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Posts Tagged ‘Recipe’

Bread and Butter Pickles

Posted in Food, Recipes, tagged , , , , , , on 27 Aug 2013| 2 Comments »

Simple LivingWhen my Earthbox garden produced more cucumbers than I could consume, I naturally looked into pickling. As a child, I never cared for sweet pickles, but then again, the only sweet pickles I had came in the form of hot dog relish, so it wasn’t a good introduction. Then, earlier this year, I saw “bread and butter” pickles on the store shelf. Curious, I tried some.

Now that’s a good, sweet pickle. I set about devising a recipe.

“Bread and Butter” pickles got their name in during the Great Depression. Cucumbers are easy to grow, and very fruitful, so every home had some in the garden. A common Depression lunch during the growing season was bread, butter, and cucumbers. When the plants produced more fruit than could be used immediately, they pickled them and ate them through the cold months–with their bread and butter.

Slicing the cucumbers lengthwise, they’re easy to lay out onto a slice of bread. Take two thick slices of whole wheat bread, slather with some nice, salted butter, add a couple layers of these pickles, and tuck in.

Yum!

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Summer Zucchini Salad

Posted in Food, Recipes, tagged , , , , , , , on 22 Jul 2013| 1 Comment »

Summer Zucchini SaladOnce my zucchini plants started pumping out 16+oz fruit, I had to think of something to do with them. Fast.

I came across a recipe that turned zucchini into tagliatelle (wide, flat noodles) by julienning them on a mandoline, and thought, “Eureka!” But no, at least not that recipe, which called for nearly 2 cups of fresh mint.

Some zucchini with your mint, sir?

So, I kept the technique, but changed the recipe, and hit upon something really nice. Clean, lively flavors, and goes great with a glass of pinot grigio or sauv-blanc. Note: if you don’t have a mandoline, you can use a box grater (see bottom of recipe). (more…)

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Conserve-ation

Posted in Food, Gardening, Recipes, tagged , , , , , , , on 11 Sep 2012| 1 Comment »

What do you do with forty pounds of plums? You experiment.

In an attempt to capitalize on this year’s bumper crop of Italian prune plums, I have been trying several new recipes, like the clafouti I tried a week or so ago. Last night, I tried a couple of conserve recipes, but I’m only going to share one of them.

Italian plums are tricky when it comes to judging ripeness. Even the ones that fall from the tree still have green-colored flesh under the dark, dusty purple skins, but occasionally one goes yellow on the inside, but those are not especially sweet. However, if you cook these little guys, they make up for their tart edge with an especially “plummy” taste, so I’ll forgive them. Besides, a little bite never hurt.

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Artisan-style Bread Overnight

Posted in Food, Recipes, tagged , , , , , , on 05 Jul 2012| Leave a Comment »

This weekend, treat yourself to homemade artisanal bread.

I put this recipe online a few days ago, and want to give it a bit more visibility because it is, in my humble opinion, the bread recipe.

It’s easy: Mix, let sit, shape, let sit, bake.

This is my version of the Bittman-Lahey version as posted by my friends over on CheapSeatEats. It’s a great recipe, especially if (like me) you’re a bit challenged in the Baking column. My main problems with baking bread have always been

  • That they never rose enough
  • I could never knead them down into that really glutenous, almost rubbery feel of the great artisanal breads
  • The crusts were never as chewy as I wanted, but always crisp and hard

This recipe solves all of those problems. The rise is guaranteed, the “tooth” is glutenous heaven, and the crust is like the old Italian loaves of my youth: firm, but chewy.

It’s an overnight rise, which actually makes it much easier. And it’s a great “master” recipe, that you can vary and tailor to your specific tastes.

Check it out, and make some this weekend!

k

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Pozole, or Mexico’s Phở

Posted in Food, Recipes, tagged , , , , , on 02 Jul 2012| Leave a Comment »

I spent the weekend working on my recipe for pozole, a traditional stew from Mexico, and it’s been impossible not to see this wonderful dish as Mexico’s answer to the Vietnamese phở. It’s a hearty stock, chock full of meat and a starch, served with a variety of garnishes that the diner can add to personal taste. And I suspect, as with phở, devotees will spend their lives searching for that perfect bowl of pozole.

Take a good stock—my preference is turkey stock—and add seared, grill-marked hunks of pork for a long, slow simmer. Shred the pork, add a nice mole sauce to the mix, and fill it out with a batch of hominy. This is your base, and it’s a good one; good enough to have all on its own.

But wait! There’s more!

You can split up the work on this dish, breaking it up over two days. On Day One, you take the long-duration tasks and prepare the stock and the meat, even prepare the mole. On Day Two, you put it all together, giving you time to spend with guests (and look like a master chef!)

Hang on! It gets better!

Now give everyone a steaming bowl of hearty goodness and let them add, well, just about anything they want: slices of buttery avocado, crumbled bits of salty queso fresco, chopped herbs like cilantro or oregano, whisper-thin shreds of green cabbage or romaine, crisp-fried tortilla strips. Squeeze a wedge of lime over the whole thing and dig in.

Heaven!

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