If the cooler weather and the leaves just beginning weren't enough to tell me it was fall just around the corner. I saw this sign at Farm Boy. The new crop of apples are in. I guess not everything about summer being over is a bad thing. Soon the markets will be filled with all sorts of apples to make pie from.

I lamented earlier about the lack of summer. It isn't just that the weather has been crappy, but because of all the rain and little sun, the pickings at the markets this summer have only been so-so. The plus side is that it seems everything has been pushed back several weeks and there are still strawberries from Quebec for sale. Seeing a flat of strawberries for sale on the weekend, I couldn't resist. And after several mornings of having a strawberry smoothie and strawberries on my cereal, I was still faced with a massive about of strawberries that were in danger of becoming a horrible waste if I didn't eat them quickly. So, I didn't really have a choice. I had to make ice cream. Casting about for recipes I settled on one from Indulge, by Claire Clark. She's the pastry chef from the French Laundry, but the strawberry ice cream recipe is incredibly easy. No eggs. Just strawberries, cream and sugar. 

Blitzing the berries in the food processor made it quite easy. The difference in this recipe compared with others though is that there are no eggs. All the others included eggs or a combination of eggs and egg yolks for a richer custard. But Clark suggested this version would be "every bit as rich and creamy." She was right. It was fantastic. Deadly rich. It didn't freeze quite solid. More like a soft ice cream consistency that made it delicious to eat straight out of the freezer. Next time I think I'll cut down the sugar a little. I found it a little sweet. But otherwise it was very good. I might take issue with her assertion that the recipe serves four to six portions. That would be four to six fairly large portions given the richness of the ice cream. It is probably closer to eight.

Ingredients

600 grams strawberries

320 grams sugar

500 mL of heavy cream.

I bought this cheese last week. A little button of cheese from Fifth Town, my new favourite cheesemaker. This was a sheep milk cheese with a soft rind. Cutting into the round the cheese oozed out. I liquid layer surrounded a firmer centre. Luscious and creamy. A bit of a mushroom flavour with a tang. This was an excellent cheese. Another hit from Fifth Town.

Margaritas for me were crazy slushy blender drinks that you got a Earls on Monday nights because they were cheap. They weren't really a serious cocktail. But then a couple of years ago, a friend of mine ordered a margarita in a bar. I was getting ready to make fun of him for ordering what I thought was the equivalent of a slurpee with tequila when the waitress brought the drink in a short glass, with just a couple of ice cubes. It was a bit of a revelation to me and on hot summer days I've been drinking them ever since.

It has been a terrible summer in Ottawa. Lots of rain. Vancouver-like, only normally July and August in Vancouver there is less rain. But the last few weeks have been great and so I've been drinking summer drinks. I've started making my own margaritas at home. This summer is has been good tequila, triple sec and limes. You can substitute the triple sec with Cointreau or Grand Marnier, both make an even better margarita than the triple sec, but I was working with what I had. To make up for my use of triple sec though I've taken to adding just a tiny bit of orange juice. It mellows out the sourness of the limes just a little. And of course I'm using excellent tequila. I think it makes all the difference.

For one drink:

Two ounces good tequila

One ounce triple sec 

Juice of one lime

Half an ounce of orange juice

Take all the ingredients and put in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake well and pour all of it into a short glass.

Daphne was having a fish taco craving on the holiday weekend and since there is nowhere in Ottawa that we know about to go for that sort of thing here we were left making out own. If you know anywhere here for good fish tacos please tell me. There is nothing really fancy about fish tacos. I think that's the real trick. Each element has to be good because if they aren't it will show. The fresh shredded cabbage. Chopped cilantro. Fresh salsa. And the fish. We used haddock because that's what was available. The fish was marinade was the key. It was a combination of chili powder, ground cumin, ground coriander, cayenne pepper, minced garlic, lime zest, lime juice, salt, pepper and a little bit of cooking oil. Only marinated for less than half an hour, we broiled the fish in the oven since we don't have a grill. It worked well. Probably could have used a little more heat, but otherwise tasty. But I'd still love to know if there is anywhere in town here to find a great fish taco.

I've written several times about why I love shopping at Costco. I think they have great quality stuff in many categories and it is great value. Nobody sells the litre cartons of heavy cream for the price they do. Yes, I buy litre cartons of whipped cream. The meat is pretty decent. That's where the veal came from for the ossco bucco. And for $3 you can get a large container of arugula. It is $5 for the small box at the shop around the corner from me, so I think if you're careful and stick to your list, it is a great place. But now I have a new reason. These chocolate covered blueberries. They are fantastic. I try nearly everything the food demonstrators have on offer at the ends of the aisles at Costco, but rarely end up buying what they have to offer. The chocolate covered blueberries stopped me in my tracks and had been urging Daphne to try them too. They are fresh blueberries covered in halfway decent dark chocolate. The sweet blueberry flavour exploding when you bite into them. A real surprise because I had expected a dried blueberry. Fantastic. Apparently they only have them for a couple of weeks a year. And they are local. From Quebec. Not quite within range for a 100-mile diet, but not flown from somewhere in South America or trucked in from California. At $10 for two boxes, they aren't cheap, but they are definitely worth it.

There are few things that I like more than noodles to eat. It is probably one of the biggest reason why I will never go on an low-carb diet. I love noodles too much. I love all sorts of noodles from every culture I've tried them. At the top of the heap are probably the Asian versions. Whether it is pho, wonton with noodles or ramen. Maybe curry laksa, chow mein or those great Singapore noodles. But Western versions too. I love them all. And this one I had for lunch might be close to one of my favourites that I've made in a long time. It was leftover osso bucco with egg noodles and a healthy and by healthy I don't mean healthy I mean big handful of pine nut and horseradish gremolata. 

This started by taking the last of the leftover osso bucco, taking the meat off the bone and heating it in a pot with a splash of white wine as the water for the pasta boiled. I also scooped out the marrow and mixed it into what was become a sauce for a little extra richness and broke up the meat with the back of a spoon. Then came the broad egg noodles and tossed them with what had become a bit of a tomato-based sauce with braised veal and poured the whole mess in a bowl. Topped with a handful of gremolata, voila I had lunch. It had all the wonderful qualities of the osso bucco dinner, bites of the rich veal, the sharpness of the gremolata. It was almost better than the dinner because it didn't feel as heavy. And the pasta soaked up lots of the flavours. If you have any leftover osso bucco, I can't suggest this way of eating enough. It was fantastic.

I was having a bit of a peanut butter cookie craving. Maybe it has something to do with the giant Costco-sized container of peanut butter has been staring at me from inside the fridge every time I go looking for something other than peanut butter. Sitting there. Mocking me with its December best before date. Telling me that I'm clearly not going to eat all that peanut butter by then if I continue to consume it a couple of tablespoons at a time on my toast. So it was peanut butter cookies last night. I decided to try the Cooks Illustrated version. Slowly but surely I'm working my way through the book. It was very similar to other peanut butter cookies I've made with a key difference in that it has the addition of some extra roasted peanuts that have been blitzed in a food processor they say it adds more peanut flavour. It also advised against using a natural peanut butter, suggesting Jif instead. But that wouldn't help me with the Costco-sized jar, so I went with the natural. The result was terrific, but Cooks Illustrated was right. The natural peanut butter left with the cookies with a slight sandy texture. Not terrible, just not as smooth as it could have been.  

To drink with the osso bucco last weekend we opened a bottle of chianti. I must confess that I bought the bottle because it had one of those little descriptions on the shelf at the LCBO saying it was great.That and the label looked vaguely familiar. I don't know a lot of about wine, mostly because my memory is not good about what I've had in the past. But I do love great wine. This one was pretty good. It had big fruit flavours. Cherry. Blackberry. In style, it was much like a California wine or one from Australia. In a blind tasting, I definitely would have guessed New World. But it isn't. It's Italian. I really enjoyed it. At $25, it was a little on the expensive side, so that might give me second thoughts about buying it again, but it was delicious.

I've been posting about what I've been cooking a lot recently, so I thought I'd change it up a little and post about a new toy this summer in my kitchen. An ISI Soda Siphon. I wish I could say that I bought it because I was thinking about the environment and didn't like all the empty plastic soda water bottles I was going through. Or perhaps it was because that I didn't like all the sodium that is in soda water when you bought it in the store. But really, it was an impulse buy after reading about Amateur Gourmet's post about making ginger ale at home. Daphne and I were wandering around the market and, as we often find ourselves, wandered into Domus. A combination of a desire to make ginger ale at home and a desire to use the mint we are growing on our tiny balcony in mojitos pushed us to buying a soda siphon. I have no regrets. I love it. The ginger ale has been fantastic and so have the mojitos. I even add a little soda water when I make an old fashioned, Don Draper's drink of choice. Not much, just a little. Instead of a splash of water. I'm not sure it is any cheaper to use one of these soda siphons instead of buying soda water. It works out to be just over a dollar per litre because of the cost of the canisters. But like I said, no plastic bottles and no added sodium.