Shortly after my last post, Toby and I headed out for our belated honeymoon in Portland, Oregon. In the two weeks before our trip and the four weeks after we returned, I put up approximately 1 billion pounds of tomatoes, not to mention various pickles. I used some old recipes, and some new ones. I tried my hand at some new jams and jellies. I made kimchi and a blackberry shrub. I scrawled notes in cookbooks and on scraps of paper that were meant to become timely canning posts, but will instead become untimely posts that go up over the winter. I shuttled heavy, jewel toned jars down to my basement larder, and felt proud that I met all of my canning goals for the season and then some (posting a final jar count and a photo of the full shelves is also on my blog to do list). In my canning frenzy, I fell progressively behind on my weekly CSA posts and accompanying recipes, which seemed like such a great and do-able idea at the beginning of the summer; c’est la vie.

one of many bushels of tomatoes, prior to being sauced and canned.

spicy dill pickles.

In addition to madly canning in the four weeks after we returned from Portland, I spent gobs of time preparing our house for a new family member.  I scrubbed floors with diluted vinegar (the strange fact that I was basically pickling my floors was not lost on me), found all-small-things-which-could-be-swallowed and stashed them away up high, put up baby gates and brought home loads of new gear. On Sunday, September 23, a fluffy, peppy, snuggly 8 week old puppy joined our brood. Her name is Dilly Bean (Dilly for short) and she is pretty much the greatest dog ever. We are teaching her to sit and lay down, to chew on her toys and not our walls, to walk on a leash without pulling and to pee outside; she is teaching us to be calmer, to slow down and rest, to speak softly, and to make time to play (the vacuuming can wait).

pick me!

oona and dilly, in love.

napping with her tigger.

they grow up so fast!

About that trip to Portland.  We visited waterfalls, mountains, gardens, evergreen forests, the desert and the beach.  We drove on crazy back roads and saw the most gorgeous landscapes. We drank pretentiously good coffee whilst listening to the Shins.  We made countless Portlandia jokes (truly, that show hits the mark).  We spent time with some dear old friends, and scored some new cookbooks at Powell’s.  We attended a cooking class. We sipped wine at a vineyard and I geeked out at a super cool jam shop. And we ate, and ate, and ate, and ate.

at multnomah falls.

moody evergreens.

mount hood.

haystack rock.

welcome to portlandia.

“pretentiously good coffee.”

put a bird on it.

eggs over smoked salmon hash.

lefse (norwegian potato crepes) at broder; i had no idea norwegian food was so amazing.

thick cucumber “chips” lightly dressed in vinegar and spices for scooping up guacamole and salsa; I am sooo making this next summer when the cucumbers are in.

to die for tacos at por que no?

homemade ravioli filled with braised pork, served at EVOO cooking school.

One of our favorite meals (although honestly it is hard to choose a favorite) during our trip was at the Joel Palmer House, where the menu focuses on mushrooms and wine.  Everything we ate that night was out of this world good, but the beef stroganoff was the most memorable. I wanted to try to recreate the dish at home and was lucky to find the recipe online. We made a few small tweaks to the recipe (I didn’t have a 1/2 cup of Oregon white truffles, sadly) and were thrilled with the results.  I’ve reduced the quantities from the original recipe (which made a whopping 1 1/2 quarts of sauce) — my version yields enough for 4 dinner portions, but you can easily double the recipe to serve a larger group.  It is actually a really easy meal to put together, and would be great for a dinner party (just realize that it is a super rich and filling dinner, so just a salad on the side is all you will need to round out the meal).

beef stroganoff at joel palmer house.

beef stroganoff at our house.

Beef Stroganoff

Adapted from The Joel Palmer House Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds top sirloin or tenderloin (we used top sirloin which was much cheaper than tenderloin but still very tender and flavorful)
• Salt and pepper
• 1 cup long grain white rice
• 1 small onion, minced and divided
• 1/4 teaspoon chopped thyme
• 1 teaspoon dried chile flakes
• 2 1/4 cups water, divided
• 1/4 cup corn starch
• 1 clove of garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons butter, divided
• 1/8 cup pinot noir (or other red wine that you like and have on hand)
• 1/4 cup chicken stock
• 1/4 cup beef stock
• 1 1/2 teaspoons chinese oyster sauce
• 2 ounces dried porcini mushrooms
• 1/8 cup soy sauce
• 2 cups room temperature heavy cream
• 1 cup room temperature sour cream

Instructions

1. Liberally salt and pepper both sides of the steak.  Allow steak to come to room temperature while you prepare the rest of the recipe.
2. In a medium sized pot, combine the rice, 1 teaspoon minced onion, thyme, chile flakes, 2 cups of water and a generous pinch of salt.  Bring to a boil, stir, cover and reduce flame to low.  Cook rice for 10-15 minutes, or according to the directions on your package of rice.  If your rice is done cooking before the sauce and steak are ready, simply take it off the burner and keep a lid on it until you are ready to serve.
3. In a small jar, combine 1/4 cup of water and the cornstarch, screw the lid on tightly and shake vigorously (do this over the sink in case your lid leaks a bit). Set aside the slurry.
4. In another medium sized pot, melt 1 tablespoon of butter over medium flame.  Add the minced garlic and cook until the garlic is soft and fragrant, about 1-2 minutes. Add the wine, beef stock, chicken stock, remaining minced onion, oyster sauce, mushrooms and soy sauce, mix well and simmer for 5 minutes. Add heavy cream and bring to a boil, stirring frequently to make sure the cream does not burn. Once the sauce has come to a boil, give the jar of slurry another good shake and pour about half of the slurry into the sauce and stir well — the sauce will thicken up very quickly. Add more slurry if needed (I didn’t need extra, but you may).  Reduce flame to medium low, add sour cream and stir until completely incorporated.  Taste test for salt and pepper.  Cover pot and reduce flame to low to just keep it warm while you grill the steak (give the sauce a stir every few minutes, just to make sure you don’t scorch the bottom of the pot).
5. Use remaining tablespoon of butter to grease a grill pan.  Heat pan over high flame, add steak and grill for about 2-3 minutes per side (our steak was about 1 1/2 inches thick and this cooking time yielded a medium rare steak, but you will need to adjust your cooking time based upon how thick your steak is, and how rare/well done you prefer your steak).  Transfer grilled steak to a cutting board and allow it to rest for 2-3 minutes before thinly slicing into bite sized pieces (note, the steak in my picture isn’t sliced as thinly as it could be — I would slice it thinner next time).
6. To serve, spoon rice into the bottom of 4 large bowls. Divide sliced steak among the four bowls.  Ladle sauce over the steak and rice. Serve hot, with the rest of the bottle of wine (you only used an 1/8 cup in the recipe, so you might as well drink the rest of the bottle now that it is open).

I call this CSA curry because I managed to use a little bit of (almost) everything from the CSA box.  Think of this recipe as a jumping off point — it is endlessly adaptable, and you should use whatever veggies you have on hand (Tamar Adler would be so proud of me, I think).  Although the ingredient list is long, this recipe isn’t hard to pull off, it feeds a crowd, and the leftovers are great.  However, I will warn you that this recipe does require a good bit of prep work, mostly in the form of chopping. A good knife and a glass of wine are helpful in this regard (actually, those two things are helpful in most situations).

The photo leaves a lot to be desired.  Don’t be turned off by my photo, because this curry is great. I was just too lazy/hungry to fuss with taking a nice picture.

Adapted from Local Kitchen

Serves 8

Ingredients

• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 3 yellow onions, diced
• 6 cloves of garlic, minced
• 4 inch chunk of ginger, peeled and minced
• 2 jalapenos (or other fresh chiles), thinly sliced (do not discard seeds and membranes unless you are a wuss)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons tumeric
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 2 large bunches of chard, leaves roughly chopped (stems removed and reserved for another use)
• 1 dry pint of cherry tomatoes, or 2 large tomatoes, chopped
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 4 tablespoons red curry paste
• 5 tablespoons brown sugar
• 2 – 14 ounce cans of coconut milk
• 2 pounds (about 6 medium) potatoes, peeled and diced
• 1 small bell pepper, thinly sliced
• 2 carrots, thinly sliced
• 1/2 cup Thai basil, roughly chopped
• Rice for serving

Instructions

1. In a large dutch oven, heat oil over medium flame.  Add onions and cook until soft.  Reduce flame to medium low, add garlic, ginger and jalapeno and cook for 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly. Add turmeric, cinnamon and cayenne and cook for one minute, stirring constantly. Add chard and cook until wilted. Add tomatoes and water and stir until well combined. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 5 minutes.
2. In a medium sized pot, whisk together curry paste, brown sugar and coconut milk over medium-low flame until well combined.
3. Add potatoes and warm curried coconut milk to the dutch oven and stir until well combined. Increase flame to medium and bring pot to a simmer. Cover pot, reduce heat to low and continue to simmer for about 20 minutes or until potatoes are just fork tender.
4. Add bell pepper and carrot to the pot, recover and continue to simmer for another 5 minutes.  Remove lid and simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes. Just before serving, stir in basil. Serve over hot rice.

The twelfth week’s featured CSA item is (drumroll please): tomatoes.

I love tomato season. In addition to the 25 or so tomatoes we received in the CSA box this week, I ordered 2 full bushels of tomatoes to put up.  Seeing lots of red in my kitchen this week.  More on that in the next post.

Week twelve’s box included:

• Garlic
• Yellow onions
• Peaches
• Tomatoes
• Thai basil
• Dill
• Parsley
• Bell peppers
• Red cabbage
• Rainbow chard

Those really are peaches in there, I swear. The trouble with canned peaches is that they don’t photograph well.  Heck, even when you take them out of the jar, they’re not going to win any beauty contests — they look a bit water-logged, to be honest. But the taste, especially in the middle of winter, is amazing.

Last year I canned our peaches in light syrup.  This year I went for medium syrup because the higher sugar content is supposed to help the preserved peaches last longer.

I processed 20 pounds (2 pecks) of peaches, which yielded 17 pints.  The recipe below is scaled down to 5 pounds, in case you are not insane.

Adapted from the Ball Blue Book

Ingredients

• 5 pounds peaches
• 3 1/4 cups sugar
• 5 cups water

Instructions

1. Prep your canning station.  I used pint jars, but you could put up your peaches in quarts if you prefer.
2. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and fill two large bowls with ice water.  Cut each peach in half and blanch in the pot of boiling water for 1 minute.  Transfer blanched peaches to one of the bowls of ice water. Use your fingers and/or a pairing knife to remove the peach skins. Remove the stone from each peach as well, and discard skins and stones.  Cut the peaches in half again (so now they are quartered) and use your knife to scrape any fibrous flesh where the pit used to be.  Place the peaches in the second bowl of ice water. Repeat until all of the peaches are skinned and pitted.
3. Combine sugar and water in a medium pot and heat over medium flame.  Stir to make sure the sugar dissolves.  Cover to keep warm.
4. Drain the peaches. Fill the jars with peaches, taking care not to smash or mangle the peaches as you fill the jars. Ladle in the hot syrup, leaving 1/2 inch headspace at the top of the jar (the bottom line of the screw marks on the jar is a good guideline for ½ inch of headspace). Use a chopstick to remove the air bubbles, and add more hot syrup if needed to maintain ½ inch of headspace after the jar is de-bubbled.
5. Process jars for 20 minutes (25 minutes for quarts).

I’m back after a long absence (I blame this on the summer heat, among other things) with three weeks of CSA updates to share. I’m not even going to try to give you a featured item for each week; there’s no way I can get it caught up at this point and move forward with new posts. So instead, I’ve got a featured item for week 11, and the inventories for weeks 9, 10 and 11.

The eleventh week’s featured CSA item is (drumroll please): peaches.

Week eleven’s box included:

• Cherry tomatoes
• Peaches
• Nectarines
• Canning tomatoes
• Eggplant
• New potatoes
• Beets
• Yellow onion
• Bell peppers
• Hungarian hot wax peppers
• Rainbow chard
• Parsley
• Dill

Week ten’s box included:

• Peaches
• Tomatoes
• Bell peppers
• Yellow onion
• Rainbow chard
• Carrots
• Green cabbage
• Romaine lettuce
• Basil
• Beets

Week nine’s box included:

• Tomatoes
• Basil
• Zucchini
• Apples
• Carrots
• Green beans
• Yellow onion
• Bell pepper
• Rainbow chard
• Scallions
• Radicchio
• Blueberries
• New potatoes

It’s been another busy week, and I didn’t have time to make something new with this week’s featured CSA item, green cabbage. Instead, I made an old favorite, Carolina-style coleslaw, which has a tart and sweet vinegar-based dressing instead of the creamy mayonaise based dressing that most coleslaws use.  I made this coleslaw this weekend along with slow cooker pulled pork and potato salad with kalamata olives for a crowd.

If coleslaw doesn’t float your boat, or if you’d rather try a recipe for preserving cabbage, I encourage you to give fermentation a chance and turn that cabbage into sauerkraut; it is really easy to do and the results are awesome. My two-part recipe for making sauerkraut can be found here and here.

The seventh week’s featured CSA item is (drumroll please): green cabbage.

Another busy week around these parts.  We’re all enjoying the summer, although the heat is a bit too much for me.  Hopefully it will cool down before canning festivities get into full swing in my kitchen (which should be any day now).

This week’s box includes:

• Romaine lettuce
• Blueberries
• Scallions
• Dill
• Basil
• Green cabbage
• Cucumber
• Carrots
• Beets
• Zucchini
• Yellow squash
• Green bell pepper
• Tomato

Stay tuned for a post tomorrow (hopefully) with a few posts from the archives on my favorite recipes for green cabbage.

It’s also worth noting that one of the main reasons — in fact, probably the main reason — I write this blog is for myself, to keep track of recipes and other kitchen adventures for future reference.   Which is to say that I recognize that this post may not be very relevant or interesting to anyone other than me.

So I took inventory of the jars that remain on our larder shelves and compared it to the end of canning season inventory list I posted in November.  We made too much of some things, not enough of others, and some were spot on.  Also, there were a few recipes that we weren’t thrilled with and won’t repeat.  Here’s the breakdown.

Too many:

• Pickled jalapenos.  We love how they turn out, but we just don’t use them fast enough.  We put up 12 pints in late September and we have 8 pints remaining. I don’t plan to make more this year, I’ll just use up what we already have.

Too few:

• Crushed tomatoes and tomato sauce.  We need to put up more tomatoes this year. Way more. I’m down to one quart which I’m going to use up this week. I don’t want to run out this early in the year. We did 81 quarts of tomatoes total last year (55 quarts of whole and crushed tomatoes, and 26 quarts of sauce) , so this year I plan to do at least 120 quarts total (possibly 150).
• Pickled beets. We did our beets in late September and we’re already getting pretty low.  We eat these on almost all of our salads, and they’re popular with our family and friends so we like to give away some jars as gifts.  Last year we did 28 pints and we’re down to 7 pints now; this year I’m going to shoot for 35 pints.
• Peaches in light syrup.  We used them sparingly because we only put up 10 quarts, but we really loved them.  I’m going to shoot for 20 quarts this year.
• Pickled hot peppers. We did 21 pints in early September and we’re down to 4 pints. I wouldn’t make a ton more, but I’d like to have a few extras, so I’ll shoot for 25 pints this year.
• Dilly carrots. I really like these and used them sparingly because we only put up 5 pints.  We’re down to 1 pint now. This year I’ll put up about 10 pints.
• Tomato jam.  This stuff was a huge hit around here. We put up 3-12oz jars and 12 half pint jars, and I have only one half pint jar remaining. This preserve makes a great holiday gift as well, so I definitely want to make a lot more of it this year. I think I’ll plan on 24 half pint jars.
  

Just right:

• Dilly beans.  We put up 30 pints and 4 quarts, and have 5 pints remaining.
• Dill pickles. We put up 14 quarts and 8 pints, and have 3 quarts and 3 pints remaining.
• Bread and butter pickles.  We put up 8 quarts and have 4 quarts remaining.  However, we will try a different recipe this time (see notes below).
• Sauerkraut. We put up 2 quarts and 1 pint, and we used it all up.
• Apple sauce.  We put up 14 quarts in November, and we have 7 quarts remaining.

Won’t repeat:

• The bread and butter pickle recipe.  We love bread and butter pickles and will make more this year, but we weren’t thrilled with the flavor produced by the recipe we used. The pickles were too oniony and not sweet enough.  They’re not bad, we just don’t love them.  So this year we’ll try a different recipe.
• Pickled soy & wasabi green beans.  Again, these weren’t bad, but we didn’t love them, and we won’t repeat them.
• Indian spiced pickled carrots and daikon radishes.  I made 6 pints but never posted the recipe because I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be happy with the end result.  I was correct.

For the sake of being complete, I’ll also note that we froze the following in 2011 (we still have a few bags of corn and peppers, but everything else got used up, and I’ll plan to do about the same amounts of each this year):

• 3 quart bags of zucchini and yellow squash.
• 1 quart bag of broccoli florets.
• 3 yellow horn peppers.
• 1 green bell pepper.
• 4 pounds of kale.
• 1/2 pound of beet greens.
• 13 quart bags of corn.
• 2 quarts of chili.
• 1 quart bag jalapenos.
• 4 cups of zucchini spread.

I’m keeping track of what I put up in 2012 — you can view the list so far (short though it is) here.  I have plans to make a few new canned good this year (jalapeno jelly is at the top of the list) so stay tuned for new recipes to be posted in the coming weeks and months.

We are in the thick of the annual zucchini glut; that’s when we have no fewer than 97 zucchini in the fridge at any given moment.  We love zucchini, but using them up is a challenge, especially because they don’t hold up well to the heat required for preservation by canning. So this week, I’m sharing a recipe that uses up 2 large zucchini in one dish.

One of the other virtues of this recipe is its flexibility. I’ve made this recipe twice in the last week, once with traditional basil pesto and once with garlic scape pesto; both were great.  The first time I used pre-made breadcrumbs that I had stashed in my freezer (simply stale baguette that I had whirled in the food processor until the breadcrumbs were fine, like sand), and the second time I made “fresh” breadcrumbs from 4 slices of stale, hearty wheat bread — these bread crumbs I crumbled by hand so that some were fine and others were large. I prefered the second batch of breadcrumbs because they big pieces had more of a crunch, but both methods yielded good results.  Also, if I had yellow squash on hand, I would definitely add it to the mix (just reduce the amount of zucchini so that it all fits in the dish).  You can switch up the cheeses too — parmesan, asiago, gruyere – whatever you have on hand will work great.

Adapted from 101 Cookbooks

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 stick of butter
• 4 slices of good quality, stale whole wheat bread (or 2 cups of pre-made breadcrumbs)
• 2 very large zucchini, sliced thin (about 1/4 inch)
• 3 or 4 new potatoes, scrubbed and sliced paper thin
• 1 cup of pesto (can be traditional basil pesto or garlic scape pesto, or some other kind of pesto; whatever you have on hand or prefer will work just fine)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon crushed red chile flakes
• 1/2 cup grated parmesan (or asiago, gruyere, or some combination thereof)

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Pour the olive oil into a 9×9 gratin dish (or another deep baking dish) and rub the oil around so that the oil is coating all of the interior sides of the dish.  Set aside.
2. If you are making your breadcrumbs from scratch and the bread isn’t completely stale yet, you can lightly toast it for a few minutes to further dry it out.  Place the dry bread in a large bowl and break it up using you hands. You want some of the bread crumbs to be fine (like sand) and some to be large (like pebbles).  This will yield about 2 cups of breadcrumbs.  Alternatively, you can use 2 cups of pre-made breadcrumbs.
3. Melt the butter in a small pan over medium flame. Continue to cook the butter until it browns and becomes fragrant and nutty, watching it closely because butter can go from “browned” to “burnt” somewhat quickly. Turn off heat and add breadcrumbs to the butter, stirring to make sure all of the butter is absorbed by the breadcrumbs,
4. In a large mixing bowl, combine the zucchini, potatoes, pesto, salt and chile flakes and mix well until the veggies are completely coated in the pesto. Add half of the breadcrumb and butter mixture to the bowl and mix well. Pour the veggies into the oiled gratin dish and top with the parmesan cheese. Top that with the remaining breadcrumbs.
5. Bake gratin for 60 minutes, or until the veggies in the center of the dish are hot and tender. Keep an eye on the breadcrumbs while the gratin is baking; if they are getting too dark (especially around the edges) you can use a fork to rake the breadcrumbs around a bit, or you can very loosely cover the dish with foil for the remainder of the baking time (don’t cover it tightly or you will steam the veggies and the breadcrumb topping will turn mushy instead of being crunchy.