One dish dinner, and some canning
Sep. 2nd, 2003 09:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidTonight was a salad dinner, defying the cooler weather with a summery dish. I particularly wanted to use as many farm veggies as I could, since fitting things in the fridge is a bit of a challenge just now. I washed the larger of the two heads of romaine, and added some of the mixed greens and many basil leaves. I left the greens in the drainer for a bit, while I diced tomatoes. I used many kinds, whichever seemed ripest, including lemony-yellow ones, red ones, and gold-almost-orange ones. My guest brought homemade garlic croutons, and some leftover grilled chicken breast, from a recent barbeque. We diced the chicken, and added that to the platter, along with a couple of cloves of crushed garlic, and some minced basil flowers, from the porch. Then we dressed the salad with sea salt, freshly ground black pepper, balsamic vinegar, and some almost-green extra virgin olive oil. It was a huge platter of salad... and we ate every bite. I'm still full, hours later.
I also finished my first ever batch of watermelon pickles. Last year, I thought about watermelon pickles, since it seemed a shame not to use the organic watermelon rind that came with the melons from the farm. I'd never had any, though, and it seemed like too much work. This year, I was determined to try it, though I've still never had any to compare it to.
I used the rind from one of last week's watermelons (I could've used both, as it turns out), and used a recipe I'd found online, though I spread the steps out over a couple of days, partly due to exhaustion from the marathon move, and partly due to lacking sufficient quantities of cider vinegar until I restocked. I'm not sure how this changed the final product...
I boiled the rinds for five minutes, then let that cool. I drained the big pieces, cut off the outer green skin and the rest of the pink flesh, and diced the remaining white part. I let that sit in salty water for many hours. After I drained that, I boiled cider vinegar and sugar together, with cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, and whole allspice wrapped in a cheesecloth bundle. The recipe had a variant that included minced preserved ginger, and since I had some, I added it. Once this was boiling, I added the watermelon rind, and let it boil. Unfortunately, the cheesecloth didn't work as well as I'd wanted, but at least the whole spices are easy to avoid (and I did get *most* of them out). I let it boil while we ate dinner, then canned what was left at the end, which gave me three half-pints, and part of another, though without enough vinegar to cover it in the jar. What I hadn't remembered was how much I like the smell of boiling cider vinegar. It makes me think of chutney, a good olfactory association.
I had to try some, and it's pretty intense, a bit more sour than the average sweet cucumber pickle, but with more complicated flavors, and a good texture. My guest suggested the flavors would likely meld together more in the next few days, and was happy to take a jar home to test that hypothesis.
Now I have to figure out what one does with watermelon pickle. Since it made me think of chutney while cooking, perhaps I can use it as I would a chutney, baking it on fish or chicken, or using it on a cream cheese sandwich. It seems more a condiment than a side dish, somehow.
I also roasted a couple of trays of farm veggies (potato-onion-carrot and onion-eggplant-tomato). I find if I cook them, I'll manage to eat quite a lot of veggies, either just straight as cooked, or mixed into a frittata, or put on top of a flatbread, or added to a pasta dish, or something. I'm too full of salad to really think about their fate just now, though I'm happy to have something to base lunch tomorrow on....
I also finished my first ever batch of watermelon pickles. Last year, I thought about watermelon pickles, since it seemed a shame not to use the organic watermelon rind that came with the melons from the farm. I'd never had any, though, and it seemed like too much work. This year, I was determined to try it, though I've still never had any to compare it to.
I used the rind from one of last week's watermelons (I could've used both, as it turns out), and used a recipe I'd found online, though I spread the steps out over a couple of days, partly due to exhaustion from the marathon move, and partly due to lacking sufficient quantities of cider vinegar until I restocked. I'm not sure how this changed the final product...
I boiled the rinds for five minutes, then let that cool. I drained the big pieces, cut off the outer green skin and the rest of the pink flesh, and diced the remaining white part. I let that sit in salty water for many hours. After I drained that, I boiled cider vinegar and sugar together, with cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, and whole allspice wrapped in a cheesecloth bundle. The recipe had a variant that included minced preserved ginger, and since I had some, I added it. Once this was boiling, I added the watermelon rind, and let it boil. Unfortunately, the cheesecloth didn't work as well as I'd wanted, but at least the whole spices are easy to avoid (and I did get *most* of them out). I let it boil while we ate dinner, then canned what was left at the end, which gave me three half-pints, and part of another, though without enough vinegar to cover it in the jar. What I hadn't remembered was how much I like the smell of boiling cider vinegar. It makes me think of chutney, a good olfactory association.
I had to try some, and it's pretty intense, a bit more sour than the average sweet cucumber pickle, but with more complicated flavors, and a good texture. My guest suggested the flavors would likely meld together more in the next few days, and was happy to take a jar home to test that hypothesis.
Now I have to figure out what one does with watermelon pickle. Since it made me think of chutney while cooking, perhaps I can use it as I would a chutney, baking it on fish or chicken, or using it on a cream cheese sandwich. It seems more a condiment than a side dish, somehow.
I also roasted a couple of trays of farm veggies (potato-onion-carrot and onion-eggplant-tomato). I find if I cook them, I'll manage to eat quite a lot of veggies, either just straight as cooked, or mixed into a frittata, or put on top of a flatbread, or added to a pasta dish, or something. I'm too full of salad to really think about their fate just now, though I'm happy to have something to base lunch tomorrow on....