Lots of Pickles

three quarts of bread & butter pickles

We planted four cucumber plants back in May, and they have been fairly productive. In The Locavore's Kitchen, the author has simple recipes for garlic-dill pickles and bread & butter pickles, both favorites, and both easy to make. Even without having a prolific crop of cukes, I've "put up" about 10 pints of dill pickles, a quart and a pint of spicy dill pickles, six pints and three quarts of bread & butter pickles, plus four pints of sweet pickle relish (minced cukes, onions, red and green peppers, and celery). Making pickles is not remarkable, but given this is the first year I've canned/preserved food, I have to say that it isn't as hard as I thought it would be.

garlic-dill pickles

With an experimental science such as cooking, success lies in having the best quality ingredients and the correct tools and equipment. Cucumbers picked the day before they are pickled fall into the first category and a Viking range with an 18,500 BTU burner falls into the second category.

We have to give the pickles some time to sit before they are ready to eat, but at least none of the jars have exploded or turned a funny color yet.

Making and Preserving Pesto alla Genovese

It is that time of summer when the basil is ready to be picked and when there is a new crop of garlic at the markets. That means it is time for the annual summer rite of making pesto alla Genovese (basil pesto). As with many crops, basil comes all at once and it is highly perishable. In addition to a decent basil crop, we have an excellent crop of flat leaf parsley, which can be used on its own to make pesto or can be added to the classic recipe for basil pesto. We follow the recipe for basil pesto in Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. (This book is a critical resource for anyone interested in Italian cooking.) The problem always becomes how to preserve the pesto so that we can eat it year around.

Wild Blackberries

This summer the wild blackberry crop is outstanding. Even though blackberry bushes are highly invasive, in certain years they produce an unusual amount of berries. The trick is to get them before the bears do.

The berries have ripened slowly this summer, and it was possible to harvest a good portion over the period of a week. In the large meadow on the other end of the property there is a huge patch of blackberry bushes that were covered with flowers this spring and with berries in late July. It is normally difficult to get at many of the berries as one has to literally wade through the bushes as thorns rip both clothing and skin. This year, however, a bear had managed to get the first crop of ripe berries, and in doing so had made a nice set of paths through the bushes. While it was still a hazardous undertaking, we managed to pick well over one gallon of berries.

wild blackberries

Now wild blackberries are not at all like the plump, juicy things you get in the store. They are small, full of seeds, exceptionally sour, and don't have much juice. I took the berries, put them in a pot with 1/2 cup of sugar, and brought them to a simmer. This brought out a lot of the juice. The mixture was forced through an old applesauce sieve my mother had used long ago. This got most of the juice and pulp out, and left most of the seeds behind. A final pass through a fine-mesh strainer gave about ten cups of blackberry mash.

Peaches from Branstool Orchards

A trip to Branstool Orchards in Utica, Ohio to pick these:

 plus sugar, pectin, and minced ginger gave this:

 

Sorry, but it's not for sale.