Tag: recipe

Pumpkin

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Baking, Event, Freezing, Ingredient, UsingLeave a comment

It’s been a week of firsts here at Twice as Tasty. It saw the official launch of workshops on just about any technique, recipe, or topic that is or will be covered by the blog. If you’re intrigued by these recipes but timid about trying them solo, workshops are for you—and your friends; the workshops are designed to be hosted in private kitchens for small groups. The first phase will be in my local corner of Montana. But I love to travel, so contact me if you’re interested in hosting anywhere: Next stop will be Bellingham, WA, and the Puget Sound area at the end of December.

Twice as Tasty also catered its first event, a house concert at the EVK Lounge. From a food standpoint, this was an opportunity to add smell and taste to an already sensual evening, with the scent of baking pumpkin and chocolate wafting through the room midway through the show. Learn to make Roasted Pumpkin Puree and Seeds and Pumpkin–Chocolate Cookies

Broccoli

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Freezing, Ingredient, UsingLeave a comment

One of the few vegetables I always blanch is broccoli. For years I skipped blanching before freezing altogether. As I mention elsewhere on this blog, blanching affects food quality rather than food safety, and I wasn’t really tasting the difference with most vegetables. Besides, I grill corn, onions, eggplant, and most other veg before freezing, which makes a blanch step redundant.

Broccoli, I’ve learned, is a big exception. Frozen raw, it ends up tasting bitter and woody, even when you add cheese and stock to make a soup. I opt to place the chopped stems and florets in a steamer basket instead of plunging them into the boiling water. Hervé This explains in Kitchen Mysteries that hydrogen ions ultimately are responsible for cooked vegetables appearing brown instead of green. Putting vegetables directly into water only increases their contact with hydrogen. Learn to steam-blanch broccoli and make Broccoli Cheese Soup

Chowders

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Freezing, Grilling, Topic, UsingLeave a comment

I’m a fan of thick, hearty soups. Although I make miso or hot and sour soup when I’m down with a bug, I gravitate toward soups that you know are filling just by looking in the pot.

Last week, I mentioned a range of thickeners that can be added to the pot. My favorites are flour-and-butter roux, as in 30-Minute Cherry Tomato Soup. and potatoes. Potatoes have the advantage of acting as both main ingredient and thickener and can be the prominent—or even the primary—ingredient; they can be added to the pot precooked or raw. Like tomatoes, potatoes are mostly water, but the portion that is solid is almost entirely starch. As you heat potatoes, the starch softens, expands, and gels, making the soup more viscous. Keep this in mind when you’re preparing a potato-thickened soup: Potato starch gels at a lower temperature than flour. The result is a far thicker soup. Learn to make Hearty Corn Chowder and Boozy Potato Chowder

30-Minute Soups

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Freezing, Grilling, Topic, Using6 Comments

Soup. That short word has endless variations. A walk down the canned soup aisle, a price check of a gourmet carton, or a search for a soup recipe is enough to convince anyone that making a steaming, scrumptious pot from scratch is a complex, challenging process. But soup is as simple as the word. This dish is an excellent place to take the leap from following a recipe to improvising a meal.

At its most basic, soup is four components: a base, a thickener, a liquid, and a main ingredient. The liquid and main ingredient can be thought of as the essence: add 3 parts liquid to 2 parts main ingredient, and it’s soup. Add a base to boost the flavor and a thickener to improve the texture, and you’re competing with that gourmet carton. But it’s likely you’ve never seen a recipe that puts it this way—until now. Learn to make Fresh Improv Soup and 30-Minute Cherry Tomato Soup

Stocks

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

I can’t recall when I started making soup stocks. All I know for sure is that vegetable stock and shrimp stock have long been staples in my freezer. The pair meets most needs, but I keep a lighter Corncob Stock and heavier mushroom stock on hand when growing season and freezer space allow.

Like salad dressings, stocks are easy to make and adapt. They’re also powerful: Replace water with stock when preparing soup, a sauce, or even plain rice, and you instantly elevate your dish to the next level. But stocks can be too powerful: Store-bought stocks are often too intensely flavored and too highly salted. By making your own, you can control everything from content to salt ratio to storage size. They can be made with whole vegetables, but they’re equally tasty from the trimmings off another meal. You don’t really need a recipe, but a few techniques can help. Learn to make Vegetable Stock and Shrimp Stock

Apples

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Canning, Dehydrating, Ingredient2 Comments

Applesauce is among my earliest canning memories, in the kitchen and on the tongue. My dad grew several varieties of apples, and every year my mom would puree the fruit into dozens of quarts of applesauce. I recall pushing down on softened apples with a wooden mallet while my mother cranked away on the handle of the Victorio food strainer. I called it the “Victoria strainer” and clung to the idea that the British queen once used a similar device.

But my favorite applesauce was made by my grandmother. Grandma Tiny chopped apples by hand for small batches she stored in her freezer. Her “chunky applesauce” outshined all others. Mom’s applesauce did have one advantage: we could pour it onto dehydrator trays and dry it into fruit leather for school lunches. Between the two versions, I was spoiled to all other applesauce and have never been able to stomach commercial forms.
Learn to make Grandma Tiny’s Chunky Applesauce and Auntie Julie’s Fruit Leather

Tomatillos

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Canning, Freezing, Grilling, Ingredient, Using2 Comments

If you’re a gardener, you likely end your season with a rack of green tomatoes and a quest to find a way to use them. Sorry, but this is not that recipe. I gave up on green tomato salsas several years ago—the vinegar required to make the salsa shelf stable when water-bath canning has always seemed overpowering.

Instead, I fell for the lovely green lanterns that grow into tomatillos, the traditional base for salsa verde. These little husked fruits clock in at pH 3.83, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, well below the safe level for water-bath canning. The added acid covers the secondary low-acid vegetables and boosts the flavor. Even so, grilling and draining vegetables hasn’t been lab tested by National Center for Home Food Preservation, so I heavily researched and meticulously calculated the acidity for safe canning; to double-check my calculations, I test the recipes with a ThermoWorks high-accuracy pH meter. More details are in the Tips & Tricks for the recipe.

Tomatillos are as easy to grow as tomatoes; just be sure to buy two plants so that they cross-pollinate. Not surprisingly, I prefer them grilled like tomatoes—and have found yet another beverage use for their juice. Learn to make Grilled Tomatillo Salsa and Grilled Tomatillo Margaritas

Tomatoes

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Canning, Freezing, Grilling, Ingredient2 Comments

Hopefully you were swayed by my argument for grilling vegetables last month. In this week’s recipes, the grilled flavor shines. The salsa has evolved over the years from fresh to roasted and finally to grilled. We get more compliments for it than for anything else we process, and no matter how much we put up each year, our stash barely lasts to the next canning season.

The grilling creates intense flavor, but it also lets you stretch out the process to suit both your harvest and your schedule. We harvest and grill the ingredients as they come ripe, separating the tomato juice and solids. Then we stash everything in the freezer until we have enough for at least one full canner batch of salsa. It’s also a fabulous recipe for a canning party, particularly when paired with a tasty beverage to celebrate your hard work.
Learn to make Grilled Tomato Chipotle Salsa and Grilled Tomato Bloody Mary Mix

Sweet Peppers

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Grilling, Ingredient, Using2 Comments

My love for grilled flavor in frozen and canned vegetables grew from a love of freshly grilled garden goodies. Long before the technique became essential for frozen eggplant puree and jars of pasta sauce and tomatillo salsa, we were grilling vegetables and immediately stuffing them into our mouths.

Although the grilled food I encountered as a kid was mainly meat, one summer treat at the family home consisted of sticks of shish kebabs. Unlike the traditional Middle Eastern meat sticks, these were mainly veg. Perhaps it was just a ploy to get little girls to eat vegetables: let them choose food to thread on sticks and spin on the grill grate until charred. I’m pretty sure my early choices were black olives, potato, and pineapple, but I eventually developed a taste for anything cooked over coals. I still rely on a version of my mom’s marinade—and grill an extra bell pepper for the next day’s munchies. Learn to make Shish Kebabs with Garlic–Soy Marinade and Corn, Bean, and Pepper Salsa

Eggplant

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Freezing, Grilling, Ingredient, UsingLeave a comment

I fell in love with baba ghanouj when I lived in San Francisco; Kan Zaman, just around the corner from my basement flat in the Haight, made the tastiest version. This Middle Eastern dip is the lesser-known cousin of hummus, pairing equally well with pita bread and made just as easily from scratch. Unfortunately, I’ve seen baba ghanouj recipes that are as flavorless and bastardized as the premade hummus popular in American grocery stores. Some even get the dip’s distinctive flavor by mixing in liquid smoke. Ew.

We spent a season working to replicate the Kan Zaman version—or at least my memory of it—and taste-testing it whenever we had people out for a sail or over for dinner. After grilling the eggplant to get a fabulous smoky flavor, we knew we had our recipe. If you grill, puree, and freeze the eggplant, you can make baba all year. The same goes for onions: grill, dice, and freeze for a year-round dip that will make you the hit of any party. Learn to make Baba Ghanouj and Grilled Onion Dip