I Didn't Forget

Pi day was last Monday. I did not forget! 

Having generally been frustrated with my usual pie crusts, I decided to make a lemon meringue pie with a pate sucrée crust. This is more common in tarts, but the sweetness of the crust offsets the tartness of the lemon filling and it worked well.

Per usual, I made two pies, as the elderchild in college also needed a pie. (Note to self: 1/4 of the master pate sucrée recipe and 1-1/3 of the lemon filling recipe in the Pilsbury cookbook made one 9" pie and one 8" pie. 1 full meringue recipe.)

Plus, it gave me an opportunity to use the blowtorch. My favorite part!

Year of the Rooster

Today is the Chinese New Year and a friend of ours was hosting a celebratory dinner/housewarming party. I wanted to make something at least remotely traditional and didn't have a lot of time. A quick Google search yielded various cookies and then I found a recipe for Chinese peanut candy. I've seen this stuff in Chinatown, little batons wrapped in plastic, always factory-made. I'd never even thought about making it from scratch. But it was so easy! The peanuts are roasted and then mixed with salt and five spice powder, then put on a baking sheet with sesame seeds and red pepper flakes. Then the sugar is cooked with water and a little vinegar for 16 minutes and poured over the top. When the sugar is poured, the candy is sprinkled with more sesame seeds and, after a few minutes, cut into pieces.

A few notes to self: the amount of the sugar wasn't enough, so while I doubled the recipe I should have tripled the sugar portion AND maybe use a little less of the red pepper flakes. It has a kick.

Another gift I brought for my friend was paté, made from a combination of chicken, duck and turkey livers. I'd saved a bunch of livers from all our various roast birds and ended up with 18 ounces of liver. That, when cooked with the shallots, garlic and duck fat, made two 12-oz loaves of paté. I made the paté a few days ago, using this recipe, and had frozen some of my share for later meals. I think my friend may do the same. Twelve ounces is a LOT of paté.

The other project for today was making turkey stock. I now have all the stocks I need to make Gooduckey soup, which I think I'll do tomorrow. I have a ton of turkey meat, some duck and some goose meat to go with all the stocks. I just want to pick up some more exotic mushrooms and then I'll have everything I need. I didn't can the turkey stock yet; I'll take what I need for the soup and then can the rest.

Revisiting a Recipe

When I first started culinary school we made lovely bread in class that had cheese baked inside it and also sprinkled on top. I tried making it at home and overproofed the rolls; they came out too big and the wrong texture. Since I got Legion, though, I've only been making the same basic bread recipe every week with just minor modifications. In an effort to experiment a little, I decided to try to make that cheese bread again, but using Legion instead of packaged yeast.

What I did was start with 8 ounces of starter and subtracted 4 ounces of flour and 4 ounces of liquid from the recipe. This dough was very soft and sticky and so different from the bread I've been making. I've forgotten what it was like! I probably added a little too much liquid as I did add another ounce of milk while mixing. (Hey, note to self, don't do that!) Regardless, the dough fermented and proofed appropriately and the rolls came out really well. I think that was a reasonable approach to adjusting the formula and, for an experiment, I'm pleased with the results.

Also today I made a half batch of salsa verde. The link to the recipe doesn't work anymore so I had to find it again. Here's the new link. This made two cups of salsa. I'm hoping the farm share has more tomatoes and tomatillos so I can make more salsa in the next few weeks!

Last night for dinner I made up a recipe for ramen: for the broth I combined 1 pint each of duck and chicken stock, 1 pint water, 2 T. red miso paste, one egg, some ginger and garlic scapes, plus 1 T. sesame oil. Separately I cooked some Vietnamese noodles which were similar to ramen noodles (and all I had in the house). When the noodles were done they were served in a bowl with the broth and topped with a hard boiled egg, thinly sliced garlic scape (no scallions handy), blanched carrot slices and zucchini chunks. It was wonderful.

Chocolate + Zucchini

How could I ever NOT make this? It's so tasty, and it has zucchini in it. And the kids love it.

Today I took the larger of the two zucchinis from the farm share and made Chocolate Zucchini Bread, but I put it into muffin form instead of a loaf. The single batch recipe makes 24 muffins. I accidentally forgot to put the topping on before baking them, so pulled them out about halfway through, when I remembered, and sprinkled it on. Seemed to work okay. We had them as a side dish for dinner. They are, after all, a vegetable.

Note to self: 18 minutes at 350. 

Late in the Season

For strawberries, at least.

It's been hard to find a day when the weather was good and we were free and the strawberry fields were open. Today we got two out of three. It rained most of the way up to the farm but since it was supposed to clear up they opened the fields anyway. Good thing, as we didn't have another day to go and the fields should be depleted by the end of the week. We picked just over 11 pounds.

So far, I have made one batch of Strawberry Margarita Jam (note to self, ran out of triple sec and used a wedge of orange instead), one batch of Strawberry Jam and one of Strawberry Lavender Jam. For the latter, I infused the jam as it was boiling with 2 T. of lavender buds in an herb strainer. I have an idea that I can enter regular strawberry jam in the fair and then maybe try the themed entry again with the other strawberry jams - one each of lavender, thyme, and margarita.

I also set aside a quart of strawberries with sugar so I can make strawberry shortcake tonight. That leaves a quart for eating and another quart for...something. Suggestions welcome. I know the 11 year old would like a pie.

A Week's Worth of Projects

Mostly completed today, although I did make granola again the other day. (Note to self: melting the coconut oil is a huge improvement.)

After I brought home some of that starter culture, I thought it might not be terrible to try to maintain it. I renamed it "Legion" as it is both One and Many. I spoke with two of the chefs and got a few more suggestions of how to manage its generally slow growth and so last night after we got back from dinner I made the dough and set it up to ferment overnight. This morning I shaped the loaves, set them to proof, and left. The elderchild had a class at MIT this morning, and then we all went on a bike ride to the dim sum place in the next town. Once we came back home, I baked only one of the loaves. In the middle of the oven. And it was perfection. (At least, on the outside. I haven't sliced it yet.) For the record, it proofed for 7 hours.

The second two loaves waited through that baking time and the hour it took to bake a pie and just came out of the oven as well. I did put them on separate sheets so they wouldn't touch each other while baking and put the smaller of the two on the top for the first 15 minutes. Neither split on the sides. While it neither proves nor disproves the theory that the oven temperature is very uneven, it does suggest that the longer proofing process helped. In the interest of recreating what appears to be a success, here are the stats: 400˚F oven, turn (and swap racks) every 15 minutes, total bake time is 40 minutes.

And, did I mention, there was a pie? Tomorrow is Pi Day. It's almost as good as last year's because it's 3-14-16 which is π rounded to 4 decimal places. 3.1416. I made a blueberry pie. I keep forgetting to do something about the tapioca. Maybe I need to grind it finer or something, as many of the pearls don't get incorporated. Doesn't affect the taste, though.

I did have a plan to also make Meyer Lemon curd. I still have about 8-9 Meyer Lemons downstairs in the fridge. After setting up lamb shanks to simmer for dinner, which involved grinding more dried lemon, I no longer have the energy. Another day.

An All Day Affair

On Thursday, in addition to all the pastries, the Chef had to feed a bread starter culture that one of the other chefs maintains at the school. He very kindly gave me some to use this weekend to make bread. I knew from working with it last weekend as an aside while assisting the dumpling class that it takes a long time to ferment and proof but I had no idea it'd take as long as it did.

I started making the batch of bread dough around 6:30 this morning, when I got up. I had it fermenting by 7:15 or so, and kept an eye on it all day. By 4 pm it was finally ready and probably only because I put the bowl on the radiator for a few hours. I formed the loaves and let them proof. Until 8:30 pm. At which point I baked the loaves at 400˚F for almost an hour. It is possible they could have proofed longer; the sides of two of the three loaves split a bit. Or it could have been where they were placed in the oven. I really am not sure; they were on one baking sheet and the one that didn't split was on another so it's possible it had more to do with location than proofing.

Regardless, the bread is really tasty; my husband and I have already eaten half of one of the loaves, mainly because we couldn't stop ourselves!

So, note-to-self, if I ever do this again I should let it ferment overnight if possible, and then it'd be ready to shape at a more reasonable time of day.

It's That Time of Year Again

Pie season!

Actually, Thanksgiving. But really isn't it all just about the pie?

Today I made 2 pumpkin pies. Since I'm working tomorrow I wanted to take one in and have one ready for our big dinner on Saturday. I already made pumpkin bread last week, I'll start the turkey brining tomorrow night, and make the stuffing and the apple pie on Friday. The rest will get made on Saturday morning. It is all under control.

Here are the pumpkin pies. Instead of evaporated milk I used less sugar and then used a combination of egg nog and sweetened condensed milk. (Note to self, open the can completely, don't make the little triangle holes. It doesn't pour out easily. I always forget.)

Don't Say a Word

Sorry so dark!

Tonight for dinner we had goat cheese and roasted tomato ravioli with a mushroom cream sauce. And the 10 year old ate it.

Yeah, you read that right. It was a sauce containing eggs and mushrooms. We just didn't say so. It was a huge hit, even if the sauce "broke" because the heat was too high. Here's how I made it:

Mushroom Alfredo Sauce

2 T. mushroom powder (I used the dried suillus mushrooms)

1 cup heavy cream

3 eggs, beaten

salt and white pepper to taste

pinch of nutmeg

The eggs, cream and mushroom powder were slowly heated (not slowly enough, note-to-self!) with the salt, pepper and nutmeg until thickened. While it was resting I made the ravioli. We've found that the 10 year old's favorite ravioli has chicken in it but if I can't find those, the goat cheese and tomato ones are a good option. I thought the hotplate was as low as it could go but apparently it was still too hot and the eggs cooked a bit. You can tell by the photo that the texture was off. The taste was perfectly fine. If I wasn't trying to keep the mushroom powder a bit of a secret I might have added more. Or chunks of mushroom. But this was just right for today.

Don't say ANYTHING!

Bacon Jam

Roxanne and Donna and our bacon jam!

A while back, Roxanne asked me if I knew how to can bacon jam. I figured it required a pressure canner, which she did not have. So we came up with a plan to make the jam together and can it as a way for her to learn about pressure canning and for both of us to have bacon jam. I'd wanted to make this for quite a while. There are all sorts of recipes on line for this; here is the one we used:

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds sliced bacon, cut crosswise into 1-inch pieces
• 2 cups finely chopped shallots (from 3 large or 8 small shallots)
• 4 small cloves garlic, chopped (about 1 tablespoon)
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground mustard
• 1/2 cup bourbon
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1/3 cup sherry vinegar
• 1/3 cup packed light-brown sugar

Directions

1. Spread half of bacon in a single layer in a large skillet and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until browned, 20 to 23 minutes. Transfer to paper towels to drain. Remove fat; clean pan. Repeat with remaining bacon, reserving browned bits and 1 tablespoon fat in pan.
2. Add shallots and garlic to pan and cook over medium heat, stirring, until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add chili powder, ginger, and mustard and cook, stirring, 1 minute. Increase heat to high; add bourbon and maple syrup. Bring to a boil, scraping up browned bits. Add vinegar and brown sugar and return to a boil. Add reserved bacon; reduce heat to low. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until liquid reduces to a thick glaze, about 10 minutes.
3. Transfer mixture to a food processor and pulse until it has the consistency of a chunky jam. Refrigerate in an airtight container at least 1 hour and up to 4 weeks.          

However, instead of refrigerating the jam, we put it into jars (note to self, that whole recipe makes only 3 cups of jam!) and pressure canned it at 10 pounds of pressure for 75 minutes. I have one jar, Roxanne has one jar, and she is sending the third to someone on a cooking show to see if he likes it. I'm sure he will, it's really good.

[And, Kristy, if you're reading this, I know you've wanted some of this for a while, too. I can make more.]

Working My Way Through

Today I started to tackle the apples my family picked last week. I made a double batch of apple cake which, unfortunately, suffered from me getting distracted by fixing the hive. There was a little singeing around the edges. Fortunately, it was easily cut off and the rest tasted fine. I might have to make another batch, though, as we ate a fair amount tonight and some is earmarked for work. What I need to remember (Hey! Note to Self!) is that the oven is too hot on the edges and I should not overfill it.

Why did I get distracted by the hive? I went to swap out the feeder and discovered the whole thing was significantly tilted and the legs had moved. My husband had been planning to swap some of the bolts in the legs for carriage bolts with locking washers so they wouldn't slip anymore. Now seemed like a very good time to get that done. I didn't mind being that close to the hive but he was not as familiar with having the bees inches from his nose. He seemed a little tense while he was shifting the hive back and forth as we leveled it. I think he was glad to get through that unscathed. Without his help, there was no way I could have leveled the hive and I'm so appreciative of his plan to fortify the legs of the stand.

Once we got that taken care of, and the cake out of the oven, I made a batch of applesauce - 14 larger apples made 3 quarts of sauce which is smooth (food mill) with white sugar. The last few things I did today were the second batch of grape jelly and then I warmed up the remaining almost 4 cups of grape juice, added some sugar, and then cooled it down so we could drink it with dinner.  For dinner, we grilled the last piece of venison from the freezer.

More Baking Than Canning

In addition to our weekly farm share, sometimes our mason drops by with vegetables from his fabulous garden. Usually zucchini is one of the things he brings (along with celery, green beans, basil, tomatoes, peppers and sometimes eggplant - it's really quite wonderful) and they're generally the very big ones. Each one makes about 3 cups of shredded zucchini, which means they are perfect for chocolate zucchini bread. Since I had 2, the other day I made a double batch - 4 loaves. Do you know why this recipe is so great? Because the 10 year old asks me to make it. Knowing full well there is zucchini in it.

One loaf went to my next door neighbors who had just returned from a month away. Another went to the construction workers in front of our house. They are replacing the water main on our street with a new 3-foot diameter main, complicated by old pipes, traffic, heat, and the fact that the entire neighborhood is mostly ledge. For the past week I've had to either make a date with them to leave my driveway or get my car out really early and leave it out on a side street all day. Anyway, they've been super nice. I brought a loaf of the bread to them, and said they could leave the plate on my steps when they were done. Not TWO MINUTES later, the foreman appeared at my door with an empty plate. I was highly amused.

The other two loaves were for us, and one was finished that day - eaten for both breakfast and dinner. See, it's a vegetable, right? So it's perfectly fine for dinner!

Last night we'd stopped by the local peach farm so I bought a quart of "seconds" as well as a quart of peaches for eating. I made the seconds into a peach cobbler which we ate for dessert. (Note to self, use the 9x13 dish, not the Corningware.) We tried it with the spruce ice cream - not bad, but I think I might like to try it with the wintergreen ice cream instead. If there is any left by the time I get home from work today!

Another Bartering Opportunity

A few months ago, I started a new job.  The really cool thing is that I work with newborn babies and their happy families.  It's a breath of fresh air.  An added bonus is that it is at a hospital closer to home, a place I worked at about 18 years ago as a moonlighter.  Some of the nurses remember me from then.  Others remembered me from when I had my kids there.  And then there are new nurses for me to get to know and we often find out we have things in common.

One nurse raises horses, sheep, and chickens.  She and her family have shown the sheep at the Topsfield Fair for a long time.  I'm quite certain I've seen her at the Fair when we went through the sheep barn.  This year, for sure, I'll be making a point to go find her!  As we were talking recently we ended up discussing my jam-making and arranged a barter.  She brought me a dozen eggs and, when I get strawberries in June, I'll bring her a jar of strawberry jam.  A little delayed gratification for her; I got to enjoy the eggs today!

In our quest to get the perfect soft-boiled egg, today I boiled the water and put the (cold) eggs in.  After 30 seconds I dropped the heat to the lowest setting and let the eggs sit in the hot water for another 5 minutes and 30 seconds.  6 minutes total, and they were, indeed, perfect.  And incredibly tasty.

In other news, I used the yogurt I'd made from the powdered culture to make a second batch and it came out with exactly the right texture.  I left it on the heating pad for about 9 hours, maybe those extra 2 hours helped it firm up a little.  Since I'm keeping a tally of how many batches I can get out of one packet, so far we are at 2.

Busy Sunday

Today I found myself with some time and not a lot of things planned.  It seemed like a good idea to get some more things out of my freezer and also take advantage of the copious amounts of field garlic in the yard.

First off, I made a batch of chicken stock, from which I canned 4 pints of stock.  The rest of the stock went into a batch of chicken soup.  Leeks (farm share, sliced and frozen), carrots and celery were sauteed and then the rest of the stock added.  To this I added some leftover rice and chopped up chicken (also from the freezer).  This simmered for a while.  When I was ready to can it, I put 2 tsp. of orzo into each jar, uncooked, and filled the jars with soup.  The soup was then processed the usual way, 75 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure.  When the jars came out, the orzo was cooked and plump and there was still plenty of liquid in the jars.  We'll see how the texture is when I eat some of it.

Lastly, I picked and chopped enough field garlic from the yard to get a cup.  With this, I made a double batch of field garlic bread.  Note to self:  do not use rapid rise yeast, as the tops of the loaves collapse and I think that's why.

Black Walnuts

After letting the walnuts dry for a month, I cracked them open with a vise today.  Out of 20, only 3 were bad, which is a pretty good yield.  It definitely makes sense to get them directly off the tree when possible.  Note to self:  it also seems to be easier to crack them open if they dry longer.

Once I extracted the nuts from the shells I toasted them in the oven at 200 degrees for about 20 minutes.  I ended up with about 3/4 cup of walnuts.  Last year, I put them into a pear conserve.  Not sure what I should do with them this year...

Thinking Ahead

I love it when I find that my past self thought ahead.  Even if I forgot I did something clever.  Even if it takes months to finish whatever I was thinking of.  It's always such a pleasant surprise, a little gift I sent myself from the past.

Today it took the form of frozen chicken.  Don't laugh.  It doesn't take much to make me happy.

I decided it was a good day to make chicken soup so I pulled out 2 bags of frozen chicken bones and a bag of frozen vegetable scraps.  Then I found a bag of what looked like cubed chicken meat.  I looked all over the bag for bones and didn't see any.  Could it be, I thought, that I actually managed to be prepared?  That I knew that sometime in the future I was going to make chicken soup and would want to have a whole lot of meat all ready to go in?  Apparently, I did.  And it made my afternoon so much easier!

For the stock, I tied all the vegetable scraps into a cheesecloth so I could just fish it out and throw it away.  I put a bay leaf and a few peppercorns in that as well.  I tossed all the chicken bones in and then added enough water to cover it all, probably several gallons, as this was the lobster pot.  This simmered for a few hours.  Then I took out the veggies, strained the stock, and made soup.

The soup started with onion, parsnips, celery and carrots, sautéed, and then I added the chicken cubes and about 4 quarts of stock.  Plus salt, pepper, thyme and parsley.  Mmm.  I just now added egg noodles and that's going to be dinner.

While that is cooking, I'm canning the rest of the stock:  5+1/2 quarts.  4 quart jars and 3 pint jars.  Which are blue.  Has anyone else seen these?  They're a really pretty light blue glass that I think aren't really meant for anything to go into them.  After all, once you put anything yellow, or green, or red into them, it's no longer such a pretty blue color, is it?

Oh, and self, here's another little gift for next time.  Don't try to muscle the pressure canner closed.  You know why.

I Really Ought to be Sleeping

Tonight I'm working the overnight and I need to be taking a nap.  But I figured I had some canning to do, so maybe I should tire myself out first?

The peck of apples made 4.5 quarts of applesauce - smooth with white sugar (note to self:  2.5 cups for the whole peck) which will make the 8 year old very happy.  We opened our last jar a week or so ago.  The food mill didn't give me any trouble today, either, which is nice.

I also roasted those poblano peppers.  Unfortunately a few went bad in the fridge so I didn't have as many as I planned.  But I had about 7 smallish peppers, and 2 red jalapeños, so I roasted those too.  After taking off the skins, I stuffed each poblano pepper with shredded "Mexican mix" cheese and topped them with a little more.  The jalapeños went on the edges of the dish.  I'll bake them for dinner; they'll make a nice little side dish.