July 2009 Archives

A ruby root becomes a lip-puckering treat with the addition of vinegar, sugar, salt, and some time in the water-bath canner.

Active time: two-and-a-half hours, but with an hour free while beets cook.

 "What is that?" my husband asked years ago, looking at the quart jar of magenta eggs I took out of the fridge like a prize.

"Pickled eggs and beets," was my matter-of-fact answer, as if to say, doesn't everyone eat these?

I should have known - four years of college away from my predominantly German part of Pennsylvania had taught me that no, everyone does not eat these. Or many of the other quirky, Pennsylvania Dutch foods I grew up with.

Count my New York City-raised husband among them. Already not a fan of beets, he thinks anything pickled is not worth eating. (I've never figured out how someone raised in a city of delis does not like dill pickles, but I've resigned to it.) 

Just as he's resigned to the recurring jar of hard-boiled eggs and beets hanging out in a purplely brine in the fridge during the summer, because pickled beets are truly a thing worth eating, despite what my husband says.

And so, in the summer, when the beets are bursting out of their row in my garden, I put up about a dozen pint jars to keep me going through the winter as well. You may be able to take the Dutchie out of Pennsylvania, but she'll always come back for the food. Her husband will just come along for the ride.

 

The process

Yet unable to bring myself to pressure canning, in which you can process low-acid foods like beets and many other veggies, but during which process you can (I irrationally believe) also risk blowing up your kitchen, I stick to the water-bath canning method outlined in the jam post. To do that with most veggies, you also need to pickle them, adding enough vinegar to stave off bacteria growth during the long winter months on the shelves. Happily, adding vinegar to beets turns them into what I'm after in the long run anyway.

Beets will be plentiful at the markets from now until well past the first frosts, so no rush to pick some up. But when you do, buy a couple of bunches - a six-quart pot of whole beets will yield about seven pints of quartered beets in brine. Any type will do - most people grow the traditional red type, which makes for a darker brine, but I think these golden beets have a better flavor. 

Cook the beets for about an hour, then cut the tops off and rub off the skins. Save the water from the cooking pot. Quarter or slice them into sterilized jars, filling them to within a quarter-inch of the top.

Bring two cups of the beet water, two cups of sugar, a quart of cider vinegar and two teaspoons of salt to a boil. Cover the beets with the brine, leaving a quarter-inch headspace in the jars.

Here's where the process slightly deviates from jam: any time you have veggies or fruit floating in a brine or syrup, you should tap out any trapped air bubbles in the jars before cleaning the rims and capping them. I use the plastic "bubble remover" that comes with the Ball utensil kit on the company's Web site, but any rubber kitchen spatula will do. Just run it down the side of the jar, tapping out any trapped air as you go. 

Process the cleaned and capped jars in a hot-water bath for 30 minutes.

Enjoy them all winter cold on salads, warm next to roast meats, or room temperature straight out of the jar. But let them bathe in the vinegar for at least two weeks before opening them. Until then, I'll be waiting with my fork. 

Buying chickens fresh from the farm means delicious dinners, but first you have to cut up the chicken.

Active time: 35 minutes, for two chickens

 

Boneless, skinless chicken breasts are the ultimate convenience food. Defrosted in minutes, they become a blank canvas on which the creative cook can work her magic - or at least quickly get a nutritious meal on the table.

But the breast is just one part of the bird. Local eaters - myself included - tend to look for ways to consume most the animals we choose to eat. It's cheaper if you buy the whole chicken and cut it up. But I think it's also a more responsible way of eating -- if an animal is going to die for you to chow down (and trust me, plenty have died for my daily diet), eating the majority of its parts are a way of honoring its sacrifice.

Our CSA offers fresh, whole chickens every couple of weeks through the summer, and I order five to ten more for a fall delivery from a couple of other local farmers - some from Vic Russo of Mountain View Farm and some from Lisa Diefenbach at Setter Run Farm (both in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania). Getting them from whole bird to those convenient, single-meal packages requires a little quality time with my chef's knife, but it really isn't complicated.

 

The process

Classically trained chefs can turn a chicken into parts so smoothly it can look like one motion. Watching me will remind you more of a horror movie. But in the end, the whole chicken is still rendered into parts, no matter how ugly the process was in-between.

Start with the appendages, and the key here is to look for the joints. Bend the wing backwards and find the joint attaching it to the body. Your knife will slide neatly through at that point, cutting the wing off.

Move on to the legs, bending them back from the thighs to find the joint again and slicing through.

With the legs gone, disconnect the thighs from the main body at their joint and then again along the backbone. You can also cut the thighs with the legs still attached, as I have in the photos, to create chicken leg quarters ready for some BBQ sauce and the grill.

Slice down the center of the breast, and pull the skin off the meat. Cut each breast away from the rib bones and off the wishbone at the top, pulling the meat off the carcass as the knife releases it.

The breast will come off with the "tender" still attached, but cutting that off will give you a breast closer to a single, four- to six-ounce serving. The tender has a tough piece of white sinew that needs removed by holding the end in one hand and running your knife flat between the sinew and the meat.

A quick, B-rated, horror flick later, and you're done. I freeze the breasts in pairs in waxed paper between, while thighs get packed four to a zipper bag - each the start of a quick meal. I continually add to a big bag of wings in the freezer, and when I have enough, we have Buffalo wings. I do the same with the legs, occasionally stewing six or eight of them down in the crockpot to shred and season for chicken tacos. I save the tenders in a separate bag for oven-frying and topping salads or cutting into pieces for kabobs on the grill.

The carcass usually goes directly into my stock pot along with carrot tops, an onion, some herbs, two or three garlic cloves, a handful of peppercorns, a pinch of salt, and maybe a lemon. Cover it all with water and simmer for a couple of hours. Strain the resulting stock, skim the fat if you're fat-conscious, and freeze it in pint containers.

A word about the innards - most birds come stuffed with a liver, heart and gizzard, and here's where I deviate from my "use the whole animal" sermonizing. I invite you to offer ideas for the gizzard - or even tell me what a gizzard is. Until then, I'll continue to throw it away, along with the heart. But the livers go into the freezer and later into a pâté that will land on my buffet at Christmas. Convenience it is not, but it is truly decadent, holiday food. 

Photos by Genaro C. Armas

Read about a fledgling farmers' market in the Watts section of Los Angeles in this blog post on the Los Angeles Times' Web site. Its mission goes beyond those of many other markets.  

With new summer fruits appearing weekly at the farmers' markets, it's time to make some jam - a surprisingly easy process that promises a sweet and fruity winter.

Active time: Twenty minutes to make jam; about 40 minutes to process it. 

 

If you invite me to dinner or for an overnight visit, chances are the contents of my hostess gift will contain a jar or two of homemade jam. Strawberry-orange jam, spiced blueberry jam, apricot jam, peach butter, and  cherry-almond jam - they are all staples in my pantry, the products of a summer partially spent stirring pots of boiling, sticky fruit into chunky, sweet spreads. And since I process my jam in a water-bath canner, they stay fresh for at least a year.

But they don't last forever, and I make far more jam than my husband and I could ever finish in the year between one summer to the next, so the little jars of sunshine are the perfect thing to tuck into a bag of goodies to say "thanks for your hospitality." Jam is quite hospitable, especially when it's offered with a loaf of homemade bread.

The process

I make so much because I get bored with one flavor to the next, and frankly, it's really easy to make - something you can whip out in an evening after work. The key is to follow the process to the letter - jam may be easy, but for all of its sweetness, which hints recklessness, it is a thing of precision. Deviate from the timing or the quantity of fruit to sugar and you may wind up with several pints of ice cream topping rather than jam. Which, in reality, is not a total loss.

Start by gathering your tools and ingredients. The fruit, of course, and a box of pectin. I use Sure•Jell, because, well, that's what my mother uses, but there are other brands. The instructions inside the box will tell you how much fruit to buy - although I always err on the side of buying too much. Making half-batches of jam is an iffy process that only sometimes works. So buy the pectin first, or keep an instruction sheet handy. You also need canning jars and their two-piece lids - I use the tiny, half-cup jars and half-pints, but you can preserve jam in any size jar. And you'll need a canner or a big stockpot to run the filled jars through a water bath. But make sure you also have another big stockpot - at least six quarts - for making the jam in. This could require borrowing an extra from a neighbor.

Cleanliness is crucial to canning, so jam starts with sterilized jars, which are easy to do in a dishwasher that can reach a high temperature. Make sure to load both the jars and the metal rings that make up half of the two-piece lids. The flat lids go into a barely simmering, non-reactive pot. I use a CorningWare casserole for this. Fill your canner with cold water and set it to boil. When the jars are ready, you're ready to start the jam, which really only takes a few minutes, so don't start it before your dishwasher is finished.

My basic recipe comes from the Sure•Jell box, and the process detailed there is a good one. I'm doing more and more jam lately with Sure•Jell's low-sugar pectin, but no matter which you use, the basic process remains the same.

The fruit goes in the bottom of your stockpot - whole if it's berries and roughly chopped if it's peaches or other stone fruit. Crush the berries with a potato masher. Add the pectin, lemon juice if needed, and a pat of butter, which old-timey grandmothers say keeps the jam from foaming. Stir that together. Do not add other ingredients unless you're using another tested recipe that calls for something - the jam might not turn out. Measure the required amount of sugar into a separate bowl - do not change the amount. Bring the fruit mixture to a rolling boil you can't stir down, add the sugar all at once, and bring it back up to a rolling boil, stirring constantly. Boil for exactly one minute and remove from the heat. Skim off any foam with a spoon. 

Pull your jars out of your dishwasher and fill them - I use a funnel for this process that I got as part of a canning kit from Ball. You can order one using this link. Fill the jars to within a quarter-inch of the rim - the liquid needs some headspace to expand into in the canner. Using a clean paper towel dipped in the simmering water the lids are hanging out in, carefully wipe down the rims of the jars so they're free of jam or other debris that could interfere with the seal. Place the lids on the rims and fit the rings over of them. You want the rings screwed tight, but not so tight the jam can't expand in the canner.

Place the jars in the rack of your canner - or, if you're using a stockpot, use tongs to lower them in the boiling water. If you don't have a rack, place a towel on the bottom of the pot to give the jars a little cushion. The water should come at least two inches over the tops of the jars.

Jam gets a 10-minute steep in the water bath - begin the timer only after the water comes back up to a boil. After ten minutes, use tongs to lift them out, and set them on a dish towel overnight. Do not touch them for at least twelve hours, during which time you should hear a loud pop each time one of the lids clamps down and seals its jar.

The next morning, test the seal by pushing down on the lids. If the lid has any give, it's not sealed. No worries. Just pop that one in your fridge and eat it first. The others are ready for your pantry shelf. And your next hostess bag. People will be begging you to come to dinner.

Photos by Genaro C. Armas

 

Summer's the time to put up fruits and berries for winter, and this week brought raspberries, blueberries, sour cherries and apricots.

Active time: one to two hours to pick blueberries (with husband help) and one hour to pick cherries; one hour and 24 minutes to process two kinds of jam, and hour to pit cherries, a half hour to freeze blueberries and 10 minutes to freeze raspberries.

 

It's been fruit week in my kitchen. Village Acres Farm CSA keeps me pretty well supplied with fresh root veggies and cold-weather greens in the winter, but fruit needs picked and put up in the summer when it's plentiful. And after nearly two weeks away on vacation, there was plenty to do when I returned on Monday. So here it is - four fruits in four days:

Tuesday - raspberries and blueberries

I came home to an e-mail from Diane Cramer, a vendor at the Bellefonte Farmers' Market, offering me some extra raspberries if I wanted them. Even better - she was headed out that afternoon and would drop them off. "I'll take two pints," was my immediate reply, knowing one would go in the freezer directly and another would go in my mouth (almost as directly). They were delicious, and I picked up another pint Saturday morning at the market. Raspberries will hang around farmers' markets well into the fall, depending on what kind your local farmers grow. Some produce a lot in June and July but then stop, while others produce most of their fruits later in the season, until they get hit by the first frosts. I'll keep buying them in small batches (they're not a cheap fruit), freezing half of them and eating the rest fresh.

I nearly missed Diane when she arrived with her raspberry bounty, as my hubby and I were on our way to meet the Central Pennsylvania Slow Food Convivium for its July meeting, blueberry picking at Jo Ann and John Sengle's Mountainhome Farm near Julian, Pennsylvania. The Sengles have planted their mountainside in blueberry bushes available for pick-your-own in July and August, and the picking right now is made easy by laden bushes and cool evening temperatures. Call 814-355-2655 to schedule an evening at the farm - picking starts each night at 6. John Sengle says the next weeks will offer the best opportunities for picking.

Genaro and I picked eight quarts of huge berries in a little over an hour, and that was giving us time to chat with other Slow Food Snails. What to do with all that blue? I freeze about three gallons a year - the superfood is one of Genaro's favorites - and the rest became a spicy blueberry jam, easy snacks out of hand, and this pie.

The process for freezing blueberries and raspberries is simple - easier than even strawberries, because there's no cap involved. They go right on a wax-paper lined jelly-roll pan and into the freezer until firm. Then just pack them into freezer bags for smoothies, morning cereal, muffins, pancakes or dressing up a plain cake when unexpected company arrives.

Thursday - sour cherries and apricots

Diane's fruit-themed e-mail wasn't the only one in my in-bin when I got back in the office on Tuesday. Way Fruit Farm sends periodic e-mails to their customers, letting them know what fruit is available. It's helpful for planning purposes. Here's the link to the Web site to sign up.

While it's nice to know when strawberries are ready and when the first apples are being picked, it's essential to know when sour cherries are ripe at the farm. Way Fruit is the only farm in the county growing sour cherries, and it often sells out in days, so the electronic head's up is vital to those of us who appreciate the lip-smacking pucker from a sour cherry.

This year's picking began at 8 a.m. on Thursday, and by 8:20 a.m., the cars lined the tiny country road that leads to the orchard. The trees hummed with busy pickers, while the angry crows cawed out their indignation at the intrusion from nearby hillsides. By 3 p.m. the next day, the trees were stripped of their ruby fruit - the farm sent out an e-mail noting record crowds this year.

I'm glad I got my 15 pounds picked on Thursday morning, along with some bonus apricots I found in the farm's market. It's easy to go a little overboard with sour cherries - in good conditions, red clumps keep coming into reach as you climb higher and higher in the tree. It's addictive fun.

The process of pitting those cherries is not as addictive, but pit them you must to freeze them, dry them, or turn them into pie and jam. You can use a pitter, but if you don't have one, your thumbnail will do the trick nearly as fast.

Once pitted, I freeze them as I do other fruits, or I dry them at the lowest setting in my oven. Dip them in a solution of two tablespoons of ascorbic acid (the acid found in Fruit Fresh) to a quart of water for five minutes before draining them in a colander, and laying them on a cooling rack covered in cheesecloth. Place the rack on a cookie sheet, and slide them into a very low oven. I actually use the warming drawer in my oven on a medium-high setting for several hours. Check them periodically, and pull them out as they darken and shrivel. They'll look like raisins when they're done, and that's exactly what they stand in for during the winter in oatmeal and cookies and granola.

It can take several days to rotate all of them through your oven - by Saturday I was nearing the end of my haul. Keep any fresh cherries awaiting processing in your fridge.

Once dry, pack them into a freezer-safe container and freeze - as dried fruit, they should be shelf stable, but if any moisture remains, they could mold, and it's better to not take the chance on all that hard work.

I dry some of the apricots as well, halving and pitting them before giving them a toast in the warming drawer. The rest get turned into jam, but that's for another post. Stay tuned!

So there you are - four days, four fruits, and three different ways to process them, not counting pie. Speaking of which, I think there's a slice of blueberry left in the fridge calling my name. After all that work, I deserve it.