Learn to Grow Food in Small Spaces

This wonderful, FREE event will teach you how to grow your very own food on your balcony, rooftop or backyard - no matter how small!

Check it out on Saturday, August 13th from 2-5pm at Eastminster United Church, 310 Danforth Ave, Lower Level

Escargot a la jardin

...or in English: Snails from the garden. Sounds much better in French, doesn't it?

If you won't eat snails from your garden in the name of sustainability, and if their incredible nutritional breakdown* doesn't get you excited, then you will just have to cross your fingers that the time and effort ( and butter) you put into preparing this dish will give your the courage to have a taste. Escargot is rich and tasty and if prepared properly, its soft tenderness is pleasantly surprising.

*100 grams of snail contains 16g protein, 2 grams of carbohydrates and 1 gram of fat ( high in omega-3 fatty acids). Also, from 100 grams of snail you get a whopping 19% of your  recommended daily intake (RDI) of Iron, 25% RDI of Vitamin E and 40% RDI of Selenium!

I figure, killing snails will be like killing a chicken. There is a point - between gutting the warm animal and butchering - that the chicken starts to look like food. This is going to be gut-wrenching for me as I have made serious efforts to avoid the cute slow-movers and shiver toe to head when I hear a crunch beneath my foot.

Snails take 7-10 days to get ready, so by that point, maybe I will be more keen to eat them.

Below are instructions adapted from Pat and Bob Reynolds' recipe ( one that the BBC used: here) 

Step 1: Collect snails (Helix Aspersa) in a container. As an appetizer, a serving is about 7 snails per person.  So let's assume you've dragged 3 friends into this endevor and collect about 30 snails.

Step 2: Cover the container VERY tightly with mesh or something that will allow the snails to breathe but not escape ( can you imagine waking up to an army of snails marching towards you in slow motion? Horrifying!

Step 3: For 7-10 days, feed the snails cabbage or lettuce. (If you want organic snails, feed them organic lettuce.) This cleans them out much the same way as feeding cornmeal water to shellfish*. Good, edible stuff goes in and sandy, gritty stuff comes out.

*Did you know snails are terrestrial mollusks? 

Step 4:  Plop your friends into a sieve and then dunk them in boiling water. This is to kill them, not cook them, so only keep them in the water for a few seconds.

Step 5: Use a fork to pull the snail from its shell. Keep the shells in one bowl ( they are nice for presentation purposes) and the snails in another. Give the snails a rinse under lukewarm, running water.

Step 6: In a pot, combine:
160ml water
100ml dry cider,
One small carrot, roughly chopped
One small white onion, roughly chopped
The snails*

*Make sure they are covered with liquid. Add a bit more water if they are not.

Step 7: Bring to a boil and then turn the heat way down and let them simmer for about 40 minutes.
       
Meanwhile: Boil the shells in salted water, rinse in cold water and repeat two more times. Put the shells on a tray and dry them in a warm oven.

Step 8: Nothing like a bit of butter to take away your worries.

In a small bowl, mix together the following:
1/4 lbs salted butter, room temperature.
½ tsp fresh Chervil, chopped finely
½ tsp fresh Dill, chopped finely
½ tsp fresh Basil, chopped finely
½ tsp fresh Sage, chopped finely
3 teaspoons fresh Parsley*, chopped finely
Pinch of Cayenne Pepper

*Curly parsley is easier to cut, but often sandier. Flat leaf parsley has more flavour. 

While you're chopping herbs, finely chop some chives, and save some parsley, which you can use as garnish.

Step 9: I bet you're starting to get hungry. You may even be talking to your snails now, threatening them that they better be delicious after all this hard work and time you've put in. Push a little of the butter mixture into the shell, right to the back. Put in the snail and then seal him in there with more delicious herby butter. You can do this ahead of time, and keep them in the fridge after assembled, or you can cook them right away.

Step 10: To serve, place the escargot de la jardin on escargot trays ( or on a baking sheet if you don't have one) and into a hot hot oven. When the butter bubbles, they are ready. Serve with crusty bread.

The photo above was taken by Mellie at five star restaurant, Vue de Monde

Monkeys Taught Me To Love Swiss Chard

This week, an article in Macleans magazine brought to light the excessive waste produced because of strict regulations on the appearance of produce. When I lived in Italy, and we grew our own twisted and leggy carrots, we learned that even when our arugula was bug-bitten and our potatoes were looking everywhere, they were still edible, and better, they were delicious. Grown without genetic modification or pesticides, all of the vegetables we grew at La Petraia were truly ‘slow’: We planted, we fed and we harvested our vegetables proudly.

Four culinary students and I stayed in Chianti for the summer and worked at the agriturismo in Radda: La Petraia. We were all completing a stage, meaning; we were there for the experience (and working for free). We had our housing paid for and we were given a weekly grocery allowance so that survival was possible during the three months that we would be there. A restriction on our grocery list was vegetables. We were not allowed to buy vegetables because we had to eat what we had grown. It makes sense, until you start going mental from monotony.

Harvesting without the use of pesticides never seemed so right. We had no problem growing asparagus – and we often had to harvest them twice daily because they grew so fast. There was no need for anything but the earth, the rain (or the irrigation when it was August and drought season) and our care. So when the kitchen had already used a bunch of asparagus for that night’s dinner guests, we were sent home with asparagus. And when pink, yellow and white-legged swiss chard was overflowing in its patch only the size of a small dinner table, we were sent home with swiss chard.

Swiss chard has a long growing season. In Canada, I use Foodland Ontario to keep track of what is in season when; but the calendar shows me what months. In Tuscany, our strawberries were in season for two weeks in the beginning of June, and grew alongside the asparagus. Asparagus grows like little rockets erupting from their underground layer, but their season is over quickly too. It is the swiss chard that survives and thrives.

For one week, our fridge was filled with clear bags of zucchini and so ever day we would make pasta with zucchini, zucchini sticks, fritters, and bread until we had had enough. We would take the bags of vegetables home at night, and in the morning, we would bring them back to work and before we were caught, we would chuck the zucchini into the compost pile and be consumed by guilt. Zucchini season was still in full swing when the chard began.

We honestly didn’t know what to do when we harvested such an abundance of swiss chard. I often say that people don’t buy local because they are uninspired. There are only so many times you can eat a beet salad before you begin to protest and whine when you see it on a menu proudly displayed as a seasonal. Cooking anything but Italian food is difficult in a small town, where you are as likely to find soy sauce as you are a store that doesn’t take a two-hour lunch break. So when I found myself mixing dried herbs and spices to make a swiss chard hot and sour soup I demanded an alternative.

The next day, after we had been handed our two clear bags of swiss chard, we stopped on our way home. Exactly half way home, along a windy road with 16% inclination (or at least that’s what the sign with falling rocks told us) there was a big yellow sign pointing down a dark driveway: Parco Nazionale de Cavrilglia. I knew there was a zoo beyond the dark forest on either side of the road leading in because on one of the first drives to work, we were stopped by a lama. He stood is the centre of the road and looked straight at us as if to say, “Yeah so what? I’m a fucking lama. Move on”. Someone in the car explained that many years ago some lamas had escaped from the zoo but decided that they liked the area, stayed and started a family. Cute, but unexpected and possibly even untrue.

We drove in and found a parking lot and a small store selling ice cream, popsicles and drinks. After our popsicles, we wandered down a path behind the little snack bungalow. There, we found MONKEYS! Looking over the chest-high cement ledge - on my tippy-toes - we looked down into a pit of Japanese Macaque monkeys grooming, swinging and screeching at the children on the other side of the fence down below. One leaf of swiss chard fell from their sky. I looked around and none of the other monkey-gawkers had noticed and so I threw in another. A little monkey shuffled over and the instant he showed interest, so did his (I presume) mama. Soon our bags were empty and the monkeys were sitting cross-legged or squatting, munching on pink and white and yellow swiss chard and looking up at us adoringly.


We visited almost every day on our way home from work, saving some for the other animals. But the ostriches weren’t interested in anything but showing off their big legs (not knowing that they were being drooled over by four culinary students with a love for all food and lot of imagination). The mouflon (wild sheep) weren’t impressed with anything despite their beautiful big space shaded by a surprisingly Canadian-looking forest. There were also horses, and Canadian geese and one very large boar who was always asleep- but none of them were interested in our swiss chard. Only the monkeys.


As if their selective appetite for swiss chard rationalized it, we visited a few more times, until swiss chard season was over. It was the tomatoes’ turn to burst with fecundity, but I promise the monkeys didn’t see one red morsel. Every morning in August we would pick baskets of plump red and sun-warmed tomatoes from only two rows of vines no more than 10 feet long; And every morning the next day we would do it again. We made pappa al pomodoro, tomato sauce, tomato chutney, sun-dried tomatoes and tomato basil sorbet. The Italians were given tomatoes and they didn’t complain about variety, they made it. The next time I grow swiss chard, I will honor it and experiment. Maybe swiss chard pesto, or braised with a lamb dish, or mixed with goat cheese and stuffed in an omelet, or made into chutney. Whatever I do with the swiss chard, those cheeky monkeys won’t be getting any.