Jammin’ with the currents
Oh, we know there’s gonna be a pun here somewhere!
Something about this time of year—whether it’s the abundance of produce from the garden and the farmers market, the sun-soaked days, or the fresh air, something always activates Charles’ homesteading gene towards the end of July. Next thing you know, he’s jammin’ over a hot bath of mason jars filled with produce, extracting essential oils, or stirring a kettle of warm milk.
As flower farmers, we embrace the seasonality of our blooms. We don’t live off the grid or anything extreme (we’re blogging about this after all), but we do make a modest attempt to broadly embrace seasonality in our lives. Living with the rhythm of our garden and even our yogurt or sourdough cultures is a little way to break free from artificiality, efficiency, and convenience, and to live more authentically as humans.
Today, we want to share some of our summertime easy-to-do, go-to homesteading treats: Quick Pickled Apples, Spicy Pickled Summer Squash, Honey Fermented Garlic, Mayonnaise, Sweet Yogurt, and Black Currant Jam (see what we did there?)
Quick Pickled Apples
These store well in the fridge for around a week and make a great snack by themselves or as a topping on a homemade pizza!
Ingredients:
1 cup water
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup maple syrup (we love bourbon barrel-aged syrup from M3 Farms)
1 1/2 teaspoons pickling spice
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2 large apples
2 or 3 anise pods (or 10-15 seeds)
Directions:
To make the brine, add the water, vinegar, maple syrup, pickling spice, and salt to a medium kettle and heat it to a boil, then reduce the heat and allow the mixture to simmer for 10 minutes while you peel and slice the apples—you can get them right now on Saturdays and Sundays from Under the Tree Farm at the Ithaca Farmers Market.
Peel, cut your apples pole-wise, and slice them 1/8 inch thick, then put them in a pint-size mason jar with the anise.
Remove the brine from heat, allow it to cool, and pour it into the mason jar filling to the neck of the jar for about 1/2 inch of head space.
Use a fork to compress the apples and brine and add more brine if needed so that no slices are out of the mixture.
Spicy Pickled Summer Squash
We love to sautee these for a side with some heat to just about any meal!
Ingredients:
Enough summer squash to fill two 1-pint mason jars to the neck
3 tsp. peppercorns
1 1/2 tsp. coriander seeds
3 tsp. pepper flakes
1/4 cup of thinly sliced sweet onion
3 cloves of garlic
1 1/4 cup vinegar
1 1/4 cup water
2 tsp. sea salt
2 tbsp. honey
Directions:
Cut the summer squash into 1/8 inch slices. Place the summer squash, peppercorns, coriander, pepper flakes, onion, and garlic into a large bowl, then divide equally into two 1-quart mason jars.
In a small kettle combine the vinegar, water, salt, and honey and bring it to a boil. Pour the mixture over the contents of each jar.
Use a fork to press the summer squash so the brine completely immerses them. Leave 1/2 inch of head space if water-bath canning. Let your jars cool to room temperature before covering and refrigerating them. This method stores in the refrigerator for up to 2 months.
If water-bath canning, submerge the warm, capped mason jar into a water bath and bring it to a boil for 15 minutes. Remove the mason jar from the bath and set it on the counter out of direct sunlight to cool for 12-24 hours. As it cools and the pressure changes, the jar will seal resulting in a shelf-life of around 1 year.
For information about canning safety from the CDC, click here.
Honey Fermented Garlic
We cook with this in everything from chili and steak to sauteed honey garlic zucchini and summer squash.
Ingredients:
6-8 heads of garlic (enough to fill 3/4 of the jar)
honey
1 packet of Red Star Champagne yeast
Directions:
Fill a mason jar 3/4 with peeled garlic heads. We used ‘Music’ garlic—one of our absolute favorites, for our last batch; it has a rich flavor that’s spicy uncooked and hot when cooked.
Then, add the champagne yeast and slowly pour in the honey, allowing it to flow down to the bottom of the jar. We love using the honey from our bees or apple blossom or red bamboo honey from Howland’s Honey.
Screw the cap on just enough for the lit to catch (1/2 turn or so) and set your jar in a bowl someplace dark to ferment for up to 30 days; you can eat it during the fermenting process, though! Adding the bowl is important because as the yeast do their work, some honey will likely bubble and drip out of the jar.
Once each day, seal the lid completely and turn the jar upside down to let the fermenting honey to move to the bottom of the jar, then return the jar upright and loosen the lid. After a month, we store our fermented honey garlic in the refrigerator.
Mayonnaise
We love to turn an egg from Bottomland Farm into mayo, and mix a few drops of Smokin’ Hot Heirloom Hot Sauce from Mojo’s Sauce into homemade mayo for a B.L.T. And sometimes we even like to fry up an egg to make a Bacon, Egg, Lettuce, and Tomato sandwich!!!
Ingredients:
1 cup of extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp. room-temperature honey mustard
1 tsp. apple cider vinegar
1 room-temperature egg
1 pinch of sea salt
Directions:
Place the olive oil, mustard, vinegar, egg, and salt in a wide-mouth mason jar and blend using an immersion blender. It’s super important that everything is room temperature or the emulsion won’t work, and your mayo will be runny.
Homemade mayo lasts about one week in the fridge—if it lasts that long around here!! 😉
Sweet Yogurt
We love adding currant jam, along with fresh fruit, like peaches from Jackman’s Vineyards to homemade yogurt!
For this you’ll need a good cooking thermometer—we like one with a magnet, like this ThermPro+. You’ll also need yogurt maker, like this Yogotherm, and a sweet yogurt culture from the New England Cheese Company. And if you really get into it, you can use it to make your own sour cream, Greek yogurt, crème fraîche, kefir, and more!
Ingredients:
8 cups of whole milk
1 pinch of sea salt
Sweet yogurt culture
Directions:
In a large kettle, heat on medium heat 8 cups of whole milk to 185°F—we like Trinity Valley (the Cadillac of milk) from Hollenbeck’s ShurFine in Newark Valley. Stir continuously so the milk doesn’t burn to the bottom of the kettle. Continue to stir while you hold the temperature +/- two degrees of 185°F for 20 minutes—this prepares the proteins to produce a thick yogurt.
Next, cool the milk quickly to 115°F. Fill your kitchen sink with cold water just above the height of your warm milk and set the kettle in the sink. Stir continuously to mix the cooling and warm milk for an accurate temperature.
It will cool very quickly, and this is where the magnetic thermometer really comes in handy. When you’re at 116°F remove the milk from the cool water bath and let it fall just below 115°F. The cooling process should take 3-5 minutes.
Now, add the yogurt culture and stir for 1-2 minutes to ensure it mixes well, then pour your culture into the yogurt maker. Seal it up and let it incubate for 6-12 hours; we find that 12 hours is optimal for a thick yogurt. Afterward, remove the yogurt pale from the maker and store in the fridge. It will thicken some more as it cools.
To make more yogurt, you can use a heaping spoonful of your last yogurt and repeat 8-10 times before it becomes sour, or fill 1/4 to 1/2 of a mason jar with your first batch and make several more from the refrigerated culture.
Black Currant Jam
Hey, we had to come up with the pun for this blog somehow!!!
Way back in the mists of time—10 years ago, when we moved to New York and bought our farm, we planted a bunch of currant plants from Double A Vineyards in Buffalo.
They’ve become prolific, and we love using their foliage for greens in flower bouquets as much as we do turning their fruits into delicious jams each year!
Ingredients:
4 cups of currants
2 cups sugar
1 tbsp. lemon juice
Directions:
Rinse and wash the currants, then add them to a small kettle, along with sugar and lemon juice, and boil them until the mixture reaches your desired thickness. Then, pour the reduced mixture into sterilized mason jars. Cap and submerge the jars into a water-bath and bring them to a boil for 30 minutes. Remove the jars from the water bath and store out of direct sunlight for 12-24 hours.