For several days after Thanksgiving, I really didn't feel much like cooking. I like cooking - A LOT - but I needed a break. We lived on leftovers and quick meals for a few days, but now I feel like I'm ready to rejoin the world of cooking.
This weekend Aaron made latkes, the traditional potato pancake associated with the holiday of Hanukkah/Chanukah/choose your favorite spelling and move on. Hanukkah is called the festival of lights since we Jews light a 8 branch menorah (candelabra) + the helper candle (shamash) in honor of a mythic miracle of oil for the Holy Temple's menorah lasting much longer than predicted. The actual story of Chanukah has to do with a battle of cultures and religions, but this blog is about food and not religious history, so back to food. In honor of the supposed miracle, we Jews eat a lot of greasy food during the 8 days of Chanukah.
Aaron makes some of the BEST latkes I've ever had. He of course does not cook with a recipe, but he does stick to a formula - one onion for every two potatoes. Most recipes I've read suggest one onion for four potatoes, and I don't find this formula as flavorful. In addition to the grated onions and potatoes, Aaron adds enough egg to make the vegetables stick together. It looks fairly soupy before he fries it. After he fries a batch, he puts the latkes on paper grocery bags in a dish in the oven to stay warm and drain. Let me try explaining this more like a recipe. :)
Aaron's Latkes
Ingredients:
Potatoes
Onions
For every 2 potatoes, 1 onion
Eggs
Salt and pepper to taste
Cooking oil of your choosing (Aaron likes peanut oil)
Instructions:
Grate potatoes and onions, preferably with a food processor since it is quicker and less dangerous. Put grated potatoes and onions in a large mixing bowl. Begin to add beaten eggs until you have a fairly soupy mixture. It won't be a liquid, but it is somewhat pourable. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Prepare a baking dish such as a 13 x 9 Pyrex and preheat your oven to 200 degrees. Cut some brown grocery bags to line the baking dish and eventually to layer between rows of latkes.
Heat oil on a griddle or in a large skillet. You will want to heat a shallow pool of oil and consider having a pan lid nearby in case of grease fire. Aaron has yet to cause a grease fire, but other family members seem to be prone to latke fire starting. Scoop potato mixture on griddle into 3-4" diameter "blobs"/pancakes. Fry for several minutes on each side. As the latke fries on the first side, you can test its "flippability" with a very flat spatula after a few minutes. Latkes are ready to flip when they do not threaten to fall apart when you touch them with a spatula.
When latkes are fried, remove them from heat and transfer to your prepared baking dish. Keep dish in oven while you cook remaining latkes. Make sure to put a layer of paper bag between the rows of latkes. After you have made all the potato mixture into latkes, serve latkes warm with applesauce and/or sour cream.
Speaking of applesauce, I made a cranberry applesauce which complemented the latkes rather nicely. My usual applesauce recipe follows:
Ingredients:
8-9 apples, cored and sliced, possibly peeled
1 c. water
cinnamon (optional)
Instructions:
Combine ingredients in large pot. Bring to boil. Continue boiling/simmering until apples are mashable (10 minutes?). Mash with potato masher or immersion blender.
For cranberry applesauce, I added just under 3 cups of fresh cranberries. The resulting sauce was quite red, a bit tart but still sweet enough that the kids really enjoyed it.
More cooking coming as our week starts again!
Showing posts with label apples. Show all posts
Showing posts with label apples. Show all posts
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Saturday, September 18, 2010
The Storing Has Begun
Part of our family's annual Rosh HaShanah tradition is to go apple picking. Yes, I realize this activity is not in agreement with Jewish law/halacha. We go to appreciate God's Creation. We go to spend time as a family. And of course, we go to enjoy the apples and other fruits. I imagine this tradition will change as our kids get older. I envision the annual apple picking to happen around but not necessarily on Rosh HaShanah or at least such that we attend services AND get our apples too.
Justifications aside, let me share a bit of our experience from this year and explain the title of this post.
As in past years, we returned to Shelburne Farm in Stow, MA. We like Shelburne because of its size, the friendly farmers and staff, and the minimal pesticide usage. Oh, and the cider doughnuts are amazing. :) This year we decided to pick peaches as well as apples. Nom nom nom!
A peck of peaches, to be more precise:
We filled the box more than this picture shows, but you get an idea of what a peck looks like.
We also picked a half-bushel of apples - Cortlands and McIntoshes. I didn't take a picture of OUR bag, but this image will give you an idea of quantity.
SO what to do with so much fruit and only 4 people? I hear Bubba in my head...apple crisp, apple sauce, apple pie, apple in butternut squash soup. And those peaches? Peach cobbler, peach sauce, peach crisp... ooh what about apple peach crisp?
Yes, I made apple peach crisp and it was truly awesome. Here's a recipe for those who want to have divinely good food.
Apple-Peach Crisp (modified from Better Homes and Garden cookbook)
10 cups of sliced, peeled, cored/pitted apples and peaches
2-4 Tbsp. white sugar (I tend to use only 2)
1 c. regular rolled oats
1 c. packed brown sugar
1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground ginger (OPTIONAL! I skip it because my kids aren't fans)
1/2 c. butter
Place fruit in 13x9 baking dish. Sprinkle and stir in white sugar.
For topping, in a medium bowl combine the oats, brown sugar, flour and spices. Cut in butter till mixture resembles coarse crumbs. I start this by "dicing" the butter, and I found a butter knife to work well for the task. Sprinkle topping over filling.
Bake crisp in a 375 oven for 30-35 minutes or till fruit is tender and topping is golden. Serve warm (perhaps with ice cream).
As much as we all could live on fruit crisp, it isn't the best option for processing so much fruit. The next thing we have been doing with the fruit is making sauce because it is wicked easy, gets through a lot of fruit, keeps well, and is delicious! Our first attempt of apple-peach sauce ended up being more like apple-peach juice since we didn't account for the amount of liquid in the peaches. That is, peaches are REALLY juicy and when they boil, they add lots of liquid to the sauce which ends up making "soup" or "goo" or "juice," depending on who names it. I'll let you figure out who named the concoction what in our house.
The second round of sauce making has gone much better. Here is what we did for proportions -- check out the simple ingredients!
Apple-Peach Sauce
5 peaches - peeled, pitted, and halved.
About 20 apples (we didn't count; we just filled our large pasta pot). We leave peels on because we're lazy and maybe there is extra healthy stuff in the skin.
2 cups of water - we probably could do yet less.
Put all in pot. Bring to boil and let fruit soften. Mash with a potato masher, immersion blender (my kitchen tool of choice), or food processor in batches. Enjoy!
We have about 7 quarts of this sauce - 4 from the soupy batch; 3 from the saucy batch. Caleb enjoys drinking the soupy kind at breakfast. Aaron likes the sauce straight from the pot, nice and warm. I like putting the apple-peach goo in my steel cut oatmeal. Ellie remains undecided about the goo, but she is intrigued. And it makes the house smell great!
To finish off the peaches before they became compost, we blanched about 10 peaches, which made removing their skins ridiculously easy. We sliced or halved them and put them in freezer bags. I'm excited about having sweet peaches in February.
Also on the storing front, I made a batch of grape jelly thanks to the generosity of our neighbors who have a grapevine that actually gives them grapes. This is in contrast to our grapevine which we ignore and thus get no noticeable fruit (or maybe the various critters get to it first?). I don't have a good system for storing jelly and jam since I have yet to make a cooked jelly/jam. I put the majority of the grape jelly in a quart container from take out soup, some in a 3 cup Rubbermaid container, and the last bit in an actual jam jar from the farmers' market.
Coming up in food storage - corn! Aaron made a delicious corn chowder tonight, so we will remove corn from cob and freeze it. I'm sure we'll store some corn on the cob as well since that worked well for us. Last year we stored green beans, but we blanched them a bit too long and purchased a bit more than we needed. This year, we'll purchase fewer pounds and see if we can get the blanch time right. I'd also like to store some bell peppers for things like chili and enchiladas, so I need to read a bit from our preserving book to see if I can just freeze them up too.
My bed beckons, but perhaps my next post will talk a bit about why we go to the effort of storing food from the summer instead of buying the same kind of food from a regular grocery store.
Justifications aside, let me share a bit of our experience from this year and explain the title of this post.
As in past years, we returned to Shelburne Farm in Stow, MA. We like Shelburne because of its size, the friendly farmers and staff, and the minimal pesticide usage. Oh, and the cider doughnuts are amazing. :) This year we decided to pick peaches as well as apples. Nom nom nom!
A peck of peaches, to be more precise:
We filled the box more than this picture shows, but you get an idea of what a peck looks like.We also picked a half-bushel of apples - Cortlands and McIntoshes. I didn't take a picture of OUR bag, but this image will give you an idea of quantity.
SO what to do with so much fruit and only 4 people? I hear Bubba in my head...apple crisp, apple sauce, apple pie, apple in butternut squash soup. And those peaches? Peach cobbler, peach sauce, peach crisp... ooh what about apple peach crisp?
Yes, I made apple peach crisp and it was truly awesome. Here's a recipe for those who want to have divinely good food.
Apple-Peach Crisp (modified from Better Homes and Garden cookbook)
10 cups of sliced, peeled, cored/pitted apples and peaches
2-4 Tbsp. white sugar (I tend to use only 2)
1 c. regular rolled oats
1 c. packed brown sugar
1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground ginger (OPTIONAL! I skip it because my kids aren't fans)
1/2 c. butter
Place fruit in 13x9 baking dish. Sprinkle and stir in white sugar.
For topping, in a medium bowl combine the oats, brown sugar, flour and spices. Cut in butter till mixture resembles coarse crumbs. I start this by "dicing" the butter, and I found a butter knife to work well for the task. Sprinkle topping over filling.
Bake crisp in a 375 oven for 30-35 minutes or till fruit is tender and topping is golden. Serve warm (perhaps with ice cream).
As much as we all could live on fruit crisp, it isn't the best option for processing so much fruit. The next thing we have been doing with the fruit is making sauce because it is wicked easy, gets through a lot of fruit, keeps well, and is delicious! Our first attempt of apple-peach sauce ended up being more like apple-peach juice since we didn't account for the amount of liquid in the peaches. That is, peaches are REALLY juicy and when they boil, they add lots of liquid to the sauce which ends up making "soup" or "goo" or "juice," depending on who names it. I'll let you figure out who named the concoction what in our house.
The second round of sauce making has gone much better. Here is what we did for proportions -- check out the simple ingredients!
Apple-Peach Sauce
5 peaches - peeled, pitted, and halved.
About 20 apples (we didn't count; we just filled our large pasta pot). We leave peels on because we're lazy and maybe there is extra healthy stuff in the skin.
2 cups of water - we probably could do yet less.
Put all in pot. Bring to boil and let fruit soften. Mash with a potato masher, immersion blender (my kitchen tool of choice), or food processor in batches. Enjoy!
We have about 7 quarts of this sauce - 4 from the soupy batch; 3 from the saucy batch. Caleb enjoys drinking the soupy kind at breakfast. Aaron likes the sauce straight from the pot, nice and warm. I like putting the apple-peach goo in my steel cut oatmeal. Ellie remains undecided about the goo, but she is intrigued. And it makes the house smell great!
To finish off the peaches before they became compost, we blanched about 10 peaches, which made removing their skins ridiculously easy. We sliced or halved them and put them in freezer bags. I'm excited about having sweet peaches in February.
Also on the storing front, I made a batch of grape jelly thanks to the generosity of our neighbors who have a grapevine that actually gives them grapes. This is in contrast to our grapevine which we ignore and thus get no noticeable fruit (or maybe the various critters get to it first?). I don't have a good system for storing jelly and jam since I have yet to make a cooked jelly/jam. I put the majority of the grape jelly in a quart container from take out soup, some in a 3 cup Rubbermaid container, and the last bit in an actual jam jar from the farmers' market.
Coming up in food storage - corn! Aaron made a delicious corn chowder tonight, so we will remove corn from cob and freeze it. I'm sure we'll store some corn on the cob as well since that worked well for us. Last year we stored green beans, but we blanched them a bit too long and purchased a bit more than we needed. This year, we'll purchase fewer pounds and see if we can get the blanch time right. I'd also like to store some bell peppers for things like chili and enchiladas, so I need to read a bit from our preserving book to see if I can just freeze them up too.
My bed beckons, but perhaps my next post will talk a bit about why we go to the effort of storing food from the summer instead of buying the same kind of food from a regular grocery store.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Apples, apples, apples
As a result of our trip to Stillman's Farm in New Braintree on Monday, we have apples. I don't mean that we picked a peck of apples. I mean we have APPLES. We have 2 large reusable grocery bags of apples, probably about a bushel all told. Let's not forget we had about 7 apples leftover from our last apple picking outing AND another small bag (8-12 small apples) from our last CSA pickup. The challenge with apples is to get through them before they become compost.
I'm already feeling a bit like Bubba from Forrest Gump (the line is close to the end of the clip) - apple crisp, apple bread, apple pie, applesauce, apple dumplings, apple cobbler, apple jam, apple butter, apple pancake... OK, I haven't made all of those things yet, but I see it in my future. We already have about 12 quarts of applesauce frozen. More is forthcoming because those 7 leftover apples aren't good for much else. I'm sure I have 1-2 loaves of apple bread in the chest freezer.
Now I have this bushel of apples to get through before I have a big ol' pile of compost and fruit flies on my kitchen counter. Every day I see the two bags sitting on the counter, reminding me that I need to eat, bake, cook, and otherwise consume these apples. Apples, like all real food, have a limited shelf life. I need a plan. Right now I'm approaching the apples rather haphazardly, hoping to use them up and enjoy them at the same time. I want a plan that focuses on enjoying the apples first. I want a plan that maximizes the apple experience. It's too easy to take 20+ apples and make 2+ quarts of applesauce. Apple crisp also uses a fair amount of apples, but it isn't the easiest to store long term. Apple bread only requires 1 cup (approx. 1 apple) per loaf.
Today I made 2 dozen apple muffins because I think I can freeze them for breakfasts and snacks in the winter. I think I'm going to have to see how I can incorporate apples into meals and not just into snacks or desserts. If anyone is reading this and happens to have favorite apple recipes, do send them along. I'm off to AllRecipes and RecipeZaar to see what I can find!
I'm already feeling a bit like Bubba from Forrest Gump (the line is close to the end of the clip) - apple crisp, apple bread, apple pie, applesauce, apple dumplings, apple cobbler, apple jam, apple butter, apple pancake... OK, I haven't made all of those things yet, but I see it in my future. We already have about 12 quarts of applesauce frozen. More is forthcoming because those 7 leftover apples aren't good for much else. I'm sure I have 1-2 loaves of apple bread in the chest freezer.
Now I have this bushel of apples to get through before I have a big ol' pile of compost and fruit flies on my kitchen counter. Every day I see the two bags sitting on the counter, reminding me that I need to eat, bake, cook, and otherwise consume these apples. Apples, like all real food, have a limited shelf life. I need a plan. Right now I'm approaching the apples rather haphazardly, hoping to use them up and enjoy them at the same time. I want a plan that focuses on enjoying the apples first. I want a plan that maximizes the apple experience. It's too easy to take 20+ apples and make 2+ quarts of applesauce. Apple crisp also uses a fair amount of apples, but it isn't the easiest to store long term. Apple bread only requires 1 cup (approx. 1 apple) per loaf.
Today I made 2 dozen apple muffins because I think I can freeze them for breakfasts and snacks in the winter. I think I'm going to have to see how I can incorporate apples into meals and not just into snacks or desserts. If anyone is reading this and happens to have favorite apple recipes, do send them along. I'm off to AllRecipes and RecipeZaar to see what I can find!
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