Category: Refrigerating

Garlic and Nasturtiums

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Canning, Ingredient, RefrigeratingLeave a comment

When it comes to making pickles, I often think big: pounds of produce, half-gallon jars for fermenting, multiple batches of quart and pint jars for canning, and hours spent cleaning, preparing, and processing. But when it comes to eating pickles, a few often go a long way: a couple of Definitely Dilly Beans in a Grilled Tomato Bloody Mary, a few slices of Better Bread-and-Butter Pickles to serve with or stuff in Gorgeous Grilled Cheese, a handful of Cumin-Spiced Zucchini Refrigerator Pickles to accompany Indian dishes.

As I’ve already shared this month, some pickles are best in both small batches and small doses. This makes them ideal condiments to pack quickly and easily into small jars, store in your fridge, and dip into as needed. Two I always try to have on hand are pickled garlic and nasturtium “capers.”
Learn to make Pickled Garlic and Pickled Nasturtium Seeds

Refrigerator Pickles

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Refrigerating, Topic, Workshops4 Comments

I don’t advocate small-batch canning, but I am a fan of quick and easy pickling that fills your refrigerator one jar at a time. If your only experience with pickling is opening a store-bought jar, then refrigerator vinegar pickles will convert you to homemade. Even if you grew up in a household that put up shelves of pickled vegetables every summer, like I did, refrigerator pickles have surprising benefits.

The disadvantage of refrigerator pickles—that they aren’t sealed in heated jars and thus shelf stable—can be an advantage in freshness and crispness. Small-space gardeners or CSA members can put up a jar at a time as produce ripens. Even expansive gardeners can use fridge pickles to test new flavor combinations. Cucumbers are ideal refrigerator pickles, because they soften so quickly when heated. You should still only use pickling cucumbers; the thick-skinned slicing cucumbers you find in grocery stores and even lemon cucumbers are really only useful as fresh pickles. After years of pasteurizing summer squash, I’ve switched from the canner to the fridge to keep the pickles’ crunch.
Learn to make Cucumber Refrigerator Pickles and Cumin-Spiced Zucchini Refrigerator Pickles

Fresh Pickles

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Refrigerating, Topic2 Comments

When I think of fresh pickles, I immediately envision a platter of sushi, accompanied by pickled ginger (gari) and preceded by a quickly pickled cucumber salad (kyuri asazuke). The Japanese know a thing or two about pickling. They find a range of uses for pickled foods, including condiment, relish, garnish, palate cleanser, and digestive aid. Small portions of these foods can appear at any meal, even breakfast. Traditional Japanese pickles feature ingredients ranging from vegetables to eggs to fish to even cherry blossoms.

In America, the primary exposure to Japanese pickles comes as an appetizer before a meal and as a palate cleanser during it. A favorite local sushi restaurant serves sunomono, small portions of freshly pickled cucumber salad, before every meal—so of course I needed to come up with a version for our home-rolled, and more importantly boat-rolled, sushi nights. This salad is best made fresh when cucumbers are in season. Learn to make Quick-Pickled Cucumber Salad and Pickled Ginger

Pick a Pickle

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Canning, Fermenting, Refrigerating, Topic, WorkshopsLeave a comment

Almost every vegetable garden explodes in July. My first July harvest included the last of the spring greens and asparagus, midcycle broccoli and garlic scapes, and the first snap peas, carrots, beets, and bulb onions. The harvest will go straight into our mouths, but as the yields grow jugs of vinegar and a box of salt will be front and center, ready for pickling.

All of my recently harvested vegetables can be pickled, along with snap beans, summer squash, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, garlic, cabbage, and even fruit. That’s the beauty of pickling: it lets you preserve any low-acid vegetable safely. And like many of my favorite processing techniques, it’s endlessly variable. Various pickling techniques let you preserve everything from a single cucumber to a box of cukes. You can flavor them to fit any meal: American dills or bread-and-butters with burgers, Japanese kyuri asazuke with sushi, Indian kheer uragai with curry—and that’s just a few variations on cucumber pickles.
Read more about quick and easy pickling

Fruit Syrups

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Canning, Freezing, Refrigerating, Topic1 Comment

Syrup. For most of us, the word brings to mind pancakes or waffles drizzled with—OK, drowning in—liquid maple sugar or its cheaper, corn syrup–based counterpart. But as you start harvesting from your garden, the word expands to endless options based on the fruits of summer and enhanced with herbs.

My love of fruit syrups grew when I learned how to extract bonus jars of the flavor-packed liquid from fruit solids intended for jam—and make jam more easily in the process. Syrups are less finicky than jelly but can still be processed for long-term storage or simply stashed in the fridge. Traditionally made from boiled fruit that’s been strained to separate its juice, I’ve found a cold method separates the juice even more effectively from almost any fruit and a roasted method gives an extra boost of flavor.
Learn to roast and freeze fruit for syrup

Herb Infusions

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Baking, Dry storage, Refrigerating, Topic2 Comments

Salt and sugar get a bad rap for their effects on our bodies when consumed in large quantities, but their ability to act as a preservative is often underappreciated. Salt and sugar prevent spoilage and make it difficult or impossible for undesirable bacteria to grow. The rule of thumb for salt curing is that 20% salt keeps most undesirable bacteria at bay.

Although dehydrating and freezing are the most common ways to preserve herbs, the rising popularity of artesian salts and infusions has brought attention to herbs preserved in salt or sugar. The preservative pulls moisture from the herbs while keeping their flavor intact. Leaves plucked from the jar can be used as though they were fresh. The remaining herbed salt works best as the finishing touch, but infused sugar can also work within a recipe. A little of the flavored salt or sugar goes a long way, and the herbs keep a long time.
Learn to make Salt-Preserved Herbs and Herb-Infused Sugar

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (aka the Garden)

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Freezing, Grilling, Refrigerating, Topic, Using, Workshops4 Comments

It’s early May, and the growing season looks so promising: You’ve weeded beds, added compost, and attached hoses. You’re buying starts and scattering seeds. Your garden looks neat and orderly, the rain’s handling your watering, and after winter’s gray you’re thrilled by the first daff blossoms and garlic shoots.

Fast-forward to late July, and it’s a different story. Your garden has exploded, or perhaps imploded. Weeds threaten to outpace desirables in every corner. Early plants have gone bitterly to seed, and late ones are suffering heatstroke. One day your basil gets a sunburn; to compensate, you overwater and drown your tomatoes. You’ve got 6 activities crammed into every weekend, and your planned garden-fresh dinner is supplanted by takeout. You look out the window, afraid to go deeper into your neglected garden. Why did you do this again? Here’s my secret to enjoying this personal jungle.
Read more about my secret to enjoying this personal jungle

Fresh Homemade Dairy

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Fermenting, Refrigerating, TopicLeave a comment

My first experience with making dairy products at home was yogurt. Long before Greek yogurt was popular in the United States, my travel bug had given me an insatiable craving for the thick, creamy fermentation. A hostel owner turned me on to a local maker of sheep’s milk yogurt, which I then ate mixed with honey and topped with fruit almost every morning I was in Greece.

American yogurts paled by comparison, so back home, I searched for an alternative way to get my Greek yogurt fix. I could strain almost any yogurt to approximate the consistency, but only expensive ones got me in the right flavor neighborhood. Then I learned all I needed was a little bit of good yogurt and a gallon of milk: Even with cow’s milk, homemade tasted better and was more affordable than anything I could buy. Which of course led to the question, Could cheese be this easy?
Read more about homemade cheese and yogurt

New Workshops and a Road Trip

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Event, Fermenting, Refrigerating, Using, WorkshopsLeave a comment

People love to gather in kitchens. Whether you’re feeding a family or hosting a party, the scents of good food being prepared draw people to the room. It’s part of what makes a Twice as Tasty–catered house concerts special: live music in an intimate setting is coupled with delicious appetizers and the scent of baking cookies for intermission. It’s also what is making Twice as Tasty workshops so popular: instead of trying to keep people from hovering while you cook, you gather your friends in your kitchen. Then I teach everyone how to prepare a fabulous dish, make a favorite from scratch, or use a new technique.

Twice as Tasty workshops have been so popular that I’ve taken them on the road. My recent road trip to the Pacific Northwest was such a success I plan to repeat it in the future. Workshops are always available locally in Montana’s Flathead Valley.
Read more about the current topics and scheduling a workshop

Planning the Season

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Canning, Dehydrating, Dry storage, Fermenting, Freezing, Refrigerating, Topic2 Comments

Seed catalogs have been arriving for weeks, making me think about planning the garden despite the 5 feet of new snow that buried our local mountains in the last few days. This past weekend only enhanced the spring fever: I led a workshop at the 2nd annual Free the Seeds event and was impressed by not just the four-digit turnout but also the number of booths, workshops, and talks. The local Farm Hands organization lists more than 110 farms, ranches, community gardens, farmers markets, and restaurants and grocers that emphasize local food for a county with a population of under 100,000; nationally, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s most recent survey found that 167,000 U.S. farms locally produced and sold food through farmers markets, on-farm sales, and other direct farmer-to-eater sales.

This means that no matter where you live, it should be possible to grow or purchase locally grown food and use it in Twice as Tasty recipes. Now’s the time to start thinking about what you want to grow in your new garden, add to your existing plot, or ensure will be delivered by your community-supported agriculture (CSA) farmer.
Read more about planning the season