I like to can with an eye on the benjamins. What food products can I preserve that are costly to buy in the store, or rare to find? Canning tomatoes, on their own, feels virtually worthless. Commercially-canned tomatoes are cheap and good quality. There’s no point, man. That’s the cost half of the equation.

Peaches are an example of the “rare to find” category. Canned peaches aren’t rare per se, but good-tasting commercially-canned peaches are not merely difficult to find, they simply do not exist. In the case of peaches, it makes sense to put forth the effort because the reward is so delicious.

But what can be done with the humble tomato? Sauce and plain canned tomatoes are out, since the effort to cost/quality ratio is too high. I decided that, hey, spaghetti sauce is pretty expensive, especially for good-quality varieties. So let’s look at how to can spaghetti sauce and make some. And let’s calculate at the end the true cost and do a comparison!

prepping the tomatoes. prepping, prepping

First, pick 45 pounds of tomatoes.

WHAT?!?!?!???!?!?!!!111

Oh. Whew. It’s only 3 of these baskets’ worth. Each basketful came in around 15 pounds. Those aren’t your typical little plum tomatoes. Those are Opalka plums.

Put on your pirate voice. Now. Giant monsters they be, yarrr. A typical Opalka plum measures about 6 inches long. I was able to dig up about 25 pounds worth of those and supplemented the rest with Black Krim, Eva Purple, and Sudduth’s Brandywine varieties, all of which are basically gigantic beefsteak heirloom tomato varieties.

Opaklas, unlike the beefsteaks, have virtually no juice and no seeds, making them perfect for sauces. You don’t have to cook them down as long to get a thick sauce, which is key when you’re making spaghetti sauce in 90-degree heat without air conditioning.

That’s right. Things just got serious. Without. Air conditioning.

it puts the tomatoes in the pot, or it won’t get the hose when it gets hot

Let’s take a bigger look at the pic in the bottom right, above.

And here’s what 45 pounds of tomatoes, quartered, looks like. Now keep in mind that perspective may be distorted. Those are giant tomatoes in a giant stainless steel bowl. That bowl is so huge my mother stores it above the cupboards in her laundry room, because otherwise it would give all the normal bowls complexes with its huge size and its bragging ways. If it helps, peek at the small bowl to the back and to the left. That’s a normal large bowl. Teeny, ain’t it?

Now that the tomatoes are washed, cored, and quartered, it puts the tomatoes in the pot. They didn’t all fit into the giant pot at first, of course. Oh, yeah. You’ll need a giant pot for this too, if you do the whole recipe. Too bad there isn’t a Giant Kitchen Store somewhere. Damn, I just gave away a million-dollar idea there!

So just cook them a few minutes and the rest of the tomatoes can be smushed in too. All the spices et al go in now.

Bring to a boil. This will take approximately forever minutes. Then you’re going to simmer the tomatoes and spices for 20 minutes. In the meantime, you get to set up the instrument of the tomatoes’ destruction.

a medieval torture device for tomatoes

This is a Vittorio strainer, or food mill. It’s a pain in the ass to set up but it does the job. You put together this Rube Goldberg machine and then, ladle by ladle, run the burgeoning tomato sauce through it to smush it all real good (!) and get rid of all the peels and seeds.

The resulting stuff is a tad watery. You don’t want to can that!

So you dump it all back into the giant pot and cook it all down. This will take a couple hours. Get a book or go take a swim and make someone else give the sauce a stir once in a while. Ooh, look, it’s about half cooked down. Time to can! \o/

here’s where things get hairy

It’s at this point that my picture-taking skills go entirely to hell, because there’s so much going on. I mean, look above. That’s not at the beginning of canning. That’s after filling up the canner once and waiting for the water bath to do its job. Which gives you time to clean up a tad and downsize the sauce pan from Godzilla to Morlock.

Not to mention all the peels and other garbage!

that’s some purty sauce, but is it worth it?

I got 11 pints of thickened, seasoned, delicious red sauce for pasta from this recipe. How much does it really cost, with and without labor included? I suspect it’s more than the $2–$3 I’ll pay to get good spaghetti sauce on sale from the grocery store. If you leave labor out and assume you already have canning equipment, and just need to pay for canning lids, olive oil, and spices, along with tomato seeds and onion sets, my calculations came to $0.74 per pint. That’s not including labor, electricity, jars, canner, and so forth, which are all somewhat serious investments.

A rough calculation including labor for canning time at minimum wage made the sauce cost about $3.50 per pint.

So in the end it comes down to time. Are you able to eke out the time to spend most of a day at home, with about half that time actively working on the canning? If your time is really scarce, buying spaghetti sauce still makes sense.

But if you have the tomatoes and the time, this spaghetti sauce from the Ball canning book is, as the kids say, awesomesauce. Ha ha.

canned spaghetti sauce

This works not only for pasta, but for lasagna and makes a good pizza sauce as well. Get step-by-step instructions on how to can spaghetti sauce using a boiling-water canner here. Adapted from

Yield: 10–11 pints of thick spaghetti sauce

45 pounds tomatoes, preferably plum/paste or a mixture
6 cups onions, chopped*
12 cloves garlic, minced
½ cup olive oil
2 tablespoons dried oregano
6 bay leaves
¼ cup canning salt
1 tablespoon black pepper
1½ tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
bottled lemon juice or citric acid powder (such as Fruit Fresh)

Select fresh tomatoes free of blemishes. Wash tomatoes and drain. Remove core of tomatoes and cut into quarters. Set aside until you’re ready to use them.

Sauté the onions and garlic in olive oil in a gigantic pot until soft. Add quartered tomatoes, oregano, bay leaves, canning salt, black pepper, sugar, and crushed red pepper flakes, if using. Bring to a boil, then simmer 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

While the sauce is simmering, set up your food mill or strainer. After the sauce has simmered 20 minutes, remove the bay leaves and run the mixture through the food mill or strainer. You’ll get a watery sauce with some pulp in it, which you’ll keep, and seeds and skins and whatnot, which you’ll discard.

Bring the sauce to a boil. Lower to medium-high heat and cook down until sauce thickens — until it’s reduced in volume by half or more.

To can, add 1 tablespoon of the bottled lemon juice or or ¼ teaspoon citric acid to each pint jar, and fill with sauce, leaving ¼-inch of headspace. Adjust caps and process in boiling-water canner for 35 minutes.

© Amy for Shiny Cooking, 2010. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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I’m making pasta sauce today. Woo! It calls for 45 pounds of tomatoes. Check this out, dudes. It’s nearly 15 pounds of tomatoes. See? 45 pounds isn’t that bad. The recipe, which is from the unfortunately-named Ball Blue Book, claims to make 14 pints or 7 quarts.

Yeah, right. Only if you can watery sauce. Blech.

What else was I going to say? Oh, yeah. I get to set up the Vittorio strainer today. Which reminds me, Mom, can I come borrow it?

Okay, I’m off. Bbl with updates and recipe.

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Post tags: tomato

Looks like I fell off the edge of the world for a while there. It was an unplanned hiatus, brought on by minor crises and busy-ness. Here’s the tale, and a “recipe” for blueberries and cream.

Mainly it was the June Dental Crisis

For months I’d been having problems with “sinus infections” and tooth sensitivity and swelling/pain in my upper left jaw. “Sinus infections” is in quotes because I thought they were at the time; now I’m fairly certain some of them were caused by the tooth and not the other way around (“Your tooth hurts? Oh, that must be from a sinus infection”).

It all began with sensitivity in an upper molar last fall. Since I did have a raging sinus infection at the time, my dentist logically ascribed it to that, and told me to get in touch again if it didn’t go away. Go away it did, a few weeks later. Yay! I thought. It got better!

But then from that point on, that area of my mouth was odd. The gums there were prone to infection and swelling, and I babied that tooth’s area with constant flossing and brushing. Then one day, a sliver of the tooth broke off, inexplicably. My dentist had to replace the filling in that tooth and then it became really painful. It all seemed weird.

The new filling came loose after a few weeks and my dentist referred me to an endodontist for a root canal. When I arrived at his office I saw that some of what the $1,000 root canal fee was paying for was mood lighting and leather dentist chairs. However, I’m not complaining, because it was also paying for some really advanced equipment and the endo was not only very skilled and good at explaining things, but also quite relaxing to look at.

After some high-tech x-rays the endo did a football-style play by play for me, drawing lines on the monitor that had my x-rays on it to help illustrate what he was talking about.

That was probably my favorite part.

The giant top molar — you have one too; it’s the one 2 in front of your wisdom tooth, or 1 in front if they’re out; go touch it with your tongue now. I’ll wait. Welcome back. So the top molar was cracked, and cracked so deeply he couldn’t work on it.

“You said you experienced strong sensitivity last fall?”
*nod*
“And some weeks later it just went away?”
*nod*
“Yeah, that’s when the tooth died. All your problems since then are because of that.”

I was very sad over my dead tooth. And sad that I still had to pay $540 to not get a root canal. And sadder still that it had to be extracted. The next day I had it pulled. I’m seeing an implant dentist in September to get that business going, which will involve more annoying procedures and more healing periods.

I shouldn’t complain. I rarely get sick. I have no health problems. I’m really glad the worst problem I’ve ever had was a dead tooth. But meh. I can still be annoyed.

This affected the blog

Two ways this affected Shiny Cooking:

1. I didn’t want to post. I couldn’t eat properly, because of pain before the extraction and because of healing gum tissue afterwards. So I didn’t want to cook or try new things or talk about something I couldn’t enjoy much anymore. This was pretty much all of 2010 really, given that I was having constant little infections all winter/spring. It kept me from posting much or wanting to post. I was just sad every time I checked in here or read other food bloggers and wanted to try and do things but couldn’t.

2. Money. Cooking and taking pictures while cooking takes time, but that’s not too much worse than non-blogging-oriented cooking. The posts themselves though, they take quite a bit of time, from writing them to picking out photos and optimizing them to formatting the recipes properly in WordPress.

I get paid for none of this. I get a pittance from my sponsor’s advertising and usually when I post Foodbuzz-themed events I’m getting a stipend that’s quite nice for one post’s work but it’s not enough in the long haul.

Normally this isn’t too huge a problem but with the recent spate of medical expenses plus over $2,000 coming up for the implant I’ve been pushed to neglect Shiny Cooking in favor of other projects that provide some money. I don’t want to have to do that, but that’s the way it is. I’ve been considering some ways I could generate some revenue through Shiny Cooking, but that’s a topic for another post.

For now, you know what’s been going on. As for the future? I have dozens and dozens of post topics saved up, literally dozens. Shiny Cooking will live, because I can’t stop posting forever. In fact, the bug to document everything I eat is coming back.

blueberries and cream

We went blueberry picking at Montrose Orchards last Friday. It was hot and muggy and generally pretty miserable, but I got a little over 10 pounds of blueberries.

The first thing I did with the blueberries, after eating gobs of them by the handful, was make fresh blueberry pie in a walnut-oat pie crust.

The second thing I did with the blueberries was “make” blueberries and cream. I noticed I had a half-pint of unopened heavy cream in the fridge and knew I had no plans for it. So we poured a bit of it over a big bowl of blueberries, spooned on a teaspoonful of sugar, and it was good.

And that’s my return-from-hiatus recipe. Blueberries. Cream. Sugar. Ripe, taut-skinned blueberries bursting under your bite, bathed in silky cream and sweetened just a bit.

Go try some.

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Post tags: blueberries, cream

I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve never had to learn how to make strawberry freezer jam. I’ve been even more fortunate in that I never even tasted store-bought jam until I was practically an adult.

As a result, I’m spoiled. Spoiled rotten. I turn up my nose at Smucker’s, and even those fancy top-shelf brand jams can’t satisfy.

I never had to learn how to make strawberry freezer jam because every year I saw my mom make it right in front of me. Sis and I got drafted to help pick strawberries in our grandparents’ strawberry patch. I recall crouching low, pushing through the leaves, and searching for the elusive strawberries Grandma insisted were still there even though we were sure we’d gotten them all.

Nowadays we buy our strawberries already picked from local growers. Rhode’s Strawberries, run by “Captain Bob” Rhode of Chesaning Showboat fame, is always our first choice. Most area growers this year, though, complained of small harvests and we wound up going about 35 miles away to find reasonably-priced berries.

let’s make strawberry freezer jam!

Making strawberry freezer jam is a snap because there’s no special recipe. In fact, deviation from the standard recipe is frowned upon because it will likely result in failure of the jam to set up properly. Just clean one quart of strawberries per batch of freezer jam. Have one package of Sure-Jell or other pectin on hand for each batch. Then chop up those berries. You could briefly, carefully whirl them in a food processor, or use a potato masher, but I find the chopper to be my favorite.

Oops, you can’t really see the chopper in that pic. Here’s a better one! See, it’s like a biscuit cutter, but darksided.

Add the sugar to the chopped strawberries. I’ve got a double batch going in this picture; that’s why there’s so honkin’ much. You can totally double batch it, but don’t even think of triple or more batches at a time. That’s crazy talk.

At this point in the process, if you’re gonna be snapping pictures, you’d better have someone else around, because the stirring and the pouring and the stirring again and the zomg fill the jars before jam sets madness is going on and things are, if not exactly hectic, then not quite “Let’s stop and compose an artsy photo” conducive.

See, for the above, after the lime went in the coconut sugar went in the strawberries, the water went into the pectin, the pectin-water went into the strawberry-sugar, and the pectin-water-strawberry-sugar went into the adorable little jars. And all pretty quickly too, because if you lollygag, the jam will set up before you get it into the jars, which isn’t a tragedy but is a bit messy.

The strawberry freezer jam recipe is in every package of Sure-Jell, and I’m including it below as well, with tips and commentary Kraft simply does not offer. Oo la la.

strawberry freezer jam recipe

Every time I’ve made strawberry freezer jam, and every time anyone I know has made it, I’ve gotten more jam than the recipe predicts (5). I always wind up with 6 cups or 6½ cups. So be prepared with extra clean jars/containers. In fact, that’s always a good idea when canning or preserving. You don’t want to stop in the middle of something time-sensitive to wash jars.

yield: 5–6 cups
special equipment: chopper or food processor; funnel
time: 60 to 90 minutes, plus 24 hours

1 quart strawberries
4 cups granulated sugar
¾ cup water
1 box Sure-Jell fruit pectin

Wash 6 cups’ worth of containers and lids in warm soapy water and dry thoroughly.

Hull and wash strawberries. Chop strawberries until they’re soupy and contain chunks in the size you desire.

Stir in the sugar. It won’t all dissolve right away. Let stand for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. While waiting, set out jars/containers where you plan to fill them, and get a ladle and a funnel ready if you have one.

In a small saucepan, mix water and pectin and bring to a boil over high heat. Stir constantly. Boil for 1 minute, stirring constantly and watching to be sure it does not boil over.

Remove pectin from heat and add to the strawberry-sugar mixture. Stir for 3 minutes or until sugar is dissolved. The sugar may not be entirely dissolved, but 3 minutes is all you need to stir, or less if the sugar dissolves quickly.

Immediately fill containers, ladling the hot jam through the funnel if you have one, leaving ½ inch head space to allow room for expansion in the freezer.

Cover containers with their lids and let stand at room temperature for 24 hours. Then the strawberry freezer jam is all ready to go into the freezer.

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Post tags: strawberries

Just a quick line here to share the joy that is Not Pouring Salt From a Goddamn Spout. This might be old news to a lot of you, but it’s brand spanking new to me. I have no idea why I never thought of it before.

It began when I bought a carton of salt with a bum spout. Until then, lo these many years, I measured all my teeny ¼ and ½ teaspoons of salt by pouring it out of that giant spout. Since this method is clumsy, to say the least, I always did it over a sink so I didn’t accidentally dump several tablespoons of salt into, say, cookie dough, while trying to measure it out.

But then I got the bum spout. It tore out completely from the carton. Being somewhat rigid and OCD, I was at a loss. How would I measure my salt? Ohnoes!

how to store salt! (exciting)

As a temporary solution, I dumped the contents into an el cheapo plastic storage container, the kind you put leftovers in. I thought it was a kludge, just a way to hold the salt til I burned through it and bought another canister.

Ha! Do you know how flippin’ easy it is to just stick the measuring spoon in to the salt? Or your fingers, if you’re one of those hippie feel-good non-measury types? The little plastic container became my default for salt storage.

why isn’t this on page 1 of “how to cook”?

Apparently I am not alone. According to the food geeks populating the Jamie Oliver forums, who all seem to keep their salt in jars or other non-salt containers, maybe this is just something obvious I’ve missed all these years. This really should be in the front of every beginner cooking book/lesson. “Save your sanity and get your salt out of the pour-spout container.”

I bet one of those half-cup canning jars would be a purty way to store salt, too. I’m going to stick with the cheapo Rubbermaid plastic, though, cause those nice jars are going to hold strawberry jam, a much more valuable commodity.

look, a poll

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Rice is born in water and must die in wine. – Italian proverb

Mm, risotto. The creamy arborio rice dish accepts all sorts of additions, especially vegetables of all kinds. One of my favorite risottos, right up there with mushroom, is asparagus risotto. When the asparagus season wanes and we’ve had our fill of steamed or pan-roasted, or oven-roasted, or with-an-egg-on-top asparagus, I like to make this risotto before the weather turns too hot to want to attend a stove for half an hour or more.

So many risotto ingredients are white: the wine, the rice, the cream, the cheese. Choose a light broth base, and you get a stunning white dish.

I fail at this. My base is brown, and tints the rice a pale amber. However, I LIVED.

The old proverb above refers, in part, to the wine customarily used in making risotto. Wine is added just before you begin pouring in the water/broth that the rice is going to absorb, to relax the starches with its acidity and add a subtle, fruity note to the dish.

I think it’s to get a bottle of wine opened up so you have to finish it. Yes, you have to finish the wine, by hook or by crook.

If in the mood, I love the attentiveness risotto requires. Adding 1 cup of liquid at a time, and stirring until it’s absorbed is a bit meditative, if you’re weird that way. I am.

One cup down, 4 to go. One glass down, several to go.

The liquid is absorbed, and a small flurry of activity gets cooked chopped asparagus, cream, Parmesan, and salt and pepper stirred in until you could cry at the pinnacle of starchiness and smoothness.

One last look. Now eat.

asparagus risotto

This is an excellent risotto base recipe. Substitute ½ to 1 pound of any other vegetable or vegetable combination. Just make sure the vegetables are cooked to your liking before adding to the risotto at the end. Adapted from a recipe by RiceSelect.

1 pound fresh asparagus spears, diagonally sliced into 1-inch pieces
3 cups water
2 cups vegetable broth (I like Better Than Bouillon Vegetable Base the best)
1 tablespoon butter
½ cup chopped yellow onion (1 small onion)
1 cup uncooked arborio rice
⅓ cup dry white wine
½ cup heavy cream
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese
½ teaspoon salt
¼ 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

Have all ingredients measured and ready before preparing the asparagus risotto. You’ll be glad you did.

Steam or pan-fry asparagus until crisp-tender. Set aside.

In a 2-quart saucepan, bring water and broth to a simmer. Turn down the burner to its lowest setting and cover to keep warm. This water-broth mixture is what we will add to the arborio rice, cup by cup, until it’s all absorbed.

In a large, heavy-bottomed skillet, melt the butter over medium heat. Cook onion in the butter about 5 minutes, or until soft. Add rice and stir for a couple minutes, coating each grain in the butter-onion mixture. You may notice some browning in the pan as the rice’s starch hits it. That’s okay; just don’t let the rice itself brown.

Add wine and stir until it’s absorbed. The wine will sizzle but it won’t jump out at you dangerously. Just thought I’d let you know so you aren’t too surprised. What the wine will do is deglaze the bottom and quickly soak into the rice.

Now it’s time to begin cooking the rice. You’ll be stirring almost constantly for perhaps 20 minutes. Turn the heat up to medium-high, and pour in 1 cup of the water-broth mixture. Stir frequently until the liquid is absorbed.

Continue this process: Once the cup of water-broth mixture is absorbed, add another cup of it and keep stirring. Repeat until all liquid is absorbed, or until the rice is tender. I’ve always used the entire 5 cups of water-broth mixture.

You’ve made risotto! Now’s the part where we make it awesome risotto. Stir in the cooked asparagus, cream, Parmesan cheese, salt, and pepper. Mix well.

Leftovers keep well in the fridge and freeze well too. It’s even good cold. Enjoy.

© Amy for Shiny Cooking, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: asparagus, rice

The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a piece montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri.

I’m going to suck it up and pick one name to stick with for this post…so croquembouche it is. I like the sound of it and how it rolls off the tongue. Try it yourself: CROAK-EM-BOOSH. Isn’t that fun? “Piece montée,” on the other hand, means “mounted piece.” So you can see that, clearly, “croquembouche” is the superior term.

Croquembouche means “crunching in one’s mouth,” because of the caramelized sugar holding the pieces of filled pastry together. It’s a tower formed of profiteroles, or miniature cream puffs, which are made with pâte à choux pastry batter then piped with a creamy filling. The traditional filling, since we’re being French, is of course pastry cream, or crème patissiere. Once the cream puffs are ready you melt some sugar, dip the cream puffs in the very hot sugar, and assemble the tower.

The croquembouche challenge appeared just in time for Mother’s Day, so I had a good reason to get off my ass and make it early in the month for once. Sadly, I’m terrible at following rules, and instead of preparing the challenge recipe for pâte à choux, I used the whole grain recipe from King Arthur Flour, because around here we love when whole grains work just as well as refined flours. And it did…but more on that in a few days when I put up the pâte à choux recipe proper.

The whole thing made me very nervous. Piping fillings into cream puffs? Dipping said puffs into burning hot caramel? Sticking them together in a stack so they don’t fall? Making spun sugar?

I found this video pretty helpful as far as the whole assembly process. At least it made me less frightened of burning my fingers off.

So how did the croquembouche go over on Mother’s Day? I wound up making two because I misjudged how large I could make the first, beribboned one. I kind of like the small one, on the red plate, a little better: it’s funkier in its irregularity, leaning like the Tower of Pisa and twisting like an insane DNA strand. Sis was more impressed with small croc’s spun sugar, too: my fork must have caught the quickly-cooling sugar at just the right temperature to drag thick, personality-filled strands of sugar the color and shiny, hard consistency of amber.

The family’s verdict: mini filled cream puffs are yummy. Croquembouches look really cool. But they’re a pain to eat: wrestling delicate, cream-filled pastry from its diamond-hard caramel sugar glue is an exercise in destructive futility. You don’t make one of these expecting them to stay purty once the guests begin pawing at it.

Unless your guests turn it into a game of Jenga. Then it’s kind of cool. Insert Jenga-like croquembouche picture here, because I’m in Chicago right now and forgot to upload it before I left.

Loved this challenge, because it reminded me of how dead easy cream puffs are to make. I’ll show you soon!

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It’s asparagus season, it’s baseball season, it’s school music program season, it’s kitten season.

All of these pale, though, compared to the One Season to Rule Them All.

Pie season.

Fruit pies are the pinnacle of the home baker’s art — sweet and tart, ensconced in a flaky crust. I’d go so far as to say they’ve always been an indicator of a farm cook’s prowess.

When I was just a wee browncoat I read the entire series of “Little House” books. Tacked onto the end of the boxed set is a slim volume called The First Four Years. The First Four Years covers the time just after Laura and Almonzo were married, and they set out to build their own household. It’s an unusual volume in the series in that it doesn’t bear the editorial stamp of Laura’s daughter, Rose, who edited and polished up the rest of the series to give it a smooth narrative and familiar themes.

The First Four Years is rougher and darker than the rest of the series as a result. Almonzo develops what sounds like a viral joint condition similar to rheumatoid arthritis which makes it difficult for him to work with his hands, weather disasters constantly eradicate their crops and efforts to get ahead, and Mr. and Mrs. Boast come off as pathetically creepy when they make Laura a modest proposal to adopt her new baby, their reasoning being that the Boasts themselves cannot have any but Laura and Almonzo could always have more.

we’re getting to the point

There were happy and amusing spots in the narrative, though. One which stood out to me as a child was near the beginning of the book, when Laura and Almonzo moved into the house he’d built for them. She marveled at the kitchen’s modern conveniences, like the pull-out bins for flour and other dry staples. I flashed back in recognition to my house’s kitchen, which had been remodeled when I was six or so. Before then, however, the cupboards had a couple of those same bins along the bottom, which, for the uninitiated among you, open in somewhat similar fashion to an expanding file folder.

laura’s rhubarb pie

The other humorous moment I remember from the book was the first time Laura made a pie in her new home. Almonzo brought home the threshing crew for lunch, and Laura had been wracked with nerves, sixteen years old, hoping everything she’d cooked would turn out satisfactory.

The crew was impressed by the food, relieving Laura. She put the rhubarb pie out. One man took a bite, paused, and reached for the sugar bowl. Lifting the top crust and generously spooning sugar on the rhubarb filling, he joked that the best kind of pie was one where you could control how much sugar was in it. Yeah, she’d forgotten to add the sugar.

with rhubarb pie, try not to forget the sugar

There’s a reason rhubarb is known as pie plant. Familiar to people in the past, rhubarb was rarely used in cooking before sugar became commonly available, because it’s so incredibly astringent. I kind of proved this in my savory rhubarb experiment, in which I found out it was very difficult to make rhubarb tasty without sugar.

The beauty of fruit pie is that balance between sweet and tart. Try not to freak at the 1-⅓ cups of sugar in this rhubarb pie recipe. The rhubarb needs it, and you’ll still have that distinctive rhubarb tang.

Rhubarb’s the first pie fruit of the season. Try to get a pie made with it before the rhubarb’s gone. You won’t be sorry.

rhubarb pie

I haven’t done a pie crust tutorial yet, and for that I apologize. If making your own crust, please, please just use the recipe on the Crisco can. Note that the shortening was reformulated several years ago to make it virtually trans-fat free (the label says 0 grams). You’ll be disappointed with butter. Use shortening, use ice cold water, add just enough water til the dough comes together cohesively, and don’t play with the dough too much, and you’ll have a flaky crust. Trust me.

oven: 450°F (then 350°F)
prep: 15 minutes (assuming pie crust is already made)
total time: 1 hour 15 minutes

pastry for a 9-inch double crust pie
4 cups chopped rhubarb
1-⅓ cups granulated sugar
6 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon butter

Preheat oven to 450°F. Roll out bottom crust and place in 9-inch pie plate. Trim edge of pastry.

In a medium bowl, combine sugar and flour. Sprinkle ½ cup of the sugar-flour mixture on the bottom pastry crust in the pie plate.

Dump the chopped rhubarb on top of it.

Sprinkle the remaining sugar-flour mixture evenly on top of the rhubarb.

Cut the butter into 6-10 smaller bits and dot the rhubarb with them.

Roll out top crust and cover the pie. Trim, seal edges, and crimp. With a sharp knife, make a few slashes in the top crust to allow steam to escape.

Place pie in 450°F oven on bottom rack. Bake for 15 minutes, then lower the oven temperature to 350°F and bake another 45 minutes, or until top crust is very slightly golden and fruit is bubbling.

Remove pie from oven and let cool on a rack for an hour or more. If you cut into a warm pie, it goes all over the place! If you can resist long enough to let it cool completely, you won’t have watery juices pouring out from the slice you just cut.

© Amy for Shiny Cooking, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: rhubarb

Sis and Mom were thrilled with the dinner party. “You can do this anytime,” they cooed conspiratorially, and they began plotting holiday schedules. “Thanksgiving, Christmas…no, Mom will still do Christmas…Easter….”

I hadn’t hosted an event of this magnitude before. A bit over a month ago my sponsor, Foodbuzz, contacted me with the offer to host a pasta and wine-pairing dinner party using free coupons supplied by Buitoni Riserva. That shit’s expensive, so I jumped at the chance.

the asparagus mistake

I picked up 5 packages each of fresh pasta agnolotti, which is is a jumbo half-moon shaped ravioli. One was wild mushroom, and I planned to toss it with roasted asparagus and chives, drizzle it with olive oil, and top it with freshly ground black pepper and goat cheese. Unfortunately, I didn’t consult my sister the asparagus roasting expert, and left it in the oven about 20 minutes instead of the 5 she said was correct, and the asparagus came out limp and mushy.

My aunt, Linda, brought over a bunch of chives she snipped from her patch, some blooming with crunchy-oniony flowers atop them. They were too pretty to ignore, so they got put out on the table.

The guest list: Mom and Dad, Jennifer and Dale Javier (he said he wanted to be called Javier), Mom’s best friend Leeann and her daughter (and my friend) Angie, and Linda. I asked Leeann which wine she wanted to drink. “Oh, I love all white wine,” she said, so I poured her the La Noble chardonnay I’d picked up and a teeny glass of fino. Fino is very dry sherry that I drank a lot in Spain and it always makes me think of briny olives, tapas, dancing sevillanas, and walking home through the Parque de María Luisa at seven in the morning.

Not everyone was into the wine thing, though. Dad and Javier mixed themselves up some massive bloody marys.

Check out this spread! Angie made that vibrant salad, Mom brought the relish tray, and there’s the wild mushroom agnolotti along with the four cheese (Quattro Formaggi) agnolotti, and the red sauce I mixed up for the latter.

where’s my two dollars?

There’s Linda and the view from the other side of the tablecloth. That’s right, tablecloth. Cloth napkins. Frawnch fries. Frawnch bread. Kwissssmassss. Pardon me, I’m channeling Better Off Dead.

The top is the wild mushroom agnolotti with the asparagus/chives/black pepper/olive oil/goat cheese topping I mentioned. The left/bottom is the four cheese agnolotti with a roasted red pepper and kalamata olive sauce, topped with fresh basil. And supposed to have grated parmesan on top, but I forgot to get it on there for the pic. That sauce was the bomb.

Jennifer posed for an action shot! You can see a glass of red wine, which would be the shiraz Angie brought. I’d originally planned on cabernet to pair with the wild mushroom agnolotti, but we ended up breaking that out later. The red paired really well with the four cheese as well. Personally, I drank a little of the chardonnay and the shiraz and liked them both with both pastas. Maybe I’m just easy. Don’t answer that.

Dad warned Javier early on, “You’re not going to be getting any meat here tonight.” Of course they were going through that theater to tease me, but their little plan backfired. They chowed down and made happy noises just as much as everyone else did.

Notice how I ran out of serving dishes and dug into the storage containers. I’m so not prepared for this big party thing.

bring out your desserts

Linda made the coolest. Dessert. Evar. Think peanut butter pound cake. Slice it. Spread with peanut buttercream and blackberry jam. Top with another slice of pound cake.

That’s right. Linda made pound cake pb&j. Awesome.

Jennifer dipped strawberries in chocolate and served them on an appropriately-themed playing cards plate. Did I mention this was dinner and games night?

Mom and Leeann have been best friends for like 40 years, since Leeann moved in next door to Mom and Dad. <suckup>Did I say 40? I meant 20, because they couldn’t be a day over 40 themselves.</suckup>

euchre tournament!

Time to get our game on. With 8 of us present, and everyone liking euchre, we drew numbers, paired up, and had a little euchre tournament. To my chagrin, I was paired with Dale Javier, but he only fucked up once so I didn’t get to yell at him.

Jennifer and Mom were the winning team (never put people with shared DNA on the same team) and suddenly when it was over people began joking, “Where are the prizes?”

“Prizes?” I said, and a light bulb went on. An opportunity to divest myself of some excess goods! I got out some packaged rice/pasta sides I’d been planning to hand off to Linda, some product samples I’d received randomly in the mail, and some decks of playing cards from an estate sale I went to last week. Jennifer chose this lovely rice side dish to take home with her.

For her parting gift, Angie selected “stars of country music” playing cards and some instant coffee samples.

Then we played Perudo, or Liar’s Dice, and after that midnight was approaching, so the parent types and Jennifer and Javier left before they all turned into pumpkins. This left Linda, Angie, Bill, and me, and we broke out the Pictionary.

how to draw siamese twins in pictionary

how not to win at ingenious

Even with the adults gone, the wine kept flowing. We finished the La Noble and the Oak Leaf shiraz. Then we finished the Red Truck varietal red, and broke into the Clos du Bois chardonnay and Ravenswood cabernet, and Linda finished her Funky Llama chardonnay.

Wits and Wagers made an appearance, and then we closed out the night with Ingenious. Angie couldn’t remember if she’d played before and Bill was new to Ingenious, so I played with a handicap — I picked my tiles to play randomly. I got trounced as the newbies quickly picked up on the strategy and scored one Ingenious after another. I’m never believing Cranky Angie again! (Cranky Angie: I don’t think I like this. I don’t know if I want to play this. I know and understand Cranky Angie, because Cranky Amy always makes an appearance with new games too.)

what did i learn from all this?

I can put on a grownup party.

I can sip wine without getting too drunk.

Having smokers around leads to more smoking.

The Buitoni Riserva pastas are really good. The Quattro Formaggi Agnolotti was the hands-down favorite.

Good wine goes with anything.

Euchre needs to be more than a regional game.

roasted red pepper and kalamata olive pasta sauce

This sauce was the hit of the party. Salty, piquant, and complex, it goes well with simple pastas like cheese ravioli or agnolotti. I hesitate to post it as a recipe because it’s so simple, but it’s so good that it must be shared.

1 (28 ounce) jar red pasta sauce, like marinara
1 small (7 ounce) jar roasted red peppers
¼ cup kalamata olives

Purée the roasted red peppers and kalamata olives in a blender. Pour sauce and pepper/olive purée into a 2-quart pan and warm over medium heat. Serve over pasta.

© Amy for Shiny Cooking, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: asparagus, basil, cheese, chives, olives, pasta, sweet peppers, tomato

Everyone knows that a little fat in cooking is a Good Thing. Butter or olive oil brings out flavor, coats food, and makes it glisten and look pretty. What I want to know is the name of the god person who got the brilliant idea to use both at once.

butter and olive oil, together at last

The plain, quick-simmered aspargus I slapped up earlier is a homey preparation, perfect for quick weekday suppers. This asparagus, cut the same into 1-inch niblets, is fried in olive oil, butter, salt, and garlic for about 8 minutes or so. Infused with flavor, it works when you have company, or a bit more time to hover over the stove with the asparagus. Wait, what was that above? Let’s reiterate.

Butter.

Salt.

Olive oil.

Garlic.

What’s the word for one more than a triumvirate? Because this is one holy 4-ingredient mashup.

pan-roasted asparagus

If you choose to reduce the butter or olive oil, or if you prefer a fresher taste to the garlic, add the garlic near the end of the cooking time. Cooking the garlic and asparagus in less fat will increase the chance of the garlic overcooking and browning, which gives it an icky flavor. Cooked as specified in the recipe, the garlic will infuse the asparagus with garlicky flavor. Icky + garl?

method: stovetop
time: 20 minutes total

1 pound asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1-inch lengths
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
3 cloves minced garlic

In a large skillet, melt the butter over medium-high heat. Add the olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic. Stir together.

Add asparagus and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring frequently.

© Amy for Shiny Cooking, 2010. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: asparagus