Pizza!!

As the start of a new school year has whittled away at my free time (hence my lack of posts), I've been forced to face the fact that summer days spent in the garden and kitchen are gone. Instead, I've been trying to come up with some quick, healthy options for dinner. The garden is still providing us with more food than we can eat (see photos below) so I also want to make sure I'm putting our veggies to good use.

Since I still have lots of peppers, tomatoes, and basil growing, I've been making a lot of pizza. To save time, I just use a pre-made whole wheat crust and pile on the toppings.  I like the refrigerated dough in the bag from Trader Joe's, but there are tons of options available.  I don't like a lot of sauce, so I usually just brush the dough with olive oil.  Then I slather on a layer of ricotta with dried basil, oregano, garlic, and salt and pepper mixed in.

After this, the possibilities are pretty much endless.  Below are some of my favorite toppings: basil, bacon, tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and roasted red peppers.  I usually cook and chop the bacon and roast and slice the peppers ahead of time to make things even faster after a long day of work and graduate school.

Once you get all the toppings on, it's just a matter of waiting until the cheese is bubbly and starting to brown.  Pictured below are a tomato, basil, mozzarella and bacon pizza (left) and a roasted red pepper and goat cheese pizza (right) I recently made during the week in less than 20 minutes.

Just slice, serve, and avoid those feelings of guilt that come with not using up your end of summer veggies!

Beets!

Recently I decided to harvest all of the beets growing in my garden.  I had been holding out because some of them still looked pretty small, but they hadn't really increased in size in about a month so I just pulled them all.

A lot of people don't like beets, but I grew up eating them with my grandmother and have always loved them.  They're also extremely good for you.

I had hoped to have enough to make a couple of jars of pickled beets but because it was a pretty small yield, I took another route and made a simple roasted beet salad instead.

Roasted Beet Salad with Balsamic and Goat Cheese
Any quantity of fresh beets
Goat Cheese
Balsamic Vinegar
Aluminum Foil
French Baguette 
Olive Oil


Heat the oven to 400 degrees.  Cut greens off the beets, leaving about 1/2 inch of the stems attached.  Greens can be lightly sauteed or used in a cold salad.  Wash the beets, but don't spend much time scrubbing as the skins will be removed after cooking.  Trim any stringy roots from the bottoms.

Once beets are washed and roots are removed, group them by size.  Using aluminum foil, create packets for each grouping by placing beets in the center of one piece of foil, topping with another, and folding up edges.

Place packets directly on the oven rack to roast.  Beets are ready when they can be pierced with a fork with no resistance.  This usually takes about an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes, depending on the sizes of the beets.  Obviously, smaller beets will cook faster, so check often.  While the beets are roasting, slice the baguette into 1/2 inch thick slices. 

When the beets are done, remove the packets from the oven.  Switch the oven to broil if you plan to use the it to toast the bread.  Be careful opening the packets as steam will escape. Allow beets to cool until they are tolerable to touch.  Gently slip the skins and stems off the beets by holding them in your palm and lightly rubbing them with a kitchen rag or paper towels.

Beets can be refrigerated whole to cool down or sliced immediately if you want to use them warm.  Place sliced beets in a bowl and toss with balsamic vinegar to taste. Crumble goat cheese using a fork in another small bowl.  The amount needed will depend on how many beets are being used. 

Lay beets on a plate and top with goat cheese crumbles.  Set aside.  Place baguette slices on a cookie sheet and lightly brush with olive oil.  Place under broiler, monitoring closely until bread is toasted.  Remove toasts from oven, place on a plate, and top with the beet salad.

Savory Corn Griddle Cakes

One of my favorite resources for recipes to use with the abundance of summer veggies is Jack Bishop, author of my two most used cookbooks.  The first, Vegetables Every Day, was a college graduation gift from my brother and sister-in-law.  It is set up alphabetically and contains several main dishes and side dishes that can be made with each vegetable.  I happened upon my other favorite, A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen, sitting in someone's garbage at the curb while walking with my mom on a visit to Raleigh.  I love this book because it is divided into the four seasons, with recipes utilizing the specific vegetables available at different times of year.  For anyone looking for great vegetable recipes, I would recommend either or both of these cookbooks.

Though I am not vegetarian, I would say we only cook dishes with meat a couple of times a week during the summer due to the availability of fresh veggies from the farmers market and our garden.  I love Jack Bishop's recipes because if you want to add a little meat or change things up a bit, it's pretty easy to do.  This is just what I did last night by adding swiss chard, tomatoes, and sausage crumbles to the Savory Corn Griddle Cakes I made from A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen.

Savory Corn Griddle Cakes
4 medium ears of corn, husks and silk removed
1 ounce of cheddar or monterrey jack, shredded (about 1/4 cup)
1 tablespoon minced fresh cilantro leaves
3/4 cup milk
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons melted unsalted butter, plus more for cooking
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup salsa or sour cream, or Spiced Honey Syrup (recipe is in the book)


Place a platter on middle oven rack and heat to 200 degrees.  Grate the corn on large holes of a grater set inside a bowl until the cobs are clean.  Discard cobs.  Stir cheese, cilantro, milk, eggs, and melted butter into the grated corn.  Fold in the flour, baking powder, and salt until no streaks of flower remain.


Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium heat and lightly grease with butter.  Fill a 1/4 cup measure with batter and pour into the hot pan to make a round cake.  Repeat until the pan is filled with griddle cakes.  Cook, flipping cakes once until lightly browned on both sides, about five minutes total.  


Use a spatula to transfer the griddle cakes to the warm platter in the oven.  Repeat with remaining batter.  Serve with salsa, sour cream, or Spiced Honey Syrup.


I adapted this recipe a bit by eliminating the cilantro, using queso quesadilla, and changing the toppings.  Here are some photos of the process and the end result.

I decided to top my cakes with some sauteed swiss chard from the garden and A Way of Life Farm sausage crumbles.  I finished off one with diced garden tomatoes and the other with a light drizzle of maple syrup.  They turned out awesome!

Jammin' It

We haven't expanded our garden to include any fruit yet, but my husband's aunt and uncle have lots of property and tons of blueberry and blackberry bushes.  They invite any willing members of the family to come and pick berries any time since they can't possibly eat them all.  My husband and I took them up on their offer and I decided to make some jam with the gallons of blueberries and blackberries we'd picked.

Though this was my first attempt at making jam, it proved to be really easy.  I decided to go the old fashioned route, avoiding the need for added pectin.  This left me with just two ingredients: berries (9 cups) and sugar (6 cups).  The first step was to squish the berries, which I did with a potato masher.

Next, I dumped them into a big pot and mixed in the sugar.  You can see, at left, that I started using a large soup pot with the blueberries.  I later ended up dumping the blueberry mixture into one of my water bath canners because boiling fruit makes A LOT of foam and everything was about to spill over.  So, if you attempt this, be advised you need a BIG pot with several inches of space beyond the height of the fruit.

Because I was making pretty big batches, the berry and sugar mixtures took quite a while to boil and thicken up.  I think it took nearly an hour of constant boiling before the desired consistency was reached. During this time, it was really important to keep stirring periodically because the fruit can become stuck on the bottom of the pot and scald.

Once the mixtures started to thicken, I had to keep testing it to see if they had reached the jellying point.  I decided to go with the cold plate method because I didn't trust my assessment of whether the jam was properly sheeting off the spoon since this was my first time.

Once the jam had reached the jellying point, I immediately removed it from the heat and funneled it into half pint jars.  I processed them for ten minutes and all sealed successfully.

I gave some away and we still have 14 jars in our pantry, so I am sure we'll be enjoying blueberry and blackberry jam for a long time!

Pickles, Round Two

So the first batch of half sour pickles I posted about last week turned out waaaaaay too salty to be consumable.  The spice mixture was perfect, but the ratio of salt to water was just not right.  I consulted this website which contains excerpts from this book and my second attempt turned out perfectly.  

I ended up leaving them in the brine for a total of about 63 hours before sampling them and decided to take them out because the flavor was just as I like it: mild, garlicky, and still containing hints of cucumber.  I think the new pickling crock my husband bought me for my anniversary present may have also helped as it is better than using a plastic bucket.  Here is the final recipe I will now be using to make half sours:

Half Sour Pickles

Thoroughly wash cucumbers and slice 1/8 inch from the blossom end.  While preparing the rest of the ingredients, soak cucumbers in icy water for ~20 minutes to crisp up.

Combine salt and water in a saucepan in bring to a boil to make brine.  Use 2 Tablespoons salt to every 4 cups water, depending on how much brine is needed to completely cover the amount of cucumbers being used.

Grind the following spice mixture until fragrant in a mortar and pestle:

1/3 teaspoons whole coriander seeds

1/3 teaspoons brown mustard seeds
2 whole allspice
1/3 teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes
1/3 teaspoons black pepper corns
1/2 teaspoons dill seeds
2 or 3 pieces broken dried bay leaf

Add to the pickling crock/container being used:

4 – 6 cloves garlic

spice mixture above

cucumbers (This recipe is suitable for 6-8 pickling cucumbers.  Using more may require adding more spices or garlic.)

Pour brine over cucumbers and spice mixture and allow to settle.  Use a freshly washed dinner plate or food grade plastic lid and 1-2 sanitized jars filled with water placed on top of cucumbers to hold them under the brine.  Cover the crock/container with cheesecloth. Check the brine daily and remove any scum that has formed on the surface with a spoon. The time required for pickles to attain the desired flavor will vary and can be determined by sampling after 48 hours.

Once desired flavor has been reached, remove pickles from brine using tongs.  Pickles can be placed in a sanitized jar if you plan on canning them, or a container suitable for refrigerator storage if you plan on eating them in the near future.  

Heating and straining the brine through paper coffee filters is said to reduce cloudiness (though I didn't find this to be successful).  This step can be skipped if this is not a concern. Pour brine over the pickles and immediately place in refrigerator or process to seal.