Pepper Relish Kicks Off 2012 Canning Season

Red Pepper Relish

After 9/11, I made jam.

Everyone coped with the aftermath of 9/11 in different ways. I made jam. I learned from Laurie Colwin's exquisite essays about Plum Jam and Corn Relish (both in More Home Cooking), and acquired at least three dozen more books about modern and historical canning and preserving.

It would be fair to say that between October 2001 and September 2006 that I was obsessed.I kept an annotated jam log, and those were the years when I had six cases of empty jars in my car "just in case." I won ribbons at the Minnesota State Fair for jams, relish and, of all things, Barbecue Sauce in 2004. Odd indeed, because I don't grill.

Another distraction/obsession

I got distracted from canning in 2006, when I began to paint with watercolor, acquiring an obsession which has taken over my life with nanoscapes (geometric abstractions) and small friends (whimsical creatures who have a show at Hopkins Center for the Arts between June 24 and July 13, 2012. Opening reception June 24 from 4-6 pm, if you're in town).

After 2006, I made just a few things including the memorably rock-hard Carrot Marmalade, Amazing Spiced Cherries (best preserved thing ever), deeply weird Jamaican Banana Jam (all in July 2007), and Ginger-Chili-Jelly (May 2010), which I loved, but the Minnesota State Fair judges found wanting.

My jam chops are rusty, but I'm ready to get back to it. 

First up for 2012 is Red Pepper Relish, an ideal beginning preserving project because it doesn't have to set up like jelly or jam (no pectin), and it imposes the important discipline of soaking and rinsing the vegetables to preserve their crunch. It was also ideal for me because it requires just one cup of sugar, which was all that I had. My version is hot and sweet and crunchy.

Granite Ware 21-1/2 Qt Canner

TOOLS YOU NEED:

Preservation is chemistry, which can cure you of all sorts of ailments or kill you if instead of creating a healthy atmosphere for deliciousness, you make a stew of botulism. Read the directions. Read them again. Follow them to the letter.

1. A 20+ quart kettle with a rack. The Columbian Home 0707-1 Granite Ware 21-1/2-Quart Steel/Porcelain Water-Bath Canner with Rack is less than $20 and is available from Amazon and hardware stores everywhere. 
2. An 8-to-16-quart pan with a lid in which to boil the vegetables. You can spend a little or a lot on this pan, or you can use whatever pan you use to make spaghetti sauce.
3. Labels for your jars. If you like doing preserving, your kitchen will fill up with jars that look quite beautiful but will bring you grief when you can't distinguish between Blueberry-Ginger-Double-Chili (which you like) and Black Raspberry (which you are not too keen on and want to give away.)
4. Tools you need and MUST STERILIZE by boiling in the big canning kettle:.

• jars, lids, and bands, which you MUST sterilize according to package directions
• a wide-mouth funnel
• a large ladle to pour the preserves into the jars 
• a knife to use to pop out the air bubbles 
• a jar lifter which is the right tool for getting hot jars out of boiling water
• a magnetic lifter for getting jar bands out of hot water (not strictly necessary, but fun to use)

RED PEPPER RELISH (freely adapted from Linda J. Amendt's Blue Ribbon Preserves)

8 large bell peppers
8 large red fresno peppers*
2 dried habenero peppers**
2 medium red onions
1-1/2 cup white vinegar
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1 cup sugar
1T Kosher salt

*If red fresnos are unavailable and you don't mind mixing your pepper colors, use a combination of jalapeno and serrano, depending on how much heat you can bear. Otherwise, use a few more sweet red peppers and some reconstituted hot peppers in addition to the habeneros.

** I found Mariposa Farms Dehydrated Habenero in my local grocery. Very handy.

1.  Soak the habenero peppers in hot water for 30 minutes. Drain.

Handy Habeneros

2.  Chop the fresh peppers and onions quite fine. (NOTE: When I chopped by hand in 2003, I wrote "Either wear gloves or never do this again.") Use the food processor on "pulse" and stop before you get to pepper soup. Don't fret if everything isn't the exact, precise, same size. This is preserving, not creating mosaics.

3. Cover the fresh peppers, onions, and soaked habanero peppers with boiling water. Let stand for 10 minutes. Drain. Cover again with hot (not necessarily boiling) water. Let stand for 5 minutes. Drain in a sieve for one hour.

4. In the 8-to-16 quart pan, heat the vinegars, sugar and salt. Bring to a rolling boil. Add the drained vegetables and simmer for 15 minutes. Remove the habanero peppers. EITHER cut up fine and return to the pot or discard. These are very very hot.

5.  Ladle into sterilized jars, leaving 1/2 inch of head space, and process for 15 minutes. Cool cool overnight.

The Sacred Literature of Fresh Tomato Deliciousness: Laurie Colwin

If you do not already own Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking and More Home Cooking, stop now and run to a bookstore, or do a quick-as-a-wink click to Amazon, Jessica's Biscuit or your Kindle. Her essays are priceless; her thoughts on tomatoes and the recipes in the "Tomatoes" chapter of More Home Cooking, should be required reading and eating.

If it were not a copyright infringement, I would reproduce the chapter in its entirety -- but I know better.  She begins:

There are very few things that mankind cannot live without. For centuries, we survived without compact discs, automated bank tellers, iceberg lettuce, and bubble gum-flavored toothpaste, to say nothing of the internal combustion engine.

But life as we know it would be unimaginable without the tomato...

And later one of my favorite sentences in tomato literature: "In summer, the idea is to eat as many tomatoes as you can and enjoy the luxury of getting sick of them."

Two of my three favorite recipes in this chapter are directions for a fresh tomato sandwich slathered with mayo and celery seeds, and for a tomato pie with a double-biscuit pie dough and copious amounts of Cheddar. That she details its origin -- from a friend who found it in a school cookbook and who changed it to make it her own -- reflects her devotion to story telling.  In addition to writing about food,  she was a novelist, and I am not surprised to believe that the animating spirit of all of  her food writing was "What is a recipe without a story?"

In the spirit of story-telling, she gives basic-but-not-definitive instructions for slow-roasted tomatoes, one of the best foods on earth.  Through some delightful trial and no inedible error, I devised a recipe that works in the dead of winter with fresh and canned Roma tomatoes.  If you can bear to turn on your oven for three hours in the summer, you will be rewarded with the Concentrated Tomato Deliciousness that comes of baking chopped fresh tomatoes, some hot peppers, garlic, and olive oil.

Will you share it? I dare not predict.

Never fail fruit (and beet!) torte: Thank you, Marian Burros

After mistakenly recycling a treasured 20-year collection of handwritten recipes, the first one that I recovered and entered into a large, heavy leather-bound journal was Marian Burros’ Plum Torte, which she first published in the New York Times on August 14, 1984.

It was one of the most requested Times recipes – ever -- and she republished it along with some great reader stories and questions in The Best of DeGustibus (1988, Simon and Shuster). Between the torte and the recipe for plum jam in Laurie Colwin’s More Home Cooking (1995, Perennial), Italian Prune plums are market prizes for me now.

But this torte is a treasure because it isn’t a One Trick (fruit) Pony. While it sings with Italian Plums, it welcomes all plums, stone fruits, strawberries, blueberries (fresh and dried), and, especially good news for beet lovers – roasted beets. It is also very good with roasted carrots. Beets and carrots may be surprises in dessert, but, trust me -- they will be welcome surprises.

Among this torte's other sterling qualities are its limited tool requirements (bowl, spoon, small baking pan: no stand mixer required), flexibility (although it calls for two eggs, one will do nicely), multiplicity (double, triple, quadruple to your heart’s content), and the fact that it freezes easily and thaws beautifully.

A note on baking pans: this works in a spring form pan, in 8 or 9# square pans or in 8 or 9# rounds. If you have silicone liners, use them, but butter or spray the silicone and the pans well.

All Purpose Torte (adapted from DeGustibus)

For one 8x8 or 9x9, or two six inch rounds

1 cup sugar
½ cup unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
1 cup flour
½ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp cinnamon
pinch of salt
2 eggs (1 egg will work just fine)
Choice of: 12 plums, pitted and cut in half
10 oz strawberries, trimmed and cut in half
1 pint of blueberries
1 cup of dried blueberries, reconstituted in blueberry vodka or water
2 cups of roasted beets or carrots, cut into bite sized pieces
Topping: 1 T sugar, 2 T lemon juice, dusting of cinnamon

1. Preheat the oven to 350. Butter or line a pan (see note above) with silicone liner.

2. Cream the sugar and butter. Add the egg and mix until the egg is combined.

3. Whisk the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt in a small bowl. Add to the butter and sugar mixture and mix until all of the flour has disappeared.

4. Spread the batter into the prepared pan. Add the fruits or vegetables in rows or circles. If you are using stone fruits, put them in skin side up.

5. Top with sugar, lemon juice and cinnamon.

6. Bake for 1 hour at 350 degrees.

7. IF FREEZING: cool completely, wrap tightly in double plastic and then in double foil. Reheat at 300 for 20 minutes.

ENJOY!

The Delights of Winter Tomatoes - No Kidding

Fresh winter Roma tomatoes taste like the spawn of cardboard and cotton, and not in the vaguely good way you might remember the cotton candy you ate at the circus when you were six.

But with some oil and garlic and some patience, you can create something that guests will fight over – if you decide to share. I can’t imagine how good this would be with Height of Summer Tomatoes – but who would turn on the oven for three hours in July?? Fortunately, winter Romas are cheap, so you can make this often.

******

2 pounds (or more) Roma tomatoes, cut in eighths (sliced the long way)
5-6 cloves garlic, crushed (or ½ tsp dried minced garlic added midway through baking)
¼ cup olive oil
1 tsp red pepper flakes (more or less to your taste)
1/2 red or yellow bell pepper, cut in ½ inch dice (optional)
salt and pepper

1. Heat the oven to 325.
2. Cut the tomatoes. Crush the garlic and dice the bell pepper.
3. Combine the ingredients in a shallow roasting pan. NOTE: If you use a rimmed cookie sheet, you will certainly have to clean the oven.
4. Roast for 3 hours, stirring twice an hour.
5. If you can resist the temptation to eat these tomatoes right out of the pan, leaving no need for creative use of leftovers, you might:

a. Use in place of fresh tomatoes in Mark Bittman’s Tomato Curried Scallops;
b. Layer on a grilled cheese sandwich;
c. Serve alongside any grilled meat or fish;
d. Add to salads;
e. Process with some Italian cheese and serve over pasta;

f. Use as a layer in a terrine.



Other references to food like this:


1. I first read about something like this years ago in Laurie Colwin’s More Home Cooking (HarperCollins, 1993, pp. 111-112). She’d had it at "a very fancy buffet as a side dish...or condiment....Whatever it was, I tried not to disgrace myself by eating enormous quantities of it, but I was not successful. I could not get enough. Finally I snagged a waiter and begged him to tell me what it was." The waiter said to take drain canned plum tomatoes and roast them with garlic and olive oil -- for an undesignated "long time." If you need more reminders that Laurie Colwin was a writer to be reckoned with, she concludes "With a loaf of bread and a bean salad, this makes a dinner I would walk through fire for." 'Nuff said.

2. James Peterson has two wonderful recipes in Vegetables: The Most Authoritative Guide to Buying, Preparing, and Cooking with More Than 300 Recipes (William Morrow and Company, Inc.,1998, pp. 260-261), one for "Slow-baked Cherry Tomatoes with Herbs" and another for "Roasted [fresh] Tomatoes."

3. Google “roasted tomatoes.” Have fun.