Cucumbers, Pickles

This is the second time I have had gobs of small cucumbers on hand and very little, or no, dill. The last time this happened, a few years ago, the poor cucumbers mostly went to waste, so they are part of our abundant compost now.

Because the dill that we planted did not do very well this year in the garden, a few days ago I went on a mission to find dill. I went to Super Saver, the discount grocery store in town, knowing that they were my best bet for finding some. They often have outstanding, unusual produce, and I recalled seeing dill there at some point in the past. I was in luck. They had two large bunches of dill that had seen better days, but were not quite past pickling quality. That, along with the single large sprig I got from our garden, was enough to can eight quarts of cucumbers.

Our grape vines are crazily prolific this year, so we have tons of grape leaves. I have read that adding a grape leaf improves the flavor of the pickles a lot. I have never made them without grape leaves, so I can't attest to their importance, myself. The pickles that we make are always quite good, so I'd say it's worth putting the leaves in if you have them handy.

Many cookbooks have recipes for cucumber pickles, including the Joy of Cooking and The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The Original Classics, and there are always new books coming out about pickling, canning and preserving, like Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It and Other Cooking Projects (by Karen Solomon; Ten Speed, 2009), which I looked at the other day and liked a lot. It's always great to look at new books coming out because they always offer something new--a new take on things, a new voice, a new hand. I do not own this one, but it's on my wish list.


Despite the dozens of pickle recipes that I surely have in my cookbook collection--even without this book--I use an adaptation of my mother-in-law's recipe, the one my husband grew up on. Here is our version of it:


Claire Gardner's Pickles (Regular Type) (Dictated 2003)

Pickling cucumbers
Canning salt
Garlic cloves, peeled
Dill
Grape leaves, fresh (optional)
Hot peppers (aka chilis), any kind, dried or fresh (optional)

Use quart, wide-mouth canning jars with metal rings, and always use fresh lids. Clean the jars and rings very well, preferably in the dishwasher with a heated dry session. Do not wash the rubberized lids in the dishwasher.

Begin boiling a few quarts of water in pots or tea pots. Then begin heating some other water in a low-sided pan, so that you can simmer the lids and rings. They should come right out of simmering water before putting on the jars.

Begin boiling a few cups of white vinegar in a pan.

Rinse the cucumbers very well in a bowl of water and then under running water. As they are rinsed, put them into absolutely clean bowls. Also rinse the grape leaves and/or chilis, if using, also under running water.

Peel 2 to 3 cloves of garlic for every jar you'll be filling. Rinse them well in running water after peeling them.

Place one grape leaf (if using) and one chili (if using) in each jar. Then put in a wad of dill (I only use the fronds, not the stems) and add 2-3 peeled garlic cloves. Put in 1 tablespoon of canning salt (do not use regular table salt and certainly don't use sea salt, or you'll have cloudy brine). Then start to stuff the jars--not packed too tightly--with cucumbers. Try to leave a little room at the top and don't have cucumbers sticking all the way up so that they will touch the lids when they are upright.

Then put a butter knife in the jar to diffuse some of the heat, so the jars don't crack, and pour in 1/2 cup of boiling white vinegar. Then fill the rest of the jar with boiling water, leaving 1/2 inch at the top.

After filling each jar, wipe the rim with a very clean, wet dish towel.

Then, using tongs, pull out a lid from the simmering water and place it on the top of the jar. Do not touch the lid with your fingers. Then pull out a ring from the simmering water, using the tongs, and carefully screw the lid on. Be careful not to screw it on too tightly--just tight enough to be completely screwed on, but not beyond that at all.

Write the canning date on the top of the jar in Sharpie.

Then turn all of the jars upside-down on a clean counter top and leave there for 8-12 hours. Then turn them upright and store in a cool, dark place, but not the refrigerator. You can eat them in 3 months, but they will be better after 4 or 5 months, and good for a year, at least. I don't know how long after canning these pickles I would trust eating them, but 2 years would be my own, unofficial limit, if for no other reason than possible deterioration of quality after that point.

You can add other seasonings to these pickles if you wish, like cloves or allspice, I'm sure. But I have not experimented with that. The hot pepper version is very hot. We usually just make them plain, with dill and grape leaves only.

Popsicles

Last week, when I went to pick up my son from all-day pre-school, he was crying his eyes out, leaning back on the head teacher, and she was holding his face with a piece of gauze. "I was just going to call you," she said. He had fallen (as he has a tendency to do) and hit his upper lip on the wooden part of a couch. His front tooth punctured his cheek, and I had to take him to get a stitch that night.

Poor little guy! He couldn't eat much for a couple of days, so I thought about what might be good to give him. He didn't like ice put on the wound, so I thought: we used to make homemade juice popsicles when I was a kid. So I found some Dixie cups in the cupboard and filled them with some bottled strawberry lemonade and froze them with some popsicle sticks and plastic spoons poking out.

They were fun for him to eat, they got some cold on the wound and got some little bit of nutrition into him for a short time. I liked having a few myself. They're good for this time of year anyway.

Here's the Lime-Cream Pops recipe ("Fit to Eat") from The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, 2000).


Lime Cream Pops
Makes 16 pops or 1 quart of sorbet

These are half sorbet, half frozen yogurt; for sorbet alone, follow steps 1 and 2 only. Freeze the pops in popsicle molds, available at grocery and housewares stores, or paper cups; use a stick or spoon in the center for a handle.

2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon grated lime zest
Lime Frozen Yogurt (recipe follows)

1 Combine the sugar and 2 cups water in a medium saucepan, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low; simmer until the sugar dissolves, about 5 minutes.
2 Prepare an ice-water bath; set aside. Pour the sugar syrup into a bowl set in the ice bath; set aside until chilled. Remove the bowl from the ice bath, and stir in the lime juice and zest. Transfer to an ice-cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions.
3 Spoon 1/4 cup frozen lime sorbet into each of 16 4-ounce (1/2-cup) popsicle molds or paper cups. Place molds in the freezer to set for about 1/2 hour.
4 Remove the molds from the freezer. Spoon 1/4 cup frozen yogurt on top of the sorbet. (If the frozen yogurt has hardened in the freezer, allow it to soften until it is spoonable.) Insert wooden sticks three-quarters of the way into the molds, and place in the freezer until the entire pop is fully set, at least 4 hours. Freeze the remaining frozen yogurt in an airtight container for up to 5 days.

Lime Frozen Yogurt
Makes about 1 1/2 quarts

1 quart plain low-fat yogurt
3/4 cup fresh lime juice (about 5 large limes)
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1 teaspoon grated lime zest
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 Place yogurt in a fine sieve or cheesecloth-lined strainer set over a medium bowl; chill for about 1 hour, until about 1 to 1 1/3 cups liquid has drained from the yogurt. Discard liquid; set yogurt aside.
2 In a bowl, combine lime juice, sugar, corn syrup, lime zest, and vanilla; whisk until sugar dissolves; about 2 minutes. Add strained yogurt; whisk to combine. Transfer to an ice-cream maker; freeze according to manufacturer's instructions. If necessary, work in 2 batches, keeping remainder refrigerated while freezing the first batch. Store in a plastic container in the freezer for up to 1 week.

Kebabs

I know that lots of people love grilled meats, like my friend Joni, who I wrote about in an earlier post. Being still fairly new at meat-eating, I am not so much in that camp. There is one concoction, though, that I do often enjoy and that's kebabs.

After reading Brian Geiger's recent article in Fine Cooking about marinades and all that they can and cannot do, I decided to put together a marinade of buttermilk, lots of fresh herbs, garlic, salt and pepper. Then I put in chunks of skinless chicken thigh and chicken breast and let it sit for a couple of hours. I roasted some zucchini rounds with olive oil, salt, pepper and a little Penzey's Brady Street cheese sprinkle and some Roma hot house tomatoes with olive oil, salt and dried oregano. Then I threaded the chicken on skewers with the pre-roasted zucchini and tomatoes (I like my kebab vegetables to be cooked through) and I stacked the loaded skewers on a plate and took it outside to the waiting, hot, charcoal-filled grill.

I put three of the dark-meat skewers on and saw that that was all I could put on over hot coals. I guess that I had waited too long because the coals had diminished considerably. My husband and I worked together to lift the grate up to put more charcoal in the grill, but we didn't have potholders and the stick and tongs that I picked the grate up with failed me and down went two of the lovely kebabs. As I am wont to do, I shrieked a bit. I only had nine skewers to start with, so two down was a considerable portion. But then I got it together and grilled what was left and brought out a bunch more little meat bits not on skewers and all was well again.

I had made Rose Levy Bernbaum's pasta salad, from her Rose's Celebrations book, with quinoa pasta, beans cooked from dried, fresh herbs, oil-cured sun-dried tomatoes, a Vidalia onion, and U.S.-grown corn on the cob, which just started showing up in stores last week. I cut a part of a watermelon into wedges. I roasted a sweet potato that I had cut into oven fries. And there was our Sunday feast.

The kids were not too happy with it, but I sure was. The meat was properly cooked through, with charred spots, the vegetables were flavorful and tender, the salad was a great accompaniment, the watermelon was so refreshing after a winter and spring with none. Yes, an affirmation that kebabs are my favorite grilled dinner. I'm so glad it's finally summer again.

Bocce Club Pizza

While I'm on the subject of the old neighborhood, I will mention Bocce Club pizza. I grew up near one of the original locations, the one on Clinton Street, and it was the only pizza I knew for most of my childhood. When I was five, I went as a witch for Halloween, and my parents made me a witch's hat out of a Bocce Club pizza box. As an older teen, I was gleefully offered some Pizza Hut pizza by a friend, and I was excited to try the famed pie. I took a big bite and was immediately struck by how wrong everything was with it! The crust was offensive tasting, the sauce was baked into it and the cheese was solid and nasty. There was nothing good or correct about the Pizza Hut version of pizza. Disgusting. And now, where I live, in Lincoln, Nebraska, Pizza Hut might be considered to be one of the better pizzas available. We have something here called Valentino's pizza, which locals genuinely love. But, my god, it is even worse than Pizza Hut, it is worse than a frozen pizza. It is truly, inedibly bad, with a bitter cardboard crust, bitter, almost nonexistent sauce, and a coating of unparalleled tasteless, granular cheese product. And you can't get green olives.

Ok, so Bocce Club pizza, what is it like? I have not had one in ages, but I think I can conjure it up. A crust that is the correct balance between tender and firm--with a freshly-made wheaty, yeasty taste. Delectable charred bits of cheese cling to the bottom of the crust from the incredibly high-heat oven that the pizza was baked in. The liquidy sauce has a sprightliness to it and a natural sweetness, with a hint of herbs. The cheese oozes like it's almost liquid in places and has a pleasant tangy edge and a lingering creaminess. The toppings are robust and flavorful, and you can get green olives. The anchovy pizza has just the right hint of fish--it's not smothered with them like other places do their anchovy topping.

Apparently, the old Bocce Club pizza place is still there, with the same guy, Rudy, running it. He must be in his 70s now. It's in an inner city neighborhood with many empty lots around and ramshackle houses nearby. My dad, who still lives near there, said that Bocce's is in the news sometimes for armed robbery still, so it makes me wonder if Rudy still wears a gun on his hip, like he always used to.

I used to go pick up the pizza when I was still living with my parents, and the small galley waiting area held maybe ten people comfortably enough. There were no seats, just that galley. And there was a high opening that allowed the waiting people to see the pizza-making action. Rudy worked quickly, without stopping, grabbing a crust, shaping it, slapping on sauce, sprinkling on cheese, placing toppings--quick, quick--in the blasting oven. Taking a pie out as he put one in. Putting it in a box, closing the box, calling out a name. And again, the same. How I loved that pizza.

Now, the best pizza I can get is at a bar called Yia Yia's here in Lincoln. It has a thin crust and some good toppings. But it's not that kind of homemade, charred, oozy, tangy, sprightly thing that I fell in love with as a wee one. The best thing I can do now is make my own, in my pitiful 500 degree oven. I have not yet found a really great crust recipe, but I have used this one, from the Chez Panisse Café Cookbook with some success.

Pizza Dough
Makes enough dough for about 6 pizzas.

SPONGE
2 teaspoons dry yeast
3/4 cup lukewarm water
2/3 cup bread flour

DRY INGREDIENTS
4 cups bleached white flour
1/4 cup rye flour
1 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup olive oil

To make the sponge, dissolve the yeast in 3/4 cup lukewarm water and stir in the 2/3 cup bread flour. Allow this mixture to sit until quite bubbly, about 30 minutes.

Mix together the white flour, rye flour, and salt in another bowl. Stir 1 cup of cold water and 1 cup of these dry ingredients into the sponge. Mix thoroughly and let sit for another 30 minutes.

Add the remaining dry ingredients and the olive oil and knead, by hand or in an electric mixer fitted with the dough hook. Knead until the dough is soft and elastic, about 5 minutes. It may be necessary to add more flour if the dough is wet, but add only enough flour to form a soft, slightly sticky dough. A very soft, moist dough makes the best crust.

Put the dough in a large bowl, cover, and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 2 hours. For even better-tasting, more supple dough, let the dough rise slowly overnight in the refrigerator.

Punch down the dough and divide into portions--4-ounce balls for pizzettas, 3-ounce balls for crostatas, or 7-ounce balls for standard pizzas. Form each portion into a nice smooth sphere. Allow the dough balls to rest at room temperature, wrapped in plastic, for an hour or so before shaping and baking. Individual dough balls may also be frozen, then thawed overnight.

Penny Candy

There were several neighborhood stores where I grew up near Fillmore and Clinton Streets in Buffalo, New York. One was Felski's (near Eagle and Smith Streets), where I would go to get a quart of milk for my mother when I was only five, and it cost a quarter. Another was a place that my father called Pani Sunshine, Pani being the Polish word for Mrs., and Sunshine because the lady there was so sour-pussed. I forget their last name, but her son's name was Freddie, and he lived with his mom all of his life. She was a squat Polish-American lady with frizzy hair and he was a trim, dark-haired guy with a mustache. The store became known as Freddie's after a while, because he more often manned the store over time.


(It used to be so neat and tidy--how it's deteriorated; sad)

I got to thinking about Pani Sunshine the other day because my son was given a trinket in a treat bag at a birthday party, a little plastic guy with a parachute. I recalled vividly how I used to buy those at the corner store, along with balsa wood airplanes, Bomb Pops (when I had enough money--they were a whole quarter) and tons of penny candy, which was truly one cent each. I loved the little red fish, which are now known as Swedish fish, probably the best. We also got Tootsie Rolls (another favorite), hard candies, licorice, nougats, and so many others.

Where we live now, unlike where I grew up, there is no corner store, no full grocery store, no butcher, no pharmacy, no mom-and-pop cleaners, no office supply/toy store, no dentist, no wedding gown shop, no liquor store, no beauty salon, no gas station. You scarcely had to leave my neighborhood to engage in commerce of just about any stripe. The old neighborhood is completely cut off from the rest of the city by viaducts over which, back then, trains rumbled by day and night. In fact, the backyard of the first house that I lived in was bordered by a train track. I remember listening to the deafening roar of the train as it sped by at crazy speed in the middle of the night and, to this day, that sound (in the distance now) never fails to soothe me to my core. An older child may have been afraid of such a racket, but my infant ears knew nothing else and it meant night-time and peacefulness to me.

We lived in four houses in that neighborhood over the years, and my father lives in yet another there now. The third house that we lived in, on James Street, is occupied by my aunt, uncle and cousin--still in the family. That is the house that is around the corner from Pani Sunshine (on the corner of Eagle and Montgomery Streets), but the store closed down long ago, as have most of the others in the neighborhood.

From time to time, I have tried my hand at making candy, with mixed success. When homemade candy turns out well, it is a stunning bit of kitchen magic. Fresh candy is vastly superior to most commercially-made candy mostly because the factory-made stuff just isn't fresh enough to be great. I tend to only buy and eat candy around candy-themed holidays like Halloween and Easter because that's when you can get the freshest batches. An elusive quality evaporates quickly in candy almost just as much as it does for baked goods.

There are lots of great candy recipes in cookbooks. You can make your own marshmallows, nut brittles, chocolate-covered nuts and fruits, candied popcorn, candied fruit peels, caramels, truffles, hard candies and lollipops, rock candy, and on and on. I have a couple of books devoted to candy recipes, The Antoinette Pope School Candy Book from 1949, and Candy from the Good Cook series from Time-Life (1981). But there are candy recipes in The Joy of Cooking, many of Maida Heatter's books, many of Martha Stewart's books, and scattered around in all manner of cookbooks, here and there.

Here's a an easy recipe for Chocolate Armagnac Truffles from The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The Original Classics. There is a whole chapter devoted to candy in that book, including recipes for caramels, fudge, pralines, nut brittles, popcorn balls, almond nougat, toffee and fruit jellies. If you try the truffle recipe, let me know what you think of it.

Chocolate Armagnac Truffles

Makes 5 dozen

12 ounces best-quality semisweet chocolate
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons Armagnac (brandy or orange liqueur may be substituted)
1/2 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder, sifted

1. Chop chocolate and place in a large heat-proof bowl. Bring cream to a boil in a small, heavy saucepan; pour over chocolate. Stir until chocolate is melted and smooth. Stir in liqueur. Refrigerate until firm, at least 3 hours or overnight.

2. Scoop up 1/2 teaspoon chilled chocolate; quickly roll into a ball. Continue until all the mixture is used. Place cocoa powder in a bowl; roll truffles in cocoa to coast. Chill until firm. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.

Out of Africa

It's not that I don't love Italian food. I adore pesto-laced meatballs, herb-doused vegetable melanges, freshly made ravioli filled with butternut squash, Sicilian specialties with their deeply satisfying tomato sauces. Yes, I do. But it has been wearing on me for years now that food magazines so often feature Italy as a destination, or they feature Italian food. Truly, with all due respect to the great cuisines of Italy, this has gotten old, people.

I recently made a friend on Twitter, Courtney, and she and I have exchanged a few E-mails about African food. Why isn't the food of the vast continent of Africa explored more often? Africans continent-wide have done amazing things with beans, okra, peanuts, plantains, etc. The easterners have perfected curry as well as the Indians. The former colonization brought with it at least one good thing, namely hybridization of African foods with French, Portuguese and other cuisines.

But start to look for African cookbooks for an American audience, and you will be hard pressed to find many. Marcus Samuelsson, the acclaimed African-Swedish chef, has explored the foods of his continent of origin in The Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa. Dr. Jessica B. Harris wrote The Africa Cookbook several years ago, and it's a classic book by now--good for those looking for authenticity. And there are a few other books available but, relatively speaking, they are few and far between.

Just when Courtney and I were exchanging our thoughts on the underrepresentation of African foods in the U.S., coincidentally, the first issue that I received of the Thornes' newsletter, Simple Cooking, was a special issue devoted to African foods! It was full of well-researched information and contained several recipes.

African food needs to have its day in the spotlight. I want injera and Ethiopian curries, bobotie, rusks, black-eyed pea fritters, gombo, chicken with rice, West African-style, just as much as all those great things I listed from Italy. When the wave comes, I will be there riding it.

Nana

The legend in our family is that our ancestors were Polish royalty. As kids, my cousins and I loved this tidbit and would affect Polish/Buffalo, NY, accents and say things that we thought sounded royal. Our supposed heritage gave us a bit of cockeyed confidence. I was glad to grasp onto the possibility of a royal lineage.

This birthright did not extend very far, however. In the area of food, we were treated to certain ethnic specialties, to be sure, like freshly-made pierogis, Polish sausages made by butchers right in our neighborhood, deli meats of all stripes, delicious pickles, tender rye bread encrusted with fresh, naturally-sweet caraway seeds. The yeasted, crumb-topped coffee cakes were perfection.

But those were not our everyday foods. My Nana, my mother's mom, took care of us kids quite often. She was not big on cooking, but she was big on thrift. She made a few things in heavy rotation, like hamburger pie, plain hamburgers and plain white rice, canned green beans, stuff like that. Milk was always the reconstituted kind, skim, from powder. And there were lots of generic-brand cookies and Wonder bread. I loved good food, even back then, but I didn't mind eating at Nana's. At any rate, it gives you something to compare the good stuff by, if you really get to know the not-good kind.

Nana drank coffee all day long. She sometimes had people over and they'd play Yahtzee or pinochle while they smoked one cigarette after another. They argued with each other incessantly, always taking affront to each other, and swearing liberally. They used Polish to say things to each other that they did not want us to understand. They were loud, and they didn't pay too much attention to us. We played in the backyard a lot.

When Nana neared the end of her days, I visited her almost every day. I listened to her stories--always about herself, never asked about me (she would have been a fine blogger, I think)--and I did things for her like go to the store, clean stuff in her house and just keep her company. I was in college then, and a full-bore vegetarian. I planned to make her and my great-aunt Rose, Nana's step-sister, a dinner from Jeanne Lemlin's Vegetarian Pleasures, a book that I still use from time to time: mushroom quiche, Irish soda bread, home fried-potatoes and onions, fruit salad. I bought all the ingredients, then dawdled a few days. I have set the story up so you can guess that I did not get to make that dinner for Nana. Aunt Rose and I shared it together a few days after Nana was gone. So, whenever I use Vegetarian Pleasures, I think of Nana, what a character she was. From royalty? Perhaps. Let's just say it was so.