Maggie's Farm

I had a little spare time the other morning, so I did one last harvest from my rhubarb patch to make another batch of  Rhubarb-Hot Pepper Jam. Golly, it is delicious and tangy. For the pepper component, I used chopped sorenos, jalapenos, and some sweet red peppers too just for their flavor. A little lemon juice and a dash of salt. Rhubarb is not to everybody's taste, but I love it.

I use one cup of chopped peppers per 3 cups of chopped rhubarb. I'll use up the rest of my chopped peppers to make ordinary hot pepper jelly. Sometimes I make it like a sauce, sometimes like a firmer jelly. Regardless, it is a bit too hot for some people.

My peppery special jams and jellies go well with cheese, cream cheese, pork, chicken, scrambled eggs, or anything else. Available at your specialty food store never. Photo is hot pepper jelly with cream cheese, but goat cheese is better. Any cheese, really.

Indeed the website is an encyclopedia of outdoor cooking: Amazing Ribs

A Southern friend told me the menu she was cookin' up for a 25 person outdoor backyard party tomorrow:

Fried squash blossoms
Homemade barbecued ribs
Jalapeno-cheddar cornbread
Collards with bacon and maple syrup
Fried green tomatoes (from her garden) with buttermilk dressing
Caprese salad (also from her tomatoes)

S'mores for dessert

Cheap, simple, delicious, and fun. American (mostly),  I could see this for a country wedding menu.

There's nothing more refreshing than a cold Borscht. A family member handed me an old recipe for it yesterday.

There are countless ways to make it, all from eastern Europe. I think I like it best with chunks, and with a dollop of sour cream on top, but the one pictured is excellent too.

Here's another Bird Dog favorite: Cold Zucchini Soup

In their list, this silly newspaper omitted cold Borsht and Zucchini Soup.

What are your favorite cold summer soups?

How To Make Refrigerator Dill Pickles

How to make pickles

Pickled Peppers

How to Make home-canned Spiced Peaches!

Intro to home canning

Pickling Tips and Recipes

I like to soak sweet corn in the husks, and grill them in the husks.  Three ways.  Boiled corn is boring and it's summertime so you are grilling your food outside anyway.

I just had to get a new vegetable grilling basket from Amazon. Nice. Fewer of them fall through the cracks that way.

Does Adding Pasta Water Really Make a Difference?  Yes it does.

Even people who hate vegetables find pickled vegetables to be a treat. You can pickle anything - onions, summer squash, cauliflower, peas, beans, peppers, beets, carrots, turnips, cabbage, peaches - you name it.  People will eat it before it is fully pickled because it tastes good. Here's Perpetual Pickles for you with gardens.

Vegetables (like fruit) are nutritionally borderline-useless, but they can be made to be tasty. Thus far this summer I have produced many half-pints and a couple of quart jars of hot pepper jelly, and about 12 quarts of dilly beans. Waiting for my peaches to ripen to make Peach Chutney. I did not grow cucumbers this year. I forget why.

Here's quick and easy Crisp Pickled Vegetables

Here's Canning and Pickling. It's a labor of love and makes no damn sense at all.

A pal has been traveling across the US with family in an antique camper. He reports that they had possibly the best dinner they have ever had in the US at The Windsor Hotel in Del Norte, Colorado. Not likely that you would be passing through there, though.

Here's a book:  Blue Highways: A Journey into America by William Least Heat Moon. Fun book.

It's a new form of cheese to me: Burrata. It's a gooey variant of Mozzarella (a cheese which I do not like, even Buffalo Mozzarella. Flavorless and rubbery). Burrata, like Mozzarella, is a fresh cheese.

I'd be willing to try Burrata with sliced tomato. They may have it at our gourmet Italian market, and I am told Whole Foods carries it sometimes. I hate Whole Foods on principle, but they have always had a fine cheese department. Me love cheeses with fruits, nuts, jellies for dessert.

A good tomato platter might be sliced tomatoes, sliced mango or peach, a chunk of oozing burrata, a handful of chopped fresh basil, and a balsamic dressing.

From The New York Times Gets It Wrong about Genetic Engineering:

 ...with the exception of wild berries, wild game, wild mushrooms, and most fish and shellfish, everything in American diets is derived from organisms that have been genetically improved in some way.

Most foods have little resemblance to their natural origins. They have been domesticated and are "unnatural." Human genius defeating a cruel nature.

"We’re interested in the color, shape and sizes of the vegetables from 400 years ago, compared to modern cultivars of the same vegetables..."

A book I'd like to read: Maize for the Gods: Unearthing the 9,000-Year History of Corn

Wild maize is a grass, with the fruit/seed about an inch long. Were it not for those ancient Central American genetic engineers, we'd have neither grits nor polenta.

Photo is teosintas, ancestor of domestic maize

Despite all of her visits to every part of Italy, Mrs. BD concedes that the best Italian food she has had is at Scarpetta, one of the spots she goes to with friends when she goes to see theater and dance. She has some real foodie pals.

Scarpetta. Give it a try. As a matter of fact, she is taking a BD daughter to dinner there tonight after the new Annie Baker play. (They are Annie Baker fans after loving Flick a while ago.) She says their pastas are amazing but our advice is to always skip pasta in good Italian restaurants. Why dine on starch, when there are so many other better flavors in antipasti and secondi?

I'll make exceptions for Pappardelle al Funghi  with wild mushrooms, or Fois Gras Ravioli with Black Truffle.

Looking back, thus far, for Italian, we have also recommended Barbetta, Giovanni, Macelleria, - and Bar Eolo for genuine Sicilian. Only Barbetta is a jacket and tie joint, but for Giovanni a jacket is appropriate.

Here.  It's blueberry season now in the northeast, for a few weeks.

This sounds like a fine summer party dish from the grill, despite all the annoying greens in it.

I do like Thai flavors. Thai Grilled Pork and Vegetable Salad with Spicy Peanut Dressing

Mrs. BD asked me to fix up a batch of rhubarb compote to splash on some Haagen Dasz for a fancy dinner party we are attending tonite. My guess is that nobody there will have had it before. It's a North country treat. Lots of people do not care for it much. Their loss. It's tangy. I always use half the sugar.

We are the Rhubarb People. A racial identity group and a much-abused and/or neglected one. Maybe we all originated in Yorkshire. Who knows?

Since my own recipe for hot pepper jelly (served with cheeses and cream cheese) was such a hit at a fancy cocktail party in NYC that I have been urged to produce a line of it, I decided to branch out into Spicy Rhubarb Jam. Maggie's Farm Produce, or something. All-organic, meaning grown in pig and cow shit.

Mom always grew her sizeable patch right outside the barn. We would just pitchfork some fresh horse poop and horse straw on top of it when cleaning the barn. Worked well. A rhubarb patch likes to be fed.

A good patch takes a couple of years to establish itself. How do you harvest rhubarb? With a sharp yank on the stalk. Not with clippers.

My rhubarb plantation, stolen from my Mom's garden, is overwhelming. Had to use some more of it. We'll make some pies too (never with strawberry), but I invented my own recipe for Spicy Rhubarb Jam - chopped rhubarb, lemon juice, sugar, chopped fresh red chilis and chopped jalapenos, some chopped green peppers, a little salt, and I threw in some pectin for the heck of it. No pressure canner.

Is cooked rhubarb red? Almost never. People add food coloring but I don't bother. You only get a little red from the young thin stalks.

Yes, the jam tastes like spicy rhubarb. Quite tangy. I like it. Might be good with pork or chicken. Not sure. Definitely good with cheese especially goat cheese. Not on a toasted bagel. I am no expert food canner but I just boil the heck out of the Ball jars for about 15 minutes and hope for the best. Botulism is not wanted.

Next stop might be Spicy Cranberry Preserve. Why not? Any poultry is improved with some cranberry on the side. And for those who can enjoy a tart now and then, for dessert any little rhubarb or cranberry tart is nice.

My Mom always put up tons of these pickled string beans from my Dad's garden. When you take some out, people eat them like popcorn. You can not can too many of these.

Dilly Beans.

A Bird Dog daughter and I made a couple of large batches of hot pepper jelly on Friday. Doggone it, they failed to gel despite plenty of pectin.

The good olde internet:  How to Fix (or Remake) Jam or Jelly That Turns Out Too Soft or Runny

We wanted to make a ton of Rhubarb jam on Saturday but we ran out of sugar and Mrs. BD needed to control the kitchen for a double family birthday party. Poached salmon, etc. Anyway, people gnawed on my raw Rhubarb stalks. Delicious and stringy. The Rhubarb I salvaged from Mom's garden is going great guns and, racially, we are the Rhubarb People.

Poached salmon with yoghurt dill sauce is one of our standards for bringing as our contribution to outdoor summer dinner parties. Asparagus is good on the side. Everybody loves it.

We also use this as our large group Christmas Eve after-church suppers for whoever is lucky enough to be invited to our place for supper around the fireplaces, with the tree (Christmas Eve requires seafood, and you can do this in the afternoon so it's ready when you get home.) One or two of those huge Costco filets, depending on numbers, is good to poach. Easy to do.

Recipe here. We poach the large filets intact and present them on a large tray. It's more appealing that way.

Simple and good, if you like raw vegetables.

Yes, Greeks do eat a lot of "Village Salad." It does call for Greek olive oil (often considered lousy oil except by the Greeks), which is somehow different from Italian even though the olives are the same.

Greeks, like the north africans, don't really do "extra virgin" or any of that fancy stuff.

I considered butterflied lamb, and considered short ribs. Finally decided to keep it simple - burgers on the barbie. I haven't done burgers on the grill yet this Spring.

We'll have three Dads (including me) and 10-12 people for lunch. I'm cooking. Fathers grill meat on Father's Day to signify their masculine hunter-gatherer role in life.

I like to server burgers with hard rolls, chips, and a platter of pickles, sliced onions, and sliced tomato. If somebody wants a cheeseburger, I'll use a slice of Saga Blue. Bowl of German potato salad from the market. Male cooking.

I'll probably grill up my usual platter of veggies too as a side: red peppers, onions, scallions, eggplant, mushroom, summer squash, all with browned or slightly-burnt parts and splashed with olive oil. People love my simple grilled vegetable mix and it makes excellent leftovers. I grill with charcoal + firewood.

When I do burgers, I never use lean meat. What's the point? I put the meat in a big bowl, stir it up with a little Worcestershire sauce or Soy sauce, plenty of ground pepper and Kosher salt, some garlic powder or dried onion soup mix, or sometimes a little herbed bread crumbs to hold the juices. I like them to come off the charcoal crunchy and dark on the outside and pink in the middle. Ten minutes or so, depending on the heat.

Beer, wine and bubbly water with some lime. Ketchup? You betcha. Made a batch of hot pepper jelly/relish for thems as got the nerve to try it. Hot as hell itself. Tasty on a burger. Some of my peach chutney too from last fall. Those condiments are good with anything.

We'll have a birthday cake for dessert, because we have one of those to take note of this week. Yellow cake with Mocha frosting. Except for the birthday, I would have cooked up a big Blackberry Cobbler for dessert. Even men can make that.

How do readers like to make burgers?

Pic is preparation for the cocktail hour shrimp boil at the Greyfield Inn.

Why are the shrimp so tender? They are bought directly from the shrimp boat, and they are in the boil in their shells for 2 minutes max - 90 seconds preferably - just until they turn pink. I tend to find shrimp boring but these were sweet and not chewy.

The square hole in the table is for the shells. Works for oyster roasts too.

You are supposed to drink beer with them.

They use this recipe for dipping sauce.

We are truffle fans. I have hiked those truffle woods in Umbria.

The way I make black bean soup -

4 cans of Goya black beans (make sure they are GMO black beans, much better)
2 medium onion diced
chopped garlic, as much as you like (not organic garlic, please)
about 4 slices of bacon
a couple of bay leaves
some chicken broth
thyme
cumin and/or chili and/or cayenne pepper powder
1 fresh jalapeno pepper chopped (or jarred - doesn't matter) and/or chopped scallions

Cook the bacon. Remove it. Sautee the onion and garlic in the bacon grease a little. Chop up the bacon. Dump out most of the bacon grease, then dump in the beans (don't drain them), onions and garlic, bay leaf, chopped bacon, some chicken broth, salt, and a couple of dashes or so of the flavorings. (I hold the jalapeno in abeyance as not everybody likes it. Can be added as garnish when done)

I don't use cilantro because I hate it. Cilantro - some like it, some do not. It's genetic.

Simmer covered for an hour or so or toss it in a crock pot. Add more chicken broth it it's too thick. Then mash it in the pot with a potato masher. Some people just take half of it and run it thru the blender for a creamier result but I like to mash it. Scallions on top, +/- chopped jalapeno.

I like it with a big dollop of mashed taters in the middle of each person's bowl, but some people prefer sour cream and salsa on it. Whatever.

Salad on the side? If you are a rabbit, fine.