Dark Days: An Oven Warmed Home

Happy New Year! I keep wondering if I'll back out of the Dark Days Challenge, even though it's still just the beginning. It's funny that at solstice, we celebrate the days gradually becoming brighter once again, but in fact it's these next few months that will be the toughest to get through in terms of cold, and anticipation for the growing season that is still a ways off. I thought about that, and then I read this recent recap post by the East group on Not Dabbling In Normal and realized that coming up with blog posts is a struggle for many of the folks taking part in this challenge. So maybe I'll keep posting. One post at a time. Maybe it will help me to better appreciate January-March.

This recipe on Food52 for Boston Baked Beans is really good, I made it last summer. Then a couple of weeks ago, I saw this recipe for Maple Baked Beans on the Serious Eats site and knew it was time to make some mapley baked beans of my own. Almost completely local, and while not an entire meal, a substantial dish that is somewhat of a feast on its own.

I decided to use more of the methodology from the Food52 recipe, but went with some of the quantities from the Serious Eats recipe.

First I set the oven to 250F, cleaned about 2 cups of Cayuga Pure Organics Yellow Eye beans, and then chopped up a local sweet onion. I decided to keep the recipe as simple as possible and kept my ingredient list way down. As soon as all of my ingredients were prepped I melted a nice hunk of Ronnybrook butter in the pot (you need a pot or dutch/french oven that is both stove top and oven safe, as well as a lid).

Once everything was nice and hot I threw in the onions and let them cook until they started to soften a bit, then I tossed in a few spices: about a quarter teaspoon of cumin, and half teaspoon each of chili powder and Spanish paprika, plus a good helping of salt. Oh and then I poured in a HALF CUP OF DELICIOUS MAPLE SYRUP from Cronin's Maple Farm down the road (please excuse the obligatory emphasis, I'm a huge fan of maple syrup, especially maple syrup that comes from 13 minutes away). I stirred that a bit, then added the dry beans and mixed it well so that the beans were well coated. I poured in about 5 cups of water, added some slices of leftover ham from the holidays and stirred it all together. I then covered the pot and put the whole thing in the oven, stirring occasionally, for about 2 hours, or until the beans became plump and tender. The last step is to take the lid off the pot, and raise the oven temperature to 400F and let the liquid boil down to whatever thickness you like.

Enjoying a cup of baked beans by the fire

If you grew up eating baked beans from a can, like I did, you'll really love fresh baked beans out of the oven, plus having the oven on for so long really helps to keep the house warm!

I'm going to cheat now and leave you with a photo of the thumbprint cookies I made last week using Marisa's recipe from Food in Jars. They're far from local, I mean, I used the fancy new Thomas Keller backed C4C gluten free flour mix, organic sugar, and almond extract from very far away, but the butter is 100% local, and the fillings consist of my blubapricot jam and my dark chocolate raspberry jam, which are both local aside from the sugar, lemon, and chocolate...yeah.

Preserve Scapes

If you are anything like me, then you've been loading up on as many garlic scapes as possible for the last few weeks. This is one of my favorite times of year. I wish garlic scapes grew out of each garlic plant MULTIPLE times before the garlic harvest, but alas they only appear once, and perhaps it's better this way because it makes them so much more special.

The season is fleeting, and they won't be around much longer, here are some ways you can preserve them:

Pesto
I have to admit, I made three types of pesto using garlic scapes this season, and they're all in my freezer right now, where they will keep for many months. They are all very simple, and rely on the same formula: add garlic scapes, herbs and/or nuts and/or cheese, olive oil, and salt to taste (maybe even some lemon or lime) to a food processor, blender, or molcajete (mortar) and you have your pesto.

First I made one with almonds, it's vegan (though would taste really good on a steak), and has a nice crunch to it. Here's a photo of it in the great outdoors:

 

Then I made one with a large bunch of fresh basil. Here's a picture of it after a spin in the food processor:

Both of these came out great, and the beauty of garlic scapes is that the garlic flavor is much milder than that of garlic cloves, so you can kinda go crazy with them in their raw state without getting the super-spicy bite that you would from large quantities of raw cloves.

I also ended up making a large batch with both fresh basil and parsley, with a small pile of grated parmigiano reggiano mixed in. I think that one is my favorite, but I'm kind of a cheese fiend...

Compound Butter

I did not make a scape compound butter this year, I did last year and enjoyed it very much. If you eat butter, I highly recommend this. It too can be frozen for many months just like the pesto. I wrote about making compound butter out of ramps (aka wild leeks) here so check that out. In that post I link to a recipe for making your own butter then turning that into the compound butter. You can follow that and just substitute chopped scapes, or you can simply buy butter, and use that for your compound butter. The butter I bought to make my scape compound butter with this year got eaten, by me, before I had a chance to add the scapes. So much for that idea!

Candlelight Preserved Strawberries

Or perhaps this post should be titled: Why I Secretly Love When My Jams Don't Set

 

There was a huge storm two Thursdays ago. At the time, we really needed the rain, but no one needed the hail. All the lighting, hail and wind were too much for the power lines in the section of the Hudson Valley where I live and work for half of every week.

There's something to be said for living off-grid, for a number of reasons that I will not get into now, but this all becomes even more apparent when you've got no electricity and you realize you're entirely reliant on a big, faceless power company.

We lost power at the farm, while I was still working. The strawberries had ripened way too quickly for us to pick fast enough in the extreme heat, so we were hastily hulling them in order to freeze them for sale in the winter. Then the lights went out, and didn't come back on. The winds were so strong, and between that and the hail and lightning, we began making plans to get inside the walk-in cooler in case all that nasty weather turned into a tornado. Thankfully it didn't.

I went home with four quarts of strawberries, yet to be hulled, in order to make jam. I drove the 13 miles home from the farm, and along the way no one had power. When I got home the vegetable plants in my garden were laying down, in shock from the heavy rains, hail, and 25 degree temperature drop they'd just been through. There was debris scattered about from the trees, but other than that there didn't seem to be any damage. I decided to use what was left of the daylight to begin reading a new book, and put candles around the house. When, and only when it finally got dark out, did I begin hulling strawberries by candlelight at the dining room table. Two full days of hulling strawberries at the farm, and the most berry-hulling-fun I had was sitting by myself quietly, hulling those 4 quarts by candlelight.

Now, if you want to follow my recipe, but you also want your jam to set, I strongly suggest you halve the recipe below. If you want to take your chances (as I prefer) then just follow the recipe as is. My preserved strawberries are suspended in a syrup that just yearns to be poured over ice cream, yogurt, or just eaten by the spoonful. I can't get enough. It's delicious, and I don't miss the jam-that-would-have-been at all.

Happy Summer!

------------

Candlelight Preserved Strawberries

Quantities and techniques adapted from Put 'em Up! by Sherri Brooks Vinton, Canning for a New Generation by Liana Krisoff, and Mes Confitures by Christine Ferber.

Makes roughly 4 pints

4 quarts strawberries (preferably no spray)
2 cups cane sugar
3 lemons
4 pint jars or 8 half pint jars (or any mix thereof)
*See note below for potential variations

Hull the strawberries leaving them whole if they are small, cutting them in half if they are large. Toss them in a large, non-reactive bowl or pot with the sugar, cover and allow to macerate in the fridge overnight, or until the next evening if you don't have time to make the preserves in the morning.

The next day, pull your strawberries out of the fridge (I refrigerated mine in the pot I was planning on cooking them in, which helped since I had no running water for clean-up the night before when there was no electricity). Juice the lemons, strain the juice if necessary, and set aside. Reserve the seeds from the lemons when juicing and place them in a dampened cheesecloth bag.

Clean your jars and lids, and prepare a pot of water for water bath canning. Here's a bit of instruction on water bath canning if you are unfamiliar with the process. (In this circumstance it is not necessary to sterilize any of the equipment beforehand since the jars will be sealed in the boiling water for 10 minutes).

Add the cheesecloth bag to the pot of strawberries and bring it all to a boil. Add the lemon juice then continue boiling for about 20 minutes, or until desired set is reached. I do not recommend boiling for much more than 20 minutes or you risk the strawberries losing their vibrant, fresh flavor. 

my canning rack is too big for this pot so I use a dish towel to keep the jars from rattling

Once the preserves are ready ladle into clean jars, close up the jars and place them in the canning pot. Bring the water in the pot back to a boil, and let the jars process in the boiling water for 10 minutes. Remove jars and allow to rest undisturbed for 12 hours.

The preserves will keep, out of direct light, for at least a year. Once opened, the preserves will keep in the fridge for at least a month, unless you eat them first.


*If you want to play around and vary this recipe a bit, you can throw in a vanilla bean during cooking, lemon zest, or a drop of balsamic vinegar - each pair very well with strawberries!