CrankyCakes

Well, not crostini exactly since the bread isn’t crisp.  Maybe canape, but they anyway were what I brought to a veggie potluck this week.  I skipped the crisping because I always kind of hate the inevitable crumble and collapse of bruschetta and crostini after you take one bite and before you know it you’re dripping tomato cubes and apologizing to the hostess about the carpet.

Not only was I taking such care of my future co-eaters, but then I felt myself simpering with smugness about being able to combine thawed roasted beets from the freezer, fresh snipped fennel fronds from the garden, a Brie-like goat cheese from our CSA share, and apricot preserves from last year.

Character flaws aside, what’s really nice about these is that they can be an inspiration for all sorts of summer eating.  A piece of good bread, crisped or not, a slice or schmear of cheese, a tart and fruity something on top, and a sprig of some fresh herb or other – lots of possibilities.   I made this version thinking about how the different kinds of sweetness of beets, apricots, and fennel would play with the creamy cheese on baguette.  But you of course will adapt it to use what you’ve got around.

Beet, Fennel & Goat Cheese Canapes
About 25 pieces

Arrange on a platter:

• 25 (or whatever) thin slices of baguette, lightly brushed with
• extra virgin olive oil (you’ll need about 2 T.)

Place on bread:

• 1 slice Caprella, Camembert, Brie, or any soft cheese you like

Set bread aside.

Combine and puree in a blender, or a bowl that will accommodate an immersion blender:

• 1/4 c. apricot (or other fruit) preserves
• 2 T. olive oil
• 1 T. sherry (or other mild) vinegar
• pinch salt
• pinch sugar

Pour dressing into a medium bowl.

Cut into small dice:

• 2 c. worth roasted beets (or plum, peach, apricot, melon, tomato, etc.)

Combine dressing and beets or fruit with:

• 2 T. finely chopped fennel fronds (or basil, lemon balm, nasturtium leaves)

Place a heaping teaspoon of the beet mixture on top of the bread and cheese and top with:

• 1 small sprig of your chosen herb.

More Dutch Baby info.

I don’t know what’s happening here, but I know that I’ve got far too much to do and far too many apples that have been sitting around here since I picked them (more like “picked them up off the ground”) on Saturday.  They’re starting to look kind of surly and impatient.

I’m so busy right now, working here and here and on this.  Work is good!  But it’s cutting into my cooking and blogging time, for sure.

Still, I found myself with the time to make some apple butter, and the time to at least plan to make some chunky apple-raisin-spice jam.  Or more apple butter.  Or compost, at the rate this is going.

In any case, if you find yourself with a wild herd of apples looking accusingly at you, may I suggest getting out or borrowing a crockpot and making yourself some delicious apple butter?  It’s easy, and a comforting balm for these overworked days.

The recipe is simple.

Get a boatload of apples.

Peel and cut a bunch of apples.   If you have a good peeler/corer/slicer, go ahead and use it.  (Maybe you’ll have results better than mine.)  If you have a crappy one, why not just skip it and use the usual implements like these?

Peel and cut until your crockpot is full.  Maybe a little less full than this:

Put the lid on and turn the heat up to high.  Let it cook for 8 hours, maybe while you sleep.  But if you actually get 8 hours of sleep a night, don’t boast about it, okay?

In the morning, or after whichever 8 hours you choose, your apples will have cooked down to something like this:

Mash it all up with a wooden spoon, add 1 – 3 cups of sugar, and a 1/2 t. of whatever spices you like, maybe some cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, the usual.  Turn the heat down to low and cook for another 8 hours.  When it’s done, it will be a thick brown fudgy goo, looking maybe chocolate-y.  It’s not chocolate, but it will make people make yummy sounds and start going through your cupboards for a container to take some home in.

To eat it, just spread it on some good bread and enjoy.

Today was Shelburne Orchard‘s Truckload Saturday, and some neighbors and I went to load up – $50 for two carloads of Macs, Galas, Liberty’s, and Empires.  These neighbors, in fact:

CrankyGreg says we looked like a bunch of hip, radical nuns, which I can live with.  We took our blessed selves and went and scavenged the “falls,” and jostled the last attached ones out of their branches.  And I’m wildly pleased to report that I climbed a tree to chase down some high-hanging Galas.

After a couple of hours we had two cars full of apples and were hungry, so we went up to the Orchard’s store and food area, where we found an enormous apple pie,

and these nice people frying up onion rings made with Ginger Jack in the batter,

and sausages roasting inside their brick oven.

So now I’ve got 4 bags (about 2 bushels) of apples hanging around.  I’ve taken the first batch and started some Crock Pot Apple Butter.  With the rest, I’d like to can Apple Pie Filling, but can’t seem to find the Clear Jel I’d need.  Maybe more applesauce, maybe something else, whatever it is I’m sure E. & Z. will be tired of it long before it’s gone.

From pickyourown.org. My camera isn't back from the doctor yet. But our plums did look a lot like these.

My friend Meredith left this last week:

If you can come up with three more zucchini recipes, then certainly you can think of three ways to use up that jam we made last fall. (I certainly can’t!) Remember how I found the secret stash of plum trees? And no one was picking them, and I felt a civic duty to pick bags and bags of plums? And we made a tart plum-vanilla jam? Fun time, it was. But, well, that jam is still sitting on my shelf — six jars, maybe? A year has passed, and it’s time to use it up. So, I challenge you! Three recipes, please …

I accept the challenge!  And, M., I still have several jars too.  But here’s how we can use them – and how anyone could make use of any tart jam sitting on their shelf.

1. Think dessert. Get:

• 1 box mini phyllo shells
• 1/2 c. mascarpone cheese
• 1 t. honey
• 1/2 c. plum or other tart jam.
• Fresh berries for garnish.

Toast the shells very lightly for a minute or two.  Mix together the maple syrup and mascarpone.  Spoon a small amount of jam into the bottom of each shell, and use a melon baller to place a small scoop of mascarpone over it, then top with a berry.

2.  Make a barbecue sauce. Combine:

• 1 c. hoisin sauce
• 1/2 c. any tart jam
• 2 T. Sriracha or sambal oelek

Use it for grilling eggplant or chicken or tofu or anything you like.

3.  Put it in between layers of any sweet golden cake, and then frost with a butterscotch or caramel frosting.

What do you think? And what else do you need to use up?

At last we got it together to organize a summer playdate with some friends.  Though the weather report on Sunday was threatening something torrential, the skies were clear as the day went on and so we rallied our various troops and headed off to pick blueberries.

It was a sticky day and we were hot and crabby.  Still, in between refereeing various fights (all involving my children) and stopping for snacks and water refills and bouts of whining, I had a moment or two to appreciate the act of picking itself.

After two grueling strawberry picking sessions, blueberries feel like a gift.  They’re easy to spot and grow in friendly little clusters and are a comfortable height for picking.  If your place to pick is like ours, your kids, when they’re not busy trapping each other inside the hammock that the farmer is nice enough to provide, can run up and down the rows like the wild baboons they are.

And after three hours of that, after reducing my children to plaintive cries of, “home … home,” we went home, and this is what I made the next day, while the boys loudly channeled Cain & Abel as I shrieked, “THESE POTS ARE HOT!  GET OUT OF THE KITCHEN!”  It was a good time.  Well, no, it really wasn’t.  But when I served this on homemade bread for breakfast the next day and all was silent except for the happy little noises they made, sounding like content little nursing babies, it was very nearly worth it.

Blueberry-Lavender Jam
4-5 cups

• 4 c. berries, rinsed and picked over to remove stems and “squishers,” then mashed
• 1/4 c. lemon juice
• 1 1/4 c. sugar
• 3 t. Pomona’s Pectin powder
• 2 t. calcium water made according to Pomona’s directions
• 1 flower sprig from fresh organic lavender

1. To read about canning safety, equipment, and much more, visit Canning Food Recipes.
   
2. Make calcium water if you haven’t, according to directions enclosed with pectin.
3. Wash and rinse jars, and let stand in hot water.  Bring lids and rings to boil, turn down heat, and let stand in hot water.
4. Put mashed berries into pan with lemon juice.  Add the calcium water and stir well.
5. In a separate bowl, combine sugar and pectin very thoroughly (a whisk works well).
6. Place lavender sprig into berries and then bring to a boil.  Add the pectin-sugar mixture.  Stir vigorously 1-2 minutes to dissolve the pectin completely.  You can use a slotted spoon to look through the berries to make sure you don’t have clumps of pectin hanging around, which would prevent setting-up.  Return to boil and remove from heat.  Remove lavender.
7. Fill jars to 1/4″ of top.  Wipe the rims clean with a clean dish towel or cloth napkin.  Place a lid and a band on top, screwing band on firmly.  Place in boiling water deep enough to cover, and boil for 5 minutes (adding 1 minute for every 1,000 ft. above sea level).  Remove from water.  Let jars cool and listen for the satisfying snapping sound as the lids form a vacuum seal.  Verify the seal by pressing down in the lids’ centers to check that they don’t move.  (If they do move that’s ok, just put the jar in the fridge and use within a couple of weeks.)

Allow me to start with what is not included in this post:

• How I brought my children to a hot field on a sunny day with milk in sippy cups, but no water at all.
• How Z. clung to my leg and whined and pleaded to go home, insisting we hold hands every time I took a step.
• How I went to pick a week too early, knowing we’d be away for the peak berry-picking weekend, which resulted in twice as much work for half the results.  And a sunburn.
• The growing awareness of how so many of these allegedly golden, wholesome childhood moments I seem so hellbent on providing are like this.  Sigh.

Regardless, we are completely out of last year’s jam, and I heard that the call had gone out that strawberries were ready.  So off we went to Adam’s Berry Farm in Burlington’s Intervale, at which we can pick our own organic strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries.  (For blueberries, I’m also especially fond of Owl’s Head, which has an astonishingly beautiful hillside setting and live music, even if its berries aren’t organic.)

One double bedtime, some serious lolly-gagging, and seven pounds of berry-cleaning later, I was getting ready to can.  Well, truth be told, I was trying to talk myself out of canning because it was 11:00 and I wanted to go to sleep.  But I had washed the berries and couldn’t trust them not to spoil, and there was no way I was letting all that suffering be for naught.

I pulled out the Pomona’s, a citrus pectin that’s activated (i.e., is able to gel your preserves) with the addition of the calcium powder that’s included.  I know some serious jam-makers who don’t like its texture, but I think it makes great stuff.  Plus it doesn’t require a crazy amount of sugar (in fact, you don’t really have to use any), and you can double or triple batches, unlike with many traditional recipes.  Isn’t flexibility nice?

Strawberry-Honey Jam

About 5 pints

• 8 cups of strawberries, cleaned, with stems removed, and cut into halves or quarters, depending on how chunky you want the results.
• 1 cup honey
• peel from 1/2 organic orange, or 1/2 t. dried
• 4 t. Pomona’s pectin
• 4 t. calcium water made from packet included with pectin

Wash and rinse jars, lids and bands.  Some boil everything, and some say this isn’t necessary.  Whichever way you decide to go, do that and then keep in hot water until ready.

Place water in boiling water canner deep enough so that it will cover the jars you’re going to fill once you put them in.

Mix calcium water according to package instructions and set aside.

Put berries, orange peel, and calcium water into stockpot and bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Stir pectin into honey.  As berries are approaching a boil, look at the texture and either leave as is, or use a potato masher to smooth out chunks as desired.  When berries are at full boil, vigorously stir honey-pectin mixture in for 1 – 2 minutes, being sure to stir hard enough to dissolve the pectin.  Bring to a boil, then remove from heat.  Remove orange peel if using large pieces.

Fill prepared jars to 1/4″ of top, wipe around the rim with a wet cloth, then place on lids and bands.  Carefully place jars into boiling water, and boil for 5 minutes.

Place on a rack to cool.  In the next little while you should hear the slight snap of the lids sealing completely, which will let you know that they’re ready to store.  To test the seal, tap on them.  If they move or wiggle at all, just keep in the fridge and use within three weeks.

This jam is delicious.  Like fresh strawberries themselves, bright and sunny and not overly sugary.  My mom (and you know how moms are always the most objective of critics) said it was the best strawberry jam she had ever had.  It may be immodest, but I agree.  What a treat it’ll be if that taste lasts into the depths of winter.  And by then, I’ll have forgotten the rest.