Adventures in Canning: Pickles Two Ways

So today while M.B.  was asleep I decided to go all crazy scientist on some cucumbers. To the right we have a canning cook book style original dill pickle, to the left we have a ridiculous random recipe that I pulled out of my ass. Warning: my recipe does not follow any USDA or FDA approved methodologies, follow at your own risk. However, both styles were ten minutes in the cooker, five minutes without the heat, and then I pulled the jars out of the cooker and let them cool on the counter. The dill recipe was pretty strait forward, dill, mustard seed, sugar, vinegar water. Boring in my opinion. When I pulled it out it started to hiss, which means that I didn't get a good enough seal for it to be actually preserved, we are working with second hand material at this point; we haven't had the time or money to buy new materials.... oh well, everyone fucks up. We had to refrigerate it just to make sure we don't kill our selves, feedback on the actual recipe next week. The unorthodox recipe is the one I am most excited about. I used a mix of red wine and sherry wine vinegar. Red wine and White wine vinegar have an acidity percentage of 5%, while Sherry wine vinegar has an acidity level of 7%; there fore making more ideal for pickling and preserving. I also added four chilis, some garlic (duh), mustard seed, worcestershire, rosemary, and a spoon full of horseradish. I have no idea how it's going to turn out, it might even turn bad; this is the first time I have actively tried to preserve before. 

Anyway, I will give you updates as soon as I believe my 'pickles' are ready, many more updates on home preserving to follow! One of the classes that I am about to take is called "Extending the Season", which means that I will have a talented Chef teaching me a lot of great ways for you (us) to preserve food instead of having to throw it out. 

Keep checking in, school starts soon so that means millions of new ideas!!

---- Chef Z

CSA Share: Week 3

It's the week before we go away for 12 days on vacation!  That being said a lot of preserving will be neccessary with this share in order to get it all out of the way before our trip.  Remember the number in the parentheses is the number of weeks that we have gotten this item.  Also remember that each weeks share equals approximately $32.50 and that Joe at Screamin' Ridge Farm uses organic/sustainable methods   This week the share included:

Assorted lettuce which included Green Leaf (2) and another type whose name I don't remember...sorry!  weighing in at approximately 12.9oz

Escarole (3) approximately 2.7 oz

Oregano (2), approximately .6oz

Mint, approximately .4oz

Chives (2) with flowers, approximately .5oz

Senposai, a green that is like mustard greens and cabbage according to Joe and can be used in stirfries, approximately 6.4oz

Basil (2) approximately .6oz

Radishes (3) approximately 4.8oz

Cucumbers, approximately 1lb 5oz

Asparagus (3) approximately 7.1oz and last but not least...

EGGS!!!!

So the ideas that we have for this share are:

Cucumber pickles two ways

Mini Asparagus Frittatas

LOTS of salad

Braised/Stir-fried escarole, senposai, etc.
Mojitos, I don't like mint on my lamb. But I like to drink!

and donations to the kind people who are helping us out before we leave!

Joe included another recipe idea in our weekly email that might help you who are getting Senposai out!  Joe suggests chopping it up with garlic, onion and basil and stir-frying it.  Add some egg and some leftover rice for a fried rice stir fry.  If you need a stir-fry sauce Joe recommends using a mix of soy sauce (1/4 c.), sesame oil (1 tbsp) and rice wine vinegar (1 tbsp) -- thanks Joe!

 When I was living in Hawai'i, I made Haole fried rice. Now Haole is pretty much a racial slur against white mainlanders, but you have to take everything in stride. My fried rice starts off with sesame oil and some veggies, usually onions, garlic, peppers, or whatever I have laying around. Once those are sweated I add the rice and turn the heat up, hence 'fried' rice. After I get the rice to temp, making sure not to burn it, I add the shoyu (soy sauce). You have to be careful here because it is really easy to add to much, you are just looking to give it that famous brown hue. Once the flavor has developed and I am satisfied, I add a couple eggs and stir vigorously to make sure that it all mixes in. Boom, done. Now you have all the makings of a full course meal in one pot. Cooking time: 15-20 minutes.

---- Chef Z & M.B.

The Wednesday Weekly Reheat

 THE WEEKLY REHEAT

The review will consist of the following: What I ate, What I liked about it; What I didn’t like about it; Any additions I made to it; What I cooked it in; A score that will be out of ♥♥♥♥♥ with 5 being the highest in the lovin’ factor – Enjoy!

- Nut free, fresh basil and garlic pesto served with pan roasted Pete's Greens chicken breast on farfalle pasta:  To make the pesto, Chef Z used 1 bunch of fresh Basil from the week 1 share, 6 cloves of garlic (!!), and Parmesan cheese all in the blender and then drizzled extra virgin olive oil until it reached the desired consistency.  After this was made, Chef Z had it sit in the fridge while the pasta cooked and he pan roasted the Statler chicken breast that had been seasoned with salt & pepper from one of the chickens he had broken down.  Once the chicken was cooked, the skin was removed and the small wing part were eaten as a yummy appetizer.  I love fried chicken skin!!!  The rest of the breast rested and then was sliced into bite size pieces.  Once the pasta was completed, the chicken and pesto were tossed in with it along with some milk to make the pesto go farther.  The meal was served with grated mozzarella on top.  Rating: ♥♥♥♥.  I found the basil and garlic to be spicy and stong on their own but with the addition of the milk it made a great pesto cream sauce.  For a easy, quick throw together meal, this was great!  Sadly there were no leftovers as there wasn't enough sauce!  Next time we are hoping to preserve a batch for other tasty uses.

- Radish Green Pesto on Spaghetti with a poached egg (adapted with lots of changes from Chocolate & Zucchini):  Honestly, I didn't even know that radish greens were edible until I did a Google search.  As luck may have it, they are and so nothing will be going to waste if we can help it!  What I have found is that alone, or in a salad, I'm not a fan as they are very bitter, so it was necessary for me to find a recipe.  This was not a Chef Z creation but a "fending for myself/I'm STARVING" creation which included the following ingredients: 1 bunch of greens from 1 bunch of radishes (stems removed), 1 oz of Cabot cheddar cheese grated or sliced with a veggie peeler, 1 oz of raw almonds, 2 tiny cloves of garlic, 1 cap of concentrated organic lemon juice, 1-10 second long drizzle of extra virgin olive oil all in a 3 cup food processor.  I pulsed the ingredients until mixed then added more olive oil as needed.  I already had the water boiling before I started with the assumption that if it turned out like crap I could use spaghetti sauce on the noodles instead and still be fed in record time.  Once the noodles were cooked (it was about 4oz before cooking) I added about 2 tbsp of the pesto.  Turns out it was nice, mild and nutty!  And since I have extra that I covered with olive oil as Chocolate & Zucchini recommended I have an even faster meal for next time!  I took the left over pasta to work that night (I had made a double batch on purpose) and it definitely held up to a 1 1/2 minute cook time in my Mr. Bento's big container.  Rating: ♥♥♥♥♥ since it was easy, stress free, reheats well, and uses part of a plant that I would have thrown away! 

-Homemade Cheddar and Fresh Chive Baking Powder Biscuits: This was an easy one.  Take your favorite baking powder biscuit recipe (I used Joy of Cooking) and add 6 oz (3/4 c.) Cheddar and 2/3 rds of a bunch chives, chopped.  Bake as recommended until golden brown.  Yummm.  I think I ate half of them...straight out of the oven. Rating: ♥♥♥♥ I think that next time I will use butter instead of Crisco like I did this time (trying to clean out the pantry!) I think it would improve the texture and taste.
-CSA Dump Soup:  Probably like everyone who has ever had a CSA or a garden, we were trying to figure out how to use up some of our old produce.  Chef Z made a soup of homemade chicken stock, turnip greens, escarole, left over Spicy Italian Beef Sausage, and cured pork belly.  It turned out really well!  I suspect that there will be many dump soups in our future!  Rating: ♥♥♥♥♥ Really favorable soup!  It will be great for rainy days this summer and it can be frozen for a quick dinner in the future!

Other than these dishes, I ate a lot of salads this week with a homemade dill dressing that included homemade mayonnaise, yogurt, dill, Worcestershire, hot sauce, parsley,salt and pepper.  I usually do vinaigrette but I had a little yogurt to use up before we go on vacation!  I also had sauteed greens in omelets and over couscous.  Stay tuned to see what we get tomorrow!!

---- M.B.

Adventures in Canning: Spicy Pickled Asparagus and Radishes

This weekend in our first attempt to preserve our bounty, Chef Z and I settled down to make Spicy Pickled Asparagus, and since we had a few radishes from week 1 left over, those were thrown in the mix too.  We want to have the disclaimer that we are very very new to canning!  Chef Z has never canned and I only watched my mother do it for the past 20 years.  If you are planning to can food, please read and use recipes that are approved by the USDA or from a Ball canning book so that you can have the safest product possible.  Our recipe was from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving with references from the blog, Sustainable Pantry, as it was a small batch.  Now Chef Z will explain the process and what he did!  I agree with M.B., I like to fuck around with cooking, but improper preserving can lead to a lot of disease and wasted product. So for this batch, I cut the asparagus in half so it would fit in the jar.

  The mixture was coriander seed, mustard seed, 4 chilis, 4 garlic cloves cut in half, black pepper, and some pickling salt. While we were sterilizing the ball jars, I took maybe 3 cups of White Wine Vinegar and brought it to a simmer, I then added all ingredients sans the asparagus and let that simmer for about 15 minutes. Once I was satisfied that all flavors had been added to the liquid, I added the asparagus and simmered for 2 minutes. After that I added the ingredients to the jar and sealed it up using a hot-water-bath canning method, we had to let it cool on the counter because if we had put it in the fridge the jar would explode and I can't have that cause I really like pickles. It was a lot of fun and I look forward to canning more in the future, we are going to be doing a lot of it next week because we are going on vacation for two weeks and can't afford to loose all our food.

--- Chef Z and M.B.

CSA Share: Week 2

Welcome to week 2!  Joe is keeping it interesting up at Screamin' Ridge.  This weeks share included the following foods in the following amounts, get ready for some tasty noms!  This week I will be adding in () next to each item how many times we have received it and I will continue this for the whole CSA.  I thought this might help some of you who may be interested in getting a CSA in the future.  Remember that the approximate value of each week is $32.50 based on weekly retail with a 10-15% discount.  Screamin' Ridge uses organic/sustainable methods so keep that in mind when looking at the value.  First up -

Eggs (2)!  I remembered to get a photo this time before devouring them ;) Look at the beauts! 

Asparagus (2) approximately 8.5oz

a head of Red Leaf Lettuce approximately 4.9oz

a bunch of Basil (2) approximately .8oz

Radishes (2) approximately 5oz

Japanese Salad Turnips (2) approximately 11.6oz

a head of Green Leaf Lettuce approximately 8.1oz

 a head of Escarole(2) approximately 8.7oz

Joe included an all purpose herb salad dressing recipe in this weeks share e-mail that may be helpful to some of you.  Chef Z and I are doing something similar already!

Simple "House" Vinegrette from Chef/Farmer Joe of Screamin' Ridge Farm

1/3 c. good Olive Oil

2/3 c. oil of choice (sunflower, canola, etc.)

1/3 c. favorite vinegar (balsamic, rice, etc.)

1 tbsp Dijon mustard

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

1 clove finely chopped garlic

Put it all together in a bottle/jar and shake vigorously.  Once it is emulsified, it is ready.  Add fresh herbs of choice.

Now some thoughts from Chef Z on what this share has in store.

I'm definitely gonna try something new with the escarole, it is such an interesting leaf. Tomorrow we are going to pickle some asparagus, I'm adding some of the left over radish that we have as well. It is really nice to get some good salad greens, unfortunately it's not gonna bode well with my famous caesar dressing, oh well maybe I'll have to get creative (damn...) Looks like a good pickup and we will have some things to talk about this week, look at our blog on the weekends dammit!! That's our low hit count :(

June Meat Share and a Week 1 Weekly Reheat

This is the last Spring Meat Share from Pete's Green!  It looks small, but for the estimated $50 a month that the share costs, we feel that we got a great deal!  Above is Chickzilla's sister weighing in at 8lbs, followed by some Greenfield Highland Beef Hot Italian Beef Sausage at 1lb and the best thing we may have gotten in the share....a beef loin tenderloin weighing in at 1lb from North Hollow Farm!  This will be the last meat share for a while!  We decided to not get a Summer meat share since we got a bulk order and we will be gone for 2 weeks in June --- also we will have a plethora of eggs to be dealing with from our CSA!



Now for the.....

THE WEEKLY REHEAT

The review will consist of the following: What I ate, What I liked about it; What I didn’t like about it; Any additions I made to it; What I cooked it in; A score that will be out of ♥♥♥♥♥ with 5 being the highest in the lovin’ factor – Enjoy!

- London Broil with Braised Escarole, Baby Leeks and Turnip Greens: I'm giving it ♥♥♥♥ because I seriously wanted some more greens.  They were AMAZING!  I definitely want to eat those again.  Because the London Broil was medium I was weary about cooking it more in the microwave at work.  I ended up putting it on salads this week for my lunch which added a nice protein punch.
- Salad Turnips in Rice Wine Vinegar: This was Joe from Screamin' Ridge's idea and he was right on the money.  I would nibble on these any day of the week: ♥♥♥♥♥ 
- Deviled Eggs with Homemade Lemony Mayonnaise and Kombu cured salmon:  these were some of the homemade things that I was able to bring along on our picnic when my guest, Jessica from Eat, Sleep, Garden was in town.  How can you go wrong with Deviled Eggs?  The homemade mayonnaise is the key though!  It tastes nothing like the stuff in the store and is easy enough that even I can make it ;)  I'm giving it only four stars this time because I put too much lemon juice in for my own taste ♥♥♥♥.  The Kombu cured salmon is a creation of Chef Z's that he makes on a regular basis when we can get a side of salmon on sale.  I love it!  It goes great anywhere that traditional smoked salmon would be good.  This week I had it with salads, scrambled eggs, baked potatoes and cheese and crackers.  ♥♥♥♥♥ 
 -Salads galore!:  After a long New England winter I polished off the salad greens we got this week like it was my job!  They were deliciously bitter.  I topped my salads with thin slices of salad turnip, radishes, onion, cured salmon, and Cabot cheddar along with a homemade Italian vinaigrette.  The only thing to rate on this since it is just a salad, is the dressing.  I'd give it ♥♥♥ mainly because it was a little too bitter to go along with the salad greens and the recipe had to be tweaked from the original.

Check back with us tomorrow for Week #2!

--- M.B.

First Meal

So we have a guest over for the next couple of days so I have been making larger portions than normal. Today was really exciting because of all the goodies that I got to play with.

Tonight's menu is London Broil with braised Escarole, Baby Leeks, and Turnip Greens.

This is marinated in beef broth, red wine (we used a Zin), garlic (lots of it of course), shallot, coriander, mustard seed, and Worcestershire sauce. I marinated it for an hour, flipping it once. I set the oven to broil... duh, and cooked it for about 15 minutes, again flipping it once. It came out a nice medium and was quite tasty. Check in with M.B. later for reheat tips.


For the braised greens I start by sweating garlic then added the baby leeks, just the white parts saving the rest for Vichyssoise; also added was a chiffonade of the turnip greens.

 I let this cook for a while, about 5 minutes, then I added some white wine and let that reduce au sec( stuffy French for almost dry).

Once this had reduced I started adding some homemade chicken stock, much like you would do with a risotto. I brought it back to a simmer and added the escarole. The finished product took about thirty minutes, a little longer than expected. One thing I didn't realize about the escarole is that it reduces by A LOT, seriously I added a head and barely got 3 servings out of the batch. It was fucking delicious though, the sweetness of the turnip greens, the bite of the baby leeks, and the bitterness of the escarole was harmonic. Because I am French trained, I made a little sauce out of the remaining beef stock and a little bit of the Zin, I put that over the "final plate" picture. M.B. said that the sauce was really good, but it didn't come through much for me.

It was a great meal for three people, the London Broil was 1.7 lbs., I used 1 head of escarole, the whites of about 5 baby leeks, and a handful of turnip greens. It was a good meal for three people and M.B. was able to at least take some meat for her third shift meal. It took a little longer than expected, but with M.B. and her friend sitting on the couch drinking wine and not helping it's to be expected. I wanted a little more out of the marinade and in the future I would marinate for a much longer time. I'm still figuring out how to use seeds in the marinade, it would probably be better to crush the seeds before adding, but hey, no one's perfect.