Canning Without Fear

Last year, I feared botulism. Then, a delicious pot of dill pickles cast down that fear. Canning is easy. Sterilise, make sure the rim is clear, the contents are hot and deposit into boiling water. If it doesn't seal, then you've got a problem.

So far I've made three things to can. The first were dill pickles. I bought a huge bush of dill, a few dozen small pickling cucumbers (small tastes better than big, the latter seeming to have all its flavour disolved), and fresh organic garlic. The garlic was really the highlight. It was so fresh that the paper around the individual cloves hadn't yet dried. I crushed them and they smelled totally different from the stuff at the supermarket. Almost like a medium strong cheese.

I then made a tomatillo and chipotle pepper salsa, trying to emulate the one from Frontera which is apparently inspired by Varacruz, Mexico. The ingredients read as follows: tomatillos, tomatoes, onions, water, garlic, salt thyme, chipotle chiles, sugar. I did exactly that, with proportions depending on the order in which they're written on the bottle. My error was in not roasting the garlic and tomatillos which is how the Frontera salsa was made. Instead, I pureed everything and then cooked it in a pot. Delicious but not true to what I was trying to emulate. For now, I've got 1500 milliliters of salsa canned and waiting to be eaten. Next time the tomatillos, those beautiful green apple tasting tomato-like individually wrapped delicacies will get a good roasting before they make their way into the canning pot.

Finally, I made apple butter. Those details can be read in the blog entry below (Wild Apple Butter).

One day, I'll have a crawlspace full of of canned goodies, mostly containing things from my own gardens, that will feed me and my family throughout the cold winters of Canada. Plus there might be a cask or two or six of beer and cider and fruit wines. It wouldn't be unreasonable to say that there will also be a root cellar heaping with vegetables, a few racks of ripening cheeses, and poles with curing charcuteries. And a passive solar greenhouse keeping the season going despite the snow. One day. In a hopefully not-too-distant future.

Marinated Pork Tenderloin with Sweet Potato Purée and Warm Chipotle Salsa

If this recipe sounds fancy that's because it's from the 5th edition of Le Cordon Bleu's Professional Cooking which is basically a textbook for culinary schools. You've got everything in here from the use and care of a chinacap to the basics of broiling and the chemistry of gelatine. It's awesome because you could basically work through this whole book and you'd be a "professionally" trained chef. Now the only problem is is that doing so would cost a fortune because lots of this food doesn't come cheap and all the recipes are written for restaurant portions. Best to pay your tuition and go to a culinary school if that's your bag. But if you're like me, you just want to learn how to cook better so buying a book like this does the trick.

What I was originally looking for was a recipe for Eastern European pork roast with sauerkraut. I don't even know if that's the dish but I'll post it as soon as I've found out. For now we have this South American inspired dish that has the delicious flavour of marinated pork loin, coupled with the sweetness of the sweet potatoes, and all offset with a nice smoky and spicy chipotle salsa. It's obvious that a recipe from Le Cordon Bleu will match flavours properly. Salty. Sweet. Spicy. There's no tart or bitter here but you catch my drift.

The marinade consists of chopped onion, mashed garlic, salt, oregano, cumin, cinnamon, lime juice, olive oil and powdered red New Mexico chiles (I used dried chiles from Mexico but that's what I had on hand...the recipe says that you can also substitute for good old chili powder). As you can see there's nothing magic about this marinade. Just let sit over night, barbecue or roast, and enjoy.

As for the salsa, it's also pretty basic. Roast one garlic clove and 1 lb of plum tomatoes for about 10 minutes, peel, throw into a blender with 2 whole chipotle chiles in adobo (seeded or unseeded depending on how much heat you want), a bit of salt, a bit of adobo sauce, purée and voilà. You could probably add cilantro, onions or other such traditional salsa ingredient but I found this sauce was basic and tasted really nice.

All you have to do once everything is cooked is to cut the tenderloin into medallions, place on top of the roasted and puréeed sweet potatoes, drizzle with salsa and that's it. Delicious. Lean. And lets not forget spicy.

But if you're not a health nut, you can use the leftover tenderloin and salsa with some smoky cheddar all baked on top of some nachos and you've got another delicious meal that's great with a nice cerveza, a hockey game and some wings.

Mexicanish X-mas Supper

In order to kill two birds with one stone, as the old adage goes, we introduced a small group of our friends to semi-authentic Mexican food which also served as a holiday supper. You can see in a previous post my entry on homemade flour tortillas. I’ll say it again though that nothing beats real tortillas. Like anything made fresh and never having been in contact with a store, it’s so much better. The taste cannot be imitated. But that’s my opinion.

Now given what I just said, you’ll probably think me a hypocrite to have served canned refried beans. (Note: don’t be intimidated by the fact that these look like dog food when coming out of the can.) Supposedly these take forever to make. Beans on their own are a pain in the ass. Imagine having to refry them! Geez! Anyways, the guacamole and Mexican style salsa were made from scratch. For the guacamole, I put two fresh avocadoes, a hot pepper, a tomato, half an onion and two garlic cloves into my food processor, turned the little switchy thing and voila. Pretty much the same for the salsa but I don’t make that. My girlfriend has the recipe and I’m not quite sure where she hides it.

Also available for tortilla stuffing – in addition to such boring things like slivers of iceberg lettuce, chunks of tomato and shredded cheddar – was pulled pork in achiote and orange juice. The stuff we use is like a red spice brick which is sent to us by my girlfriend’s Mexican stepmother. Strait from the source. On the last batch of products we also got various dulce de leche de cabra treats, sun dried peppers, Maseca, corn husks, some dry pulled pork stuff and other things that I forget cause they’ve already been eaten. The next thing I’m whipping up are tamales.

In order to satisfy my appetite for spiciness, I put the two hot sauces I now have in stock on the table. The hottest in the Tabasco line, the habenero and chipotle hot sauces got a few people sweating. Now I know that these are mild in comparison to most real hot sauces but you’ve got to keep in mind that my French Canadian friends aren’t used to anything spicier than pepper and radishes. One advantage is that I was able to amaze them with my hot sauce eating capabilities. I’m like a super hero to the hot sauce layman’s eyes

For desert, my girlfriend made crème caramels which we found in our Mexican cook book which therefore means that it’s Mexican (A+B=C). The melted icing sugar caramel sitting on top of the gelatinous custard tasted a tad burnt. Supposedly that’s what it’s supposed to taste like. Served with some fresh mango I really didn’t care. It was a great end to a meal and a great launch to hours of wicked conversation and coffee drinking.

P.S. The coffee was made with my new Bodum coffee press by the way. I’m never going back to drip coffee again…ever…

Tortilla Heaven

My girlfriend's stepmother is Mexican and so packaged tortillas, fake salsa, and other imitations don't cut it. Thankfully, we got her stepmom's recipes over the holidays and have finally managed to make real tortillas and make a true Mexican style salsa (i.e. a more liquid salsa which isn't chunky at all). The result was a delicious supper where we pilled tonnes of roasted pork (which we would have made with achiote and orange juice if we hadn't lost our precious brick of spices), canned refried beans (I've been informed that these taste as good as the originals), chopped tomatoes, iceberg lettuce slices, some hotsauce for me, grated cheddar and sour cream. We would have made some mashed avocado but, to put it lightly, it had lost it's freshness.
Now if you do attempt to make the tortillas you must be forewarned that it really isn't an exact science. It's like watching an Italian grandmother make pasta...no rules and no mesuring cups. It's all about good old fashion a bit o' this and a bit o' that. But when you do finally arrive at the perfect mix, you'll never want to eat store bought tortillas ever again.

One last tip is that you can make your own tortillas using Maseca mix (which are corn tortillas). Just throw in the wet ingredients and you've got tortillas. But, like dehydrated potatoes and boxed pancakes, the results are always better when you start from scratch.

Have fun!

Real Mexican Tortillas

1 kg all purpose flour

160 g tenderflake

2 tbsp sugar

Boil about 5 cups of water with salt. Take out 1 cup flour from the 1 kg and set aside for use during the rolling of the dough. Mix flour, sugar and tenderflake. Slowly add boiling water a but at a time until it has a dough texture. Make sur not to add too much water. Mix well as you are adding the water till it had been incorporated and then add more water if necessary. When the dough is ready, divide it into small balls about the size of a racketball. Flatten balls into something that looks like a tortilla with a rolling pin. The tortillas have to be very thin; if they're too thick it won't work.

Cook tortillas in a shallow frying pan. Put flattened dough in on one side for about 30 seconds, then flip them on the other side. At this point air bubbles will start to puff up the tortilla. Simply press on tortilla with a paper towel to let air out. Finally, flip tortilla onto uncooked side finish cooking. And that's it. You should now have a beautiful mound of blistery fresh tortillas. (Don't be shy to put a good lump butter on a really hot tortilla to enjoy as you work).

Mexican salsa

4 garlic cloves

3 tomatoes, skinned by scoring and putting in boiling water for a minute or so

1 onion

1/2 jalapeno

2 tsp oregano

Put all ingredients in a blender. Add a bit of oil to a pot and cook the salsa for 10 to 15 minutes. Taste salsa then add salt and pepper.