Car's in the Shop

While I'm at home, waiting for new brakes, I have time to work on some rhubarb (yes, I bought more) and apricots. I got to thinking they would go well together, and I think I was right. I took the rhubarb chutney recipe I usually use from The Joy of Pickling and substituted some apricots in for the rhubarb, so it was 1 pound of rhubarb and 12 ounces of apricots. The rest of the recipe was exactly the same - 3 cups onions, 2 T. minced fresh ginger, 2 c. cider vinegar, 1.5 c. brown sugar, 1 tsp. crushed red pepper, 1 cinnamon stick, zest of one orange, 1 c. golden raisins, 1/2 tsp. kosher salt. This all simmered together for 35 minutes and then I canned it, minus the cinnamon stick. I ended up with 7.5 cups of chutney.

At this point, I had run out of lids, so I rode my bike to the hardware store and bought more. I also took a few side trips since I'm working on a scavenger hunt for our neighborhood newsletter. I was getting locations and appropriate questions for kids to go find and answer. We have some pretty cool Revolutionary War history in our town and it's nice to take stock of it once in a while.

Once I got back I made a batch of Apricot-Rhubarb Jam - for this I used the Certo recipe for apricot jam and, instead of 3.5 cups chopped apricots, used 2.5 cups of apricots and 1 cup of rhubarb. I also added maybe a half a cup more sugar, thinking the rhubarb might need it. This made 3 pint jars and a little extra for tasting. I'm not sure why I ended up with less volume (the original recipe makes 7 cups) but maybe the rhubarb cooks down more than the apricots do?

Green Tomatoes

Last week at the farm share they said you could take as many green heirloom tomatoes as you could use, so I threw some in my bag and thought about relishes. I had 7+ pounds and decided to make a chutney and piccalilli. It took a few days for me to get organized and have some time, but today was a good day for this.

First I started on the veggies for the piccalilli. I chopped 2 quarts of green tomatoes, 2 red peppers, 2 green peppers, and 2 large onions and mixed them with 1/4 c. of Kosher salt. This was covered and left on the counter. Then we went apple picking. Today was going to be the absolute last day for our favorite farm, so I figured we'd better go and go early. We arrived just 5 minutes after they opened to a parking lot full of cars. Even with that, the orchards weren't too crowded and we were able to get a half bushel of Empires, Golden Delicious, Cameos and Cortlands pretty quickly.

When we got home from the apple farm, the first project was pickling 2 more half-pints of jalapenos, since I had some more from this week's share. Even though the recipe is on line, I'll reprint it here:

12 jalapenos, sliced
1.25 c. vinegar (today I used cider)
0.25 c. water
1 tsp. Kosher salt
1/2 tsp. sugar

Boil the brine. Put the sliced peppers in jars and pour the brine over the top, leaving a 1/2-inch headspace. Process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

While that was processing, I started this Green Tomato Chutney. This was boiled down for an hour and packed into 4 half-pint jars. The recipe claims to make 3 pints, but I only got 2. The chutney was processed for 15 minutes.

Finally, I drained the veggies for the piccalilli and got them boiling in 3 cups of vinegar and water solution (1 to 1), 2 c. of brown sugar, and 1 tsp. each of turmeric, dry mustard powder, and celery seed. This recipe claimed to make 6 pints, I only got 5. This was processed for 5 minutes. I tasted the small amount left in the pot and it is excellent.

I still have almost 2.5 lbs. of green tomatoes left. Any suggestions?

Rhubarb Chutney and Lobster

No, not together. But it is Memorial Day weekend, and I'm using this free time to put up a bunch of stuff. I finally found local rhubarb at a nearby "Farmstand." I put this in quotes because it's like a local Whole Foods, but somewhat smaller and attached to its own farm. There is livestock to visit, hay rides in the Fall, they sell plants and trees, AND it is an amazing grocery. Even more dangerous than Whole Foods. Which is why I rarely go there. Except that they had rhubarb.

So I made rhubarb chutney (recipe from The Joy of Pickling) while I prepared a lobster dinner for 3 of the 4 of us. See if you can guess who doesn't eat lobster...no surprises here. Had to make a hot dog instead. Boiled lobster, grilled corn on the cob, garlic bread, fried fiddleheads...mmmm. Eaten outdoors, of course, since it's so messy. Fortunately it had stopped raining by dinnertime.

Now the chutney is out of the canner, and went, "Pop!...popopop!...pop!............pop!...popop!" In the big lobster pot I have the shells, tomato paste, carrots, celery, onions, spices and water, making a lobster stock. The recipe is from The New England Soup Factory Cookbook and maybe having the stock around will inspire more seafood soups. Likely I'll can the stock tomorrow; it's already pretty late!

Rhubarb Two Ways

Another springtime treat arrived in the grocery store recently: rhubarb! I must point out that my rhubarb plant is not very robust. I have moved it once, to be closer to my compost heap, and it doesn't get a whole lot of water, so maybe that's part of it. But it was given to me by a friend of mine a few years ago and I'm holding out hope that it will eventually take off.

So I buy it instead.

Yesterday I bought 3 pounds and 2 large containers of strawberries. First of all, I made a strawberry-rhubarb pie. It was so good, our 7 year old ate 2 pieces in about 3 minutes! Since that was such a hit, I decided to make strawberry-rhubarb jam. Also a hit! Yum! 2 c. of crushed strawberries, 2 c. of chopped rhubarb, 5 c. sugar, 2 T. lemon juice, and 1 package of Certo. I ended up with 5 half-pint jars and 1 half-cup jar with a little extra.

I still had a lot of rhubarb left so I hunted in all my cookbooks until I found a chutney recipe for which I actually had all the ingredients, except onions. I sent my husband out for some onions (not easy on Memorial Day but he succeded) and set to work: cider vinegar, brown sugar, ginger, cinnamon, hot pepper, orange zest, onions, rhubarb, raisins (ran out so added some currents). This made 4 half-pint jars and 1 12-ounce jar, plus a little more which is in the fridge. I plan to try it tonight on some rice. Smells good!