On this blog I’ve been a big proponent of meal-planning but the truth is that in the last year I’ve really not lived up to my own ideals!  I would say for the majority of weeks of eating this past year I had very little plan.  We still ate fairly well, mostly local, and healthy, but I think we weren’t as focused or efficient as we strive to be.  So my goal is to get back to doing this!  In that spirit I planned most of our dinners this past week and they were:

1. Bulgar bowls with veggies and marinated veggies (from the newest issue of Cooks Illustrated)
2. Potato Leek Gratin and Cole Slaw
3. Beef Bulgogi (also from Cooks Illustrated)
4. Thai Millet Cakes and an Asian Cole Slaw

The other thing that I find is really important for regular cooking is that I work with tools that are in good shape.  In other words, I need sharp knives!  A few years ago I took my chef’s knife down to STOP restaurant supply on Victoria St in Kitchener. That was a good experience although it’s a bit far from my house.  A few weeks ago I got contacted by Sharp My Knife to review their knife sharpening services in exchange for a free sharpening.  They are a local company that comes to your house by appointment to sharpen your knives (and anything else that needs sharpening).  It was hard to pass up this convenience!

Jeff came by on a recent morning and sharpened my chef’s knife, meat knife, paring knife, and my pocket knife (or my EDC).  It took about 20 minutes or so and then my knives were all ready to go. 

 I’ve been using all of them this week and am very happy to once again have super-efficient knives to use. Yes, sharp knives mean that you need to be a bit more careful but ultimately they end up being safer and more comfortable to use.  The difference is especially noticeable when cutting more difficult foods. 

I’m trying to make sure that I maintain them in the best state possible by honing them with my steel before or after every use. This helps to correct small flaws on the cutting edge. But I’m realizing that ultimately all knives will reach a point where they need to be sharpened (this can be checked with the paper test).  Then it’s nice to know that if I don’t want to make the trip down Victoria St. then I can just book an appointment with Sharp My Knife and get them done quickly and easily. 

 So as far as goals go for this new year we’ll see how I do on meal planning.  At least I’m in good shape as far as having good sharp tools to work with!

I made this on a whim with kohlrabi we got in our first installment of this year’s CSA.  A trick of mine for making nice uniform julienned style slices for the carrots and kohlrabi is to cut them into 2 inch pieces and then stack them in the top of the food processor with the grater attachment on.  By stacking them lengthwise they grate the long way and result in a more julienned style.  I hope that makes some sense!

Anyway, this salad was great the first night we had it and actually improved after sitting in the fridge.  It was well received by my family and the people we shared it with.

Lately we’ve been putting chutney on our burgers, sandwiches, crackers, or just putting it on the table where people can decide to do with it whatever pleases them.

I wanted to use up a few of the pears from our tree as well as the leftover peaches from our canning session a few days prior.  The recipe is loosely based on a few others but one unique feature is the use of the peach and pear peels to add color and pectin to the chutney.

The peels are normally just discarded so this gave throwing them in to boil with the vinegar and lemon juice gave them a good use.  The skins of peaches are often saved and used for making peach jelly (or honey as it’s sometimes called), while pear skins contain good amounts of pectin.

I was especially pleased with just how much color the peach peels added, turning the finished product a deep pink as opposed to a more yellow color that would have likely been the result without them.

The spiralizer is one of those.  After a friend lent us hers to help us dispatch with a few too many zucchinis we were hooked.  I picked one up at Vincenzo’s a few days later and haven’t looked back (of course they’re easy to find on amazon.com and amazon.ca as well).

Since we tend to eat pasta about once a week we’ve made the switch for the summer from regular pasta to long strands of zucchini, stir-fried and tossed with a simple sauce, pesto, or herbs.  Tip: if your zucchini is quite large and watery wrap the spiral slices in cheese cloth and squeeze out the excess moisture!

The full recipe is shared on the Bailey’s Local Foods blog, but really you just need a spiralizer and your favorite pasta toppings!

Disclosure: this post uses Amazon affiliate links

“Whatever highly honorable motives they may have—to save money or to enjoy themselves, for example—the greatest motivation for homebrewers is the opportunity to experiment and to produce beer in all the glorious varieties in which it manifests itself.”

-Michael Jackson (this MJ, not the other) in the preface to The Joy of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian (Amazon.ca and WPL)

Making beer from scratch in your own home is extremely satisfying but it can seem a bit difficult if you’ve never tried.  And if you do know a little bit about the process that most people use it can seem downright intimidating.

That’s because many homebrewers brew five gallon batches (or larger) and use all sorts of specialized equipment.  This includes pots and kettles that are 8 gallons or larger (the average “large” stockpot is around 2-3 gallons) and converted coolers with false bottoms or manifolds for straining grains.  In addition to this are all the buckets, jugs, tubes, pumps, measuring devices, and other unique items that serve very specific purposes in the brewing process.

However, it is possible to brew your own beer—truly from scratch—with limited supplies and equipment.  You just have to be willing to go a little bit smaller and then you can work with more common household items, like the pots and strainers your kitchen most likely already has.

This is where Emma Christensen has had a huge impact on my perspective towards homebrewing.  In her first book, True Brews (Amazon.ca and WPL), she taught how to make a wide variety of fermented beverages at home—kombucha, root beer, cider, mead, wine, beer, and more—and in most cases with very little specialized equipment.

I truly hadn’t considered making one gallon batches up beer until I read that book.  Although much of my brewing is still 5 gallon batches, the beauty of small batch brewing is that all aspects of the process are made more manageable by scaling down.  And just what are those aspects?  Here is an overview of brewing a small (1-2 gallons) batch of beer:

1. Heat 1 gallon of “hot liquor” to 160^◦F (“hot liquor” is just what the hot water is called)
2. Dough in (mix the hot liquor with the recipe’s crushed malts)
3. Mash for 1 hour at 148-153^◦F (basically just maintain the mixture of malts and water at this temperature for 60 minutes to create “wort” which is the sweet malty liquid that will ferment into beer).
4. Lauter and Sparge (lautering is the process of straining the wort from the grains and sparging is rinsing the grains with additional hot water).
5. Boil (the boil is when hops are added and the wort is sterilized, clarified, and concentrated through evaporation. 60 minutes is the typical length for this step).
6. Chill and pitch yeast (before the yeast can be added to the wort it must be brought down to room temperature. For a 1 gallon batch of beer this is usually done by setting the kettle in an ice bath in the sink and stirring with a sanitized spoon.  Then the wort is transferred to a sanitized bucket or jug and yeast is added).
7. Ferment (the yeast convert the wort into beer over the course of 2-3 weeks).
8. Bottle (the finished beer is mixed with a small amount of extra sugar and then put in bottles where the additional fermentation creates carbonation. Then you drink the beer!).

Looking at that list of steps I can’t say that brewing beer is “simple.”  However, if you break it down and just approach the process one step at a time there shouldn’t be a part that is overly difficult.   And once again, this is where Emma Christensen comes in!

After tackling small batch brewing in True Brews with enough detail to get people started she revisited it in full form in a second book, Brew Better Beer (Amazon.ca).  About a year and a half ago I had the opportunity to do recipe testing for a few recipes that would appear in the book (I got compensated for the ingredients and received a copy of the book once it was published).  I brewed up a 5 gallon batch of her “Riding Lawnmower Pale Ale” and one gallon batches of the “Pecan Pie Brown Ale” and “Affogato Milk Stout.”  Of those three the milk stout was my favorite and I plan to brew up a large batch of it later this summer to enjoy in the fall as the weather turns cooler.

With the arrival of Emma’s new book I decided to try out the “Smoky Chipotle Porter” recipe.  I’ve been intrigued by spicy beers for a while and had been waiting for a good opportunity to try brewing one.  Emma’s step by step instructions are clear and easy to follow. If you have a copy of her book the intro chapters go into great detail about all the steps, but if you don’t have the book I highly recommend her beer school on The Kitch’n.

And speaking of Brewing Better Beer, the publishers are going to send a copy of the book to one reader of this blog (in the US or Canada).  To enter just go to the form at the end of this post.  But if you don’t win a copy be sure to ask your local library to order one—that’s what I do every time I don’t win a book!

My plan is to follow up this post in a few weeks with a more in depth look at the equipment that I find essential for small batch homebrewing.  I’ll also include a review of how the Smoky Chipotle Porter turned out!  (And just send me an email if you’d like some ingredients to brew your own small batch of this beer for $12!)

What follows is an excerpt from Brew Better Beer, courtesy of Ten Speed Press. 

Credit: Reprinted with permission from Brew Better Beer, by Emma Christensen, copyright 2015. Published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.

Photography copyright © 2015 by Katie Newburn

Smoky Chipotle Porter

I admit it: the idea of a spicy beer is a little . . . strange. Even to me. But this smooth and smoky porter with its slight prickle of heat is worth a leap of faith. Chipotles are the smoked and dried version of jalapeños—a process that transforms the crunchy green peppers into wrinkled, deep-red husks while simultaneously tempering their quick burst of heat into something slow and smoldering. Just the thing for a moody beer like this one.

Brew Notes If you’d like the smoky flavor of chipotles without the heat, crack open the dried peppers and shake out the seeds before adding them to the beer.

Make It Yours Make a Mexican hot chocolate version! Add cinnamon sticks, cacao beans, and a split vanilla bean or two to the secondary. (Read more about adding spices on page 166.)

Beers to Try Pipeline Porter (Kona Brewing Company), Stone Smoked Porter (Stone Brewing Company), Alaskan Smoked Porter (Alaskan Brewing Company

Follow the master method for brewing 1-gallon or 5-gallon all-grain batches as described on pages 54–59 (5-gallon measurements in parentheses).

• Remove liquid yeast from the refrigerator and, if necessary, activate according to package instructions. Place on the counter to warm.
• Heat 1 gallon (or 4 gallons) of water to 160°F, then stir in the grains. Maintain a mash temperature of 148°F to 153°F for 60 minutes. Raise the temperature of the mash to 170°F, then sparge using 1 gallon (or 2½ gallons) of 170°F water to make 1½ (or 5½) gallons wort.
• Bring to a boil over high heat. Add the Magnum hops and boil vigorously for 40 minutes. Add the Mt. Hood hops for flavoring and the Irish moss and continue boiling for another 15 minutes. Add the chipotle peppers and continue boiling for another 5 minutes. Add the Mt. Hood hops for aroma and remove from the heat. (Total boil time: 60 minutes.)
• Cool to at least 75°F and transfer to a sanitized primary fermentation bucket. Add the yeast and aerate the wort.
• Let ferment for at least 1 week or up to 4 weeks at 70°F; then transfer to a sanitized jug or carboy for secondary fermentation. Continue to ferment for another 2 weeks or up to 2 months at 70°F.
• Taste the beer a few days before you plan to bottle. If you’d like a stronger, hotter flavor, chop 1 chipotle pepper (or 5 peppers) and steep in just enough vodka to cover for 15 minutes, then drain and add the peppers to the beer. Taste daily and bottle when the beer tastes good to you.
• Dissolve the sugar in ¼ (or 1) cup of boiling water and let cool. Mix with the beer, bottle, and store for 2 weeks or up to a year. Refrigerate before drinking.

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Fresh salsa is always the preferred option, assuming it’s made with delicious local ingredients.  Based on that restriction fresh salsa is generally limited to a span of about 3-4 months, with true pico de gallo salsa only happening for a couple of months.

So I’m okay with eating my canned salsa.  My whole family enjoys it and when we open a jar it typically gets eaten in one sitting.

Recently we found a game changer.

Apples.

Ontario’s apple growers are very adept at preserving their apples into the winter months allowing us consumers the opportunity to eat a delicious local fruit throughout these lean months.

Ontario farmers are always quite good at coaxing plants to grow in greenhouses and hothouses throughout these cold and sun-starved months.  The most recent discovery of ours was cilantro.

One day for lunch a couple weeks ago I decided to make a salsa with the apples and cilantro we had got at the Kitchener Market a few days before.  I through in a couple frozen jalapeños that we grew, some local red onion, a dash of lime juice (not local…) and dash of apple cider vinegar.  I think I could have left out the lime juice to stay pure to my local ideals but I wanted to have at least one classic flavor on board.

The result is an amazing, crunchy, flavorful salsa that really makes it easy to imagine the summer that is still a long ways off.  And thanks to the lime juice and vinegar the apples stay nice a fresh so this salsa can be saved in the fridge for several days without losing quality.

Now, I have to admit this is not the first time I put apples in a salsa – see The Pleaple have Spoken.  But it is the first time I’ve realized we could eat a fresh Pico de Gallo style salsa in the cruel cold heart of winter.  So, our lives have been changed, and for the better.

This post was originally written for Bailey’s Local Foods, which is where you can find the recipe.  However, a recipe is not super necessary for this salsa as you can simply experiment and find a ratio of ingredients that works for you!

The last sweet corn of the season will soon be harvested, but it can be enjoyed for the next year until a new harvest begins by simply buying and cooking a bit extra right now.  Find a local farmer, and buy 3-4 times as much as you’d like to eat for one or two meals.

The easiest way to preserve all that extra corn is by freezing it.  Simply cook the corn the way you would normally cook it, but shorten the cooking time to roughly half.  For us that means cooking it about five minutes.  And make sure to leave a few cobs of corn in the water for the full cooking time to eat while you’re working on this project.

Then trim the kernels off the cob with a knife.  Aimee from Simple bites recommends using a bundt cake pan to support the cob and catch the kernels that fall down.  Once you have collected enough corn spread them out on baking sheets and freeze them (or skip this step and go straight to bags, we do this extra step so they don’t all freeze together).   Once frozen transfer the corn to large freezer bags labeled with the year.  Stick them in the freezer and that’s it!  Now you can enjoy local sweet corn all year!

Oh and don’t make our mistake and toss the cobs until you’ve used them to make corn stock!  There are tons of recipes on the internet for this, including Aimee’s, but here are the basics:

• 1 onion, chopped a bit
• 5-10 (or more) corn cobs
• 2 (or more) quarts of water
• Spices and herbs if you want

Simmer for 45 minutes, then strain and save the broth for soup!  Freeze it if you want, or you could can it so it doesn’t take up freezer space.  Yes, as I’ve said before you totally can can soup!

Now, if you still have energy then you can be a good prepper and freeze some peppers!  Or can some salsa.  What about peach salsa.  There’s lots to do….

(This post has been updated a few times since 2014, including the past two summers with info about prices found at St. Jacob’s Market in Ontario).

Our final batch of salsa that we canned for the year, Chunky Peach Salsa, was definitely our best.  And maybe that is because after canning 3 other batches we learned a couple things.

One thing we learned was not to cook the peaches very long or they got lost amongst the tomatoes.  Basically we now just add the peaches to the salsa right before we’re ready to start canning.

Second was that if you don’t want to add tomato paste to thicken the salsa then you’ll have to cook it for a long time.  This could mean simmering the salsa for 1-2 hours….

So our final canning session for salsa leaves us with a total of 56 pints of 4 different kinds of salsa (including the homegrown salsa I wrote about earlier this week).  And while 56 pints may seem like a lot it’s essentially 1 pint a week for the next year with 4 extra for sharing or larger eating events.  Yes, we eat a lot of salsa.  Well, my family eats a good amount of it, but without me around they’d likely only need about 20 pints for the year.

Here is the recipe and it is loosely based on our friend’s (non-peach) salsa which we refer to around here as “Mr. Dan’s.”  When we made this the other day we did a double batch which produced 18 pints.  A single batch will likely produce 9-11 pints, but results will vary based on the variety of tomatoes used and how long they are cooked down.

Update, 2017

Here’s what I got at St. Jacob’s Market here north of Waterloo in late August, to make a quadruple batch:

• 1/2 bushel Roma tomatoes($11)
• 1/2 bushel San Marzano Tomatoes ($12 or $15 depending on vendor)
• 1/2 bushel sweet banana peppers ($12)
• 1/2 bushel Red Haven peaches ($15 for the smaller uglier ones)

And 2018:

• 1 bushel Roma tomatoes for $15
• 1/2 bushel long red sweet peppers $15
• 1/2 bushel Red Haven peaches $20

And what I generally have from our garden, CSA or elsewhere:

• 1 large bunch cilantro
• 5 lbs onions
• 3-4 heads garlic
• 1 litre/quart cider vinegar (we actually make our own… which it seems surprising I don’t have a post about!)

For one thing we have a huge bag of tomatoes on the floor, another full of peppers, and peaches are covering our hutch.  Luckily eventually I find the right attitude and energy and I get back to feeling good about all this cooking and preserving.   Plus everyone here works really hard:

Yesterday my young assistant and I tackled the homegrown tomatoes by turning them into an entirely homegrown salsa.  Well, it was entirely homegrown until we realized that it was way too runny because we had thrown several Brandywine tomatoes into the mix.  Thus there was an addition to the recipe of a small can of tomato paste.

Ahhh well, we can’t always be purists and that’s probably okay.  Luckily there is no rule book when it comes to eating local, just a desire to eat as close to home whenever possible.

Although this salsa is for canning we’ve also been enjoying lots of fresh salsas with whatever ingredients we have on hand.  The most obvious thing of course is the peaches, but we’ve found that most fruits work well in salsa as do many unconventional vegetables.

Cucumbers, as pictured above, are an amazing addition to a fresh salsa.  They bring a light fresh flavor of their own but also soak up all the flavors of the foods around them while adding a nice crunch and color to the final product.

Radishes are great too, for the combination of spicy flavor, color, and crunch.  Recently we added kohlrabi to a salsa, which was great too!  It turns out that as long as you meet a few requirements pretty much any fruit or vegetable can go in a salsa.  Here are our guidelines for creating unique original salsas:

1. Some crunchy things, like any of the following, nicely diced in small pieces: onions (any colour), sweet peppers, radishes, cucumbers, apples…
2. Some sweet things, also nicely diced: peaches, plums, nectarines, apricots, apples, pears, watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew, strawberries, tomatoes, sweet corn…
3. Some fillers, (diced if necessary): black beans, cucumbers, extra tomatoes, fruit…
4. For some spice and zing: hot peppers (diced, or dry crushed red peppers if you don’t have anything fresh), cilantro, lime juice (or local options would be cider vinegar or verjus if you can find it), garlic, a dash of cumin, and salt and pepper.

I recently shared 5 salsa recipes on the Bailey’s Local Foods blog so check those out for more inspiration.  Today’s recipe is for an (almost) all homegrown salsa for canning.  You’ll need a pressure canner for this recipe because there is not enough added acid (vinegar or lemon/lime juice) to make it fully safe for water bath canning.  If you added a whole cup of vinegar it would likely be safe for water bath canning, but we didn’t want that much vinegar flavor in this recipe.

This recipe yields 7-9 pints, depending on how much you cook it down.

This dish can be assembled up to 12 hours in advance. Prepare through step 2, but don’t add the lentils. Cover and refrigerate overnight. The next day, stir in lentils, place stoneware in slow cooker and proceed with step 3.

Tips

If you have any leftovers, this stew stores very well in the refrigerator for up to 5 days. Store in an airtight container and reheat as necessary, adding a little water if the stew is too thick.

Broth (or stock) is one of the most indispensable pantry staples. Commercial broth cubes and powders are loaded with salt and just don’t deliver the flavor of homemade stock or prepared broth. I like to keep 32-oz (1 L) Tetra Paks on hand, especially the sodium‑reduced variety. They come in handy when you’re making soups and stews.  Alternatively, you can make your own broth in a large batch (using a slow cooker!) and can it using a pressure canner.

Tomato paste is now available in tubes in many supermarkets and delis. It keeps for months in the refrigerator.

Orzo is a small, rice-shaped pasta. You can substitute any small pasta for the orzo or break spaghetti noodles into short pieces.

Win a copy of Easy Everyday Slow Cooker Recipes!

The publishers will send a copy of Easy Everyday Slow Cooker Recipes to one raffle winner in Canada or the US.  You can enter multiple ways so get started here:

Update: Giveaway has ended, congrats to Melanie!
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This post is shared at Real Food Wednesdays.