Still Tomato Season

This week I was able to bring home another bag of plum tomatoes from the farm. It must have been about 12 pounds! Today I ran them through the food mill, yielding 16 cups of purée. Once it cooked down, I was able to can six pints of tomato sauce. Three pints have Persian spices and three pints are plain. It's a lot of work to get the purée and makes a big mess but it is worth it to have homemade tomato sauce. 

I miss the Jolly tomatoes the farm used to plant - these were nice to can whole since they were incredibly uniform in size. The closest I've seen lately were the weird hybrids mixed in with the Sungolds. When I went back this past week, they'd all split due to the recent rain and there weren't any good ones left. I wonder how many more weeks we'll get decent tomatoes before the weather catches up with us?

Nouruz Birthday Combo

Nouruz, the Persian New Year, is celebrated on the first day of spring. It's not often I do something special for it, but my husband's birthday falls around then as well. After wondering what to do for his birthday cake, and getting a little inspiration from the kids, I decided to pull out the stops and have a Persian-themed meal and dessert.

For the meal, I made a version of Khoresh Ghormeh Sabzi: lamb stew with greens. And beans, but I left those out. My recipe uses dill and cilantro, and is one of two similar recipes I found written on scraps of paper in my first cookbook binder from when I learned to cook in college. Apparently, prior to this week I'd made it exactly once. I generally go to the tomato based basic Khoresh which does not have the greens. I also made boorani (spinach and turmeric with sour cream or yogurt), and Zereshk Polo, rice with barberries that have been slightly candied with saffron. For the first time, I tried to make tadiq with bread rather than rice or potatoes, it didn't come out well at all, so apparently that's a thing I need to work on. 

Dessert was a baklava cheesecake. I used a honey cheesecake recipe which is literally just cream cheese, honey and eggs, and made a crust of two layers of baklava in the springform pan. After pouring in the cheesecake, I put another two layers of baklava on the top, and baked it at 325˚ for 30 minutes and 350˚ for 35 minutes. Likely it could have used another 15-20 minutes as it was a little soft in the middle. When the cheesecake came out of the oven I immediately poured rosewater syrup on it and decorated it with more of the sugar and almond mixture and then some dried rose petals.

We've spent most of the week working through the leftovers. I'm not sure why, but many Persian dishes taste even better the second day. These were no exception!

Cheesecake and baklava layers, mmm

Even More Christmas

Last night a larger subset of our family got together for gift giving and dinner. There were 10 of us in total, and we had a lovely afternoon of appetizers and presents. Then for dinner I roasted a beef tenderloin, Mom made baked stuffed shrimp which we baked after the tenderloin came out of the oven, and I made Persian rice. Apparently, I had not yet made Persian rice after I got my new pots, which are thicker, so my usual timing to make tadiq didn't work out, and the tadiq did not form properly. At least the rice tasted good! I guess I'm going to have to practice.

For dessert, I made individual trifles from this recipe; it was fun to assemble everything in wine glasses but it definitely took up too much space in the fridge....

It was great to get together with my family, some of whom live far away so we don't see each other often enough. Merry Christmas!

School Project

For English, the youngerchild had a project due today. The assignment was to pick a poet from a country other than the US and make a presentation about the poet and their poetry as well as incorporate some of the elements of the culture. Creativity was encouraged. My child chose Hafez, a poet from Persia in the 14th century. So, in addition to the writing parts, we jointly decided that there should be traditional Persian sweets for the class to consume while the presentation was happening.

Last week the youngerchild and I made baklava. It went pretty well, considering the youngerchild hadn't really done anything like it before. My goal was to step back and let my kid do most of the work and we had a lot of fun. This stayed in the fridge, uncut, until yesterday when we were putting everything together.

Yesterday we attempted zoolbia. This was much harder as it required deep frying and then dousing the fritters in saffron and rosewater syrup. First we made the syrup and set it aside. Then we made the batter with corn flour, yogurt and water. On the first attempt to use a squeeze bottle to drizzle the batter into hot oil, the squiggles were too thin and they looked like shredded wheat. I cut off the tip of the squeeze bottle and tried again but the batter sank in the oil and stuck to the bottom of the pot. So I carefully transferred the hot oil to a muffin tin and tried again, getting hot oil EVERYWHERE. Amazingly enough, nobody got burned. In the muffin tins, the batter came together more like a cookie than a squiggle, but at least they didn't stick. I would transfer the zoolbia into the syrup and the youngerchild would take them out when they were sufficiently infused and put them on the cooling rack. We put them in a container and poured more syrup over them to give them more flavor and then this morning before taking them to school drained off the excess syrup. They taste good even if they don't look quite right!

Fish Week

While the youngerchild, who despises fish, is away at camp, the rest of us are having a fish-only week.

Sunday we were in Rhode Island and had clam cakes while enjoying the Crescent Park Carousel. I grew up about 3 miles away from there and used to ride that carousel with my friends all the time. We got skilled enough to catch 4 rings with each pass, by leaning really far out and catching one ring with each finger. As you might imagine, that increased our odds of catching the brass ring. But enough reminiscing! Rhode Island clam cakes are a not-so-guilty pleasure of mine. I love 'em. One summer as teenagers, empowered with cars, my friends and I hit every little dinky clam shack on the East Bay side of the state, looking for the best ones. There was a tiny little broken down looking place on Route 6 near a tidal stream, in my opinion those were the best. I don't even remember if the place had a name. Anyhow. Sunday. Clam cakes.

Monday was some of the walleye we'd caught and frozen. I had two bags left, with three filets each. Now we're down to one. Baked with some butter and Ritz cracker crumbs and some herbs. Topped with a shallot cream sauce and served with roasted garlic scapes and a salad with just lettuce, Hakurei turnips, and pickled fiddleheads.

Last night, after I worked for 14 hours, we had sushi from our favorite Japanese restaurant in town. Too tired to cook.

Tonight, I just steamed 3 pounds of mussels and they were amazing!  Briefly: dice and sauté one shallot and one clove of garlic. Add and sauté one link of chorizo, sliced. Add 1 pint Persian spiced tomato sauce (coriander, cumin and lime) and about a cup of water and bring to a boil. Add the mussels, cover and steam for 5 minutes. Voilá. Served with french bread to soak up the liquid. And a nice white wine.

Tomorrow night we will grill some salmon which is currently marinating. Then the youngerchild comes back and there will be, sadly, less fish on the menu.

Series of Small Dinner Parties

We haven't done this in a while: have company for dinner more than once a week. Last night Lisa came by and we had grilled chicken marinated in yogurt, plus zereshk polo which is Persian rice with barberries. I have never gotten the tadiq to do this so well before. It just fell out of the pot, with all the rice in a pot-shaped disk. The difference is, I think, that I added some oil to the butter before I put the rice in. The barberries we brought back from Halifax. I'd never seen the right kind of berries around here so I bought enough to last me for years. Barberries are super tart and have to be cooked with a little sugar before steaming in the rice.

Tonight with another friend we had the grilled octopus I've been marinating for a few days. I used this recipe from Hunter Angler Gardener Cook and it was so delicious! It was served with homemade bread, baba ganoush which I made this afternoon, the marinated fava beans from the farm share, and roasted summer squash. To round out the theme, our guest brought Lebanese pastries which are like baklava but round with pistachios in the middle. Like these.

Freezer Room

With the start of the farm season, it's time to clear out the freezer a bit. I brought out 3.5 gallons of tomatoes I'd frozen last fall and finally got them made into sauce. Boiled, run through the food mill, and the liquid reduced by about half to get 4 pints of sauce and a little extra. All 4 pints were flavored with Persian spices (coriander, cumin and lime) which always makes things easier when I'm cooking. I'd picked up some dried barberries (zereshk) while I was in Halifax a few weeks ago and I'm psyched to make some zereshk polo and khoresh. Having these jars of sauce ready to go will save time.

Also in the freezer are loaves of chocolate zucchini bread - we had one for dinner tonight and there are 3 left. That I can find. 

Reduced by Seventy Percent

Over the summer I accumulated a lot of tomatoes, which I froze until I had a full day to make them into sauce.  Today I pulled 5.5 gallons of tomatoes out of the freezer.  They took up a lot of space.  (5.5 gallons of space, to be exact...)  I brought them all to a boil and then ran them through the food mill, getting about 25 pints of tomato juice and puree.

This simmered on the stove the rest of the afternoon and cooked down into a nice, thick sauce.  Two pints were canned with Persian spices and the other 5 pints I left plain.  I would have made more jars of the Persian spiced sauce but I ran out of ground lime and didn't want to grind any more today.  We had a lot going on in the kitchen, as my husband was also roasting three ducks while all this was going on.

From those three ducks, we rendered almost five pints of duck fat, which is good because I used up all the fat from the last few ducks to make that confit yesterday.

The dishwasher is on it's 3rd load today, and we have at least one more, maybe two, before we'll have the kitchen cleaned up.  Now I'm going to go put my feet up and rest!

Productive Day

I'm visiting my parents for a few days and they requested I make a full batch of toorshi for them. So I gladly chopped up 2 heads of cauliflower, a bunch of celery, a pound of carrots, 4 peppers, 8 hot peppers, and 2 cabbages and Mom peeled 3 heads of garlic. From start to finish it took 2 hours. And now they have 4 half-gallon jars and I get to keep my second jar!

After that, I set to work on the Halloween costumes. The kids and I are riding in an event on Sunday as a team (our instructor will be the fourth member of the team). There are prizes for best costume. How can I resist? I love Halloween. I love making my own costumes. The challenge here is to make costumes that we can ride in. We decided on chess pieces. I have completed the sewing today: shortened the horses' blankets, made a bishop's stole, 3 belts and 2 small tunics (for the knights) and one long tunic for the queen. Guess who is going to be the queen!

"There's a Lot of Stuff in My Fridge"

This is what I said to my sister earlier today.

Now, one batch of toorshi later, I have more room in that fridge.  This year's batch consisted of:

2 small cabbages (farm)

3 peppers (from my garden, picked before last night's frost)

4 jalapenos, 3 poblanos and 2 other, unidentifiable peppers (farm)

1.5 pounds carrots (farm)

1.5 heads of garlic, cloves peeled and halved (they were huge) - (farm)

a bunch of dill (farm)

and a bunch of celery and a head of cauliflower (Whole Foods)

The other day we opened last year's jar.  That batch had habaneros in it and it was HOT.  And really, really good.  My father had some and was inspired to open his jar from that last batch.  I think it may be mostly gone already!  In an effort to make this year's batch as hot, I left the seeds in the jalapenos.  Generally, it takes a few months for it to taste right, but it seems we generally wait almost a whole year before we open a jar, so it has a lot of time to get spicy!

Because I added cabbage this year, the volume was greater, so I ended up with 3 half-gallon jars.  One for my brother, one for my dad, and one for me.  Bliss!

Something to Crow About

"Why, is it," my husband asks, "that when you cook with the farm share you announce it to us at dinner?  You don't announce which grocery store the food came from, so why is the farm different?"

Good question.  I guess that even after three years I am still really excited to be getting my produce locally. It feels like a novelty.  And it's made me a little spoiled.  I frequently turn up my nose at produce in the store (even the much-lauded Whole Foods) because it isn't nearly as fresh as the veggies I bring home from the farm.  I also feel like I'm getting a tremendous bargain - all this organic food for not a whole lot of money!  What could be better?

Tonight I made a double batch of khoresh, a basic persian stew.  Once you have the base, you can add all sorts of things to it.  So, after skimming off 2 quarts for the pressure canner, I added turnip greens, beet greens and mustard greens to the rest of the stew and, 15 minutes before dinnertime, I added some fried eggplant.  This, plus the potato tadiq in the rice, used up a good chunk of farm share from this week.

I am, however, inundated with squash.  I have all the squash I had last week, plus another delicata, a kabocha, and a small pumpkin.  I will need to take Lisa up on her offer to make soup!

Turnips, Raw and Cooked

One thing our farm share has provided, in abundance, is turnips.  Hakurei turnips, to be specific.  We had a LOT.  Eating them all in salads wasn't an option.  I have used them all up and want to share the recipes here.

First, I made a Shirazi salad.  I chopped 4 tomatoes, 2 cucumbers, 1/3 of a red onion, and a few turnips (equivalent in volume to the cucumbers) in a very very fine dice.  To this I added 1/2 c. lemon juice, 1/2 c. olive oil, salt, pepper, and a handful of fresh mint leaves.  Ta da!  It was wonderful, and the mint didn't taste minty at all after mixing with the rest of the dressing.  Even better, the mint and the cucumbers came from my garden.

Then I used up the rest with some potatoes in a curry (the potatoes were also from the farm).  I quartered the potatoes (1/4 pound) and turnips (4 or 5, they're small) and cooked them in oil with some chopped onion.  To this I added 1 T. curry powder and a handful of pine nuts.  After cooking for a little while the turnips tasted sweet, almost caramelized.  This was really tasty and easy!

I've worked through more of the farm share but am left with the green and wax beans and a cabbage.  I'm planning on waiting until Thursday to see if I get a lot more beans and then make a bean salad to can, rather than eat them now.  I think it'll be a good amount.

HOT!

Habaneros!

This year's toorshi batch consists of 1 cauliflower, celery, carrots, green and red peppers, 2.5 heads of garlic (cloves left whole but peeled), fresh dill, 1 cherry red pepper and 8 habaneros. All but the cauliflower and the celery came from the farm share. I ended up with 2 half gallon jars and am just waiting for them to seal. I had a little taste before I packed all the veggies and it's already hot! I can only imagine what it will be like after it's pickled for a few weeks. Wow.

I need more vinegar. For that matter, I need more jars.

Helping Hand

Another reason why this hobby is great is that I can prepare food for people and it won't go bad sitting on the shelf. In other words, when someone is under the weather and people are showing up with food, mine won't take up precious fridge and freezer space. Such is the situation now, so I made a double batch of khoresh and put up 2 quarts which were delivered yesterday. I'm glad to be able to help.

We had company last night for dinner (which is why I made a double batch) and, as a side dish, I put out a pickle tray: toorshi, dilled carrots (spicy!), bread & butter pickles (the ones with the rice vinegar), and pickled fiddleheads. I also set out a bowl of the 3-bean salad with the beets. When I'd made that particular recipe with golden beets, the color leeched out of the beets. I thought the red beets wouldn't do that, but they did. Strange to see white beets and know that they used to be red! But it was a perfect accompaniment to the khoresh and rice. Kind of like having a chutney. Which I didn't remember I had, or I would have served that, too!

Now it's Time to Eat

During the past few months I have gradually canned so much food that the pantry is FULL. So full that I have started to stack flats of jars in the space next to the fridge, displacing all the random stuff that was stored there and eliminating the kids' favorite hiding spot. Time to start using all this food...

Last night we had a friend over for dinner whom we rarely see, as he lives in Europe and, well, we don't. I pondered what I could prepare which would be different, and hit upon a Persian-themed dinner. Truly, I spent all day in the kitchen, but it was worth it! Khoresh bademjan, polo with potato tadiq, boorani (spinach and yogurt) and toorshi as side dishes, plus roasted pumpkin (which isn't really Persian, but I've had it in an Afghani restaurant and thought it might go with the rest of the dishes). The toorshi was much spicier this time, certainly not overpowering, but the extra peppers were noticeable. For the khoresh bademjan, which is beef stew with eggplant, I peeled and sliced an eggplant, salted the slices and set them aside for 30 minutes. Then they were rinsed, dried, and fried in olive oil until soft. The eggplant was set aside until 15 minutes before it was time to eat. The stew itself was 2.5 lbs of sirloin tips, cut up and browned with 3 onions, chopped. To this I added 1 pint of the tomato sauce with Persian spices, 1 c. of water, and a handful of dried parsley. This simmered for several hours, and then the eggplant got added at the last minute. All of this was served over rice (polo).

For dessert, I made an apple pie. Now that I actually know how to make them successfully, it's become really fun and no longer stressful to make them. And this was the best one yet - it got baked for almost 90 minutes, and the apples were super soft.

This dinner also showcased the farm share, as the potatoes in the tadiq, the apples in the pie, and the pumpkin were all from the share.

And the leftovers are just as good!

Toorshi

When I was a kid, in the fall my father would make toorshi in great big jars. I don't remember much about how he made it, but I remember it smelled good and was too spicy for me to eat. A couple of years ago I asked him for the recipe; he laughed and asked, "Why do you want to make that?"

Well, just recently we all got together and I opened up the last jar from last year's batch. He seemed to really enjoy it. So, in answer to his question, "That's why. Because you like it."

Today's batch should be spicier, as I included a rainbow of farm share hot peppers: 1 small green scotch bonnet, 6 cherry red peppers, one really long and evil looking chili, and a couple of yellow hot peppers. Also in this year's batch: farm share carrots, garlic, and cabbage. I had to buy the cauliflower and celery at the store.

This is the only thing I make which does not get processed. I use the half-gallon jars, and they don't fit in the canner. But processing makes the veggies too soft anyway so, after cooking the veggies in the hot liquid for a few minutes, and packing the veggies in the jars, I boil the liquid again and pour it over the top. This extra heat makes it seal without processing. And it seems to be enough; last year's batch was fine on the shelf for a full year. As an added precaution, I washed the jars in the dishwasher and let them sit in there until I was ready so they would be hot and sterilized.

And, for the record, we love it, too.

Edgy Tomatoes

Edgy?

I received a box from my mother (Thanks, Mom!) containing 24 pounds of B-grade tomatoes for canning. She bought it on the 27th. I received it on the 30th. I wasn't able to get to can them until yesterday so, yes. Edgy. A little squishy. But not impossible to work with or really gross or anything.

I worked on the sauce in 2 batches because my pots were not large enough to accommodate all 24 pounds of tomatoes while they cooked. Evidently I'm not very good at splitting things evenly because the second batch was heaped into the pot (see picture) and in danger of spilling over on multiple occasions. So, yes, in this regard as well. Edgy. But I got everything processed through the food mill and simmering on the stove. I let the sauce simmer for several hours to reduce in volume. More patience led to thicker sauce.

Edgy also means "having a bold, provocative or unconventional quality." I ended up with 8 pints of Persian-spiced tomato sauce: 5 teaspoons cardi and 1 tablespoon of ground dried lime per jar. (Cardi, for those of you who are wondering, is an equal mix of cumin and coriander. The dried lime is really lime or lemon, left whole and dried. I beat them with a mallet and run them through the blender to make a powder. That part is pretty fun.)

Edgy.

Persian Spices

Today I used the last quart of tomato sauce with Persian spices to make lamb shanks for dinner. The spices are coriander, cumin, and dried lime, and I put them in the jar before pouring in the tomato sauce. This way I could make a big batch of tomato sauce and then end up with multiple different flavors of sauce at the end. My grandmother would mix the coriander and cumin together and store it that way; she called it cardi, which means "work," I think. I also made Persian rice with potato tadiq.

Doesn't it look yummy?