Archives for the 'food storage tips' Category
Seeing red
I purchased 140 pounds of roma tomatoes and yesterday I processed them into 80 quarts of ground tomatoes and tomato halves to be used over the next year. Alex helped by riding with me to get the tomatoes and then loading and unloading them in and out of the van. GH helped me round up my supplies and made an emergency trip to the hardware store for canning domes. Powered by extra espresso and a well loaded iPod I managed to make short work of these babies and finished the job in 6 hours.
For those of you that haven’t canned tomatoes and are curious I’ll give you a quick overview of my technique*.
- Load dishwasher with jars and lids and run on the sanitize cycle with heated dry.
- Wash the tomatoes.
- Cut their heads off.
- If processing as ground tomatoes run them through the food processor, skin and all. Fill jars. Add a dash of lemon juice and salt.
- If processing as half tomatoes, cut them in half and stuff them into the jars and top off with a mixture of water, salt, and lemon juice.
- Clean the rims of the jars and place a hot dome lid on top of each. Screw on the ring.
- Using a steam canner load 7 jars in and bring to boil.
- Once you’ve got a good boil, set the timer for 30 minutes.
- When the timer goes off remove the jars, refill canner and process another batch.
*NOTE: my technique is not similar to the USDA or FDA methods or recommendations…I’ve done it this way for years with great success.
CSA Roundup and how tapioca kicked my butt
My desktop is cluttered with photos from food that I haven’t written about yet, so here we go…. The pasta in the top left corner had smoked pork jowl lardons, broccoli, fava beans, green onions, and basil. It was tossed with an egg and a generous slosh of pasta water and was so utterly fresh, sweet, and fragrant that I actually hummed with glee as I ate it.
The ice cream is the vanilla recipe from David Lebovitz’s book The Perfect Scoop. It was rich and satisfying and I’m looking forward to making the anise flavored version this weekend.
The blueberry galette was made with berries from our first fruit share. I froze the other 8 pints so that we can have galette all year. You can find my crust recipe here and the filling is just a pint of berries and 1/3 cup of sugar.
Lastly is a zesty escarole and sausage ragout that is laden with garlic chunks, cremini mushrooms, red pepper chunks and onion. It was all given a fast spin around a hot pan and served up with some freshly grated parmesan reggiano and a side of zucchini that I passed through the mandolin so it would look like linguine. I tossed it in a hot pan with some olive oil, sea salt, and pepper and topped it with the parm too. These types of meals are common summer fare around here and are so well suited to CSA shares that even though their flavor and freshness are exceptional we tend to take them for granted…until around the end of October when we would love to have a huge head of sweet, sweet escarole. Such is life…
Our CSA share today included swiss chard and a russian kale. Anyone that gets a CSA share knows that storage of the produce can sometimes be an issue…refrigerators are only so big and other items must be accommodated too. I take the time to storage the produce in a way that makes my prep work simpler and also takes up less space. In this case I cut out the center quills, which also cuts the leaf in half. I cut the leaves in half again and gently pack them and the quills into a ziploc lined with paper towel (to absorb any excess water). This way they take up less room and are just a quick chop away from being ready to cook. As I was working through the chard I noticed it smelled just like beets. I just looked it up on Wikipedia and they belong to the same species…beets are grown for their roots and chard for their leaves. Who knew?
I promised Dexter I would make him bubble tea and then after reading this article in the NYT’s Sunday Magazine I thought…how hard can it be? I had the tapioca pearls in the pantry so I got busy one afternoon. Let me tell you, that tapioca kicked my ass! I stirred those [multiple expletives deleted] pearls for so long I thought I was going to keel over. When they were done, or more truthfully…when I gave up, they sucked. My mom said I should have used instant but I don’t use instant anything…I’ll never make tapioca again! Has anyone else made anything with large pearl tapioca? What is up with this stuff…or is it just me?
I have triumphed in growing a few California Poppies in my lush Wisconsin Flower garden. Sure it’s taken several years and hundreds, if not thousands of seeds…but HA HA…I did it. Now, if I could just get my Acanthus Mollis to flourish.
Local all year long, and cake too!
Eating local, as much as possible, all year long is my goal. But I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not able to give up coffee, vanilla, bananas, wine, etc, etc, etc… But I can do better by storing local produce when it is available at its best here in Wisconsin. That means that two weeks ago I froze 30 pounds of local strawberries, and this week I froze a batch of garlic scape pesto. This kind of preserving can be done in large batches like I do over labor day weekend when I can tomatoes or it can be done in small batches like I do throughout the summer when the CSA provides more of something than we can possibly eat.
One summer it was broccoli…every week our CSA share had another head of broccoli and frankly I couldn’t take it anymore. So I froze it and we had broccoli for soups and sides throughout the winter. Carrots were abundant one year and I ended up making batches of chipotle carrot soup and freezing it in quart jars. It was so welcome in the winter that I plan to buy local carrots at the market this year just in case our CSA doesn’t have an odd abundance of them again. Sure it all takes more time, thought, and effort than just buying a bag of frozen produce at the store in the winter, but it is so satisfying to know that your food was bought locally…and here in Wisconsin it is the only way to eat a little local in the winter.
So here are a few tips to help you begin freezing, pickling, and canning your local produce. I’ll write on this topic often throughout the summer and I’ll post instructions and tips for specific produce as it appears in the market.
Last week I saw green beans at the market and they were perfect for freezing. You want to select long, skinny beans that have a good snap to them. Snap off their stem heads, wash them, and pat them dry. Then bag them into ziplocs in the size you will use the most. Place these in your freezer and you’re done. The less contact the beans have with water the better your end product will be. In the past I always blanched the beans first, that’s what my mom did, so I did too. But I read in The Busy Person’s Guide to Preserving Food by Janet Chadwick that it isn’t necessary.
It’s a good idea to have your supplies on hand so you can make small batches whenever it’s convenient. Stock up on ziploc bags, canning jars, pickling salt, white vinegar, cider vinegar, pickling spices, and fresh herbs. For canning I use a steam bath canner rather than a water bath canner. The difference in time and convenience is huge and you’ll really appreciate it once you get going. It’s also a good idea to scout out farmers who can supply you with the produce you need. My CSA supplies some; but to get us through the winter I also go to produce farms like the Country Bumpkin shown in the top photos.
Life around here has been quiet this week. GH is in Chicago for a class, the boys have been eating leftovers and sandwiches, and I had a failed encounter with a trout that tasted like lake water…bleah! I did make this lovely cake for the boys, I’m sure you’ve seen it on other blogs as it has made the rounds, but here it is just the same. It is so quick, easy, and simple that I have made two more since my first one earlier this week. I think it will go especially well with strawberries and ice cream. BTW…I’ve included measurements but I’ve found you can be rather imprecise with this cake and it still turns out well.
French yogurt cake
1/2 c plain yogurt
1 c sugar
3 eggs
1/2 cup canola or olive oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
Preheat oven to 350ยบ. Butter your cake pan well.
Mix the yogurt, eggs, oil, sugar, and vanilla in a medium mixing bowl. Add the flour and baking powder and mix well. Pour into the pan, and bake for 25 minutes or until a knife comes out clean.
Let it cool for 10 minutes and then turn out of the pan. Let it cool more before slicing.
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