Swiss Chard, a sweeter way

Swiss chard is one of my favorites, but we don't eat it much because I live with supertasters. And for them, chard is a "bitter" vegetable. Okay, so it really is a bitter vegetable--but it bothers them more. In any case, this recipe takes some of the bite away, but retains all the great health benefits of this overlooked (and cheap) vegetable.

Ingredients:
1 bunch Swiss chard, stems and leaves washed carefully
3 garlic cloves, chopped finely
1-2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons good quality olive oil
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup currants
sprinkle of salt to finish

Cut the chard into 1 inch pieces, using both stems and leaves. I like to give it a second rinse at this point so any remaining grit is really gone.
Heat the oil in a pan, add the garlic and cook for less than 1 minute. Add the chard, and stir. The leaves will begin to wilt in a minute or two. Then add the raisins and currants. Sprinkle with the sugar, and cook over medium heat for another few minutes. I overcooked it a bit so water from the chard and the oil combine with the sugar, and so the currants and raisins soften a bit and take on some garlic flavor. This should be completely done within about 6 minutes. Sprinkle with a dash of salt to taste before serving.

Scallion cakes

We love these little cakes--crisp and doughy at the same time, and definitely not to be eaten often--they are delicious as a treat to go with an Asian meal. They are also great for an hors d'oeuvre--we simply make a larger batch, and smaller cakes.

Ingredients for cakes:
2 bunches scallions, chopped into small bits (about 1.5-2 cups total)
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons sesame seeds
3/4 cup very hot water
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons sesame oil
2 tablespoons olive oil or canola oil, for cooking (you may need more, depending on the thickness of your cakes)

For dipping sauce:
2 tablespoons soy
2 tablespoons sesame oil
3-4 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
2 teaspoons very finely chopped scallion
2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh ginger


Equipment:
large bowl for mixing
frying pan
plate lined with paper towels for after frying


Make the dipping sauce first, and set it aside so the flavors blend.


Toast the sesame seeds on a dry pan, over medium high heat. They will turn light brown very quickly, so keep your eye on the pan, and keep stirring them. They should be fragrant and toasted in less than 2 minutes. Set them aside in a bowl.

In a large bowl, mix together the scallions, flour, 1/2 of the sesame seeds, and salt. Add the hot water, and stir mixture with a fork. It will become very sticky. Add the soy sauce, and then the sesame oil. Using your hands, pull the bits together and knead it slightly to make a dough. It will become smoother as you work it with your hands. You may need to add flour to it, or even a bit of sesame oil. I sometimes put a bit of the oil on my hands as well. This helps with the next step, which is shaping the cakes. You should get 6-7 cakes from this batch, each measuring about 2" round before cooking. Make them and set them aside on a plate. Ours had a bit of flour still on them, as you can see here. The bits of scallion on the surface of the cake will be especially nice when sauteed.



Heat the oil in the pan, and once it is hot and shimmery-looking, add 2 or 3 cakes. Don't overcrowd the pan or they won't cook right.


Push each cake down with the spatula so they flatten a bit in the pan. This will get them as crispy as possible. For the single batch, each cake will become about 3 inches around finished size.

The first batch may take a bit longer, but plan on cooking each side between 2-5 minutes. For the first batch here, it took 5 minutes per side. By the second batch, the pan was hotter, and it took only 2 minutes per side to get them nicely browned.

Set them on the paper-towel-lined plate to drain quickly, then press them onto a plate lined with the remaining sesame seeds. Serve the cakes while they're hot, or, let them rest and serve them within a day's time. You can crisp them up in the oven if you want to make them ahead of time. Make sure you brush them with a tiny bit of sesame oil if you are serving them later.

Crystalized Ginger

This is a family favorite--nice for a bite, or to mix into a cup of hot tea. We find our homemade batch is spicier than the ones we find packaged at the store; we like the extra zing.

Here's what you need:

1-2 pounds of ginger root--the freshest you can get (older pieces don't slice as cleanly)
2 cups sugar
1.5 cups water
an additional 1 cup sugar for dredging

Have ready the following:

A large, heavy saucepan
A strainer, lined with cheesecloth, and set over a large bowl
A foil-lined cookie sheet
A bowl for dredging


Peel the ginger completely. Slice into quarter inch rounds, either using a knife, or a mandolin.

In a large, heavy saucepan, dissolve the 2 cups of sugar into the water, and add the ginger. Cook over medium to medium-low heat for an hour, or until the ginger pieces are soft, pliable, and starting to be translucent.



Remove the ginger from the stove, put it into the strainer, and let drain and cool for 30 minutes.

Save the gingered water that drains off, and put it in a lidded glass jar. You can save this in the fridge for 2 weeks, and use it to flavor tea, drinks, soda, etc.

Preheat the oven to 200F

Take the cooled and drained ginger slices and dredge them in the additional sugar until each piece is coated completely. Put the sugar-coated slices on a foil-lined cookie sheet, and bake them at 200 F for 2-3 hours. The finished pieces should be fairly hard, but not crispy. Let them cool completely, and then pack them in an airtight container.

Welcome!

As with many firsts, the first post always seems to be a bit awkward. This will prove to be no exception. So I'll just say: Welcome to the newest of my blog projects, one in which I post things we cook and eat together in our family. I hope you can comment and post some of your favorite recipes and foods, too!

Starting out with a harvest recipe: Wild Grape Jelly

What better way to start the fall than with a little wild harvest in the neighborhood? Where we live, there are wild grapes growing along the streets. When we moved here, a neighbor told me about her grape harvest every fall, and insisted that they were easy to find. So for several years, I looked for them as I walked around the streets near our house. No luck.
Finally, one day in August this year, I lifted the leaves of what looked to be a grape vine and--ta da! There they were--bunches and bunches of fat, green grapes. And once we found one vine, it seemed they were everywhere we looked. Can it be that I missed them for all these years?

As for the taste--well, they were sour as could be in August, but by mid September, they had ripened, and on our evening walks, the air was heavy with the smell of them. Our daughter thought it smelled like grape gum--and it was that intense. But they weren't really sweet. Instead, they had a concentrated tart flavor. After some research on the web, I figured we had mustang grapes--good for cooking, but not for eating. Sometime shortly after Labor day, we picked close to 4 lbs of the darkest grapes. Time to make jelly!

I prowled around online to find a good recipe, and found one in particular that seemed to work. Here's the link for it. Of course, being a recipe-tinkerer, I changed it. Here's the play-by-play of what I did, and the recipe itself.Bear with me. This is a long recipe, with lots of steps. But very worth it!:

What I needed:
2.5 lbs grapes, sorted, washed, and cut into bits
2.5 cups water
5 cups sugar
1 package liquid pectin

I'm also a fan of "mise en place," so I set up the following before I started:
a strainer, lined with triple cheesecloth and set over a large glass bowl
the canning pot (we have a huge one that has a rack in the bottom to remove the jars and keep them from direct contact with the pot itself, so the jars don't crack)
the jelly jars, sterilized by running through the dishwasher. This recipe made enough for three 8 oz jars, and three 4 oz jars.
the jelly jar lids, washed by hand and set into a small pot of water (to be used for canning)
a big rubber-lined tongs to use to get the hot jars out of (and back into) the canning bath

Note: The only thing you really need to set up before you start boiling the grapes is the strainer/bowl. The rest you can set up just before canning the next day.

What I did:
1. Prepare the grapes. After I gave the grapes a good washing, I realized we also had to inspect each of these little guys for parasites--flies or something equally gross that had decided to set up house. So, that night after everyone was asleep, I stayed up and cleaned each grape and cut each one open. This must have been a good year for the bugs, because once I was done, there were only 2 pounds of so of uninfested grapes.

2. Boil them. I put the prepared grapes into a pot with the water, and boiled them down for about 5 minutes, mashing the grapes up a bit as they cooked. Then I simmered the mixture for 15 minutes or so.

3. Strain the grapes. I let the mixture cool off the stove for 15 minutes, then poured the whole thing into the strainer lined with cheesecloth. Because I was making jelly, I did not squish this mixture at all, but let the mush drain passively into the bowl. This was to ensure the juice stayed clear. I left it alone overnight.

In the morning, the juice had drained nicely. What was left was slurry, with seeds, skins, etc, which I tossed. It looked like this:

The juice was beautiful. I came away with about 3 cups of very tart, very purple juice. If you want to just make juice to drink, you could just add sugar and water to this base. I'm pretty sure this is how they make the juice you'd buy at a store. We made a few glasses like this to go with breakfast. Yum. Here's what it looked like:


But if you want to make jelly, you need to do a few more steps. First, more "mise en place." Canning is mostly prep, you know.
I set up the jars by boiling them for 10 minutes in the big canning pot. To keep them ready for the hot mixture, I let them sit in the hot water.
I also boiled the jar lids in yet another small pot, and got a tongs ready to grab them when I needed them. The lids, like the jars, sat in the hot water waiting. The stove was getting crowded!
Finally, I laid out a thick dishtowel on the counter as a place to set the hot jars.


Then I started the cooking. Here are the steps for that:
1: Boil juice and sugar.I put the juice back into a large, heavy saucepan, added the 5 cups of sugar, and stirred until it was dissolved. I boiled it to a full boil, which means that it was bubbling like crazy even while I stirred.
2. Add the pectin. After the mixture reached foil boil, I took it off the heat, quickly poured in the pectin, and brought it back to a full boil, where I boiled it for one whole minute.
3. Take the mixture off the stove and set it aside for about 3 minutes while you do the next step.
4. Quick--get the jars ready. I had to do this by myself, but if you have someone working with you, this could be done while you are cooking the sugar and grapes together. To get the jars ready, I took them out of the water bath (using the rubber tongs!), dried them quickly (wearing rubber gloves and using another thick dishtowel) and set them up on the folded towel on the counter.
5. Go back to your grape mixture, and skim any foam off the top with a metal spoon.



6. Then ladle the clear juice mixture into the jars. I still had some foam on the top of my mixture after it was in a few of the jars, so I carefully took that off with a spoon then.
7. Wipe the rims of the jars with a dry cloth to make sure you will get a good seal with the lids. You want the rims to be perfectly clean and dry where they contact the rubber part of the lids.
8. Take the lids from their hot bath in the little saucepan, dry the rubber part of the lids, and set the lids on the jars. Then take the rings from the water, dry them, and quickly put them gently onto the lids. Twist only a turn or two. Don't tighten too much!
9. Put the jars, right side up, into the big canning bath, and cover them with the hottest water you can add. Make sure you have at least 2 inches of water above the highest jar. Bring the pot to a boil, and boil it for 10 minutes.

10. Take the jars out (use the rubber tongs and hot mitts!). Set them on the thick towel, and don't touch them for 24 hours while they set up. You should hear them "pop" as they each seal. You'll see the slight indent on the top of each lid when they do. Ours "popped" about 5 minutes after we set the lids on the jars. The 24-hour waiting period is for the seal to catch and the jelly to gel.
11. 24 hours later, check the lids on your jars. If you can pull a bit at the lid without a ring and it doesn't budge, you have a good seal. If not, you could reprocess the jar, or you could just use that jar right away (which is what I did with our faulty one).
112. Tighten the rings on the jars with good seals. You're done! Whew! That was a LONG recipe. But the jelly was delicious.