Sunday Scones

 

Scones. There are probably more variations on this Scottish quickbread than there are Scots to bake them. They are round, square, rectangular or wedge-shaped - not to mention heart-shaped on Valentine's Day. They are sweet, savory, filled, topped, studded with dried fruit or nuts, drizzled with icing, or served plain with butter, jams, and clotted cream. They can be light as a feather or dense like a shortbread. They're all scones. And they're all good.

In the US, scones are pretty much always sweet, although, as with every other variation imaginable, the degree of sweetness can vary greatly. My first choice is usually a less-sweet light-biscuity style as these are. I don't really care that much for the overly-iced sweet things sold at the coffee chains.

We have a throw-together recipe that can be tweaked countless ways to make countless variations. It's pretty no-fail. The only caveat is to have a light hand as you would making biscuits.

Basic Scones

  • 3 cups flour
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 5 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 1/2 sticks butter
  • 1 egg
  • 1 cup milk

Preheat oven to 400°. Line cookie sheet with parchment or very lightly grease.

Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in bowl. Cut in butter. Mix the egg and milk and stir in until moistened.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead briefly. Form dough out into a 1/2 inch thick round. Cut into 8 wedges, and place on the prepared baking sheet a couple inches apart.

Bake 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Today, Victor added about a cup of dried cranberries and sprinkled the top with sugar before baking.

It's a gray, dreary, wet day here in Pennsylvania and the dough was a tad more sticky than usual. It was a bit more difficult to work with, but he wisely resisted adding more flour and cut 6 not-so-even wedges instead of the usual 8.

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The end result was an airy light-as-a-feather scone that brought a smile to my face with every bite.  What they lacked in uniformity they more than made up for in flavor and texture.

I think it's time for another...

 


Strozzapreti with Beef and Onion Ragu

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Strozzapreti. I just had to type it one more time. What a great word. It's a type of pasta from Italy. There must be thousands of shapes of pasta in Italy. Every time I turn around I'm seeing a new name and shape. It's a far cry from the 4 varieties I remember as a kid.I like different shaped pastas and will buy new shapes - provided they're priced the same as the other stuff. I'm way too cheap to spend twice as much money for a barely-discernible difference. And a lot of the shapes on the market really are just a half-twist away from being called something else.

I bought the strozzapreti at Cost Plus a while back and it's been sitting in the cupboard just waiting a reason to come out and play.

Tonight was the reason.

I was perusing my latest copy of Cooks Illustrated and came upon a recipe for Italian Beef and Onion Ragu. I like Cooks Illustrated, although they can also annoy me sometimes with their quest to make something better - and by doing so, change the dish so completely it doesn't even resemble what it was they started with.

Their recipe sounded good, so I used it as my starting point and made a few changes to make it more to my liking.

Rigatoni with Beef and Onion Ragu

  • 1 1/2lbs boneless beef chuck roast, cut into 4 pieces and trimmed
  • 2 oz pancetta, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
  • 4 oz salami, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
  •  2 carrots, coarsley chopped
  • 2 celery stalks, coarsely chopped
  • 2 1/2 pounds onions, coarsely chopped
  • 6oz can tomato paste
  • 1 cup dry white wine
  • 2 tbsp minced fresh marjoram
  • 1 pound pasta of your choice
  • 1/2 cup Pecorino Romano, grated, plus extra for serving

Sprinkle beef with 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper and set aside. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 300°.

Process pancetta and salami in food processor until ground to a paste. Add carrots and celery and continue chopping until very fine. Place in pot. Finely chop onions in processor and set aside.

Transfer paste to Dutch oven and begin cooking over low heat.

Cook pancetta mixture over medium heat, stirring frequently, until fat is rendered and poaste begins to brown. Add tomato paste and cook, stirring constantly, until browned, about 90 seconds. Stir in 2 cups water, scraping up any browned bits. Stir in onions and bring to boil. Stir in 1/2 cup wine and 1 tablespoon marjoram. Add beef and push into onions to ensure that it is submerged. Transfer to oven and cook, uncovered, until beef is fully tender, about 3 1/2 hours.

Transfer beef to carving board. Place pot over medium heat and stir in remaining 1/2 cup wine and cook for 2 minutes. Shred beef into bite-size pieces. Stir beef and remaining 1 tablespoon marjoram into sauce and season with salt and pepper to taste. Remove from heat, cover, and keep warm.

Cook pasta according to package instructions. Drain and add to warm sauce. Add Pecorino and stir. Serve, passing extra Pecorino separately.

It came out really good. Oniony without being overpoweringly so and really rich. We all ate a lot and there's enough left for another meal.

Not bad, at all...

 


Biscotti

Christmas 2013 shall be known as the Year of the Biscotti at our house.  Victor came up with some awesome variations of the original recipe this year - totally awesome!

We've always made a couple different types of biscotti every year, but this year, they seemed to really come together.

It started with a pistachio biscotti - a new flavor for us. When we were in Italy last year, we picked up a trinket bottle of a pistachio cream liqueur. It was in a bottle shaped like the Italian boot with an "I" and a "♥" hot glued onto the front and "Italy" written in a black Sharpie. It may have cost a euro. Maybe. We had no thoughts of ever actually drinking the stuff - it was just a tacky little souvenir.

The basic biscotti recipe calls for about 3 tbsp of anisette and we always add something when making the variations, so when Victor said pistachio, I grabbed the little bottle. Wouldn't you know... It had exactly three tablespoons of liqueur in it! Our lucky day.

In it went, and into the oven they went. And out of the oven came the hit of the season!  A totally outrageously good cookie! We knew we needed to make more - but we had used up all of the liqueur. We went online and found several brands available. Sadly, living in the backwater Commonwealth of Pennsylvania means dealing with The State Store. Naturally, they didn't stock it or even know what it was. But we had seen a recipe for making it at home. I bought a bottle of Everclear.

We made our own.

Pistachio Biscotti

  • 2 3/4 cups flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1 cube (stick) butter
  • 2/3 cup sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 3 tbsp cream of pistachio liqueur
  • 8 oz pistachios, roasted - unsalted
  • 1 tsp vanilla

Sift together dry ingredients.  Cream sugar and butter, add eggs one at a time. Add vanilla and pistachio cream. Stir in flour. Stir in pistachios.

Divide dough in half.  Shape into logs.  Place on greased cookie sheets and bake at 350° for 18-20 minutes.

Cool completely.  Slice into 1/4 to 1/2″ slices and toast on both sides in 350° oven.

Pistachio Cream Liqueur

  • 8 oz pistachios, roasted and coarsely chopped
  • 750ml Everclear or 100 proof vodka
  • 1 1/2 qts whole milk
  • 3 lbs sugar
  • 1 tbsp vanilla extract

Pour alcohol over pistachios and let sit for a week to infuse. Shake or stir now and again.

On day 7... Bring sugar and milk to a boil and simmer until sugar is dissolved - about 10 or 15 minutes. Remove from heat and cool completely.

Strain pistachio alcohol through several layers of cheesecloth. Discard pistachios.

Mix cooled milk syrup with liquor. Add vanilla.

It's done.

The liqueur itself tastes pretty good. Over ice it would make a nice martini of sorts...

The next cookie is the basic - the mother cookie from whence all others are created. This is Uncle Rudy's recipe and it has never failed us.

 

Traditional Anise Biscotti

  • 2 3/4 cups flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1 cube (stick) butter
  • 2/3 cup sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 3 tbsp anisette (or more…)
  • 1 tbsp toasted anise seed
  • 1 tsp vanilla

Sift together dry ingredients.  Cream sugar and butter, add eggs one at a time. Add vanilla, anisette, and anise seed.  Stir in flour.

Divide dough in half.  Shape into logs.  Place on greased cookie sheets and bake at 350° for 18-20 minutes.

Cool completely.  Slice into 1/4 to 1/2″ slices and toast on both sides in 350° oven.

Next is another newer variation this year - Orange Macadamia. We've done apricot macadamia in the past but this year, the apricots are being used elsewhere...

 

Orange Macadamia Biscotti

  • 2 3/4 cups flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1 cube (stick) butter
  • 2/3 cup sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 3 tbsp Cointreau
  • 8 oz Macadamia nuts, coarsely chopped
  • 1 tsp vanilla

Sift together dry ingredients.  Cream sugar and butter, add eggs one at a time. Add vanilla and Cointreau. Stir in flour. Stir in macadamia nuts.

Divide dough in half.  Shape into logs.  Place on greased cookie sheets and bake at 350° for 18-20 minutes.

Cool completely.  Slice into 1/4 to 1/2″ slices and toast on both sides in 350° oven.

And then the boy got crazy. He decided to try stuffed biscotti!  Total genius!

First up was a Walnut Biscotti stuffed with a date and bourbon paste. This was an unexpected surprise. It totally worked.

 

Walnut Biscotti Stuffed with Dates

  • 2 3/4 cups flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1 cube (stick) butter
  • 2/3 cup sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 3 tbsp bourbon
  • 8 oz coarsely chopped walnuts
  • 1 tsp vanilla

Sift together dry ingredients.  Cream sugar and butter, add eggs one at a time. Add vanilla and bourbon. Stir in flour. Stir in walnuts.

Divide dough in half.  Shape into logs and flatten with rolling pin. Spread thin layer of filling along center. Roll up jellyroll-style and place seam-side sown on greased cookie sheets and bake at 350° for 22-25 minutes.

Cool completely.  Slice into 1/4 to 1/2″ slices and toast on both sides in 350° oven.

And then the last of the biscotti - for now. Apricot-stuffed Almond Biscotti.

We always have some of Aunt Emma's filling left over and this was the perfect venue for using it up!

 

Apricot-Stuffed Almond Biscotti

  • 2 3/4 cups flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1 cube (stick) butter
  • 2/3 cup sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 3 tbsp amaretto
  • 8 oz sliced roasted almonds
  • 1 tsp vanilla

Sift together dry ingredients.  Cream sugar and butter, add eggs one at a time. Add vanilla and amaretto. Stir in flour. Stir in almonds.

Divide dough in half.  Shape into logs and flatten with rolling pin. Spread thin layer of filling along center. Roll up jellyroll-style and place seam-side sown on greased cookie sheets and bake at 350° for 22-25 minutes.

Cool completely.  Slice into 1/4 to 1/2″ slices and toast on both sides in 350° oven.

The possibilities really are endless. Any combination of nuts, fruit, and liquors or liqueurs can be used - and we plan on using a lot of them in the years to come.

Enjoy!

And Happy Holidays to All!


Kentucky Ham and Adluh Grits

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This northern boy just made his first red-eye gravy. And it came out pretty darn good, if I do say so, m'self!

We're still working through the fantastic gift box Mike and Barbara sent us and tonight was country ham from Kentucky.

I have to admit I've only had real country ham a couple of times in my life. It's nothing like it's spiral-cut supermarket relative and more like it's distant cousin speck. Dry and salty with a really firm texture. And pretty awesome flavor. It needs to be soaked in water - or milk - for about 30 minutes prior to cooking. I opted for the water.

It was simplicity itself to cook. Trim the rind, place in a hot skillet and brown on both sides. The even easier part was the red-eye gravy. Add a cup of coffee to the skillet and scrape up the bits. Serve over ham.

I was a bit leery about the gravy. I have a vague memory of making it once and thinking it was the most gawdawful thing I had ever tasted. It must not have been the right ham, because this one came out just fine.

I served it with Adluh Grits from Columbia, SC because they're the best grits out there. You can buy them online.

The fun thing is we get to do it, again, because we only cooked up half of it!

I gave Nonna a reheated potato puff from last night because she won't do grits. Her loss, for sure, but the potato puff reheated really well.

Next is going to be the bacon.....

 


Potato Puffs from Down Under

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I need to make time to update this thing a bit more often!  We're cooking and baking like there's no tomorrow - and nothing is getting posted!

Shame on me.

I guess the main reason is we're cooking and baking like there's no tomorrow. It takes time to sit down and write about food - and baking cookies is so much more fun - especially when one is a lousy typist.

Later today I think I'll do a cookie column and highlight some of the fun thins we've done.  And we have ham from our friend Mike in South Carolina that is hitting the dinner table, tonight.

In the meantime... Victor was in the kitchen last night and what a treat it was! He got a recipe from his friend Roy in Australia for a potato dish baked in muffin tins and it seemed like a natural to go with some Dover sole...

We don't eat a lot of fish in our house. We both love it but I just never ate a lot of it growing up. My mother wasn't a fan other than fried shrimp or petrale sole in a restaurant once in a while so it never became a childhood taste memory. Our Catholic non-meat Friday meals were tuna or mac and cheese - homemade - not from a box. I never had a fish stick - still can't eat them. Fish is always something I have to actually think about buying - and we all know how well I think.

So with some Dover sole thawing and me working a bit late, Victor took over in the kitchen.

The extremely thin pieces of fish went under the broiler with butter and lemon zest for maybe three minutes. It's a flash-cook, done when the rest of the meal is already plated. But the start of the plate was the potato puff.

They're like a potato souffle only a lot easier to make.

Potato Puffs

  • 3 cups mashed potatoes
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/3 cup sour cream
  • 1 heaping cup shredded cheddar cheese
  • 3 tbsp grated parmesan
  • 2 tbsp chopped chives or parsley
  • salt and pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 400°. Lightly butter 8-9 wells of a muffin tin. Whisk the eggs with the sour cream. Stir in cheeses and chives/parsley. Add the potatoes and mix well. Spoon them into the cups filling them to slightly below the top. Bake for 25-35 minutes until they pull away from the sides of the cup and are golden brown. Remove from oven and let cook 5 minutes before removing from pan. Serve with additional sour cream, if desire.

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The potatoes came out great. Victor made them in a larger muffin tin and switched out the cheese to an Italian 4-cheese blend. They baked just under 45 minutes. Most excellent.

We shall be doing these, again...

A simple, rockin' dinner.


Sunday Breakfast with Mike and Barbara

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Mike and Barbara may have physically been in South Carolina this morning, but they were here with us, nonetheless - in a way that could only be topped by them being here in person!

A couple of days ago the UPS man rang the doorbell with an absolutely delightful surprise - a gift of smoked and cured meats from Broadbents in Kentucky! Mike and I have traded stories of cooking, cast iron skillets, grandmas, and family feeding frenzies in between left-leaning liberal politics for many years, now, while Barbara has won more ribbons at the South Carolina State Fair than Carter has little liver pills. Seriously - she's won several hundred over the years. She ain't no slouch. These two know their food.

When Mike starts talkin' food - especially Southern food - I listen.  And when food he talks about arrives at my door, I eat!

I have spent some time down south, I have former brothers-in-law from down south, we have some great friends who live throughout the south, and I have cooked and eaten my share of southern food, but I'm not an instinctive southern cook. I can fake it pretty well and can make a pretty good biscuit, but good sausage or red-eye gravies simply elude me, as does a lot of the basics.  My maternal grandfather's family goes back to North Carolina and Tennessee in the late 1700s and early 1800s, but my Missouri-born grandfather moved to California and married a Yankee girl. That was the end of grits in his life - and the end of Traditional Southern Cooking in our family. I didn't know what okra was until I went into the Navy. In fact, Uncle Sam's Yacht Club was my introduction to a lot of southern foods, from chitlin's to collards to fried biscuits. Who knew?!? Certainly not this San Francisco boy. 

But the palate expanded over the years and the curiosity continued to grow. And, the more I tried, the more I liked and the more I liked, the more I tried.

Which brings me back to the package...

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Ham, bacon, and sausage. Hog Heaven, indeed!

It's funny that with any ol' ham, bacon, or sausage, I just take it for granted and use however I wish, but with ham bacon and sausage that was dry-rubbed, smoked, and cured in Kentucky and bought by friends in South Carolina, I feel slightly intimidated. What should I do?  What should I do?

The obvious response is, "Eat it, dummy!" but I need to do it justice. I need to over-think this. I mean, just eat it?!? Would Julia Child just eat a poussin?!? Well, yeah, she would - done simply and done well.

So I started with the sausage.

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A basic Sunday breakfast - sausage and eggs, potatoes and toast. Lots of coffee.

I took the outer wrapper off the sausage and was immediately hit with hickory smoke. I peeled it out of its muslin bag - the sausage is packed into them and then smoked - and marveled at the aroma.

I drooled a little bit.

The instructions on the pack said to place slices in a cold skillet and then cook and brown. It's the same concept as cooking a duck breast - you start rendering the fat slowly for maximum flavor and crispy skin with minimal burn. I did as I was told and within minutes the kitchen was filling with the scent of smoky goodness. The sausage cooked to a perfect crunchy-crusty exterior with a firm, meaty, and juicy interior. It was sausage unlike any sausage I have ever had in my life. It had absolutely everything going for it  - I have now been totally spoiled.

Mike says that the flavors are strong, but they are as close as he has ever seen to the meat they used to hang and smoke when his grandmother had hogs and they butchered in the fall. I can't imagine being able to do something like that and have it taste so good. I wonder what the neighbors would say if we built a smokehouse out back...

In the meantime, my tummy is smiling and the brain is working overtime trying to figure out a simple way to serve up some ham and bacon. The nice thing is it's smoked - I don't need to use it up immediately.

I can obsess over this for a while...

Thanks, Mike and Barbara! We're lovin' it!


Christmas Cookies 2013

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Christmas 1981. I remember it well. More or less.

It was my second Christmas in Boston - and a lot better than the first!

My first Christmas was fairly miserable. I had moved from Lake Tahoe about a month before.  Hyatt had screwed up my transfer (actually, a new Personnel Director had given my job to someone else) and I was living in a rooming house in East Boston - bath down the hall, communal kitchen - for $45/week. I could barely afford it and a T pass to get to work in Cambridge - as a Banquet Steward. A far cry from the Restaurant Manager/Executive Steward I was in Tahoe.  The awesome house, the fabulous roommates, Susan, Clare, and Michael...

But things got better. I was introduced to Dana and we became roommates. Meanwhile, my old roommate, Susan moved from Tahoe to Boston. Dana graduated from Law School and eventually moved back to St Louis. Then Susan and I moved into a great flat on Mission Hill with another friend, Gordy.

The job had improved and I was making much better money, but flying home wasn't in the cards that year. We went kinda goofy with the decorations, and somewhere along the line, I picked up a Charlie Brown Christmas mug. Susan and Gordy both made it home that year, and I was alone. But not for long.

We lived in a typical Boston 3-decker. Our landlords lived down the street from us.  We had the first floor,  and their daughter lived on the 2nd, and her aunt - our landlady's sister - lived on the top. Evelyn - the aunt - threw a Christmas Eve party every year that was spectacular. Food and drink for days. And days.

I was dragged upstairs and forced to eat and drink until I could barely walk. THEN we went out to visit all the other relatives. We hit a dozen different homes and had even more to eat and drink. I think we poured ourselves in about 3am. Maybe later. Everything gets a little fuzzy after about midnight...

And here I am, 32 years later, making dough for Christmas cookies in the Philadelphia suburbs and drinking coffee from the memorable mug, remembering the night I was an honorary African-American, eating chittlin's and doing shots in the Blue Hill Avenue projects. To say I've led an interesting life is an understatement. And I have a 32 year old mug that brings a smile to my face every time I see it.

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Onto baking...

We have found over the years that it is easier to make the various doughs over the course of a week or so - and then do marathon baking and get as many done as we can over a weekend. Then we just fill in with things here and there. It's a great system!

We have our standard cookies we make every year - Aunt Emma's Apricot cookies, several different biscotti, thumbprints, pizzelles... but we also like to throw in a few new ones every year.

This year, I grabbed my worn copy of Carol Field's The Italian Baker and started looking for new ideas. I came across a couple recipes I hadn't made before.

The first one is a cornmeal cookie.

Zaletti

adapted from The Italian Baker

  • 3/4 cup dried currants
  • 2 tbsp rum
  • 5 1/2 oz unsalted butter, at room temperature
  • 1/2 cup plus 1 1/2 tbsp sugar
  • 2 large eggs, at room temperature
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 1/2 cups flour plus 2 tablespoons flour
  • 1 cup polenta
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt

Toss the dried fruit with the rum - or other liquor of choice - and set aside.

Beat together the butter and sugar until smooth and creamy, about one minute. Add the eggs, one at a time, then the vanilla, beating until incorporated.

Whisk together the 1 1/2 cups flour, polenta, baking powder, and salt. Mix the dry ingredients into the beaten butter mixture until incorporated.

Grain the currants and dust with the additional 2 tbsp flour. Stir into batter.

Pinch off pieces of dough about the size of a small walnut, and roll into balls. Place them evenly spaced on the prepared baking sheet and press them down gently with your hands to partially flatten them.

Bake the cookies in a preheated 325º oven about 12 minutes, rotating the baking sheets midway during baking, until the cookies are very light brown on top. Remove the oven and let cool completely.

You can also form the dough into logs and refrigerate. Slice the cookies into 1/4-inch slices and place them evenly spaced on the prepared baking sheets. Again, bake for about 12 minutes.

We're not baking until the weekend, but this dough tastes fantastic! I used Amaro Massagli - a liquore we picked up in Lucca for the soaking. Yum.

The next are Stazzate. These are a crumbly chocolate and almond cookie with a half-cup of Strega, an Italian herbal liqueur. The recipe says you can substitute Galliano, but I chose the Amaro Massagli, again.

The only time I ever really had Galliano was for a Harvey Wallbanger.  And probably the last time I had one of those was while watching Harvey's blow in 1980. Yes, I was part of the crowd out there watching as the bomb exploded - drinking Harvey Wallbangers, of course!

http://youtu.be/jU1eplCrJFs

But I digress...

I figured any liquore would work - especially since I wasn't making them for anyone who would know the difference!

Stazzate

  • ½ tsp baking powder
  • 1 tbsp water
  • 1 ¾ cups finely ground, plus 2 tbsp roughly chopped, almonds
  • 1 ½ cups plus 2 tbsp. flour
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 2 tbsp chocolate chips
  • 1 tbsp cocoa powder
  • 1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
  • ½ tsp. salt
  • ½ cup Strega or Galliano liqueur
  • ⅓ cup coffee, at room temperature

Heat oven to 325°. Grease 2 parchment-lined baking sheets with butter and set aside. In a small bowl, whisk together baking powder and 1 tbsp water until dissolved.

Combine ground and chopped almonds, flour, sugar, chocolate chips, cocoa powder, oil, and salt in a large bowl. Stir in the baking powder mixture, liqueur, and coffee to form a wet dough.

Divide the dough into 1-oz. portions. Roll into balls and transfer to prepared baking sheets spaced about 1-inch apart. Bake until set, about 30 minutes.

Transfer cookies to racks and let cool to firm before serving.

There are quite a few more recipes that we'll be making, but several of them require the dough to be made and baked right away. We're not quite ready for baking, so...

Stay tuned.

I'm sure I can come up with a few more fun Christmas stories - like 1972 in the Gulf of Tonkin...

Navy-Christmas


Pressure Canning

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I have been having some serious fun in the kitchen!  Not that I don't always have fun in the kitchen, but our new pressure canner is serious fun!

I've done a bit of canning over the years but it's always been hot water bath. Jams and peppers, for the most part - easy to do. Lately, I've thought about venturing out and seeing what else I could get into a Mason jar and last week while sitting on the couch and talking about it, Victor ordered me a new pressure canner! Merry Christmas!

The first thing I made was a triple batch of Katja's Bacon Jam. And then I asked Victor to make a big batch of sauce. Tomato sauce has to be pressure-canned - there's just no way a hot water bath will get it hot enough. We usually have sauce in the freezer, but I really wanted jars on the shelf. We have a lot more shelf-space than freezer-space.

Yesterday, when I got home from work, there was almost 4 gallons of sauce simmering away on the stove! Gastronomic heaven!

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I boiled my jars, sanitized the lids, and went to work. It takes about 2 hours to can quarts of sauce - that's everything from bringing the canner up to pressure, the actual canning time, and the cool-down. I had to do two batches - the canner will only hold 7 quarts - but most of it is unattended. I just came in and checked that the pressure was consistent a couple of times.

Victor made this with #10 cans of San Marzano tomatoes from Italy, but I'm already planning sauce made from tomatoes out of the garden!

Oh boy!

I see fun in our future!