Mulberries, Fava Beans, Farm Shares and Crisps

We got a new farm share this year. Last year we didn't get a CSA because the farm we'd been at for over a decade suffered from drought and chose to not offer the CSA. I missed it. This year it became clear they weren't going to restart the CSA program, so I needed to find a new farm.

There are several farms that deliver shares to our area and I found one, Siena Farms, that delivers to the ice cream shop in the next town which we visit often. Conveniently, we can buy ice cream when we pick up the veggies! A small share weekly seems to be just enough for us. We started with some good salads and are moving toward sautéed and stir fried vegetables with various proteins. Tonight will be shabu-shabu, as I have carrots, napa cabbage, shitake mushrooms and garlic scapes from the farm. 

Today I'm blanching some fava beans although I have to decide what to do with them, maybe marinate?
But at least they'll be ready to eat. 

Also today, I made a batch of mulberry jelly. This wasn't the best mulberry year, because we had some rather windy storms come through so a lot of the berries got shaken off before I could get to them. Not to mention, I am always competing with the birds, squirrels and chipmunks for berries. I got just enough to make 9 cups of mulberry-lime jelly.

Last project of the day is a berry crisp - for the 4th the youngerchild made a chocolate cake that was decorated with whipped cream frosting and berries in an American flag motif. There are a lot of berries leftover, even with me making raspberry-blueberry muffins this morning and us all just eating a bunch. So I tossed the rest of them with cornstarch and sugar and made a crisp that I'll bake for dessert. 

Fair in the Rain

We went up to the Fair two days ago, the weather was rainy but not super windy. It was the little bit of Hurricane Ian that reached New England, I guess. Generally, I prefer to be at the Fair in the rain because fewer people go so it doesn't feel as crowded. 

From the canning perspective, I won first place for sauerkraut and for tomato (pizza) sauce, and second place for the mulberry jelly, raspberry jam, and salsa verde. I didn't bake anything for the baking competition, but I did spend Friday baking a cake for the elderchild's birthday. More on that later.

One of the most fun parts for us is seeing the rabbits, and this year we spent some time watching the judging of some larger rabbits. There are these little stalls with wire doors that flip up so the rabbits are put in one side and the judge takes them out the other side and examines them. The rest of the rabbits, though, are all trying to get out of the stalls, and so every so often a rabbit's head pokes up above the stalls and a person has to hurry and push it back down before it jumps out. It's like whack-a-mole, but gently and with rabbits. It was so funny to watch!

After about four hours, we headed home, and I spent the rest of the afternoon frosting the cake I'd made and making chile rellenos for dinner.

Ah, the cake. The elderchild requested a red velvet cake like the one on this season's Great British Bake Off (the technical challenge). I looked up their recipe and, after making a run up to Saugus to get 6" cake pans which I discovered I needed right when I was about to start preparing the ingredients, followed the recipe to the letter. It SANK. I'm not sure why. So I cleaned up, went back out to the store to get more red food coloring and cocoa, and used a different recipe, which worked. And tasted really good, I might add. I did use the frosting from the GBBO recipe, which tasted great, but it was so runny. I had to put a skewer in the cake to keep it upright while I tried to frost it. There was a lot of cursing. 

Ultimately, the cake tasted fantastic, even if it was not as smoothly frosted as the ones on TV. 

Happy Birthday!

Disappointing

We've been picking raspberries at the local farm for years. In the past few years, they have taken out most of the raspberry bushes in favor of expanding to a more broad selection of crops and a farm stand. Which is fine, but that means fewer raspberries. Recently they've taken to limiting the amount of raspberries a group can pick. This morning three of us went, and we were only able to pick three pints.

What that means is I was unable to make raspberry jam without pectin and had just enough berries to make a batch of jam with pectin. There were no berries left over for snacking. I guess it'll have to do. 

Raspberry Cheesecake

I have a rare weekend off and had some time, so I made a cheesecake. This time, I took some of the batter and mixed it with raspberry purée and then swirled it back in. What I need to remember is that it needs a little more time in the oven and that my notes are correct - in other words, don't second guess what I've already written!

I also made a raspberry coulis

Lucky Twice

This morning my husband and I went to pick raspberries. Last year, we had to schedule an hour block and we could pick pints or quarts. This year, things are not as plentiful. We could only schedule a half-hour block and were given the option of half-pints or pints. We opted to pick 4 pints. Which we did as quickly as possible. Thunder started rumbling in the distance. We picked faster. 

Just as we were leaving the raspberry row, the sky erupted with lightning and, a few minutes later, it poured.

By the time we got home, the sky was so dark, it felt like 8 pm. I made a batch of raspberry jam without pectin, and ended up with about 6-7 cups of jam from 2 quarts of berries.

This afternoon, we went back out to pick up the farm share. We kept an eye on the weather report and went when it had stopped raining. We did curtail the pick-your-own part of the share. In particular, we opted to skip the flowers and tomatillos and I didn't glean any of the tomatoes that were left (not on the share, but up for grabs for people who had the time). Thankfully, we got back to the car a few minutes before it once again started raining buckets. The farm share was full of late season greens: lettuce, arugula, kale, escarole, and chard, plus raspberries, onions, eggplant, peppers, kohlrabi, and herbs. 

Three more weeks of the share to go! Hopefully there will be better weather. 

Proctor Hill Berries

The place I used to go horseback riding is called Proctor Hill. I was given permission to forage there; there were nettles but, mostly, there were berries. All sorts of berries. Over the years, I foraged wee little amounts of black raspberries, red raspberries, wild blueberries, a handful of blackberries, and wild grapes. These were tucked into the freezer, waiting until I had enough of them. I had always intended to make a mixed berry jam or jelly as a gift for my riding instructor. 

Time has marched on and my instructor has left that farm for a place that better suited her current needs. I haven't ridden for over a year, after a spectacular fall made me question whether I wanted to continue. I was just getting ready to consider Western pleasure riding instead when the pandemic effectively made the decision for me. At least, for now. I do miss it; spending an hour or so a week without a cell phone in sight, only focused upon the immediate challenge of convincing a very large living and opinionated creature to do what I wanted. It got me out of my head in a way that nothing else seems to do. 

In the process of moving out and then back in to a freezer, I found all those berries. It was clear I was never going to add to the stash so it was time to make jelly out of what I had. The grapes are the dominant flavor but the raspberries do add something, I think. I cooked down the berries with water, extracted almost six cups of juice, let the solids settle, and then made jelly. Ultimately I ended up with about nine cups of jelly, enough for 12 small jars for my gift stash and a few extra just for us.

Sure Sign of Autumn

It's September, the kids are in school (sort of), the nights are cooler, and raspberries are in season.

This year for raspberry picking we were asked to sign up in advance and each group of up to 6 people would be assigned their own row for an hour. I'd already been rained out of one time slot last week and I was glad for the good weather today. My husband was free this morning and needed a break from work so he joined me and we enjoyed a quiet morning at the raspberry farm.

We brought back 3 quarts of berries which I promptly turned into 10+ cups of jam without added pectin. Raspberry seems to be the jam we always run out of, so it's nice to refill the supply. We have another slot in 2 weeks which hopefully will not get canceled and then we can have more berries just for desserts and snacking.

All The Pieces Coming Together

After our disastrous macaron attempt last week, the elderchild and I tried again yesterday. It was almost disastrous again but we persevered and got pretty decent looking raspberry macarons!

Here's what worked, and what didn't:
1. The oven, new, is convection, and it seems that it should be set to 275˚F. 300˚F was too hot and they didn't develop their little feet.

2. The parchment, King Arthur brand, was perfect.

3. The egg whites were the near-catastrophe. I had egg whites in a carton which I'd used for a cake. After we tried to make meringue out of them for the macarons I recalled that they don't work well for that purpose (maybe there is a preservative or pasteurization issue? I don't remember). Anyway, we separated some eggs and made a better meringue which we used for the macarons. Not wanting to waste the other egg whites, later I beat the meringue for probably 20 minutes and made forgotten cookies. Which are not bad, after all that!

Forgotten cookies.

4. For the ganache, since I didn't have raspberry purée, I used raspberry syrup I had in my canning inventory. I added together the volumes of the purée and invert sugar and just used that total amount of raspberry syrup, and it worked perfectly.

I am now out of almond flour and don't anticipate buying any more in the near future as my freezers are both overflowing with food.

Personal Pies

The weather has not been kind this last week as far as the farm share is concerned. The tomato plants died in the frost so this was likely the last week for any tomatoes. The raspberries aren't getting enough sun to ripen so there were very few to pick. It took a while but my husband and I were able to get almost a full half-pint of berries. They weren't very pretty, or big, or even necessarily at the peak of ripeness. After giving half to my friend as her part of the share, I had a tiny amount of berries. What to do?

What I did have was a little bit of leftover pie crust dough from last weekend. I rolled it out and lined four small ramekins with crust. Then I divided up the raspberries and a handful of blueberries I also had in the house, sprinkled on some sugar mixed with cornstarch and cinnamon, and added a top crust. These were baked, uncovered, in a 350˚F oven for about 35 minutes. Voilá, instant personal pies!

Peach Melba Jam

My last attempt at this particular jam was in 2010 when I broke my hand. I vaguely remember shoving everything one-handed through the food mill and coming up with jam that was mostly raspberry and very little peach. This time, I had an immersion blender and I reversed the proportions of the peaches to raspberries so it was 2 parts peach, one part raspberry. It's still pretty heavily raspberry, though.

The berries came from my farm share and the peaches from that place near my parents' where I often get the half-bushel for canning. I was in the neighborhood last week and got two 4-quart boxes of peaches, and now one is completely finished.

Using the Sure-Jell recipe with 4 cups of puréed fruit and 5.5 cups of sugar, I made 7 cups of peach melba jam.

The rest of the berries will likely get consumed tonight with a little cream and sugar. They won't last long. The residual storm that was Hurricane Florence passed through and was gone by the time I got out there, but that rain was intense. And it wasn't even at hurricane level - I cannot imagine what the people in the Carolinas have been through. At the farm, they basically said that if you were brave enough to be in the fields, everything was unlimited, so I picked about a quart of berries, a whole lot of green beans, the largest bunch of parsley I dared to get, and whatever peppers, tomatoes, and tomatillos I could find.

I hope to make some salsa verde tomorrow. Actually, I hoped to make some today, but SOMEBODY fed the cilantro to the rabbit. I even ran to the store just now but they were completely sold out(?!). Apparently, cilantro is on everyone's menu but mine.

Fancy Birthday Cake, Day 4

Finished!

This morning I started out by making the apricot glaze which was required to then make raspberry glaze. First I used about 10 ounces of apricot jam from my stash and mixed it with some water and boiled it. When it was thick I added corn syrup and strained it to make apricot glaze. Then I added an equal amount of puréed fresh raspberries and this was then ladled onto the cakes. They went back into the fridge to set. That took a long time, particularly on the larger cake. I think the glaze layer was thicker and that's why.

This afternoon I melted some chocolate and decorated the cakes. First I got to use the torch to remove the rings and then suffered the consequences of the glaze not being fully set. (The glaze ran down the sides a bit.) Ultimately, I think the decorating came out fairly pretty. I didn't make little chocolate "duck feet" like we'd been taught in class; just some dots and swirls and then topped the cakes with raspberries.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Fancy Birthday Cake, Day 3

After work and making mousse and going out to dinner, I was too tired to post this last night...

Step 3 was to make the chocolate mousse and the raspberry syrup and assemble the cake. For the syrup I tried to cut corners and use some of the raspberry syrup I've canned but I shouldn't have. I did heat it up but it was still a little too heavy for soaking cakes. In the future I should remember to use the lighter syrup and follow Chef's directions. Anyway. The mousse.

Cakes with mousse, ready for the fridge

First I used one stand mixer bowl and whisk to make the mousse base, with the egg yolks and the sugar syrup and the chocolate. While that cooled, I chilled the second mixer bowl and whisk in the freezer, washed the first one, and made Italian meringue. Finally, I made whipped cream in the chilled bowl with the chilled whisk. Once all three things were combined I had chocolate mousse and it was time to assemble the cake.

The cake layers (1 per cake) had their tops and bottoms sliced off and then they were soaked in the raspberry syrup. These were placed in the rings. I then used some of my raspberry jam and piped a spiral of jam on top of the cake. I meant to get a picture at this point but I was just too sticky. The next step was to fill the rest of the ring with the mousse and smooth it. These went back into the fridge to chill and set.

The rest of the mousse was divvied up into little ramekins for desserts over the next few days and the youngerchild and I ate the rest!

Just a glimpse into what my kitchen looked like at the end of all this...

A Little Embarrassing

A bright yellow grasshopper

Today I went to pick raspberries. It hasn't been a great season for them and the local organic raspberry farm has only been able to open their fields every other day because they get picked out in one day and need a day of rest. They hadn't been picked for two days and so the were relatively plentiful. They were also infested with ants. That part wasn't as much fun.

What was lovely was that it was foggy when I got there, and not very hot. Gradually over the time I was there the sun burned off the fog and it was just starting to get humid and warm when I left.

At one point, I looked down and there was a very large bee on my pant leg. And even though I know it won't sting me just because, it wasn't a honey bee and it was very, very large. I shrieked. Everyone else in the field stopped to look at me. I managed to explain myself, "There was a bee," and they all made sympathetic noises and went back to their own raspberries. But it was a little embarrassing. After all, I'm a beekeeper. Did I mention it was a very large bee?

After a little over an hour, which was all the time I had, I probably had about 3.5 quarts. Enough to make jam. First I brought everything home and washed all the ants off. I sealed up the bowl they were in so if any ants were still in there, they wouldn't get all over my kitchen.

This afternoon, when I got home from picking up the farm share, I rewashed the berries and got them all crushed. I had hoped to get some of the seeds out, but I was worried I wouldn't have enough berries if I did remove some of the volume in the form of seeds. I shouldn't have worried, as I ended up with 11 cups of jam instead of 9. But it's rather seedy.

My goals for tomorrow include the apple pie filling I've been planning on making and also some salsa verde. Maybe even some regular salsa as well. Neither takes a long time so that will help get through the farm share from the last two weeks.

A Snowy Pi Day

This year, for Pi Day, I was prepared. I bought some pears before the snowstorm and today, with the help of the elderchild, made a maple pear pie. After slicing the pears, I let them sit with 1/2 cup sugar while we made the crust. Then I drained the pears and boiled the juice with some maple syrup, cinnamon, nutmeg and cornstarch to thicken it. This was mixed back with the pears before filling the pie crust. Here's the finished pie.

Note the vents - the elderchild carved at least 11 digits of π into the crust!

We had some of our neighbors over to enjoy it with us, and it was terrific! Also I made a raspberry tart with the rest of the crust; that was an afternoon snack.

In addition to all that, while the storm was dumping eight inches of snow, and then rain, on us, I made a gallon of yogurt, a batch of cornbread, a batch of chili, and also did a whole bunch of laundry. Oh, yeah, and last night I made bread. All sorts of lovely food!

Success!

It's rainy and cold today, which is just the day to go to the fair if you don't like the crowds. Which is exactly how we like it! We generally avoid the midway and the rides so the rain doesn't bother us.

Salsa Verde

Part of the collection of strawberry jams

Elderberry Jelly

Strawberry Jam

First off, the canning results: First place for salsa (salsa verde), sweet relish (zucchini relish), and "other" jelly (elderberry). Second place for the collection of 3 jams (variations on strawberry), apricot jam, and "other" pickled vegetables (carrots).  Third place for strawberry jam and raspberry jam. The dill pickles and the bread and butter pickles didn't place. The judges did something different this year. There were no Honorable Mentions, and if they didn't think a category didn't have a first place entrant they just didn't fill it. Some categories only had a third place awarded. Many categories had multiple winners in each place. It was unusual; I've not seen anything like it before.

Apricot Jam

Honey Lemon Almond Coffee Cake

Next, to the bee house for the baking with honey competition! I'm quite pleased to report that the Honey Lemon Almond cake won the coffee cake class and the Honey Whole Wheat Bread placed second in the whole grain yeast bread class. And I got some suggestions for a class to take this winter that isn't far from home and covers top bar hives.

Dilled Carrots

For the rest of the day we wandered around, ate fair food, watched emus race and female lumberjacks chop up logs. We fell in love with the rabbits, as always, and watched a chick hatch. And we rode an elephant. It was an odd collection of things.

Zucchini Relish

Raspberry Jam

Not What it Used to Be

Today I'd set aside the morning to pick raspberries with the youngerchild and make a batch of jam. I suspected the drought might have caused some problems with the raspberry farm, and it did, but they also have decreased the size of their raspberry patch this year. Instead, they have a wider variety of produce and a separate section for blueberries. Which is nice, but not what I wanted. Also, the experience wasn't as serene and zen as I'd hoped. That's OK, I have berries.

Sadly, the youngerchild is still too anti-insect to pick a whole lot of berries so I did most of the picking. It took a while but I got about 3.5 quarts of berries. Plus a goat milk yogurt drink, some fromage blanc,  and a couple of muffins. As soon as I got home I set to work making jam.

To keep the seed content to a minimum, I used 2 cups of crushed berries with seeds and 3 cups of puree without seeds. This made 9 cups of jam, two of which will be set aside for the fair. This year I can test out my theory about the presence of seeds in the jam. Provided it tastes reasonably raspberry enough, which is always iffy early on in the season and especially this year because of the drought.

Day 27: More Viennoiserie

Last week when we each made a batch of croissant dough, we saved half of each batch for today. Danishes!

But first, we had to make more dough for tomorrow: four batches of croissant dough to make eight patons, and eight batches of puff pastry dough, and a single batch of brioche dough. So, in between making various danishes, we made all the turns for all our doughs and got them ready. Tomorrow there will be more croissants and some other fun things as well.

Then we got to work on the fillings for the danishes. We needed pastry cream, which was the base for the cheese danishes and the apricot ones, and a component of the pecan rolls (part remonce, part pastry cream). We also made a lemon filling.

Each danish was a different shape. The cheese ones were squares with the corners tucked in. The apricot danishes were pinwheels. The raspberry ones were bear claws and the lemon ones were little baskets. Some of the lemon ones had raspberries on them and others did not. The pecan rolls involved strips of dough with the filling, twisted and then rolled into snails. Everything was proofed, washed with egg wash, baked and then glazed or dusted with powdered sugar or both.

This week we didn't forget and with the scraps we made monkey bread.

Before Coffee

This morning, before work and, yes, before coffee even, I tended to my wee little beasties. First I took out Legion and made a batch of bread dough. It always comes out so thick it threatens to overheat my mixer so I end up kneading it by hand. After about 10 minutes of that, it was ready to set aside to ferment. By tonight, it should be ready to form into loaves and then proof overnight.

Last night I started a batch of yogurt using the little bit of yogurt I set aside from the previous batch. When I make yogurt I set aside about a cup in a container just large enough to hold it without much air space. That way, no one goes in and out of it and contaminates it and it's ready and waiting for me. (Incidentally, remember when I couldn't find my packages of yogurt starter? I found them. Buried in the downstairs freezer. But for today I'm still using the carryover from the last batch.) This morning I doled out the yogurt into containers and now we're good for a while.

Now I can have my coffee as I have a breakfast of homemade yogurt with homemade peach melba jam and homemade granola. Mmmm. I am so lucky.

Day 7: Fillings

The theme of today's lesson was fillings: pie fillings and chocolate mousse.

We'd touched on fillings last week when we did the cream fillings for the tarts. Today, however, we went into them in more detail. We learned the difference between a binder and a thickener, and when they are used. We made chocolate mousse, pecan pie filling, apple pie filling, blueberry pie filling, and black currant curd. With those fillings, and with more pâte sucrée and pâte foncer, we made little apple, blueberry and pecan pies, little pies with the curd, and each of us made a Mogadore cake.

The skills involved in the cake included cutting the top and bottom off the cake layer, soaking it in raspberry syrup, fitting it into a ring, piping jam onto it, and then filling the top with the mousse. Then we had to smooth it and chill it. While it was chilling, we made the chocolate decorations for our cakes. After that, we applied the glaze, smoothed that layer, and then decorated the cakes with writing chocolate, raspberries and our chocolate decorations. It is pretty amazing tasting.

I'm quite tired!

Day 1 - Quick Breads

Raspberry Almond Tea Cakes

Today was my first day of pastry class!

After about 2 hours of orientation/tour/basic housekeeping information, we started to learn about quick breads. Specifically, about chemical leavening agents. Then we got to work. The seven of us were split into four groups and each group made a tea cake, a muffin and a scone. We opted for a raspberry almond tea cake, carrot muffins and apricot ginger scones. I had to go down to the storage area to find dried apricots and candied ginger, but it was worth it! (For the record, I added 2/3 cup chopped dried apricots and 1/3 cup chopped candied ginger to the basic scone recipe.)

Carrot Muffins and Apricot Ginger Scones

Each recipe was chosen because it used a different mixing method: creaming, muffin, or biscuit method. When everyone was done we all photographed our food, cleaned up, and divvied up the goodies so everyone got a bit of everything. Because there was just too much, I dropped off a bunch at work before I even got home.

What I ended up keeping for ourselves: pumpkin bread, 1 chocolate chip scone and 1 chocolate chip muffins, 1 strawberry muffin, 1 each of barley, raisin and apricot ginger scones, 1 carrot muffin and some other sort of muffin. Sour cream pecan, I think.

Some of what I brought home.