How to Cure and Dry Beef - Yankee Prepper

Here is a video on drying and curing beef that I want to save. It's from Yankee Prepper on youtube.com.



The basics are:
Trim as much fat as possible off meat.
Mix 1:1 ratio of baking soda and salt - start with 2 cups each - in a tub big enough to work in.
Rub into meat repeatedly for about 20 minutes.
Let meat sit overnight in tub in refrigerator.
The next day, rub in more mix if needed.
Tie meat up with kitchen string - roll it, shape it, make it tight.
Hang it over a pan indoors in a warm, dry place and leave for a month.
When the meat is very firm - like a pepperoni stick - when you press it, it's done.
Cut the string off.
Scrape and scrub, with a brush, as much mix off as possible.
Slice thinly.
Vacuum seal in bag or jar and store.
Will keep for 2 years.

Meatless Sausage From Food Storage By Imstillworkin

Here is a video put together by Imstillworkin over at youtube.com. This seems to be a fabulous recipe for emergencies - electricity is out for a long time, stores are closed, and you're out of breakfast meat. Of course, it's also pretty good for any vegetarians in your life or if you're trying to cut back on meat and fat in your diet.


The link she followed on the internet for the recipe is here.

Cooking Tuna with Jose Andres

This post is to include a link to a show featuring Washington, D.C., chef Jose Andres in a show he did called "Made In Spain" cooking dishes with tuna. Here is the link:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/60535

For those not used to a Spanish accent, Andres has a fairly strong one. Just remember that the letters -cia, z, and s in the middle of words usually sound like "th" to us, and the letter v sounds like a "b." For example, the area Galecia (Ga-lee-see-ah to us) sounds like: Ga-lee-thi-ah. The area Valencia (to us Va-len-see-ah) sounds like: Bah-len-thi-ah.

The first dish he makes is a tapa called Ensaladilla Rusa, which is actually a potato salad with tuna, and he tops it with trout roe. The potato salad is different from what we're used to in the U.S., or at least in my area, in that it also has cooked carrots and green peas. I can hear Max groaning now. Andres made an olive oil mayonnaise, which I have to admit has me groaning. He also used balsamic vinegar as the acid. I've tried using only olive oil for mayo, and it went straight in the garbage pail. Goes to show my appalling lack of taste, I guess.

The next segment of the show  is shot at sea as the fishermen fish for tuna, the bluefin. Then he goes into a restaurant famed for its treatment of tuna and shows various dishes and treatments of tuna.

Following that Andres goes back to his home in D.C. to do a dish. I had to just shake my head because the man started the segment with a block of tuna that would likely cost $100 at the very least. Yep, I'm gonna run down to my local Kroger and pick up a block of tuna a foot long, 4-5" wide, and 2" tall. Mebbe after I win the lottery.

Other than the appalling waste of food used in filming cooking shows, though, I've enjoyed the series. In keeping with my effort to refine my taste enough to like fish, I wanted to keep track of the recipes and methods shown.

As an aside, I have looked and looked but been unable to find a clip of Justo Thomas going about his day as the fish butcher of Le Bernadin, Eric Ripert's restaurant. I've found a few showing Mr. Thomas filleting a fish, but that's not what I want. I remember watching a full segment of him. I think it was filmed by Anthony Bourdain, and must have come from one of the "No Reservations" shows.

Justo Thomas is an amazing fish butcher who daily prepares at least 700 pounds of fish for Le Bernadin. Ripert states that when Thomas is on vacation it takes 3 people working 12-hour days to replace Thomas. Wouldn't most of us love that kind of job security!

Dehydrating Tomatoes Into Fake Figs

Okay!  When my tomatoes come in, I'm going to have to try this:  Dehydrating tomatoes into tomato figs. This is a video from youtube.com by imstillworkin. It is a recipe she found in an old cookbook, and it is a way to mimic figs. However, she commented that to her the taste was more like dates than figs. Whichever they taste like, I love them both. That makes this look like a win/win.

Cajun Cooking with Julia Child and Emeril Lagasse

I'm embedding this video because I want to keep the ingredients for Cajun spice so that I can make it myself, and, LOL, reduce the amount of cayenne pepper. Maybe then I can enjoy the flavor of Cajun without being turned off by the heat. This video is from 1993, and my, oh my, doesn't Emeril look young! in this video, he shows how to make a Shrimp Etoufee and a Crab Boil.

Watch Cajun Cooking with Emeril Lagasse on PBS. See more from Julia Child.

Great Fake White Wine Experiment

We're off on another Great Fake Wine Experiment as of March 2, 2012. This experiment is to make a white wine easily and cheaply. I have a problem with the tannins from red wine - they have a tendency to give me a headache. So I thought I'd try a white wine.

After tasting the Great Fake Red Wine, it was far too dry for my tastes. After decanting the peach wine, it was sickeningly sweet. Four pounds of sugar for the red grape wine; 10 pounds of sugar for the peach wine. This white grape wine will get 5 pounds of sugar.

It generally follows the original Great Fake Wine Experiment recipe:
4 cans of frozen white grape juice
5 pounds of sugar
1 package of yeast
4 gallons of water

Before beginning defrost the frozen juice.

Put the sugar in a big saucepan; I used my pressure cooker. Measure out one gallon of water and pour enough of this in the pan to cover the sugar well. Pour the rest into the container in which you're going to make the wine (5-gallon carboy/water jug). Heat the sugar just enough to get it all melted; it melts better with as much water as you can put in your pan without sloshing over.

While stirring sugar and waiting for it to dissolve, in a small container, cup measure, bowl, whatever is easy for you, put about 1/4 cup warm water, not over 115° F, and add the package of yeast and stir in. Let this set and bloom while you're melting the sugar and doing other things.

Pour the grape juice into the carboy. Add 1 gallon of water. Add the dissolved sugar water. Add the yeast; don't worry about this extra 1/4 cup of water - it won't break the recipe. Add the last 2 gallons of water. Put the lid on and give this a shake to mix everything up. Take the lid off and tape the balloon to the top of the carboy. Electrical tape is the best as is doesn't leave tape goo on the carboy.

Set aside somewhere that doesn't go below 70°F until the balloon deflates and falls over, usually 4-6 weeks. When the balloon flops over, the fermentation is done, and it's wine.

The Great Fake White Wine Experiment
Due sometime after May 2, 2012

Broccoli and Pasta - Tom Colicchio of Top Chef

This is a video of a one-pot dish of broccoli and pasta by Tom Colicchio of Top Chef.

Egg Dish - Tom Colicchio on Top Chef

This is a video of a breakfast dish that is a favorite of Tom Colicchio of Top Chef. It's an oven-baked egg dish with bacon, mushrooms, leeks and eggs. Since leeks are sparse where I live, I'd likely use green onions or sweet onions.

Spicy Cole Slaw - Gail Simmons on Top Chef

This is a video of making a spicy cole slaw that I wanted to remember. It's by Gail Simmons on Top Chef. It uses peanut butter as the base. She adds enough Sriracha to blow the top of my head off, so I think I'll be skipping that. Max loves it. It's so hot it ruins anything for me to eat. Crystal sauce or Cholula is about as hot as I can go. I know; I'm a wimp. I also think I'd slice everything more finely than done here; certainly on the carrots. I'm simply not a fan of a lot of carrot in any salad.

Fish Recipe - Tom Allen on Top Chef

This is a video of a method of oven-cooking fish in parchment which I want to remember. This method cooks the fish in parchment and calls for a fish fillet, grape tomatoes, kalamata olives (or whichever olive you like), some lemon zest, and a sprig of fresh thyme if you have it.

Pork Roast - Tom Allen on Top Chef

Here is a video I'm embedding to remind me of a method of roasting a pork shoulder. Yum.

Onion Soup Mix

This is a video by BexarPrepper from youtube.com on how she makes onion soup mix.

Beef Wellington by Gordon Ramsay

This recipe for Beef Wellington makes me drool. So I'm putting it in my blog to keep for easy access. It's a 2-part video.





While Max was in this weekend (3/11/12) we explored a new-to-us meat market, Hughes, outside of Paducah and got the beef and bacon for the recipe. We went to Kroger for groceries for the mushrooms, etc., and about a mile from home I realized I forgot the puff pastry. Grrrrrr.

Oh, well! I froze the beef, and during the next week I'll track down puff pastry, hopefully in Bardwell, and pick up another package of mushrooms and do it next weekend for Saturday supper.

Runza

Imstillworkin recently posted this recipe on her youtube channel, and it piqued my interest enough to want to save it. I've been craving a meat pie or pastie-type thing lately, but am so horrible with making crusts that craving is all I've done. This recipe looked delicious and easy enough there seems hope that even I can make it.

From her vid, she says it's a dish called Runza and is eaten in Nebraska. It's a meat filling wrapped in a yeast dough and baked in the oven.

Julia and Jacques - Beef and My Breakfast Quiche

This has been a wonderful Sunday afternoon, which I've spent watching episodes of "Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home" over at hulu.com . That's Julia Child and Jaques Pepin (Ole Asbestos Fingers).

This episode was their first and about beef. Since I wanted to remember some of the recipes and methods they used, I embedded it here.

And to start Sunday morning off right, I made Lola and myself a quiche. Yum.

Great Peach Wine Experiment Begins

The Great Fake Wine Experiment has been so much fun it's propelled me into trying a different one. This time it's peach wine. It began on January 7, 2012.

Non-sequitor: While I'm writing today's blogposts, I'm listening to an Amanda Palmer channel via www.pandora.com . For those not familiar with Pandora on the computer, it's an internet radio website that allows you to listen to music. You type in an artist that you like in the search box, and Pandora begins playing music from that artist and others that perform similar music. I've loved Pandora for at least 7 years, probably longer, but I can't remember when I first learned about it.

Charles or Melda - you could listen to singers like Frank Sinatra, Perry Como or Tony Bennett :-)

Back to Peach Wine








Original Peach Wine Recipe 
1 gallon fresh peaches
3 gallons of water
9 pounds of sugar


Gayle's Adapted Peach Wine Recipe
2 #10 cans of peaches
3 gallons of liquid - peach juice + enough water to make 3 gallons
1 10-pound bag of sugar



Again, I used a 5-gallon water container purchased from Wal-Mart. I emptied it, measuring out the required 3-gallons of water for the wine. Then I put the canned peaches in a colander sitting over a bowl and drained them. I saved the juice.

While you're draining the peaches, put the sugar in a large pot and cover it with enough water to melt the sugar, and sit that on the stove on low. The object is to get the water warm enough to melt all the sugar but not to get it terribly hot.

While the sugar was melting, I chopped up the peaches in a food processor. Two (2) large, #10-size, cans of peaches were exactly the gallon of fruit the recipe requires. Of course, for a not-fake recipe, one would use fresh peaches.

Next I put the peaches in the water jug. To get the fruit in the water jug, I used electrical tape and taped my canning funnel to the jug. That way the fruit actually went in the jug and not slithering and splashing all over the floor. Although since I splashed so much water on the floor emptying the water jug, it would have been fairly easy to clean.

Then I added the by-now melted sugar. That got shaken up until the mash was thoroughly mixed up.

Then I poured in the peach juice and shook that to mix it all up. I had measured the liquid from the peaches and subtracted that same amount from the 3 gallons of water. After the peach juice went in, the remaining water was poured in. At this time I yelled for Max, and he shook the whole shebang vigorously for me.

Then I taped a 9-inch party balloon to the top of the water jug with electrical tape. The electrical tapes makes a nice seal but doesn't leave tape goop, um, residue on the water jug. Now the impatient waiting begins.

Pumpkin Canning Finished for 2011

Okay. The canning of pumpkin for 2011 was finally finished a couple of weeks ago. Yay! All in all, I got 4 jelly jars of seeds, both roasted and brined, 15 pints of pumpkin puree for pies or bread, 7 jelly jars of pumpkin butter, and enough puree for 2 pumpkin pies to bake tomorrow from two pumpkins.

One of the pumpkins was a monster pumpkin that Uncle Charles gave me (Thank You!) , and one was a regular-sized one that I rescued from shooting practice from the neighbors across the street. "No! Stop! Don't shoot that pumpkin!" They had 5 or 6 so didn't mind me saving one from an explosive death.

It took me quite a few days to get through the process of cutting, seeding, baking, skinning and pureeing (is that a word?) both of the pumpkins. It took hammering the knife with the meat pounding mallet to get through the monster pumpkin. On the right is the pan of the cooked pumpkin.

Max talked about his mother cooking their on the stove when he was young. I wanted to try a method of removing the seeds and baking the pumpkin before removing the skin so that skinning wouldn't be so difficult.

The monster pumpkin was so large, I could only bake 1/2 of it at a time. Each bake took almost 2 hours. The normal pumpkin fit in the oven in one baking. So all in all it took 6 hours to bake the pumpkin. However, I didn't have to try to scoop raw pumpkin away from the skin. Skinning was very easy after the baking was done. I could also do other things while the baking was going on.

After the quarters or halves were baked, I easily skinned the pumpkin meat and then pureed the meat in a food processor. Note for simmering the puree:  Use a deep pan; this stuff spatters like its only purpose in life is to burn you. It took a few days to get the puree canned, the butter recipe figured out and canned, and the seeds done. Remember that there were other things going on - plumping repairs, Mother care and old age, sigh.

The recipe I used was adapted from one I found on the internet; however, it was changed extensively. Perhaps my pumpkin butter doesn't taste like the "real" stuff, but it sure is good.



Pumpkin Butter


3 cps pumpkin puree
3/4 cp Tampico Citrus Punch (orange juice type liquid)
1 cp sugar
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
pinch of powdered cloves (to taste)
pinch of cinnamon (to taste)

Combine all ingredients in saucepan and simmer until thickened.

Celery Salt

Last night while unloading the celery from the dehydrator, it seemed like a good time to do a little experiment making celery salt. When I was refreshing my memory on dehydrating the celery, I had seen several comments on making celery salt from the dried celery. I wanted to see how it would turn out.

To make celery salt this way, you combine ground celery with salt. Doh, eh? My grinder takes 3 tablespoons of "spice" as a maximum to grind well. That ended up being about 1 tray from the dehydrator. I ground that to a fine powder and added 1/2 teaspoon salt.

In the top photo, you can see how much celery was on one dehydrator tray. The little pile of celery on the left is three tablespoons. You can see my grinder with three tablespoonsful in it.

The end result was far different from store-bought celery salt. First, the color was much lighter.  Second, it was a finer grind. Third, I controlled the salt content; thus, it was far less salty. Fourth, it didn't have as much celery flavor.

In the bottom photo, the spoon on the right is a commercial celery salt. The spoon on the left and the bowl contain my ground dried celery

I was unhappy with losing the robust celery flavor and wonder if using some celery seed with it would impart more celery flavor. I actually liked the lighter color. I'm unsure about the more powdery texture and will have to wait until I use it to decide if that matters.

If anyone with experience in doing this would like to jump in with their opinions, please feel free to comment below.  If you're viewing this on the home page, you can comment by clicking on the word "comment" where it shows how many there are. If you click on the title of the blog post, you will go to a page with only this post, and there is a link to click on to "Post a Comment."

Dehydrating Celery

Since celery was at such a good price during Thanksgiving, I took the opportunity to stock up on it for my dried foods storage. There are as many different ways to dehydrate celery on the internet as there are to cook chili.

While doing this batch, I saw quite a few websites that talked about grinding the celery and mixing with salt to make celery salt. That's something I'd like to try in the future. I need to get a new grinder for spices before I can, though.


Edited 12/18/11 to add permalink to celery salt post:
http://jolagayle.blogspot.com/2011/12/celery-salt.html

After trying a few different methods, this is the one I've settled on as liking the best. It gives the best color, although it takes a longer amount of time.

1. Wash celery well.
2. Cut off leaves and wide root ends
3. Slice celery into 1/4" slices (crosswise)*
4. Put slices into bowl of cold water if processing a lot.**
5. Just before loading dehydrator, soak celery in 6 cups of water with 1 tablespoon of baking soda for 5 minutes.***
6. Drain and load dehydrator trays.
7. Dry at 110°F  until celery breaks easily, 16-18 hours. 

*This is the size with which I like to cook. I've seen directions for 1" slices and have considered doing that for putting under roasting meats; however, I've not done it so far.

**How much you process depends on the size of the celery, your stamina and dehydrator. It took 3 bunches of medium celery to fill 6 trays for my Nesco dehydrator.

***Do this in batches if you don't have a huge bowl.

Canning Pickled Banana Pepper Rings and Okra

The last thing I've done this weekend is to make some pickled banana pepper rings to eat with pizza. Huzzah! I was amazed I got 12 half pints of pickled rings from the peppers Jill brought me, in addition to making white bean soup, eating a few with meals, and I've still got a bit I'll dehydrate.

Before I did the banana peppers though, I did up the okra Uncle Charles brought me. They turned out lovely. I've been sitting on pins and needles hoping I'd get okra to pickle. I used a recipe Jill gave me that comes from her husband's family. They've used it for decades. It's been a long time since I ate some of Joe's pickled okra, but I remember it was good. Well, if he wouldn't have put the red peppers in it (ducking and running.)













Following is Joe's Pickled Okra recipe. It can be used for all sorts of pickling. I used it on the banana peppers, and Jill says they've done Giardiniera (carrots, cauliflower, celery, peppers, onions, zuchinni). This IS NOT a USDA-approved canning recipe. It is a very old recipe from before the days of food scientists and litigation. One can't assume this recipe is absolutely safe for use, especially for people who live in states with high loads of botulism spores (west of the Rockies.)

1 quart white vinegar
3 quarts water
1/4 - 1/5 cup canning, pickling or kosher salt
1/8 tsp alum per pint jar

Optional: add garlic, dill or hot peppers to taste

1. Sterilize jars. 
2. Mix vinegar, water, and salt in pot and bring to boil.
3. While waiting for solution to boil, pack sterilized jars with fruit or vegetable of choice.
4. Pour boiling solution over packed jars and let cool enough to handle.*
5. Pour liquid in jars through a strainer back into solution in pot on stove and return to boil.
6. Do this four (4) times. According to uptake of solution by produce, 3 times may suffice.
7. On the last time, add 1/8 tsp alum to each pint jar.
8. Top with canning lid and ring.
9. Let seal and cool overnight. Remove ring and rinse jars. Date and store.
10. Let jars sit for 1 month before eating.

*When I can handle the jar this way, it's cool enough. I don't want to get burned doing this.