Links to Preserve the Harvest

Well that fall chill is starting to creep in, and around here that means that its time to get out the canner and steam juicer - its grape harvesting time.  And while I have all the equipment out and the water bath going, I'm always inspired to try my had at some new recipes.

Now I am relatively new to canning, and didn't benefit from an upbringing that saw any use of preservation methods other than putting things in the deep freezer, usually never to be seen again.  I've relied on my mother-in-law, books, and of course, the internet.

Here is a great site that I came across with some great information for new and seasoned preservers alike, along with some great tips on canning with honey. Check out 40 Preserving Links: Beginner tips, pro tricks and canning with honey at Simple Bites

One of the recipes links is for Rhubarb-Rosemary Jam from Local Kitchen which looks like a great one to try, seeing as the rhubarb is still going strong at my house, and one of the husband's favorite things is rosemary. As we are not a toast-and-jam household, this also appeals due to its mix of sweet and savory, and my mind is already slathering some on a GF cracker and topping with some lovely aged cheddar.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Also while at Local Kitchen blog, I traveled down the proverbial internet rabbit hole and ended up at Eggplant Bacon - which is marinated, dried eggplant. The sweet'n'salty umami-rich marinade features tamari (be sure to use a wheat-free one), smoked paprika and maple syrup.  This looks like a great way to preserve some of the local eggplant bounty for the cool days of winter ahead.

Look back for some great grape recipes, as we tackle this year's harvest before the rains and hordes of starlings have their way with the fruit.  Some favorites are Grape Juice, Hot Pepper Grape Jelly, Wild Rice Pilaf with Grapes and Pecans, and Rustic Grape Galette.

Lovely Lilikoi

While in Hawai’i recently, I got to indulge in one of the seasonal treats of the Island winter – lilikoi. While not botanically different from purple passion fruit, lilikoi a.k.a. yellow passion fruit, has slightly larger fruits with more tartness.  You won’t be able to grow lilikoi anywhere that it drops below 40 degrees F, making it a special tropical treat (many thanks to Irene for sharing!).

The tartness of these fruits coupled with the many seeds makes lilikoi less desirable for fresh eating but fantastic for juicing.  From here you can make jelly, sorbet, or vinaigrette, but we think its true calling is to become Lilikoi Martinis! You’re shocked, I know.

Depending on the size and your powers of extraction, it takes 10 or more fruits to make one cup of juice.  Irene had gathered probably two dozen or so and we got about 3 cups worth of the precious elixir. The key is to be patient and give the juice all opportunity to separate from the pulp. Fortunately, it is easy to recruit a ‘stirrer’ for this process, as the other hand is left free to hold a wine glass, a camera, or whatever one fancies.

While I can’t grow a lilikoi in Portland, there are two passion flower vines that are hardy enough to withstand our climate, either of which could also be ‘juiced’ according to the same protocol.  Until I have my own vine that bears fruit, I’ll just have to dream about lovely lilikoi.

Lilikoi Juice

1) Get out a large, fine mesh strainer that fits over an appropriately large glass bowl or measuring cup (glass makes it easier to see when the juice is touching the bottom of the strainer, but you could use any non-reactive vessel that is big enough). The idea is to have the strainer fit completely within the bowl but be suspended by it, so that no juice gets lost out the sides and the whole thing isn’t too tippy.  We used an 8 cup/2 quart/2 litre pyrex measuring cup, with an 8” diameter strainer.  This set up comes in handy for many other events in the kitchen, so it is worth investing in. Also get a medium sized stainless, glass or ceramic bowl for pulp discards.

2) Prepare a clean glass stoppered bottle or lidded jar to hold the finished juice.  We used a Grolsch beer bottle – the kind that has the stopper mechanism attached.  Chose something that will make it easy to pour the juice out of, but avoid plastic if you can as it can contribute flavors/odors from the last thing that was in it.

3) Cut the lilikoi fruits in half and scrape the pulp and seeds into a blender carafe.  When you get 2-3 cups of pulp accumulated, pulse on low 4 – 5 times to break up the pulp a bit, but not so much as you start pulverizing the seeds.

4) Transfer the blended pulp to the mesh strainer (that is over a bowl) and stir gently with a spoon to move the pulp around and let the juice escape into the vessel below.  When juice is only sporadically dripping out, transfer the pulp to another bowl but don’t throw it out (yet). 

5) Continue steps 3 & 4 above until you have used all the lilikoi and reserved all the spent pulp.  If the juice in the bowl touches the bottom of the mesh strainer it will slow/stop the accumulation of juice.  If this happens, suspend operations temporarily and pour off the juice into the prepared bottle from step 2. Resume.

6) When all the lilikoi have given their tangy innards to the cause, return all of the used pulp to the strainer and stir to release any remaining juice.  Then while still over the catchment bowl, find another bowl that just fits inside the strainer and use it to push down on the pulp to really squeeze out every drop of goodness (it keeps dishes to a minimum if this is the same bowl as the one that you have been putting the reserved pulp into, so some prior test-fitting might be in order). Don’t push so hard that you wreck the strainer. Pour off any additional juice from the catchment bowl into your bottle.

7) Ta-da… You are now the proud possessor of lilikoi juice!  Make yourself a martini – you've earned it! The juice will keep in the fridge, tightly covered, for a week or more.  Freeze for longer storage.

*The waste pulp makes great compost, just beware that you might get some volunteer lilikoi sprouts in the pile too – which might not be a bad thing!

Lilikoi Martinis

Serves 1 | easily doubled

Once you've made the juice, this is relatively easy! The absolute best is to use juice that has not been put into the fridge yet - it retains this beautiful floral perfume that is especially intoxicating.  

Fill a martini shaker 1/3 full with ice. Shake briefly to help breakup the ice, then open and add:

• 2 oz good vodka
• 1 oz lilikoi juice
• ½ to 1 oz simple syrup* (or to taste)

Shake vigorously and strain into martini glasses.  Double everything to make two if your shaker allows – your friends will be very appreciative!

Now sit back and enjoy the sunset…

*To make simple syrup, add equal parts sugar and water to a pan (1 cup of each is lots). Heat to a boil then reduce to a simmer, stirring constantly until the sugar has dissolved. Let cool and store in a covered bottle in the fridge, where it will last a loooooong time.  Discard if the liquid becomes cloudy or smells badly, which are signs of mold.

Lessons From a Chef & Culinary Instructor

I recently had the great pleasure of attending a talk and tasting given by Chef Dan Brophy.  His commitment to seasonal, local, homegrown food was very apparent, as was his dry wit and acerbic humor.  And while I would have made my Summer Succotash differently, I definitely learned a bunch and had a great laugh. 

As he has a half-acre urban farm, he is passionate about eating from the seasonal bounty, and then putting up the harvest to enjoy later in the year.  As it is currently tomato season (finally!) he shared a dead-easy technique for oven-dried tomatoes that can then be frozen for later use.  I promptly went home and made a batch with a bunch of our tomatoes that had all ripened with we were away.  Check it out here

And after all these tomatoes are used up, he warned against falling for the one that are brought in from hothouses all over the continent in the middle of winter.  

"It is tomato shaped…maybe even tomato colored…but definitely not a tomato."

Followed by the following advice on how to survive through this period of tomato impostors:

"Eat your bodyweight in tomatoes while they are in season and you won’t need to eat another one until the seed catalogues come and you start dreaming of tomatoes."

And presumably by then you will still have one or two jars of tomato jam, roasted tomatoes, homemade tomato sauce or tomato chutney to indulge in while waiting for the tomato plants to grow.

Chef Dan also had a wealth of information on how to be a better cook, be it either in he home or in a professional kichen.  One little gem he said that is often heard repeated in various forms is:

"If you are not making mistakes, you’re not trying very hard."

And I would add that you are not learning very much either.  He says that the average American home has a meal rotation of 10 items.  T-e-n.  He himself grew up in a 10-meal-rotation household in North Dakota, where the Salmon Loaf was the Meatloaf recipe but you opened a can of salmon instead.  He also pointed out that most of his culinary students came from similar such households.  I’m pretty sure that growing up I was exposed to more than 10 dishes on a regular basis, but with kids and work and activities I'm sure that my mom, like mothers everywhere, took a certain comfort in knowing you can get spaghetti on the table in 20 minutes.  So lets say I grew up in a 20-meal-rotation house - whooo hooo.

So if you feel as though you’ve fallen into a bit of a ‘Taco Tuesday’ rut, lash out and try some new ingredient or dishes and see how that revitalizes your culinary world.  (By the way, he advocates to his students that they get into a 100-dish rotation!)  Along those lines he also said:

"Be a committed member of the herb of the month club."

Pick an herb, preferably one that you are seeing in abundance in your garden or the market stands, and commit to using it 12 times in the next month – sauces, soups, stirfries… add it to rice or potatoes or a dessert, make a tea or put it in a smoothie.  Not all of your attempts will be good, some might even be awful (refer to the comment about making mistakes above), but you’ll have a much more intimate understanding of that herb and will undoubtedly stumble on some fantastic flavor combinations in the process.

Here are Chef Dan’s simple steps to being a great cook:

1. Know what you are doing

The other half of which is …then you know when you are done.  So what is the goal, the technique, the dish?  Then you know how to measure 'doneness'... is it by the color, texture, internal temperature?  And by all means STOP when you’re done.  He said that he often witnesses “death by boiling” in the kitchen… veggies should be simmered, and definitely not for long.  This also goes for knife skills – so you can stop at ‘chopped’, or go all the way to ‘fine dice’.  All these things do make a difference... so practice, practice, practice.  Make small batches and screw with it until you’ve got something great – which, presumably, is what you a going for. And for goodness sake take notes!  Get out the stickies and jot down what works and what really doesn't - both are valuable to remember for next time.

2. Seasoning

Specifically – salt.  Unless you are on pills for hypertension, don’t be afraid of salt.  As Chef Dan says, “salt is magic – it makes food freaking delicious”.  Too much salt and you may as well be a cow licking one of those pink blocks out in the pasture, too little and you’ve got “Marlon Blando”.  

I think the key to the right amount of salt is the right salt.  Don’t use that iodized, free-flowing, tiny-grained table salt.  That is the sure way to the salt lick.  If you must, then at least measure it out into your hand before adding it to anything.  You only need ½ a teaspoon of this stuff to meet the daily requirement for iodine.  Other sources are seafood & vegetables, bread (usually due to the amount of salt added), dairy, and plants grown in iodine-rich soils[1].  Even VGF diets usually have enough - and if you're worried about developing a goiter put nori or another seaweed on the list for your 'herb of the month club' and you'll have a great relationship with a natural source of iodine.  

So turf the ‘traditional’ stuff in favor of kosher salt, or one of the wondrous variety of seas salts.  We have Alaea sea salt from Hawai’i that we put in a salt grinder.  Not only do you use less salt overall, but you also gain trace minerals in proportions that are more similar to your own body chemistry – after all, we arose from the sea in the first place (well, more like wriggled, but you get the picture). 

Another way to use less salt is to eat less processed food.  Your palate gets accustomed to the insane amount of sodium in these products and then you need more to taste more.  I used to drastically over-salt my food until I ate a couple of “bland” meals and then a whole world of flavor opened up to me.  Compensate by amping up the herbs and spices, and you can wean yourself off salt while still enjoying food. 

Which leads us to the fact that salt is only one of the flavors that you need to concentrate on – sour, sweet, bitter, and umami (a Japanese word roughly translated as savory) are just as important.  And what’s more is that your brain interprets taste by comparing the responses from the different taste buds[2].  So meals that incorporate all of these flavors really do dance on your tongue.

3. Aroma

Herbs and spices make food sing!  Most of what we taste comes from our sense of smell – you realized that in grade school when they made you plug your nose and eat a piece of apple, which you couldn’t distinguish from the piece of onion.  And this is precisely the problem with most packaged foods, in that they are totally lacking in aroma – even VGF organic soups in a can need a healthy shot of pepper, red chili flake, basil, garlic or something to make it from the pan to my bowl.  That’s just the nature of making soup from a can versus making it from scratch.  That’s where the herb of the month club comes in!  I for one am looking forward to this exercise in aromatics.  And you don’t have to stop with herbs – heck, do a spice of the month club too.  That sumac in the Mediterranean food store looks interesting?  Figure out how to make it work in soups, stews, breads, dips…and I know it does because that’s exactly what I did.  You just have to dive in and chalk it all up to experience.

4. Presentation

Finally, don’t go to all this effort to just blob something on the plate.  We eat with our eyes first, that is what draws us a little closer, then the aroma makes it enticing and we dig into that lovely, well seasoned, well executed meal!  So keep in mind color, shape, height and texture.  Use the natural color of your ingredients to your advantage, shape the components such that you cover only about 60% of the plate, put the most beautiful or intriguing thing on top, and a play of textures on the plate will undoubtedly be a play of textures on the tongue. 

So I hoped you were inspired to greater culinary invention and creativity like I was – thanks Chef Dan!

---

[1] Whitney & Rolfes. Understanding Nutrition, 10^th Ed.  Thompson Wadsworth. 2005.

[2] Kalat. Biological Psychology, 8^th Ed. Thompson Wadsworth. 2004.

Oven-Dried Tomatoes

Wash your tomatoes and remove the stems.  Cut them in half and place them on a baking sheet (I used a Silpat for easy clean up but you could also put down baking parchment – don’t use wax paper, it will “melt”).  Put them in a 200 degree F oven for 4-6 hours depending on the size, maybe less if you have convection.  Remove them when they have reduced by half and are soft but not juicy.  Let cool and then either place the whole tray in the freezer if you have room, or transfer them into an air-tight container or bag and try to lay them out so they freeze in a single layer.  If you’ve done the tray thing, let them freeze overnight and then transfer to an airtight container.  For best flavor use within 4 to 6 months.  Best added to soups, stews, stir fries and other cooked applications.  What fun additions can you come up with???

Too easy!  Just cut and let them do their thing...

...and you get 'disks of sunshine' for the cold days ahead!