The Bitten Word

Apple-Fennel Sauerkraut with Caraway (Part 1)

Martha Stewart Living (October 2011)

Well, it's finally happened: We are rotting vegetables (but with purpose!).

We had never had much interest in fermenting vegetables ourselves, but we had two run-ins with kraut-devotees (kraut-heads?) over the summer. The first was at a farmers market near our house, where North Mountain Pastures sells a variety of fermented vegetables. We sampled and then immediately purchased "shiozuke" -- a jar of fermented vegetables including turnips, radishes, carrots, red onions, garlic, ginger, mustard seed and Himalayan sea salt. We loved the sample we had at the market. We have yet to use it at home, but we think it will be great on its own or with fish. 

Our other kraut-meister was Zach's mom, B, who has been fermenting a traditional sauerkraut in her basement this summer. She packs it in water and brine and then stores it at room temperature for several weeks while it ferments. Clay hasn't made it to Tennessee to sample B's recipe, but Zach had a taste when he was visiting home a couple weeks ago. It was sharp, pungent and incredibly tangy. (Although he's still trying to decide if he'd say it was "good.")

Before this, we had never even considered making kraut ourselves. We're all for pickling and canning and other methods of preservation, but it hadn't really dawned on us to make sauerkraut. 

Well, Martha Stewart Living's October feature on Farmhouse Culture, a small business in Santa Cruz, California, was all the inspiration we needed to get to fermenting.

Freezing Fresh Basil and Other Herbs

After a summer of growing fresh herbs like basil, thyme, rosemary and mint, there's nothing more dispiriting than needing some for a recipe in the winter and being forced to buy a sad little (pricey!) container of herbs at the supermarket. 

Over the last few years, we've learned to preserve some of our herbs before the frost gets them, using very simple methods that keep the herbs recipe-ready in our freezer. 

Recently, our basil plants -- much like 70's-era Aerosmith, or, come to think of it, current-day Aerosmith -- were in a serious need of a trim. We took the shears to them, used our usual method and stowed them in the freezer.  

Here's what we did: 

Canning Tomatoes How-To: Tomatoes Packed in Water

We had quite an adventure last week in canning our tomatoes. Though we've posted a video detailing that (very, very long) night, we thought some readers might like to see a step-by-step process of how we did it, and what we used.

The biggest change between this year's canning and our previous efforts is a change in method. Two years ago, we used a hot-pack method, meaning that the tomatoes themselves were cooked prior to being placed in the jars.

This year, we opted to skip that step and do a raw-pack method, meaning that the tomatoes go into the jars raw, and boiling water is then added.  It was this method (and skipping the cooking step) that allowed us to do 90 pounds of tomatoes in 7 hours. If we had done the cooking step, it likely would have taken us all night to complete the canning process.

So come along on our raw-pack canning adventure! At the bottom of this post, you'll find the full recipe that we used, along with the video of our rollicking night, in case you missed it earlier. And between here and there, you'll find a bunch of photos that show each step of the way.

Tomato Time -- The Movie

Hi, all!

Well, as promised, we're reporting in on our experience last week of canning tomatoes. We'll have an additional post up tomorrow that walks you through the whole process.

But we also wanted to share this video we made of the whole night. We didn't start the canning until after work one night last week.  So the process stretched into the wee small hours of the morning. Let's just say, things got a little kooky.

Anyway, enjoy!

Tomato Time!

What have we gotten ourselves into?!

Our CSA put tomatoes on their U-pick list, meaning shareholders can pick as many as they want. So this morning at 5:30, we rented a car and drove out to the farm.

Our haul? A full 90 pounds of tomatoes! (Yes, we weighed them.) 

We're going to can them tonight when we get home from work. But we're planning to use a different method from one we used the last time we canned tomatoes.

Stay tuned!

One more pick of our 'mater haul after the jump.

Meyer Lemon Ginger Marmalade

For much of April, we were obsessed with the thought of making the wonderfully elegant-looking Meyer Lemon Crepe Cake on the cover of Martha Stewart Living. We initially thought that we'd make it for an Easter Brunch, but because we were training a 10-mile race the following weekend, a huge holiday brunch seemed like a bad idea.

And after that, we really just couldn't come up with a reason to make the crepe cake. After all, that cake isn't a mid-week, just-throw-it-all-together kind of affair. It looks like the kind of cake you'd serve following an entrée of crustless cucumber sandwiches. In anticipation of making the cake, however, we had already bought a big bag of Meyer lemons. 

Meyer lemons were something we'd actually never purchased before. If you're not familiar, a Meyer is a variety of lemon that is thought to be a cross between a lemon and an orange. They have a yellow-orange color and aren't quite as tart as regular lemons. 

There we were, crepe cake-less and with lemons that were quickly approaching their prime.

So, what to do when life hands you Meyer lemons?

Make marmalade!

Easy Oven-Roasted Tomato Sauce

A Bitten Word Recipe

As you've no doubt read in countless places, there's a tomato shortage in this area, due to Paula Abdul leaving American Idol, or something like that.

Though we're definitely seeing fewer tomatoes this year in our CSA share and at our local farmers market, we haven't exactly been tomato-less. Last week, for instance, we got six pounds of tomatoes in our share (though we had opted for a double share that week). 

Because we were going out of town, we knew we couldn't get through all six pounds in a week.  But we knew exactly what we'd do with them.

Pickled Watermelon Rind: UPDATED

 

UPDATE: Check out our latest attempt at Pickled Watermelon Rind -- along with some great ideas for how to use it.

 

As we've mentioned many times before, we both grew up in the South, and we're familiar with just about all the Southern staples you can think of.

But there's one Dixie delicacy we'd never tried: pickled watermelon rind.

After we cut up a melon for our Tequila-Soaked Watermelon Wedges, we hated to throw the rind away. So we decided it would be the perfect chance to try our hand at pickling it.

Freezer Jam

As regular readers of The Bitten Word know well, we're both from the South. We  grew up with mothers or grandmothers who would "put up" (as in, preserve) all kinds of food in the grand Southern tradition, from beans and squash and tomatoes to all manner of fruit preserves and jellies.

But it took a trip to Maine before we had freezer jam.

It was the summer of 2007, and the two of us took a little trip to Maine to visit our friends Dan and Wendy, a terrific couple that Clay had known from college. We flew into Boston, rented a car, and leisurely made our way up the New England coast, stopping frequently for all kinds of culinary treats -- lobster rolls, Whoopee pies, Moxie cola.

Dan and Wendy's house, outside the adorable town of Belfast, is a picturesque place -- long and low, covered in white clapboard, with a large barn just off the house.  The broad green lawn behind the house stretches down to a small, cold swimming pond before getting lost in a tangle of Maine woods. 

Our first morning there, we sat on Dan and Wendy's back deck, drinking coffee and basking in the warm morning sun. Wendy brought out a lovely, simple breakfast: English muffins and a jar of bright red strawberry freezer jam.

The idyllic setting already felt like a dream. The jam made it feel like Heaven.

Canning Tomatoes

As we've mentioned before, we both grew up around relatives who canned vegetables every summer. Still, we'd never done it ourselves, and the thought of it seemed daunting.

But when our CSA farm recently offered unlimited U-pick tomatoes, we decided it was high time to learn.

So one day last week, we got up early and Zipcar'd out to the farm, a beautiful rural plot that's actually only about 15 miles out of D.C. 

By 8 a.m., we were standing amid the cool tomato vines, inhaling their spicy, pungent scent. As the morning fog burned off and a rooster crowed from the barn, we plucked impossibly perfect ripe orbs -- pink, red, orange and purple -- from the vines.

It was a pastoral, idyllic morning -- and it belied the frantic bloodbath waiting for us at home.