All that ground turkey...

(Originally written 13 Sept. 2017)

Pie-like Objects (PLOs)

1 1b. ground chicken, turkey, or pork
1/4 c. chopped onion, or to taste
1-2 ribs celery, chopped, if available
1/4 tsp. garlic powder, or to taste
1 tsp. ground cinnamon, or to taste
ground black pepper to taste
salt if desired
1/2 c. blackberry juice, concentrated to a light syrup (see recipe below)
dough for 8-16 crescent rolls

Cook meat, onion, celery, and spices, stirring to combine and to break up the meat, until nearly done. Add juice and finish cooking. Remove from heat.

Form crescent roll dough into 4-8 squares; if working with precut triangles, you may find it easiest to offset them so the narrow points stick out, then seal the seams and tuck the ends along the sides. Divide the meat mixture between the squares and wrap the dough to form bundles or turnovers. Bake according to the directions for the rolls, until light brown and done. Cool well on a rack before refrigerating; do not cover until well chilled or they may get soggy..

"Pies" that stay sealed will keep better than ones that split, so eat the split ones first.

Blackberry Concentrate
When ready to start, rinse blackberries gently (they will keep better unwashed and not too tightly covered). Dump them into a pot and smush them a bit with a potato masher or your widest spatula. This gives you some burn-preventing liquid without adding water which will then just have to be cooked off again. Cover and simmer on medium-low heat (about 4 out of 9 on my stove), smushing and stirring occasionally for... awhile. Until it's had enough and is all runny. Half an hour or so, once it starts bubbling and you (probably) turn the heat down.

Rig a jelly bag. If you're like most people these days, you won't have a proper jelly bag; it's easier to lay a couple of layers of cheesecloth in a strainer. Make sure enough cheesecloth hangs over the sides that you can pull the corners together and make a bag, and put strainer and cheesecloth over another pot, or a large bowl, and dump in the berries and juice. After the first 1-2 hours, gather the cheesecloth corners and tie them to form a bag; hang the bag over the pot/bowl, possibly from the knob of a cupboard. You'll probably want to use a loop of twine for this, because the cheesecloth will be pretty messy. (If you have friends or family who are into horror or goth, be sure to show them your hanging bag and "bloody" hands.) Let the berries drain awhile longer, a couple of hours to overnight.

Time for a break. Clean up, put the juice in the fridge, and throw away or compost the berries and cheesecloth. Now aren't you glad you dont have a jelly bag to wash? Make sure you have enough clean canning jars (I recommend 8 oz. jelly jars or those cute 4-oz. pots) and unused lids if you're going to can it.

When you're ready to continue (don't leave it more than a few days or you'll lose momentum), set the juice back over medium-low heat and simmer, uncovered and stirring occasionally, until it reduces to about half the volume or you're out of patience. If you have a candy thermometer, aim for the low end of the syrup range, about 210-215F (100C). While waiting on this, put water in your canning kettle and find whatever you put in the bottom to protect the jars (I use a washcloth since I lost my little wire thingy years ago). Start it heating. Arrange lids and (upside-down) jars in a shallow pan of water and get them boiling to sterilize them. Set out a kitchen towel to put the jars on while filling and, later, while cooling (NOT a good towel; use the same one you've been drying your washed and hulled strawberries on all summer). Find your jar-lifter or tongs and other canning tools as desired. Isn't that juice cooked to syrup yet?

When the juice is finally syrupy, fill the jars, leaving 1/4 inch or a little more headspace. Close jars and load the canner, adding more water if needed to cover the jars. Boil 10 minutes. Remove jars to the towel and listen for the pops while cleaning up; some may even seal while being removed from the canner.

Complete information on canning (.pdf file).

The Blackberry Chicken Calzone experiment
I wanted to start off my new blog with something creative and unusual, so in the best "what needs to be used up?" tradition I attempted... let's call it Blackberry Chicken Calzone. Unusual, I think I managed. Edible...?

It all started with the blackberries in a friend's back yard. She had eaten, frozen, and smoothied as many of the things as she could handle and they were still coming over the back fence like a tsunami; would I like to pick some for myself? Please?

So with one load from her yard and another from a local park (because now I was in full berrying mode and, after all, it's free food), I started out by making juice. This is an easy way to get rid of all those seeds. Then, since I still had blackberry jelly from last year and the row of canned grape juice next to it suggested I wasn't going to drink it as juice, I decided to cook it down into an unsweetened syrup sort of thing. The idea was to make sort of a blackberry version of pomegranate molasses, although later I realized that pomegranate molasses is sweetened.

Now that I had this blackberry molasses-oid, what to do with it? Remembering the original inspiration (I think it was a chicken fesenjan recipe?) and digging around in my freezer, I decided to cook some ground chicken in it. By tasting the juice and sniffing spices, I settled on a little garlic and onion, just because that's pretty much what goes on everything savory in my kitchen, plenty of cinnamon, and a bit of cubebs just because I hadn't used any for a long time. To be honest, I think they were too old to make much difference.

So far, so good. I had some pizza dough from the food bank in the freezer that I thawed for this little adventure. I'm not sure if it was supposed to be for a thin, crackery crust, if freezing killed the yeast, or if it was just too old, but it didn't rise. I stretched it out as best I could (with it ripping all the way), dumped the chicken in the middle, and pulled the edges over to make a sort of minimalist, one-filling calzone, then cooked it like the package said to, but it looked more dried than baked. Plus a lot of the bottom stuck to the pan. I gamely tried some of the fragments anyway, since that's what there was for dinner, and it wasn't actually too bad once you got past the appearance. Further experimentation showed crescent roll or puff pastry dough to be a better choice than the pizza dough, and that golden raisins or chopped dried figs made a good addition. The technique also works with other combinations of meat, juice/sauce, and additions.

Dessert was Trader Joe's shortcakes from the food bank via the freezer (thanks for donating them, TJ's!) under very basic strawberry sauce made by coarsely fork-mashing wonderful local strawberries from the Tumwater Farmers' Market, courtesy of their generous Market Match program.

Esperanta traduko: this post is also available in Esperanto, because Dana is a language geek.

Switchover

I had been thinking about starting a new blog for a year or so, but until this point my writings for the Tumwater Farmers' Market blog kept me busy enough. I wrote on e post but never got around to setting up the blog. However, at this point someone else took over writing the Market blog (and took it in another direction). The following earlier posts are "reprinted" from that blog for your convenience. Enjoy!

Definitions, pt. 1

adjust seasonings: usually, add salt and pepper to taste, although any other seasonings can be adjusted at the same point

agrodolce: an Italian sweet and sour sauce. ("Agridouce," by the way, is a word of similar meaning that I made up, I think from French usage, before discovering this term, and describes any dish of the European variety of sweet and sour flavor)

aubergine: eggplant

bloom (chocolate): the whitish layer of fat or sugar that forms on chocolate when it has had a hard life -- been poorly stored or improperly handled. While it may affect the texture of the chocolate, bloom does not make the chocolate unsafe to eat. Some don't mind it at all, others considered bloomed chocolate inedible.
More details.

bouguet garni: a little bundle of fresh herb twigs, intended to be removed before the dish it has flavered is served. The bouquet is traditionally tied in a little bundle with string, although the herbs may be placed in a small cloth bag instead (in which case they don't even need to be whole twigs).

BTU: British Thermal Unit, used to measure heat output. One BTU is the amount of heat needed to raise one pound (2 cups) of non-aerated water from 60 to 61 degrees F at normal air pressure. Now you know.

chiffonade: shredded or thinly sliced herbs or vegetables, often used as a garnish

corn flour: corn starch

cornichon: small gherkin (which is a small, young cucumber)

deglaze: remove dried juices from a pan by adding liquid and cooking, scraping the bottom gently to help dissolve the residue; a standard step in making gravy

divided (in ingred. list): not used all at once. This is mostly found in older recipes, and warns you that, for instance, 1/4 cup of that "2 c flour" is going onto the roux (q.v.) and only 1 3/4 cups will be used for the biscuits. The actual amounts to be used will be in the body of the recipe.

fines herbes: chives, chervil, parsley, and tarragon. A traditional mixture is 1 part each tarragon and chives, 2 parts chervil, and 8 parts parsley, but every chef has her/his own formula.


macerate: to soften fruit, especially berries, by marinating or otherwise treating them to make them release their juices. Sprinkling strawberries with sugar is a common example.

non-reactive (pan, bowl, container): one that won't react with acidic ingredients such as vinegar, tomatoes, or some fruit juices. Stainless steel, glass, ceramic, and plastic are all non-reactive; avoid aluminum, copper, and cast iron unless enamelled or lined with steel.

persillade: chopped parsley and garlic, usually added to dishes at the end of cooking

mirepoix: chopped onions, celery, and carrots. These ingredients form the basic flavoring of many foods, especially soups.

roux: a cooked mixture of butter and flour, often used in sauces.
instructions for making a roux
video on how to make a roux

syrup, golden, or light treacle: light molassess, more or less
more from Wikipedia

syrup, simple: sugar water, basically. It can be light or heavy. In bartending, the ratio of sugar to water is usually between 1:1 to 2:1; 1 C sugar to 3 C water is more common in cooking. The syrup should be cooked 2-3 min to dissolve the sugar.
more from Wikipedia

temper (chocolate): to subject chocolate to a series of temperature changes that make it less likely to bloom (q.v., above)
article on tempering chocolate

temper (milk, eggs): to warm delicate foods such as milk, cream, or eggs slowly to prevent curdling, by adding a small amount of the hot mixture to the cold ingredient before mixing them together.
more details