Fall Means Apple Butter

When I was little, my mom and I made apple butter every year.  There was a specific ritual to it: we'd go to the apple farm to get a good deal on a huge bag of apples (a peck? half a bushel?), make sure we had new lids for the canning jars, and got to work.

My job was to cut up the apple quarters into tiny pieces.  One of the first times I remember being allowed to help, I must have been maybe seven years old.  My mom and Gammy were much faster--one of them would quarter, core, and peel the apples while the other would chop.  My "job" was really just to keep me busy, I'm pretty sure.

After the invention of the slap-chop thingamajigger, my job became much more important.  Mom would keep the apple quarters coming, and I would slam the handle down in rapid-fire mode until the apple pieces were pulverized.  

The rest of the day only got better from chopping apples.  We would make our apple butter in huge batches in a Nesco turkey roaster oven so that we had enough to give as gifts and to eat all year long, and once all the ingredients were cooking I got to lift the lid periodically and take the longest-handled spatula we owned to stir the bubbly, spicy, molten apple lava.

The end of the day was the best part, though.  If you make apple butter, there is absolutely no way to know that it has been properly made unless you taste it on homemade bread.  Once the apples had been cooking for a long time--usually early afternoon--Mom would make a couple loaves of country white bread. She had a knack for timing it so that the loaves were cooling while we sterilized and canned the apple butter.  There always seemed to be the right amount left for a bowlful of scrapings that we dipped into with spoons, smearing the mahogany-colored preserve over the fresh bread.

The jars of apple butter we processed in a hot water bath for ten minutes, taking them out and letting them cool upside down on a towel on the counter top.  After an hour or so we turned them right side up and I always tried to listen for the pop as the cooling air inside the jar set the seal.

This ritual of making apple butter was so ingrained in my experience of fall that when I went to college freshman year, I woke up one September morning craving apple butter.  When I called my mom a few days later, she actually told me that she had made her yearly batch of apple butter that weekend!  Somehow I must have known it was an apple butter day, even four hours away from home.

If you have a crockpot, apple butter is a cinch to make--prep it in the afternoon and let it cook on low all night, and you can make bread in the morning and have it for breakfast.  If you make it on the stove, it only takes a couple hours for it to come together (and less if you have friends to help you chop apples).

Apple Butter

makes 7 or so jars

1/2 peck + a few apples, any kind*

1/4 c. white vinegar

3-4c. sugar

4 T. cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1/4 tsp salt

Quarter the apples.  These are Golden Delicious
from the farmer's market.

 

1. Peel, core, and chop the apples to small-to-medium pieces.  The bigger the pieces, the chunkier the final product.  If you like yours thick and spreadable, chop the apples smaller.

Seems like I've cut up so many!  Not nearly enough.
Keep going!

This is half a peck of apples, quartered.

This step takes a while.  Cut out the core from each
quarter and peel them.  I ended up using this many plus another 1/3 of this bowl of apples--enough to fill my dutch oven.

Chop the apple quarters into small pieces.  I cut them
lengthwise into thirds or fourths, then chopped them crosswise.

 2. Put all the apples in either a large crockpot or a dutch oven.  Add the vinegar, sugar, and spices to the apples and stir until the spices are well-distributed.

Add the other ingredients to the apples and turn on the heat to medium.

3. If using a crockpot, turn on high until it starts to bubble, then switch to low heat.  If using the stove top method, turn heat to medium.

It only took a couple minutes for them to start getting juicy!

 4. Cook in the crockpot on low overnight or on high 8-ish hours, until the apple butter has reached a pleasing consistency (up to you) and color.  You might have to switch to high heat and take the lid off to evaporate some of the liquid and make it thicken up.

Stove top method: once the apple juices are bubbling, turn the heat to medium-low and stir frequently to prevent bubbling over.

Bubble, bubble, bubble.  Be sure to stir every 5 minutes or so
or you might get scorched apple butter on the bottom.

This is maybe an hour in.  It's cooking down a lot and
the apples are getting softer.

 5. Once some of the liquid starts to evaporate, check out how the consistency is coming along.  If the apple butter is getting thick without changing to a deep cinnamon-brown, you can add a little water, put a lid on the dutch oven, and turn the heat down lower to give it enough moisture to cook for longer.  If it's coming along nicely, skip that part and let the juices cook out until you get a consistency you like.  Be aware that as the liquid evaporates, you'll need to stir more frequently to prevent scorching.

(Almost) finished!  It reduced in volume by about 50%.
I let it cook a little longer with the lid on, on very low heat,
so that the bigger pieces softened up and the butter looked darker.

6. Once the apple butter is done, you're ready to go!  You can can it at this point--and if this is your plan, while the preserves are cooking you might want to wash and sterilize your jars in a big stock pot of water so that hot apple butter goes into hot jars.  Otherwise, you can keep the apple butter in the fridge for a reasonably long time (several months--like a jam.  The sugar/vinegar/cooking helps preserve it).  I have trouble getting jars of apple butter to last that long, though.  This recipe made enough for 7 peanut butter or regular jelly jars (I recycle the glass ones--they make great pantry containers).

7. Enjoy the scrapings from the pot (or whatever won't fit into your jars) on a slice of fresh bread.  Or, you could get a nice rustic loaf from the bakery/store and toss it in the oven on low for a few minutes to warm it up.  If you're feeling super-nice, share with friends.  Otherwise, hoard it til next fall.

Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes

If you have a garden, and if you planted tomatoes, then when August hits you know that you are in for a LOT of bounty all at once.  There will be more tomatoes than you will know what to do with; there might even be more tomatoes than you can give away to grateful or unsuspecting neighbors.

All this came out of my garden in...about 3 days.  See the monster
squash in the top left corner?  And see how big the tomatoes are?
Seriously.  Bigger than baseballs, only barely smaller than softballs.

I only planted three tomato plants: two "Early Bird" and one "Cherokee Purple" (heirloom) variety.  The Early Birds have lived up to their name: they started flowering almost as soon as I put them in the ground, and now for the past month or so they've gradually sped up production.  At first, it was one or two tomatoes a week.  But this weekend, I pulled 5-6 tomatoes off of one plant and left at least that many in varying states of orange behind (they should be ready soon!).

I ate tomato sandwiches, and I sliced tomatoes into wedges and ate caprese salads, and I made a small batch of homemade salsa.  And then I still had tomatoes left over.  Since I'm on my pediatrics outpatient month (and basically have a month of vacation), I thought I'd make tomato sauce.  Turns out, that's pretty damn easy and I would've been able to make it even if I weren't on an easy rotation.  Once it was done, I portioned the sauce into single-serve containers and froze it for an afternoon, then popped them out and kept all the blocks in a freezer bag (to free up the valuable tupperware containers).

Tomatoes: into the skillet they go!  Plus some salt.

Easy Tomato Sauce: makes 3 single-serving portions

Ingredients (all fresh is best):

-tomatoes

-garlic

-basil

-salt

Method:

1. Chop the tomatoes.  I used 3-4 large tomatoes from my garden.  They each probably weighed almost a pound...they were about the size of grapefruit!  If you have smaller tomatoes, I'd use 5-6.  The amount of tomatoes I used filled a 10 inch skillet basically to the brim

2. Throw all these tomatoes in the skillet over medium heat.  Using a wide skillet is actually helpful because it gives you a large surface area for evaporation; this makes the sauce reduce more quickly.  Add a few sprinkles of salt (I used about a good pinch per tomato) to help them release their juices.

Adding salt was the right idea.  See how juicy they got?

3. Cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally, while the tomatoes start to break down.  Finely mince or grate some garlic into the cooking tomatoes.  I used two fat cloves of garlic for my panful of tomatoes, but you could use more or less to taste.

4. Next, chop the basil.  I usually chiffonade basil, then cut it cross-wise, to mince it easily.  Add this to the pot of tomatoes.  (They should be pretty juicy and watery now.  The liquid in my skillet went almost all the way to the top.)  You can also turn down the heat to medium-low at this point.

Garlic and basil have joined the party.

5. Keep watching the tomato sauce and stir it occasionally.  It needs to bubble gently (not boil rapidly or anything) and should be giving off plenty of steam, which means it's reducing.  The tomatoes will also gradually become less chunky and more like a thicker tomato sauce.  It's important to stir, too, because the thick tomato-paste-stuff will sink to the bottom while the tomato juice reduces on top, and you don't want the sauce to scorch.  Taste the sauce every now and then to make sure there's enough salt, or the basil flavor isn't too strong, or that there's enough garlic for your liking.

Now it's all reduced.  It's a little hard to tell, but it's much
thicker and more sauce-like than tomato juice-like.

6. In about 30 minutes, the sauce should be reduced enough to be finished.  The key here is to check for the consistency that you like, not to just time it.  Turn off the heat.  You can either puree the sauce and run it through a sieve to make it extra-smooth, or you can be like me and just pour it into containers.

Ready to freeze!  Now I'll have fresh tomato sauce stowed away
for the cold, bleak days of surgery rotation.  Or just winter in general.
Be sure to leave a little room for the sauce to expand when it freezes.

Tomato Sandwich

Ingredients:

-fresh tomato

-cheese (mozzarella or farmer's cheese or provolone would all work)

-basil

-mayonaise

-bread

Method:

1. Toast the bread.

2. In the meantime, slice the tomato.  I like my tomato slices about 3/8 inch thick (I know that's pretty exact, but it's more than a quarter inch but less than half an inch).

3. Slice up your cheese of choice.

4. Make sure your basil is ready to go (leaves picked off stems, chiffonaded if you prefer)

5. Spread mayo on your toast, thinly.  This protects the bread from tomato juice.

6. Assemble the sandwich: toast-mayo-cheese-basil-tomato-mayo-toast.  Oh, and you can throw some S&P on the tomato before you close it up.

7. EAT very messily and think "YUM THIS IS WHAT SUMMER TASTES LIKE!"

Enjoy the tomatoes while you can!  THIS is when they absolutely taste the best--forget fresh tomatoes in December, you don't even want to know how far they've traveled (you can taste it in their mealy texture).

Go!  Make sauce!  Or Bloody Marys! Or just eat them sliced and plain!

Ooey gooey brunch: Monkey Bread

Post-exams is always a daze, but especially after finals.  To celebrate being done (and to nurse our inevitable hangovers), some of my friends and I got together and made brunch on Friday morning.  At my house growing up, you can't have holiday brunch without Monkey Bread, also known as pull-apart bread, also known as the best breakfast treat ever.  My mom would make this every Christmas Eve because it was easy to just throw it in the oven while we opened presents.  Then, the warm, cinnamon-sugar smell would remind us that we were starving and we would cluster around the counter, sneaking pieces before they cooled and snacking on them loudly to cool them even as we gobbled them down.

My mom always made ours in this special pan--a white ceramic loaf pan with a little tray to turn it out onto after it baked.  She also used frozen roll dough cut into pieces and dipped them in butter, cinnamon, and sugar.  Since I like to bake bread from scratch (and since it's actually cheaper), I used the recipe found here at Eatin' on the Cheap to make Monkey Bread from scratch.

The recipe is not too complicated if you're familiar with yeast breads: the dough is enriched (milk for liquid, plus some melted butter and some sugar) and also contains some cinnamon.  The sugar mixture for coating contains cinnamon and nutmeg mixed with brown sugar, and then the bottom of the pan gets a mix of melted butter, brown sugar, and chopped walnuts.  Then it's just a matter of assembly (and patience)!

The dough has to be mixed, kneaded, and left to rise for about an hour before you can really start the rest of the recipe.

Get everything set up first: melted butter, sugar-spice mixture, and dough chunks.

The dough gets divided into quarters.  Each quarter is rolled into a log and then cut into 16 pieces.  (Here's a great way to practice your fractions if you're rusty.  I cut the log in half, then each half into halves, then each of those into four pieces.)

Roll a quarter of the dough into a log and cut it into 16 pieces.

The dipping part is definitely the messiest part.  I suggest having the sugar/spice bowl right next to the bundt pan so there's minimal sugar all over afterwards.  I also thought it was easier to plop the buttered dough piece into the bowl and scoop some sugar over it rather than actually rolling it around.

Dip the pieces in butter and then into the sugar-spice mixture.
Then arrange the pieces over the bottom of the bundt pan.

Repeat for all four quarters of the bread dough, layering as you go and smushing the dough as necessary to make it fit tightly in the pan.  Toward the end I ran out of sugar for rolling, so I just dipped the dough in butter and threw them in there (luckily the top ones turn into the bottom ones once you flip it).

Add more pieces in layers until you've used them all up, about 3-4 deep.
I ran out of sugar and spice at the end so these last few are just dipped in butter.

Now you can cover it and put the pan in the fridge overnight.  In the morning, take the pan out an hour before you want to bake it.  Bake in a 350 degree oven for 40-50 minutes (mine was perfect at 40 minutes), then let it cool for five minutes in the pan.  Don't let it cool too much longer than that, though, or else it will stick in the pan.  Put a plate or platter over the top of the bundt pan and flip the whole thing over and voila! You're ready to go.

Ooey, gooey, caramely goodness!

This was so delicious and really not complicated--totally worth it.  If you're pressed for time, frozen roll dough or (as per other recipes I saw on the internet) biscuit dough would probably work okay, too...but the extra oomph from the bread being cinnamony was pretty delicious.

Happy holidays!

Cheater French Onion Soup

If I had to pick one soup to eat for the rest of my life...it'd probably be French onion.  (It might be tomato soup, but I think it'd depend on the day you ask.)  There is something fantastic about the simplicity of it: onions, cooked slowly until they turn a dark, caramel brown; a few simple seasonings; a rich broth; and of course, a toasted, melty, cheesy crust of bread on top sopping up the juices.

There's just one problem.  French onion soup takes a long time to make.  I mean, caramelized onions are no joke--you have to cook them over low heat for half an hour or forty-five minutes before you're even close to ready, and then you have to add everything else and give it some time to simmer together....By the time you're lapping up the dregs from the bottom of your soup crock you've been hungry (and smelling soup-makings) for hours.

Well, I offer you a simple solution: cheat.

That's right, I said it.  Cheat.

Last year I was perusing foodgawker and the like and came upon a wondrous claim: that, by employing the miracle machine that is the crock pot, one could make caramelized onions without any effort or waiting or constant attention.  Turns out, it's really simple.  Combine pre-caramelized onions with a little vegetable (or beef, if you're into that) broth, some thyme, salt, and pepper, and a cheesy toast-thing for dipping, and you're good to go.

Caramelized onions
6-8 large yellow onions
2 T butter

-Halve and peel the onions, then slice evenly in the direction of your choosing.  (I went cross-grain, but you could julienne, too, if you prefer.  Not sure what difference, if any, it would make.)
-Put the butter in the bottom of a large crock pot. Throw all the onions on top of the butter, until the crock pot is full.
-Cook on high for a few hours to get things going, then turn down the heat.  Cook until the onions are caramelized to your taste.*

Yield: about 6-7 cups.  I put a jarful in the fridge, used some immediately, and froze two containers' worth.

*Note: I foolishly started mine at around 6pm, so at around 9 they were just starting to turn pale beige.  I turned the heat to low and went to bed, and they were perfect the next morning.

Cheater French Onion Soup
serves 1
1/4 to 1/2 c. caramelized onions
1 tsp vegetable bouillon mix or 1 veg bouillon cube
S&P to taste
dash of dried thyme
1 to 1 1/2 c. water

Combine all ingredients in a pot.  Simmer until warmed through.  Serve with cheesy toast things. 

Ready to be packed for lunch: in the bottom, caramelized onions.
Top right, dried thyme; bottom right, bouillon paste.

Cheesy toast things
favorite cheese
bread

Put cheese on bread.  Broil until bubbly.

Added hot water, stirred it around, and
let it sit for a few minutes.  Instant soup!

***
Here's how I cheated even more.  I packed this for lunch--our cafeteria has a hot water dispenser, so I put my onions and seasonings into a jar, packed cheese and crackers to eat on the side, and added hot water when I was ready to eat.  No fuss, plus it's warm and comforting when the weather has finally decided it's fall outside and should therefore be drizzly and gray all day.

A little bit of this, a little bit of that

Pan-fried toast with fresh tomato slices, an over-easy egg, and mustard sprouts.

I went to a family medicine conference at the end of last week.  It was in my hometown, so I got to stay at my mom's house and be pampered by her.  While I had a lot of fun--scoping out all the residency displays and picking up a farm's worth of animal-shaped stress squeezie-things, hanging out with a friend from far away--it was still nice to come home to my own apartment.  However, knowing that I would be gone for a couple days, I had let my groceries dwindle pretty low.  So when I woke up for breakfast this morning, I found one egg and a weird assortment of veggies in the fridge.  A paw through the freezer turned up a little frozen bread buried in the back.  With a pat of butter in the pan, I managed to turn fridge leftovers into a pretty passable breakfast.  In other news--I definitely need to go to the store today.

~Lindsey

It's aliiiiiiiiiiiive! Part 2

Okay, so things got out of control.

I was just going along my merry way, feeding my little seed culture daily and watching it bubble and foam.  Finally, it was the last day for feeding the seed culture.  Now, good ol' Reinhart warned me that it should double in six hours or so, and that it might even triple.  But I didn't really believe him.  I sort of imagined that I might get a double rise but surely nothing bad could happen if I left the culture out overnight.  Well, see for yourself:

This is after six hours or so.  See the saucer?  This was my overflow insurance.

In a related note, sourdough starter, once dried, is surprisingly difficult to clean up: tacky, gooey, but also slightly crusty at the same time.

This was the next morning.  Whoops!  I guess I didn't think the wild yeasties had it in 'em.

Luckily, the culture survived, I made the barm, and then finally--after a week! I was ready to make bread.  Reinhart's recipe makes a huge bowlful of dough, so I got two baguettes and two smallish boules out of one recipe.  I made mine with half whole wheat and half bread flour, and the resulting bread...well, it had great flavor but I'm not sure that it tasted any better than Reinhart's other bread methods, like pain à l'ancienne.  But, now that the starter's made, I can keep it in the fridge, let it mellow out for a little bit, and feed it again when I want to make bread the next time!  Plus, this is perfect timing--I was just about to run out of yeast anyway.  Good thing my apartment air obliged!

Love,

Lindsey

It's aliiiiiiiiiiiiive

I have embarked upon a wild adventure.

No, I'm not climbing mountains or traversing cliffs barefooted or scuba-diving in the Marianas Trench.  Think more like wild as in organisms--growing organisms.  I started a sourdough culture!

I have fond memories of my mother experimenting similarly with wild yeast and bacteria in the form of a wide-mouthed quart jar with a hinged lid and strawberries on the sides that smelled funny and contained a thin, watery liquid.  The jar would sit in the back of our fridge for weeks at a time, and then sometimes Mom would pull it out and wake up the starter, then use it to make bread.

Since buying Peter Reinhart's book The Bread Baker's Apprentice, I have taken my whole bread-baking obsession to a new level.  The type of bread with the most patience and time requirements, though, had remained elusive--how to justify taking more than a week to make a loaf of bread when there was physiology and neuroscience to study?  I resolved to wait until this summer to give it a go, with the hopes that once I have my starter made I, too, can keep my own little kitchen chia-pet in the back of the fridge.

Reinhart's method started with whole wheat flour and pineapple juice, and I'm now at the point where I've fed the little bugger for a few days running.  I'm almost at the barm stage now, which is sort of like the leveled-up version of the seed culture and will itself get fed and watered until it's ready to be used in bread-making.

Stay tuned for pictures and updates!  Hopefully I'll get to bake some bread over the long holiday weekend.

Love,
Lindsey