The Bounty Hunter

The Bounty Hunter is a website about cooking and eating delicious, seasonal and local foods.

Breakfast

A Spring Frittata of Nettles and Purple Sprouting Broccoli

I have vegetables on my brain even more than usual. I am helping organize a group art show that is opening this Thursday, April 7th. The theme for the exhibition is Eat Your Veggies. Also, it is really feeling like spring. We are starting to see the first signs of the season in nature and at the farmers markets. I cleaned up our little vegetable patch and planted some seeds on the weekend.

I love how vegetables and fruits follow the seasons. This rhythm is one of the defining influences of my cooking style and what I choose to eat. I find cooking seasonally keeps me inspired and challenges me to try new recipes and ingredients. The last month or so I have been cooking a lot with the spring shoots from kale, collards, and arugula as well as beautiful purple sprouting broccoli. Chives have come up and I cooked up the first rhubarb into a compote with honey and vanilla. This week I came home from market with gorgeous red radishes, stunning red veined sorrel and some green garlic. I also went foraging for nettles a few weeks ago with a dear friend of mine who lives on Bowen. The best!

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Coconut Buckwheat Granola with Rose Petals

After well over a year of quiet, spring seems like as good a time as any to come back to writing and posting on my website. It has been a long break and I feel ready to create and post on this space again. I had thought about a redesign of the site and other changes but in the end decided that what was most important was to simply get posting again and sharing some of my creative energy and inspiration.

The last year has been one of health challenges and many different dietary changes, which at times left me feeling unsure and uninspired in the kitchen. I was unable to use ingredients I had long relied on in my pantry and couldn’t make many of the staple recipes I cooked on a regular basis.

The positive side is that these changes opened up an opportunity to try new ingredients and ways of cooking I had not previously explored, to embrace fruits and vegetables to the fullest, and to find some new favourite foods. More than ever food and cooking have become about nourishing myself and those around me.

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Honey and Vanilla Roasted Rhubarb

Spring seems particularly beautiful and dramatic this year. Once again I am totally smitten with all of the blossoms. Spring also means the return of another favourite, rhubarb.

I was delighted, a little giddy even, to see the first rhubarb at the farmers market this weekend. I have seen it coming up in gardens around the city and when poking around my Grandma and Aunt’s garden on Gabriola Island over Easter. But alas I do not have the space to grow my own so I rely on the kindness of others to supply me with this Spring delight. If I visit at the right time my parents or Grandma will send me home with some which is always a treat.

Thankfully Yolanda and Brian grow beautiful rhubarb at Shalefield Farm and brought the first picking to the market on Saturday. I asked if they knew which variety it was but they were unsure. What Brian did know is that he got the rootstock from a Mr Reinhart in 1973 from his backyard. I love it. I find rhubarb often has a story like this. It is handed down by friends, neighbours or family for generations. A friend of mine has a rhubarb plant that has been in her family for over 100 years. So special.

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