Kat of All Trades

After not making time to post for two weeks – it’s my busy season at work! – I’ve got so many photographs, recipes, and stories to share. Since pie seems to be everyone’s favorite topic, I figured I’d start with a post about that!

For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been involved with Gotham Girls Roller Derby since 2007, first as a skater for the Bronx Gridlock, and now as their manager. When you’ve been working together for a while – practice  three or four nights a week, plus other events – you start to develop team traditions, superstitions, and inside jokes. The more you bond off the track, the better your connection will be when you’re skating together as a team. You trust each other.

Throughout those three and a half seasons, one of the traditions we’ve developed is sharing a victory pie for each bout that we win. That’s 13 pies so far: we play four bouts per season including the championship, and have only lost one in that time frame. One of my other teammates usually bakes; however, after our last bout, she was hosting our team barbecue, so we decided that I would take a turn. I have, after all, made a few pies in my time.

I still had plenty of rhubarb left from rhubarb fest, and at that point, strawberries were still plentiful at the greenmarket, so I’d picked up quite a few. The perfect early summer victory pie? Strawberry-rhubarb. One of my teammates doesn’t eat sugar, so I looked up some information about baking with agave nectar and went for it. If nothing else, I knew it smelled amazing when it came out of the oven, and it looked stunning in the yellow pie dish my teammates gave me as a manager’s gift at the end of last season.

I’d be exaggerating if I said that people dove at me when I arrived at the barbecue; however, I mean it when I say that the 12-inch, deep-dish pie plate was empty in under ten minutes! I’m pretty sure there isn’t a better way to spend a summer evening than celebrating victory, conversing, and sharing pie with friends.

Part of why I’m telling you this particular story is that I believe that pie is an amazing food that carries on a long tradition of friendship, community, and sharing food. My friend Lauren is in the last days of her Pie in the Park Kickstarter project, and she needs your help to make it a success. She’s planning to publish a Pie in the Park cookbook, which will include stories of baking, recipes, and pie tips. Proceeds from book sales will go to Clinton Hill CSA to help fund their low-income shares. The money raised from her Kickstarter project will help cover printing costs, as well as paying the book’s designer and illustrator a fair rate.

If you love pie as much as I do – and I’m pretty sure you do – consider donating!

Either way, you can still enjoy this recipe.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie, sans Sugar
Makes one 12-inch pie.

1 unbaked double crust
5 c rhubarb (1 lb)
4 c hulled and halved strawberries
1/3 c cornstarch
3/4 c raw agave nectar
1/4 c spring wildflower honey
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3/8 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit, and coat the bottom and sides of  12-inch pie plate with butter.

Roll out half of the dough for the bottom crust. Put in pie dish and crimp the edges of the crust.

Combine the rest of the ingredients in a large bowl, making sure that the fruit is thoroughly coated with the cornstarch, sweeteners, and seasonings.

Roll out the other half of the dough for the top crust. If you prefer to do a lattice crust, cut the dough into long strips.

Pour the fruit mixture into the bottom crust. Top with the rolled out dough or the lattice.

Bake for 15 minutes, then add a foil ring around the edge of the pie plate to prevent the crust from burning. Bake for 25 more minutes, and allow to cool before slicing and serving.

(If you’re looking for bake-off details, scroll to the bottom! I think you should read about pie first, though.)

I’ve been experimenting with some pie recipes recently, taking seasonal favorites rhubarb and strawberry and playing around with flavors to see what I like best. They’re not quite ready for recipe sharing, but they are pretty enough for a peek!

I brought this pie to the Eagle Street Rooftop Farm pie potluck a few weeks ago (where I had the pleasure of seeing Brooklyn Homesteader and meeting Pie in the Park!). I’d been pondering what type of pie to bring, and then I remembered that I’d purchased 25 pounds of rhubarb the day before. I recalled baking a rhubarb custard pie last year, so I went back through my pie notes and decided to change up that recipe a bit.

In addition to the eggs for the light custard, I added some vanilla, cardamom, and orange zest. I think it needs a bit more work to balance things, but overall, people seemed to enjoy it, and I was pretty happy with the flavors. I think I’d like to try it without the custard, or with more time for the custard to chill; the day of the potluck, the pie came out of the oven and went directly to Greenpoint.

This beauty is a strawberry pie that I baked when I went to visit my cousins in Pennsylvania. Black pepper and balsamic vinegar both amp up the flavor of strawberries, so I tried them in tandem. It was good, but a little too much, or perhaps not quite the right amounts of each. More experimenting will be necessary!

In other pie-related news, I’ll be competing in a pie bake-off this Saturday, June 12! The bake-off, which Jimmy’s No. 43 is hosting, is a fundraiser for the awesome bk farmyards, a Brooklyn-based decentralized farming network. Tickets are $20 at the door, and doors open at 1:00 p.m. There will be so many amazing people bringing pies, and I’m super excited to be part of the competition. I’ll be bringing my balsamic pie – this time with strawberries – and I promise you won’t want to miss it. You can get all of the details here. Come early and bring friends! (And after the bake-off, come to Hunter College, where I’ll be managing the Bronx Gridlock to victory over the Manhattan Mayhem! Tickets are available here; that will sell out before Saturday.)

That’s a previous iteration of the balsamic pie. It’s as delicious as it looks.

Did I tell you I purchased a 25-lb box of rhubarb a few weeks ago? I’d been buying a few pounds at a time at $4/lb, and the girl at my favorite farm stand mentioned that they sold 25-lb boxes of rhubarb for $50. Half-price rhubarb? Yes, please!

Two of my amazing and wonderful friends were kind enough to come participate in Rhubarb Fest: chopping, bagging, freezing, and canning with me! We finished everything in two hours, including canning nine half-pints of rhubarb-blood orange jam.

I’m so in love with that jam. The color, the flavor, everything! You know it’s a good day when it starts with the giant box of rhubarb pictured first and ends with this:

Yes, that would be fresh rhubarb-blood orange jam over vanilla bean ice cream.

Since then, I’ve made rhubarb jam with lemon and lavender, as well as a rhubarb pie. The rest of the rhubarb is hanging out in my freezer, waiting to be paired with other fruits, including my preferred partner berry: blueberry!

I made my first batch of jam on Saturday! I figured that since I’ll be getting 25 POUNDS of rhubarb from the farmer’s market, it would be a good idea to get familiar with jam making when I only needed to process a small batch.

Lessons learned:

1. Jam is sticky. And it splatters everywhere. Be prepared to clean your kitchen and yourself afterwards.
2. Make sure your jars and boiling-water bath are ready to go as soon as the jam is done, so that the jam can go immediately into the jars and then be processed in the bath.
3. The jam will go from not-quite-jam to ready and rather thick very quickly.
4. If you want to have jam to share, put it in half-pint jars and make more than two pints. Two pints is not enough!
5. Seriously, have the boiling-water bath rolling while the jam is cooking.
6. Listening to jar lids pop is exciting!

Rhubarb-Blood Orange Jam (adapted from The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and Other Sweet Preserves)

2-1/2 lb of rhubarb stalks, cut into pieces about 3/8-inch square
1/2 c water
Grated zest of 1 blood orange
1/2 c blood orange juice (storebought is okay!)
3 c unrefined sugar

Start your boiling-water bath! You can use it to sterilize your jars while the jam is cooking, and then it will be ready to go as soon as the jam is ready.

Combine rhubarb, water, and zest in a large pot. Heat the pot over medium heat, cover, and simmer the contents for about 20 minutes, until the rhubarb is tender and breaking down. Stir periodically throughout the 20 minutes to ensure that nothing is sticking.

Remove the pot from the heat and add the juice and sugar. Put the pot back on the stove, and over medium heat, stir until the sugar is dissolved. Raise the heat to medium-high and boil the jam until it mounds in a chilled dish. (Read: When the jam starts to look, well, more like jam, put a small bowl in the freezer. After it’s in the freezer for a few minutes, take out the bowl and drop a small amount of jam into it. If it forms a little hill – and if, once you let it cool for a few minutes, it doesn’t run when you tip the bowl on its side – the jam is ready for the jars.)

Ladle the jam into pint or half-pint mason jars. Wipe the jar edges clean. Add lids and rings, tighten to finger-tight, and process the jars for ten minutes in a boiling-water bath.

A partial loaf of bread decided to hide in the back of our fridge for a few weeks. While perfectly edible, it left something to be desired in terms of using it for sandwiches. No better way to make it new again than to drench it in milk, eggs, and spices, right?

I also wanted to try out baking with my canned rhubarb, as I’d like to use this method to preserve more while I can still get it. This seemed like a good first attempt, as I could then use the sugar syrup to sweeten the pudding.

I’ll call this sweet success, though next time, I’ll add a full cup of tangy, wonderful rhubarb.

Rhubarb Bread Pudding (adapted from Diana Shaw’s The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook)

4-1/2 c loosely packed stale bread cubes (about 6 slices)
1/2 c canned rhubarb
2 large eggs
2 large egg whites
1 c milk (I used 2%)
1/4 c rhubarb sugar syrup
3 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cardamom

Grease a 1-1/2 quart baking dish, and place the bread cubes in it. Add the rhubarb

Whisk together the eggs, egg whites, milk, syrup, brown sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, and cardamom until well combined. Pour the mixture evenly over the bread and rhubarb. Mix together to make sure all bread is coated. Cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 30-40 minutes.

Twenty minutes before you are ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Bake until golden brown and firm to the touch, about 50 minutes.

In case you weren’t sure what was topping my yogurt in my last entry, those are the entire wheat kernel – sans hull – which are also known as wheatberries.

I got the idea recently that rather than just eating granola, I could change up my yogurt additions by throwing on a variety of whole grains. I spotted these grains from Cayuga Pure Organics at the farmer’s market, and decided to try them first.

Here’s the thing about wheatberries: they apparently take forever and a day to cook. I soaked 1 cup of these for over an hour in 3 cups of water, then put them on to cook with 1 tsp of salt. I brought them to a boil over medium-high heat, and then simmered until the water was gone. At that point, I tried a few, and they were still crazy hard. So I added more water – about another 1/2 cup – and continued to simmer until the water was gone and some of the kernels popped open. They were still rather al dente, but it was time for me to head out, so I went with it. Next time, I’ll start them soaking in the morning before work and cook them in the evening.

I added some of my rhubarb in sugar syrup to add some fruit and sweetness to the mix, which was pretty tasty. I can’t get enough rhubarb these days. Fresh fruit or preserves would also be good.

Variety is the spice of life, though, so I made some granola, too. Last week, Ian and I took a wild edibles cooking class with the charming Louisa Shafia, author of Lucid Food, and I picked up her cookbook at the end of class. The boastful name of her granola recipe caught my eye, and it used ingredients I had in my pantry. Why not try it?

The Best Granola Ever (adapted from Louisa Shafia’s Lucid Food: Cooking for an Eco-Conscious Life)

2 c raw nuts, coarsely chopped (My mix was about 3/4 c walnuts, 1/4 c slivered almonds, and 1 c cashews)
2 c rolled oats
1 tbsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
Dash or two of salt
6 tbsp maple syrup
5 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1-1/2 c dried apricots, coarsely chopped
1/2 c raw, unsweetened coconut flakes

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees Fahrenheit.

Combine nuts, oats, spices, and salt in a large bowl and stir. Add the maple syrup, 4 tbsp of the oil, and the vanilla extract, and mix thoroughly.

Spread the granola evenly on a baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes. Stir the granola well, rotate the pan, and bake for 15 minutes more. At this point, the granola should be almost completely dry. (Mine didn’t get especially dry; next time, I would bake for longer.) Add the apricots and the remaining 1 tbsp of the oil to the mixture, stir well, and return the pan to the oven for 5 minutes. Add the coconut flakes and bake for 2 minutes more.

The fact that I finally have a kitchen of my own (well, my own and Ian’s) means that I finally have space to do all the canning I’ve wanted to do since I got my great-grandmother’s canning pot back in 2007. Heather and I canned ten pounds of tomatoes that year, and then I moved out of that house with its lovely large kitchen and no longer had space to keep more than a few necessary items in my pantry. I canned a few jars of tomatoes last summer, and then didn’t have the space or motivation to do anything else.

This spring, though, I am READY! I live a quick walk from a fantastic farmer’s market, and I have some space to store the goods. (Well, we’re going to need another small shelf. But who’s counting?) I’m especially excited to use some new books I purchased to preserve my seasonal farmer’s market finds, our CSA goods if we don’t eat them quickly enough, and hopefully the treats from our garden!

The farmer’s market is a weekly stop for me now, and last Saturday, in addition to the ramps, I picked up some asparagus and rhubarb. These are two of my favorite spring/early summer treats; I could eat them pretty much every day, even with asparagus’ unfortunate side effect.

I had the best of intentions for those: baking rhubarb pie; eating delicious, fresh asparagus with a hint of butter and lemon juice. And then life happened. I ended up with lots of evening plans, including my knitting group, a Wildflower Week walking tour of Inwood Hill Park, and a delicious Wildflower Week dinner at james (I had the veal sweetbreads appetizer, and a lamb burger with goat cheese and ramps greens for my main course. In case you were wondering. And the bittersweet chocolate espresso terrine with hazelnuts and cinnamon creme for dessert!). The week flew by, and suddenly, I needed to use that produce before it was too late.

Enter: canning.

A word of advice: fill your canning pot with water and start heating it up before you start doing anything else! It takes close to 45 minutes for mine to come to a rolling boil. Yowza! Also, make sure you’re properly heating or sterilizing your jars and lids. Read your favorite canning/preserving book for more information about proper canning techniques. Seriously, I can’t emphasize that enough.

Pickled Asparagus (adapted from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving)

2-1/4 lb asparagus
3 tbsp chopped red bell pepper
1tbsp chopped jalapeno
1-1/2 tbsp chopped garlic
2-1/2 c white vinegar
1/2 c + 1/3 c sugar
1/2 c + 1/3 c water
2 tsp pickling salt
1 tbsp dill seed
1 tbsp mustard seed

Chop the asparagus so that it hits the inside of a pint jar at 3/4″ below the rim. Rinse asparagus, then place in a large, flat dish. Cover the asparagus with ice water, cover the dish, and put in the refrigerator for at least an hour.

Chop and combine the bell pepper, jalapeno, and garlic. Set aside.

Bring vinegar, sugar, water, and salt to a boil. Boil for five minutes, add asparagus, and boil for two more minutes. *This is a good time to heat/sterilize your jars and lids.*

Add 2 tbsp of the pepper/garlic mixture, 1 tsp of dill seed, and 1 tsp of mustard seed to both jars. Pack jars with asparagus, tips down so you don’t damage them when you remove them to eat.

Ladle pickling liquid into the jars, leaving 1/2″ headspace (space between the top of the jar and the liquid). Wipe the rim of the jars, put lids and rings on jars, and twist until you get resistance.

Add to hot water bath and boil, covered, for ten minutes. After ten minutes, remove lid, and boil for five more minutes. Remove jars from canner, place on towel on countertop, and allow to cool. Check seals after 12-24 hours to ensure a proper seal, and tighten the rings.

Makes two pint jars.

Rhubarb in Sugar Syrup (adapted from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving)

4 lb rhubarb
1 scant cup sugar

**Note: The jar I canned has too much headspace. Don’t do what I did: use the proper size jar!**

Chop rhubarb into one-inch pieces. Dump into a medium pot and add sugar. Mix together, cover, and allow to sit in a cool place for 3-4 hours.

Put pot on stove. *Don’t forget to heat/sterilize your jars and lids.* Bring mixture to a boil, and boil for 30 seconds.

Pour mixture into your jar(s). Wipe the rim of the jars, put lids and rings on jars, and twist until you get resistance.

Add to hot water bath and boil, covered, for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, remove lid, and boil for five more minutes. Remove jars from canner, place on towel on countertop, and allow to cool. Check seals after 12-24 hours to ensure a proper seal, and tighten the rings.

Makes about one quart jar.

I learned a very important lesson on Saturday: do not go weed in the backyard alone! It is entirely too depressing. I got out there and tackled the garden bed and its surrounding area first, and that was awesome. The dill, rhubarb, and cucumbers are starting to strut their stuff, which pleased me greatly. I can’t wait to see what they look like after these few days of rain!

After weeding the bed and taking some photos, I made the unfortunate mistake of looking at the rest of the yard. D’oh! Yes, it still looks a million times better before it did when we started; however, all of the areas that we’ve weeded have the same evil weed still going strong.

I hate this guy. I call it the red asparagus tree. We’re still not entirely certain what type of weed it is – I initially thought it was a type of spurge, but now that the leaves are growing, I’m not so sure – but it. is. EVIL. It’s got an extensive, woody root system, so when you pull it, even if you go deep, you’re not getting out all of the roots. It oozes some milky sap, and then a week or two later, you start seeing more of the pink/red, asparagus-esque shoots. I’ve seen a few woody stems with six or eight tiny red sprouts popping up, taunting my inability to conquer, ready to take over the yard.

Suffice to say, seeing more and more of it pop up was kind of a downer. I shuffled back to the apartment, seeking comfort in the form of chocolate.

Enter what you’ve been waiting to see: something to use up those rapidly browning bananas and satisfying your chocolate comfort needs. I cut back on the sugar from the original recipe to balance the sweet bananas and the fact that I used sweetened cocoa. I also added some wheat flour so I can more easily pretend it’s a breakfast food and not entirely unhealthy. Eat up!

Chocoholic Banana Bread (adapted from Nigella Lawson’s How to Be a Domestic Goddess)

1/2 c white flour
1/2 c whole wheat flour
2 tbsp sweetened cocoa (I used Ghirardelli Sweet Ground Chocolate and Cocoa)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 c unsalted butter, melted
1/3 c sugar
2 large eggs
2 large, ripe bananas, mashed
3/4 c chocolate chips
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter and flour a 9×5-inch loaf pan, or line it with parchment paper.

Combine flours, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium-sized bowl; set aside. In a large bowl, beat the melted butter and sugar until blended. Add the eggs one at a time, then the mashed bananas. Stir in chocolate chips and vanilla extract. Finally, add the flour mixture, a third at a time, stirring well after each addition.

Pour batter into loaf pan and bake in the middle of the oven for about an hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.

I’ve never really gardened before; in fact, every time I’ve tried to keep houseplants alive, I’ve failed miserably. My parents had a garden while I was growing up, and I remember bits and pieces about it, but, like other hobbies that I wish I’d learned then (see: getting my grandmother to teach me to knit), I didn’t care enough about it until much later in life. My grandmother did eventually teach me to knit…at age 22, and now, as I’m shifting more and more to a local diet, I’ve desperately wanted green space to call my own.

Ian and I looked at an insane number of apartments in January – 39 in nine days – and we knew that on our budget, we had to make a few concessions. One of those was giving up the idea that we could have some sort of backyard…or so we thought. A few weeks after we moved into our building, we realized that we could, in fact, get into the yard through the basement. We discussed what we would want to do to clean the space and make it usable for us and for the rest of the tenants. Between Ian’s background in forestry and my limited knowledge of gardening from work and reading, we formed a basic plan and got down to business.

This is what the backyard looked like when we first set foot in it. It was overrun with a variety of plants, including some highly invasive species. It was filled with trash; we cleared out two large bags filled with garbage on our first day out there, including pull-tab Pepsi cans, leftover tiles from the bathrooms, and so much glass that we’re convinced someone must have had a glass farm in the yard at some point. It was horrifying.

After quite a few days of work, we’ve gotten the yard to a mostly usable state. The piles on the right are all of the sticks and branches that we collected while cleaning, and we bagged the leaf pile that was initially taking over the back right corner. We pretty thoroughly weeded the back half of the yard, which Ian seeded a few nights ago with a mixture of native grasses and wildflowers. To the left, you can see part of the garden bed we created, using a border of bricks, concrete, and rocks which we found while cleaning the yard. Before planting, we added quite a few bags of soil and compost to raise the pH of the soil, which Ian tested, as well as to lower/eliminate risk of lead in the soil. We basically have a raised bed, even though it’s missing the wood frame that people typically associate with those.

My friend Tea and I planted seeds on Easter weekend, and it’s really hard for me to describe the joy of seeing them sprout. It’s simply incredible to watch those tiny seeds become plants. I started a few things indoors – tomatoes, rosemary, lavender – and every morning I hurry out into the living room to see what’s happening with them. Last week, my Roma tomato plants transformed overnight:

Today, they’re starting to show their first real leaves!

I’m already thinking about things that I would like to do differently next year (see: use a divided seed tray as I am really nervous that I’m going to have a hard time transplanting my little tomato plants); however, this year is supposed to be a learning experience, and if nothing else, I’ll have plenty of herbs, as those are happily sprouting in the backyard! Today, we also spotted rhubarb starting to grow, as well as what appear to be sprouts of our cucumber and corn plants. I think spring is my new favorite time of year.

As I’ll hopefully have plenty of produce to move from garden to table, I’ll be following GrowCookEat for weekly posts about gardening and cooking with food you grew yourself.

There’s been lots of baking happening this week, more than any other homemaking activity. Some of it has been for business; some has used up leftover produce and dairy; and all of it has been for pleasure.

Baking is really fun for me because it’s generally relatively quick for me to throw something together, and then we have tasty treats to last for a few days. I’m really looking forward to having all kinds of fresh farmer’s market fruit in the summer, but for now there are apples and dried fruit and chocolate chips, so I’m getting by.

Apple and rhubarb is one of my favorite combinations, and I think it’s a great transition from a fall and winter full of apples into spring flavors. I have a variety of pie and pastry cookbooks that I often use as inspiration; this recipe was for straight-up rhubarb pie, and I adjusted and tweaked and came up with what you see above. There’s apple and rhubarb and lemon and honey and…YUM. I think I’d like to try making and canning some apple-rhubarb jam or jelly. Y/Y?

The pie bites were free at MoCCA Festival this past weekend if you bought a pie comic from my lovely friend Tea. She is a purveyor of adorable things and draws awesome comics. The full-size pie went with me to my knitting group. I had a few apples that were at the end of their days, and rhubarb that had been hanging out in my freezer for a while. It was time to use them for a delicious cause.

One thing to note about recent pies: I’m officially obsessed with my pastry blender. I thought I made an awesome pie crust before, and I’m certain it’s gotten better since the holidays. The one change I’ve made is using a pastry blender, which was a Christmas gift from my cousins. I’m in love.

Then there are smitten kitchen’s dreamy cream scones, which are one of my current obsessions. I make them with dried cranberries or chocolate chips, though I’m going to try make them with tea leaves soon. One of my coworkers made Earl Grey shortbread cookies recently, and since then I can’t stop thinking about tea scones.

Last but not least, a quick and tasty treat that I threw together for a coworker’s goodbye potluck. I wanted to whip up a gluten-free and sugar-free batch so that I could bring some to my book club as well. I actually whisked the eggs whites and salt into a meringue by hand rather than using a mixer, and oh man, did that make me feel badass! I want to develop my whisking muscles!

One thing worth noting is that these definitely tasted better after being in the fridge overnight. I’d recommend making them at least a few hours before you’d like to serve them so that they have time to chill.

Coconut Macaroons (recipe adapted from Elana’s Pantry)

6 egg whites
1/4 tsp finely ground sea salt
1/2 c agave nectar
1/2 tbsp vanilla extract
1/2 tbsp almond extract
2-1/4 c shredded coconut
1 c coconut flakes

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. (Trust me, you’ll want to use the parchment, or these guys will stick!)

Whisk egg whites and salt until stiff. Fold in remaining ingredients until well combined.

Using a tablespoon, drop balls of dough about an inch onto the parchment-line cookie sheet. Pinch each macaroon at the top.

Bake until lightly brown, about 12-17 minutes.

Makes 20-24 depending on size.