Recipicity

One of my favorite recipes of the summer!  It’s not a canning recipe, though; this one belongs in the fridge, and shouldn’t be kept more than 6-8 weeks.

Serrano (Cilantro) Salsa Verde – in fridge

1 T. peanut oil
1 sm onion, diced
10 serrano chiles, stems removed & cut in half lengthwise
3 cloves garlic
½ c. cilantro
¾ c. water
1 t. white vinegar
¼ t. cumin
½ t. salt

Heat oil in a skillet and fry onion, serranos and garlic.  Stir frequently, cooking about 10 minutes until chiles blister.

Place in blender with the rest of the ingredients and blend until smooth.  Store in refrigerator, about a month.

I love tomato soup, but the stuff in a can just doesn’t do it for me anymore, and I had no idea where to start with homemade. How would it not just taste like spaghetti sauce?

I found a trio of recipes in Mollie Katzen’s Enchanted Broccoli Forest, and made two of them this weekend.

#1: bay, celery seed, cloves, thickened w/ flour
#2: rosemary, basil, w/ cream cheese
#3: dill, basil and thyme, thickened with potato

I made #1 and #3 first, and then a triple batch of the winner: #3. It’s a little spicy but not at all reminscent of pasta sauce, and I immediately craved grilled cheese sandwiches when I tasted it.

Melt 3T butter or olive oil in a cast iron Dutch oven. Add 3c. onion, quartered and thinly sliced. Add 4 bay leaves and spices: 1/2 T salt, 1/2 T celery seed, and 2t cloves. Watch the heat w/ the cast iron, so that the onions don’t burn. Whisk in 5T flour and cook for a few minutes. This keeps the soup from tasting like flour.

Open three 28-oz cans of whole tomatoes, pour off a bit of liquid, and puree with a stick blender. Add to Dutch oven, mix in, and add 3T honey. Stir well to remove any bits of onion from the bottom. Let cook for about an hour.

zucchini, tomato, gouda

Ingredients:
Pizza Dough (1 triple batch)

Toppings:
Good-quality Balsamic vinegar
Extra-virgin olive oil
Approximately 20 cherry tomatoes, halved
3-4 cloves of garlic (minced or roasted to form a paste)
Parmigiano-Reggiano or Asiago cheese, grated
Salt and pepper to taste

Start with the pizza dough recipe on this site.  My preference these days is for mixing the dough in the Kitchen Aid, letting the dough hook slap it around for about 5-7 minutes, until it’s nice and smooth and thready when you pull it.  Drizzle a bit of olive oil on top and run the spatula around the bowl to coat the dough with oil.  Cover and let rise in a warm place for a few hours, or store in the fridge to use within a week.

spinach, banana pepper, feta

Preheat oven to 450-475 and take dough out of the fridge at least 20 minutes before you plan to bake the flatbread.  If you’d like, you can toss a couple cloves of garlic (unpeeled).  Really, just toss them in on your pizza stone, or on a pan, or just throw the whole head in on the shelf.

Knead dough for a few minutes in a light dusting of flour. Shape into a ball, press lightly, and let the dough rest for about 10 minutes. You’ll skip this step the first time, I know I did.  But you’ll find that the dough resists being rolled out until it’s rested; it’ll keep shrinking back into a little ball, and you’ll curse and probably punch it.  So just go make a cocktail or something and let it have a rest. In the meantime, you can sprinkle a sheet pan with coarse cornmeal.

You can also prep your toppings! You can use whatever you have on hand, really.  Except… I suggest choosing just a few fresh, flavorful ingredients.  Don’t use grocery store tomatoes here, or canned mushrooms, or pre-grated parmesan cheese (those are all about equally heinous in my book).  Less is better. Better is better.  If it’s winter, pick something that travels well (like onions or shallots) or is well-preserved (like artichoke hearts or roasted red peppers) for your primary topping.  We make a lot of apple-gouda and walnut-gorgonzola pizzas in the winter. Red onion-mozzarella, or cheddar-jalapeno, or garlic-shallot-asiago if you want to keep it simple.

Ok, so you have your drink and you have a superfreakinghot oven, and you have a lovely ball of dough.  Roll it out to the size of your sheet pan (about 1/4″ thick, ideally), and carefully lay it on the pan or your pizza peel.

Drizzle or brush dough with olive oil.  Sprinkle your toppings (tomatoes, balsamic, garlic, salt and pepper) around the dough evenly, and grate a thin layer of hard cheese on top.  Bake until golden brown, slide onto a board and slice it up!  You’re aiming for just enough cheese so that it caramelizes in the oven.

jalapeno, veggie sausage, mozzarella

Since tomatillos are still coming in my garden, I might just get this posted in time for someone else to try it.  I’ve been so delayed in publishing other recipes!  This is one of the recipes that I cobbled together from a few others; it’s nothing original, but it is tasty!!

Though it’s not a canning recipe, it keeps quite well in the fridge.

Use as salsa with chips, spoon a bit on eggs or on top of chili, or stir into rice.  It has a great fresh, green flavor, but not too hot (you can adjust the heat upwards if you like.

3 jalapenos, stemmed and seeded (red, if you have them)
1 # tomatillos, husked and boiled in salted water for 10 minutes
1 small yellow onion, roughly chopped
1 clove garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
1/2 t. salt
1/4 c. fresh cilantro (ESSENTIAL that it’s fresh)

Put all ingredients in blender or food processor until evenly chopped. Heat 2T. oil in a saucepan and cook over medium-high heat, stirring CONSTANTLY for 5-7 minutes.  Let cool, pour in jar and store in the refrigerator (up to 6 weeks or so. We’re going on 1 mo with no changes in flavor or color yet).

I’ve been putting up a ton of produce this summer (mostly fruit, including tomatoes), and a set of those recipes is forthcoming. But this is what I’m eating right now: veggie soup, made fresh, that tastes like it took hours to make.  The base is a concentrated stock that I made a couple weekends ago while canning, from a recipe in the River Cottage Preserves Handbook.  It’s incredibly simple, and also helps to use up the tail end of some forgotten veggies in your pantry/fridge!

This is eminently alterable, depending on availability of veg and your preferences; just pay attention to the ratio of veg to salt (about 4:1).  I like to put all the rough-chopped veg into a bowl and weigh it, then add salt accordingly.  The salt is useful in bringing out the flavors, and probably plays a bit of a role in preserving the mixture, too.

2-3 leeks (white part)
1 fennel bulb
3-4 carrots, peeled & cut in chunks
2-3 celery stalks, cut in chunks
handful of sun-dried tomatoes, soaked
2-3 shallots, peeled
1 small red onion, roughly chopped
3-4 garlic cloves, peeled
handful of parsley
about a tablespoon of fresh rosemary or cilantro

Throw in the food processor and blend.  Stop when you can still individual pieces of veggies; you don’t want to make mush out of this. The color is awful, and you want to have recognizable bits of veg in your soup.

Pack it all away in a jar in the fridge, and use at the ratio of about 1 t. to 1 c. water.  I sometimes drop it in a hot pan w/ a little evoo and cook it for just a couple minutes before adding boiling water.  Add fresh veggies and white beans, or rice or pasta, or whatever you like!

I’ve never been one to think, “hey, I should make my own ketchup,” but we’ve got a whole lot of tomatoes right now. A whole lot. And at this point, I’m ready to try just about anything to have this amazing fresh summer tomato flavor come February.

I was pretty happy with this recipe, and had it all nicely packed away until I started thinking about acidity and why it was that the recipe didn’t require pressure canning. So I looked back at the recipe and realized I’d forgotten the vinegar!! So back into the pot it went.

From Ball Blue Book

4 qts. chopped, peeled, and cored tomatoes
1 c. chopped onion
1/2 c. chopped sweet red pepper
1 1/2 t. celery seed
1 t. whole allspice
1 t. mustard seed
1 c. sugar
1 T. salt
1 T. paprika
1 1/2 c. vinegar

Combine tomatoes,onions and peppers in large saucepot, and cook until tender. Puree in food processor.
Cook rapidly until thick & reduced by half.

Tie whole spices in bag. Add spice bag, sugar, salt, paprika to tomato mixture.
Simmer 25 mins, stirring frequently.

Add vinegar, and simmer until thick, stirring to prevent sticking.

Remove spice bag and ladle hot ketchup into hot jars, leaving 1/4″ headspace.

Place canning lids & rings, and process 10 mins in a boiling water canner.

Pretty much taken from here, though I didn’t measure the liquid after, and I think I was a little over.  Or else I just boiled it too long after adding the pectin.  Because I haz mint mojito ice cream sauce / cocktail syrup, not jelly.

As Adapted:
3/4 C Water
1/2 C Light Rum
One handful each of mint, lemon balm, and lemongrass (fresh)
3 1/2 c. Sugar
Juice of 6 limes
2 T lemon Juice
1 Pouch Pectin

Combine 3/4 c. water with 1/2 c. rum in a large saucepan, add mint, bring to a boil and then turn the heat off. Cover and let steep about a half hour. Strain through cheesecloth or coffee filter.   Measure out 1 C of the liquid, return to stove. Add rum, sugar, lemon and lime juice, and bring to a boil.  Add pectin, bring back to the boil for a minute.

Leave 1/4″ headspace, process 10 minutes.

just a little taste.

Over the last month, I’ve probably made enough jam to take care of holiday gifts for my whole family and friends, plus still keep some for us. I can get a little obsessed with flavors, especially this time of the year when everything at the market is so GORGEOUS!!!

All ingredients in these jams etc. came either from our backyard garden or from the Urbana Market at the Square.

So here’s the rundown.  Recipes to follow in a separate post (or 10), once I find all my notes and de-sticky them enough to read :)

Jams & Jellies:

1. Mint Mojito Jelly

2. Strawberry-Mint Jelly

3. Black Raspberry Jam w/ Vanilla

4. Orange-Vanilla Blueberry Jam

5. Black Raspberry Mint Jam

6. Ginger Mint Rhubarb Jam

7. Lemon-Ginger Rhubarb Jam

8. Strawberry Lime Jam w/ Shiso

9. Strawberry-Balsamic Jam

10. Gooseberry Jam

Other Canning:

11. Chai Syrup – my attempt to replicate the chai concentrate from my beloved soy two-pump chai light base coffee Frappuccinos :)

12. Bread and Butter Pickles – just a fridge batch, but I have plans for this guy.

13. Dill Pickles