Yummy Yards CSA Box #12

The first two recipes I made this week didn’t have any ingredients at all in them from this week’s box, but they did become ingredients for cooking up the box contents later.  And how!

Those darn apples just kept falling off the tree so I made and canned several more batches of apple sauce, with and without fresh ginger.

Though both kids claim to like it,  (“It tastes just like real apple sauce, Mum!”), it always comes back from school untouched.  There’s something about eating it out of Tupperware that puts them off.   I’ve resolved to use it up in place of oil in baking. 

Here is my super-easy recipe for apple sauce: no peeling, no coring, and you’re left with a lovely rosy-coloured, delicious sauce.  Better than real apple sauce!

Apple Sauce

1. Wash, then cut bad spots and bruises off as many apples as you have on hand.  I used at least two heaping sinks full for my last sauce-making extravaganza. 
2. If they are windfall apples, cut through the core to make sure you are not making Apple Worm Sauce by mistake.
3. Throw the works into a very large stock pot.  Add about 1 cup water, just enough to cover the bottom and prevent scorching. Bring to a gentle simmer.  Cover and cook until the apples start to fall apart, stirring occasionally. 
4. Cool to room temperature.
5. Pass the apples through a food mill to remove the cores and seeds.  If you don’t have a food mill, you can press the apples through a sieve over a large bowl, using the back of a large spoon.  This is way more time-consuming, but strangely satisfying.
6. Depending on the type of apples used, you may need to adjust for sweetness or tartness with sugar or lemon juice.  
7. Can in boiling water for 10 minutes.

Ginger Apple Sauce

For a delicious, warming variation, add a large hunk of peeled, chopped ginger with the apples and continue with rest of recipe.

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Speaking of ginger, next we have Ginger Jam.  I was getting dangerously low, so I bought about 6 large hands of ginger at the veggie store for less than $3, and went to work.  I’ve made this recipe twice before and been very happy with the results, but this time I think it is absolutely perfected.  I now have seven jars of the spiciest, most tasty ginger jam ever.  There is no going back. 

It takes a bit of muscle for this recipe, and a fair time to peel the ginger.  I recommend watching a documentary on Ray  Kurzweil while you peel and it won’t seem like such a chore. The effort is absolutely worth it if you love the flavour of ginger.

Ginger Jam

• 5 or 6 hands of fresh ginger
• 4 cups water
• 5 cups sugar
• 1 package liquid pectin

1. Peel and slice with the grain several hands of ginger.  You are aiming for about three or four cups full when it is all sliced.
2. Place ginger in a large pot with about 4 cups water.  Cover and simmer gently for about 1 1/2 hours, until it is tender.  Don’t let it boil dry;  add more water if necessary.
3. Drain ginger in a sieve, reserving liquid for other recipes.
4. When the ginger is cool chop it very, very well in a food processor.
5. Pass the chopped ginger through a food mill.  This is tough work.  At first it will seem like you are only getting juice out of the ginger, but persevere!  Eventually you will extract all the meat, leaving behind a dry mass of unappetizing, coarse fibres.
6. Return the ginger pulp to the pan.  Add sugar.  Bring to boil.  Boil hard for 1 minute.
7. Add the package of liquid pectin.  Simmer 7 minutes, skimming off the (delicious) scum.
8. Can as usual: 10 minutes in a boiling water bath.

Some uses for left-over ginger liquid:

1. Add a splash to lemonade
2. Lovely in a gin and tonic
3. Include when making chai concentrate
4. Add it to poaching liquid for fish

Next I used some of the uncooked, chopped ginger and some of the left-over ginger liquid to poach a trout.  Sometimes I have even used a glob of the jam, itself, for the job.  I also used the green parts of the leeks and it made a very good poaching liquid.

Leek and Ginger Poached Trout or Salmon

• Leek greens, chopped
• Ginger liquid – 1/2 to 1 cup
• Water to cover bottom of poacher
• Ginger, chopped
• Soy sauce – 2 splashes

1. Place chopped leeks on bottom of poaching pan.  Add ginger liquid and water.  Simmer 10 minutes.  Turn off heat.  Be sure there is enough liquid left to cover bottom of pot.
2. Place fish on poaching tray and fit into poacher.  Sprinkle with ginger and soy sauce.
3. Place lid on poacher and simmer very, very gently for about 1o minutes.  If the heat is too high white gunk will come out of the fish and make it look yucky.  It will taste just fine, but you won’t want to serve it to the Queen.  Turn off heat and let sit, covered, for another 10 minutes.
4. Remove skin.  Reserve poaching liquid to use as soup stock.

I make a poached fish two or three times a month and keep it in the fridge.  There are many ways to enjoy it:

• warm, with rice
• cold, in chunks, on salad greens with chopped mushrooms, Craisins or strawberries and Ginger Jam Jar Dressing.*
• in a toasted hamburger bun with Zucchini Relish and lettuce
• or in the next recipe: Salmon Soup with Ginger and Broccoli Tops

*Ginger Jam Jar Dressing:  into a nearly empty jar of ginger jam, add rice vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper.  Shake to free all the good bits stuck to the side of the jar.  Makes a very yummy salad dressing.

Salmon Soup with Ginger and Broccoli Tops

• 1 leek, chopped
• Butter – 1 glob
• 2 carrots, chopped
• Poaching liquid from salmon, or veggie or fish stock
• Ginger liquid, optional
• Poached salmon or trout
• Broccoli tops, separated and cut into manageable pieces

1. Sauté leek in butter until beginning to soften. 
2. Add carrot, stock and optional ginger liquid.  Simmer until carrots are tender.
3. Add broccoli tops and cook gently 3 minutes.
4. Place cold salmon in bowls.  Pour soup over top.

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OK, now, what about all that apple sauce?  In a dual effort to introduce more veg into the kids’ diet, and to have something on hand to pack in their school lunches, I decided to do a head-to-head chocolate zucchini cake battle:  Martha Stewart’s Chocolate Zucchini Cakes with Walnuts vs Bon Appétit Chocolate Zucchini Cake.  Kind of.  I made changes to each recipe: apple sauce instead of oil, whole wheat flour for part of the white flour, reduced sugar content, and soured evaporated milk in place of buttermilk or sour cream. 

To make soured evaporated milk add contents of one can to two large squirts lemon juice in a large measuring cup.  Let sit a few minutes until curdled. 

Here are the recipes as I made them:

(No Longer) Bon Appétit Chocolate Zucchini Cake

• 1 1/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup butter, room temperature
• 1/2 cup apple sauce
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup soured evaporated milk
• 2 cups grated unpeeled zucchini
• 1  cup chocolate chips
• 3/4 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 325°F. Butter and flour 13 x 9 x 2-inch baking pan. Sift flours, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt into medium bowl. Beat sugar, butter and apple sauce until well blended. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla extract. Mix in dry ingredients alternately with soured milk in 3 additions each. Mix in grated zucchini. Pour batter into prepared pan. Sprinkle chocolate chips and nuts over.

Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 50 minutes. Cool cake completely in pan.

Martha Stewart’s Chocolate Zucchini Cakes with (or without) Walnuts – Bastardized Version

• 1/2 cup butter, room temperature
• 1/2 cup apple sauce
• 1 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• Walnuts
• 1  cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 2 cups grated zucchini
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1 cup chocolate chips
• 6 tablespoons soured evaporated milk
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Non-stick cooking spray

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.  Beat butter, apple sauce, sugar, salt, and egg. Add vanilla, zucchini and milk and stir until incorporated.  Add sifted flours and cocoa powder and stir until combined.  Stir in chocolate chips.

2. Spray three mini muffin pans and a loaf pan with cooking spray. Fill each cup with batter and top with a walnut.  Or not. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center of a muffin comes out clean, 15 to 20 minutes. Let muffins cool slightly in pans on wire racks before turning out.  Bake the loaf about 50 minutes.

The house smelled so good!  Both recipes produced delicious cake, but the winner is…the Bon Appétit cake by a small margin.  It is more cake-y, while the Martha Stewart one is more dense and brownie-like.  Sorry, Martha.  Also, I’m not a big fan of chunks of chocolate in stuff;  I prefer the chocolate chips melted on top of the cake.  It seems more like icing that way, though it is a bugger to slice. 

Anyway, samples were eagerly gobbled up by everyone in the house, and no one seemed to notice the zucchini or the apple sauce, or that there were two different recipes in play.  I wrapped the slices in plastic wrap, to be frozen and slipped into school lunches as needed.

Which brings me to the next recipe.  There was still more grated zucchini, so I pressed on, making a batch of rather yummy, crispy zucchini pancakes, based on a recipe I cut out of a magazine years ago.  Sorry, I don’t know which one.

Zucchini Pancakes

• 3 or so cups grated zucchini
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 leek, sliced
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 2 eggs, slightly beaten
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• Salt and pepper
• Oil for shallow frying

1. Place the zucchini in a colander and sprinkle with salt.  Mix.  Let sit 10 minutes.  Press out liquid.  Mix with rest of ingredients, except oil.  Obviously. 
2. Heat oil in pan.  Drop spoonful of batter into oil and cook until starting to crisp up at edges.  Turn and continue until browned on both sides.  Drain.

   Lastly, before and after pictures of the mother of all turnips from my box this week.  It had to live on the counter until I could cook it, since it would not even begin to fit in the fridge.  It became a lovely mash with butter, cream, salt and pepper.