Doubling Down on Sauce

Left to right, tomato sauce and Bolognese sauce

This week my grocery list included the ingredients for mirepoix or the “trinity” — onions, celery and carrots. Because it’s winter and Persephone Farm isn’t doing any farmers’ markets right now, I’ve been getting produce from a grocery store. (Although, I still have plenty of onions in my root cellar!) Grocery-store produce just can’t compare to Persephone’s fresh-picked taste and overall goodness. Also, stuff I get from the store doesn’t last as long in my fridge, so to get the most for my money, I use the produce I buy quickly and in more than one meal.

Since I needed carrots and celery for cannelloni, I decided to make Bolognese and tomato sauce, too. I hadn’t planned on making both sauces on the same day, but I started to get out the ingredients for the Bolognese (a savory tomato sauce with ground pork and beef) and realized it’d be silly not to make both sauces at once. They both start with the trinity, so if I was going to chop up celery, onion and carrots for one recipe I figured I might as well do it for both.

Mirepoix - onion, celery and carrot

I usually don’t get out my Cuisinart food processor for chopping small amounts, but since I was doing large quantities I knew it would save time. I was following Lidia Bastianich’s recipes. But I did tweak the Bolognese recipe. I doubled the amount of mirepoix and crushed tomatoes, while keeping the amount of meat the same. I also mixed a little beef broth concentrate into to the water the recipe said to add every so often to keep the sauce around the same level.

Huge can o' tomatoes

With the intent to make sauce, I picked up a huge can of crushed tomatoes from Costco, where I go every few months to stock up on things such as toilet paper and dish detergent. (I normally don’t buy much food from Costco since we don’t eat a lot of processed food.)

The tomato sauce finished cooking first. The Bolognese cooks for two to three hours, so I’d just give it a stir every once in awhile and add broth as needed.

The Bolognese turned out perfectly. It was meaty and rich. We could have skipped the gnocchi and just eaten it with fresh-baked bread and grated cheese. We’ll put both sauces in the freezer and cut off chunks as needed to sauce fresh pasta or spread on pizza crust. So I saved time by making both sauces at once — and money by not letting produce go to waste. This also means that in the future we’ll have delicious, healthful meals with a slow-cooked taste in the amount of time it takes to defrost the sauce and cook pasta. Double the sauce, double the bonus.

The Bolognese simmered for three hours

Links:

Lidia's Bolognese

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/9735848

Saving up for Winter

Spiced Apple Butter, Pickled Beets, Dilly Beans!, B&B Pickles

So I feel like a squirrel. But in a good way.

Trevor and I have made our third attempt at canning and are finally seeing some success. In our prior attempts, we used recipes from cookbooks not specifically about canning and preserving. After our neighbors offered us all the apples we could pick from their tree and we realized the apple tree in our backyard was also producing, we didn’t want the apple windfall going to waste. So I started looking for a good canning book.

I browsed through several canning books online and read a few recommendations from The Oregonian. Then I went to the bookstore and decided on purchasing Canning for a New Generation: Bold, Fresh Flavors for the Modern Pantry by Liana Krissoff. What I liked most about the book was that it doesn’t scare the reader away by making home canning this scary, arduous process. Some books made it seem as if you needed a laboratory and science degree to can safely. I felt that if people have been canning for generations, then it must be safe otherwise people would stop doing it.

Also, the author has a sense of humor. And it’s beautifully photographed and packed with recipes for every season that I couldn’t wait to try.

We started off making Spiced Apple Butter. After reading the book carefully, I realized I needed some sort of strainer or food mill. The Squeezo strainer recommended by the author cost about $200. So that was out. Then I remembered that there was a fruit and vegetable attachment for my Kitchen Aid mixer that I didn’t have, but it worked with the food grinder attachment I did have. And it was around $50. It meant I didn’t have to peel and core six pounds of apples. Sold!

I followed the slow-cooker method for making the apple butter and it worked perfectly. When Trevor came home from work the apple butter was ready for canning. It’s much easier to can with two people. We finished up pretty quickly thinking, “That wasn’t too hard!”

The following weekend Trevor wanted to make Honeyed Bread-and-butter Pickles, Dilly Beans! and Pickled Beets. He brought home Persephone pickling cukes, dill, green beans and beets after his shift at the farmers’ market. Then we got to work.

2nd round: pickled beets & carrots

The pickles and beans turned out perfectly. The Dilly Beans! are my new favorite snack. I used to buy olives from the olive bar at my Fred Meyer to nibble on while making dinner. The Dilly Beans! have taken their place. Along with the Spicy Carrot Pickles we made the following week.

We did mess up our first batch of beets though. We were both working on the brine, (the hot, salty vinegar mixture that’s poured over vegetables to pickle and preserve them) and neither one of us added the water the recipe called for. That makes for very vinegary beets. We did a do-over and they should be fine.

What we learned from Canning for a New Generation and pickling our own vegetables is that we have some freedom with changing the spices if we keep the brine the same. We will be making many more recipes from this book. Also, it’s very satisfying to see the beautiful glass jars lined up on the shelf. That’s what I mean by I feel like a squirrel. Come February when fresh green beans are a distant memory, I’ll be able to pop open a jar of Dilly Beans! and crunch into a wonderfully preserved memory of summer.

Cleaning Out the Cupboards

When I was making up my shopping list last week, I looked around the kitchen to see what I had on hand. I spotted some dry lentils and remembered a tasty recipe from Cooking Light— Bacon, Onion and Brown Lentil Skillet.

I’d never enjoyed lentils all that much until I made this recipe. And this is one of those recipes that may not sound all that appetizing, but once you smell the onions hitting the bacon grease, you know it’s going to be great.

In addition to the lentils, I also had some carrots, chicken broth, bacon and lots of fresh thyme. So I knew it’d be an economical meal that I could round out with produce from Persephone Farm. So we grabbed Persephone onions, garlic and parsley for this dish — and some Swiss chard and shallot to go on the side. I used some of the extra bacon grease to cook the chard in, too. Below is my variation of a recipe handed out at the Persephone stand.

Tasty Sautéed Greens

Feel free to use kale or collards instead of the Swiss chard. And you can use a combination of onion and garlic instead of shallot. Serves 2.

1 bunch Swiss chard, chopped and thoroughly washed

2 tablespoons bacon grease or olive oil

¼ cup shallot, sliced

salt to taste

½ teaspoon red pepper flakes, or to taste

a splash balsamic vinegar

Bring 1 cup water to boil in a 4-quart stockpot. Stir in chard, reduce heat, cover and cook for 10 minutes.

Add grease or oil to large skillet over medium heat. Add shallot and red pepper flakes, cook, stirring, until shallot is tender, about 4 minutes. Add greens to skillet and reserved cooking water. Add salt to taste, sauté about 10 minutes or until desired degree of softness. Finish with a splash of balsamic vinegar. Serve and enjoy!