Lemon pickled green beans

Fussy eaters filled my home when I was a growing up. My father, Ernie, known to many in Hancock County as "the potato chip man," grew up eating simple meals of meat and potatoes, and so that's what my mother usually put on our table, that and the occasional tuna wiggle. 

Along with pork chops or chicken or meatloaf, one of a short list of vegetables was featured: corn, peas or green beans, most often from a can. How did my mother prepare those vegetables? Let me count the ways. 1. boiled on the stove top with a pat of butter. 2. Uh, well, if boiling them on the stove was good enough for my grandmother, then it was good enough for us. 

Since taking my place in the kitchen, though, I have discovered loads of ways to prepare a bounty of vegetables. Green beans can be sautéed, stir-fried, roasted, steamed and even pickled. Pickling wasn't my favorite choice till recently, however, as the "dilly beans" I sampled from other people's pantries did not inspire enthusiasm. 

That all changed last year when I swapped some canned goods with my friend Abby Curtis. Her pickled green beans were a delight. I decided then that I would plant a patch of beans and put some up for winter eating, and I did just that earlier this summer. With the odd spring and summer weather, though, planting a second crop of beans on July 21 seemed like a good idea, as did experimenting with new seasonings. I'm now in the second week of harvesting those beans.

Lemon pickled green beans

After thinking about what flavors taste good with green beans (and make sense in a pickle), I settled on the following recipe. It's simple, with a prominent lemon note and otherwise balanced flavor. 

Here's the recipe for seven pints:
4 pounds of green beans, washed and cut to fit in the jars
6 black peppercorns per jar

1 Tbl. fresh chives per jar
1/2 tsp. lemon zest per jar
1/2 tsp. dried thyme per jar
5 cups of white vinegar
5 cups water

1/2 cup pickling salt

Fill the sterilized pint jars with the green beans, peppercorns, chives, lemon zest and thyme. Leave an inch of space at the top of the jars.

Start a water bath by putting enough water to cover the jars into a canning pot or other large, deep pot, and setting it on the stove on high to bring to a boil. 

While waiting for that watched pot, put the vinegar, water and pickling salt in a large pot over high heat, stirring to dissolve the salt. As soon as it comes to a boil, remove it from the heat and pour it carefully into the pint canning jars, leaving an inch of headspace for the food to expand. Put the sterilized lids and bands on those jars. They should be finger tight.  

Carefully lower those jars into the boiling water bath. Process them for five minutes from the time the water bath has resumed boiling. 

A lunch of whole wheat toast, cheddar and various pickles

Turn off the burner and remove the pot from the heat. Carefully remove the jars and set them on a cooling rack undisturbed till they cool. Once cool, tighten the bands and label them. They should be ready to eat in a week, but will keep for months or longer in a cool, dark place.

These lemon pickled green beans are delicious from the jar and make a great addition to a light lunch of toast, cheese and any other pickles you have on hand. Another great way to use them that many people just don't think about is as an ingredient in another dish. Think about it. You have green beans that are already pleasingly seasoned. They can be chopped and added to a cold potato salad, a stir-fry, fried rice or even an omelet with some parmesan cheese on top.

Enjoy!

Ginger pickled carrots (and my take on bahn mi!)

One of summer's joys is eating vegetables fresh from the garden. I fondly remember having lunch with my friends Phil and Chris at Chris' mother's place in Harborside. His mother is Barbara Damrosch, so fresh veggies were part of that meal. She went right out and picked carrots to eat in a salad.

Eliot Coleman, also at the table, said that to get the most nutrition out of fresh vegetables, they needed to be eaten soon after picking. That idea stuck with me, but sometimes I find a whole crop ready to harvest and can't possibly eat it all fresh. In that situation, I do my best to preserve the harvest for eating later in the year, perhaps in winter when summer is a distant memory or a promise of what's to come. 

Ginger-pickled carrots are the star.

Last week, I checked my garden charts and realized that it was time to harvest carrots to make room for another planting. They were ready, and I decided to pickle the bulk of them for later consumption. 

I had made ginger-pickled carrots before, but wasn't happy with the recipe or the process. That first recipe included mustard seed, which added a note that I didn't enjoy. It also involved blanching the carrots before canning them, but this softened the carrots, and I wanted mine still crunchy from the jar. I decided to follow a recipe I had used a few weeks earlier for pickled daikon, but with fresh ginger added in the hope that it would stand up to the sweetness of the carrots and the brine.

Here's the recipe for two pints of ginger pickled carrots:
enough carrots for 2 pint jars

1/2 tsp black peppercorns
8 or 10 matchstick sized pieces of fresh, peeled ginger
1-1/2 cups rice vinegar

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup sugar

1 Tbl. pickling salt

First, prepare the carrots by washing and scrubbing them thoroughly. I don't peel them, but you certainly could if you like. Whether you cut them into sticks to fit the jars or into coins, I suggest they be no thicker than 1/4 or 1/3 inch. If you cut them into matchstick size pieces with bahn mi in mind, then those pieces are well below that thickness. 

Fill the sterilized jars with carrots. Add half of the ginger and 1/4 tsp. peppercorns to each pint jar.

Start a water bath by putting enough water to cover the jars into a canning pot or other large, deep pot, and setting it on the stove on high to bring to a boil. 

While waiting for that watched pot, put the vinegar, water, sugar and pickling salt in a saucepan over high heat, stirring to dissolve the salt and sugar. As soon as it comes to a boil, remove it from the heat and pour it carefully into the pint canning jars, leaving 1/2 inch of headspace. Put the sterilized lids and rings on those jars. They should be finger tight.  

Carefully lower those jars into the boiling water bath. Process them for 10 minutes from the time the water bath has resumed boiling. If it boils too vigorously, turn the heat down gradually. 

Turn off the burner and remove the pot from the heat. Carefully remove the jars and set them on a cooling rack undisturbed till they cool. Once cool, tighten the rings and label them. They should be ready to eat in a few days, but will keep for months or longer in a cool, dark place. I keep mine in a cupboard.

Once they're ready to eat, you can use them in a delicious Vietnamese sandwich called a "bahn mi," which I think just means "bread." I had my first bahn mi in Honolulu when I was in graduate school, and boy, did I enjoy it. It had a crackling crust, mayonnaise, pickled daikon, pickled carrots, curried chicken, cilantro and chili peppers. Oh, it was so good!

A venison bahn mi-style sandwich.

Inspired by that experience and knowing that I had both ginger-pickled carrots and pickled daikon in the cupboard, I decided to make a delicious sandwich with some venison I had slow-roasted the night before. You could certainly use roast beef or stick with chicken.

Here's how I made it. 

First, I bought a crusty baguette that was soft inside. Some "high end" baguettes can be too firm for our purpose. For the sandwiches in the picture, I cut the baguette in half and scooped out some of the bread to prevent the sandwich from sliding apart when you eat it. 

I smeared both pieces of baguette with wasabi mayo. You could use horseradish mayo, spicy mustard and mayo, or just mayo with sliced peppers on top, as is more traditional.

Then I put down a thick layer of pickled carrot and pickled daikon, draping an overlapping layer of meat on that. Thin-sliced cucumbers went on top of that, then 1/4 to 1/2 cup of cilantro leaves. I put the other half of the baguette on top, then cut it in half. Feel free to add more or less of something to suit your own taste. Mine was delicious, but it would have been more to my taste with extra wasabi in the mayo and more cilantro. Enjoy!

Baked ricotta gnocchi

When I was in graduate school its the early 2000s, I took a vacation in Spain and spent a lot of time with my old Maine friends Louise and Neil in Santiago de Compostela, where Neil was a student. My birthday came during that trip, and they treated me to dinner at a lovely restaurant in the old part of the city, where we both were staying. Seeing gnocchi on the menu, I had to have it. I'm a sucker for dumplings of any kind. These little, fresh dumplings were divine, tossed in a simple basil pesto. 

Many years later, I chaperoned a GSA trip to Italy, and when we got to the piazza del comune in Assisi, we broke off into groups for lunch. Two other teachers, Jackie and Rachel, and I decided to steer clear of the tourist-focused restaurants on the piazza, and within a few minutes walk, we found a place that looked promising: Ristorante I Monaci. After we settled in, I saw gnocchi on the menu and knew that I had to order it. I was expecting potato gnocchi, but when they came out, I realized that's not what I had ordered. These gnocchi weren't the small dumplings I was used to. They were the size of hens eggs, and they sat in a broiled casserole with sauce and a bit of cheese. When I cut into one of these gnocchi, the texture was incredible. They were soft, almost spongy, and absolutely delicious.

As the years passed, I realized that I wouldn't eat those dumplings again unless I made them for myself. I asked the restaurant for the recipe: no reply. I went online to find something that looked the same, thinking there'd be a recipe attached. I had no luck at first, but eventually, I found enough references to ricotta gnocchi that I decide to give it a shot. The recipes were inconsistent, though, so I set about figuring out the core principles for making ricotta gnocchi. Though these are not quite as spongy as what I ate in Assisi, they are still delizioso. Though it takes a bit of planning to make them, they are otherwise simple to prepare. Enjoy!

Baked ricotta gnocchi (serves four as a side or single course)

Ricotta gnocchi w/sauce and mozzarella

1/2 c. finely grated parmesan cheese
1 c. ricotta cheese
2 eggs
1 c. flour
olive oil

2-4 c. tomato sauce
1 c. shredded mozzarella

Set a large pot of salted water to boil.

Set the oven to 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Put the tomato sauce into the casserole, then slide the pan in the oven. Feel free to embellish the sauce. I start with crushed tomatoes and add garlic powder, a bit of truffle salt, basil, oregano, maybe a bit of crumbled Italian sausage--whatever I feel like.

As the pan and sauce warms, mix the parmesan, ricotta, and eggs well. I used a food processor, but a spoon or whisk will do. Transfer this into a large bowl. Fold in about one-third of the flour being careful not to mix it too much. The liquid and agitation activates the gluten and can make the dumplings tough. Gradually add the remaining flour. The mixture will go from being like batter, to being a soft dough that deforms, to being a stiffer dough that doesn't deform. That's what we're aiming for. 

Rub some olive oil on your hands, then take golf ball-sized lumps of dough and roll them quickly in your hands to make small balls. Set these on a platter as you go, but don't let them touch. After they are all rolled, put a few tablespoons of olive oil in a shallow bowl and put that near the boiling pot. Take the pan with the sauce out of the oven and put it near the shallow bowl. Turn the oven up to 500 degrees.

One at a time, drop the dumplings in the boiling water. After a couple minutes, they should rise to the surface. Continue to boil them for another minute or two, then using a slotted spoon, take several out, put them in the bowl with oil, and roll them around quickly to coat them with oil. Place them in the pan of sauce. Continue till all the dumplings are oiled and in the pan. Sprinkle with shredded cheese and put the dish in the oven. Bake till the cheese is well melted, about five minutes, then turn the heat up to broil. When the cheese has started to brown, remove the pan from the oven. Serve with the sauce and enjoy!

Sweet potato-black bean cakes

As a child, I was a member of the latch-key generation--kids who came home from school to an empty house--so I cooked for myself out of necessity. Though I started by heating up tomato soup, flipping pancakes, grilling burgers, within a few years, I realized that as long as I had a good recipe and the right tools and ingredients, I could make just about anything I put my mind to. And at 14-years-old, I tested that budding kitchen philosophy by making chicken Kiev with new potatoes and haricots verts for Jennifer Carter (now Minkowitz) and Kris Bauersfeld, the other neighborhood kids in my class at Ellsworth High School.

The dinner went well, and I was happy with most of my culinary adventures. In the years that followed, I kept noodling around in the kitchen--pun intended--and my personal approach to cooking shifted. Rather than start with a recipe, now I see what I have in the kitchen, then work with those ingredients to make something to feed my body and satisfy my taste buds. No recipe needed.

Following that philosophy, I recently spied a bowlful of black beans and mashed sweet potato in my refrigerator and decided to make a healthy, wholesome, delicious lunch.

Here's the recipe for lunch for one.

Sweet potato-black bean cakes w/salsa, sour cream.

1/2 cup mashed sweet potato
1/2 cup cooked black beans
2 T barbecue sauce
2 T nutritional yeast
1/4 cup or more flour
2 or 3 T oil
2 T sour cream
1 tsp sriracha hot sauce
2 tsp chopped cilantro
1/4 cup corn salsa

In a small bowl, mix the sweet potato, beans, barbecue sauce, nutritional yeast, and flour till the mixture is firm enough to shape into cakes, but not dry. You may need to add more flour. I added the yeast to help dry the mix out, too. If you don't have any, just add a bit more flour.

Set a nonstick skillet over medium to medium-high heat and add the oil. Shape the mixture into three or four small patties. When the oil starts to shimmer, gently place the patties in the oil, sliding them around a bit to make sure they don't stick. Cook them for 2 minutes or so, then lift the edge of one patty to see if they have browned well. When they have, flip each one and cook them again for 2 minutes or so. 

As the cakes cook, stir together sour cream, cilantro, and hot sauce. 

Remove the brown cakes from the oil, set them on paper towel to soak up some of the fat, then put them on a small plate. Serve with the seasoned sour cream and salsa. 

Though these patties hold together, they are soft and so would not work well as a vegetarian burger in a bun.

As with most of the dishes I make, this one also could be changed to suit your tastes in lots of ways. Use cajun spices or chili powder instead of barbecue sauce; after flipping the patties, put some shredded cheese on top and cover to melt; add hot peppers, pickled or fresh to the sour cream; use scallions instead of cilantro; pick any hot sauce you like; maybe even top with cole slaw or shredded kim chee if you're feeling adventurous. 

Savory sausage oats

Healthy diet and exercise are the keys to reaching a healthy weight. As obvious as that is, years ago, I was convinced that I could achieve my health goals with diet alone. To do so, I cut sugars and other heavily processed carbs from my diet. I was getting tired of eggs and bacon for breakfast--I know, woe is me--and had put my favorite breakfast oatmeal back in the cupboard. 

I mentioned this while visiting my friend Lynn Stone, of Sorrento and San Francisco, and she suggested that I start my day with savory oats. Though at first, I couldn't imagine enjoying them without maple syrup or brown sugar, she reasoned that oats are a grain, just like rice or wheat, and that there was no reason not to eat them as a savory dish instead of sweet for breakfast or any meal. "Just add some butter and salt to the cooked oatmeal," she suggested. And she was right.

So in the fall, as I was cooking up sausages so I could use the pan drippings to make gravy for some yummy turkey and stuffing potstickers, inspiration struck to make savory sausage oats for breakfast. I used rolled oats, but as long as you follow the instructions, you could used steel-cut oats or groats, both of which will add considerably to the cooking time. 

Savory sausage oats with cheddar, garnished with pan-fried cabbage

Here's the recipe for breakfast for one:

1/2 cup rolled oats

1 cup water

a pinch of salt

2 cooked, chopped breakfast sausage links

1 egg

1/4 cup of shredded cheddar cheese

Sriracha hot sauce and other seasonings to taste

Cook the oats as usual. (Add a pinch of salt and the water to a small saucepan, cover, then put over a high flame. When it boils, reduce the heat to medium, stir in the oats, then cook them, covered, for five or six minutes, stirring occasionally.)

As the oats are nearly finished cooking, stir in the chopped sausage and the egg. Keep the pot on the heat and stir occasionally till the egg is well mixed and cooked through. As the oats are already hot, this may take as little as a minute. Spoon the hot oat mixture into a bowl and top with the shredded cheese and hot sauce, or whatever seasonings you choose. Stir it all up to help the cheese melt, et voila! A delicious, quick new way to eat oats for breakfast ... or any meal.

Note: The egg is mixed into the oats to give them a smooth, creamy texture, but it would make a more attractive presentation to fry the egg sunny side up, then slide it atop the sausage oats. As you can see, I also added a bit of pan-fried shredded cabbage that I was preparing for another use. Some kimchee would add texture and flavor to this dish, too.

One-pot macaroni and cheese

Comfort foods are foods that bring back warm memories of home and childhood, foods that we eat when our spirits are low and we want to feel better. Though comfort foods can be sweet (chocolate pudding) or savory (mashed potatoes and gravy), they always hit the spot. 

One of the most popular comfort foods in the United States, macaroni and cheese comes in many varieties. There are shelves of it in the supermarket, boxes of many colors with different cheeses, different noodles, dried powders we add to pasta, milk, and butter. A "step up" includes cheese sauce in a silver pouch. It's available in the frozen food section, too, in single-serving containers and family style trays. Many delis carry it as ready-to-go meal option. Though all of these options sell well because Americans want to indulge in delicious comforting fare, our love of macaroni and cheese more than likely came from eating the homemade stuff when we were children.

My sisters and I loved our mother's macaroni and cheese, made from roux, with milk and mixed cheddar cheeses and a bit of dried mustard. I'll never forget one Christmas eve when I was a teen. A pot of macaroni and cheese with buttered bread crumbs on top was in the oven when the power went out. Fortunately, we had a gas oven at the time, so dinner kept cooking. My sister Jill collected candles, and Dad found the oil lamp we used to light the dining room in such "emergencies."

After my father fried up some red hot dogs, we all sat down at the dining table to eat. The house was quiet--no television, no hum of appliances--and the mood as we ate was calm, peaceful, thoughtful. There was no rush to finish so we could watch our programs or read a book, so we sat together and talked. After dinner, we sat around the same lamp and played Yahtzee. Eventually, the lights came back on, and we went back to our routines, but I decided that year that we would share the same meal every Christmas Eve we spent together from then on. 

One-pot macaroni and cheese

Making homemade macaroni and cheese as my mother did isn't complicated, but it's more than some want to attempt. Anyone unfamiliar with the process of making roux and then turning it into cheese sauce might be intimidated. And so, many turn to boxed macaroni and cheese, but there is another way to make a simple macaroni and cheese that's ready in 30 to 40 minutes. One-pot mac and cheese. 

Here's the recipe.
4 cups cold water (and more for rinsing)
1 pound macaroni
1 cup half and half
2 T butter
1 tsp salt
1 tsp dry mustard
1 tsp black pepper
8 ounces of Italian blend shredded cheeses

Put the macaroni in a medium saucepan (a taller one, rather than short and wide, is better) and rinse it with cold water. Drain the water as best you can, then add four cups of cold water to the pot. Cook the pasta over medium heat till it comes to a simmer, stirring every minute or two to keep the noodles from clumping. For those of you who don't know, "simmer" means right on the edge of a boil. When you see steam and you hear the occasional bubble, that's the simmer. 
Stir in the half and half, then cover again for a minute or two to let the mixture come back to the simmer. Turn the heat down to low and cook the pasta for 10 minutes, stirring every minute or so. You'll notice the pasta plumping up, and just before it's finished, the level of liquid in the pan will seem to drop to about half or two-thirds the height of the noodles. Two things are happening: the noodles are swelling and rising up, and the level of liquid is dropping. As you approach the 10-minute mark, you'll notice the liquid becoming creamy and coating the pasta.
Add the butter and spice, and stir them in well. Remove the pot from the heat. Add half of the cheese, stir well, then stir in the remaining half. Season to taste if needed, or stir in optional additions, like bacon bits, chopped chicken tenders, cooked spinach or whatever you think will taste good. 
Note: A blend of cheeses is best for this dish. I attempted this first with sharp, dry cheddar, and the result simply wasn't cheesy enough. Mix your own, or look for mixed, shredded cheeses in the supermarket.

Blueberry bars

The mind is an interesting thing. Say the right word, and all sorts of images, thoughts, feelings flood into it. Madison Avenue counts on this. They hope that a commercial with a sizzling burger will send us out to buy one at whatever restaurant they're promoting. When my friend Jeni Webber mentioned how she misses her mother's blueberry pie--and her mother--I started salivating and was determined to make two. One for me and one for friends. 

When I got up, however, I saw that there wasn't enough vegetable shortening in the cupboard to make two pies, and I definitely wanted to share whatever I baked.

"Muffins?" No. "Cake?" No. "Bars," I thought. Blueberry bars. 

A quick internet search turned up a recipe on Smitten Kitchen that looked promising, but I didn't have the lemon that the recipe called for. I decided to use spices to bring some high notes to the dish. Coriander came to mind first, but I decided instead to use ginger for those high notes and some cinnamon and nutmeg to complement it. 

Blueberry bars with a wheat, oat, almond crumble

As I was already changing things, I decided to replace some of the wheat flour with whole grain and whole nut: oats and almonds. While they don't rise as well as wheat flour in a muffin, they worked well here, both for the texture and the taste. 

Blueberry bars

1 cup roasted almonds

1 cup oat

1 1/4 cup white flour (approximately)

1  cup granulated sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup cold butter, cut into 1 T pats

1 egg

1/2 cup white sugar

4 tsp cornstarch

1/8 tsp grated nutmeg

1/8 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp ginger

4 cups blueberries (frozen or fresh, but be gentle with fresh)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease a 9-by-13-inch baking pan or line it with parchment paper and grease the paper. 

Process the oats and almonds in a food processor till they create a coarse, evenly blended flour. Put them in a large bowl with enough white flour to bring the total volume to 3 cups. I needed 1 1/4 cups of flour when I made it.

In a small bowl, mix the sugar, baking powder, and salt. Mixing them apart from the other ingredients will make it easier for you to break up clumps of baking powder. Add this to the flour mix and blend well. 

Cut in the butter, then cut in the egg, till you have an even crumb mixture. As an alternative to cutting the butter in by hand, you could pulse the butter into the flour in your food processor if its bowl is large enough. Watch the mixture carefully as you do this. You want to pulse it to the point that the butter has been well incorporated, but if you do this too long, the butter may start to melt. If the flour butter mixture starts to clump together again, go no further. Quickly pulse in the egg.

Put half of this mixture in the prepared pan and pat it down lightly to cover the bottom of the pan evenly. 

For the filling, mix the sugar, starch, and spices well in a medium bowl. Then gently fold the berries in to that bowl. Spread the berries onto the layer of crumble base, sprinkling any remaining sugar-spice mix over them evenly. Top with an even layer of the remaining crumb mix. 

Bake the bars till the crumble turns light brown. Check at 40 or 45 minutes, but it took about 10 minutes longer in my oven. Put the pan on a cooling rack. Cut into bars after it has cooled completely.