Processing the Fall

[beetiger]

heron61 posted a lovely looking recipe for brined apples last night, and I wanted to try it.

It calls for a gallon jar, but I can't fit that in my fridge for a month and it's not cool enough here to keep it fermenting in the garage, so I pulled out a heavy rubbersealed quart jar that I have, to make a small batch. I've got about 3/4 quart of small Seckel pears from our CSA, which are nice but for some reason don't soften up and hurt my teeth, so I figured I'd pickle them instead of some apples.

I made a third-recipe of the brine, using some nice greek honey I've got from my inlaws and some plain old regular salt instead of pickling salt. No sour cherry leaves, so some nice rolled gunpowder green Chinese tea I've got laying around. No fresh tarragon at hand -- some crushed dried bay will do. They seem to be jammed in the jar tight enough to not float, so I skipped weighting them.

bard_bloom picked up our son and looked at him seriously. "Watch well my son! See how your mother uses a recipe while changing every last thing in it."

I think they're going to be great. If not, well, I can't really blame heron61. He tried to tell me what to do.

Comments

Re: Alton Brown

[sheherazahde.livejournal.com]

While that is true, to be fair his show isn't about fast or even easy cooking. I don't always agree with him but I love his explainations on the theory and science of cooking.

I learned how to brine a turkey from him (not fast or easy, although easier than any other brining instructions I've seen)

But I also learned how to make Turbo Hummus from him. I hardly ever used to make Hummus, now it is so fast and easy it is one of my fall-back recipies.