Chilies

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

You could call this week’s main recipe a food fail. A couple of years ago, I set out to make homemade sriracha. I had grocery bags full of hot peppers that season, and I thought some were destined to become chipotles for Grilled Tomato Chipotle Salsa and others would be fermented to replicate the flavor of the classic Thai chili sauce and paste.

Then we started smoking chilies and attempting to find the perfect balance of smoke and heat. Suddenly I had grocery bags of smoked chilies—which would not ferment. Even at the low temperatures used for smoking, the heat was high enough to kill off the natural bacteria in the peppers that are essential for fermentation. But I was too stubborn not to try. And although my chili paste never fermented, it was delicious.

So now I make Home-Smoked Chili Paste every year and have yet to miss that bottle sriracha on my shelf. I’ve since learned that adding a culture could allow me to smoke and then ferment, so expect more experimentation down the road. But for now, what could be called a food fail has turned into a favorite kitchen staple.
Learn to smoke chilies and make Home-Smoked Chili Paste

Beets

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Ingredient, Using3 Comments

Root vegetables are ideal for roasting. Beets, potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic—all take on a range of flavors missing from a raw or boiled preparation. The hidden sugars rise to the surface and caramelize, and the oven’s enclosed, indirect heat intensifies flavors. High-temperature roasting seals the surface, leaving the interior soft and moist, while low heat deters mushiness. Either way, the result is delicious.

Most root vegetables can be roasted in the same way: Cut them into pieces, coat them with some oil so that they cook rapidly and don’t stick to the pan, and spread them evenly and turn them occasionally for consistent cooking. Even beets and garlic can be roasted in this way. But I like to wrap these vegetables whole in foil, let this bonus layer and their natural skins seal in their juices and flavor, and then remove the skins and cut them down to size at the end.
Learn to roast beets and make Roasted Beet and Cheese Salad

Grilled Tomatoes

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

I grill a lot of vegetables, from asparagus to tomatillos, but I probably spend the most time grilling tomatoes. Not only are they delicious on a skewer with other vegetables for dinner, but they’re also fabulous when pulled off the canning shelf or from the freezer. And the process for grilling large tomatoes is easy: slice them in half, sear them cut side down on a hot grill for a couple of minutes, and then flip and cook a few more minutes until soft.

Those of us with large gardens quickly come up with enough grilled tomato batches for canner loads of salsa, Bloody Mary mix, and pasta sauce. But in recent years, I’ve been running a small batch to freeze in cubes—the perfect size to drop into a soup, spread on a pizza crust, or simply dip into with mozzarella-stuffed breadsticks.
Learn to make Grilled Tomato Pizza Sauce and Stuffed and Grilled Breadsticks

Grill It, Roast It, Smoke It

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

And just like that, September is here. Long before I’m ready for summer to be over, the month that signals the start of fall rolls in. But even though a few of August’s garden-fresh favorites are finished for the season, September’s list of harvestable fruits and vegetables is the longest of year, with the last of the summer beans, berries, and corn bumping up against the first of the fall greens, plums, and winter squash.

If August is the month for enjoying fresh fruit and veg, September is the month for adding a bit of charred, caramelized, and smoky flavor to the produce on the table. We’ll be grilling, roasting, and smoking all month at Twice as Tasty—mostly thanks to some incredible response from recent Twice as Tasty workshops.

Although my September schedule is quickly filling up, it’s not too late to get in on the current lineup or featured workshops locally. And Twice as Tasty will be on the road again in late October! For more details, click here.
Read more about grilling, roasting, and smoking

Fresh Tomatoes

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

Tomatoes top the list of my favorite fresh summertime, homegrown vegetables. (Yes, scientifically, they’re fruit. But to a cook, they’re vegetables.) These are fresh summertime favorites because their sweet, juicy flesh is at its peak, tasting completely different from tomatoes that have been grilled, roasted, or otherwise cooked or preserved. They’re homegrown favorites because despite the few tomato varieties available in grocery stores, hundreds of varieties are available as seed.

We planted 26 tomato starts in late May and have been harvesting 14 varieties this month. Some are tiny, bright red cherry tomatoes; some are dark purple giants. My childhood loves are sweet Yellow Pears I eat like candy from the vine, but some of my recent favorites are heirloom Black Cherry tomatoes, with large (for the “cherry” class), dusky fruit, and dense, heart-shaped Oxheart tomatoes. Each adds a distinct flavor and texture to fresh appetizers and salads.
Learn to make Herbed-Tomato Dip and Panzanella (Tomato and Bread Salad)

Fresh Fillings

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Topic, Using2 Comments

If you grow a giant garden, each day’s harvest fills multiple boxes and baskets and then every spare corner of your refrigerator. But if you grow a more reasonably sized garden, your harvest likely comes in dibs and dabs: a couple of cucumbers and tomatoes, perhaps a pepper, a small mound of greens, a handful of herbs. Combining these garden-fresh favorites into a meal that showcases your effort often means coming up short for a standard recipe.

This is why I love fillings and stuffings; the ingredients are endlessly variable, a little goes a long way, and the result is a sparkling-fresh meal that highlights produce just off the vine. Whether you’re filling summer rolls, stuffing squash blossoms, or even building Grilled Fish Tacos, the key is to use less filling than you think you’ll need. A gentle hand while wrapping delicate rice paper or petals around that filling is also essential for success.
Learn to make Summer Rolls and Stuffed Squash Blossoms

Wild Berries

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

We interrupt the regularly scheduled post to bring you…huckleberries! Regardless of where you live, some foraged fruit or vegetable likely draws people out of their gardens and into the wild. But if you live in the high country, you know that regularly scheduled activities get shunted aside when hucks ripen on mountain slopes. As the season progresses, the most accessible berries are snatched up by other omnivores—human and bear—so pickers must go farther and higher to find these treasures. In my case, a 3-mile roundtrip hike and 3-hour picking session yielded about half a gallon of tiny purple gems.

With that much effort and time involved, I tend to hoard my huckleberries and dole them out in small doses—no small feat when I will happily eat a cup of fruit on one bowl of granola and yogurt. So you won’t find me rolling the results of a day of foraging into a pie or jars of jam. Instead, I prefer recipes that highlight smaller amounts of fruit, whether for breakfast or for dessert.
Learn to make Crepes with Wild Berries and Lemon Cheese and Rhubarb–Huckleberry Galette

Garden-Fresh Favorites

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

When summer hits and the garden is in full swing, I spend a lot of time processing its bounty to enjoy later. But the greatest joy of growing your own garden is immediately eating the sun-warmed peppers, crisp snap beans, and brilliant orange carrots you’ve produced. No matter how well you preserve a fruit or vegetable, it’s still a substitute for fresh-from-the-plant flavor.

Twice as Tasty made the front page of The Daily Inter Lake’s Montana Life section this week. The delicious photos and story by Brenda Ahearn focus on a recent workshop on Indian spices.

Fortunately, eating freshly harvested produce is easy. A walk through the garden has you snapping off a peapod here, grabbing a cherry tomato there, and collecting a handful of raspberries that you pop straight into your mouth. But grazing is just the beginning. This blog already offers some of my favorite fresh recipes for asparagus, corn, and zucchini and tomatoes. The key to making these fresh-tasting dishes is knowing when and how to pluck the choicest edibles.
Read more about enjoying garden-fresh favorites

Canning It Forward

On By Julie Laing | Twice As TastyIn Canning, Event, Topic2 Comments

This is a big week at Twice as Tasty, and it’s all about canning it forward. For the second year, I’ll play a part in feeding more than 100 hungry sailors at the Montana Cup, an annual sailing regatta hosted by the North Flathead Yacht Club in Somers, Montana. Jars of preserves and other Twice as Tasty treats will be shared for meals and awards. Coincidentally, the regatta’s opening day is the Ball brand’s seventh annual Can-It-Forward Day.

Gifting and sharing home-preserved food cans it forward to the joy of both creator and eater. You’ll find plenty of recipes here to inspire your canning projects. But this blog is just one small voice in the world of home preserving, and much of my inspiration began with other voices. Here are some of my favorite canning recipes from other sources.
Read more about my favorite recipes from other sources

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