Cranberry Sauce

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday to cook for, whether we have 4 or 14 at the table.  I generally start preparing things a week in advance.  First off, the dishes get divided up.  My mother always makes the sweet potatoes.  My sister in law makes the green dish and, for the second year in a row, a chess pie.  I make the turkey and the stuffing, the mashed potatoes, gravy, and squash, a pumpkin pie and an apple pie, and pumpkin bread.  Most of that can be made in advance which is good because I only have one oven.  Today I made the cranberry sauce and canned it.

It's super easy - 2 cups sugar, 2 cups water, 2 bags cranberries.  Boil for 10 minutes or so.  Can for 15 minutes in the canner and let it rest for 5 before taking it out.  This made 3 pints of sauce.  I'm not a fan of orange zest or any other flavors in my cranberry sauce so I don't get all fancy with it.

Over the weekend I'll start getting everything else all set.  I'm working long days in the early part of next week so the baking will have to be after dinner!

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.

Tomato Sauce, Plain and Not

Over the summer and early fall I accumulated 5 gallons of tomatoes which I stored in the freezer, waiting to be sauce.  I needed a whole day, or at least about 6 hours of uninterrupted time, when I could process them.  Today I had that time.  I brought out all 5 gallons and boiled them until they were soft.  Then I ran everything through the food mill.  And clogged the food mill, more than once.  Very messy, but not as bad as the year when the entire thing deconstructed and landed on the dining room floor.  I work in the kitchen now because the dining room has a rug.  It was a good plan.  Tomato juice actually squirted up to a foot from the mill through the little holes in the screen!

Once the food mill step was completed, I left the juice on the stove and let it boil down until slightly less than half its volume.  That's a LONG time.  But I've found that if I'm not patient, my tomato sauce is watery and then it isn't as good for stews and things.  Ultimately I had 8 pints of sauce.  They were canned in the water bath, so each pint had a tablespoon of lemon juice added.  Four of the pints are plain and four have Persian spices:  lime powder, cumin and coriander.  I got a fair amount of work done while this was happening.  Hooray for multitasking!

These were processed for 35 minutes and then they sat in the hot water for another 5.  Now they're out and cooling.  I haven't had tomato sauce for a few years, and it's nice to have a little in my pantry again.

In other news, I started making yogurt again.  I had a few failures over the summer most likely due to the milk not cooling down enough before I added my starter.  This time it's perfect.  At some point I might try skyr but for now this will do!

FanGirl

Last night my husband and I went to Hank Shaw's book tour dinner at Craigie on Main in Cambridge.  We had a wonderful dinner which was a tasting menu of various dishes all made with duck...something.  Fish poached in duck fat, duck croquettes, duck consomme, the list went on and on.  Unfortunately for me, several of the dishes had juniper* in the seasoning but the chef was very creative in coming up with something I could eat that was similar.  My husband got the full experience, I was a bit envious!  The food was amazing, creative, unusual; it incorporated wild mushrooms, chickweed garnishes, autumn olives - all sorts of things a forager appreciates!  Hank said he wanted to show how high-brow wild and foraged foods could be and he couldn't be more right.  He and the chef came up with dishes that were sublime.

(*I am allergic to juniper.  Yes, I know.  It's really strange.  And not usually an issue.)

Meeting Hank was fun.  I have to admit, I'm a fangirl.  At least I didn't "squeee!" when he arrived at our table.  He signed both my cookbooks (Duck, Duck, Goose and Hunt, Gather, Cook) and we chatted a bit about foraging for mushrooms and some of his recipes.  I got up the courage at the end of the night to give him my blog address, written, rather appropriately, on my old fishing license that I found in my purse.

So, Hank, if you're reading this, thank you for being an inspiration in the kitchen and the outdoors, for some really terrific recipes that I've enjoyed making and eating, and for making wild food accessible to so many people.  It was truly a pleasure to meet you.

Dealing with the Perishables First

Since I still had food left over from last weeks' share and came home with even more, I am working through the perishable food as quickly as possible.  Last night we ate the lettuce, some of the arugula, radishes and peppers, plus some of the brussels sprouts.  I also made that tomatillo salsa yesterday, using up the tomatillos, cilantro, and chili peppers.  Today I made another batch of eggplant caponata and another batch of that hot pepper sauce.  It seems today's batch was even hotter than the last.  I used fewer chilis and more banana peppers, and there was one super huge jalapeño in there as well.  I think there was some cross pollination of the banana peppers and the habaneros at the farm, as the banana peppers were orange and red and occasionally more habanero shaped.  So I guess it's fitting that both habaneros and banana peppers were used in this sauce.

I also needed to clean up the garden today as it's supposed to freeze tonight.  That consists of draining all the hoses and shutting off the water, emptying the rain barrel, and getting all the plants off the roof.  The miniature Meyer lemon tree came inside (but far away from Mocha's constant nibbling) and the rest of the veggie plants got tossed over the side of the house.  It is so satisfying to dump them off the roof!

Last Farm Share of the Season

It's always a little sad to say goodbye to the farm for the winter.

Today was the last pick up and I came home with lots of food.  A half-peck of apples, a jar of honey, popcorn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, watermelon radishes (so pretty!), peppers, bok choy, arugula, onions, daikon radish, celeriac, kuri squash, brussels sprouts (five STALKS), tomatillos, hot peppers, cilantro, parsley, sage, and lettuce.  My sister-in-law took the cabbage, butternut squash, and garlic in addition to her half of the other things.  We decided I would keep all the tomatillos and hot peppers to make more salsa verde and more of that hot pepper sauce and then just give her half. I tackled the salsa verde first.  By combining the tomatillos I had last week with today's I had 3 pounds which allowed me to scale the recipe up for a change.  I ended up with 3 pints of salsa; 2 jars will go to Steph and I'll keep one.

For dinner we had pan seared salmon (cooked over sautéed cabbage, allowing me to use up another head of cabbage, I have 3 left), plus brussels sprouts, and a nice salad with the lettuce, arugula, bell pepper, watermelon radish, and dried cranberries.

Thanks to everyone over at the Food Project for another great year!  See you in June!

Living Dangerously?

Puffballs before cleaning

Puffballs after cleaning 

Last week at the stables I saw shaggy mane mushrooms.  Nothing else looks like them.  Many had already turned inky with age, so I was certain they were correct.  All week I debated if I should try again with the wild mushrooms.  My last 2 attempts both resulted in tingly lips and I felt like that was the end of it.  But still I wondered, especially if I could eat wild mushrooms in restaurants.  I decided to go for it.

Yesterday I was at the stables and picked a bunch of small shaggy manes - I tried to get the smallest, youngest ones I could because they don't last long and I wanted to test one out ahead of time before I used them in something.  While I was wandering around the back field I found a bunch of other mushrooms:  alcohol inky caps, which I did not pick, and gem studded puffballs, which I did.

Last night I tested the shaggy mane by boiling it and eating a few pieces.  No tingling.  This morning I peeled and sautéed one of the puffballs and sampled it.  Also no tingling.  Encouraged, I thought about making a meatless stroganoff with the two mushrooms together.  After getting the whole thing to a simmer, my husband scoffed at it and said, "It is nothing like stroganoff.  Why don't you just call it soup?"  Soup it is.

Shaggy Manes, starting to turn inky

Shaggy Mane and Puffball Soup

Puffball mushrooms, peeled and cubed

1 onion, sliced thinly

2 T. butter

2 T. flour

1 quart vegetable stock
Diced shaggy mane mushrooms

parsley

winter savory

thyme

salt and pepper

Sauté the onions and the puffball mushrooms in butter, add flour and continue to cook for a minute.  Add the stock and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally, until thickened.  Add the shaggy manes and spices, simmer.

Pretty tasty!