Green Salsa Verde

I made salsa verde this fall and used it in a soup for dinner today (see below). It's nice and spicy and adds that extra chile flavor to anything you want to add it to. The recipe is from BHG Canning-Preserving-Preserving & Drying Late Summer 2015. That magazine has been my go-to for so much of my canning since last summer.

You'll need to make this when you can find tomatillos plentiful in the grocery store or farmstand.

3 pounds of fresh tomatillos, husked and rinsed of their stickiness
4 fresh poblano chile peppers
4 fresh serrano chile peppers
8 cloves of garlic, minced
1 T salt
1 t sugar
2/3 cup white vinegar
1/4 chopped onion
1/4 c loosely packed fresh cilantro leaves
1/4 lime juice

 Preheat the broiler and place the tomatillos and peppers in a foil-lined baking pan. Broil 4-5 inches from heat for 14-16 minutes or until charred, turning when necessary. Wrap peppers and foil and let stand about 20 minutes until you can handle them to remove the skins. Discard the stems and seeds of the peppers. Peel tomatillos if desired but do not de-seed. Cut all into manageable pieces and combine tomatillos with peppers, garlic, salt and sugar and process all in food processor but do not puree.

Transfer to large pot and stir in vinegar, onion, cilantro and lime juice. Bring to boiling; reduce heat and simmer for 10 min. uncovered.

Ladle hot salsa into hot sterilized canning jars. Wipe jar rims and screw on lids. (I didn't process in water bath for 15 min. but kept the salsa in refrigerator.) Makes 3 pints.

Pork Poblano Corn Soup

I had slow-cooked some boneless pork chops a few weeks ago, adding spices in a crockpot overnight. Today, I took that frozen pork, 1 box of Trader Joe's Poblano Pepper and Creamy Corn soup, 1 cup of frozen sweet corn from this summer's cobs, two cans of white kidney (canellini) beans, 1 chopped onion, 1 box of chicken stock, and a couple of spoons of my Green Salsa Verde.

Best Food for a Boxer

Many people have asked us how we fed our beloved Boxer, Chuisle. Chuisle came to live with me on Labor Day weekend in 2005. She was rail thin and very sick with Boxer Colitis. A month or so later, after many doctors' visits and hospital stays, and frustrated that she was getting no better and was actually sicker, I insisted that we leave Tuft’s animal hospital for the last time. I took Chuisle home and began making the Best Food for a Boxer, experimenting as I went along. In the beginning, I peeled the sweet potatoes and cooked the beef and barley and oatmeal and eggs separately. Then I mixed it all together and stored them in empty cottage cheese and yogurt containers. When Chuisle was a bit over one and half-years old, I met Gerry and we began making her food at his house in Norfolk. We quickly realized we could cook it all (except the barley and eggs, cottage cheese or yogurt) without peeling the sweet potatoes in the crock pot. We needed more to last the week, though, so switched to a large soup pot and made about 18-20 cups each week.

So for a decade, we made her food every week in large batches. We mixed about 1-1/2 cups in the morning with cottage cheese cooked with an egg. In the evening, we topped her dish with plain yogurt. Chuisle lived healthily and happily until the week after Labor Day weekend in 2016. She had the healthiest, softest coat and a bounce in her prance. We lost our beautiful, faithful Boxer on September 12, 2016. We love her and miss her. We estimate that she ate over 3500 pounds of sweet potatoes, 1000 pounds of beef, and 600 large containers of cottage cheese and plain yogurt and 300-dozen eggs, over 1000 packages of barley, and 1000 cups of uncooked oatmeal in those 11 years!

Here's the final recipe we came to rely on:

A large pot and some water to partially cover about 7-8 large sweet potatoes, peel on and cut into 1/2 inch rounds or wedges.

About 1-1/2 cups of oatmeal (we used Trader Joe's)

1 to 2 pounds 80% fat ground beef

2 packages of Trader Joe's 10 minute barley

Simmer the sweet potatoes and oatmeal until they are soft but not mushy. Throw in some extra stock or broths that you might have hanging around. You want your end result to be mushy, not too firm or watery, so you'll have to experiment.

Toss in the ground beef and break up all of it with a large masher. (We used one that didn't totally mash up everything.) Simmer until beef is no longer pink.  Shut off the heat and pour in 1-2 packages of the barley. There should be enough water so that the barley is covered with potatoes and meat. If not, add very hot water to the simmering pot. Cover and leave for about a half hour. Mix it all up and store it in the frig in individual meal dishes or one big container.

You can toss in some leftovers with the barley. Extra veggies, chicken or lamb meat. Bacon fat. Whatever. It's good for them! (We cooked chicken carcasses and lamb bones and stored the small bits of meat and broth for our Best Food for a Boxer cooking days.)

Sweet Corn Pancakes from Smitten Kitchen

These were posted on Smitten Kitchen's Facebook page and I couldn't resist. I love sweet corn off the cob. I save the cobs separately to simmer with milk for chowders. I freeze both. For the pancakes: 2 T butter plus some additional for brushing 3/4 cup kernels cut from one large ear of sweet corn (or use what you have frozen) 1/8 t. salt plus some for seasoning the corn 1 large egg 1-1/4 cup buttermilk (I use the dry reconstituted with water; I keep it in the refrigerator) 1/4 t. vanilla 1 T sugar 3/4 c. flour 1/4 c. cornmeal 1 t. baking powder 1/2 t. baking soda Melt the butter in a skillet and add corn. Saute for 4-5 minutes until it browns ever so slightly. Sprinkle with salt and let cool. Wipe out the skillet. Or if you are using a large griddle, clean the skillet! Lightly beat the egg in the bottom of a large bowl, whisk in the buttermilk, corn, vanilla, and sugar. In a smaller bowl, whisk the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, and 1/8 tsp. salt. Stir all the dry into the wet ingredients, mixing until just combined. It will still be lumpy in appearance. Heat a skillet or griddle. Brush it with butter. Ladle 1/4 c. batter at a time. When the pancakes have bubbles on them but are slightly dry around the edges, flip them over and cook them until they are golden brown underneath. Lower heat if necessary. I served these with fresh strawberries tossed into a saucepan with hot strawberry jam. Yummy!

Tunisian Orange Almond Cake

I found this recipe in Sarah Raven's terrific cookbook, In Season: Cooking with vegetable and fruits. It's interesting because instead of flour it calls for bread crumbs and ground almonds (or Trader Joe's almond flour which is pure ground almonds.)

I found that using a bit more bread crumbs didn't hurt because I use fresh crumbs from a sourdough boule. They are airy and light so I use about a cup instead of 1/2 cup. Superfine sugar can be made at home but processing the granulated sugar in a food processor for a few minutes.I also doubled the recipe for a pan of small bundt cakes.

1/2 - 1 cup slightly stale breadcrumbs
1 cup superfine sugar
3/4 cup ground almonds
1-1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 cup butter, melted 4 eggs
Finely grated zest of 1 large orange
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon

For the syrup:
Juice of one orange and one lemon
1/2 cup sugar
2 - 4 cloves
1 cinnamon stick

Mix the breadcrumbs with the sugar, almonds, and baking powder in a food processor. Add the melted butter and eggs and beat well. Stir in the citrus zests.

Pour into a greased 8-inch cake pan - or into other molded cake pans. Put the filled pan into a cold oven and set the heat to 375 degrees. Bake until the cake is a rich brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. This will be about 40 minutes in an 8 inch pan, more for a bundt pan, and less for individual pans.

When the cake is baking, make the syrup by placing all the ingredients into a pan and bringing it to a gentle boil stirring until all the sugar has dissolved. Simmer for 3 minutes and then remove the cloves and cinnamon stick.

Allow the baked cake(s) to cool in the pan for 5 minutes and then turn out on a plate. Pierce holes in it with a skewer and pour over the syrup. Leave to cool. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream.

 

Lasagna Sandwiches

Gerry brought some lasagna fixings home from his Geoge Golf Weekend. In one container I found meat sauce and in another ricotta that was already mixed with chopped parsley.

We had some frozen hollowed-out bulky rolls - I had used the insides for bread crumbs. I spooned the meat sauce into the roll hollow and

topped it with the ricotta. I sprinkled on some grated Italian blend cheese and topped that with Parmesan shavings and the top of the roll. I wrapped it in tin foil on the sides and bottoms, leaving the top exposed. I put these in a dish in a 375 degree oven for about 1/2 hour.

They were crunchy like a toasted sub and we ate them by hand. Yummy.

Chillin' in the snow with Limoncillo

Meyer lemons from Costco come in 4 pound bags - and they are beautiful and fresh when you can get them. Last month, I decided to make homemade limoncillo using our own Canelli Wildflower Lane honey. 


It's going to be a fun summer of cocktails - but perhaps a snow cone today would be fun!

Last month, I cut the lemons into quarters and removed any seeds that were obvious. I then packed them into a large glass jar and covered them with Sky vodka. We taped up the jar (it had a lid that didn't seal) and let it sit in the cellar among the wine bottles for four weeks. Last night we brought up the lemons and I knew I had to finish the project this morning - I thought it was going to be a bit more difficult than it was.

Essentially, I drained the vodka from the lemons and then put the lemons in a pot with 4 cups water and 4 cups raw sugar and 2 cups of our delicious honey.

I let them simmer for a few minutes and mashed them down, extracting the juice. I then drained the lemons into a colander and let them cool, straining the syrup of all pulp and seeds. When the syrup was very cool, I mixed it up with the lemon-vodka (about 2-1 syrup to vodka) and used a funnel to store the limoncillo in several bottles with covers and put them in the frig.

I then removed the pulp from the strained lemons and placed it in a pot with about 2 cups of water and simmered it for 10 minutes to get the flavor from the pulp. I added that to 4 cups of water and 4 cups of table sugar and 2 cups of raw sugar.

 I sliced all the peels into thin slices for garnish in a drink and added them to the water/sugar simmering on the stove. I simmered them until they were all translucent. I ended up with about 12 ounces of slivers covered with syrup and 12 ounces of extra simple syrup.

We decided the strong Meyer lemon flavor makes this a perfect limoncillo to mix in cocktails. LimoncilloQuest is a great site for tons of recipes.

Candied Meyer Lemon Slices in Syrup

This past fall (during my 2015 preserving craze), one of the favorite recipes I used was for Candied Meyer Lemon Slices in Syrup. The recipe is small-batch from preserving by the pint by Marisa McClellan. The whole idea is to preserve just a few jars (2-4 and in this case half-pints) so that you aren't storing or giving away quarts of everything you preserve.

I used four pounds of lemons and 4 cups of sugar last time (and again this time.) The original recipe was obviously going to produce much more syrup than candied lemons ... and I had four pounds of lemons so I used them all.  Last fall, I finished with about six half-pint jars.


In my first batch last fall, the lemon slices came out wonderful - a nice clear syrup and lovely, sweet slices. They are terrific in a gin and tonic, a honey-lemon drink, hot or cold tea, or glass of soda water.

While I gave away a few jars, I have been hoarding my own stash to use on a tart this spring or over a lemon pound cake.

And so, this week when I saw 4 pound bags at Costco, I knew I needed more candied Meyer lemons!

This time, however, I used pint jars (I read several canning/preserving directions on the Internet. Basically, the processing time is the same for half-pints as pints of jams and jellies.) I boiled the juice down for a nice, flavorful syrup. Possibly a mistake.

Sadly, the syrup ended up a bit cloudy this time and I will have to wait to see how thick it will end up being. The lemon slices also seemed to break down more this time around. Delicious nonetheless! I tasted some left in the pan. Sweet and the rind is tender yet a bit firm and chewy with just that touch of lemon bitterness.

The original recipe calls for one-pound of Meyer lemon slices, 1/4" with seeds removed. I removed a thin slice from the stem side but kept the other end. It makes for a nice piece of lemon rind.

Cover the lemon slices with water and bring to a boil and cook 20-25 minutes until the zest appears tender.



Take them out of the pan with a slotted spoon and drain.  You should have some liquid left depending on how much water you started with. If it isn't one cup, add some warm water to the pan so you have one cup liquid.

Add  2 c. sugar and bring to a boil.  Add lemons and cook 10-15 minutes until the lemon peel is pretty translucent with little whiteness left.

Place lemons and syrup on half-pint jars, put on lid and ring and process 10 min. in a water bath. Cool.