The Christmas season is in full swing, and at our house one of the things that means is the drinking of copious amounts of hot, spiced cider. For as long as I can remember the holidays, both Christmas and Thanksgiving…and many of the days inbetween, were accompanied by the the sweet, heady smells of a pot of spiced cider warming away on the stove top. To this day, it just doesn’t seem like the Christmas season without having brewed up a gallon or two of one of my favorite drinks.

While we’re on the subject of cider, I want to rant just a little (and I think I’ve voiced this rant before so I’ll make it short). It drives me nuts, walking through the grocery store and seeing bottles of clear, amber liquid that companies are passing off as cider. Sorry, but it looks and tastes like ordinary apple juice and has about as much in common with real cider as does Grape juice. Cider should be brown and cloudy with a body and mouth feel that apple juice can only wish it could attain to. I even have a problem with “pastuerized” cider, but I understand that some people are concerned about food borne illnesses. But please, if you have never tasted fresh, unpastuerized cider before, check it out. You’re in for a treat. The real stuff, when made properly has a complexity that is totally lost in the pastuerization process.

It’s the holidays so enough ranting and more holiday cheer! You’ll notice, in the picture, that there is a distinctive red hue to that mug of cider. Don’t adjust your computer monitors, it’s supposed to be that way. I often like to add “Red Hots” candies (you know, those little, red, firery, cinnamon candies). They add a nice festive hue to the cider and help bump up the cinnamon in the drink. If you don’t want to use the candies, and sometimes I don’t, just up the number of cinnamon sticks you add to the cider to compensate for the lack of cinnamon flavoring.

Once made, you can ladel it into mugs and serve as is, for the children and teetotallers in your group or you can do as most of the members of my family do and spice with a shot of bourbon or dark rum. A few of those and I guarentee that you’ll get a party started!

This recipe uses a gallon of cider as I find that it can go pretty quickly, but you can easily adjust to make the amount you need. Also I just toss in all the spices. If you’d rather not fish around trying not to ladel up allspice berries and cloves you can tie them up in a coffee filter and just remove the whole thing after about 30-60 minutes.

Hot Spiced Cider
makes just over 1 gallon

1 gallon Cider
4 each Cinnamon sticks
1 Tbl. Whole Cloves
2 Tbl. Whole Allspice Berries
1 (12oz.) can Orange Juice Concentrate
3-4 oz. Red Hots candies (the little red cinnamon candies)

Place all ingredients in a nonreactive pot and simmer, without boiling for, at least, 30 minutes. Ladel into mugs and serve. Feel free to add a shot of bourbon or rum for a more adult beverage, or experiment with any of the various flavored alcohols out there. If you come across a really great combination let me know. If so desired, garnish the mugs with an orange wheel and a cinnamon stick for stirring.

Well, it’s November 1st and I survived another Halloween, which is getting more difficult as my daughter gets older and becomes more of a force to reckon with when she’s hopped up on massive quanitites of sugar. She turned 5 on Halloween (and yes, sometimes I think she truly is the spawn of the devil!) and I’m glad I wasn’t her teachers that day. She must have told me 20 times that morning that it was her birthday and that she was a big girl now. I can’t imagine how many times her teachers had to hear that line. More power to them, as a full day of that would have driven me crazy, and we all know that I’m on the edge as it is! But I’m not out of the woods just yet. We didn’t have time for her birthday party this past weekend so we are having it next weekend. That means 20 kids running around hopped up on cake, ice cream and soda. My only consolation is fact that I can then send them all home to unsuspecting parents who will then have to deal with the sugar crash. And yes, I know I’m evil! It’s part of my charm. Just ask my wife.

While we were out this weekend, we stopped by the farmer’s market here in town as it was the last one of the season. I wanted to make sure we stocked up on winter squashes as I love playing around with them, and they make great, hearty, Autumn time meals. I picked up a few Butternut squash perfect for soup making. Adding just a bit of curry powder to the mix gives the soup a nice complexity but doesn’t overpower the flavor of the squash.

There are many ways to garnish this soup; bacon is one garnish I use regularly, but today I wanted to change it up a bit. We had gotten a loaf of pumpernickel bread with our last CSA share of the season so I diced them up into 1/4 inch cubes and sauteed them slowly, in butter, over medium heat until crispy. I also peeled and diced an apple which I dusted with a mixture of 1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon and 1/4 tsp. ground chipotle pepper, but plain diced apple works well also.

Curried Squash Soup
serve 8-10

2 medium Butternut squash (about 4-5 pounds)
2 ribs celery
1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic
1 cup half and half
1 tsp. curry powder
1 Tbl. honey
salt
pepper

Peel, seed and dice the squash. Chop the celery. Peel and chop the onion. Peel the garlic. Place all the vegetables in a large pot. Add the half and half and then add water to just barely cover the vegatables. Add the curry powder and honey and season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and cook for 25-30 minutes or until all the vegetables are tender. Puree the soup either in batches, in a blender, or in the pot using a stick (emersion) blender. Taste and adjust seasoning to taste. This version doesn’t have much sweetness which is the way I like it when using the curry powder. If you want it sweeter just add more honey. Garnish with your choice of toppings or see above for suggestions.

It’s Fall and that means that our CSA box is starting to fill with root vegetables. Onions, potatoes, celery, and beets have all made appearances in recent weeks. Hopefully they will continue to show up in our boxes along with other root vegetables such as rutabagas, parsnips, and turnips. Take well to all sorts of cooking techniques, from frying and sauteing, to boiling, roasting, braising and pickling. Raw they can often have a sharp, but pleasant bite, but cooking them slowly oftentimes draws out their intrinsic sweetness, mellowing them and lending a deep, rich earthiness to many dishes.

As a kid I hated beets, and even as an adult they were probably the last root vegetable for me to imbrace, but now that I have I love them and look forward to both the Spring and Fall crops when beets can be found fresh, locally. Luckily for me, our CSA farm did produce both a Spring crop which was quickly used up and a Fall crop which has been showing up in our boxes the last couple of weeks. The first week was a nice large bunch of typical red beets, but the other week saw a mix of golden and Chioggia (red and white striped) beets.

Hopefully, you like beets as much as I do. If not, your out of luck as the next 3-5 posts will all be revolving around beets. I hope you enjoy these brightly colored, gifts of nature as much as I do.

Beet and Blue Cheese Spread
adapted from Cooking Light Feb. 2008

1 pound beets, medium sized
2 apples (any tart variety will work well)
1/3 cup blue cheese, crumbled (I used Gorgonzola)
1 1/2 Tbl. horseradish

Trim beets of any greens, rinse well, removing all dirt and place in a baking dish. Add 1/4 cup of water, cover with foil and bake at 350°F for 1 hour, or until the beets feel tender when pricked with a knife. Allow to cool then trim off root and stem ends and peel. Roughly chop and place in a food processor. Peel, core and chop the apples, placing them in the processor along with the blue cheese and horseradish. Process until well blended and somewhat smooth. Serve with crackers or toasted pita chips.

I’ve recently be playing around with dehydrating as a form of preserving food, and making tasty treats thanks to my new dehydrator from Chef Talk. In the past, dehydrating hasn’t held a lot of allure for me, but I am the curious sort (for both better and for worse) and am always looking to try new things and experiment with new, at least to me, techniques.

Of course, one of the first things I’ve tried is fruit leather (beef jerky will be this weekend) as I have always loved those fruit roll ups. I wanted something a little more sophisticated, flavor wise and remembered the numerous bags of cranberries that were sitting in our freezer. Cranberries alone weren’t going to make a good fruit leather so I decided to pair them with apple, a classic paring and to spike it with just a hint of cinnamon. The resulting leather reminded me of those classic fruit roll ups but with a more complex, less overly sweetened flavor that adults would enjoy.

Apple Cranberry Leather

1 pound cranberries, fresh or frozen
4 pounds apples, peeled, cored and roughly chopped (choose apples that are both good baking and eating apples, I chose Braeburn this time)
Apple juice, or cider
corn syrup
1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon

Puree the cranberries, in a blender, until smooth, adding just enough apple juice to get the cranberries blending. Repeat this process with the apples, again using just enough juice to get the puree started. You want it to be thick enough still that you will need to stop the blender occasionally and push the contents down. Combine the cranberry and apple purees, stirring to combine. Add the cinnamon and just enough corn syrup to sweeten the puree to your liking. Use corn syrup as opposed to sugar as sugar tends to recrystallize making the fruit leather brittle. Flow the manufactures suggestions for making fruit leather in your dehydrator, making sure that the puree is no more than 1/4-3/8″ thick. Do yourself a favor and lightly oil the tray you make the leather on. It will help in removal when done. Dry at 130F for approximately 6-9 hours. The length will depend on a lot of variables including humidity, ambient room temperature, how much juice you added, etc. The leather is done when it is still pliable, but no longer tacky to the touch. Remove trays from dehydrator and allow to cool slightly. Remove fruit leather from trays and roll in plastic wrap.

When we lived in Vermont my family used to often take Sunday drives. It seems that the art of the Sunday drive has been lost. Who can blame people, seeing what the price of gas is nowadays, but I can’t help but feel saddened. People don’t know what they are missing. I loved those Sunday drives, at least in hindsight. I’m not so sure that I particularly enjoyed them at the time, but now I look back on them with fondness. Sunday drives are about the trip and not the destination. Sometimes my parents had destinations in mind and at other times we’d just drive, look at the scenery, and if we happened upon something cool or a neat little store then it was a bonus. Most times I think my dad just pointed the car in a direction and just drove randomly, though I bet he’d never admit it.

I was always thrilled when our trips wound their way down to Waterbury Center, because I knew a stop at Cold Hollow Cider Mill was imminent. It might be a tourist trap, but I loved and still love that place. As a kid, I was fascinated by watching the giant cider press turn out gallons and gallons of cider from the apple pulp they’d load in to it. I could have sat there for hours watching them press that apple pulp into one of life’s greatest treasures-cider.

The other reason I looked forward to the trip was the hot cider donuts. Crisp on the outside, soft and moist on the inside. Colored a deep brown, these donuts were packed with the flavors of autumn, from the variety of warm, sweet spices they used to the rich cider reduction used to moisten the dry ingredients. With a bribe of a few hot donuts and a couple glasses of cider my parents were assured of a little piece and quite from my brother’s and my endless verbal barrage, and I believe they took full advantage. (continue reading…)

If you haven’t realized by now that Fall is my favorite season and that apples are one of my favorite foods then either: 1. you haven’t been paying attention, or 2. you are new to this blog and haven’t yet read many of my previous posts. Either way I am not going to bore you today with a rehashing of my previous sentiments. Read a few earlier posts from the last few weeks and you’ll get the picture.

The only thing I will say, before moving on to the recipe for today is that this recipe rocks!!! I know I should be more humble but really, I really liked these when I came up with the idea. I’m sure there have been plenty of others who have thought of stuffing an apple with caramel before turning it into a dumpling, but I haven’t come across any recipes. Besides, this recipe gives you the best of both caramel apples and apple dumplings. What isn’t there to like? I hope you enjoy this as much as I did!

Caramel Filled Apple Dumplings

1 recipe Your favorite pie dough for a double crust pie
4 each Apples (choose a good baking apple such as Granny Smith, McIntosh or Gravenstein)
10-15 each Individual Caramels
3/4 cup Sugar, granulated
1/2 cup Water
1/2 cup Cider or Apple juice
1/2 tsp. Cinnamon
1/4 tsp. Ground Ginger
2 Tbsp. Butter

Preheat the oven to 375F. Peel and core all the apples, leaving just a bit of the blossom end intact. Roll out the pie dough and cut into 4 7″x7″ squares. Pack the cored apple with the caramels, packing it in lightly. Wrap the apples in the pie dough. There are 2 ways you can do this. 1. Bring the corners of the dough up, over the apple and pinch them together in the center. Then pinch together the seams giving yourself an elegant little package, or 2. wrap the dough around and over the apple, forming it to the apple so that the package maintains an apple shape. I then use some of the scrap dough to form decorative leaves “glued” in place, on top, with a little water. Place in a 9×13 pan and bake at for 30 minutes. Meanwhile combine the remaining ingredients in a saucepan, bring to a boil and cook for 3 minutes. Remove from heat. After the apples have baked for 30 minutes pour syrup over dumplings and bake 20-25 minutes more, basting the dumplings with the syrup every 8 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool for 5-8 minutes before placing in a bowl with a little of the remaining syrup and a couple of scoops of vanilla ice cream.

About 3 weeks ago I made my own sauerkraut for the first time. You can find the post about it here. For the last week, I have been checking and tasting it daily to see if it was ready. Today I decided it had fermented enough so I packed it up into smaller containers and refrigerated it. In hindsight, the next time I make sauerkraut I will let it go just a little further and get a touch more sour as I really like sour things, though my wife thought it had just the right amount of sourness. Either way I am very happy with the results. My homemade stuff is so much better than the store bought stuff, and it is so easy to make. I don’t know why it took me so long to attempt to make sauerkraut, but after this experiment I think it will become, at the very least, a yearly thing. Maybe next year I will make a larger batch and attempt to can some when it is done.

Of course, once the sauerkraut was ready I couldn’t wait to cook with it so I threw together one of my favorite dishes, Choucroute. Technically what I prepare is not truly choucroute as I use beer in my dish as opposed to white wine (usually Riesling) and I skip many of the traditional spices such as juniper berries, mace, nutmeg, etc. in favor of caraway seed, but choucroute sounds so much better than Sausages Braised with Sauerkraut. This dish can be made up pretty quickly, but I prefer to cook it slow and low for 1-2 hours as I find this long, slow cooking yields a depth of flavor that quick cooking just can’t achieve. (continue reading…)

I hate to admit it but I am not a huge fan of vegetables. Oh, sure, they’re all right, but I would much rather fill up on starch and proteins. I know, I’m such a Midwesterner! In my defense, I have been trying to consume more vegetables in the past few months, but I still have a long way to go. There are notable exceptions to this though. Fresh, in season tomatoes, fennel, and asparagus are just a few I like and I have always loved many of the vegetables from the Brassica genus. This includes things like cauliflower, broccoli, brussels sprouts, and cabbages. It also includes many of the root vegetables that I like such as rutabagas and turnips.

Root vegetables have a pleasing sharpness that I enjoy, but they also have a wonderful, underlying sweetness. This sweetness can be developed and brought to the fore by roasting the vegetables, which is the way I prefer to cook them. In this recipe I accent that sweetness even further by glazing them with cider and a little bourbon, enrich them with a little butter and add an herbal note with fresh thyme which is still looking good, in the herb garden, despite the numerous frosts we’ve had.

Cider-Bourbon Glazed Root Vegetables

2 Tbsp. Butter, melted
2 pounds Root vegetables, peeled and cut into thick, medium length sticks (I use a mix of carrots, parsnips, rutabagas and turnips)
4 each Shallots, peeled & quartered
4 sprigs Thyme
3/4 cup Cider
2 Tbsp. Bourbon
Parsley, minced
Salt
Pepper

Preheat the oven to 400F. Toss the root vegetables with butter, to coat then place in a 9×13 baking dish. Pour cider over the vegetables and add the shallots and thyme. Season liberally with salt and pepper. Cover the pan with foil and bake for 20 minutes. Remove the foil, add the bourbon and roast for 25-35 minutes more, stirring every 7-8 minutes. The vegetables are done when they are tender, starting to brown and the liquid as mostly evaporated, glazing the vegetables. Season again with salt and pepper, if needed and sprinkle with the minced parsley. Serves 6 as a side dish.

I don’t eat breakfast a lot. I think I’ve said that before on this blog but it is worth repeating. Sometimes I grab a quick bowl of cereal or a piece of fruit on my way out the door, or if I have to stop for gas I might grab a donut and a coke (healthy I know!!!!), but that is pretty much it during the weekdays. On weekends we a much more likely to cook a breakfast even though that doesn’t happen regularly, but since we have the time and it is not something we do often we usually go all out and make up quite a spread. This past weekend it was I who decided to make breakfast, and since I had apples on the mind (a trip to The Littler Farmer was planned for later in the day), Apple Pancakes seemed the perfect choice. Round out the breakfast with a homemade Maple-Cider Syrup, Hungarian bacon and coffee and we were geared up for a day of cleaning out the basement and a trip out to The Little Farmer.

Maple-Cider Syrup
2 cups Cider (try to use fresh, unpasteurized, local cider though store bought cider will work fine, just stay away from Apple juice)
1 tsp. Cornstarch
1 Tbsp. Water
1/2 cup Maple Syrup
1 each Lemon wedge (lemon cut into 1/6ths)

Bring cider to a boil and reduce by 1/2 to 1 cup. Dissolve cornstarch in water and stir into cider. Return to a boil and cook 1 minute to thicken. Remove from heat and stir in maple syrup. Add lemon juice from lemon wedge to syrup and hold syrup warm.

Apple Pancakes

1 cup Flour, all-purpose
1/2 tsp. Salt
1/2 tsp. Cinnamon
3 tsp. Baking Powder
1 each Egg, beaten
1 cup Milk
1/2 cup Applesauce (if unsweetened add 1Tbsp. Granulated Sugar)
1 each Apple, peeled, cored and diced into 1/4inch cubes (chose your favorite apple, though stay away from Red & Golden Delicious as they pretty much turn to water when heated)
2 Tbsp. Butter, melted

In a small bowl combine flour, salt, cinnamon, and baking powder. In a large bowl combine egg, milk, applesauce, sugar (if using), diced apple and butter. Stir to combine. Add flour mixture to liquids and stir to bring together. Don’t over stir or pancakes will get tough. Cook, on a greased griddle, over medium to medium high heat. Flip pancakes when the edges start to look somewhat dry and the bubble that form on top burst, leaving little holes. Pancakes are best served the minute they come off the griddle but if you need to hold them until all are done, place them on a cookie sheet, cover with paper towel and put them in an over set to 175F. Makes 8 pancakes.

Fall is in full swing and I am thrilled! This is my favorite time of year. The crisp, cool air, the sharp scent of burning leaves and fireplaces, the beautiful autumn colors as the trees change, and of course, the food. As the weather starts to turn cooler I leave behind the thoughts of light, refreshing meals and start thinking about warmer, heartier, more comforting types of foods; soups, chili, stews, pastas with rich, hearty meat sauces, and slowly braised or roasted meats. Fall also means many of my favorite fruits and vegetables are being harvested. Apples immediately come to mind as they are my favorite fruit, but also mushrooms, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, mushrooms, winter squashes and many root vegetables. Fall also means the opening of one of my favorite places, The Little Farmer. Technically, they open in summer, early August to be exact, selling early season apples and peaches they bring in from a friend of theirs, in Michigan. I admit, I take my first trip out there, soon after they open, to pick up one of their apple muffins, which are to die for, and for which I usually start craving by mid July. Arriving at The Little Farmer in the midst of the summer heat seems wrong, but I need my muffin fix so you’ll find me out there either opening weekend or the week after.

After that first, initial fix, I usually wait until the weather starts to change and they start to harvest the later varieties of apples.

Some of the varieties they grow and sell are Cortlands, Russets, Jonamac, Honeycrisp, Duchess, Paula Red, Ginger Gold, McIntosh, and Empire. They also grow and sell pumpkins, so there is usually a trip out there with the daughter to pick pumpkins for Halloween.

You can choose any of the many hundreds of pumpkins they have already harvested or you can head out to the fields and harvest your own.

But if you think that The Little Farmer is just a roadside stand and U-Pick farm you would be missing out. It has become a one stop shopping adventure. A place to get out, enjoy the weather and a little rural fun. There are hayrides to be taken, a corn maze to navigate, freshly dipped caramel apples to be eaten, goats to be fed, and a fantastic playground with a twenty foot tall mountain of hay bales to be climbed. There is also a craft barn filled with seasonal bricabrac. The main apple house itself is filled with more knickknacks.

But this is where you can buy many of the food stuffs either prepared right on the premise or manufactured for them. All the wonderful baked goods, including the aforementioned apple muffins are produced on site, as is the cider, while many of the pickles and preserves are manufactured for them, according to their specifications.

Once Labor Day arrives, the place gets busy on weekends and they often offer entertainment or events throughout the autumn, including a Dog Walk, when people can bring their dogs for the day. And what would any weekend event in Wisconsin be without brats. Each weekend The Little Farmer allows a group to come in and do a brat fry to raise money for their group or charity.

My wife laughs at me, but I bet from the time they open, in August to the time they close in mid November, I venture out there at least 6-7 times or more. But I love the place! It reminds me of days gone by when we, as a nation, were much closer to our agricultural roots. I also like to help out local farmers and businesses, and it doesn’t hurt that I really like the product they produce!

If you are interested in visiting The Little Farmer, they are located on Hwy. 151 about 10-15 minutes north of Fond du Lac, Wi, on the east shore of Lake Winnebago, in Malone, WI. You can find them on the web here. If you are in the area stop by and, at least, grab an apple muffin.