Marisa McClellan's Blog, page 144

Salted Rye Cookies from Whole Grains for a New Generation

My cookie output has been woefully low this holiday season. There was a batch of rugelach for Hanukkah, a celebratory round of pumpkin seed brittle on my first full day in Portland and these salted rye cookies.

Both the rugelach and the brittle are old favorites, the rye cookies were a recipe that had jumped out from the pages of Liana Krisoff’s new book Whole Grains for a New Generation. I spent a few days cooking from it a couple weeks back for a Table Matters piece (publishing soon!) and found everything in it incredibly appealing and inspiring.

These cookies did not let me down. They are buttery, sweet (but not obnoxiously so) and pleasantly sandy from the rye flour. A classic slice and bake style cookie, the only garnish they need is a quick roll in chunky sugar and flakey salt.

I left half at home for Scott and brought the balance out to Portland with me in my luggage. They were forced to compete for attention with the brittle and have still managed to disappear first.

If you’re looking for one final cookie to make this year, or simply need something to eat with a mug of tea, this is such a good one.

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Salted Rye Cookies from Whole Grains for a New Generation

Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks / 225 g) unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup (150 g) granulated sugar
1 large egg
Kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon finely grated orange zest
2 1/2 cups (230 g) whole (dark) rye flour
3 tablespoons coarse sparkling sugar or turbinado sugar

Instructions

In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, cream the butter and granulated sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg, a pinch of salt, and the orange zest. Gradually mix in the flour.
Divide the dough into two portions and place each on a sheet of plastic wrap. Shape into logs about 2 inches (5 cm) in diameter and wrap tightly.
To shape the soft dough log into a more perfect cylinder, use a paper-towel tube: Cut the tube open vertically along one side and nest the wrapped log inside, then tape or rubber-band the tube closed.
Chill in the refrigerator until firm, about 1 hour.
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
On a sheet of waxed paper, combine 1 1/2 teaspoons salt and the sparkling sugar. Unwrap the dough logs and roll them in the mixture to coat well. Place each log on a cutting board
and cut into 1/8-inch-thick (3-mm-thick) rounds, arranging the rounds 1 inch (2.5 cm) apart on the prepared baking sheets.
Bake until lightly browned at the edges, about 16 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through so the cookies bake evenly.
Remove to wire racks to cool completely.
The cookies can be stored at room temperature in an airtight container for up to 1 week.
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Giveaway Winners!

With Christmas just a handful of hours away, it seems like the right time to post some recent giveaway winners.

This last week, I had eight Hamilton Beach Set ‘n Forget slow cookers to share. I so enjoyed reading all your favorite ways to use your slow cookers. I plan on borrowing a great number of those ideas!

The winners are numbers 212 (Sara), 221 (Jennifer), 498 (Sarah), 618 (Betsy), 695 (Pamela), 899 (Sharon), 918 (Kim), and 1060 (Annie). Congratulations everyone, I’ll be in touch shortly!

Then there’s the giveaway from the week before. I got lost in the frenzy of holiday prep and getting out of town (I’m out in Portland, Oregon right now) and forgot entirely to post the winners. So sorry about that!

The mugs from Korin go to number 23, which is Elle (who writes the blog Dancing Wooly Masters).

The Korin petty knife goes to commenter number 350, which is Savanarola.

Thanks again for all the giveaway entries! I hope everyone is having a lovely holiday season! I’ll be back tomorrow with a cookie recipe I made recently that I’ve absolutely loved. I realize that cookie season is rapidly coming to a close, but I think there’s always space for one more treat!

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Quick Pickled Romanesco Broccoli

Spiced Apple Butter + Giveaway

Since I was very young, I’ve been something of a collector. I figured that if having one of something was good, then having three or four was even better. As a kid, this meant that I had more pens and pencils in my school bag than necessary and felt most comfortable when I had a back-up security blanket.

In my adulthood, this propensity towards duplication has most actively manifested itself in the kitchen. I have at least two dozen wooden spoons and spatulas (when just a handful would really do), three vintage waffle irons (because you never know when one might break) and five slow cookers.

There’s no really good defense for the wooden implements or the waffle irons, but I do have a rationale for the slow cookers. My slow cooker needs often vary and so having different shapes, sizes and eras to choose from give me options.

Dips go in the mini-cooker. When I make overnight oatmeal, the 2 1/2 quart pot is best. If I’m doing a batch of blueberry butter and want really low, slow heat, nothing works better than my vintage, 4 quart, avocado green cooker. I also have kept a basic 6 quart cooker in the rotation for a while for stocks and soups, though I must confess, it has never been my favorite.

Then there’s slow cooker number five. It joined the line-up recently and rocketed to the top of my slow cooker hit parade. It’s the Hamilton Beach Set ‘n Forget model, with a lid that can be locked into a place and a thermometer probe that you can use to test internal temperatures without lifting the lid and releasing the heat. It allows you to set the cook time and temperature (when the time is up, it shifts to a keep warm setting).

This time of year, my slow cookers are in regular rotation for the production of apple and pear butters. I typically go with my vintage cooker, because I know that I can trust it not to burn (older slow cookers have lower set temperatures than the newer models). However, because of its capacity, it ends up yielding just a couple of pints. As you know, most of the time I like a small batch just a little more than the next girl. During the holiday season that changes and  I appreciate the option of larger yields for gift giving.

I realize now that I’ve avoided the newer cookers and their higher temperatures because I’ve never worked with one that had an auto shut-off before. I tend to let my fruit butters cook overnight. That was too much time for my brute force, either-on-or-off cooker. But having the option to set it to cook for 5 or 6 hours and then shift to warm has changed everything. I know this technology has been around for a while (my mom had a slow cooker when I was little that did something along these lines), but I’d never before experienced it. I am in love.

My fruit butter yields are higher because the new Hamilton Beach machine has a larger capacity and I’m not running the risk of burning the butter because it shuts off when I ask. I am a happy canner.

Before we get to the apple butter recipe I’ve made three times in the last month in machine, I have to tell you one more reason why I really like it. It’s that “Stay or Go” feature. This slow cooker has a lid fitted with a silicone seal that can be locked into place. That makes it an able traveler, which is terrific for a regular potluck-attender like me.

I used it to transport and serve mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving (sadly, they were the worst mashed potatoes I’ve ever made; both lumpy and gummy at the same time. But the quality of the potatoes wasn’t the cooker’s fault) and it will be pressed into travel service again soon.

The formal recipe I’ve been using for this slow cooker apple butter is after the jump, but here’s the narrative version. You begin by filling your slow cooker to the top with sliced apples (I got about eight pounds into my cooker, but there’s some natural variation here). You add a little water (maybe 1/2 a cup) to help things along and then you let the cooker for for four to six hours on low, until you can mash the apples into sauce.

Then you puree the heck out of the applesauce, until the skins disappear. It works best in my Vitamix, but I’ve also achieved this same effect with an immersion blender and persistence. Then you return the puree to the slow cooker (it will only fill it 2/3 of the way up at this point) and cook on low for another six or so hours with the lid slightly askew for venting purposes, until the sauce has reduced into butter. Stir in sugar, spices, and lemon zest/juice for balance. That’s it! Easy and makes such good holiday presents!

Finally, the giveaway. Hamilton Beach has generously given me eight (yes, that’s eight) of these Set ‘n Forget Slow Cookers to give away to my readers. Here’s how to enter.

Leave a comment on this post and share your favorite slow cooker use.
Comments will close at 11:59 pm on Saturday, December 22, 2012. Winners will be chosen at random and will be posted to the blog on Sunday.
Giveaway open US residents only.
One comment per person, please. Entries must be left via the comment form on the blog at the bottom of this post.

Disclosure: Hamilton Beach gave me one Set ‘n Forget Slow Cooker for review and photography purposes and they’re providing eight additional units for this giveaway. They did not pay for inclusion on the blog and my opinions remain entirely my own. 

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Spiced Apple Butter + Giveaway

Yield: approximately 3 pints

Ingredients

7-8 pounds apples (any varieties you like)
1/2 to 1 cup dark brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
zest and juice of one lemon

Instructions

Slice apples and heap them into a six quart slow cooker.
Add 1/2 cup water and set to low.
Cook until apples are tender and can be easily pressed into sauce. On low, this will take 4-6 hours. On high, it should only take 2-3 hours.
Puree softened apples into a smooth puree (it shouldn't be necessary to peel).
Return to puree to slow cooker and cook on low for 6 hours with the lid set slightly ajar so that it can vent.
Add 1/2 cup sugar, spices and lemon zest/juice. Taste and add more spices and sugar, if necessary.
Funnel hot apple butter into prepared jars.
Apply lids and rings and process in a boiling water bath canner for 15 minutes.
When time is up, remove jars from canner and let cool on a folded kitchen towel.

Notes

My batch yielded just over 3 pints, but with all things that depend on reduction, yields will vary. I can see this batch ranging from 2 to 4 pints, depending on the water content of the apples and the length that you cook them.

This recipe can be canned in pints, half pints, quarter pints or any other small jar designed for boiling water bath canning. All jars pints or smaller are processed for 15 minutes. Should you want to can it in quarts, increase processing time to 20 minutes.

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Remembrance

 

The events in Newtown, Connecticut on Friday continue to make my throat tight and my heart heavy. I cannot make sense of it and I can’t stop thinking about it.

I’ve long been taught to respond to even the most senselessly awful events with love and compassion. The eternal hope is that the goodness of life will eventually outweigh the horrors. But when something this inexplicably vile happens, it can be hard to find that spark of hopeful light in all the darkness.

Like a number of other bloggers out there, I am going to take a break from the recipes, the holiday frenzy, and the giveaways today to create a little space for all of us who are still fumbling our way back to a new, tender balance.

(If you’re in need of a little boost, I suggest reading or watching President Obama at last night’s prayer vigil. It made me cry and gave me hope that things might finally start to change.) 

 

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Holiday Giving: Cookbooks for Everyone!

Cookbooks are one of my favorite things on the planet. I have them in every room of our apartment. I cook from them, read them in bed, give them as gifts, and even use them occasionally as furniture (there’s a stack in our living room that doubles as an end table).

I was told recently by the folks at Eat Your Books (an awesome service that allows you to enter all your cookbooks and the blogs you follow in order to be able to organize and  search them) that nearly 3,000 cookbooks come out every year. I only see a small fraction of those, but I still manage to wade through a whole heck of a lot. These are some of the best that have crossed my path since about this time last year.

Poptails is a fun book for all cocktail lovers. Author Erin Nichols (she writes the blog Erin Cooks) has concocted 60 boozy popsicles for cooling down on hot days. Part of what makes this book genius is that she’s found a way to treat the alcohol so that you can get it to freeze well.

I wrote about Marmalade recently, but to recap, it’s a charming little book that features a number of recipes for marmalades (both sweet and savory). Everyone who’s interested in taking their preserves in a decidedly citrus-y direction should have this on their shelf.

Yogurt covered raisins? Homemade saltines? Corn nuts without the package? You’ll find recipes for them all in Lara Ferroni’s new book, Real Snacks. Many of the recipes have gluten-free options and they all take a more wholesome approach than the classic snacks on which they’re modeled.

Speaking of gluten-free, there’s no better primer for gluten-free baking for this time of year than Jeanne Sauvage’s book Gluten-Free Baking for the Holidays. My sister had to stop eating gluten earlier this year, so we’ll be baking a lot from this book in just a few days.

I was so inspired by Tamar Adler’s An Everlasting Meal when I first read it last spring and I continue to return to it when I need a little help being creative with the bits and scraps that so often fill my fridge and pantry. It’s a great gift for people who do better with a trace of an idea than a strictly structured recipe.

I am devoted to vanilla. I am in the habit of buying my vanilla beans by the pound and try to tuck those fragrant seeds into nearly everything I jam or bake. Pure Vanilla by Shauna Sever celebrates all things vanilla and everytime I pick it up, I find something new in it that I want to make (today I’m anxious to try the Nutty Vanilla Spread on page 132).

I realize it’s probably in bad taste to put one’s own cookbook in their gift guide. But I can’t help but think it might just make a really nice present for someone who’s been itching to start canning.

Cheryl Sternman Rule and Paulette Phlipot’s Ripe gorgeous book that is great for lovers of fruits, vegetables, reliable recipes, and vivid photography. It’s lovely enough to leave on your coffee table, but should really be taken to the kitchen and used. Buy it for anyone who needs a culinary lift.

Whole Grains for a New Generation by Liana Krisoff (she also wrote Canning for a New Generation) is my current cookbook obsession. I’ve made four dishes from it in the last week and have at least 20 more earmarked for the coming months. It makes whole grains incredibly accessible and has me using things like rye flour and wild rice, which are two ingredients that have rarely entered my kitchen before. And now I adore them both.

I did a whole lot of raving about Kim O’Donnel’s new book, The Meat Lover’s Meatless Celebrations over on Table Matters last month, but I can’t help but recommend it again here. It really is such a good book for those of us who want to cut back on meat without giving up anything in flavor.

The Kimchi Cookbook by Lauryn Chun and Olga Massov is such an awesome book for fans of Korean fermented pickles. It’s got a ton of useful information and the recipes are varied. I’ve long been intimidated by kimchi, but this book helped me get over my fears and dive in.

If you believe in home cooked dinners, eating with family, around a dining table, Dinner: A Love Story by Jenny Rosenstrach should be on your shelf. It’s filled with sturdy, appealing recipes and stories from the dinnertime trenches.

Alana Chernila’s The Homemade Pantry continues to be one of my favorites for basics. Its heft and photography, coupled with Alana’s words and recipes, make for such a pleasing cookbook experience. I still get a kick out of the fact that the recipes are arranged by the aisle on which they’d be found in the grocery store.

I collect old community cookbooks and have often felt a pang that they might be going the way of console TVs and cassette tapes. However, the Food52 community and cookbooks give me hope. Much like those old books, they gather the best from friends and neighbors (no matter how far-flung) and bring them together. The recently released The Food52 Cookbook, Volume 2 does a beautiful job of this type of community collation.

In recent years, many of us have made the switch from grocery store beef of unknown providence, to local, grass-fed beef, raised by farmers we know. However, with this kind of meat buying comes foreign cuts and untold cooking challenges. Lynne Curry’s new book, Pure Beef is sturdy, informative, and seriously useful if you’ve bought in on a cow and don’t know what the heck to do with the package labeled shoulder tender.

Kale is hot and you can count me among its many fans. In my search for more ways to incorporate this dark, leafy green into my diet, I stumbled across The Book of Kale by Sharon Hanna. It includes more than 80 ways to prepare kale. Never again can your family complain that they’re tired of kale, since you’ll be cooking it a new way every week!

 

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Preserves in Action: Hanukkah Edition

Hanukkah took me by surprise this year. It started last Saturday night, which felt impossibly early to me (I still wake up most days thinking it’s November, so I’m woefully out of sync). The days since have passed in a blurry haze of deadlines, gift wrapping, and holiday parties. Though I’ve struggled to wrap my hands around this holiday of miracles and illumination, I’ve somehow still managed to light my menorah (two nights out of six so far) make a couple of appropriately celebratory foods. They both just happen to involve preserves.

The first thing I made was a batch of rugelach. These cookies are eaten all year long, but are particularly traditional around Hanukkah. The dough is made with butter, cream cheese, flour and just a bit of sugar. After some time in the fridge to chill, you roll out the dough, spread it with fruit jam, and spread chopped walnuts and raisins over top. The round of dough is sliced into wedges, rolled, chilled (ideally, at least. I rarely have room in my fridge to chill a sheet pan) and baked. They are divine and when I make them, I feel connected to all the women in my family who rolled these same cookies long before I was born.

 

On Wednesday night, I made latkes. I don’t really ever follow a recipe for latkes (though I do employ this trick of soaking the shredded potatoes in a bowl of ice water to help extract the starch and prevent discoloration). Much like I assume my great-great-auntie Tunkel once did, I grate potatoes until it looks like I have enough. Add shredded onion, an egg or two to bind, flour to thicken, and salt and pepper for flavor. And then fry until crisp in a bit of oil. Topped with a layer of sour cream and applesauce (there’s the preserve!), they are such a treat.

How are you using your preserves this week?

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Honey-Sweetened Chestnut Butter

The first fall that my family lived in Portland was magical. We were escapees from Southern California and everything about the changing leaves, chilly nights, and morning frost was novel and thrilling to me. I was also innocently astonished by the new varieties of edible bounty around us.

Across the driveway, Mrs. Gosling grew raspberries and a wild herb garden. On the other side, Jan and Guy had pumpkins, beans, and apples on their tiny city plot. We had had plums and guava trees in Los Angeles, but the food of the Pacific Northwest felt sturdy and sustaining.

One day, we discovered a clutch of chestnut trees on the lawn of a high school (ultimately, the very school I’d end up attending years later). My parents, caught up in my excitement over the idea of roasted chestnuts (Christmas songs made them sound so romantic), let me fill a partially closed umbrella with my haul (we had yet to learn that true Portlanders never use umbrellas).

We brought them home, gave them a cursory rinse and piled them onto a baking sheet. Never having had anything to do with chestnuts, we had no idea that there were multiple varieties or that you needed to make a little cut in the shell to prevent them from exploding once heated. It was, after all, in the days before we had the internet to help us with such research.

Soon enough, the kitchen filled with smoke and the chestnuts began to explode in the oven. The inside of the oven ended up covered with a sticky, green nutmeat (turns out that these were the non-edible horse chestnuts) that had to be scraped off with an old butter knife. Our time as chestnut eaters was over before it got a chance to begin.

It was a good 20 years before I tried chestnuts again.

In recent years, I’ve returned to the chestnut. Wiser and armed with better information, I’ve found that as long as you have the edible variety, those hard shells contain flesh that is sweet, tender, and has a texture much like the bean paste you find inside many Chinese buns and baked goods.

There are a number of classical applications for chestnuts, including soups, stuffings, puddings, and roasted whole for snacking. Less common, but my favorite, is a chestnut spread. I tried a version made by Bonne Maman a few years back and was totally smitten. I’ve bought it occasionally since then, but it’s long been on my list of things to make at home. This was the week!

This time of year, a number of grocery stores and farmers’ markets carry chestnuts. If you  have the option, sort through them and select nuts that are firm, heavy, and that don’t feel like the nutmeat is rattling around inside the shell. Unlike most other nuts, which seem to last forever in their shells at room temperature, chestnuts are highly perishable and need to be stored in the fridge. If the chestnuts are pre-packaged, make sure to get a few more than you’ll need, to compensate for the few that will inevitably be moldy inside.

To prepare the chestnuts to make this spread, you cut an ‘x’ into the shell and then boil them for 20-25 minutes, until the spot where you cut begins opens up on its own. Once the time is up, you drain them and run them under cold water to stop the cooking. Then you peel. Peeling chestnuts can be a time consuming task, because there’s both a hard outer shell and a papery skin that need to be removed. But it’s that kind of pleasing, mindless work that goes well with a good podcast.

When you make this spread, you have to be diligent and puree until it is intensely smooth. I made mine in the Vitamix, because I knew it would eventually give me the texture I wanted, but there was a lot of starting, stopping, and scraping involved. It also needs a goodly amount of water, adding in small increments, to achieve silkiness. I imagine it would also work using a food processor or even an immersion blender, though I did not try it this time around.

Like so many nut butters, this one is good smeared on toast or crackers. It’s also a nice filling for small shortbread cookies or as an addition to a platter of cheeses (I was talking to Madame Fromage earlier today and she suggested pairing with the goat cheese called Robiola. It’s wrapped in chestnut leaves, so they’d compliment each other beautifully). It’s also a wonderful homemade holiday gift for chestnut lovers, as it’s unusual, seasonal, and delicious.

Print

Honey-Sweetened Chestnut Butter

Yield: approximately 2 cups

Ingredients

1 1/2 pounds whole chestnuts
1/4 cup honey
1 vanilla bean, scraped
1/2 teaspoon
1 to 1 1/2 cups water

Instructions

Bring a medium sized pot of water to a boil.
While it heats, cut a small x into each of the chestnuts.
Once the water boils, carefully lower the chestnuts into the water and cook at a low boil for approximately 25 minutes.
When time is up, drain chestnuts and rinse with cool water.
Peel away the hard outer shell and the inner papery layer. You should have approximately 2 1/2 to 3 cups of peeled chestnuts.
Place peeled chestnuts in a blender or food processer with the honey, vanilla seeds, and salt.
Add 1/2 cup of water and pulse to combine.
Continue processing/blending, scraping down the sides regularly, and adding water until you've achieved a smooth, not too thick consistency.
Scrape into small jars and refrigerate. Schema/Recipe SEO Data Markup by ZipList Recipe Plugin2.1http://www.foodinjars.com/2012/12/honey-sweetened-chestnut-butter/


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Holiday Giving: More Favorite Things

We’re heading into the holiday home stretch here, friends. Tonight is the midway point of Hanukkah, the winter solstice is a week from Friday and, as they say, there are just 12 shopping/cooking/crafting/making days before Christmas. The gifting season is upon us. If you’re still stumped for ideas, here are a few more things I like (I’ll have a fresh good gifting recipe up tomorrow as well).

Since first discovering them, I’ve been entirely charmed by these mugs. The one with the knit print is double walled, so that you can hold it even when its filled with steaming liquid. The one on the right is from a line called Mugtails and is available in rabbit, cat, and fawn styles in addition to the squirrel one pictured above. They’re sold by Korin.

For morning caffeination efforts, I regular turn towards two tools. A hand-cranked coffee grinder that fits onto a wide mouth mason jar (I like having to work a little for coffee) and a Teastick (fill with loose leaf tea and swish through a mug of hot water. It’s perfect for a quick cup). My particular model is currently sold out, but I hear good things about this one, too.

I’ve long been obsessed with wooden tools and since last year, Earlywood Design has been my favorite purveyor of all things useful, handmade, and satisfyingly tactile. I particularly like their slant-edged scraper, but I’m slowly amassing a well-rounded collection of their utensils (next on my personal list of wants from Earlywood is their short server). They also have awesome customer service. One of the scrapers I bought started to split along the grain and they were happy to replace it. Many thanks to Nici of Dig This Chick for turning me on to them.

 

You’re all familiar with my inability to resist any mason jar accessory. Well, from the moment I saw the Mason Shaker, I knew I had to have it. I’m not a huge cocktail drinker (simply because I have a lousy tolerance for booze), but I love this shaker lid for batches of homemade lemonade. Must like the Teastick above, it appears to be sold out. However, I spotted a bunch at my local West Elm about a week ago, so check your bricks and mortar stores if you want to get one before the holidays.

 

Last February I visited Korin, a store in New York that specializes in fine knives and tableware and they gave me a Petty knife to use and review. I rapidly shot up my list of favorite kitchen tools. Having a knife that exists in the space between a small paring knife and a larger chef’s knife is a boon for tasks like quartering apples, cutting carrots into sticks, and opening avocados (things I do a whole heck of a lot). It would make a really great gift for a cutlery lover.

All good gift guides come with a giveaway and this one is no different. Thanks for Korin, I have the mugs pictured at the top of this post and the petty knife pictured just above to give away to one lucky winner.

Here’s how to get in on the giveaway:

Leave a comment on this post and tell me one thing you’re hoping to get done before the new year.
Comments will close at 11:59 pm on Saturday, December 15, 2012. Winners will be chosen at random and will be posted to the blog on Sunday.
Giveaway open US residents only.
One comment per person, please. Entries must be left via the comment form on the blog at the bottom of this post. I cannot accept submissions via email.

Disclosure: Korin has provided the mugs and knife for this giveaway. They did not pay for placement. All opinions remain mine. 

 

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Quick Pickled Romanesco Broccoli

A couple weeks back, I bought a bright green head of romanesco broccoli. It was more money than I should have spent on a single handful of produce, but ever since trying it a few years back as a pickle on the Farmhouse Platter at Supper, I’ve had a weakness for it.

I like it best as a quick pickle (also known as a refrigerator pickle), because it stays most crunchy and crisp that way. You also retain more color if you keep it out of a boiling water bath canner.

It’s an easy pickle to make. Take on head of romanesco broccoli and break it into florets. Because of the spiral arrangement of the little fractal heads, it typically breaks apart quick easily. Place spices in the bottom of the jar and pack the florets in on top (my particular head fit perfectly into a pint and a half).

Heat apple cider vinegar, water and salt together just until the salt dissolves. Pour the pickling liquid over the florets and use a chopstick to ease out any air bubbles.

Place a lid on the jar. Once it is cool, pop it into the fridge and let it sit for about a week before beginning to munch. You’ll end up with deeply tangy, crunchy pickles. This time of year, when soups and braises appear on our weekly menu with greater frequency, having these in the fridge makes me very happy. The recipe is after the jump.

***********************

Winners! Jennifer (#455) wins the set of Weck Jars and the ladle from Kaufmann Mercantile. Jan Jack (#183) wins the Jars Go To tote from A Tiny Forest.

Print

Quick Pickled Romanesco Broccoli

Ingredients

1 small head romanesco broccoli
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup water
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds
1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon dill seeds
1/2 teaspoon red chili flakes
2 garlic cloves

Instructions

Break broccoli into florets.
Combine vinegar, water, and salt and bring to a boil.
Place spices and garlic cloves into the bottom of a large jar.
Pack broccoli in on top of the spices.
Pour pickling liquid over the broccoli.
Remove air bubbles with a chopstick.
Place a lid on the jar and allow it to cool.
Refrigerate jar for one week before eating. Schema/Recipe SEO Data Markup by ZipList Recipe Plugin2.0http://www.foodinjars.com/2012/12/quick-pickled-romanesco-broccoli/


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Blogger Cookbooks on Twin Cities Live

Here’s a fun clip for your Friday morning. Recently, Twin Cities Live featured three of their favorite blogger cookbooks and they included my little book in the line-up (along with The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook and What Katie Ate).

Thanks so much, Elizabeth Ries, for making two of the fruit curds from my book and for sharing them with your viewers!

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