Simplest Dill Pickles

To me, July means the opening of pickle making season. The Valley has many farms that produce abundant first-rate pickling cucumbers. My garden produces plenty of dill and garlic. (Hopefully this year, I will have some of my own home grown cukes as well.) Pickles are the natural result of all of these riches.

I have been making a variations on a basic dill cucumber pickle recipe for many years. It all started when we had to go gluten-free in our kitchen. We missed good vinegary pickles, so I resolved to make them myself. Like so many people, I thought this was going to be a hard thing to do. I soon learned that with quality ingredients, it’s pretty easy to make good pickles. You also don’t have to make 3 dozen quarts at once. I have a routine down for 4-6 quarts at a time, which works out well. I do this a few times while cucumbers are locally available, and in this way have a nice supply for the year.
Pickling is associated with canning. Canning involves processing the caning jars full of pickles or what have you in hot water to kill any microbes that will spoil your food under non-refrigerated storage. Processing the pickles freaks a lot of people out and I was definitely one of them (I was haunted by vague unsettling visions of dangerous pressure cookers.) It can also go badly if you do it too long, resulting in mushy pickles, which are pointless. The good news is, there are many types of pickles you do not have to process, as long as you keep them refrigerated. I do not process these pickles in hot water after I make them. Once the jars are cooled, they go right in the fridge, where they will keep for over a year and still be quite tasty.

I’m not a pickling expert. Quite frankly, my experiments beyond my basic dill pickle recipe have been mediocre at best (and sometimes just awful). However, I have hope that this summer’s experiments will work out better. I have a new guide: The Joy of Pickling by Linda Ziedrich. This revised edition came out this past spring. In addition to covering the basics, it is an excellent overview of all sorts of different types of pickles from many cultures. She conveniently includes many recipes on a smaller scale, so you can just make a couple of quarts of something, or even reduce her recipes to make just one quart if you like.

Pickle Essentials

Simplest Dill Pickles

6 quart sized canning jars (aka Ball jars or Mason jars) with screw on lids, spotlessly clean and scalded (dunked in boiling water)

6 lbs of freshly harvested pickling cucumbers no larger than 2.5 inches, scrubbed clean,(you really do need to look for cucumbers labeled for pickling for the best results)

Ice water to cover the cukes and a container to hold it all ( I use a cooler)

1 garlic head (about 8-12 cloves) peeled and chopped course

12 large dill heads, plus all of the sprigs of dill removed from the stalks, divided into 4 equal portions

6 tbs of pickling spice (1 scant tbs for each jar). If the pickling spice does not include hot peppers, I like to add half a small dried hot pepper (such as arbol) to each jar as well. Sometimes I make my own pickling spice. I can’t give exact measurements, but I can tell you the order by proportion, starting with the largest amount: yellow mustard seed, dill seed, whole coriander,  whole peppercorns, celery seed, dried hot pepper, whole allspice, whole cloves, whole cinnamon stick (cut in chunks).

3 1/2 cups of cider vinegar (Get the best quality that you can find — it makes a difference whether you use the good stuff instead of the generic. Some orchards that make apple cider also make excellent cider vinegar. Lately, I like the vinegar made by Dwight Miller Orchards, just up the road in Vermont.)

6 cups of water–filtered is best

1/2 cup pickling salt (Picking salt is a finely granulated plain salt that has none of the added iodine or stabilizers that table salt has. These additives will form a whitish sediment in your pickles that won’t spoil them, but will look funky. )

Approximately 24 hours before you want to make your pickles, slice about 1/16 inch off the ends of each cuke and put in ice water. Add ice as needed during the 24 hours to keep cold. If you use a cooler, you’ll probably only have to add it once. This step really is the secret to crispy, full flavored pickles, don’t skip it. I am sure there is some scientific explanation for this.

Bring vinegar, water and salt to a boil, stir to make sure salt is dissolved. Keep warm over med heat, covered. While it’s boiling, put one dill head, dill sprigs portion, garlic portion and spice portion in each jar. Then you can slice your cukes into spears or halves as you like.  Pack cucumber vertically in each jar, as many as will fit in one layer. Don’t be afraid to squeeze them in, they will shrink a bit as they sit in the brine. Top with another dill head.

Ready for the brine

I like to put the jars on a cooling rack, because they do get hot when you add the brine. Ladle the hot brine into each jar to cover the contents, but only as far as the bottom of the ring on top of the jar.

Practically Pickles Already

Top with screw on lids and let cool for about 10 minutes. I suggest writing the date on top with a sharpie, plus anything else you want to remember about the batch.  Allow to cool completely before refrigerating. Wait at least 2 weeks before eating for best flavor. The flavor gets better with time.

Dated and ready for the fridge

Tempeh for a Big Salad

June and early July mean harvesting lots of lettuce and spicy greens from the garden. I do make a lot of simple green salads with meals. However, I really enjoy having garden fresh greens to use in one of my favorite meal concepts “the Big Salad.” I put together mixes of tofu or tempeh, cheese, cooked veggies, raw veggies, beans, grains and herbs with the greens and suitable dressing for a complete and delicious meal. The trick is not to use too many things, or else the greens get lost. You also want to choose things that will harmonize. For example, vegetables cooked in with Asian style seasonings (soy sauce, ginger and sesame oil) might not go so well with balsamic vinaigrette and sun dried tomatoes. Within these basic guidelines, anything goes!

Spicy Greens

I first discovered the Big Salad concept about 15 years ago in the cookbook that really got me going on creative vegetarian cooking “The American Vegetarian” by Marylin Diamond. I’ve been playing around with it ever since. In the winter, when salad greens are mediocre, it helps enhance that dose of fresh greens that we need. In the spring and early summer when the greens are great, it makes for a delicious meal. I look forward to the “salad days” all year.

Lately, I’ve been inspired anew by the eating at the Candle Cafe and by their cookbook. Their fabulous salads and their recipes reminded me of a technique I had sort of forgotten about: marinating tofu and tempeh. Tempeh and tofu treated this way make a great component to a big salad.

Here is one flavorful way that I like to prepare tempeh to use in these salads.

Tempeh for a Big Salad

This is more than you need for a big salad for two, but it is so good as leftovers it is worth it to make extra.

2 8 oz packages of tempeh

1/2 cup of soy sauce, tamari or bragg’s liquid aminos

2/3 cup of apple juice

1/4 cup of agave syrup, or honey or other sweetner

4 tbs of chopped garlic

3 tbs of grated ginger

1 tsp dried chile flakes

fresh ground pepper to taste

Grated Ginger

Combine all of the ingredients except the tempeh in a shallow baking dish or other container. This is your marinade. Cut each package of tempeh into 4 equal pieces and place into the marinade.

You can now do a couple of different things with this. Both methods make for flavorful tempeh.

A. If you made this in a baking dish, you can immediately put the whole thing into a 350 degree oven and bake for one hour, cool slightly and slice for salad.

B. Leave the tempeh in it’s marinade for a couple of hours or overnight. You can then bake the whole thing as above. You can also take the tempeh out of it’s marinade, slice it and saute until slightly browned.

Marinating Tempeh

The big salad pictorial continues here.

The Tangy Harvest Part 2: Rhubarb Crisp

Rhubarb, straight from the garden

Rhubarb is another early treat from the garden that I love for its strong acidic taste. I never tasted it until I was an adult and a neighbor gave me some of their surplus. Not knowing what to do with it, I looked through my cookbooks and came up with a recipe for rhubarb crisp. It became an instant classic in our kitchen.

Oddly enough, I have not yet planted it in my garden. Somehow, through the generosity of other gardeners, I always have enough, and I forget to get crowns for planting in early spring. Maybe next year.

At this point, I can pull this dish together without looking at a cookbook and so I just eyeball everything. I’ve done my best on the measurements.

Rhubarb Crisp

4 cups or so of sliced rhubarb

1 tbs of tapico flour or cornstarch

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 to 1 1/2 cups of sweetener ( I like a combo of rice syrup and agave or honey)

1 cup of gluten free flour mix

3/4 cup of date sugar

1/8 tsp of salt

3/4 cup of butter, cold, and cut into 10 pieces

3/4 cup crushed corn flakes, fruit juice sweetened

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

When you are preparing the rhubarb, keep in mind that many of the stalks have a skin that is rather fibrous and is best removed, similar to the way you remove the strings from a celery stalk by pulling them away with the edge of your knife. If you have very slender stalks it may not be necessary, but the very large stalks from mature plants seem to always have it.

Prepping the rhubarb

Place the sliced rhubarb in a 9×13 glass baking dish or pan of your choice. Sprinkle with the tapioca flour and toss to coat. Sprinkle with cinnamon and the sweetener and toss again to coat.

Sweetened Rhubarb

Place the flour, date sugar and salt in a food processor and pulse a few times to mix. Add the butter, and pulse until the butter in mixed into small pieces. Add the crushed corn flakes and pulse a few times to combine. (If you don’t have a food processor, you can mix the flour and sugar together in a bowl and cut in the butter. Then stir in the cereal.) Spread this topping over the rhubarb.

Ready for the oven

Bake at 350 for about 40 minutes (check after 30 minutes). The top should be browned and the filling bubbly.

Yummy

The Tangy Harvest Part 1: Sorrel Soup

Sorrel

I have a clump of sorrel in my herb garden. It’s the first thing I get to harvest and eat in any quantity each year and it keeps on producing all season. It has a tangy  flavor that I really enjoy. Over the course of the summer, I mix it in with sauted greens, salads and sauces. My annual tradition is to make that first big bunch into sorrel soup. I go for the most basic version of this soup, which showcases the flavor of the sorrel. I’ve tried making a vegan version with oil and almond milk instead of butter and cream, but I really find that I like the dairy version best.

Sorrel Soup

Sorrel Soup

2tbs of butter

2 cups of veggie broth, warmed

3-4 cups of sorrel leaves, washed, any really tough stems removed and coarsely chopped

2 cups of cream or half and half (good fresh cream will be noticed here)

salt and pepper to taste

Melt the butter in a large pot over medium high heat. Add the sorrel and toss to coat. Cook while stirring until it starts to wilt. It turns from bright green to a greenish brown. Stir in the broth and cook over medium for 5 minutes. Cool slightly and puree in blender, food processor or with an immersion blender. Stir in the cream and add salt and pepper to taste. Cook on medium until heated through (do not boil). Taste and adjust seasonings.

that sorrel soup sure was good

Spinach Feta Pizza

I love pizza. More accurately I love good pizza. I’m a pizza snob, I admit it. I come from “Pizza Belt North” (or Apizza as they call it there sometimes). After eating some of the best pizza anywhere in my formative years, I have no patience for frozen or chain store pizza imposters. I’ll have no papas, no huts, no pizzas that come with free cinnamon sticks—none of it.

When we started cooking gluten free, one of the things we missed was pizza. There are commercially available mixes and ready made crusts for the gluten free crowd, but honestly they are mediocre at best. I like a thin crispy crust pizza, just slightly chewy, not all doughy and soggy or altogether too thick.

After much trial and error, I have settled on the yeast pizza crust recipe that I based on the one in The Gluten-Free Gourmet Bakes Bread. I’ve tinkered with it a bit to suit our tastes. I substitute brown rice flour for white rice flour because I like the flavor and the nutritional value. I also do not use unflavored gelatin or egg replacer, I use soya powder, which adds the protein that the gelatin would have. I also skip the sugar. I do however mix up the dry ingredients in a large enough batch to make a couple of rounds of pizzas. You don’t have to, but it is convenient.

The crust starts out a lot different than wheat crust. It’s very wet, you can’t knead it by hand, it’s standing mixer all the way on this one, unless you have a team of very strong armed people standing by to help mixing. You cannot cook it on a pizza stone. It has to be cooked in a pan, and I highly recommend using a layer of parchment paper to ensure clean release. My pans that I use for the recipe below have a cooking surface of 10″ wide by 15″ long. You can use larger pans, if that is what you have, but the crust will not fill the pan. Even with minimal topping, you have to bake it before you top it until it turns golden to avoid soggy crust. The end result is delicious and indiscernible from regular wheat crust.

For toppings I experiment and improvise, but there are a few clear favorites:

1. Mushroom pizza with a very basic but well-laced -with -garlic marinara
2. Pesto broccoli pizza based on one served at Northampton institution Joe’s Cafe
3. Good quality Mozzarella, Parmesan and Gorgonzola cheeses with lot of slivered garlic
4. Spinach, feta, sundried tomato, and kalmata olive ( a combination sometimes referred to as “Florentine”).

Topping possibilities are endless. The main thing to remember is to keep any wet sauces to a minimum and make sure your other toppings are as dry as possible. I think pre cooking some vegetable toppings is preferable (mushrooms, spinach, broccoli) while others are best left raw (thin slices of red onion, peppers). Quality ingredients are always important for anything you cook and pizza is no exception. Cheapo processed cheese makes for crumby pizza. It’s also really best to shred/grate it yourself. Pre shredded cheese tends to loose flavor and dry out while it sits around in its package and sometimes has preservatives that detract from taste.

It is usually best to make your sauce and cook any veggies before you start the crust. Then you can slice raw veggies and shred your cheese while the crust rests and bakes. However, the first few times you make this, you might want to get all of the toppings ready first, and then make the crust until you get a good sense of the timing involved.

Spinach!

Spinach, feta, sundried tomato, and kalmata olive pizza

CRUST MIX

• 4 cups brown rice flour
• 2 cups tapioca flour
• 3 tbls xanthan gum
• 4 tbls soya powder (not soy flour, soy powder for baking)

Mix all dry ingredients together into a container with a tight light. Shake until well combined. This makes about six cups of pizza crust mix, enough for 4 medium sized pizzas.

CRUST

dry ingredients

• 3 cups of pizza crust mix (see above)
• 1/3 cup nonfat dry milk powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 packet dry yeast granules

wet ingredients

• 4 egg whites
• 3 tbs plus 1 tsp olive oil (plus extra for the pans)
• 1 tsp vinegar (I usually use cider vinegar, any will do)
• 1 1/2 cups, approximately of warm water (hot from the tap is fine
• cornmeal to dust pans (optional)

TOPPINGS

• 2 to 2 1/2 cups of cooked spinach (or frozen and thawed) squeezed as dry as possible in a clean kitchen towel, and chopped medium
• 1 cup of sun dried tomatoes, soaked in hot water for 30 minutes or so until reconstituted, drained and patted dry and chopped medium
• 10-12 kalamata olives, pitted and chopped medium
• 3 medium cloves of garlic, sliced thin (or to taste). I usually blanch the garlic for 30 seconds and drain and cool before slicing, this keeps a nice garlic flavor without total garlic overload
• 6 -8 oz of part skim mozzarella shredded
• 6-8 oz of feta cheese

1. Preheat your oven to 400. Adjust the racks to the two middle positions.
2. Blend dry ingredients together in a bowl and set aside.
3. In the bowl for your mixer, mix the wet ingredients and 1 cup of the water. Turn the mixer on low, and add the dry ingredients, about 1/3 cup at a time, mixing for a few seconds between additions. Add more water if you need it to have a firm dough that can be spread (you might not need all of the water). Once all of the dry ingredients have been added, beat on high for 3 minutes.
4. While the dough beats, prepare your pans. Line two cookie sheets or baking pans with parchment paper, brush with a little olive oil, and if you like dust with some cornmeal.
5. Grab a rubber spatula and use it to dump the dough out as evenly as possible between the two cookie sheets. Spread out into a thin layer over most of the pan, leaving a half inch or so from the edges.
   

   GF pizza crust ready for the oven

6. Let the crust rest for 10 minutes while you make sure you’ve turned the oven to 400 and work on preparing your toppings.
7. Place the untopped crusts in the oven and bake for 7 minutes. Rotate the pizzas from top rack to bottom rack and bottom to top and bake another 7 minutes until golden.
   

   Baked GF Crust

8. Top with spinach, tomatoes, olives and garlic. Crumble feta over the veggies and then sprinkle the mozzarella over the feta. Bake six minutes, rotate the trays again and bake another six minutes. Keep checking every couple of minutes after that until the top pizza starts to brown. You’ll probably need to move the bottom one up to the top rack and let it cook a little more til it browns.
   

   Pass the crushed red pepper

My new fave veggie burgers

I’ve been making veggie burgers for a long time. I’ve only posted one of my recipes so far, because I try to make recipes a bunch of time before I post.

Trouble is, I have a day job and a life, so sometimes that stuff gets in the way.

I generally make some sort of veggie burger on a weekly basis. In the case of veggie burgers, I’ve got to admit, I’ve been completely distracted by this recipe by Heidi Swanson. Her website is incredible, if you are a vegetarian cook you should be looking at it.

Here is her Ultimate Veggie Burger recipe. I’ve decided it’s my total fave veggie burger recipe, other than some really specific stuff dependent on seasonal garden fresh items that I’ll blog about in spring and summer.

Normally, I have a lot of things to say about other people’s recipes and I pick them apart. This is recipe is perfect how it is. I don’t have anything to add.

I also was unable to take any pictures today, so I will let the picture on her website stand as the best one.

Sopa Seca

I first encountered this recipe in the Cook’s Illustrated cookbook The Quick Recipe. This has become one of our favorite dishes. Sopa Seca is essentially a Mexican casserole, based on pasta or sometimes rice. The pasta or the rice is browned before being combined with liquid and other ingredients and baked.

The recipe we like is made with pasta. Traditionally, the pasta used is fideo, a coiled vermicelli (sometimes fideo also refers to a dish similar to sopa seca.) I just use gluten free spaghetti. Tinkyada is the best brand that I have found.

The browning of the pasta was a surprising technique to me at first. (It also freaks out anyone who may be in the kitchen with you when you are cooking). It adds a rich nutty flavor that stands up nicely to the other strong flavors in the dish.

Browning the pasta

It works best to brown the pasta a handful at a time, so that you have more control. It can go from brown to burnt quickly. As each batch browns, transfer it to a baking dish.

All the browned pasta

Once all of the pasta is browned, you can use the same skillet to saute the onions and spices (cumin and chipotles). After a few minutes I add beans and veggies (in this case spinach and shredded zucchini, or sometimes broccoli chopped small) to make this a one dish meal. Then in goes the liquid that will cook the pasta, in my case veggie broth and the liquid from the tomatoes. Once it’s come up to bubbling, carefully pour the whole thing over the browned pasta.

Black beans, onions, garlic, chipotles, cumin, tomatoes, and shredded zuccini

You just have to have faith when you brown the pasta in the first step, and you just have to hang in there for the next part as well. When you pour the broth and veggies over the pasta, all of the veggies and the beans just kind of sit on top of the still hard noodles. It really doesn’t seem like it’s going to work at all.

The hot onion bean and tomato mixture goes over the noodles

After it’s been in the oven for 15 minutes or so, the liquid is absorbed by the noodles. When you give it a stir, you can see that the noodles are soft.

The pasta has cooked

Once the pasta has softened, you top the whole thing with some shredded cheddar or Monterey jack (pepper jack if you fell like having a really spicy dish), and return it to the oven for another five minutes. Creamy, spicy and delicious, I like this with some cilantro, avocado, a little sour cream and a big squeeze of lime juice. Make a big batch, it reheats nicely.

Baked Manicotti

One of our favorite recipes in my household is Baked Manicotti. Sheets of fresh pasta are rolled around a ricotta and mozzarella filling, nestled in a dish, slathered with a simple tomato sauce and baked until bubbly. Simple? Yes. However, I’ll borrow an expression from someone I know, this stuff is “so good that you could hurt yourself”.

After some discussion of the possibilities, we decided to make this for our Christmas dinner, knowing full well that there would be leftovers to enjoy the next day; Christmas all over again.

I had no experience with this dish until the January/February 2007 issue of Cook’s Illustrated. There I read a recipe for making baked manicotti that bypassed stuffing the traditional manicotti pasta tube. I was immediately intrigued by this recipe. The author describe a tedious, if not disastrous, process of stuffing pre-shaped pasta tubes, and the subsequent epiphany of rolling the filling inside pasta sheets. It sounded like something that would function like a lasagna, but might actually be a bit easier to pull together. The first time I tried it, we were hooked.

Now I did make one major variation from the recipe as published. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, my husband can’t eat wheat. Therefore the pasta recommended in the recipe was not an option. The recipe calls for using no-boil lasagna noodles, Ronzoni being CI’s favorite brand. The noodles are soaked briefly, drained and then filled and rolled to create the manicotti tubes. A little further investigation revealed that the no-boil noodles are thinner than the regular noodles. I thought, “oh well we can make our own pasta in sheets for this.”

Kneading the pasta dough

So you might be rolling your eyes and saying “oh yeah, that’s what you thought, I’m so sure.” Look, we had been making our own pasta for years prior to the discovery that we can’t use wheat flour in our kitchen. We were very happy to discover that we could just as easily make fresh pasta from flours other than wheat. Again, we owe a debt of gratitude to the late Bette Hagman for her recipe for bean flour pasta in her book The Gluten Free Gourmet. The bean flour recommended in the recipe is garfava flour, however straight garbanzo flour works well also (both are readily available at health food stores and some supermarkets.) This pasta has a wonderful flavor, and when cooked is as light as a feather. (If you have not ever tasted fresh pasta, wheat or gluten free, and by fresh I mean pasta that has not been dried for packaging, you really need to try it. It’s light and airy and just a whole different experience that the dried stuff.) I should think any traditional Italian fresh pasta recipe would work for this manicotti recipe, as would purchased ready made fresh pasta sheets

It’s not a work day recipe, as far as I’m concerned. Making pasta isn’t hard, but it is specific, and it does take some time, but not hours and hours. My husband Chris has turned out to be the pasta making master in the family, and it’s his hands in the pictures that you see making the pasta. Rolling the dough out for this recipe could be accomplished with a rolling pin, since no special shapes are required other than something at least vaguely rectangular. We do have a hand crank pasta machine, and it does make rolling out easier, faster and more consistent. (Ours is the Al Dente brand, which is not necessarily the highest rated, but it has served us well for about 5 years). There are electric ones out there, as well as attachments for the Kitchenaid standing mixer, but I don’t know anything about them.

Rolling out the pasta I

Rolling out the pasta II

Ready to be manicotti

Alright, so enough already about the pasta. The sauce is a super basic tomato sauce flavored with garlic, red pepper flakes and olive oil. Normally fresh basil and parsley are included, but it is December in New England, and the fresh parsley and basil that was in the market when I was shopping was dismally substandard, so I decided to skip them both. (I certainly could have tried going round to some other stores, but I just wanted to go home.) I do have dried basil from the plants that were in my garden this past summer, so it still has a good amount of flavor. The ricotta filling is similar to what you would find in a lasagna recipe, mixed with eggs, salt and pepper, Parmesan cheese, basil (and normally fresh parsley, but as I mentioned, it was a no go).

Like any simple recipe the quality of ingredients is imperative. Good ricotta is a wonderful thing. Bad ricotta is like chalky cottage cheese–your basic nightmare. Please remember, it is a major player in this particular recipe. Ricotta is traditionally made from the whey leftover from making Romano. There are recipes out there for making your own ricotta. If you’ve gotten in to making your own fresh cheeses, such as paneer, this is something to consider. If like most of us you’re buying your ricotta, don’t cheap out. If you can get hold of some local artesian stuff at your farmer’s market, or if your local Italian market makes their own, by all means go with that. Please please please if you are shopping for ricotta in the supermarket, buy Calabro. (Whole Foods may be the only national chain in the US that carries it; I’ll look into it more.) Pester your supermarket people to carry it if they don’t. I’m not just plugging these guys because I’m originally from CT, where they are based. I’m not going to name names, but all of the other major national brands have gums and stabilizers,which, despite lengthening their shelf life, just make them taste terrible. Period. I’m not even of Italian ethnic heritage and I understand this.

I have similar opinions about Parmesan cheese, but I am going to refrain from carrying on about them here.

Making the pasta is the most involved part. You can have the sauce bubbling while you mix up the filling. Then, once your pasta sheets are rolled out and cut to size, you’re ready to go.

Ready to be rolled

Nestled in, ready for the sauce and the oven

I’m pushing it a bit by crowding them in, but I did not want to start another pan.

Sauced

After 40 minutes or so in the oven, you have an incredible pasta experience. All you need to round out the meal is a simple salad.

It fell apart a bit while serving, but no one cared.

The photos are here.

Spiced Nuts

Over the last few years I’ve tried to make holiday gifts for anyone I’d like to give a small gift to (coworkers etc). Some years have been more successful than others to be sure. I’ve decided that it works out best when I pick one thing to make for everyone. This year I decided on a food gift. I wanted something foolproof. After a thumbing through my cookbooks and thinking about it for a while, I decided on Spiced Nuts. In one of my cookbooks I had found the index card that I had scribbled the recipe on after tasting the ones that someone else made years before. Since then, I make them each year around the holidays as a treat for us to have at home. They are pretty easy to make and are delicious, and much much better than anything similar that you could buy. Obviously, this gift does not work for people with nut allergies or for vegans (egg whites are involved).

Spiced Nuts

I am going to start taking more about the costs of ingredients. I think people might be interested, and it will be useful for me to think about. Here is what I bought for this project:

$65.08 for 8.39 lbs of nuts
pecans $18.35 (2.45 lbs @ 7.49/lb)
cashew pieces $16.01 (3.82 @4.19/lb
almonds $30.72 (2.12 @14.49/lb)

$2 worth of spices, (cardamom, ginger, cinnamon, coriander)also purchased in bulk. This is an educated guess, since I purchased quantities larger than I needed for this recipe for other uses, but it definitely wasn’t more than this.

$6 worth of sweetners ( I used regular sugar for some batches, date sugar for others, as some people would rather not eat sugar.)

$2.69 worth of eggs ( I used the better part of a dozen egg whites. I was able to use most of the yolks for other baking, but I’m just counting it here as a dozen.)

$9.75 (9.29 +tax) for 1 doz. quart canning jars

$10 on ribbons etc (mostly from the dollar store but I did decorate a few with some beautiful high end ribbon, but frankly the curly ribbon dollar store stuff came together better)

$95.52 was the total, which actually does seem like a lot for some nuts. But, this breaks down to $7.96 per gift (one gift=one jar), plus an entire Saturday afternoon to make (my free time = priceless). This works with my budget and my rhetoric.

I made 12 quart jars full. This was enough for what I needed, plus a couple extra just in case, that we will be only too happy to eat at home, if I don’t give them away.

Recipes abound for this stuff. I had my original recipe on my index card, which appears to be Martha Stewart’s recipe. A handful of recipes pop up on Epicurious. Turns out Alton Brown had the same idea (and there are plenty of recipes from the FoodTV crew.) The Splendid Table has another take. Seems like most of the usual recipe sites pop up in the results when you Google it. I landed on a version similar to my index card, with a few pointer’s from a sidebar in Cook’s Country (subscription needed) from December 2007.

I went with an egg white version rather than a butter version. I find the whole butter method a bit greasy after these things sit around (oh but for eating while still warm, it is divine.) I went with the oven method, because it would be easier to make a lot. I chose a combo of cinnamon, ginger, cardamom and coriander for the flavors. I picked my three favorite nuts pecans, almonds and cashews to blend together, although just pecans would also be a good choice.

Fresh nuts are essential to this recipe. I cannot emphasize this enough. The best nuts around here come from the bulk bins at local health food stores. The turn around of product is high and the quality control good. An added bonus is that you can by exactly what you will use in a relatively short amount of time (a few months max, refrigerated if possible). Nuts are oily and therefore will go rancid quickly in your cabinet (or on a shelf in the market), it’s a fact of life. They may not have spoiled enough to make you sick, but they will not taste as they should.

The same is true for the spices. I bought mine in bulk at the same time as the nuts. They were so fresh that their aroma filled the car on the way home. That said, the quantity of spice in the recipe is very important. You want enough so that the flavor comes through nicely, but not so much that it’s like eating potpourri. 8 teaspoons total was a good amount for each two pounds of nuts. The flavor was a bit strong fresh out of the oven, but mellowed a bit after the nuts cooled.

As far as technique is concerned a couple of key things stood out. First, draining the nuts for a few minutes after tossing them with the egg white and before tossing them with the sugar and spice made a big difference in the final result (not draining meant some of the nuts were surrounded by a thin crusty collar of baked egg white). Second, lining the baking sheets with parchment paper was absolutely essential–other wise the nuts would stick, even to a nonstick pan. The parchment also made it possible to use the same pans for each batch of the whole 8+ pounds (I only own three baking sheets–if I’d had to clean and dry them each time, I’d still be making the nuts instead of writing about it.) Third, a fairly cool oven toasts the nuts nicely, without there being danger of going from toasted to burnt in an instant as is the case with a hot oven. 300 degrees was just right, and I used an oven thermometer to check that 300 on the dial meant 300 in the oven (a slight adjustment was necessary).

After the nuts had cooled completely, I filled the jars. During the baking time of a couple of the batches, I had cut out circles of wrapping paper, using the lid of the canning jar as a guide. I had wanted the wide mouth jars for this, but all that the store had left was the narrow mouth style.

Decorative lid

I had picked out different, fancier paper with visions of using the wide mouth jars. The pattern did not work with the narrow mouth jars, so I used a different paper that I had on hand.

I finished the decorating with various ribbons. Pictured here is the classic “curly ribbon”.

Fits with the festive mood

So even if you don’t make them as gifts, it’s a good make ahead party snack, or just something nice to have anytime.

Recipe here.

Frittata For Two

A frittata is a hearty omelette that is generally cooked first on the stovetop and then finished in under the broiler. It is one large, flat egg cake, rather than the french style rolled or folded omelette. It’s fast, the whole thing comes together in 20 minutes or less.

It’s another one of those concept recipes: follow a few basic principles and you can vary the flavors with whatever you have on hand or want to use. It’s also easy to multiply if you need to make more servings. Frittatas are good for a make ahead dish because they are just as good at room temperature as they are hot. You can slice them up into any sized wedges or squares for serving.

The only “special” equipment you need is an oven/broiler safe skillet. Mine is cast iron. 10 inches is a good size for a frittata for two. If you don’t have a skillet that you can put under the broiler, I’ve included a variation on the technique that will get around that problem.

Note that the handle completely lacks any plastic or wood.

Really you can put anything in a frittata, veggies, cheeses, grains, whatever you’ve got. It’s a terrific way to use up those small amounts of leftovers that you didn’t want to throw out, but that aren’t really enough for another meal. If you’ve got ingredients that are already cooked, it will come together that much faster. Instead of actually cooking these ingredients in the first step, you can just heat them up and then proceed.

Whatever you put in them, you just don’t need all that much of it. If you put in to0 much stuff, it will be more like “eggs in vegetables and cheese, etc.” instead of “cheese and veggies etc in eggs”.

How much is enough?

The photo above illustrates the approximate proportions to be used with 5 eggs:

• 1 cup or so of filling
  In this recipe that’s 1/2 cup broccoli and cauliflower and 1/2 cup mushrooms (about 5 average sized). Since everything is raw, it will all shrink a bit as it cooks, so I’ve used a very generous measurement of a cup. If you were going to use a leafy green, such as spinach, it works best if it’s a) already cooked or frozen and thawed, b) been squeezed to remove excess water prior to measuring and cooking.

• 2-3 tablespoons of onions/garlic/fresh herbs
  In this example, it’s just minced onion.

• 1/3 cup of grated cheese (packed)
  In this example, it’s smoked gouda–you can skip the cheese and go for a little more of the other filling of you’d like.

These measurements are not super precise. You can have a little more or a little less and your frittata will still turn out fine.

Broccoli Cauliflower Mushroom Frittata for Two (Printer Friendly PDF)

This serves two in my house (my husband usually has a pretty good appetite). Depending on what else you serve with it, it may serve another person or two. Double it and you can serve 4-6 for sure.

1/2 cup combined of broccoli and cauliflower, chopped small (frozen and thawed is just fine, by the way)

1/2 cup crimini mushrooms (about 5 average sized)

3 tablespoons of minced onions

1/3 cup of grated cheese (cheddar, gouda, havarti, etc.)

5 large eggs

2-3 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese (optional)

oilve oil

salt and pepper

Adjust your oven rack to the middle position in your oven. Turn on your broiler.

Crack the eggs in a bowl. Beat lightly until yolks and whites are mixed. Season with salt and pepper. Stir in the grated cheese (not the Parmesan).

Heat your skillet over medium high heat. Add 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Add the broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms and onions. Cook, stirring occasionally until everything has just started to brown, about 3 minutes. Lower heat to medium. If the pan seems very dry, add another teaspoon or so of olive oil.

Broccoli, cauliflower and mushrooms and onions cooked until everything just starts to brown.

Pour the egg mixture into the skillet right over the vegetables. Cook stirring constantly until the eggs start to set up a bit, about 30 seconds.

Sprinkle Parmesan over the top if you’re using it. Then put the skillet under your preheated broiler. (Do not walk away during this time. Keep checking it every 30 seconds or so until it’s done. Trust me, it’s better this way.) Broil until the top just starts to brown, 2-3 minutes.

Serve hot, warm or at room temperature. It’s fine to let it rest while you make some toast.

Variation if you don’t have a broiler safe skillet:

Prepare the egg mixture and cook the filling ingredients as directed. Place the filling ingredients in a lightly oiled broiler safe pan of your choice. Pour the egg mixture over the filling, sprinkle with Parmesan and broil as directed.

Finished Frittata