Rhubarb chutney

It's no secret that I love rhubarb. I've been working for years on cranberry-rhubarb jam recipes that I hope to share soon, and earlier this summer, I made rhubarb butter that was out of this world. But I leaned so far into the sweet side of things that I decided to try something different: chutney. 

I read widely on the topic and soon realized that it was British-style chutney I was thinking of, like the Major Grey's chutney or mango chutney you can buy in most supermarkets. There are heaps more kinds of chutneys that actually originated with Indians, not just in India, but it was the sweet, spicy, tangy condiment I had in mind.

Rhubarb chutney ready to put up for winter

Thank goodness I did. It's marvelous sauce, and I've eaten it on toast, with pork, and even with cheese on an omelet. As I explored the different ways to use it, I realized that it would take it's place alongside yellow and dijon mustards, sriracha and other hot sauces, and katsu sauce in my refrigerator. 

Here's the recipe.

6 cups sliced onion
10 cups sliced rhubarb
1/2 cup minced crystalized ginger
1.5 cups raisins
4 cups light brown sugar
3 cups apple cider vinegar
2 T salt
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. ground cloves
1 tsp. cayenne or other chili pepper powder

Put all the ingredients into a large nonreactive pot. Bring to a boil, stirring, then reduce to a simmer. Continue cooking, stirring occasionally, till the sauce thickens. This could take 45 minutes or more depending on the water content of your onions and rhubarb.

Ladle the sauce into sterilized jars and process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes. This batch made about 16 half pints of chutney. 

Consider experimenting with this recipe. It's quite flexible. For example, you might replace the crystalized ginger with just a tablespoon or two of dried ginger, or even some minced fresh ginger. Try golden raisins, dried cranberries, or another favorite dried fruit instead of raisins. Chopped dried apricot comes to mine. Add more heat, or different heat. The smokiness of chipotle would go nicely in a chutney. As it is, this recipe isn't particularly spicy hot.

Three apple butters

Fall brings with it warm days, cool nights, and a more silver light, but harvest time is what makes the season so special to me. What do I like to harvest most? Apples. With those apples, I make pie, of course, but I also make apple butter so I can enjoy the taste of fall all year-round. 

Usually, there are bushels and bushels of apples hanging from the branches of trees up and down the Shore Road. I pick what I want and leave plenty for the deer that grace the woods near my home. Last year was a bumper crop, some say because the winter before was so harsh. I'm not sure the cause, but I do know that last year's relative feast seems to have brought on this year's relative apple famine. There's even one tree that has not a single apple on it. Imagine. 

So, rather than pick for free, I instead went to Johnston's orchards off the Bangor Road. The season is still young, so there were only three varieties available for picking: MacIntosh, Paula Red, and Cortlands. I was familiar with the Macs and Cortlands, great baking apples, but had to try the Paula Reds to be sure they're suitable for making apple butter, and they are. They tasted sweeter than the other two, so I knew they'd work well. 

My goal this year was to make apple butter with as little added sugar as possible. A friend makes it with no added sugar, but by the time I add spices to mine, some sugar is needed to balance the tartness in the apple skins. In the past, I've enjoyed apple butter enriched with mulled red wine. The wine sweetens the butter a bit, and the spices add richness and depth of flavor.

Mulled wine-brandy, apple syrup, blackberry-lime.

This year, I decided to expand on that by making one batch with mulled red wine and brandy. It definitely needed some sugar, but I added only 1 cup to the entire batch, which yielded 9 pints of apple butter. For the other two batches, I decided to try sweetening them using things I already had in my cupboard from years past: apple syrup and blackberry lime syrup. 

Apple syrup is cider that has been cooked down till it's thick, almost like molasses. The blackberry lime syrup was made from cooked blackberries, lime juice, and sugar two years ago. It's fantastic in desserts, and so it seemed like a natural way to sweeten and enrich the flavor of apple butter. 

The basic recipe below started with enough apples to fill a 10-quart stockpot, which filled a six-quart slow cooker with apple sauce, which then cooked down slowly over the course of half a day or more to yield about 4.5 quarts of apple butter. If you'd like to make less, simply cut the recipe. 

Here's the recipe for the mulled-wine enriched apple butter. Basic instructions for the other recipes follow.

10 quarts of mixed apples

2 cups water

1 bottle of red wine

1 cup brandy

1 T cinnamon

1 tsp allspice

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1 cup sugar

I measure my apples by filling the stockpot nearly to the brim with whole apples, then I remove them and clean out the stockpot. Core the apples with a corer or by cutting the apples into sections and cutting off the parts of the core. Put the apples into the stockpot. Once you've put about half of the apples into the pot, add the water and turn the burner on medium. Core and chop the rest of the apples, adding them to those in the pot. Cover the pot. Stir occasionally to keep the apples on bottom from burning. As the water in the pot heats up, it will soften more of the apples, adding to the liquid in the pot. 

While the apples are cooking and softening, put the wine, brandy, and spices to into a medium saucepan. Set over medium heat, stirring occasionally, till the wine begins to give off steam, then reduce the heat to low. Continue simmering the wine mixture either till the apples are cooked or till the mixture has been reduced by half. 

Once the apples have softened, turn the heat off and remove the pot from the heat source. Add the sugar and mulled wine to the pot. Use an immersion blender to puree the contents of the stockpot. Be careful to keep the end of the blender immersed while using it. That sauce is very hot, and splatters will burn. Continue till there are no more apple chunks in the sauce. This can take several minutes.

Carefully pour the sauce into a six-quart slow cooker. It should just about fit. Put the lid mostly on so the sauce will stay hot, but moisture can escape. The sauce will thicken into apple butter over low heat over the course of several hours. This will happen faster if the spiced wine-brandy was reduced over the stove. Stir perhaps every 15 to 30 minutes. I have left this on low overnight before. Doing so produces a skin on the top that can be stirred into the sauce. But if you don't know your slow cooker very well, it's best not to leave it untended. 

As soon as the sauce is sufficiently thick--I like to cook off about 1/4 of the volume--use the immersion blender again to make the butter smoother. Again, be careful. The splatters are very hot. Put into sterile jars and process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes. If you don't want to do that, it should keep well in the refrigerator for several weeks. 

For the apple syrup apple butter, I cooked about seven quarts of apples as above and added half a pint of apple syrup and the spices before pureeing it and finishing it in the slow cooker. It will thicken faster because I didn't add a bottle of wine and cup of brandy. Process as before. 

For the blackberry apple butter, I cooked about 10 quarts of apples as above and added a pint of blackberry-lime syrup just before pureeing. I varied the spice mix, using 2 teaspoons of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon of allspice, and 1 teaspoon of ginger, which I think goes better with blackberries than cloves. 

Roasted delicata squash pizza

Pizza. The Italian food that many identify with America. When I asked my international students their favorite American foods, many answered "pizza!" with enthusiasm. 

I can understand why they might say this, too. Think about how many places you can buy pizza now in Hancock County. It's available at several pizzerias, even more restaurants, frozen in every supermarket, and by the slice at most convenience stores. Counting all the different toppings and brands out there, there are hundreds of choices available to us.

But when I was a boy in Ellsworth, we were limited to just a few brands of frozen pizza and one pizzeria that I knew of, Roy's. Before either of my sisters, Jill and Karen, had a license to drive, if we wanted pizza when Mom and Dad weren't around, we usually made it from a boxed mix that came from the supermarket. At the time, it seemed like quite a treat, but now, with so many options, the thought of that boxed mix doesn't exactly make my mouth water. 

What does make my mouth water is making delicious meals using local ingredients, and one such ingredient available now at farmer's markets and supermarkets is delicata squash. This squash has skins so thin that you can eat them. Its full of flavor. "No, Grandma, there's no need to add that half stick of butter. Save it for winter squashes." In my opinion, the best way to cook delicata squash is to roast it. So, when I bought some recently, I knew that was what I'd do. 

What I didn't know when I bought it was that I'd later be inspired to make pizza with it. I didn't want to drive back to the store for more ingredients, so I opened the refrigerator to see what I could add to make this pizza sing. 

Delicata squash pizza with bacon and scallions.

The result: roasted delicata squash pizza with bacon and chopped scallions with creamy cottage cheese blend instead of sauce. The nuttiness of the squash goes very well with the smoky bacon, creamy cheese, and the sharp, bright taste of the scallions. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. 

Here's the recipe. 

1 pound of pizza dough

2 delicata squashes

oil for brushing

4 strips bacon

1 cup cottage cheese

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. finely ground black pepper

3 scallions, sliced thinly, both the white and green

Make or buy 1 pound of pizza dough and have it at room temperature when you're ready to start making the pizza. There are good options for prepared dough at the supermarket, but if you want to make your own and don't have a recipe already, I like this recipe from Forno Bravo, a pizza oven maker. Italian "00" flour, the finest grind, was available at Rooster Brother and John Edwards in Ellsworth the last time I checked. 

Carefully cut the delicata squashes into slices 1/4-inch thick. There's no need to peel them. The thin skins are edible. Brush the slices with oil--I used olive oil--then put them on two baking sheets. Roast them in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes, turn them once with a spatula, then roast for 15 minutes more. Remove them from the oven and let them cool before removing the seeds from the middle of each slice, a step that is much easier to do after they've cooked than before. The seeds can taste quite bitter, and while they might make a good snack if roasted and seasoned separately, they do not belong on this pie.

While the squash is roasting, cook the bacon till it has just started to crisp up. If you cook it till it's completely crispy, it may burn on top of the pizza. After the bacon has cooled, chop it into small pieces. 

In a small bowl, mix the cottage cheese, Parmesan cheese, salt, and pepper. I used cottage cheese because that's what I had on hand, but ricotta would work well. Any hard, sharp cheese would substitute well for the Parm, too, which was added to this mix because the cottage cheese (and ricotta) can be quite wet. If you already have shredded cheese on hand, like mozzarella, go ahead and use it instead of the cheese mixture. Smoked gouda would work quite well, also.

Move the oven racks to the middle and top of the oven and preheat it to 475 degrees.

On a floured board, roll half of the dough into a roughly oval shape and lay it on one baking sheet. Do the same with the other half of the dough. I used the same sheets already used for roasting the squash. As they were already oiled, there was no need to put anything else on them, but if you use clean baking sheets, oil them or sprinkle on some cornmeal. You also could cook these on a pizza stone if you have one. Follow the directions for using that stone, which may require a longer preheat, higher temperature, and shorter cooking time. 

Spread half of the cheese mixture over each crust, then arrange the squash slices on top. There may be some leftover roasted squash. Yay! Sprinkle the chopped bacon on the pizzas. There should never be leftover bacon. Finish by sprinkling the chopped scallions on top all of that. Bake the pizzas for 8 to 10 minutes, one on the top rack, one in the middle, switching them after they've cooked about 5 minutes.

After they've finished baking, let them cool for a few minutes before slicing them. Buon appetito!

Vegan chocolate "pots de crème"

Chocolate. We go way back.

When I was a kid in the 1970s, my mother would give me a quarter. My sisters, Jill and Karen, and I would walk up to Dick's Cornor Store--Yes, that's how it was spelled--with the other neighborhood kids. I sometimes bought a soda from the vending machine by the door and still had a dime left over, but much of the time, I went straight to the candy rack to buy a chocolate bar.

Dick's burned in 1983, but my love of chocolate lives on, even as my tastes have changed. Milk chocolate bars no longer hold the appeal they once did. Now, I demand a deeper, richer chocolate experience. One such experience comes in small dishes, in pots de crème, simple chocolate custards.

The recipe I usually follow comes from the Food Network. It's simple, easy, and indulgent, and whenever I make it, there's plenty to share with friends, whom I love and want to be happy.

But what's a genial host to do when he wants his friends who don't eat eggs, milk, and cream to be happy? Create a vegan version! Sure, it's not a true custard, hence the quotation marks around "pots de crème," but it's just as indulgent.

Vegan chocolate "pots de crème."

Here's the recipe.

9 ounces of dark chocolate, chips or chopped

2 cups unsweetened almond milk (reserve 1/4 cup)

2 tea bags (spice tea)

2 tbls. cornstarch

1/2 ripe banana, mashed (optional)

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 tsp. salt

1 tsp. vanilla

Put the chocolate in the bottom of a blender.

Heat the almond milk with the tea bags in a small saucepan over low heat. Almond milk can scorch if it gets too hot.

As the almond milk heats, put the cornstarch and reserved almond milk in a small bowl and stir till dissolved.

As soon as the tea bags have steeped long enough to lend color to the almond milk, add the mashed banana, sugar, and salt. Stir till the sugar has dissolved.

Add the almond milk with the cornstarch and turn the heat up to low-medium or medium. Stir continuously to avoid scorching. After a few minutes, the mixture should thicken up noticeably, indicating that the liquid has warmed up enough for the starch to do its thing. When I made it last, this thickening occurred when the liquid got to about 170 degrees F.

Remove the pan from the heat. Quickly stir in the vanilla, then pour the mixture into the blender. Hold the lid on the blender with a kitchen towel. It's hot, and building pressure could force the lid off. Blend till the chocolate has melted and the mixture is smooth. This might take a minute or two. Pour into small dishes. It should make six to eight half-cup servings. Refrigerate for at least an hour. 

Choosing your chocolate: While the recipe calls for dark chocolate, how dark depends on your taste. To me, milk chocolate would be too sweet, but anything from semi-sweet to 90% cacao should work well. Flavored bars, like those with sea salt caramel or chili pepper, can add interesting flavor to the dish, but stay away from bars with chunks of nuts or dried fruits, which may settle in the blender and not mix well.

Choosing your tea: Pick tea with a flavor that goes well with chocolate. I have used both Celestial Seasonings Coconut Thai Chai and Gingerbread Spice tea in the past. Earl Grey tea is popular in chocolate now, and raspberry tea seems like a natural fit.

Melt-in-your mouth Blueberry Cake

No fruit says "Maine" like wild blueberries, and though you can buy them in the freezer section of the local supermarket year-round now, when I was growing up, if you wanted blueberries in the winter, you had to go get them yourself in late summer.

When I was a boy, my mother would take us to visit her friend, Donna Rae, and we'd pick quarts of blueberries by hand from the fields behind her house. Sure, it would have been easier and faster to use a rake, but harvesting by hand allowed us to pick only the fattest, ripest berries. We learned to tug on those leaf-hidden clusters of fruit with loose fingers so that only those blueberries ready to drop would land in the palms of our hands. Berries that weren't quite ready stayed on the bushes for another day.

When we got home, we cleaned the bounty, and most of the fruit went into the freezer. Every bite of pancake in December, muffin in January, or pie in February brought back memories of bent knees, warm summer breezes, the rustling of blueberry leaves, and the sound of berries being dropped into plastic bowls. Not all of them went into the freezer. Some were destined for my mother's delicious blueberry cake.

At the time, it was the only blueberry cake I knew. But after years of trying other people's blueberry cakes, this recipe stands out as lighter and more moist than the rest, probably because the egg whites are beaten separately and folded in. Of course, I could be biased.

Note: If you use frozen blueberries, don't be alarmed when some of the purple color of the berries bleeds into the cake. It will taste just as delicious.

Melt-in-your-mouth blueberry cake

Here's the recipe.

2 eggs, separated

1/4 cup confectioners sugar

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup shortening

1 tsp vanilla

1-1/2 cups flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 cup milk

1-1/2 cups blueberries tossed in a bit of flour
(Optional additions: a tablespoon or two of finely minced crystallized ginger adds a delicious spicy note to the cake. Fold it in with the egg whites.)

Beat the egg whites with confectioners sugar in a small bowl till stiff.

Cream the granulated sugar, salt, and shortening in a large bowl. Beat in the yolks and vanilla.
Mix together the flour and baking powder, then add to creamed mix alternately with the milk.

Fold in the egg whites.

Fold in the blueberries.

Bake in a greased 8-by-8-by-2-inch pan in a 350 degree oven for 50 minutes to an hour. A toothpick inserted into the cake should come out clean. Set the pan on a cooling rack and let the cake cool at least 10 minutes before cutting.

Rhubarb butter

I love cooking things that grow in my yard or in my neighborhood. But even more, I love canning what I cook and enjoying it far out of season.

Every year, when the apple trees along the road on which I live grow heavy with fruit, I harvest bags of apples to make butter and molasses. For the last few years, I have experimented by adding wine and spices, thinking that whatever could be mulled would be delicious in apple butter. The experiments have paid off. Throughout the winter and spring, I spread thick apple butter on toast or mix it with butter and chopped walnuts to put on waffles or French toast.

Though it’s not apple season yet, it is, however, rhubarb season. Though most harvest rhubarb only in late spring, it can be harvested judiciously all summer if you don’t let the plants flower.

Years ago, a former colleague, Sue Jellison, graciously gave me rhubarb plants, and though I have used those red and green stalks to make cranberry-rhubarb jam for a few years, this summer, I decided to experiment. While the rhubarb molasses didn’t turn out well, the rhubarb syrup did, but the real joy was tasting my first batch of rhubarb butter.

Rhubarb buttter and warm double-cream cheese.

As one might expect, it takes a fair amount of sugar to sweeten it up, but the result of combining rhubarb, sugar, cinnamon, heat and time is a thick, sweet-tangy spread that is delicious on toast, with cheese, or even as a substitute for the traditional sweet-tangy accompaniment to egg rolls, duck sauce. Try mixing it with a little maple syrup and butter to put on pancakes.

Rhubarb Butter

Makes 4 cups

6 cups chopped rhubarb stalks

3 cups sugar

½ tbl. ground cinnamon

Stir the chopped rhubarb stalks – the leaves are toxic – and the sugar in a pot. Let it sit till the sugar is wet with moisture from the fruit. This might take 20 minutes. If the fruit doesn’t yield much moisture, add ½ cup of water. Bring the fruit and sugar to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally. Remove the pot from the heat and add the cinnamon. Other spices could be added to taste, ½ tsp. of dried ginger perhaps, or any other spice associated with rhubarb pie.

Pour the mixture into a slow cooker. Heat it on high for about an hour with the cover ajar to let moisture escape. High heat at first speeds up the reduction process when the mixture is wettest and least likely to burn, but it could be started on low.

Scrape the sides and stir the mixture with a rubber spatula. Using an immersion blender, process the mixture in the slow cooker till there are no more chunks. Reduce the heat to low and cook the sauce with the cover ajar till the volume of the mixture is reduced by one-third or one-half, scraping and stirring occasionally. I prefer it thicker, so reduced mine by one-half. Depending on your slow cooker, this could take from a few hours to several. Test the sauce for taste and thickness occasionally, keeping in mind that it will thicken as it cools.

Store the rhubarb butter in clean jars in the refrigerator or process it as you would jam in a hot water bath.

Goat cheese pizza

The recipe first, then the story below!

Ingredients:
1/4 pound thick bacon (smoked if you've got it!)
2 large yellow onions, chopped
2 T leftover bacon fat
1/2 tsp salt (smoked sea salt is great)
1 bell pepper, thinly sliced
A few twists of black pepper
8 oz chevre
One pound of pizza dough at room temperature

Cook the bacon in a cast-iron skillet over low to low-medium heat, turning two or three times. Slow cooking can take 20 or 30 minutes, but renders the fat in thick bacon better.

Pour 2 T of the fat into a heavy-bottomed frying pan over low to low-medium heat. [Save the rest for frying eggs. YUM!] Add the onions and the salt, stir, then cover. After 15 minutes, the onions will have released a lot of liquid and their sharp smell and taste, and should be translucent. Add the bell pepper. With the cover off, keep cooking, stirring occasionally. As they cook, they lose moisture, sweeten up, and slowly turn golden. This take 45 minutes to an hour or more, but produces great flavor.

While the onions cook, chop the bacon, then roll your dough out on a floured board. If you have a pizza stone and paddle, great. Turn the oven on to 450-500 degrees and put the stone in the middle of the oven. I just use a cookie sheet. Shape the dough on the paddle or the cookie sheet. I like it thin, and this dough covered the entire sheet. Thin dough responds better to a hot oven. If the dough shrinks too much, let it rest before stretching it or rolling it to cover the pan/paddle.

Drop the chevre in little bits onto the pizza dough. Spread it if you can. Once the onions and peppers are finished cooking, spread them over the cheese and crust evenly, then sprinkle the bacon on top. Bake for about 10 minutes at 450 degrees, or perhaps 8 at 500. Take the pizza out to cool and add a couple twists of the pepper mill. Let it cool 5 or 10 minutes, then slice it and enjoy!

This is an easy recipe to adapt to other ingredients. Have some arugula? Toss a fistful onto the pizza right after it comes out of the oven. Fresh basil? Toss some on before you add the onions/peppers. Roasted garlic cloves? Bring 'em! Italian sausage instead of bacon? Oh, yeah. Maybe put a smear of tomato paste on before anything else.

The story:
After giving a friend a bowl of delicious trifle made with whipped mascarpone cheese, crystallized ginger, grilled pound cake, blueberries and more, a friend returned the clean bowl and brought me some sage chèvre that she had been given. [Sharing is caring, right.]

As soon as I saw it, I thought, "pizza." She couldn't stay for supper, but another friend had a Portland Pie Company pizza dough and answered my social media call for hungry mouths. The result? This delicious goat cheese pizza with caramelized onions, peppers, and some super smoky Benton's bacon. Yummy! We sat outside on the patio and tried not to distract the joggers and walkers passing by with the sounds of our lip smacking and the repeated chorus of "This is so good!"