Messy But Hopefully Worth It

Today I tackled all those peppers.  I had about 3 pounds of green and red bell peppers and 5 poblanos, mostly from the farm but a few were from my roof garden.  I didn't want to make a relish again, so I decided I might try roasting and pickling them.

The roasting part is easy enough, but the peeling and slicing is rather messy.  I kept the red, green and poblanos in separate bowls in an attempt to make nice layered arrangements with the red and green peppers.  The poblanos fit into a half-pint jar with some of the onions and garlic from the brine.  I tried to get all the others into my remaining 3 half-pint jars, and that just didn't work.  I had to switch to pint jars and I ended up with 2 pints of somewhat jumbled red and green peppers.  Oh, well!  This was from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, page 317.

I Found Enough Energy

And made 6.5 quarts of applesauce, using 1.5 pecks of apples, 2 cups of white sugar and 1 cup brown.  That's enough applesauce to fill my larger pot almost up to the brim, and the smaller one to just overflowing.  (I know this because I started with the smaller one.  You get the idea.)

This uses up all the apples I've stockpiled.  Still to go:  tomatoes (when I finally have an entire day, not sure when that's going to be), about 3 pounds of peppers with which I'm still not sure what I'll do, beets, 5 heads of cabbage, that pumpkin that needs to be roasted, regular cranberry sauce (no rush on that one) and I have another quart of tomatillos but no cilantro, and a few poblanos that need to be roasted (maybe with the pumpkin?).  So much to do....

Hot Pepper Madness!

Props go to my brother-in-law who procured a recipe for me for hot banana pepper sauce.  He gave it to me a few years ago with a jar of said sauce, which was hot and thick and wonderful on meats.  Yesterday in the farm share I got to pick a whole quart of hot peppers and, when I saw there were banana peppers, got to thinking about this recipe.  However, since I didn't have the 36-50 peppers the recipe called for or, for that matter, enough mustard (it calls for a quart!), I scaled a bit, and changed a few things.

Hot Pepper Sauce

4 banana peppers, 3 habaneros and 10 chilis. Yum.

Roughly 10 banana peppers (see photo, I improvised)

4/5 cup French's mustard

4/5 cup white vinegar

1 + 1/5 cups sugar

3/5 tsp. kosher salt

1/4 cup flour

1/4 cup cold water

Slice off the tops of the peppers and then grind them, seeds and all.  (I found this was easier if I added some of the vinegar to the blender.) Put this mixture in a pot with the mustard, vinegar, sugar and salt.  Bring to a boil.  Mix the flour and water in a bowl and add to the sauce, stirring.  Cook for 5 minutes until the sauce thickens.  Process for 15-20 minutes in water bath canner.  Let rest for 5 minutes before removing from the canner.  (This made about 3.5 cups.)

I also made a cranberry habanero chutney using this recipe.  I doubled the recipe and in the place of the habanero jelly I added 4 minced habaneros (seeds removed) and in place of the jalapeños I added 1 green bell pepper.  This made 7 cups of chutney, a good addition to my gift stash.

I am planning on doing more today but now I'm tired and all my pots need washing, so I think I'm going to rest a bit and see how I feel.  I have to work until 2 am tonight so I might want to conserve my energy!

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!

Arugula and Bresaola Quiche

My parents were coming for brunch and I improvised a quiche for the occasion...

Arugula and Bresaola Quiche

1 leek, sliced thinly

2 cups arugula, chopped finely

2 tsp. balsamic vinegar

about an ounce of mocetta bresaola (pancetta or cooked bacon will do), cut into bite sized pieces

3 eggs

1 cup half and half

shredded cheese, about 1 cup

salt, pepper and nutmeg

First I made a pie crust for a single-crust pie, tossed my pie weights in and baked it for about 20 minutes at 400 degrees.  While that was baking, I sautéed the leeks in a little oil, then added the arugula and stirred it until the arugula was wilted.  I took it off the heat, added the vinegar and the bresaola and tossed.  In a bowl I beat the eggs, added the half and half, cheese, and spices.  When the pie crust was ready, I put the leek-arugula-bresaola mixture in and poured the egg mixture over the top.  This was baked at 375 degrees for 35 minutes and it was terrific!

Squeeeee!

Seedless Red Raspberry Jam

"Other" Grape Jelly

Rose Hip Jelly in the "Other Jelly" category

Happy Donna!

Salsa Verde

Yesterday's farm share was full of lovely autumn things:  a sugar pumpkin, an acorn squash, tomatoes, parsnips, turnips, beets, arugula, peppers, potatoes, garlic, tomatillos, hot peppers, green beans, parsley, cilantro, and a few things I didn't even pick up (bok choy, flowers, eggplant, mustard greens, and so on).  I'm getting behind on my canning projects so took a few minutes this morning to make that tomatillo salsa again, but since I used a green chili pepper I can officially call it salsa verde.

Since I only had a pound of tomatillos I cut the recipe in half and now have 2.5 cups of salsa in the canner.  I used the immersion blender to make it smooth after it simmered for 10 minutes.

Still in the works:  I have about 5 gallons of tomatoes frozen, waiting to be sauce.  I have slightly less than a peck of apples in the fridge, also waiting to be sauce.  I think I have enough beets to make a batch of pickled beets.  I still haven't heard from the farm where I get my Elberta peaches and I'm beginning to think I won't.  That's OK.  At some point I'll roast that pumpkin and save it for pie.  I have eggplants and peppers and greens from my mason and I have peppers from my own plants to harvest and do something with.  What I'm lacking right now is time.

There are 3 more weeks in the share, and hopefully then I'll finally catch up!