Thursday Recipe - Sweet Slice Pickles

And another wonderful pickle recipe from my awesome pickle cookbook. This one holds up well to processing. You can use little cucumbers or fully ripe ones or anything in between. It's pretty quick to do, too.

Sweet Slice Pickles

Cucumbers - enough to fill 5 pint jars once sliced
1 T. mustard seeds
2 t. celery seeds
whole cloves
3 c. 5% acidity white vinegar
5 c. sugar
1 T. pickling salt

Scrub cucumbers thoroughly. Slice off blossom end and stem, discard. Slice the cucumbers into 1/4 inch slices. Stuff the slices into pint jars, packing tightly.

Divide mustard seed evenly between jars. Repeat with celery seeds. Add 2-3 whole cloves to each jar.

Heat vinegar, sugar, and salt together until it boils.

Pour hot syrup over cucumber slices, dividing it evenly between the jars. If you need more liquid to fill the jars, just add some plain vinegar on top.

Process and seal as appropriate to your altitude.

Makes 5 pints of sliced sweet pickles.

You can add sliced onions or peppers to this if you want. Just substitute it in for some of the cucumber slices.

Thursday Recipe - Salsa Verde

I adore salsa verde, except nobody makes it without cilantro anymore. In case you haven't picked up on it, I detest cilantro. Detest isn't strong enough. Abhor, loathe, despise, execrate (cool word I just found in the dictionary!). The stuff is foul beyond words. If you like it, good for you, but please, please, PLEASE don't try to convince me to try it. I have and no, I will never NEVER like the stuff.

So, I had a whole garden full of green tomatoes and needed something to do with them. I still have quarts of green tomato mincemeat in my basement. I don't have any salsa and my children eat it like candy. So salsa was the obvious answer. I couldn't use my red tomato version, so I went searching for something with green tomatoes. I came across this recipe on the Ball Canning website. I didn't have all the ingredients, so I improvised. I like the version I came up with. It's sweet, tart, citrusy, and very tasty.

Bonus, it can be bottled and stored. If you can keep your kids out of it. Just follow the canning and processing directions for your area and altitude. The original recipe has information on processing or check your local county agricultural extension office.

Salsa Verde

3 large anahiem chilies
7 c. finely chopped green tomatoes
1 large onion, chopped small
2 - 3 large cloves of garlic, finely minced
1/2 c. lemon and/or lime juice
1 t. cumin
1 t. dried oregano
1 t. salt
1 t. chili powder
1 t. black pepper

Wash the chilies. Roast until nicely blackened. (This takes about 15 minutes in my BBQ grill. If you don't have a way to roast them or just want the easy way, use 2 can chopped green chilies. If you want it spicier, chop up some fresh jalapenos or other peppers and add them in.) Peel the roasted peppers, remove seeds, and chop into small pieces.

Dump everything into a large pot - chilies, tomatoes, onion, garlic, lemon/lime juice, and spices. Cook and stir over high heat until the mixture comes to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 10-15 minutes.

Fill clean, warmed pint jars. Wipe the rims clean, process and seal if desired. Otherwise, put it into containers and refrigerate for at least overnight before serving.

If you like it smoother, use a stick blender on the salsa until it's the texture you like.

This recipe makes about 5 pints.

Thursday Recipe - Chili Sauce

This is an old recipe from a church cookbook I got as a wedding present. It's attributed to Helen Lake, so wherever you are, Helen, thank you. I first made it years ago when one of my kids was allergic to corn to the point they couldn't even have corn syrup. He was only a year old and loved ketchup, but every brand I could find back then had corn syrup. I found a bottle of chili sauce that didn't have anything he was allergic to, but it was expensive. So I tried making my own.

This is a mild flavored sauce, with a kick of vinegar. You can chop it as fine as you like. It will still be a bit watery, not thick like commercial ketchup. I like to use it to make sloppy joes.

Chili Sauce

2 dozen large tomatoes (about 18 c., peeled and chopped, seeded if you like)
4 green bell peppers (chopped very fine, about 2 c.)
2 red bell peppers (chopped very fine, about 1 c.)
5 large onions (shredded fine, about 3 c.)
1 t. ground cloves
1 t. dry mustard
1 t. nutmeg
3 1/2 c. vinegar (5% acidity, IMPORTANT! This is for food safety, make sure you use the right acidity. Plain white vinegar is the best, although you can use cider vinegar.)
2 1/2 c. brown sugar
3 T. pickling salt (non-iodized)

Mix everything except vinegar, sugar, and salt, in a very large, heavy saucepan, 10-12 qt stock pot should be big enough. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer for one hour, until sauce thickens. Make sure you stir it every 10 minutes or so to keep it from scorching on the bottom, especially as it thickens. Stir in vinegar, sugar, and salt. Cook for another 5-10 minutes. Ladle into clean pint jars and process to seal. This recipe makes anywhere from 6 pint bottles to about 10 pint bottles, depending on how long you let it cook and juicy the tomatoes are.

For processing, clean rims and screw on a new lid insert. Boil for 40 minutes (this is at my altitude of 5000 feet above sea level) to seal. Remove and let cool. Wash jars and label with date and contents. Check seal before storing.

For canning, check out these books and sites:
USDA Guide to Home Canning (PDF download)
http://www.homecanning.com/
Ball (brand of canning jars) site
http://pickyourown.org/allaboutcanning.htm
National Center for Home Food Preservation

Sloppy Joes My Way

1 lb. ground beef
1 pint chili sauce
2 T. prepared mustard
1 c. quick-cooking oatmeal

Brown hamburger in large frying pan, drain off grease. Stir in chili sauce and mustard, bring to a simmer. Reduce heat, cook for 15 minutes. Stir in oatmeal. Cover and let sit for 5 minutes. Stir well before serving.

The oatmeal helps thicken it, stretch the meat a bit farther, and add fiber. If you don't like the gummy texture, try using 1/2 c. of instant grits or cornmeal, or 1 c. instant rice.

Serve over buns or bread with plenty of extra chili sauce, mustard, ketchup, sliced tomatoes, etc.

Thursday Recipe - Pickled somethings

My daughter and I are on a road trip visiting friends and attending a con. The drive was very long so when we found an old used bookstore in the middle of nowhere Montana, we had to stop. We found a wonderful cookbook - The Complete Book of Pickles and Relishes by Leonard Louis Levinson, Hawthorn Books Inc., 1965. I'm in love already. I want to make just about every recipe in the book. (Sorry, the Jerusalem artichoke pickles will never happen at my house. I detest Jerusalem artichokes.) I even found recipes for pickled crabapples and Lady apples. Mustard pickles, fruit pickles, vegetable pickles, relishes galore - this book is making me drool. I love pickles.

There's one page the book opens to. Here's the recipe on that page. I'm making this one as soon as I can find the ingredients. I'm making as many of the others as I can. I'll post recipes and my results as I do it. If not this summer, definitely next.

Curry Pickle Chunks

3 lbs. 4-5 inch pickling cucumbers
1 2/3 c. white vinegar
1 c. sugar
1 1/2 t. curry powder
2 T. mustard seed
1 1/2 t. celery seed
2 t. salt (pickling salt preferred. The iodine in regular salt can make pickles turn a funky brown color.)

Wash cucumbers thoroughly, cut into chunks.

Combine remaining ingredients and mix well. Heat to a boil. Add cucumbers. Heat just to boiling point; then simmer while quickly packing 1 hot sterilized jar at a time. Fill to 1/8 inch from top. Be sure vinegar solution covers vegetables. Seal each jar at once. Makes 4 pints.

If you make these, please let me know how they turn out.