food : apple time is here again

As in previous years, I could not resist the allure of apples in season. In deference to my dramatically diminished ability to process and can, we only picked sixty pounds of apples rather than the hundred-plus pounds that we typically bring home from Larriland Farm. Sadly, this was not a good year for local apples, and we weren’t able to get any Granny Smiths. Truthfully, we were only able to pick Pink Ladies and ended up buying some Stayman from the stand to complement the flavors (in order to follow the rule of always using at least two kinds of apples in any recipe). We still ended up with a fair number of apples, as we receive a bag of assorted eating varieties each week from the fruit share portion of our CSA.

What I usually do with all these apples is can a couple of batches each of sauce and chutney. This year, though, we don’t need sauce as we’re still working our way through a half dozen quarts from last autumn, and I don’t have the time to make chutney, what with all the chopping and stirring that entails. Instead, I’m making pies and muffins for the freezer and crisps for us to eat. We probably don’t need such a steady infusion of baked sugary goodness in our sleep-deprived state…oh, wait, of course we do! I plan to make a cake or two, possibly also for the freezer, but the big addition to the apple roster this year was apple butter. I used my crock pot for only the third time in ten years to slow cook the apple butter, which made it super easy to deal with. The canning is not onerous, now that we have all the supplies and have been through the routine dozens of times. With the slow cooker it’s not necessary to stir the pot constantly to keep it from scorching, and we set it up to cook overnight. I did end up letting it cook with the top off for an additional two hours, as it was still pretty runny in the morning. It’s delicious; I’ve been having it on toast and will probably make another batch this week. Once that’s done, the rest of the apples will be for eating; the beauty of the Pink Ladies is that they keep in the fridge forever and provide something fresh for my partner’s bag lunches for most of the winter.

As an aside, the chutney recipe I use is from one of my favorite cookbooks, Simply In Season. When I went looking for it online, I came across a person who spent last year cooking all the recipes in the book. She blogged about it , and it’s fun to read through and see how recipes I’ve made or thought of making turned out for her. I have to say, it’s also nice to see one of these make-everything-in-a-cookbook-in-a-year blogs that uses a regular cookbook rather than a coffee table book from a gourmet restaurant. Not that there’s anything wrong with those, they’re just not ever going to be what I use in my kitchen.

food : apple time is here again

food : cooking goals for 2010

So far, I have only a couple of cooking goals for the year. One, I want to learn to cook dried beans in my slow cooker. Two, I want to learn to make pizzas. Neither of these will seem like major challenges to most of you, I’m sure, but they are things that I’ve had a block on that I want to get past. To this end, I am soaking my first batch of dried (Great Northern) beans overnight tonight and will be making them in the slow cooker tomorrow. The inaugural cooked-white-beans dish will be Marcella Hazan’s white bean soup, which is essentially white beans, garlic, and parsley. (I finally scored a copy of the original The Classic Italian Cookbook at a local thrift store this weekend and already have about a dozen recipes marked to try; rather than spring for the new version, I’ll now keep an eye out for the equally out of print and well-regarded More Classic Italian Cooking!)

On the second point, we’ve set a date for the 31st of January to make our first homemade pizza (yes, that’s the next weekend day we will have free together after today). Between now and then I’ll be assembling whatever it is we need for pizzas, and polishing up the as-yet-unused pizza stone we received as a wedding gift. (We did request the pizza stone, we just haven’t broken the barrier of actually making a pizza yet.)

In general, I want to branch out into making bread, but I am not yet ready to set a specific goal. I have a strong suspicion that the pizza hump is actually just a foothill of the yeasted-dough mountain by which I remain completely daunted. It’s not even the prospect of either a bread brick or a pot of runny goop that is the specific problem, I am just disproportionately stressed by the whole idea. So, after January 31st, the goal is to make some bread. Sometime. Before 2011. Or maybe not. No pressure!

food : cooking goals for 2010

food : tourtière


The first pie before it went into the oven (after which it didn’t last long enough for more pictures!).

In preparation for hosting our family Christmas this year, I baked and froze two tourtières for Christmas Eve. Although the pies are the traditional French-Canadian Christmas Eve meal, and I am in fact French-Canadian, I mostly remember them as a feature of my Irish and British grandparents’ celebrations. Which could simply be because that’s usually where we spent Christmas Eve.

At any rate, I grew up with tourtière that included potato (sacre bleu!) and therefore had to do quite a bit of research on the internets in order to find a recipe that suited. In the end, I cobbled together two recipes—a plain version from French Kitchen in America and a ‘pâté à la viande’ with potato from Micheline Mongrain-Dontigny’s website—and tweaked them to my own tastes. Since we had ground venison, I included it and added slightly more garlic and spices to make sure the pies didn’t taste gamy.

Christmas Eve Tourtière (makes 2 pies)

Filling
2 lbs ground pork
1 lb ground venison*
2 large onions, minced
2-4 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium potatoes, peeled
1/2 to 1 c hot water
1/2 tsp dry (ground) mustard
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp ground clove (optional)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon (optional)
dash allspice
dash nutmeg
salt to taste
1-2 eggs

*Can be made with all pork.

In a small pot, cover the potatoes with water and boil until soft. Remove from heat and mash coarsely.

In a large skillet or heavy-bottomed pot, brown the meat over medium heat with no oil. Mince the onions and garlic in a food processor, add to the browned meat, and cook over medium heat until soft. Add the mashed potatoes, spices, and enough water to keep everything from sticking and make the consistency that of a thick sauce. Salt to taste and remove from heat.

Cool the filling completely; it may be made ahead and refrigerated 1-2 days. Just before assembling the pies, allow the filling to come to room temperature and mix in at least one egg to help it hold together in the pie.

Crust*
3/4 c white flour
1/2 c white whole wheat flour**
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 stick (8 tbsp) very cold unsalted butter (straight from the freezer is best)
2-4 tbsp ice water

*Four crusts are required for this recipe; I prefer to make them one at a time, as a double recipe is a bit large for my food processor.
**Can be made with all white flour.

In a food processor, combine flour, sugar, and salt and pulse a few times to mix. Cut the cold butter into 1/2 inch cubes, add to the flour mixture, and process until the mixture is coarse contains no butter pieces larger than a pea. Add ice water one tablespoon at a time, processing thoroughly between each addition. After the second or third tablespoon, the dough should appear wet and begin to clump up. Process until the dough is balling up, and then turn out onto a floured surface. Shape the dough into a disc, and then roll out immediately (if the butter and water were not cold enough, the dough may need to firm up in the fridge).

Assembly & Baking
Line two pie tins with crust—I used disposable aluminum ones since I was freezing the pies—and trim the excess dough with a sharp knife. Divide the meat mixture between the two pans, filling the pans to level or slightly mounded in the center. Cover with another crust, trimming the excess crust with a small knife. Seal the pie by turning the edges under, so that the top crust is against the pie plate, and pressing the circumference with a fork. Brush the tops of the pies with egg wash (1 egg beaten with cold water), and cut slits for steam with a sharp knife.

Bake at 350F for 45-60 minutes, until crust is lightly browned and loses its wet appearance and filling is steaming.

To freeze, allow to cool completely. Freeze to hardness on a tray, and then wrap in foil and place each pie in a ziploc bag. To reheat, bake at 350F for 30 minutes and then at 375F for 30-45 minutes, until filling is steaming and a knife inserted into the middle of the pie feels warm.

The end result was very moist (in a good way), although a few eaters voted for less cinnamon. I went with spices because I was concerned about the venison, and in the future I think I’ll make at least one plain pork pie with minimal spicing. Two pies were just enough to get the six of us through Christmas Eve dinner—accompanied by lentil soup, my uncle’s mild chili sauce, our farmer’s Garlic Fire Sauce, and homemade pickled beets—and lunches on Christmas Day, Boxing Day, and the day everyone drove home. Even with the spices, they were good enough that I’m eyeing the remaining ground pork in the freezer and wondering if I can justify making another pork pie with all-butter pâte brisée crust before next Christmas. Probably not.

food : tourtière

food : even more winter canning

I don’t have a picture to share, because I am too lazy to pull all the jars out of the cupboard and clear off the dining room table to take one, but I have even more canning to report! Once the Granny Smith apples came into season, I was able to make the traditional brandied mincemeat that I’d been drooling over in The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. We now have eight quarts of it, which should last us a good long while; for one of the batches I used the pear brandy made by the German uncle of my partner’s coworker’s wife. It’s good stuff, but only my father and one of our friends has ever been able to drink a full cordial glass of it, and we suspect that our friend was just being polite. There’s still a bit in the bottle, but there’s more in the mincemeat! At any rate, we should be set on mincemeat for at least a couple of years.

Those apples also went into the Simply In Season chutney, which was the same as last year except I used dried cranberries instead of golden raisins (you’re given a choice in the recipe, I didn’t just make substitutes willy-nilly!). One batch turned out as I remembered it last year, and one batch seemingly spontaneously scorched caramelized so it’s quite a bit darker and thicker. Still good, but not quite as nice-looking in the jar. When I acquired more apples, I also acquired more pears, so I made two batches of pear butter using Elise’s recipe that a friend pointed out to me. I didn’t cook either batch long enough, but the second batch came out slightly darker and thicker than the first. They’re both delicious, just tilted more toward runny and away from sticky.

In addition to the canned products, I used more of the apples to make and freeze three apple pies, one of which we had at Thanksgiving. I used the recipe from the Williams-Sonoma Pie and Tart book that I always do, with just a bit of extra corn starch to help it gel up. The pie baked up well and tasted great, but the crust didn’t survive being frozen and then driven 12 hours in a car. To be fair to the pie, the crust was having some cracking problems even when I was rolling it out, and a large part of the crust looking bad was the apples compressing much more than usual when they cooked (I assume due to the consistency changes from being frozen). So, it had a definite pandowdy ambiance, even more so since it started with a rustic whole wheat flour look. Still good, though; we won’t be throwing the other two in the trash. We still have some apples in the fridge, so there may be more pies coming down the pike.

The last canning I did was a batch of quince jelly. We managed to scrape very few quinces from our yard this year, just enough for two batches of jelly (to contrast, I think I made five or six the first year we learned what they were, and had enough to give some of the fruit away to friends). We may be able to scrape another batch, if we get lucky and the few I have remaining are not rotten at the core. With all the wet weather this year, the fruits that weren’t knocked out of the trees by the high spring winds were largely rotten. Hopefully we’ll have better luck in two years, and maybe even a light year in between.

Besides the jelly, I may can some cranberry-orange relish, but I might also just make it fresh for Christmas. Despite having just acquired many more small jars through the generosity of my parents and grandmother (who I believe thinks I did her the favor!) that will probably be all the canning I do until spring. In the meantime, I have tourtières to make (and freeze) and cookies to bake!

food : even more winter canning

food : blueberries

The echoing silence around here has been due to our absence. We were off in the Great White North last week, visiting family and collecting blueberries from the family farm. Usually when we arrive this time of year the bushes are laden with fruit, so much so that it’s impossible to pick them all. Along with the fruit, the bushes are typically crawling with all manner of wasps and hornets which feast on the berries as they become overripe. Despite our best efforts each year, we’ve never been able to pick the bushes totally clean.

This year the bushes were the barest I’ve ever seen them; oddities of weather meant that the crop was unusually small. The scarcity when we arrived was also due in part to the decision to allow pick-your-own folks to access the field without set hours; the easy to pick berries at eye and hand level were all gone. Berries remained at the interior of the bushes and at heights that required one of us to stand on a stool while the other held the bucket. In addition to these, some bushes were dotted with second round berries, those that were left to ripen after the bush was picked nearly clean earlier in the season. As a result, we spent more time in the field this year for fewer berries. The weather was gorgeous, clear and much cooler than home, even on the hottest days. It was nice to be outside, and I lost track of time each day as I usually mark the hours passing by the number of berries in the buckets.

Now that we’re back home we’re eating berries in our cereal, I’m freezing some for the winter, and I’ve made one pie and some sauce to go over the angel food cake we had for my partner’s birthday. There’s a recipe for pickled blueberries that seems to be something like a sweet relish or chutney that I’m interested in trying, but I may decide that we don’t have enough berries to spare for that. I remind myself that the berries will grow again next year; I’m sure I’ll be convinced, as I am each year, to share some with our friends.

food : blueberries