Some Thoughts, New Stuff, and an Experiment

Thoughts:
I just applied for a new job, could everyone reading this send some good vibes my way? I'm sure I can do the job, and pretty sure I would like it more than my job now. I'd probably get paid more too. So start rooting for me!! :)
I love candy bars, and I just noticed the the price is really going up (10 whole cents! 99 cents for a candy bar!) which seems like a real shame. Is it the economy? Is it inflation? Is it temporary and will be back down in a week? I guess I'll just have to be better than ever about buying them when they are on sale, buy one get one free, or 2/$1.
The Lovemuffin is out of town for a couple of weeks, and I have to feed the missionaries on Thursday all by myself. The sister from Korea said "we will eat everything" (I think she meant "anything," second language, you know) What on earth should I make? I'm kind of thinking quiche with something crazy like artichoke hearts and fennel, something like that. I learned how to make quiche from a guy that I worked with, and I haven't tried it at home yet. Or maybe I'll just get a huge Papa Murphy's pizza. Any ideas? Let me know.
There are finally some tomatoes ripening on my plant, they are very pretty and I hope it keeps doing well. The one big pepper on my bell pepper plant also looks like it is ripening, I'm very excited. But my zucchini plant is pretty much dead. I thought it might recover, it looked like it wanted to produce more fruits, but the leaves are shriveling up and I just don't think it can support itself anymore. Oh well.

Some Stuff:
For my birthday I treated myself to a trip to Sur la Table; I bought a kitchen scale, a pastry cloth/rolling pin cover and a new pastry brush. Our last silicone pastry brush got lost in one of our moves and I've been missing it. The pastry cloth was kind of an unnecessary splurge, but I'm interested to see if it makes it easier to roll out pie crusts. I also might try to do a strudel. But the scale, ah, to have a kitchen scale. Now I can make things from this book, that only gives measurments by weight. I'll have to check out "The Bread Bible" (Rose Levy Berenbaum) and "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" (Peter Reinhart) from the library. I've never read "The Bread Baker's Apprentice." It looks intimidating. But I think they both give recipes and talk about making breads by weighing ingredients, and how you can get more consistant results and do some interesting experiments by changing the ratio of water to flour. I'm very excited.

An Experiment:
I am trying to make a sourdough starter using my brand new scale (hooray!!) and these instructions. I'm not sure if it's working. It's pretty stinky right now, and it looks like it is rising, but both of those things could be from the bacteria that likes to live in it before the pH changes and makes it not habitable for bacteria. I wonder if this is really a good experiment for me, because I don't even like sourdough bread. But I think it can be made more or less sour, depending on the temperature that you keep it at. I'll have to read up on balance between lactic acid and acetic acid. It should be nice to have a 100% hydration starter, because you can maybe use it in all sorts of things, like this chocolate bread. Hopefully it works and isn't too yucky.

More Pie!

In case you haven't noticed, pie is one of my favorite things to make and eat and share with friends, as well as just look at and read about. I used the leftover berries from my berry pickin/jamming adventure to make a crazy delicious pie. I used boysenberries, olallieberries, and blackberries. I learned a trick from my grandma to use tapioca to thicken the juices instead of flour or cornstarch. It's a little funky, but it works well and is good because it doesn't have the yucky cornstarch or raw flour taste.

Berry Pie

pie crust dough for 2 crusts or enough for a bottom and a lattice top

4-5 cups berries of your choice, fresh or frozen

3/4 cup sugar or more, if you like it sweeter

lemon zest from one lemon, or less as you like it

2 teaspoons lemon juice

1/4 cup instant tapioca pearls

Roll out the dough and place in the pie pan, trim the dough so that a little of it overhangs the pan, a little less than an inch. Keep the dough well chilled. Roll out the dough for the top half or the lattice, keep it chilled as well. Mix together 3 1/2 or 4 cups of the berries, sugar, zest, juice and tapioca pearls together, pour into the pie shell, and top with remaining berries, as much as you want, but don't overfill it. I just discovered that it is nice to have extra whole berries to put on top that aren't disintigrating because of the sugar and the stirring, it makes it look really nice. Arrange the top crust, cutting vents, or make the lattice top. Fold the excess dough under itself, and crimp the edges. If desired, you can brush the top with milk and sprinkle with a little coarse-grained sugar, to make it extra pretty and sparkly.

Bake at 425 for 40-50 minutes, until the filling is very bubbly and the crust is toasty brown. Check the bottom crust if you are using a glass pan, it should be brown and cooked looking as well. If the bottom isn't cooked, but the top crust is getting too brown, you may want to make a foil tent or rim to put over it, well vented, and let it bake a little longer. No one likes a soggy doughy bottom crust. When the pie is completely cooked, try to not devour it right away, let it cool so that it can set up. Get together with friends and serve with a nice French vanilla ice cream if desired. Eat the leftovers for breakfast.

What do you do in the Summertime?

Pretty much every summer that I can remember my mom has made jam and I helped. Sometimes we find a great deal on some fruit, so we buy a ton and make jam like crazy for a day or two. It's great. Last year my mom and I picked apricots from Lovemuffin's grandma's tree, and we made seventeen batches of apricot jam. It was pretty incredible. We're still eating it. Lovemuffin's cousin also made a couple of batches, she tried a recipe that didn't call for pectin, so it needed less sugar and then you boil it for a long time so it's more like very thick syrup, but quite tasty, because it is fruitier. This year the fruit I got wasn't free, but I got a good deal because I picked my own. A couple of ladies from church and myself went up to the Gizdich Ranch in Watsonville to pick berries and it was great fun. I ended up with 19 pounds of boysenberries and about 5 pounds of olallieberries. By the way, when you say "olallieberries," it sounds like "lalaberries," even though Wikipedia says you pronounce it "oh-la-leh." Olallieberries are some sort of hybrid, you'll have to look at the little chart. Too complicated. Anyway, they make a good jam and a good pie, but they are a little tart for eating fresh, not quite like blackberries or raspberries, or even boysenberries. Those boysenberries on the bushes were so big and pretty, I just had to keep picking them, and the two women I was with helped, and that's how I ended up with 19 pounds.
When I got home that night I made two batches of jam the regular way, with the pectin and the whole lot of sugar, and then darling Lovemuffin saw how much sugar it was and thought we should try something different. Which was weird. He's never been one to be concerned about his sugar intake. I started looking up recipes for pectin free jam, and in my vast research (read, about half an hour of web surfing) I decided that I would try a small batch using one part fruit, and one part sugar, and a little lemon. And it worked really well! It set up well, it's nice and fruity, not too sweet, and you can do a pretty big batch all at once instead of having to do a lot of small batches over and over again. Which is kind of nice, but it's also nice to have small batches to process in the hot water bath, so that you can fit all of the jars in at the same time.
Here's what I did for my larger batch that worked really well:

Less Sugar Boysenberry Jam
11 cups mashed boysenberries
1 lemon, zest and juice
11 cups sugar

Place mashed berries and lemon zest and juice in a large pot, and bring to a gentle boil. Add sugar slowly, stirring with a very long handled wooden spoon. Bring it back to a full boil and let boil for 10-20 minutes, or longer if you aren't at sea level. The texture of the bubbles will change. If that makes sense. I took some videos, but I'm having a hard time posting them, there are some pictures that might give you the right idea, and I'll try to describe it. The bubbles become more caramelly and persistant. When the sugared fruit starts boiling, it looks pretty much like water at a full boil, and then when it is ready to set up, therer are more bubbles constantly, it is hard to tell when one pops and another takes its place.
Before:

















After:

When the jam changes in this way, ladle it into clean jars, wipe the top and put on the lids and rings, and process in boiling water. I did mine for 10 minutes and the lids popped right as I took them out of the water. If you are at a higher altitude, process for longer. This batch set right up and I really like the texture of it without the pectin. The pectin-free jam made from berries seems different than the one from apricots, less like syrup and more like regular jam. Probably the berries have a lot more natural pectin in them than apricots. Another thing I have heard that you can try to make pectin-free jam is to use a quince in it, because quinces are supposed to have a huge amount of natural pectins. Maybe I'll try that sometime too. I have to say a big THANK YOU! to Lovemuffin's cousin, for introducing me to a new method of making jam. It's really fun to know that you can experiment with jam and it will still taste good, even if it doesn't set up exactly the same as it would if you follow exactly the recipe from the pectin boxes.

Rhubarb Cobbler

Rhubarb has always fascinated me. It looks like pink celery, and it tastes so good in pie. It's amazing. If you have ever had rhurbarb, its was probably in strawberry rhubarb pie. When I was in high school, I really wanted to grow rhubarb in our yard because I had heard that it grows really well in cold places like Siberia and Wyoming. My dad never really got on board with that idea, maybe because he only knew of one thing to do with it. But I have always been sure that there is so much more to do with it, I just need a lot to experiment with.

Now, whenever I see good fresh looking rhubarb at the grocery store or the farmers market, I buy a couple of stalks and either use them immediately, or cut them up and freeze them for future use. It freezes very nicely, just spread out the pieces on a cookie sheet so they aren't all in a big clump and then put them in a freezer bag so that you can measure them easily when you use them later. Elise, of my favorite food blog, simplyrecipes.com recently posted a bunch of great looking rhubarb recipes, I haven't had a chance to try them all, because I keep getting stuck on this rhubarb cobbler recipe which I want to share with you today.

A couple of years ago I saw this recipe for rhubarb cobbler online, I don't remember where or I would post the reference, and it is awesome. We tried making it in the dutch oven with my family with the same dumping method you use to make peach cobbler with canned peaches, but it didn't have enough liquid in it to make the cakey part turn into cake, and it was way too sweet, plus the melty wax from the everlasting candles we put in for Motherdear's birthday, and overall wastn't the best cobbler experience ever, so that was kind of a bummer. So here is the tried and true method that you do in a cake pan in the oven.

Rhubarb Cobbler

3 c. chopped rhubarb

3/4 c. brown sugar
4 Tbsp. butter, melted
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 c. milk
1 1/2 c. flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 c. sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, butter a 9 x 11 inch pan. Combine rhubarb and brown sugar in a medium size bowl, mix well and set aside. In a large bowl, combine 3 tablespoons of the melted butter, eggs, milk, flour baking powder, vanilla, and sugar. Beat with a heavy whisk until a smooth batter is formed. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Spread the rhubarb mixture over the batter in an even layer. Drizzle with the remaining melted butter, bake for 40 minutes, maybe a little longer if you want the middle not quite as gooey as it looks in the picture above. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream, if desired.

Variations:

*Add 2 or more teaspoons (to taste) minced fresh ginger root to the rhubarb/sugar mixture, prepare and devour as usual.
*Add orange zest and up to 1/4 c. orange juice to rhubarb/sugar mixture (decrease amount of sugar if you are adding juice), prepare and devour as usual.
*I kind of think that the amount of sugar in the rhubarb part can be reduced a little, as you like it. It is important to have some sugar, because it helps make it liquidy, which seems important for cobbler, and rhubarb is very very tart on its own. But you may want to reduce the sugar if it sounds like too much for you.

My babies are growing up so fast!

Here are my plants, see how grown up they look! The zucchini is kind of going crazy, it is getting tons of flowers, and I'm kind of nervous about them, though, I'm not sure if I'm doing it right. But the other day we sauteed one and it was tasty, so I guess it's okay. My landlady says you can eat the flowers, so maybe we'll do that too. There are two bell pepper plants now, I planted the second one about a month after the first one, I think I saved the poor thing from the home depot. The small one is just barely starting to get flowers and buds on it, but the big one has a couple of peppers and even though they are going kind of slow, they are definitely growing.  The tomato is humongous, it has flowers on it, but I haven't seen any fruits growing yet. I like to go out and give them hugs and whisper to them about how special they are.

 

Bright and Tasty Vegetable Stew

The idea for this dish is from a Moroccan tagine. Something that I have never actually eaten, unfortunately, but I saw this recipe for a lamb tagine with all these different vegetables, and I really wanted to try it. We were feeding the missionaries, and what better time to experiment with crazy food than when you have a captive audience, right? Actually, I get super nervous about cooking for other people, start thinking too much and second guessing myself, so maybe not the best idea after all.

The original recipe is from a cookbook I got at the library, "The Africa Cookbook: Tastes of a Continent" by Jessica B. Harris. It calls for lamb, carrots, turnips, eggplants, calabash squash (like a pumpkin) and zucchini, along with spices, of course. That combination of vegetables seemed a little more autumnal that I wanted, so I did something a little different, and hopefully still preserved the spirit of the thing. I meant to serve it with couscous, but apparently I didn't have any couscous. It was really good with the rice that I cooked instead with vegetable stock and a little cardamom. You could of course add meat, beef or lamb would be good, brown them to start with in olive oil and spices, then add the vegetables as directed. Or you can grill your favorite meat and serve it on the side, in case you are feeding a vegetarian. Pesky vegetarians.

Vegetable Tagine 
olive oil for sautéing
5-6 carrots, chopped into 1 inch chunks
1 onion, chopped not too small

2 teaspoons fresh ginger, roughly chopped 

fresh ground black pepper, to taste

5 or 6 cardamom seeds, or about 1/4 tsp. fresh ground cardamom

pinch saffron (optional)
3 sweet bell peppers, chopped into 1 inch chunks
3 zucchinis, chopped into 1 inch chunks
1 - 1 1/2 cups vegetable stock
6-8 sprigs cilantro, leaves coarsely chopped
6-8 sprigs parsley, leaves coarsely chopped

Sauté the carrots and the onion in olive oil for a couple of minutes, add cardamom, black pepper and saffron, half of the ginger. Add the bell peppers, and zucchinis  and stock. Simmer covered for 20-30 minutes, add the remaining ginger halfway through. Stir occasionally until the vegetables are soft and there is less liquid, it shouldn't be too dry, but it shouldn't be soupy at all. Add the chopped cilantro and parsley leaves, let simmer an additional 5 or so minutes. The colors of the vegetables should be bright and cheerful, and the flavor with the spices will be bright and cheerful, too. Serve along with rice or couscous flavored with cardamom or thyme.
Serves 6.

My Macaroons

Already I have forgotten where I learned this, but recently I discovered that the word "macaroon" in Italian refers to almond paste. The word macaroni is from the same root, something to do with paste. If you go to a French bakery and they have something called macaroons, they are some kind of sandwich cookie, sometimes they have all sorts of different flavors and colors, but they sure don't have coconut sticking out all over-they are strictly an almond based cookie. Just do a quick image search, you'll see what I mean. 

The European macaroons are delicious, but I am obsessed with coconut, and I like my macaroons with toasty coconut and just a little almond. I like the coconut chopped finely, I think it makes a better textured cookie, and I don't get strings of coconut stuck in my teeth. These are pretty sweet cookies, so I started using unsweetened coconut, which I found from Bob's Red Mill at Whole Foods.

Macaroons

1 1/2 c. unsweetened coconut

1/2 c. almond pieces

1/2 c. sugar

2 egg whites

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a cookie sheet. Chop up the coconut and almond finely - I do this in a spice grinder, but don't turn it into powder - place in a small bowl. Add sugar, mix in. Add egg whites, mix well. Scoop small balls of the mixture onto the cookie sheet, only about 2 tablespoons per cookie. Bake for about 10 minutes, let them set on the pan for a couple of minutes, then scoop them off and let them cool on a rack.
Note that these cookies will not spread out, you can place them very close together on the pan and they will not grow into each other.