Carciofi for Christmas?

The marketeer called me this week to tell me she and her husband, the lawyer, had bags of artichokes, and would I want to come help them "put up" the 'chokes? Certo! Especially since I'd never had a chance to do artichokes before. Off I went, jars and St. Helena olive oil in hand.

We did two batches: one brined and the other in olive oil. Both types will be ready in about 3 weeks. It was incredibly easy - most of the time spent was in preparing the artichokes. The lawyer - who grew up in artichoke farmland - showed me how to trim them properly so they aren't tough or bitter.

Next time I want to do some whole baby artichokes - anyone have any recipes they like?

I think it actually worked!

This Thanksgiving, we celebrated the life of my late, lamented uncle. Now, he was an odd man - after his death, 5 (FIVE) guillotines were found in his house. One (which I particularly remember) was dedicated to chopping the heads off asparagus; particularly effective over dinners when - as kids - we visited him. The gravlax went over well - of course, these are my relatives, but two of them lived in Norway for several years, so I'm feeling confident. :) The salmon was firm, deep red, and quite tasty when served with capers, onions, some lemon and dill.

And the turkey (all 18 lbs) was quite delicious - the consensus was that it was better than last year (wow!). I think that might have had something to do with the fact that this year it wasn't a Butterball, but rather a "natural" turkey that didn't have hormones/ antibiotics injected like the usual Butterball behemoth. While it wasn't a heritage turkey, the dark meat sure did taste good, and it was done in 3 hours flat. Yum yum YUM! The only thing I missed was a decent pecan pie - I'm definitely making one next year.

Tomorrow we'll eat leftovers and joke amongst ourselves about the previous night's stories. In the meantime, happy Thanksgiving one and all!

Thanksgiving

Made the "Judy Bird" this afternoon: a dry-brined recipe from Judy Rogers of the Zuni Cafe in SF. I shouldn't say I made the bird, just started the process of brining and will cook it on Thursday (all 18 pounds). It came out beautifully last year so I'm looking forward to my second time around.

And I tried something new today - I prepared gravlax. I've always wanted to make things like cured meats, and gravlax is basically cured salmon. I rubbed equal amounts of sugar and salt into some nice salmon fillets, covered them in dill, wrapped them in plastic wrap, and put them in the fridge where they'll sit quietly for the next 3 days, upon which they'll turn into something resembling smoked salmon without the smoking. A classic Scandinavian or North Baltic dish, which I'll be serving prior to my family's Thanksgiving feast in Florida. :)

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you Americans, wherever you are!

Time for dem pears again, hon

I finally tasted the creme de cassis, and darn if it isn't good! Got that confirmed by a couple of "tasters" of the kir royales that I made, who agreed that not only was it good, but it was doing a good job of covering up some rather miserable bubbly someone had given us as a freebie (thankfully, that was after we'd had some good champagne). Note to self: always use decent sparkling wine!

Since the kitchen I have is considerably smaller than the doctor's in Sonoma, and not very conducive to hot water canning, I decided to continue with the alcohol-based preserving. The marketeer gave me some beautiful pears she and the lawyer had picked last weekend, so I mixed some Red Bartletts and Boscs in a lovely, big Italian jar I bought recently, and added vanilla, sugar, and about 5 cups of vodka. Since it needs to sit for at least 3 months (preferrably 4), it'll probably be New Year's before we can try the resulting liquor. Just when we'll need it!

Here figgy figgy!

Figs ruled Labor Day weekend: both the preserved and the fresh variety. We started by making fig chutney, a rich concoction updated from a Victorian cookbook. Amazing when served with a triple cream like St. Andre or maybe a really runny Camembert!

I'd found a recipe for grilled figs on the NY Times Bitten blog, and the doctor and I decided we should try 'em Saturday evening. I picked the grape leaves, tied the little bundles up with a rosemary skewer, and boy were they a thing of beauty! We ate them with chicken and some sausage, and relished the creamy goat cheese with the fig, drizzling some of the leftover fig chutney "sauce" over the top of the grilled figs. Yum!

The garden is looking fabulous, and we also spent time working on peaches and tomatoes, returning again to the fabulous 1948 tomato preserve recipe we'd tried last year. The doctor modified the peach conserve recipe and used white peaches and lemon. Quite happy to know there will be plenty more tomatoes before the season is out, so we can keep trying more recipes, including putting up some salsa.

Peachy

Given the popularity of my peach marmalade with vanilla and cognac, I felt compelled yesterday to do a big batch of peach preserves. Armed with almost 15 pounds of peaches, I launched into preserving while everyone else was drinking frosty drinks in the summer Sonoma heat. Once again, the peach marmalade recipe I have proved fussy, and it's clear I'll have to re-trench and experiment with it to make sure I don't end up with caramelized peaches (as I did yesterday). While waiting for the peach marmalade to cook down, I indulged in a hilarious Wii game, Samba de Amigo, much to the amusement of the doctor and the gamer.

I did manage to succeed with peaches in brandy (ready in about a month), which resulted in a bit of leftover simple syrup that we put over ice cream and happily gobbled up.

Peaches - I'll have to consult with the marketeer to get 'em right the next time....

Ready in a month

Experimenting today - found new Italian canning jars (single lid variety from Bormioli, very Euro), and decided to try two new recipes: creme de cassis and eggplants in olive oil (from my "bible").

As usual, new recipes and new methods mean experimentation, and for the eggplant recipe I used a lovely, fruity Sciabica olive oil which I found at the farmer's market yesterday.

The creme de cassis is a huge experiment - couldn't find black currants so I used red and added a few blackberries for color.

We'll see how they both turn out in a month or so!

Is it Kir time?

I'm thinking of creme de cassis right now - any local (NoCal) sources for currants?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/dining/22currant.html

Fruity drinks at the farmette

While at the Sonoma farmette yesterday, I pulled out the frozen watermelon and plum juices yesterday to whip up a batch of drinks. The watermelon was light and frothy - especially with the addition of some lime juice and mint, freshly picked from the garden. For the plum, a dark rich purple jammy juice, I added a bit of basil that I'd gathered, and it really highlighted the sweet-sour of the juice. (Next time I might add a bit of seltzer or more ice to lighten the plum as some found it a bit too thick.)

We also had occasion to pick some more cucumbers as well as some green beens (tiny haricots verts ready to eat raw!) as well as eggplant and zucchini which the doctor grilled up to accompany the sausages and brats the marketeer had sourced from her North Beach butcher. The marketeer also brought along a few of her creations for the doctor and the gamer to try: cherries in wine and the apricot conserves. Being the marketeer, her preserves were beautifully labeled, unlike my scrawls using any indelible marker on hand. :) Time to up my game!

We had some fabulous wine and great conversation, enjoying the visiting sailor's tales of the South Pacific, especially his trip from Easter Island to Pitcairn. (I briefly wondered what food preserving might be like on that incredibly remote and isolated island!)

The marketeer and market goods

I had the great good fortune of spending some time yesterday with my friend the marketeer who has been on a canning roll in the last week: white peaches, apricots, strawberries, and (as of last night) cherries. Inspiration for some of this comes from the Eugenia Bone book, Well-Preserved, as well as Mes Confitures, by Christine Ferber. (Both of which were featured in the recent NY Times article; thanks to my incredibly generous friend, I now have copies of my own!) I love the focus on savory in the Bone book, and as the marketeer noted, the Ferber book has more of a preserved whole fruit approach which resembles that of my own preserving bible, the Oded Schwartz book, Preserving. I wonder if this is a more European approach to preserving?

We prepared cherries in wine last night, and while they'll have to sit for a little bit before we use them, I'm looking forward to sharing the bounty with the doctor once she returns from the wilds of Wisconsin.

In the meantime, I'm on the search for good fruit in alcohol recipes, so if anyone has ideas for recipes or sources for purchasing copious amounts of eau de vie (we will have a LOT of pears!), please post them here!

Has preserving gone "mainstream"?

From the NY Times today: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/dining/27cann.html

Preserving Time in a Bottle (or a Jar)

By JULIA MOSKIN

Published: May 27, 2009

The recent revival of canning fits neatly into the modern renaissance of handcrafted food, heirloom agriculture, and using food in its season.

Recipe request

As I've received a few requests for recipes, I'll post the lemon curd recipe below. This is a modified version of the recipe found in my preserving "bible," Preserving by Oded Schwartz.

Ingredients

• grated rind and juice of 6 lemons
• 1 1/2 cups (375 g) granulated sugar (while this is what the recipe calls for, I usually cut the sugar by almost half)
  
• 3/4 cup (150 g) butter, softened
• 5 eggs, beaten
• (I add about a teaspoon of cardamom)

1. Place the lemon rind and juice in a small pan with the sugar. Heat gently, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Add the butter and stir until melted.
2. Transfer the mixture to a double boiler or a bowl placed over a pan of simmering water. Strain in the eggs and cook over barely simmering water, stirring often, for 25-40 minutes, until it is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. If you're going to add cardamom, do so toward the end of the cooking period, about 5 minutes before the mixture is ready. Do not let the mixture boil or it will curdle. (More importantly, be really careful with the eggs as you don't want them to cook too soon.)
3. Pour the curd into warm, sterilized jars, and seal. (Finish them off with a hot water bath or if you're going to eat/use the curd within a week, you can place the jars in the fridge.)

If you want a completely smooth curd with no zest, you may also want to strain the mixture before you put it into the double boiler.

Citrus on my mind

Ah, lemon curd! The Meyer lemons have been begging to be used, and so the doctor and I decided to do dueling recipes: I from my preserving bible, and she from a home recipe. We both cut the sugar considerably, and created lovely (and very different) curds - mine was eggier and more lemony, and hers was lighter and more delicate. Needless to add, both batches were gone within the week, and I now have "orders" to produce more for various friends and family.

I'd like to try adding a bit of cardamom the next time for a more complex curd. But first, I have orange marmalade (with a touch of coriander!) on the brain, and will be tackling both this Sunday, when the kitchen will transform into the church of curd and citrus....

The first annual urban canning dinner

As we gathered on a late winter's evening in Sonoma, each bearing a recipe that would include one or more of the preserved goods from the garage larder, the kitchen quickly filled with requests for various pots, bowls, implements, and glasses of champagne. The doctor fired up the grill for the tenderloin, and the assembly line in the kitchen got underway, with the lawyer, the marketeer, the real German and his Serbo-Croatian wife, the doctor and I all chopping, sitrring, and cooking our various recipes, while the gamer and the boys chatted, and the dogs happily cleaned up anything which dropped on the floor. My pot o'greens was relegated to the burner on the outside grill as the stove was a beehive of meatballs and pots a'stewing. (That gave the doctor the brilliant idea to use the outdoor burner for the hot water bath once the preserving season starts - during the heat of last summer we found ourselves preserving in bathing suits in the kitchen, so this should help minimize the heat.)



We had a wildly successful dinner, one which seemed effortless even with all the cooks in the kitchen and some confusion about the proper way to form meatballs (luckily the real German came to the rescue!). It was planned and yet spontaneous, and full of deliciously surprising combinations. Here's what we indulged in:

• A lovely ripened Camembert accompanied by homemade fig chutney
• An antipasto of Melanzane and mozzarella: little, lightly fried balls of eggplant with a "surprise" middle of mozzarella (straight from Marcella Hazan)
• Rao's famous meatballs (beef, pork, and veal) accompanied by homemade marinara
• Spinach, orange, almond & onion salad with home-grown oranges and a light vinaigrette
• The afore-mentioned tenderloin (there must *always* be a grilled item on the doctor's menu)
• Wilted spicy Indian greens (chard and curry) with sides of homemade green tomato chutney
• Bread fresh from the Ferry Plaza farmers' market in San Francisco
• Clafoutis with homemade strawberry and pear preserves and vanilla ice cream
• Homemade Poire William with a twist: we'd used Aquavit instead of eau de vie and put in a vanilla stick - the liqueur was sweet, incredibly smooth and will be delicious over ice cream or over poached fruit
• Lots of Sonoma-local wine

And so with cries of "we must have another!" we ended our evening with resolve to indulge again. And indulge we must, as we still have *boatloads* of preserves to get through.