Okara and Veggies/Meatless Main Dish Recipe

Anyone who makes their own* soy milk or tofu knows about the okara problem: what to do with the 'soy lees' or okara -- the leftovers after all the soy milk has been squeezed out of the ground beans.  We know this stuff is full of protein and fiber, so isn't there a way to keep it out of the compost pile?

Most American recipes I've found try to shoehorn okara into baked goods or meatloaf as a filler or meat substitute.  Most Asian recipes call for ingredients I can't find even at my local Asian supermarket.  I adapted this one from a couple of Japanese recipes that treat okara as a main ingredient and don't try to hide it.  My non-tofu-loving family went back for seconds (before I told them what they were eating) and have admitted they'd be happy it if I made it again.

It's March, so I used root vegetables, frozen edamame, and dried shiitakes, but you could substitute any number of seasonal vegetables in this recipe.

Okara & Veggies
Serves 4

1 oz dried shiitake mushrooms
1 T olive oil
1# golden beets, peeled and cut into matchsticks
1 T salt, divided use
1 large russet potato, peeled and cut into 1/4" dice
3 T soy sauce
1 T mirin
1/2 T rice wine vinegar
1 T sugar
1/2 c broth or stock
12 oz shelled edamame
1/2 c sliced leeks or onions
3 c cooked soy lees or okara**
1-2 T sriracha sauce to taste
1/4 c mayonnaise

Cover shiitakes with 2 c boiling water and leave to soak 1/2 hour, then drain through a cheesecloth or very fine sieve (reserving liquid), remove and discard stems, and slice thin.  Set aside in large bowl.  In the meantime heat oil in a 6-QT or larger sauce pan over medium-high heat.  Add julienned beets and 1/2 t salt, stir, cover, and lower heat.  Allow to sweat 15 minutes or until barely tender and add to mushrooms in bowl.

In same pan place diced potatoes and 2 1/2 T salt and add water to barely cover.  Place over high heat.  Once boiling, lower heat to lowest setting, cover, and cook until barely tender, 3 - 5 minutes.  Drain and add to beets and mushrooms in bowl.

Return pan to burner and set to medium high heat.  Add reserved mushroom liquid, soy sauce, mirin, rice wine vinegar, sugar, broth, edamame, leeks, and okara/soy lees.  Stir gently until combined and bring to a bare simmer.  Lower heat and cover, stirring occasionally, until leeks are barely tender.  Uncover and continue to cook until most of the liquid is absorbed.  Add 1 T sriracha sauce, mushrooms, beets, and potatoes and heat through.  Taste and add more sriracha if desired.  Remove from heat and add mayonnaise.  Serve hot.

*And you should consider making your own soy milk at least.  It's much, much cheaper, and you know exactly what went into your food.  Tofu is a bit of a process, but it's not difficult, again it's a lot cheaper, again you know what went into it, and the end product is better than what you can buy at the supermarket. And, bonus: if you make it yourself, you end up with okara.

**If you made your soy milk in a soy milk making machine, your okara is cooked.  If not, you need to cook it.  To cook, break okara up, wrap in a linen or cotton dishtowel, and set onto a steamer basket.  Place steamer basket into a sauce pan with 1/2" of boiling water, cover, set heat to lowest setting, and allow to steam for 25 minutes.  Cooked okara will keep 3 days in the refrigerator or can be frozen.

Six Secrets to Smooth, Creamy, Silky Hummus

Hummus is a funny old thing.  There are only six ingredients.  For most recipes the preparation couldn't be simpler: throw everything into a food processor and puree.  So why isn't your homemade hummus ever as good as the stuff you can buy at the grocery?  The texture is just never quite what you were hoping for.

Turns out there are a few secrets.  Some are more important than others, so you can weigh the extra yumminess against your own personal time constraints and decide which ones you want to incorporate, but I promise if you make hummus using all the secrets, you're never going to want to buy hummus again.  You'll be asked to bring Your Amazing Hummus to every party from here on out.

1.  Start with dry beans.  If you need hummus before tomorrow, you're going to have to go with canned, and yes, your hummus will still be very, very good if you use all the other secrets.  But if you have time, soaking and cooking your own beans will help enhance the texture and add a depth of flavor that even the highest-quality canned beans just can't match.

2.  Add a little baking soda to the soaking water.  The beans soak up just enough of the baking soda to make their texture creamier, but not enough to change the taste of the final product.

3.  Remove the skins.  I know, I know.  Very few of us are delighted at the thought of spending twenty minutes removing the skins from a pound of chickpeas, but this is one of the more important secrets.  You could also use a food mill or mash the beans through a fine sieve to remove the skins, but to me the extra steps of setting up and cleaning the food mill seem like more work than simply plopping down in front of the TV with a bowl of beans in my lap for a few minutes, so I just do it by hand.  Now, that said, if you decide to skip this step, you'll still end of with very good hummus if you follow all the other steps.  It just won't be mindblowing hummus.

4.  Chill the beans before pureeing.  Hot or warm or even room temperature beans won't emulsify as well as cold beans and instead can become gummy.  Additionally, when the beans are pureed warm, its impossible to tell whether more water or oil is needed to get to the puree to the desired consistency.  What seems like the perfect consistency when warm or room temperature may thicken to a cracker-breaking stiffness in the fridge.  Chill a cup or so of the cooking water, too, while you're at it.  Even if you're using canned beans, chill them before you use them.

5.  Roast the garlic.  Raw garlic is really hard to get perfectly smooth in a food processor, even after you've minced it fine, and I think the roasted garlic flavor is an improvement in hummus.  However, if you prefer the flavor of raw garlic, you can mash it with a mortar and pestle or put it through a garlic press. To roast just a clove or three, lay them on a cupped square of sprayed tin foil, add a teaspoon of olive oil, wrap tightly, and roast at 300 for an hour until the cloves are completely softened.

6.  Emulsify the lemon, tahini, oil and garlic together first.   Along with removing the skins, this is the most important secret to smooth, creamy, silky hummus.  No matter how many other recipes direct you to do so, you can't simply throw all the ingredients into the food processor together and expect them to emulsify.  I suspect the reasons there are so many recipes out there calling for the dump-and-puree method (and so many home cooks wondering why they can't get their hummus as smooth and creamy as Mrs. Hoozit's down the road) is because whenever someone asks Mrs. Hoozit for her recipe, she simply (whether by oversight or design) hands over the list of ingredients and doesn't get into the techniques.

A final word about ingredients:  This won't affect the texture, but it will affect the taste.  The olive oil, tahini, and lemon juice are what give hummus most of its flavor, so when possible it's worth it to choose high-quality ingredients.

Okay, so the recipe:

Smooth, Creamy, Silky Hummus

1 pound dried chickpeas (garbanzo beans)
1 t baking soda
1 clove garlic, roasted (or more to taste)
1/4 c tahini or roasted tahini (or more to taste)
3 T extra-virgin olive oil
2 T fresh lemon juice (approximately the juice from 1 large lemon)
salt to taste

In a large covered saucepan place beans and baking soda and add cold water to cover by at least 2 inches  Allow to soak 12 hours or overnight, adding water if necessary to keep beans covered.

Drain beans and rinse; cover with fresh water by at least an inch.  Bring to a boil, reduce to simmer, and simmer covered over lowest heat for 1 - 2 hours.  Drain, reserving one cup of cooking water.  When cool enough to handle, remove the skins by pinching each bean gently to slip the skin off.  Chill beans and reserved cooking water.

In the bowl of a food processor place tahini, olive oil, and lemon juice, and puree several minutes, stopping to scrape down sides as needed, until the mixture looks smooth and emulsified.  Add garlic and process until smooth.   Add 1 - 3 T of chilled cooking water, 1 T at a time, processing 2-3 minutes after each addition, until you have a silky consistency.  Add chilled beans (I like to reserve a few for garnish) and 2 T cooking water and process 5 - 10 minutes, stopping to scrape down sides as needed and adding additional cooking water 1 T at a time if necessary to produce a smooth texture.  When the mixture looks very, very smooth, stop and check for desired thickness.  Add additional cooking water, 1 T at a time, until the desired thickness has been reached.  (You're looking for a dense, smooth texture that is not so stiff it will break a cracker dipped into it and not so thin it will slide off it.)  Taste for seasoning and add salt if necessary, processing for a few seconds to incorporate.  Refrigerate if not serving immediately.  To serve, swirl on a plate with the back of a spoon, drizzle with olive oil, garnish with reserved beans, and serve with crackers, pita chips or fresh pita, or raw vegetables for dipping.

Make & Can Your Own Cranberry Sauce for Holiday Gifting

It’s amazing to me that some people actually prefer canned cranberry sauce to homemade.  I suspect much of the claimed preference for it is irony from the same folks who order PBR in a craft brewery, but it’s not all that: my own sister-in-law truly wants a log of the canned stuff on the Thanksgiving table.  Once a dish gets on that table, it becomes part of the family tradition. Whether or not anyone likes it or even actually eats it, it’s just got to be on that table until the end of time.  Woe be unto the host who decides to stop making great-grandma's black-cherry-jello-with-canned-black-cherries-in-it just because great-grandma was the only one who ate it and she's been dead fifteen years and now it just sits there looking sad and gets thrown into the compost heap every Sunday-after-Thanksgiving.  But I'm not bitter.  
 
You can't change tradition, but you can add new ones: our Thanksgiving table contains BOTH my own homemade sauce and the canned stuff my mother-in-law probably switched to sometime in the 1950s.

Why she or anyone ever switched is inexplicable to me, because there can be no comparison between grainy red Jello in the shape of a can and real cranberries cooked from fresh.  And there’s no excuse, either: of all the traditional dishes on the table, cranberry sauce is hands-down the easiest and quickest.  Prep time is about three minutes, and the sauce can be made days ahead so all you have to do on Turkey Day is put it into a serving bowl.  But switch they did, and in large numbers.  Ocean Spray sells 72 million cans of the stuff every autumn, a can for 2 out of 3 households.

So let’s see what we can do about switching them back: let’s gift them homemade cranberry sauce.  If you give it to them as a beautifully-presented handmade gift, they’ll probably at least try it, right?

So: easiness?  How easy is this:  You put cranberries in a pot with sugar and some spices, bring it to a boil, lower to a simmer, and let it cook ten minutes, stirring occasionally.  Yes, that’s the entire process.

Cranberry Sauce
makes ~10 pints
6 pounds cranberries (if you can't find bulk berries, 8 12-oz bags equals 6 pounds.)
4 cups orange juice
8 cups sugar
1/2 t cinnamon
1/2 t allspice
1/2 t cardamom
1/2 t nutmeg

Place all ingredients into a large pot, bring to a boil, lower to simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until the cranberries pop -- about ten minutes.

What we’re going to do takes it one step further: we’re going to, er, can the sauce.  Go ahead, laugh, but OUR sauce isn’t going to slither out of the canning jar in a gelatinous sliceable mass.  And it isn’t going to contain high fructose corn syrup, either.

Canning instructions:

1. Fill your canning kettle with 7" of water, place canning rack into the kettle, and bring to a boil on your highest-heat burner turned on high.  Leave it on the boil.
2. Sanitize 10 pint jars (I usually just run them through the dishwasher.)
3. Keep the jars hot by pouring a little water into each, setting them into a 13x9 pan with an inch of water in it, and sticking the whole thing into a warm (170 - 200 degree) oven.  
4. Working with one jar at a time, pour water out of jar, then ladle the hot cranberry sauce into the jar, pushing cranberries down gently into the liquid so they aren't sticking up and adding extra liquid if necessary to cover them.  Leave 1/2" of space between the top of the liquid and the rim of the jar.  A canning funnel (a funnel with a wide bottom) is very helpful to prevent spillage.
5. Wipe the rim with a damp cloth, place a lid on it, and screw on the ring just until you feel resistance.  You don't want the rings on tight -- they're only there to keep the lids in place while the batch processes, and tightening them can prevent a seal from forming.
6.  As you fill the jars, set them into the kettle on the rack.  You'll need a pair of tongs for this; canning tongs are extremely helpful in grasping the jars securely.
7.  Repeat until you've filled the kettle.  Cover, and when the pot returns to a boil, start timing.  After five minutes at the boil, remove the jars and allow to cool on a cookie rack.  You should hear the lids pop as the seals form, and when you look at the lids they'll appear very slightly pushed-in.  Any jar that doesn't form a seal should be refrigerated and used within a few weeks. 
8. Allow to cool 24 hours before removing the rings, wiping the jars and lids clean with a damp cloth, and labeling. 

Best. Chicken. Salad. Ever.

This is my new favorite chicken salad recipe. The vinegary pickled vegetables provide a counterpoint to the typical mayo-heavy chicken salad. 

Best Chicken Salad Ever

(adapted from a recipe by Mary Klonowski for Bon Appetit)

2 1/2 cups diced cooked chicken (approximately 2-3 breasts) (See Perfect Poached Chicken Every Time)

1 cup drained giardiniera (I used this recipe, but a jarred version works fine if you want chicken salad in less than two days!) chopped fine (about 1/4" dice).  If you're concerned about salt intake, you may want to rinse the giardiniera briefly before continuing.

¼ cup mayonnaise

¼ c Greek yogurt (I used 0%fat, which worked fine)

1/4 cup (lightly packed) chopped fresh basil

Mix all ingredients together well.  You'll notice this recipe doesn't call for any salt -- giardiniera is salty, so definitely taste before adding additional seasoning. 

   

Long-Simmered Roma Beans with Ham Hock

At Montgomery Farmers' Market this past weekend I bought a quart each of yellow and green Roma beans (also known as Italian green beans, Romano, or flat beans) from White Oak Valley Farm and a ham hock from TS Farms.  This is one of my favorite after-market dishes.  I've made it nearly every week since the Romas started coming in.  It's simple and while the cooking time is long, the prep is quick. 

Long-Simmered Roma Beans with Ham Hock

2 quarts Roma beans (I love it when I can use yellow and green -- they look pretty together.)
1 t olive oil
1 c finely chopped onion
1 clove garlic, minced
1 ham hock
1/4 t cayenne (optional)
1/4 t salt plus more to taste
Ground black pepper to taste

Snap the stem end of the bean off.  The other end you can leave -- it's the end with the little curl on it like this (I forgot to photograph a raw bean, so this one had already been cooked):

Then snap each bean into pieces about 2" long.

In an 8-quart pot, heat oil and saute onions and garlic until the onion is translucent.   Add the beans, the ham hock, 1/4 t cayenne, and 1/4 t salt.  (Don't oversalt at this point -- the pork hock contains some salt, too, which will be released into the broth as the beans cook.) I usually start the onions and garlic, then once they're cooked I turn off the heat and just snap the beans right into the pot.

Fill with water to barely cover the beans (if the ham hock is sticking out, no worries -- just turn it over a couple of times during the cooking process), bring to a boil, lower to a gentle simmer (you want to see the smallest amount of bubbling you can manage while still seeing some bubbling), and let simmer for 3 hours -- yes, THREE HOURS -- adding additional water as needed to keep the beans barely covered.

Amazingly Roma beans won't turn mush with this length of cooking.  They just become very tender. 

Once the meat has pulled away from the bone, remove the hock from the water, pull the meat from the bones, and shred the meat, removing any fat or gristle.

Return the shredded meat to the pot to continue cooking.  Taste and add fresh ground black pepper plus additional salt if needed.  Serve beans in their 'pot liquor' -- the broth.  I like to serve it with a salad and good bread to mop up the broth for a rustic light (and very cheap) dinner.

Giardiniera

Giardiniera

1 c green bell peppers in 1/2" dice
1 c red bell peppers in 1/2" dice
1 c fresh jalapenos or other hot pepper (I like to use one of every hot pepper I can find that day) sliced thin
1/2 c celery in 1/2" slices
1/2 c carrot in 1/4" slices
1/2 c onion, chopped
1 c fresh cauliflower florets in 3/4" pieces
1/2 c salt
water to cover  
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped 
1 T dried oregano
1 t red pepper flakes (more or less to taste)
1/2 t fresh ground black pepper
1/2 c green olives, sliced in half
1 c white vinegar
1 c olive oil

Place into a bowl the green and red peppers, jalapenos, celery, carrots, onion, and cauliflower.  Stir in salt and fill with enough cold water to cover.  Cover and refrigerate overnight, stirring occasionally.

The next day, drain the salty water and rinse the vegetables.  Do not skip rinsing -- this will be extremely salty otherwise.  In a bowl, mix remaining ingredients and pour over vegetable mixture.  Cover and refrigerate at least two days, stirring occasionally.  Keeps two weeks or more in the fridge. 

Perfect Poached Chicken Every Time

Hands-on prep time: 2 minutes
Total time: a little over an hour

I used to overcook boneless skinless chicken breasts all the time.  I was so concerned about undercooking them that time after time I'd end up drying them out.  Even using a thermometer didn't seem to help.  I was so consistent at it that if I was planning on making a recipe using cooked chicken, I'd either roast up a whole bird the day before or if I was short on time, resort to buying a roasted bird. 

Then I discovered this nifty trick.  It's not ready-to-use in minutes like a traditional poach or saute, but the hands-on time is about 2 minutes and I can now produce perfectly cooked chicken every time.  It's completely foolproof.  If you can boil water, you can make perfect chicken.   

Choose a heavy pot with a tight-fitting lid that is large enough to allow 3 or 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts to lay flat on the bottom without overlapping and deep enough to contain enough liquid to cover the chicken breasts by 2".  I use a deep 4 qt saucepan:

Fill with chicken stock to about 3" -- it'll take about two quarts of stock.

Trim your chicken well of any fat -- poaching with this method won't render the fat off like sauteeing in a very hot pan would.

Bring stock to a full rolling boil and with a pair of tongs slide the chicken breasts into the boiling stock, moving them around slightly as you set them on the bottom of the pan to prevent them from sticking.  Don't put in any more breasts than will fit on the bottom of the pan.  You don't want any overlap, and they shouldn't be crowded.  Return to the boil, cover with a tight-fitting lid and remove from heat.  Allow to sit until the pot has cooled just to the point you can place both palms flat on the sides of the pot for a second (the liquid inside will still be a food safe 140+ degrees).  This will take about an hour or so.  Et Voila!  Your chicken breasts are perfectly poached and ready to be diced for chicken salad or casseroles, sliced for sandwiches or salads, whatever.  Remove breasts from stock.  Look how perfectly cooked they are -- if you click on the photo to get to the larger version, you'll be able to see the meat is still juicy:

Use or wrap and refrigerate immediately. 

Bring the stock back to a boil, then strain (I use a cheesecloth) and freeze for the next time you use this method.  You can reuse the stock nearly indefinitely, adding more as needed to replace what's been lost to evaporation during boiling -- it just keeps getting chickenier -- but be aware of salt levels becoming concentrated.  I taste mine every so often, and once it's gotten to the point I don't want my cooking liquid any saltier, I add only unsalted stock or water to replace evaporation losses.  

Linda Lou's Sweet Pickle Chunks

Over on Gardenweb's Harvest Forum, canning expert (she's a Master Food Preserver) Linda Lou is famous for her sweet pickle chunks, a 9-day pickle that turns out so crunchy it almost seems supernatural. I recommend making a double batch, as along about Day 7 you're going to have a hard time keeping your family from stealing these out of the crock before you can get them canned. This is a great recipe for beginning canners. We demo'd this recipe at Hyde Park Farmers' Market July 5th.

Linda Lou's Sweet Pickle Chunks
Makes 8 pints

24 pickling cucumbers (choose slender 6-inch cucumbers of similar size and even shape, preferably picked within the past 24 hours.)
12 c sugar
6 c cider vinegar
5 t pickling and canning salt
3 T pickling spices, tied in a bag

Day 1: Cover cucumbers with cold water and discard any that float. Wash gently in several changes of water. Discard any that aren't firm and fresh. Cut 1/16 inch off of each end. Place whole cucumbers into a large sterile (I use a five-gallon food-grade bucket) container and pour enough boiling water over them to cover. Weight them (I use a dinner plate) so that all are completely submerged. Leave at cool room temperature (not above 75 degrees F.)

Days 2, 3 & 4: Drain water off cucumbers. Rinse well. Rinse bowl and plate. Pour fresh boiling water over to cover and weight so that cucumbers are covered. If at any point you notice a scum forming, don't worry -- just rinse the cucumbers well and wash and rinse the container and plate that day. If you see mold forming or the cucumbers develop a nasty smell, compost the batch.

Day 5: Drain cucumbers, rinse well, and cut into 1" chunks. Make a syrup by combining the sugar, vinegar, salt, and pickling spices bag and bring it to a boil, stirring to dissolve sugar. Pour syrup (along with pickling spice bag) over cucumbers and weight so they're covered.

Days 6, 7 & 8: Drain cucumbers, retaining syrup. Reheat syrup (with pickling spice bag) to boiling. Pour over cucumbers and weight so they're covered.

Day 9: Prepare pint canning jars. Drain cucumbers, retaining syrup. Remove pickling spice bag and reheat syrup to boiling. Pack chunks into jars and cover with hot syrup, leaving 1/2" head space. Process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Trying something new...

Hello to all after some winter hibernation. Our Winter CSA started up recently, and I am thrilled to be back in the green(s). Oh, and in the tubers. Root veggies, that is. A few weeks ago, my share included some delicious spinach, a lettuce mix, some coveted cilantro, and a green known as mache (a dark green lettuce with a kind of sweet, nutty flavor). We’ve had some awesome salads at my house.

And, 3 lb of Jerusalem artichokes, a.k.a. sunchokes. I’ve never eaten this knobby little tuber before. I half-considered passing it up and just grabbing my greens and heading home. But, my curiosity won out and I decided I’d give them a try. I had to pull out my vegetable bible, The Victory Garden Cookbook. I decided I’d try the Jerusalem Artichoke Soup, since the author Marion Morash claims it is her husband Russ’ favorite choke recipe.

A golden opportunity presented itself when all three of my children were elsewhere for a Saturday evening. They are fine eaters, mind you, but Jerusalem artichoke soup is pushing it even for them. I spent no small amount of time peeling those sunchokes, so I was really hoping I could trust Russ on this one and the soup would be a hit with my husband and me.

And, oh my. It was wonderful. Really tasty. The beauty of belonging to a CSA is that often those gardeners spring something new on you – I have to admit I probably wouldn’t have picked up those sunchokes on my own! Now I’m a fan. And if you’re wondering why they call them Jerusalem artichokes, well, according to Marian, they never came from Jerusalem and they aren’t related to the globe artichoke, though they do taste a bit like them.

Coincidentally, I was reading an article called “The Best Antiaging Foods You’re Not Eating Enough of” in the April issue of More Magazine. Guess what was #10? Yep, sunchokes. Apparently, they’re packed with vitamins A and B, potassium, iron, calcium, and magnesium. A win:win. If you’re looking for the next anti-aging big thing (okay, I’m pushing it), here’s the recipe for the soup. Enjoy!

Jerusalem Artichoke Soup (The Victory Garden Cookbook, Marian Morash)

1 lb. Jerusalem artichokes
Lemon juice
1 medium onion
2 stalks celery
1 leek
2 tbsp butter

1 ½ tbsp flour

3 cups chicken broth

1 cup cream

salt and pepper

½ cup sour cream

Wash, peel, and coarsely dice chokes, dropping them into water acidulated with 2 tbsp lemon juice as you prepare them (this keeps the chokes from turning brown). Chop onion, celery, and leek and cook in butter over low to medium heat for 10 minutes, or until softened. Sprinkle on flour and cook, stirring, for 3 – 5 minutes. Add chokes (remove from lemon water right before adding) and broth and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer for 15 – 20 minutes or until the vegetables are tender. Puree mixture in a blender or processor, and return to saucepan. Add cream and reheat. Season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice to taste, and serve with a spoonful of sour cream on top.

Beef Short Ribs in the Slow Cooker

Although I have five of them in different sizes, I'm not a huge fan of the crockpot. There always seems to be a better way to cook almost everything, and I use mine mostly for making oatmeal overnight and for keeping food warm as an alternative to chafing dishes and warming trays. (At Thanksgiving, I had one full of gravy and another full of mashed potatoes.) But for cooking tough cuts of meat when you don't have time to babysit the oven for hours, a crockpot does a great job.

I had some great-looking beef short ribs from Green Acres. I've made beef short ribs in the oven before and always seem to end up drying them out, so this time I decided to try the crockpot. To go with, I made some mashed sweets and sauteed chard, both from last week's winter CSA box, so this turned out to be a 99%+ local meal. Even the leeks (the last of a bunch I'd bought late spring from Boulder Belt at Oxford Farmers' Market and frozen), beef stock (homemade) and butter (from our herdshare) were local. Which sort of underscores the point that eating locally isn't difficult after you've been doing it a while. I had all those things in my fridge, pantry and freezer.

BEEF SHORT RIBS IN THE CROCKPOT
serves 6

3 pounds beef short ribs
salt and pepper
flour for dredging
3 T butter
1 c chopped leeks
2 c beef stock
3/4 c red wine vinegar
1/3 c brown sugar
1 T chile-garlic sauce
2 T Worcestershire sauce
2 T catsup

Salt and pepper meat; dredge in flour. In a large skillet, heat butter and brown meat on all sides. Add meat to crockpot. Add remaining ingredients to skillet and scrape up all the little sticky bits. Bring to a boil, lower heat, and simmer gently until reduced by one-half, about half an hour. Pour over ribs in crockpot and cook on low 9 hours.

Cabbage Rolls

I found a great cookbook recently: Bake Until Bubbly. It's a book of casserole recipes with nary a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup to be found. All of these casseroles are from-scratch, which is very exciting to someone who loves the ease of a one-dish meal but would rather not use industrial "food" products in homecooked meals.

Yesterday I had several heads of savoy cabbage I wanted to use up. The book contains three recipes for cabbage rolls (one each from Finland, Poland, and Croatia) so I modified the Polish recipe. The original recipe says it will serve six, but I think that's wildly conservative. The recipe calls for three pounds of meat, for gosh' sake! I ended up with two 13x9 pans of rolls, so I froze one.

Both husband and son gave these the thumbs up. They were a lot of work, but I think next time I'll probably make four smaller pans containing one meal's worth each out of this recipe, so for me that's worth the time and multiple dirty pots and bowls.

Cabbage Rolls
makes 2 13x9 pans, 6 servings each
or 4 8x8 pans, 3 servings each

3 pounds of cabbage
salt, various uses
6 T butter, divided use
3/4 c rice
1/4 pound bacon, diced fine
2 med onions, cut into 1/4" dice
1 pound ground beef
1 pound ground pork
1 pound ground chicken
1/2 t ground pepper
1/2 t ground celery seed
1/4 t marjoram
1/4 t ground nutmeg
1 c ketchup
1 T Worcestershire sauce
2 c water
1 c tomato puree
1 T brown sugar

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil. Bring 1 1/2 cups water to boil in a small saucepan with a cover. Preheat oven to 325. Oil two 13x9 or four 8x8 pans.

Core cabbages and remove outer leaves. Drop into large pot of water for 10 minutes, peeling away leaves with a tongs if possible as they loosen. Drain leaves on paper towels. After ten minutes, remove remainder of heads and drain, then peel off leaves carefully and drain. Trim the large thick outer vein to make leaves more flexible.

Add rice to saucepan along with 1/2 t salt and 1 t butter. Stir, return to a boil, reduce heat, cover, and cook 10 minutes. Set aside.

In a skillet, saute bacon until crisp. Add onion and saute until transparent. Transfer to a large bowl. Add rice, beef, pork, chicken, pepper, celery seed, marjoram, nutmeg, ketchup, Worcestershire, and 1 t salt. Mix well.

Arrange cabbage leaf flat on cutting board with stem end closest to you. Place 2 - 4 T stuffing (depending on the size of the leaf) onto the center of the end of the leaf, roll once, fold in ends, and continue to roll into a neat package. Place seam side down in baking casserole, arranging the rolls into a bricklike pattern so that empty spaces are filled neatly.

(If you'd like to freeze one of the pans, press plastic wrap down over rolls, cover with aluminum foil, and freeze for up to two months. Thaw completely before continuing.)

In a bowl, mix water, tomato puree, and brown sugar. Pour evenly over cabbage rolls. Dot with remaining butter. Cover with aluminum foil. Bake 2 - 2 1/2 hours.

Winter Squash Addiction: A Confession

Okay. I admit it. I can’t walk away from winter squash. I love ‘em. All types. All sizes. My sideboard is filled with pumpkins of varied lineage, also acorns, butternuts, spaghetti squash. And when I go weekly to pick up my winter CSA share, I feel compelled to buy one or two more squash over the few included in the share already. Perhaps it’s a way to stay connected to that bounty of fall, especially now that the stark winter weather is here and the trees are bare. Perhaps it’s because I love to eat any dish or baked good that has pumpkin or winter squash as part of its makeup. Soup, pasta, chili, muffins, pie, cake, pancake, pudding…..oh, stop me now!

Two days before Thanksgiving, my friend Kathleen and I pureed two types of winter squash to make pies. We sliced up a large musque de provence squash (otherwise known as fairytale), and roasted each slice until a fork slipped through the outer skin easily. Then into a food processor, into a custard, and, finally, into a homemade pie crust (courtesy of Kathleen!). We also halved a Long Island Cheese pumpkin (so named because of its resemblance to a wheel of cheese, pictured above) and roasted it. Looking at the two types of puree, it was apparent which would make the better pie. A taste test clinched it. The Long Island cheese puree had a creamy texture, golden color, and a sweeter taste. The fairytale was a more vibrant orange (oh, the beta-carotenes!), but a more watery texture and the taste, though good, wasn’t as sweet as the Long Island. We made pies from both, and while both tasted wonderful (oh, so much better than a pie from that fast-food restaurant I shall not name….), the Long Island Cheese pumpkin pie was heaven!

I am aware that not many people would choose to spend precious hours taste-testing pumpkin varieties right before Thanksgiving, but I skimp on the table decorations. (You guessed it: I put a few of the prettier squash in the center of the table and have done with it!) Anyway, I plan to use the gallons of winter squash puree in my freezer in just about every way I can think of. Kathleen suggested the pumpkin pancakes – I substituted the puree for mashed banana in one of our favorite pancake recipes, added cinnamon and a little ginger, and the kids couldn’t eat enough of them! We’ll make pumpkin bread to hand out to aunts, great aunts, grandparents, etc.. And I’m looking for a good pumpkin scone recipe…..

The one type of winter squash that I don’t puree and freeze is the spaghetti squash. These last a good while – though we’ve been eating ours weekly in a dish, Spaghetti Squash with Sausage Filling, that’s become a family favorite. Below is the spaghetti squash recipe. Enjoy!! I’m off to continue my winter squash odyssey......

Spaghetti Squash with Sausage Filling
1 spaghetti squash (3 ¾ - 4 lb), halved lengthwise and seeded
1 lb bulk Italian sausage
1 cup chopped bell pepper
1 cup chopped onion
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 ½ cups marinara or tomato sauce
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
Place squash halves, one at a time, with a little water in microwave safe container with cover slightly askew to allow steam to escape, cook on high for about 8 minutes, or until tender when pierced with a fork. Cool slightly. Meanwhile, sauté sausage, pepper, onion, and garlic in a skillet until sausage browns and vegetables are tender. Break up sausage with spoon. Mix in marinara sauce. Using a fork, pull out squash strands from shells. Mix strands with sausage mixture. Season mixture to taste with salt and pepper. Place in casserole dish and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese (alternately, you can leave skins intact and place filling into the shells for a fun presentation). Bake uncovered in a 400° oven for about 20 minutes, or until thoroughly heated and bubbly.

Chile-Garlic Sauce

This very hot, very garlicky sauce is the perfect addition to any recipe that will benefit from a good kick in the pants. Use sparingly! I drop a teaspoonful to a tablespoonful into soups and sauces, mix a scant teaspoon into meatloaf, and add a tablespoon to a 1/2-cup each of sour cream & mayo for a great veggie dip.

Chile-Garlic Sauce
make 2 - 2 1/2 quarts

1 1/2 - 2 pounds small chile peppers. I use a mix of habanero, scotch bonnet, jalapeno, small red Thai chiles -- whatever looks good at the farmers' market. Remember that the smaller the chile pepper, the hotter, so if you want this sauce hot, choose the small chiles.
1 1/2 - 2 pounds fresh garlic cloves, peeled
1/3 cup kosher salt
1/2 cup vinegar (almost any vinegar will work fine with this recipe)*
1 tablespoon sugar
1 2-qt lidded jar, run through the dishwasher

IMPORTANT: Use gloves while handling chiles.

Rinse chiles, slice off stems, and drain. You don't need to remove the seeds.

Working with half the ingredients at a time, place half of each ingredient into the food processor and grind into a paste, then scoop into a large mixing bowl and repeat with the other half of the ingredients. Combine the two batches, adding extra vinegar if necessary*. Spoon sauce into prepared jar, pushing it down to remove any air pockets. Put lid on jar and allow to sit on counter for twenty-four hours, then move to refrigerator. Allow to age for one to two weeks before tasting. Taste cautiously -- this stuff's fiery! Keep refrigerated and use within one year.

I usually have a little more of this than I can fit into a single 2-qt jar, and I package up the extra and hand it out to fire-loving friends.

* Finished paste should be just that: paste. If it's too thick, add a little more vinegar, but don't add too much as this sauce will become more liquid over time as it's stored.

Winter CSA Workday

I spent some time this morning out at Turner Farm working as part of my winter CSA agreement. Many CSAs operate this way: In addition to the share cost, a sharer works a specified number of hours each week helping with farm chores.

Today I washed radishes, carrots, and Jerusalem artichokes and bundled the radishes and carrots for sale at tomorrow's farmers' market down at Findlay. It was cold, but I got to work inside a heated building for which I was very grateful! I was there about two-and-a-half hours, so I've made a dent in the 20 I'll need to put in over the entire 20-week season.

If you're down at Findlay tomorrow, stop by the Turner stall and check out the radishes. I found two I'd missed after I'd bundled and packed away all the others, and they were delish! I was telling Melinda, the Garden Manager at Turner, that most of them were the perfect size for sauteed buttered radishes, a recipe I've posted before. I sorted them into bundles of similar-sized radishes, so grab two or three like-size bundles for a wonderful side dish on a cold day.

BUTTERED RADISHES
serves 4

2 T butter
salt to taste
~25 small tender radishes, trimmed
2 t sugar
1 t red wine vinegar
1 1/2 t ground pepper

In a small skillet, melt butter. Add radishes and salt, coat radishes with butter, then cover pan and leave over low heat for 4-5 minutes depending on the size of the radishes. Add sugar and vinegar and saute 2 minutes, add pepper, remove from heat, and serve.

Of Voles and Sweet Potatoes, or: Linguica, Sweet Potato and Spinach Chowder

My Winter CSA box this week from Turner Farm contained sweet potatoes...lots of sweet potatoes. The ugliest sweet potatoes you've ever seen.

This is what a sweet potato looks like when it's been damaged by voles. Pretty ugly, eh? But other than the obvious cosmetic damage, there's no harm to the sweet potato -- you can trim off the damaged parts and use it as usual. Vole-damaged sweet potatoes even store just as well as perfect specimens. But of course a lot of people would be put off by the visual and pass these up in favor of more perfect-appearing sweets. So when you're hitting the farmers' markets at the end of the season, if you see some ugly sweet potatoes cheap, snap 'em up! They're a bargain, and you're rewarding a farmer for using organic methods.

I also had some excellent-looking young spinach in the CSA box, and I had a few onions from the farmers' market down at Findlay. I'd picked up some wonderful linguica from Linwood Sausage Company at one of the last Hyde Park Farmers' Market days a few weeks ago, and I always keep chicken stock in my freezer. It's a blustery day, with the first sleet of the season. I'd had my fireplace going since mid-morning. Soup seemed like the perfect choice. So I made one of my favorite rustic autumn soups.

Linguica, Sweet Potato, and Spinach Chowder
Serves 6

1 pound linguica
2 onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 pounds sweet potatoes, roughly chopped
6 cups chicken stock
1/2 pound baby spinach
salt and pepper to taste

Heat 6-quart stock pot to medium high. Score linguica links and squeeze sausage out of the casings into hot pan; break apart with wooden spoon into small pieces. Add onions and garlic and fry until sausage is cooked through. Add sweet potatoes and cook fifteen minutes. Add chicken stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 45 minutes to an hour and a half, or until sweet potatoes start to fall apart. Add spinach and cook until wilted; correct seasonings; serve.

The Seasons of a CSA Season

This is my favorite time of year at the Farm. The weather is cooler, so spending time in the fields starts to look very appealing again. You still have the bounty of summer crops – eggplant, tomatoes, squash, basil, peppers (hey, ratatouille, anyone?) – and we’re starting to see the fall crops like my favorite winter squash and pumpkins appear around the produce shed.

Which brings to mind something that I’ve gained from being a CSA sharer besides access to the freshest produce anywhere. I’m a little less clueless about what’s in season when. Truly, I was not hip as to why asparagus was such a good Easter side dish. Did I mention that I grew up in the ‘burbs where the only thing in our “garden” was tomatoes – I guess I knew that much. How Dad’s tomatoes in July just blew the store-bought ones right out of the water. Okay, and corn from the farm stand. That corn-on-the-cob and sliced, salted tomato combo on my plate sort of defined summer for me.

It took me a season as a CSA sharer to realize that we wouldn’t be getting those sugar snap peas all summer long. That I should enjoy each crop as it appeared, because that particular vegetable wasn’t going to show up again until next May, or June, or September. So now I have recipes that I pull out once a year, create a dish that tastes so much more delicious because it’s the right time for it, and then put that recipe back in my overstuffed binder until next time. One of these recipes is Pasta with Fava Beans and Pancetta, a recipe I found on epicurious.com. It’s pretty yummy, but I wouldn’t dream of buying frozen fava beans to make it in October. (Assuming you can buy frozen fava beans? I’ve never looked.) Another is my favorite okra dish, Okra and Tomato Stew, courtesy of my vegetable bible, The Victory Garden Cookbook, by Marian Morash. I‘ve found a LOT of my recipes from this book over the years. We have okra and tomato stew weekly during okra season. Though my kids aren’t necessarily thrilled by this, I am. I love this dish – it’s especially good with a little diced ham over rice.

This seasonality is also what drives me to make the most of what’s in my share each week. I’m kind of neurotic about trying to use everything – it seems almost criminal to throw something from my share in the garbage because I didn’t get around to using it. When something so vitally nutritious and ripe gets rotten on my watch, well, I take it personally. I don’t get nearly as emotional if the expired veggie in question came in a cellophane wrapper. So, this afternoon when I surveyed the contents of my refrigerator after our power finally came back on, I had to pull myself together when I realized that the ½ lb of basil from last week’s share was no longer fit for the pesto I had planned for it. Of course, it would have thawed in my freezer anyway, I guess.

I’m often forced to get creative in the pursuit of using up my weekly share. Another post, another day, perhaps? Anyway, I sincerely hope your power is back on and your food loss was minimal.

Okra and Tomato Stew (The Victory Garden Cookbook, Marion Morash)
1 lb okra
1 lb tomatoes
1 clove garlic
1 small hot pepper 2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 cup chopped onions
½ cup chopped celery
salt and pepper

Clean and trim okra; cut into ½ inch pieces. Peel and chop tomatoes. Mince garlic and hot pepper. Heat butter and oil in sauté pan. Stir in okra, onion, and celery; sauté until lightly colored. Add garlic, tomatoes, and pepper; sauté for 5 minutes longer. Reduce heat, and simmer for 10 – 15 minutes, or until okra is tender. Season to taste and serve. (Note: you can alter the amounts or the ingredients for this recipe to fit what you have. Omit celery, include bell or banana peppers. Add carrots, corn, or cut up green beans. Add diced ham. Or fry up bacon, and use some of the bacon fat in place of the butter and oil, then top with the crumbled bacon. Yum! Great over rice!)

Oat Groats: Cheap, Tasty, Healthy Breakfast

I'm eating a lot of oat groats these days. I found a source for locally-grown oat groats, but the minimum order was 25 pounds. Oat groats are the least processed of all edible forms of oats, so they store a very long time (some sources are giving them 30 years under the right conditions.) So even though I'd never tasted them before, I decided to give them a try. I figured any minimally-processed food was a good addition to our diet, and even if it took us years to use them up, it'd be okay. And in the meantime if the apocalypse arrived, there'd be something to eat. Win-win-win.

Oh. My. God. This is what oats taste like. I like good old-fashioned oatmeal just fine -- I've eaten it for years, still happy to eat it if that's what's on the table. When I discovered pinhead oats and stone ground oatmeal, though, I realized just how much regular oatmeal had lost in the process of being...well, processed. (Don't speak to me of instant oatmeal. That's not a food.) So it comes as no surprise that getting closer to the whole grain results in an even more interesting taste and texture.

Even so, oat groats were a revelation. If you've never had them, you are missing out. They take a while to cook -- these are not a convenience food -- but they're so worth it. They're nutty, with a firm texture. The cooked grains are bigger than a grain of cooked rice, which along with the chewy texture makes them much more interesting than the soupy-paste of rolled oats and superior even to that of pinhead oats, which up until now I'd thought the pinnacle of oat gastronomy.

And I'm starting to see the 25-pound minimum order as an advantage. I paid $0.65/pound for my oat groats, which works out to about five cents for a 3/4 cup serving. In the morning, I bring 2 cups of water to a boil, add a 1/2 t of salt and a cup (~5 oz) of oat groats and set it over my heat diffuser on the lowest setting on my stove. It barely simmers for 45 minutes and is ready just about the time the rest of the family rolls into the kitchen. Add a splash of milk and you've got breakfast for four. Pretty good for about thirty cents.

Originally posted at Eat.Drink.Better.

Killer Canning, or How to Avoid Poisoning Anyone

Home canning is all the rage. Eating locally is in, and doing so year-round pretty much requires some kind of food preservation. No one's freezer space is unlimited, and home canning is a great way to preserve the harvest. It seems every food blogger is canning and offering recipes for the foods she's canned.



Unfortunately I'm seeing a large number of unsafe canning recipes posted on various food, recipe, and local eating blogs, and we aren't talking about just the kind of unsafe canning that gives you a few days of gastrointestinal misery. We're talking serious neurotoxins, botulism, paralysis, and death.



Here are a few key bits of knowledge, useful whether you're canning yourself or are the recipient of a home-canned gift.



Canning Fruits. In general, canned fruits are safe. Almost all fruits (exceptions include bananas, figs, and tomatoes) are high-acid, which means both that spoilage is less likely and that any spoilage is likely to be evident -- you'll see mold, or the jar when opened will have an off smell, or the seal will be broken. This is why so much home canning is about jams, jellies, marmalades, and other fruit spreads. HIgh-acid fruits are all safe to can in a boiling-water bath using a wide variety of recipes.



Canning Vegetables. This is where the serious food-safety issue comes in. All vegetables are low-acid foods and are unsafe to can in a boiling water bath unless sufficient high-acid ingredients, generally in the form of vinegar, bottled lemon juice, or citric acid, are added. The proportion of high-acid to low-acid ingredients must not be altered from that specified in the recipe. The problem is that often an experienced-cook-but-inexperienced-canner picks up a canning recipe and assumes her cooking experience can be used to adapt and improve the canning recipe. It can't.



Tested Recipes for Canning Vegetables. Unlike cooking recipes, which the cook can adapt to her own tastes -- increasing the proportion of one ingredient, omitting another entirely, using an unspecified technique such as sauteeing the veggies -- the canning of vegetables should be done using a tested recipe (that is, a recipe that has been tested by the USDA -- or the equivalent, in other countries -- and found to be safe for home canning) with no changes in the proportion of high-acid to low-acid foods. To be sure the recipe you are using is a tested recipe, use a trusted resource such as the Ball Blue Book (use a new edition, as canning recommendations have changed over the years), the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving , the Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving, or the National Center for Home Food Preservation.



When you discover a delicious-sounding boiling-water bath canning recipe online and think you'd like to try it, ask the person providing the recipe where he got it. (Most foodies are happy to talk about the source of their recipes and won't take this as an insult if you ask in a way that indicates curiosity rather than mistrust.) If he did not get the recipe from a trusted source, or if he adapted it in any way that changes the proportion of vegetables-to-acids, or if he added oils, fats, or animal products, don't use the recipe. Find another similar recipe from a trusted source and use that instead. The same goes for gifts of home canned vegetables, including combination recipes such as salsas, sauces, chutneys, and relishes. I cannot stress this enough. When canned vegetables go bad, one likely culprit is botulinum, which is the neurotoxin that causes botulism: if it doesn't kill you, it can leave you paralyzed. It is a seriously nasty bacteria and nothing to fool around with. Worse yet, unlike mold, you can't see, smell, or taste botulinum. The seal on the jar may not even be broken.



With the sharp increase in canning by inexperienced canners, we are likely also to see an increase in home canning-related food poisonings. Done properly, home canning is very safe and a great way to preserve the harvest so you can eat locally all year around. But do take the necessary steps to make sure you know what you're doing.



The National Center for Home Food Preservation is a great resource for home canners, new and experienced alike. The recipes posted there are all USDA-tested and approved, and they have a ton of information for home canners -- even a complete home-canning course you can download in pdf form.



Your county extension service is an excellent resource for information about canning. Many are offering canning classes geared to new canners.



Another great resource for canners is the Harvest Forum on GardenWeb. You can search the forum archives to find answers to many questions.



Originally posted at Eat.Drink.Better.

Red onions, two ways

At the Hyde Park Farmers' Market Sunday morning I saw some beautiful red onions.  I wanted to make salad onions, but standing at the booth I couldn't remember how many onions the recipe called for.  So I bought three generously-stacked quart boxes and ended up with 7 1/2 pounds of onions -- which turned out to be over twice what I needed. No worries, as I'd also seen a recipe for a red onion relish that sounded interesting.  



It was promising to be a lazy day -- husband and son both out of town, daughter still asleep from a late babysitting job the night before -- so I decided I'd make both the salad onions and the relish. 



The salad onions recipe calls for 2 1/2 pounds of small red onions in quarter-inch rings, and the relish calls for 4 pounds of thin slices.  I had mostly big onions, so I used the smallest for the rings and then to make up balance sliced off the ends of the bigger onions.  Once I had my 2 1/2 pounds of rings, I sliced the rest of the onions thin for the relish. 



I made the relish first, since it calls for long cooking times.  The recipe is Caramelized Red Onion Relish in The Complete Book of Small Batch Preserving.  This is good on broiled and grilled meats, especially pork and chicken, though the recipe notes also recommend it for steak -- it seems too sweet for that, to me.  Spread it on toasted bread with horseradish on the other slice for a great sandwich of cold sliced pork.   



RED ONION RELISH 

4 half-pint jars 

4 pounds red onions, sliced thin 

1/2 c firmly-packed brown sugar 

1 t salt 

1/2 t  ground black pepper 

8 T balsamic vinegar 

1 1/2 c red wine 



In a heavy pan, saute onions and sugar over medium-high heat, stirring to prevent sticking, until onions are golden and start to caramelize and liquid has evaporated, about an hour.  Add salt, pepper, vinegar and wine, bring to a boil, stirring to the bottom of the pan to scrape up any sticky bits, then lower heat and simmer until reduced to thicken the syrup, about another half hour. Taste and correct seasonings. 



Ladle into hot jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace.  Process 10 minutes in a boiling water bath.



The salad onions recipe I use is the one for Red Onions in Wine Vinegar in Linda Amendt's Blue Ribbon Preserves.  I use red wine vinegar instead of the white wine vinegar she calls for because red onions tend to wash out when cooked and preserved and I don't find that look very appetizing -- using red wine gives them back their nice deep pink color.  The red wine vinegar I used has an acidity of 6% as compared to the white wine vinegar's 5%, so I'm not risking losing acidity (a concern when canning low-acid foods like onions in a hot water bath and the reason you shouldn't try to change proportions of low-acid vegetables to added acids in canning recipes.)  I also process these the regular way -- 10 minutes in boiling water rather than her recommendation which is to pasteurize (30 minutes at 180-185 degrees) simply because I know of no easy way to keep a large kettle of water between 180 and 185 for 30 minutes without sitting on top of it.  These are great on salads and also on burgers. 



PEPPER-VINEGAR SALAD ONIONS 

4 pint jars  



3 pounds small red onions, sliced into 1/4" rings to make 2 1/2 pounds of rings 

6 1/2 c red wine vinegar 

3/4 c sugar 

2 t whole black peppercorns 



In a large heavy saucepan, combine vinegar, sugar, and peppercorns.  Over low heat, stir until sugar is dissolved.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer 5 minutes.  Add onions and simmer, gently stirring, 5 minutes, then remove from heat. Pack hot onions into jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace.  Allow to settle for a few moments, adding more onions if necessary.  



Ladle syrup into jars, maintaining the 1/2 inch headspace.  Process 10 minutes in a boiling water bath.

Garlic Mustard Dill Pickle Relish

I'm back! We had a stupendous trip but I'm glad to be home. Several travelling-locavore posts are in the pipeline from the trip, but today I wanted to do something homey in celebration, so: Garlic Mustard Dill Pickle Relish into the pantry.



I wasn't planning to can (what I need to do is laundry!) but yesterday at the Nativity Church Tailgate Market in Pleasant Ridge (3:30 - 6:16pm at 5935 Pandora and as far as I know our area's only Monday farmers' market), I saw some beautiful early season cucumbers at Neltner's. Normally I wait to can until later in the season so I can buy the ingredients cheaply, but the cukes were so pretty and fresh looking that I couldn't resist. I bought enough for a recipe of dill relish, which I use often in egg salad and other recipes. This recipe is adapted from the classic Ball Blue Book Dill Pickle Relish recipe, which doesn't include mustard seed or garlic.



GARLIC MUSTARD DILL PICKLE RELISH  

7 pints



8 pounds cucumbers

1/2 c salt

2 t turmeric

1 qt water

1 pound onions, chopped fine

1/3 c sugar

2 T dill seed

1 T mustard seed

6 cloves garlic, pressed

1 qt white wine vinegar



In batches of ~1 1/2 pounds in the food processor, chop cucumbers until just chopped fine. Don't overprocess. Dump into a bowl, add salt, turmeric, and water, stir, and let sit 2 hours.Meanwhile, set jars, lids, and rims into canning kettle, fill with water to cover pint jars by 2 inches, cover and bring to a simmer. When the 2 hours are up, drain cucumbers, rinse, and drain again. Add to a non-reactive (enamel or stainless) stock pot along with remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil, reduce to simmer, and simmer 10 minutes.



Using tongs to pull jars, lids and rims from the hot water as needed, ladle the relish into hot pint jars, leaving 1/4" headspace. Wipe jar rims with damp cloth, cover with hot lids and screw on lid rims without tightening. (The lid rims are only there to hold the lids in place during processing; overtightening can both interfere with processing and cause you to dislodge the lids when removing the lid rims before storing your relish.)



Turn heat to high under canning kettle, set jars into canning rack, drop into water, cover kettle, bring to a boil, and process 15 minutes. Remove from water and set on rack to cool. Once cool, check seals (press gently in the center of the lid -- if you feel a slight pop and the center flexes down and then back up again, the lid didn't form a seal and that jar should be refrigerated and used within a month), remove lid rims, label, and store.