I wanted to rest and read the last two chapters of my mystery, but Charles was sleeping in our warm bedroom. The living room and the other bedrooms were too cold and although the kitchen and my studio were warm, there wasn’t a comfy place to curl up in either room. Moving furniture was the only solution.

My Studio Nest

After I moved a daybed into my studio, rearranged my painting table and files and created a cozy ‘reader’s nest’, it was nearly dinner time. Charles was rested and said he would make dinner if I told him what to do.I was in charge of the menu and cooking instructions and he would do the cooking. First the menu. We would have sauteed flounder, oven roasted potatoes, and Charles’ favorite vegetable, creamed spinach. Since he would be roasting the potatoes, we agreed the he would bake his first cake ever at the same time. We began with the potatoes because it takes 45 minutes for them to cook.

Here’s how he did it:

Oven Roasted Potatoes

He pre-heated the oven to 350º, put one tablespoon of butter and two tablespoons of olive oil in a medium baking dish and put it into the oven while he scrubbed three medium potatoes and cut each potato into six wedges. He put the wedges into the hot oil/butter mixture, sprinkled them with salt and pepper, tossed them to coat all of the surfaces with the oil and put them into the oven to bake.

After putting a log on the fire and pouring a glass of wine for the cook, it was cake time.

Ridiculously Simple, but Delicious, Chocolate Cake for a Tired Spouse

I read the recipe and he followed my instructions.

Charles easily transformed a package of frozen chopped spinach, some sour cream and a few pantry staples into creamed spinach.

Creamed Spinach

He minced a small onion while a package of rock hard, frozen spinach was being zapped, on high, for two minutes in the microwave. Then he melted a teaspoon of butter in a medium saucepan, added the onion and sauteed it. When it was translucent he added the drained, defrosted spinach, a quarter of a cup of milk, a grind of fresh nutmeg and a quarter of teaspoon each of salt and pepper. After five minutes of cooking over low heat, most of the liquid had evaporated and the spinach was cooked. He stirred in a quarter of a cup of sour cream and a half a teaspoon of fresh lemon juice and turned off the heat just as the oven timer rang. He pulled out the cake, poked it with a toothpick, the toothpick came out dry, he put the cake on a rack to cool, gave the potatoes a stir and closed the oven. It was time to cook the flounder.

Sauteed Flounder

I found the flounder in the fridge while Charles combined a quarter of a cup of flour, a quarter of a teaspoon each of salt and pepper and a teaspoon of dried dill on a piece of waxed paper and made the egg wash by beating an egg in a shallow bowl. He heated a teaspoon of butter and a tablespoon of olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat. When the oil was hot, he dipped each filet into the egg and then into the flour before sauteing them for three minutes on each side.

The fish was cooked, the potatoes were golden and the spinach was creamy. Dinner was divine. Charles was exhausted, I was grateful. We ate chocolate cake in my rearranged, cozy studio and left the dishes until Sunday morning.

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]]> http://www.carolegbert.com/flounder-dinner-in-a-cozy-vermont-studio/feed 2 http://www.carolegbert.com/portugese-milk-mayo-from-a-vermont-kitchen http://www.carolegbert.com/portugese-milk-mayo-from-a-vermont-kitchen#comments Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:52:52 +0000 Carol http://www.carolegbert.com/?p=4475 It’s not to late to make a New Year’s resolution. Rather than resolving to go to the gym three times a week, or to sort out the extra clothes at the back of my closet, or to re-read at least one classic before the daffodils appear; I have resolved to have an empty fridge when it’s time to travel to Italy in March.

Rainbow Carrots

(I wanted to share my most recent painting, Rainbow Carrots, even though carrots have nothing to do with this post. )

The first step is to dispose of all of the half-filled jars of mystery sauces that have accumulated since we returned from Italy last spring. The second, and perhaps more difficult part is resisting the jars of exotic sauces at the market. I will make do with only three jars of sauce, mustard, ketchup and mayonnaise. The mustard is grainy Dijon mustard, the ketchup is what remains of the homemade ketchup I made as a Christmas gift for Charles, and I will make mayo as we need it.

Usually, mayo is made with either an egg yolk or a whole egg but recently I made Maionese de leite, a mayonnaise that comes from Portugal. This creamy, egg free sauce, made with milk and flavored with a hint of garlic is less sticky and bit more watery than traditional mayo but it can be substituted for traditional mayo. An immersion blender is necessary to make it. Here’s how I did it:

Homemade mayonnaise is delicious whether it’s traditional egg based mayo or creamy milk mayo but, if your New Year’ resolution is to spend less time in the kitchen, mayo from the grocery store is the right choice for you. Happy New Year!

Here’s a link to my recipe for Mayo made with eggs. 

Download and print a label for your homemade mayo here.

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Next weekend will be a variation on last weekend with what may seem like an unending parade of buttery sweets, rich cheeses, roasted turkeys, sublime wines, New Year’s Eve buffets and football feasts. The abundance of rich, artery clogging food that inspired my daughter-in-law, Alison, to suggest that we start each day with a bowl of oatmeal.

Oatmeal often described as a cholesterol lowering, vitamin rich, high fiber digestive aid is also a staple in my pantry. Charles often cooks up a batch of rolled oats in the microwave and we enjoy it topped with a bit of brown sugar and a splash of milk. But inspired by the holiday week, Alison created six varieties of luxurious oatmeal. Each variety began with Alison’s basic Oatmeal. Here’s how she made it:

Alison’s Basic Oatmeal
1 1/2 cup steel cut oats
6 cups boiling water
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
2 teaspoons ground flax seeds

She began by adding the steel cut oats and to the water in a medium saucepan. She stirred the oats occasionally and after half an hour of cooking, over medium-low heat, most of the water had been absorbed and the oats were tender. While the oats cooked, Alison put a quarter of the sunflower seeds and flax seeds into four deep cereal bowls.

On Monday she made Cinnamon Apple Oatmeal
Basic Oatmeal
1 apple, cored and cut in 1/2 inch dice
1/4 cup pecans, chopped
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
8 teaspoons brown sugar
1 cup milk, heated
She added a quarter of the apple, pecans, cinnamon and brown sugar to the sunflower and flax seeds in each of four deep cereal bowls and added the cooked oats and warm milk. It was better than apple pie for breakfast.

On Tuesday, Alison added raspberries, almonds and honey to the sunflower and flax seeds.
Raspberry Almond Oatmeal

Basic Oatmeal
1 cup raspberries
1/2 cup slivered almonds
4 tablespoons honey
The hot oatmeal intensified the flavor of the fresh raspberries and made breakfast better than a Linzer Torte.
Today we had mixed berry oatmeal. It follows the Luxurious Oatmeal method with these ingredients:

Mixed Berry Oatmeal
Basic Oatmeal
1/2 cup strawberries, sliced
1/2 cup blueberries
1/2 cup raspberries
1/2 cup pecans
4 teaspoons brown sugar

Mixed berry oatmeal surpassed strawberry shortcake for breakfast.

Alison has written Banana Walnut Oatmeal on the calendar for tomorrow and Fig Oatmeal for Friday. Here are the ingredient lists:

Coconut Banana Oatmeal
Basic Oatmeal
2 bananas, sliced
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut, shredded
4 Tablespoons maple syrup
Fig-Hazelnut Oatmeal

Basic Oatmeal
6 dried figs, diced
1/2 cup hazelnuts, chopped
4 Tablespoons honey

Although I haven’t tasted the Coconut Banana or the Fig-Hazelnut Oatmeal, I’m confident that they will be at least as tasty as banana bread or fig newtons for breakfast.

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I don’t know whether it was Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, a gift from a new friend, daily lunches of pate and camembert with a crusty baguette from the French Market or the fact that ketchup was made in the Heinz factory, a few miles from my home in Pittsburg, that turned me into a ketchup snob. Ketchup had to go. There was no ketchup in my kitchen from mid 1965 until December 2011. Yes, it’s back. There is a jar of ketchup in the fridge and I’m planning to give jars of ketchup to my most sophisticated, foodie friends for Christmas this year.

It won’t be Heinz ketchup, it will be ketchup from Carol’s Vermont Kitchen. My willingness to re-consider ketchup came about because I wanted to give a bright red, edible gift for Christmas. Ketchup is an unusual gift and may result in a holiday smiles. I read ketchup recipes in old cookery books, learned a fair amount of ketchup history, modified a couple of recipes and eventually made a batch of lovely red, nothing like the stuff from the grocery store, ketchup. Here’s how I made it:

Ketchup

1 – 28 ounce can pureed tomatoes
1 medium onion, diced
2 cloves garlic
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1 Tablespoon dry mustard
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon celery seed
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
sea salt to taste

I put all the ingredients, except the salt and pepper, into a slow cooker and stirred the mixture until it was combined. I set the slow cooker on high, covered it and cooked it for two hours, stirring occasionally. I removed the lid and continued cooking the ketchup, on high, for forty-five minutes until it ‘plopped’ off a spoon. I added the black pepper and salt and turned off the slow cooker. When the ketchup was cool, I stirred it and transferred it to a wide mouth quart jar and put it in the fridge.

I’ve served this lovely red sauce warm with meatloaf, Charles used it right from the fridge on ham and cheese sandwiches and we’ve stirred it into bowls of hot buttered pasta.

In the seventeenth century, English sailors returned from China with a pickled-fish sauce, called ke-tsiap. That brown sauce went through many changes, traveled to Malaya, eventually met tomatoes and ke-tsiape name morphed to kechap. Before manufacturers settled on ketchup, it was also called catchup, katsup, catsip, kotchup, kitsip, catsoup, cornchop, katsock and cutchpuck. Not only does ketchup add flavor, but some studies show that it may be a powerful tool in the fight against cancer and heart disease.

If this ketchup trivia is not enough to impress my foodie friends – I’ll tell them that ketchup can be used to clean, antique, copper utensils.

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There are many desserts, called puddings in Britain, with names that are charming and inscrutable enough to require translation.
Here’s my guide to British Puddings:

Cabinet Pudding or Chancellor’s Pudding – This traditional steamed,  molded pudding, made from a combination of bread or sponge cake and dried fruits, is usually served with a sweet custard sauce.

Clootie Dumpling – Dumplings made with flour, breadcrumbs, raisins or currants, suet, sugar, spice, milk and, sometimes, golden syrup. The dough is wrapped in a floured cloth, placed in a large pan of boiling water and simmered for a couple of hours before being lifted out and dried in front of a fire.

Duff – A steamed pudding, traditionally served on Christmas Day, it originated in medieval England and is also known as plum pudding or plum duff.

Figgy Duff – It resembles white Christmas pudding but contains figs. It may be baked, steamed, boiled or fried and is known primarily because of the familiar request, “Now bring us some figgy pudding,” in a Christmas carol.

Jam Roly-Poly, Dead Man’s Arm, and Dead Man’s Leg are all names for a traditional dessert invented in the early 19th century. It is a flat, suet pudding, spread with jam, rolled up like a jellyroll and steamed. It is called Shirtsleeve Pudding when steamed in a shirtsleeve rather than a pudding bag.

Spotted Dick –A steamed, suet pudding, containing dried fruit, usually currants, commonly served with custard. The spotted refers to the dry fruit and Dick may be a corruption of the last syllable of the word pudding or a corruption of the word dough. This sweet treat is also known as Spotted Dog.

Sussex Pond Pudding - A rich dessert made by encasing whole lemons, butter and sugar in a wrapper of suet pastry. It is either boiled or steamed for several hours. If currants are added, this dessert is known as Kentish Puddle Pudding or Kentish Well Pudding.

Toffee Sticky Pudding, also known as Sticky Toffee Pudding, is a steamed or baked dessert consisting of a moist sponge cake made with dates, topped with a warm toffee sauce and finished with a cloud of whipped cream. It is my favorite pudding because I can remember its name, I can make it in the oven without using a shirtsleeve or any other strange equipment and it doesn’t have any suet in it. I made it on Sunday to share with six friends for Charles’ early birthday celebration. Here’s a recipe for the cake and a second recipe for the toffee sauce that makes it a sticky pudding:

I served slices of still-warm cake with warm toffee sauce and a dollop of whipped cream. Sticky Toffee Pudding is one of the reasons that my Nana sang “There’ll always be an England, and England will be sweet!” 

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The unusually wet and humid September brought extraordinary fungal inhabitants to my garden — none of them edible. Most prolific were the freakish, foul-smelling, dog stinkhorns, good only as subjects for a photo or two before they withered. Not that I would trust myself to eat any mushroom that might poke up amongst the yellowing hostas and rambling morning glories. I’m no mycologist, nor have I been schooled in the ways of forest foraging like my friends in Eastern Europe.About ten years ago, I began what would turn out to be perennial work with an old Soviet era film studio in Vilnius, Lithuania. The former propaganda mill had been retooled to serve the needs of low-budget Hollywood movies and TV shows like the ones we were making for The History Channel. Whether filming re-creations of Viking battles or an enactment of Attila the Hun entertaining Pope Leo I, many of our locations were in pine forests. In autumn, mushrooms sprang up everywhere. At lunchtime, all of the Lithuanians on the film crew disappeared into the woods to forage for wild mushrooms. They returned with bags of boletes, chanterelles and other, more unfamiliar beauties. Everyone was completely confident in their mushroom identification skills that had been passed down for generations.

Still, my husband Rob insisted that I not take any mushrooms to cook for dinner. He changed his mind when we saw fresh chanterelles being sold for few Litas a pound  at the city farmers’ market. I prepared them in the local way – sauteed with onion and bacon. They were delicious.

Before we left Lithunaia to return to Baltimore, I stopped at a market stall for a string of dried mushrooms of an undetermined kind. I hung it as a decoration, next to antique baskets on a rack above my green Aga stove. All winter, their distinctive forest fragrance lingered in the kitchen as a reminder of Lithuania.

The following spring, two Lithuanians who had worked on our film crew called to take us up on our offer of a place to stay should they visit  the U.S. We had become especially fond of this young couple whose comical banter could have been the genesis for the characters Latka and Simca on the old TV series, Taxi.

While I roasted a chicken with potatoes and carrots for dinner, our young guests, let’s call them Latka and Simca, sat at the kitchen table sipping wine and entertaining us with their first impressions of America as seen from the windows of the Greyhound bus that had brought them from Newark airport to Baltimore. Suddenly, Latka looked around as if he had just realized that he was no longer on the bus. How surprising, he exclaimed, to see in our American kitchen a woodstove so like the one his grandmother had.

“It’s not a woodstove and it’s not even American,” I laughed. I had owned the Aga for less than a year — its novelty hadn’t worn off and it didn’t take much to get me boasting about its unique features – it was always on and there are no controls to adjust. To hear me tell it, the great cast iron Aga was an all but a human presence in my kitchen, producing the finest meals imaginable and requiring absolutely no effort on my part. “Why,” I went on, “it cooks bacon perfectly. I just throw it into the roasting oven. There are no messy splatters to clean up!”  Simca noticed the string of dried mushrooms and asked why we hadn’t eaten them.

During dinner, we reminisced about shooting battle scenes with Huns and Romans in the cold and mud of the previous autumn. We told our guests that we had to attend a meeting early the next morning and I showed them where to find bread, cereal, milk and jam and they assured us they’d be fine until our return. I offered to show Simca how to use the special Aga toaster but she assured me that she would have no need to cook anything.

Lithuanian Bacon

When we returned from the meeting, the smell of bacon wafted from the house. Our guests, who were watching television, jumped up as we came in. We knew by their long faces that something unfortunate had happened. “Latka is very sorry, Char, for the destroy of your fine stove,” whimpered Simca.  As we headed for the kitchen, I couldn’t imagine anything that would really damage the Aga. Then Latka began a dramatic reenactment, complete with hand motions, of what had happened.

It had begun with the discovery of his favorite food, bacon, in the refrigerator. Recalling my comments from the night before, he had thrown the entire pound of it onto the cast iron floor of the roasting oven. Then he went to help Simca with the TV remote. When he returned to the kitchen, bacon fat was flowing like a river down the front of the Aga and across the floor.  He managed to remove the bacon, consume some of it, (very tasty he said), and clean up the fat that had oozed out of the Aga. He paused before he nervously opened the roasting oven door and showed me a huge greasy, black stain. He said, “Is very bad, no?” I reassured him that it would burn off eventually even though I wasn’t sure that it would.

I remembered their visit on a rainy Saturday a few weeks ago as I was cleaning the pantry, organizing drawers and preparing the kitchen for autumn cooking.  I used the wire brush that came with the Aga to sweep out the roasting oven. The grease was gone – it had taken a few months but it finally did disappear. I removed all the utensils from the rack above the stove and loaded them into the dishwasher. Then I gave the rack a good scrubbing. After re-arranging my collection of old biscuit tins and dusting the antique baskets, I took down the equally dusty decade-old string of dried mushrooms and gave it a quick swish in warm water. Restored to pride of place, they again filled the kitchen with the dusky scent of the forest. All is in readiness for my favorite cooking season.

If you should be lucky enough to have some chanterelles, here is how they are prepared in Lithuania and on my lovely green Aga.

For one pound of mushrooms: gently wash and dry them and  trim the ends and remove any soft spots. Drop them into boiling salted water and cook for twelve minutes. Dice three ounces of bacon and fry it. Add a diced, medium yellow onion to the pan. Drain the mushrooms and add them to the bacon and onion along with a pinch of salt and a grind of pepper. Cover the frying pan and continue cooking over low heat for seven minutes, stirring several times. Serve for lunch with hot potatoes.

Char sent me this timely link from Saturday’s New York Times.

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Carol Egbert

My thoughts often turn to tea, a cup of tea, a pot of tea, a tea cup, a tea pot.  You might enjoy an image I discovered this morning. Here’s the link. 

I drink English Breakfast tea  with lime.  Char, my friend with a green Aga, served Irish Breakfast tea with thin slices of lime studded with a four whole cloves.My nana drank pink tea, strong tea with lots of milk and sugar, from a large, plain white tea cup.

Charles and I enjoyed apple tea in Turkey, served only with a  breakfast that consisted of a slab of feta cheese,  black olives,  sliced tomato and bread.

On a train in China, the only liquid safe to drink was  boiling water in a large thermos decorated with images of pink peonies. We flavored it with a few leaves of jasmine tea.

Hot tea served with hot milk, on the small deck of a houseboat in Kashmir, made the day and the macaroons shine.  You can read more about that day and the macaroons here.

Carol Egbert

A cup of smokey lapsang souchong tea, a splash of cream and a book of Mother Goose or Billy Collins poems – perfect on a gray day. Here’s a link to Billy Collins reading one of my favorites - The Lanyard. Perhaps you could make a cup of tea before you click on this link and sip the tea as he speaks.

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Matthew and Alison have a “veg” box from Riverford Farm delivered every Thursday. The organic vegetables and fruit come in a reusable cardboard box and are accompanied by seasonal recipes and news from the farm. The “veg” box, augmented with a bit of meat or fish, milk, cheese and eggs and miscellaneous items like fresh ginger and hot peppers from the grocer at the train station, is the center of their healthy and sustainable diet. This week’s box had leeks, cabbage, broccoli, carrots, parsnips, fennel, potatoes, onions and baby bok choy.

On Thursday, we had “veg” box stir-fry and bok choy with black beans for dinner. Here’s how Matthew did it:

“Veg” Box Stir-Fry

He washed and sliced enough leeks, carrots, cabbage and broccoli to fill a medium bowl, about four cups. For the sauce, he combined a tablespoon of soy sauce, a tablespoon of white wine vinegar, a heaping teaspoon of cornstarch, two teaspoons of hoi sin sauce, a tablespoon of toasted sesame seed oil and a tablespoon of sugar in a small bowl. He heated two tablespoons of vegetable oil in a large pot, added three small, whole, dried chili peppers, two cloves of garlic and a one-inch knob of ginger root, both minced. As soon as we could smell the garlic and ginger, he added the vegetables. After the vegetables had cooked for five minutes, he added the sauce and cooked the vegetables for two more minutes.

It took less time for Matthew to cook the bok choy than it took for me to set the table and serve the stir fried vegetables.

Bok Choy with Chinese Black Beans

He rinsed and quartered three heads of baby bok choy, put a splash of vegetable oil, about two teaspoons, one clove of minced garlic and a tablespoon of rinsed, salted Chinese black beans and the bok choy into a cast-iron frying pan over medium-high heat. After the bok choy had cooked for a minute, he added a tablespoon of white wine, turned the bok choy over and cooked it for another minute.

We evaluated dinner as we ate it. The texture of the crisp bok choy and the sweet/sour sauce on the stir fried vegetables were pluses, forgetting to remove the whole chili peppers before serving the stir fry was a negative. We awarded dinner four-stars.

On Saturday, I bought a pint of strawberries and a small container of double cream, (heavy cream in Vermont), at the train station market so that I could make strawberries and cream French toast for Sunday breakfast. Here’s how:

Strawberries & Cream French Toast

I rinsed the strawberries, removed their leafy caps, sliced them and combined them with a tablespoon of sugar. I toasted four pieces of sunflower seed, whole-wheat bread. I combined two eggs, two tablespoons of cream, a teaspoon of sugar and a quarter of a teaspoon of nutmeg in a shallow bowl. I put the toasted bread into the egg mixture, set it aside for ten minutes, turned the slices over, waited ten minutes more so that the bread would absorb the eggy mixture, and then sauteed the bread in butter in a medium cast iron frying pan over low heat.

I found a whisk and recruited Matthew to whip half a cup of the cream. When the French toast was golden, I sprinkled each serving with a teaspoon of sugar, added a generous helping of strawberries and a scoop of whipped cream to each plate. We sat in the sun, enjoyed our breakfast and tried to decide what we should make for dinner.

Here’s a link to the Riverford Farm website. If you live in the UK you may be able to arrange to have a Riverford box delivered. Whether or not you have a veg box delivered, the Riverford site has a great variety of recipes here.

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Concord Grapes Carol Egbert

She showed me how to use small clippers to harvest the bunches of fragrant, purple-black grapes. We sat on her back porch and watched birds feasting on grapes as we separated the ripe grapes from the stems, leaves and spider webs. Ruby always used the grapes we gathered to make enough grape jelly for a winter’s worth of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

My pantry is filled with jelly so I decided to use the grapes from the market to make a focaccia studded with grapes and pine nuts and seasoned with rosemary and olive oil. I wanted to try this classic Italian bread that is made in Tuscany during the wine grape harvest. Here’s how I made it:

Concord Grape Focaccia

I combined one package of active dry yeast with three-quarters of a cup of lukewarm water in a large bowl. I added two tablespoons of honey and stirred until the yeast and honey had dissolved. I set it aside for ten minutes, until the yeast had begun to grow and make the mixture foamy.

I added a quarter of a cup of olive oil, one and two-thirds cups of all-purpose flour, two-thirds of a cup of fine cornmeal and one and a half teaspoons of kosher salt to the yeast mixture, and stirred it with a wooden spoon to form a soft dough.

I turned the dough out onto a floured board and kneaded it until it was smooth and elastic. I added enough flour to the board, about a third of a cup, as I kneaded, to keep it from sticking to my fingers and the board but not so much flour as to make the dough dry.

I oiled a large bowl with a tablespoon of olive oil, put the dough into the bowl and rolled it around until it was coated with oil. I covered the bowl with a cloth napkin and put it on the counter near the oven that was preheating to 400º to rise.

It took me nearly an hour to rinse, halve and remove the seeds from two cups of concord grapes. When I had finished, the dough had doubled in bulk and it was time to assemble the focaccia. I oiled a twelve by seventeen inch baking sheet with olive oil. I gently deflated the dough, (I try never to punch anything in my kitchen), and put it onto the baking sheet sheet. I stretched it to form a disc that was half an inch thick. I used my finger tips to make dimples in the dough, scattered the prepared grapes, half a cup of pine nuts, one and a half teaspoons of minced fresh rosemary leaves, two tablespoons of sugar and half a teaspoon of flaky sea salt onto the dough. I drizzled the focaccia with two tablespoons of olive oil and put it into the oven.

In thirty minutes it was golden brown and dripping with juice the color of garnets. I served it with steamy carrot soup and a green salad. It was fun to pretend that we had spent the day working in a vineyard in Tuscany harvesting grapes.

Down load a recipe for Focaccia with an ingredients list here.

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When the sweet aroma of apples cooking to make applesauce and jelly as inspiration and a chance meeting with an overloaded apple tree,  Charles gathered loads of apples. Here’s how I made a batch of apple butter:

Apple Butter

I washed the apples and Charles disengaged the peeling blade on our old fashioned, hand powered, red enamel apple peeler, and cored and sliced the apples. I filled a four-cup microwave safe bowl with apples, covered it, zapped the apples in the microwave for five minutes and put the partially cooked apples into a slow cooker set to cook on low for ten hours. We continued coring and zapping apples. When the slow cooker was filled to the brim, I set it to cook on low for eight hours, put the lid on and went to bed. In the morning, I removed the lid, added a cup and a half of granulated sugar, one and a half teaspoons of ground cinnamon, half a teaspoon of ground cloves and a teaspoon of ground ginger and used an immersion blender to puree the fragrant, red-brown apple butter. I cooked the uncovered apple butter for another hour to thicken it. We processed the apple butter according the instructions that came with the jars.

Apple butter is the most inexact recipe I can think of, the quantity of apples depends on the size of your cooking vessel, the quantity of sugar and spice depends on your palate and the length of cooking time depends on how you define “thick enough”. You can make apple butter by roasting, prepared apples in a covered ovenproof container at 225º ‘until it is thick enough’.

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