Buche d'Automne

For the elderchild's birthday, I wanted to make something very different. We'd been talking a lot about all the interesting mushrooms that had been cropping up as the weather cooled and I was reminded of making meringue mushrooms in culinary school and how fun that was. So I set about thinking of a project that would highlight mushrooms and yet still be an appropriate autumn themed birthday cake.

I hit upon a Buche d'Automne.

First, I made the mushroom parts first with a simple Italian meringue and let them sit in a cooling oven overnight. The stems and shelf mushrooms were white and then I added some brown food coloring to make the tops. 

The next day I made the pumpkin pastry cream, by adding pumpkin purée to a pastry cream recipe and then mixing in cinnamon, clove, allspice, ginger and nutmeg. That was kept chilled until it was time to assemble the cake.

A day later I made a joconde - a sponge cake with almond flour, cooked in a very thin layer in a sheet pan. This was then soaked with a ginger simple syrup. To make a pumpkin mousseline, I whisked the pumpkin pastry cream and then folded in whipped cream. This was spread over the joconde and then it was rolled and chilled. I also hand painted sugar paper with food coloring and cut out oak and maple leaves.

Finally, on the big day, I made a maple Italian meringue by substituting maple sugar for white sugar. I frosted the rolled cake with the meringue, used a torch to make it look more like a birch log, and then decorated the cake with the mushrooms, leaves and some fresh daisies. 

The elderchild was pleased!

Farm Share Mixed Radish Pickle

The farm share always has radishes and Hakurei turnips the first few weeks and, since I'm the only one who likes radishes, even with just half the share they build up. (Note to self, they are not great on pizza.) But last week also had small Daikon radishes so I thought to mix all 3 into a quick radish pickle using rice wine vinegar and ginger. This is a recipe in Preserving by the Pint which I've made before, just not with all kinds of radish/turnip at once. They made exactly 1 pint, good for sandwiches and salads.

Another thing I had in abundance was fava beans so following another recipe in Preserving by the Pint, I made a fava-parsley-walnut pesto, using foraged black walnuts instead of regular ones. This made over 2 cups of pesto; I froze one cup, and baked chicken breasts coated with some of the rest. All of us ate it, some of us liked it. The rest were just very polite. 

Breakfast Kuchen

Last night over dinner we were talking about European plum tortes and how there are so many variations and they all depend on local fruit. Well, I don't have any plums on hand, but it did get me thinking, and so this morning I made a peach kuchen as a variation of this recipe for a plum kuchen that uses buttermilk.

The variations were: I used all purpose flour, and I used canned peaches with ginger I made last year. So I didn't coat the peaches in butter, allspice and sugar, since they were already sugary. This did affect the bake, since they're wetter than fresh plums, so it was a little runny in the middle. I made a modified chai-spiced whipped cream (cardamom, cinnamon, and ginger) and we had nice warm cake for breakfast!

Tomato Jam

One thing I have never been particularly convinced of was tomato jam. Every time I received a jar via my mom's neighbors it was a solid gelatinous lump of tomato, not particularly spreadable. But I try to keep an open mind and, since I have so many tomatoes from the farm, thought it might be time to make this and see for myself.

A little online research and I found this recipe, with fresh ginger and not requiring me to peel the tomatoes. I had 4.5 pounds of tomatoes so scaled up the recipe and got it simmering. After about an hour and a half (maybe the hotplate was too high...) it had cooked down into the right texture. Not gelatinous, much more spreadable. It tastes like spicy ketchup and it's really, really good.

As a good rough estimate, 1 pound of tomatoes equals one cup of jam at the end. Everything just came out of the canner now and I can't wait to use it as a spread!

Canned Peaches with Ginger

After gradually working through most of the canned peaches and other things I made when I had that peach tree, it was time to see if my favorite farm might have freestone peaches available. Last week I put my name in for a half-bushel (20 pounds) of B-grade peaches. Today they called me to let me know they had some and, as luck would have it, I was in the vicinity of the farm for a good part of the day. So it was an easy side trip to stop by on my way home. (The farm is about 40 miles from my house.)

This evening I made canned peaches. To make eight pints of peaches I used up about 10 pounds, leaving another 10 pounds for other projects (I plan to make peach salsa tomorrow). The peaches were peeled, sliced, and warmed up in medium syrup. Then they were packed into jars and 3-4 pieces of candied ginger were added to each jar. I plan to enter some in the fair; I don't usually enter fruit in syrup like this but it can't hurt to try!

In Between Storms

We've had a lot of thunderstorms come through here in the past two days, and whenever the sun has made an appearance I went to the mulberry tree in the yard to pick berries. I must have forgotten how many cups of juice went into a batch of jam. I thought it was eight. Actually, it was four. So after a few days I had just about eight cups of juice, enough for a double batch of jelly. The tree is rather prolific this year.

Normally I don't like to double up jam and jelly recipes because then, if the mixture is too deep for the diameter of the pot it might not gel. Eight cups didn't seem too huge, though, so I simmered the mulberry juice with 1/3 cup lime juice and sliced fresh ginger (about 1.5 inches of ginger root, sliced as thinly as I could manage without a mandolin). To this I added two boxes of powdered pectin and 9.5 cups of sugar. All told, it made just over 13 cups of jelly. I strained out the ginger pieces when I poured the jelly into jars. Most likely, I will enter this one in the fair. It's time to start thinking about that again!

Mixed Vegetable Kimchi

Some of the greens we get from the farm are greens we're not too excited to eat. Some go straight to our rabbit (looking at you, mustard greens). Some clearly want to be made into something more interesting. Like kimchi.

Usually once I get a Napa cabbage and some scallions I'll make a batch. I have to say that in the past I've been disappointed in my kimchi but I think it's because I use too much liquid and so it's soggy. I'm going to try to remedy that this time. Also, I had four different vegetables I could use in the batch, so I did:  Napa cabbage, bok choi, scallions and daikon radish. For proportions of the salt and water and the spices, I used the cabbage and radish kimchi recipe on page 182 of The Joy of Pickling.

These have been brining since yesterday and, after a quick purchase of fresh ginger, I mixed up the drained vegetables with minced ginger, Korean red pepper, salt and sugar. Now this will ferment in its brine for a few days. And then I plan to make sure I remove most of the extra liquid so my finished product isn't so disappointing. I guess we'll find out next week.

Quite The Production

Holidays came and went, along with a quick ski trip in Vermont that was less "skiing" and more "staying inside and avoiding the rain." We did play a pretty awesome game, Betrayal Legacy, which kept us entertained for hours but needing to take a break once in a while because it was so complicated! We also discovered that ground venison is a fine substitute in tacos and spaghetti sauce. My brother-in-law sent me a bunch of game meat for Christmas; I sent him a signed copy of Hank Shaw's new cookbook: Pheasant, Quail, Cottontail.

One of the things on my agenda this weekend was to defrost the freezer, so exciting, but that meant I needed to get the four gallons of tomatoes out of there. Yesterday they thawed and this morning I boiled them and tried to run them through the food mill. I'm not really sure what happened except that somehow the food mill got jammed. I ended up scooping out tomato pulp from the hopper and pushing it through a sieve by hand, making a mess that the youngerchild suggested looked like a crime scene. Someone has been watching too much Supernatural, maybe? Anyway, after the liquid boiled off I was left with 3 and a half pints of tomato sauce; I added Persian spices to one pint, Italian spices to the other two and left the half-pint plain.

The other thing that I wanted to get done today was to make a batch of gingerbread cookies for my mother-in-law, who was envious that she didn't get any over the holidays. I got the cookies all made today - two different sizes of hearts - and will frost them tomorrow, hopefully. It's a LOT of cookies. 

Free Pears

My friend and neighbor with the pear tree emailed me a few days ago, saying the tree had about a million pears and did I want some? Well, she wasn't kidding. That tree really did have about a million pears. It's still relatively early in the season but they'd already started to fall and mess up her yard. I grabbed about 20 pears and left them in my kitchen to ripen for a few days.

One of the things that has been making me a little nervous is that the fair is fast approaching and I didn't have much to enter yet. I decided to revisit a recipe I made pretty early on in my canning hobby, a pear ginger conserve that has chopped almonds in it as well. It's in the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, page 90. Right around the time I was grating the ginger, the pages fell open to another recipe that uses fresh ginger but calls for a cup instead of a teaspoon! I'm glad I caught my error in time.

This used a little less than half of the pears, and I have plans to make another recipe with them tomorrow. Or maybe in a day or two. Our original plans for tomorrow have pretty much evaporated due to impending thunderstorms so we're going to do one of those escape rooms instead. Wish us luck!

Prizewinners!

We went up this morning in the rain to spend the day at the fair. In addition to all the canned goods I entered, I decided to make cupcakes to enter in the baking competition. I am on a carrot cake kick so I made carrot cake cupcakes. I had to enter a plate of 6 of them.

When we got to the fair we immediately went to drop them off and check out the canned goods section. I did quite well, with first place for: soup, sauerkraut, and sweet relish. Second place for: the collection of three jellies (the ones with the wine that I banged out in a few hours the night before I had to take everything up), other pickled vegetable, Concord grape jelly and apple jelly. Third place for the strawberry jalapeño jam. Honorable mentions for: wild blueberry jam and ginger peach jam. Only three entries did not place: salsa, mulberry jelly, and apricot ginger jam.

We wandered around the fair for a few hours while we waited for the cupcake judging. We checked out the rabbits, cows, pigs, sheep, and goats. I got nose-booped by a calf named Bella. We watched a little bit of the junior cattle show and visited the beekeepers exhibits. I held a 1-2 day old chick. Ate a bunch of fair food, ran into a few people we knew and shared a table with a few we didn't (but know now!). And we got back in time to watch them judge the cupcakes. We felt it was a very good sign that one of the two judges didn't want to give up the plate with my cupcake on it! And, at then end, I'd won first place!

Now I'm home, working on a beet and goat cheese tart for dinner with friends. And there are more of those prizewinning carrot cake cupcakes for dessert!

This is Much Easier

When I buy peaches at the farm, I buy them by the half-bushel. And then I have about 24 hours to process them all before they go bad. It's stressful. With my tree, I'll probably end up with about the same amount of peaches but I am getting them a few at a time. This way, I can do a project each day and nothing is in danger of spoiling.

Today I pulled another 2.5 pounds off the tree, making a total of 11.5 pounds so far. And after some other yard work, I made another batch of peach jam, this time with crystallized ginger. So: 4 cups chopped peaches, 2 T. lemon juice, 1/4 cup crystallized ginger pieces, 1 box powdered pectin, and 5.5 cups sugar. You know, for the fair.

As I was chopping up the peaches I started thinking about peach ice cream. That might be my next project!

Just Too Much

Have you ever had so much to do you didn't know where to begin?

Yes, of course you have. Well, it's been happening to me lately, which is part of why I haven't done a whole lot of cooking or canning projects. Sometimes, being busy is a good thing. It gets you going in the morning, out the door, and then it's easier to run your errands and get things done because you're already past that inertia. Sometimes, you either have more than that or just slightly less, at which point the path of least resistance is to sit on the couch and play video games and justify that you'll do that thing tomorrow. Over and over again.

So much so that I let an entire bag of Meyer lemons go bad because I kept putting off making curd. That I haven't even planned our summer vacation. That I have to be reminded to do the things I said I do. This is not like me.

Therefore, when I saw that apricots were on sale today I took that as an opportunity and bought a whole bunch. Enough to make a batch of apricot jam and a batch of apricot ginger jam. (I had fresh ginger in the house because I planned to make something with it and, you guessed it, never got around to it.) I'm hoping the apricot ginger jam is fair-worthy and I'll set two jars aside.

Maybe this is the kick I need to get moving. I certainly hope so.

Day 1 - Quick Breads

Raspberry Almond Tea Cakes

Today was my first day of pastry class!

After about 2 hours of orientation/tour/basic housekeeping information, we started to learn about quick breads. Specifically, about chemical leavening agents. Then we got to work. The seven of us were split into four groups and each group made a tea cake, a muffin and a scone. We opted for a raspberry almond tea cake, carrot muffins and apricot ginger scones. I had to go down to the storage area to find dried apricots and candied ginger, but it was worth it! (For the record, I added 2/3 cup chopped dried apricots and 1/3 cup chopped candied ginger to the basic scone recipe.)

Carrot Muffins and Apricot Ginger Scones

Each recipe was chosen because it used a different mixing method: creaming, muffin, or biscuit method. When everyone was done we all photographed our food, cleaned up, and divvied up the goodies so everyone got a bit of everything. Because there was just too much, I dropped off a bunch at work before I even got home.

What I ended up keeping for ourselves: pumpkin bread, 1 chocolate chip scone and 1 chocolate chip muffins, 1 strawberry muffin, 1 each of barley, raisin and apricot ginger scones, 1 carrot muffin and some other sort of muffin. Sour cream pecan, I think.

Some of what I brought home.

Not Quite Right

Ever since Lisa sent along this recipe for gingerbread cookies I've wanted to make it. Well, the cookies plus the royal icing are truly an all-morning affair. I think it took me three hours to make all the cookies and ice them.

First, the cookies. Lisa said the dough was sticky and she was right. Also, the only holiday-themed cookies cutter I had was a star. As I didn't have enough parchment paper to make it easier, I needed to find a way to transfer the stars to the cookie sheets. I used a pastry scraper. In the beginning they ended up looking like starfish that were running away from something. As time went on, the dough became a little less sticky and it was easier to transfer them and then they looked more as intended. Also, I baked them for only 9 minutes after the first batch which, thankfully, was the batch that looked like fleeing starfish, came out a little toasty.  Some of the more toasty ones became my practice cookies for the icing.

The cookies cool very quickly and so I was able to do the icing at the same time. I probably could have used a wider tip on my decorating bag but I have limited options. Regardless, I made many variations on a star pattern and here they are.

Why is it not quite right? Well, I'll tell you. I spend a chunk of time this morning at the store picking out little tins that were not dented from a larger supply of very dented tins. Yup, you guessed it. The stars don't fit.

Gingerbread Pears

There's a nice little orchard/farm not far from the stables and every Wednesday after riding we stop and get peaches.  Sometimes we get other fruit, like plums or apples, and lately they have had really good, tiny Bartlett pears.  Yesterday there was a quart of them that were perfectly ripe, so I bought them and quickly realized I needed to use up about 6 of them in the next day.  I decided to poach the pears.

First I thought about poaching them in wine, but then I thought that might not be something the kids would like.  So I found a recipe for poaching them with ginger and I strayed a bit from the recipe:

Gingerbread Poached Pears

4 small Bartlett pears, halved and cored

1.5 cups water

1/3 cup sugar

1/4 cup crystalized ginger

2 T. molasses

Boil the water, sugar and ginger for 5 minutes to make a light syrup.  Add the pears and simmer for 10 minutes.  Remove the pears, add the molasses and boil again, reducing the volume of the syrup until it's as thick as you like.  Pour over the pears.  Voila! 

Long Time, No Sausage

I'm not sure why I haven't made sausages in over a year.  It's fun, it's satisfying, and it's a lot of hard work.  Oh, maybe that's why...

I found a huge pork shoulder and separate package of pork fat in the grocery store the other day, which I took as a sign that I should make a batch of sausages.  This time I made breakfast sausages with ginger and sage from the Charcuterie cookbook.  I cut up the meat last night and seasoned it.  This was made more difficult by the fact that my kitchen scale gave up just as I was almost done weighing out the meat.  Really gave out.  The display was flashing something unintelligible and continued to do so even after I changed the battery.  That makes scaling up a sausage recipe almost impossible!  Fortunately, I was very close to being done with the weighing so I guessed on the final amount and then guessed a little on the salt.  It turned out a little more salty than expected but not bad, so I seem to have done alright.

Today the 11 year old and I stuffed them into casings.  My husband took over when said 11 year old got tired.  I think we got about 40 links and we had patties for lunch to use up the rest.  They taste great by themselves, and awesome with maple syrup.

Finally I Have Some Time

I've been planning on working on my gift stash for a while but something always seems to get in the way.  So I set aside several hours this morning to try to make a dent in it.  I made two batches today - Maple Pear Ginger Jam and Cranberry Rhubarb Compote (same as last year).

For the Maple Pear Ginger jam I made a few changes from the first recipe attempt.  One change was that I added ginger (obviously).  I cut the pears larger and simmered them with some pear juice and 4 big chunks of fresh ginger.  When they were soft I removed the ginger, mashed the pears, and returned the ginger to the pot.  Then I added the lemon juice and the pectin and then, once it was boiling, the syrup and the sugar.  When it was time to can it I removed the ginger.  This made 5 cups and a little bit.

The Cranberry-Rhubarb Compote was easier since I had 1 pound of rhubarb already measured out in the freezer.  (There's that thinking ahead thing - isn't it great when it works?)  That plus 1 and a half bags of cranberries and 2 golden delicious apples made 9 cups of compote.  I now have 21 8-ounce jars and 31 4-ounce jars in the stash.  I might need more, but this is a significant improvement!

My Amazing Neighbor

We were invited to our neighbor's house yesterday to break bread.

This was no ordinary bread.  He had been planting rye grass in his yard and then got to wondering what would happen if he let it grow and harvested it?  Well, he let the whole yard grow and then, recently, harvested it with a scythe.  Then he threshed it.  And winnowed it.  And ground it.  And made bread.

It is (and was) a work of art!  I can't even begin to tell you how good it is.

In return, we brought some of the apricot ginger mulberry jam which not only tasted fabulous on the bread, the mulberry tree is across the street from his house.  Talk about eating local!

Lessons

Remember how I learned how to make sausages a few years back?  I'd purchased the lesson in an auction to benefit our school system.  Well, it was time for me to return the favor.  For our PTO silent auction, I volunteered a canning lesson.  It was purchased by another parent in town and, today, we got together to make a batch of jam.

She'd requested low sugar jam so today was my first experience with the low sugar Sure-Jell.  Let me just say it worked terrifically!  The plan had been strawberry jam (I picked some yesterday up at the pick your own place in preparation) but we ran out so topped off the required 6 cups of fruit with some apricots.  While this was all being prepared (and it went off without a hitch) we discussed boiling water vs. pressure canning, pickles, tomatoes, various recipes, and being creative within the basic rules.

After my student left with her flat of very tasty and wonderfully fragrant strawberry apricot jam, I made a creative batch of my own.  I'd noticed that the mulberry tree around the corner was getting ripe, so I went out at 5:30 am (yes, you read that right) to pick some.  In the rain.  Why, yes, I am crazy.  I got about a pint.  I found that there are fewer cars then, therefore, fewer gawkers.  I found more hanging over my car at the grocery store, an they were larger and sweeter, and I got about a half-pint of those.  These (crushed), plus 5 apricots, and 2 T. minced fresh ginger went into a pot, with 1/3 c. lemon juice, 5.75 cups sugar, and 2 packages of Certo.  I'm not messing around with the Certo anymore.  I'm going to continue to double up until it's gone.

I now have 7.5 cups of Ginger Apricot Mulberry Jam.

Gingered Spaghetti Squash

Last night's dinner was a roasted chicken (and, yes, I'll be making stock and soup sometime - the bones are frozen until I get a chance to do that), a big salad and gingered spaghetti squash.

Since I wasn't really sure what to do with them, the spaghetti squashes have been sitting on the counter, taking up space.  And I haven't really been around much to make dinner, so it seemed like last night was the right time to tackle it and be creative.  I cut it in half and seeded it, and roasted it for about an hour at 350 (cut side down on the baking sheet).  Then I used a fork to make all the little spaghetti strands, and fried them in butter with grated fresh ginger and some salt and pepper.  I allowed a lot of the moisture to cook off.  I think it was a success!

The salad included arugula, mustard greens, and tat soi from the farm and dandelion greens from my yard.  I'd been planting Jerusalem artichokes and found a few dandelions so brought the leaves in for the salad.  My husband very politely commented that it was a "challenging" salad.  Too much sharp and bitter for his taste, I guess.  Just wait until I have Jerusalem artichokes to add!

I now at least have used enough squashes that the rest fit into a large basket instead of just hanging out all over my kitchen counters.  2 butternuts, 2 red kuri, 2 acorn, 1 spaghetti, 1 blue ballet, and that's a cob of popping corn in there, too.