Canning Roundup

Dilly Beans!, Bread & Butter Pickles and Kosher Dills.

After trying out several recipes from Canning for a New Generation last summer and fall, Trevor and I decided to do even more canning in the following year. We’ve made good on the promise and we’re running out of room for all of our beautifully filled glass jars.

Trevor is not working for Persephone Farm this season, but does occasionally fill in when someone needs a day off. Last Saturday was one of those days, so we stocked up on a boatload of veggies while he was at the Hollywood Farmers’ Market, especially tomatillos for Salsa Verde and the last of the season’s tomatoes.

Our friends Paul and Meredith mentioned they’d tried the ketchup recipe from Canning for a New Generation and that it was unbelievable. I decide try it with the Persephone tomatoes. They did mention that they’d cut back on the allspice, so I omitted it and I added a little extra apple cider vinegar for more tang. I also reduced the amount of cinnamon. Even though it took a couple of hours for the seven pounds of tomatoes to cook down to three cups, I think store-bought ketchup is ruined for me now.

Green tomatoes soaking in lime.

We also tried Green Pickled Tomatoes for the first time. I had a slew of green tomatoes still on my plants and decided to not let them go to waste. The sliced tomatoes are soaked in a pickling lime solution overnight, rinsed and rinsed and rinsed, topped with brine and canned. The result is firm, sweet and tangy pickles delectable on grilled cheese or a turkey sandwich. Pickling lime was a little hard to find, but I eventually found it at a wonderful new store in Sellwood called Portland Homestead Supply Co. It takes a lot of self-control for me to not buy everything in that store! Earlier in the summer, I was able to can a batch of Crushed Tomatoes from our garden, too. I found citric acid at Portland Homestead Supply, too.

Pear-applesauce, Plum Filling,Spicy Carrots,
Green Tomato Pickles and Ketchup.

We also made two batches of Spicy Carrots that remind me of the giant crock of pickled carrots, jalapeños and onions my grandfather used to make. One bite of our carrots thoroughly clears your sinuses. These might be the prettiest jars in our collection. The thyme sprigs and dried red chiles stand out against the bright carrots.

Zucchini pickles are really good on
ham-and-cheese sandwiches.

Earlier in the summer, we made bread and butter pickles from homegrown zucchini. They tasted just as good as the cucumber version we made last summer. And it was a great way to use up a lot of zucchini. And we canned four batches of Dilly Beans!, probably our favorite canning project from last summer.

Brandied cherries, yum!

Disappointingly, our all the apples on our apple tree had worms. We had to get apples from the Fruit Loop in Hood River to get our applesauce fix. We got a great deal on pears, too. So this year we canned chunky pear-applesauce. But the good news is we discovered that our plum tree gives an incredible amount of fruit. We canned pie/cobbler filling. I used the first jars of filling this week and it hasn’t taken long for us to finish off the plum cobbler with fluffy biscuit topping. We also canned Brandied Cherries made partially with cherries from our tree. We spoon the cherries over vanilla ice cream or toss them into Sidecar cocktails.

Our cupboards also hold Charred Tomato Salsa, Peach Cilantro Salsa and Quickest Kosher Dills. Our extra work will pay off when we’ll be enjoying green enchiladas made from Salsa Verde, crisp Dilly Beans! and plum cobbler for the rest of fall and winter.

Plum cobbler with biscuit topping.

Links:

http://www.homesteadsupplyco.com

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

Dancing Ravioli

Several years ago when I was living in California, I was at a party in which one of the hosts started making fried ravioli late into the night. He was dancing around while breading up the ravioli and deep-frying them. He wasn’t someone who had the reputation of being a “ladies man”, but nevertheless he soon had a crowd of hungry girls dancing around the kitchen with him — and eating the crispy ravioli as soon as they were cool enough to handle.

I think that was the last time I’d indulged in deep-fried ravioli goodness. So when I saw a recipe in Cooking Light magazine for Quick Crisp Ravioli with Roasted Tomato Sauce, I wondered if this version could match my memory of the decidedly "unlight" version.

And I have to say, the light version met that same incredible combination of crunchy breading and oozing, melted-cheese filling I remembered. For the sauce we used two pints of super sweet Sungold tomatoes straight from our garden and Persephone Farm garlic. We added fresh basil to the sauce as well since it’s just going crazy in our garden right now. And the combo of fresh tomatoes and fresh basil is hard to beat.

The recipe called for refrigerated ravioli, but I had some frozen ravioli that I used instead. We just cooked them in boiling water before draining them and breading them. They worked out just fine.

This meal was cheap, fast and utterly delicious. Definitely a reason to dance around the kitchen.

Links:

Quick Crisp Ravioli with Roasted Tomato Sauce 

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=2011033

Ravioli

Happy Meal

Last night Trevor and I didn’t really talk while we were eating except for the occasional exclamation of “Oh my God, this is so good!” or “Mmmmmm!” The meal that had us so happy and full was from Cooking Light’s 2009 March issue. We had Tomato Poached Eggs, Zucchini and Mint and homemade focaccia.

We’ve made this meal several times since we got the issue in the mail. The recipes are based on traditional Sardinian cuisine. Sardinia is a “Blue Zone” with a higher-than-normal amount of residents living to be healthy 100-year-olds. As Cooking Light reports, one of the secrets to this longevity may be a plant-based diet in which meat only plays a small role.

And this meal is definitely worth sticking around for! We did slightly modify the recipe. Instead of the traditional Sardinian music bread, we made focaccia with stone-ground flour from Bob’s Red Mill. For that recipe we swapped the dried herbs for fresh rosemary and basil, and added thinly sliced onions, too. And we used homemade tomato sauce we had on hand instead of making the sauce. But we have made the sauce in the recipe before and it’s delicious.

We used zucchini, garlic and onion that Trevor brought home after working at Persephone Farm’s stand at the PSU Farmers’ Market. And we picked all the herbs from our garden. Ricotta salata is a firm, salty version of creamy ricotta. This cheese can be difficult to find, but it’s available at New Seasons stores in Portland.

This meal is so good, we forget it’s vegetarian. It’s so homey and satisfying that even a staunch carnivore won’t feel like something is missing from his plate.

Links:
Tomato Poached Eggs
Zucchini and Mint
Easy Focaccia
Bob's Red Mill

The Beginning

I love food. And because of that, I became a locavore without even realizing there was a whole movement of people eating food straight from their communities – whether to reduce carbon emissions, keep money in the local economy or stay healthy. I just did it because the freshest food always tastes best to me, and you don’t get much fresher than something grown an hour away and picked the day before it’s brought to you. (Although stepping out to your patio and picking vegetables and herbs from your own little garden, is fresher, and we do that, too.)

Of course local, organic food can be a bit more costly than produce you can find in the grocery store. Luckily, my hardworking and equally food-loving husband was offered a job at the Portland Farmers’ Market. So he gets up at an ungodly hour for a Saturday and unloads a truck of veggies from Persephone Farm in Lebanon, Ore., and then sells them. So he makes some extra money, but the true payoff if that we can take home anything that’s still around right before the market closes.

So I’ve decided to document our attempt to work in as much produce from Persephone into our diets and thereby reduce our food expenses. I’ll post photos of meals, detail what ingredients are from Persephone Farms, tell which cookbooks we’ve used — or jot down the recipe if it’s one from our repertoire.

Summer Tomato Gazpacho

We used Persephone’s tomatoes, onion, cucumber, garlic and parsley, and basil from our garden. Serves 4.

5 large ripe tomatoes, peeled and seeded (see note)

1 large cucumber, peeled and seeded

½ cup red onion

½ large red bell pepper

2 small cloves garlic

5 basil leaves

¼ cup parsley

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

salt and black pepper to taste

extra virgin olive oil

packaged croutons, optional

Note: To peel tomatoes, bring a large pot of water to boil. Slice an X into the bottom of the tomatoes. Have a large bowl of ice water nearby. Place tomatoes in boiling water for 30 seconds to 1 minute, or until skin starts to peel off. Place tomatoes in ice water. Peel. Slice in half and scoop out seeds.

Place first seven ingredients (tomatoes through parsley) in the bowl of a food processor or blender. (This may need to be done in two batches.) Blend until smooth. Add balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper, and pulse a few more times. Divide among four bowls. Top with croutons and olive oil if desired. Enjoy!