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Food In Jars Mastery Challenge - Salt Preserved Dill

February 25, 2017 by Kelsey Fast in Eat, Make

When I heard that Marisa at Food in Jars was running this challenge I was so excited, but for some reason the first month slipped by and I didn't end up making any marmalade! This is not altogether bad since marmalade moves very slowly in our house as Mr. Forager can't stand the stuff. Not to mention that I still have some in the pantry from last winter!

This month there were so many options that were exciting to me that I didn't have time to try them all, but I wanted to make sure I tried out salt preserved herbs so that I have a good handle on it when my gigantic herb garden starts producing in a few months! I will still be trying a few of the others I think since I love the idea of salt cured egg yolks, salt preserved soup base, gravlax, and many other things (salt preserved grapefruit!). I will also need to replenish the kimchi in my fridge soon. Salt is such a useful tool! It is amazing the kind of things we can create just by adding salt to something.

I began by stripping a bunch of dill I got from the local store (alas, being February, local fresh herbs are hard to come by!), but I soon got tired of it and wondered if I could just whiz it all through my Vitamix blender. I figured this way I could make use of the stems as well and have less waste. After that I added the zest of one lemon and 1/2 cup of coarse salt. I think if you were chopping by hand you might want to use fine salt, but I figured sine I was using my blender this might be a better way.

I am happy to say that it mostly worked, but - as you can see below - the mixture overall is quite wet! I am hoping it will dry out nicely and then I can crumble it back into a salt-like consistency. Some of the very strong dill scent has given way to more of a general "green" aroma since blending, but I am sure it will come back to normal as it dries. I can't wait to have this on hand since I don't have any dill related seasoning in my pantry at the moment and every time I make potatoes I seriously feel the absence.

Render Your Own Lard

February 23, 2017 by Kelsey Fast in Eat, Make

While the idea of whole animal eating sounds really nice, the reality can occasionally be a bit gruesome. If you've been reading my blog for a while now you can imagine I was very excited when we learned that our friends' farm was going to be offering sides of pork since I am passionate about supporting local growers. If they are our friends it is the icing on the cake!

I love that all the money I spent on this meat is going directly to support my friends and their farm. I know them, and that they are people of quality, and that they really care for their animals. I know they source extra treats for them like the surplus milk and cream from the local dairy, and the slightly old produce the local grocery store would have wasted. I've seen their farm and probably saw this very pig.

As I was planning my order with the butcher I mentioned that I would really like to have as much of the trim as possible - things like soup bones, and all the extra fat. In fact, when my friend dropped off my order she asked if I would want to take the head! My frugal self and my squeamish self had a little battle, but in the end I took it. That's a lot of meat to waste! Currently it is waiting for me in my freezer to become an attempt at head cheese. Regardless of how that adventure goes, I knew for sure I was going to try to render some lard.

I started out by rendering in a large pot on the stove, but the cubes I painstakingly cut (note to self - get fat ground next time if possible!) started to stick to the bottom, and I ended up transferring it all to a crockpot on low. The other thing I didn't realize is that if you don't slowly ladle off the fat as you go it takes forever to render. Once I realized that things moved along much more quickly, and "cracklins" - the leftover bits of skin and tissue that have slowly deep fried through the process - started to form. I saved my cracklins to mix into a batch of baked beans.

It is important that you don't ladle your fat directly into glass storage containers, since it will be too hot and your glass will shatter. I strained mine into a plastic bowl first and then poured it into mason jars. Working in batches like this also helped since I would know if I had burned it before mixing it in with the rest of the finished lard. Thankfully it didn't happen, but it gave me peace of mind to know that if I ruined some I wouldn't necessarily ruin it all!

When the lard is liquid it is a light golden colour, but as it hardens it turns white. To get really beautiful, pure white lard you want to render only the leaf lard which is the fat surrounding the kidneys. Since I knew the butcher was really busy I didn't bother to specify that I wanted it separated. I also didn't think I needed to be super particular about my first attempt in case it was a complete flop!

After the lard had cooled a bit more I put it in the fridge and it hardened up nicely into this nice creamy colour. It doesn't smell particularly pork like, but it isn't completely odourless. This is probably since I didn't discriminate about the types of fat I used. I may not use this in a pie crust in case the piggy taste remained, but I definitely would give it a try with biscuits or something else more savoury.

Have any of you tried rendering fats? It was certainly time consuming, but I feel like it was worth it! I am also pleased to know this technique won't be lost because most of my generation isn't interested in learning traditional cooking! Writing this post was my way of passing it along. If any of you try it let me know how it went!

Foraging in Winter: Snow

February 09, 2017 by Kelsey Fast in Find, Eat

It can be hard to be a forager in the winter when everything is covered with snow. The earth is dormant, so there is not much obviously available to eat. The day I stumbled upon Bless This Mess's recipe for snow ice cream, I knew that I had to try it! (Can I also just say how much I love the fact that they have a family cookbook? Definitely something to aspire to leave as a legacy for my own family!)

I still get a little thrill every time I see snowflakes falling. I feel a little like Lorelai from Gilmore Girls: snow is special. The morning my son was born I looked out the window and upon seeing the feathery crystals tumbling out of the clouds I thought 'wouldn't it be lucky for him to be born today'?

Before you start thinking I am too crazy, understand that where I did most of my growing up it barely ever snowed. Sometime - usually in early January - we would get our week of winter and that would be it. There are only a handful of winters in my memory that actually yielded enough snow to be worth mentioning, and that was usually for only one day or so. Now living in Kamloops, the fact that we actually have obvious seasons is refreshing. Although this winter has been particularly snowy - even temperate Vancouver has been covered in white several times - I still think snow is magical, and the idea of making ice cream from it just puts it all over the top.

I have to preface these photos by saying that my snow was not as good as it could have been. It was freshly fallen that morning, but the temperatures warmed up that afternoon and it got a bit of an icy crust on the top. I was wondering if I was going to get a chance to try again with better snow since it was looking like the temperatures were going to continue rising, but as I am typing right now there is a huge storm outside that is set to continue all day tomorrow so it looks like I will get my chance!

For my attempt, I riffed off of the Bless this Mess recipe, but made less since I was only making it for myself. I also only had table cream for my dairy, but I would like to try again with evaporated milk like she did. Regardless, it was actually pretty tasty, even if the texture of mine was a bit more like a vanilla sno-cone than ice cream due to the icy layer that had formed when the sun came out. The dinosaur sprinkles were also obviously 100% necessary.

Is it still snowing where you live? Go out and try this! You'll have a lot of fun.

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Bake Some Pies With Fannie Farmer: Recap

January 12, 2017 by Kelsey Fast in Eat

I'm not going to post the full list of completed pies and rankings and whatnot today since there are about 60 pies in my completed list now and I just wanted to do a quick update for now! I'll do a larger update later on. Here are a few of the highlights since I last posted:

The Peanut Butter Cream Cheese pie was seriously incredible. Just pour the filling into a crumb crust and chill it. So easy, and so delicious. There wasn't very much sugar, and it was full of protein and healthy fats from all the peanut butter, cream cheese, and butter that it was almost a protein bar in pie form!

I really loved the Eggnog Chiffon Pie. Really loved it. I was starting to think that I didn't like chiffon pies in general since they have all been a little weird in my opinion so far, but this one was perfect.

Cream of Wheat Custard pie made for the perfect thing to bring to our Life Group's annual New Years Day (or day after as sometimes happens with scheduling) Brunch. It was light, but filling at the same time. Not too sweet, and the whole wheat crust was better than I expected! I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about whole wheat pastry, but now I am excited to try with some different pies too!

The Maple Pecan pie I froze and saved for Christmas was excellent as well. I was really happy with how it stood up to the freezer. When we ate it after Christmas dinner you couldn't tell at all that it had been baked a couple weeks beforehand!

I lost some speed working through this list over Christmas, but I am excited to get back into the swing of things. There are lots of beautiful citrus based pies that I am excited to try out in the coming month or two now it is in season!