Salsa

Tonight I am making a second batch of “Zesty Roasted Pepper & Garlic Salsa”. It’s really, really damn good. In my opinion, of course. But if you were to eat some, I’m fairly sure it would be your opinion, too.

The recipe is based on the “Zesty Salsa” recipe from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving (Judy Kingry, Lauren Devine) and was the perfect way to use up the overabundance of peppers and tomatoes on my counter.

At a friend’s suggestion (yes, yes, you get credit for this, L!) I roasted most of the peppers, some of the onion, and all the garlic (using one head of roasted for each clove of minced that the recipe called for). The results were smooth, smoky, rich and comfortably spicy. It’s so fine, I feel completely compelled to share.

Zesty Roasted Pepper Garlic Salsa

• 10 cups peeled, diced tomatoes (about 6-7 pounds tomatoes)
• 7 1/2 cups chopped peppers: I used approximately 5 cups of a combination of roasted, skinned jalapenos, hot cherry peppers, hot italian frying peppers, yellow and red peppers. The rest were unroasted, seeded and diced semi-hot peppers.
• 5 cups chopped onion: I used about 1 cup roasted red onion, 3 1/2 cups chopped fresh yellow onion, and 1/2 cup chopped fresh red onion
• 5 heads of roasted garlic
• 1 1/4 cups apple cider vinegar
• 1 T dried cilantro flakes (totally optional)
• 1 T salt (I like kosher, but use what you have)

A few notes on the ingredients:

If you can, use Roma (or a similar paste-type) tomatoes. Globe tomatoes are pretty watery, which means your salsa will be watery, too. However, both paste and globe tomatoes are tasty, and I don’t mind watery salsa. You can also squeeze your tomatoes before measuring them if you want to reduce the amount of liquid.

To roast peppers, you can hold them over the flame of your gas stove or put them on the grill, but I like the oven. I can do a lot of peppers at once without a lot of hassle. Basically you just put your peppers in a single layer on a baking sheet, stick them in the oven at 400 degrees F for 20-30 minutes, turning every 10 minutes or so, and that’s it. The skins will turn blackish in spots and will split and blister. This is perfect. Let them get mushy and look like used-up balloons. Take them out of the oven and put them directly into a paper bag, close up the bag, and steam them for about 10 minutes more before peeling/seeding and chopping them. A tip: cover your baking sheet with aluminum or tin foil before roasting to make clean-up easier. Oh, and wear gloves when you’re peeling and chopping them.

To roast garlic, I whack off the top of the garlic head so that I can see a little bit of each clove. Place the trimmed heads in the center of a piece of foil, close up the foil to make a little packet, and stick that in the oven along with your peppers. It takes about 40-50 minutes to roast the garlic this way. Remove the packet from the oven and let it cool. Open the foil, take one of the garlic heads and squeeze the base of it gently to push the garlic pulp up and out of the skins. The garlic will be soft and practically spreadable (some people do like to use roasted garlic as a spread, in fact).

If you are one of those insane hot-foods people you can also add some hot pepper sauce to your salsa, though I think the best flavor comes from using hot peppers instead.

To make your salsa, dump all of the ingredients into a big pot. Bring it to a boil over medium-high heat, then reduce the flame and let it cook at a strong simmer/gentle boil for about 10 minutes. The salsa will thicken a bit. Cook it until it’s the texture that you like (though I’d advise against cooking it terribly long, as it will just get mushy and icky).

Put the hot salsa into prepared canning jars, cover them with lids and rings, and process. I did the first batch in a water bath canner for 15 minutes, and the second batch in the pressure canner at 10 psi for about the same time. I like to use the pressure canner just to get all the processing done at once, though it’s plenty acidic to do in the boiling water-bath. The recipe makes 8 – 9 pints.

Enjoy!

Kitchen Mechanics

You may or may not have noticed the profound lack of posting around here lately. This is because I am too busy running heavy machinery in the kitchen to have time to blog. But don’t worry. I took pictures.

First of all, in a fit of desperation (after hand-seeding a bushel and a half of tomatoes), I broke down and got myself a tomato strainer.

This particular one is the “Roma” strainer. It comes with a tomato/apple screen (you can buy other screens, such as a grape screen and a salsa screen, if you have an extra $35 to shell out.) The strainer itself is about $55-$60 and is a good design, though some of the parts are kind of cheesily made.

Notice the very large hopper on top, the hand crank (since, as you might recall, we canned last year’s tomatoes without electricity); notice the nifty chute for your strained product to roll down, and the little plastic garbage funnel on the far left. This is a time-tested arrangement for straining, where a screw inside the screen moves the pulp through an ever-shrinking funnel until all the liquid material oozes out through the strainer screen and the strained out stuff pops out the garbage end.

Basically, you chop your tomatoes (quartered is fine, unless they’re abominations) and cook them for a few minutes to get them extra-soft.

Ladle some of the tomaotes and juice into the large hopper.

Turn the crank, and watch the magic happen.

When you’re all finished, you will have a nice bowl of tomato puree that you can cook down into a thick tomato sauce. Or you can make soup. Or you can make one of the nine billion tomato dishes that require skinned and seeded tomatoes. It’s up to you.

While you’re deciding what to do with your tomato bounty, I’ll show you our other new piece of kitchen equipment. I finally got myself a Pressure Canner.

(You will see by its sheer size and magnitude that it deserved Capitalization.)

See how it dwarfs my old water-bath canner? See how its girth is so massive that the two can’t both fit on the stovetop at the same time?

I fear the Pressure Canner, to be quite honest. It has a humongous lid, with a ginormous handle:

Doesn’t that look just massive? (It is. I can barely lift it.)

But the intimidating part is all the dials, gauges and weights.

They seem so precise, which is so not me in the kitchen. I am a hack, really. And hacks and high pressure don’t seem to go together. Not really. I need to be careful and pay attention, damnit.

Everything about this cooker/canner is big, including the noises that it makes (but that’s another story). Let’s just say that I can process 32 pint jars at one go, or 16 quarts. I can also make enough soup at one time to feed a platoon of hungry soldiers.

But I’m excited to finally have a pressure canner. This means we can put up meat sauce, or low-acid vegetables, or meat, or soup stock, or basically anything you might otherwise see in jars or cans in your grocery. And that, my friends, is no small thing.

CSA Week 10, And A Recipe To Boot

Here is this week’s box:

It included

• An enormous cucumber
• a medium sized zucchini
• celery
• some green onions
• a head of cabbage
• five potatoes
• a bit of broccoli
• some flowers (we think they are zinnias)

Last night I made a beef stir-fry for dinner and used up most of the onions, the beans, some of the zucchini, and the rest of the green pepper from last week. I will share the recipe because it is not only tasty, but ridiculously easy.

Let me say that what follows here is not an authentic stir-fry recipe. Or let me say that any resemblance to authentic stir-fry recipes, living or dead, is completely unintentional. This is how I clean out my refrigerator and come up with a quick dinner at the same time.

I should also mention that we buy our beef by the half. If you imagine a brown paper grocery bag, and then imagine six of them filled to bursting, that is about how much beef you get out of a half. (Many folks prefer to buy a quarter, since this is an awful, awful lot of beef.) About two or three of those bags contain ground beef, which comes in handy in the winter time as a filler for other casserole dishes and soups. But we also get a lot of steaks. And while I like the taste of steak now and again, I personally can’t sit down to a slab of meat and just dig in. Even my husband, who has been called “Beef Boy” in the past, can only eat so much steak.

This thing about the steaks is important because you should know that I probably would not go out and buy a steak to make stir fry with. But if you have a steak in your larder and cannot bear the thought of just frying it up and carving it, or maybe you have just one or two steaks and several people who want to eat, this is a nice way to spread the love.

First off, get out your meat ingredients. They need to be sliced and then marinated for about an hour. You can also use tofu in place of the meat (so they say), or I’ve used julienned pork chops or chicken pieces as well. Sometimes both.

For the marinade, you’ll need soy sauce, mirin (sweetened sake) OR you can use a tsp of honey plus some white wine vinegar or rice vinegar; I also use red pepper flakes and a tablespoon or so of oil. My favorite oil is sesame or walnut, but you can also use a mild olive or even a vegetable oil. You only need a tablespoon, so just use what you have. The point of this recipe is to use things up, not to add rarely-used items to the pantry. Mix all the marinade ingredients together in a proportion that is about four parts soy sauce to one part mirin/vinegar and one part oil. Put the meat in a bowl and cover it with the marinade, tossing to coat all the pieces. There should be just enough to coat everything. It should not be swimming in marinade. For two steaks, I generally use about 1/4 cup soy sauce (or less) plus a tablespoon each of mirin and a tablespoon or maybe even two teaspoons of oil.

Next, while the meat/protein is marinating, make a pot of rice. I use a rice cooker (since it’s brainless) but just work with whatever you have. Make whatever kind of rice you think you’d like to eat with your stir fry: brown, white, whatever. I find that wild rice and risottos are not so good with stir frys, but what do I know?

Now it’s time to get the vegetables ready. This is a very flexible recipe. It’s one of those clear-out-the-crisper-drawer kind of efforts (my favorite kind!) In addition to one or two steaks, our family likes to add some carrots, peppers, onions, peas, beans, and whatever else is hanging around that looks like it needs to be fried up and eaten. Last night we had some leftover corn-on-the-cob that I scraped off and put into the bowl, along with some cherry tomatoes. The only important thing is that you arrange your vegetables so that the ones that need longer cook times (peppers, carrots) go in the pan first, while things that just need a quick swish in the hot pan (tomatoes, green onion tops, already-cooked things) go in last. I use a large cutting board and scrape things into the pan in order. You can also use small bowls or whatever system works for your kitchen’s layout.

Heat up the pan – or, if you’re really fancy (I am not), your wok. Add a few tablespoons of quality oil. Sesame oil is good for high heat stir frying. Walnut oil also works. Olive oil is also fine (but not EVOO, that is best for uncooked dishes or low heat). Let the oil get hot (practically smoking) and then add the meat. Make sure you’ve got everything that needs fried right at the ready, because this part goes pretty fast.

Put the meat pieces in first. For thinly (1/4″) sliced steak, I usually cook the pieces for about 2-4 minutes TOTAL. As soon as they are colored on all sides take them out of the pan, for goodness sake. Even if you like your meat medium, or well done, do not let them hang out all day to turn into leather. The meat will continue cooking once the outside is seared, so you really want to get them out of there right away. Some pieces will cook faster than others, so you have to watch each piece and take it out when it’s ready. Chicken might take a minute or two longer. You can always add them back to the pan if you need to.

Toss in the vegetables once the meat has started cooking. Add the ones that need to cook longer first. Peppers, zucchini and carrots can practically go in with the meat. You’ll have to sort of wing it based on what you’re cooking. Remember, though, that the point is not to make the vegetables mushy. You’re just trying to get them slightly soft. If they were crunchy when they went into the pan, they should still be slighly crunchy when they come out.

Any extra liquid that’s in the bowl can also go into the pan. It makes a good sauce. Once everything is cooked, put the meat and veggies into a clean bowl and serve along with the rice. Enjoy!

On The Good Foot

This is a [frozen, cleaned, par-boiled] chicken foot.

I made chicken stock yesterday, and how can you make chicken stock without some chicken feet? I ask you.

My girls are not impressed, unfortunately. For some reason, they think Foot Soup is icky.

I guess they sort of have a point.

No one complains when the soup bowls get passed around, however.  So don’t knock it until you try it.

The End.

Another Hard-Learned Lesson

If you’re making a cream cheese frosting, and the recipe calls for one and one-half cups of powdered sugar, you should really make sure that your powdered sugar container contains powdered sugar and not BAKING SODA. They may look a lot alike but, trust me. They don’t taste ANYTHING alike.

Good fortune has smiled on us, however, in that my habit of tasting substances whilst they are still in the mixing bowl (and, in this case, NOT already on the cake) revealed the horrible, awful truth: that I had included a full cup and one-half of BAKING SODA, instead of powdered sugar, in my frosting. And, no it was not good.

Come on, universe- give me a collective EEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWW. Because that’s what a cup and a half of baking soda beaten with butter and cream cheese tastes like. And, to make matters worse, there is no way short of a shot of vodka that you can clear that taste out of your mouth. (I know. I’ve tried.)

(Including the vodka part.)
The sad news is that there’s also no way of fixing this blunder, and I have now wasted two packages of cream cheese and two sticks of butter (not to mention one and one-half cups of baking soda), with no more cream cheese on hand to make a new batch, and thusly no frosting for my yummy banana cake. I shall have to improvise with some custardy filling kind of thing, and possibly a buttercream frosting. It’s not the same, but it’s a lot better than Baking Soda Frosting, that’s for sure.

Meanwhile, I’m off to make a new label for that cannister straightaway, although I’m fairly certain I won’t be making this mistake again in the very near future.

Reach Into The Magic Recipe Bag…

Last night’s meal was a surprising take on that old standby, chicken.

First off, you should know I never buy cuts of chicken anymore. Not only is it ridiculously cheaper to buy a whole bird, but I like having the guts (no pun intended) to make stock later.

Second, there is just only so much roasted chicken a girl can eat, marvelously easy though it is to make. But what to make instead? DH does not like “girl food”- things with intricate sauces (i.e. anything besides gravy), or dishes with mayonnaise, lots of cheeses, etc. He’s a plain old meat & spuds boy. I needed an idea for something new and different to do with this whole (free-range, organic) chicken that was nicely thawing at the bottom of my fridge. What’s a mama with a napping toddler to do?? Make a coffee and read a cookbook, of course.

So I delved into my Fannie Farmer edition and came up with this little gem, modified to match my spice cupboard:

Vinegar Chicken Saute’

• a whole fryer (3-5 lbs) chicken, cut into 8 standard parts
• some unsalted butter*
• salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
• 1/2 cup vinegar**, divided
• 1/4 cup water
• a clove or two of garlic, minced
• fresh parsley, chopped
• fresh tarragon, chopped, or a teaspoon of dried tarragon***

You will also need

• A deep skillet with a matching lid, or a skillet with a lid that you fashion out of a pizza pan or a piece of aluminum foil, etc.
• Tongs, for turning your chicken pieces
• A platter to put the meat on while you finish the recipe

First, the recipe notes:

*Use unsalted butter. I inherited some salted butter from my mom when she cleaned out her fridge, and it is truly disgusting after eating the unsalted kind all these years. Take ownership of your salt, and apply it yourself. Don’t let someone else dictate how much you should put in your food.

**The original recipe called for red wine vinegar. Not having any on hand, I substituted cider vinegar with satisfactory results. However, red wine vinegar will definitely give this dish a smoother taste. The cider kind made it rather brash, but we like spicey foods and are rather ignorant about culinary finesse, so our untrained tastebuds didn’t care.

***I did not have fresh or dry tarragon, for some reason, so I used dried basil instead. Tasty.

Cut up your chicken as noted, wash and dry the pieces (do NOT use the dishwasher), and lightly season with the salt and pepper. Take about 3-4 T of the unsalted butter, melt it in a skillet over medium-high heat, and then deposit chicken parts within. Brown chicken on all sides for about 10 minutes. Pour in 1/4 cup of vinegar and the water, lid your pan, and reduce the heat to medium-low. Simmer for another 15 minutes or so to cook the insides of the meat. Don’t leave it too long, or it will be dry. When the chicken is done (use a meat thermometer to be sure, or cut into the thickest part of the breast meat to check), take it out of the pan and put it on a plate. It would be nice to keep it warm, but I put it back in the pan and heated it up just before serving, and that worked just fine. Back to your pan. Dump in the garlic, simmer it for a minute to get it soft, and then add the rest of the vinegar and another T of butter. Turn up the heat to get it boiling and cook it that way for another minute, until the butter is melted and the sauce is blended nicely. At this point, the recipe says to ladle the “sauce” over the chicken and serve, using the herbs as a garnish. Bah. I put the herbs into the sauce, added the chicken back to the pan, and sashayed everything around for a minute to coat the poultry and heat it up. We don’t do much with sauces around here, barring spaghetti or pizza sauce, as I mentioned earlier.

DH: This is good. A mouthful later: This is really good. Two pieces later: This is really good.

DD1: I don’t like chicken. Can I have more pineapple? Prego?

DD2: Signs “more”. Again. Again. And again.

Mama: Definitely make it again, but maybe I’ll put Red Wine Vinegar on the shopping list and see what the difference is.