Perfect Pressure Cooked Quinoa

Quinoa featured in Collard Green Wraps - Recipe Coming Soon

Quinoa - chewy grains of seedy goodness, you know it and like it. It's as though millions of people have gotten together and collectively dumped gluten. "Hi Gluten, it's over. No, it's me, not you. You make me fat, and feel bad about myself and I've found someone new...oh and I want my records back".

Having tried every cooking technique out there, I've finally come to think this method makes a consistent el dante quinoa, but your gonna need to get yourself a pressure cooker.

What you will need:

• 1 cup whole grain quinoa
• 1.25 cup water

Rinse the quinoa well in a fine mesh strainer with cold water and drain. Put into the pressure cooker and dry fry on medium heat stirring often. Cook the quinoa until it is brown and you hear the kernels popping - about 5-7 min.

Next pour the water overtop the quinoa and close pressure cooker lid. Turn heat to high and allow pressure cooker to hit high pressure. Cook at high pressure for 1 minute. Allow to release using the natural release method (set aside and allow pressure to come down naturally).

Once pressure has been fully released open lid and gently stir to fluff the quinoa. Let sit for 10 minutes before serving. 

Duck à l'Orange Crème Brûlée

Thanks little guy

Guest post from Jar Head:

One of the pleasures of being out on Mayne Island is picking up fresh local ingredients directly from the farms. This past weekend we came across fresh local duck eggs, something that we have not previously used. Once we cracked one open and saw the huge size of the yolk relative to the white we immediately realized that these were made for custards.



Combined with the fact that we just recently acquired a pressure cooker - which we heard makes great custards - we were set to go.

Ingredients and Equipment

What you will need:

• 1 cup cream
• 3 duck yolks (4 if using chicken)
• 2.5 TBSP white sugar
• 2 TBSP raw sugar (for caramelizing)
• 1 vanilla pod, split and seeded
• zest of one orange
• pressure cooker 
• trivet
• ramekins
• tinfoil
• torch 

Add the creme, vanilla and orange zest to a heavy bottomed pot and bring to a boil stirring occasionally. Once the milk begins to boil and froth remove from heat and set aside for at least 30 minutes to allow the flavours to infuse.

Once the creme mixture is at room temperature prepare your pressure cooker. You want your ramekins to be above the water - I raised the steamer that came with mine by arranging 4 empty ramekins on the bottom of the pot with my steamer sitting on top. Add water to just below the steamer.

Ready to Cook

In a mixing bowl add the white sugar and the egg yolks and whisk until the sugar is completely dissolved. Add the yolk mixture to the cream mixture and incorporate. Strain the mixture through a mesh sieve into your ramekins and cover tightly with the tinfoil. Place the ramekins onto the steamer insert, cover and lock. Turn heat to high and once at low pressure turn down heat and maintain at low pressure for 8 minutes. Once the time has elapsed remove from heat and allow pressure to come down naturally.

Topped with fresh berries...mmm

Remove the ramekins and check to see if they have set - they should be jiggly in the middle but not liquid. If they are not set return to the pressure cooker and repeat at low pressure for an additional few minutes depending on how loose they were.

Once cooked allow to cool 30 minutes and then place in fridge for 3-4 hours. 

Before serving remove from fridge, cover the top with the raw sugar and torch to caramelize. Serve with fresh berries and mint leaves.

Grilled Beer Sandwich

As you can tell, this blog has taken either a tragic or delicious turn for the better by featuring beer in multiple recipes. After a peek into my incredibly well stocked pantry, and a spin of the imagination wheel, I landed on a grilled cheese sandwich, but beerified. If fried sandwiches are good enough for Elvis…well they're good enough for me.

It's about to get all gooey

Gather the following:

• 1 loaf of multigrain beer bread 
• 1 jar of beer mustard 
• 1 block of beer washed or beer infused cheese
• 1 giant pile of beer glazed onions (see below) 
• Coconut oil, or butter if you’re a traditionalist
• 1 solid fry pan 

Pull your beer mustard out of the fridge and allow to warm slightly. Slice the bread into fry-able slices and shred the cheese.

For the Beer Glazed onions you will need the following:

• 2 large onions 
• 2 tsp of butter 
• ½ c water 
• ½ cup beer 

A quadruple beer threat of awesomeness

Thinly slice the onions, use a mandoline if you happen to have one. Warm your pan at medium and add the butter. Add all the onions – yes all of them and cook until they just become translucent, a little golden browning is okay, just don’t burn these guys. Stir as often as is necessary. Once the onions are translucent and the pan is mostly dry begin adding the beer a couple of TBSP at a time to deglaze the pan, allow the beer to fully evaporate. Continue this process alternating between beer and water deglazes until the onions are brown and sticky.

The sandwich fry:

Assemble the sandwich, collect your 2 pieces of beer bread, slather one slice with beer mustard, top with beer glazed onions and as much cheese as your heart can handle. Place those sandwiches in a preheated & buttered pan and fry with the lid on to encourage the cheese to melt and flip at your leisure.

You should turn up with something like what's in the picture - be classy and top the whole business with some chopped parsley. Serving a grilled beer sandwich with a glass of craft beer is a centre field home run for anyone looking to impress their beer inclined friends. Now get out there and knock one outta the park.

Curried Lentil and Cauliflower Soup

It's not yet past soup season and given the days here on the wet coast plague us with the "Damp" something warming is a welcome relief. It doesn't need to be fancy or French to sooth the hunched back surly symptoms of the Damp, just a solid stew/soup that'll fire up the burn from the inside out. 

Get some:

The soup horizon  - there's no going back

• 1.5 cups red lentils
• 1 onion
• 1/2 inch of ginger
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 1 TBSP curry powder
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp coriander 
• 2 carrots
• 1 small head of cauliflower
• 2 cups low sodium veggie broth
• 3 bay leaves 
• use all the soaking water from lentils
• 2 thai chilli's or 1 tsp chilli flakes

Topping: 

• Fresh herbs cilantro, parsley, fennel or chives
• Sour cream or yogurt
• Lime juice
• sprinkle of salt

Rinse the lentils multiple times in cool water to remove the outside starches place in the cooking pot & cover with boiling water by at least 2 inches. Allow to stand for at least 15 mins to soak. Meanwhile sweat the onions with a sprinkle of salt. Add the garlic and ginger briefly sweat. Push veggies to the side and dry fry the coriander, cumin & curry powder. Add the stock, & lentils with all the soaking water.

Bring the soup to a boil and then turn down to a simmer, add carrots and clamp the lid on and cook for 10 mins. Feel free to add more stock or water to loosen the soup up of it's getting too thick. After the 10 min has elapsed add the cauliflower and cook for another 10 mins. Stir often to stop the lentils from sticking to the bottom. Lastly add a chopped chilli pepper & stir well, cook for another 5 mins. 

Add the fresh toppings, these brighten the flavour and add dimension to the soup
try:  chopped fresh, cilantro, parsley, fennel or chives and a spoon of sour cream or yogurt.

Like all good soups this get better when it takes a little fridge nap over night. Excellent for freezing and nomnomnoming at a later date when your world is inside out and upside down and eating is just a matter of getting through the next 8 hrs.

Beer Pairing: A Belgian style triple works great here. L'Herbe à Détourne matches well with its sweet creamy malts and dry bitter hops that compliment each other perfectly. The sweetness of the triple is present and the addition of bitter hops accentuate the creaminess of the soup perfectly.

Beer Marshmallows! Yup you read that right.

Our ingredients including DDC's Aphrodisiaque.
Beautiful Vancouver in the background

We here at Fondue Voodoo like to see great craft beer put to use, primarily put into our beer glasses where it can go to a very good cause, our bellies.

While sitting in front of a wood fire late one night with my stout nightcap in one hand and a slowly roasting marshmallow in the other, booze induced fireworks of imagination blasted off in my head...ok so maybe more like a click of a burnt out lightbulb, but that's hardly the point...and so beer marshmallows were born.

Choose a good, heavy flavoured stout or porter so that the beer shines through.

In multiple trials we've used these solid offerings with great success, Dieu du Ciel's Péché Mortel or Aphrodisiaque, Powell Street Craft Brewery's Dive Bomb Porter and Parallel 49 Brewing Company's Ugly Sweater. Yeah, product testing is the worst... ;)



You could let your beer go flat first so that all you get is the beer flavour, but we prefer to enjoy our marshmallows with all of the beers bubbly characteristics so we left it fully carbonated. You will thank me later when you have your first beer marshmallow burp while giggling to yourself...

What you will need:

• candy thermometer
• 1 large bottomed, well greased baking dish or cookie sheet with tall edges
• 1 cup stout or porter, divided into two 1/2 cup portions
• 3 tbsp gelatin powder (equal to 3 packets or about 12 sheets)
• 2 cups white sugar
• 1/2 cup corn syrup
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 egg whites (I prefer to use dried egg white powder for this)
• 1 tsp vanilla paste or 1/2 stem vanilla pod, seeded (optional)

Dusting powder for the set marshmallows

• 1/2 cup icing sugar
• 1/2 cup corn starch

Mix the icing sugar and corn starch together in a bowl and set aside for later use.

Powell Street's growler dispensing great
beer and wisdom

Add gelatin to 1/2 cup of the beer in the bowl of your stand mixer, gently stir and set aside.

Pour the remaining beer into a large heavy stock pot together with the white sugar, corn syrup and salt. Warm the sugars over medium low heat and occassionaly stir with a wooden spoon until the sugar is completely dissolved.

Once dissolved, increase heat to medium, and slowly bring to a boil. Do not stir during this stage. Allow the sugar mixture to boil until it reaches 118 degrees celcius (245 farenheit), just between a soft and hard ball on your candy thermometer.

Immediately, and very carefully! pour the hot sugars over the beer and gelatin in your stand mixing bowl and incrementally, but swiftly, turn it to high. Add the vanilla to the mixer and continue to whip the sugars and gelatine on high until it almost triples in volume and lightens in colour, approximately 10 minutes.

Almost there...

While the sugar mixture is being whipped, beat your egg whites in a separate bowl until they reach stiff peaks.

At the 10 minute mark add the egg whites and continue whipping until they are incorporated, about 1 to 2 minutes.

As soon as the egg whites have been incorporated pour into the greased baking dish and use a greased spatula to spread. Use some of the cornstarch and icing sugar mix to lightly cover over the marshmallows.

Place in fridge to set for 4 hours.

Parallel 49's Ugly Sweater dude gives the thumb's up

Once the marshmallows have set, remove from fridge and place on a cutting board dusted with the icing sugar and corn starch mix. Cut the marshmallows into cubes and generously dust each cube in the icing sugar mixture. Place on a wire rack and allow to sit for 3 to 4 hours to dry.

Once dried, put the marshmallows in a sealed container in the fridge. These are best within the first few days but can last for up to a week...trust me, there won't be any left...

In terms of serving you can have them as is, but we have also experimented with covering in chocolate and cashews, melting in hot chocolate, floating in a morning coffee for a breakfast beer chaser and charring with a blow torch which was both recklessly fun and delicious.

Now be careful kids, these surgery pillows of beer joy are additive, for good beer karma be sure to spread the joy around - your friends and family will approve.

Craft Beer Mustard

Mustard is the golden standard for everything in the Foundue Voodoo house, salad dressing, sandwiches, marinades and everything in between. I'd wash my hair with it if I could. I learned about DIY mustard using beer, and gave up buying mustard in favour of the tarragon pickled flavoured home spun version. The magic here is the love that goes into the craft beer and the patience required to leave the finished mustard in the fridge for 24 hrs while it settles down.

You'll need:

• 1/2 cup + 1 tbsp tarragon vinegar 
• 1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
• 1/2 cup stout - we used Central City's Red Racer Oatmeal Stout
• 1/4 cup brown mustard seeds
• 3/4 cup yellow mustard seeds
• 1/4 cup mustard powder
• 1/2 tsp tumeric (for colour)
• 1/2 tsp cayenne (for heat)
• 2 tbsp honey

In a sauce pan warm the vinegars, stout, mustard seeds and mustard powder to simmer (Do not boil!) to soften mustard seeds, between 10 - 15 minutes. Remove from heat, add remaining ingredients and use a food processor to process the blend until it reaches a consistency you're happy with. Cool and place in a glass jar and toss it to the back of the fridge for a little rest.

Test the mustard after 24 hrs, if it's bitter allow it it continue to rest - the bitters will mellow after a proper chilly nap.

Once your happy with your mustard adjust the flavour by adding more vinegar and honey to your preference.

Enjoy on everything.

Ants on a Log - Now for Adults

Warning - this post may contain nuts, deliciousness and double entendres.

Occasionally the Fondue household has a snack attack - which often ends in a salty sweaty mess of stale nachos and questionable salsa.  Ants on a log seem too childish to indulge in, and yet too delicious to give up on. Who doesn't like peanut butter? (blahblahblahAnaphylactic shock).
In the best interest of matching adult behaviour with childhood memories, peanut butter is getting a make over.

March sunshine in Vancouver is the best.

Get some:

• Clean, trimmed and dry celery ribs
• 1/2 c Organic peanut butter
• 1 TBSP honey 
• 1 TBSP Sriarcha hot sauce - or your favourite pepper based hot sauce
• 1 tsp lime juice
• 1/2 tsp splash of fish sauce or soya sauce
• Nuts - salted peanuts, cashews, almonds walnuts 
• optional: cilantro & 1/4 tsp powdered garlic

Assembly - this is the easy part
Pile the peanut butter, honey, hot sauce, lime juice, fish sauce & optional garlic powder into a bowl and stir to incorporate.
Stuff your celery ribs with the spicy peanut butter topping.
Place the nuts securely in the peanut butter and place cilantro artfully on top.
Serve the remaining peanut butter with apple slices for a sweet salty spicy taste sensation.
This snack attack is great with a delicious Driftwood White Bark Witbier.
I wouldn't have been a happy child if I could have drank Driftwood with my after school snack.