Jul 22
2010

Along about yesterday, my good buddy Kristina came over with a big pile of white peaches from her yard. Kristina lives in Fallbrook, and she and her family have this fabulous yard full of citrus trees, avocados, and stone fruit. Every once in a while, she asks me if I want some. Do I ever?!

These were perfect, wonderful, sweet, juicy, just-slightly-bruised peaches. There was no way we were going to get to them all while they were still fresh. So I saved out the ones in the very best shape, and then I made this with the ones that needed attention immediately:

Fallbrook Sunrise Jam

  • 5 cups mixed white peach and black plum puree (mostly white peaches, with two plums. I didn’t bother to skin them, just pitted them and tossed them in the food processor. It’s OK to have some chunks — it doesn’t have to be perfectly smooth.)
  • 5 Tbsp. lime juice
  • 5 c. sugar (I like the organic evaporated cane juice stuff)
  • A sprinkle of cinnamon and a dash of cloves

Prepare six half-pint jars — wash them and bring to a boil in your canner. Prepare the lids and bands. Your yield should be somewhere between four and six cups, depending on how soft you like your jam, so prep six jars to be on the safe side.

Bring the puree and lime juice to a boil in a wide shallow saucepan, stirring to keep it from sticking. Add the sugar. Return to a boil and boil hard, stirring frequently until the gel stage is reached. (I like mine a little soft, and bear in mind that since there is no added pectin to this recipe, it will probably be a soft jam anyway.) Skim off the foam if there is any.

Ladle hot jam into hot jars, run a spatula around the jar to help remove air bubbles, wipe the rims, put on the lids and bands, and put the jars back in the canner. Bring to a boil, and water-bath process for 10 minutes. Remove the lid of the canner, wait five minutes, and then pull the jars out and set them on a heat-safe surface. I normally put mine on a towel. Leave ‘em alone until morning, then check the seals on your jars. Reprocess or refrigerate any that didn’t seal correctly. Otherwise, they should keep on your shelf just fine. Remember to label and date them! Enjoy!

Fallbrook Sunrise Jam

Tags: , , ,



Trackback  •  Posted in Canning and Preserving, Improv, Recipes  


Jul 22
2010

I mentioned that my garden exploded. What I didn’t mention was the ugly batch of blossom-end rot that came along with it. /: It seems that especially the hybrid tomatoes are bearing so heavily that they can’t get enough calcium, even with supplementing and with plenty of water.

My nursery guy suggested that I thin out the fruits. Since I was going to whack back the vines anyway so I could, y’know, walk around the beds, I thought this was a good idea. But what to do with the tomatoes? I hated the thought of composting them all, especially since there were still a lot of good ones.

Then I remembered: fried green tomatoes. Typically, green tomatoes are the ones picked at the end of the season, when it’s too cold for the tomatoes to finish ripening. But it seemed to me that there was no reason I couldn’t use tomatoes that were just picked early …

Nearly 11 pounds of green tomatoes

Nearly 11 pounds of green tomatoes later ...

(Those are strawberries in the back, not tomatoes. I got about a pound of those, too.)

So yeah. That’s a large pile of green tomatoes. I looked at them, thought for about five minutes, and then did what any normal Italian-Californian would do. I made green tomato salsa. And then I made spaghetti sauce.

Green Tomato Spaghetti Sauce

This is more of a method rather than a recipe-recipe. Here’s what you do.

Chop up an onion. A big one, if you have a lot of tomatoes, and a small one if you don’t. Chop up as much garlic as you like — I used five very large cloves, because I had a heck of a lot of tomatoes. Saute those both in some olive oil until translucent.

While those are sauteing, chop up your green tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes don’t need to be chopped. You can chop them pretty roughly because you’re going to puree the sauce later. I did mine in quarters for the small tomatoes and in eighths for the large ones.

Add the green tomatoes to the pot along with a cup of water to help them cook down, and a generous splash of wine. I used red, but white would be fine. Add whatever spaghetti-sauce spices you prefer. You can use a mix. I don’t generally have one in the house, but mix mine each time. I like mine made out of basil, oregano, parsley, thyme, rosemary, garlic powder, onion powder, fennel, black pepper, and red pepper. Go light on the rosemary and red pepper or they’ll try to take over your sauce.

You’ll want to simmer this mixture for about half an hour, until the tomatoes are softened. If you’ve got a “boat motor” — an immersion blender — this next part is easy. Use the boat motor to puree the sauce until it’s pretty smooth. Add more water or wine if you need to. If you don’t have a boat motor, use a food processor or a blender, but be careful, because the sauce will be very hot.

At this point, taste-test the sauce. It will be a bit more sour than a typical red sauce. I wanted to round it out a bit, so I added a handful of brown sugar. Let the sauce simmer until the flavors are nice and melded. I let mine go about an hour and a half. I’ll usually toss some sausage in my saucepot, too, and let it cook while the sauce is cooking. It flavors the sauce and cooks up nicely. I used some chicken parmesan sausage, but pretty much any Italian-style sausage would be good. Of course, if you’re a veggie, you can leave the sausage out, or use vegetarian sausage.

You can serve this over pasta just like any other spaghetti sauce. I think it would make a really neat pizza sauce, but I haven’t had time to try it. I didn’t can the sauce — the leftovers are in the freezer. My big batch of tomatoes made three and a half pints of salsa and three quarts of tomato sauce.

Not bad for salvaging a garden emergency! (:

Tags: , , , ,



Trackback  •  Posted in Canning and Preserving, Improv, Recipes  


Jul 22
2010

For reals. (: This is what happens when you take a three-and-a-half-day vacation.

Good grief, I have a forest out here!

Good grief, I have a forest out here!

It's a jungle out here.

I take that back. It's a jungle out here.

Walk around the beds? Who would want to do a silly thing like that?

Walk around the beds? Who would want to do a silly thing like that?

You gotta watch out for those tomatoes. Give 'em an inch ...

You gotta watch out for those tomatoes. Give 'em an inch ...

Scarlet runner bean flowers

Scarlet runner bean flowers. I found my first pods on it yesterday. I saw a hummingbird visiting them, too.

Lemon cucumbers. We're getting a ton of them.

Lemon cucumbers. We're getting a ton of them. I picked five today. The bees love them!

These stayed on the vine just long enough to get their photo taken.

These stayed on the vine just long enough to get their photo taken.

Fairytale eggplants. I picked 'em and made oven-fried eggplant. Mmm.

Fairytale eggplants. I picked 'em and made oven-fried eggplant. Mmm.

These were supposed to be purple tomatillos? We'll see.

These were supposed to be purple tomatillos? We'll see. If you press the husk gently, you can feel a tiny marble-sized fruit inside.

Zucchini. Need more be said?

Zucchini! Sadly, they are not doing so well with this grey weather. I'm having problems with powdery mildew. /:

Melon #1

This is Melon #1. I swear, they'll end up with names before they're done growing. This one's about the size of a softball.

Melon #2

And this is melon #2. It's the bigger one. About the size of a bocce ball.

So with all that growth, there was lots of picking that needed doing. And lots of pruning. We’ll get to that next post …

Tags: ,



Trackback  •  Posted in Garden  


Jul 22
2010

Hi all! Just want to let you know that Auntie Pasto will be on a week-and-a-half hiatus, due to ComicCon and other life stuff that involves the dreaded (ha) “no internet access”. Should return the first week in August. Thanks for your patience!

Tags:



Trackback  •  Posted in Uncategorized  


Jul 13
2010

I feel so proud to be able to post this, finally. (: This is what I harvested today!

July 13 Harvest Photo 2010

Check it out! Four fairytale eggplants, aren’t they cute? One white eggplant, six black pearl cherry tomatoes, three zucchini, a couple of pattypan squash, a “sweet pepper Mohawk!”*, a lemon cucumber (actually two, but I found the second one later this evening) a few remaining blueberries from the first flush, and ten whopping ounces of strawberries — a mix of Pretty in Red, Pretty in Pink, and Seascape. That’s over half a pound! In one day! All it needed was the sun to come back out …

I’m so pleased. (: I’ll admit that I’m not the world’s most experienced gardener. This is my first year growing everything in the veggie dish except for the cherry tomatoes. It’s my second year growing strawberries and blueberries. Cherry tomatoes … well, I’ve tried, but this is the first time that I’ve ever had them look so good and be so promising for lots of ‘matoes. I’m excited.

Uncle Pasto is of the opinion that if things continue this way, we will end up with too much food. Heh. Maybe. But it’s tasty. If it comes down to it, I will just have to beg people to take miniature eggplants off my hands. (:

So I took everything in the veggie bowl except for the cucumber and the cherry tomatoes (we ate the cherry tomatoes at dinner), added a few fingerling potatoes that I harvested a few days ago, and the zephyr squash, and cut them all into roughly equal pieces or left them whole. I tossed them with olive oil, salt and pepper, and put them on the grill while Uncle Pasto was cooking up some BBQ chicken — this is in preparation for Wednesday when we will be really busy. I let them cook, and pulled them off as they became ready, nice and grilled and soft-but-not-too-soft, yum. Then I chopped them into bite-sized pieces and tossed them all together. I’d been thinking about adding some more olive oil and balsamic, but I might actually not. They’re really good just as they are — the flavors are so pure.

I owe you folks pictures of my garden as it is now — you won’t believe how much it’s grown. Or maybe you will, if you grow your own food. I spotted my first green bean today, along with lots of other microbeans, and the tomatoes are slowly starting to turn, one at a time. It’s just a real pleasure to be out there every day, seeing what has started to ripen or come ready. (:

*this gets said much like this.

Tags: ,



Trackback  •  Posted in Garden  


Jul 13
2010

It would probably make more sense to do my CSA posts on the day when I actually get the box. Unfortunately, that day is also RPG night, so I’m usually pretty busy, and then don’t get to it over the weekend. Sorry ’bout that!

Here’s the CSA box for this week:

July 8, 2010 CSA

Kristina got the beets and the collards, and two of the boxes of blackberries. We got ‘most everything else, though we shared it.

What we’ve done with it so far: peaches, blackberries, and oranges are being eaten raw. No need to mess with good fruit, right?

The spring mix got turned into a simple salad with some lemon cucumbers, onion, and tomato from the yard. The salad dressing was a throw-together of cottage cheese, yogurt, lime juice, onion, garlic, paprika, salt and pepper in the mini food processor. Deeelicious. We had the salad with some hot dogs that Uncle Pasto smoked on the grill.

Speaking of the smoked hot dogs, the leftovers went for lunches and got sliced and tossed into a homemade mac ‘n cheese tonight. The broccoli went with the mac ‘n cheese. Not in, since we were putting hot dogs in it instead. We like Alton Brown’s recipe for roasted broccoli, and it makes a great side dish here because you can mix the breadcrumbs in with the mac ‘n cheese if you made a stovetop mac instead of a baked mac.

Tomorrow is going to be a pork-and-cabbage stirfry and a carrot salad, both from Beyond the Great Wall. Though I will be tinkering with the carrot salad a touch … And the next time I have a chance to rave about cookbooks, that’s the one on the top of the list.

The zephyr squash got made into a grilled veggie salad … but I’ll be talking about that in the next post.

Tags:



Trackback  •  Posted in CSA Adventures  


Jul 8
2010

With all that food coming from the CSA, we’re starting to have a bounty of goodness over here. Which is great — but things need to be eaten or otherwise dealt with. So this is what I did this evening:

Bread-and-Butter Zucchini

These are bread-and-butter zucchini pickles from Linda Ziedrich‘s The Joy of Pickling. This is only the second recipe I’ve tried out of her book. I’m hoping I did this right, because I haven’t done a lot of pickles before. I quartered the recipe because I didn’t have all that much zucchini (and you can see a little yellow squash snuck in there too), but I only halved the brine, because I wasn’t sure I’d have enough if I didn’t. It might be too much. I don’t know. But the jars all pinged shut, so tomorrow morning I’ll check the seals and see if they’re good, and then stash them in the back pantry for three weeks.

I’ll let you know how they turn out then. (:

Oh. You’re looking at me funny about that “back pantry” thing. Well, here’s the deal — my kitchen doesn’t really have a proper pantry. We have some IKEA shelves that handle most of the things that I use all the time, and then we’ve converted part of the linen closet as pantry storage as well. That’s the “back pantry”. It mostly holds things like vinegar, honey, and oil. It’s also a good dark place to stash foods that need to be kept in the dark, which won’t work with the front pantry.

Tags: ,



Trackback  •  Posted in Canning and Preserving  


Jul 8
2010

This week’s box contained the following:

June 30 CSA

Kristina got the chard and beets and some of the rest of the other food.

We used the oranges, carrots, and radishes as part of the 4th of July party — orange wedges and a veggie tray that also included cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, and cucumber. Veggie dip was a variant on the one I usually make — mix pesto with whipped cream cheese. I had cilantro in the fridge, so I made cilantro pesto.

I also used the kale for the party over the weekend, but it didn’t get eaten then because of the weirdness with the timing of the food. So we’ve been eating kale slaw (kale, raisins, pecans, and a buttermilk-mustard dressing) over the past few days. Kale is really sturdy — there’s essentially no difference from the first day I made the slaw until now. It’s not a bad way to eat kale, either.

The yellow squash got used as part of a pasta salad tonight. Pasta, ham, basil pesto, sauteed yellow squash, cherry tomatoes, green onions from the yard, and olives. Mmm.

The cabbage is slated for okonomiyaki tomorrow. (: MMMMM, I love that stuff. I should post the recipe for you guys when I get the chance. That reminds me … I need to work up a gluten-free flour mix for that …

Tags:



Trackback  •  Posted in CSA Adventures  


Jul 8
2010

General verdict: tasty!

Specific verdict: Uncle Pasto and I need a bit more learning on how to control a smoker fire. No no no — nothing bad happened. We were using the charcoal from the bottom of the bag, and it seems the smaller pieces burn hotter than the larger ones. We had a hard time getting the fire under 275F, which meant that the brisket cooked too quickly and was still a bit chewy when it was done.

How do you troubleshoot chewy brisket? You apply moist heat. Which meant that the leftovers (’cause like I said, it was tasty, just chewy) got turned into caldillo. I have no pictures for you today, but here’s the general deal. This is a great way to use up leftovers.

Smoked Brisket Caldillo

  • leftover brisket (other large roast leftovers work well for this too)
  • canned tomatoes (I used 32 oz — use whatever seems to be the right amount to make stew with)
  • leftover salsa
  • 2-3 Anaheim chiles, roasted, peeled, and chopped
  • 1 large onion, chopped
  • 3-5 cloves garlic, as you like, minced
  • cumin and Mexican oregano to taste
  • olive oil
  • salt and pepper to taste

Optionally, you can addc ooked beans (though that’s not very Texan) and veggies to bulk it out. I opted for red beans and pattypan squash, as we’re long on squash from the garden.

Saute the onion in the olive oil. Add the garlic and chiles and cook lightly. Chop the brisket, removing as much fat as you can, and add to the pot. Add tomatoes, salsa, and spices, and simmer until the brisket is nice and tender. Add the beans and vegetables if desired, and simmer until the beans have soaked up the flavor of the stew and the veggies are tender.

Serve with chunks of ripe avocado, or sour cream, and any leftover homemade biscuits you might have. (:

Tags: , , ,



Trackback  •  Posted in Improv, Recipes  


Jul 3
2010

Today’s post is brought to you by the inimitable W. Park Kerr and Norma Kerr, the founders of the El Paso Chile Company, and their book, The El Paso Chile Company Texas Border Cookbook, is a book I cannot live without.

Now, it’s Texan, and the portions reflect the same. If you prefer portion sizes more like people in, say, California or New England, just eyeball the number of servings the recipe tells you, double it, and that’s what it actually serves, most of the time.

I’m strongly considering petitioning them to permit me to do a cook-through-and-review of their book, that’s how well I like it … well, that and I’ve already made something like half of the recipes in it, so it’d be easy, except for acquiring some of the game in the Tame Game chapter. Hee.

But anyway! On to the book itself. Let me rave about the soups-and-stews chapter, which produces such deliciousness as El Paso Gazpacho with Garlic-Shrimp Salad; Cream of Green Chile Soup; Caldo Tlapeno; Ham, Corn, and Red Pepper Chowder; Pueblo-Style Lamb and Green Chile Stew, and Caldillo of Smoked Brisket with Green Chiles.

My goodness, I’ve made everything in the soup chapter except for the chicken broth-with-shrimp soup and the menudo. And they’ve all been fabulous.

Speaking of the Caldillo of Smoked Brisket. The Kerrs have a fantastic indoor-brisket recipe, which we’ve made many many times. In fact, we’re making brisket this weekend for the 4th, and that’s what prompted this post. But we’re not doing the indoor brisket. We’re doing their outdoor brisket on our new charcoal-gas hybrid grill. MMMM, smoke. Their fabulous brisket recipe can also be used to make their brisket-and-veggies salad, called salpícon, and OH, that is good too, with chipotle chiles and crunchy radishes.

I use the Kerr’s recipe to make red enchilada sauce the way it was intended, no tomatoes at all. Pure chiles. And it is so good, and so fiery hot, with a long, lingering burn. I don’t serve them with the fried egg as they suggest, because I already find their cheese version very dense. But oh so good.

It being a Texas cookbook, there’s an entire chapter devoted to chili. I’ve made three of the five recipes, and they’re all wonderful, but I’m particularly fond of the chile con carne verde.

I love the Kerrs’ frijoles de olla recipe, and it’s pretty much my go-to beans recipe. Veggie types will want to leave the bacon out … but bacon and beans are just meant to go together, as far as I can tell. The blueberry cornbread is excellent. The masa biscuits are to die for, and best served with homemade jam, warm and delicious right out of the oven. And of course, it includes a recipe for sopaipillas, which I’ll admit, I haven’t gotten to yet, but it’s a thing-I-must-do as far as I’m concerned.

I absolutely recommend this book without reservation. Get yourself a copy and try out some of the delicious things in it! And I’ll be reporting on our smoked brisket, sometime after the 4th of July. (;

Tags: , ,



Trackback  •  Posted in Books