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Bring on the Bread!

Posted by on November 6, 2011 7 Comments

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed but good quality bread* is getting more expensive every year.  Grain prices are going up so this isn’t surprising.  My own grocery budget is getting smaller so paying almost $4 a loaf and going through two loaves a week is $8 a week.  That’s $32 a month in bread.

We could, of course, give up bread.  There is a lot of noise out there from people evangelizing (or waxing rhapsodically at any rate) about the wonders of the Paleo diet.  Eschew all grains!  I’m all for everyone eating a diet that suits them, that makes them feel their best and if not eating grains makes you feel your best than I have no argument against it.  For you.  But I don’t view grains as evil or bad for my health.  So I continue to embrace them.

I’d forgotten how wonderful it is to bake my own bread.  My mom has decided that she wants to bake bread once a week to help us save money.  She used to bake bread in the hippie commune I was born into but that was over 36 years ago.  So she asked me to give her a refresher course.  I love the feel of bread dough, I love shaping it, punching it down, the smell of the yeast.  Then, at last, the smell of the bread in the oven is the most heavenly smell in the world.

If you haven’t baked bread before I suggest you get the book “Great Breads” by Martha Rose Shulman.  I learned to bake from that book and taught two friends to bake bread using that book.

I’m looking forward to more home baked bread!

 

*My definition of good quality means: whole grain, zero preservatives (big fat 0), made locally.  Or artisan bread for special occasions using white flour but zero preservatives and made locally.

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Tomato, Pesto, Ricotta Tart Recipe

Posted by on November 2, 2011 2 Comments

Tomato season is over for us.  It’s been over for a couple of weeks.  I would be devastated but for the fact that I ate a couple hundred pounds of them while they were going strong and ended on a high note with my tomato tart experiments.  The last version, the one I’m going to share with you, I made for our friends who are moving out of state.  I needed to make something memorable enough that they’ll be inspired to come back and visit us.

It’s super easy unless you have to make your pesto from scratch, plus make your own ricotta (as I usually do), and then, of course, there’s the crust to make.  Wait!  Seriously, none of those things are difficult to make and if you’re not up to making them all yourself you can buy them pre-made.  If tomato season is already over for you too then you have two choices: bookmark this for next year or if you happen to have any sundried or oven roasted tomatoes in your freezer- you can top the tarts with those.  Whatever you do, don’t use hothouse tomatoes from the store.  Banish the thought!

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Tomato, Pesto, Ricotta Tart Recipe

makes 6 individual tarts or one 9? tart

Tomato, Pesto, Ricotta Tart Recipe

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 375°. Cut the pie dough into six equal sized pieces. Roll out and fit into the tart pans. Put all the filled tins into the freezer for 20 minutes.
  2. Blend the ricotta with the pesto until completely incorporated.
  3. Remove the tart tins from the freezer and fill each one with the ricotta, dividing it evenly between them all. Smooth the surface of the ricotta out in each tin. Arrange three slices of tomatoes on the top and brush with olive oil.
  4. Arrange on a baking sheet (to catch any spillage) and bake for one hour (or until the crust is golden).

Notes

If you’re using a 9? tart tin, arrange the tomatoes slightly overlapping each other starting with the outer edge and work your way to the center in a spiral. You may notice the lack of additional salt or pepper in this recipe- that’s because pesto is usually already salted and peppered and it is enough for the whole dish. I did salt and pepper the tomatoes in one version but I didn’t think it added anything to the tarts. I freeze the dough before baking because it keeps it from shrinking down in the oven while baking. If you never have this issue and prefer to refrigerate before filling, as most recipes suggest, go ahead and do that. Many ricotta recipes call for an egg to help set it up but I find this is usually unnecessary. Sometimes when I make my own ricotta I add a little bit of milk when stirring it up because it gets a bit dry after draining off the whey, so if your ricotta is homemade, make sure it’s not dry- it’s going to cook for an hour which will dry it out more.

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Here’s how I layered my tomatoes for a full sized tart.

If your tomatoes are huge you may only want to put one slice on top, as I’ve done here.

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Basic Pie and Tart Dough Recipe

Posted by on October 27, 2011 4 Comments

I learned to make pie dough first from my mother using barley flour and for years used the one she published in her cookbook “Honey and Spice”.  The next pie dough influence was Deborah Madison‘s recipe in “Vegetarian for Everyone”.  Some of her tips proved useful in increasing my success with making a really good dough.  The last influence was Martha Stewart.  I find her instructions aren’t as good as my mom’s and Madison’s, but I like using her proportions of ingredients.

I make a really good pie dough.  This is one of my few baking talents.  Some people use slightly different butter to flour ratios for tart doughs but I use the same dough for both pies and tarts.  One way in which I disagree with almost everyone is that I don’t believe it matters whether you use salted or unsalted butter.  I dislike unsalted butter on my toast so I use what I keep on hand.  I still add salt to the flour.  Trust me, this dough is not too salty.

I also never add sugar to my crusts regardless of whether I’m making a savory or sweet pie.  Most recipes say you can add an optional teaspoon of sugar and I see no reason for it.  There are even sweeter versions of pie dough (pâte sucrée) but I never make this kind of crust because I don’t have a great sweet tooth and if my crust is full of something sugary I don’t need the crust itself to also be sugary.

Some people are intimidated by pie crusts and I don’t understand why.  As long as you have a food processor it’s both fast and easy.

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Basic Pie and Tart Dough Recipe

Basic Pie and Tart Dough Recipe

Ingredients

  • 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
  • 2 sticks of cold butter
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/4 to 1/3 cup ice water

Instructions

  1. Measure the flour and salt into your food processor bowl and pulse a few times to mix. Cut the sticks of butter into cubes and arrange evenly around the flour as shown below:
  2. Pulse the butter until the butter pieces are well broken up (many say “the size of peas” but the pieces will be uneven so I don’t find this useful). The photo below shows about how your flour butter mixture should look right before adding water:
  3. With the processor running add the water one tablespoon at a time in a trickle. After about 3 tablespoonfuls check the moisture of the dough to see if it’s ready or if it needs a little more water.
  4. Check the dough by taking out a small handful like this:
  5. Then squeeze it in your hand. If it retains the shape you squeezed it into when you touch it, the dough is ready to be rolled out. If it breaks apart easily then it needs a little more water, only just a little at a time. See how it looks when it’s ready in the image below:
  6. Now dump the dough onto a pastry board or clean counter top. It will be very crumbly. As quickly as you can, gather it all in a heap and press it into a ball. Do not knead it.
  7. Now you can divide it in two and roll it out.
  8. I shape each half into a flat disk, put it between two layers of wax paper and roll it out until it’s large enough to fit a 9? pie pan, I lay it over the pan, gently press the dough into it and then flute the edges. Or, I may divide the dough into different sizes to use for individual pies or tarts, but I still make flat discs of them. If you aren’t going to use the dough immediately, store in the fridge between the wax paper in a plastic bag (the plastic bag will prevent the dough from drying out).
    9. Here are some tips I follow that I find very useful in making successful pie and tart crusts:
  9. I roll out my dough into their pans right after forming the dough, I don’t wait for it to chill in the fridge. When the dough is rolled out in the pie pan and the edges are crimped I put it in the freezer for at least 20 minutes before filling and baking. I do this step even if I’m planning to pre-bake the shell. Freezing it first prevents shrinkage of the dough. I also find it helps prevent the bottom of the crusts from getting soggy if you don’t pre-bake.
  10. For pre-baking I usually use kidney beans as pie weights. I keep a jar of them for this purpose. Once you’ve used the beans for pre-baking I don’t think they’re good to cook, but you can use them over and over again.
  11. Many people like to trim their tart crusts level with the top of the pan. I don’t like to do this. I prefer to build the crust up a bit higher than the tart pan. This is a rustic approach. It also prevents shrinkage of the crust and a spilling of the contents over the top. I do sometimes trim the uneven or excess dough off with scissors to get a more consistent crust thickness.
  12. If you only need enough for one pie crust you can, of course, halve the recipe. But why do that? You can wrap the extra dough tightly (or vacuum seal it) and freeze it for later.
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Tomato, Pesto, Ricotta Tart Recipe

 

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Preserving Notes for Fall 2011

Posted by on October 2, 2011 8 Comments

I would like to say that canning season is truly done for me as of today.  Instead, I can say with confidence that canning season is kind of winding down but who knows when it will truly end because I still have quince on my tree and a friend has said her concords are in.  I dearly want to make concord grape soda and/or grape syrup for Italian grape sodas.  Or even just juice.  It’s the only home canned thing my son enjoys that I make.  It’s the only thing he asks for.  Here are my notes from this year’s canning adventures so far.

Jam:

My jams almost always taste fantastic.  It’s hard to go wrong with jam flavor so I can’t claim it’s because of my great mastery or kitchen brilliance.  Jam consistency is a whole different story.  Most years I have more trouble getting my jam to set than making them set too hard.  What I find frustrating and weird is that the only jam I used pectin in didn’t set well at all, but the other two jams which I made without pectin set more firmly than I wanted.  Again and again.  I made three batches of blackberry jam.  I adjusted the boiling time to shorter and shorter periods with each batch until the last one I did I was absolutely SURE it would end up being too soft.  It was not.  It was just as firm as all the other batches.

I made two batches of Damson jam.  (Incidentally, I did jell testes for every single jam batch, in case anyone cares to know).  Each batch is more stiff than I’d like it to be.  For me the perfect jam consistency is sticky and thick but soft enough to spoon onto a scone without having to violently shake it from the spoon.  I think I know the trick now at last.  The jell test instructions say to put a teaspoon of jam onto a little chilled plate then put in the freezer for one minute.  This is not enough time to really tell.  That’s my opinion.  I think next year I will bring my jams to a boil for just a few short minutes and then take it off the burner, do the jell test, and let it cool at room temperature for a half an hour or so.  The little plate I did my jell test on last night that indicated my damson jam was not yet ready sat on the counter over night and this morning it was the perfect consistency.  But I boiled it longer last night because it didn’t seem set enough.  So what I learned is that to do it properly, I must take my time with the test.  Why should I be in a hurry anyway?

Rose Hip Syrup:

Gross.  I hate the flavor I got.  I have had dried rose hips in tea many times in my life and very much enjoyed the flavor and the slight tartness of them.  I thought the flavor of rose hip syrup would be similar.  Not so.  It was sweet, kind of soft and floral, and though that may sound good to some people it was awful to me.  So that was a total waste of time.  I can’t give up on rose hips, though, because they are so nutritious and full of vitamin C.  My plan is to do the tedious and cut them, gut them, and dry them.

Asian* Plum Sauce:

I tried a recipe from the book “Preserved” by Johnny Acton and Nick Sandler. This is not at all what I want in a plum sauce.  I didn’t use the spices they used because I dislike cinnamon in most savory food (except some North African dishes) and I really dislike star anise.  They have you cook the sauce for two hours (to let the spices I didn’t use infuse the sauce) and I did cook it down for quite some time because after adding so much vinegar, water, and soy sauce it was much too thin.  The sauce I ended up with has a very muddled dark taste.  Maybe the soy sauce had something to do with that.  Maybe just cooking it for so long.  I’ll tell you what, though, the spices that were called for would not have improved it one bit.

What I wanted is  the kind of plum sauce you get when you order Mushu vegetables in a Chinese restaurant.  The authors of this book claim that that’s what this is supposed to be like.  It’s not.  It’s been a while since I’ve had plum sauce in a Chinese restaurant but I haven’t forgotten that taste.  What I loved about that sauce was its bright, tangy, and very plummy flavor.  I’ll do better to make up my own version next time.  The plum sauce I made last year using yellow plums, ginger, garlic, sugar, and jalapeno was fantastic for dipping spring rolls into.  That’s more like what I want, except with dark plums.   What a waste of Damsons that turned out to be.

Dill Pickles:

There weren’t many pickling cucumbers to be had and the ones we got were too big and had much too developed seeds inside which means they will be mushier than usual on the interior.  I gutted many of them that were seriously sub-par and I have no idea how those will turn out.  The idea is that I will chop those up for potato and egg salads.  The seeds were enormous and gelatinous because they were too mature.  We were a little desperate, so we made do.

There are several quarts of mixed vegetable pickles (with green beans from the garden included) and I think those will be very nice.  They look super pretty as well.

Peach Chutney:

Second year making it.  Last year I cooked it a little too long and it got very dark.  We liked it, it was good.  The adjustments we made this year were to lower the sugar (it was too sweet) and to lower the amount of raisins.  I may have not cooked it quite long enough this time.  The color is prettier (lighter orange) but it may be softer than intended.  I think over all it will be an improvement.

Jalapeno peppers:

They’re very good.  Really wish they were more evenly sized (my mom is untame-able in this way) but they taste great and I’m happy we have so many of them.

Lots of freezing:

Lots of pesto.  That always turns out great.  I did some in jars (my preference) but since the freezer is actually running out of space this year I had to revert back to using plastic vacuum seal bags.  Also have 6 quarts of corn chowder in there, 3 quarts of pinto bean chili, at least 10 quarts of plain blanched corn, 3 pints of sauteed onion with hot peppers and corn.  A couple bags of slow roasted tomatoes which I don’t think turned out well but I can’t say how something that’s so simple and which I’ve made well so many times before could be unsatisfactory- yet it’s so.  I have several jars of strawberry syrup and ginger syrup in there as well.

Drying:

My mom has been doing a lot of this work.  Several quarts of dried nettles and a quart of dried kale.  Varying amounts of: thyme, stevia, calendula, cayenne peppers (there are still quite a few ripening), and arnica.  I’m considering drying a giant zucchini to experiment with how it is reconstituted in winter soups.  Anyone else tried this and have an opinion?

Theoretically I’ll be done with fall preserving when I’ve gotten and processed the concords and picked and processed the quince (Philip has requested quince jelly).  So where are all of you in your food processing – are you done?  Almost done?  Or just getting started?

*The original recipe was called “Oriental Plum Sauce”.  When referring to people or things from the Asian continent it is considered (according to my Asian friends and my personal opinion combined) to be better form to use the word “Asian” instead of the word “Oriental”.

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Cherry Tomato Gratin Recipe

Posted by on September 24, 2011 2 Comments

Cherry tomatoes are often the first ones to ripen in the garden and the last to give up to dropping fall temperatures.  Most people who grow them eventually get to a point where they need to figure out something else to do with them besides using them in salads or eating them right off the vine.  This is what you do with them.  It’s simple, it’s fast to prepare, and it makes a fantastic side dish.

This recipe is based on one from “The Vegetarian Table: France” by Georgeanne Brennan, one of my favorite cookbooks.

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Cherry Tomato Gratin Recipe

serves 4

Cherry Tomato Gratin Recipe

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 lbs cherry tomatoes
  • 2 Tbsp olive oil
  • 8 oz ricotta cheese
  • 1/4 cup basil, julienned
  • 2 cloves garlic, finely minced or pressed
  • 1 tsp salt
  • fresh ground pepper
  • 2 Tbsp grated Parmesan cheese

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 425°. Divide the tomatoes into four 8oz ramekins. Drizzle half a tablespoon of olive oil over each dish of tomatoes.
  2. In a bowl, mix the ricotta with most of the basil (set aside just a little for the top of each gratin), the garlic, salt, and pepper.
  3. Divide the ricotta between the four ramekins – top each dish with it, sprinkle with Parmesan, and add the rest of the basil.
  4. Place the ramekins on a baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes, then finish by broiling just until slightly browned (only a couple of minutes). Let it cool down before eating because those tomatoes retain heat well!
  5. Gluten free recipe. (I don’t know if any store bought ricotta has gluten in it but I used my homemade and it is definitely gluten free)

Notes

If you want to make your own ricotta - it's easy! How To Make Homemade Ricotta

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Pickled Jalapeno Recipe

Posted by on September 8, 2011 5 Comments

This recipe is based on the one in Joy of Pickling by Linda Ziedrich but I’ve changed the spices to match my own tastes.  I wanted pickled peppers like the ones I buy in jars in the Mexican section of the grocery store and these absolutely hit the spot. The main difference is that canning them at home gives you a softer finished pickle which some people might not like as much.  The ones in the store can be almost crunchy at times.  I don’t personally like them crunchy so these are perfect for me.  If you want a crunchier pickle you can add pickling lime but I’m not going to advise on how to do that since my one experience using pickling lime disgusted me beyond belief.  The taste of these peppers is tangy, hot, with just a little garlic flavor.  I suggest eating large quantities of them with huge blocks of cheese.

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Pickled Jalapeno Recipe

Serving Size: yields about 4 pint jars

Pickled Jalapeno Recipe

Ingredients

  • 2 lbs jalapenos (whole or sliced in rounds)
  • 4 garlic cloves
  • 2 tsp mustard seeds
  • 1/2 tsp black peppercorns
  • 4 cups distilled white vinegar (5% acidity)
  • 4 cups water
  • 3 Tbsp canning salt (or pure sea salt with zero additives)
  • 4 Tbsp olive oil

Instructions

  1. In a nonreactive sauce pan mix the vinegar, water, and salt and bring to a boil. At the same time put your jars in the water canner to boil until you need them.
  2. Wash the peppers and trim the stems to about 1/4" or cut all the peppers into rounds discarding the stem ends. If using whole peppers slit them twice lengthwise.
  3. Divide the spices between the jars evenly and fill each jar with as many peppers as you can fit without cramming them.
  4. Fill each jar with brine. Shake the jars a little and tap (gently) on counter top to bring air bubbles to the surface. Top up with more brine if needed leaving 1/2" headspace.
  5. Pour 1 Tbsp olive oil into each jar. Wipe the rims carefully with a clean damp cloth. Fit the jars with two piece lids.
  6. Process in the boiling water bath for 10 minutes.
  7. Let the peppers cure for 3 weeks in a cool, dry, dark place before opening.

Notes

How much brine you need is going to depend on the size of your peppers and whether you leave them whole or slice them. You may have some left over and that's fine.

If you are working with a large amount of peppers it may be more useful to follow this guideline: add to each jar 1 garlic clove, 1/2 tsp mustard seeds, 1/8 tsp peppercorns, and 1 Tbsp olive oil.

At the time of this writing I canned 12 lbs of jalapenos and ended up with 28 pints of pickles. I did a mix of whole and sliced peppers. I mention this to illustrate that yields can only be given in approximations here.

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Couscous T’Faya Recipe: saffron couscous with caramelized onions

Posted by on August 30, 2011 3 Comments

This is a traditional North African wedding banquet dish.  I know this because it says so in the book from which I adapted it called “The North African Vegetarian Table” by Kitty Morse.  I made this dish many years ago without the saffron because I don’t generally buy saffron.  Not because it isn’t grown locally (though theoretically, if I was more of a madwoman than I am, I could grow it myself) but because it’s expensive.  In a funny circular way I came to know this dish more personally through my friend Sharon who gave me an enormous package of envelopes of powdered saffron.  I thought she had gotten it from her own travels.  I didn’t use any of it until now because I’m not used to having 50 envelopes of powdered saffron at my disposal.  It seems so precious a gift and I have enjoyed seeing that exotic treasure every time I open my spice cabinet for the last year and every single time I see it I say to myself “I need to make a saffron dish soon because I have so much of it!”  And then I would manage, somehow, not to make any saffron dishes.

It finally occurred to me that while spices are known to last for quite some time it is also known that they lose their integrity with each year in storage and while it is certainly lovely to open my spice cabinet and see my exotic precious gift of saffron sitting there, it would be embarrassing to never use it and have wasted it all.  So I finally returned to this dish that I made years ago without saffron and this time I got to experience it how it’s supposed to be.  It was so good I knew I would immediately write my version of it here, to share with all of you.  But therein lay a problem: there are all kinds of powdered saffron grades and often they are mixed with things like turmeric and if I’m to give you a recipe then I need to help you find what I used or come up with equivalents.  This turned into two hours of fruitless and increasingly frustrating research.  I translated every word on the packaging into English and nowhere was there a word for saffron or even turmeric listed.  The only ingredient listed was corn starch and a mysterious secret formula which makes up 14% of the ingredients.  Formula E-102.  I found out only one thing which is that this product I used is made in Novelda, Espana which really is a saffron producing region.  The company that made mine is nowhere to be found online.  So I put in a desperate call to my friend Sharon to get more information on where she got this strangely unlisted gold.

She told me that her ex-sister-in-law (a Moroccan woman) had made her some fantastic food using this saffron and so Sharon asked her if she could bring her back some of the same stuff she uses the  next time she traveled back home.  Sharon imagined that B would bring her a few small envelopes but as it turned out she brought her three big packages of it, each containing about 50 envelopes of saffron.  This is the stuff she uses in her own cooking.  Sharon shared the gift with me knowing I would appreciate it.  However, she doesn’t know any more about this particular brand of saffron than I could find out.

The funny thing is that when I told Sharon about the dish I was writing the recipe for she said she had had that same dish at her brother’s wedding in Morocco and that she’s wanted to know how to make it for a long time.  It’s funny how the first recipe I use this saffron for is one she’s had in its country of origin and that it was her gift that made it possible for me to make it.  The version Sharon had was different from the one in the book that I followed (and then changed for personal taste).  The thing that seems key is the saffron, cinnamon, caramelized onion, and raisins.  The version in my book includes almonds and hard boiled eggs.  The version Sharon had at her brother’s wedding banquet sounds more like my adaptation without those ingredients.  Try it and see what you think.  I include the amount of saffron in threads as it appears in the original recipe and then if you have powdered you can do as I did and use an envelop of it.  I’m not generally a fan of sweet in my savory and cinnamon is for me, as it is for many Americans, a spice for sweet food.  It is used in a lot of savory dishes in North African food and in this context I find I actually enjoy it.

 

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Couscous T’Faya: saffron couscous with caramelized onions

serves 6

Couscous T’Faya: saffron couscous with caramelized onions

Ingredients

  • 4 Tbsp olive oil
  • 4 onions, quartered then sliced very thinly
  • 1 1/2 cups couscous
  • 3 cups of hot water (with the saffron dissolved in it)
  • 6 Spanish saffron threads, crushed and added to the water*
  • 1/2 cup raisins
  • 1/2 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • freshly ground pepper

Instructions

  1. In a large saute pan heat 3 Tbsp of the olive oil on med/high heat, then add the onions. Saute until they begin to brown, turn down the heat to med/low and keep cooking until they caramelize, stirring frequently to prevent burning.
  2. Add the remaining Tbsp of oil to another large saute pan on med/high heat and stir in the dry couscous until coated. Stir frequently until the couscous is very slightly toasted, then add the water, cinnamon, salt, and pepper. As soon as the water is simmering, turn off the heat completely, cover with a lid and let sit for ten minutes.
  3. Fluff the couscous with a fork and add the onions and raisins. Serve.

Notes

* or 1 envelope of powdered saffron.

I served this with zucchini sauteed with vinegar, honey, and oil which was really nice. I will put that recipe up soon. What I wanted to serve it with was carrots sauteed with honey, oil, and mustard and garnished with either parsley or cilantro but I didn’t have any carrots that day. This is a great accompaniment to hearty stews and spicy stir-fries or tagines.

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Summer Squash and Tomato Pasta Recipe

Posted by on August 20, 2011 2 Comments

Every summer I see recipes crop up whose sole purpose is to perpetrate the old zucchini joke.  “Got more zucchini than you know what to do with?  Here’s one way to use it up!”  I hate that old gag.  If people felt burdened by having abundant zucchini every year they’d stop growing it.  I may hate that joke because for some reason my zucchini plants never do go rogue on me and I’d love it if they did.  I’d love to have “too much” summer squash.  If you have that much of it you can shred it and freeze it in two cup portions for making zucchini bread all winter.

So I’m not offering up this recipe as a way to “use up” your annoying abundance.  I’m offering this one up for sheer love of summer squash as a delicacy I only eat fresh for a few months of the year and look forward to more than Christmas.  If you love summer squash as much as I do then you need to make this dish, or make up your own variation of it.  It’s simple, it’s aromatic, and nothing in the dish hides behind anything else.

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Summer Squash and Tomato Pasta Recipe

serves 4 to 6

Summer Squash and Tomato Pasta Recipe

Ingredients

  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 1 large onion, quartered and then sliced thinly
  • 2 zucchinis or 4 crooknecks or 6 patty pans, diced on the thin side
  • 3 cloves garlic, pressed or minced
  • 5 large tomatoes, cored and diced chunky
  • 1/2 bunch basil, julienned
  • 1 tsp salt
  • fresh ground pepper
  • 1 lb angel hair pasta

Instructions

  1. Heat the olive oil in a large saute pan on med/high heat and then add the onion. Stir the onions frequently to prevent burning. When they begin to brown a little add the squash. Saute until the squash is tender and lightly browned.
  2. Set a big pot of salted water on to boil.
  3. Add the garlic to the onions and squash and saute for about two minutes then add the tomatoes.
  4. Boil your pasta now and it should be ready just about the same time as your sauce.
  5. Stir the sauce frequently to keep the tomatoes from sticking. they should be breaking down nicely but you should still have some chunks left when you’re done (depending on the type of tomatoes used). Right before you’re ready to drain the pasta add the basil, salt, and pepper to the sauce and cook and stir for about two minutes and then turn the heat off. Add the pasta and toss it well.
  6. Eat. I added about a bucket of Parmesan to mine because I love Parmesan and I look for any excuse to eat it. It’s a hard habit to break but I did eat a couple of bites of this pasta without any and it was excellent. Next time I might just eat a bare bowlful.

Notes

If I’d had any Kalamata olives I would have added some. I have noted produce size because with homegrown especially there is such a wide range of sizes and that can affect the amount of sauce you have for the pasta. For this one I actually used 1/2 of an enormous yellow zucchini but I am very good at estimating equivalents and two medium sized ones would be the same. You can mess with recipes like this a lot and still make it fantastic. So don’t be afraid to play. You could use twice the onion and really caramelize them before adding anything else and that would have made a sweeter sauce.

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Cooking Ambitions: Dishes I Want to Master

Posted by on August 14, 2011 10 Comments

I just got back from Southern California a few days ago and my head is full of food intentions.  I went down there for the Blogher ‘ll conference and then stayed on (and hopped a train) to visit with my sister in Los Angeles.  I had a food plan going down there which was to eat nothing but: Mexican, Chinese, Middle Eastern, Greek, and Indian food.  Here in McMinnville these ethnic foods are not done well when they are done at all.  I should say that they aren’t done according to what I’m used to and what I’m used to is the best Mexicali food in the world from the Mission District in San Francisco.  I say “Mexicali” because there are more and more people who feel the need to interject that what we know as “Mexican” food in the states is a bastardization of the real thing south of the border.  I accept this distinction.  Rick Bayless has accomplished what he set out to accomplish.

What ended up happening is that I ate a fair number of American-style breakfasts, a veggie burger here and there, some classic hippie food (it was so fantastic to reconnect with my tofu roots!), a extraordinarily bad Greek salad, some decent Mexican food which was good but didn’t compare to any of the Mexican food of the Mission District, some very good Japanese food, excellent Thai food (though it made me burp quite a bit so I’m thinking Pad Thai doesn’t quite agree with me), amazing high end Mediterranean style food (from Croce’s), and some really good wood fired pizza.  Having an eating plan was fun and I’m glad for the focus but some things left me still wanting.

When you have food cravings that have gone long unsated it is necessary to take matters into your own kitchen.  I didn’t get any Chinese food at all so my craving for garlic eggplant, vegetarian spring rolls, and vegetable chow mein has only grown more intense.  There is a long list of cooking ambitions I have and I’m going to list them here.  If any of you have recipes for the following dishes that you swear by-please share!  (Bearing in mind that if your recipe requires meat or meat juices to make it good- it’s not for me).

  • Vegetable Chow Mein
  • Garlic Eggplant (don’t know the actual name of the dish- it’s got chilis and garlic and is sweet and sour and the eggplant melts in your mouth- skin and all)
  • Falafels
  • Palak Paneer
  • Aloo Gobi (there are many recipes out there for this but I want the classic kind you find in Indian restaurants)
  • Tamales – I was inspired by the green corn tamales I had at El Cholo in Santa Monica though those were WAY TOO SWEET, so my thought is to combine masa harina with fresh corn to keep the sweetness down but have the wonderful flavor of fresh corn.
  • Red Enchilada sauce – I have tried several and have yet to find one that really satisfies me.  I want one like you get in restaurants but a lot of the recipes I’ve seen are kind of creepy.
  • Red Thai curry paste – but without shrimp paste or fish sauce
  • Green Thai curry paste – but without shrimp paste or fish sauce
  • Indian spice mix – I want to put together an all purpose Indian spice blend that I can just pour out and toast up on the spot.  I have a book with different blends so I’m going to try that out.
  • Greek style salad dressing – we used a basamic vinaigrette last night and that was good but the classic dressing used on Greek salads usually has some pretty sharp herbs in it and is lemony.

I’m going to be very busy in the next month juggling work (we’re going through some big changes that require everyone to really pitch in), food preserving, querying agents for my book, and through all of this I want to eat well and get some things in my repertoire that I can lean on.  I plan to eat a lot of Greek salad while tomatoes and cucumbers are prolific.  I need to make dressings in bulk to keep ready for use in the fridge.  I’d like to make lots of enchilada sauce when peppers and tomatoes are flooding the farmer’s market.  I’d like to have shortcuts in my freezer to Thai curries.  Sometimes when I get really busy I start leaning too heavily on simple and fattening things like grilled cheese sandwiches.  My plan is to truly get the most I can out of the summer produce while it’s still abundant.

In our own garden we’re starting to see tomatoes ripen and beans have been prolific while I’ve been gone and are already winding down (my mom steamed an enormous batch and I used half of them in a Greek-style salad last night), I have one artichoke ready to harvest, lettuce, kale, our first cucumber, some zucchini, and the blackberries are luscious and there are tons of them.  Biggest score in the world is that my non-produce-eating child ate a handful of them yesterday.  I plan to make some cobbler (my mom’s request), some jam, and if we have enough- some wine.

Time to get dressed and prepare the kitchen for canning!

 

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Strawberry Jammy Sauce or Saucy Jam?

Posted by on July 6, 2011 9 Comments

For the first time in my gardening life I had enough fruit from my own yard to make jam.  For anyone who has dreams of living off the fruit of the land, this is a beautiful and triumphant moment.  Although, I suppose it’s a little less triumphant when I report that the bed of everbearing strawberries, from which this incredible bounty grew from, did not produce consistently good tasting berries the way my June bearing patches did.  We couldn’t stop eating the ones that came from the June bearing patch but these ones… eh.  So making jam was less about using up the crazy excesses of my bountiful yard as it was about finding a way to make them taste better.

I will take this moment to dispel an insidious myth that everything you grow yourself tastes better.  Not true.  This deserves an entire post on it’s own.  I’ve grown carrots that were, indeed, better than any carrot I’ve ever bought.  I’ve also grown carrots that were woody, bitter, and stupid.  In that order.  There are so many factors that go into what makes a vegetable good: variety planted, soil quality, frequency of watering, heat available to plant, etc.  It’s really annoying when everyone out there claims that everything home grown is better.  It annoys me, but apparently not everyone else.  It also may indicate that they have magic soil and mine is just ordinary.

Back to the jammy strawberry sauce.  Or saucy strawberry jam.  Whatever.

You are always going to get the best preserves from using the freshest and best tasting fruit.  Truly.  But the magical thing about jam is that if you have a somewhat watery flavored fruit, cooking it down a little with a lot of sugar can result in a more intensified flavor so that a mediocre strawberry will make a good flavored jam (and an ambrosial flavored strawberry will make something you want to describe in some stupid poetical way that will make everyone around you want to hit you).   I chose to use a recipe from Hilaire Walden’s book “Perfect Preserves” which is full of dreamy recipes for what promise, right on the cover, to be perfect preserves.

I think if you’re not me making perfect strawberry jam might be a cinch.  But I AM me.  I am an excellent food preserver.  My pickles are renowned (and not just limited to my close small family circle either, at least two friends have raved as well!), my blackberry jam has given much pleasure, my pickled cauliflower is shiny, my canned peaches coveted.  I’m not bragging, I’ve just practiced a lot.  Except with pectin.  Pectin and I have yet to come to an understanding.

I’ve used several varieties and several recipes and sometimes it works out well and I can’t understand how come people make such a big fuss about it (mostly me), and then other times I follow the exact same instructions and it doesn’t set.  I used timers and everything.  I am not a sloppy preserver.  You already know the end to this story because I gave it away in the title of this post.

My strawberry “jam” didn’t set much.  It’s definitely thicker than sauce, but likewise it’s thinner than what I like to experience in a jam.  It’s not Hilaire’s fault.  I know the fault must lie in my own methods, or in the natural pectin levels of the fruit I was using being perhaps unusually absent.

It doesn’t actually matter because it tastes SO good!  No watery flavor at all, nice and rich and exactly what my idea of perfect strawberry jam tastes like.  There is a quality some strawberry jams can get that’s almost – I’m not even sure if this would be the right word- metallic.  This doesn’t have that unhappy quality.  It’s sweet without shriveling your teeth up.

So I’m happy.

Which I better be because I took 6 1/2 pounds of berries and turned it into 15 half pint jars of strawberry jam.  I’m not done with pectin yet.  I think we’re going to come to an understanding soon.

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