Ninja Foodi Beef Stew

Taste-wise, this beef stew is spot on and comparable to what you'd get at a restaurant or knew what you were doing in the kitchen. Not sure what meat cut was used for this beef stew, typically leaner/tougher cuts are used for stew as it tends to cook longer. But, longer cooking does not make meat tender. It's the fat and marbling that makes that happen; and appropriate heat/time used to cook it. The texture of the beef is okay; cooked but not tender. 

TheFoodening Blog: Ninja Foodi Beef Stew

Ingredients

1 lb beef stew meat, cut into 1" pieces
1 tbsp olive oil
15 oz organic tomato sauce
2 Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and diced
2 organic carrots, peeled and diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tsp beef bouillon (I use "Better than Buillon Beef Flavor")
2.5 c filtered water
2 tbsp Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce
2 tbsp dry vermouth, optional
dried herbs: parsley, thyme, basil, paprika
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Soup thickener:

2 tbsp cornstarch + 2 tbsp cold water, mixed together

Total cooking time: about an hour

Directions

1. Sear the meat in olive oil either stove top or using the saute function in the Ninja Foodi. Brown all the edges of the meat then transfer to the Ninja Foodi cooking pot.

2. As you are preparing the vegetables, set the Ninja Foodi to Saute. Add vermouth to deglaze the pot, carrots, potatoes, garlic, herbs, salt, and pepper.

3. Select "Pressure" and "Hi" on the cooker. Set the timer for 25 minutes.

4. Natural release 10 minutes, then quick release.

5. Stir in cornstarch mixture. It will thicken before serving.

Makes: 2 quarts

Ninja Foodi: Sriracha BBQ Chicken Wings (from raw frozen!)

This was the first item I made in the Ninja Foodi using both the pressure and air fryer features. In retrospect, it tastes as though I should have marinated the frozen chicken wings first, as they were bland and tasteless without the BBQ sauce that I added later in the air crisping step of this recipe. The crazy part is cooking frozen meat to perfectly cooked in the Ninja Foodi.

The cooking times on this recipe needs additional testing. After the pressure cooking phase, the wings were done. Any air frying would have added additional heat and time, making these somewhat dried out but "looking" the part of being broiled or fried. Total cooking time is too long if you want the outcome to be tender but crispy chicken wings.

TheFoodening Blog - Ninja Foodi Sriracha BBQ Chicken Wings

Recipe adapted from the basic Ninja Foodi cookbook that came with the unit.

Recipe: Fail

This is a fail because total cooking time is 40+ minutes -- the same amount of time that an oven-based recipe uses to get chicken to a minimum 165 F.

The original recipe calls for frozen chicken breasts which much denser than chicken wings. The cook time could have been halved for each step: PC and AF. And, the chicken, while frozen and raw, could have been marinated at least a half hour before cooking. The "fixed" directions, time, and temps are noted below.

Ingredients

2 lb raw chicken wings
1-2 c BBQ sauce (I used Trader Joe's Sriracha BBQ sauce)
1 c water
additional sriracha sauce, optional for more spicy

Add 1 c of bbq sauce and chicken wings to a resealable plastic bag or food storage container. Let the wings marinate for 30 minutes or longer in the fridge. In my first attempt, I did not marinate before cooking and applied the sauce at the Air Crisper step.

Pressure Cooker Directions

Place fry basket in pot. Add water to pot and chicken to fry basket. Select "Pressure" and "Hi". Set timer for 10 minutes. Start.

10 minutes natural release, then quick release.

Remove pressure cooking lid.

Air Crisper Directions

Select "Broil", Temp to 400 F, and Time for 10-15 minutes.

Toss or use a silicone pastry brush to apply more BBQ sauce to the wings.

Check at 5 minute intervals to see how crispy the wings are getting. Serve with additional BBQ sauce.

Matcha Madeleines

It's a wonder why there isn't a higher rate of heart disease in France than there is in the US. Perhaps it's our lacking embrace of saturated fat from animal products such as dairy, cheese, butter fat, etc. There is really no reason why these little cakes are so pricey at coffee shops like Starbucks. You're literally eating just a tablespoon of cake batter. So anyways.. onto the recipe. Oh, and one other thing, when using AP flour, if you use unbleached/unbromated flour the cakes will be darker than when using "white" flour.

Ingredients

1/2 c unsalted butter (1 stick or 4 oz or 113 g)
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 tbsp whole milk
1 c all purpose flour (120 g)
2/3 c organic granulated sugar (133 g)
1 tbsp powdered sugar, plus more for dusting
1 tbsp matcha green tea powder
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of sea salt

Directions

0. Prepare the Madeleine pan(s) with butter and a dusting of flour. Set aside.

1. Melt the butter. Set aside and let cool to room temperature.

2. In a bowl, sift together flour, sugar, matcha powder, powdered sugar, baking powder and sea salt.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk together milk and eggs.

4. Gradually add the flour mixture to the milk/egg mixture and fold in with a spatula. Let the batter rest for at least an hour.

Preheat oven to 375 F (190 C).

5. Bake for 10-12 minutes.Remove from oven and let cool. Gently remove madeleines to a rack.

At this point after the cakes have cooled to room temperature, you could dust them with powdered sugar and eat.

Strawberry Lemonade Iced Tea, Cold-Brewed

This ratio came out tasting rather well. Though, I wonder if it's better to add all the sweetener (in this recipe, just organic granulated sugar) when mixing the base or after the fact and just sweeten per serving. This write-up reflects the latter. I had half a quart (2 cups) of Strawberry mash in the fridge. I was going to make more strawberry ice cream with it but after a week of it just sitting in the fridge, this is what it went into.

There are actually four recipes on this page. Stop and go wherever you'd like.

Ingredients - Strawberry Syrup Mash

1 lb fresh strawberries, core/stem removed
1/2 c sugar

Mash the strawberries, use an immersion blender, or blend it all together in a food processor.

(optional) Add 1-2 tbsp of fresh lemon juice if you want to preserve the red color of the strawberries.

At this point, you could skip the lemonade part of this recipe and add a 14-oz can of coconut milk to make coconut strawberry ice cream. But, that's an experiment for another day.

Ingredients - Strawberry Lemonade

1/2 fresh lemon juice from 2 large lemons

Directions

Add the lemon juice to the strawberry syrup mash. Mix well. Refrigerate until ready to use.

For one 12 oz serving:

add 1/2 c Strawberry Lemonade base
fill mug with filtered water (or cold-brewed iced black tea for a Strawberry Arnold Palmer)
add sweetener, to taste (for this I added 1 tbsp organic granulated sugar)

Cold-brewed Black Tea

4 tsp English Breakfast tea (or 4 black tea bags)
4 cups of water
1 quart mason jar w/ lid

Combine in the mason jar and let sit overnight in the fridge.

Side note: 

You can use a vegetable peeler to peel just the yellow part of the peel from the lemon and put the peels in a clean jar filled with vodka.. to make lemon extract. You can then add a simple syrup to that extract (1:1 ratio) to make limoncello. Then compost the peels when all that is done.

Two ingredient Five-Spice Peach Ice Cream

I had an almost serious thought about how ice cream is made. Much like that fruit-at-the-bottom yogurt concept where it is just plain yogurt + jam, I thought I might try to add a finished jam (five spice peach) to the two-ingredient no-churn ice cream base. These no churn recipes are for the extra lazy. Taste-wise, you're much better off making an actual custard base for ice cream for a more balanced taste that doesn't taste overly dairy-like. The prep time is so short that from start to finish, you could be eating this ice cream in about six hours (what it takes for the mixture to set in the freezer).

Photo-wise, it doesn't look that interesting. And since the jam is essentially pureed peaches with sugar, pectin, and spices, there aren't visual orange peach bits in the ice cream. I think the "five spice peach jam" comes from the Food in Jars cookbooks.

This has the texture of an ice cream; but it lack the body and flavor depth that an egg-based custard brings to the dessert. Maybe it could be plated up with some grilled peaches. That'd be a dashing display.

Makes: 1.5 quarts

Ingredients

1 pint organic heavy cream
One 14-oz can of sweetened condensed milk
1 pint peach jam

Directions

In a large bowl, whip the heavy cream to soft peaks (about 10 minutes) with an electric whisk. If you do this step by hand it takes much longer and requires serious upper body strength.

Once soft peaks have formed, whisk in the sweetened condensed milk. Then stir in the peach jam. Make sure you break up the jam so that it is evenly distributed.

Put the ice cream mixture into quart containers and freeze for at least six hours.

Two Ingredient Strawberry Ice Cream

You know when you've spent too much time on Instagram or Pinterest when your tired brain thinks that Buzzfeed's Tasty videos are onto something with their "2 ingredient' ice cream recipes. Then you actually try them out and find that the ratio of dairy to everything else is too high. This strawberry ice cream tasted a lot like strawberry-infused cream than an actual strawberry ice cream, despite having mixed in 2 lbs of strawberries into the batch.

The Foodening Blog - Two Ingredient Strawberry Ice Cream

While this is a no-churn recipe, you do need a food processor or blender.

Tasty's recipe ratio:

1 pint heavy cream, beaten to soft peaks
One 14-oz can of sweetened condensed milk

And, strangely, that is it for their "two ingredients". I put in more than their suggested amount of mix-ins into this batch. Tasty only uses 1 cup of chopped strawberries. I can't imagine how bad their ice cream tastes.

To this, I added 1 lb frozen strawberries (coarsely chopped in the food processor) plus 1 lb fresh strawberries, an additional half cup of organic granulated sugar to balance out the tartness of some of the strawberries.

And even with that, it didn't really have that strong strawberry flavor.

The flipside to this is to make an actual churn-based recipe and make a vanilla custard base, like what Alton Brown would suggest.

This batch made 2 quarts. While just tasting like frozen strawberry-infused ice cream, it lasted less than a week. What can I say. I really like ice cream.

Kitchen Notes: Garden Seed Starts, 2019

This spring I have been 'composting' a lot of the vegetable scraps directly into the raised garden beds to amend the soil. Generally this just involves digging a hole, dropping in some non-meat food waste, enslaving red wrigglers (worms) that I find lurking under my patio pots, and covering it with topsoil. A week or month later, the food is gone and I have nice dark rich earthy-smelly soil. Perfect for...

Despite the very warm start of May, I have not planted anything new in that raised bed. I should probably move all the flowering bulbs out of the vegetable garden bed into its own area at some point. Half of my rosemary bush on the side yard died when some boards from the fence fell on it during winter. Oh, and I picked up a rhubarb plant. That'll get put into the side yard as soon as I dig out the Prima apple tree that didn't seem to have survived our freak spring snow days in April. It's just as well.

The gold potato "seed" starts from sprouted potatoes in my pantry seems to be leafing very well. For months they were in a pot on the backyard side-of-the-house that gets less than four hours of sunlight, also covered by leaf mulch. Just last week I moved the pot to the backyard patio and it seems to be doing well.

The russet potato "seed" starts don't seem to be doing much at all. How long do I have to wait until the sprouts turn into leaves?

As for other plant "cuttings", I have some romaine lettuce that is regrowing its leaves nicely after having eaten the rest in a salad, I wonder if I should plant them down into soil now that they're starting to grow roots in the yogurt cups I have the plants in.

Cornbread with Fresh/Frozen Corn Kernels

Just how many cornbread recipes does one need anyways? Well, here is another and was less sweet than it should because I put in two tablespoons of the half cup that it originally called for. While it is made with corn and cornmeal, it is also made with wheat flour; so, definitely not gluten free. Recipe ratio comes from The Spruce Eats. I typically get my cornmeal in the bulk bins at the grocery store. Not many ways one can screw up cornbread, except maybe cook it for too long. I didn't have any half 'n half on hand, but I did have milk and heavy cream, so I used half of each.

Ingredients

1 c yellow cornmeal
1 c unbleached all purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs, beaten
up to 1/2 c organic granulated sugar
1 c half and half; or 1/2 c heavy cream + 1/2 c whole milk
1 c sweet corn, fresh or previously frozen (thawed/drained)

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 F

Grease (with butter) an 8" x 8" baking dish.

Is there a purpose to the order of operations? Hmm, I wonder. Sift all the dry ingredients together. Then add the eggs, half 'n half, and sweet corn. Mix until just combined.

Pour into prepared pan and bake for 30 minutes.

Tapioca Pudding

This recipe ratio comes from Bob's Red Mill and the pudding has a really fluffy texture; of course, this is from beating the egg whites. I would post a pic but it's just a vanilla pudding with tapioca in it.

Makes 6 (1 cup) servings

Ingredients

1/3 c small pearl tapioca, soaked in 3/4 c water for 30 minutes
2 1/4 c whole milk
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/2 c sugar, divided
2 eggs, separated
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions

Soak tapioca in water in a saucepan that can hold at least 2 quarts. Don't drain any remaining water.

Add milk, salt, 1/4 c sugar, and stir frequently over medium heat until boilings. Then simmer over very low heat for 10-15 minutes.

In a small dish, beat the egg yolks. Temper the egg yolks by gradually adding some (maybe a tablespoon?) of the tapioca mixture to the yolks and stirring before adding the egg yolks+tapioca to the pot. Whisk together This is what gives the pudding its yellow-ish color.

As it is cooking over very low heat, beat the egg whites in a separate bowl with 1/4 c sugar until soft peaks form.

Once the tapioca has thickened, turn off the heat (momentarily). Stir or whisk in the beaten egg whites, about 1/4 cup at a time until it is well combined.

Turn heat back on to a low setting and cook for 3 minutes.

Remove from heat. Whisk in vanilla extract. Let cool before eating.

Apple Cider Vinegar & Honey Shrub

This batch made roughly 16 oz of syrup and seems to have the right "sweetness" for a drinking vinegar. What to do with the leftover grated apple? I am composting it in the vegetable garden.

Ingredients

One apple, cored not peeled
1/2 c organic granulated sugar
1/4 c raw honey
1 c raw/organic apple cider vinegar (ACV)

Directions

1. Combine ACV, honey, and sugar into a clean 1-quart mason jar.
2. Grate apple and add to jar.
3. Cap the jar and store in refrigerator for 2-3 days.
4. Strain vinegar syrup into a clean jar.

To Use

Mix 3 tablespoons of vinegar syrup with 8 oz of sparkling water.

Vegan Mushroom Jerky / Slow-Roasted Mushroom Strips

As far as snacks go, this was so time consuming with little reward (remember the zucchini chips?) that it makes me almost want to buy a food dehydrator. I doubt I'll ever use fresh mushrooms this way again. It's no wonder all the mushroom jerky recipes call for those large portobello mushrooms. The mushroom slices shrink by more than half, which is why you'd want to use the largest mushrooms as possible. I, however, did not have portobello mushrooms and used fresh shitake mushrooms instead. Recipe ratio comes from Food52.

Ingredients

2 tbsp low sodium tamari soy sauce
3 tbsp apple cider vinegar
2 tbsp maple syrup
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1/4 tsp ground chili powder
x large or medium portobello mushrooms

Directions

Slice mushrooms to 1/4" thickness. Add to marinade. Refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight.

Preheat oven to 250 F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Arrange mushroom slices on the sheets.

Bake for 1.5 to 2 hours, or until the pieces have shrunken and are dried out. You could flip the slices at the midway time mark, but I didn't bother.

Certainly flavorful and I ate half before I stored the rest in the fridge.

As a snack food, this is a waste of time for so few calories.

I added the remainder of the finished batch to a soup and it was delicious.

Restaurant Style Salsa

Ever since finding this recipe ratio on the internet, it has been my go-to quick salsa for chips, nachos, tacos, and potlucks. It is so easy to prepare (with a food processor) that I have canned fewer jars of salsa this year; only a half batch of hatch chile salsa. But, this recipe doesn't require hatch chiles at all. I usually use one bunch of cilantro, leafy green parts only; and this is significantly more volume than the half cup the recipe calls for. If you want the cilantro to be finer, roughly chop with a knife before adding to the food processor. 

TheFoodening Blog - Restaurant Style Salsa

Ingredients

Two 14.5 oz cans of roasted diced tomatoes w/ green chiles
1-2 garlic cloves, minced
2 green jalapenos, halved and seeds removed
1/4 tsp organic granulated sugar
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 c fresh cilantro, finely chopped
1/2 lime, juiced

Directions

Pulse together in a the bowl of a food processor with the sharp/serrated blade: all the ingredients.

Refrigerate for an hour before serving to let the flavors mingle together.

Slow Cooker Minestrone

I suppose it is possible to overcook the vegetables on this, though it wouldn't be any worse than reheating the soup. If you are going to add some type of pasta to this, I suggest cooking the pasta separately, then adding cooked pasta to the serving bowl. There is a lot of flexibility as to what goes into this vegetable soup; though most notably it's root vegetables + beans + pasta.

Ingredients

1.5 quarts vegetable/chicken/beef broth
Two 14.5 oz cans of diced/crushed/whole tomatoes
One 15 oz can beans (cannelini or white/red kidney beans)
2 organic carrots, diced
2 organic celery ribs, diced
1 zucchini, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced or finely chopped
1 cup green beans, fresh or frozen (optional)
1 lb fresh spinach leaves (optional)

Spices

1 tbsp fresh or dried parsley
1.5 tsp fresh or dried oregano
1 tsp fresh or dried thyme
sea salt, to taste (about 1 tsp)
freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Pasta

1/2 c macaroni, fusili, or other small shaped pasta, cooked separately

Directions

Add broth, vegetables (except the spinach), beans, and spices to the slow cooker. Cook on low for 8 hours.

Cook macaroni or fusili pasta separately. Drain. Set aside until ready to eat.

Add spinach leaves and cooked pasta to crockpot at least 20 minutes before serving.

Chocolate Chip Crunch Cookies

This recipe presumably comes from the "Murder She Baked" film, produced by Hallmark. They're a great tasting cookie with crispy edges. If you use real butter, eggs, and sugar in the recipe, each cookie comes out to be roughly 135 calories or so. And, simply eating just one with milk is not possible. The butter is likely to be the most expensive ingredient in this batch. Using a 1/4 cup ice cream scoop can get you uniformly shaped cookies. In retrospect, these weren't as crunchy as I had imagined and I probably should have added in the crushed corn flakes at the same time as the chocolate chips.

Makes: 35 cookies

The Foodening Blog: Chocolate Chip Crunch Cookies

Ingredients

1 c unsalted butter, melted
2 c corn flakes, crushed
2 eggs, beaten
2 tsp vanilla extract
2.5 c all purpose flour, unsifted
1 c organic unbleached granulated sugar
1 c light brown sugar
1 tsp sea salt
2 tsp baking soda
1.5 c semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 F

Melt butter and let cool slightly before mixing in with white sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, and beaten eggs. 

In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and baking soda. Add this into the butter mixture and stir to combine until no flour powder remains. Stir in crushed corn flakes and chocolate chips.

Spoon or use a small ice cream scoop to drop rounded balls of dough onto a baking tray. For a half-sheet pan, I baked these in batches of six per tray.

(I only own one tray, so at 10 minutes per day you can imagine how long this took to bake.)

Bake for 10 minutes and let cool on racks.

Kitchen Notes: Sourdough Starter

Part of the reason to make your own is so that you don't buy the cup of refrigerated starter from some (un)known company at the grocery store for what amounts to a lot of time and an inexpensive amount of flour. I probably should have started this in say.. summer, when the ambient temperature of my kitchen was in the 70s. Alas, I suppose it'll take longer than the week proposed by King Arthur Flour. They have a non-refrigerator/non-freezer method of preserving your starter too. Which, by the looks of it, reads like it is better than the valuable storage space in the refrigerator/freezer...basically you take the finished sourdough starter as if you were going to use it and dry it out at room temp across several days on parchment paper, then store the dried starter in an airtight container.

Anyhow. Back to the starter. I am not reposting KAF's instructions, but I am going to detail what I am doing with this attempt. Previous tries at sourdough breads have resulted in my killing the starter after I used a portion of it to bake a sourdough bread. It feels bad to waste food ingredients; but alas, you can use discarded starter in a number of recipes that call for bread dough: pizza crust, pretzels, etc.

Day 1, Jar 1:
1/2 c dark rye flour + 1/2 c warm water

Day 2, Jar 1:
Half removed, added 1 scant cup AP flour + 1/2 c warm water

Day 2. Jar 2 (essentially, now I have two Jar 1s):
Jar1 Discard + 1 scant cup AP flour + 1/2 c warm water

Day 3, Jar 1 & Jar 2:
Half removed from each jar and placed in Jar 3 (which will be refrigerated for later use)

and so on, so far, I am only on Day 2.

Kitchen Notes: Canning Unsweetened Fruit Juice

I thought about making a mixed berry jam using the berries that have been in the freezer; but my pantry currently suffers from a glut of uneaten jams. To convert this into the base of a drink spritzer, take an equal amount of a basic sugar syrup (1:1 ratio of sugar to water, boiled together and volume reduced by half) and add it to the juice. Then add up to a 1/4 c of the juice mixture to a glass with ice and sparkling water (or sparkling wine).

TheFoodening Blog - Unsweetened Mixed Berry Juice

I just needed to free up some freezer space for my dumplings. Anyhow. Onto the process.

This batch had a lot of seeds! OMG. So many tiny seeds to filter out. I batch strained the solids 2-3 times (the -3rd time was the thick goo leftover in the strainer and I let it drip out overnight in the fridge in a bowl).

1/2 lb boysenberries, from the farmers market - big, ripe and not really sweet
1 lb strawberries - uhh, I froze them whole so the stems were still there
1 qt blueberries - these have been in the freezer for a while, a couple years; picked at Majestic Farm Blueberries a few miles away

I am not sure why I tossed in the remainder of an opened jar of Fonseco port, but a bit more than a cup of port is also in this "juice".

Crock it all together in a slow cooker for a few hours on LOW.

Made: 5 half pints

Plum Jam with Whiskey and Ginger

In this batch, I set aside two 8 oz freezer jars to see what this stuff tastes like on toast and/or pbj sandwiches. The jam didn't set in the water bath and spreads easily enough after being refrigerated. And no, pectin was not used. And no, it didn't set like a normal jam where equal portions of sugar and fruit purée were used. If I made this again, I'd omit the whiskey/bourbon. It tastes good with peanut butter without the whiskey. The ingredient ratio comes from the My Friday Food Swings blog.

TheFoodening Blog: plum ginger jam ready to eat

3 lbs Italian plums (dark purple skin, yellow flesh), pit removed
2 1/2 c organic granulated sugar
2 tsp kosher salt
1/4 c fresh lemon juice
2 tbsp ground ginger
1/2 c whiskey or bourbon, any plain variety

Directions

1. Wash and quarter the plums, removing the pits. Place plums in a large bowl and mix with 1/2 c sugar, salt, and lemon juice. Store in refrigerator overnight.

2. Cook plums, its juices, and remaining sugar in a heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat for 15 minutes. If you're going to strain out the skins, do so at this point, otherwise use an immersion blender and purée it all smooth. Stir frequently or the jam will burn. Add ginger powder and cook for an additional 15 minutes.

As you boil the plums with the sugar, don't be alarmed by the not-red color this produces before using the immersion blender.

At this point, I reserved a cup of jam, letting it cool in a bowl before transferring it to a freezer jar.

3. Add the whiskey, if using, and boil for an additional 3 minutes.

4. Process using hot jam in hot sterilized jars/bands/lids in a hot water bath for 15 minutes.

Made: 2 half-pint freezer jars + 4 half-pint jars

Hatch Chile Salsa, version 2

Can't say I've been making or trying out new things this year in the kitchen. Life, the universe, and everything has been busy. I've stopped making the crockpot apple butter because it simply yields more jars than I can reasonably give away as gifts. Besides all the hassle of making the apple butter, nobody is eating it. Bummer. Anyhow.

Homemade salsa is always a winner. There is more to it than just eating it with chips, tacos, or nachos. Salsa goes into a variety of recipes. In July I did a control batch of salsa; basically the heat base is from a dozen green jalapenos and two red jalapenos. It is surprisingly mild; though, probably has a little more heat than the hatch chile salsa.

This season, I've altered the hatch chile salsa ingredient ratio that I used in the previous year. It currently includes:

4 large green jalapenos, seeded and stemmed, then diced
12 tomatillos, quartered
5# red tomatoes, stemmed, chopped
1 bunch fresh cilantro. finely chopped
2 heads of garlic, peeled and chopped
1.5 lbs prepared hatch chiles (picked this up from Trader Joes)
12 fresh hatch chiles, prepared (roasted, peeled, seeded, chopped) -- this surprisingly only made 1 cup of prepared chiles
1 green bell pepper, stemmed/seeded, then diced
2 tbsp sea salt
1/4 c fresh lime juice

This batch made 7 pints total: 6 pints plus 2 half pint jars

I'm sure that omitting the red tomatoes would have just made it a salsa verde (or green salsa) but I like the sweetness that tomatoes bring to salsa.

Yeah, the processing was different too. Because it took so long to prep all the ingredients, I ended up only boiling the ingredients together (except for the jalapenos, cilantro, green bell pepper, salt. and lime juice) for 1.5 hrs. Then I let it all cool down and stuck the pot into the refrigerator until I could complete the recipe. Fact of it is, I didn't have fresh limes on hand. Ooops.

By the end of the week (today), I managed to get around to preparing and adding the rest of the ingredients. Before adding the remaining ingredients, I tasted the salsa. A little bland, but what did I expect, I hadn't salted it. Also, it lacked the spicy heat of chiles, even though more than two pounds of processed hatch chile peppers went into the batch. I also pureed it to a not-chunky consistency with the immersion blender. 

For texture, I diced the green jalapenos and green bell pepper at this stage.

The salsa pot might have been simmering on the stove for an hour more or so; then I added the jalapenos, bell pepper, cilantro, salt, and lime juice and cooked the batch for a half hour more to help preserve the color of the bell pepper and cilantro.

I did not blend the salsa before putting these into prepared jars and into a 15-minute boiling water bath.

Homemade Pickled Ginger / Gari

Young ginger is a summer season ingredient; so it's best to pick it up fresh at your local Asian grocery store that has it before summer ends. I picked this up from Portland's Fubonn Asian supermarket on the southeast side of the metro. Inexpensive, for what it is. Though, I'm not going to break even on cost with preparing it into pickled ginger compared to what it costs already prepared. At least it won't have any of that nasty pink food coloring.

I made it from this recipe ratio from Just One Cookbook and let's just say that I'm very disappointed in the thinness that a Cook's Illustrated top recommended mandoline has done with these ginger slices. I could have sliced them thinner with a knife. They taste OK, though, more like ginger pickles than the pickled ginger you'd eat with sushi. There was no pink to the young ginger to begin with, so these didn't turn a shade of pink while fermenting. In fact, they are of a light brown color.

TheFoodening Blog: pickled ginger, ready to eat

Homemade Sour Cream

Maybe one day I'll write up a post of the many combinations of sour cream, heavy cream, buttermilk, whole milk, and the ingredients that thickens the sauce and/or cheese. But that day is not today. Here is how to make sour cream from scratch if you happen to have run out of it or just wanted to make a party chip dip. This will be thinner than store-bought sour cream because it lacks thickeners such as carrageenan, a seaweed extract. 

No lemons? Substitute lemon with an equal amount of white vinegar.

Ingredients

1 c (8 oz) heavy cream
2 tsp fresh lemon juice
1/4 c (2 oz) whole milk

Directions

Like the crème fraîche, you'll want to use a clean pint size mason jar.

To the jar, add the heavy cream and lemon juice. Give it a stir to mix together. Add milk. Cover with a lid and shake a bit. Remove the lid and cover with cheesecloth, secured with a rubber band around the rim. Let sit on the counter for up to 24 hours, or overnight.

The mixture should have thickened.

Why this process requires the cream to 'breathe' while the crème fraîche does not. I have no idea. Maybe you don't want extra 'flavors' in the crème fraîche.

Remove the cheesecloth and give the mix a stir. Cover with a lid and refrigerate for up to 2 weeks.

Homemade Crème Fraîche

I'm not sure why people buy $4+ tubs of this at the grocery store. It is heavier than heavy cream and thinner than sour cream. It'll whisk up like heavy cream but will have a much different taste and texture. This is different than making sour cream from scratch.

1.5 c heavy cream
0.5 c low fat buttermilk

Pour ingredients into a clean pint or quart mason jar. Cover and shake the jar a few times. Let sit on kitchen counter for 8 hours; then refrigerate for up to 24 hours.

To use with fresh berries:

Whisk desired amount until it has thickened to stiff peaks. Add 1 tsp granulated sugar and 1/2 tsp vanilla extract. Spoon this over fresh blueberries, raspberries, or strawberries.

Ginger Salad Dressing

This recipe tries to replicate the house-made ginger salad dressing that one can usually find with a Japanese restaurant's entree or bento salad. It comes together fairly easily; though you will have to procure or make-from-scratch a couple of the ingredients.

Yes, there is such a thing as toasted sesame oil and you can buy it in any grocery store that also stocks Asian goods. In the Portland or Seattle areas, Whole Foods and Uwajimaya definitely carries both oils. Read the ingredient label since not all brands carry pure sesame oil--where it is the only ingredient. You could also make it yourself by using toasting white sesame seeds before grinding it into an oil; though that takes special kitchen equipment to extract the oil from the seeds. That is too much trouble. Just buy the stuff.

Making your own sushi ginger is fairly simple, if you can get your hands on fresh young ginger. Sometimes

Ingredients

50 gm pickled sushi ginger
1/4 c toasted sesame oil
1 tbsp soy sauce

Directions

Purée until smooth using an standard electric blender or immersion blender. Serve over fresh greens or roasted vegetables.

Canning 2018

The part about food blogging that bugs me is that if I don't write something up as I am doing the recipe or series, it doesn't get written up at all. Now I have to look at my old social media posts to see if I did any canning in 2017 other than a case of salsa (12 pints). I will surely update this post as the year progresses.

Bitters is a new experimentation series. Instead of taking the bitters class at OMSI, I thought I would just read up on it and try out the experiments myself instead of spending $130 on the course. Isn't that what the library and the Internet are for?

Here's what's been going on so far:

Extracts
Young ginger, 4 oz

Bitters
Cherry bitters, 4 oz

Liqueurs (vodka base, simple syrup sweetened)
coffee liqueur (Stumptown coffee base), 1 litre

Salsas
Control batch salsa (jalapeno peppers), 5.5 pints, 0.5 pints eaten already
Hatch chile salsa, 6 pints plus 2 half pints

Here's what's scheduled to be made:

strawberry liqueur
chocolate liqueur

Completed Extracts
Lemon extract, 1 pint
Vanilla bean extract, 1 pint
Bing cherry-infused bourbon, 1 pint
Cherry blossom extract, 4 oz

Almond biscotti

Here's a recipe that I've made a few times already this year and didn't write it up until now. Good for snacking, potlucks, gift giving, etc. Not that healthy but better than what you can buy at the store.

The Foodening Blog - almond biscotti ready for eating

Ingredients

4 c. unbleached all-purpose flour
2 c raw almonds (or unsalted roasted almonds)
4 eggs
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 c. organic cane sugar
1 c. unrefined coconut oil
2 tsp vanilla extract

2 tsp almond extract

Directions

1. Reserve 1/2 c flour. Sift dry ingredients together (flour, baking powder, salt).

2. Whisk eggs, vanilla extract, almond extract, sugar together

3. In skillet, toast raw almonds until the almonds have changed color (darker brown) but not so long that the almonds burn. Skip this step if using pre-roasted almonds.

4. Coarsely chop almonds and combine with 1/2 c. flour. Stir to combine.

5. On a normal day, the coconut oil will be solid. Heat the coconut oil in a small pan over low-medium heat until melted. Let cool to room temperature before adding to the dough.

6. Mix everything together.

Shaping and baking. The dough will spread somewhat during its first bake session, leave at least two inches between bars of dough. This is ok. After the first bake, simply use a sharp edged knife or pastry knife to separate the logs.

The Foodening Blog - biscotti dough after the first bake

Bake at 340 F for 30 minutes.

Remove from oven. Slice loaves diagonally into 3/4" to 1" pieces. Then place cut side up onto the baking tray.

Bake at 330 F for 10-15 minutes, or until the edges are lightly browned.

A note on the coconut oil: Using unrefined coconut oil passes a coconut flavor to the cookies.

Crockpot: Smoked Ham Split Pea Soup

In today's age of healthier cuts of meat, finding smoked pork hocks at the grocery store is hard. Check with the butcher or at the meat counter of your local grocery store. The smoked pork is probably with the other frozen meat. One smoked hock is enough for a 3-qt batch of split pea soup. I picked up a frozen package of three smoked hocks from my local grocery store.

When rinsing the split peas, don't let them sit around and dry out in the colander. They'll stick together as one mass and you'll have to pry them off. Also, traditional pea soup has onions in it. If you can eat onions, add a diced yellow onion to the recipe. The salt in the broth or smoked meat should be enough for the batch of soup.

Ingredients

1.5 quarts chicken/vegetable/pork broth
1 lb or 2 cups of dried split green peas
1 smoked ham bone or smoked hock
3 organic carrots, diced
3 organic celery ribs, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 bay leaf
1 tsp fresh or dried thyme
freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Directions

Cook covered for 6 hours on LOW. Remove ham bone from the pot. The meat should come easily off the bone. Add the meat back to the pot. Discard the bone. Remove bay leaf before serving.

Easy Meatballs (for spaghetti)

If you don't like to get your hands dirty, this recipe is not for you. The binders in this recipe are bread crumbs, milk, and egg. If you are gluten-free or vegan, this recipe really isn't for you either. I don't have and am not willing to create a vegan "meat" ball recipe. Get your inner carnivore on because we're going to play with meat in this recipe.

I have seen all sorts of meat ratios for this recipe. Sure, you could probably combine equal amounts of ground pork and ground beef, heck toss in some lamb or veal as well; but by then the cost of the meat will exceed your entire spaghetti recipe and that's not good for anyone's food budget.

Note to future self: use lean ground beef. I used 80% meat/20% fat ground beef for this attempt, and well, the meatballs exuded a lot of oil when cooking. 

Ingredients

1 lb lean ground beef (93% lean should work)
1/2 c milk
1/2 c fine breadcrumbs
1/2 c Parmesan cheese, grated
1/4 c fresh Italian parsley, leaves only, finely chopped
1 large egg
1 tsp salt
1 garlic clove, minced
freshly ground black pepper

Easiest way is to add all the ingredients to a large bowl and mix by hand. Stirring it together with a fork will only get you so far.

Use a tablespoon to scoop out some of the meat and form it into a ball with your hands. Set it on a plate and repeat until the plate is full.

Directions - in sauce

If you have just made a pot of spaghetti sauce, transfer some of the sauce sans meat to a skillet and add the meatballs in a single layer. Cook for about 20 minutes then transfer everything back to the pot that has the spaghetti sauce and simmer for an additional 10 minutes or so.

Directions - oven baked 

Preheat oven to 400F.

On a lipped baking tray, arrange meat balls in a single layer and bake for 25-30 minutes. Check on the meatballs to make sure they don't burn. If they burn, none of them will come off the tray without a spatula scraping them off.

Chuck all the cooked meat balls into the spaghetti sauce. Or set onto paper towels to drain the oil. Can also store these into a quart-size bag and freeze for later.

Yes, I really did two batches of meatballs, one cooked in a sauce and baked the other, then tossed both batches into the already-completed spaghetti sauce.