As a change of pace from slaws and salady shaves this week, I got back in the pickle lab, quick-curing matchsticks of raw kohlrabi in both cider- and rice-vinegar brine. Both worked beautifully, with the cider version yielding rounder, sweeter flavors than the brighter, lighter rice vinegar. Let your own mood—and pantry—be your guide. Quickled…
Category: put it up
preserved
Swap-Box Hero: Quickled Shishitos
Shishitos are hot. Not hot hot (only one in ten have enough capsaicin to read as spicy). But hot trendy, I guess. Over the past six or seven years, they’ve shown up in our sharebox just three or four times—total. But if last night’s “predicted contents” email from LFFC holds, tomorrow will be at least the third…
Concord Grape Jawn
This one’s a ‘tweener. Not really a jelly, since I’m too lazy to strain it a second time. And not really a jam, since I’m too lazy to pinch the skins off each berry so they don’t get filtered out with the pips when cranked through the food mill. Why’s that? Because I’m also too…
Wild-Fermented Beans? No Big Dill
Making pickles doesn’t have to be a Big Production. Sure, if you’re sterilizing jars, assembling a vinegar brine, bringing it to a boil, packing jars, and canning them, you’ll need to block out at least an hour and bust out some pots and pans. But if you’re making fermented pickles—say, wild-fermented* dilly beans—once you top…
Swap-Box Hero: NSFW Edition
Cover photo partially redacted for your safety. Because horseradish, often, is Not Safe. Not for work. Not for polite company. And certainly not for expectant, insistent little pups who run counter-side as soon as they hear the clink-scrape of the carrot peeler.* Who knows whether it was squeamishness or unfamiliarity that put off our CSA…
Lemon PECOTA
Sometimes, I wish preserving projects had Sabermetrics scores. Maybe a twist on VORP, which attempts to quantify the value a player adds to your team over an average-ability replacement player. Value Over Replacement Condiment? That’s close. Moneyballjars. VORC could not, alas, match PECOTA for pun potential, but, yes, preserved lemons will certainly up your chicken/fish/veal PICCATA game….
Blackberry-Fig Preserves
Besides mosquitos and morning glories, about the only thing thriving in my garden this hot, sticky summer is my fig tree. The cherries got 95% wiped out by ill-timed, early-June torrential rain and whipping winds; July’s grapes were all lost to the birds; and this month’s near-daily drenchings have left most of the tomatoes that…
Compound Interest
In my book, butter is always good. But some butter is better than others. And Summerbutter—a compound butter made with pureed tomatoes and a dash of salt—is nearly perfect. Echoing Marcella Hazan’s iconic tomato sauce (while rivaling the simplicity of cacio e pepe), Summerbutter lives to lend a decadent, velvet wrap to hot noodles (or even zoodles)….
Goosecherry Jam
This post, started one year ago today, was supposed to be a victory lap. The cherry-and-gooseberry jam I’d made after last year’s epic harvest had been my favorite jar in years, and I was looking forward to creating—and documenting—a second batch. Alas, in 2018 Mother Nature had other ideas. An extended verycoldsnap in March had delayed…
Small-Batch Fig Jam
That seems redundant, doesn’t it? Because if you find figs at the farmstand, they’re often upwards of $12-a-quart—or even a buck apiece for big ones. And if you grow them yourself, you likely eat as many as you can straight off the tree (or, say, with a little honey and yogurt . . . or…
Boxing Day 