Dilly Dilly Dilly Beans

Last weekend, a couple of my cousins dropped by and we ended up opening one of the last jars of dilly beans from last year. I made them last year at the end of bean season because Rich liked some that we had purchased, but balked at the price. So I looked up a few recipes, consulted the list of ingredients on the bottle we bought and made my own.

The first batch was...spotty. I bought some more mature beans than I would have liked and ended up with two types. One worked really well. The other was...terrible. Really gross, actually. Mealy and icky.

So, this year, I opted to use French beans (haricot vert) instead of green beans (blue lake). The French beans are much narrower, crisper, and just prettier. I found some pretty inexpensive, and bought four pounds.

Dilly beans involves fresh dill, fresh beans, garlic, spices, vinegar, salt, and water. That's pretty much it. And a water bath for the canning part. Oh, and fresh peppers if you want some heat.

I added another variable into the mix.



I bought and dried some lovely chilies last fall and have been grinding them for use in various thing. They have lasted much longer than I expected. I think, based on their heat and size that they may have been cayenne peppers, but who knows. I just think they're pretty. They were fun to have strung up - I threaded them through the stems and hung them up by my old kitchen window to dry.

Anyway, the beans. I trim the stem end at a diagonal so they look pretty and leave the tail end. And then there is the stacking...sigh...that takes forever. But it's worth it. I always put in some dill and some garlic and the spices on the bottom and then start stacking the beans with a whole jalapeno or serrano chile along with the beans. Then jam as many in as I can without smushing or snapping too many beans. I used pint and quart jars so that I could make some spicy ones and not so spicy ones. Then when it's all done, fill the jars with a boiled combination of vinegar, water and salt.

Then insert into a water bath for ten minutes and set aside to seal. The jars will pop on their own as they cool. All of mine popped, so it was all good.

On a lark, since I picked up some beautiful fresh asparagus at the farmer's market yesterday along with the dill, I pickled a jar of spicy asparagus, too.

And voila!



I also picked up one bunch of what I was told was turnip tops. They had some flowers, but more importantly and oddly, they had these little...bumpy things. That tasted like turnips. Almost like the seed pods. They were interesting...so I canned them :)



They look like alien blobs.



Especially compared to the very orderly looking beans.

I put the "leftover" jar of beans in the fridge last night to chill so I could try them. I prefer them to be cold since that makes them crisper. I tried them. Pretty good. Spicer than I had anticipated which makes me wary of the larger jars which have more of the homemade chili powder than the little ones...but maybe ratios will work in my favor?

Last night, I went upstairs to bed a little early and crashed. This morning, I came downstairs and discovered an odd looking jar. Putting it next to the other jars made it look even more distinctive...which of these jars is not like the others?



Yep, Rich got into the dilly beans. And finished off the leftover jar. Sigh. I suppose I should put another on in the fridge. But that might just encourage him.

Here is my tweaked recipe.

Dilly Beans

2 pounds beans (I doubled)
fresh dill
fresh jalapenos or serrano peppers
fresh garlic
whole mustard seed (1/4 tsp per pint, 1/2 tsp per quart)
whole peppercorns (1/4 tsp per pint, 1/2 tsp per quart)
whole coriander seed (1/4 tsp per pint, 1/2 tsp per quart)
ground chile pepper (1/4 tsp per pint, 1/2 tsp per quart)
white vinegar
water
canning salt (I used kosher salt, the ratio of Morton kosher salt to canning salt is 1 cup canning salt = 1 cup + 2 Tsp kosher salt. This is specific to Morton kosher salt.)

Prep the jars (sterilize) and fill with a good hunk of dill (lots if you like it) spices and sliced and whole garlic. (I like to eat sliced pickled garlic, so I slice them. If using only whole, I'd give them a solid whack with the flat side of a knife to open up the garlic.)

Then place the beans in the jars, selecting longer ones for the taller jars so that there is some space above the tops of the beans.

Boil 2 1/2 cups water with 2 1/2 cups of vinegar and 1/4 cup canning salt (1/4 cup + 1/2 Tbs kosher salt). Pour the hot liquid over the tops of the beans.

Put covers and twist caps on and process for ten minutes in a boiling water bath. Remove and let cool.

These can be eaten as soon as the jars cool - they are thin and pickled immediately.

THE Best Banana Bread

I've made many a loaf of banana bread in my day. I had great success with a sour cream based recipe. I prefer nuts. I like a banana bread with a lighter texture. Not quite cake, a bit moister than that.

Banana bread is quite controversial. I've tried many recipes. MANY recipes. Dana's got a really good one that is even lighter than mine. Julie and Aaron make variations on the Joy of Cooking's recipe which are really tasty. In my quest for the best banana bread, I've read through recipe after recipe and made lots of them. Using butter, shortening, oil, yogurt, applesauce, bread flour, cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, whipping egg whites, using only egg yolks, buttermilk, milk, soy milk...you name it, there IS a banana bread recipe out there that uses it.

To be clear, I do not count banana breads with additions other than walnuts to be legitimate. The addition of coconut and dried fruit is...well, silly. I'd consider making a banana bread with coconut for Rich if he really wanted it, but I don't think he cares enough.

While reading through the Epicurious site's recipes for banana bread, I was reading the reviews of one of the recipes when I stumbled across a recipe in the comments! There are comments which review the recipe, which is like seven pages into the 24 page comments section! The comments kept referring to John from MA's recipe, so I tried it. Pretty darn good. I don't add vanilla and spices, although I'm sure they'd be great. I just make it as is with some of the nastiest, ripest bananas ever.

Bananas are a...touchy subject in our house. I buy them. No one eats them. They turn brown. I don't buy them, suddenly Drew and Rich can't live without them, they eat a few and then the rest turn brown. I have taken to freezing them when they achieve blackness to a degree that even I would not eat them.

The black banana thing is a result of a recipe for banana bread from the Olives dessert cookbook which is part of a banana nut bread pudding with all sorts of yumminess. Anyway, in that recipe, you take the blackest, nastiest bananas and beat the bejeezus out of them. Honestly, that is how the recipe reads!

I figured, hey, black bananas are black bananas, so I started using grossly black bananas for all my banana bread. And...well, only good things have happened. I tend to decrease the volume of sugar in all my banana bread recipes by at least a third since the bananas have plenty of their own sugar. And even as I strain most of the kind of gross liquid from the bananas before dropping them into the mixing bowl, they retain enough moisture that the bread is never dry. Plus there is no way to tell once they're frozen how gross or not they were as freezing turns them black, anyway. I just pack them in a gallon sized ziploc bag (they tend to ooze a little sometimes) and pull out a few to thaw whenever I want to make banana bread. It's pretty handy, actually. Note that everything I have read about freezing bananas recommends freezing them in their peels, whole. After thawing, the skins come off very easily and can be discarded or composted, per SOP.

Anyhow, my recipe du jour for the Best Banana Bread is below. As I mentioned, I use about a third to half less sugar. And I use room temperature butter and eggs. Many of the comments about this recipe note that adding a dash of vanilla, a pinch of cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, or an assortment of other spices only enhances the flavor. Add what you want. Don't add anything. It's whatever you want. And remember to do!

John from MA's Banana Bread

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup buttter, at room temperature
3 ripe bananas
2 eggs, beaten
1 1/3 cups flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup crushed walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Sift the flour, salt, baking soda three times. Yes, THREE times. (Apparently this is the magic number for fully uniformly distributing the soda and salt. Alternatively, you could put it all into a stand mixer bowl and just whip it around with the whisk attachment for a few minutes.)

Cream butter and sugar.

Add bananas and eggs. Beat thoroughly to incorporate.

Add all the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly.

Stir in the nuts and pour into a 9 x 5 loaf pan. Bake for exactly 55 minutes. (Seriously. 55 minutes. I get twitchy and rotate the pan after fifteen minutes. That's optional if you have a well balanced oven. Mine has a hot spot, so I'm a paranoid rotater.)

Note: I have used an 8 x 4 loaf pan with Magic Cake strips to great success. Without the strips, the bread would have gotten very overcooked on the edges and exploded out the top of the smaller pan. This way, I got a realy nice and even loaf that looked really pretty and tall. Alternatively, just use those lovely disposible wax loaf pans and adjust time accordingly.

And voila. That's it. The Best. For now. :)

Whole Grain Pancake Breakfast

I saw this a few weeks ago while perusing Mark Bittman's column in the NY Times. I like his cooking in general, with a few notable disagreements over recipe composition. Plus, I'm always looking for ways to increase our fiber intake in general, as it is one of those things that it's really difficult to over-do. In any case, he wrote about Gary Danko's Whole-Grain Pancakes, and well, I figured I really had to try them. Especially since I had all the ingredients at home already.

They reminded me of fluffier versions of Jotham's favorite boxed mix, Kodiak Cakes. We have a box of those in the house, but I decided to try this recipe since you never know when the boxed stuff will be available. Plus, this way I can tweak it more easily.

It was a pretty typical pancake recipe - mix dry ingredients, mix together wet ingredients, whip egg whites. Add dry ingredients to the wet, mix, then fold in the whipped egg whites. Not rocket science.

All in all, I'd say they turned out pretty well. They didn't burn, which was a concern because they're pretty dark. And they were WAY fluffier than the mix, to which only water is added. I took some pictures without the eggs that we had with them. We had the pancakes with some fresh blueberries and some lemon curd I made a couple of weeks ago. The boys weren't as thrilled with the lemon curd, but I used it as "glue" for my blueberries and made little tacos out of the pancakes. Rich just goes for the squeeze method and apparently doesn't require glue. Drew had pancake sticks (sliced), so he scoffed at my curd. (I don't quite know when it happened, but we have been eating pancakes and waffles, in particular, with our hands, more often than not.)

I thought they had a lovely nuttiness and Rich noticed the texture of the buckwheat flour. I don't know that he was thrilled with the little bits. The pancakes were more filling than normal white flour, I thought, and I had four tiny little ones, while Rich had three normal sized ones (about 3" diameter) and Drew had two. The blueberries ultimately distracted Drew as did his love of eggs. He almost didn't finish.

Anyhow, don't they look cute?






You don't really notice the darkness of the pancakes themselves until you look closely with a frame of reference for the white.



Anyhow, I think I'm going to bag up some of the flours, with the baking powder and spices, pre-measured, for a faster morning turnaround, but all in all, I liked it. In theory, since I used the white flour, I didn't need to separate the eggs, but I like really fluffy pancakes, and these did not disappoint. It will make it more difficult for a camping trip, though. I suppose I could forego the truly fluffy pancake experience to have them camping. Sigh, sacrifices, sacrifices.

These are filling, though, and stick to your tummy better than oatmeal, so don't overdo it in eating them. I suspect you would regret it.

Whole-Grain Pancakes

Adapted from Mark Bittman from Gary Danko, as printed in the NY Times

Time: 30 to 40 minutes

Butter as needed
1/3 cup whole-wheat flour
2/3 cup white unbleached all-purpose flour
2/3 cup buckwheat flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander or cardamom
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs, separated
2 cups milk

1. Melt 3 tablespoons butter. In a large bowl combine flours, sugar, baking powder, spices and salt.

2. Beat egg whites with an electric mixer or a whisk until stiff peaks form, but do not overbeat. In separate bowl beat milk, yolks and melted butter until foamy, a couple of minutes. Add milk mixture to flour mixture and give a couple of good stirs, but do not overmix. Fold in egg whites and stir until batter is just evenly colored and relatively smooth; it's O.K. if there are some lumps.

3. Heat a large skillet (preferably cast iron) or griddle over medium heat until a few drops of water dance on its surface. Add butter as needed (or use a thin film of neutral oil, like grapeseed or corn). When skillet is hot, spoon batter into pan. Cook until bubbles form and pop, about 2 minutes; you may have to rotate cakes to cook them evenly, depending on your heat source and pan. Then carefully flip pancakes. Cook until well colored on other side, another minute or two more. Serve or keep in warm oven for a few minutes.

Yield: At least 6 servings.

Note: Buckwheat flour is sold at most grocery stores in the speciality baking or flours area. I used Bob's Red Mill, which is a label I use often for specialty flours and grains. I think my whole wheat flour was also from BRM. I have seen BRM products at every grocery store lately. Some have broader selections than others. The best I've seen is the natural foods area of Raley's grocery store. Even better than the natural foods coop and Whole Foods.

Cheesecake thoughts

Last night I made a cheesecake for no particular reason. I've been doing a lot of cooking and baking and for some reason last night, I just started baking. The kitchen was all clean. Dishes were put away, stove and sink clear...and I just had to bake. So I started making cheesecake. It helped that I had some cream cheese that I had accidentally left out for a few hours, so I used it.

The cheesecake recipe is from Christy's mother-in-law. She reappropriated and retitled it (Doyle's Secret Cheesecake) from another source. Christy's brother-in-law made it for her baby shower and it was delicious. So I asked for the recipe and last night, I made it for the first time. I'll include it below unless Christy objects, in which case I will reappropriate it from her, retitle it and post it with a slight modification. :D

Anyhow, this is the first cheesecake I've made that did not involve a bain marie. Interestingly, it is baked directly in a springform without the bain marie. Texturally, it worked pretty well, but the sour cream thing. Sigh. That didn't work so well.

The sour cream topping is an important part of cheesecake for me. It is a contrast to the sweetness of the cream cheese part, which is the majority of the cheesecake. Unfortunately, during baking the cheesecake itself is still quite delicate. And...the sour cream is rather dense...and well, it sank. The whole center two inches of my cheesecake is sour cream. In an...unpleasant way. At least for me. Eating a whole bite of sour cream is not exactly my idea of dessert. At least the rest of the cheesecake turned out well. The texture was a little softer than I wanted. I think I will try baking it in a bain marie, more so that it solidifies a little more but doesn't brown quite so much. Plus, it will keep the sides down a little and keep the whole thing a little more uniform in texture.

Anyhow, it at least looks nice. Not too much cracking. Note that after taking the cheesecake out, I ran a knife around the edge of the cheesecake immediately so that as it cooled, the whole cheesecake would contract and not crack. It was a little cracked prior to the application of the sour cream, and there were three tiny little cracks in the center after it cooled for 24 hours in the fridge. But given what I've seen in the past, this was fantastic!



But here, after I unmolded and sliced it, where you can see how far down the sour cream went. It certainly explained a lot about why the top layer felt thin and I could see the darkness of the toasted cream cheese part. It almost looks like I was making a two-flavor cheesecake or something.





All in all, I think this is a good base recipe. I had to fight my tendencies to mess with the recipe. I wanted to add Meyer lemon zest and juice to make it nice and lemony, but I figured I should get the base model down first.

So here is the recipe, exactly as provided to me by Christy. And my notes about it follow.

Doyle's Secret Cheesecake

Ingredients:
1 pkg Graham crackers
1 cube butter
1 Tablespoon sugar
4 large eggs
1 cup sugar
3 x 8 oz. cream cheese
2 Teaspoons vanilla
1 pint sour cream

Take cream cheese from frig 30 min. prior.

Mix:
1 pkg. Graham crackers, crumbed or smashed
1 cube butter, melted
1 Tablespoon sugar
Press into bottom of a 9" spring form pan.
Bake 375 degrees for 8 min.

Filling:
Beat eggs and 1 cup sugar.
Add one at a time, 3 x 8oz. pkgs. cream cheese.
Beat well after each addition and add 2 tsp. vanilla and beat again until smooth.
Pour into crust and bake at 375 degrees for 35 minutes.
Remove pan from oven and top with 1 pt. sour cream to which you have added 2 Tblsp. sugar and 1 tsp. vanilla and mix well.
Bake whole cheesecake for 5 more minutes at 475.
Cool and store overnight in refrigerator.

Amy's notes:

I used a 1/2 cup of butter (one stick) for the crust. I think it could be done with less as the crust was a little butterier than I would like for this type of dessert.

I also ran the crust about a half inch up the side of the springform. I actually like crusts and would have preferred even more, maybe even an inch up since the finished cheesecake was almost two inches high.

The cream cheese I used had been left out for almost four hours. It was *ahem* very soft. It made beating very easy. But as a result, I think I over whipped the cheesecake. It was very soft and I think it contributed to the ease with which the sour cream sank into the middle.

Also, the eggs were at room temperature. One of the keys to getting cheesecake very smooth and creamy is to have everything at room temperature so it blends together nicely. Eggs are no exception. Having used cold eggs once, I learned that they will sieze the cream cheese, making all that time spent bringing the cream cheese up to room temperature a complete loss. So don't use cold eggs!

I applied the sour cream in a practical way without thinking. Next time, I will probably put it into a plastic zip top bag, snip a corner and apply carefully to the edges and let it sink into the center on its own. I also might not use quite so much. The outer third of the cheesecake was actually above the top of the springform when I applied the cream cheese (probably due to over whipping the filling), so the sour cream just fell right down into the middle. I think in a bain marie, that it would not rise quite so much because the water would equalize the cooking from center to edge and that the sour cream would not fall quite so far down into the cheesecake.

The whole thing was softer than expected. I think the cheesecake part could stand another ten minutes of baking prior to applying the sour cream.

After baking, do run a nice thin, sharp knife around the edge, making sure to go all the way down to the bottom (which for me involves a little bit of crust that I run up the sides because I like crusts) so that as it contracts, it will not form Grand Canyon sized cracks.

I sliced the cheesecake using Bon Appetit's recommended method - I ran hot water in the sink and heated the knife before each slice, wiping it with a cloth to dry it and then slicing. The slices were perfectly smooth and there was no tearing or leaking of the layers. It was really nice and clean looking, despite the softness of the cheesecake.

I also served the cheesecake with a blueberry compote. I heated two cups of frozen blueberries with a 1/2 cup of sugar and the juice of half a lemon. After it was nice a syrupy and most of the blueberries popped, about 15 minutes, I took it off the heat and then added two more cups of frozen blueberries to it and put it aside to cool down. It was a nice combination of texture and not too sweet, which worked really well with the cheesecake. I like fruit with cheesecake, but not on top of it.

And that's it. I think I'll be obsessing with cheesecake for a while. If anyone else has any recommendations as to cheesecake recipes, send them on over. I'll be baking a few in the next few weeks. I suspect some people at work will not be happy with me for messing with their new year's resolutions.

Tamale Pie

So I had never heard of such a thing. Tamale pie. That's an oxymoron. Tamales don't come in pie. Pie is not corny and spicy. But there it was in the CI 30 minute recipe book. I mentioned it to Rich who responded positively. It is essentially cooked taco filling with cornbread baked on top. Sounded interesting. I decided I'd make it on a Monday night, on a day I work from home so I could take the time to do it properly the first time.

Yesterday, I made my first tamale pie. It turned out surprisingly tasty. I, of course, adapted the recipe immediately to suit our tastes and made a little personal-sized tamale pie for Drew before spicing up the fillings. As a result, the whole thing took WAY longer than half an hour. Maybe double, in the end? But man, was it tasty! I served it with some leftover Mexican rice from the prior evening and some lettuce meant to be turned into a salad which was somehow forgotten despite the fact that it was sitting right there, in the middle of the table.

I promise I'll get better at taking pictures of things for dramatic effect. In the meantime, you can take my word for it. It was delicious. Surprisingly good. And Rich and Drew both really liked it. And Rich and I both loved it for lunch today. I even had a little piece with dinner tonight. (This is astounding as I am not a repeat-eater. In general, I dislike eating the same thing for multiple meals in a row.)

So here is my adapted recipe for tamale pie a la Amy. :) I found the recipe made more than a pie pan's worth, so I ended up making two small casseroles in addition to the pie pan. I don't know that it's enough for a 13x9, maybe an 8x8? In theory, CI says this is should be baked in the 12" skillet in which it was prepared. Since I use nonstick to cut down on the oil used in the recipe, I couldn't put it in the oven (hot teflon = fumes = bad for everyone), so I used other things.

Also, mine took over half a hour to bake, in the end, because it just wouldn't bake. I took it out to test when the cornbread was browned, but just under the beautifully browned crust, the cornbread batter was still totally raw, so back into the oven it went. Just make sure it is fully baked before removing.

Note: I think this would work GREAT as a vegetarian meal. Obviously, no beef or chicken stock, but I was thinking that I'd add some frozen corn and maybe some kind of squash, chopped up, for the volume. I think it would be really good. I even think I could get Rich to take it seriously as a meal. (He currently requires animal protein to consider a meal a meal.)

I served this with our favorite Mexican rice and the salad that was not consumed. I'll blog the rice recipe soon. It is seriously the best Mexican rice ever! (And I made like a dozen different recipes before finding this one!)

Tamale Pie
adapted from Cooks Illustrated, The Best 30-Minute Recipes

Ingredients
some vegetable oil
1 large or 1.5 small onions, chopped
2 tablespoons chili powder (yes, 2, and no, I did not add any extra for this one)
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 pound ground beef (as lean as you want, I think ground chicken or turkey would work well in this recipe)
1 14.5 oz. can diced tomatoes, drained
1 14.5 oz. can black beans, rinsed and drained
1/4 cup chicken stock or water
1 jalapeno, chopped finely, omit ribs and seeds if desired (we have particularly spicy ones right now, otherwise, I would have used two. And yes, we used the seeds and ribs.)
1-1.5 cups chopped cilantro (I just take half of a bunch from the store and chop the heck out of it, stems and all)
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 recipe cornbread of your choice (CI actually recommends Jiffy. We happened to have a bag of Marie Callendar's from Costco, acquired after a particularly satisfying jaunt to a MC's in Oregon.)

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Prep an 8x8 square or deep dish pie pan by spraying some nonstick spray onto it. If making two, use standard pie plates - the filling will fill two regular pie pans pretty easily.

Cook the ground beef in a skillet until browned. Using a spoon, separate any large lumps. When cooked, drain thoroughly.

Prepare whatever cornbread recipe you have decided to use. Set aside the batter.

In a large nonstick pan, heat 1-2 tablespoons vegetable oil over medium/medium-high heat and saute the onion until softened, about 2-3 minutes. Then add the chili powder and stir frequently. (Watch out for the 'fumes' which can cause coughing!) After another 2-3 minutes, add the garlic and stir until fragrant, about 1 minute. Don't let it burn! (If you want the jalapeno, but don't want all the heat, you can add it now to cook it a bit and mellow it out.)

Now add the tomatoes and the black beans and incorporate thoroughly. Add the ground beef. If the mixture dries up, add the chicken broth. There should be some liquid to keep the meat moist in the oven. Once everything is simmering nicely, take it off the heat and stir in the cilantro, and cheese.

At this point, if you are cooking for kids or those who don't handle spicy, portion out enough for a separate prepared pan or casserole (maybe half). And into the rest, mix in the jalapeno (if you didn't already add it earlier).

Carefully put the mixture into the prepared pan. Ideally, you want a fairly thick layer of filling on the bottom of the pan (like 3/4"-1").

Pour cornbread batter over the top of the filling. I found that 1/2" to 3/4" of cornbread batter worked well. Any more and the baked cornbread never seems to finish cooking.

Bake the completed "pie" in the oven until the cornbread is baked. This can vary, depending on how thick you poured your cornbread layer.

To serve, cut portion lines along the cornbread and let some of the steam escape. Then scoop the cornbread and filling out.

This reheats beautifully in the microwave. Perfect hearty lunch to take to work!