Food Preservation with the Daring Cooks

The September 2010 Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by John of Eat4Fun. John chose to challenge The Daring Cooks to learn about food preservation, mainly in the form of canning and freezing. He challenged everyone to make a recipe and preserve it. John’s source for food preservation information was from The National Center for Home Food Preservation.

I started this month thinking that I'd make the recipe John gave us for Oven Roasted Tomatoes. Just halved or thirded tomatoes, sprinkled with salt, olive oil, minced garlic and basil (which I skipped because I was out of it). Slowly roasted at a low temp. They were fabulous, and although I had intended on preserving them, in the spirit of the challenge (freezing), they were so good, I ate a third of them before they'd finished cooling, and then used the rest in a pasta sauce for dinner that night.

While that would have fulfilled the challenge technically, I decided I could do a bit better.

I was looking at the recipe given for Apple Butter, thinking it would be great in the slow cooker, when I came home with a discounted 1kg tub of strawberries. Bingo. This was the easiest thing in the world to make. I halved or quartered what was left of the strawberries, after the kids had some for afternoon tea, and in their lunchboxes - it came to 5 cups of pieces.

Then I put them in the crockpot and cooked them on slow for 19 hours, mashing after 3 hours, and stirring occasionally.

It could have definitely done with a shorter cooking time, as parts of it did scorch a little, and made the overall product a little bitter, but it wasn't yet done when I went to bed after 11 hours cooking, so I had to make do. Quite possibly I'd have had better results if I'd pureed the strawberries first. Ah well, live and learn. May be I should try with apples....

'Danny Special' Pierogis

The August 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by LizG of Bits n’ Bites and Anula of Anula’s Kitchen. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make pierogi from scratch and an optional challenge to provide one filling that best represents their locale.

I'd completely forgotten about this month's Daring Cooks challenge to be honest, and it really was on a mere whim that I decided to make calzones for dinner, but with a mince meat filling, more like a bready empanada than an 'inside out pizza' (as we call calzones in our house).

It wasn't until I was looking at the Daring Kitchen forums, checking a detail for the Daring Bakers challenge coming up on the 27th, that I realised that the meal we had eaten the night before, fell technically under this months Daring Cooks theme.

Although the recipe given by LizG and Anula was for flour pierogis, they did say that bread ones were acceptable, and this pretty much fit the bill. Dough, wrapped around meat.

I used my standard pizza/calzone dough, and for a filling, I made a batch of what I term Danny Special. It's something my mother used to cook fairly often, but I remember one night she and Dad went out, and it was just the three youngest of us at home. (By the youngest, I mean myself, my brother Danny who is nine years older than me, and one of my sisters, who is eleven years older than me.) Danny cooked this for us all to eat, only, because he kept "testing" it, to check the seasoning, by the time it was ready, there was only a quarter of a large pan full left. And then my sister and I howled (like stray dogs) all the way through his Stray Cats tape while we dried and he washed the dishes. :) Kids. Every time I make this, I remember that night, and so, even if only to myself, this is the Danny Special. It's not really a dish representing my locale, unless you are really specific, and say that my locale is my house or one belonging to my family :D

This is pretty much just chopped (or canned, diced) tomatoes, diced onion, and mince. Fry it all up, you can thicken it with a little gravy powder or the tiniest amount of tomato paste if you want. If you use tomato paste, go very easy on it. This is a meaty gravy type dish, not a tomato bolognese sauce. I used quite a bit of gravy to make it nice and thick inside the pierogis, but if you serve with mashed or steamed potatoes, you don't need it as thick.

Put a couple of spoonfuls on a rolled out circle of dough, bake for 18 minutes at 180°C, and serve in front of the tv while watching Dennis the Menace.

This was DP's double sized one, because he eats more than the rest of us.

Daring Cooks: Pate and bread

Our hostesses this month, Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, and Valerie of a The Chocolate Bunny, chose delicious pate with freshly baked bread as their June Daring Cook’s challenge! They’ve provided us with 4 different pate recipes to choose from and are allowing us to go wild with our homemade bread choice.

The pate I chose to make was the Tricolor Vegetable Pâté: from Bon Appétit Oct 1993 on Epicurious. I made it as directed, but only used half the written recipe for the White bean layer, and it was still plenty. I also made my own ricotta for the pesto layer

though it doesn't photograph that well. Ricotta is actually quite easy to make.

Ricotta
2L milk
4 Tbsp white vinegar

Heat the milk until you see small bubbles at the side of the pan. Turn off
the element and add the vinegar. Strain the curds off the top and then drain
through a very clean Chux type dishcloth. Two litres of milk makes 500g of ricotta cheese. (so if you only want enough for the pate recipe, just use 500ml milk and 1 Tbsp vinegar)

My pate all tucked up, waiting to set

I made Brioche, but in the excitement of Master Two's birthday party, I forgot to get a photo of my bread, but I'll share the recipe with you below anyway.

Brioche (Breads from your breadmaker - Richard Carroll)
150mls tepid water
2 Tbsps sugar
90g unsalted butter, at room temp
2 tsp lemon juice
2 eggs
500g White Bread Mix
2 tsp instant dry yeast

Place ingredients into the bread pan in the order listed, insert into the breadmaker and close the lid.

Cook on 'Sweet' program, 'Large' size, 'Medium' crust.

My top crust was a little pale, but the sides were a lovely golden colour, so I probably wouldn't mess with that.