Yummy Pimento Cheese Spread

Did you find yourself a peck of fresh red peppers at the farm market last weekend?    I hope you did!  Such a deal, I found a peck for five dollars, with each one more perfect than the next.  So, I'm betting that you roasted and marinated them when you got home, using last week's post.  Possibly by now, you are tired of eating them on bread with parmesan cheese, but have some leftover (is this really possible??).  But, if so, here is what you want to do now.....

Travel down south and you'll find that they love their pimento cheese spread, while  we in the north really know nothing of it.  But having been a southerner for one year of my life (grad school at N.C. State ), I'm in tune with southern cuisine.  My ears perk up when I hear favorite dishes being mentioned.  I have unusual cravings from time to time.  And quite often, my homemade iced tea gets an extra jolt of sugar for the "sweet tea" lover in me.  But, I have never had pimento cheese spread.  It was time for this to change.  And, my leftover marinated red peppers (after making and canning 7 jars this weekend), gave me a great idea!  They are  surprisingly pimento-like.  Actually, they are so much better.

The big bonus, and this really is a big bonus now that we are hitting soup season around here, is that the spread makes a lovely toasted cheese sandwich.  Imagine the joy of a piping hot pot of tomato soup alongside this vision of loveliness.  (While you're imagining, I'm going to run over to the stove, as it is rainy, gray, cold and windy here!)  And the spread recipe makes enough for quite a few sandwiches, so invite a few people over to help you enjoy it.  But, fair warning, you may want to wait for the tomato soup post next week.

Gussied-Up Southern-Style Pimento Cheese Spread


8 ounces extra sharp white cheddar cheese - grated
8 ounces sharp orange cheddar cheese - grated
1/2 cup mayonnaise
3/4 cup marinated roasted red peppers (or pimentos)
1/2 tsp celery salt
1 or 2 dill pickles - chopped up


Pulse together in food processor lightly, to retain identity of ingredients.  Smear on your favorite sandwich bread for toasted cheese, or serve with crackers, raw veggies, baguette slices, etc.

P. S.  Want to know a great tip?  When making grilled cheese (or any other grilled sandwich), a light and quick coat of mayo on the surface of the side of the bread to be grilled will give you perfect results, and is MUCH easier than butter to handle.  Just be sure to be skimpy with it.

Roasting and Marinating Red Peppers

The very first time that I ever had home-roasted red peppers, we were at my aunt's house. She had set out a small bowl of them before dinner, with some italian bread. Being famished, we dug into it, and were immediately taken aback. "What are these?", "OMG!", "How did you make these?", were the things I remember uttering between bites. She patiently explained the process, but also gave the disclaimer, "they can be a bit tedious".

Hmmmmmm......tedious and I don't usually get along too well. But these, maybe these would be worth it.

I mean, aside from the fact that red bell peppers made it to the "World's Healthiest Food" listing, they are both delicious and useful in a whole bunch of ways. I'm actually a big fan of raw red pepper slices (especially when dipped into a curried veggie dip). But, I would have to say that my favorite way to eat bell peppers by far, is now by roasting them.

And they are so worth it. Although I don't get around to making it very often, this time of year it is hard to resist. A quick visit to any farmer's market finds large, heavy, deep scarlet bell peppers in abundance, and I think, "take them home and DO IT!" If you find yourself in a similar situation, take some time out of your busy day to make these. You won't be sorry.

To start out, you need to blister and roast the peppers under high heat....a grill or broiler. I usually throw mine on the grill when I have other things being cooked. You can virtually forget about them, and just remember to run out and turn them occcasionally, till all sides char up to a blackened state (about 20-30 minutes). Once the peppers have softened, and it is sufficiently darkened, rush it into a bowl and put a quick lid on it. Then, go ahead and eat your dinner (you know, the one you had put on the grill with the peppers). After dinner, the peppers should be cool enough to handle.

So far, pretty easy huh? But this is the tedious part. Carefully peel off blackened skin and discard, as well as the stem and core of the pepper, and the seeds and white membranes inside. But, you need to do this while hovering overtop of the bowl, so that you can catch all of the drips of the sweet pepper juice....this forms the base of your marinade.

Once you have accomplished this part, you are home free. Now slice up the fleshy soft parts of the pepper that remain. Mix them right into the pepper juice with some a couple of glugs of good olive oil (the cloudier and greener the better!). Sprinkle a high quality balsamic vinegar into the mix, and season with tiny amounts of salt and fresh cracked black pepper.

And for the very important last step, eat it, by spooning it onto crusty italian bread with a shard of well aged italian cheese (parmigiano reggianno, pecorino romano, asiago, etc). You can also keep it under a layer of olive oil in the fridge for about 10 days, but it probably won't last that long. And right after I took this picture?

I ate it.

The End of Peaches

Hear ye, hear ye, the end of peach season is upon us. From the fertile fields of Pennsylvania, the luscious, unctious, ought-be-illegal-it's-so-good, crop of 2009 has just dropped. Time is ticking. If you see PA peaches still at your favorite farm market, scoop them up. Quickly. Like we just did. Thanks to the raid on our local grower, we found ourselves with a half bushel of beautiful blushing gems. The plan: Home Canned Vanilla Peaches.

By the way, we have two peach trees growing here, planted by us. Neither seems particularly happy. Peaches appear from the blossoms in late spring, and start to swell, almost teasing us. We have not treated the trees, and it shows. This year, one peach got very near eating size, and to protect it from birds and insects, I cut a piece of nylon stocking and wrapped it as it hung gracefully from a branch. Sadly, the raccoon that lives nearby has been endowed with opposable thumbs, and made quick work of the carefully wrapped snack. So this year, no homegrown peaches for us. Maybe next year will be better. We have a lot to learn.

And that would include canning. I am a rookie canner, and will likely stay that way. You see, I see canning as a large scale operation. I fail to see how a lone person could accomplish all of the vagaries of the canning process by themselves. If you locked me in the kitchen and put the task in front of me, you might still find me there three days later, up to my eyeballs in peels and lids. So, when two friends eagerly volunteered to join in the peach party, it was great news.

I'm also of the mind that with all of the work involved in home canning, I'll stick to the value-added product. Something pickled, or herbed, or complex in some exotic way. Something you wouldn't mind paying a little more for, if you could find it in the local high end grocery. That's how I decided on Vanilla Peaches. The idea is to put a sliced vanilla bean inside the jar with the peaches and sugar solution, then process it. The infusion of sweet, heady vanilla into those gorgeous peaches is already haunting me. The three of us spent a good deal of sweat equity, a small fortune in vanilla beans, and netted 20 quarts of love.

Now, the hard part. How to keep our hands OFF the peaches until winter arrives, and the taste of peaches has long been gone.......so that we can truly appreciate the investment spent. Don't be surprised if we hoard them a bit, and instead serve up some fine Del Monte product when you visit. I'm sure you would understand. But, to guarantee a jar of your own, do you want to sign up for the canning party next year?

Home Canned Vanilla Peaches

16 Pennsylvania grown freestone peaches

6 cups water

3 1/2 cups sugar

2 vanilla beans

2 lemons

4 wide-mouthed, quart jars/lids/rings

1. Sterilize Jars, Lids, Rings.

2. Mix together water and sugar and bring to a boil for 1 minute. Cool slightly. Put into a pourable container.

3. Squeeze the juice of 1/2 of Lemon into each quart jar.

4. Cut vanilla beans in half. Then make slit vertically to expose seeds. Place one half into each jar.

5. Blanch peaches in boiling water for 1 minute, place in cold water bath. Cut in half, peel, remove pit and all parts of red fibrous core. Stack peach halves into jar, packing well. Stop when you are within an inch of the top.

6. Fill jars to within 1/2 inch with the sugar solution. Run a knife inside the jar to loosen air pockets.

7. Dip clean towel into boiling water and wipe the lip of the jar. Place lid and ring on jar and finger tighten.

8. Process in boiling water bath for 30 minutes. Cool, then check seal. Refrigerate those that do not seal properly.

The Infamous Pickled Beet

Since this blog's origin as "The Pickled Beet", I have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of the beet crop, followed by the pickling of that crop. Luckily, its been a great year for beets in my garden. In my haste, I rushed out and pulled them all up in one day, and called my mom. Help!!!

My love for pickled beets can be attributed to my grandma. Oh yes, I do like beets in all sorts of different preparations, even just freshly cooked with a tab of butter, salt and pepper. However, my heart belongs to the pickled variety. When Easter rolls around, pickled beets and eggs are a requirement in my book. Grandma and I used to make them together, with her telling me what to add in between lots of story telling and laughing, tasting and adjusting our handiwork, and then sitting down to enjoy them at the table. Not everyone in the family agreed with our refined tastes, but mom, grandma and I loved them.

Her method involved canned beets. She used their juice to form the base of our pickling liquid, which was a pretty straight up concoction of sugar, vinegar and the canned beet juice. She always said to add the eggs just a few hours before serving. "Otherwise, they get like rubber", she would explain.

I love them her way, really I do. But, one day at the now defunct Ye Olde Silver Fox restaurant, I was served their homemade pickled beets on my salad. They were good. Really good. Sweet and tart, yes, but also hints of spice. So, I have set out to improve on grandma's recipe. This year, I started with fresh garden beets, roasted in their skins. Then a brine, bringing together not just sugar and vinegar, but herbs and spices, and a touch of lemon. Yes, I'm changing her recipe. But I really don't think she'd mind. She was always up for new things, and her spirit of adventure lives on in all of us.

I wish grandma were here to share in the bounty this year. My mom and I spent 2 fun days on the this batch. The first day picking, washing, trimming, and roasting the beets, then mixing up the brine. Day two was devoted to canning. All told, we ended up with 12 pint jars of pickled beets, to open up slowly through the winter. We will save a precious few jars for around Easter time, when memories of times with grandma will be shared as we sit down together and dig in.

Grandma's Slightly Modified Pickled Beets

10-12 medium sized beets

2 cups water

2 cups sugar

2 cups vinegar

1 tsp ground cloves

1 tsp allspice

1 tsp cinnamon

Bay Leaf

Lemon Peel strips from 1/2 of Lemon

1/2 tsp kosher salt

1. Place clean beets in baking pan, covered with foil. Bake at 375, for at least an hour, until beets are fork tender.

2. Mix together remaining ingredients in saucepan. Bring to boil. Allow to boil for 15 minutes.

3. Once beets have cooled enough to handle, peel. Cut into slices or cubes and pack into clean and sterile canning jars.

4. Ladle in hot pickling juice. Leave 1/4" of head space. Seal.

5. Place in boiling water bath for 30 minutes.

A Girl and Some Figs

Figs are sexy. At least, that is what I've been led to believe. They are also rather hard to come by. Feeling rather deprived, I can say that I had never tasted a fresh fig. Until last week, that is. Thats when I came across a whole carton of fresh figs for a tidy sum. Sold! You may be thinking that for a fig rookie, thats a pretty big risk. But, I had armed myself for this occasion, and I was ready to dive into them.

I grew up with a tainted view of figs, etched by Fig Newtons. This was the cookie of choice available at my paternal grandmother's house when I visited. I can't say that I didn't eat them, but they didn't compare well to, lets say, Oreo's or Chips Ahoy. And that's not even judging them beside homemade chocolate chip! I mean, they were figs. That's barely different than prunes to a young mind. So, that image carried well into adulthood. Until one day, an Italian friend waxed eloquently about this favorite fruit, just as the fig harvest was in full swing. I was enchanted. It sounded way more interesting than the fig newtons I'd grown up with.

That's why I ended up buying a fig tree at a spring garden market a couple of years ago, and with it came high hopes for a fig-filled future. So I started collecting recipes. I wanted to be prepared when the harvest rolled in. Instead, after surviving one growing season, it curled up and died after a failed hibernation attempt. You see, since figs are rather tropical, so they cannot survive a typical Pennsylvania winter without major intervention. I'd heard the stories of Italian gardeners digging large trenches to bend over the tree and thus bury the branches, but I was assured that you could overwinter it successfully in a cold garage or barn just as well. No such luck for me though. So, the recipes remained untouched. Until now.......

With 24 figs staring me down, I had to make a decision quickly. The flatbread with fig spread, blue cheese and prosciutto was the hands down choice on this day. If truth be told, I'm not a huge fan of uncooked prosciutto, but I'm glad I pushed past that hesitation. Because baked on top of this flatbread, it takes on the character of tender, tasty, crispy bacon, and becomes the high note to the sweet, jammy, figgy bottom layer. And the blue cheese? Divine............

Flatbread with Fig Spread, Blue Cheese and Prosciutto

(adapted from http://www.latimes.com/la-fo-figrec24-2sep24,0,3754661.story)

1 pound fresh Black Mission figs (about 20)
1/2 cup port wine
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary or 1 tsp dried
3 tablespoons minced shallots
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 slices prosciutto
6 (6-inch) flatbread - (can use Naan, or pita)
4 ounces (1 cup) mild blue cheese or goat cheese, crumbled

1. Remove the stems from the figs, then cut the figs into quarters. Place in a 9-by-12-inch glass baking dish. Combine the port wine, balsamic vinegar, brown sugar, rosemary, shallots and salt. Pour over the figs and roast in a 375-degree for 30 minutes, stirring several times. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool slightly.

2. Cut the prosciutto horizontally into half-inch strips.

3. Place the fig mixture in a food processor and pulse 4 or 5 times to break up the figs. The mixture will resemble a thick marmalade.

4. Spread about one-fourth cup fig mixture on each flatbread to within half an inch of the edge. Sprinkle the cheese on top of the jam, evenly dividing it between the 6 pizzas, then drape the prosciutto slices on top.

5. Bake until the cheese has melted and the flatbread is crisp, about 5 to 7 minutes. Slice and serve warm or at room temperature.