Compost and planting leeks for the winter

After one year of composting food scraps from our house, we now have rich organic material to add to our garden. We planted leeks today to harvest after the first hard frost. If we don't harvest them we are going to mulch them heavily for a late spring harvest. 

Looking into the inside of our composting barrel; you can find the barrel in one of my previous post.

The compost came from all of our food scraps in the house, with the exception of meat products. The barrel has not been emptied for one year. I was amazed at how we kept filling it and as nature did its thing and broke down the matter there was always room for more. In addition when I went fishing and came home with extra worms I would throw them in the compost. Finally I want to point out that at no time did the compost smell unpleasant. 

I planted this bed on August 20th; depending on our first hard freeze I am going to try and harvest it in November. Leeks are hardy and as the weather gets colder I will increase the mulch up around the leeks.  I have been told I could cover them over the winter and harvest them in the warm spring. I will do this if the leeks are not big enough in November. This bed was planted with mustard for most of the summer; I cut the mustard and worked it into the soil prior to planting. If you look closely you will see the awesome compost on the rows! 

Peeling a farm fresh hard boiled egg

Farm fresh eggs are great to eat but when cooking the eggs for deviled eggs or hard boiled eggs they can be a "devil" to peel.  The reason for this bedeviling task is what makes the farm fresh egg superior; between the shell and egg white is a thin membrane that protects the inner egg from outside bacteria. I have tried many methods to peel the shell without ripping away the cooked egg white. One method involves puncturing a pin hole at the bottom of the egg, this does two things 1. The pin hole releases the sulphur from the yolks, while cooking, thus keeping the yolk bright yellow. 2. Allows water to get into the egg and helping to release the membrane from the egg white. While this method worked somewhat successfully I have come up with a much easier method.

Before we get to my ease of peeling your farm fresh egg here is some interesting facts on eating farm fresh, pasture raised hens. Mother Earth News conducted a study on farm fresh eggs vs. store bought eggs and they concluded, “Eggs from hens allowed to peck on pasture are a heck of a lot better than those from chickens raised in cages! Most of the eggs currently sold in supermarkets are nutritionally inferior to eggs produced by hens raised on pasture. That’s the conclusion we have reached following completion of the 2007 Mother Earth News egg testing project. Our testing has found that, compared to official U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) nutrient data for commercial eggs, eggs from hens raised on pasture may contain:  1⁄3 less cholesterol, 1⁄4 less saturated fat, 2⁄3 more vitamin A, 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids, 3 times more vitamin E, 7 times more beta carotene, 4 to 6 times as much vitamin D” Information provided by Mother Earth News

Now for my new method to peel the hard cooked egg; a method that makes the most sense! Sometimes my inner Chef should stop and review the tape and stop over thinking how I am doing a task and get back to the basics! The process is to simply crack the egg  and under running cold water, gently press on the shell, while turning the egg, continue to do this until the shell rubs free. The video demonstrates how I peel the egg under cold running water. Note I am pushing on the shell very gently as I turn the egg under the running water. 

When I cook my hard boiled eggs I put them in a pot with enough water to cover the eggs, and place a lid on the pot. I bring them to a boil, shut off the heat and let them sit covered for ten minutes. I drain the hot water after ten minutes and run cold water on them until they are cool. Now I can peel them with my fool proof method! 

Canning the Pickles

Canning food has a long history in our country dating back to 1858 when John L. Mason created the square glass jar with a screw on lid and tops with a rubber coating.  The ability to store vegetables, fruit and other seasonal foods made it possible to transport food by pioneers or store food for the winter. 

There really is no fallible method in the canning process; this is why it is imperative to understand the process prior to undertaking your own canning.  Each step in the process can be problematic if not followed correctly and could be fatal to those you love if you are not careful.  With that stated I am sharing how we can at our house but would encourage you to research and create a complete understanding of the process prior to undertaking.  I have read a lot of material regarding the canning process and often I will read "how my grandmother canned and no one became ill due to her canning methods."  The problem with a statement like this is the unknown illnesses from those days; food poisoning was always going on but more than likely it was misinterpreted as the flu or other sickness.  I am a huge fan of growing food, preserving the harvest and eliminating highly processed foods from our cupboards.  In order to be successful at maintaining the ability to do this we need to combine old world ideas with modern knowledge.  Taking those early methods and understanding the science behind them will greatly improve the safety and provide nutritious food for your family. 

Canning food and which foods to can, are important to me as it will greatly impact the product when I go to cook later.  For most of my vegetables I prefer to freeze them; the nutrient content does not lessen as much as it would if I canned the vegetables.  In the case of pickles you need to can them if you are going to have that crunch, and zippy flavor.  Pickles do not freeze well, lol!

Our canning process for our pickles

We use a pressure cooker for canning

Create a new brine for the pickles and sanitize the lids in boiling water. See my previous post for the brine recipe. When making the new brine omit the salt! Remember we brined the pickles first and pickled them in a crock with salt! 

Bring the water up to a boil to sanitize the jars

Slice the larger ones in half

Match up the size of the cucumbers

The jars are filled with new brine and pickles and ready for canning. We left a 1/2 inch head space for the vacuum to work in the jars.

Our pickles were pressurized at 15 lbs of pressure and the process starts when the button on the front pops up; they are pressurized for fifteen minutes once that button pops up

Pickles removed from pressure cooker. It is very important you read how to release the pressure in pressure cooker and follow those instructions. For us it was to allow the pressure to release gradually after removing from heat; we knew it was released when the button popped back down.

We ended up with 11 quarts of pickles!

"Preserving evokes deep-rooted, almost primeval feelings of self-sufficiency and survival, gatherer and hunter, for this is how our ancestors stayed alive. " The River Cottage Preserves Handbook, by Pam Corbin

The above quote comes from one of my favorite books related to preservation of food. Pam writes a unique book on preserving foods, many of which are not commonly found in books here in the states. 
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall writes the introduction in Pam's book describing how he first heard of Pam, "...of first hearing of "Pam the Jam" when she was running Thursday Cottage Preserves, a small commercial company that operated in an almost domestic way, making old-fashioned preserves the old fashion way, with real ingredients. I knew she was the perfect person for the job.", you can learn more of Hugh at https://www.rivercottage.net/hugh-fearnley-whittingstall

There are many other books available for reading on how to preserve and in doing the research you are sure to come across some really interesting ideas for your own home canning. Our pickle recipe for example was derived from two very old Polish cookbooks and I believe the outcome of our pickles were definitely the same as if you walked into an old fashioned store with the barrel of pickles!   

Old Fashioned Polish Crock Pickles

Fermentation

What is fermentation?

Process by which microorganisms converts sugar into another substance in the absence of oxygen

Fermentation comes from the Latin word fevere, meaning to boil. The ancient Romans, upon seeing vats of grapes spontaneously bubble and transform into wine, described the process using the closest analogue they could think of. The process was not actually boiling, the gas from the yeast produced enzymes transformed the sugars in the grapes into alcohol, thus it appeared to be boiling.

Lactic acid bacteria

Rod and sphere shaped bacteria that are present on the skins of fruits, vegetables and humans.

Used for their ability to convert sugar into lactic acid and used in producing pickles, kimchi, and other lacto-fermented products. Because of the lactic acid they are able to tolerate low-pH environments. They are salt-tolerant and thrive in anaerobic environments.

Pickling

A great pickle has a good amount of crunch with the right amount of sour! Pickles are a lacto ferment and one of the easiest fermented foods to prepare.  If you want to pickle something just remember a 2% solution of salt to the total weight of the product you are going to pickle. To figure that out just use a bakers percentage, the main product is your 100% or in this case cucumbers.

Crock Pickles

Approximately 1 pound of grape leaves

Fresh Dill leaves, stems or seeds

3 ounces pickling spice

12 pounds of freshly picked cucumbers (they should be fairly equaled in size and medium in size). The best cucumbers are all green, bumpy and have no yellow on them.

Pickling Solution

2 gallons of cold water (water should be from a well or free of chlorine and other additives you could use distilled water)

1 pint of distilled vinegar

5.12 ounces of canning salt 

Method:

1.       In a 4 gallon crock with a lid, place a layer of grape leaves, one of the fresh dill leaves, stems and or seeds. Scatter 1 ounce of pickling spices on grape leaves and dill. Fill with evenly sized cucumbers half way up the crock. Repeat with grape leaves, dill and pickling spices and add more cucumbers up to the last 2 to 3 inches from the top.  Repeat with grape leaves, dill, and spices.

2.       Combine water, vinegar and salt and mix together thoroughly. Pour over cucumbers and place a non-metallic weight on top to keep cucumbers from floating above the brine.  If you are using a stone do not use limestone.

3.       If the temperature is kept at 86 degrees Fahrenheit the fermentation will be complete within 2 weeks (if cooler, fermentation will take longer).

4.       Pickles should become dark green, but should not be slimy. At the end of the curing, the pickles may be canned in sterilized jars. Strain the pickling liquid and add fresh dill, and grape leaves to the liquid and pour into the jars with the pickles prior to canning. 

Cucumbers coming out of brine after 3 weeks

Ready for canning

UW Health at The American Center Community Open House Culinary Demonstration

On Sunday UW Health at The American Center, their new health care and wellness facility on Madison's east side hosted an open house to the public.  As a part of the open house chefs from the Madison community were asked to come in and do a fifteen to twenty minute demonstration featuring healthy ethnic styled foods.    The featured chefs and restaurants were Bunky's Cafe Teresa Pullara, and her husband, Rachid Ouabel, Chef Patrick DePula from Salvatore's Restaurant, Chef Kevin McGuinnis from Madison College and myself.  The center features a brand new demonstration kitchen to be used to educate the community on the benefits of healthy eating, and at the same time assist patients who may have to change their own personal eating habits due to their current health.   UW hospital has opened two demonstration kitchens in the Madison area, the other being on the west side of Madison.  The significance of this for Madison College will be in our networking with UW and connecting our future demonstration kitchen with UW’s.  The open house featured some key athletes; legendary Donald Driver of the Green Bay Packers and recent star of UW basketball Sam Decker. Thus the open house was packed and of course filled with folks wanting to meet and maybe get an autograph! I am sure having the two stars on site helped us but we did have standing room only for our presentations!

You can view my demonstration at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2OkFt-ImLegVG9nM0dMTEFZck0/view?usp=sharing

For my demonstration I only needed to head up to our garden and have a look at what was growing in abundance. Our carrots and beets this year are exploding and we have been thinning them out over the last couple of weeks.  Normally I will harvest my root vegetables after the first frost; I cover them with hay when the weather starts to chill and a frost is coming. When we get that first frost we will go out and harvest all of our root vegetables. The sugar content in the root vegetables will increase exponentially and thus we end up with sweeter flavors. We have done this in years past and I can tell you of times we were being snowed and rained on while we worked into the night pulling up those tasty vegetables!  When I cook our root vegetables I prefer to roast them in the oven; roasting will caramelize the sugar in the root vegetables creating a great flavor profile.  For my demonstration I choose to Spanish Pinchos. They are similar to Spanish Tapas but have their own twist on tasty appetizer portions; you can order several different types, like Tapas but usually they are in the form of a type of sandwich or served with a bread component.  Typically you will find some kind of omelet or something prepared with cod.

Our fresh beets and carrots

Map of the Basque region

The Basque region of the world sits in two countries, Spain and France; the people of the Basque region are rich in culture and history. The region spans about 100 miles from Bilbao, Spain to Bayonne, France. Politically the Basque have undergone much, and yet despite the efforts of Franco, to wipe their culture from the maps of Spain, they are still a thriving community of people.  An interesting part of their language is that it is the only language in the world that does not have a similar dialect anywhere else in the world! During the Franco era the Basque were forbidden to speak their language and because of that there are older generations who do not know their language and yet it is the younger generation who speaks the language; this is definitely unique in the world of language as most often the language is lost when it comes to a younger generation. 

Fresh fish Pincho

While traveling in Northern Spain, Basque Country, I learned of Pinchos or Pintxo; they are found in Pincho bars in the Basque country.  At the time we were traveling with students and others in the Northern Spain region specifically for the Basque cuisine.  The trip was quite memorable and of course the food and wine were nothing short of spectacular! One of the fascinating aspects of the Pincho bar is the wine; when you order you simply ask for blanco vino or tinto vino or white wine or red wine.  The server behind the bar pulls one or the other from the wall of wines on the shelf and pours your selection. There is no sommelier or specific winery from which they make the selection; in fact you have no idea where the wine was produced! I can honestly state I did not have a single bad glass of wine! Each bar has a chef who has developed the menu of different pinchos offered and in fact there is a competition held in the Northern region to find who has the best dish for that year. We dined at one of the winners for the 2009 competition.  The bars will keep track of how many pinchos, what kind of pinchos consumed by the number and size of tooth picks left behind after you have eaten your pinchos.  I should state this was clearly not always the case when we dined but on some occasions the toothpick count was happening. 

Spanish award winning Pincho Chef; they earn the hat he is wearing in this photo when they win! 

The Pincho I choose to create follows in the recipe below. Feel free to ask any questions regarding the recipe and hopefully I can assist you! I will post a picture of my pincho later in another blog; the video did not really do it justice when I finished preparing. 

This is the recipe for my dish:

Grilled Beets, Roast Carrots, Pimento Aioli, Seared Chicken Breast Pincho

Yield: 4 Pinchos

1 Medium Red beet roasted in olive oil, salt and pepper and peeled

1 Medium Carrot roasted in olive oil with salt and pepper

1/8 cup Honey (used for seasoning the vegetables)

½ cup Olive oil (used for vegetables, bread and searing chicken)

¼ cup White wine vinegar (used for seasoning vegetables)

¼ cup Pimento puree (you can purchase canned pimentos for the puree)

½ cup Aioli (see recipe)

1 cup Brine (for chicken breast) see recipe

1 - 4 to 6 ounce skinless Chicken breast

4 Slices crusty French bread (use a good quality French bread for this)

To taste salt and pepper

1 tablespoon minced chives

4 Small beet greens the smaller ones are the best as they are tender.

4 Long sandwich skewers (skewers should be able to go through all of the items on the pincho)

Method:

1.            Slice Beets into 4 slices and brush with olive oil, honey and white wine vinegar. Places beets on a very hot grill and mark both sides quickly being careful to not burn the honey. Season with Salt and pepper.

2.            Slice roast carrot into 4 even slices, lengthwise. Brush with honey and white wine vinegar. Season with salt and pepper.

3.            Brine the chicken breast for about 1 hour. Remove from the brine and pat dry. Season lightly with salt and pepper and sear the chicken breast in 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Finish in the oven until the chicken is completely cooked.  Let the chicken breast rest and slice into 4 equal slices.

4.            Rub sliced crusty French bread with olive oil and lightly brown each slice in the oven.

5.            Whisk in pimento puree to the aioli.

6.            Brush pimento aioli on each slice of bread and layer first with beets, carrots, small beet greens, and sliced chicken breast. Using a squeeze bottle squeeze bottle drizzle aioli on to each pincho and sprinkle with minced chives. Skewer with a large sandwich pick and serve. 

Brine

Yield:  1 cup

½ cup kosher salt

¾ cup Water

½ cup Ice

1 tablespoon Honey

1 Sprig Fresh thyme

1 Sprig Fresh Italian Parsley

1 Bay leaf

Method:

1.            Combine salt and water and bring to a boil. Add ice and chill. Mix in honey and add herbs. Chill completely before using.

Aioli

Yield: 1 pint

1 Egg yolk

1 teaspoon Garlic mashed to a paste (1 toe of garlic will work)

½ ounce white wine vinegar

¼ ounce Water

½ teaspoon Dijon vinegar

1 cup vegetable oil

5 ounces Extra-virgin olive oil

To taste kosher salt

To taste Pepper

1 Tablespoon Lemon juice

Method:

1.            Combine egg yolk, garlic, vinegar, water and mustard. Whisk them to together and slowly whisk in the vegetable oil at a very slow stream to form the emulsion. Continue adding the oil slowly; when finished with the vegetable oil continue with the olive oil. When finished it should be the consistency of mayonnaise. Season with salt, pepper and lemon juice and chill immediately.

Note on roasting vegetables

Wash the outside of the vegetables thoroughly before roasting. Try to have equal sized vegetables for roasting as they will vary in their cooking times.  Beets tend to take a long time to roast; I like to season them and wrap them in aluminum foil when roasting. This does two things, one it keeps the flavor of the beets contained to the beets and does not dry out and two it assist in the cooking time of the beets. I usually roast my vegetables at 375 degrees Fahrenheit.  You can also roast them with some aromatics; using fresh herbs for example will offer a nice additional flavor.