This is a bit of redemption for me. 2 years ago, I wrote about pickling whitefish, and failed at documenting the recipe or approach to it. So this time around, I’m taking notes as I plan on doing this often. It’s not fussy, it’s tasty, and strikes me as the kind of thing every good northerner should be happy to tuck into with a beer or vodka. So when the fish in the photo below came into my life, I knew its fate. I’ll never forget this fish. I’d never caught a whitefish. And for whatever reason, they kept popping off the hook while just coming out of the ice hole. Flopping in the hole, no hook or line attached, trying to sort out escape. So I panicked…or rather…thought quick on my feet. Whitefish number one that day was scooped out of the hole with my kitchen spider [which does only a marginally good job at de-slushing a hole, btw]. The bad boy in the photo below, which looks kind of like a minnow in the photo but was actually a foot and a half + long, I scooped out with my hand – my reflex being to plunge my arm down the hole after it, and fling it out onto the ice. Some good laughs were had. This one fish made 3 pints of pickled fish.

So here’s the deal with the pickling. Fillet. I took the rib cage off via filleting from the back toward the abdomen. The bones go soft in the pickle, so no biggy if they’re left in. Cube the fish into 1X1″ pieces. For 3-4 fish: 1 cup salt, 5 cups water. Make a brine. Let the fish sit in the brine from 12-96 hrs, depending who you ask. Drain. Cover fish pcs with white vinegar. Let soak for 12-96 hrs [same deal]. Drain. Prior to jarring, make and chill a brine solution of 1.5 cups white sugar, 2 cups vinegar, 2 tbsp pickling spice or other aromatics of choice. Pack jars tightly, pour on brine, and eat from a week later to a few months later. Too long and the texture goes mushier – when fresh, the texture is pleasant, dense, and if you hate pickled fish, these could easily change your mind. They changed mine. I’m sure you could use less salt and sugar, but to me, these are like junk food – like tying into a bag of chips. Now: patience. Hard to wait that first week. Need to catch more whitefish.

This farm should be celebrated by Slow Food and anybody who values biodiversity. While others are farming a single variety of potato in serious quantities, this 4th generation family farm is growing 40 or so varieties and counting. Potatoes need not be a boring staple. What struck me when listening to John was his focus on taste – choosing potato varieties because they have the best taste. What a novel concept for something we eat. John also offers some great advice for what varieties to use in different cooking applications. I thought I knew potatoes, but apparently I have a few things to learn. They also do a veg CSA, raise heritage laying hens and turkeys in a straw-bale construction coop, and all kinds of other cool stuff. Add to that a stunning location atop a high point with a view over the Rockies, and it’s quite the memorable place.

Their online catalog is here, if you’re in the mood for potato enlightenment and/or want to order from them. I will be, again.

When small, the photo on the left looks strikingly like a giant storm of doom shot from space. But it’s just an ice hole. An ice hole that hardly had a line put down it this morning, because, as I was fated to learn, small children have no attention span for ice fishing. Which is cool. I brought other stuff to do – books, sand toys, food, etc. No dice. My 3 year old complained the entire time, starting before arrival. Too cold, wanted mommy, wanted to go home. What I fail to understand is that on the way home, after essentially ruining everybody else’s morning complaining and crying, she declares: ‘I love ice fishing!’. I don’t understand.

The lake we went to is one that’s aerated and stocked with 40,000 trout a year. Figured that might result in some coolness. Nope. Not a bite. Although when you let the toddlers choose their lures, and spend zero time manning a line, you’re not exactly setting yourself up for success. To make things worse, unlike the last time I went ice fishing [Episode 26], we couldn’t see anything much beyond the hole. For whatever reason, the water’s murkier. I’ll choose a lake I can see into, every time. Just a matter of figuring which ones those are exactly. Thankfully the lake was close to the city, it was a beautiful morning, and all my new ice fishing gear worked out a treat. Couldn’t have sucked too bad, as I’m going to a different lake tomorrow. Without the 3-year-old.

Two people passionate about pizza. Like. Hardcore passionate. New Level Pizza [no they don't have a website, but you can follow them on Twitter @newlevelpizza], is affectionately known by members as ‘pizza club‘. Pizza club is currently a member only deal, not open to the public, and you can only go if you get invited by an existing member. There’s a long list of reasons why pizza club is a member-only deal at the moment, and you can ask the guys all about it when you score yourself an invite to go try their pies.

I have always adored the concept of prix-fixe eating – allowing the chef to do what inspires them and knock those dishes out of the park, rather than burning their energy accommodating everybody. Depending on the season and night, you’ll get a different array of deliciousness. Chad’s folks happened to have been in town from Newfoundland bearing gifts of line-caught cod, lingonberries, and cloudberries – so they ended up on the menu this particular night. Next time, something different.

It’s always fun to listen to folks talk about what they’re passionate about – and this episode’s no exception.

If you haven’t had haggis, I would recommend giving it a go. It furthered my interest in grinding off-cuts into other ground meat preparations – was chatting with some folks on Twitter this week about the prospects of a heart, tongue, and marrow burger, for example. How is it that that sounds decadent, when all of those pieces would often get thrown out? I’d bet money I could serve you a chili with tongue in it and you’d never know different. I’m already sold on spaghetti and beef-heart-meatballs. If my mother in law ever reads this, she’ll really, totally never ever want to come over and eat in my kitchen.

I would like to add my voice to all the others asking the city for a non-essential or cosmetic pesticide ban.

I’m a local food writer heavily involved in the urban agriculture and foraging communities. I lead groups of Edmontonians to harvest backyard urban fruit with Operation Fruit Rescue Edmonton. I go on forays with the Alberta Mycological Society to harvest mushrooms that are abundant in our city. I guide a fruit foraging event for Slow Food Edmonton. I write about wild foods for the Alberta Conservation Association, many of these foods being abundant in our city limits. NAIT’s Culinary Arts program has me take students out foraging in the city to inspire them to use the foods around them. In all of these cases, broad use of pesticides is a concern. In fact, one of the most common objections to folks using the foods around our city is that they don’t want to touch them because they don’t know what kind of chemicals they’ve been sprayed with. That’s just sad, and a deterrent to our citizens connecting with the food around them – which seems to counter the spirit of the ‘Food and Urban Agriculture Project’.

I often hear the City of Edmonton talk about the desire to be a world-class city. Perhaps then we should share the same level of protection other municipalities have when it comes to ingesting pesticides. Perhaps we need to be progressive on this front rather than last on the uptake. Sports fields are nice, but so are food and health. If you think pesticides are safe to eat, by all means feel free to eat all you like, but please don’t force the rest of us to in the name of protecting jobs.  -  Sincerely, Kevin Kossowan

Applejack is a hard liquor of 20-30% abv that can only be made when it’s extremely cold out. For that, it is special to me. Its flavours and smells cannot be created in warmer climates – perhaps why the Normands don’t do applejack despite their apple-booze culture…they simply can’t. It’s extra special due to the fact that distilling booze to make spirits is illegal here – big time. But this isn’t. I spoke to 4 people at the AGLC [all strangely helpful and nice] before finding out if posting this would incriminate me. The guy at the top didn’t even know what applejack was, and had to look it up and get back to me. Apparently I am into the obscure. Clearly couldn’t be something they were enforcing if they didn’t even know what it was, no? Had to be sure though, and in the end, the authorities gave me the okay – but do check with the authorities in your jurisdiction prior to trying it, finding yourself in the slammer, and blaming it on me. Don’t do that.

You could try this with a full bodied white on the sweeter side if you want to give it a go and are short on cider [not a problem I have]. My one suggestion having done it is that you’d want to use as high quality an input as you can – use your good stuff, not your ‘this-sucks-but-maybe-if-I-Applejack-it-stuff’ – as it will concentrate the good, but also the bad. More, in the video.

This is a follow up to Episode 27, the reaction to which I must pause to thank you all for. I was more than slightly apprehensive in the days just prior to shooting it, fearful that if it didn’t go well, it could reflect badly on the subjects of the story. Turns out the result has been an outpouring of praise, appreciation, and value for the transparency, respect, and approach. I’m very grateful for you all and for having a brilliant individual to interview.

This is far…lighter, although still a serious topic near and dear to me: food waste. I left that day with 60-70 lbs of off-cuts from only 1 of the 5 cows killed, and it wasn’t even all the off-cuts. 100 lbs of edible ‘waste’ from one cow might be a good rough estimate. I’ll repeat myself to death that it’s the consumer demand that drives this waste. I’ll lump myself in there. I didn’t grow up eating heart, tripe, kidneys, caul fat, oxtail, etc – so I’m still learning about all this stuff too. But I now render all my lard from our annual pig, and easily use it all up. And I thoroughly enjoy roasted pig head which I would never have considered a few years ago. Pig skin crackling makes a regular appearance in my kitchen. There’s still a lot of an animal that I could learn to use better. So in this one, you get to see me make a dish with a bin cut that quite frankly should not be.

How did it taste? The flavour was intense and outstanding, and the mouthfeel unparalleled. For stews, I’m not sure there’s a better cut of beef. If the local restaurants don’t scoop this reject cut, I might, it’s that good. And for those that ‘don’t have the time’, please note how long it took to prepare.

When I buy sides of pork and beef from local farmers, it is quite plainly illegal for them to be killed in an un-inspected environment. Consequently, farmers bring their meat animals to one of the local meat processors/abattoirs and for a very reasonable fee, the processor does what’s called a ‘kill & chill’. Under supervision of a provincial meat inspector, they do the kill, gutting, skinning [or scraping for pigs], and chilling of the carcass. It’s important work, and I’m guessing it’s work that most retail customers are oblivious to, for a variety of reasons. You don’t want to know. Industry doesn’t want you do know. I think we should know.

In the poultry industry, kill plants have been shut down by increasing regulation over the years such that producers must now drive their poultry to the plant in St. Paul to have their birds processed – even if it takes hours and hours to drive there. The result is highly-stressed birds and significant loss of life in transit. Ask your local poultry producer about it. For whatever reason our local red meat processors have [thankfully] not met that same fate. We need to keep it that way. We need to better understand their role in our local food supply chain. We need to support these people that do our dirty work for us – and make no mistake, it’s the consumer that demands the dirty work be done.

Another theme I wanted to address is the amount of food that goes in the bin at the processor – by request of the consumer. Stock bones, oxtail, heart, liver, tongue, kidney, caul fat, tripe, pig heads, and loads more go in the bin because we don’t want it. It’s wasteful, disrespectful, and I think we’re due for a culture change in this regard.

This episode is graphic and not for everyone, so don’t watch it unless you want to see how a cow gets killed and processed. It’s a far too uncommon look at a critical part of the process of delivering meat to the table. I will be moderating the comments liberally.

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