Farmer's Market Bounty: Roasted Red Peppers

This past week has been all about preserving (for days/weeks but not months) the fresh produce from the weekly Farmer's Market. In addition to making oven-dried tomatoes, I wanted to preserve the large, red peppers that I picked up this week. I've been thinking about red peppers, marinated in herbs, oil, and vinegar, and what a wonderful accompaniment they would make to salads and on pita bread with goat cheese. (Now that I've got the cheesemaking bug, I think goat cheese is my next accomplishment.) Anyway, I found this great resource for roasting peppers and keeping them. (While there are a ka-gillion recipes that call for roasted red peppers, if they don't require you to open a jar, then you are expected to use them all up as part of a larger recipe.) I wanted information on how to dress up roasted red peppers that would keep in the fridge to be added to snacks and meals over the course of a few weeks. And I found here, in a New York Times Health piece.

I started by grilling the peppers directly on the burner. I actually woudn't recommend doing two front to back like this, since I would occasionally "warm" my forearm while reaching over the front pepper to check and turn the back pepper. I moved the back pepper to the left front burner and that was a much safer way to roast two at a time. It took about 5 minutes or so to roast each pepper.

Here is a pepper almost completely roasted. Its skin is almost completely blackened.

Then, once I'd charred each pepper as well as I could, I put them each in a bowl and covered tightly with cling wrap. They stay in there, steaming a bit, until they cool. Once they're cooled down, after about ten minutes, I peeled off the blackened skin, which comes off very easily. It breaks apart and sticks to your hands, so I found it helpful to rinse my hands repeatedly. (I remember vaguely reading somewhere that you want to resist just putting the peppers under running water--although that is a super easy way to get the skin off--since it washes away a lot of the roasted flavor. I don't remember where I read or heard this--or maybe I've invented this. Anyway, because of this half-memory of something that might not even be true, I resisted putting them under the faucet, and instead, put my hands under the faucet.

Once they were peeled, I followed the suggestions in the recipe. I a) sliced in half over a bowl (you want to keep all the juice that is caught inside the pepper); b)seeded and cored the pepper; c) sliced the halves into strips and put those in a separate bowl with the strained juices; d) added dried basil (would've used fresh, of course, but had none on hand), sea salt, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, about 3 garlic cloves minced, and 1 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar; e) I mixed it all up to evenly distribute all the flavors and then put them into jars for the fridge--well, one pickle jar and one plastic take-out container.

After tasting a few this morning, I might add a bit more vinegar and perhaps more dried seasonings. But they're fresh and bright-tasting. The first thing I thought of when biting into one was how good they would taste on a pizza.

Farmer's Market Bounty: Oven-Dried Cherry Tomatoes

Last night was full of culinary victory in my house. In addition to successfully making homemade mozzarella cheese, I successfully, and tastily, preserved some beautiful cherry tomatoes by oven-drying--a variation on sun-dried tomatoes.

It has become more and more important to me to gather up as much of the fresh, in-season produce from local farms. But to have it sustain us beyond it's limited window of edibility is always a challenge. Either the produce sits in the fridge too long, or on the counter. Life happens. My intention for veggie-heavy meals get lost in shuffle, when nights get late before we've even started cooking, and we often forego the second side of veggies for some other leftover. (Or we fill up on tomatoes on herbed and olive-oiled baguette slices, which is becoming more and more a pre-dinner treat that we love.) Or instead of finding their way into fresh smoothies, peaches grow soft on the counter as I spend what seems like every waking minute prying non-food items from Thora's jaws, or keeping her this side of melt-down, from a log-rolling tantrum. Needless to say, all my Monday-Morning-Farmer's-Market hopes for healthy, responsible, globally-sustainable eating sometimes goes by the wayside, or specifically into the the compost bin. But because I hate that sense of failure as I drop the wilted greens or squishy fruit in with the compost that not every bite got eaten, I've been eye-ing the produce at the Farmer's Market with specific thoughts of semi-preserving. (I'm not canning, so the preserving I'm doing here extends the lifespans of the produce by several weeks in the fridge, rather than months on the shelf.)

So last night's success was oven-dried tomatoes. I cut in half about 1/2 pint of cherry tomatoes, scooped out their seeds with a grapefruit spoon, and laid them cut-side up on a foil-lined baking sheet.

(Could these look more like candy?!?)


I put them in a 200 degree oven (the lowest setting on ours) at roughly 10:30pm for what I was thinking might be over night. But at around 12:30am, when I was still up (!), I took a look at them, and they were already shriveled and some quite leathery. So I took them out and put them in a heat-safe bowl. (I will soon be pouring boiling liquid on them, so the bowl needs to be tough.)

Then I referred to the recipe in Kingsolver's book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, called "Antipasto Tomatoes," which can be found at their website here. I brought about a cup of plain white vinegar to a boil (just what we had on hand and a quantity that I eyeballed and assumed to be enough to cover my small amount of tomatoes). After it came to a boil, I poured it into the bowl over the dried tomatoes, tossed in a few whole cloves of garlic, and let the tomatoes and garlic steep for 10 minutes. Then, I scooped out the tomatoes and garlic from the vinegar and, by pressing them, drained as much of the vinegar off as I could. (I reserved the vinegar that is all carmel-colored and tomato- and garlic-infused now and sure to be good in some new incarnation.) Once drained, I tossed the tomatoes and garlic with dried basil, oregano, rosemary, and thyme. (I used dried since I didn't have fresh herbs on hand, but would surely use fresh if given the option.) I put them into a jar and poured olive oil over them to cover (see top photo).

I tried some this morning, and they're quite yummy. There's still a subtle vinegar hit to the taste, which I'm not sure I want there or not. The vinegar bath helps raise the acidity so as to help prevent the bacteria that causes botulism, so it's necessary. But perhaps I could've pressed harder when draining and gotten more of the vinegar out before they went into the jar. But I think they will be nice on salads, on crusty bread, or tossed with pasta. I plan to get some plum tomatoes on Monday and do this again, for one reason, that I'd like to try again and see what happens with a meatier tomato--one that has more substance to it after it's been seeded--but ultimately, I have a feeling these won't last long.

Next up: Roasted Red Peppers

Cheese! (after 3 tries and finding the right milk)

So tonight didn't end in despair and culinary disappointment. I successfully made my own mozzarella cheese! I can't tell you the elation I felt as the gloppy goop started to turn into stringy goop right before my eyes. The sense of pride as I stretched it between my hands twelve inches, then 18 inches! It was fun and in retrospect, quite easy. Once I landed on the right milk, that is. And for you in Massachusetts, that milk seems to be Garelick brand all-natural milk. (Of course raw milk straight from a farm, your own cow or goat, for example, would be best. But for those of us who don't have ready access to farm milk, so far the store-bought brand that works for me is Garelick.)

The first two times I tried to make cheese, I was using Trader Joe's organic milk*. And despite not being labeled "ultra-pasteurized," it wouldn't result in a curd that ultimately clung together. Perhaps they heat their milk when pasteurizing to a higher temperature than milk that doesn't need to travel as far and be stored as long. Garelick is a Massachusetts company, and so their milk is transported relatively short distances. (For home cheese-making, you must use only non-"ultra pasteurized" milk [or raw milk that you pasteurize yourself] since the curds won't set.)

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am making my first entree into cheese-making via the supplies and instruction from the folks at The New England Cheesemaking Supply Company at www.cheesemaking.com. Their instructional booklet and dvd are so informative and inspiring. And after having trouble the first time, I emailed them with my problem and they wrote back the very next morning with helpful tips.

Anyway, here's my success:

Here it is, a kind of clingy mass, having separated from the whey.


Then it spends about 2 minutes in the microwave. This is just before it goes in for its first minute.


Here I am pressing it into a single piece (although, it pretty much was a single piece prior to this step) and expressing more whey before going back in the microwave for another 30 seconds.



Working the cheese



Stretching the cheese

And the final product. Viola!

I look forward to working a bit more on final presentation next time. It begins to harden up and take shape before I really knew what was happening, so I was stuck with a less than perfect globe of shiny, white mozzarella. It tastes great. I look forward to it with baguette toasts and heirloom tomatoes tomorrow!


* While my experience seems to suggest that Trader Joe's milk doesn't work for home cheese-making, we are happy with both their organic and regular brands for daily drinking for both us and Thora.

Something I never thought I'd do: Home Cheesemaking?!?

So something I haven't written about, but have been meaning to, is my appreciation for Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. It spoke to me, spurring me on to do things that I've done in the past (backyard gardening) but that had lapsed while we lived in apartments in NYC. It also encouraged me to do things (namely Farmer's Market shopping) that I did before for fun, but now I do with a true sense of purpose, enjoyment, and obligation (it's very important to support local farmers since they provide bio-diversity necessary for our planet's well-being, the significantly lower fuel usage in getting the produce to me and my neighbors, the sensibility and enjoyment of eating food that's "in-season,"...)

Anyway, two direct repercussions of reading this book are:

I'm serious about growing our own vegetables and fruit next season. Sean got me this great book as a birthday present this year, called Bountiful Container, that is proving to be critical in my planning for next year. (While I have yard access, due to a shady tree in our backyard, very little of the ground gets lots of sun. So I'll be doing container gardening along one side of house which gets tons of sun but which is also completely paved over with asphalt.) I'm so excited and don't know how I will get through the long months of winter. Seriously, I'm excited. You should see the plans, dog-eared library books, my highlighted copy of Bountiful Container littering the floor along my side of the bed.

The second thing I've done, that I have to admit I never ever imagined I would ever do, (even in my most hippie-fied fantasies), is to make my own cheese. And this is a direct result of Kingsolver's book. I had some birthday money burning a hole in my pocket and as always, I was determined to use it for something out of the ordinary; something that I want, but that I can't really justify to myself to come out of our budgeted monthly money, which also has to fund things like toilet paper and food for the baby. I know, you're thinking, "Cheesemaking?!?" I said, I know. But apparently it's super easy to make soft cheeses like mozzerella, ricotta, and goat cheese. The place to go for home cheese making is cheesemaking.com, where Ricki Carroll has been teaching home cheese making for 3 decades. Just tonight, I purchased the Starter Kit, which contains their book, an instructional dvd, and the Mozzerella & Ricotta kit which contains all the equipment and ingredients I need to make mozzerella 30 times. For now, I'm kind of doing this for the novelty of always being just 30 minutes away from organic, homemade cheese made without unnecessary processing, refridgeration, storage, transportation, etc. But rest assured (or be forewarned, whichever camp you fall into), I'll write about the trials and victories, the cost and savings, the taste and elbow-grease that goes into making your own cheese at home. So stay tuned.