Fresh-Pickled Vegetables

I like this refrigerator pickle recipe from Alice Water's Simple Food book because it has so much less salt and sugar than other recipes I've used. And, because they're refrigerator pickles, you don't have to worry about canning them. They're ready in a few minutes and keep for a week. She recommends using veggies like sliced carrots, quartered cauliflower florets, quartered pearl or cipolline onions, halved okra pods, small turnips cut into wedges, whole green beans, small cubes of celery root, etc. I went traditional with sliced cucumbers. You can vary the brine a lot by using different spices or vinegars. I didn't have half the spices she called for, so I basically just used dill and red pepper flakes.

Alls you do is bring the brine to a boil, cook the veggies in the brine in batches (if you're using more than one kind of veggie, cook each kind separately), pull the veggies out when they're cooked but still crisp, and let them cool. When the veggies and the brine are cooled to room temp, combine the veggies, put them in a jar or another covered container, pour the brine over them, and refrigerate.

1 1/2 cup white wine vinegar
1 3/4 cup water
2 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 of a bay leaf
4 thyme sprigs
Half a dried cayenne pepper or a pinch of dried chile flakes
1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds
2 whole cloves
1 garlic clove, peeled and chopped in half
Pinch of salt

Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally.

Here's a site with a bunch of information about vinegar. Apparently, white wine vinegar is not the same as white vinegar, which I didn't know. I thought one was just a fancier term to allow the manufacturer to charge more for the same stuff.

Felt like a bit of a change of pictures at the top. This is my new favorite spot in my new favorite town. It's on a bridge downtown overlooking what I think is the Eau Claire River, although it may be the Chippewa River. I still get them mixed up. Anyway it's probably irrelevant to you which one it is. Regardless, it's a river in downtown EC, and I think it's pretty. Maybe if I get motivated I can collect topical photos to rotate with the changing seasons. Won't that be fun!

New Article on Volume One: http://volumeone.org/magazine/articles/857/Eating_Your_Yard.html

You can also find my articles by clicking on the link to my name.

My new secret weapon

I've just recently (ie, this week) discovered the magic that is bechamel sauce. It's a pretty handy replacement for cheese when you're baking something. So, I wanted to make baked ziti but I didn't want allll that cheese, so I just used a couple ounces of Gruyere and a little Parmesan instead of a whole bag of mozzarella. And then on top I put a batch of bechamel and baked it until it was a little brown. It was still very creamy and good. I also made a swiss chard gratin this way with no cheese at all.

There seem to be a lot of variations. I just make the one that was in my Spoon cookbook. It calls for melting 4 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan (I replace 1/2 or 3/4 of that butter with olive oil, depending on how thick I need the final sauce to be) and whisking in an equal amount of flour until it's smooth. Then you whisk in 2 and 1/4 cups of milk, bring to a boil while stirring, then cover and simmer for 20 minutes until it doesn't taste floury. Add salt, pepper, and/or nutmeg.

Roasted Tomatoes

It's a pretty simple idea: roast tomatoes, sliced, for a while until the water evaporates somewhat and the sugars concentrate. The tomatoes get buttery rich and shrunken, but not leathery like a sun-dried tomato. I've seen a few variations: Alton Brown does his with tomatoes cut in two, tossed with herbs and sugar and baked at 170 for 10 hours, I've seen a recipe for 250 for 3-4 hours. But this is the one that I've tried that I like the best:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Core and slice tomatoes. Place on parchment-lined baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil, sliced garlic, kosher salt and pepper and bake 30-60 minutes until juices have evaporated. Store in plastic zip-top bag in fridge or freezer.

Pretty easy, but I've learned a few lessons from doing this a couple times already. I get my tomatoes from the farmer's market. They sell them here right now for really cheap for the less-than-perfect toms. I got 6lb for $5, and if I had gone up to 10 or 15 lbs it would have been even cheaper per pound. I've tried both romas and the big round tomatoes and I like the round ones better.

As for the parchment paper, I normally replace parchment with my silicon mats, but I think in this case it's better not to. The paper soaks up some of that liquid so it doesn't leak out all over my oven. Also, instead of a baking sheet, I think I'll try a glass or pyrex baking pan from now on, for the same reason (to keep the juices in) and that if you don't clean the metal baking sheet right away the acid will do un-good things to the metal. I think I will also skip the garlic from now on. It gets too bitter with all that baking. Or, maybe I'll toss a whole one in there with the paper still on so that the tomatoes get the aromatics, but the garlic doesn't burn. Hmm...

The first time I did it, I has some problems with some pieces shriveling and charring while other pieces were still juicy. I thought if I cut the pieces with a mandolin that would keep everything even, but the tomatoes were too ripe for that. So I just tried really really hard to make them all the same size, and I put the thicker pieces on the edges and the thinner pieces in the middle. That helped a lot. I think it's better to undercook than overcook these, as the charred tomatoes aren't very good at all.

After I roasted them, I cooled the pans on the counter and then put them in the freezer. When the tomatoes were frozen I picked them off the pan and put them in a bag. I think if you wanted you could just put the unfrozen pieces in a bag and freeze them like that: after all, you're probably going to use the whole bag at once, right? not piece by piece? I might do that in the future, the frozen tomatoes were not easy to peel off the sheets.

I kept a batch unfrozen yesterday and saved it for dinner. We just tossed them in some pasta with some olive oil and mixed it up to sort of mash the tomatoes. It was really sweet and velvety. I loved it, and even Chris liked it even though he doesn't normally like sweet food. Anyway, I plan on putting some up every week until the tomatoes stop being cheap, and that way we can have some during the long, cold winter. You could also use them for pizza or bruschetta or as a side dish.

Now that I'm 30, I've been trying to keep an eye on my cholesterol (oh, the irony of moving to the dairy state!). Chris and I are going to get burgers tonight at Red Robin, and I noticed their website has a customization option where you can see what the nutritional value of the burgers are and what happens if you add things or take things away. I've been trying to keep my cheese-eating to what I've been thinking of as high-impact cheese (meaning, cheese that is delicious and important to the dish or meal). Example of high-impact cheese: a platter of delicious cheese, fondue, pizza. Example of low-impact cheese: those cubes of "cheddar" that you get in the ziplock bag at the grocery store, sandwiches and wraps, most cheese on Mexican food. I've decided that cheese on burgers are, for me, mostly low-impact (the exception being blue cheese or feta). So, on this Red Robin site I just wanted to see what would happen to the nutritional value of a burger if I took away the cheese and mayo. It is astonishing! I'm literally blown away at the difference. I have no more face, because it has been blown away. Also shocking was how unhealthy a restaurant salad can be. Seriously, most of the burgers had fewer fat and calories than the first salad I clicked on.

Anyway, not to get all healthy and whatever, I was just astounded. It was a "no way!" moment. Plus, the website has fun sound effects.

Weather Update

So I know the weather here in west central Wisconsin is of concern for some of you (specifically the cold weather). Here's an update so far:

Today the high is going to be 84 (for comparison, I think the norm high for July is in the mid-80s). The normal high for today is 71, so we're having a bit of a warm spell. I think I'm already shifting my mentality because it seems almost oppressively hot. When I lived in DC, oppressively hot didn't start until the triple digits.

Anyway, a very few of the leaves are starting to turn. Mostly big maples. The locusts in my backyard are starting to think about it, but aren't ready yet.

As for how this winter is going to be, it depends who you ask. The Farmer's Almanac people say it's going to be colder than normal for the upper midwest, but the National Weather people say warmer than normal (due to El Nino). Normally I'd give more weight to the people using the scientific method to predict weather rather than the people using the phases of the moon, but I've seen such shoddy weather predictions for the midwest that I'm willing to give the moon a chance.