Hard Sauce

Serve this sauce with bread pudding or Christmas pudding.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup soft butter
1 and 1/2 cups of sifted icing sugar
2 tablespoons rum or brandy

Instructions:
Cream the butter with the icing sugar until light and fluffy. Stir in the rum or brandy. Place a generous dollop on top of warm pudding and get blissful.

Zucchini Pepper Relish

The dog days of summer in southern Ontario happen to correspond to the monster days of zucchini. A 'friend' off-loaded one such vegetable on to my sister and rather than tossing it over the back fence, she proceeded to make zucchini relish on the sultriest day of the year. The heat must be getting to her.

 

For other stellar zucchini recipes and riveting zucchini commentary just go to your left, scroll down to the blog archive, and retrieve the posts dated: 
 

Oct 31, 2009, Nov 5, 2009, Sept 11, 2012, May 11, 2013, and Aug. 5, 2013. You'll see.

 

Ingredients:

• 1/2 giant zucchini ( about 3 cups finely chopped in food processor)
• 2 cups finely diced onion (3 large)
• 2 cups finely diced red, green and cubanelle  pepper ( 2 green, 2 red. 1 hot)
• 1/4 cup coarse salt (pickling salt)
• 1 1/2 cups cider vinegar
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 tsp mustard powder
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 1/2 tsp celery salt
• 1/2 tsp hot pepper flakes
• 1 tablespoon corn starch mixed with about a quarter cup of water to form a slurry

Mix the first 3 ingredients with 1/4 cup of coarse salt and let this vegetable mixture sit for 1/2 hour. Rinse and drain the mixture then place it in a large pot on the stove. Add the vinegar, sugar, mustard powder, turmeric, celery salt and pepper flakes, stir everything together and simmer on a medium heat for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, add the corn starch slurry and boil the mixture hard for about 2 minutes. Fill sterilized canning jars with the hot relish and seal. When you hear the lids of the jars pop, you'll know they're sealed.

Roasted Garlic Aioli

From the Fresh Tracks Cafe cookbook, Whitewater Cooks, comes this easy recipe for a popular restaurant accompaniment to fries. And remember, you can use exactly the same roasting technique to make garlic mashed potatoes....just don't put the mayo. into the mash.


Ingredients:

- 2 cups of good quality mayonnaise
- 1 whole garlic head
- 1/2 teaspoon olive oil
- 1/2 teaspoon of rosemary or thyme
- salt and pepper

Cut the top off of the garlic to expose the flesh a little. Lay the garlic head on a piece of tin foil (cut side up) and drizzle with the olive oil. Sprinkle with herbs, salt and pepper. Wrap into a tinfoil package and roast in the oven for 30-40 minutes at 325 degrees F. Cool slightly before you squeeze the roasted garlic out of its papery skin into the mayonnaise. Whisk until smooth. Season with salt and pepper to taste. This is good on burgers, sandwiches and is a great dip for fries.