CSB Treats, Week 1!

For my first CSB pick-up I made a Whole Wheat Butter Cake, Raspberry-Plum Sauce, and whipped, sweetened Creme Fraiche for each customer. Naturally, I made one for my family too, and we enjoyed some of it for dessert tonight after an easy dinner.

The sauce was really easy to make, and the other recipes can be found on this blog as well (see above links, highlighted). Last week I picked local Green Globe and Italian plums, which I thought would pair nicely with the raspberries I had frozen (from our neighbor's house this summer).

Raspberry-Plum Sauce

Amounts are completely estimated; you can experiment and see what tastes the best to you, and work with whatever fruit quantities you have on hand.

A few pounds plums

Equal amount raspberries, fresh or frozen

Sugar, to taste

Halve and pit the plums. Place in a stockpot, add some water, cover, and cook until very soft. Run through a food mill to remove the skins. Place the puree back in the pot, add the raspberries, and bring to a boil. Add sugar to taste, depending on the quantity of fruit you're using (start small and increase slowly). Stir to dissolve.

At this point you can either cool the sauce and refrigerate it, or serve it warm. If you'd like to can it, bring it back up to a full boil, ladle it into hot jars, and process in a boiling water canner for 10 minutes.

Dill Pickles

While it may seem like I'm slacking in the cooking/baking/blog posting departments lately, I must beg to differ. It's late summer and that means I'm up to my ears in canning projects. I suppose I could post all the recipes I'm doing, but it seems redundant and boring to post how to can peaches in a light syrup...you can google all that elsewhere!

As for cooking, I have been mostly grilling super easy fare. Lots of veggies from the garden, cuts of fish or meat from the deep freeze, fresh fruit, and grilled flatbreads are the norm right now. Even if the temperature in my kitchen was somewhat conducive to cooking, I couldn't do much if I wanted to! I needed to update my pots and pans set, so I placed an order with a small local shop for a new set of stainless steel All-Clad. Afraid that it would take me a while to sell my old Calphalon set, I listed it in the paper. Well, they sold very fast and now I am waiting to receive my new pots, getting creative with canning in the limited few that I still have.

I am posting my dill pickle recipe below because it's different than most that are published currently. The Ball Book of Canning uses sugar to temper the vinegar in every recipe, but I do not like the taste of sweet pickles! I tried a few last year and was not impressed, giving most away. Usually the vinegar to water ratio is 1:1 in pickled vegetables, but the following recipe is safe, as long as it's not messed with. Ball actually has the same ratio listed for their dill recipe, but they add sugar and pickling spices too. In this case, sugar is not a preservative; it's for flavor and to temper the sourness of the vinegar. I like my pickles with lots of dill, a little garlic, and no other flavors...bare bones pickles, if you will, more like the classic store bought flavor (only so much better!).

Classic Kosher-Style Dill Pickles

7 lbs pickling cucumbers

7 quart jars, lids, and rings

lots of ice (approx 1 1/2 bags cocktail ice)

cold water

6 cups white vinegar

3/4 cup Kosher salt (or canning/pickling salt will be fine too)

14 garlic cloves, peeled

7-14 dill heads (the flowery part)

Rinse and scrub the cucumbers well. Slice the blossom end off (if you can't tell which is the stem end and which is the blossom end, take a thin slice off each end). Place the cucumbers in a large bin of ice water (I use my kitchen sink) and let them soak at least 2 hours.

Boil your jars at least ten minutes, and bring the lids and rings to boiling as well. When the lid water is boiling you can turn it off and let them stand in the hot water until you need them. Keep the canner boiling, though.

Combine 8 cups cool water, 6 cups vinegar, and 3/4 cup Kosher (or pickling) salt in a large stockpot. Bring to a boil.

Place two garlic cloves and 1-2 heads of dill in each jar (depending on how much dill flavor you like). Pack the cucumbers tightly, to about 1 inch from the top. When all the jars have been filled, ladle the vinegar solution to the tops of the cucs (you should have about 1" head space). Wipe the rims and screw on the lids. Place in the boiling canner, return to a full boil, and process 15 minutes (10 minutes for pints). Turn off the heat, open the lid, and let them stand 5 minutes. Remove to a towel to cool completely before checking the seals. Label with the date and store in a cool, dark place for up to one year. Be sure to not open the jars for at least one month to allow the flavors to blend.

Saving Some For Later

Canning season always manages to sneak up quietly on me, starting off with a few batches of jam, and then all of a sudden it's full-on, with days full of processing all sorts of in-season produce! The last few days our green and yellow wax beans have been going crazy. That's a really, really good thing, though, so I'm careful to not complain about the extra work those veggies bring me. It was so nice to have a freezer full last winter, and the Dilly Beans were a major hit too. I had never pickled beans before, but we all agreed that this year I'd definitely have to process even more, especially since I'd experimented a little with the flavorings and we now have a pretty good idea of what's tasty and what's, well, tastier.

As I was pickling the jars shown, I used the brine recipe in the Ball Blue Book of Canning. It's a pretty good guide, although it (understandably) hugs the side of over-caution on the recipes. They suggest doing a hot pack, where you bring the beans to a boil before packing, and while you can get a few extra in the jars this way, it's extremely unpleasant, burning your fingers and hands and making the whole process much slower. I prefer to do a raw pack, holding the beans in the palm of one hand and then pushing them into the jar, adding however many more I can stuff in. Cutting them up would allow you to pack more in also, but I like the look of the beans left whole. I found some hearty organic, locally grown red peppers at the Farmers' Market this morning and tossed in a few slices for color.

Dilly Beans
The ratio of vinegar to water to salt in the brine is very important for food safety guidelines, but feel free to experiment with various spices (mustard seeds could be interesting too!).

4 1/2 tbsp pickling or canning salt (kosher salt will work too, but not regular table salt)
4 1/2 cups white vinegar
4 1/2 cups water
about 3 1/2-4 lbs fresh beans, green, yellow, or a combination
2 red peppers, sliced into strips
9 cloves of garlic, peeled
1 head of dill (the flowery part)
whole peppercorns
red pepper flakes, optional
8 or 9 sterilized pint wide-mouth canning jars, lids, and rings

Snap the blossom end off each bean and rinse them all well to remove any debris.

Bring the water, vinegar, and salt to a boil. Place the hot jars on a towel. To each one, add: 1 clove of garlic, 2 sprigs of dill (each little flower portion on the head is a sprig), and 2 or 3 peppercorns. If you like a little zing, try adding 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes (my husband LOVED this variation, but my kids liked them better "plain.").

Gather a large handful of beans and two or three pepper slices. Push into a jar (it should be a tight fit). Try to push a few more in to fill up any gaps. Repeat until all the jars have been stuffed. (Don't worry if the beans are as tall as the rim, just so long as they don't over lap or stick out to prevent the rubber from sealing. The beans will shrink as they're heated.)

Ladle the boiling hot pickling liquid to about 1/2 inch from the rim (it's still OK if the beans are above the liquid). Screw on the lid and place in the boiling water bath. Repeat with the remaining jars, placing each one in the boiling water as it's filled. Bring to a rolling boil, cover, and process for 15 minutes. Remove jars to a towel to cool completely, label, and store up to one year. Make sure to not open the jars for a few weeks to allow the flavors to blend. (Sometimes the beans look a little shriveled when they come out of the canner. In a few days or so they'll puff back up as they absorb the brine more fully.)

BPA-Free Canning Lids

My neighbors are out of town, but before they left for the weekend, I managed to strike up a deal with them. They have a gorgeous hedge of raspberries, and I know they usually just eat them fresh and freeze some for later. I offered to make them some jam in exchange for weekend berry-picking access, and they were happy to oblige! So yesterday my children and I headed over and had six cups of ripe, juicy berries in about 30 minutes.

We headed back across the driveway and I began my jam making process. I like to use Pomona's Pectin. You can double, triple, quadruple, or whatever to the batch(es) of jam, and can use as much or little sweetener as you like with a great gel result. I like to use evaporated cane juice because it's less expensive than the other options, but honey, agave, or even fruit juice concentrate have all worked nicely (you can also use artificial sweeteners, if desired).

I have some new canning lids that I wanted to try out as well. Ball and Kerr metal varieties have always been good to me, result-wise, but they are now being lined with Plastisol. Plastisol has BPA in it. So even though you're canning organic produce and trying to provide healthy fare for your family, you're still exposing them to a nasty, hormone mimicking, estrogenic chemical. Ugh. Enter Tattler canning lids.

Tattler canning lids are plastic also, but they're BPA-free and come with a loose rubber ring to create a tight seal. As an added bonus, they're also made in the USA! While I did have to purchase several sets, I would've had to buy a lot of Ball/Kerr sets this summer instead, and the Tattler ones are reusable. I figure I'll make up the extra cost in two or three canning seasons.

If you choose to try out the Tattler lids, follow the directions precisely. I thought I had as I was jamming, but two of my jars did not seal properly. I ended up reprocessing the two to see if I could get it right, and it worked perfectly the second time around. They want you to tighten the ring, then loosen it again before boiling the jar. I did that step, but when they came out of the water bath I didn't re-tighten them. Apparently that's critical because it helps them to form a tight, safe seal once cooled. So after they'd cooled completely I removed the rings, checked the seals, and all were perfect! I could lift the jars by the plastic lids.

I don't like that the lids are plastic, but I do see where metal can give an off taste to highly acidic foods. At least they're BPA-free, reusable (some people have some that still work after 25 years!), made in our country and not out-sourced overseas, and easy to use (once you get the hang of it). You can also use them in pressure canning. Now if only I could find an acceptable substitute for the Plastisol-lined lids for the more decorative jars that I use for gifts!!