Posts Tagged chutney
Green Tomato and Apple Chutney
Posted by castironidaho in Food Preservation, Recipes on October 27, 2011
So, we finally got a good hard frost in Boise the other night, the 24th or so of October. Late for us! When the frost comes, many of the plants in the garden turn instantly black, and kind of weirdly smelly. Though it’s not a pretty sight, I have to admit that the first hard frost is one of my favorite days of the year. It means the farm season is winding down and that I will soon get some well-deserved rest, once all the cleanup is done. I also love to go out the day or two before the frost and bring in as many things as I can from the field. Tomatoes, peppers, basil, tomatillos, squash, will all turn to mush. A few more weeks of abundance can be harvested from boxes in the storeroom, or canned or frozen to last us the winter.
So, we’ve been canning like mad since mid-summer, and I’ve been meaning to send out a canning recipe or two to you, our dear readers. It’s a little bit of a tedious process and requires you to be at home for several hours in a row. I’m kinda too tired of it to write too much about it…..but also very content with our storeroom full of jars. If you’ve never done any canning before, and have extra stuff that you just gleaned from the garden, I recommend having a look at the Ball Blue Book, made by the makers of the Ball canning jars. Or check out their website for the simplest instructions on basic stuff like canning tomatoes, plus all sorts of more interesting recipes.
Basically, the main thing for canning is to use a tested canning recipe. You can’t just make any sauce you want and put it in a jar, because the ph might not be right, and it could spoil. We do all of our canning in a hot water bath, just a big pot of boiling water. A pressure canner is only necessary for low-acid foods like green beans.
So, last year I made a number of chutneys and sauces, and all of them got used up! This one was one of our favorites, and it’s a perfect post-frost recipe because you probably have an excess of green tomatoes, and apples are at their crunchy best right now.
Green Tomato and Apple Chutney
- 4 lbs green tomatoes
- 1 lb cooking apples
- 1 lb onions
- 2 large garlic cloves, crushed
- 1 Tbsp salt
- 3 Tbsp pickling spice
- 2 1/2 cups cider vinegar
- 2 1/2 cups sugar
Chop tomatoes, onions and apples and place in a large pot with salt. No need to peel the green tomatoes, it’s nearly impossible to peel them anyway. Tie the picking spice in a piece of cheesecloth and add to the pot. Add half the vinegar and bring to a boil. Simmer for one hour, until chutney is reduced and thick. In another pot, combine the rest of the vinegar and the sugar and heat gently, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Add to the pot with the chutney.
I usually at least double this recipe, and have found that I have to simmer it for quite a while before the chutney thickens as much as I want it to. Be patient and stir frequently. Don’t let it stick to the pot. You can easily put the finished pot of chutney in the fridge and do the canning the next day, just be sure to bring it to a boil again before you put it in jars.
When you’re ready to can, get your canner pot of water boiling, and put your jars in to sterilize them. (If you’re lucky enough to have a dishwasher, unlike us, you can run them through there to sterilize them instead.) Spoon hot chutney into hot jars, using a funnel to make it easier. Heat another pot of water to just below boiling, and place your lids in it for a few minutes. Make sure you don’t have any drips on the jar rims, then fit the lids onto the jars and tighten the rings. Place in a boiling water bath for 20 minutes.
I recommend letting this or any chutney sit in its jars for about a month before you use it, gives the vinegar some time to mellow out a little. We liked to use this on sandwiches with meats from Smoky Davis, and for making tuna melts. Just mix a can of tuna with a similar amount of green tomato chutney, spread it on bread, top with a slice of cheese, and warm under your broiler. Delicious instant meal!
– Katie
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Road Food
Posted by castironidaho in Places we eat, Road Trips on March 28, 2011
We love road trips. Mountains, desert, hot springs, or canyon, we love exploring the great state of Idaho. Experience has taught us, though, that a good meal can be hard to come by in some of Idaho’s more rural areas. After searching for quality restaurant meals in locations such as Cascade, Mountain Home, and Idaho Falls, but encountering only rural Idaho’s vast culinary desert, we now travel prepared with our own supply of road food.
The ironic part about Idaho’s Culinary Desert is that it’s located on some of the greatest farmland on earth. Sadly though, not much of this farmland is dedicated to growing delicious food for the local population to eat. Idaho has lots of ranching, and lots of commodity crops like potatoes, onions, and wheat, that are exported to other states. Grocery stores in more rural locations tend not to be so impressive either, and we’ve heard stories of desert ranchers making monthly grocery shopping trips to bigger towns, and surviving on canned goods most of the time, especially in some of the colder, higher elevation areas where it’s hard to even grow a garden. To be fair, the local population is very tiny in some of these locations, and maybe the local culture doesn’t yet support great restaurants, even near tourist locations, or the locals actually grow gardens and cook for themselves at home most of the time (!). Anyway, Cast Iron is in search of good places to eat in Rural Idaho. If you know of any, let us know!
For a recent trip to visit Marty’s grandma in Salt Lake City, we traveled prepared. We packed our picnic bag with all kinds of goodies. We usually keep it pretty simple: Sandwich fixins, including good bread, meat, several kinds of cheese, homemade chutney, avocado, and some leafy greens like spinach or lettuce. I always pack some fruit, and Marty usually likes a sweet treat, maybe a chocolate bar for something easy or cookies if we had time to make them. And PB&J, for if we need a change of pace on our sandwich options. I also like to pack a picnic plate to prepare the sandwiches on, and a knife.
A good thing about sandwiches is that they’re easy to eat while driving. Usually it’s my job to make sandwiches, while Marty drives.
Now, what separates the sandwich you see here from an ordinary sandwich, is that the meats we used came from a favorite local establishment, Smoky Davis. Located on State Street just up the street from my house, I drove by it for two years or so before I ever went in. I sure was missing out. They carry all sorts of smoked and dried meats. We ask for ours sliced thin like lunch meat, and though they look like ordinary lunch meats, they are far superior. The dried beef, smoked turkey, and dried pork are some our our favorites. They are a perfect compliment to our homemade chutney or chili sauce, which we use on winter sandwiches rather than a slice of tomato.
In addition to superior smoked meat products, Smoky’s sells fresh local beef from some farmer friends of ours at Homestead Natural Foods, local eggs from a neighbor of our farm out in Star, and a wide selection of local wines. We highly recommend Smoky Davis for your next picnic or satisfying lunchtime sandwich.
– Katie
Pierogies
Posted by castironidaho in Places we eat, Recipes on March 23, 2011
It seems like in the melting pot that is America, the one ethnic tradition that outlasts all the other aspects of language and culture is food. Pierogies are a delicious potato and cheese filled pastry, and are one of those kinds of ethnic foods, passed on to me by my mother’s Polish family. My mom’s parents, Mary and Henry Nebzydoski, both were the children of immigrants and both spoke Polish, although none of the language was passed down to my mother and her nine siblings. They were dairy farmers in rural Pennsylvania, my uncle still runs their farm today. My grandmother was a wonderful cook and I remember eating pierogies by the dozen as a child. We had contests on who could eat the most.
My grandmother was very Catholic, attending mass at her tiny local church almost daily in her later years. Pierogies, apparently, are a traditional Lent food. (Lent, for the unindoctrinated, is the 40 days before Easter. Right now it’s Lent.) Traditionally during Lent, Catholics don’t eat meat on Fridays. So this meatless dish was served on Fridays in Lent, and also made en masse by my grandmother and the church ladies, for a fundraiser.
Here’s a photo of my grandparents and eight of their ten children. The one in glasses is my mom. My grandmother Mary Nebzydoski is in the middle and my grandfather Henry is on the right. I’m not sure who the man with the cigar is, if somebody in my family knows, leave a comment!
A few years ago my mom compiled a cookbook of Nebzydoski family recipes. In it was grandma’s recipe for pierogies, calling for 14 cups of flour. This must have been the recipe the church ladies used. We split it in half and still had a LOT of pierogies. But none of them lasted long enough to be frozen for later!
Pierogies
Dough:
- 1 cup oil
- 6 eggs
- 2 cups water
- 2 Tbsp salt
- 7 cups flour
Mix all ingredients to make a stiff dough. Add a little more flour if it’s sticky.
Filling:
- 2 1/2 pounds cut up potatoes, boiled.
- 5 oz cheddar cheese
- 2 Tbsp salt
- 2 Tbsp butter
Mix like mashed potatoes. Add the cheese while the potatoes are still hot, and keep it fairly stiff as it will make it easier to make the pierogies.
To make the pierogies, divide the dough into 8 pieces. Roll out one of them as flat as you can get it. I found the dough to be a little stretchy and hard to get really flat and thin, but do the best you can. Cut into 4×4 inch squares and place a spoonful of filling on the middle of each one. Put a little water along the edges, fold over in a triangle, and squish them shut.
I put the pierogies onto a cookie sheet as I was forming them, so they wouldn’t stick together. Next, you have to boil them. (Pierogi dough is actually a lot like fresh noodle dough.) Drop them into a pot of boiling water a few a time, stir a little to prevent sticking. Remove with a slotted spoon when they float to the top. If they water gets too sticky and murky, you may need fresh water. Cool on a flat surface.
Next, you can either pack them between layers of plastic wrap and refrigerate or freeze them for later, or prepare them for eating.
There are two ways to eat pieorgies: deep fried in oil, or baked with butter and onions. Because we were serving a lot of people at once, the baking method was easier, so we chose that. As a kid, I always liked them fried, but now I’d say both are delicious. And equally unhealthy, because you need a LOT of butter.
We did two different versions, one traditional with butter and caramelized onions, and the other with butter, onions, and balsamic vinegar. We served them with homemade chutneys from last year’s garden, including chili sauce, green tomato and apple chutney, and sweet pepper relish.
Almost forgot to tell you that if you want to eat pierogies without all the work of making them, they’re on the menu at Salt Tears Coffehouse and Noshery, a new restaurant right here in Boise. Located in the same shopping center as the Collister Library, it offers an interesting and different lunch menu. We’ve only eaten there once but liked it. Salt Tears shares it’s space with an art gallery featuring all kinds of local art. The pierogies were the real thing, and we also tried the bread pudding and some kind of mini pizza.
– Katie
A Winter Local Foods Menu
Posted by castironidaho in Events on March 8, 2011
Farmer Marty recently got into an online discussion with local food writer Guy Hand. I’ll let Marty elaborate on that discussion, but the result was that we ended up inviting said writer over for dinner, along with some of our friends who are active in the local foods movement, including mushroom connoisseur Alex Hartman, urban farmer and expert canner/brewer/winemaker Casey O’Leary of Earthly Delights Farm, Earthworm Envy blogger Brandon Follett, and Flying M Pastry Chef Laura Shoemaker.
Marty often says that local farmers would have a much easier time making a living if we could just figure out how to get rid of winter. During the summer months, it’s easy to buy mostly local food in Idaho, and relatively easy for restaurants and stores to source local things directly from farmers. However, I like to joke that it’s winter in Idaho for 8 months out of the year (the number of months in which we saw, last year, at least one snowfall). So, eating local during these months requires some food storage, canning, freezing, and pickling. We did all of these things in the late summer and early fall of last year, so unless your pantry and freezer have similar stores, and unless your boyfriend also harvested a deer last fall, this winter menu might not be that useful to you. But should give you some food for thought to think ahead for next year!
Here’s what we had:
- Venison Chili (from Marty’s deer).
- Pierogies (a traditional Polish pastry that my granny used to make, made from our storage potatoes).
- Homemade chutneys to top pierogies: Chili Sauce, Green Tomato and Apple Chutney, Pepper Relish, and Tomato Chutney. These chutneys are featured in so many of our meals. Boy, was that time well spent!
- Mexican stuffed peppers made from frozen Anaheims from the garden.
- Marinated Jerusalem Artichokes.
- Locally harvested mushrooms prepared by Alex.
- Dilly beans prepared by Casey.
- Pickled eggs, prepared by Casey’s neighbor with Casey’s chickens’ eggs.
- Boston Creme Pie prepared by Laura.
- Lots of local wines, mostly from Hell’s Canyon Winery, owned by a friend of Alex.
- Several interesting home brews prepared by Casey.
I’m not sure whether Guy Hand got any questions answered by Farmer Marty and the rest of this crew, but we did have a good time and a delicious meal. It was the most interesting, authentic, and lovingly prepared of the many “locavore” meals I’ve attended. There’s nothing better than being nourished by our own garden, freezer, hunting trip, or canning project, even in the middle of winter.
Recipes to follow!
–Katie
