Homegrown Popcorn

We're just about out of popcorn, and being out of popcorn is not acceptable. Fortunately, Sherry just planted this year's crop.

What? You don't grow your own popcorn? You should - it is easy to do, and tastes great. We grew it for the first time last year, and now it is firmly planted on the list of items we no longer need to buy.



Growing popcorn is a lot like growing regular corn - only easier, since you only need a tiny patch. Well, I guess that depends on how often you eat popcorn... For us, though, a 3 by 4 foot square area was plenty.

We chose Dakota Black Popcorn, from Seeds of Change as our starter seed. It germinated well and grew quickly into six foot stalks with two small ears each.

In mid-summer came the hard part - waiting for the corn cobs to completely dry out. You need to leave it on the the stalk until the husks, cobs and kernels are nice and dry before harvesting the ears.

The reddish black kernels are small, somewhat pointy, shiny and beautiful:



Once off the plant, we set the ears aside for another couple of weeks to fully dry the cob. Then all that remained was to pop the kernels off the cob, discarding any damaged ones.

This task is a bit tedious, but was easily accomplished over several evenings while watching TV or a movie, using a large paper bag to catch the seeds.



For this year's planting we used select seeds from last year's batch. Gourmet popcorn on the cheap!

Here is what it looks like popped:



The dark bits you see aren't burned - the dark kernels just make it look that way. We find that this popcorn has a more interesting texture and flavor that your typical store-bought variety.

If you don't have a garden, or just aren't interested in growing your own, we still recommend trying this kind of popcorn. Before we started growing our own, we used Boulder Popcorn - you can buy from them online.

Food Photo Round-Up

When we make a good dish, but I don't really have enough for a blog post, I often post a picture on twitter instead. For those of you who don't follow along with those tweets, I figured I'd do a round-up of some of the pictures here on the blog.

The picture above is a homemade Sicilian sausage (one of our favorites - we need to do a post on making them sometime) with Hasselbeck (or is it Hasselback?) potatoes and a black kale salad.

Mapo Doufu


Fuchsia Dunlop's version of "Pock-Marked Mother Chen's Bean Curd", from her book "Land of Plenty" is on our regular rotation.

Chawanmushi


This was our first attempt at making Chawanmushi, and it turned out really well. I love savory custards.

Shoyu Ramen


Not quite homemade ramen - I call it "home-assembled". We buy packaged ramen noodles and add the trimmings - fish cake, pork slices, greens, nori and, of course, a soft-cooked egg.

Lamb Shanks Braised in Red Wine


Is there is anything more comforting than a braised lamb shank? We do a red wine braise based loosely on a short rib recipe from Daniel Boulud's "Cafe Boulud Cookbook".

Romanesco


The first time I saw a picture of Romanesco I was amazed - it is such a cool looking vegetable. Sherry has had great success growing them this winter, and we've been eating a lot of it.

Spaghetti alla Carbonara


Perfectly cooked spaghetti coated with egg is a thing a beauty. We make ours with homemade pancetta, which I prefer to the traditional guanciale.

Green Chile Cheeseburger


We've posted a number of times about green chile cheeseburgers in New Mexico, but we also make them at home, using hatch green chiles that we buy by the crate when they are in season. Yes, that is American cheese on the burger. I make no apologies.

Gougères


Light, puffy and cheesy - Gougères may be the perfect snack. They are made with the same choux pastry technique used for cream puffs, but go a savory direction instead of sweet.

Pan-Seared Duck Breast with Green Beans and Potatoes


Rosy pink meat and succulent skin - what more is there to say?

Homemade Bacon


It has been over three years now since we started making our own homemade bacon, and we're still going strong. Store-bought bacon is a thing of the past for us. We're almost out of the last batch we made - time to make some more!

Canned Tomatoes and Tomatillos

We ended up with way more tomatoes this summer than we could handle, so we had to do something with the overflow. We are perpetually out of freezer space, so canning seemed the most practical option.

Because our tomatoes had high enough acidity (we checked with a pH meter!), we didn't need to pressure can them - boiling was sufficient. We gave them a quick roast under the broiler first so that the skins could be easily removed.

After it was all said and done, we ended up with 29 pints (mostly red, but a few jars of green zebras):



We also did up a bunch of tomatillos the same way - resulting in a nice little pallet of 1-cup jars:



I think we're set for the winter!

Taco Shop Hot Sauce - Salsa Verde

Two plastic squeeze bottles of heat and flavor have pride of place in our refrigerator door. Hot sauce, red and green, is for us a condiment that sees pretty much daily use - sometimes multiple times a day.

A while back, I posted my recipe for our red, chile de arbol "Taco Shop" hot sauce. This post, however, is all about green.

And green means tomatillos from the garden:



Our green hot sauce is even simpler than the red one. Just tomatillos, green chiles (usually Serranos) and garlic. I put them on a sheet pan and put them under a broiler for 5 minutes or so.



When they are done, the garlic has roasted, the tomatillos have browned and the chiles have softened and blistered.



Then it is a simple matter of blitzing it all up a blender with some salt and a bit of water to loosen it.



We find it convenient to keep the sauce in an 8oz squeeze bottle. It makes for efficient delivery to top your food of choice. In this case, it was breakfast tacos. Yum!

Taco Shop Hot Sauce - Salsa Verde

Makes about 2 cups.

Ingredients:

14 ounces tomatillos, husked and rinsed
2 serrano chiles
3 garlic cloves
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 cup water

Husk the tomatillos and rinse them to get rid of their stickiness.

Place tomatillos, chiles and garlic on a sheet pan and put them under the broiler. Check them after 5 minutes, and then again every minute until they soften and begin to brown.

After letting the pan cool, peel the garlic and take the skin off of the chiles. In a blender, mix everything together with the salt and water until smooth.

Fried Green Tomato BLT - The "BLFGT"

I am happy to present to you the Menu In Progress House "BLFGT" (Bacon, Lettuce and Fried Green Tomato) sandwich. Home-cured bacon, homemade sandwich bread and lettuce and tomatoes from the garden.

Having produced prolifically for the past several months, our initial planting of tomatoes is winding down, and Sherry has started pulling out some of the plants. We had some green tomatoes still on the vine, so fried green tomatoes seemed in order.



In addition to the Early Girl tomatoes from the plant we pulled out, we picked a few unripe Green Zebra tomatoes to add to the mix.



You fry up the bacon:



Bread the tomatoes in flour, beaten egg and cornmeal and fry them up in the bacon fat:





Toast some white bread:



And make yourself a sandwich.



Serve with a homemade zesty dill pickle and you are good to go.

Tomato Season is Offcially ON!

Our summer garden is a forest of tomato plants, and they are now producing more tomatoes than we can eat (which is saying something, because we eat a lot of tomatoes).

If we keep getting production like this, we're going to need to look into canning some. I'm thinking I'll quickly roast or blanch them, peel them and just can them whole.

Come winter, it will be nice to be able to pull a jar of our own tomatoes from the pantry shelf to use to make a batch of pasta sauce.

For now, though, we're doing our best to keep up with the influx of fruit.



That means eating lots of tomato-centric dishes like gazpacho. No complaints here...

Sugar Snap Pea and Daikon Radish Flower Salad

As winter turns to spring, we've been enjoying a very nice salad that has a foot in both seasons.

We planted daikon radishes last November, and now they are nice and big. As a bonus, when we harvest them they have beautiful flowers that have an intense, radish taste.

On the spring side, our sugar snap peas are producing like crazy at the moment. No chance of them going to waste, though - we can't get enough of them.

The peas and the radish flowers combined make for a salad that is as pretty as it is tasty.



A little bit of vinaigrette - not too much - is the only other ingredient.

Simplicity in a bowl.

Garden Upgraded!

All new gardeners at the Pacific Beach Community Garden are initially given a half-sized plot. As you can see on the right of the picture above, ours is pretty full.

What to do about it? Annex the plot next to us, of course!

The timing was perfect, since the garden just got a load of compost in. We've turned the soil in the new plot, mixed in compost, and now we're ready to get planting.

It will be great to have the extra space as we start ramping up toward summer.

Bragging Rights

Sherry's garden plot was awarded "Garden of the Month" this past month at the Pacific Beach Community Garden. Not bad for something that was just a plot of dirt with potential a few months ago.

While I'm bragging, I might as well mention that we're still getting tomatoes in December. I love you, San Diego!

Homemade Mozzarella with Garden-Fresh Tomatoes and Marjoram

Even though we didn't get started on our garden plot until early September, we still wanted to give tomatoes a shot. We planted some varieties known to tolerate colder weather (Early Girl, Siletz, Glacier) , and were lucky to get some help from late season warm weather.

While we haven't gotten a ton of tomatoes, the ones we have are very tasty. Yesterday, Sherry made up a batch of fresh mozzarella to enjoy with some of them. We didn't have any basil on hand, so we picked some sprigs of marjoram from our patio.



Sherry has had trouble making mozzarella in the past, but this batch came out perfectly. It is really easy to make (when it works). If you are interested in giving it a try, stop by our friends' new cheese and wine making shop, Curds and Wine when it opens this Thursday and get yourself some cheese making supplies.

A Garden

We really love where we live, but it has a downside - no yard. And as a result, no garden. Sherry has done what she can with our patio space - chiles, small tomatoes, herbs. But we haven't had the space to do anything more substantial. Until recently, that is. The above drawing is the layout of our new garden plot in the Pacific Beach Community Garden.

Who knew that PB had a community garden? We didn't until we stumbled across it two years ago. Sherry put her name on a waiting list, and we promptly forgot all about it. Then, a month or so a go, we got a phone call from the garden coordinator saying that a plot was available. A week later, we had a garden.

Well, more accurately a plot of dirt - but a plot of dirt with potential...

Hot Sauce

One of the downsides of living in a condo is the lack of space to grow a garden - our outdoor real estate is limited to a small patio. Choosing what to grow is key. No zucchini here. Potatoes? Forget about it. We grow herbs, some small tomatoes, and of course, chiles.



It is really convenient to have a local source of chiles when we need one or two to add heat to a dish we are making. We never use them all up that way, however, so we always end up with a bunch left over and in need of a purpose.



And what better purpose than Hot Sauce? Today we've got serranos (normal sized and tiny), ceyenne and thai bird chiles.



Seeds can make the sauce bitter, so I removed them from about half the batch.



Blending them up in the food processor with some onion, garlic and roasted red bell pepper adds body and mellows things out.



Running it through a food mill gets rid of any big chunks of skin or seeds.



We like to add plenty of vinegar to thin out the consistency and add a nice zing. Cooking it a few minutes sets the flavors and sanitizes the sauce.



Then all that is left is bottling. We get our bottles online from Leeners.





Our hot sauce recipe is constantly evolving based on the year's chile harvest and our current hot sauce needs. The recipe below is fairly mild with a lot of vinegar twang, so use a vinegar you find tasty. To make a real kicker, leave out the roasted bell pepper and reduce the vinegar and onion by at least half.

Hot Sauce

Makes about 7 5-oz bottles.

Approx. 50 fresh, hot red chiles (eg. 30 small serranos, 20 thai bird chiles, and 5 large ceyanne)
4 1/2 cups red wine vinegar, divided
1 large red bell pepper
1 large white onion, roughly chopped
1/2 large red onion, roughly chopped
8 garlic cloves
4 teaspoons sugar
4 teaspoons salt

Rinse the chiles and drain well. Cut off the chile stems and discard. Cut chile lengthwise and remove the seeds (leave some in for additional heat). Bring 1 cup red wine vinegar to a simmer and blanch the chiles 4-5 minutes to soften. Set aside to cool.

Roast the red bell pepper until the skin is charred. When cool enough to handle, remove and discard the skin, seeds, core, and stem. Place the flesh in a food processor along with the onions and garlic cloves. Add the blanched chiles and process to a fine puree, adding some of the blanching vinegar to loosen the mixture if necessary.

Pour the chile puree into a saucepan and blend in the remaining vinegar. Bring to a low simmer and cook gently 15 minutes. Run the cooked puree through a food mill or strainer to remove large pieces of skin and seeds, then return the strained hot sauce to the pan and simmer another 5 minutes to sanitize. Transfer to clean, sterilized bottles. (Detailed instructions for safe handling and storage can be found at Leeners.com).