compote

Ever done a recipe with no measurements?

Yep. This is one of them.

Nevertheless, it was delicious.

Oh and I forgot to take photos.

Perhaps I shouldn't post the recipe, and besides, this isn't even a recipe that takes time. But hey it is "old fashioned" and was delicious. So here goes...with guesstimate measurements.

1 apple, diced/peeled
5-6 pears, diced/peeled
~1/4 c yellow raisins
~1/8 cup water
~little under a cup of sugar (I used that raw blondish sugar
~1 1/2tsp vanilla extract (My pastor's wife made homemade extract and it is awesome)
~1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
~1/2 tsp cinnamon
teeny pinch salt
a few shakes of this liquid ginger stuff I have. I'd say a grate or two from a microplane, of ginger would do
squeeze lemon

I diced/peeled the fruit and added it to the water/lemon/sugar/vanilla.
I brought it to a low boil, added the rest of the ingredients (raisins, seasonings)
boiled until it thickened and fruit was soft.

It was lovely and delectable over vanilla ice cream. Like all the joys of homemade apple pie, except pear, and gluten-free/grain free....nut free..really, quite allergy friendly.

Pickles

I love most pickles foods. I used to have a killer pickle recipe I had created/tinkered with to perfection. Of course I never saved it or anything so it died with an old computer. So here is my attempt to recreate it although I totally haven't a clue what my old recipe contained.

But pickles have a nostalgic thing to them. I had made a dozen jars the day before I have birth to my second son. It was probably funny to see a very pregnant woman stirring a steamy pot on the stove and in 90 degree weather! So I remember as I about left for the hospital to make sure my pickle hard were sealed.

So here is my recipe and I hope it turns out.
It makes 2 quarts.

Would you know they're ripe around Christmas in very southern California? At my home 2 hours away our cukes are not ready until late Summer.

Anyway here is my recipe.

Oh these are refigretator pickles, I usually make "real" pickles. Make sure the jars are sanitized and lids very clean.

2 lb cucumbers, sliced into rounds.
1 sweet onion, sliced thin. You might not use it all.
1 1/2 cups cider vinegar
1 cup water
1 cup white sugar
3 tablespoons kosher salt, coarse is best
3 tablespoons picking spice mix
Bunch of coursely chopped fresh dill.

Line bottom of jars in onion slices. I used a quart had and 2 pint jars and only about half an onion.
Add cucumber slices. Add as many horizontally as you can buy some may need to go in vertically. Lightly tamp down and add dill, enough to be a layer.

In a saucepan, heat the picking spices, vinegar, sugar, water, salt. Boil, stirring until sugar is dissolved, and let dinner a few minutes. Pour mix over the pickle jars. Leave a bit of head space. If you need more liquid, mix up some more vinegar, sugar, water, half the salt and boil.

Lightly place lids on and let sit on the counter until cool enough to place in refrigerator. Once ready, make sure lids are tightened. Set in fridge one week before eating. Consume, refrigerated, within one month.

Homebrew beer

I like beer. There, I said it. Sure, wine is good to but I prefer beer in most cases. I guess that makes me an unusual woman. What makes me even more unusual is that I brew my own beer. Such a task is usually relegated to groups of bearded gruff men, or so I have been told, researched, and witnessed.

I have allergies, so brewing my own beer means I can avoid allergens and also I get to do "science experiments" of sort while brewing, and create my own, well, creations.

Homebrew beer is super tasty. Big corporation beer is pasteurized in most cases, and even many microbreweries add extra food safety precautions, as is obviously needed, which can detract from the subtle flavors of home-brew.

The first step to home-brew, not pictured, is SANITIZATION. Imagine you are performing a surgery, and you can then imagine how sanitized things need to be. If you forget a step, you can end up with beer that tastes awful (like a fruity sauerkraut) or worse, food borne illness.

To sanitize, I prefer star0san or sank-clean. Follow the directions on the bottle and sanitize the carboy (container your beer ferments in), bunghole and accompanying pieces, siphon, thermometer, the thing that detects alcohol and brix ( I forget the name. I'm awful with brewing terminology), spoon9s), funnel, scissors, tongs. Also I like to give a good dawn-soap scrub-down to the brewing pot and spoons and other cooking utensils (as in, soap them up, rinse them off, samite them, that order). I do not generally sanitize my brewing pot and lid but use hot hot water to clean.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some sanitization step. Forgive me.

Really, before brewing, read a book, yes, a whole book, or attend a class. Don't simply take my blog as "word" for brewing as I'm sure I am skipping things. I don't skip things when actually brewing. Phew.

Oh in addition to all the cooking/brewing gadgets, you will need a recipe or beer-ingredient kit with cracked grain, malt, hops, whirfloc or irish moss, any flavoring agents (use those once you've brewed a few times as they get tricky) and bottling supplies. Many prefer to bottle in sanitized bottles and use priming sugar to carbonate but that means a whole week of looking at your beer in the bottle and not being able to drink it. You can invest in a kegerator and c02 tank and play mad scientist and you get beer much quicker, but it isn't bottled, just legged. Your choice.


Anyways let's commence to brewin'!

To the left/below is by brew pot. I am boiling 3 gallons of water. I prefer bottled spring water as we have hard water, and it is chlorinated and fluoridated and all that nasty stuff. I add the water cold/room temp and quickly get to the next step.

overkil, my gajillion gallon brew pot. I suggest an 8-10 gallon one.

Here is step 2. You will have a certain amount of grain or grains. Each recipe is different, so really, follow the recipe, but the procedures generally stay the same, just with different amounts and times and stuff.  Here I have some carapils and bavarian roster barley. I add it to a brewing sock thing (see, I can't get the terminology right) but cheesecloth works too. I prefer the socks though as they keep stuff in better, but floating  stray grains aren't the end of the world. Oh, don't use regular people-socks. 

So put your grain(s) in the sock and tie it up. Don't waste time as your water is heating. Add your sock of grain to the water. Heat until 152-170 depending on the recipe, and it should take just about 30 minutes. So...don't leave the kitchen too long, If it gets that hot before 30 min turn the stovetop off and let it steep, if it seems like it will take longer, put a lid on your kettle/pot.

grain just put into the pot

timing things and showing my thermometer.

So here, below, is my grain at 20 minutes. See how it has steeped like tea? Different grains and brews steep at different colors.

steeping

leftover water bottles

fully steeped

Once your brew has steeped, remove the grain bag. Some people cook healthy granola bars and stuff with the grain. I give a spoonful of it to my dogs mixed with their food.

Get the "tea" to just boiling and then remove from heat. Stir in your malt slowly, making sure it doesn't clump or stick or anything. Sometimes it can get frothy which is why you don't make 3-5 gallons of beer in a 5 or less gallon pot. But again my giant pot is overkill.

Occasionally stir, and put the heat back on until boiling.

(blurry) malt par

another blurry shot of the malt going in.

Every recipe varies as to type(s) of hops and how/when/how much to add. But here I am adding some hops. I prefer hops pellets but you can do fresh, fresh-dried, etc. They look much greener in person. Add hops according to recipe, and I prefer to put it in those brewing sock things. My recipe called for 1 oz for 60 mins, 1 oz at 15 mins, 1 oz at 1 min.

hops hops hops

Not pictured is adding either a whir floc tablet or recipe-amount of irish moss. Usually you add it the last 5 minutes. If not, you get gross looking cloudy beer.

Remove hops after "done" per recipe, usually 60 mins.  Oh! And check your yeast instructions while boiling...gives you something to do, and you will see why yeast directions matter, soon.

removing hops

As seen to the right, you then need to cool your beer, or wort, or whatever it is called. Most use a wort chiller which is a cool looking steampunk-type contraption but I do it the longer more boring way. I add water to a giant tub as seen below (well I fill it abut 6" deep with water) and a ton of ice. I plop my brew pot of wort in there and let it cool, checking the temperature constantly. Each recipe calls for a different pitching temp.  Then when very close to temp, I add 2 more gallons of spring water. 

BE SANITIZED here as boiling helps sanitize but now it isn't boiling. Even sanitize your hands. 

So yes I add water to the giant brew pot or, more preferred, I use a funnel and two people and pour the warm wort into my carboy and add water on top. 

Then, not pictured,  get ready add your yeast.  DON'T ADD IT YET! READ THE YEAST DIRECTIONS. Some need to be always refrigerated until right before rewind, some need to be added to warm water, etc etc.  Ok, you're well read. You're this close to adding yeast. STOP! Get your alcohol/brix/cal measuring thing and your siphon/beer/wine thief  (sanitized of course) and suck up some warm wort and pour into a skinny beaker (usually supplied with that measuring thingy I'm speaking of) and write down your measurements and keep it safe. Date it, too.

cooling

Now it is time to ferment! This to the left is the carboy, bunghole (yes it is a real word) etc. My "wort" is "primed" with yeast. 

Let me back up a bit. I do all the stuff I did and put the carboy/bunghole and wort and all that. Place in a cool and dark place (warmer than say 55, cooler than 80). Add sterilized water to the water-part of the bunghole (see this is why you should read  a book on brewing). Let sit. Within a few to 36 hours you will see bubbles in the carboy and the bunghole part you put water in. It takes at least 7 days to ferment and turn into beer. Recipes vary on time and tell you what brix, cal, alcohol percent to aim for. SANITIZE a siphon, your hands, the measuring thingy and beaker and test after 7 days or until bubbling is longer than every minute.

Once "ready", cool in a fridge for a day or to to let stuff settle and clear. I was out of fridge space but it was cold out so I used outdoors. Fridge is preferred.

Now you can keg, or bottle. Enjoy!

Oh and homebrew has more vitamin B and probiotics and stuff so it is good for you! In moderation.

Happy brewing!

Smoked salmon

Who likes smoked salmon?

Me!

Really, I like salmon of all incarnations but smoked is probably my favorite.

I hot-smoke my salmon to ensure food safety. I also dry-brine and short-term as I can never seem to rinse enough salt out when brined for 24+ hours
 That being said...


I make a dry brine of two parts kosher salt (do not use any other kind, please) to one part white sugar one part brown sugar.
Or as you can see, 1/2 cup kosher salt
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar

generous smattering of course ground black pepper and a pinch of dill (optional).

Mix it well, so it does not look pretty like shown below.

This is always too much. But you can keep some for the next time or so.

Oh and duh, you need salmon which you will see later. It MUST have the skin on, and needs to be de-boned if not already. Two thickish slices/filets of near equal size and shape preferred. You will see why later.

the dry brine.

So then I lay out two pieces of foil with two pieces of plastic wrap on top. The tin foil should overlap so that...hm I am out of analogies. Let about three inches overlap. It doesn't need to be precise. 

Sprinkle a little dry brine on to each piece of foil/plastic wrap.

foil, wrap, brine.

Here is one slice of salmon on top of the foil, plastic wrap, and sprinkle of brine. Do the same for both pieces.

steelhead salmon this time around, I believe.

Once you've placed both salmon pieces on your foil-wrap-brine, sprinkle brine on top of each piece. Put less brine on the thinner parts or else you'll have fish-colored salt.

Many fish smoking recipes cover the fish in salt so all you see is salt. I find it too salty no matter what I do, kind of like if you did salt cod without bathing it for 48 hours. Bleck. But each to their own.

brine time

Then, once each piece is properly brined, move one piece (pull the plastic wrap close to the next) and put your hand under the foil and PLOP! Plop it on top. Matching sides matters a little, which I did not do here, oops, but it doesn't effect flavor. (see photo at left)

And then, using the foil around your fishy, wrap it. Wrap it TIGHT, you may need to press and pull stuff, but don't make it so tight the foil tears. If you've ever made tamales or pierogi, think of it being that tight as in filling-to-wrap, but you can exert more force since it is foil and not dough. (see photo at right, It looks like a California/Mission burrito!)

plopped on top

fish burrito?

Now for the part my camera decided to erase.

Put the fish burrito into a deepish dish, whatever you can find to fit it. Lipped cookie sheets or a 9x13 dish work well.

Go hunting in your pantry (imagine another magically deleted image) for some cans, preferably expired so they don't risk getting fishy.

Put the heavy cans on top of your fish in a dish (I can rhyme). This weighs down the fish a bit, in addition to your tight foil burrito, to ensure the brine does its job and quick.

Place your fish in a dish in the fridge for 4-6 hours. Again many brine 24+ hours. I don't. It is up to you.

Then, as finally pictured, rinse your fish and I even lightly swipe it to get any chunks of salt off.

rinse your fishes

Lay your fish out to air-dry for one hour. I like to put it on foil on a lipped cookie sheet and lay it on a slight angle for water to drip off. When it is below 55 out but above 25-30, I leave it outside and just pray no ravens, hawks, or eagles take off with it. No joke.

The fish should feel kind of like shellac or even just kinda sticky.

Place in a smoker (I have an electric one) and smoke it. I use alder and maple wood and add a handful of chips every hour. Well my handful is skimpy so a big handful. I also use a cooking/oil brush to wipe the white fat goop off after an hour. You can even dip the brush in real maple syrup if you like.

I smoke it at varied temps depending on the weather, plus we are at 5,000 feet and it just seems I have to smoke hotter and faster up here. So I start at 180 for an hour and crank it to 210 for an hour. I want to to be an internal temp of 155, and I want it from outside drying, to finished at internal 155 in 4 hours so worse case scenario, crank up the smoker the last hour until done.