Weekend Canning Round-up: Tomato Sauce, Zucchini Relish and Bread & Butter Pickles

Nine weeks out from my knee surgery, I am up and about almost back to normal in time for autumn canning season.  Tomatoes, basil, squash, apples, ground cherries, quince, persimmons - I just need to lay my hands on some lemons!

STOCK:  I made my best batch of stock yet, using the bag of veggie scraps I store in the freezer, along with the beet green stems from 3 bunches of white beets, stems from a bunch of radishes, and the seeds & skins of the tomato sauce making.  I even threw in the seeds & stems from a couple jalapenos used in salsa - giving the 2 gallons of stock a bit of zing but it's so rich and flavorful that I am going to use it to make some udon noodles this week. 

My newest favorite trick for making stock:  throw in a 1/4 cup of dried porcini mushrooms.

TOMATOES:
Tomatoes have suffered the worst of this chilly growing season -- as a result, nobody has tremendous backyard tomato production.  Even local farmers are finding the fruits are coming late and small.  I had been banking on picking 200# of tomatoes at Mariquita's "U-Pick" weekends this fall - the 150# I picked last fall didn't get me through the spring.  However, Julia said that they might not have a U-Pick event this fall (my fingers are still crossed, okay?). 

I bit the bullet and bought two 12# box of Early Girl tomatoes for $29 each.  I made up a big batch of marinara.  My friend Serafine helped me process the first batch of cooked tomatoes - we used the food mill attachment for the Kitchen Aid.  I think she was impressed by how easy it was to make sauce - she had seen cooking shows where they pour hot water on tomatoes to skin them and then cut out the seeds.  That's a PITA, IMO. 

Two weeks later, I bought two more 12# boxes of tomatoes last Thursday.  I spent all day cooking down the sauce - even pulled out 4 quarts of sauce from the first batch out of the freezer.  I ended up with a mere 9 quart jars of sauce, plus about 2 quarts that went into dinner each weekend - that's just under $10/jar to make my own sauce.  I guess I could go to Berkeley Bowl and buy sauce cheaper - but it doesn't taste at all the same.  After spending $120 on tomatoes (which is more than I spent last year for 150# at 50 cents/pound) - I think I am going to hold out and wait for tomato season to perk up so I can do the U-Pick event.

I didn't use all of the tomatoes for sauce - I also used some in a black quinoa tabouli, and made a quart of killer salsa (which goes great with carrot-flax crackers).  I still have a few in the fridge because those Early Girls are good eating!

YIELD:  
14 qts tomato sauce
1 qt salsa


APPLES:
Last Thursday I also got 20# of Pippin apples ($11 for 10#) from Mariquita - which I made into applesauce & dried apple rings.   The apples were mostly fairly large, a bright green and super crisp and delicious.  I saved about 8 of them for eating, put about 7# into the dehydrator and turned the rest into applesauce.

YIELD:
12 16 oz jars of applesauce
4 8 oz jars of applesauce


SQUASH:
Despite the problems my tomato plants are having in the garden - my squash are doing great.  The cocozelle is still going nuts with three vines that are about a total of 22' in length.  The yellow sunburst squash is more compact and still producing several a week.  The Rond de Nice - which I transplanted to a mini raised bed - has just showed signs that it is going to take off and be the rockstar of autumn.  The fourth zucchini plant that I bought - perished after it was sat upon at my "bon voyage" party on 7/9 - it limped along but transplanting it to another pot just resulted in speeding up the death.

I've been collecting squash all week - the small squash went into zucchini bread & butter pickles, the large squash went into the cuisinart to be shredded for zucchini relish.  I also saved the carrot pulp from the juicer to put into the relish - it made it a really pretty color.

YIELD:
12 8oz jars of zucchini relish
3  4 oz jars of zucchini relish
4 16 oz jars of zucchini bread & butter pickles
2 12 oz jars of zucchini bread & butter pickles
2 8 oz jars of zucchini bread & butter pickles


GROUND CHERRIES:
I'm collecting lots of ground cherries - mostly they are ripe but some are not.  I am experimenting with ways to ripen the green cherries - and have put them cleaned on a tray in the kitchen in the sun.  They might go into a bag soon.

Coming up - a trip to Larissa's house to check on the quince & persimmon trees!

Applesauce!

I love applesauce.  I hate quartering, coring and peeling apples.  I've been doing it since I was 10 years old - and always found that the hand pain was just no fun at all.  This year, I decided to try something easier - I halved the apples and used a melon baller to scoop the cores, cooked up the apples and then put them through the food mill attachment for my Kitchen Aid.

I was amazed and pleased to discover that this worked a lot more easily - with no clogs! - than the tomatoes!  And, in fact, there was way less waste than if I had cleaned the apples by hand!  I ended up with about 2 cups of skins & centers from the apples instead of a whole bowlful of seeds & cores.

Next time - I'm just going to quarter them and leave the seeds/cores and run the cooked apples through the food mill.  Even less work!  Even less waste!

YIELD:

8 - 16 oz jars of applesauce

Applesauce & Ball Python

APPLES got finished off today. I made up 2 gallons of unsweetened applesauce, after putting it through the Foley mill, I canned the first batch as plain unsweetened applesauce and the second with a ton of fresh grated ginger and a scoop of Succanat.

YIELD:
Unsweetened applesauce
5 - 16 oz
2 - 8 oz

Ginger applesauce
4 - 16 oz
2 - 8 oz


PYTHON: This evening, there is an extra heartbeat in my home. After my friend Jon and I walked back from dinner on Piedmont, we rounded the corner from 40th toward past Mama's Royal on Broadway to the sight of a man and woman looking at the sidwalk, or wall, or something. "What kind of snake is that?" the man asked. "It can't be anything bad, maybe a king snake." I looked closer -- "It's a ball python!" I knelt to get a photo and a closer look -- I could feel the heat from the brick wall that attracted this large, beautiful snake but the smell of urine was dreadful (there is a gap between building and retaining wall where patron's of the the corner bar avail themselves). Jon tried to pick up the snake but she turned her head under her body quickly, so I reached down and picked her up just as FOUR Oakland Police cruisers pulled up.

Apparently, the bartender had called the police. I stepped toward them and offered the snake, curled around my left arm, for examination. Did you ever see four cops levitate backward 5 feet? I did.

I decided to bring her home, put her away safely and find her owner on craigslist. I will put a note up on some posts in the neighborhood, too. She clearly is a man's snake - she liked Jon's big hairy arm better than mine, and she gave him her throat to stroke but freaked out when I tried the same thing. The kitties have varying reactions - Dobs is a bit scared, George is curious, and Carmine is completely noninterested. Snake is safely in a large kennel with some tissue and a water dish, a heating pad on medium under one end of the cage. I left a message with the East Bay Vivarium and hope to find her owner soon -- I know I'd be freaking out if I couldn't find my 4.5' long ghost ball python.

Apple pie...

I have a love hate relationship with pie crust. When I try to follow directions, I end up with something I don't like as well as when I follow my instinct. I got everything - marble board, marble rolling pin, shortening, flour, water super cold, cold, cold. The first pie crust was such a bitch to roll out.

The second was better - the last two I let set out of the fridge longer and they were much easier. I think the first one didn't work so great because there were too big patches of shortening resulting in a few gaps in the crust. I didn't want to do double crust or lattice, I just rolled out the leftover pie crust dough and cut out heart shapes, putting 5 hearts on top of each pie.

After mixing the apples with the flour, sugar, spices and lemon, I let them set and then put them in the crust with a slotted spoon, leaving the juice in the pot. None of the pies overboiled and messed up my oven.

I cut up the rest of the pink apples for a batch of apple sauce which is a gorgeous light shade of pink.

YIELD:
4 - 9" apple pies
7 - 16 oz jars of unsweetened pink applesauce

Canned Apple Pie Filling

The test batch of apple pie filling on Wednesday went well but I was shocked at the shrinkage after 20 minutes of hot water bath! I had packed the apples flat to the bottom in layers, but ended up with about 2/3 of a jar of apple, 1/3 of syrup after the bath.

Friday, my dear friend Jonathan came over to visit and he helped to quarter and core the apples which I sliced and left the sliced quarters together so that I could pack them vertically in the jars. I got a lot more apple in the jar this way and am very satisfied with the results.

Jon was delighted with the apples from Lawrence's batch which he said tasted just like the apples from the tree in the backyard of his childhood home. He was rewarded for his efforts with a cache of jams, jellies & chutneys and a promise of apple pies for his birthday/housewarming party on Saturday.

YIELD:
2 - 1 qt Larissa's red flesh apples
5 - 1 qt Lawrence's tart-sweet green apples

Green with Envy

GREEN GAGE PLUM JAM: The Green Gage plums are so GOOD! I finished up the jam and added as little sugar as possible because they were so sweet:

YIELD:
6 - 8 oz jars
9 - 4 oz jars

3 c. puree for sorbet

JUICER: I did test out the new juicer -- I'm not sure it's the one for me. Bits of apricot went flying off into the pulp area from the spinning knife/strainer basket that are still quite juiceable. It did a great job on lemons, though, once I cut off the peel with my knife (didn't try it with peel on).

JAM: I got the apricot-chipotle jam started, but 2 tsp of powdered roasted chipotle pepper didn't add much flavor to 4 cups of fruit, so I put a whole chipotle pepper in the warm fruit over night to soften up and flavor it.

APPLES: The apples I got on Sunday from the lovely Larissa -- same place as the plums -- are all a nice light yellow outside and when I cut them open to try them in the juicer, they are a nice red-pink inside! I have never had red flesh apples before and these are beautiful and delicious.

Zucchini Madness

ZUCCHINI FRITTERS: After perusing several recipes this afternoon, I decided to make up my own zucchini fritter recipe and it came out darned good.

4 c. grated zucchini
1/2 c. grated onion
1/4 c. grated carrot
handful chopped squash blossoms

Usual directions about salting the zucchini and leaving it set in a colander for 10-20 minutes apply. I used my potato ricer to squeeze out the juice right into a bubbling pot of veggies that I later turned into a zucchini-golden chanterelle bisque.

For the batter:

1 c. flour of your choice
2 T. baking powder
2 T. crushed black pepper
2 T. fresh, chopped thyme
2 T. fresh chopped oregano
handful of fresh chopped parsley


Add enough water until it starts to resemble a thick batter instead of a dough, then mix in the zucchini and veggies. Stir in more water until it reaches a consistency that will form nice 1/4 cup globs that you can pat flat on the frying pan with your fingers. Brown on both sides until done. Eat with some delicious Pottsfield Relish* or chutney or fresh salsa. Maybe an almond-lemon pesto.

ZUCCHINI (Golden Chanterelle) BISQUE: I had a monster zuke from the new friend who has opened her yard to my foraging for apricots, green gage plums and apples. Big zukes are good for zucchini bread, fritters and bisque.

If you did not know, a bisque is a soup that uses rice (and potatoes, sometimes) to create a nice creamy, starchy consistency. No dairy, cheese or bizarre thickeners required, I swear.

Cook up 1/4 c. of arborio rice and let sit in the hot water.

Cook over med-high heat until tender:

5 c. zucchini, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
1 c. carrots, chopped
2 c. fingerling potatoes, chopped

In the dutch oven, heat enough water or vegetable broth to cover the veggies (start low and add more once the veggies are done sauteeing). I added 1 packet of dry sauteed, sliced golden chanterelles and about 1 c. of golden chanterelle broth to the pot. Once the water is hot, add the rice, too - what the heck. Also added 1 T crushed black pepper. Don't add any salt yet -- remember, you added miso!

After adding the softened veggies to the pot of broth, I added about 3 T of miso, along with 1/3 c fresh parsley leaves, some fresh oregano and thyme. I let everything cook until it was very soft.

Cool the veggies and broth. Process in blender or food processor. At this point, I pulled out two more 8 oz (before dry sauteeing) baggies of chopped golden chanterelle and let them defrost in the bisque. It tastes pretty good -- I will let it cool and check the seasoning tomorrow when I heat it up. This bisque will be great to freeze in individual portions for lunch!

PLUMS: James pitted most of the plums -- I had to stop him so we'd still have some to snack! Even then, we were plucking plums out of the pot as they warmed up, these are the tastiest plums we've ever had. The plums are resting - skins and meat - I am going to strain some and just make jam out of the meat tomorrow. I think I may pull out plum skins with tongs if it is easy enough, otherwise I will just leave the in.

APPLES: Apple sauce requires a lot more peeling and paring than I think I have time this week. I now have a whole big milk crate of apple from my friend Lawrence -- when I called to check on our morning carpool he said, "I have a surprise for you - you're going to hate me!" So, I have apples from Larissa's house on Sunday - light yellow, and a crate full of tart green beauties (much bigger) from Lawrence's place in Danville. I'm thinking I should make some canned apple pie filling -- he had told me he was going to make a rum raisin apple pie, so I think I should make at least one batch of rum raisin apple pie filling. I can leave on the peels and just slice up the cored apples, cover them with the syrup/batter and hot water process them. Any other ideas on what to do with apples and limited appendages and waking hours?

APRICOTS: While the plum jam is cooking tomorrow, I may focus on the apricots since they'll go off earlier than the apples. I wish the solar dehydrator was done! Hoping my brother will finish it off on Tuesday, then I can do some dried apples!



*Recipe for Pottsfield Relish coming soon. I promise. I just opened my last jar in anticipation of a bumper tomato crop. I swear - pictures are coming soon for everything!