So, that did it. This year, I have decided, will be the year of vinegar pickles. Sure, I’ve got a quart or two of half sours in various stages of fermentation floating around my kitchen, but I’m hoping to can at least half a dozen pints of pure pucker pickles for my winter enjoyment. This is a mixed batch of random vegetables, including the obligatory cucumbers and zucchinis, but the recipe is fairly flexible. You could certainly add cauliflower, beans, celery, asparagus…you get the idea. Ziedrich recommends a 20-minute water-bath processing time for a version that includes mostly easily pickled things (cucumbers, peppers, onions) plus just a few carrots. If you’re planning on using lots of carrots, you’ll probably need to increase the time, but not necessarily by much. Remember, even the sturdy pickled beet only need 30 minutes. In any case, I’m not a carrot-canning expert, so change the vegetable proportions at your own risk. Please, please, please do not change the ratio of water to vinegar, but feel free to add sugar to taste.

Stuff the following things in a pint jar, in more or less the amount recommended:

3 kirby-size cucumbers
About half of a 5″ zucchini or yellow squash, cut into spears
One medium garden carrot, cut into thin spears
2 hot wax peppers, slit down the side
4 jar-length pieces of fennel, with feathers attached
1 clove garlic
1/4 t. peppercorns
1 sprig thyme
1 sprig tarragon

Combine 2 3/4 c. vinegar (I used cider vinegar) with 2 c. water and 1 1/2 T. kosher salt. Bring to a boil. Pour this over your vegetables. You’ll have canning liquid leftover—just stash it in the fridge until the next time you’re ready to assemble another jar of garden delights. Adjust two-piece canning lids and process 20 minutes in a boiling-water bath. You don’t have to wait three years to open them, but do give them at least three weeks to let the vinegar do its work.

You’ve got three basic options: freezing, dehydrating, or canning. More ambitious folks can try fermenting, like I did with my bumper crop of bok choi last year. But let’s stick with the basics here.

Freezing Greens

This is the easiest, and probably the best, solution. It’s very, very easy to freeze greens. You just blanch them, cool them in an ice bath, and freeze. I’ve got step-by-step instructions and photos here. Assuming you’ve got a good freezer, these will keep very well for a year. We used ours all winter in soups, stews, pastas, dips, and even just sauteed with garlic. They shrink dramatically when blanched—plan on about a pound of fresh greens to make about two cups.

For most people, this is the way to go. If, however, you have limited freezer space, you live in an area that experiences frequent power outages, or are planning for a future without electricity, you need other options. Alas, they’re not great. But, you asked, so here goes.

Dehydrating Greens

Are you one of those people who likes to sprinkle seaweed flakes over your rice bowl at the local health food store? Then you might like this. Steam your greens just until they’re wilted. Transfer them to dehydrator trays and dry at a low temperature (say, 110ºF) just until they’re crispy. You’ll want to keep an eye on them—within two hours, mine looked like this:

Now what, you may ask, would you do with dehydrated turnip greens? That’s an excellent question. I rehydrated some with a little bit of room temperature water, and they looked pretty good. The problem was that they had no perceptible taste. In the end, I crumbled them up and stuck them in a spice jar:

I sprinkled an entire leaf’s worth of flakes over a bowl of roasted potatoes and couldn’t tell they were there. I suspect that they’re still fairly nutritious, though, so maybe this isn’t such a bad way to incorporate hearty greens into your diet. I guess.

Canning Greens

The things I do for science.

Yes, it is possible to can hearty greens. It requires a pressure cooker and a processing time of 1 hour, 10 minutes for pints and 1 hour, 30 minutes for quarts. Yes, you read that right. And after you’ve subjected these poor, innocent vegetables to 240ºF to more than an hour, you get this appetizing product:

(And that’s the glamor shot.)

The nutritional value of all of this is questionable. They taste about like you would expect them to. If, however, you have absolutely no other options and feel strongly about having a pantry full of shelf-stable vegetables, this technique will serve you well. But Lordy, do they smell bad. Here’s how you do it.

1) Bring about 3 quarts of water to a boil. You need 2 quarts for the pressure canner, plus some extra to pour over the greens.
2) Steam the greens until wilted. Cut them into manageable pieces.

3) Stuff the greens into canning jars. Add 1/2 t. salt per jar (optional) and cover with boiling water, leaving 1″ headspace. Don’t forget to remove the air bubbles. Adjust two-piece lids.
4) Transfer the jars to a rack on a pressure canner. Pour in 2 quarts of boiling water. Lock the lid into place, but do not place the regulator on the steam vent. Turn on the heat and exhaust steam from the vent for 10 minutes. Then place the regulator on the steam vent and bring the canner to 10 pounds of pressure. Start timing once the regulator starts rocking—70 minutes for pints, 90 minutes for quarts. (If this is confusing, see the step-by-step directions, with pictures, in this post.)
5) Turn off the heat and let the pressure drop of its own accord. When the pressure has dropped, remove the regulator. Now open all your windows. After waiting a few more minutes, open the lid away from your body. The pungent aroma of overcooked turnip greens will fill your house, and you’ll have all the shelf-stable greens you want. Plan on 2 to 5 pounds per pint, depending on the kind of greens involved. Um, yum?

Other ideas?

My favorite strawberry farm, Gaventa’s, no longer offers U-pick. Waaaah. My next favorite strawberry farm, Mood’s, apparently isn’t offering strawberries this year, but plans to open for other fruit picking in mid-June. That left Johnson’s, a weirdly tourist-y place in Medford that I don’t particularly recommend as a “farm experience” (enforced hayrides = bad, in my book), but the price was right ($1.75/pound for more than 10 pounds) and the berries were DELICIOUS. But here’s the kicker: they wanted $4.95 for pick-your-own cherries. Um, no.

For that, we headed over to Rowand’s Farm in Glassboro. Now this is a U-pick I can live with. The proprietors sit in lawn chairs and hand you plastic buckets. Sweet cherries are $1.65/pound. They also have strawberries, but I can’t vouch for them, having already gorged myself at Johnson’s. But there’s a catch: they’re closed on Saturdays.

Once you bring all that fruit home, then you have to do something with it. Some options and recommendations from last year’s blog:

Freeze it, individually (not particularly recommended, but convenient) or in sugar
Make endless jars of jam, including my favorite, cherry raspberry
Can it with rhubarb
Combine it with lemons for a marmalade
Stash it in syrup
Dehydrate it

Julia over at What Julia Ate highly recommends drowning fruit in alcohol and straining the remains to make liqueur. This is a new one for me, so no results yet. But I’ll keep you posted.

Happy picking and preserving!

Can I just tell you how delicious this yellow mole is, and how grateful we should be that Rick Bayless exists to tell us hopeless gringos how to make such things? You really, really must make this. Besides being absolutely delectable, it’s a great use for frozen green beans! Heavens! This version turned out especially well because I used fresh, extra fatty chicken broth. I’m sure it’s still good and will do less damage to your arteries if you skim your stock. Warning: four guajillo chiles (pictured below) were too much for me. Two were too few. So, um, use three, or to taste?

Chicken with Yellow Mole (paraphrased and ever-so-slightly adapted from Rick Bayless’s Mexican Everyday)

3 dried guajillo chiles, stemmed and torn into several pieces
1 pint roasted tomatoes
1/2 small white onion
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1/2 t. ground cumin
4 c. fresh chicken broth
2 T. canola oil
2 c. cooked chicken (if you’re making broth, bingo! you’ve got chicken!)
1 T masa harina, or coarse cornmeal in a pinch
2 c. green beans (frozen are fine)
2 large or 4 small Yukon Gold potatoes, cut into 1″ pieces
Salt
Cilantro

1) Combine the torn chiles, tomatoes, onion, garlic, cumin, and 1 cup of the stock in a blender. Puree until smooth.

2) Heat up the oil in a large, heavy pot. Add the tomato-chili mixture and cook until it looks like a thick paste. Rick says it takes about 5 minutes; I needed closer to 20. Maybe that’s because I’m using about twice the tomatoes that he recommends. In any case, dragging a spoon through the mixture should leave a track.

3) Whisk the masa harina or cornmeal into the remaining stock, then add that to the chile-tomato mixture. Bring to a boil and simmer until it starts to get thick. Add the cooked chicken (ideally shredded), the green beans, and the potatoes. Cook until the potatoes are tender, then taste and adjust the seasonings.

Serve with warm tortillas. Hint: if it’s too spicy, eat it with yogurt. This gets better and better as it sits in the fridge, though I doubt it will last that long.

Pumpkin Pear Soup

1 quart frozen pumpkin
1 quart chicken broth, preferably homemade, or vegetable stock if you want a vegan soup
2 T olive oil or butter, if you’re doing local
1 large onion, chopped
3 ripe pears, peeled and diced, or 1 c. dried pears, chopped
2 or 3 sprigs fresh thyme
salt and pepper
1/2 c. white wine
parsley or cilantro for garnish

1) If you’re using dried pears, soak them in hot water for 20 minutes. Then drain and set aside.

2) Put the pumpkin and the stock in a soup pot and bring to a boil. Add some salt. Simmer for at least 20 minutes.

3) Meanwhile, heat up the oil or butter in a skillet. Turn down the heat to medium low and add the onions. Cook slowly until they start to caramelize, about 20 minutes. Now add pears (dried or fresh) and the thyme sprigs and keep cooking. You want everything to be soft and delicious and slightly brown. Salt helps.

4) Puree the pumpkin/stock mixture in a blender (you can skip this if your pumpkin is very smooth). Stir in the onions and pears (remove the thyme). Pour the wine into the skillet to deglaze it and let it cook for just a couple of minutes. Then toss the wine into the pot, too. Adjust the seasonings and garnish as desired.

This keeps several days in the fridge and freezes well.

My best latke tips:

1. Really wring out those potatoes. You’ll ruin a kitchen towel, but you’ll be much happier with the results.

2. Add a tablespoon or so of cottage cheese. Just trust me on this one.

3. Make sure your oil is really, really hot. Few among us have a deep frying thermometer these days, so I’ll characterize it like the Spanish would: it needs to be hot enough to brown a breadcrumb in 30 seconds.

4. Scoop out the latkes in a 1/3 c. measuring cup. Really pack it in there, the better to keep it together in the frying pan.

I’ve never met a latke that I didn’t like, but I’m especially partial to cheese latkes, potato and sweet potato latkes, and regular potato latkes with a handful of shredded carrots thrown in. Yours?