Pomodoro!, Pulcinella and the Glory of Summer Tomatoes

As noted previously here on The Crispy Cook, some blogger buddies and I were offered the chance to review copies of the new book "Pomodoro! A History of the Tomato in Italy", by David Gentilcore (NY: Columbia University Press, 2010) and we decided to put together a little blog event to roundup our thoughts about the book and to celebrate the tomatoes we all crave every season. If you would like to join us, please feel free to blog up something (including a recipe for a dish featuring tomatoes) and leave a comment below by our deadline of September 13, 2010 and I'll include you in the roundup.


Reading Professor Gentilcore's lively prose was a treat. I have enjoyed absorbing details of history through other food-centric volumes (Mark Kurlansky's "Cod" and Salt" are particularly good reads) and Pomodoro! was an entertaining romp through many centuries of Italian history. The tomato is not native to Europe, but was imported from the New World in the mid-16th century as a botanical curiosity for aristocratic gardeners. It was considered a plant that would dampen one's bodily humors and was not incorporated into everyday Italian cooking until the 1800s, when peasant women began sun drying tomatoes and tomato paste to supplement their farm incomes.

The struggles among Italy's various principalities and regions leading up to unification of Italy in the 1860s saw a general shift in prosperity from South to North. The proud Kingdom of Naples was reduced to a provincial capital and Neapolitans were mocked as bumbling, pasta-munchers in nationalist newspapers. Being poorer meant that Southern Italians ate less meat and more vegetables, and tomatoes soon zoomed to the top of the food pyramid.

Gentilcore's book has other interesting chapters about how the development of tomato varieties swung back and forth between Italy and the U.S. and how the waves of Italian immigration to America developed new tastes back home for tomato-heavy recipes. The chapter "The Autarchical Tomato", about how Mussolini's government used the tomato and home cooking iconography in its Fascist propaganda is similarly eye-opening, and overall the book is a great combination of scholarly detail and engaging writing that chronicles how the tomato slowly became an integral part of Italian culture.


Having some Neapolitan ancestors, the short description in the book about the commedia dell'arte stock character of Pulcinella, who represents Naples with his ever-present pot of macaroni, intrigued me to learn more. Commedia dell'arte is a stylized form of comic street theater which features masked actors and which flourished in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. Many characters originally developed to represent different regions, and Pulcinella, with his long-nosed black mask, oversized floppy clothes and sugarloaf hat, became a Neapolitan trickster type, who, when he wasn't loafing around gorging on macaroni, carried a cudgel to beat people with. If you've even seen a Punch and Judy show you'll see how Pulcinella evolved into the long-nosed evil assaulter, Punch, in English puppetry traditions. There is a Pulcinella Museum in Acerra, which would definitely be high on my itinerary if I get to visit Italy someday. In the meantime, I sketched a merrier version of the pasta-loving Pucinella to be my tomato muse in the kitchen.



And now to turn to the glories of the pomodoros, or golden apples, the tomatoes of summer! Ah, the beauty of a bowl of fresh garden tomatoes. It is the season when our family indulges in simple tomato sandwiches, tomato and cucumber salads, tomatoes tucked into pretty much every supper dish and our kitchen counters are filled with colanders and bowls of tomatoes awaiting canning and freezing.

I always grow at least 10-12 plum tomato plants in our home garden. They are meaty and fabulous for preserving, either as sauce or slow-roasted in the oven with salt, pepper and olive oil and then packed into freezer packs with fresh basil leaves. The other tomato varieties we like for immediate eating include whatever red and yellow varieties are offered as seedlings from the farmer around the corner and this year that included Striped German, a yellow and red heirloom variety with heavy fruit and some Supersteak and Celebrity tomatoes. And of course tomatoes need basil and garlic for neighbors, so I think my garden is fairly Italianate these days.

Since I already had put up some canned tomato sauce and spicy salsa this summer I thought I would attempt canning some tomato barbecue sauce. In honor of my saucy, spicy new friend Pulcinella, who also endears himself to me with his high-pitched voice and tendency to hop around like a chicken (pulcinella means little chick in Italian), I present this sweet and tangy tomato barbecue recipe:



Pulcinella's Barbecue Sauce
-adapted from the 1990 Ball Blue Book

8 quarts tomato puree
(I use my 4 quart crock pot to cook down cored, chunked tomatoes pretty much every night during tomato season. I turn the crock pot off in the morning and when things have cooled, I run the tomatoes through my food mill to get rid of seeds and skin and it makes a wonderful puree)

3 large onions, peeled and rough chopped
2 green bell peppers, seeded and rough chopped
2 red bell peppers, seeded and rough chopped
1 bunch celery, leaves and all, rough chopped
2-3 hot peppers, seeded and rough chopped (wear gloves)

1-1/2 cups brown sugar
5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 Tbsp. dry mustard
2 tsp. cayenne pepper
2 tsp. dried red pepper flakes
2 cups cider vinegar

Cover onions, bell peppers, celery and hot peppers with water in a pot. Bring to a boil. Lower heat and cook, covered, until vegetables are softened. Puree through food mill.

Put pureed veggies and tomato puree in large stock pot and bring to a boil. Lower heat to medium and keep at low boil until mixture thickens down to about half.

Stir in remaining ingredients and simmer, stirring occasionally to keep from scorching, until sauce is nice and thick, about 2 hours. Season to taste with salt and add more hot pepper flakes if Pulcinella advises you to.

Pour into sterilized pint jars, leaving 1/4 inch head space. Cap and process in a hot water bath for 20 minutes.

Makes 7 pints.

This is a slightly sweet barbecue sauce that is great for marinating vegetables and slathering on grilled zucchini slabs and portabella mushrooms. Pulcinella advises that it tastes great on roast chicken too.

I hope this post piques your interest in learning more about the history of tomatoes and seeking out Gentilcore's book, "Pomodoro!". You can read an interview with the esteemed author over at The Boston Globe and be sure to check back here after September 13th for the roundup of tomatoey posts.

Z is For Zucchini

It is high summer here in upstate New York and it requires a couple of colanders to make the rounds of the garden each day, harvesting the abundance of vegetables and herbs that are flinging forth from the Crispy Garden. Zucchini plants are always fecund producers, so we've been enjoying lots of sauteed grated zucchini with butter, garlic and basil, zucchini stewed with tomatoes and basil and loading up the freezer with packages of grated, squeezed out zucchini so we can get our summer squash fix in the depth of winter.

While I've made other zucchini relishes and pickles before, I had never tried making a classic bread-and-butter pickle recipe using my garden squash bounty, but since we had a let up in the hazy, steamy weather this past week, I boiled up a vat o' water and got into canning mode. After perusing my canning library for inspiration, here's what I made:



Bread and Butter Zucchini Pickles

14 cups zucchini, trimmed and sliced into 1/4 inch slices

1/2 cup pickling salt

6 cups white vinegar

3-1/2 cups sugar

4 tsp. brown mustard seeds

2 tsp. celery seeds

6 dill heads


Layer zucchini slices with pickling salt in a big ceramic bowl. Cover with water, cover and let stand for at least 2 hours.

Drain zucchini and rinse salt off with cold water. Pat dry.

Make pickling brine in a large stainless steel or porcelain sauce pot. Combine vinegar, sugar, mustard and celery seeds. Bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve sugar. Lower heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Add zucchini slices and stir to coat with brine. Cover pot and let stand at least one hour (or overnight).

Sterilize 6 pint canning jars in a big hot water bath. Bring zucchini slices in brine to a boil and then pack into hot jars, popping in a dill head in each (I pop them in the middle of the jar). Fill jars to within 1/2 inch of top of each jar. Tap gently to remove bubbles, then seal and process in hot water bath for 10 minutes.

Remove from hot water bath and leave to seal by themselves overnight. Refrigerate any jars that haven't sealed properly.

Makes 6 pints.

These pickles came out very well. The zucchini is nice and snappy after the salting and the brine is sweet and tangy like a good sweet pickle should be. Perfect.

For other zucchini harvest ideas, take a look at these recipes from the Crispy Vault:

Zucchini Trifolati

Zucchini Pizza on Gluten-Free Crust

Spicy Zucchini Relish

Stuffed Grape Leaves with Zucchini and Cilantro

Cream of Ratatouille Soup

Spinach-Zucchini Soup with Fennel Seed

Nightshade Ragout

Zucchini Tonic

I'm sending this vegetable contribution over to Katie at EAT THIS!, a fellow gluten-free food blogger and gastronomic adventurer who's hosting this week's round of Weekend Herb Blogging. You can find out more about this weekly food event at the Australian headquarters of Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once. Look for an interesting roundup of vegetastic recipes and posts after the Sunday deadline over at EAT THIS!

Putting A Monster in a Jar: Pickled Cauliflower

During this overly damp and cooler than normal growing season in upstate New York, we've had mixed success with our garden veggies. The zucchinis, beans, greens and cucumbers grew with tropical vigor, but other vegetables, like the tomato crop, suffered from the various viruses and pests that love wetter conditions.

We had a six-pack of cauliflower transplants in our garden and only two came to a head. But head they did. They were cauliflower whoppers and grew to be 14 inches in diameter. I used one earlier this summer over the course of a week, snagging florets for raw snacking, stir-frying others, and baking the rest with some grated knobs of cheese.

Then I was faced with another gargantuan cauli-monster and I thought of Dog Hill Kitchen's Gingered Sweet Pickled Cauliflower recipe. I've never canned with cauliflower, so I was eager to try out this recipe, which Dog Hill Mistress Maggie says is similar tasting to those jars of mixed vegetable pickles you sometimes see in the pickle aisle.



My monster cauliflower was thus preserved for winter months when our garden consists of a frozen, rabbit-gnawed couple of Brussels Sprouts stumps, topped with snow. I used a couple of Bucillus frying peppers from our garden instead of the prettier red chile pepper called for in Maggie's recipe, but otherwise, I was faithful in following this great (and long-bookmarked) recipe. Thank you Maggie!

I am submitting this pickled cauliflower post to Weekend Herb Blogging #199 which is being hosted by Mele Cotte. Weekend Herb Blogging is a weekly blog event that puts the spotlight on those members of the Vegetable Kingdom that sustain us, and is headquartered at Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once.

Canning Spicy Zucchini Relish

While I missed Leave a Zucchini on Your Neighbor's Porch Day (August 8th), I have been able to unload some of our overflowing garden bounty on family, friends and bookstore customers. We only planted four zucchini plants, but as usual, once these gigantors sense a certain heat and humidity factor in the air, they bound out of their carefully tended plots and start shooting tendrils and umbrella leaves over their poor neighbor plants.

Even when we hack our zukes back they keep reproducing, so I've been cooking up lots of sauteed zucchini to pack away into the freezer and grating it into my homemade vats of tomato sauce (cooked down in the crockpot overnight to reduce some of the heat in my warm summer kitchen). It's been too steamy of late to do any baking of zucchini bread or muffins, so I turned to my cookbook collection to get some ideas for canning zucchini. I once made a batch of tasty yellow zucchini pickles, but nobody but me would eat them, so I needed inspiration.



I found a Zucchini and Green Chili Recipe in my copy of the Time-Life Good Cooks volume on Preserving and subbed in some of my own Busillus frying peppers and some hot red pepper flakes for the green chilies and cut the sugar. The result was a really nice hot and sweet relish that we sampled on our sandwiches and got preserved into pint jars for later use. Here's my recipe for:

Spicy Zucchini Relish

(Adapted from Time-Life Good Cooks volume "Preserving")

2-1/2 lbs. zucchini, trimmed and finely chopped
2 green frying peppers or ancho chilies, seeded and finely chopped
4 large onions, peeled and finely chopped

5 Tbsp. kosher salt

2-1/4 cups cider vinegar
1 tsp. dried red pepper flakes
3 cups sugar
1 Tbsp. dry mustard
1 Tbsp. turmeric
1 Tbsp. nutmeg
2 tsp. celery seeds

I used my trusty food processor to whizz up my zucchini, peppers and onions, and it had the added benefit of steering the onion fumes away from my tear ducts, but you can just chop up the veggies by hand if you like.

Toss vegetables with salt in a glass or ceramic bowl and cover and refrigerate over night.

The next day, rinse vegetables in a colander with cold water and squeeze out to draw out juices. Repeat again. Place vegetables and remaining ingredients in a non-aluminum pot and bring to a boil. Boil thirty minutes.

Pour into 4 hot pint canning jars and seal. Process in boiling hot water bath for 15 minutes. Let cool and seal. If your lids don't pop down, refrigerate them and use the relish within one month.

Makes 4 pints.

This recipe is being submitted to Weekend Herb Blogging, the weekly blog event that celebrates posts about vegetables, fruits, herbs and other plant ingredients that is headquartered at Haalo's lovely, tasty blog, Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once. This week's guest host for WHB is The Cabinet of Prof. Kitty, a musical food blog (you'll have to check it out yourself for the fullest flavor....And a great salad recipe that can't be BEET.

Autumn Gardening and Cooking

The Fall leaves are pretty well at their peak here in Saratoga County. A lot of the maple trees already flamed and fell early and the foliage is not as fiery as it has been in past years, but it is still a visual treat to see all the burgundy, orange and yellow leaves. The vegetable garden got its killing frost a couple of weeks back, but we still have some stalwarts hanging out like the sage, chives and oregano in the herb patch and the prehistoric looking brussels sprouts plants. The apple trees keep producing, and so I've made several batches of rosy pink apple sauce for the freezer.

That's an easy project to do with my crockpot, as I just core, peel and chunk our apples and toss them into my slow cooker overnight with maybe a cup of water. By morning, they are soft and I just throw in a little sweetener and some cinnamon.

When the meteorologists all predicted a hard frost I got busy harvesting the last beans, peppers and green tomatoes. We had a banner year for tomatoes. It was a veritable green tomato army that invaded every sunny window ledge and several 5-gallon plastic buckets. Unfortunately, they brought in their own brigade of fruit flies, so I got busy wrapping up one bucket of green tomatoes in newspaper to ripen more slowly over the next month or so.

There was still an impressive bounty of green overrunning the drainboard and our window sills so I thought I would try out a batch of Green Tomato Chutney. I found this recipe to use up 24 of my green love apples and only modified it by subbing whole mustard and coriander seeds for the mixed pickling spices and it came out very tasty. Actually, it's almost identical in taste to the Apple Chutney I made earlier this season, except that there are more crunchy spices to chew on with this batch.

I still have a batch more green tomatoes on hand, so any ideas OTHER THAN Southern fried green tomatoes, would be cheerfully accepted. I just don't like them, although the book "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe"by Fannie Flagg is certainly a tasty read.

Canning the Fruits of Autumn with Apple Chutney

When my eldest was an impossibly cute toddler Dan and I planted some scrawny Spartan apple trees around our manse. The saplings were awfully stick-like and we were not so much hoping for an orchard of fruit as some shade and landscaping for our lawn.

Fast forward fifteen years and now my apple trees are abundant with fruit and leafy as can be. We've battled with tent caterpillars, weird lichen-like scabs on the branches and spring snowstorms that battered all the apple blossoms off before the bees could get busy, so this is so amazing to see that our six apple trees have actually borne fruit. And so much fruit it is! Perhaps the long, cool spring and buckets of summer rain are just the right conditions for fruit-bearing.

We don't spray our apple trees and sometimes (alright, usually) don't remember the annual pruning, so the apples aren't pictures of beauty. They are scabby and knobby and you don't just brush them up on your shirt and take a bite after eyeballing some of the unappealing peel. But they do taste nicely tart-sweet and are wonderfully crisp.

My weekend was filled with the task of making applesauce, apple crisp and a velvety brown apple chutney. Peeling and excising out cores and inhabitants from these knobby apples takes a long time, so I didn't put up huge vats of apple products, but I did manage to get four containers of applesauce, 1 9x13 pan of apple crisp and 7 pints of chutney using the contents of only one tree. With five more trees to harvest, I am thinking that my horse and donkey owning neighbor is going to get a bushel of equine treats in the next week.

Chutney is the perfect accompaniment for spicy food, rice dishes and we love a bit of chutney and cucumber raita on the side of our Bhajis. It is also luscious mixed with sour cream for a quick dip or with cream cheese and curry powder for a stiffer spread. I tweaked the apple chutney recipe in my Ball Blue Book canning recipes cookbook and here it is:

APPLE CHUTNEY

16 medium apples, peeled, cored and cut into rough chunks
2 lbs. raisins
1 large onion, peeled and rough chopped
2 large red peppers, rough chopped
4 cups brown sugar
3 Tbsp. yellow mustard seed
1 Tbsp. ground ginger
1 Tbsp. crystallized ginger
2 tsp. allspice
2 tsp. pickling salt
2 tsp. hot pepper flakes
5 cloves garlic, peeled and rough chopped
4 cups cider vinegar

Clean 7 pint canning jars and lids. Place in canning kettle and bring to boil. Cover and keep warm while making chutney.

Place all ingredients in a large, heavy-bottomed pot and mix well to dissolve brown sugar. Place on stove and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer, uncovered, 1 hour and 15 minutes, stirring often to keep from scorching. You want your chutney to be nice and thick and not runny, so you may have to extend your cooking time if your apples are particularly juicy, as I did.

Pack into hot pint jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Seal and adjust rings. Place back in hot water bath and process 10 minutes once water has come to a boil again.

Makes 7 glorious pints of chutney.

I have also made this apple chutney with fresh cranberries, cut in half and that is a lovely holiday addition.

I am submitting this recipe to the Slow Food Edition of the Go Ahead, Honey, It's Gluten Free cooking event founded and hosted this month by Naomi at Straight Into Bed Cakefree and Dried. This thematic event showcases gluten-free goodies and I'm excited to see what slow-cooked treats everyone cooks up this round, which runs until September 30th. Be sure to check back with Naomi for a luxurious and delicious roundup.

Canning Homegrown Tomato Sauce

The Crispy Cook is mightily staying on top of the perpetual tomato harvest by roasting tomatoes in the oven overnight (175 degrees F) tossed with oil, salt and pepper in glass baking dishes (metal cookie sheets get eaten away by tomato acid and then make the tomatoes taste unpleasantly metallic) AND by cutting grape tomatoes in half and dehydrating them overnight in the dehydrator AND by giving them away in our bookstore and to all friends and parents of kids' friends (HOW EMBARASSING!) AND by canning them into salsa or sauce. (Chutney is on the agenda next).


Canning tomatoes is somewhat of a multi-step and multi-hour process, but one with rhythms that soothe me after a long day, so I really do enjoy it. I've found that this year I've been able to get into a system of picking and washing tomatoes one day, chunking them up into the crockpot to cook down the next, and sieving and cooking down the sauce and canning on the third day. Here's what I've being doing at the Kitchen Tomato Factory:

Day One: Pick ripe and even a few slightly underripe tomatoes (for extra acid and zingy green flavor). I use whatever tomatoes I have ready, usually a mixture of plums and salad tomatoes, both red and yellow. Wash and let air dry.



Day Two: Core and cut up tomatoes into large crockpot (mine is 4 quarts). You don't need to add water because the tomatoes will let off a lot of juice. Cover and cook on high 1 hour, then lower heat to low and cook until tomatoes are mushy (at least 4 hours). I usually go to bed and wake up in the morning, turn off the crockpot and put the tomatoes in my Mouli contraption that presses out the tomato juice and pulp, but leaves a surprisingly small amount of seeds and skin behind. Then I either let it cool and refrigerate it until I have time to deal with it or proceed to:



Day Three: Cook down tomatoes until they are a thicker, saucy consistency. Dont' let the sauce scorch on the bottom. This is where you throw in the seasonings: sauteed garlic and onions, some red pepper flakes, black pepper, chopped basil and oregano and a hint of brown sugar to take the edge off the tomato acid. When sauce is desired thickness, add pickling salt and lemon juice/cider vinegar and keep on low flame.

Wash jars and put in canning kettle with water to cover. Bring to boil. Take out hot jars, fill with tomato sauce, seal and process in hot water bath. Take out and let the music of the popping lids bring a smile to your face.



I follow the Tomato Sauce recipe in my old reliable, the Ball Blue Book, but you can also find good instructions for canning a variety of tomato items on this site, which also gives you all the correct ingredient amounts and processing times. I personally would stay away from adding mushrooms to any tomato sauce as it just doesn't seem safe to add fungi to a home-canned item. You can always zip up your home-canned sauce later to add other chunky items or cheese or simmer it longer to get it even thicker.

Don't be afraid to learn how to do simple home canning. If you are scrupulously clean with jars and lids and in following exact proportions for canning recipes, you'll end up with delicious, nutritious, economical, beautiful items in your pantry. Things won't blow up, you won't poison your family, it'll be alright.



I am submitting this Tomato Sauce Extravaganza to Grow Your Own, a twice-monthly event started by Andrea's Recipes, and which is being hosted this round by Noob Cook, who is not only a talented cook but an excellent food photographer.

Canning Spicy Salsa

Yesterday was a gorgeous and warm summer day, perfect for visiting the Washington County Fair on its last day. We saw crazy crested chickens, lop-eared goats, prize-winning pumpkins and sampled lots of great maple syrup treats. Not to mention the people watching!

The highlight for me was talking to some of the farmers and young kids exhibiting their prize animals and of course, checking out the blue-ribbon preserves. I grabbed up a leaflet from a Master Gardener at the Agricultural Extension booth about canning tomatoes and was inspired to keep chipping away at my tomato harvest with some Spicy Salsa. I kicked up the heat in the recipe with a can of smoky chipotles in adobo sauce and now I have four quarts of summer gold for winter meals.

Smoky Chipotle Salsa

7 lbs. tomatoes
1 lb. hot peppers, seeded and chopped
1 lb. sweet peppers, seeded and chopped
1 lb. onions, chopped
1 (7 oz.) can chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
1 cup cider vinegar
1 Tbsp. pickling salt

Bring a pot of water to boil and dip tomatoes in pot, several at a time, for 1 minute. Remove with slotted spoon and plunge into cold water. Slip off skins, core and chop coarsely.

Place all ingredients in large kettle and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for 10 minutes.

Ladle hot salsa into hot, sterilized jars and fill up, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Add lids and screw on rings to seal. Place in boiling hot water bath and process 20 minutes.

Makes 4 Quarts.

I am submitting this bold, red recipe to the "Food in Colours" food blog event sponsored by Tongue Ticklers. The featured color is RED, so this salsa fits the bill nicely. There is still time to submit a red vegetarian food entry (the deadline is August 27th) so if red is your color, check it out!

Canning Sweet Pickle Relish

All the rainy weather has given us a bumper crop of cucumbers, so I consulted my trusty Ball Blue Book and decided to try a sweet cucumber relish for the first time. It only used up 6 cucumbers, but every day I'm trying to keep up with the garden, so it helps.

Sweet Pickle Relish

6 cucumbers, peeled and chopped
2 medium onions, peeled and chopped
1 green bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1/4 cup salt
3 cups sugar
2 cups cider vinegar
1 Tbsp. celery seed
1 Tbsp. mustard seed

I put the cucumbers, onions and peppers in chunks into my food processor and whirred them around until they were in small pieces, but you can also hand chop your vegetables.

Place vegetables in a large bowl. Sprinkle with salt and mix around. Cover with cold water and let stand 2 hours, or overnight.

Drain and press out excess liquid in a colander.

Combine sugar, vinegar, celery seed and mustard seed in a non-reactive large pot. Bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve sugar.

Add drained vegetables and bring to boil again. Lower heat and simmer 10 minutes.

Pack into hot sterilized pint jars, leaving 1/4 inch head space. Place caps on and tighten. Place in hot water bath and process for 10 minutes.

Makes 4 pint jars.

Garlicky Cucumber Refrigerator Pickles

The cucumber rules in our household. We like to grow the Suyo Long cucumbers that curl and twist as they grow and stay deliciously sweet and small-seeded even when they are big, but this year my old seed packet didn't germinate during our cool spring weather, so I was forced to buy some cucumber plants. Our local garden spot had Marketmore cucumbers, which are basically a standard straight-growing dark green cuke. They have been fabulously prolific in our damp summer so we've been gorging on cucumber salads and cucumber and tomato salads and cucumber and mint and tomato salads, etc.

There are so many cukes though, that we're also giving them away at the store and to our neighbors and there are even more left over to make deliciously crisp Refrigerator Pickles. The following recipe is one we've adapted over the last several years from various canning and vegetable cookbooks and they are really tasty.

Garlicky Cucumber Refrigerator Pickles

10-12 large cucumbers, cut into thin spears or slices
2 cloves garlic, peeled, crushed and cut in half
6 heads of fresh dill, preferably with dill seeds hanging off
1 tsp. pickling spice (or mix of mustard seeds, bay leaves, and hot pepper flakes)
1/4 cup coarse salt
1/4 cup white vinegar
2-1/2 qts. water

Trim ends of cucumbers and peel if skin is really thick or damaged. Otherwise leave skin on. For cucumber slices, the food processor gets them delectably thin.

Place cucumbers, garlic, dill, and pickling spices in a non-reactive, non-metal pot. Put salt, vinegar and water in another large non-reactive pot and bring to boil. Boil at least 2 minutes to make brine. Pour over cucumbers in original pot. Place a china or stoneware plate over cucumbers to weigh them down and add another weight (like a heavy jar or can). Cover with lid or plastic wrap.

Leave at room temperature at least 8 hours or overnight. Pack cucumbers into six squeaky clean half-pint jars. Pour brine over and seal. Refrigerate at least 2 days before opening to let flavors mingle.

Pickles keep up to six months and stay deliciously crisp. Discard any jar that has a funky smell when you open it. The pickles should just smell garlicky and taste lightly salty and herby.

Makes 6 half pints.

Canning Sweet and Sour Wax Beans

Despite only having ten or so plants from my mole-ravaged row of yellow Rocdor wax beans, these plants have been incredibly prolific and have kept pumping out produce for our table which we have enjoyed simply steamed and in a delicious Yellow String Bean and Tomato Salad, which is my new favorite bean salad. Since the beans are still streaming in and now we are entering the fertile tomato-zucchini crescendo, I thought I would try canning some for the winter.

I still have a couple of jars of Dilly Beans from last year, so I was searching for a new pickling recipe. The library had a few canning and preserving books left on their shelves and this old-fashioned recipe jumped out at me from "Pickles, Relishes, Chutneys, Sauces & Catsups, Mincemeats, Beverages & Syrups" (Emmaus, PA: Yankee Books, 1992). I didn't have summer savory as called for in the original recipe so I subbed in some chopped basil. I also forgot to pop in the bay leaves I had laid out when filling the jars, but this will hopefully not put me in a pickle later on. Here's my adaptation of:

Sweet-Sour Wax Beans

2 lbs. wax beans, cut diagonally into 1-inch pieces
1 cup white vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp. celery seed
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1 tsp. dried summer savory or basil (or 1 Tbsp. chopped fresh herbs)
Bay leaves

Get all of your pickling jars and implements washed and sterilized in hot water. Get the canning kettle ready on the stove and heat until boiling. Cover until ready to can.

Place beans in a pot and cover with water. Add a little bit of salt and cook until just barely tender, about 4 minutes, once the water has begun to boil.

Drain beans, saving about 2 cups of cooking liquid. Mix cooking liquid with vinegar, sugar, celery seed, ginger and savory/basil to make a pickling brine. Bring to a boil. Add beans and bring to a boil again.

Pack clean, hot pint jars with beans, pop in bay leaves, and cover with hot brine, leaving 1/2 inch headspace at top. Cap jars and add to canning kettle. Bring to boil again and process 5 minutes.

Remove jars to cool overnight. Check to make sure all lids have popped down in the center before storing in a cool, dry pantry. If one or more of the lids haven't popped down, store jars in the refrigerator.

Makes 4 pints.

The library cookbook recommends serving this with pork, but I think I will pop the pickled beans into potato salads and serve on a relish tray.

Mango & Red Pepper Chutney

I recently joined the Foodie Blog Roll (see sidebar) hosted by the Leftover Queen and there is a monthly Food Joust in the Queen's honor. This cooking event challenges participants to develop a recipe using three ingredients put forth by the preceding winner. The May Joust trio includes mangoes, cardamom and brown sugar, which inspired me to make a mango chutney to go along with all the bhaji mania and Indian-influenced recipes my family loves.

Mangoes are a new fruit for me. I have bought many a jar of Major Grey's mango chutney, but I don't think I have ever enjoyed a fresh mango, much less cooked with one. I did a little research on various mango chutney recipes and none that I saw called for cardamom, but this spice has a nice ginger and lemon taste, so I thought it would work well in a chutney. The other chutneys I have made from apples and tomatoes have all turned a uniform molasses brown, so I thought a bit of red pepper would brighten up the color.

I was able to get three hard green mangoes at the supermarket and waited for them to brighten up and ripen, but it seems I got them in three different stages of development. After five days, one was half-red and going a bit soft, one was springy and only a little bit red and one remained green and hard. It was time to start experimenting....

My copy of Nuevo Cubano Cooking (by Sue Mullin, NY: Chartwell, 2003) advised wearing rubber gloves in case of skin allergy. A little more Internet research showed that mangoes are botanically related to my diabolical arch-enemy, poison ivy, which turns me into a puffball with slitted eyes, so I made sure to wear my dishwashing gloves when I chopped up these fruit. I did cut off a few yellow rubber fingertips as the mango flesh is slippery and has a maddening attraction to its huge, flat pit, but I didn't want to end up a scratchy, puffy mess, so I stuck with it.

The best way to cut a mango is to make longitudinal cuts along the crazy center pit, and this website has lots of good instructional photos, so I am glad to have found that thanks to another Foodie Jouster. Then you can score the fruit and scoop it away from the peel directly into a bowl from the two outside pieces. I kept my pieces on the large side since I figured they would cook down in the chutney, and this turned out to be the case. Ripe mango is quite tasty and I will have to get some for future fruit salads.

I have some experience canning, so I went ahead and processed my mango chutney in a boiling water bath, but since this only makes a small batch, 2 cups, you could also just refrigerate it. All the vinegar and spices should keep it for several months, if properly covered. If you do want to experiment with canning, it's really not as scary as it sounds at the outset. Do invest in a jar lifter, proper jars and lids and a wide-mouth funnel and make sure you have a good recipe to follow. You need a strong back and hands to lift the heavy canning pot full of water and jars and you want to be extra-cautious when handling boiling-hot jars, but there is nothing more satisfying than hearing those lids seal ("POP!") when they cool and seeing your produce lined up on the pantry shelf. There are lots of great canning books and Internet resources to help you get started.

On to the jousting:

Mango and Red Pepper Chutney

1-1/2 cups brown sugar
3/4 cup cider vinegar

3 ripe mangoes (not over-ripe), peeled and cut into chunks
1 medium onion, peeled and roughly chopped
1 red pepper, cut into 2 inch strips
1/4 cup golden raisins
2 big slices of crystallized ginger, chopped (mine was rock-hard so I pulverized it with a mortar and pestle; you could also substitute 1 tsp. ground ginger)
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tsp. yellow mustard seeds
3 cardamom pods, seeded and pounded a bit in the mortar and pestle (discard the husk)
1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes
2 Tbsp. snipped chives (adds a bit of dark color)

In an enameled pot, mix sugar and vinegar. Heat to boiling, stirring occasionally to melt sugar.

Add remaining ingredients and bring to boil. Simmer, uncovered, until a liquid is syrupy, at least 45 minutes. Don't cook too long or the all components of the chutney will turn a uniform brown.

You can then cool and refrigerate your chutney or process it in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes.

Makes 4 half-pint jars (two cups). This chutney is medium-spicy. If you want to kick up the heat you could add fresh chiles or cracked black pepper.

Mango chutney is a divine accompaniment to any curry or spicy food, great slathered on a cracker with cream cheese or try a peanut butter and chutney sandwich (PBC).

***There is still time to join me in this month's joust. Participants must blog and enter their entry in the Foodie Joust by May 1st. See here for the Jousting rules.

Canning Dilly Beans

So the dewpoint is in the 70s and it's 90 degrees Fahrenheit outside and we are all sweating just sitting still in the shade. Time to boil up a cauldron of water and start canning! 

 It is ironic that harvesting and storing the garden bounty must be done in the steamiest of weather, but that's when the vegetables start bounding out of the garden at a lightning clip and you can actually hear them growing when the cricket chirps die down. My friend Hope taught me how to can many years ago when I was an energetic, single young lass and I enjoyed making all kinds of weird chutneys and pickle relishes that I would give out to my bewildered relatives. "What is this and how do I eat it?" was their common reaction. 

 Once the kids came, my canning efforts ceased, as toddlers do not allow for the long preparation, focus and boiling water dangers that is necessitated. Now the kids are older and I have time to can again. The bean patch started to really churn last week, so I harvested up my beautiful purple string beans, snipped off their ends and prepared them to be pickled for later consumption. It is especially nice to chop up these dilled beans and sprinkle them in winter salads, when the good, fresh vegetable selection at the market is sparse. If you have never canned before, see if you can find a friend to show you the basics, as there are a lot of health issues involved with making sure every part of the canning process is sterilized.

 If that is not possible, I would recommend getting a copy of the Ball Blue Book, published by the good folks at the Ball Canning Jar Corporation in Muncie, Indiana.  Here, then, is the Dilly Bean recipe from the Ball Blue Book: 

 Dilly Beans 

 2 lbs. trimmed green beans 

4 heads dill 

4 cloves garlic

1 tsp. cayenne pepper (I like to use red pepper flakes instead)

 2-1/2 cups vinegar 

2-1/2 cups water 

1/4 cup canning salt (don't substitute regular salt, this is chemistry!) 

 Pack beans lengthwise into hot jars, leaving 1/4 inch head space. To each pint, add 1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper, 1 clove garlic and 1 head dill. Combine remaining ingredients in a large sauce pot (non-reactive, like an enamel or glass pot). Bring to a boil. Pour hot liquid over beans, leaving 1/4 inch head space. Remove air bubbles. Adjust caps. Process pints and quarts 10 minutes in boiling water bath.

 Yield: about 4 pints. Happy Canning!