A Simple Soup

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Well its now Spring and the team is preparing for our Tea Room's seasonal opening next Tuesday!

Meanwhile, since our last blog entry, we had the opportunity to compose a new soup recipe based on what we had on hand.

The last (hopefully) snow storm of the season, did not stop us from trying to dig up some Sunchoke roots. With what had been a rather mild Winter, we thought the ground would be soft enough to recover a few tubers and we were quite right.

Gathering Sunchoke tubers following what we hope to be the last snow storm of the season

 In the past, we had always harvested our Sunchokes late in the Fall and usually after the first frost. We were told that Inulin (the carbohydrate that causes flatulence) turns into sugars when the tubers are subjected to low temperature.

Picking the tubers so late in the season was an opportunity to test this thesis.

The Sunchoke Tubers, once cleaned, were ready to be processed

Once cleaned, we decided to taste them raw. Usually, we found the Sunchoke to have a nice mild and nutty taste. We were quite surprised to find that this late in the season, they are indeed very sweet. They almost tasted like carrots!

We decided to turn these into a soup. In the past, we have tended to use a simple combination of potatoes and Sunchokes to make a nice creamed soup. This time, we decided to combine these with some Squash. We roasted the Sunchoke tubers with diced Squash and added them to a combination of cooked leeks, onions and garlic. Since we had some at our disposal, we threw in a few handfuls of pumpkin seeds.

A great vegetable base for a soup.

We added some stock and once the vegetables were fully cooked, we took the mix through a blender.
The result was a very good and simple Sunchoke and Squash soup.

A simple Sunchoke and Squash soup, garnished with Pumpkin seeds

Finally, the inspiration for this soup was the theme of our first 2017 SlowFood Niagara convivium meeting which was hosted at the farm last Sunday. The theme was: Aboriginal Foods.

The members really outdid themselves by preparing a potluck that included everything from Pemmican, to salmon, bison stew and wild rice.

SlowFood Niagara meeting....a great "spread"

March 27th!

To view the latest from Ridge Berry Farm visit our new blog and site!

This is our first blog entry in quite a while....and we're back!

The reason for this quiet period is simple: we've been hibernating.

During this time, we've had a lot of people ask when will the Tea Room open again for the season. Well, the date has now been set: March 27th.

This is a bit later than expected. But during this relatively mild Winter, we've not stopped any of our major projects. This year, this has involved finishing the first floor of the barn. Basically insulating it all and extending our kitchen/production area. With some of our wall covering on back order, we simply could not finish it all in time for our originally planned 21st March seasonal opening.

The back of the barn's first floor: in its original configuration

The back of the barn: a new and improved production area

Meanwhile, the Winter months have allowed us to continue experimentation in wine making and fruit liqueurs. The focus of our work has been the Kiwi berries we harvested last Fall. We continue to work on Melomels (a fruit-based Mead or Honey wine). The results have been quite good and we've now perfected the clarification of our wines.

In the end, the process is rather simple and involves just 4 basic ingredients: fruit, honey, water and yeast.

Kiwi berries drenched in Honey

Once water is added, the activated yeast does all the work

Within just a few weeks, our fermenter is ready to disgorge a beautiful dry white wine

Finally, quite a few changes are expected in this year's Tea Room operation. We hope our patrons will benefit from all these changes. In any case, we now are looking forward to a great new season and the blog is now back on, full swing with weekly updates.