Heirloom Tomatoes - U-pick - 50 cents/pound!

Tomato Upick 2009: Mariquita has a great event this Saturday - which, alas, I will not be able to enjoy since I will be otherwise engaged. If you want to get down to Hollister, you can pick tomatoes for 50 cents/pound, bring your own boxes.

Apricot Infused Vodka & Sorbet

Today I finally decided to decant the 4 half-gallon jars of vodka, apricot halves and apricot pits. I was able to totally fill both of the original 1.75 ml vodka bottles and ended up with 1/2 gallon jar of puree. I pulled out the Kitchen Aid food mill again - after first using the chinois (aka "Foley Mill" - it looks like a cone with holes and sits on a wire stand over a bowl or pot). I also let the pulp sit in the jelly bag all evening to drain out as much clear infused vodka as I could.

When I got tired of the mess in the kitchen, I put it all away, pulled out some frozen chunks of very ripe honeydew and threw it into the Cuisinart with 2-3 cups of apricot infused puree that wouldn't fit in the half-gallon jar for a really delicious smoothie/sorbet which I also shared with my neighbors.

YIELD:
3.5 L apricot infused vodka
1/2 gallon jar of vodka infused apricot puree
1 qt apricot-honeydew sorbet

Fermented Pickles

My Mariquita mystery box had a sack of cute little pickling cucumbers, all about 2-3" long - and my friend Matthew contributed two larger cucumbers from his box (amazing - I know three people who don't like cucumbers!). Instead of heating up vinegar and salt water and putting a big half gallon jar in the hot water bath - I decided to do a fermented pickle.

1. Thoroughly clean wide mouth half-gallon jar and vegetables.
2. Pack little cucumbers, thinly sliced ginger, a few of those serrano peppers from the mystery box, some cumin, mustard and dill seed into the jar.
3. Cover with salt water (1-2 Tb sea salt per cup of water).
4. Fill half-pint size jar with salt water, close up tightly with a lid, wash thoroughly and place in mouth of jar to keep veggies submerged.
5. Check veggies every day to ensure they are submerged - if a whitish mold or scum forms, scrape it off. Add more water or salt water (remember - some back up in your half-pint jar!).
6. After 2-4 days - check a pickle - use a clean pair of tongs or fork to reach into the jar rather than your hands. Stop fermentation by putting jar in the fridge - resume by leaving on counter (add more salt water and veggies).

YIELD:

1 half-gallon jar of cucumber-serrano-ginger fermented pickles

Enjoy!

A sad tale of two tomato gardens...

My tomatoes are not looking nearly as good as last year - next year, I am definitely mixing in several bags of manure and more fresh dirt. I threw in the towel and ordered a 20# box of San Marzano tomatoes from Mariquita and brought them home on the back of my motorcycle on Thursday night. I think that Andy, who writes a great blog Ladybug Letter, hasn't been exposed much to folks who use motorcycle for anything other than joy riding because he remarked, "You'll sure make an interesting figure in traffic with all that stuff on the motorcycle!"

Sunday, I seeded all the tomatoes and heated them up enough to put them through the Kitchen Aid food mill attachment. I quickly discovered that the skins clog up the food mill attachment quite quickly and ended up putting through the solid matter 3-4 times before I got all of the good stuff out of the skins - resulting in about 1# of skins and seeds going to compost out of 20# total. After simmering down the sauce in two pots (I really do need one big stockpot) - I put up my tomato sauce.

YIELD:
9 - 16 oz jars of San Marzano tomato sauce
9 - 8 oz jars of San Marzano tomato sauce

Vegan/Gluten-free & Soy-Free Mexican Chocolate Cake

After reading up on some vegan flourless chocolate cakes and applesauce cakes, I mostly adapted from this recipe on Karina's Kitchen blog, I have to offer you this persimmon chocolate cake which is vegan, gluten-free & soy-free, low fat and made without refined sugar but which tastes so rich and delicious, and is so easy to make that I made three of them.

Ron's Birthday Cake
Put dry ingredients into your mixing bowl or food processor cup:

3/4 c. sorghum flour
1/4 c. amaranth flour
3 tablespoons corn starch
1/2 cup organic sucanat
1 Tb dry Ener-G Egg Replacer
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp cinnamon
4 Tb Xocolatl cocoa powder (or regular cocoa powder)

Mix to blend dry ingredients, then addwet ingredients:

1 c persimmon puree
4 oz. melted dark chocolate
2 tablespoons Spectrum Organic Shortening
1/2 c raw agave nectar
2 tsp champagne vinegar
3 tsp vanilla extract
3 tsp coffee extract - or - 1 Tb instant or finely ground coffee
1 tsp almond extract

Blend until smooth, then pour into prepared springform pan. Bake in pre-heated 350F oven till firm - about 30 to 35 minutes, depending on the size of your pan and altitude. Cool on a wire rack. Chill or eat right away with your fingers and call it a "test," before making another one.

I'll be serving this with a persimmon sauce that I made with 1 c. persimmon, 1 c. water, 1 c. sucanat and cooked down to nearly persimmon butter consistency.

Plum gone!

This morning I put the rest of the plum juice into pots and made up more plum jelly - Plum Cinnamon (inspired by Barbara's story of her German cherry-cinnamon jam making friend), and Plum Ginger. And yes, cleaning up the rest of my canning projects and other last minute projects does put a delay on other plans but at least I'll feel good about things. :)

YIELD:

Plum Cinnamon Jelly

• 3 - 12 oz jars
• 5 - 8 oz jars
• 6 - 4 oz jars

Plum Ginger Jelly

• 5 - 12 oz jars
• 2 - 8 oz jars
• 4 - 4 oz jars

In a pickle...

It is traditional, for me, to suffer from adequacy syndrome. That is, biting off more than I can chew. So, I find myself in a pickle - with large quantities of food to preserve and a schedule to leave town tomorrow around 1-2pm for camping by a river in the Trinity Forest. And yet - I am still in the kitchen!

With cucumbers and zucchini from James and my gardens, I put together some bread & butter pickles (yes, I know the cukes are too big around but...) and have a bowl of onions and squash layered with salt and ice to turn into zucchini bread & butter pickles in about an hour.

In that hour, I will make jelly from 16 cups of plum juice, cut up a small honey dew and small watermelon for breakfast and lunch tomorrow, juice 20 lemons, pack all my clothes and put together all the details for campgrounds on my itinerary in a PDF to print at Scott's house.

But seriously - the bread & butter pickles look great. Once the zucchini bread & butter pickles are in the jars, I'll have three types of pickles ready to eat in about 2 weeks.

YIELD:

Cucumber bread & butter pickles

• 8 - 16 oz jars
• 1 - 8 oz jar

Zucchini bread & butter pickles

• 4 - 16 oz jars
• 8 - 8 oz jars

RECIPE:
4lbs cucumbers or zukes
2lbs onions

Slice and layer with salt, cover with ice and let sit at least 90 minutes - then drain, rinse, drain, rinse...

In a pan, 4 cups vinegar, 2-3 cups sugar and spices - mustard seed, cinnamon, fresh ginger or dried, black or white pepper - whatever you think works.

Bring to boiling - then add drained vegetables - bring to boiling again and then put into sterilized jars, wipe the edges of the jars and put on the 2 part lids, process for at least 10 minutes in hot water bath.

I put a serrano chile with the stem end snipped off with scissors in the bottom of each jar but you don't have to - you could put in a dried cayenne pepper!

Let the pickles sit for 2 weeks - then refrigerate to chill and eat. Try not to get caught eating them out of the jar with the refrigerator door open at 3am in your birthday suit. So embarrassing.

Figs, Beans & Tomatoes

GARDEN has been looking quite pathetic. James suggested I just get out the hoe and clear the whole area and start over. I'm determined that the volunteers and scraggly looking plants I got from the farmer's market will make it.

Since he's going out of town, James gave me 11 2' high tomato plants in half gallon pots, started from my seeds, which he had not the space and we worried they would die on the deck in his absence. I also was gifted a dozen small tomato plants in 2-4" pots by Scott's neighbor Devin.

So, as you may imagine, after a weekend of many other friend related tasks - I had a busy day today. I made up some green fig jam, spicy dilly beans, cleaned out James' fridge of perishables and then weeded my garden and found some cucumbers and planted tomatoes. I also harvested some cucumbers from my garden to give to Hastings & Catherine -- I have a bunch of cucumbers from James which I want to turn into bread & butter pickles before I leave on my trip on Tuesday.

SPICY DILLY BEANS - James gave me all the string beans in his garden since he won't be around to pick them or eat them for a week - together we cleared about a pound and a half. We agreed that they would make fine hot dilly beans. This time, they are going to be really spicy. And more garlic. I cut dill flowers and leaves from my garden (yay!) and included 1 habanero and 1 serrano and 2-4 cloves of garlic in each 12 oz jar.

GREEN FIG JAM - The figs that I picked ripe on Monday at Susie & Rich's kept pretty well in the fridge. I learned, however, that picking unripe figs and leaving them on the tray to ripen seems to result only in "hrm, not quite ready" to a giant hairy moldball the next day. So, the bowl of ripe figs in the fridge resulted in 4 cups of mashed, simmered fruit - and a fine light green fig jam.

YIELD:

• 5 - 12 oz jars dilly beans
• 8 - 4 oz jars green fig jam
• 2 - 8 oz jars green fig jam

Plum Habanero Jelly - with a twist!

Since the Plum Serrano came out with a nice bite - I decided to put a twist on the plum habanero this year. So far - I have managed to only rub the bottom of my nose so that's the only part of me affected by habanero tinged fingertips. No bathroom breaks or ear rubbing for a while - eep!

Plum Habanero Jelly with an Orange Twist

• 10 c plum juice
• 1 c water
  
• 7 habanero chiles, seeded and quartered (but not separated to make it easier to yank'em out!)
• 1 tsp decoriated cardamom
  
• 3 Tb finely shaved/microplaned orange zest
• 1 c orange juice (squeezed from same oranges zested)
• 5 c demerara sugar (to taste)
  
• pectin (per instructions)

I'm heating the juice to get the ingredients warmed up and then am going to simmer it down about half a cup and turn off the heat to let it steep. After it cools - check the flavor - I removed the habaneros and let the orange and cardamom steep for half a day because of other errands.

Next, I strained the orange and cardamom - measured 12 cups altogether - added 1/4 c lemon juice and then brought to a slow boil. I added the sugar with pectin, walked away and the pot overboiled so I lost 1.5 c of jelly on the stove. Could be worse, I suppose ... this stuff is yummy!

YIELD:
6 - 8 oz jars plum habanero w/twist of orange & cardamom
15 - 4 oz jars plum habanero w/twist of orange & cardamom

Kitchen Notes

Given all the preserves I made in the past year, and excluding the liberal use of sucanat and molasses in chutneys and other cooking, I'm actually surprised that it took me 13 months to use 50# of unrefined cane sugar.

I'm only using 3 cups of sugar in 8 cups of plum juice for this batch of jelly (my idea of low sugar - compared to equal parts sugar & juice in most recipes). Time to go buy another 50# bag!I'm still mulling over the gustatory logistics of plum jelly for 2009 - I have completed a batch of plum serrano, and here is what I am considering for the rest of the jelly, to be done in batches of 8 cups of juice:

• POP (plain ole plum)
• plum-habanero w/orange peel (chile filtered out, fine peel left in)
• plum lavender (a popular one last year)
• plum cinnamon-clove

Any suggestions or special requests?