Chris was gone this weekend, so....

Items put up this weekend:

• 1 qt raspberries (frozen)
• 5 lbs roasted roma tomatoes (frozen)
• 6 pints pickles (frozen, thus bringing the season total for freezer pickles up to 12 pints)
• 20 pints crushed tomatoes (canned--it was a group effort, I'm getting 5 jars)

Items unsuccessfully attempted:

• 10 lbs apples sauce from crab apples (I don't have a food mill, and I wasn't going to peel all those tiny apples, but I thought maybe a sieve or a potato ricer would work to separate the peels from the apple mush. They didn't. Luckily, I tried it with only 2 lbs first, so I only have a little bit of skin-on apple mush to work through. It tastes very good with yogurt!)
  

Sweet Corn Pancakes

I got to go to the farmer's market for the first time in weeks yesterday. I went a little overboard and bought enough to feed a family of four vegetarians. Contributing to this was my mistakenly buying a dozen ears of corn instead of my usual 6 (I must have been checked out yesterday because when he gave me the corn and I noticed how much heavier the bag was than usual, I thought it was due to all the rain we've been getting. It didn't occur to me until I was home that it was heavier than usual because I had bought twice as much corn). However, this is a happy thing, to have too much corn, especially when it is literally the tastiest corn I have ever had in my life. Very, very sweet. But what to do with it all?

Enter the recipe below. It was good, it pretty much tastes like pancakes with corn in it, but that's a fun twist, no? From Smitten Kitchen.

Makes about 9 to 10 4-inch pancakes

2 tablespoons butter (1 ounce or 28 grams), plus additional for brushing pan
3/4 cup kernels cut from one large ear sweet fresh corn
1/8 teaspoon (1 gram) salt plus additional for seasoning corn
1 large egg
1 1/4 cups (296 ml) buttermilk
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon (13 grams) sugar
3/4 cup (3 3/8 ounces) all-purpose flour
1/4 cup (3/4 ounce or 22 grams) cornmeal, any kind
1 teaspoon (5 grams) baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Melt butter in a large cast iron skillet or griddle pan over medium heat. Add corn and saute for 4 to 5 minutes, until it begins to brown ever-so-slightly. Sprinkle with salt and set aside to cool. Wipe out skillet.

Lightly beat egg in the bottom of a large bowl, then whisk in buttermilk, corn, vanilla and sugar. In a smaller bowl, whisk flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda and 1/8 teaspoon salt. Stir dry ingredients into wet, mixing until just combined but still lumpy in appearance.

Reheat your skillet or saute pan to medium. Brush the pan with butter and ladle 1/4 cup batter at a time, 2 inches apart. When the pancakes have bubbles on top and are slightly dry around the edges, flip them over and cook them until golden brown underneath. If they seem to be cooking too quickly (dark on the outside, raw centers) turn your heat down to low for the next batch and inch it up as needed. Repeat with remaining batter, and serve immediately with a pat of salted butter and a healthy dose of maple syrup.

Corn Chive Pudding

From Gourmet cookbook. This recipe is the reason I bought the cookbook. Suz would make it and it would be heavenly. You can use fresh corn or frozen corn. Make sure you stick to the amount of corn (20 oz) as if you have too much corn, the pudding will be loose and runny.

Serves 8

Ingredients

• two 10-ounce package frozen corn kernels, thawed
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
• 2 cups milk
• 4 large eggs
• 1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise and seeds scraped, reserving pod for another use
• 1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh chives
• a pinch freshly grated nutmeg

Garnish:
Garnish: 3 tablespoons chopped fresh chives

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. and butter a 1 1/2-quart quiche dish or pie plate.
2. In a food processor pulse half of corn until chopped coarse. In a bowl stir together chopped corn and remaining corn kernels and sprinkle with sugar and salt, stirring until combined well.
3. In another bowl whisk together milk, eggs, vanilla seeds, butter, flour and chives and stir into corn until combined well. Pour pudding into quiche dish or pie plate and sprinkle with nutmeg. Bake pudding in middle of oven until center is just set, about 45 minutes. Garnish pudding with chives.

I might start a new tool on the blog, quotes from Chris. Here's one installation:
"I'm pretty enamored with the idea of swamp people, in general."

Nothing like pickles in the morning

I got up early today to finish up a batch of freezer pickles before work (is that weird? Maybe). I think they'll turn out ok. The recipe called for a ton of sugar. I only used 2/3rds of what it called for, but I was afraid to cut it out because I didn't know what functional use sugar serves in pickling. Any? None? More research is required. Anyway, if you, too, are interested in making freezer pickles, here's the link I used from the UW Extension office. See page 54. If you want to can your own pickles, you may want to see if your local state university has an extension office with tips. It seems that altitude is really important. I also just really like the UW Extension. Always handy with a good tip.

Went berry picking

Raspberry Brown Sugar Gratin

In honor of Dave and Kathy's visit, and of the nearly six pounds of berries I picked, I made this gratin. Except, I didn't use raspberries, I used blueberries. And I didn't use creme fraiche, I used thickened yogurt. And I didn't even use half of the sugar, nor did I put it through a sieve because that didn't work. So of the three ingredients, I used none of them correctly. It was still tasty, though.

From Smitten Kitchen:

There are a lot of ways you can play around with this — flavoring the sour cream with lemon, vanilla, cinnamon or almond; using a mix of berries, etc. — but it is flawless the way it is. Want to fancy it up for fancy people? Make it in individual ramekins or tiny gratin dishes.

[Updated to add] Ooh, I just had an idea — Swap thick, full-fat Greek-style yogurt swapped for sour cream and serve it at a brunch to what I have to imagine would be a round of applause. Or at least I’d applaud.

1 pint (2 cups) fresh raspberries (or your choice of berry)
1 pint (2 cups) sour cream (or crème fraîche)
1 cup dark brown sugar

Preheat broiler. Gently fold raspberries and sour cream together in a shallow 1-quart dish. Press the brown sugar through a sieve or mesh colander so that it sprinkles evenly over the dish. (I tried using a sifter; don’t bother, it doesn’t work.) Run the dish under the broiler until the sugar just starts to caramelize. Eat at once.

Keeping: The leftovers might look like something died in your fridge but I can assure you, are equally delicious.