grapefruit marmalade & something to spread it on

I was honestly afraid that canning season had gone forever when it turned cold.  There was a distinct lack of any brightly coloured fruit on the trees in my neighborhood, and I was squintingly-skeptical of all the fruit in stores since I was fairly certain it was imported.  I did know that it was citrus season, as there's an overabundance of citrus trees on my street, but what could I do with citrus other than nomnomnom and juice?  How wrong was I.

It all started with a google search, for grapefruit preserves.  I came upon one recipe that really intrigued me -- a rhubarb and grapefruit jam that you bet your pants I'll make later -- and a vague idea that I loved: spicy marmalade.  Of course, the first thing I had on hand was grapefruit, and while I love them dearly, I didn't know how well they would hold up to preserving.  I had some organic grapefruit, of the yellow skinned yellow fleshed variety, from a friend's tree that I cut up for marmalade.  I used this recipe as a base, I love the beautiful, thin strips of orange rind in the marmalade, and thought that decreasing the amount of pith in the recipe would decrease bitterness.

The marmalade was delicious, but intensely bitter when I crunched on the rinds.  It has either mellowed since I canned it, or is improved by the presence of bread and butter, because I had it for breakfast this morning and just wanted more.  To be honest, I was a little disappointed when I first tasted it -- I was looking for more of the floral, citrusy flavour of a grapefruit and less of the bitterness -- but now I love it.  I made a variant on it a few days later removing the rind (so it would technically be a jam/jelly?) and adding vanilla bean.  Yum.



With all this marmalade about in my house, I needed something to spread it on.  So I busted out this bread recipe from Smitten Kitchen, my trusty KitchenAid, and my new USA bread pans and got to work.  I made some alterations to the recipe, using whey from my strained yogurt as the liquid, adding a little extra sugar to make up for the tartness of the whey, increasing the milk powder, and adding some vital wheat gluten.  I don't usually buy high quality flour or bread flour -- maybe I should invest in some? -- so sometimes adding a little extra wheat gluten is necessary to achieve a good rise.



I've tried this recipe a few times now and never has the bread turned out as glorious as it did this time.  The ingredient additions really improved the texture of the bread, and I could tell this even when I was kneading it (this might be attributed to a more thorough attitude towards kneading, but I've made another loaf since this one and went back to the original measurements and the bread wasn't quite as perfect), as the dough was smooth, supple, and without the coarseness I was expecting from the whole wheat.  I was careful and took all day on this loaf: I let it really double in size for the first rise, and after I put it in the bread pan I made sure it crested the rim beautifully before putting it in the oven.  All the hard work paid off because my bread was light, fluffy, and wonderful except for one thing: THE HUGE HOLE DOWN THE CENTRE OF THE LOAF.



Yes, after all that hard work, I underbaked my bread.  But you know what?  Bread with a hole in it is perfect for navy eggs/eggs in a basket/toad in the hole &c.

Grapefruit Marmalade
makes two half-pints and a little left over

900 g. grapefruit segments and rind*
2 1/2 cups sugar (or more to taste)
4 cups water

Peel your grapefruit however you see fit -- whether by supreme-ing them or failing that as I did and just peeling and pulling away the pith -- and make sure to separate as much of the pith and membrane from each segment as possible.  Put the fruit itself in one bowl, pith and white membranes in another, and reserve the rind.  Separate as much of the pith as possible from the rind so you end up with really beautiful, thin segments of rind like you see here, and then slice your rind as thick or thin as you like. I chose thin, spaghetti like strips, and I love the way they curl around the jar, but they are a bit cumbersome to eat.  Next time I'll be trying more bite-sized pieces.

Once your fruit and rind weighs approximately 900g (I think I ended up with 954g), add the 4 cups of water and set the fruit to a strong simmer in a non-reactive pan (I almost always use my dutch oven for this).  Add sugar conservatively, I added 2 cups at first, and added a quarter cup at a time until I reached the sweetness I wanted.  (At this point you should start getting your jars, lids, and rings ready.  Keep the jars in boiling water for 10 minutes to sterilize them and get them up to jam temperature, and simmer the rings for 10 minutes to activate the seals. The rings don't need much, just keep them on hand.  Want more thorough instructions?  Check out Food in Jars or a canning book such as the Ball Blue Book.)

NOTE: This is where my method differs from other marmalade methods, although you'll find similar things out on the tubes.

Simmer your mixture until it reaches 218 F.  At this point, my marmalade set, so go ahead and take the pot off the heat and get your jars ready to fill.  I always put a dish towel, and often one of my silpat mats, down on the counter before putting the jars on there.  Ladle marmalade into your jars until you have only 1/4" headspace left, and add lids and rings.  Process for 5 minutes.

While your jars are processing, eat the little bit left over on some bread with butter. Enjoy!


Light Wheat Bread, adapted from Smitten Kitchen
makes one two-pound loaf

2 1/2 cups unbleached bread flour (high-gluten flour)
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
3 tbs honey (or sugar, molasses, or other sweetener)
1 1/2 tsp salt
4 tbs powdered milk
1 tbs active-dry yeast
2 tbs unsalted butter, room temperture (or shortening)
1 1/4 cups whey, warmed (if you use water, reduce the amount of sweetener)

Stir together flours, salt, and powdered milk (also the sugar, if you're using it, and instant yeast, if you're using that) in a large bowl or the bowl of an electric mixer.  Next add the softened butter and combine the flour mixture.  Dissolve, as best you can, your honey in your warmed liquid, and add the active-dry yeast to proof it (I always proof mine, some say you don't need to, but I always do).  Once the yeast has proofed, add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix until a ball forms.  The dough should be soft and supple, and especially in an electric mixer you should have no dry ingredients left on the bottom of the bowl (scrape your bowl and keep mixing first).  If you need, add in a few more tablespoons of water/whey (I almost always do, but am not quite comfortable adjusting the liquid measurement yet) as a looser dough is almost always better than a stiff one.

Knead the dough for at least 10 minutes (6-10 on medium-low in a mixer), using bread or wheat flour to keep your surface non-stick if you knead by hand. Try to add as little extra dry ingredients to the dough as possible, as this will stiffen up the dough.  You want the dough to be firm, smooth, and supple, and to pass the windowpane test.  (Here Deb suggests using a thermometer to check the temperature also, but I have never done so, too lazy I guess.)  Transfer your dough to a lightly oiled bowl and cover in plastic wrap.  Ferment at room temperature for 1 1/2 to 2 hours (it takes at least 2 in this cold weather for me), or until the dough has doubled in size.

After the first fermentation/rising, take the dough out of the bowl and gently press it into a rectangle about 6" wide and 8-10" long.  It should be about 3/4" thick, but mine is often thicker because I don't go the whole hog on length.  I basically just make sure the pane fits inside my bread pan when rolled up.  Roll the dough up lengthwise (i.e. so it fits in your bread pan, mine's 8" by 5", so I shoot for a log no longer than 8") and transfer it to your bread pan.  Allow to ferment a second time for another 1  to 1 1/2 hours, although mine went for 2 hours to get a good rise.  You want the bread to crest over the pan but not be falling everywhere.

Preheat your oven to 350 F, and put the oven rack in the middle shelf with a cookie sheet or baking tray on it.  Put your bread pan in the middle of the baking tray, and bake for 30 minutes. Rotate your pan 180 degrees and finish the baking for at least 15-30 minutes. It's worth taking an internal temperature if you're new to bread making, and your bread should register 190 F in the center and sound hollow when thumped on the bottom.

Turn the bread out of the loaf pan immediately and allow to cool for at least 2 hours before cutting.  If you're bad, cut into it early and enjoy it with butter and marmalade!  Or nutella. Or just butter. Or vegemite. Yum.

Dark Days for one, blondies for an army

Sick of making cupcakes for every event I bring dessert to, I was looking for something a little more unique for my roommate's going away party a few weeks ago.  I had made these blondies a week prior, and they were pretty delicious, but I there was something missing.  Not missing, exactly, just... there to be improved upon.  I knew that I had to up the salt factor -- the perfect balance of salty-sweet is my holy grail for desserts -- and there just weren't enough chunks for me.  I needed more chunks!!



I whipped up a batch of home-made toffee and chopped that up into bite-sized pieces, and upped the vanilla in the recipe.  I needed the blondies to stay fudgy and not cake-y, so I also downed the cooking time just a little.  Definitely an improvement.  Such an improvement that this is the only photo I got of them after they went into the oven (apparently some party honorees think that they can break into dessert before dinner has even been served, because they're going to Africa and won't be back for ever!).



This refrigerator pasta was my dark days meal for the week.  I'm not used to cooking for just me, and since I learned to cook with my mum and godmother when they were prepping for big parties -- that's when my tiny hands were useful to them -- for a long time I could only cook meals that would feed me for months, or a Mongolian horde for a day.  And that was not a sustainable way for me to cook.  One of my major Dark-Days goals is to also waste less, so when thinking of what I could buy for my meal and finding myself too lazy to emerge from my house-cocoon, I looked in the freezer to find the motherload!

I had blanched and frozen local, organic zucchini and summer squash back when they were in season (why I must blanch them before freezing I am still not sure of, I just did it because the internet insisted I had to, and that was an argument with my computer that I wasn't going to win), and there were also some oven-dried tomatoes in there.  Not just any oven dried tomatoes though, oven dried, organic tomatoes, that I grew.  This wouldn't be such an accomplishment, since California summers are great for tomatoes, but we had an unseasonably cold summer, so my tomatoes stayed green along way into July, even though the plants had gone into the ground in April, and I didn't get more than 30 ripe tomatoes bigger than cherry sized.  When the first frost came my plants were covered in grapefruit sized, green tomatoes, ready to fall on the ground because of my benign neglect.

Anyway, I threw all of those things together with some organic canned tomatoes that I found in my cabinet, and was quite pleased by the delicious flavour the oven roasted tomatoes added.  Dried red peppers, plenty of salt and pepper, made for a wonderful dinner (and lunch and dinner and lunch, I suspect).  No recipe for this one: putting together refrigerator pasta is not something to be proud of.

White Chocolate, Walnut, Toffee Blondies, adapted from The Country Cook on Tasty Kitchen
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tsp baking powder
10 tbs unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups light brown sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
2 tsp vanilla extracts
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup white chocolate chips
1 cup toffee chunks

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Start browning butter on stovetop, keeping the butter over medium heat and stirring frequently.  Watch carefully, once the butter starts to brown, it will burn very quickly, so keep an eye on it.  While doing that, stir together your dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking powder), and beat the eggs.

Once butter is browned, mix with the sugar and allow to cool a bit.  Mix in the beaten eggs and vanilla, and when those are combined add the dry ingredients.  Your mixture will be pretty thick, but persevere!  Add your chunks (walnuts, chocolate chips, toffee, etc.) and spread the mixture into a 9" x 13" pan that you've sprayed liberally with non-stick spray (or oiled).

Bake 25-30 minutes.  Depending on how goopy you want them, you might undercook a little, like I did, or you can go the traditional route and just wait until a cake tester inserted in the blondies comes out clean.

Dark Days: White Bean Stew

I often see a recipe on one of the many food blogs I regularly follow and think, "oh! I should make that right now."  Generally I don't have the ingredients though, so sloth takes over until the next time I go to the grocery store because I'm very nearly out of food all together.  This doesn't usually apply to baking actually, because I tend to keep a basically fully-stocked pantry of non-perishable baking ingredients on hand.  So in that case, it's usually a lack of butter or eggs that holds me back.  These days, with an abundance of butter and eggs, it's been self control. I know, ridiculous.


So when I saw this white bean stew on Smitten Kitchen, I knew that it would make a perfect meals for my Dark Days challenge. Part of my self-challenge for Dark Days is getting more non-meat protein into my diet, so this meal looked like an easy and delicious way to do so.  I altered the recipe a little, starting with dried white navy beans, which I soaked overnight and threw in my trusty pressure cooker to cook up.  I put in 3 cups of liquid per cup of navy beans, which were the cooking recommendations that I found online, and threw in a sliced onion. Half of my liquid was actually vegetable stock, which I hoped there would be just enough left of to cook the stew with.





I declined to clean out my trusty pressure cooker after this and just threw in the garlic, since my onions had already been added in with the onions.  I also skipped the pre-cook of the chard, so after I had added my beans, tomatoes, and all the rest of the liquid, I put in the raw chard.  I served the stew with thick sliced, toasted bread that I had made using the King Arthur Flour no-knead bread recipe.  Incidentally, this bread has become a staple in my house, since one of my roommates loves it, and thus I get to keep making it every few days.





The stew was a huge hit with my roommates and myself.  Even the boy acceded that it was delicious, and he tends to be a meat-give-me-meat-in-my-food kinda guy.  I took Deb's tip and rubbed the toasted bread with garlic when serving the stew, and it was a great addition.  As the bread got all soaked in stew it really added a nice bite of garlic to the last few bites.





White Bean and Chard Stew, adapted from Smitten Kitchen
makes 6-ish servings


1 pound Swiss chard
1 cup chopped carrots (I left this out because I had taken all my carrots to my horse earlier that day)
3 stems chopped celery
1 medium onion, sliced or chopped
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
3 cups cooked white beans (about 2 cans if you're using canned)
2 cups vegetable broth/leftover bean cooking liquid
1 28 oz. can tomatoes (I used whole, chopped them, and threw everything in the pot)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
pinch crushed red peppers
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon sherry vinegar


Saute the onions, celery, carrots, and garlic in a few tablespoons of olive oil.  Add drained white beans and allow to heat through for a moment, then add tomatoes, vegetable broth, and bay leaf.  Simmer for 20 minutes, and clean your chard leaves. To do so, cut the ribs and stems out of the chard leaves (I just aimed to cut out anything that looked tough), and give them a rough chop if you feel necessary.  Add the chard into the stew and mix it in thoroughly, taste test, and add salt, pepper, and crushed red peppers.  Allow to simmer another 10 minutes or so until the chard is wilted. Salt and pepper to taste if there's anything missing, and serve over thick toasted bread that you've rubbed with raw garlic.

Dark Days: Cauliflower Soup

I've really been flagging on my Dark Days Challenge meals.  Since the challenge started, I've only been in country for one week.  I was lucky enough to spend my holidays in Belize with my boyfriend, but it means that I didn't do any cooking.  I did, however, do lots of sustainable and organic eating, but there is no photodocumentation of this.  Why?  Well, basically every dinner I had in Belize was had in near darkness.  No joke, it was like romantic lighting taken to the furthest extreme -- we're talking so dark you can hardly tell what you're eating, and you hold the votive candles up to your menu to order.  Absolutely everything I ate was delicious though; whether it was from one of the many resort restaurants we ate at or a local eatery.



Of course, I did get the stomach flu half way through the trip, gloriously on a day that we were traveling.  This really decreased the number of new things I got to try over the next few days, but I did get over it, and was well enough before the end of the trip to resume eating.



Upon returning stateside I promptly ate a hamburger, then some fish tacos, and then I didn't feel so well.  So I decided that my first home-cooked meal for the new year would be something with vegetables, and why not make it a Dark Days challenge?  I also love cauliflower soup, so I turned to this recipe from Pioneer Woman, because who doesn't trust good old PW?  The only cauliflower that my co-op had was orange, so I went with it.  I also forgot to buy celery, and just went with that too.  I prefer a slightly chunky soup and was too lazy to cut my vegetables small, so I ran the soup through my food processor.  The resulting texture was perfect for me, small chunks, still chewable, but definitely soup.  However, some people might have described the resulting appearance or texture as resembling something they were seeing for the second time...



For a creamier texture, you might try using your immersion blender or regular blender (working carefully with the hot liquid, after all).  Want something that doesn't resemble orange goop?  Use white cauliflower and omit the carrots, then puree.  A smooth, creamy, pale cauliflower soup would be worthy of presentation.

Cauliflower Soup, adapted from The Pioneer Woman
servings: 4-6
For serving, a little bit of Parmesan cheese would not go amiss, but I didn't add any, and it is lightly salted and peppered so you can salt and pepper to taste as you serve it.  PW suggests serving over a cup of sour cream, and mixing that into the soup, which would be delicious.  I went for a slightly lower-calorie option, and found this soup to be filling and hearty, yet not too heavy.  Perfect for a winter lunch.

6 tbs butter
1 onion, diced
1 carrot, diced
2 celery stalks, diced
1 1/2 whole cauliflower heads, roughly chopped
2 tbs fresh parsley
1 quart vegetable broth
4 tbs flour
1 1/2 cups milk
3 tsp salt
pepper to taste

Sautee onions, celery, and carrot in 4 tbs of butter until translucent (or lightly browned, if that's your preference).  Add cauliflower heads to the pot, and allow to cook for 10 minutes.  Add parsley and vegetable broth, and simmer liquid for 20 minutes.

Melt 2 tbs butter in another saucepan.  Mix milk and flour in a small bowl or measuring cup, and pour it into the melted butter.  Allow this mixture to cook and thicken, then add to the vegetable soup mixture.  Simmer 15 to 20 minutes, and the resulting soup should thicken up.  At this point you can serve your soup, or puree it, simmer a little longer, and then serve.

Thank you, Martha (extra fattening)

I made mini-quiches recently, and they were incredible. So incredible, in fact, that I didn't even get after photos.  They were devoured almost immediately, and all I'm left with is this:



A photo of them in the oven is all I have to remember their deliciousness.

Now, these aren't exactly the easiest snack I've ever made, but they are incredible. The pastry was absolutely perfect: flaky, crunchy, buttery.  Martha's recipe was perfect, although I did make a small addition: instead of making the pate brise in the food processor I froze the butter and grated it (a la Joy the Baker), gently mixing it into the flour and salt, and then adding water until the dough formed.  It was divine.

I followed Martha on the custard base, and customized the fillings. I had scallions, broccoli, and cheese, in one batch and bacon and cheese in the other.  Cheese, it's essential; you must have it.  I don't know if you could alter the custard base to be a little less fatty (it is heavy on egg yolks and cream), because it had such a wonderful texture and flavour.  I will have to try it next time.

One change I did make is to make the mini quiches in muffin tins instead of mini-muffin tins. To do this I used the whole pate brisee recipe, Martha suggests only using half to make 24 mini-muffins, and had to just about double the filling recipe.  I rolled each of my cutouts a little more after cutting them, because I didn't have a cutout big enough for the muffin tins.  I don't remember how much I altered the baking time though, so go by your gut?

So go forth! Make mini quiches! And maybe just follow Martha's recipe and not mine.

Dark Days: Chicken and Dumplings

This year I'm participating in the Dark Days challenge, which, in short, challenges people to eat Sustainable, Organic, Local, and Ethical (SOLE) food at least once a week throughout the Winter.  I'm participating in this challenge to help me evaluate how economical eating SOLE is as well as to raise my own awareness of the availability of SOLE food. As a graduate student I often consider myself too impoverished to actually eat ethically, but I've never actually evaluated this.  And I will admit, that living in California means that I really do have an easy time of eating SOLE.



My first meal was chicken and dumplings, which I shared with my roommates.  I was curious about how much sputtering the chicken thighs did when I was searing them, it burned me so!  In fact, this made me resent my chicken thighs a little, but in the end their deliciousness won me over.  I got local, organic leeks, celery, carrots, onions, and herbs from my local co-op. The chicken came from there also, and was definitely organic, but potentially just outside the local range.  I used stock I had previously made and canned, and my flour is local.  The milk was leftover from before I started the challenge so... I'm just going to say waste not on that one.



Not only is this meal delicious, but it's easy because you can use your crock pot.  The recipe I based it off of uses the oven, but I was going to be out all afternoon so threw all the ingredients in the crock pot on low.  I also took some liberties with the herbs, but that's what easy meals are for.



I can't actually think of an Australian analogue for chicken and dumplings. I guess chicken stew, which I would happily eat with bread or savory scones (biscuits), although biscuits aren't exactly popular in Australia. I would, of course, slather my bread with butter and use it to soak up the remaining juice at the bottom of my chicken stew.  Dumplings like this absorb the juices and leave you with both a thicker and slightly less juicy end product, which requires less sopping.



Of course, there was the creepy, circular floating fat on top of our bowls.  None of us was going to not eat the meal because of it, but after the leftovers were refrigerated I scraped the cooled fat off before reheating my next few meals.  In the future, I might take the skin off the chicken thighs before searing them.  Or afterwards (and upon second reading of the original recipe, this is what is suggested), since it is nice to have that reserved chicken fat to cook the vegetables in and add to the dumplings.  Either way, I'm going to go for a less fatty end product in the future.

Chicken and Dumplings, adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Stew
5 pounds bone-in, skin-on chicken legs
1 tbs olive oil
2 leeks, white and light greens only, sliced into half-moons
1 large onion, chopped
3 celery stalks, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
6 tbs all purpose flour
1/4 cup dry sherry
3 cups chicken broth (or more to your desired consistency)
1/4 cup whole milk
1 tsp fresh thyme, minced
1 tbs fresh rosemary, minched
3-4 leaves sage (I left them whole and pulled them out at the end with the bay leaves)
2 bay leaves

Dumplings
2 cups unbleached, all purpose flour
1 tbs baking powder
1 tsp table salt
1 cup whole milk
3 tbs reserved chicken fat (or butter, unsalted)

Heat a tablespoon or less of oil in a large dutch oven or skillet, and turn it to medium-high until the oil starts to smoke.  Throw in as many chicken legs as needed to cover the bottom of the dutch oven or skillet in a single layer and allow to sear and brown on each side, about 10 minutes total.  Do this in multiple batches if you have to (as I did).  Remove chicken and put it on a plate, and reserve the remaining chicken fat in the skillet/dutch oven (I poured mine into an old jar, the perfect receptacle for nuclear-hot fat).

Return your pot to the stove and lower the temperature to medium.  Add flour to make a roux, and allow to turn golden brown. Then add sherry to deglaze the pan, and let the mixture simmer and thicken (you may have to lower the stove temperature a bit).

While the roux/sherry is thickening, add your chopped vegetables and whole chicken thighs to the crock pot.  (I just threw them right in there without pulling off the skin, but I advise you to rip that skin right off.)  Add the chicken stock to your sherry mixture, and mix until it thickens a little.  Pour the juice over the chicken and vegetables in the crock pot.  Add your herbs of choice to the crock pot, put the lid on, and stick that baby on low for 4-6 hours.

30-ish minutes before you plan to eat, pull the chicken out of the crock pot and shred it. At this point you can either return it to the crock pot to keep warm, or reserve it to add back in after the dumplings are cooked.

At this time you should also make the dumplings. Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt, and whisk. Add the milk and reserved chicken fat, and mix until a dough forms. Drop golf-ball sized (about a tablespoon) pats of dough into the crock pot liquid, make sure all are submerged, and turn the crock pot to high.  Put the lid on the crock pot and let the dumplings cook for at least 30 minutes. They should double in size and, if you want to check one, look cooked all the way through, without any raw dough left in the center.

Consume, enjoy.

(Upon second reading, this recipe seems surprisingly complex. It's not, really, but for some reason it just took a lot of words to convey it in all its delicious glory.)

Urban Foraging

I live in Davis, a town where a lot of urban foraging is available. There are fruit trees all over the place that yield wonderful results in the summer, community gardens that put out their excess grapes, squash, and herbs when they have then, and the barn where I ride is lined with walnut trees that I have yet to take advantage of, but trust me, I will. (Especially because moldy walnuts are a risk to dogs and horses, so we have to clear them out anyway.)

Since discovering the concept of urban foraging, which I had previously just thought of as quasi-pilfering, I've come to love the idea of it. Discovering Hunter Angler Gardener Cook has made me even more enamored of the idea. Free food that you make into even more delicious things?! The best.

Since reading Hank's post on olive curing, I've been smitten. Olives are incredibly plentiful in Davis, and with a friend I collected three half-gallon jars full of them. Some of them are the biggest olives I've ever seen in my life, and I was so amped to get started. Only the entire town of Davis seemed to be out of lye!

Down to plan B. I threw those olives into half-gallon jars and I've filled them with brine. The brine is approximately 1/4 cup salt and 1/2 cup vinegar per gallon of water.



I topped the jars off with a little bit of cheesecloth to keep all of my olives submerged, and left them in the laundry room to cure. I'm not completely sure what it means to brine olives, but when I've figured it out, I'll be sure to tell you.

Dulce de Leche!

Or, heaven on a spoon.

I've been seeing dulce de leche recipes all over the place, and while I was desperate to make some I was somewhat turned off by the fact that you have to boil the cans for three hours. Or bake the sweetened condensed milk in the over for three hours.  Really, anything that involved three hours I wasn't into.

But then, then, I found this gem of a recipe.  It involves a pressure cooker and mason jars, both of which I have because, well, I am an impulsive consumer. And I make jam.  But the point is that this is an excellent and quick way to make dulce de leche, and if you have access to a pressure cooker and want some dulce de leche, you need to make it.

The first thing to do is get your supplies together. Pressure cooker, rack, can lifters and lid tightener-gripper thing, magnetic lid picker-upper, hot mitts, jars, lids, and rings.




Oh, and your sweetened condensed milk. I think I had ten cans. Perhaps nine.  The next thing I did was fill my measuring cup with the sweetened condensed milk, as much of it as would fit. I wanted to use the measuring cup as an in-between because I didn't think I could successfully get all the sweet nectar out of those cans and into the jars with any accuracy. A spatula is a necessity here, it was very useful for getting every last drop of sweetened condensed milk out of those jars.

I watch hulu while I'm cooking. Don't judge me.

Start filling your jars to about 1/2" headspace.



It's hard to take photos that aren't blurry when you're pouring sweetened condensed milk into jars in poor lighting. It's unfortunate.

When you think you have about 10 minutes of jar-filling left, throw your rings and lids into a pot of boiling water for that time. This will activate the seal on the lids and allow you to actually seal your dulce de leche. This step is not necessary if you're planning on refrigerating your dulce de leche immediately, but I let mine sit on a shelf for a little while*.

When all your jars are filled, put on the lids and screw on the rings. And put them in your pressure cooker.



At this time you can go ahead and fill your pressure cooker with 3 quarts of room temperature water. Do not use hot water, because your jars are cool and your sweetened condensed milk is, at best, at room temperature, and if you fill your pressure cooker with boiling water (like you would when canning jam or jelly), you run the risk of breaking all your jars and making a hot mess of sweetened condensed milk all over the place.

Attach the lid of your pressure cooker and turn on the burner. Vent the pressure cooker for 10 minutes, and when that is done turn it to 10-11 lbs pressure. For my Presto pressure cooker that's the highest setting and it's fine.  Cook it for 20 minutes, maintaining that pressure, and then turn off the heat and allow your pressure canner to de-pressurize for at least 10 minutes. After that, you can help your pressure cooker along by opening the vent, and allowing the steam to leave the cooker. After the steam is all vented once again, you may open your pressure cooker, and you should be greeted by a most magnificent sight!



Seriously. Beautiful.

Now, your dulce de leche and jars and the whole setup there will be nuclear hot at this point. Observe:



One of these things is not like the others. And it's the bubble rising up through the focal can in the second picture. My dulce de leche was literally still boiling at this point, and you do not want to go touching those jars anytime soon.

At some point, you can take them out of the canner and allow them to cool in a draft-free area, but I would recommend waiting at least 30 minutes until you do this.  Try to wait for your dulce de leche to cool completely before opening the cans. I don't know what would happen if you tried to open the cans prematurely, but I can imagine all kinds of nasty hot caramel going everywhere in a worst case scenario.

* The USDA does not actually recommend canning milk products. But, as my source recipe points out, there are a few things about this recipe that make me think it's safe to can dulce de leche this way.
1. The sweetened condensed milk came out of a can in the first place, which is theoretically hermetically sealed, and if your jars are clean and you work quickly you will minimize bacterial exposure. Of course, quickly is all relative in bacterial terms, and the difference between one minute and five is probably negligible. What I mean here is don't let your sweetened condensed milk sit around all day at room temperature while the cat walks on the dining table.
2. There is so much sugar in this stuff that it's practically sterile on its own. Well, not necessarily sterile, but there's a hell of a lot of sugar in there.
3. You can can meat products in a pressure canner when taking the appropriate precautions.

So while I can't necessarily condone this, I can point out that I have, since making those six cans of dulce de leche, given away all of them and nobody has fallen ill. Make your own judgment on this one.

Want the recipe? Visit No Empty Chairs!

vodka infusions, and a new blog

I've toyed for a while with the idea of starting a food blog for myself. I like thinking about food, making food, eating food, and taking photos of food, so I figured it was time for all of that to come together.

We'll start with the vodka infusions I made last week. Of course, I have no idea whether or not they'll be delicious, but they're here, and waiting. Most sets of instructions I could find online said that within a week the infusion would be ready to drink, however other sources suggested that the longer you leave the flavouring in the vodka the more delicious it becomes.

My first problem was finding a container to put my new vodka infusions in. You can buy stoppered containers from Ikea for $3 each, but they're a little bigger than I wanted (at least for my first try), and that would necessitate a trip all the way to Ikea. I settled on these little numbers from Cost Plus, although mine are obviously in a rectangular shape. I liked the smaller size (570 mL each, so you end up with about 500 mL of your flavour of vodka), and that it had a nozzle for pouring the vodka off eventually also (I don't like things that glug too much, it makes it difficult to pour accurately!). I wasn't too worried about the bottles being airtight, since no particulate could get in anyway, and many of my stored bottles of alcohol are hardly airtight anyway.

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I made blueberry, blackberry, and raspberry last week. Today I made two more, one with vanilla and one with coffee, so we'll see how those go also. The blackberry, by far, had the prettiest colour at bottling, but now the blueberry bottle has become a beautiful purple -- the same colour that leaks into blueberry pancakes -- that is so pretty. My blackberries were on the border of overripe and freshly picked, so I didn't bother to add any sugar. However, the blueberries were store bought and the raspberries, though freshly picked were a little tart, so I added just about a teaspoon of sugar to each of those bottles before adding the vodka.

Eventually I'll drink these, although I don't know in what or with whom. Probably for my birthday next month, as they should be good and delicious by then. I'm also hoping to make a bottle with chillies (probably dried, because then I'll get some delicious smoky flavour in there too), and perhaps some other fruit. Oh, and chocolate! There's a great recipe for chocolate liqueur on Epicurious.

Infused Vodka "Recipe"

(This is more of a set of generalised instructions than a recipe, pieced together from various sources on the internet.)

Start with 750 mL of your choice of vodka. Some suggest using a premium grade vodka because it will be the smoothest in the end and have a better overall flavour. Others suggest that anything that is at least triple-distilled is adequate. (I settled for Kirkland vodka, because it is relatively inexpensive and comes in large bottles.) I would say use anything that you're happy to drink yourself.

Add to a seal-able glass bottle or jar 1 cup of your fruit or flavouring of choice. This amount is, of course, variable. If you're adding vanilla to your vodka, use a bean or two, and if using something strongly flavoured like coffee beans, add a little less than a cup. I choose to err on the side of more flavour, because you can always dilute your infusion with a little more vodka of your choice, but it's hard to concentrate a flavour more. For whole fruits, chop them up so plenty of surface area is present, as greater surface area will allow for great flavour infusion. (My current infusions are blackberry, raspberry, blueberry, vanilla, and coffee, but I hope also to make chocolate, lemon, orange, and chili at some point in the near future; other websites suggest making infusions with lemongrass or garlic for more fancy flavours).

Let your jar sit in a dark place for at least a week (for strong flavours, such as berries and vanilla), and up to a month or more (for milder flavours, like lemongrass or melon). You can check on it every once in a while and shake it up, or just set it and forget it and enjoy your end result when you remember again!