April 2019 Mastery Challenge Round-up
Friends! April is over and thus wraps up the fourth month of the Mastery Challenge. This time, we focused on using and transforming the preserves in our pantries.
This time around, we had nearly 90 people report that they made nearly 200 dishes. There were three frozen treats, four batches of compound butter, five batches of cocktails, 7 marinades, 10 loaves of bread, 11 cheese plates, 12 vinaigrettes, 14 pies or tarts, 24 batches of cookies, 27 savory sides, and 41 savory mains.
There were also 34 projects that didn’t fall into the categories I offered. All told, that’s a lot of preserves in action!
As is so often the case, attitudes at the start of the month were mixed. A healthy portion of you felt good about the topic, but the rest were all over the board.
Happily, by the end of the month, the majority of you who participated felt really good about cooking with preserves. I’m kind of delighted with how positive the results were this time around.
For the visually inclined among you, here’s a pie chart of the dish breakdown.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Genevieve Boehme (@genaboehme) on Apr 22, 2019 at 1:42pm PDT
The photo above from @genaboehme includes a Victoria Sandwich with strawberry-rhubarb jam, a cheese plate with marmalade glazed nuts, French onion soup with turkey stock from last Thanksgiving’s bird, and quinoa salad with preserved lemon, pickled onions, and other odds and ends.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Nadia Hassani (@nadia_c_hassani) on Apr 20, 2019 at 9:54am PDT
From @nadia_c_hassani, a Raspberry Almond Vacherin featuring her homemade red currant jelly.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Colette (@oregoncolette) on Apr 10, 2019 at 7:55pm PDT
Finally, from @oregoncolette, a batch of asian ginger soy-sauce chicken (sounds delicious!). Now, some comments from this month!
Thanks for pushing me to work through the crazy amount of pesto in our freezer! Still going strong…
Maia from Berkeley, CA
While I always cook from my larder, I tend to use my canned items first, and let my freezer items languish. As we enter berry season, freezer space is desperately needed, so I chose to use this months challenge to work down my freezer preserves! It worked out wonderfully, though this challenge might carry over into the next month as freezer space is still a bit tight
