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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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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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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Watercolor painting by Carol Egbert

Saturday, white puffy clouds danced across the cobalt blue sky, the grass was freshly mowed and my Kindle was giving me that ‘come hither’ look. It was a day to make one of my favorite (nearly) no-cook, (almost) zero effort dinners. This dinner has four steps:

• Determine menu
• See what’s in the pantry and fridge
• Go to market for what isn’t
• Pull dinner together

Charles and I decided to split the tasks. I decided we would have roasted chicken with pink ginger sauce, sesame noodles and a nectarine salad. I found soy sauce, cayenne pepper, vinegar, canola oil, garlic, honey, sesame seeds and sesame oil in the pantry and mayonnaise, sour cream, catsup and pickled ginger in the fridge. Charles went to the market to get a rotisserie cooked chicken, a box of pasta, scallions, fresh ginger and some nectarines. I got lost in my book and snoozed a bit.

When I woke up, I put a large pot of water on the stove over medium heat. In less than half an hour after Charles returned from the market, we sat down to an Asian inspired summer dinner. Here’s how we did it:

Sesame Noodles

I salted the pasta water, turned up the heat and, when the water was boiling, stirred in half a pound of linguini. I made the sauce for the noodles and Charles carved the chicken while the noodles cooked. For the sesame sauce, I used a wire whisk to combine a quarter of a cup of soy sauce, one tablespoon of sugar, one teaspoon of minced garlic, one teaspoon of minced fresh ginger, one tablespoon of red wine vinegar, two tablespoons of toasted sesame oil, a wee pinch of cayenne and three tablespoons of canola oil. After cooking for seven minutes the pasta was tender, a bit softer than the usual al dente, but just right for a salad eaten at room temperature. I put the drained pasta into a large serving bowl, poured the sesame sauce in and tossed the noodles until they were coated with the sauce. I cut three scallions into thin slices and sprinkled them on top.

Download and print sesame noodle recipe with an ingredients list here.

When he had finished carving the chicken, Charles made the Pink Ginger Sauce.

Pink Ginger Sauce

He combined one tablespoon of finely minced, pickled ginger with two tablespoons of mayonnaise, two tablespoons of sour cream, one teaspoon of catsup, a pinch of cayenne and one teaspoon of fresh lime juice. He put a generous puddle of sauce on two dinner plates.

In twenty minutes, we had everything ready but the nectarine salad. Charles cut two nectarines into thin slices and I mixed up a simple sauce of a tablespoon of olive oil, a teaspoon of honey, a teaspoon of lime juice and a pinch of salt. He poured the sauce on the nectarines, gave them a quick toss and put a serving on each plate. I added a serving of sesame noodles to each plate, Charles added a drumstick and a thigh to his plate and I choose a wing and a breast for mine.

We made dinner in less than thirty minutes and there were enough leftovers for lunch in less than five minutes on Sunday. It was fun, quick and collaborative. There is lots of room for substitution in these recipes – pasta can be any shape you like, I used linguini fini; lemons can be substituted for limes; leftover roast beef or pork can stand in for the chicken; apricots, peaches or melon alone or in combination would make a lovely salad; and, maple syrup is a wonderful substitute for honey. Pickled ginger is found in the sushi cooler, if you can’t find it, use a teaspoons of minced fresh ginger root. The absolutely essential ingredient, not to be omitted, is a snooze – either before, during or after dinner.

Download and print pink ginger sauce recipe with an ingredients list here. 

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Abbe Fetel Pears

The other evening, I decided to serve veal cordon blue for a small dinner party and the last pear and a solitary yellow apple sitting on the counter caught my eye. Don’t be impressed by the veal cordon blue, the butcher had done all the work. He had put a slice of cheese and one of prosciutto between thin slices of veal and then breaded it. All I had to do was sauté them in olive oil. But, back to the pear and apple – I decided that a warm pear and apple salad would complement the rich veal entrée. Here’s how I made it:

Warm Pear & Apple Salad

I sauteed the cored and thinly sliced, unpeeled pear and apple in a tablespoon of butter over low heat until the fruit was tender and beginning to brown. That’s it! No salt, no sugar, no spice.

As the fruit cooked, it filled the air with a flowery perfume. When I went back to the market and asked the vendor what kind of pear it was, he said “Italiano,” with a smile and a shrug. I found more information on the Internet. The pear with the pale skin and sweet perfume is an Abbe Fetel pear described as a large fruit, with melting whitish flesh, very juicy and aromatic, that originated in France in 1866. So, it’s not an Italian pear at all, but a pear worthy of a cordon bleu. The Abbe Fetel pear may not be sold in markets at home but many varieties of pears are, and that puts warm pear and apple salad in the can be recreated category.

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I don’t mean the kind that involves a cream pie in the face, champagne sprayed around the table or peas slingshot across the room. I mean friendly, family disagreements about the best cranberry sauce. Should dessert be apple or pumpkin pie? Are creamed onions or a green bean casserole mandatory? Will there be chestnuts in the stuffing? Most picture perfect holiday meals exist only in magazines and movies, with a group of strangers presented as family, dressed by stylists, sitting at a perfectly decorated holiday table. Real holiday meals are an opportunity to share a favorite recipe and no one will complain that the second version of cranberry sauce has spoiled the symmetry of the table.

My favorite cranberry relish was inspired by a recipe from my friend Lynda. I added a chili pepper when I made it last year. Here’s how I did it:

Roasted Cranberry Relish

I sorted, washed and drained one bag of fresh cranberries and then combined the berries with the zest of one lemon, one cup of sugar, two tablespoons of olive oil, one teaspoon of kosher salt, one seeded and diced jalapeno pepper and the crushed seeds from four cardamom pods.

I transferred the mixture to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. After baking for ten minutes in a 450-degree oven, the cranberries released their juice and were ready to be transferred to a bowl. To finish the sauce I stirred in the juice of half an orange and two tablespoons of Marsala wine. I let this sauce sit for an hour before serving so that the flavors could meld.Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

I made a second sauce with three small leeks, cream and rosemary. It transformed the leftover tomato sauce and linguini into an elegant dinner. Here’s how I did it:

Pasta with Creamy Leeks

I began by rinsing and slicing the leeks as I had for the soup and then I sauteed the sliced leeks and a large pinch of dried rosemary leaves in a mixture of one tablespoon of olive oil one and tablespoon of unsalted butter. When the leeks were translucent and tender, I added a cup of light cream and continued cooking the sauce until it was steamy hot. I combined cooked linguini with the tomato sauce and topped each serving with a generous spoonful of the creamy leek sauce. Delicious!

I’ve read that if a girl sleeps with a leek under her pillow on March 1, St. David’s Day, that she will see the face of her future husband in her dream and also that leeks can be used to predict the future. Fortunately, I don’t have to put a leek under my pillow because I see Charles each day. I don’t know how to use a leek to predict the future but I do know that even though I’ve used all of the leeks from Don’s garden, I’ll be able buy leeks at the market all winter long to make more soup and pasta sauce.

It’s great on vanilla ice cream, luxurious on apple crisp, divine on top of chocolate ice cream and under whipped cream, and irresistible on a spoon right out of the jar. Here’s how I made it:

Caramel Sauce

I combined one cup of sugar and half a cup of water in a medium saucepan, stirred until the sugar was dissolved. I continued to cook the sugar over medium heat. When it was a deep amber color, I removed the pan from the heat and poured in one cup of heavy cream. When the cream stopped bubbling, I put the pan over low heat and stirred until the cream was incorporated and the sauce was smooth and light brown. I removed the pan from the heat, added one teaspoon of vanilla, a pinch of salt and a pinch of cayenne pepper.

This sauce will thicken when chilled. It can be reheated to serve and will last in the fridge for a couple of weeks if you hide it carefully behind a large jar of mustard, as I did. Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

I used them as a base for pasta sauce and for grilled pizza during the gray days of the following winter.

Whether I added them to pasta sauce, used them to top pizza or on toasted bread for brushetta, I always began by pureeing the tomatoes with either a food processor or an immersion blender. The intense flavor of the roasted tomatoes satisfied my tomato desire until I emptied the last jar on Town Meeting Day.

Here how I did it:

Oven Roasted Tomatoes

I made oven-roasted tomatoes in four pound batches. I cut the tomatoes in half lengthwise, removed the seeds and the liquid surrounding them, sprinkled the cut side of each tomato with kosher salt and put the tomatoes, cut side down onto a double layer of paper towels. After half an hour, I put the drained tomatoes into two ceramic baking dishes that were large enough to hold them, cut side up, in a single layer. I topped each dish of tomatoes with half a cup of diced onions, a quarter of a cup of olive oil, six unpeeled garlic cloves and half a teaspoon of minced fresh rosemary leaves. After two hours in 200º F oven, the tomatoes had collapsed and the juices had begun to caramelize. I packed the tomatoes into half pint jars, added tomato sauce to fill the jar to within half an inch of the top and then followed the directions that came with the jars for heat processing in boiling water.  Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.