Good morning, friends. It’s surely soup season, and Judy Gillespie is seeking your help because “Soup is my specialty. The only problem is that I am lactose-intolerant. I want recipes for cream soups that are lactose-free, and also any other solutions or recipes that other readers have found.”
Here’s another conversation thread, the other side of Best of the Best. What is the Missing Ingredient in your kitchen? If you made a wish list, what would you wish? The rest of us can get ideas from your answers as we have from the favorite parts of a number of readers’ kitchens.
And as we hold on, very tenuously, to the tastes of summer, here’s a reminder to send your best canning recipes.
BEETS
Thank you again, Mary Sterling, for the canning recipes you sent to us from Calhoun, Georgia. Today we share one of hers for the most robustly colorful of vegetables. The source is “Kerr Kitchen Cookbook.”
Pickled Beets
6 to 7 pounds (2- to 2 1/2-inch) beets with tops
Water to cover beets
2 (2-inch) cinnamon sticks
1/2 teaspoon whole cloves
4 cups cider vinegar (labeled 5% acidity)
2 cups sugar
2 cups water
1/4 cup Kerr pickling salt
1 medium onion, sliced (optional)
Wash beets. Trim tops, leaving 3 inches of tops and roots. Place beets in an 8- to 10-quart saucepan, and cover with water. Cover and cook beets over medium-high heat until skins slip off easily, 20 to 25 minutes. Drain and discard water. Trim off tops and roots. Slip off skins. Slice beets 1/4-inch-thick.
Tie cinnamon sticks and cloves in spice bag or cheesecloth. In a 4- to 6-quart saucepan, combine vinegar, sugar, 2 cups water, pickling salt and spice bag. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Add beets and onions. Cook 5 minutes.
Remove spices. Immediately fill hot pint jars with beets, leaving 1/2-inch headspace. Pour hot vinegar mixture into jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Carefully run a nonmetallic utensil down inside of jars to remove trapped air bubbles. Wipe jar tops and threads clean. Place hot lids on jars, and screw bands on firmly.
Process in Boiling Water Canner for 30 minutes.
Yield: 7 pints.
TOMATOES
After the following recipe for stewed tomatoes, Pat Treadwell added the lovely sentence, “I hope this helps someone.” And we know it will. As a variation, the cook may use either fresh or canned tomatoes.
Stewed Tomatoes
12 quartered tomatoes (see note)
2 teaspoons chopped parsley
2 teaspoons minced onions
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons celery flakes
2 tablespoons butter
Breadcrumbs
Salt and pepper
Wash and skin tomatoes. Place in heavy pan over low heat with parsley, onions, sugar and celery flakes. Cook 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add butter. Thicken with breadcrumbs, and season with salt and pepper to taste.
Note: You may substitute 5 cups canned tomatoes.
INTRUSIVE AIR
Consider this is a postscript to our discussion of storing foods to last. Jane Guthrie considered “the other problem I have when I buy something in a large container: air.
I like a particular organic yogurt, which comes in a 48-ounce container, and it takes me three weeks or longer to use it.
“Also, sometimes sour cream and cottage cheese don’t stay as fresh as I like over a long haul.
“The yogurt keeps fresh until I can finish it if I cover the surface with plastic wrap. I press the wrap down to seal the surface; it’s a little messy but it works.”
BREAD
J.D.N. invites company for dinner and says, “I’m not sure how everything else will turn out, but you are going to love this bread.” She kneads this bread by hand for 10 minutes, and it works well. “Believe it or not, it takes an hour (or maybe a few more minutes) from start to slathering with butter, and it’s 100% whole wheat without being too heavy. When the bread is cool, I slice and butter it, then wrap in aluminum foil to heat for dinner.”
Best Homemade One-Hour Whole-Wheat Bread
3 cups warm water, approximately 110 degrees
1 tablespoon active dry yeast
2/3 cup honey
1/3 cup oil, plus a little extra for hands
7 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour (or use part white)
1 tablespoon salt
Butter to spread on top of bread
Heat oven to warm, about 200 degrees.
Place warm water in large mixing bowl. Add yeast, and stir. Stir in honey, and let proof (start to form a creamy foam) for 5 minutes.
Add oil, most of flour and salt. Begin by adding 7 cups of flour. (If using a stand mixer, start to mix using the dough hook. Add remaining 1/2 cup of flour until dough pulls away from sides of mixing bowl. Using Bosch or KitchenAid, knead for 10 minutes at medium-high speed.) If you don’t own a stand mixer, you can knead by hand.
Place a little oil on hands, and shape into two bread loaves. Spray loaf pans with nonstick cooking spray. Put pans in a warm oven to let rise until double, about 20 minutes.
Once bread has risen, turn oven to 350 degrees. Leave bread in oven, and set timer for 25 minutes.
Check bread to see if it is golden brown. Once bread is done, remove from oven, and spread butter all over warm loaves. Let cool for several minutes before removing from pan.
Spread butter and jam or honey on warm bread.
If you don’t eat it within 2 days, bread may be frozen.
– From Melissa Stadler of “Modern Honey”
JUST A DASH
There are a couple of challenges to making the copious batch of muffins that several of you sent last week. What if you don’t have a lot of refrigerator space or a crowd of diners? “The Nana” wrote to recommend her daughter’s solution to both.
“I too have used the six-week bran muffin recipe but found that it was not practical when it became just the two of us. My daughter taught me something she learned in a cooking venue. You can freeze muffins raw. She used this because her family likes muffins but different kinds. She would make up the batter, freeze an assortment and then pop them in the oven still frozen. Then everyone had their favorite muffins. I buy the disposable muffin pans. I freeze the raw muffins first, then wrap them well before storing. This way we can have fresh muffins without the waste (or the gummy tops of leftover muffins).”
Thank you for all you sent, for all you will copy from these pages in your own kitchen.
REQUESTS
* Lactose-free soups
* Your kitchen’s “missing ingredient”
* Canning recipes
Jane HenegarTO REACH US
Fare Exchange is a longtime meeting place for people who love to cook and love to eat. We welcome both your recipes and your requests. Be sure to include precise instructions for every recipe you send.
* Mailing address: Jane Henegar, 913 Mount Olive Road, Lookout Mountain, GA 30750
* Email: chattfare@gmail.com