Category Archives: techniques

Beyond Canning: Gochugaru Preserved Lemons

24 March 2016 by local kitchen

Well, hellllllllllllloooooooooooooo there! It has been quite a while, hasn’t it? It seems I took an unintentional blog hiatus over the winter: life and work (and more life) and not quite having a lot to say all played their part. But breaks are good things, I think; and I’m feeling refreshed and ready to tackle new cooking projects, and more importantly, talk about them here! And what better reason to come out of bloggy hibernation than to celebrate the launch […]

Categories: citrus, fermenting, fruit, preserving, quick & easy, winter • Tags: canning, citrus, cooking, food, preserving, quick & easy, recipes

Apple Bourbon Chipotle BBQ Sauce

6 October 2015 by local kitchen

Apples, apples, everywhere. I’m not sure there has been such an apple season in the Northeast in my lifetime. Maine was swimming in them: trees everywhere dotted with hundreds of red, green, or golden orbs; apples piling in drifts on the side of the road; apple trees you never even knew you had producing large, juicy, blemish-and-worm-free fruit; the air redolent with spicy, slightly fermenting, apples. The story’s no different in my own front yard: we have several 100-year-old, tall, […]

Categories: apples, canning, condiments, fall, preserving, sauces • Tags: apples, canning, condiments, cooking, food, local, preserving, recipes

Blueberry & Golden Plum Pie + A Giveaway!

8 August 2015 by local kitchen

This post is in partnership with MightyNest, the online retailer with a positive mission: providing the natural, organic, and non-toxic products that families seek for their homes while also giving back to schools. MightyNest is sponsoring the giveaway and provided a set of the materials to me for use in this post. This recipe started out as a cherry pie. An open-faced, glazed cherry pie, in fact. To which I added some lovely little golden plums of the I-can’t-resist variety […]

Categories: baking, berries, dessert, pastry, pie, plums, summer, whole wheat flour • Tags: baking, berries, cooking, dessert, food, local, recipes

Strawberry Habanero Margarita Mix

2 July 2015 by local kitchen

Are you looking for a spicy, seasonally-appropriate, festaholic cocktail to kick off your holiday weekend? One that quickly & easily dispatches five of the 28 pounds of celebratory strawberries you picked at the farm last week? One that is so aggressively spicy that your husband takes one sip, carefully slides the glass out of his reach and coughs, “It’s very… um… you.” Of course you are! This preserve started out as a jam, but as the mixture of strawberries, sugar, […]

Categories: berries, canning, drink, preserving, wine, beer & liquor • Tags: berries, canning, cooking, food, local, preserving, recipes

Simple Strawberry Skillet Jam

29 June 2015 by local kitchen

It’s that time of year again: the time when I’m buying an armful of rhubarb, or a flat of berries, or pound after pound of peaches, and some innocent, unsuspecting stranger asks brightly, “What are you going to make?” The reactions I get when I tell people that I make jam run the full gamut from Stewie to serious side eye to the Patrick Stewart quadruple take. At the farmer’s market last summer, one woman even told me, “Girl, ain’t nobody […]

Categories: berries, preserving, summer • Tags: berries, food, local, recipes, summer

Mini Rhubarb Pie

13 June 2015 by local kitchen

Mini pie! Though they can be a bit tough to find, I love my mini, 7-inch pie plates. I have two, actually: one in the classic heron pattern used by Tai’s Uncle Charlie at Hog Bay Pottery, and one deep-dish 7-inch by Emile Henry that I snagged years ago at a little shop in Bedford Village. And they are not so mini, really: a quarter of the pie is still a hefty serving, and with ice cream the pie could […]

Categories: baking, dessert, pie, rhubarb, spring, whole wheat flour • Tags: baking, cooking, food, local, recipes, rhubarb

Ramp Powder

5 June 2015 by local kitchen

A couple of weeks ago, I took a sunny drive out to Holbrook Farm and picked up what had to be the last ramps of the season: they were huge, with big, fat bulbs, and the slightly yellow-green leaves that say the end of ramp season is nigh. It’s been a busy Spring, and my visits to the farm have been few and far between, so it’s just possible that I picked up everything else in the store as well. […]

Categories: 100% local, drying, leek, preserving, spring • Tags: cooking, food, local, preserving, quick & easy, ramps, recipes

Blueberry Meyer Lemon Cake

8 May 2015 by local kitchen

See that cake up there? That was my breakfast. No one, including me, should try to tell you that cake is a nutritious option for breakfast – there is plenty of butter and sugar in there, after all, and those two aren’t exactly nutrient dense. Strangely enough, however, despite my rather non-nutritionally-stellar breakfast, I haven’t “crashed” this afternoon (fiber in whole grains delays absorption of simple carbohydrates and prevents spikes in insulin), I have managed to perform complex mathematical equations […]

Categories: baking, berries, breakfast, cake, citrus, dessert, snack, spring, summer, whole wheat flour • Tags: baking, cake, cooking, food, local, quick & easy, recipes

Kami’s Cake 2015: Jimmie Cake!

10 April 2015 by local kitchen

Jimmies, people. Not sprinkles, not shots: jimmies. Said in your best South Park Timmy voice: jim-MAH. I went simple with the Kami Birthday Cake this year: 2 layers, basic cream cheese frosting, and lots and lots of jimmies. I opted for a quick-baking, no muss, no fuss chocolate layer cake from Molly at my name is yeh, though I swapped out hazelnuts for pecans because I’m ornery. And I was out of hazelnuts. [Though I will make that chocolate hazelnut […]

Categories: baking, cake, chocolate, citrus, year round • Tags: baking, cake, cooking, food, local, recipes

Oatmeal Cookies with Molasses & Bacon Fat

8 March 2015 by local kitchen

Bacon fat. In cookies. Why I have never done this before? It seems so obvious, especially with a cast of characters that is comfortable with the savory side of life: eggs, butter, flour, oats. I’m surely not the first person to think of this, as a quick Google will show you, but it seems it took the never-ending winter of 2015 to push me into Bacon Fat Cookieland. For that, my friends, we must offer up thanks. Thanks for the […]

Categories: baking, chocolate, dessert, nuts, snack, whole wheat flour, winter, year round • Tags: baking, cooking, food, local, recipes

Meyer Lemon Quichelets

21 January 2015 by local kitchen

Big box of Meyer lemons in the mail = Meyer lemon in EVERYTHING. For a few precious weeks, at least. This year is no exception: aside from the usual Meyer lemon in tea, in fizzy water, and in various boozier concoctions, I’ve roasted cauliflower & fennel with a couple of sliced Meyers, marinated chicken breasts in Meyer juice then broiled them with still more sliced lemon, perked up a chicken, black bean & vegetable soup, and made a Meyer version […]

Categories: appetizer, cheese, citrus, eggs, fennel, pastry, vegetarian, winter • Tags: cooking, eggs, food, local, recipes, starters, vegetarian

Feta & Preserved Lemon Scones

11 December 2014 by local kitchen

My beloved New England Revolution played in the MLS Cup in Los Angeles last weekend. For the fifth time in a dozen years, the Revs battled it out in the championship game of Major League Soccer. For the fifth time, I jumped up and down in the stands; I clapped and sang, I rejoiced and cried. For the fifth time, I sat dejected in a stadium parking lot, nursing a beer with a few hundred die-hard New England fans, all of […]

Categories: baking, breakfast, cheese, citrus, parsley, snack, winter • Tags: baking, cooking, food, local, quick & easy, recipes, vegetarian, whole grain breads

What To Do with Preserved Lemon

1 December 2014 by local kitchen

Did you know that our good friend Sean of Punk Domestics fame is now the Food Preservation Expert over at About.com? It’s a really nice resource for All Things Preserve-y, and he’s been steadily adding new content. You should go check it out. And while you’re over there, you can take a look at the little guest post I put together discussing a bunch of different ways to use up preserved lemon, including links to various favorite recipes around the […]

Categories: citrus, preserving • Tags: canning, cooking, food, local, preserving, winter

Pumpkin Chocolate Marbled Bundt Cake + A Giveaway!

29 October 2014 by local kitchen

This post is in partnership with MightyNest, the online retailer with a positive mission: providing the natural, organic, and non-toxic products that families seek for their homes while also giving back to schools. MightyNest is sponsoring the giveaway and provided a set of the materials to me for review. Teflon in cookware is a bad idea: we don’t really need to debate this, right? When heated (which cookware occasionally is, cough), Teflon coatings on nonstick cookware can release a toxic […]

Categories: baking, cake, chocolate, dessert, fall, whole wheat flour, winter squash • Tags: baking, cake, cooking, dessert, food, giveaway, local, pumpkin, recipes

Mirepoix, Sofrito, & Soup Base for the Freezer

16 October 2014 by local kitchen

Have you ever noticed how each season’s preserving takes on a life of its own? Sure, you have the standards that you put up every year: canned tomatoes, your husband’s favorite pickle, ears and ears of frozen grilled corn. But each season it seems a certain method of preservation wins the day. Either the canning pot is bubbling away non-stop, or you have six different crocks fermenting on the counter, or everything in sight gets spread out in the dehydrator. […]

Categories: 100% local, freezing, preserving, soup, spring, summer • Tags: cooking, food, local, preserving, recipes