cooking

food : cooking goals for 2010

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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

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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 : autumn canning

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Applesauce, tomato sauce, pear mincemeat, and pickled beets, with spiced pear jam in front.

A couple of weeks ago, we spent an afternoon at Larriland Farm, where we picked our own bags of Stayman apples (48 pounds), beets (20 pounds), and Roma tomatoes (30 pounds). I also bought three smallish pie pumpkins and a box of pear seconds. This last was from Catoctin Mountain Orchard, where we’d hoped to pick apples and were disappointed to discover they were only sold pre-picked from the store (thus the trip over to Larriland). My plan was to turn all of this into canned goods, that we’d eat through the winter while marveling at my foresight and dedication to our tastebuds. Okay, maybe not the last bit, but making the food last a good long time was definitely the plan.

The first day, I made tomato sauce from Barbara Kingsolver’s recipe from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. The sauce was tasty (we had enough left over for a meal that night), and I have 10 quarts of it to look forward to eating over the next year. I have 10 quarts of it because…well, because the 30 pounds of mostly Roma tomatoes I picked were apparently much denser than the 30 pounds of tomatoes she calls for in her recipe. So I had two big pots of sauce simmering down, which were then combined into one big pot, which was then augmented with another 1/2 recipe of spices, and finally simmered down to 10 quarts. It’s not only that my 30 pounds was more voluminous than her 30 pounds, it was also that I puréed the tomatoes by putting them fresh into a food processor, not by cooking them and straining them and then putting them into a food processor. So whatever liquid was in the tomatoes was in the pot waiting to be cooked off. Nothing I’ve read says that the way I did it was wrong, and I still had a half recipe more than projected, so I’m thinking the larger factor was having all Roma tomatoes. At any rate, come on over for pasta!

After the tomatoes were dealt with, I proceeded on to beets. Over the course of the next three days, the 20 pounds of beets became 19 pints of pickled beets (technically 21 pints, as two went into the fridge and we ate it right away). While this works out to about one pound per pint, the recipe was in cups of sliced beets so it was a bit…exciting…to figure out how many were needed for each batch. In the end, I just boiled pots of beets, skinned them in cool water (much easier than peaches, or tomatoes for that matter), and stored them in the fridge until they could be sliced and pickled in 10 cup increments. I used the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving recipe, and had to double the amount of liquid to fill the five pint jars per batch. (I found that if I stored the extra beets and liquid from the first batch, and added them to the pot at the end of the second batch, two batches made 11 pints.) Don’t ask me why; maybe my pot had too much surface area, maybe I boiled it too vigorously for too long. Whatever the reason, I needed more liquid (which is how we ended up with 2 pints in the fridge in the first round). Before I started I considered making a variety of flavors of pickled beets, but in the end I stuck with the regular kind, figuring that everyone knows and likes the familiar taste so why mess around with it. So, come on over for pickled beets!

The other major effort was turning the apples into applesauce. These Stayman weren’t particularly great, sort of mushy and not as tart as I remember from previous years, so my plan was to combine them with a few Empire apples (from my market friends at Harris Orchards) and make them all into sauce. About 12 pounds of apples goes into four quarts, and with the combination of the two kinds I had plenty for four batches with some left over. I started off following the Ball recipe, but quickly abandoned it as it uses far more sugar than I like. (It also calls for a tablespoon of lemon juice for each quart; I forgot to add it for one batch, which led us to do some research and learn that the USDA does not require lemon juice for canning apples, as all apples on the market are acidic enough to safely can using the water bath method. I still added the lemon juice to the last batch, but don’t worry if the recipe you have doesn’t include it or you forget.) The first batch I made with half the amount of sugar and some cinnamon, and it came out way too sweet (I’m sure my partner will slurp it up like the candy it is). The second batch I made with only 1/2 cup of sugar, the way I like it, and the third I made with more cinnamon (2 teaspoons) and 1 cup of sugar (which still made it a very sweet dessert sauce). The last batch was back to the 1/2 cup, and the apples were old enough by that point that even the added lemon juice couldn’t keep them from browning up quickly. It still tastes fine, but doesn’t look as nice in the jar (which destines it for early consumption). Now that the sauce is out of the way, I’m looking forward to another round of tart apples (such as Granny Smith and Braeburn) to make into other things, like chutney and mincemeat.

Speaking of mincemeat, that’s what I made from the pears. Two kinds of mincemeat (one with rum and currants, and one with port and regular raisins) both from the Ball book. The pears were overripe and very juicy, so I’m not sure that the consistency is quite right on the mincemeat, but they both tasted delicious (if a bit overly sweet; for a person with a sweet tooth, I seem to be at the low-sugar end of the range). I’m sure they’ll be a hit at Christmas, and their beef-free status makes them worth their weight in dried fruit. These two recipes were also by volume (10 cups of chopped pears each) rather than weight, and I neglected to weigh the fruit ahead of time, so I don’t actually know what we acquired for our six dollars. Enough to make 8 pints of mincemeat and another 7 half-pints of jam. The jam was the first attempt at using pectin, and I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, the jam gelled up beautifully. On the other hand, the jam seems cloyingly sweet to me, although that’s somewhat cut when it’s actually on toast and not just being taste-tested from a spoon. It’s a nice recipe, though, with cinnamon and dried cranberries for a bit of a spicy-tart undercurrent. Of course, as soon as I’d used all the pears this way, a friend pointed out that Elise put up a pear butter recipe at Simply Recipes, so I’m tempted to get another box of pears and make pear butter next week. The downside is that it involves cooking the pears then putting them through the food mill, a process that I generally dislike. The upside is that it looks delicious!

Now, I just need to cook, purée, and freeze the pie pumpkins and the kitchen dining room will be cleared and ready for the next round of apples. Just as soon as I find a place to store all the filled jars.

food : autumn canning

food : peaches

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This year I am canning peaches for the first time. I’ve never been drawn to canned fruits, although I know people who can pears and peaches every year in massive batches. I couldn’t resist the recipe for brandied peaches that reran in the New York Times recently, and decided that I could make a few pints. Since I was only able to scrounge up four wide-mouthed pint jars in the house, four was what I settled on. Which is good, because six pounds of peaches is heckuva lot. At every step—weighing, peeling, slicing, boiling—the bowls and pots I have were at capacity.

The peaches themselves were not the best I’ve ever had. They were ripe, with a couple of exceptions, but the texture was a bit mealy (which I discovered when I went to have one for breakfast earlier in the week). They came from the farmers’ market, from Harris Orchard which generally has excellent fruit. I think the weather this year just didn’t agree with stone fruit, even more than is typically true in this area.I hope they won’t fall apart with cooking; it’s my belief that sugar syrup and brandy will go a long way toward making the texture of the peaches not of paramount importance, but maybe that’s the wrong end of the stick.

After cooking them in sugar syrup until just soft, I packed them into the jars. I’m pretty sure I cooked them too long, and I’m not clear on what I could have done to have the jar not be filled with liquid that seeped out of the peaches. Maybe drain them in a colander first? That seems to defeat the purpose of having them hot. At any rate, I drained them a bit in order to have room in the jars for more sugar syrup, but in the end only had room for the brandy. So, I had an enormous pot of sugar syrup left over. It seems inconceivable that peaches cooked in sugar syrup could end up not being sweet enough, so I’m going to assume that they’ll be fine. In the unlikely event that they’re not, I suppose we can sprinkle sugar on them.

In the future, if I do this again, I think I’ll keep the peaches in halves and definitely not cook them nearly as long. I’ll let you know around Christmas how this batch turned out.

food : peaches

food : tomatoes

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A couple of things have contributed to my silence around here the past couple of weeks. One, it’s been godawful hot and sitting in front of our furnace of a computer is the last thing I want to be doing. Plus, the heat makes my brain melt so anything that requires stringing words together coherently is out. Two, we’ve been up to our eyeballs in fruits and vegetables, and it seems like I’ve been working around the clock to chop, peel, dice, slice, bake, roast, stew, and generally turn them into meals. It probably hasn’t been around the clock, it just seems that way because the kitchen gets so hot.

This year has not been great for tomatoes in our area, so we didn’t get as many early in the season as we usually do. In the past, we’ve been heartily sick of tomatoes by this point in the summer, and this year we’re just getting going. I’ve had sliced Purple Cherokee tomatoes on fried egg sandwiches and my partner’s been taking the assortment of cherry tomatoes to work with his lunch. That leaves us with several pints per week from our CSA (now quarts as the harvest picks up) of mid-sized red, orange, and yellow tomatoes to deal with, in addition to whatever odds and ends are given to us by our friends with the enormous garden. Two weeks ago the solution was deer chili. Yes, I said deer chili. I know that you couldn’t pay me to eat a venison burger during the nine years I lived in a deer-shooting-friendly state, but now that I’m a grown-up and the deer is free and leaner than beef, I’ve succumbed. It’s actually not that bad, and works really well in the recipes in which I’d previously used ground turkey. So, yeah, I’m not a vegetarian anymore, but that still doesn’t mean I’ll eat any of the meat that is reasonably easy to procure and cheap by way of coming from a CAFO. Mennonite-raised chickens and turkeys, wild salmon, and deer killed by a friend: that’s about the whole of it. I may branch out to Mennonite-raised pigs for the holidays this year; don’t hold your breath, though.

At any rate, the chili was good and used up a lot of tomatoes. We have another 2 lb. package of ground venison, but since we also have 2 containers of chili in the freezer, I probably won’t make another batch just yet. Last week I made ratatouille for the first time in order to use up some tomatoes and one of the two eggplants we had in the fridge. While I ate ratatouille growing up, I never buy eggplants of my own volition because I don’t really like them. Since subscribing to our summer CSA, I’ve had to adapt to receiving them as one of the semi-regular vegetables. The first year, I made all of the eggplant into baba ghanoush. Which worked out well, because many of our friends liked it so I could serve it to guests and didn’t have to really eat that much of the eggplant at all. Last year, the weather wasn’t great for eggplants and we didn’t get many (or, possibly, our farmer scaled back because we received so many the year before). This year has been a low-eggplant year, but in CSA terms that means I’ve only gotten a few of the Japanese eggplants and 2 decent sized standard ones. Thus, ratatouille, using the Simply In Season recipe. It was good, and my partner liked it well enough for us to allow for a repeat later this week. I did have to go out and purchase the courge, which I found kind of amusing. Our farmer is committed to not overwhelming us with the vegetable that everyone else is typically overwhelmed with in the summer, thus the summer squash shortage.

Winter squash, however, is a different story. We are already starting to see the boom of winter squash, and I had two spaghetti squashes (one enormous, one normal) to find a use for. I’ve seen those weight loss shows, I know that you can do some weird thing and the squash gets all stringy and you can eat it with sauce if you’re on the Atkins Diet. I just really didn’t know what weird thing, or if this was a food that a person not trying to lose 10 pounds per week would ever want to actually put in their mouths. Since we had the squash we gave it a try, serving the ratatouille over it, and I am pleased to report that it was good. The other half of the (enormous) squash I used to make a cold salad with chunked fresh tomatoes (also chopped onion, minced garlic, and fresh basil). The salad was surprisingly good. I am not the best at cold salads; it rarely occurs to me to make them and I am always doubtful regarding their appeal. Last summer was the first year I made a cold salad other than bean or potato (and I haven’t made potato salad in years), a shredded beet salad from a recipe foisted on me at the farmers’ market by the guy who runs the nearby community garden farm. This year I tried a couple new combinations, and they were all nice so I shouldn’t really have been that surprised that a non-green salad was good. So good that we voted to use the remaining squash for another salad rather than with the ratatouille, even.

In addition to tomatoes, which another round of salad has the benefit of making a dent in, the item I most need to find a use for is chicken stock. Our winter CSA included two stewing chickens, and due to limited time I only ever stewed one of the chickens. (Yes, I don’t have a job, but that doesn’t mean I actually have a lot of time for all-day activities like making chicken stock.) Now, limited freezer space means that I need to use the chicken stock I have before I can thaw and stew the remaining chicken. One of the only recipes that I make regularly with chicken stock—Turkey Lentil Pilaf, also from Simply In Season—also uses up fresh tomatoes, so we’ll be having that tonight and probably a couple more times over the next few weeks. In fact, the recipe doesn’t use much more than chicken stock and tomatoes: lentils, turkey, rice, and fresh mint. Probably also some onion and garlic. Now you know.

After tonight’s pilaf and tomorrow’s ratatouille, I’ll assess the remaining tomatoes and decide if some of them need to be stewed and frozen. And then we’ll pick up our CSA on Thursday and start all over again.

food : tomatoes