T Minus Something

The contracts are signed. The appliances are on order. The cabinets are under construction. We have a plan. 

Starting next week, maybe Monday, maybe later, depending on the permitting process, we demolish the kitchen and two of our three bathrooms. The contractor is taking pity on us and not destroying the only bathroom with a shower until he can get the third bathroom, the original one with a tub and soldered brass pipes, replumbed. Since we're finally going to be able to reach the pipes. Once that is done, we can have a makeshift shower in there until everything else is finished. 

What I'm discovering is that packing up a kitchen while I'm still trying to use it is stressful and hard. I'm trying to empty the fridge and that's not easy either. I also don't have enough boxes. 

Today I used up the eggplant and tomatoes from the farm share to make another batch of caponata. The color is off because I used an heirloom variety that is more yellow than red. But it's still caponata and it still tastes good. It'll make a nice sauce for pasta in a pinch. 

Back to the Favorites

In previous years, when I was flush with tomatoes and eggplant, I made a lot of Roxanne's caponata. Sadly, for the past few years I haven't had the right ingredients at the right time, but this year there have been a lot of eggplant in the farm share. The tomatoes are just starting so it's possible I'll be able to make more but, for today, I was able to make 3.5 pints of caponata. I've missed it! In general, I substitute green bell pepper for the celery and this time I didn't have red wine vinegar so I used cider vinegar which worked just fine. 

Last Batch of the Season

Of caponata. Maybe?

I had three small eggplants, a green pepper, and five tomatoes from the farm which got converted into caponata today. These, plus onion, celery, capers, olives, vinegar, lemon juice and sugar made 8 cups. When I first got the recipe from Roxanne, the amount of vinegar was listed as 1/4 cup. In the book, it says one cup. That seemed like a lot, having subsequently tasted the end result. So today for one batch I only added 1/2 cup, and I tested the pH to make sure it was acidic enough to can. Which it was. I think these 8 jars will be part of my gift stash.

Excavating

Now is the time to dig out the fridge. And it's a good day for it as there is a sidewalk repair going on across the street and it's hard to get in and out of the driveway. Because of the excavator.

With all the accumulated farm share veggies I made a triple batch of eggplant caponata (9 jars) and a full batch of hot pepper sauce (also 9 jars). I had to run to the store to get more jars.

Also today, I baked the bread and cake with honey that I plan to enter in the fair. I have to bring those up tomorrow to Topsfield. I was hoping to do that tonight but my husband and I are going to a lecture downtown and so I made time to drive up there tomorrow. The bread is the same whole wheat bread recipe I've been using with Legion and the cake is the honey lemon almond pound cake I came up with when I was in school. I'll top that with a lemon ganache and black walnuts. Tomorrow morning. Early. I don't think I'll have time to do that tonight. There was a bit of a crisis with the bread, though. The parchment paper I bought recently is *ahem* not of the best quality and STUCK to the bread. What a disaster! When I discovered the problem, the other loaf was in the oven so halfway through the baking process I had to get it off the bad parchment and onto another baking sheet lined with better parchment. This seems to have worked and I have one loaf without any stuck-on parchment to enter. I did go back to Amazon and write a truthful review of the parchment paper. I will never buy that again!

Apple Picking

Whether or not we were going apple picking was undecided up until the time we actually showed up at the orchard and it had stopped raining long enough for people to pick. The weather was being rather unpredictable. Regardless, with a friend in addition to the family, we filled our bag with Honeycrisps, Galas, Fujis and Macs. And then filled our stomachs with cider donuts and cider slushies. Mmm.

After a lunch with my parents, we came home and I started cooking. First I used up all my eggplant and tomatoes by making a double batch of eggplant caponata and a single quart of whole tomatoes (26 small, maybe Jolly, tomatoes).  Then we ate dinner and it was time to make applesauce.

I probably cooked about a half-peck of apples, maybe a little more. It was all the Macintoshes and some of the Galas, I think. The Macintoshes cooked down so well and the Galas didn't that after I ran it all through the food mill, I cooked down the peels again to get the rest of the apple bits out. To the resulting applesauce, just over three quarts, I added about two cups of sugar. These were processed for 20 minutes and then rested for 5 before being removed. I'm sure I will be making more!

Another Use for the Caponata

Yesterday I made a batch of tomato salsa which yielded four pints. I'd hoped to make a batch of caponata yesterday as well but I was just too tired and ran out of time. So I made it this evening. However, not all of it was canned. As I was cooking chicken tortellini for dinner I thought that the caponata would make an excellent sauce. Turns out, I was right! However, as the youngerchild doesn't really like eggplant I also made a quick Alfredo sauce which worked well. What was left of the caponata was canned into two pint sized jars, one 12-oz jar and one 4-oz jar. My gift stash (all the 4-oz jars) is now up to 28 jars.

Restocking

This weekend has thus far been spent making the things we've run out of. Yesterday morning I made a batch of yogurt, half a gallon this time rather than a full gallon, and it was ready when I got home from work. Last night I started a batch of bread. This morning I proofed it and baked it. This afternoon I made eggplant caponata and canned it (three pints plus one 4-oz jar). Later today I'll make granola.

For the bread, I thought I'd try to make a Pullman type loaf using my regular loaf pans and a baking sheet to serve as a cover. They worked okay, but could have been proofed longer so they would have been more square. I think if I'm going to do this on a regular basis I would need a Pullman pan with a lid and use a less dense bread dough.

Also, two days ago the youngerchild and I made a batch of cookies. For the first half, it was just regular chocolate chip cookies with both milk and white chocolate chips. For the second half of the batch, the youngerchild requested to add mini-marshmallows. They don't exactly work as desired; the marshmallow melts and leaves holes in the cookies. I suspected that might happen which is why I didn't add them to the whole batch. I did, however, solve the too-flat problem; my oven hasn't been hot enough so they would spread too much and get very flat.

Day 2 - Yeast Breads

Yesterday we spent the day making all sorts of fabulous breads. The night before, one of my classmates made two yeast starters: biga and poolish. These fermented overnight and in the morning were ready for us to use for our recipes. There were 8 recipes to make and 7 students so those who got done first were able to work on the 8th recipe. We made the following:

4 Grain Bread
Red pepper and Olive Bread
Petit Pain Meture
Cheese Bread (gruyere)
Chestnut Bread
5 Seed Bread (actually, 3 seeds, as the person making it didn't want to add the fennel or anise)
Parsley and Garlic Bread
Benoiton (with raisins and vanilla)

First we made all the doughs and let them rise while we had our lecture. I made the Petit Pain Meture, which is a corn bread that is baked inside cabbage leaves. After I made the bread dough I had to blanch the leaves and keep them in a bowl of ice water until it was time to proof the bread.

When the dough had risen, each recipe was divided up so we could shape each of the breads. This allowed us all an opportunity to practice making different shapes and to work with the different textures. For example, the chestnut bread and the 4 grain bread had less gluten than the others so they felt different. I learned some things about shaping and proofing that I'd been doing incorrectly for years. This is exactly what I wanted to learn! The cabbage bread (Petit Pain Meture) was particularly fun. I lined most of the baking rings with blanched cabbage leaves and then everyone popped their rolls into the leaves. We had 3 rolls that didn't get cabbage and you could definitely tell the difference. The cabbage keeps the bread moist and changes the flavor.

While things were proofing we had another part of our lecture and then it was time to start baking. Pans were going in and out of the oven constantly. Nothing is timed, either. Chef Delphin just knows. He kept one eye on the clock and never seemed worried that something would get too toasty. He has a calming presence in what could be a rather stressful environment.

The cheese bread was the most popular - as soon as it came out of the oven we all grabbed a roll and ate them while they were still hot. They smelled wonderful and tasted pretty awesome, too!

Ultimately, almost every bread got tasted throughout the day; when they came out of the oven we would slice one loaf and everyone could try some. The Red Pepper and Olive bread was also popular. In addition to bringing home my portion, I brought home some of the leftover slices (after eating some for dinner with a mushroom pate courtesy of the savory students) as I had an idea to make croutons with the pepper-olive bread but I don't think there will be any left.

Our evening lecture was all about chocolate - how it's farmed, how it's made, how to choose it - followed by a chocolate tasting. What a fabulous day!

Roxanne's Fabulous Caponata

When I dropped my canning entries off at the fair, I met a fellow canner, Roxanne.  She was entering tons of unusually flavored things:  gingerbread jam, limoncello jam, and an eggplant caponata, just to name a few.  I got to talking with her about it because I'd been looking for a way to can eggplant and she very generously shared her recipe.

Well, her caponata won first place in its division and seeing that inspired me to try to make it.  I won't reprint the recipe here, since it's not mine, but it has tomatoes, eggplant, olives, celery, onion, and capers in it.  I added green bell pepper since I have a lot of those, too.  It made 7 cups and a little bit.

Congratulations to Roxanne, and that wasn't the only ribbon I saw with her name on it!

Solo Cheese Making

Did I mention I was going to cook a lot this weekend?

Although, I'm not sure making cheese is properly classified as "cooking." We took a trip out to Eastleigh Farm today to get more milk as I wanted to make more cheese. This weekend Mrs. Claus was visiting the farm, and they were giving hay rides and tours of the milking barn. The owner very kindly showed us how they milk the cows, pointed out the differences between their set up and other dairy farms we have seen, and even took us to the cooling tanks so we could see where the milk ends up before it gets bottled. So, after a lunch of ice cream, we had our tour and hayride, then returned to chat with Mrs. Claus and pick up the milk. We even got a free T-shirt!

Almost as soon as I got home I started on the cheese. This time I decided to make 2 cheeses, one with olives and one plain, so I heated up both gallons of milk in 2 pots. I added 4/5 of a capful of the enzyme to each gallon and let them sit for almost a hour, just like before. I had 2 strainers with cheesecloth set up and, once the cheese was mostly drained, I mixed a small can of chopped olives into one of them. I am hoping that by adding less curd to the same sized mold the cheese might be a little softer. They are now in the fridge setting up. I will have to check on them more frequently to drain the whey off the plate, since I didn't press as much out as last time.