Summer Harvest Beef Stew

Beef stew isn’t really the first thing you think of having for dinner in summer. But when everything is in season, why not? I’ve been making this version of beef stew for about 10 years now and it is my absolute favorite. Maybe it’s because it’s completely devoid of peas and carrots (oh, I do hate cooked peas and carrots so) or maybe it’s the surprising plot twist at the end of the recipe, but I have yet to meet a better beef stew recipe.

Without further ado, my favorite beef stew recipe:

Summer Harvest Beef Stew
1.5lbs. stew meat
3 bell peppers, diced
1 onion, chopped
thyme, bay leaf & red pepper flakes
2 c. chopped tomatoes + 1 T. tomato paste (or 2c. tomato sauce)
2 cloves peeled garlic
1 c. really good red wine
1 c. chicken stock

Coat beef in flour and brown in a large hot pan. Take beef out and put aside. Add a bit of olive oil to pan and then add garlic, herbs, pepper flakes and onion. Saute until tender. Add meat back in the pan along with wine. Reduce wine by half. Add stock, tomatoes and tomato paste (or tomato sauce). Simmer for an hour covered and 30 minutes uncovered.

Surprise Ending
Heat 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar with 2 tablespoons sugar in small saucepan. When sugar is dissolved add into stew. Then add 1 t. unsweetened cocoa powder to stew. Stir well. Serve over roasted, quartered potatoes, egg noodles or rice.

The Perfect B for your BLT

It’s official, the Brandywines are ripe and it’s BLT season. We had our first one last week and it was divine! There’s a lot of talk about choosing the perfect tomato for a BLT. And of course if you aren’t already growing some, you pick out a nice head of organic lettuce, but you can’t just pick up a pack of cheap old Farmer Johns bacon. Oh no, you’ve got to find some really good bacon.

Well, last year we did a 12 month intensive search for the perfect bacon, by way of the Bacon of the Month Club, and we’ve found the perfect BLT bacon. We really liked using a pepper bacon, because it adds a nice spiciness. However, it can’t be too spicy because that distracts. And you don’t want a really smokey bacon, because, well, that’s just too smokey. But Hempler’s pepper bacon is perfect. It’s just the right mix of smoky, peppery, meaty, crispy goodness for your BLT. You can order it online here. And if you are feeling really indulgent, you too should try a full year of the Bacon of the Month Club. It’s great fun to have bacon delievered to your door each month.

Eating Purslane is *so* Trendy

Who knew that our little lowly weed purslane is getting so much press these days. Maybe it hired a new publicity agent, or maybe it has a new movie coming out, but whatever the reason, I’m seeing it in all sorts of fantastic magazines. It was in last month’s Sunset magazine and now it’s in this months issue of Gourmet (by the way, does the photography in Gourmet make you swoon too? I adore each and every beautiful page. I won’t get into how their recipes don’t follow the seasons hardly at all, I’ll just hush up and admire.).

I posted one recipe for it a few months back. I loved that Purslane stew and I’ve made it again since I wrote about it. But I decided to try out Sunset’s Purslane & Cucumber & Yogurt salad. I like it okay, but if I had to make it again here’s how I’d do it:

Kendra’s Version of Sunset’s Purslane & Cucumber & Yogurt Salad:
Mix Together:
1 Cucumber, seeded and diced
2 c. chopped purslane
2 Tbs. chopped mint
1 garlic clove mashed to a paste with 1 tsp. salt
2 c. plain yogurt
2 tbsp. olive oil
zest of 1 lemon
freshly ground black pepper

Oh, by the way, did you catch Scott’s Pesto Manifesto the other week? He’s worth listening to when it comes to cooking techniques. Although he works for the illustrious Chez Scott at the moment (a lovely little one table family-style joint in Sonoma) he used to cook for Piatti’s in Mill Valley and Left Bank in Larkspur (which I used to live in the apartments above before we met) so he knows what he’s talking about. His tip on blanching the basil or whatever leafy green you choose is the best. He didn’t have time this weekend to blanch our pesto and it turned out it’s usual shade of dark, gray green. Blanching it will really keep it’s lively green color.
Thanks also to Brittney of Eye on the Bay for featuring it on your blog!

How to Make Fruit Rollups

I thought we had used up all of our nectarines in our recent canning spree, but Scott walked in the backdoor yesterday with another basket full (the last of them). Hmmm, what to do with them? I thought I’d try my hand at fruit leather again. Nectarines are a perfect candidate for fruit leather because they aren’t as juicy as peaches so they dry faster. Plus I like their tangy flavor.

I had tried making fruit leather in the past and was never very satisfied with my results, but I think I got it right this time. Here’s how I did it:

Pit the nectarines and place in a pot. Turn the heat to medium/high and mash the fruit with a potato masher. You can add sugar at this point if you like, but I chose not to for this batch since the nectarines were pretty ripe already. Bring the fruit to a boil for about 15-20 minutes. Blend (carefully–it’s hot!) with an immersion blender.

Once the fruit reaches a jam like consistency, spread it onto parchment lined cookie sheets.

Place in oven and turn the temperature to the lowest setting. Once the oven reaches temperature, then turn it off. You may have to keep turning the heat on and off for the next two or so hours until the fruit has become tacky to the touch.

Once it’s cooled, roll it up in the parchment paper and slice into one and a half inch lengths. Store your homemade fruit rollups in an air tight container.

You can use the sun to dry the leather, but you will need a breathable cover such as cheese cloth to spread over it. Or else you’ll get bug and lint covered leather (that’s what happened with a previous batch, not so tasty!). I’ve found that even in our arid climate it takes a few days to dry, which is why I went the easy route and used the oven.

Overall, it was an easy process and I would totally recommend trying it if you are overloaded in fruit.

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Canning Lids Download

As promised, I’ve created a little goodie for you home canners. After years of canning, we have been very lazy about labeling our jars. Sometimes we write a quick Sharpie note on the lids or maybe a short length of masking tape with a ball point pen scribble. But usually they go label-less and we have to guess what we worked so hard to create over the summer.

This summer, however, things are going to be different. I design for a living, for crying out loud, why haven’t I gotten it together to create our own labels? Who knows why it took me this long, but last Thursday was the inspiration. Seeing all of those beautiful label-less jars of nectarines was the final straw. We put so much effort into growing the fruit, then picking it, slicing and canning it and we give them away as gifts so often, it’s a shame to not put a final little touch on it. The perfect gift giving touch. The touch that will make you smile when you go to open it.

I created four different designs and put them all together on one sheet for you to be able to print them onto label paper and use for your own home canning. I hope you like them and please, feel free to share.

Download the pdf here and print away my friends!

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Hot

You know when the first morning glint of sun shines down this hard that it’s going to be a hot day. Actually a hot, hot week. Over 100 degrees. We’re going to do our best to keep cool, keep the garden watered, and maybe we’ll do a little reading up so we can wrote a bit about organic pest control, pollinating watermelons and maybe we’ll even talk a little mulch when the weather cools down.
Stay cool friends.

When life gives you cherry plums…

…make cherry plum jam!

We have these cherry plum trees all over town. They grow almost like weeds around here and I don’t think anyone really pays attention to the fruit. The plums just fall on the ground and make a great big, icky, sticky mess. And I’ll admit, I was completely one of those people. Then my ‘crazy’ husband went outside a few years ago, collected a few and made jam out them. I thought he had gone bananas. But then I tasted the jam. It was so good! Tart and sweet and the brightest shade of magenta you’ve ever seen. It’s now my favorite jam of all.

So far we’ve made 8 jars this season and as I type we have another big pot of jam boiling on the stove. Our exact as science recipe? A pot full of plums and a few handfuls of sugar. Simmer and smash them. Strain them and simmer some more. Then put up into jars. Enjoy on toast. Give away to friends.

Kale for Sale has a great post on wasted fruit, check it out. Also GreenBean has a good comment on that post…if you belong to a group in your town, such as a mom’s group, or maybe your local freecycle, send out an e-mail asking if anyone has any fruit they won’t use. You might end up with bags of free fruit that you can use for freezing, making tarts or jam.

If you come to Sonoma…

….be sure to wear Purple Haze carrots in your hair..

You got the song reference, right? Yes, my sense of humor does border on cheesy, or rather is firmly planted in cheese.

Anyway, we’ve taken the Growing Challenge from seed to harvest! They taste good too (the carrots that is). Sweet, but not too sweet.

Since we’re in the kitchen, I opened the fridge door a few minutes ago and saw that Scott had harvested our first zucchinis and blossoms. (oh, note to self: you can easily increase blog traffic by using that little three letter word…and maybe not quite the kind of traffic you want. ooops.) Also our first pesto of the year augmented with spinach which we enjoyed on our leftover gnocchi. A tupperware full of last years defrosted nectarines. And three dozen eggs. Anyone have any good egg recipes?

What are you doing to eat more plants?

So what are you doing to eat more plants? We all know we need to eat more of them, we’ve read about it and seen it. But how do you actually incorporate it into your everyday life? More salads, more stir fries? Have you ever tried a green smoothie?

We go through phases. A week or so where we’ll do really good at incorporating plants into our day and we’ll feel good. Lighter, healthier, a bit more bounce in our step. Then we are tempted to have on teeny, tiny bite of chocolate chip cookie, and then another, and next thing you know we’ve eaten that as well as the rest of the dozen and we’re back on the pasta, meat, and sweets train and we go back to feeling heavy and slow.

Luckily the bounty of this late spring garden is helping us. How can you not eat all of this wonderful mustard, lettuce, radishes, broccoli and collard greens? That’s one good thing about having a garden. No excuses not to eat the healthy stuff, it’s right outside your backdoor. And if you leave it go to bolt then you feel like a heel for not eating it in time.

So how do you eat more plants?

purslane stew

I have this thing for weeds. I really like being able to eat them. I don’t know why. Maybe it appeals to my scrappy nature because they grow so easily that its truely like free food. Or maybe it appeals to my inner nutritionist because of all those extra antioxidents they carry to defend themselves. Or maybe it makes me feel like a pioneer in making do with what you have. But I like them. When I was my older sons age and in preschool our teacher would take us through her wilderness like backyard on exploritory walks and she would find the minors lettuce and let us eat it. Ever since then I never pass a grove of minors lettuce without picking some and enjoying it’s fresh taste.

So imagine my delight when I found out that our biggest weed bully, purslane, was edible. Purslane only comes out when the weather heats up and then it comes out with abundance, taking over every last inch that it can penetrate. Its one of the most common weeds in the world and I’ve heard that the one growing in our neck of the woods (or valley should I say) is called golden purslane. I like to eat it earlier in the spring when it’s taste is light and lemony. I find that as the plant matures it takes on a kind of soapy taste. It has high levels of iron and Omega 3s. And in Turkey they make a stew out of it. As soon as I read that recipe, I took our salad spinner basket (our favorite harvesting basket) and headed out to pick some. The recipe calls for 2 pounds of purslane and after picking a half basket full, I was only at half a pound. So you can really get rid of some weeds this way.

I washed it well followed the recipe, made the yogurt garlic sauce to go with, Scott poached a few eggs to go with and we had ourselves an incredible Sunday dinner. Really, it’s worth trying. And if you don’t have purslane where you live you can easily substitute spinach.

Purslane Stew Served with Yogurt and Garlic Sauce
from Classical Turkish Cooking

2 lbs. purslane
3 T. butter
1 c. chopped onion
1/4 lb. ground lamb or beef
1 tomato, chopped
1 c. stock or water
1/4 c. uncooked rice
salt & pepper

Heat butter in a large heavy pan and cook onions until lightly brown. Add meat and cook until it browns. Add tomato and cook for a minute longer. Then add purslane, cover the pot and let cook for about 10 minutes until the leave wilt. Stir in the stock or water, bring to a boil and add the rice. Season to your taste, cover and cook for about 20 minutes. Serve with Yogurt Garlic Sauce (2 cups of plain yogurt mixed with 2 t. crushed garlic, salt and pepper mixed together).

Enjoy!