A few days ago when some friends came over for dinner I decided to try making whole wheat noodles with the four kids old enough to help, ages 2 ½ to 7 years old. I made the dough (the weather was finally perfect and they were playing outside with the chickens, otherwise they would have helped make the dough), and called them to wash up and to help stretch each individual noodle by hand. They had contests to see who could stretch the longest noodles, hanging them on the backs of tea towel covered chairs for comparison. The longest appeared to be slightly over 2 feet long. The two year old had the technique, but not the patience for the task, so he made pretty lumpy noodles, but when he wasn’t looking we thinned them out a bit, so that they would cook evenly. The noodles were cooked and served in 4 cups of chicken broth with a teaspoon of Vietnamese fish sauce, chopped scallions and grated carrots. The kids, beaming, would hold up a noodle from the plate and say,” I made this one! I can tell because…” There were no leftovers.
Last night I made dumplings of my own sort. I started with the recipe for Kazakh noodles in Beyond the Great Wall, I tweaked the dry ingredients.
My goal was to increase the fiber content and to vary the wrappers nutritionally, and just to experiment with the besan flour for the heck of it. I have twice made the regular noodles with the whole wheat flour substitution and they came out well, so I decided to go the next step and try to make dumplings with it.
1 ½ cups of whole wheat flour
1/4 c besan flour (chickpea)
1 ¾ cups of white flour
1 t salt
2 eggs
¾ c water
Mix dry ingredients. Add eggs and water stir until it makes a dough. On a well floured surface. Divide into four balls; flatten each to a long narrow rectangle that is about ½ inch thick. Cover with plastic wrap, and then a towel. Let it rest for 30 minutes.
For me there was no rest, I made the filling.
For filling
10 oz ground turkey
2 slices of apple smoked deli ham, minced
¾ of a cup of leftover cooked carrots, mashed
1 leftover boiled egg, mashed
2T garlic chives from the garden, minced
1 clove of garlic, minced
Salt
Pepper
I cut the rectangles into eighths. My daughter rolled out the wrappers, while I made the sauce. I made a basic white sauce, but substituted 1c of chicken broth for 1 cup of milk, for seasoning my daughter added our favorite garlic/herb seasoning, 2 good shakes.
Then she stirred the sauce while I filled and sealed the wrappers. We boiled them until they floated in a saucepan filled with water and sauced them and added Romano cheese to our taste at the table.
When it was all placed on the table my daughter was resistant to put the sauce on the dumplings, but with encouragement and referral to a movie she once saw, where a rat combined flavors to create new and more complex flavors, she gave it a try. She hesitantly broke off a small piece and dunked it in a small puddle of sauce. Her eyes flew wide open and she dunked it a second time, and made what we call nummy noises. Success!!
Showing posts with label family project. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family project. Show all posts
Monday, September 14, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
We're Jammin'
I eat grape jam about four times a year, other family members eat much more of it, but it is me who plans the annual trip out to the u-pick to fill our buckets with grapes.
We got up early on Sunday as planned, slapped on the sunscreen and big hats, had a quick bite and were out the door as the fog was burning off, which meant we were leaving just a little later than we should have.
At the vineyard, there were two other families already there, one, clearly early risers, were leaving. As we exited the car the farmer started pulling out the picking buckets for us. He directed us to the variety that most jelly makers prefer Ison, rather than Black Fry and we headed out to the vines. Muscadine grapes are different from any other grapes I have ever seen. They have the dark skin and gelatinous insides like the Concord, but they are almost the size of a small plum. Every year I marvel at their enormity.
We each took our bucket and we headed for the far end of the vineyard, hoping that the fruit would be less picked over since it was a longer walk. There was plenty of fruit, some of it had already gone by, but there still was a huge amount of perfectly ripe fruit left on the vines. We started to pick. Knowing that the fruit hangs down below the vines where you cannot see it, I crawled underneath. I checked for fire ants, finding it clear, I kneeled on the ground. The grapes were just above my head, as I tried to ignore the thoughts of the giant Florida spiders as the leaves brushed my hair. I began to pick, just barely touching the ripe ones as they fell into my hands and then into the bucket.
I picked some and then tossed one into my mouth. Immediately, I was transported back to 1970’s Massachusetts, to the grape vine alongside my grandparents’ driveway with my cousins running around with my sisters. The flashes continued for the rest of the day as the scents, sights and smells nudged my memory.
My daughter ran amongst the vines, picked a few grapes, studied the bugs and chattered more than the squirrels. Between the three of us, we picked two and one half buckets of grapes, weighing in at 16.06 lbs. They were a bargain at $1 lb.
We brought them home to begin the jam and juice making. The scent of the grapes in the big stock pot as they warmed was my time machine back this time to my mom’s steam filled kitchen in Rhode Island, with newspapers spread all over the table, with the food mill, big pots, pans, ladles and spoons and boiling mason jars. My kitchen right down to the style of the food mill was the same, except we used a dark colored towel instead of newspaper to catch the drips, because we read the news on-line. The cutting board turned a glorious shade of splotched purple, just as I remembered.
My daughter clearly enjoyed extracting the juice from grapes, “Squish this!” was an instruction I did not have to repeat or encourage, it just happened. I filled the mill with hot grapes, she rotated the pestle until the skins were dry and the pot underneath was filled with thick juice, and then requested more to squish. She seemed to know when the next batch from the stove was ready to squish, because she would disappear for a while, but as soon as the food mill was prepped for more she was right there, purple pestle in hand.
The whole hot, steamy, messy affair tangibly produced six pints of jam and three quarters of a gallon of juice, which will probably end up as jelly, since none of us drink much grape juice. The intangible products will have to wait thirty or so years, when my daughter craves connection to her past and the past of the women before her,and buys herself a food mill.
I use a cone shaped mill with a cone shaped pestle, there are many types which can be found in antique shops for about $40,or in the church thrift shop where my mom socializes weekly for about $3, I understand that she practically dove across the room to get it for me when it came in.
Janet's Grape Jam
Adapted Recipe from Ball Blue Book:
2 quarts Muscadine or Concord Grapes
6 cups sugar
Wash and de-stem grapes.
Place in a stock pot and cook over low heat until the grapes begin to burst.
Place some in a food mill set over a large pot. and process until the grape skins are nearly dry and the juice ceases to flow. Repeat until this procedure until all grapes are processed. (I don't have the patience for the process in the book of separating the skins and pulp and processing separately, apparently my mom doesn't either, because I know she has never done that)
Add sugar to the pot of juice. Bring slowly up to heat, stirring to dissolve sugar. Then bring to a boil and stir frequently until it reaches the gelling point, the spoon that you stir with will cool and it will gel on it, then it is ready. Skim foam. Pour jam into sterilized canning jars leaving 1/4 in head space and process 15 minutes.
We got up early on Sunday as planned, slapped on the sunscreen and big hats, had a quick bite and were out the door as the fog was burning off, which meant we were leaving just a little later than we should have.
At the vineyard, there were two other families already there, one, clearly early risers, were leaving. As we exited the car the farmer started pulling out the picking buckets for us. He directed us to the variety that most jelly makers prefer Ison, rather than Black Fry and we headed out to the vines. Muscadine grapes are different from any other grapes I have ever seen. They have the dark skin and gelatinous insides like the Concord, but they are almost the size of a small plum. Every year I marvel at their enormity.
We each took our bucket and we headed for the far end of the vineyard, hoping that the fruit would be less picked over since it was a longer walk. There was plenty of fruit, some of it had already gone by, but there still was a huge amount of perfectly ripe fruit left on the vines. We started to pick. Knowing that the fruit hangs down below the vines where you cannot see it, I crawled underneath. I checked for fire ants, finding it clear, I kneeled on the ground. The grapes were just above my head, as I tried to ignore the thoughts of the giant Florida spiders as the leaves brushed my hair. I began to pick, just barely touching the ripe ones as they fell into my hands and then into the bucket.
I picked some and then tossed one into my mouth. Immediately, I was transported back to 1970’s Massachusetts, to the grape vine alongside my grandparents’ driveway with my cousins running around with my sisters. The flashes continued for the rest of the day as the scents, sights and smells nudged my memory.
My daughter ran amongst the vines, picked a few grapes, studied the bugs and chattered more than the squirrels. Between the three of us, we picked two and one half buckets of grapes, weighing in at 16.06 lbs. They were a bargain at $1 lb.
We brought them home to begin the jam and juice making. The scent of the grapes in the big stock pot as they warmed was my time machine back this time to my mom’s steam filled kitchen in Rhode Island, with newspapers spread all over the table, with the food mill, big pots, pans, ladles and spoons and boiling mason jars. My kitchen right down to the style of the food mill was the same, except we used a dark colored towel instead of newspaper to catch the drips, because we read the news on-line. The cutting board turned a glorious shade of splotched purple, just as I remembered.
My daughter clearly enjoyed extracting the juice from grapes, “Squish this!” was an instruction I did not have to repeat or encourage, it just happened. I filled the mill with hot grapes, she rotated the pestle until the skins were dry and the pot underneath was filled with thick juice, and then requested more to squish. She seemed to know when the next batch from the stove was ready to squish, because she would disappear for a while, but as soon as the food mill was prepped for more she was right there, purple pestle in hand.
The whole hot, steamy, messy affair tangibly produced six pints of jam and three quarters of a gallon of juice, which will probably end up as jelly, since none of us drink much grape juice. The intangible products will have to wait thirty or so years, when my daughter craves connection to her past and the past of the women before her,and buys herself a food mill.
I use a cone shaped mill with a cone shaped pestle, there are many types which can be found in antique shops for about $40,or in the church thrift shop where my mom socializes weekly for about $3, I understand that she practically dove across the room to get it for me when it came in.
Janet's Grape Jam
Adapted Recipe from Ball Blue Book:
2 quarts Muscadine or Concord Grapes
6 cups sugar
Wash and de-stem grapes.
Place in a stock pot and cook over low heat until the grapes begin to burst.
Place some in a food mill set over a large pot. and process until the grape skins are nearly dry and the juice ceases to flow. Repeat until this procedure until all grapes are processed. (I don't have the patience for the process in the book of separating the skins and pulp and processing separately, apparently my mom doesn't either, because I know she has never done that)
Add sugar to the pot of juice. Bring slowly up to heat, stirring to dissolve sugar. Then bring to a boil and stir frequently until it reaches the gelling point, the spoon that you stir with will cool and it will gel on it, then it is ready. Skim foam. Pour jam into sterilized canning jars leaving 1/4 in head space and process 15 minutes.
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