Roasted Garlic Butter

Dave asked for Garlic Butter a couple weeks ago.  So when I roasted the garlic for our garlic jelly, I went ahead and roasted twice as much as I needed.  The other day, Dave picked up a couple of steaks and we thought that the Garlic Butter would make a good finishing butter for them.


8 oz of heavy whipping cream
4 oz of garlic
salt and pepper to taste.

Set cream out on counter for about an hour to allow it to warm to room temperature, or at least close.  (The only really different between whipped cream and butter is temperature and no one wants Garlic Whipped Cream, not even Dave.)

Roast garlic at about 350 for 10 or 15 minutes, or until cooked through.  You don't need to peel the cloves, you can squeeze the garlic out once it roasts, but you need to at least separate them.  I peeled them because I like the crispy, dark flecks you get that way.

Once cream is warm and garlic is cool, pour cream into food processor.  You can either pulse it for 45 seconds or so at a time, or just turn the processor on and keep an eye on it.  It will start to look a lot like whipped cream, but slightly yellower.  As soon as it separates into butter and butter milk (Trust me, you'll know.) stop the food processor and drain off the buttermilk.  Press the butter against the side of the processor bowl to squeeze out as much of the rest of the buttermilk as you can.

If you let the processor go too long, the buttermilk will be whipped back into the butter and is very difficult to separate back out.  It can be done, but it's very time consuming.

Remove butter from processor bowl and give it a quick rinse and wipe to get the remaining buttermilk out, and put the butter back in.  Add garlic and salt and pepper to taste and pulse in the processor until you have an even consistency.  (You'll probably need more salt that you think,)

Enjoy!

Bok Choy Fridge Pickles

We've been making loads of pickles this year.  Mostly cucumber fridge pickles.   Some processed ones.  A couple jars of pickled onions.  Then I saw on the Fresh Preserving Website...

BOK CHOY!

Bok Choy?  Really?  I like bok choy.  Let's try it.

So, I made it up as I went and this is what I got.

3 clean Pint Jars
1 head Bok Choy
1/3 tsp Chinese 5 Spice Powder (per jar)
1/4 tsp Crushed Red Pepper (per jar)

2 cups White Vinegar
1 cup Water
1 Tbsp Sugar
1 Tbsp Pickling or Non-Iodized Salt
1/2 piece Fresh Ginger Grated
2 cloves Garlic

Chop the Bok Choy stalks into roughly bite-sized pieces (save the leafy parts for stir fry!), and pack into pint jars, leaving about 1/2" headspace.  Add 5 Spice Powder and Crushed Red Pepper

Combine remaining ingredients in a small saucepan and heat until boiling.  Pour hot liquid over Bok Choy in jars, leaving about 1/2" headspace.  Make sure to distribute garlic between jars.  Add lids and refrigerate for a few days.

Enjoy!

Oh! Gross!

So, I love home canning.  You make have gathered that.  And for tougher/more complicated projects, I won't attempt them without a helper buddy, just in case my kitchen explodes or something.  Which is why I was very pleased to find out when we made Garlic Jelly back in April that Mikey is a pretty good canning buddy.

But, sometimes the canning bug bites and no one's available to help, so I pick an easier project.  Or in this case, the enormous amount of garlic I purchase a while ago, desperately need to be used and everybody had plans already.

I made this really simple Pickled Garlic from Serious Eats a while back, and I really liked it for salad dressing and Dave pretty much ate it straight from the jar.  So, all in all, it was a hit.  And keeping all that in mind, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and pickle at least the bulk of the remaining garlic.

Good news:  It was just as super easy as I remembered and I didn't catch anything on fire or do anything else stupid.
Bad news: I have now had my first, ever, canning jar that didn't seal properly.  In fact, I'm pretty sure it didn't seal at all.  So I only have 5 jars of garlic, instead of 6.
Really Bad news:  Since the jar didn't seal, the garlic was basically fermenting for the last two days, rather than pickling.  You cannot imagine how bad rotten pickled garlic smells, especially after how hot it's been the last few day.  So, nasty!

Canning!

So, we tackled a couple of small home canning projects the other day.  We made 3 half pints of pickled garlic, 2 of which were promised to friends in exchange for sharing the recipes they create with it and we made 8 half pints of Blueberry Lemon Jam.

Highlights:

• It takes way longer than I ever thought possible to peel an entire pound of garlic.
• We ended up with an extra jar's worth of garlic and brine.  I could have processed an extra jar, I guess, but - jackpot!  I don't have to peel any garlic for the tomato sauce I'm making tomorrow.
• I couldn't find my zester, so the lemon peel bits in the jam are a bit big, but it's delicious anyway.
• Even after the jam cooked over, all over the stove, we still ended up with extra!  More than I could fit in the water bath pot, in fact.

The jam I would totally make again, but I wish I knew why my jellies seem to randomly cook over?  I think I may be hurrying them to a boil, but I'm not sure.  So far, I've made 3 batches of jelly.  2 cooked over, one didn't and I don't know what I did different.

The garlic needs to sit, at least until tonight before I can open it to taste.  I may not have the patience for pickles, it's making me crazy waiting.  And I'm dying to see what Liam and Lisa come up with for it.  They're both excellent cooks and the only people I can trust to remember my food allergies without having to interrogate them for their ingredient list.

As for what we're making next?  The list of what I want to make includes pretty much then entire Ball Blue Book, as well as their whole website and a bunch of stuff on Serious Eats.  So, pretty much everything!

Anybody want to narrow it down for me?