Fresh Slowcooking FSC Recipes for spring

Is the basil in your garden or on your window sill calling to you? Cook some tender chicken in a creamy, fresh homemade pesto sauce — prep it in just 10 minutes and let your slow cooker take care of the rest.

A refreshingly light tasting pork. Perfect for dinner or lunchtime left overs (if you’re lucky enough to have left overs!). Prepare the pork with an easy cumin-based rub, brown for a couple minutes to get some nice crunchy pieces on the outside, then slow cook for the day.

Truly finger-licking good! These spicy ribs are crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. Just take a few minutes to make your own homemade BBQ sauce, pour it over some meaty beef ribs and let your slow cooker work its magic.

Juicy turkey with the subtle flavours of bacon, sage and oregano — a change from your typical oven roasted turkey. With quick preparation this meal is easily served in the middle of a hectic work week with the help of your slow cooker!

Tender lamb, carrots and turnip create the core of this one-pot slow cooker dinner. By adding chick peas, a little ginger, parsley and saffron our winter veggies were about to taste warmer and more exotic.

An easy tomato soup made with fresh Roma tomatoes and homegrown basil. No tomato peeling, no cream and no bread required. As an added bonus, cooked tomatoes are a great source of lycopene, a carotenoid that helps starve cancer cells.

Bright red, crisp stalks of rhubarb are available at the Farmer’s Market these days. Perfect for making rhubarb crumble, but I really didn’t want to turn on the oven while it was a humid 30°C outside, and our air conditioning was already blasting — so I cooked my first crumble in the slow cooker. We were thrilled with the results. This citrusy, rhubarb crumble was so good that we devoured it within two days!

Remember those striped candy beets I used to cook beet risotto during the winter? They are so robust that vendors at the Farmer’s market are still selling them, even though it is almost June. Feeling the need to cook these pretty beets one more time before ushering in the bounty of new produce that is about to come our way, I simply slow cooked the beets with a lamb sirloin roast seasoned with mint, rosemary and garlic — yes, I finally got my lamb!

An easy nutritious vegetarian soup that can be prepared in minutes. The carrots, green onions and spinach provide a tonne of vitamins while the lentils supply protein and iron. Add a little curry paste and now you have a healthy soup with some zing!

Wow — This week got off to a very hectic start! Maybe it was just the shock of getting back to work after spending a relaxing weekend with family. No complaints though, work is great. Today was one of those extremely rare days when I actually confirmed a result. Now I can focus on food! (for a tonight anyway…)

Since we loved the gluten-free rhubarb slow cooker breakfast, I decided to experiment with rhubarb in a savoury dish. Tomatoes, cumin, lemon, ginger and saffron combined with the rhubarb to create a refreshing, light sauce. A great combination of flavours to add to slow cooked chicken.

So far this spring I’ve taken advantage of the great tasting asparagus by featuring it in a chicken soup, adding it to a slow cooker paella, and lamb navarin. This week I began experimenting with another spring crop, rhubarb. At first I wasn’t even sure how to classify rhubarb, my instincts told me it was a vegetable, but it tends to cooked like a fruit, in pies and jams etc. Technically the part we’re eating is the stem, not the fruit, so I’ve convinced myself it’s a vegetable, what do you think?

Every day this week, it has been raining in Toronto. This is wonderful weather for nourishing May’s flowers, and also perfect for enjoying a comforting stew that combines hearty winter vegetables with Spring’s freshest.

This chicken soup is perfect for spring. The bite-size pieces of chicken make it satisfying, while the ginger, lemon and asparagus keep it light and refreshing. Give it a try while the asparagus is fresh and full of flavour.

Making a Paella is a great way to enjoy fresh spring vegetables. This dish combines asparagus, green beans, red bell pepper and a rich mixture of meats including chorizo sausage, lamb and chicken… yes, all in one dish!