Edmonds comes to Canada

As you know, I took my Edmonds book with me to Canada, in the hope that I might be able to tick off a couple more recipes while I was there. And I'm pleased to say that although we were mostly exceptionally well catered for, I did manage to slip in a couple of Edmonds recipes.

We spent the first few days of our holiday in Whistler. Since the rest of our holiday would be spent in a campervan, I decided to take the opportunity of using a proper kitchen while one was available. I spent some time pouring over my Edmonds book, looking for a suitable recipe. I had to find something that required minimal ingredients, and preferably wouldn't take too long to make.

I selected a dessert without any difficulty: I'd been absolutely delighted with the abundance of berry fruit available - quite a novelty to me in July! Marinated strawberries (p203) seemed like an excellent light dessert for a summer evening.

Choosing a main course was a little more difficult. After considering several options, I selected the easiest one I could find: tacos (p153). These would be quick to make and would use up some of the large bag of lettuce we had in the fridge.

I'd expected to do my cooking at the cabin where we were staying, but ended up using the kitchen at Daz's - useful, since I was able to use various items like chilli powder and flour from his pantry instead of buying them.

While Mum and I perused the local supermarket for ingredients, the boys dropped into the bottle store next door for the orange liqueur. Once all ingredients were acquired, we headed to Daz's for dinner.

I started by preparing the strawberries: I hulled and sliced them, then sprinkled them with icing sugar and orange rind. I poured over the liqueur and orange juice, and stirred it all through. Then it was into the fridge to marinate - as easy as that!

Next I started on the tacos. It was a pretty basic mince mixture really - cook garlic and onion, add mince and brown, stir in chilli powder and flour, then add tomato paste and stock. Once again, I found it interesting that there were no actual tomatoes used - I'd always put a can of tomatoes in a mixture of this sort.

While the mince was simmering, I went to prepare the rest of the ingredients. Jos was diligently slicing lettuce for me, so I decided to grate some cheese. This was where I discovered a problem: we'd left our cheese in the fridge at our cabin - and Daz didn't have any at his place. Whoever heard of tacos without cheese? But that's what we had to do in the end.

The Edmonds recipe calls for only the mince mixture, the lettuce and the cheese as filling for the tacos, but we had a few other bits and pieces sitting around that needed using, so I sliced up some avocado and some tomato as possible additions. We even included a bit of ham - highly unconventional, but it worked ok!

Soon we had all the ingredients ready, so we gathered around the table and made our tacos. I was contemplating the slightly bland flavour of the mince, when someone said "did you put any salt in this?" Oops: forgot the seasoning. No one was too bothered though, and the tacos disappeared fairly quickly. It wasn't a particularly large meal, but we'd had a late lunch and no one was very hungry.

Tacos are quick, easy and quite nice, if a little difficult to eat - but don't forget to season the mince, and make sure you have some cheese! And don't be afraid to add extra fillings if you have stuff lying around. The avocado, in particular, worked really well.

When the taco dishes had been cleared away, I brought out the marinated strawberries. Served with scoops of ice cream, they were very tasty. I'd really recommend these if you're looking for a summer dessert you can throw together quickly, as long as you allow time to marinate. Marinated strawberries: they're super nice, eh?