Fermentation Success

We've been getting a farm share all year from a different farm, and while there hasn't been the overabundance of produce as was the case with the previous farm, we do sometimes get a lot of things that we just can't eat in time. I had a bunch of napa cabbage and some watermelon radishes so I decided to try to make kimchi again. 

Previous attempts at kimchi were very watery. Somehow, this one wasn't. It was perfect, in fact. In 3 days after the fermentation started the taste was just right. I gave some to my friend, as I had about 3 quarts of it. Another quart went to this lovely dish:

Salmon with fried kimchi

This was from the New York Times Cooking app - Salmon cooked on a bed of fried kimchi.

Now, what to do with all the kale?

Batch #2

Using every spare moment I had today, between picking up the farm share, running to the store twice, and driving around for both the children, I managed to make another batch of applesauce, this time with brown sugar because I don't yet want to open the new bag of white sugar. Plus I am making this Sicilian-Style Fish Stew with fish my brother-in-law gave me that he caught, and changing pretty much everything else. No golden raisins? How about barberries? No onion? Use a leek! Add escarole!

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.

Fish Stew

This is something I've been meaning to make for a while. I had that bag of walleye bits in the freezer and, for some reason, today felt like the day to make fish stew. Don't ask me why.

The recipe was one of the ones I make up as I go along. I sauteed sliced onion, minced garlic and chopped celery and then added 2 pints of tomato sauce. This was then simmered with bay, salt, pepper, and 10 sprigs of cilantro (from yesterday's farm share). About 10 minutes before dinnertime, I tossed in all the fish (thawed, of course) and let it cook in the sauce. At the last minute, I added about half a teaspoon of cumin and adjusted the salt and pepper to taste. Served over couscous, it was just terrific!

Strawberries and Garlic

No, not together. That would be silly.

Yesterday's farm share distribution included more strawberries (2 quarts) and more garlic scapes (16) which, added to the previous distributions, meant I had about 40 garlic scapes and clearly not enough time to use them. Since I still had garlic scape pesto in the freezer, as well as chopped scapes, I decided to pickle them using the recipe in Preserving By the Pint. I had enough scapes to make 3 jars instead of 2, and they're in the canner right now.

When I went to the farm yesterday, I brought the 13 year old, who was the one who picked all the berries. The request was for a strawberry shortcake, and I obliged, of course! This time we remembered to take a photo before we inhaled the shortcakes. That was dessert last night and breakfast today. Mmm.

The rest of the share consisted of broccoli, kale, arugula, Hakurei turnips (we'd just finally finished the ones from the previous 2 weeks), Napa cabbage, dill, cilantro, snow peas, snap peas, shelling peas and fava beans. As soon as I got home, I blanched the fava beans and marinated them and they'll be good on a salad. We also shelled the peas and they were part of dinner last night, mixed with leftover corn and tossed with some of that champagne vinaigrette I'd made earlier. I also made these: strangolapreti (courtesy of Hank Shaw's blog post) using some of the arugula and the rest of the komatsuna greens. Even the rabbit gives us a dirty look when we try to feed him the komatsuna. Made into a dumpling it was much more innocuous. The dumplings are tasty and filling and not hard to make. What a great recipe!

The plan for tonight's dinner is to make a fish stew with the walleye bits I'd frozen after we went fishing last summer. I will use a pint jar or two of tomato sauce, the fresh cilantro, and whatever else I feel like tossing in - I'm going to wing it on this one, I think.  Also I'm still working on getting enough mulberry juice for a batch of jelly - I have 3 cups so far and need one more.

Walleye with Spring Flavors

So, I've been following this blog for a while:  Forager|Chef.  He's got a nice combination of really beautiful photos, tasty recipes, and foraging tips and I enjoy reading his posts.  Many of the recipes inspire me.  A while back he posted about spruce tips - both as an ingredient in savory dishes and as an ice cream.  The blue spruce in front of my house is covered with new growth so I harvested about a cup of the tips and used half to make a spruce tip puree.  I cut the recipe in half and, even with that, I froze half of the puree since I knew I wouldn't use it up all that quickly.  He said in his blog that spruce goes particularly well with spring flavors.  I came up with a combination that worked very, very well.

We still have several packages of that walleye we caught last summer on Lake Erie, so I thawed one of those.  I also had a bunch of fiddleheads, courtesy of Whole Foods, and some farro.  I went out into the yard and pulled up some field garlic.  Then I set to work:

The fish was baked with just some pepper and an herb mix, 15 minutes at 425 degrees.  While that was cooking, I was simmering the farro with chicken stock.  And warming up a cup of heavy cream with 3 T. spruce puree.  And sautéing field garlic bulbs in butter with the fiddleheads, which had been blanched first.  I also reserved the green parts of the field garlic for a garnish, whole and chopped.

Voila:

What I discovered is that the fiddleheads were cooked so amazingly well, and they were the anchor of the dish - they held onto the spruce-cream sauce and tied the whole combination of tastes together.  The farro, which I hadn't really intended to mix with the sauce, was nothing without the sauce.  The spruce flavor was subtle but lovely.  I would consider thinly slicing the field garlic bulbs as they were a little bitter when left whole.

Next up, I plan to make that ice cream!

Salmon Steaks

The salmon came to us by way of Lisa, who caught it in British Columbia last summer, and it's been hanging out in the freezer waiting for a day when it made sense to cook it.  See, since the 9 year old really, really dislikes fish, cooking an entire fish isn't really worth it, not to mention dealing with the drama that ensues trying to get said child to eat.  Our niece is visiting so it was the right time for that salmon to make it to the table.

Normally, we grill salmon.  Our grill has only just started emerging from under all the snow and it will be months, maybe, before we can actually get to it.  Keep in mind, it's a regular height gas grill.  Sometime after the second snowstorm up here, we gave up trying to dig it out.  This left me only the choices of baking or pan frying.  I decided to bake it.

First, I cut the salmon into steaks.  Lisa had brought us one entire fish, with fins and tail, but cleaned.  I had to use my Japanese knife as it was the only one I had that could get through the spine.  Once I had the steaks, I brushed them with a mixture of olive oil, lemon juice, tarragon, salt and pepper and let them sit for a while.  Then they were baked for 20 minutes at 275-300 degrees (hard to tell with my oven) and rested while the biscuits baked.  Then they went back in the oven at 475 to warm up a little before dinnertime.

I think they came out perfectly.  If you ask the 9 year old, however, you are likely to get a different opinion.

Charter Fishing

Over the holiday weekend we went to visit my husband's family in Ohio.  I love going out there.  We always have a good time together, with lots of people, lots of food, and often we plan to do things I don't normally have time to do or quite possibly have never done before.  Yesterday we did something that fit both categories.

My brother-in-law chartered a boat to take us fishing on Lake Erie.  Six of us went:  My husband, the 12 year old, my brother-in-law, our niece and nephew, and me.  Between us we caught 31 walleyes (limit was 6 each) and 3 white bass that were just too big to toss back.

Look, see!  Dawn!

We got up before sunrise and made it to the boat dock over an hour away at literally the crack of dawn.  Turns out, I was the only one who was sufficiently caffeinated.  We had thought we'd be going all the way across the lake toward Canada but it turned out the fish were closer in and so, after not a very long ride, we started trolling.  I've only ever fished from a boat a few times, really:  Narragansett Bay, Galveston Bay, maybe one other place I'm forgetting.  This was FUN.  I don't know why I don't do this more often.  Oh, yeah, see paragraph one.

There were a lot of lulls in activity and then there were times when 3 of us were reeling in at the same time.  I am very proud to say that my 12 year old caught the 2 biggest fish of the day, although I didn't weigh them.  They were each over 2 feet long and very heavy.  Each of those fish could easily feed 6 people.  When we did divvy up the fish fillets I made sure I kept those (and marked them specifically) because I want my child to have the pleasure of eating self-caught fish.  The captain of the boat, Captain Popeye (I kid you not), made sure to get a picture with him in it, I'm sure it's good for business to see that a 12 year old caught a fish bigger than one's head.

31 Walleyes

All the fish that we didn't eat last night (probably 5 of the walleyes baked with some bread crumbs sprinkled on top and then in a sandwich bun with tartar sauce, mmmmm) were filleted, put in bags, and frozen.  My brother-in-law and I raced through them as quickly as possible - he'd cut the fillets off the fish and I'd take the skin off and get them bagged, with the help of my brother-in-law's brother.  I have 8 bags of fillets and 1 bag of little bits (cheek meat, pieces that succumbed to my less than perfect filleting, etc.) to make stew with.  The only hitch is that they are still in Ohio; it didn't seem like a good idea to try to take them on the plane so we'll either have them shipped or when someone drives out for a visit they'll bring them.

Random Cooking Things

Haven't really done any canning lately, but I'm getting ready for Thanksgiving so I've been making pumpkin bread and thinking about when I'm going to make my pies.  Sadly, the squashes from the farm share didn't last - as in, we didn't eat them because they went bad - but the pumpkin did so I roasted it the other day and am saving that to make a pie.

Tonight for dinner we had crepes.  I wanted to make a link to this recipe because, so far, it's the best crepe recipe I've used.  We had goat cheese-apple(or pear)-salami and Nutella-banana and lemon curd with and without pear.  It was a light dinner because we had dim sum for lunch and practically rolled out of there, so we didn't really need anything heavy!

Last night we had mussels steamed in the last of my fish stock.  If there is one thing I won't be making and canning again, it's fish stock.  I really was hard-pressed to find a use for it.  So I sautéed onion and celery, added the 3 pints of fish stock and a bottle of beer, then steamed the mussels in that.  It only takes about 5-6 minutes to steam them.  They were good, but my favorite way to have mussels is steamed in tomato sauce with chorizo.  That's they way we always used to eat them when we went out to dinner where I grew up!

Caught a Fish For Dinner!

Doesn't this look peaceful?

Remember how, two years ago, I learned how to fillet and scale a fish because I was optimistic that I would catch one on our camping trip?  That year I didn't catch anything at all.  Then, last summer, we went again and I caught a fish, a perch, we think, and it was too small and we were just about to leave so I let it go.  Well...

This past weekend was the annual trip to the same place.  This year was more pleasant - quieter, we all had adjoining sites again, and even though it threatened to rain it didn't.  And, I caught a fish that was large enough to eat (barely) and early enough in the trip that I could actually do something with it!

We're pretty sure I caught a Northern Pike.  I learned how to gut it from the 12 year old son of our friend.  It was not as messy as I had anticipated.  I made it into one big fillet but I suspect had I left the spine in and kept it fish-shaped I'd have had an easier time cooking it.  I ended up wrapping it in foil with a little salt and baking it on the coals.  Almost everyone in our group of 10 tried it (see if you can guess who didn't?) but I ate most of it because it was MINE.  I felt empowered.  Even if my husband had to be the one to smack it dead first.  Next time (and there will be a next time) I will do that myself.

We finished up the 2 quarts of lobster bisque I made back in April and froze - it helped keep the cooler cold until we were ready to eat it.  And I opened a jar of pickles.  I did bring jam and relish but we never got to them  - we had SO MUCH food for all of us, it was ridiculous!

Now I can't wait to go back!

This cheeky little guy kept coming to visit!

I Caught a Fish!

This past weekend was the annual camping trip and, in the last 5 minutes of the trip, I caught a fish! As you can tell, I'm pretty excited about it. I was saying it to myself all the way home: "IcaughtafishIcaughtafishIcaughtafish..." I don't know what kind it is, maybe someone can ID it for me? Oh, and I did put it back. (And, yes, that is a Barbie fishing rod. I didn't feel like getting mine out. Maybe it's good luck?)

From a food perspective, now that I can things eating is a lot of fun. I brought the last 2 jars of peaches in syrup and they ended up being dessert each night. And they went fast! I also brought 2 jars of chicken soup, a jar of baked beans, and 2 jars of pickles. We got through everything but the pickles. And we downed 14 brats. That was Saturday night's dinner.

There were 5 adults and 5 kids on this outing, next year we'll plan it better and all end up next to each other. This was the same campground as last year; it wasn't as quiet and restful as last year but we still had a good time (the guy with the produce seemed to be missing, we don't know why!). We traipsed off to an old cemetery and explored; the oldest stone was from 1791. I took it as a good omen that there were blackberries at our campsite, and found more blackberries and even wild blueberries all over the place. We saw the Milky Way, the kids saw shooting stars, and it was nice to relax for a few days.

And I was able to update my online inventory from the campsite. Thanks!

Fillet O'Fish

We're going camping. Soon. I am hoping we might catch a fish or two for dinner while we're there. I am realistic about this; I plan to bring enough food anyway. But, in preparation, I came across a skill I needed to learn -

How do I fillet a fish?

My dad used to fish, so I asked him. He loaned me his fillet knife and a scaler and told me how to use them. He also loaned me a couple of rods so I don't have to fish with the kids' child-sized fishing rods. Which are more my speed, anyway. (That's another thing I have to learn before we go, but I digress.) So I decided to buy a fish and fillet it myself for practice.

Today I stopped at Whole Foods and bought an entire red snapper. When the man at the counter asked me if he should scale and fillet it for me, I launched into a discussion of my plan. He very kindly walked me through scaling and filleting the fish, giving me some hope that I can actually do this.

I scaled the fish on the driveway. It probably will sparkle for a few days as I'm sure that there are still scales out there. But overall that part went fine. Then I brought it in and tried to fillet it. The knife needed a little sharpening but I followed his directions and ended up with 2 relatively equal sized fillets, with not that much meat left on the bones. Ultimately there were only a few bones and a few scales in the finished product. Which I baked with a mustard-dill-mayonnaise sauce and it was YUMMY.

As this is a blog about canning, perhaps you can guess what happened next? I took the bones, head and tail and made stock. After boiling in salted water for 90 minutes or so I strained the stock with a cheesecloth and ended up with 6 pints. Which are currently in the pressure canner. I really hope nothing breaks this time.
Now, what do I do with fish stock?