Category Archives: Food

Gingery Pickled Beets

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My husband has slowly started clearing out our winter vegetables to make room for his spring planting.  A few weeks ago he decided it was time for the beets to go. So I got out my “Food in Jars” cookbook that my sister gave me as a present after my first canning adventure and found a recipe for Gingery Pickled Beets.

Food in Jars

My friends, Jenny and Vickie, came over to see how the process works and to help me out with the mountain of beets. Well, it turns out there wasn’t a mountain but definitely enough to keep us busy.

I did some of the prep before they arrived – boiling and peeling the beets.  The colors of these beets are so intense and beautiful.

Beets boiled & peeled Beets boiled & peeled

Once they arrived, wine was opened (of course) and then it was a fury of sterilizing the jars, cutting the beets and preparing the brine.

Ready for the brine Ready for the brine Ready for the brine

I will say that the hardest part of this process was filling the jars with the liquid.  So far I have only preserved tomatoes, tomato sauce and red onion marmalade – all of which you cook in one pot and add to the jars.  This calls for placing the beets in the jars first, then adding the preserving brine.  After a few spills over the top, I finally got the hang of it.  We had a little over two pounds of beets, but I only made one batch of brine so it was a mad scramble to make a bit more to fill the last of the jars.

Ready for the brine Adding the brine Adding the brine

We had a lot of fun and this executive canner couldn’t have done it (well, wouldn’t have wanted to do it) without my two sous canners.  They each got to take home a jar as a parting gift for their efforts.

Processed Processed Good to the last drop

Epilogue:  Over a week has passed since I made this recipe so last night we decide to open a jar to taste.  So delicious.  I had to stop my husband from eating the whole jar since we all wanted to try them. I will definitely be making this again.

Pickled & Delicious

 

Gingery Pickled Beets

Adapted from Food in Jars by Marisa McClellan

(if you are at all interested in canning, seriously – buy this book.  It is amazing)

Ingredients

2 pounds beets (I used mix of red, golden & chioggia beets)

2 cups apple cider vinegar

2 tablespoons pickling salt (I substituted kosher salt and it worked fine)

1 cup sugar

1 cinnamon stick

1 (2 inch / 5 cm) piece of ginger, peeled and thinly sliced

Preparation

Scrub the beets and remove the greens and roots.  Put beets in a pot and cover with water.  Simmer over medium heat until the beets are tender, approximately 30 minutes. Be careful not to overcook, you want them to be firm so they are still a bit crunchy once they are pickled.  Drain and rinse with cold water.  Once they are cool, rub the skins off with your fingers.  Beets stain so wear plastic gloves!  Cut the beets into wedges and set aside.

Sterilize 4 regular-mouth 1-pint jars in a boiling water bath. Place the lids in a saucepan, cover them with water, and simmer over low heat.

Combine vinegar, 2 cups of water, salt, sugar, cinnamon stick and ginger slices in a pot and bring to a boil.

While the brine is boiling, pack the beets into your sterilized jars and slowly pour the hot brine over the beets.  Make sure to include a few ginger slices in each jar.  Leave about 1/2 inch space from the top.  Gently tap the jars on the countertop to loosen the bubbles or use a wooden chopstick to dislodge the bubbles. Add more brine if necessary.

Wipe the rims, put on the lids and rings and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Let them cure for at least a week before eating.

 

Gifts from the heart, or at least from your own kitchen

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I decided this past Christmas that I was going to try my hand at homemade gifts. Now I certainly couldn’t post this before Christmas for fear that it might spoil the surprise for those receiving my homemade goods. But I was so pleased with how they turned out that I now will be giving them as hostess, birthday, cheer up or just because gifts. So I suppose this is the spoiler alert for any of my friends who plan on inviting me to a dinner party.

It started out with a simple idea.  I cut a basil salt recipe out of Food Network Magazine and it had been sitting in my stack of recipes for months, along with the kosher salt and sweet little glass salt shakers from Cost Plus collecting dust in my pantry. One Saturday when my basil plant was overflowing I just picked off all the leaves, threw them in the food processor with the salt and baked the mixture.  It came out the most amazing green color. It was electric.

Basil Salt fresh out of the oven

Basil Salt fresh out of the oven

I poured it into the jars, made my own labels, tied on an old-fashioned Christmas tag with twine and that was that.

Basil Salt Jars by Jules

Basil Salt Jars by Jules

BASIL SALT

adapted from Food Network Magazine

Pulse ½ cup kosher salt with 1 cup packed fresh basil leaves in a food processor.  Spread on a baking sheet and bake at 225 degrees F until dry, about 45 minutes, tossing halfway through. Let cool and pulse again for a fine powder.  I skipped the second pulse because I liked the coarse grainy look and feel.

I decided my next food gift was going to be my sister’s delicious red onion marmalade.  It is always a favorite and now that I know how to can, I was able to make several to take with us to London for Christmas.

Double the recipe if you can, but you will need a very large sauté pan.  This batch only produced 3 full jars (plus some extra as a nice treat with aged gouda that night)

Red Onion Marmalade Label

Click the label for the recipe on my sister’s blog

The last gift I made was Jamie’s Epic Hot Chocolate.  As I might have mentioned before, I am a huge fan of Jamie Oliver and spent the months leading up to Christmas watching all of his past Channel 4 Christmas specials over and over.  He makes this incredibly rich hot chocolate and griddle pan waffles outside on a cold winter’s day over an open fire.  It was the perfect gift for my husband’s best friend’s three girls, or young ladies as I should now call them.  The only thing I didn’t add was the malt powder.  I couldn’t find it anywhere here in Los Angeles.

The best part of this gift was that I had been racking my brain to come up with a nice gift for my son’s preschool teachers and this was it. It was perfect because my son could help make it, which I think makes it more special.

Ollie making epic hot chocolate
A gift for his preschool teachers
Apparently the tongue is key to not spilling

JAMIE’S EPIC HOT CHOCOLATE

adapted from “Jamie’s Christmas With Bells On”

 Ingredients

4 heaped tbsp. cocoa powder

3 heaped tbsp. powdered sugar

2 heaped tbsp. of malt powder (optional)

2 heaped tbsp. corn flower

1 pinch sea salt

1 pinch cinnamon

3.5 – 4 oz. quality dark chocolate (70%), finely grated (plus a little extra coarsely grated to add to the top)

Preparation

Add the above ingredients (except the coarsely grated chocolate) into a large jar and shake to mix up.  Once mixed, spoon into gift jars and add a sprinkle of the coarsely grated chocolate on top.

Use 5 heaped tbsp. to 1 pint steaming milk.

And the Oscar goes to…

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After Christmas season, I can easily say, hands down, my next favorite season is Oscar season. Not just for the reasons one might think. Yes, I love seeing what all the stars are wearing, making fun of the host and the sometimes inebriated starlets and getting nervous as they open that envelope to announce the winner as if I had some personal stake in it but it is actually for the food. From that first year in my Santa Monica apartment when I took four baguettes, hollowed them out and laid them end to end across my table filled with spinach dip for “The Green Mile”, I knew my food pun destiny.

Over the years it has evolved, mainly due to the introduction (to me at least) of Photoshop in 2006.  Prior to that I would type up signs that read Multiple Layered Personality Dip for “A Beautiful Mind” or Crouching Tiger Prawns with Hidden Dragon Sauce.  I think you can all guess the movie.

However, when I started turning the movie posters into menu boards, it became serious business. I will admit that I don’t always come up with all the menu items, my regular Oscar party girls and my husband help out with ideas. But I always do the posters.  Here is a slideshow of a few favorites from previous years.

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We always have some pretty fun ideas and I think this year was no exception.  Here is a sampling of our menu.

Almond Kalenina  – kale, date, parmesan and almond salad

Beets of the Southern Wild – arugula and beet salad

D’Mango – a delicious mango cocktail as well as a Coeur a la Crème with mango chutney

Escargot – while I didn’t serve some Iranian snail dish, I did make spinach and cheese pinwheels in the shape of a snail

King’s Toast Points Bruschetta – self explanatory

Hitchcrock starring Artichoke Hopkins & Helen Mozzarella – artichoke mozzarella dip in a crockpot

Life of Pie – while I admit, this was an easy one to come up with along with Zero Dark Chocolate, my friend Jenny made an amazing samosa pie in keeping with the theme of the movie

The Schezwan  – Sweet and spicy schezwan turkey meatballs.  I will not describe the form my friend Vickie chose to shape them since she wanted to keep with the theme of this movie as well, but considering “The Sessions” was about a sex surrogate I think you all get the picture.

Snow White Cupcakes and the Bundtman – White cupcakes from Sprinkles and a homemade caramel bundt cake.

D’Mango
Escargot
Wreck It Roquefort
Almond Kalenina
Beets of the Southern Wild
Hitchcrock
Kings Toast Points
Life of Pie – The Pastry of a Lifetime
The Mushroom
The Schezwan
Snow White Cupcakes & the Bundtsman
Zero Dark Chocolate

And of course, every year we must have our wine section:

Walk the Vine
There Will Be Wine
District Vine
Wine Flight

Wreck it Roquefort:  When The Game Is Over, The Fig Begins.  Coming to Crackers in 3D

or

Fig & Blue Cheese Savouries

Click the above link for the recipe from Epicurious from The Food 52 Cookbook Volume 2 (and make sure to visit Food52 as well.  It is one of my favorite culinary websites)

Fig & Blue Cheese Savouries

A few suggestions for the recipe:

For step 3, I didn’t have a small enough cutter so I cleaned out an old prescription bottle and used that.  It worked perfectly.

For step 4, I  highly suggest using a pastry bag with a small round tip for filling if you have one.  Trying to scoop out the fig jam from a ¼ teaspoon was really difficult.

So while the menus and puns change over the years, one thing always stays the same: George Clooney is hot, and so are these … (insert just-from-the-oven item here)

George Clooney Is Hot
George Clooney Is Hot
George Clooney Is Hot