In a Pickle

These are the Asian pears we picked at Apple Annie's on Thursday (see my previous post). No, I'm not making pickles of them! They're just so lovely and delicious that I wanted to put up another photo of them. And now that I've done that, let me tell you what I did yesterday.

     As I've mentioned before, we gave up on our squash this summer - the yield didn't begin to justify the work (or the water bill). However, one of the local markets, El Super on South 6th Avenue just south of I-10, has great produce specials on Wednesdays; this week they had Mexican gray squash, which as you can see are interchangeable with zucchini (the peel isn't quite as dark but the flavor is, I think, superior - and I speak as a lover of zucchini) for 3 pounds for $1.

 One thing I love to make from zucchini is relish; it's always better any sweet pickle relish you can buy in a jar.  This recipe comes from the Better Homes and Gardens "Canning" book/magazine I've cited before. Go back a few posts to see a picture of the cover; it's still on the newsstands at the checkout counters in some markets here. I doubled the recipe to make 5 pints instead of 5 half-pints; it might get us through the winter. This is the recipe exactly as it appears in the magazine.

Zucchini Relish
5 cups finely chopped zucchini (5 small)
1 1/2 cups finely chopped onions (3 medium)
3/4 cup finely chopped green sweet pepper (1 medium)
3/4 cup finely chopped red sweet pepper (1 medium)
1/4 cup pickling salt (I used Morton's Kosher salt - never use iodized salt for pickling)
Cold water
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups white vinegar
1/4 cup water
1 tsp. celery seeds
1 tsp. ground turmeric
1/2 tsp. mustard seeds
1 or 2 drops green food coloring (optional)

1. In an extra-large non-metal bowl, combine zucchini, onions, and sweet peppers. Sprinkle with salt, toss gently to coat. Add enough cold water to cover vegetables. Cover and allow to stand at room temperature for 3 hours.

2. Transfer vegetable mixture to a large colander set in the sink. Rinse with cold water; drain.
3. In an 8- to 10-quart stainless steel, enamel, or nonstick heavy pot, combine sugar, vinegar, the 1/4 cup water, celery seeds, turmeric, and mustard seeds. Bring to boiling, stirring until sugar dissolves; reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, for 3 minutes. Add drained vegetable mixture and, if desired, green food coloring. Return to boiling; reduce heat. Simmer, uncovered, 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

4. Ladle hot relish into sterilized half-pint (or pint, if you double the recipe as I did) canning jars, leaving a 1/2" headspace. Wipe jar rims; adjust lids.
5. Process filled jars in a boiling water canner for 10 minutes (start timing when the water returns to a boil). Remove jars from canner; cool on wire racks. Makes 5 half-pints.

*Note: I chopped the zucchini and peppers by hand for this relish because I like the look of the neat little squares. It took a little more time than using the food processor, but I'm happier with the result. (I did chop the onion in the food processor.) Here's the 1/4 cup or so that was left after filling all the jars,

 and here's one of the jars. I think it's just lovely. Of course, if you've followed my canning adventures, you know  I tend to think anything that's put up in a jar like this is just lovely! The turmeric gives it that wonderful golden glow, as well as terrific flavor.

 Relish isn't all I made yesterday. Joe loves bread and butter pickles, and zucchini make amazing bread and butter pickles. Again, I think they're much better than those you can buy. I'm going to give you that recipe too, but first a note - well, almost a rant - on ingredients.
     First off, I'm never quite sure what recipe writers mean by small, medium, large, etc. The relish recipe says 5 small zucchini chopped will yield 5 cups. Okay, maybe, but you'd better measure to be sure, especially if you want to fill the designated number of jars.
     But 3 medium onions to get 1 1/2 cups finely chopped onions? Really? The next picture shows the 1.4+ cups thinly sliced onion I used in the bread and butter pickles. (I'm giving you the recipe as it's in the book; I increased it to get 7 pints instead of 5, because a canning kettle holds 7 jars so it makes sense to me to go ahead and can 7 jars. We like the stuff. We'll eat it or maybe give some away at Christmas.)

 So, my point is, again, measure! I don't know where the BH&G cooks found their puny onions, but I got well over 1 1/2 cups thinly sliced onion from just 1/2 of a large white onion! (The candle helps to dissipate the onion fumes so you don't weep so much - some onions are so strong I've thought I might go blind!)
     Many Mexican cooks prefer white onions over the usual yellow or brown ones, and El Super also had them on special, 5 pounds for a dollar on Wednesday, Miercoles de Frutas. (El Super also has Jueves de Carnes, meat specials on Thursday only. They have all the usual stuff plus cuts you're unlikely to find at Fry's or Safeway, and the meat section is so clean you could probably eat raw meat off the floor, if you were so inclined!) El Super also has specials on produce and meats, etc. that run all week.
     Now here's the second part of my diatribe on ingredients, particularly spices. Everything you see below except the cayenne, which is just there for illustration purposes, went into yesterday's pickling projects. I had to go to the market for celery seed and I would have bought yellow mustard seed too, but it was ridiculously expensive and I already had brown mustard seed at home (it's in the jar with the gold lid, next to the cayenne). Less than an ounce of McCormick celery seed cost $4.69 at our neighborhood Albertson's, though I could have paid more if I'd bought Spice Islands or one of the other brands. Mustard seed was the same price, give or take a dime, so you can see why I didn't buy any.

There are much better and often more interesting places to buy spices and herbs. Even in Albertsons and other mainstream groceries, there's usually a Hispanic section where they are sold in cellophane packets, like the cinnamon on the far left (89¢ at Food City) or the cayenne on the right (69¢ at Albertsons). The big 8-ounce jar of Turmeric was $1.99 at the 17th Street Market here in Tucson, which carries Indo-European spices, etc., as well as Rani Indian spices and seasonings. The Rani brown mustard seeds were $1.69 for 3.5 ounces, compared to nearly $5 for less than an ounce of McCormick! Not everything comes in the cellophane packets but more does than you might think, and if you run out of, say, ginger, keep the jar and refill it from the packet. I also like to shop at LeeLee, a huge Asian supermarket in NW Tucson (at Orange Grove and La Cholla) that carries all kinds of spices, etc. (and much, much more), including the Rani line and I think the Indo-European line as well, but if you don't have access to such stores, at least look in the Hispanic section before shelling out the big bucks for tiny quantities.

      Okay, now back to pickles. This is the recipe as published, to make 5 pints of:

Bread and Butter Zucchini Pickles

3 1/2 pounds medium zucchini

1 cup thinly sliced, halved onion (1 large)

3 Tbsp. pickling salt

Crushed ice (I don't have an ice crusher; I think the cubes worked fine)

2 cups cider vinegar

1 1/2 cups sugar
1 Tbsp. mustard seeds
1 tsp. celery seeds
1/2 tsp. whole black peppercorns
1/2 tsp. ground turmeric

1. Wash zucchini. Slice off the stem and blossom ends. Cut zucchini crosswise into 1/4" thick slices. Measure 12 cups zucchini slices.
2. In an extra-large nonmetal bowl, combine the 12 cups zucchini slices and 1 cup onion slices. Sprinkle with salt; toss gently to coat. Top with 2 inches of crushed ice. Weight down mixture with a heavy plate. Allow to stand at room temperature for 2 hours.
3. Remove any remaining ice from zucchini mixture. Transfer mixture to a colander set in a sink and drain. (Note: it doesn't say to rinse! I didn't, and the pickles were perfect.)
4. In a 5- to 6- quart stainless steel, enamel, or nonstick heavy pot, combine vinegar, sugar, mustard seeds, celery seeds, turmeric, and peppercorns. Bring to boiling, stirring until sugar dissolves. Add zucchini mixture. Return to boiling, stirring frequently; reduce heat. Simmer, uncovered, for 5 minutes.

5. Ladle hot mixture into hot, sterilized pint canning jars, leaving 1/2" headspace. Wipe jar rims; adjust lids.
6. Process filled jars in a boiling water bath canner for 10 minutes (start timing when water returns to boiling). Remove jars from canner; cool on rack.

They will look like this:

While I was finishing the bread and butter pickles, Joe made a run to the store and came back with these:

It's certainly nice to be appreciated!

Elvis Has Left the Building

Okay, not exactly, but the remaining dove hatchling has left the nest, well and healthy and within the 11 to however many days the Sibley Guide to Birds said is normal.
      There are, however, now 16 quail eggs in the fern in the front entryway and no sign of either of the parents, also not unusual according to Sibley. Given the time that's elapsed since the last eggs were laid (nearly a week) and the parents' absence since then, I think it's safe to say they've abandoned the nest, either by choice or by mischance. Though you'd never know it by looking around the neighborhood, quail don't have a very high survival rate. I've written about that before, in a poem called "Borrowed Days," from which these stanzas are excerpted:

Here in the desert, in these borrowed days before the heat,

we plant and hope for a brief flowering.

Here our flowers are red, yellow, orange, the hot colors. 

Here birds nest and mate frantically.

Some of their young, got in these borrowed days,

may even survive the summer. 

It does not pay to watch too closely, to count the tiny quail,

to watch their numbers shrink as the heat grows.

It shrivels the heart and urges us to tears.

We cannot spare the water.

But the summer, hot as it is, provides beauty, as in the crops we grow during this time. The greens are gone now, except the chard, which is more resilient than it looks. We'll have to buy our lettuces - I pulled out the last plants the other day. The aphids of April arrived right on schedule to take over the kale, and the beets, parsnips, and rutabagas are crowding the refrigerator, soon to be joined by the last of the carrots.

     This morning, very early, before work, in one raised bed I planted Armenian cucumbers, which tolerate our temperatures, and two kinds of melons - Kazakh, which I've neither grown nor tasted, and the Spanish Piel de Sapo, which I grew successfully a few years ago. They're delicious, and apparently if you say "melon" in Spain, that's what people assume you mean. In the other I planted my two favorite winter squashes, the Italian Marina di Chioggia, big, blue-green, and warty, and the French Muscat de Provence, which looks like Cinderella's pumpkin (but should not be confused with the Rouge Vif d'Etampes pumpkin, which is brighter-colored on the outside and according to some sources less tasty, though I don't actually know about that, having never seen or tasted one). 

 

Tomorrow I'll plant grey zucchini, which are sold here in the markets as Mexican zucchini; I think they have more and better flavor than the regular dark green ones.

Then we'll plant tepary beans along the trellises in the west garden. I've written about those amazing beans before http://morning-glory-garden.blogspot.com/2009/11/gardens-yesterday-and-today.html. Even though many people flee northward at this time of year, I'm looking forward to it. I'll just have to make sure to get up early to do whatever needs doing outdoors in the cool of the morning!

Sex in the Garden

Please calm down! I'm talking about plants here, specifically squashes and their near relatives: pumpkins, gourds, melons, etc. Up until a few years ago our garden produced bumper crops of all these crops, but as the bee population declines, so do the fruits of these plants. We should all be worried about the lack of bees; without these vital pollinators, our food supply is in serious danger.

As you probably already know, plants in the squash family produce two kinds of flowers - male and female - and the pollen has to get transferred from the male flower to the female flower in order to produce a fruit. We used to be able to rely on the bees for that, but no longer. Therefore, many gardeners have taken on the task of pollination to make sure of getting a crop at all.

It's easy to tell the flowers apart. Female flowers will have a little fruit at their base - a tiny zucchini or yellow summer squash or pumpkin, etc., and a more complex structure in the heart of the blossom - the pistil(s). Male flowers have a longer, slender stem, with a single pollen-covered stamen inside the flower and no sign of a baby squash at the base. Here's a bunch of male zucchini, yellow summer squash, and pumpkin blossoms - yes, they all look alike. The stamen in the middle of the blossom is easy to see.

The last couple of years I've been trying to hand-pollinate by following a method I saw on TV, picking the male flower, stripping off the golden petals, and using the pollen-covered stamen directly to apply the pollen to the female flower's pistil. It hasn't worked very well and I think I may have been overly enthusiastic and forceful. Some garden authorities recommend using a soft-bristled paintbrush to transfer the pollen from one to the other, and this year I'm trying that. Perhaps the female flowers will appreciate the gentler touch.

Before I could try the new approach, though, I found some female blossoms I'd missed, with their attached baby squashes, so I harvested them to make a little  breakfast frittata. I took off the blossoms and sliced the squashes; you can see slices from the siamese twin squash on the left, above, at the front in the picture below:

Then I pulled the petals off the blossoms in the bouquet in the first photo, discarded the stems and stamens,  stacked up what was left, sliced them crosswise into narrow strips, and separated them into a pile of loose "ribbons":

  

I lightly sautéed the squash slices in my little 8" cast iron skillet (I was only serving 2) over medium heat in a little olive oil, adding in 1 chopped tomato after a couple of minutes. While the vegetables were cooking, I beat 3 eggs and then stirred in 2 thinly sliced green onions and the squash blossom strips, along with a little salt and pepper, poured the mixture over the squash and tomato in the pan, and reduced the heat to medium low.

 I sprinkled it all with an ounce or so of grated cheese, in this case one of those little individual BabyBel cheese balls wrapped in red wax, though whatever's handy is usually just fine (that's what was handy), and some chopped cilantro (parsley or basil would be fine, too), put the lid on, and left it alone for a few minutes till it was cooked through and puffed up a bit. I used that time to make toast and mix up a fruit cup of sliced banana, orange sections, and a few strawberries that had somehow gotten left behind from dessert the night before.

It was a perfect breakfast for two. Though the squash blossoms didn't add much flavor, they looked very pretty, and given the color they must have contributed some beta-carotene and perhaps some fiber. I've made stuffed squash blossoms in the past, which are delicious but also labor-intensive (they do impress guests), but this was simpler and just fine. I'll include the blossoms in omelets and frittatas when I have them, and I think they would also be a nice addition to a salad or tossed into a light, brothy soup at the last minute.

I was out in the garden earlier this morning, making sure all the female blossoms got the necessary attention, and it seems the kinder, gentler approach with the soft paintbrush is working. We'll be harvesting some zucchini tomorrow, and the one pumpkin I pollinated a couple of days ago is plump and healthy and has grown to the size of a tennis ball. So I'm feeling hopeful for a better harvest this year, and if it truly is abundant, I may post some more recipes for using up all those zucchini!

over-the-hill cooking

No, I don't mean the cook is over-the-hill, though sometimes we may feel that way! What I'm talking about here are those ingredients that get forgotten in the refrigerator or garden till they're a bit past their prime. Not rotting or slimy or anything, just not as fresh as they used to be. The question, then, is whether to throw them out or find some way to incorporate them into something tasty. There's a saying I like (I saw it on an old embroidered sampler):

Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.

My grandmother, who was very important in my upbringing and who raised her children during the Great Depression, would have liked that. She taught me a lot about cooking, sewing, gardening, etc., and I also absorbed many of my beliefs and values from her. One of those is that it just makes me crazy to see people throw away perfectly good food that could be put to use and provide eating pleasure.

All of this is just the lead-in to what we had for lunch yesterday, a zucchini frittata enhanced by a few over-the-hill mushrooms.

You can't see the mushrooms in the picture. There were four of them, nice Creminis, stored properly in a brown paper bag with the edges turned down and partly open to let the mushrooms breathe, and they'd been breathing at the back of the refrigerator for a couple of weeks or so, and now they were showing their age. Not crispy crumbly dried like the ones in the little packets that we buy as delicacies at the market, but slightly shriveled and leathery though otherwise okay. I didn't want to "reconstitute" them by soaking and thus lose their flavor and "structural integrity," so I sliced off the bottoms of the stems and chopped what remained into fairly small bits, then sautéed them in olive oil with quite a bit of minced garlic and a couple of sliced zucchini for 10 minutes or so over pretty low heat. I salted the zucchini at this stage rather than salting the dish later because if you salt the vegetables as you sauté them, it not only enhances the flavor but it also draws out more of their moisture, and zucchini have considerable moisture that, before it cooked down, helped to rehydrate my mushroom bits and enhance the flavor addition they made to the frittata.

I should add here that the zucchini had also been forgotten a few days longer than I would have liked, so their lovely dark green skin was starting to show the first signs of cellulite, but they were still quite wholesome and acceptable, though they'd lost some of their youthful perfection. Anyway, after the zucchini were tender it was time to pour the eggs over (I use 6 eggs to serve 4), sprinkle a good handful or two of freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano over the top, pop on the lid, turn the heat down even lower, and go do something else for 10 or 15 minutes. I know that's not the traditional way of cooking a frittata, but it produces a lovely, puffy dish with minimal effort, and with a nice salad (the dressing recipe is in an earlier post), some good bread, and a glass of wine (this is a decent but not too pricey white Zin) it was a lovely lunch.

The bread is the "bran-enriched white bread" from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François, my current new favorite cookbook. If you follow the instructions to the letter you get exactly the results they promise - excellent bread with minimal effort. Don't let hubris derail you. As a long-time bread-baker who even used to teach classes on it, I thought I could improve on their method, so the first time I tried one of their recipes I didn't really pay attention, and what I got wasn't all that great. In fact, I almost took the book to Bookman's (Tucson's wonderful used book/music/and many other things exchange) but then I tried it again and followed the directions and was very happy with the results. With a bit more experience under my belt, I now feel able to improvise and adapt, but baking, more than other forms of cooking, does require a bit more attention to certain details.

Frittatas are such a lovely way to use up bits of this and that and turn them into something special. I'd meant to add some slivers of sun-dried tomato to this one, but I forgot. Fresh mushrooms are great, of course, and I often use just mushrooms and onions or scallions. Fresh herbs - parsley, basil, thyme, marjoram, etc. - brighten things up, but don't confuse the issue by using too much or too many different ones all together. Rosemary, for example, is wonderful with garlic and anything else, but in something as delicate as a frittata, it's probably all the herb you need, and it should be minced quite finely (dried rosemary is to be avoided - those little sharp sticks could really hurt a person! - unless you really have no possible way to get the fresh stuff, in which case the dried herb should be very finely minced and simmered in whatever you're making for a long time, or ground to a powder so it can't choke you). Leftover crumbled bacon and/or various cheeses - that last ounce of gorgonzola with some caramelized onion and a slice of crumbled bacon from yesterday's breakfast (or the day before - it's cooked so it will keep for a few days) can really elevate what might otherwise just seem like scrambled eggs for two.

And now it's time for me to go see what I can come up with for lunch today!