Pumpkin Time

There is probably no fruit or vegetable as evocative of harvest time as the pumpkin.  (Sorry, apples.)  Of course, the big pumpkins are used in ornamental displays or to carve up as Jack-O'-Lanterns. But pie pumpkins are for eating.  Especially, and always, in pies.

Pumpkin pie is the classic for Thanksgiving.  And like all Thanksgiving classics, it has to be made the way we have always had it, with the recipe my mother used.

People often make pumpkin pie with canned pumpkin.  This is sad, because it is so easy to use the real thing.  Simply cut the pumpkin in two (many people save the seeds and process them by salting and roasting as a snack) and put the two halves on a baking sheet.  Bake at 300° for about half an hour or until your finger can easily dent the fruit wall into the soft inside.  Cool, scrape and mash, and you have really fruity-tasting wholesome pumpkin.  It can be measured and frozen for future use.  (Pumpkin bread is another good use if you should get tired of pie.)

Memory is an important part of taste for traditional meals like Thanksgiving.  My mother began baking from the Ann Pillsbury's Baking Book 50 years ago (the paperback version came out in 1961).  She wore it out; I found a reprint which I have now reduced to single pages.

Many of the recipes are still good classic treatments and I use several of them.  It does show its vintage in certain directions.  For example, this recipe calls for "top milk".  That is a remnant of the days before homogenized milk and it means rich milk that is partly cream.  I simply add some cream to the 2% milk I usually drink.

I often use a full 2 cups of pumpkin.  This makes a very fruity pie.  For a firmer custard, use 1 1/2 cups.  I also use a counter-top mixer (Mixmaster) to make the pie.  If you don't have one, use a handheld.

Pumpkin Pie

modified from Ann Pillsbury's Baking Book

Have ready an unbaked pie shell.  Set the oven at 450°. 

In a mixing bowl, beat 3 eggs slightly.  Add the dry ingredients, mixing as you go.

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 T flour

1/2 t salt

1/2 t ground nutmeg

1/2 t ground allspice

1 t ground cinnamon

Then mix in 1 1/2- 2 cups cooked pumpkin.
Heat but do not boil 1 1/2 cups milk (part cream); add slowly to mixture, mixing thoroughly.

Pour into pie shell.  Cook for 10 minutes at 450°, then turn down oven to 350°.  Bake for 40-50 minutes. I usually choose the 50 minutes because I use more pumpkin.  The pie will set up more as it cools, but should not still be liquid in the center when you remove it.  Cool on a rack before cutting.

**********
I don't use the pie crust recipe from Ann Pillsbury.  True to its time, it relies on good old Crisco, which made a fine crust but we now know is loaded with trans fats.  After I threw away my Crisco can, I experimented for a while with all-butter crusts but they were failures.  Finally, thanks to a friend's food blog, I learned how to make a crust that has good manners and tastes good, too.  (And it freezes well, future pies on hold.)

A note about fats in pie crust:  There are many options, but you do need a fat that is solid at room temperature, not a liquid oil.  A blend of fats works well because you get the virtues of each kind.  I use a mixture of butter and lard.  The shelf-stable lard in big tubs at the grocery store is hydrogenated (trans fats again).  Try to find some rendered lard at a good butcher, or learn to render it yourself (not really hard if you can find the pig fat).  Keep this in the refrigerator or freezer.

Originally, this recipe called for volumetric measurements (cups).  But measurement by weight is easier and more reliable if you have a kitchen scale.

Another note: use Mark Bittman's advice and refrigerate the dough at various stages, including just after cutting and before rolling out.  Also, don't overcut.  (Don't use a food processor and reduce it into granules!)  The fat pockets from irregular pieces are what make for a flaky crust.

Gramma Bayer's Never-Fail Pie Crust

with thanks to Kim Bayer and her grandmother

Mix 3 cups of flour with a dash of salt.

Cut in (a hand pastry blender gives you the most control)

1/2 lb unsalted butter (2 sticks)

1/4 lb lard

Refrigerate briefly.

Whisk together:

1 egg

1 T vinegar (apple cider is fine)

5 T cold water

Mix this into the flour and fat mixture with minimal handling.  Use a small amount of flour on the working surface if needed.  Refrigerate.

Cut into three equal parts.  (Weigh them, if you will.)  Each one is a single pie crust.

Refrigerate.

Roll out and fill. Freeze unused portions in a plastic container or bag.

  

Ricotta Made at Home

Here are my basic precepts for sustainable food:

1. Make as much of it as you can yourself, from scratch.

2. Use either food you grow yourself, or is grown near you, as much as possible.

3. Use recognizable real food, not mixes or partially prepared mixes. (This is what "from scratch" means.)

So, although it is possible to buy ricotta cheese from the dairy case, I'd rather make it myself.  This has to be the simplest cheese in the world to make.  It can be used in many ways, including cheesecake, macaroni and cheese, and especially in homemade lasagna.

There are two ways ricotta is made.  If you are already a cheesemaker and like to make mozzarella at home, the leftover whey can be made into ricotta.  (This is a different recipe.)  But I like to make it from whole milk.  We don't have it that often, so why not have the best?  It can be made from skim or fat-reduced milk, but we now know that butterfat is actually good for you, containing omega-3 acids.  And whole milk ricotta is so delicious.

We are fortunate here in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to have an old-fashioned family dairy nearby. Not only do they sell milk that is minimally processed and in glass bottles, it is possible to obtain their non-homogenized milk, with a cream head. But if you can't get that, even supermarket homogenized whole milk makes a very nice ricotta.

You need some citric acid.  Ricotta is made by acidifying milk and heating it.  This causes the protein to coagulate and make curds.  Some people use lemon juice or vinegar, but to my taste these impart a flavor.  Citric acid is a simple, pure, crystalline organic acid that can be found in shops who cater to brewmasters or picklemakers (or cheesemakers).

Here are the proportions of citric acid to be used.  Dissolve the powder in water before adding it to the milk.

1 gallon milk            1 teaspoon citric acid         1/4 cup water
1/2 gallon milk        1/2 teaspoon citric acid     2 tablespoons water

Place the milk in a nonreactive pan (stainless steel is good) and mix in the citric acid solution.  Heat the milk, with occasional stirring, to 185-195 F°.  An instant-read thermometer is very useful for this. DO NOT let the milk boil or scorch, but watch it constantly. When it reaches temperature, turn off the heat and let it sit for 10 minutes.

Pour the whey and curds into a colander lined with butter muslin (a fine-textured cheesecloth).  If you don't have the cheesecloth, a clean "flour sack" type tea towel will probably work.  After the whey has drained (a few minutes), the ricotta can be released by folding the cloth gently, and placed into a bowl for refrigeration until used.  It should be used within a few days.

A half gallon of milk makes about 3/4 pound of ricotta.

Lemon Ice Cream (with Mango Instructions)

For languid summer feasts, the best thing is a very simple and luxurious dessert.  This classic freezer ice cream takes almost no time to assemble, and is always eaten in respectful silence.  It requires no special equipment.  Because of the high cream content, there is no crystallization and an ice cream machine is not needed.  Just pour the mix into a cake pan and place into a freezer for a couple of hours.

As an additional touch, fresh mango fruit (which is obviously not local to North America, but is frequently fresh and widely available in the late summer) may be sliced and placed on each serving.  I do not advise sugar or any other addition to the fruit.  My husband has published a full description of the method for peeling a mango on his blog, from which this illustration is lifted.

Freezer Lemon Ice Cream

2 cups whipping cream

1 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

2 T grated lemon zest

Mix and pour into an 8" square cake pan.  Freeze for a couple of hours, till solid.

This is best eaten on the same day but can be kept frozen for a few days.

It is just as good (and some would say better) when lime is substituted for the lemon.

How Green Was My Pepper

Whether you source your summer vegetables from a CSA, the farmers' market, or your own garden, there comes a time when you are faced with a bumper crop of green bell peppers.  Eventually these big babies will ripen into red sweet peppers, or into another color.  Ripened bells are beloved by most.  I've written several posts on the preparation and use of roasted and peeled red peppers and of course sweet ripe red peppers are appreciated in salads and other dishes.

But as has been acknowledged even by the writers of the New York Times food section, green peppers are another matter.  We think so little of them here that I have often offloaded the end of season bounty on friends and neighbors.

Still, they are what is now.  And they do have some use in selected dishes.  This is the time of year that I pull out an old standby, from a cookbook that is also an old standby.  I received my copy of the I Hate To Cook Book at about the same time as my original copy (1964 edition) of the Joy of Cooking.  While I read Joy cover to cover (it was my first cooking course), I probably made a great many more meals from Hate To Cook over the first several years of my marriage.  There was no stigma in cooking from cans at the time.  (That was the form in which most food was sold.)  Also, I was a student with little time or money for fancy cooking.  The book has now been reissued and its author, Peg Bracken, has now been acknowledged as a figure of cooking history in her own right.  I'm still using some of the recipes from the book.  For one thing, they don't all involve creamed canned soup.  For another thing, they are invariably easy and tasty.

This casserole uses up a whole green pepper!  It goes well with some fresh sautéed vegetables like summer squash and a crisp salad from seasonal greens.  I made mine with a locally produced pork sausage, very sustainable.

Note: the recipe calls for "pork sausage".  You'll want bulk sausage for this.  But bulk sausage comes with various seasonings included.  Mine has sage and crushed red pepper.  If you use unseasoned ground pork instead, the results may vary slightly.

Dr. Martin's Mix

Slightly modified from The I Hate To Cook Book, by Peg Bracken

Using a stove-to-oven pan (enameled cast iron is my choice), crumble and brown 1 pound bulk sausage.  If excessive fat is produced, pour some off.

Add:

1 green pepper, chopped

2 scallions, chopped

2-3 celery stalks, chopped

2 cups chicken broth (homemade or commercial)

1 cup uncooked long-grain rice

1 Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1/2 teaspoon salt

(if using unseasoned sausage), black pepper

Mix, cover, and cook in a 300° oven for one hour.

The Dill Bread of Summer

Bouquet dill is one of the most welcome sights of midsummer.  Its exuberant flowers are cheerful, whether as volunteers in a flower bed or in the vegetable garden.  And it is one of my favorite herbs.

Of course dill is famous for fish, chilled cucumber salad or soup, and in pickles.  But I especially look for it so that I can bake dill bread.

This recipe is a survivor from an era when no-knead batter breads were popular.  It contains cottage cheese, whose protein gives the bread structure without heavy kneading.  But I knead it anyway.

The bread should be made to serve hot, along with a summer meal that might include corn on the cob, a grilled meat, probably a cold salad or grilled summer vegetables and perhaps some sliced tomatoes. Its frank opulence offsets those simple elemental flavors (don't skip the butter for the hot bread). Leftover bread can be toasted the next day and served as a tea bread or snack.

Many market gardeners and supermarkets feature the variety known as dukat dill, which resists flowering and provides a long supply of the fresh dill leaves.  But in my experience these have a milder (duller) flavor than the ferny foliage of the bouquet dill.  You'll need to pick the leaves before seedheads begin to form and the leaves start to yellow.  I like the strong flavor of the bouquet dill and include lots of it in the bread.

Cottage Cheese Dill Bread

Dissolve one measure* of instant dry yeast in 1/4 cup warm water.

Mix 1 t salt, 1/4 t baking soda, 2 T sugar and 1/4 cup all-purpose flour.  Set aside.

In a saucepan (low heat), melt together 1 cup of creamed cottage cheese (not low-fat) and 1 T butter.  Let cool in pan after combined.

Combine the cooled cheese mixture with the yeast, the dry ingredients, and

1 egg

2 T (or more) chopped onion

2 T (or more) chopped fresh dill

Mix in approximately 2 cups more flour.   Turn onto floured board and knead briefly to combine flour and wet mixture, adding flour as necessary.  The objective is not to knead aggressively as for breads that depend on gluten for structure, but to combine flour and produce a dough that can be handled.  Place in a buttered bowl and let rise for 45 minutes.

Butter a casserole or loaf pan.  (An oval casserole can make an attractive loaf for the table.) Punch down the dough and place into the pan to let rise another 30 minutes or until bread has risen above the container.  (Note - it can run over the edge if left to itself, so watch.)

Bake the risen bread for 35 minutes in a preheated 350° F oven.

*Yeast note: A packet of instant dry yeast may be used.  Regular bread bakers often use a bulk dry yeast such as saf-instant (available from King Arthur's catalog or in many groceries), in which case the recommended amount is 2 1/4 t.

The center of the bread is soft, but not wet.

Keep It Simple, Sweetie!

There are many dishes that the abundant tomatoes of late summer can be used for, but finally we reach the moment when they simply need to be preserved for future use.  There are many methods that I've used, including dehydrating some plum tomatoes to be reconstituted for salads.  I haven't actually canned tomatoes in recent years because I have lots of freezer space, so I freeze them in several forms, including puree (cooked down, then put through a food mill) and Basil Tomato Sauce.

For many years I've used the Basil Tomato Sauce by itself and in combination (the Red Pepper Sauce and a rich complex ragu type spaghetti sauce that I have used the puree in as well).  But I wanted to explore some other options.

Perhaps I was the last person home cook in the Continental United States to discover Marcella Hazan's simple recipe for tomato sauce that is a galaxy away from my usual olive oil-garlic-spice based uses.  What I've learned is that her book,  Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking was central to reforming American cooking to utilize fresh produce and making food from scratch. Hazan died on September 29, 2013. In her obituary, her devotion to simplicity and fresh ingredients is stressed (a slightly different recipe for the famous tomato sauce is given there). She is quoted as saying, "Why not make it simple?"  Just before her death, I discovered this recipe and began experimenting with it.

The essence of the recipe is that it is startlingly simple and completely at odds with the palette of "Italian" flavors that we have become (perhaps too) familiar.  It consists of tomatoes, butter (not olive oil!), salt, and an onion that is removed before serving.

  One onion, five tablespoons of butter - that's it.

Apparently many people have made this with canned San Marzano tomatoes.  But I wanted to use my own tomatoes and I didn't want to keep all the seeds or to remove them by hand.

A friend who likes to make and can a huge amount of tomato sauce each year tipped me off to the use of a device often called a "sauce master" that uses a screw-type action and a screen to separate juice and pulp from seeds and skin.  There are several stand-alone versions but I found that my KitchenAid stand mixer has an attachment (the Fruit & Vegetable Strainer) which works much better.

Using this attachment, I produced 3 quarts of thin tomato purée from 6 pounds of very ripe tomatoes.  This then has to be concentrated slightly before using by cooking at low to moderate heat for about an hour, which reduces it to about half the volume.  I then used 3 cups of this (a total of 3 pounds of tomatoes!) to produce about 2 cups of dense sauce that is the very essence of tomato.  A little Parmesan, a little pasta, and you have a meal.  (This sauce does not have the faintly caramelized taste one obtains with tomato paste.)

Note the lush thickness of the sauce and how it adheres to the pasta. (Click on the image to get a closer look.)

Simple Tomato Sauce

modified from Marcella Hazan

3 cups tomato purée

One yellow or white cooking onion, peeled and cut in half

5 tablespoons butter

salt to taste

Place the pureé, onion and butter in a saucepan.  Cook at low to medium heat with occasional stirring until butter is well incorporated (a little layer of butter may appear at the top near the end, to be stirred back in) and the onion is cooked.  Remove the onion.  (It may be eaten separately or reserved for other use.)  Salt to taste (recall that tomatoes are rather salty on their own).

Use immediately.  I don't recommend storing or freezing this sauce.

Using a KitchenAid stand mixer with Fruit & Vegetable Strainer attachment 

 

Core the tomatoes and cut into quarters.  These must be pushed into the feeder with the supplied tamping tool.  A screw drives the seeds and skin out the end, while the pulp and juice come through the screen.

The housing for the screen channels the juice and pulp into a separate bowl.

 I found that the skin/seed material can be run through a second time.

Three quarts of tomato purée from six pounds of tomatoes

NOTE:  If you use Roma-type paste tomatoes instead of the more watery round tomatoes, the resulting puree is thick enough to use directly without concentrating it first.

The Fruits of Summer: Eggplant and Tomato

The gorgeous fruits of summer's bounty are a delight to the eye but a challenge to the cook.  How to use not just one eggplant, but six or eight all at once?  And the tomatoes just keep on coming, despite numerous batches of sauce.  This sets off a search for dishes that use several of these fruits of summer at once.

Middle Eastern and "Mediterranean" dishes are a great source for such recipes.  Every summer I know that when the eggplants come in, I'll be making my favorite lamb and eggplant stew from Claudia Roden's classic A Book of Middle Eastern Food  (it has since come out in a revised version but I cling to my old one).

Note that most recipes in this book, and many other recipes using eggplant, call for sprinkling the cut eggplant with salt and then draining it after awhile.  I think this may have been intended to cut the "bitter factor" from the eggplant.  However, I do not use the large eggplants but rather a smaller variety, Neon. There are many varieties of pear-shaped eggplant that are similar but I have found this one to be sweet and mild even when fairly mature.  I never use the pre-salting technique.

Lamb and Eggplant Stew

adapted from Claudia Roden

1 large onion, chopped

1 pound or more of lamb stew meat (this can be made from leg of lamb)

3 tomatoes (quartered, peeled by immersing in boiling water)

1 tablespoon concentrated tomato paste

Juice of 1/2 lemon

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

olive oil

2-3  eggplants (medium size)

salt, black pepper

Brown the meat and onion together in scant oil.  Mash the tomatoes into the mixture and add the tomato paste, lemon juice and spices.  Add water to cover and simmer for about 1 hour until the meat is tender enough to cut with a cooking spatula.

Slice the peeled eggplants thinly and sauté in batches until translucent.  This will take up a lot of olive oil.  Some of it may be poured back into the skillet for the later batches.

Mix the eggplant into the meat mixture, cover and simmer for about 1/2 hour more.  Salt and pepper to taste.

This mixture is excellent over a bulgur wheat pilaf, but any grain pilaf should work.  It is also very nice with some yogurt on the side.

Ripe Tomato Solution: Gazpacho

There comes a moment in the summer when the tomatoes are so red, so ripe that they demand a really luxurious use.  Sauces can come later.  Of course, many people would say that slicing them and eating with or without a drizzle of olive oil is enough.  But what I think of is gazpacho.

Ingredients for gazpacho are simple.

Gazpacho is a much abused dish.  I've been served many versions, and in browsing recipes I've found many horrors.

A common abuse is that bread is omitted.  The dish probably originated as a bread soup.  According to Wikipedia, it may have come to Spain from the Moors or from Rome, as a soup made of bread and vinegar.  Today there are several classic Spanish soups in which bread is a primary ingredient.

Many recipes have Too Many Vegetables.  Others actually use commercial tomato juice or add herbs or even Worchester sauce.  The result is more a salad than a soup.

I learned to make gazpacho from a Spanish woman and still use a much stained recipe in her hand to make mine.  Sara used only a few ingredients to make the soup, then passed little bowls of chopped vegetables (onions, green pepper, cucumbers) and cubes of bread to add as you wished.

Sara's Spanish Gazpacho

Soak a couple of pieces or a heel of French bread in water.

Remove stems from 4-5 very ripe tomatoes.  (No need to peel.)

Remove stems and seeds from a green pepper.

Peel 1-3 cloves of garlic.  (Three makes it rather garlicky.)

Squeeze the water out of the bread.

Place all of these into a blender (a little at a time, so that it will liquify and blend).  Once blended, add "a drop of oil and a drop of vinegar"  (I advise about 2:1 olive oil to wine vinegar) and salt.  You'll have to add these by taste.  I start with 2 teaspoons of olive oil and 1 teaspoon of vinegar, then add a little more after tasting.

Chill.  Serve with cubes of bread and vegetables to taste.  It will keep several days in the refrigerator and makes a great refreshment drunk out of a glass, too.

Green Bean Plenty

Mid-July brings a harvest of green beans (some call them "string beans") that moves rapidly into the "embarrassment of riches" period.  After the first several meals of simply prepared beans (I usually just cook them until fully tender and add butter, salt and pepper), it begins to be time to think of something else.

One popular idea I haven't tried yet is to pickle them (dilly beans).  Another winner is Maan's Green Beans, a recipe that has been passed around the Michigan food blog circuit.  (If you like garlic, you'll love Maan's.)

But my first impulse is to make up a bunch of Ted's Syrian Rice.  This is a meat stew with green beans that freezes quite well.  Like every treasured recipe, it has a history.

Middle Eastern food was essentially unknown in Oklahoma during the 1950s (unless you count Jamil's, where I first tasted tabbouleh and cabbage rolls).  So a dish titled "Syrian" was immediately exotic.  It was the specialty of one of my parents' dear friends, who would occasionally bring a dish of it to our table.  I don't know how he obtained the recipe, but it wasn't from traveling in Syria. It would be interesting to know how it came to include Worcestershire sauce.

Ted used canned green beans (what we mostly had in those days).  I simply cook my fresh beans well before adding them, and I use a lot of beans.  I've also added a pinch of cinnamon to make the dish taste just a little Middle Eastern.

Syrian Rice

modified from Ted Walstrum

1 pound lean ground beef

3 medium onions, chopped

1/4 green pepper, chopped

2 cups cooked tomatoes with juice (or 14.5 oz can)

2 cups - 1 quart cooked green beans, drained

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

salt, pepper (note canned tomatoes are already salty)

1/8 teaspoon cinnamon  (optional)

Cook the onions in butter (Ted's choice) or olive oil until they are translucent.  Remove and brown the ground beef.  Add back the onions and the chopped green pepper.  Mix in the green beans, tomatoes and seasonings.

Cook in a covered casserole at 325° for one hour.  Serve with rice.  (Ted made a hearty brown rice pilaf, but plain white rice or any other similar grain, like bulgur wheat, works just fine.)

This reheats well after freezing (the beans are not supposed to be crisp anyway).  Freeze without the rice.

Summer Beet Soup (Borscht)

Beets were the bane of my childhood.  They were one of those "no redeeming virtue" foods and I hated the smell of them cooking.  Whether simply boiled or with sickening sauce ("Harvard Beets" were a particular horror), I avoided them.  Then one day, I bravely tasted pickled beets.  That was a revelation.  Turns out that beets are transformed when made into a sweet-sour dish.

I've made pickled beets that stay in the refrigerator and canned pickled beets.  All good.  But another way to use this happy marriage of beets and sour is to make borscht.  Beet borscht apparently originated in the Ukraine.  (Sorrel soup is sometimes called "green borscht", though it is entirely different.)  There are many variations on it, though they all use beets and vinegar or lemon for the sour touch.  Some include big pieces of stew beef, and I've seen recipes calling for potatoes, celeriac, green peppers, tomatoes, parsnips, and turnips.

Probably some of those thick meaty versions make a great winter soup.  But for summer, a cold light borscht can be really refreshing.  Midsummer brings a bounty of beets and summer cabbage, also an important component of the dish. This can be vegetarian.  I like to use a homemade beef broth in making it, but water can be substituted.  Interestingly, the vegetables and the tomato paste are the only sweetening agents; no additional sugar is added.

Borscht 

1 bunch red beets (3-5, depending on size, about 1 1/2 lb)

3 carrots

1 medium onion

Peel the beets and carrots and julienne.  Chop the onion.

Simmer these vegetables for 20 minutes with 1 bay leaf in water to cover.  

1 small cabbage or 1/2 larger one

1 T butter

1 T red wine vinegar

2 T concentrated tomato paste (the kind from a tube is best)

3 cups - 1 qt homemade beef broth or water

Salt

Black pepper

Slice the cabbage very thinly and add to the other vegetables, along with the other ingredients except the salt and pepper.  Simmer until all is tender (about 30 minutes more).  Add salt and pepper to taste (check).

This could be eaten as is but I prefer to blend it and serve as a puree. (For summer, serve cold.)

Garnish with sour cream or yogurt, plus a little chopped dill.

Note: homemade beef broth may be made with a soup bone or trimmings from a bone-in roast.  Cook for 2-3 hours in a couple of quarts of water with 1-2 carrots, a parsnip, an onion, and a stalk of celery. Strain and cool; remove fat.  This freezes well and can be used for soups like borscht.

Additional note: Borscht freezes well and can be reheated.

A Season for Scallions

Yesterday (two days before the end of November) I harvested the last of my scallions (green onions).  I might have left them even longer but snow is predicted, and the ground is beginning to freeze.  If I find myself growing only a few vegetables in a small garden, I hope that one of them will always be scallions.  True, they are easily available in the market, but once started in the garden they are entirely dependable and long-lasting.  They can be planted early.  This year I planted Nabechan (Johnny's Select Seeds) on March 22 and they emerged on April 9.  I also experimented with winter sowing the prior winter, but none of those seeds emerged.  I didn't record when I began using some of the onions, but I'm pretty sure that it was early summer.

Scallions are quite frost-resistant and were still green and hardy when I pulled these last.  I think they can actually be overwintered with some protection but that is an experiment for another year.  When the ground is frozen, it is difficult to harvest them because the stems will break when you attempt to pull them from the ground, or else you get a huge clump of frozen soil and too many onions.

There are hundreds or thousands of uses for scallions, but the Chinese use them a lot both as a vegetable and as a seasoning.  I have found that these Scallion Pancakes are easy to make and delicious all by themselves, but especially as a "bread" for Chinese-style meals.  They are also good rolled up with meat mixtures like tacos.  Try them for breakfast.  They don't want any syrup or other sweet addition.

Scallion Pancakes

Beat 2 eggs and add milk to measure a total 2 cups.

Mix together 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour and 1 teaspoon salt.

Add the egg/milk mixture to the dry ingredients, along with
1/3 cup peanut oil (or other neutral oil). Mix well.

Mix in 4 minced scallions.

Pour measured amounts of batter onto a greased griddle, one at a time.
(1/4 to 1/3 cup is about right) 
Turn pancake after it is lightly browned on the first side.
May need to add scant oil between pancakes. Eat hot. May be frozen. 

Using Root-cellar Cabbage

Cabbage has been a consistent theme here, both because it is such a satisfying crop to grow, and because it has so many uses. In The Cabbage in Winter, I commented on some recipes for using cabbage, and in Cabbage is King discussed cabbage's importance as the food of the poor.

One of the most important reasons to celebrate cabbage is its role as a storage vegetable. Whether in fermented form (sauerkraut) or simply stored in a cold place like a root cellar, cabbage can serve as a nutritious vegetable through most of the winter at a time when fresh vegetables are (traditionally) unavailable. More attention is being given to root cellaring these days (here's a summary from a local workshop) as a way to preserve homegrown (or purchased) produce that is not canning, freezing, dehydrating, or pickling. After all, even excellent pickles have their limits as vegetable sides. Cabbage is a good root cellar subject if the right varieties are used.


That choice of variety is crucial, as I've learned from hard experience. Cabbages (we're talking the head-forming type, not Chinese cabbage or any of the numerous leafy members of the clan) can be of many colors (though the basics are red and green), shapes and sizes. But a crucial difference is whether they are summer cabbages intended for early harvest or fall cabbages. Early (summer) cabbages are tender, fresh and sweet, and lovely for slaw or other salad use. My beloved Tendersweet (see Mon Petit Chou) is wonderful for this. But as I described in Cabbage for Sauerkraut, early cabbages can split, as early as the first week in August. For either sauerkraut or for cold storage, you want the ones that grow fat and happy well into the fall. This head was photographed on November 16, just before harvesting. It is a variety from Johnny's Seeds, appropriately named "Storage".

The next problem is finding a good storage place. Refrigerators will work. But the idea is to find a "root cellar" space, one that stays cool but doesn't freeze. For most people who don't have a root cellar, this requires some ingenuity. (Note that a basement does not make a good root cellar. It is usually too warm and is also frequently too wet.) I found that an old kitchen cabinet in my unheated garage stayed above freezing. (The thermometer is a min/max.) This picture was taken on December 26.

The cabbage will dry on the outer leaves and should be watched for rot (do not use plastic bags!). It can be withdrawn for use as needed. This cabbage was removed from the garage on February 12. Note that the internal leaves are white and dense.






The stored cabbage can be used for fresh use, like coleslaw, but the result is only acceptable.

It is excellent for cooking, however, though not for cabbage rolls (the leaves are too tightly packed). For example, thinly sliced cabbage can be added to a gratin. An important key to cooking cabbage is that it should always be simmered, sautéed or braised gently, so the sulfurous compounds that give boiled cabbage a bad name are not released.

Here is an old favorite from my childhood that makes good use of the freshness of the stored cabbage. This soup is excellent with homemade cornbread. It is satisfying without being heavy and will keep for several days in the refrigerator.

Mother's Hamburger Cabbage Soup

1 pound or less lean ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 head cabbage, cut into thin shreds
1 stalk celery, chopped
Canned tomatoes (home-canned or 14-16 oz can) with juice
Black pepper
Dried sweet basil
to taste: salt, hot pepper sauce (note: canned tomatoes are salty already)

Cook the ground beef in a minimum of oil until the meat is no longer raw, but do not brown. Add the onion, tomatoes, and water to cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and add cabbage and celery. Cover and simmer for about half an hour, keeping water level well above the vegetables and stirring occasionally. Add seasonings and simmer for a few more minutes. Cabbage should be tender before serving.

The Terror of Tomatoes: So Much of a Good Thing

It's fortunate that we choose not to remember unpleasant things and that we compartmentalize memories. Otherwise, we might never order so many garden seeds. We'd look at those lovely pictures and think, "Oh, no - the harvest!!".

Now is the season of desperate processing. Even with the depredations of a late-season tomato late blight infection, the tomatoes have advanced from one kitchen counter, to a second, to a table in the basement. I've pulled out the last of the vines but I'll have tomatoes ripening and asking to be processed for another week or two.

I grew three varieties this year. My old reliable for fresh eating and casual cooking is Carmello, which I've been buying from Renée's Garden. It is a tender-skinned variety bred for flavor that grows medium-sized red round tomatoes. This gets made into tabbouleh, gazpacho, fresh salsa, broiled tomatoes, and of course eaten as luxurious big fat red tomato slices.





I've usually grown an Italian plum-type tomato too, and lately it has been Pompeii, also from Reneé's Garden. They produced very well this year and made large long fruits.










This year I added Amish Paste from Cook's Garden. These are described as "acorn-shaped" and that works pretty well. They are supposed to be meaty and good for sauces. Some of these fruits were huge.

I can't compare flavor for these last two, because I combined them. I usually think of plum-type tomatoes as "paste" tomatoes. So I just quartered them and cooked them together in a couple of slow cookers, a.k.a. crock pots. I cover the pot until the tomatoes juice up and begin to cook, then remove the cover and let them cook down all day. Then I run them through a food mill to remove skins and seeds, and the result is a moderately thick purée which I freeze in jars.

What I do with the Carmello when it exceeds fresh eating requirements? I skin them (by placing briefly in a pan of boiling water and then pulling the skins off) cut them up, and cook them down. This goes into various dishes for freezing, like cabbage rolls and a huge batch of spaghetti sauce. But I also make a simple basil-tomato sauce for freezing. It can be used as is or as the base of other sauces and it is a good way to use the basil I grow every year.

Basil Tomato Sauce

For each large pot (about 6 quarts) of cooked tomatoes, cut up 1 medium onion and 6 garlic cloves. Cook them in about 1/4 cup of olive oil until translucent (don't let the garlic brown) and add the tomatoes and a plentiful quantity of fresh torn (not chopped) basil leaves. Simmer with stirring until thickened, 1-2 hours. Add ground black pepper and salt to taste (I often omit salt since tomatoes are fairly salty in themselves).

I've often used this from the freezer to make a more complex meaty spaghetti sauce. It can also be used to make a sauce with roasted red peppers.

Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

For each quart of Basil Tomato Sauce, roast and peel 1 ripe red bell pepper (or more). Put the pepper and the sauce into a blender and purée till smooth. Season with black pepper and 1/4 t each salt and sugar (or to taste).

I serve this with Eggplant Parmigiana. Both the prepared eggplant and the sauce freeze nicely for midwinter meals.

The Basil Tomato Sauce is just fine as is for dishes like traditional lasagna.

Mon Petit Chou

Not for nothing do the French use cabbage as a term of endearment. Cabbage is an enormously solid and reassuring vegetable that has provided good nutrition for the humanity of the world. It is productive, high in nutritional value, and best of all, stores well. I've written previously about its role as a storage vegetable and of course about its evocation as sauerkraut. I'm enormously vainglorious and possessive of my cabbages and delight in their translation from little plants in late April to amazingly huge heads by August.

This year I planted three varieties. Ruby Perfection (red cabbage), just a few. It stores well, we like the German red cabbage (Rötkohl), and I'm trying to learn other ways to use it. This year, a new variety planted specifically for sauerkraut. Kaitlin, a new F1 from Johnny's Selected Seeds, is supposed to be a late-season, good storage cabbage ideal for kraut. I'm hoping it will solve my problem with early splitting. So far it is not very big (I planted it last so maybe it got a slow start) but looks very healthy. But this post is devoted to Tendersweet, my darling little cabbage (mon petit chou).

Tendersweet (again, from Johnny's) was an experiment last year. I found that it was not ideal for kraut but was wonderful for fresh eating and cooking. As the name implies, it is a delicate, thin-leafed cabbage. The head is endearingly flat and the soft leaves peel away easily, which makes it perfect for cabbage rolls. (See the recipe in last year's post.) Last year I froze a number of these in meal-sized portions and we mournfully pulled the last from the freezer around January. More this year.

Because it is so mild and delicate, it doesn't need any of the fussing around that you sometimes read about with salting or brining. I just cut thin slivers across the head with my sharp knife and it can be used for slaw or even served with a simple vinaigrette. Even the midveins are not harsh and coarse as some cabbages can be.

It began splitting last week after a lot of rain, so I harvested a number of the larger heads for a small batch of sauerkraut, and stored some others for near-term eating. Happily there are still a few smaller heads out there waiting for later use.

Pickled Kohlrabi Chinese Style

In my continuing quest for uses for kohlrabi, I tried the recipe for pickled kohlrabi in my Chinese cookbook. It worked.

First, a story. The first time I ever saw an actual living kohlrabi was when I visited the home of some colleagues, one of whom was Chinese. We were all young instructors at a small college in the Midwest, and Gene liked to cook. We were fortunate because he and his wife invited us over for some homemade Chinese food. (This is how I learned to stir-fry.)

They had recently bought their first house, a new house in a subdivision. They had a very small garden in the back. The only thing growing in it was kohlrabi. He didn't prepare it for us but I wondered for many years why, of all the possible vegetables, that was the one they grew. I am now convinced that it was so they could make this pickle.

Actually, it is not quite a pickle but the product of short fermentation, like sauerkraut but for a shorter period. The result is a pleasantly tangy product that is somewhat radish-like and somewhat reminiscent of kimchi. I think that it might be something one would serve alongside many dishes, and like kimchi, it could become a regular part of daily meals.

Kohlrabi Pickles (Pow Tsai: Szechuan)
slightly modified from
"An Encyclopedia of Chinese Food and Cooking"
by Chang, Chang, Kutscher and Kutscher,
Crown Publishers

For a 1 quart Mason-type canning jar, prepare a solution of 2 cups boiling water and 1 Tablespoon salt (not iodized). Allow to cool.

Peel 3-4 kohlrabi, depending on size (recipe says 1 pound) and cut into slivers.
Cut fresh ginger into slices. Use 4.
Peel 2 cloves garlic, slice.
Place all these vegetables into the jar.
Optional: also 1 "red-hot pepper", seeded and sliced.

Pour cooled salt solution over vegetables. Add one tablespoon wine (I used a dry white wine.) and screw down cap. Place on counter. After three days, refrigerate.

Notes: Carbon dioxide bubbles form by the next morning. It appears to be a classic lactic acid fermentation. Best not to screw down lid too tightly, since some pressure might build up.

I substituted a tablespoon of Sambal Oelek for the hot pepper. A little too hot for my taste. One could use a red dry "Japanese" pepper instead.

First Fruits

We've been eating lettuce for many weeks and finished off the first crop of spinach and arugula some time ago. But for some reason, it feels more real when you start to get the big substantial vegetables. It seems only yesterday that I put the kohlrabi into the ground, and suddenly it is huge. Time to start picking it before it gets too big and fibrous.

Kohlrabi is the version of the cabbage family that produces thickened stems as its major food offering. (The fresh leaves are also edible, like kale or collards.) I love to plant the purple variety Kolibri (Johnny's Select Seeds) because it is fun. It looks like an alien from outer space. It also seems to have a fine quality. In kohlrabi, that means a mild, slightly nutty taste and fibrous material limited to a little near the base.

As I reported before, seeds were started March 20, and the seedlings placed in the cold frame April 12. I was too busy to record the day they were planted into the row but I would guess it was the first week of May. Now suddenly they are huge! It is so satisfying to harvest the fruit of my efforts. Now to find good ways to use it.

Conventional recipes based on Anglo/American tradition are not very inspiring. They begin with cream sauce and end there. Here's what James Beard (American Cookery) had to say about it: "This is rather a bastard vegetable...to me it is a mystery why people really care for it...Mrs. Rorer felt that kohlrabi was more nutritious than turnips and that it was pleasant served with Hollandaise sauce." He mentions cream sauce "gauge one per person" and also serving it with melted butter. For an updated version, see this from the New York Times.

The way I have usually begun serving it is peeled, sliced, cooked until tender in minimal water, then with butter, salt and pepper. We consumed three for two people without any effort last night. It is mild but has a pleasant distinct nutty flavor. I expect that I will use it in a gratin before the season is over, probably with onions and some of my frozen roasted red pepper.

But where it really comes into its own is with pickling. I found a recipe that apparently originated with Shepherd's Garden Seeds that worked very well a couple of years ago. It makes a fresh delicious pickle that can be served as a side dish. This year I'm also going to try the Chinese version in which kohlrabi is subjected to a short-term fermentation and seasoned with ginger, garlic, and hot pepper.

Pickled Kohlrabi (Shepherd's, 1994)

Peel and slice 3 kohlrabi, 1/4 inch thick. Peel one carrot and slice into thin sticks. (I think I sliced the kohlrabi into equivalent sticks last time.) Parboil the carrot briefly (should yield to a fork but not be soft). Place raw kohlrabi, carrot, 2 crushed garlic cloves, 1 bay leaf, and a sprig of fresh dill into a quart canning jar. Heat pickling mixture to boiling and pour over the vegetable mixture in the jar, filling the jar completely. Let cool, then refrigerate for 3-4 days before use. Will keep for several weeks in the refrigerator.

Pickling Mixture

3/4 c white vinegar
1 1/4 c water
3 Tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon dill seed
1 teaspoon mustard seed
1/4 teaspoon red chili flakes

Note: the original version of this recipe called for two carrots. I found that this made it into carrot and kohlrabi pickles instead of the other way around, so reduced to one carrot. The carrot itself is very good in this treatment and provides color, but to me the point is the kohlrabi.

My Grandmother's Kitchen

My friend Kim recently had a post titled "Grow Some of Your Own Food" that asks questions beyond just food to general self-sufficiency. It echoes to some extent the principles of the Transition movement that encourages a focus on community resiliency, partly based on supplying needs at the community level. All this started me thinking about how just a couple of generations ago, this would have been taken for granted. It made me think of my paternal grandmother and her life.

The generations ran long in my family. My father was born 13 years after my grandmother, Alice Victoria Young Nix, was married, and he was in his mid-30s before I was born. So I have some memories of a woman, born in 1879, who was married before the turn of the 20th century (1897) and how she organized her kitchen and garden.

I was too young to notice much about how things were done when my grandparents lived on a little farm near Comanche, Oklahoma. I remember that they had a cow and chickens. I think the farm was only for their own subsistence; my grandfather ran a furniture store in town. By the time I spent a couple of summers in Comanche, my grandmother was widowed. They had moved into town, where she had a fairly small plot of land (using my memory and my mature estimation, I'd say about 3/4 acre or less).

Grandmother had worked much of her life outside the home as well as in it. My grandparents were married in Texas and moved into Indian Territory before Oklahoma statehood; she once told me that they drove a covered wagon in the move. She mentioned to me that she had worked in the post office, and also that she and my grandfather had been the distributors for government commodities. I would guess that that was during the New Deal. My grandfather always seemed to have operated small businesses like furniture stores or general stores. But I think that their livelihood was relatively precarious and that what food they could grow for themselves was important.

The house I visited in the town sat roughly in the center of its lot. On one side (just outside the kitchen door) was a chicken yard and coop. The chickens roamed around that part of the yard, scratching and pecking, and were fed cracked corn (I enjoyed throwing it on the ground for them). There was a rooster. Grandmother collected a lot of eggs and may have sold a few of them; from my memory, I'd estimate she had a couple dozen chickens. The chickens were also for eating. When my grandfather was still alive, he cut one's head off, using a hatchet and a wood block. I remember seeing the decapitated chicken running around frantically (that metaphor has always had real meaning for me). Then she plucked and cleaned it. It was probably fried chicken, since that was a specialty of hers.

On the other side of the house, there was a substantial vegetable garden. What I remember most about that was the two rows of strawberries, which I found to be messy, with runners everywhere and needing weeding. She had a few flowers near the house, like four-o'clocks and hollyhocks, and some lilac bushes, but most of the property was given over to food production.

I was too young to take in much of the operation of the kitchen. But I remember that they had a real icebox. Once a week someone delivered a block of ice from the icehouse, and there was a little tube near the bottom where melted water had to be captured. I think the stove was some kind of gas, certainly not wood-burning. To the end of her life (when she had a kitchen of her own), Grandmother kept a flour drawer. Instead of keeping flour in a canister, it was in a drawer of the kitchen cabinet. She didn't have one of those fancy Hoosier cabinets, but you get the idea.

I'm sure that one reason for the drawer was that baking was an important part of daily routine. She made mostly short breads (namely, biscuits and cornbread). When she spoke of yeast-risen bread, it was as "light bread", with the emphasis on "light": LIGHT-bread. It wasn't so usual on the menu. She bought white flour in large sacks (25 lbs or more). The sacks were made of a flowered calico fabric which was then recycled into aprons, tea towels, and even quilts.

When they had their own cow, they made butter, but there was a local creamery and I think she bought her dairy goods there once they moved into town. She rendered her own lard, though, producing wonderful pork cracklin's from the skin. I'm pretty sure that was used for the biscuits.

She moved into a small apartment of my parents' house in her 80s and cooked rarely after that, except some things for herself (I was horrified by her love for brains and eggs). I didn't learn many recipes from her. But her special cornbread dressing (lots of sage) lives on in our own Thanksgiving tradition. Another thing she made for every Thanksgiving was "ambrosia". I recall that as thinly sliced oranges layered with lots of sugar and coconut. We didn't make it after she stopped cooking altogether. I did love her sugar cookies. They were light and pillowy, not heavy and fatty. When I was a teenager I once asked her for the recipe and she took me into her kitchen and "commenced" (as she would have said) to pull fistfulls of flour out of the drawer, and measured sugar by handfulls and salt by pinches. I quit in disgust. Wish I could tell that impatient teenager to go back and try to measure those amounts, because I've never been able to find an equivalent recipe.

I don't think my grandmother thought of herself as a special cook, or of her garden and chickens as a special hobby or avocation. She simply made her own domestic food industry that supplied a high percentage of their needs. It was modest, ordinary, and taken for granted as the way one lived.

Southern-style Cornbread Dressing

1 recipe cornbread (NOT corn muffins!) - extra credit for using bacon fat or lard to make it
1 cup stale light bread, cubed and dried
1 medium onion
1-2 stalks celery
2 eggs
turkey drippings and broth from boiling the neck
(I now supplement this with homemade chicken broth from my freezer.)
Dried sage, rubbed just before use
salt, pepper

With hands, reduce the cornbread to crumbs and mix in the dried light bread, also reducing that to crumbs. Chop onion and celery and add, along with sage, salt, and pepper. Mix in the two eggs. Stir in as much turkey drippings as you can spare and the broth from the neck. Add more boiling water (or homemade broth) if the mixture seems too dry. You are making something like a savory bread pudding and it should be quite moist but with no free liquid standing.

This may be used to stuff the turkey but we always baked it in a greased pan on a rack under the bird. It should cook for at least an hour (contains raw eggs).

Addendum:

Cornbread comes in many varieties.  Some make a very dry cornbread that is almost nothing but cornmeal, leavening,  and fat.  Some make a sweet concoction that is almost more like breakfast muffins.  My family has always used a middle path.  This recipe was originally published in Ann Pillsbury's Baking Book (Penguin edition, 1961) and is our standard.

Perfect Corn Bread

Mix

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup corn meal

1/4 cup granulated sugar

4 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

Add

2 eggs

1 cup milk         and mix with a spoon until well combined.

Add 1/4 cup oil.  OR  melt about 1/3 cup bacon fat or lard in a 9" iron skillet. (Or use a kitchen balance to weigh out 2 oz of nonhydrogenated lard (your own rendering or a local source).

Mix the fat into the batter, make sure the skillet is well oiled, and pour into the skillet.  If not using a skillet, grease a baking pan.  (The iron skillet is both the most authentic and the best functional choice.)

Bake at 425° F for 25 minutes and decant from the pan to cool.

(The bacon fat or lard will yield the richest and most authentic cornbread for this dressing.)