Toffee

My mom's favorite candy is English toffee, with nuts, without chocolate. Many years ago, when I was still in college and Theresa still made zines, we got a Christmas gift of incredible toffee and the recipe that went with it from a zine friend of Theresa's. I have made it at least 20 times, and only once did it fail me...and the best part is, you don't need a candy thermometer! I'm going to share this recipe with you all. Which makes me kind of sad, because now I can never again impress you with a gift of the best toffee you ever had. Once you know how easy it is, you won't be impressed anymore. Oh well...

To make one small batch of toffee (you can double it successfully):

1/4 cup water
1 cup white sugar
4 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup sliced raw almonds (sliced is very important, because their thinness lets you spread the toffee super-thin, and if you don't do this, my mom will complain.)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 bar dark chocolate (any size will work)

Grease a large cookie sheet, or better, line it with parchment.

In a wide, flat-bottomed pan at least 2 inches deep, cook the water, butter, and sugar over medium heat. Stir constantly with a wooden spoon (which will turn into a toffee lollipop for you to enjoy at the end). From this point, it will be 15-45 minutes until the toffee is done cooking--I don't know why it's so variable, but it is! I usually set a timer for 45 minutes so I don't freak out about the time, and then pay careful attention to the visual clues that are part of this recipe.

If sugar crystals form on the sides of the pan, wash them down with a pastry brush dipped in water. Don't worry too much about this. After a while, the sugar will start to turn brown, then turn coarse and chunky. This means you are almost done. Add the vanilla and almonds. After a few minutes, the chunky sugar will liquefy again. (If it doesn't, sprinkle in a very little bit of water, maybe one tablespoon.) You can judge when the toffee is ready by the color, which at this point is darkening rapidly. As soon as the toffee is a deep golden brown, immediately take it off the heat and pour it onto your prepared cookie sheet. You will probably want a brave and careful friend to help you with this. Make sure it's someone you trust because that sugar is extremely hot and will burn you terribly if it gets on you! Don't try to taste it--I mean it. Do not put the spoon in your mouth until it's completely cool!

Tilt the sheet and use the spoon to spread the toffee as thinly as possible. Then, quickly, take the chocolate bar and rub it over the top of the hot toffee. The heat will melt the chocolate in a very thin layer, which gives you the perfect ratio of thin, crisp toffee to thin, rich chocolate!

Put the toffee in the fridge or freezer for a little while, until it hardens, then break it into irregular pieces. I wish I had a picture to share, but I don't.
So instead, I will share a picture of a recent house dinner, made by Jenn. She invented Brussels Sprout Sushi--or really, onigiri. Apparently, according to the internet, no one has ever blogged about that particular dish before, Each of those rice balls contained a whole, spicy Brussels sprout, cooked to delicious Korean-flavored tenderness. Aren't they pretty? Also, tasty. I would eat them again for sure.

Fall Preparation

School started again, so I, Gillian, have a good excuse as to why I haven't posted in a while. Everyone else is just slacking. Anyway, this morning we had such a good breakfast that it was gone before it could be photographed: giant popover with poached pear and quince. Mind your p's and q's! I used a recipe from Deborah Madison's Local Flavors, which seems to be my cookbook of the moment. I also failed to photograph last night's pot pie. It makes me very happy that pot pie season has arrived! But I did take a picture of this back-to-school feast that I made a week ago. The pear and quince frangipane tart was the star of the show, but we also deliciously used up a ton of kale in potato-kale soup and Jenn's famous massaged kale salad.


Theresa and I were motivated by rain-free but distinctly cool weather to move a couple of tomato plants into the greenhouse to see how long we can keep the tomatoes ripening. I dug out some potatoes that had been very ill-treated all season, from when I accidentally let them sprout in the cupboard, to throwing them out in a dark corner of the garden to fend for themselves, to deciding that even that location was destined for more glorious plants and planting tomatoes much too close to the potatoes. I got a whole big bowlful of potatoes from only two much-abused plants, which I think is pretty good! We also did our first planting of garlic--about 20 heads. I'd like to plant at least that much more, but we are out of garden space until we pull out the rest of our tomatoes, and they're still producing.

There's No Place Like Home

This is how State Fair, the massive Brandywine tomato, ended up--on toast with butter with coarse salt. I was too hungry to take many pictures before eating it so I apologize for the blurry photo...


After a week in Arizona, which to me seems as inhospitable as the moon, only much hotter and without that fun-looking low gravity, it is a relief to be back in cool, rainy Portland. The first thing I did upon getting back was to eat some good food at Pho Van. Then I ran around the garden seeing how things had developed while I was gone. Jenn and I picked four big Gold Rush squash and a bowlful of ripe tomatoes...and then picked twice as many tomatoes at Neighbor Dan's house. Of course, we had Alyssa's famous Zucchini-Tomato Gratin for dinner! The squash plants finally have powdery mildew so their season is just about over, but this summer I achieved my lifetime goal of growing more squash than I wanted...almost.


While I was away, the lettuces I planted a few weeks ago with typical despair ("it's already too late", "they'll never get big enough to eat before winter", "it's just a waste of seed because they're going to bolt right away if they don't just die in the heat") grew nice and big! Red mustard, mizuna, kale, carrots, radishes, and broccoli raab are also growing in a way that gives me hope. I was tempted to make a tiny salad last night, but I think they should grow just a little more before I start harvesting. Also typical--now I'm kicking myself for not succession planting lettuces every two weeks. I am transplanting some of these salad greens into the greenhouse where I hope they will grow all winter. Something to look forward to--homegrown salad in January!


A final story from the garden...Long Keeper tomatoes. I have just one plant of these and started harvesting them today. They never ripen on the vine, but when they reach full size you pick them and wrap them in paper and store them...and they ripen slowly over a period of many weeks. We grew these once before and had the last tomato ripen in January. That time we picked them too late though, after they had been out in the cold and lost some of their texture, and although they turned red, they were mealy. I'll let you know if we have better luck this year. Regardless of taste and texture, it's exciting to have a red, homegrown tomato in the middle of winter...but it would be even better if the tomato tasted good.

Thursday dinner

I, Gillian, said "I've given up hope. We're having fried green tomatoes for dinner."

Jenn said "That sounds better than hopelessness usually does." (Or something like that. We're always misquoting Jenn.)

And we did, in fact have some pretty good fried green tomatoes for dinner--with basil aioli, stewed green beans and sunburst squash, and Neighbor Dan's cucumbers. And I did feel despondent while watering the garden this morning because I have hundreds of green tomatoes and not one of my full sized tomatoes has ripened yet...and it seems to be fall already!


But I secretly have not given up hope, even though the weather forecast puts our high around 70 for the rest of the week. I've been harvesting a small handful of red and yellow currant tomatoes daily, and State Fair, an enormous Brandywine tomato that will be the biggest I ever grew if it ever turns red, was blushing just slightly pink today...

Tuesday Night Dinner

Dinner tonight was Macaroni and Cheese from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. It was far too hot to have the oven on today, but Gillian rescued a large pile of partly-molding cheeses from her parents' house, and they were just screaming to be used immediately.

The recipe is easy enough and can be found on the How to Cook Everything website. I made the goat cheese and red pepper variation and served it with apple sauce (which goes without saying).

I whipped up the recipe right before our house adventure to Sprout, the new donation-based yoga studio across the street from our house. When we got back from yoga, I stuck the dish into the oven and we ate dinner "European-style" at 9 pm.

I don't know how we would make this meal if we were only living off our own stores. The cheese we can get through the milk man, and if we have success with the greenhouse next summer we might be able to grow and can peppers, but I don't think the Kitchen-Aid mixer has a "macaroni" attachment. I suppose we could make ravioli instead, but it might be better to start searching for recipes that will mate up better with the food we can grow.

At dinner tonight, we talked about possible issues for our project. We considered having a list of "exotic" foods (olives?) that we can "import" before the beginning of September. We worked on our coffee roasting plans (have hints? please share!), and we thought about home brewing. House friends Ann and Kelly are interested in joining us in our experiment, and Kelly started growing hops this year, so we're halfway to home brewing already, right? Ten bucks says my 21-year old brother will help.

squashritos!

actually, they were squash tacos.

in an attempt to record all our eatings so that we can keep track of the approximate amount of food we eat as a household (and to document and share all the delicious recipes!), here's what crabapple had for dinner last night:

squash tacos! (adapted from this recipe)

ingredients:
olive oil
chili powder
cumin
*2 cloves garlic
*1/2 walla walla sweet onion, diced
*4 asst. squash (i used 3 crookneck and one 'buttery stick' yellow zucchini), in bite-sized cubes
squeeze of lime juice
1 can black beans
8 oz. pico de gallo
small corn tortillas (alyssa used flour, she had a squashrito)
* are grown by us or from farmshare... everything else from Freddy's or Trader Joe's.

Heat olive oil over medium high heat, add diced onion and garlic saute until tender.
Reduce heat to medium, add squash and zucchini, add cumin and chili powder. Cover, let cook for three to five minutes until tender. Warm beans on the stove while squash are cooking. Uncover, mix in large bowl with beans, lime juice, and salsa - season with salt and pepper.

Serve as a 'taco bar' with fresh cilantro and more salsa. I also made a yummy 'avocado cream' by blending a mashed avocado with 1/2 cup yogurt (from our milkman!), a squeeze of lime juice and 2 tbsp chopped cilantro -- tasty topping for tacos!

I served it with grilled corn on the cob (from our farmshare) and fizzy mint limeade.