Crock-Fermented Dill Pickles

This is my second year making crock dills in cooperation with my friend Cathy, who lends me the crocks her grandmother used.  The cukes come out of my gardens, as well as the peppers.  This year’s dill came from my friend Amy’s garden, and the garlic is Patti’s from Evergreen Farms (certified organic).

The recipe comes from Putting Food By–the little cucumber crock pickle recipe.  Because I started later this year (not thinking I was going to make them, and having a friend who had a little crock to fill with the early season cukes), I used the smaller 3 gallon crock this time.  The 5-gallon crock was devoted to the Concord grape wine project.

You can actually leave the pickles in the crock and eat them out of it over the winter.  But because I split the pickles between Cathy and me, and because it’s just easier to have the jars of pickles on hand, I can them.  I sterilize the quart jars and pack them with pickles, then strain the brine and heat it just to boiling before pouring it over the cukes.

I’m generally a bit short of enough fermenting liquid to can all of the pickles, so I add a brine of 3 cups water, 3 cups vinegar, and a third cup of pickling salt to that brine to make sure there’s enough.  The vinegar I added this year was 1 1/2 cups each of white and cider vinegar.

Because of the late start this year, and because I was picking those cukes very small like I like them, I only ended up with 9 quarts of pickles this year.  But they are gorgeous, and they are tasty.  Luckily, I have one quart of last year’s pickles left to eat, and a few leftovers from this batch too before I break into my share of this year’s dilly goodness.

 

Later ‘Mater

Clearing out the last of the tomatoes, so I can move the wire rack I’m holding the excess produce on back into the sunny bedroom window for the houseplants (which is its main function).

I had three pint boxes of ripened red pear tomatoes, plus a couple peach lugs about half full each of red and ripening fruits.  Those all got cleared out, and now I have a tiny wire basket with maybe four or five not-yet-ripened tomatoes left.

That’s it for the fresh tomato season.  It’s over.

All those red ripe tomatoes went into the smaller stockpot with ingredients for a small batch of soup.  I won’t be canning this batch (the fact that most of the ‘maters have been separated from their vines for weeks makes me leery)–we’ll just eat some fresh and maybe freeze leftovers if there’s enough.

It’s bittersweet.  I hate to let go and accept the fact that winter is coming, but it’ll be good to get my living room back.  I’ve still got bags of onions, several winter squashes, and baskets of peppers to use up or move downstairs, but those things will keep relatively well in their raw form.

Next canning project is either applesauce (though my friend had a great idea to make and freeze apple turnovers a la our spanikopita adventure) or pickles.  The crock-fermented pickles in the basement are pretty much ready to go.

And judging from last year, I should be starting to get next year’s seed catalogs soon!

 

Back to the Canner

I’ve taken a few week hiatus from the canner as I work on my courses and get the house in shape after the growing season.  But I did buy a big box of apples at the farmers market, and I’ve had my mind set on chutney ever since I got them.

My attitude toward chutney might make a traditional Indian cook wince (I don’t know, not having met any recently).  My idea of chutney is simply a whatever-seems-good melange of fruits and vegetables in a spicy brown sugar and cider vinegar sauce spiked with ginger and a little hot pepper.

If that’s not your idea of chutney, my apologies.

I had planned to make a green tomato-apple chutney with a friend, but her tomatoes rotted, so I had to come up with some other mix.  Yesterday afternoon in the supermarket, I saw they’d recently got in some nice-looking big fennel bulbs and that seemed promising, so I picked one up.

Too, I had a bag of organic lemons in the fridge, some onions, sweet and hot peppers, crystallized ginger–all wonderful things to throw in the pot.

The lemons got in cut in half the long way, then sliced thinly, peel and all (no seeds).  Then fennel was also sliced into thin crescents along with a couple yellow onions, and I added a couple minced cloves of garlic.  The base was 3 1/3 cups of cider vinegar and about 1 1/2 cups brown sugar. I threw in a cinnamon stick and some ground chipotle.

I was going to cut the sugar really dramatically from the Putting Food By recipe, but settled for half the sugar called for in that recipe–I like tangy, but my initial super-conservative sweetening was a little too tangy.  Now it’s about right.

Once all the other veggies were in the pot (except the peppers), I started peeling, chopping, and adding the apples as I went.  If you do it this way, some of the apples kind of melt into the sauce, while the later-added ones retain some of their firmness.

In the end, the thing looked a little too brown, so that’s when I used the red and green peppers.  They added some nice color and a good counterpoint to the sweetness.

My favorite part of the chutney is the lemon peel–so tender, but still lemony-tasting in the sauce.  The whole thing is such a great combination of sweet and tangy and spicy that I have to rein myself in from sitting down and eating a pint of it with a fork.

But there was about a half pint left over, and that jar may be emptied before H gets home tonight.

 

 

Shorter Days

Back from the farmers market and all unpacked.  The sun was setting as I headed home at about quarter after seven, having torn down and packed up what was left of a pretty good day of sales.

The produce left over was only enough to pile a small basket full, and now it’s on my kitchen table to go into meals and maybe a few more canning projects.  That went next to the other basket of produce on the table–mostly sweet peppers that started turning red in the field, and are finishing up in the safety of the house.

It’s now pitch dark at just a few minutes to eight, and I’m waiting for H to arrive, so we can decide what supper looks like.  Despite the day full of fresh produce, most Thursday nights are for eating out.

I’m not overly exhausted tonight and could probably cook, but Raziel’s has live music under the courtyard lights–there won’t be too many more Open Mics before the weather turns frosty to enjoy Ed, Michelle, and all the other locals who come to play.

While I don’t do it every week, I passed along a fair amount of my sales money to other vendors today–Patti was selling her certified organic red onions for a buck a pound, and I bought eight pounds.  They’re a bit small this year (last year they were gargantuan), but that’s OK–they’ll roast a bit faster under the balsamic glaze at this size.

I also got my usual ten bucks worth of garlic–some for planting but most for eating.  The stoneware bowl on top of the fridge is getting full, but I don’t doubt that’ll be gone far before the green garlic shows up at market next spring.

Bob Corio at Dakota Harvest Lamb advertised that this is his next-to-last market before the final on October 22nd–so I also passed some cash his way for ground beef and lamb, summer sausage and brats.  I’m on his mailing list, too, but it just seems safer to get the freezer as full as I can while he’s right on the scene.

I always wonder why more folks don’t stock up the way I and some of our other vendors (and a few customers) do.  It’s dribs and drabs–a few peppers here, a couple tomatoes there.

When I get a customer that says, “give me all the rest of those peppers–I’m gonna stuff and freeze them,” I feel a sense of camaraderie.  They know the winter’s coming, and they’re not going to be a total slave to whatever’s shipped from the Southern hemisphere to fill the grocery store shelves that week.

I also have to laugh at the ladies (it’s usually ladies) who come to the market, walk down the row of vendors, and say, “oh, I’ve got plenty of that,” and “I’ve got more than I need in my own garden.”  Sometimes I wonder why they come when they seem to already have everything we’ve got, but I like that they do come–even just to chat.

We keep watching the forecast–all of us, and the rumors of a frost “next week,” or “in two weeks” are starting to surface.  So far, the forecast for the specifically foreseeable future doesn’t go below the mid-forties at night–we’ve got a little ways to go at least.

But the fair-weather crops of summer–the eggplant and tomatoes, at least, are dropping off in their production, and the winter squashes and pumpkins are showing up in bulk now.

It won’t be long, dear readers–it won’t be long.  Fill your pantries and your basements and keep those home fires burning.

Whether it’s a heavy winter or a mild one–winter is coming nonetheless, and there’s nothing quite so fine on a blustery, icy night than realizing there’s no need to go out in the cold–everything you need is right here at home.

 

Fates are Sealed

So, I checked on the tomatoes today and realized that every tomato in the house was dead ripe.  About thirty pounds.

Don’t worry–I picked more–though they’re still in the back of the truck as of this moment.

It’s Tuesday, and although I could do the Elk Point market today, I haven’t really been able to sell tomatoes there besides the boxes of colorful cherry toms and a few big, pretty heirlooms.  It’s also crummy weather for good sales at a farmers market.

So, considering that the vines are going downhill fast and there won’t be too many more big harvests this season (if any more), and considering that we thoroughly slammed through the one jar of soup that didn’t seal from the last batch, it’s tomato soup-making time again.

I’ve got the peppers, onions, basil, and celeriac leaves in the pot, simmering down to tenderness.  I’ve got the first batch of tomatoes residing in cool water in the sink.  I’ve made myself a cup of Russian Caravan tea, and I may make another.

Last night, when H was getting ready to make a small grocery run, I asked him to pick up another case of quart jars.  While he was gone, I located another close-to-full case of empty quarts in the basement, and when he came back, he brought with him two more cases instead of one.

It’s cool and overcast, with the threat of rain ever-present on this autumnal equinox.  Good smells are starting to waft through the house. Time to start washing tomatoes and putting them through the strainer.  This may (really!) be the last time this season.

 

Tomato Soup

In the ongoing struggle to preserve as much of the season’s bounty as possible (besides what I sell at the two markets I attend), I decided to make a new recipe: Putting Food By’s Country Tomato Soup.

Washing the tomatoes

I’ve made and pressured-canned plenty of tomato-vegetable soups, but I hadn’t tried to do an entirely smooth one like this recipe.

It’s really delicious!  The downside is that now that I know how good it is, I’ll probably have to can another batch later on this week or next.  I’m getting a little weary of canning, to be honest.  And I’m almost completely out of jars–even after buying a couple more cases last week.  I’ve just got a few half-pints left that are waiting for the grape jelly project.

But, really–it’s awesome.  It’s so good, I was really upset that after the first batch, there was just exactly enough to fill three more quarts with none left over in the pot–except that little bit I sopped out with hunks of salted baguette.  And then H went at what I had left in the pot.  Yeah, it’s really good.

I did tweak the recipe a bit, though, based on a few other recipes I looked at online.  One thing I did NOT do was try to thicken it with flour and butter, as some recipes call for.  In my reading, that’s not a safe bet for home (even pressure) canning. Cornstarch worked just fine.

Instead of just the onion and green pepper called for in the PFB recipe, I added a couple cloves of garlic, a few big sprigs of basil, and a big bunch of celeriac leaves and stems (having that in my garden and not celery). The celery flavor really makes it.

All the veggies besides tomatoes were chopped and simmered with a little water in a covered pot until tender, then run through the Villaware strainer with the raw, red-ripe tomatoes (this did cause the strainer to jam up a bit, but it mostly came through in the end).

Then, I simmered the whole thing down a bit more–though it was fairly thick to start with because the tomatoes were almost all paste/sauce/canning types: San Marzanos, Principe Borgheses and Polish Linguisas.

For the record–a “canning” tomato is NOT a bruised, split, or damaged tomato (some farmstands sell their less-than perfect tomatoes as “canners”–a good way to get rid of what might better be compost).  A canning or sauce tomato is one that looks like these:

Paste tomatoes

See how “meaty” they are?  That means they cook down in a lot less time than the so-called “canners” that are just slicing tomatoes that aren’t up to snuff.

This isn’t to say I’ve never used a cracked tomato in a sauce–but since I pick those tomatoes myself, I can inspect them and know if they’re worthy–and know that a recently cracked-but-not-moldy tomato needs to be processed right away or it is compost. Period.

But back to the soup:  the PFB recipe calls for 3/4 cup of sugar, 2 tablespoons salt (optional), and 8 tablespoons of cornstarch (among a few other things) for a 4 1/2 quart batch.  I used 1 1/4 cups sugar, 12 tablespoons cornstarch, and 2 tablespoons salt for a 10 quart batch, and both H and I have pronounced it well-balanced in flavor.

To have doubled the quantity of sugar would’ve made it much too sweet, and I have learned over my years of canning to automatically cut the sugar by at least a third on any recipe.  The sugar is not acting as a preservative, so it’s really just as matter of taste, as is the salt.

Lastly, because I added celery to the recipe (which was not originally included), I processed for thirty-five minutes instead of thirty at the 10lbs. pressure recommended.

Yup.  I’m going to have to make more.

Country Tomato Soup, 2009

 

Pumpkins and Soup

I pulled one of my Neck Pumpkins from the field too early, and it wasn’t curing well, so I carved it up this morning and roasted the slices piled in a buttered 9 1/2 x 13 dish covered with foil.  I’ll scoop the mass of flesh out of the pan this afternoon and freeze it in bags for eating by itself or in soups and pumpkin pie.

Although I picked slicing tomatoes last Thursday for market, I hadn’t picked the paste tomatoes for a number of days, so M and I headed out to the farm to harvest those, plus summer squash, slicing and pickling cukes, and sweet peppers-turning-red.

So far for tomato products this season, I’ve canned 57 pints of tomato sauce, about two cases (24 jars) of salsa in pint and half-pint jars, 11 quarts ratatouille, 4 quarts TOS (tomatoes, squash, and okra), and eleven half-pints of Hungarian hot sauce.

(This doesn’t seem like that much now that I write it down.)

After bringing the tomatoes back into town and separating out the red-ripe from the not-quite-ripe, I’ve got another 25lbs. or so of tomatoes that are most definitely not going to make it to market this week.

Since H’s vote for the next tomato project is soup, I’ve been poking about the internets for good tomato soup canning recipes.  There are a lot of them out there, and quite frankly, a lot of them are scary.  Lots of flour-and-butter thickeners processed in boiling water baths. Lots of added low acid ingredients processed for much too short a time.

All this has sent me right back to the old standby, Putting Food By.  While the “Country Tomato Soup” isn’t quite what I want, I’ve got enough information in the book to know how I need to process depending on what I add to it.

It does look like I can use corn starch for thickener and celery for flavor and still get by with a 35-minute processing at ten pounds pressure with the goal of a safe and delicious product.

So, there’s yet another tomato canning adventure coming my way.

Someone told me there was going to be a frost next week.  There isn’t as far as I can tell, but I sure wouldn’t mind one at this point.

 

Oh, and did I mention?

H and I started our very first batch of homemade wine yesterday.

Had I not been utterly inundated by other produce projects, I might’ve been a better blogger about that!

On a tip from a Facebook friend, I contacted a local guy who makes a lot of different types of fruit wines.  In the spirit (no pun intended) of “the more wine-makers, the merrier,” he set us up with the yeast, nutrient, pectic acid, and Campden tabs to start our first batch.

He also ran off a good, standard recipe from the web and gave us a few tips, as well as passing along a couple of good catalogs for brewing and winemaking supplies.

So, we cleaned and de-stemmed twelve pounds of the Concord grapes from H’s vine, mashed them in the 5 gallon crock (I was going to use it for pickles–but a primary fermentation vessel was needed-stat!), and started the batch.

We had another 11 1/2 pounds of grapes besides what we used for the wine, so I ran them through my food strainer, heated the juice, then refrigerated overnight and strained this morning.  It’s a slightly tangier batch that will likely go into a jelly project at some point down the line.

The only problem we ran into was that we got the wine going in the mid-afternoon, and the recipe told us we needed to add the next ingredient twelve hours later.  So, at three o’ clock this morning, I got up and went down to my basement.

The next step after that is prescribed for twenty-four hours after the last–meaning I’ll be fumbling for the lights again and trying not to fall as I trudge downstairs half-asleep again to sprinkle on the yeast.

The lengths we’ll go…and the recipe also says the wine isn’t even drinkable for two years–maybe three.  I told H he’d better stick with me at least for that much longer; otherwise, I’ll drink all his wine!

 

Produce Insanity

Here’s how it is–I shelled beans last night while watching a movie, but I haven’t quite got the shells out to the compost, so they’re sitting in a big basket by the couch.  There is a bin of peppers and cucumbers and eggplant on the floor, two winter squash sitting on my rack below two boxes of not-quite-ripe tomatoes.

There’s a couple of shallots in a basket, too, and another too-big zucchini sitting on the floor next to two cases of various high-acid (that is, “safe”) canned goods for market. There’s a forty pound bag of yellow onions sitting over near the front door.

Then there’s baskets and boxes and flyers and signs and paper goods in a huge box from our last event, and–you get the picture.  That’s just the living room.

The kitchen is a mass of boxes, too–the pressure canner and tomato strainer boxes, plus more buckets of produce, two big pots of tomato sauce, a bin of more eggplant and cucumbers, and a basket of sweet peppers turning red, plus a few other assorted veggies that were dinged up and should be eaten right away.  Two bowls of shelled beans.

All this, and the yellow beans really need picking in the garden–should have picked them today, but what the heck was I going to do with them?  Tomorrow, maybe, I can get back out there and bring those in for blanching and freezing along with about a bazillion little Red Pear tomatoes that should go in the dehydrator.

Right now I’m pressure canning the smaller pot of tomato sauce along with some yellow squash and okra.  I only ended up with about 4 quarts of it–might’ve had five, but I couldn’t remember if I’d eaten today, so I guessed that meant I hadn’t, and I should eat some of what I was making.

Next is the bigger pot of tomato sauce, which will be dressed up with a whole freakload of eggplant and sweet peppers and probably some more squash to make ratatouille.  That is usually pressure-canned in pints, but I’m just about out of pint jars even though I bought another case of them two days ago.  Quarts it is!

I still have plenty of empty quart jars (maybe three or four cases), but at the rate I’m going, I’m going to have every jar around this place chock-full by the end of another week.

The produce inundation will stop soon–I know it will–and I may even miss it this winter when there’s nary a fresh tomato in sight.  But things will get worse before they get better.  In another week or two we’ll be getting a frost–and where do you think all that produce will go that’s still in the field?

I’d better get those bean shells out to the compost pile…and start eating more veggies.

 

Zucchini Relish, Hungarian Hot Sauce–and Grapes!

I wrote last night about chopping and cooking the vegetables for two food presevation projects destined to be canned today.  It took a little longer than I thought it would–mostly because it was supposed to rain this afternoon, and we had another pressing project to attend to:

There were about twenty to twenty-five pounds of Concord grapes on the one vine H had managed to preserve from the deer long enough to get a decent harvest, and we didn’t want the coming rain to dilute the sugars in the fruit (or make them mold or split).

So we got out there as the thunder started and managed to get only a little muddy, covered with grass-stickers, and soaked.  But we got the grapes in.  Now, what to do with them?  I’d like to do a little wine, but I’m not sure we’re really set up for that yet.

I also can’t eat a ton of Concords, as I have the fun family trait of getting terrible nosebleeds from eating too many red/purple grapes or drinking too much red/purple grape juice.  For some reason, drinking a reasonably large quantity of red wine does not have the same effect–thank goodness.  What an embarrassment at a wine tasting!

Well, I’ll get to those soon enough.  This afternoon, I had to get that zuke relish rinsed, drained, seasoned, and into jars.

You can tell it’s a well-loved recipe.  It’s from Janet Chadwick’s The Busy Person’s Guide to Preserving Food, Storey Books, 1995.

My next project, once the relish was out of the canner, was to run the tomato/hot wax pepper/onion/garlic through the food strainer.  I’d cooked them all together until soft last night with no other seasoning but some black pepper, then refrigerated.

I ran the whole mass through the strainer, put it back on the stove, and added a couple of bay leaves, a tablespoon of salt, a quarter cup of sugar, half a bunch of Italian parsley minced finely, and 3/4 cup of white vinegar.

Altogether I got eleven half-pints of sauce out of the new recipe.  And it is fabulous!  I get so tired of hot sauces that are nothing but heat.  This has nice spice and great flavor–and I’m so glad I thought to add the parsley–that really makes it special.

Now–what to make with all those grapes?