Blood Orange Marmalade

Marmalade is much easier to make than most people presume (particularly made in small batches like this one). There are plenty of recipes dedicated to making jams and jellies with low sugar content. This is not one of those recipes. Marmalade is traditionally a sugar preserve -- so I make no apologies about the sugar content of this recipe. This is a very elemental, traditional use of the naturally occurring pectin present in citrus to turn it into a delicious preserve. That's right: no powdery packets of pectin, no guessing about whether the acid and sugar content will be just right to make the pectin gel. With fruit, sugar and a little time you can make an irresistible marmalade. You can swap out other citrus fruit for the blood oranges to vary the recipe. (Meyer lemons are intoxicating.) It is fantastic swirled into plain yogurt-- a much cheaper alternative to individual flavored yogurts.

My instructions call for just a sharp knife, but if you happen to have a juicer, then by all means use it. Just be sure to grate the peel before juicing. I use a coarse grater to grate my peel -- I love biting into a robust strip of peel. If you prefer a more delicate texture, then you can use a zester.



3 Blood Oranges
3 Lemons
2 c. Sugar
Pinch of salt

Yield: 2 c marmalade

Grate Peel: Using a coarse grater, grate the outer layer of the peel from all of the oranges and lemons. Set Aside.

Cut Fruit: Using a very sharp knife, cut off the top and bottom of each orange and lemon. Set the fruit upright (on the flat surface that you just cut). To remove the rest of the the outer skin and pith, cut strips of the skin away from the fruit, following the curve of the fruit. So start with one strip cut top to bottom. Then follow right behind cutting the peel away in 1/2" strips, until you have worked your way around the entire fruit. Discard the trimmings of pith and skin. Slice the skinned fruit into 1/2" thick rounds.

Cook Fruit: Place the cut fruit and sugar in a large stainless steel stockpot. Place the pot over high heat and stir. Stir vigorously to break up the fruit. At this point you really only care about breaking up the fruit. When the fruit is thoroughly mushy, turn off the heat and pour the fruit and sugar mixture through a sieve. (If you are juicing the fruit, you can skip this step and go straight to cooking the marmalade)

Cook Marmalade: Add the reserved peel to the fruit and juice mixture and pour back into your stock pot. Place over high heat. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring occasionally. Once the mixture is boiling, turn the heat down to medium/low. At this point you are essentially waiting for liquid to evaporate. You will need to stir the marmalade frequently to prevent it from sticking to the bottom of the pan. The mixture will begin to thicken after several minutes of boiling. To test the consistency of the marmalade, drip a little bit off of your spoon onto a cold, ceramic plate. The ceramic will cool down the test very quickly and you will be able to see what texture your marmalade is. Remember that the pectin will continue to firm up for a day or two in the fridge, so you should stop cooking your marmalade while it is still a little runnier than you want the finished marmalade to be.

Store: In the refrigerator for several months. Of course you can sterilize and seal this recipe in jars too, but stored in the refrigerator there is no need for these additional steps.

Potato Skin Crisps

As I have mentioned before, potato skins can be put to good use in making a flavorful batch of broth. But they are also quite tasty cooked all by themselves. Recently I made a huge batch of sunchoke soup (incidentally if you ever have the better part of an afternoon to kill and feel like you need a good, tedious task to calm your nerves, I'd recommend peeling sunchokes. It is one of those interminable, manual cooking tasks -- right up there with skinning chestnuts and cracking almonds. ) In the end I had a wonderful sunchoke soup, and a big pile of peels. So I figured that it was high time for me to figure out the nuances of crisp potato skins (or sunchoke skins, really any root vegetable, but I think that sweet potatoes might be too fibrous to be terribly palatable).

Salted and cooked to a delicate crisp, potato skins are an intoxicating blend of earthy and ethereal. They taste, well, a little bit like dirt -- but the most delicious, wholesome, addictive dirt that you can imagine. Think of them as the strange looking, interesting uncle of the potato chip. You can eat them as an appetizer or snack, or sprinkle them on top of any dish that you'd like to add a little crunch to.

While the procedure is simple enough, I spent a surprisingly long time fussing with it to get these to come out just right. A lot of recipes call for a high cooking temperature and just scattering butter over the skins. This procedure gave me a half batch of charcoal crisps and some undercooked, lackluster skins. I found that a quick saute in butter evenly distributes the butter over the skins. Then cooking at a medium temperature for a longer time gets all of the skins crisp, without burning. If you know you want to make a batch of crisps, you can reserve your peels in a bag in the freezer until you have enough. Take a little more care and cut your skins into long, even strips (about 3"), and they will be the perfect size to serve as an appetizer. Smaller, uneven crisps (like my sunchokes) can be used as an accent to another dish.

Yield: 2-3 servings

3/4 c. Potato Skins (or similar)
1 T. Butter
salt
pepper

Preheat your oven to 350 F.

Saute Skins: Melt the butter. Toss in your skins. If you are using previously frozen skins, make sure to let any excess water that the peels have released steam off at this point. Cook for 1-2 minutes on medium heat, stirring. The skins should be evenly coated with butter and steaming.

Bake: Let the skins cool for a few minutes. Spread them out onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Make sure that you are separating them into one layer. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake for 15 minutes. Stir the skins, (just to rearrange them on the sheet). Bake for an additional 10-15 minutes until all of the skins are crisp. You won't see them brown very much because of the darker color of the skin. You can snap one or two to test for crispness, remembering that they will continue to crisp as they cool.

Store: Store cooled crisps in an airtight container for up to a week (but I don't think they'll last that long..)

Whole Wheat Crackers

I enjoy all of the little-- shall we say-- particularities of working with pastry doughs. They must be carefully handled. (As one of my dear pastry instructors would say "like children: gentle, but firm.") They must rest, chilled, for the appropriate amount of time, allowing the gluten to relax. Then they must be cut and shaped precisely. Yes, I find all of this terribly endearing, but I also realize that it is not everyone's thing. Especially for something as everyday as crackers. So I wanted to make a recipe for crackers that you could make quickly and easily-- and avoid a lot of those typical, finicky demands of pastry dough. I had a hunch that a technique I have seen used to make tender cakes and pie doughs might work for crackers. And to my great surprise, my first attempt came out stellar: crunchy, wholesome and best of all a very easy, forgiving dough to work with. If you bake them in large sheets and break the crackers into shards you even avoid fussy shaping and trimming. And to my eye, the organic cracker shard-shapes have much more character than squares and triangles. So there you have it: there are no reasons left to not make your own crackers. They will be a fraction of the cost of the packaged supermarket crackers and miles apart in taste.


Yield: Three large sheet trays of crackers

10T. Butter (1 1/2 sticks, preferably at room temperature)
2c. All Purpose Flour
1/2t. Baking Powder
1/2 tsp. Salt
1 1/3 c. Whole Wheat Flour
1/3c. Wheat Germ
1T. Barley Malt (typically found near molasses in most health food stores and well-stocked groceries)
2/3 c. Water
Salt, Sugar, Sesame Seeds, Poppy Seeds, Fennel or Rosemary to sprinkle on top.


Mix Flour and Butter: This is the "weird" technique which is likely to go against everything else that you've learned about pastry, but trust me, it works like a charm. This is also the step that gives the dough its unique texture (kind of like play-dough, actually) and allows for it to be rolled out right away.* It is nearly impossible to overmix this dough, so there is no need to be delicate with your mixing and rolling. So, getting down to business... first mix together your all purpose flour, salt and baking powder. Place the flour mixture and room temperature butter in the bowl of a stand mixer** and mix on low for a few minutes until the butter is completely incorporated into the flour. It should look like a moist, homogeneous yellow powder-- think of the texture of slightly damp, clumping sand. As I said, you can't really overmix here.

Mix in Remaining Dry Ingredients: Add whole wheat flour and wheat germ. Mix until thoroughly incorporated.

Mix in Liquids: Dissolve malt in water. Mix liquids into dry ingredients until the dough comes together.

Roll Dough: Divide dough into three portions. Shape each portion into a rectangle .On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out until it is uniformly thin-- your dough should probably be about as big as your sheet tray. In fact you should take note of the size of your sheet tray, and make sure that you are rolling your dough into a shape that will fit easily on it. You ought to be able to see the color of your countertop through the dough. As you are rolling, take a good look and note that you are rolling the center out as thinly as the edges--it is easy to have thin edges and a thick center. This is exactly what you don't want for even baking. The edges warm up before the center in the oven, so if you have thin edges they will overcook before the center is done.

Dock: Use a fork to prick the dough at even intervals. Brush the dough liberally with water and sprinkle with salt and sugar (or other seeds and spices if you want different varieties of cracker)

Bake: Place your sheets of cracker into a 315 F oven, bake for 15-20 minutes, rotating the sheets once during baking. The crackers are done when the edges are just barely beginning to brown, the center will still be puffy and soft, but don't worry. These crackers develop their crunch as they cool. (In this case, I would err on the side of underbaking-- overcooked crackers get an unpleasantly bitter edge.) Let the crackers cool on the sheet tray.

Store: In an airtight container for up to two weeks. The dough can be made ahead of time, tightly wrapped and stored in the refrigerator for a week or in the freezer for up to a month.

* The reason this technique works is that mixing fat first with flour inhibits gluten development. All of the "normal" rules of pastry dough-- letting doughs rest, not overmixing-- work to control gluten development. When you inhibit gluten development from the beginning you are truly working with a different beast.

**If you don't have a stand mixer, you can mix the butter in by hand. Make sure that your butter is softened, and use your hand to break up clumps and incorporate the butter into the flour. Continue mixing until all of the butter has disappeared into the flour, and the mixture is uniformly yellow.

Warm Cabbage and Apple Slaw

The luster of holiday cooking has worn away and the monotony of winter vegetables is starting to sink in. I thought that it seemed time to post another quick, tasty cabbage dish. This one is served warm, which seems apropos given the mind numbing (okay, everything-numbing) cold snap right now . This slaw is so easy to make it almost seems silly to give instructions for preparation-- you just cut things up and then warm them for a few minutes in a saucepan. The cabbage is added last, and not cooked completely through, so you still get a peppy little crunch and bite. It is a great side dish to pair with a hearty main course.

1/2 small head of cabbage cut into 1/4" strips
1 small onion, diced
one apple, diced
a handful of raisins
a pinch of ground allspice
a pinch of ground cloves
apple cider vinegar
olive oil
salt

Yield: 4 servings

Cook Onion: Heat a tablespoon or so of oil in a saucepan. Add onion, reduce heat to low. Cook until the onion begins to turn translucent. Add the allspice, cloves and raisins and apples. Bring the heat up to medium. Cook for a few minutes-- stirring-- until the apples begin to soften.

Cook Cabbage: Add the cabbage all at once. Cook for a few minutes-- stirring frequently. The cabbage should be fully cooked in the floppy, leafy parts of the strips and undercooked in the thicker centers.

Season: Add vinegar, salt and olive oil to taste. Serve warm or tepid. (Leftovers keep well refrigerated.)

Vanilla

Most of the posts to this blog have had to do with turning relatively cheap ingredients into tasty concoctions. But another important side of running an economical kitchen is knowing exactly how to use precious, expensive items without wasting anything. And so we arrive at vanilla-- famously the second most expensive spice (first place goes to those electric little threads of saffron). Vanilla is very expensive in all its forms (whole beans, paste, extract and powder.) It is possible to save money on costly extract by making your own... and you will also end up with delectable byproducts.

If you are cooking with whole vanilla beans, use a paring knife to make a long incision down the length of the bean. Then you can scrape out the paste of black seeds (sometimes referred to, rather vividly, as vanilla caviar). Then the seeds and pod can be steeped in liquid (often for ice cream or custard). The pods can be retrieved after steeping, washed, left out to dry and then turned into vanilla powder or sugar. Crumble the completely dried bean into a coffee grinder and whiz it a few times until you have a fine powder. A half teaspoon or so of this powder can be added directly to baked projects. Cut the powder with sugar, and you have vanilla sugar-- perfect for sprinkling on top of sugar cookies or sweetening coffee or tea.

Homemade Vanilla Extract

6 whole Whole Vanilla Beans for every
1 c. Liquor (rum, vodka, brandy even tequila)

Select Vanilla Beans: If you read the "ingredients" section in any book with a pastry chef's name on the front, you will likely find a discussion of that chef's preferred vanilla bean, complete with a discussion of its unique and superior qualities. Now let me first state that there is a marked difference between vanilla beans from different regions... but for the home cook, the much larger problem is not "Which of many equally high quality beans should I buy?"-- rather more "Where can I get a decent quality vanilla that will cost less than an introductory life insurance policy?" Many stores carry vanilla beans, but it is often a specialty item that doesn't move quickly-- consequently I've seen a lot of old, dried vanilla on store shelves. The most basic marker of quality is moisture: a good bean should be supple-- yielding just a bit to pressure. An old bean will be dry and brittle. My advice is to check your local providers for cost and freshness-- if none of them look good you might do better to order from an online supplier. If you are lucky enough to have more than one good bean option, I would chose a Madagascar bean for extract. Tahitian vanilla beans (which had at least a moment of being the trendy ingredient-du-jour a few years back) are not, in my mind, ideally suited for extract.


Select a Liquor: Most of the flavor in the extract comes from the vanilla, but you can alter the flavor by using different liquors. Rather obviously, the strength of your extract is affected by the proportion of beans to liquor and the length of time that the beans steep. Less obvious is that the higher proof liquor you use, the more concentrated extract you will achieve. I don't think that it is worth it to go out of your way to find the perfect liquor-- I'd just use whatever you have chaply available. Even if you select a very inexpensive vodka, you can still make a good quality extract.

Steep: Just cover the beans and liquor tightly, store away from light and heat and wait 2 months. At the end of steeping you can remove the vanilla bean and squeeze out the seeds (use in ice cream, custard, or to poach fruit). Then dry out the pod and use to make vanilla powder or sugar.

Store: Stored away from light and heat vanilla extract will keep indefinitely.

Cook/Bake: Now that the tasty compounds that make vanilla taste like vanilla have seeped out into your extract, they are a bit volatile. To get the most flavor from your extract add it at the end of cooking to hot dishes (such as fruit compotes of custards). If you are baking with the extract then cream the extract together with the butter. The fat magically* stabilizes the vanilla flavor and allows it to persevere even after being subjugated to the traumas of baking.


*Okay, not really magic. The volatile aromatic compounds are more soluble in fat than water, so they seep out into the fat before baking. Then they stay there (in the fat in your cookies and cakes) rather than evaporating in a puff of perfumed steam.