Author Archives: angelina

Lemony Beet Salad

beet feta salad 2.jpg I was six the first time I remember eating a beet. I pulled it up out of my mother’s garden and ate it standing right there in the back yard, dirt and all. I have since decided that I like my vegetables washed before eating as the grit of soil fails to please, but my love of beets has never wavered. I offer you my favorite way to eat them here.

Most people I know either roast or boil beets. I think roasting is nice sometimes but I find that roasting makes a beet have a stiffer drier texture (even with plenty of olive oil) so that I don’t roast them often. I never boil beets. In fact, I never boil anything. I always steam vegetables. I steam because that’s what my mother always did. She steamed because she believed more of a vegetable’s vitamins and minerals were retained using this method. I don’t know if that’s true but whenever a recipe calls for boiling, I steam instead.

This beet salad recipe can be served plain or it can be served on a bed of lettuce with feta cheese. You can use any kind of beets. I used a combination of golden beets and dark red beets. Because I cooked them together the golden beets turned red.

To peel or not to peel? I only peel off the rough parts of beets. Sometimes this means I peel the whole thing but often it means I just peel the tops. The golden beets were mostly smooth skinned so you can see a lot of it was left on. My mother influenced me in this matter just as she did with steaming. She believed that peeling vegetables removed some important vitamins and minerals and should only be peeled if the skin is tough or compromised in some way. You will find that I rarely suggest peeling vegetables in my recipes. You can always peel if you prefer it.

golden beets 2.jpg Lemony Beet Salad
Serves 4 to 6

Ingredients:
8 medium sized beets, cut into 1/2″ to 3/4″ cubes
1/4 cup olive oil
Juice of one lemon
3 cloves garlic, finely minced or pressed
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper

To serve as shown in the picture:
(ingredients are per person)
2 cups lettuce
1 to 2 oz feta cheese
1 tbsp vinaigrette to dress lettuce

Method:

Fit a pot with a steamer basket, fill with water up to the basket (but not above), bring water to a boil. (I have a steamer pot and prefer it to the baskets but either will do). Add the cubed beats and steam for 15 minutes*, or until tender enough to pierce easily with a fork.

Meanwhile, in a medium sized bowl mix together the oil, lemon, garlic, salt and pepper. When the beets are done steaming add them to the bowl and mix together with the dressing. Toss it several times as the beets cool.

If you’re going to add the beets to a bed of lettuce, as shown in the picture, let the beets completely cool. For each plate add two cups of lettuce tossed with a little vinaigrette, scoop about 3/4 cup of the lemony beets onto the bed of lettuce, and top with some crumbled or cubed feta cheese.

macro beet salad 2.jpg

Recipe notes: If you’re vegan you can leave off the feta and this salad will still be amazing. I like the salty punch of the feta and if you’d like to have that same punch without cheese you can add a few Kalamata olives to each salad. Croutons are also good here, but if too many extras are added I think you lose the fresh lemon flavor, so I prefer to keep it simple. If you have baby spinach on hand that would be a great substitute for the lettuce. I had this salad with regular spinach and I have to report that it was too tough to be enjoyable.

This recipe is Gluten Free
This recipe is Vegan if you omit the feta cheese

*I timed the steaming and 15 minutes was perfect, however, if you cut your beets a little bigger than I did it may take a few extra minutes.

Home is Wherever My Hands Get Dirty

Pinny who never moults 2.jpg After five months of applying (and reapplying) for a HAMP loan to stay in our home, we’ve decided to let it go into foreclosure. It could be many months before the bank will even look at our continually resubmitted paperwork and in the meantime we’ve had time to consider the direction our life has been going in, what our true needs are, and what “home” really means.

We’ve been homeowners for 10 years and I admit that I fell into the faulty belief that if I owned a home I would be stable, wouldn’t ever have to move, and I could plant fruit trees and watch them mature. When I moved into my first home and gushed to my dad that I would never move again he said I was wrong, that I would outgrow that house and move at least once or twice more. Turns out he was right.

I’ve planted fruit trees in three out of four homes I’ve owned in a decade and seen not a single one mature because we have either outgrown our house, been forced to sell it in order to not to lose our equity in it, and then two more homes later and we just keep moving, just keep moving.

Curly-Sue or Mo 2.jpg Owning a home gave me the freedom to discover cooking, gardening, housekeeping, and keeping hens. It gave me the inspiration to learn to can my own food and it taught me to ask what I can do for myself so that I can avoid calling someone in to do it for me.

Owning a home guarantees nothing. Most people don’t own a greater percentage of their home than the bank does. Most people don’t live in the same home for more than a few years because in spite of how far civilization has come, people are becoming more nomadic again.

orb weaver out front 2.jpg

I have had this hunger to “settle” for as long as I can remember because I resented moving so much as a kid. I hated it. My son is learning to hate it too. I kept thinking that the best thing in life is to have a little plot of land of your own to grow food on and a house you love and will grow old and die in. It’s a combination of an American myth and my own fairytale. It’s what we’re supposed to want. It’s what we’re supposed to work ourselves stiff for.

I had the house I never wanted to leave. I had the house I wanted to die in. I had it all. I had every bit of that dream and life carried it away from me on a foul wind. Ever since losing the house of my dreams I’ve clung to the same ideal, trying to recreate what I had. Every time I try to recreate it rips right out of my hands and leaves me with a wrecked foundation and a bunch of matchsticks to start over with.

I knew there had to be a message in there somewhere.

Sometimes life has to kick you in the head until you learn to duck and cover. Sometimes you have to stop trying to rebuild the same thing over and over again. Sometimes you have to look at everything differently and under the bare-bulb light of raw interrogation. What if what you think you want so bad isn’t what you need and what if creating the life you need leads to to a life you really want?

Home is not about ownership of property. Home is not about owning anything at all. Home is about what kind of a life you can make with the materials you are given and that you are able to find. Home is about nourishment. It’s about self sufficiency. Self sufficiency isn’t just about having a garage full of tools or a field of wheat, though those things are good if you have them and can keep them. Self sufficiency is about rolling your sleeves up no matter where you are or what you’re doing and asking what you can do to improve a situation, a person, or a place. It’s about rolling up your sleeves to make things with your own two hands. You don’t have to own a house to make things with your hands or to fix situations, places, or people.

I despise the old saying “Home is where the heart is” because it’s such a shameless oversimplification and meant to provoke a warm (predictable) emotional response from people and the people who say it usually aren’t homeless or heartbroken.

Home is where you nourish yourself and your family. Whether you do that in a house you own, or a rental, in an apartment, or in a commune. Home can be the shelter you took your kids to to be safe and warm. Home isn’t anything as simple as your heart. It’s earthier, harder, and primal.

As we’ve been waiting and waiting for the bank to answer our plea for assistance I’ve had a lot of time to ask myself what I need and whether what I need is what I want. They aren’t necessarily the same thing. What I need, and what my family needs, is to reduce our responsibilities and burdens. We need to cut out about fifty percent of our belongings. We need to pare down, lighten up, get back to the core things we need in order to take care of ourselves. We need a living space that’s half the size of what we have because we can’t take care of what we’ve got with our limited time and income. We need to either have a postage stamp yard or no yard because as passionate as I am about gardening, that’s not what I need right now.

We need to have time to enjoy each other’s company without constantly dealing with all the little/big things that are falling apart right now or the things we’ve obligated ourselves to do or the things we should be doing as homeowners and can’t and are therefore constantly stressed out about.

The decision to let the house go into foreclosure hasn’t been an easy one and though I have to admit that it’s making me more emotional than I like being, it already feels like a tremendous load is about to lift from my life. It feels as though this is the first right decision I’ve made in five years. It isn’t easy to pry my fingers from the ghost of the dream I spent ten years fixated on. It’s hard to let go of something everyone else thinks you should die trying to hang onto.

A house is just a house. I can’t live my life as though an apocalypse is about to render all people without acreage into starving vagabonds. A house isn’t a home if it keeps you from doing what you’re really supposed to be doing. A house isn’t a home if it drains more from you than it fills you with.

The only truly sad thing about this decision is that I must find a home for my 9 loved hens. The oldest three, Dot, Flower-bud, and Pinny are my sweet old biddies who have served me so well and who will take hens that are at the end of their laying cycles to let them retire in comfort? I’m heavy with the need to relocate them but there’s no question about it and there’s so much to do to prepare for the future move, the sooner they get settled somewhere safe and good, the sooner I can deal with the change ahead.

My life has never been settled and I see now that
it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the best day of every week is when Philip, Max, and I go out to dinner together. What matters is that I can cook amazing food and support local growers and sew and nourish my family in any shelter. What matters is that I finish writing my book and get it published. What matters is that I teach my son not to dogmatically hang onto ideals that don’t work for him as an individual.

What I hope for is a cottage no bigger than one thousand square feet, a tiny yard for my pets to enjoy, a good kitchen, and a corner to write in. Or perhaps we’ll find a cool old apartment downtown above the stores.

We won’t likely move until late spring so I have time to weed through and curate my belongings down to an essential collection.

Yesterday Max asked me what I most want. What thing do I really really want the most? I couldn’t think of anything I want. I need some new sheets but that’s not what he meant. I don’t want anything. I haven’t got an appetite for things the way I used to and it reminds me of when I was first married and I was filled with earthly wants and desires. I remember burning with the desire to own a home when I was living in our sweet old apartment in San Francisco and here I am, seventeen years later, on the other side of it all. What I’m remembering is how amazing my apple green vintage kitchen was.

I’ve been in a lot of different kitchens and I expect I’ll cook in a lot more before I die.

Home is wherever my two hardworking do-it-yourself hands dig in and get dirty.

Pasta with Cheese Sauce, Chanterelles, Caramelized Onions, and Spinach

chanterelle pasta 2.jpg I have been wanting to try chanterelle mushrooms for a long time but haven’t bought them because I promised my son I wouldn’t sell him to buy fancy groceries. I live in a damp region which encourages a diverse and plentiful population of mushrooms and it’s my plan to learn to forage them. Near the end of the season last year I found some old boletes and some decaying chanterelles which didn’t make me hungry. I hope to do better this year. In the meantime one of the local organic farms I buy my produce from had some chanterelles (foraged by their friend- boy would I like to know their foraging spots) were being offered for a single dollar digit per pound and I had to splurge.

I love wild mushrooms generally mixed with cultivated ones. On their own they’re often too maneurish for my taste. Chanterelles, it turns out, are very mild and don’t need to be toned down by tamer cousins. Aside from their delicate flavor, they have other charms: they’re very pretty and when sliced thin length-wise they make sweet curling shapes that remind me of ancient handwritten letters.

I think you should know that I wash my mushrooms under water. I am completely aware that this breaks precious culinary laws and I am unconcerned. The water the mushrooms soak up in the process of being washed gets cooked off quickly and I’ve never noticed an increase of mushroom flavor when eating mushrooms that haven’t been mauled by the faucet. I respect you if you like to brush them. I suspect it gives one a greater connection to their worth and cost- to treat them like rare treats one might not get to eat again for a long time.

I will continue to wash mine in water.

This recipe is rich. I’m not going to apologize to anyone’s waistline for presenting it. Treat yourself just this once and I think you won’t be apologizing to your waistline either.

Ingredients:
6 servings for gluttonous individuals like myself
8 servings for modest portions

1/4 cup olive oil
2 medium yellow onions, sliced thin
10 ounces chanterelle mushrooms, sliced thin
1/2 lb fresh spinach, chopped
2 tbsp water

3 tbsp flour
3 tbsp salted butter
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
2 shakes of cayenne
3 cups of low fat milk, warmed
2 1/2 cups Emmentaler cheese, grated

1 lb angel-hair pasta

chanterelles sliced 2.jpg Method:

Heat up the olive oil in a saute pan (on med/high heat) and add the onions to it. As soon as the onions begin to brown a little turn the heat down to med/low and continue to saute them until they caramelize. Be sure to stir them frequently to prevent burning them which makes them bitter.

When the onions are caramelized, add the chanterelles. Let them cook for a few minutes and then add the spinach and the water and after you’ve stirred everything well, put the lid on the pan for a minute to encourage the spinach to completely wilt. When the spinach is wilted, remove the pan from heat and set aside.

Bring a pot of salted water to a boil while making the cheese sauce, add the pasta to it as soon as it’s boiling. I find that the pasta and the cheese sauce get done in about the same amount of time.

With the butter, flour, salt, pepper, and cayenne, make a light roux. Whisk the warm milk into the roux and cook gently until it thickens. Once thickened, remove the sauce from the heat and stir in the grated cheese. Stir the cheese gently until it’s completely incorporated into the sauce.

adding to the sauce 2.jpg Add the chanterelle, onion, and spinach mixture into the cheese sauce.

Drain the pasta when it’s finished (test a piece for doneness). Return it to the pot and pour the sauce over it. I find the best way to blend the sauce into the pasta is with metal tongs.

chanterelle cheese pasta 2.jpg

Serve it up! I am a glutton for Parmesan but this pasta doesn’t actually need any extra cheese or garnishes. I add the Parmesan anyway.

Recipe Notes: If you can’t find Chanterelles any mushroom will be a good substitute. If you’d like more iron to offset the richness of…everything else in the dish, I think you can safely double the amount of spinach without detracting from the other flavors because spinach has incredible shrinking power and even doubled will not amount to overdoing it.

I’ve made this with sharp white cheddar which was fantastic; gouda would be good too though I prefer stronger sharper flavors. If you want to coat your arteries just a little more, you can use whole milk or even some cream. The reason I use low fat is because I like it best, not because it’s lower in fat. I find the cheese adds plenty of creaminess here.

You can also lower the cheese amount if you’re a fool. (Just kidding!) I usually only use two cups of cheese in my cheese sauces, I find it sufficient, the reason there’s more this time is because I had a half a cup left over and no plans for it. I’m not sorry for the extra Emmentaler here, though I’m fatter this morning, I’m sure.

Ginger Syrup: DIY Apothecary

ginger from an angle 2.jpg Whenever I feel a cold coming on I grab some fresh ginger, lemons, and honey and make a cup of tea for myself. It doesn’t always prevent the cold from coming (though it has once or twice) but it eases up the symptoms and makes me feel a lot better. Ginger is useful for a lot of ailments such as nausea, indigestion, infection, sore throats, and the flu.

Although I love making fresh ginger tea I sometimes want something stronger. This syrup is it. If you don’t like your ginger too spicy you can reduce the amount of ginger in this recipe, it will still be effective, just more gentle. Made my way it will burn going down, warming your whole torso.

fresh ginger 2.jpg Ginger is usually called a root and though I call it that myself it’s really a tuberous rhizome. When you buy fresh ginger you want to look for a piece of root that is supple and tan. Don’t buy any that has a shriveled or grey appearance or has mold on it.

Ingredients:

4 ounces of fresh ginger
1 quart of water
1 cup raw honey

chopped fresh ginger 2.jpg How to make ginger syrup:

Chop the ginger into small pieces (no need to peel the skin). Add the ginger to a medium sauce pot with the quart of water and put the stove on high heat until the water boils.

When the water boils turn down the heat (to med/low or low) so the water is only gently boiling. Let it boil until the liquid reduces by half. This will take roughly a half an hour but you should check it every ten minutes to see its progress.

straining ginger 2.jpg When the liquid has reduced by half, take the pot off the heat and let it cool down for a while. When it’s cooled enough not to give you third degree burns, strain the solid ginger bits out by pouring it through a piece of butter muslin or doubled up cheese cloth. Squeeze all the liquid you can out of the ginger and toss it onto your compost pile if you have one.

At this point you have a ginger decoction. To make it into a syrup you need to add the honey. If your decoction has cooled down completely, heat it up again so that it’s warm (but not boiling), then remove from the heat and add the honey. It’s important that your decoction isn’t boiling at this point because you don’t want to cook the honey. It has a lot of beneficial qualities in its raw state that it loses when cooked.

ginger syrup 2.jpg

Stir the honey until it’s completely incorporated in the liquid. When it’s completely cool pour it into a bottle or a jar and keep it in the fridge. It should last up to a month.

If you want a thicker syrup double the honey. I didn’t want a really thick syrup but more honey will make it even better suited to soothing a sore throat.

Dosage: 1 ounce every couple of hours while feeling acutely unwell or when your body feels low from an oncoming cold. (This is merely my suggestion based on how I’ve found it useful and therapeutic. You won’t hurt yourself taking more or less ginger syrup.)

If you’re coughing a lot you can add an ounce of ginger syrup to an ounce of vodka or whiskey. The alcohol soothes spasms in the lungs. Plus it soothes the mind at the same time.

Tip: This syrup can be made into a lovely cocktail as well: 2 ounces ginger syrup, 1 ounce vodka or other favorite liquor, mineral water, ice, and slice of lemon. Especially nice on a cold evening!

So Much Abundance

best fennel 2.jpg I think it’s funny that when I’m in the middle of canning it’s almost impossible to prepare actual meals. I end up eating a lot of sandwiches and easy food. Back when we had more money it was a great excuse to order in from restaurants. This week the best thing I ate was this pan of roasted vegetables all of which I got from the two organic farms I buy from. The tofu isn’t organic and came from the regular market.

I cut up two sweet potatoes, a few small Yukon potatoes, an enormous fennel bulb cut into six wedges, one whole block of tofu, and an entire head of garlic on my roasting pan. I cut everything into (roughly) 1.5″ size pieces. I sprinkled it with salt and pepper and drizzled a generous amount of olive oil over the whole thing. I cooked them at 400 degrees, turning them about every ten or fifteen minutes for an hour.

Best meal I’ve had all week! I’m not usually a huge fan of fennel but I have to say that eaten this way has changed my mind. I can no longer remember how I’ve fixed them in the past.

The best thing I ate the previous week was a pasta sauce I made with chanterelles and caramelized onions added to a sharp white cheddar cheese sauce. The sauce was so thick it worked well to spread on toast and broil.

All my other meals have been breakfasts of eggs, cheese, and tomatoes or lunches of cheese tomato sandwiches.

best roasted tomatoes 2.jpg I did make (and freeze) some tomato soup. I consulted friends for herb ideas and everyone has something different to suggest. I ended up using fresh thyme from the garden and the very last of the fresh local basil. I thought it was really nice but Philip preferred it as a dip for a grilled cheese. He didn’t love it on it’s own merit, which is why I didn’t bother posting my recipe here. It needs work. All soups should be worthy of standing alone.

Vespa pack mule 2.jpg I made my annual trip to the local farm Bernard’s this year for tomatoes, summer squash, and eggplant – all upick. I ended up getting some jalapenos even though I promised myself I wouldn’t. Here’s what I packed on my scooter:

74 eggplants
3.5 pounds jalapenos
34 pounds green and red tomatoes

All of this food cost only $36.95. I am not kidding. The eggplants were 25 cents each, the tomatoes were 47 cents a pound, and the jalapenos were comparatively expensive at 99 cents a pound.

free walnuts 2.jpg Last year my friend Laurie brought me a box of walnuts she’d collected from her mother’s tree. I put them in the freezer and only just cracked them all open in the last few weeks. I portioned them into vacuum sealed bags and put them back in the freezer. Walnuts are expensive to buy and I can go through a lot making this recipe for walnut pesto sauce.

aphid pickle 2.jpg

The pickles. This was not my year for pickles. There weren’t any pickling cucumbers available for upick so I decided I’d make dilled beans. When I tried picking at the farm it was not a great moment for them either. So I resolved to just make extra cauliflower pickles. I love dill cauliflower pickles so I figured I’d be just as happy eating these as the usual cucumber dills.

The day I brought home my giant bunch of dill-heads I was so giddy with excitement that I got chatty with the Rite-aid check-out guy who could be expected to have no interest at all in pickles. To my surprise I was wrong. I said “Dill!!” and he said “Pickles!” and I spazzed out at him when I found out his grandmother makes cauliflower pickles and it turns out this barely-twenty-something kid is a fan of cooking blogs and home canning.

Those dill-heads would turn out to be a grim* reminder of the superiority of insects. For anyone who doesn’t know, it is generally best not to wash herbs any time you can get away with it. I have been pickling for 4 years and have never had any problems with my dill. I’ve grown complacent and careless, apparently. I canned 17 quarts of pickles and every single one of those jars has a few tiny floating pickled aphids in them.

I thought I was going to have to dump the jars out and cry over a very large beer. Luckily my husband and my mother are more intrepid eaters than I am and have declared that they are perfectly happy to rinse the pickles before eating.

I obviously had to make some aphid-free cauliflower pickles for myself. I got more dill heads, really nice looking ones that didn’t seem to have any aphids on them. But I wasn’t going to take any risks so I soaked my fresh dill heads in vinegar for a few hours thinking this might make all the aphids die and let go. It worked! (Yes, there were aphids on these ones too.) But then I made the mistake of taking them out of the vinegar and waiting to use them the next day by which time they had developed a truly suspect odor.

In the end my last 14 quarts of pickles had no dill-heads. Instead I used a quarter teaspoon of dill seeds and a quarter teaspoon of dried dill leaves. I have no idea how they will turn out.

I am now done with my preserving season! I am ready to concentrate on actual cooking, curtain making, and writing.

*Possibly an overstatement.

Thoughts on Fitting Food Preserving into a Busy Life

organic apple 2.jpg I have been doing a lot of preserving in the past month. It has been my intention for weeks to hang up the jar tongs and get back to seriously writing the second draft of my book. I have this goal that I will have the second draft finished by January 1, 2011. Instead of writing I’ve been making batches of pesto (I’m up to a little over 20 batches in the freezer), canning stewed tomatoes (17 quarts this weekend), making quadruple batches of enchilada sauce to freeze, and yesterday I made an enormous batch of soup using the last of the summer vegetables (corn, green beans, summer squash, tomatoes, new potatoes, and fresh basil).

The elderberries are winding down now. I’ve got 11.25 cups of elderberries getting sauced in 2,250 ml of 100 proof vodka in the pantry. I have at least another 6 pounds of foraged elderberries in the freezer.

I could be done now. I could throw the towel down and leave the ring. But if I did that I wouldn’t have any dill pickles. There weren’t enough pickling cucumbers for me to make cucumber pickles but right now there are these giant locally grown cauliflowers and cabbages that I can pickle the same way I do the cucumbers. I made the cauliflower last year and it was an enormous success- not only between myself and my husband but all of our friends who tried them loved them also.

tomato stack 2.jpg

I have another nagging ambition: I want to make a green tomato salsa. I want to do it just like the tomatillo salsa I made a couple of years ago. Tomatilloes, like tomatoes, had a rough year and I didn’t manage to get any through u-pick. But I have a Mexican cookbook that mentions that green enchilada sauce can be made with either tomatillos or green tomatoes.

I want to try it!

There’s more. I saw a recipe for dill pickled green tomatoes that I think I’ll regret not trying all year if I don’t make them.

And what about the eggplants? They’re 4 for a dollar at Bernard’s and I wanted to grill a huge bucket of them for the freezer…

I keep telling myself to stop, but the truth is that doing these preserving activities makes me feel good. It makes me feel more hopeful and excited about the coming months during which time anything good or bad might happen but one thing’s for sure: I’ll be eating home pickles and making soups from tomatoes that have no pesticides on them. When I’m feeling low I can make a pasta with grilled eggplant and pesto.

So the book takes a little longer to write. I’ve been thinking a lot about my characters as I preserve, thinking about how important these same activities are to them. More so since they can’t just buy things from a grocery store the way we can today. The inspiration for the story originally came from doing urban homesteading activities and asking “What if oil didn’t completely run out but became so limited and so costly that the average person couldn’t drive a car because they couldn’t get oil and what if they couldn’t buy anything plastic? What if no one could afford to buy imported foods except on rare and special occasions? What would you have to know how to do in order to survive being more isolated in the community you’re in?

These are the things I think about while processing 50 pounds of tomatoes.

What I’ve realized is that preserving as much food every year as I can, at least in the fall, isn’t just a silly little project I enjoy doing, it’s a big project that I feel a deep need to participate in. I need to know how to preserve food I have now so I can eat it later. Because I already mostly eat seasonally my choices in produce are about to become much more limited. I buy a few things out of season, but not much. No green beans, no corn, no out of season fruit (except for Max), no summer squash, no tomatoes, no eggplant, no asparagus, no peas, and no fresh herbs I can’t still get out of my garden.

It isn’t a fancy rich person’s hobby.

I’m not rich and I’m not fancy.

It isn’t an indulgence as I’ve been telling myself it is just because I know I have other things to do. It’s one of the most important things I do for myself and my family every year.

So I’m reminding myself, and anyone else who needs a similar nudge, that preserving your own food (no matter how much or how little you do) is using the kind of knowledge that allowed humans to cross the ocean. Practicing this knowledge is what allowed humans to settle down in one place. Unfortunately it’s also what allowed armies to march far enough to conquer and oppress other countries. Food preserving is responsible for so many huge changes in human history.

It’s something I look forward to every year.

Marinated Summer Vegetables: a canning recipe

closer marinated veg 2.jpg l love marinated three bean salad, so when I found a canning recipe for it I was really excited to try it. The only problem was it called for green peppers which I don’t care for, and which aren’t traditionally found in a three bean salad. I’ve noticed that a lot of canning recipes call for green peppers where I wouldn’t normally suspect them and I’m sure this is because everyone grows them and then doesn’t know what to do with them. Toss them in the pickle! Toss them in the sauce! Put them in the piccalilli!.

If you ask your local extension service about substitutions in canning recipes you are almost guaranteed to be told: NEVER MAKE SUBSTITUTIONS! and then they’ll fall into a dead faint. They take this subject very seriously, and rightly so. The danger of making substitutions in a canning recipe is that you might alter the acidity level of the food which may possibly make it unsafe to can.

I chose to call my local extension office for advice and I ended up having to talk to the head master canner because the other ones were too scared to answer my question: can I safely replace the bell peppers in this recipe with more of some of the other items such as the green beans? She looked into it and came back with the answer that it was safe. She went on to explain that there was no reason other vegetables couldn’t be used in this recipe in place of what’s already in it, that the kidney beans and the chick peas were the lowest acidity items in the recipe and as long as I don’t skip the over night marinating step, I can make substitutions in this recipe.

Why is marinating this recipe for at least twelve hours important? Because you need to allow the beans, which have the lowest acidity level of all the vegetables in this recipe to become well saturated with the marinating liquid which ensures that the beans are at the proper acidity level.

I’m offering two versions here: Marinated Summer Vegetables and Marinated 3 Bean Salad. What I love about these recipes is that when it’s the middle of winter and there isn’t a lot to put on a salad I can drain a jar of these and add half a cup to a bed of lettuce and enjoy summer vegetables in winter.

marinated veg in pot.jpg

Marinated Summer Vegetables
yield approximately 6 pints

Ingredients:
5 cups equal parts corn, green bean, and summer squash
1/2 onion, quartered and very thinly sliced
1/2 cup celery, thinly sliced
1 1/4 cups water
1/2 cup white vinegar (5% acidity)
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp pickling salt
2 tsp dried oregano

Method:

Wash the vegetables and cut so that the pieces are all between one and two inches. For example: I cut my zucchini in half lengthwise and then into 1/2″ thick slices except for the really small ones which I sliced into 1/2″ thick rounds. Add the celery and onion and mix them all together.

In a big nonreactive pot mix the water, vinegar, and lemon juice and bring to a boil, then remove from the heat. Add the oil, salt, and oregano and mix well. Add all the vegetables to the solution and bring to a simmer. Remove from heat and let it cool down before adding it to the fridge to marinate for a minimum of 12 hours. I let mine marinate for almost 24 hours because that’s when I could get back into the kitchen to process them.

Once the vegetables have marinated, bring them back to a boil and fill clean hot jars with the vegetables, topping each jar up with marinating liquid, leaving 1/2″ head-space. Adjust the lids and process for 15 minutes in a water bath canner.

Variation:

Marinated 3 Bean Salad
yield approximately 6 half pints

Ingredients:
2 cups green beans, cut into 1-2″ pieces
1 1/2 cups red kidney beans, cooked and drained
1 1/2 cups chick peas, cooked and drained
1/2 onion, quartered and very thinly sliced
1/2 cup celery, thinly sliced
1 1/4 cups water
1/2 cup white vinegar (5% acidity)
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp pickling salt
2 tsp dried oregano

Method: Follow the same instructions for the Marinated Summer Vegetables (given above).

Recipe notes: If you are one of those people with lots of green peppers to use up, reduce the green bean quantity by 1/2 cup and add 1/2 cup thinly sliced peppers if you’re making the 3 Bean, or you can add them in equal parts to the other summer vegetables in the Marinated Summer Vegetables recipe. Another safe variation is to do all green beans for the vegetables.

Spicy Corn Chowder

summer corn chowder 2.jpg Many years ago when I was going to fashion design school in San Francisco, a friend took me to a cafe near Union Square on a blustery cold day. I ordered their corn chowder. It was better than any corn chowder I’d ever had and I have wished many times over the years that I had been paying attention to my food then the way I do now and taken notes. It was thick, not runny; it was creamy but not too milky; it was spicy without being heavy with heat. It had cilantro in it.

That cafe has been closed down for at least 15 years.

For some reason I’ve been remembering that bowl of chowder I ate 20 years ago a lot this summer, so I decided it was time to recreate it from distant memory. After several batches I present to you one of the best things you can make with summer corn. Chowder sounds like it’s meant to only be eaten in the cold weather but corn is at its best in the summer so if you can still get some at your farmer’s market, give this a try right away, even if it’s still hot where you live.

My friend Chelsea (a major inspiration for starting Stitch and Boots) suggested I make a stock out of the corn cobs and it was brilliant because the soup had a lot more flavor than when I’ve made it in the past. It really isn’t too much trouble. Cook the cobs down while you prep the rest of your ingredients and do some other kitchen chores. It’s well worth the effort make the stock out of the cobs.

corn stack 2.jpg Spicy Corn Chowder
serves 4-6

Ingredients:

7-8 ears of corn (5 cups corn kernels)
3 tbsp all purpose flour
3 tbsp butter
2 tsp salt
30 grinds of pepper (or 1/4 tsp)
1 quart corn cob stock
1 tbsp olive oil or butter
1 med. onion diced fine
1 celery stalk sliced thinly
4 med round potatoes diced med/small
1 can evaporated milk (or 1 cup milk)
2-3 jalapenos, roasted, peeled, and finely minced
2 tbsp finely minced cilantro

Sour cream for garnish

corn stock 2.jpg Method:

Bring two quarts of water to a boil in a stock pot. Cut the kernels off the corn and set the kernels aside in a bowl for later. Break the corn cobs in half and put them in the pot. Boil the cobs until the stock is reduced to 1 quart (this takes about 40 minutes for me but times may very).

Remove the cobs and set the stock aside.

In a soup pot prepare a roux using the flour, butter, salt, and pepper. Pour the corn cob stock slowly into the roux whisking briskly to remove any lumps and once all the stock is poured, let the veloute* thicken.

burnt on purpose peppers 2.jpg Heat up the olive oil in a medium saute pan and saute the onion and celery until the onion is beginning to brown slightly (this adds more flavor to the chowder). Remove from the heat and add to the thickened veloute.

Add the potatoes, corn, and jalapenos to the chowder. Stir frequently to prevent the bottom from burning. Let the chowder cook until the potatoes are completely done, around 30 minutes. Turn the heat off and add the milk and the cilantro, stirring them in well. Let it cool a little before serving.

Top with a couple of tbsp of sour cream and serve!

corn chowder chop 2.jpg

Recipe Notes: You can use a lot more cilantro and the soup will still be great. I made one batch with a whole bunch of cilantro and though it was good, I wanted the emphasis to be on the corn so the next batch I used just 2 tbsp and thought the balance was much nicer. You can also garnish with some additional cilantro if you like.

The chowder is just as good without the evaporated milk (I made it both ways) but a true chowder has milk and I like the flavor it adds so I prefer the version with milk. A word about the jalapenos- mine were very hot and 3 of them was almost too much but I later bought peppers from a different vendor at the market and they barely had any heat. So my suggestion is to only use two if your pepper are especially hot this year and you don’t want the soup to be super spicy.

One more thing- if you don’t have fresh corn on hand and want to use canned or frozen, 5 cups might be an awkward amount (it’s the amount I got off of 8 ears of corn). Don’t worry about it. Use whatever quantity comes closest in canned or frozen without wasting any. A little difference in quantity of corn one way or the other won’t ruin this chowder.

*Technically a veloute is made with beef or chicken stock but when making a vegetarian dish you always substitute meat stocks with vegetable stock so while it isn’t a true veloute, this is a vegetarian version of one.

This recipe is vegan if you make the roux with olive oil instead of butter and omit adding the evaporated milk.

Related article:
How to Make a Roux

How to Make a Roux

roux base 2.jpg
What is a roux?

A roux is a cooked mixture of equal parts flour to fat which is used to thicken sauces, gravies, and soups. Making a roux is very basic and is such a versatile cooking component that every cook should know how to make it.

The flour used is wheat and it works equally well with whole wheat as it does with refined wheat. The whole wheat will give the roux an earthier fuller flavor while the refined wheat will be more flavor neutral.

The traditional fat to use is clarified butter but you can use regular butter, rendered fat, or oil. I nearly always use butter when I make a roux but I recently tried using olive oil because I’ve heard it works well and my friend Angela uses oil frequently and suggested I give it a try. I did and it worked just as well as the butter so I can happily recommend that vegans learn to make roux in their kitchens using oil instead of butter.

A traditional roux is simply this:
Equal parts fat to flour, cooked.

That’s very simple. But before I give you the method to making the roux I want to mention that I always season my flour before I make the roux. I like to mix in a ramekin the following:

3 tbsp flour
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper
2 shakes of cayenne pepper

This is the flour mixture I use when I make cheese sauce and I love the kick of cayenne gives to the cheese. Even when I don’t use the cayenne, I always add salt and pepper to my flour. (If you will be adding hot peppers a dish in which you will be adding the roux, omit the cayenne and only add later if your dish still needs more heat)

roux 2.jpg How to make a roux:

Heat up the fat in a skillet (or soup pot) at med/high heat, if it’s butter don’t let it brown*. Whisk in the flour (or flour mixture). When it’s all mixed together it should form a thick paste as you see in the picture above. Whisk the paste for two to three minutes.

It is important to cook it for at least two minutes because this removes the raw taste of flour from the dish you will add your roux to. I always make a light roux and so never cook it for more than five minutes before adding liquid. The longer you cook it the deeper the color and flavor.

After a few minutes you either take it off the heat and transfer to another container for use later, or add liquid to create a sauce, gravy, or soup base.

making roux 2.jpg

What to do with the roux:

You can add any liquid to a roux that suits your purpose: water, stock, or milk are the most common liquids to add depending on what you’re making.

How much roux you need for a recipe will sometimes vary. I have found that usually 3 tbsp of flour to 3 tbsp of butter is sufficient to thicken 3 cups of milk for making a cheese sauce for one casserole dish of macaroni and cheese. I also find that this is adequate for thickening a medium batch of soup that serves 4 -6 people.

When you add your liquid to the roux you need to whisk constantly (and briskly) as you pour it into the pot to prevent lumps from forming. I generally pour half my liquid in and make sure to get all the roux mixed well. As soon as I see that the roux is mixed well with no lumps I add the rest of my liquid. This will take longer to thicken. It may take up to 20 minutes to fully thicken.

If you use milk (or cream) you want to make sure that you don’t let it boil hard. Watch it carefully and as soon as you see it begin to bubble, turn the heat down to med/low and whisk it frequently to prevent burning.

Once the roux has thickened your liquid, it’s ready for whatever application you intend it for.

Here are a couple of examples of what you might do next:

If you’re making a cheese sauce you turn the bechamel (roux + milk = bechamel sauce) off the heat and add two cups (or more) of grated cheese, stir, then add to pasta.

If you’re making a soup you would add your veloute (roux + stock = veloute) to some sauteed vegetables or you would start adding your vegetables to the pot with your veloute.

Every cook should know how to make a roux and I hope my instructions give a nudge to anyone who hasn’t learned to make one yet.

*Unless you are following a recipe for a brown butter sauce or

Tomato and Basil Strata Recipe

egg strata 2.jpg The first time I tasted an egg strata was at my cousin Christa’s house in Wisconsin. It’s a great dish to make for brunches because you can assemble it the night before and throw it in the oven 45 minutes before you want to eat it. It’s filling and offers everything in one dish that you should ideally start your day with (protein, grain, and vegetable).

One thing you need to bear in mind when you make an egg strata is that you must let it sit at least for one hour before baking so that the toast becomes saturated with the egg and milk mixture.

My recipe calls for a lot of eggs and if that makes you hesitant you need to consider that this recipe generously serves 8 people (or can be cut even smaller if you have other dishes to serve) which means that each serving has just 1 1/2 eggs in it. That’s not too many eggs to eat for breakfast!

About the bread. Most strata recipes call for good quality French bread or a brioche loaf. I used a great local bread called “sesame white” which has good flavor and no gluey factor. We usually use whole wheat bread and I would wholeheartedly suggest you use wheat if you have it. However, I buy the sesame white to make croutons with (because they dry nice and light and not hard) and so this is what I had the first time I made it. I liked it so much that I bought more sesame white. Bread comes in all shapes and sizes so how much bread you’ll need to toast may vary a little from what I used. Keep that in mind. This is a regular sliced sandwich bread size. If you use a french bread the slices may be half the size of what I used.

Egg stratas lend themselves to lots of variations and I encourage you to play with the possibilities!

Tomato and Basil Strata
serves 8

Ingredients
8 slices of good quality bread
1 tbsp butter for greasing your baking dish
12 eggs
2 cups milk
10 large basil leaves (or one small bunch) julienned
1 tsp salt
30 grinds of pepper
6 large tomatoes
2 cups grated jack cheese

Method:

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

Place the bread slices on baking sheets and toast them until lightly
toasted and dried out. Be sure to turn them over so they get toasted on
both sides.

Meanwhile, beat the eggs and milk together and then add the basil, salt, and pepper to it and beat a little more to mix well.

Slice the tomatoes in rounds (somewhere between 1/4″ and 3/8″ thick is good).

toast for strata 2.jpg Grease a 9×13″ baking dish with butter. When the toast is ready layer
the bottom of the baking dish with them. It was helpful with the shape
of my bread to break the slices up a bit to fit them in well.

making strata 2.jpg Cover the toast with a layer of sliced tomatoes. Make a second layer of
toast and beat the eggs again before
pouring evenly over the whole dish. Place a second layer of tomatoes on the top, cover the baking dish, and let it sit
for at least an hour.

Twenty minutes before it’s ready to be baked, turn your oven on to 350
degrees. The strata will take 45 minutes to cook. I don’t put
the grated cheese on the top until it’s been in for a half an hour.
After it’s cooked for 40 minutes at 350 I put the broiler on and let the
cheese get bubbly and slightly browned, which in my oven takes about 5
minutes.

tomato layer 2.jpg These are some of the most beautiful tomatoes I’ve ever seen! The first layer were all red ones. I liked the mix a lot.

a corner of broiled cheese 2.jpg
Recipe Notes: You can use whatever kind of cheese you like that melts well. Jack is one of my very favorite cheeses for covering casseroles with but a gruyere would also be really nice. My mom thought I should have used more basil but I didn’t want the herb flavor to overpower the flavor of the tomatoes which were at their peak of flavor. I nearly always use a 2% milk but you can use whole milk or skim if you prefer. I know some recipes even call for cream.