First bounty from my CSA share:
red leaf lettuce
spinach
spring greens
green onions
radishes WITH greens!!!
cilantro
Hopefully, I will be posting weekly how I use the bounty.
The plan for this week’s haul:
BLTs with the red leaf lettuce
Spinach-Ricotta cups (to freeze)
Cucumber-radish slaw (uses radishes and cilantro)
sauteed greens (radish, spinach and spring greens)
Spinach Gnocchi
Spinach Pasta
Spinach and Spring green “pesto” (to freeze)
The weather forecast, for the forseeable future is showers…with occasional sun breaks. So when the sun breaks, Bear, Bob and I take advantage!
This morning, the sun broke. It was crisp, cool – that beautiful, after a good rain, clean air – with the sun shining over the mountains and through the trees. Bob had his morning out and about and then Bear and it was good!
I love baking in the morning no matter what the weather is like, but when that morning sun is shining in the kitchen, the birds are singing, Bob and Bear are content – it is heavenly to me to mix or roll dough and generally dawdle in the kitchen.
My work was caught up, Bear was lying in the yard, Bob was on his fleece inside – I baked.
Pita bread. FYI – not a tricky thing at all, at all! I use the same dough I like for english muffins, pizza crust, Naan and mini-boules – my own riff on the Portuguese Broa from Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day. To make Pita, roll the dough to about 1/8 inch thick. Heat a pizza stone to 450 (the book says 500, but 450 works for me), put the dough directly on the stone and bake for 5-7 minutes until it puffs and browns slightly. Tough, huh?
May Day morning…breakfast Pita Pockets stuffed with sausage, white beans, scrambled egg, chopped cabbage and cheese – perfect!
A new bread got Sunday off to a delicious start. It is not a high moisture artisanal bread as I’ve been making, but nearly as easy. Although it does use yeast, there is no knead and rise cycle. Mix everything together, spoon it into a breadpan, let it rise for 30 minutes and bake. See Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks’ Easy little bread recipe … aptly named!
Outside, the sunny morning allowed the emerging larch needles to glow chartreuse against a deep blue sky.
Bear and I had a walk around the woods in the cool of the morning. (It got to 73F by afternoon – hot by Bear and my standards!)
And Bob shared the front porch with me as I finished my last cup of coffee.
Sunday morning.
I finished the last of my cranberry citrus marmalade some months ago – just before Jennie Perillo posted on her blog: In Jennie’s Kitchen: Clementine Rosemary Marmalade. Perfect timing. And that post referenced a previous post of hers: Meyer Lemon, ginger & mint marmalade… oh, YUM!
Jennie notes in the Clementine recipe that she used the same ratios as is in the Meyer Lemon recipe. I love understanding the ratios…be it baking or marmalade or any recipe…it is the ratios: how much of this with how much of that makes things come out right. huh…interesting life metaphor as well. But back to marmalade. I intended to make Jennie’s Clementine Rosemary marmalade the weekend following her post. But, life and motivation… Fast forward to several weeks ago when clementines became unavailable here. RATS!
Blood oranges and meyer lemons were done as well. BUT, I did manage to snag an order of blood oranges and pixie mandarins from a grower in the San Joaquin valley of California. A week and a half ago, 30 pounds of blood oranges and 20 pounds of pixie mandarins arrived on my doorstep.
Marmalade does not take a lot of fruit. And Jennie’s recipe is a perfect quantify that results in 2 pints, i.e. 4 half pints…enough to keep me going for awhile. And the other thing about that smaller recipe – although I procured a large canning pot and rack, it is so big and my stove burners are not big and it is a bit of a pain to deal with. The smaller recipe was perfect and allowed me to experiment with my citrus mix: 2 blood oranges, 3 pixie mandarins and 2 lemons.
This fruit is not organic so I let it swim in a bath of vinegar and water for a bit and then gave it a good scrub before slicing it.
So pretty!
The other thing I learned as I perused recipes is that the pith and seeds of citrus contains pectin. So…you do not need to add pectin when you make marmalade…pectin and sugar being the things that cause the fruit to “jell”.
A lot of recipes have you peeling the citrus, removing the pith and seeds, bunding the pith and seeds in cheesecloth and including that bundle in the cooking of the fruit and sugar, thus providing the pectin without the pith and seeds getting into the marmalade. A lot of work and for my money, not necessary. The pith and seeds cook down and they provide the bit of “bitter” that IS marmalade. I followed Jennie’s recipe of lopping off the ends of the fruit, halving (mandarin and lemon) or quartering (blood oranges) and slicing very thin.
The fruit/water/sugar mix is on the rolling boil, another pot holds the jars and a third has the lids.
And per the numbers in Jennie’s recipe, 4 half pint jars of gorgeous marmalade are the result. So easy, so much less mess than a huge batch. I will make another couple of small batches experienting with rosemary, ginger and basil.
Marmalade by the numbers!
For those not interested in marmalade… Mr. Bear – enjoying a lazy sunday afternoon…too bad he does not have a comfy place to nap…
Blue sky this morning over the House Summers! The good folks at NOAA suggest that we are to have a sunny morning followed by a snowy afternoon that is a prelude to a weekend series of winter storms.
Several gaggles of geese flew over headed north…apparently they are also a bit sceptical of NOAA’s forecasts…
Meanwhile, we enjoy clear sky, the rising sun and if you are Bear, a morning treat after the hard work of clearing the property of varmints!
And if you are me, you enjoy one or several “fresh out of the oven” orange pecan biscotti!
And if you are Bob…well, Bob is Bob… Happy Friday!
***re biscotti: I really like biscotti over cookies for several reasons. My favorite biscotti recipe which is adapted from Pam Anderson’s (the cook not the Baywatch babe) “My Favorite Biscotti” in her book “The Perfect Recipe for Losing Weight and Eating Great” has no fat other than eggs and my adaptation is less sugar as well. The basic recipe allows for substitution of whatever extract or zest you feel like as well as dried fruits and nuts.
My basic version:
3 eggs
1 tsp extract of your choice
2 cups flour (I use a mix of King Arthur’s white whole wheat and Wheat Montana’s all purpose white)
2/3 cups sugar (I often use 1/3 cup white and 1/3 cup brown)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp sea salt finely ground
1 cup nuts and/or dried fruit or chocolate chips (dark chocolate bittersweet)
Mix the dry ingredients through salt in 1 bowl, the wet in a separate bowl. Mix together finishing with hand mixing. Toss in whatever else from the nuts/fruit/chips category and incorporate with your hands. It is a fairly sticky dough. Form into 2 logs (about 12 x 3 each) on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper. Bake at 300 for 50 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Slice and put back on the baking sheet on their sides. Bake on each side at 275 until your desired hardness. They will harden and crisp as they cool. I typically do 6-8 minutes per side for the second baking.
And that is the last reason I prefer biscotti over cookies….You bake the entire bit of dough in one fell swoop for 50 minutes meaning I am not up and down putting cookies in the oven and taking them out. Even the second baking, they are all on the sheet and you are just turning them. Easy!
They keep in an airtight jar, supposedly for a month. I wouldn’t know as they don’t last a month…
I’ve made lemon pistachio, cherry almond, coconut almond with chocolate chips and this morning the orange pecan. The orange pecan – actually clementine pecan….I used vanilla extract, 2 T clementine zest and the juice of 2 clementines in with the egg and extract.
hee…payback!
“Who cares??? Let the *%&$! dog have the bedroom. It is warmer in here”
Back in the kitchen…
Tortilla production line – my favorite part!
This was maybe the best batch of corn tortillas I’ve ever made. Although they always taste good, this group held together in perfect circles out of the press, I didn’t burn any and oh…the corn aroma!! It is fortunate that they made it into the enchiladas!
However, after 2 batches of chile gravy, the tortillas, cleaning up the kitchen and all the pots and pans involved – I was running out of steam.
I made a mini enchilada of each type to test and make sure all was edible. WOW! – the chile gravies were packin’ a bit more heat than I anticipated. Medium chile powders from Hatch, New Mexico cooked up to the hot side. It is a good and flavorful heat but I wasn’t sure how my neighbors would like it so in light of the heat and my waning energy, I made some quick enchilada casseroles, put all leftovers in the freezer and while there is not a supply of frozen enchiladas, there is a supply of the fixin’s and easy MT-Mex meals for another day.
Today, Sunday, will truly be a day of rest. It is snowing lightly under heavy overcast and a small fire is burning in the woodstove. I will be joining whoever has possession of the bedroom for an afternoon nap.