Kale and Chicken and Raspberry Custard Tart

I was at the farm the other day and picked up two chickens, 60 eggs, 4 pork chops, and a few leeks.

I baked one whole chicken for dinner Friday, and there was enough for yesterday, and still some left over for today's lunch.  I posted a baked chicken recipe back in September, this one may have been slightly different, but similar idea.  I used some fresh lemon oregano and s&p as rub, carrots, bay leaf, and leek.

Here is the tasty kale recipe I made up today.  I'm very pleased with this tasty dish, normally I just sautée kale in butter, sometimes with garlic, but this is way tastier.

Ingredients:
- butter
- garlic (I used one large clove of local garlic, which is much more flavourful than the Chinese import)
- slivered almonds
- caraway seeds
- cumin seeds
- s&p
- 4-5 plum (Roma) tomatoes
- bunch of kale


Melt butter in a pan, add garlic, slivered almonds, then diced tomatoes.  I used 4 or 5 for 1 bunch of kale.  In the mean time take a sweet potato, wash/ scrub and cube it, then steam it, this way it retains its shape and doesn't get mushy around the edges.  Once the tomatoes have softened, add caraway and cumin seeds (crush them so they're more flavourful), s&p, stir, add kale, occasionally stir until it softens and shrinks.  Add the steamed sweet potato, stir.  Done.  So tasty.

Very steamy.

What was left of the chicken.  I love meat closest to the bone.

For dessert I made a raspberry custard tart.  Last time I made pie (pecan), I made enough dough for three pies, so I froze two.  I still have one in the freezer, and I keep thinking about a slice of pie I had a couple of years ago at The Pie Shack in Toronto.  The pie was called autumn harvest, and it was made with peaches, plums and apples, and had a top crust.  I'm thinking of making one with apples and plums and a crumble topping.

Enjoy!

Quick Ice Cream

Back in May I wrote about how to make instant ice cream, instant being about 10 minutes.  A few weeks ago, I discovered another quick way to make very creamy ice cream.  This one is a bit more sugary, but has more flavour options, is ultra creamy, and takes about 3-4 hours compared to 12+ with an ice cream maker.  Even good quality store bought or ice cream parlour bought ice cream has a fair amount of sugar in it.  The instant ice cream (from the May post) can have no sugar or whatever amount you choose; it does taste better with sugar though, without it's bland and tastes like something (much bigger than sugar) is missing.

Anyway, this ice cream can be made and eaten in the same day and doesn't require an ice cream maker.
All you need is cream and condensed milk, plus whatever flavour you'd like to add and a freezer safe container.

Beat the cream and condensed milk in a bowl with an electric mixer.  The cream won't have stiff peaks, because you're beating it with the condensed milk, but the mixture will thicken like this:

If you're adding a flavour, add it at the end.  The above picture is cinnamon ice cream, so once I added the cinnamon, I used the beater to blend it in.  If you're using nuts or fruit, fold them in with a spoon or spatula.

When ready, pour the mixture into a freezer safe container.  I've made this a couple of times so far.  The first time I used a loaf pan and covered it with aluminum foil, the following time I used plastic tupperware containers with lids.

I smoothed it out a bit before placing in the freezer, because I wasn't sure if it was more likely to end up with frosty bits if it had texture.  I learned it doesn't matter.

The ice cream ends up free of icy bits/ freezer burn.  Here we have chocolate and cinnamon:

This one was for James with a Ferrero Rocher on top:

This one was for me:

This weekend I made four other flavours.  Clockwise starting at noon: wild strawberry liquor (Fragoli, it's Italian and it comes with the wild strawberries in the bottle), lavender flavoured honey with dried lavender flowers, cinnamon-chilli-chocolate, and almond with almond extract and almond slivers.

As much as I like my ice cream plain, all these flavours turned out delicious.

My very first experiment in this line was the cinnamon flavour.  Then I made the cinnamon and the chocolate for my parents, and they loved it, my dad even said that I should start selling it.  I'm sticking to my sauerkraut for now, and other fermented foods.

Enjoy!