Remove dough from pan and let rest 5-10 min under a tea towel.

1 tbsp Cornmeal for sprinkling on pizza pans.

2 or 3 Minced garlic cloves

1 1/2 tsp Dried Rosemary or 1 tbsp fresh Rosemary

1 1/2 tsp Coarse salt

3 tbsp Olive Oil

2 tbsp grated Parmesan

For Bread: On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough into two rounds to about ½ “ thickness. Lightly grease pans and sprinkle with a little cornmeal. Place dough on pans. Cover with heavy tea towel and let rise for 30 minutes.

Sprinkle with garlic, rosemary, and coarse salt and then lightly press into dough. With your fingertips, poke shallow indentations all over the top of the rounds. Pour the olive oil over the top, letting it pool in the indentations. Sprinkle Parmesan on top. Bake bread about 20-25 min or until lightly browned.

TIP: I put an oven liner or foil on the oven’s lower rack (under this pan) while this is baking to prevent the olive oil from spilling over and burning.

For Buns: divide dough evenly into 12 pieces. Lightly grease a large pizza pan or line with parchment paper and sprinkle with a little cornmeal. Cover the dough pieces to be worked with a tea towel so they stay warm and don’t dry out. To shape each bun, pull top of dough to bottom and tuck underneath, as if you were shaping a mushroom. Then, place the rough ball on a bread board, place your hand overtop and roll the dough around in circles (very lightly) under the palm of your hand. Your fingernails should be lightly scratching the breadboard surface—this ensures you don’t press too hard! Place each shaped bun on the baking sheet and cover them as you go. When all pieces are shaped, cover them with a heavy tea towel or greased saran wrap and let them rise for 30 minutes. 

When buns have risen….

Sprinkle with garlic, rosemary, and coarse salt and then lightly press into dough. With your fingertips, poke shallow indentations all over the top of the rounds. With a ¼ teaspoon drizzle a very small amount of olive oil over the top of each bun, letting it pool in the indentations. Sprinkle Parmesan on top. Bake bread about 20-25 min or until lightly browned.

TIP: I put an oven liner or foil on the oven’s lower rack (under this pan) while this is baking to prevent the olive oil from spilling over and burning.

Ode to the Pistachio: What’s nut to love?

If pistachios had a voice, it would undoubtedly be the warm and captivating timbres of Gian Gomeshi, host of CBC Radio’s weekday morning show “Q.” 

Sounding like the name of a mischievous zodiac sign and rhyming with mustachio, I dare you to say Pistachios without smiling! No wonder in Iran, they’re known as the “smiling” nut, in China as the “happy” nut and in my kitchen, as the friendly “go-to” nut; performing cheerfully in salads, vegetarian strudels, fish marinades, pesto, crumb toppings, cheese stuffings for meat dishes or best of all…with bananas in ice cream!

Aside from being one of the most delicious and colourful little characters in the culinary nut circuit, pistachios are highly nutritious, huge on fiber and fat friendly too! They are an excellent source of copper, manganese, vitamin B6 and a good source of phosphorus and thiamin. A 30 g serving of about 49 pistachio nuts contains the same amount of fiber as one serving of oatmeal and almost 90% of the fat in pistachios is the healthy mono-and polyunsaturated fats. If you enjoy snacking on the little morsels, why not re-enact Prove the Pistachio Principle? This experiment concluded that participants ate at a slower pace when they snacked on pistachios contained in-shells. Removing the shells slowed down their snacking tempo and they ate 41% less than those who snacked on the naked, ready-to-eat versions. Take it a step further and keep the leftover shells in sight for your next pistachio snack-sitting and you are very likely to eat even fewer pistachios than before.

According to archeologists and historians, we humans have been nutty for pistachios for over 9,000 years, with the earliest evidence of this dating back to 6750 BC at a dig site at Jarmo in North-Eastern Iraq.  Emperor Vitellius piqued the tastebuds of Rome in the first century A.D. when he introduced to pistachios to Apicius—a famous Jamie Oliver-style chef at the time—who included the nuts in recipes recorded on tablets in his classic, ancient cookbooks. Word has it; Queen Sheba was quite piggish for pistachios and insisted that the entire pistachio harvest for the region be reserved for just her. Due to pistachios high nutritional value and long storage life, early traders, explorers and travelers carried pistachios to snack on while traversing the ancient Silk Road that connected China to the West.  Pistachios also carry the distinction of being one of only three nuts mentioned in the Bible, with walnuts and almonds being the other two. In Genesis 43:11, father Jacob recommends that his sons “Put some of the best products of the land in your bags and take them down to the man as a gift—a little balm and a little honey, some spices and myrrh, some pistachio nuts and almonds.” All of these items were products of trees which could still grow and provide produce in spite of food famines.

The pistachio as we know it today was first grown in Western Asia. It is related to the mango fruit and the spice sumac and was originally grown in cooler parts of Iran and Iraq. By way of Iran from Syria, their cultivation spread throughout the Mediterranean region. Today, pistachios grow in Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, Tunisia, Pakistan, Egypt, Italy, and Afghanistan and also in the state of California in the US, where there is a Pistachio Commission dedicated to preserving, protecting and growing her preciousness!

I like to keep shell-removed whole and chopped pistachios in a Ziploc bag in my refrigerator freezer ready to add to a variety of recipes. Tip: The Bulk Barn carries shell-on and shell-removed pistachios.

Here are a few ideas and recipes to help win you over to my Happy Nut society!

Add chopped pistachios to:

·       bread crumb coatings for chicken

·       goat cheese and chopped apricots for a pork tenderloin stuffing

·       oatmeal fruit crisp toppings (like apple crisp)

·       to your favourite fruit pie recipe

·       salads (toasted) with cranberries and feta cheese, drizzled with a maple-raspberry vinaigrette

·       quinoa or couscous with currants or raisins and a pinch of cinnamon

·       pasta dishes, toasted and sprinkled on top as a garnish-instead of pine nuts

·       vegetarian dishes such as Mediterranean strudels or lasagnas

·       pesto or any recipe that calls for pine nuts

·       your hot oatmeal porridge in the morning!

Salmon with Maple-Nut Crust

1 large tail piece of salmon

1/4 cup maple syrup

1 tsp curry powder

1 tsp Dijon mustard

1/2 cup chopped shelled and chopped pistachios or almonds or pecans.

Line a rimmed cookie sheet with tin foil. Wash and dry salmon with paper towel and place skin side down on the sheet. Sprinkle salmon with salt and pepper. Mix together syrup, curry and mustard. Chop up or crush nuts. Preheat oven to 425F. Spoon half of maple syrup mixture over fillets then sprinkle with nuts. Spoon remaining maple mixture over nuts. Cover the areas of the sheet that don't have fish on them with tin foil pieces. This keeps the oil from splattering and burning. Bake in centre of oven at 425F for 35 min.

Maple Syrup-Pistachio Baklava

(Note: have everything prepared before you unwrap the phyllo pastry from the pkg)
1 1/2 cups pistachios or walnuts, finely chopped
1/4 c sugar
1 tsp t cinnamon
¼ tsp ground cloves
1 pkg phyllo dough (in pastry section of frozen foods) thawed
1 c melted butter

2 1/4 c pure maple syrup, heated

¼ cup water

1 ½ tsp lemon juice

1 ½ tsp lemon or orange rind grated

2 tbsp chopped nuts

Combine nuts, sugar, and spices. Brush a 9x13" baking pan with butter.  Lay thawed pastry on table or large, work surface. Cover sheets to be worked with a plastic bag and damp towel until you’re ready to use them.  Cut all sheets from the pkg in half width wise. Set aside 10 to work with and cover remaining pastry. Brush a sheet of pastry with butter and then layer in pan, do this with 10 sheets.  Sprinkle with 1/3 of the nut mixture.  Butter and layer 7 more sheets in pan, top with 1/3 nut mixture.  Butter and layer 7 more sheets and rest of nuts.  Top with 16 more buttered phyllo sheets and brush with remaining butter. Important: With a very sharp, serrated knife, score and cut through the layers of pastry into 1 1/2" squares.  (It will crumble to pieces if you cut it after it’s baked.) Bake at 350F for 15 min, then 325F for another 30-35 min, or until a rich golden brown. (Keep an eye on the edges for burning.)  During the last 20 minutes of baking, in a saucepan mix together syrup, water, lemon and rind. Bring to a boil, then turn down heat and let simmer for 10-15 min, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat. When baklava is done, immediately pour the very warm syrup mixture evenly over top.  Sprinkle 2 tbsp chopped nuts overtop.  Cool in the pan for at least 4 hours and enjoy! 

This is one of my favourite Shortbread recipes which I adapted from a recipe I found in a very old cookbook in the amazing Vancouver Public Library--where they have a whole section devoted to cookbooks Yes, I was in heaven! I think the orange zest and pistachio combination in this recipe gives these Shortbreads a little mystery zing.

Pistachio Shortbread

• 1/2 cup plus 1 tbsp butter 
• 1 egg
• 1 2/3 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tbsp orange zest
• 1/2 cup chopped pistachios
• (1/4 cup dark chocolate chopped-optional)
• egg yolk (lightly beaten) for glazing before baking

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until smooth.  Add the egg, vanilla, orange zest and mix well. Stir in flour and knead by hand until dough comes together. Add in pistachios by hand, with chocolate (if using chocolate). Cover and refrigerate at least 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 350F.
Roll dough into 1/2 inch thickness and cut with cookie cutters. Alternatively, you may roll the dough into inch balls, then flatten with a fork to create a criss-cross, plaid pattern. Brush with a little egg yolk and sprinkle with granulated sugar. 
Bake 8-12 minutes on a parchment lined flat baking sheet on the middle rack in the oven preheated to 350F. Watch carefully and DO NOT let them brown. Allow to cool on rack. 
Other optional additions include: blanched almonds, dried cranberries, dark chocolate chips or chocolate mint chips.

St-Ambroise Great Pumpkin Ale Bread Beer

St-Ambroise's Great Pumpkin Ale, canned pumpkin and pumpkin seeds team up to produce this delicious Fall loaf. 

Pumpkin seeds, otherwise known as Pepitas, contain many healthy vitamins and minerals and are used in many Mexican recipes. They play a key role in this St-Ambroise Great Pumpkin Ale Bread I made earlier this week. The seeds are not only in the bread but also  sprinkled on top just before baking, yielding a scrumptious crunchy crust. With the ale and canned pumpkin making up most of the liquid in the recipe, the bread's texture is moist and very rich. And guess what? These loaves are very cute little party guests too; colourful, versatile and a little unusual. Excellent for breakfast—toasted and slathered in honey—or befriending a hearty veggie soup at a cozy fall supper. Happy baking!

St-Ambroise Great Pumpkin Ale Bread

This recipe is intended for the breadmachine, using the dough cycle, then shaping and baking the loaves in the oven. If you  make the loaf in the breadmaker, choose the 2 lb size loaf option and the Whole Wheat cycle.

Note: Beer and canned pumpkin should be at room temperature.

 ½ cup St-Ambroise Great Pumpkin Ale (room temp)

1 cup canned pumpkin (room temp)

1 egg

¼ cup buttermilk (o skim milk) powder (both are available at the Bulk Barn)

1 ½ tsp salt

1/3 cup brown sugar

2 tbsp butter or margarine

1 cup whole wheat flour (or Fife flour –available at the Bulk Barn)

2 ¼ cups all-purpose white flour

½ cup pumpkin seeds (unsalted)

¾ tsp allspice

½ tsp ginger

¼ nutmeg

¼ tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp cloves

1 ½ tsp bread machine yeast

For topping:

1 egg white beaten

¼ cup pumpkin seeds

2 tbsp flax seeds

2 tbsp sesame seeds

2 tbsp poppy seeds

Measure ingredients into the breadpan. Insert the pan into the breadmachine. Choose the dough cycle. Press start.

When the breadmachine beeper sounds and dough is ready:

• Preheat oven to 350F and set over rack to middle shelf.
• With a sharp knife, divide lump into four equal pieces.
• Roll each piece into a flat 6” square.
• Roll up each square (tightly) into a small log shape.
• Pinch seam along the bottom of each loaf to seal dough.
• Roll ends to taper them and seal.
• Lightly spray grease or grease a flat baking sheet or French Loaf baking pan.
• Sprinkle seed mixture over the surface of each pan.
• Place loaves on prepared baking sheet or baking pan.
• Spray grease a piece of saran wrap, large enough to cover the loaves.
• The plastic wrap should touch the surface of the bread to allow it to rise freely, without creating a skin on the loaf. Remember: it will double in size.
• Place on baking cooling rack over a pan of hot water.
• Cover with a tea towel (to create a little warming tent for the bread).
• Let rise in a warm, draft-free place until just double in bulk (about 35 minutes) The top of the fridge is ideal!
• When risen, remove wrap and blush each loaf with beaten egg white.
• Sprinkle loaves with remaining seeds and very lightly press down with fingertips.

• Bake in oven at 350F for 25 min, then turn pan around and bake another 5-6 minutes. Bread should be golden brown.
• Slide loaves onto a baking cooking rack (place a large tray underneath to catch the seeds) and allow to cool for at least one hour before slicing.

Excellent toasted, buttered and smothered in honey! But then anything goes with honey, doesn’t it Denis!