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Salt Cured Chili Peppers
A month or so ago I came across a book that had a recipe for Salt Cured Peppers. I was intrigued at the idea of an option other than pickling or drying, so I decided to give it a go. The result was amazing! The flavor of the pepper is well preserved along with the heat. In fact, I find it very much like eating them fresh. Well, with a salty bite on the tongue.
The great thing about these peppers is that you can save them a year or more and when you find yourself needing to make a salsa in February or wanting a touch of hot pepper oil you need to only chop them or puree them with the accompanying ingredients to fulfill the needs of your recipe. No more store bought peppers for you!
The process is easy. You need only cut your peppers into 1/2 inch segments, salt them and then cover and refrigerate them for 5 days, stirring them once each day. At the end of five days you bottle them in one or two quart jars and you are on your way.
| Salt Cured Chili Peppers |
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- 2 pounds fresh hot peppers
- 1/2 cup salt
- Wash, dry and chop the peppers into 1/2 inch segments.
- Put them in a ceramic or non reactive bowl and pour the salt over the peppers. Mix the salt throughout the peppers, and let them sit at room temperature for at least 24 hours cover and refrigerate.
- After placing them in the fridge you will need to stir them once each day for 5 days, skim off any scum that may form at the top.
- After 5 days have passed, Pack them in a jar and keep in the fridge for a year or more. Every time you need peppers your supply is at hand.
Raised Waffles
What is a Sunday morning without waffles? I’m not talking about eggos. The waffles I am talking about are the kind of waffles you make up the night before using yeast. You let them rise overnight and then add the eggs in the morning, just before you cook them. They are crispy on the exterior, soft inside and malty with the remnants of the yeast party that happened while you were peacefully sleeping and dreaming of a plate of this goodness!
Sorry that all you get is a photo of the mix. I was too busy diving in to actually photograph the waffle. I’ll get one up here someday.
| Yeast Raised Waffles |
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- 1/2 cup warm water
- 1 package dry yeast
- 2 cups warm milk
- 1/2 cup melted butter
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 eggs
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- Use a large mixing bowl (at least 6 quarts) as the batter will rise to double its original volume. Put the water in the mixing bowl and sprinkle in the yeast. Let stand to dissolve for 5 minutes. Add the milk, butter, salt, sugar, and flour to the yeast mixture and beat until smooth and blended. A whisk or fork will work just fine.
- Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, go to bed, and let stand overnight at room temperature.
- Just before cooking the waffles, separate your eggs, lightly beat the yolks and fold them into your mix. Then whip your eggs whites until stiff peaks form(this is the true trick to the best wafles ever) and fold them into the mix. Add the baking soda, and stir until well mixed. The batter will be very thin.
- Pour about 1/2 to 3/4 cup batter into a very hot waffle iron. Bake the waffles until they are golden and crisp. This batter will keep well for several days in the refrigerator.
- This should make about 8 waffles.
Tomatoes everywhere. Time to can some tomato sauce.
So, last weekend I got the bug to go pick tomatoes at one of our local U-Pick Farms. It was Day Farms up in Layton. It is a great place and just a short drive from SLC.
It really was a beautiful Day. Not too hot and not too cool. Just right for the back breaking job of tomato and pepper gathering.
So I sent the laborer off into the fields…
And we came home with this!
And a case of peaches and a case of peppers and a bag of zucchini and a bunch of corn. Day Farms is a great place!
Two days later I was canning tomato sauce and tomato paste.
It took all day but I did end up with 10 quarts and 9 pints of sauce and 11 4oz jars of Tomato paste. Today I am working on more sauce. Should get another 10 pints or so.
The process is pretty easy so check out the photos below and have fun.
First you roughly chop up about 12 pounds of tomatoes and put skins, seeds and all into a large pot to simmer. (I leave the skins and seeds on to add depth and flavor) You will also notice chopped garlic in that photo. I added one clove per 12 lb batch for added depth as well. No salt. I’ll do that when I cook.
You should have a pot like this.
Notice the super cool Portable Induction Cooktop
Once you get it warmed up and simmering you can mash it a bit with a masher.
Simmer some more (1/2 hour I guess) and then dump it into your food processor to puree the whole lot of it. Better yet, if you have an Immersion Blender
Then you simmer some more (1/2 hour I guess).
And then ladle it into a Food Mill
Then return it to the pot to simmer some more. You want to go from about 7 quarts to about 5 quarts of sauce. Then bottle your sauce in quart or pint jars and process it in your pressure canner per the directions as they are laid out for your region and altitude. In my case it was 13 lbs of pressure for 25 minutes.
When you are done ( in my case I did it four times), you will end up with this…
Want to make tomato paste? Then roast your tomatoes in a 450 degree oven for about 1/2 an hour – 45 minutes. Then follow the steps above and simmer to a lovely thick paste.
Dear Chickens
Dear Chickens,
Thanks for the poo.
Love,
Lettuce and Spinach
Fall Means Busy Time.
It was a long day of canning tomatoes and preparing some garden beds for Fall crops yesterday. Today the Fall/Spring lettuce and spinach crops are now planted and I have enough tomatoes put up to feed our family for the winter. Tomorrow I should get the carrots, radishes and chard in. I am going to miss Summer, but I love fall as well.
I’ll leave you with a photos of the Tomato jars I filled yesterday and watch the blog for a full post on how we canned them.
Making Sunbutter – Sunflower butter the easy and cheap way.
We recently found that one in our household had a peanut butter allergy and being lovers of the famous PB&J this hit us hard. We knew we had to find a substitute that we could all live with. Enter SunButter, the peanut butter substitute to brighten your day!
Well, at about $5.00 a jar, it hurt, but we needed to do it. It tastes very similar to peanut butter and made those bleary eyed morning lunch packing chores much easier. I just couldn’t stomach the price though and last week I started googling recipes. What I am posting here today is a conglomeration of a couple that I found and seems to be the road to a sunflower butter that closely rivals that of the store bought product.
Ingredients to assemble:
3 cups roasted sunflower seeds. (Use raw sunflower seeds and roast your own. DO NOT buy pre-roasted or salted seeds as they are too dry and too salty)
1 teaspoon sea salt. (I prefer Maldon)
1 teaspoon sugar
Sunflower (or any oil of choice) to drizzle.
I started with roasting 3 cups of sunflower seeds that were under $2 a pound at our local Whole Foods. It takes just about 5 minutes on the stove in a heavy pan, I prefer the All-Clad French Skillet
When most of your sunflower seeds are golden brown you are ready for the next step. Now pour all of your seeds into your food processor along with a teaspoon of sea salt and the teaspoon of sugar (you can add more to taste later if you wish) . It is going to be running for a long time and will probably get hot. Don’t panic. If you have a sturdy, quality, food processor, you shouldn’t have any problems. I use a Cuisinart Elite 12-Cup Food Processor
Once you have your seeds loaded up you are ready to go! So turn it on. In just about 30 seconds you should have a pretty grainy batch of ground up sunflower seeds. Most recipes tell you stop here and add the oil. Don’t. Let it keep going so that the seeds can release the oil within them, naturally.
Here is the grainy stage.
Keep going and you will see it starting to clump.
At this point you want to start using a rubber spatula to scrape down the sides. Do this every so often, but don’t be afraid to walk away and open up your chicken coop for the day. I did. Found an egg.
It’s getting shinier.
Then you will soon be here.
Now you can start drizzling in the oil a little at a time until you reach a nice spreadable consistency.
And here it is, looking good.
Scoop it into a pint jar and you are ready to go!!! Sunbutter for less than half the cost of store bought and in less time than it takes to load up the kids and head to the store!!!
What can you do with a few cherries?
We have probably been through 15 pounds of cherries this year and all of them were eaten straight from the bag. While I love to put up food for later I have never been a big fan of canned cherries or cherry pie, so I never gave any thought to canning them, that was until I was thumbing through Chef Michael Symon’s book. Michael Symon’s Live to Cook: Recipes and Techniques to Rock Your Kitchen
Symon has a chapter on pickling and within that chapter was a recipe for pickled cherries. I immediately knew what I was going to do with the next batch of cherries I purchased. The thought of those cherries sounded like something I could buy into and was a wonderful way to preserve cherries for winter. I can just imagine them accompanying a wonderful short-rib dish.
So I set to work assembling my ingredients and for the most part I had what I needed. I substituted and added a few of my own touches. I do think they turned out pretty well. The Recipe makes about 2 quarts and I doubled the recipe for the brine to ensure that I had enough liquid to submerge the cherries into two quart jars.
Ingredients: (remember to double all the ingredients below, except the cherries, if you are going to preserve them beyond 30 days in the fridge)
2 pounds bing cherries
2 cups red wine vinegar
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 tablespoons kosher salt
2 strips orange zest, removed with a vegetable peeler (I used grated orange peel)
1 tablespoon black peppercorns (skipped these, don’t know why, but I just didn’t like the sound of them)
2 cinnamon sticks and 2 cardamom pods (to replace the peppercorns and add a bit of a floral note)
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
1 bay leaf
Instructions:
Prick each cherry with a fork several times and put them in a nonreactive jar or container.
Mix the vinegar, sugar, salt, orange zest, black peppercorns, cinnamon sticks, coriander seeds, and bay leaf in a nonreactive saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat so the liquid simmer, and cook for 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cook for 10 minutes. Pour the liquid over the cherries (they should be completely submerged).
When the concoction is completely cool, seal or cover the cherries, and refrigerate for up to 1 month. In my case I placed the cherries into two sterilized quart canning jars and poured the hot brine over the cherries. I then sealed the jars and processed them for 30 minutes in a water bath. Remember to adjust your water bath time based on your location above sea level.
(Adapted From Michael Symon’s Live to Cook)
Review: Forage, Salt Lake City
There is something amazing about a restaurant where the chef/owner plays an active and defining role day after day and year after year. Forage is the epitome of this example where chefs/owners Viet Pham and Bowman Brown dedicate their days and their lives to the creation of some of the finest pieces of art/food this city has ever seen.
Last night we paid our second visit to Forage and were blown away by the presentation, quality and creativity of the food we were presented. It was amazing, delectable, beautiful, creative, fresh, earthy and so much more I can’t find words to describe it. Being rated the best restaurant in City Weekly was an honor this establishment truly deserves.
Because the menu changes seasonally I will not go into the detail of dish served and only describe the overall tone of the meal served.
In every dish you will find a combination of flavors and textures that will delight and tantalize every corner of your mouth, every taste bud and every sense. To say the food here is an experiment is wrong. It is a well thought out plan to bring you the delight of the food from it’s inception as a seed, it’s journey through the earth to the growth as a plant and then bring the flavors to your mouth that signify it’s journey. It is done precisely and not experimentally.
Service is gracious, detailed and the servers know and have tried every item they serve. The wine pairings are well selected and right on. You can also count on at least two visits to your table by Viet or Bowman or both, as they also delight in presenting you with their food.
Forage is a lost art, a delight in Salt Lake City and the pride of it’s owners and it shows. Don’t miss this restaurant, it is worth your time and your money.
Day 120 – Be Part of the Stampede and Party on Antelope Island!
- Image by Ed Yourdon via Flickr
The Antelope Island Stampede Festival is this weekend and it promises to be a good time for everyone! Think fireworks, climbing walls, kite flying, picnics, music, food and MORE! All for only $10 per carload. How many can YOU fit in your car?
From the website:
The Antelope Island Stampede!
Looking for some Family Entertainment over Labor Day 2010? Come to the Layton area of Northern Utah for kite flying, hot air balloons, live music and fun. With over 21,000 attendees in 2009, the Stampede has grown and evolved into a premier regional event. Professional balloonists and kite fliers, nearly non-stop local entertainment on the stage, outstanding food, family activities, and the island mystique.
There are chairs in the food tent, but you’re encouraged to bring your own in order to enjoy the music, entertainment and the fireworks from the beach on Saturday night.
The event begins at 5PM on Friday and continues through Sunday.
If the weather allows the balloons to fly, they will take off shortly after sunrise on Saturday only. Kites fly whenever the wind allows on each of the days. But there’s more than just kites and balloons. Come on out for non-stop fun and entertainment. You can ride horses, kids can play on the inflatable toys, there’s a small train, a climbing wall, and lots of food and music.
And if the weather cooperates further, we’ll have the first fireworks display ever on the island. Fireworks will be shot from the beach at White Rock Bay, and they will easily be seen from the Stampede area! Everyone loves fireworks… Come out for a really great show on Saturday evening! And… BYOC!
