NY Hot Pepper Relish

20-30 peppers
1 or 2 onions
5-10 cloves garlic
2 c. white vinegar
1.5 c. water
1 tb sugar
2 tsp salt

Roast, de-skin and de-seed the peppers, chop and put in a big saucepan or pot. Dice the onion and garlic, add it to the pot. Put all the other ingredients into the pot and bring to a boil. Simmer it for 20 minutes, then ladle into sterilized glass jars. Process the jars. Later, get some good-quality buns and sausages. Invite your friends over and grill up the 'dogs. Top with exotic mustards, perhaps homemade sauerkraut, and this pepper relish. Garnish with a few cold ones and some tunes.

I found the original recipe, posted way back in 2005, on The Cutting Board forum and pretty much used it straight up, except it called for red cherry peppers and I had on hand a mongrel assortment of peppers from the Saturday farmer's market. The poster notes that, "here in upstate NY, when you order sub sandwiches, unless you specify, you will get a sauce like this on them. It's got a good flavor but, IT'S VERY HOT."

Let's hope so. I can hardly wait to try it over a bratwurst.

It's Blackberry Season

You gotta want it.

I wonder how many...

...pints of pickles 14 pounds of cucumbers makes?

Farewell, June

Spent the last weekend in June canning, and looking with anticipation to the high days of summer: peaches are just coming in, and plums, blueberries, and local blackberries (rubus ursinus) are just around the corner. The farmer's market finally has more than lettuce and vegetable starts, so I bought some pickling cukes, picked some strawberries, and started in...



Yum: strawberry jam, peach jam, bread and butter pickles, pickled onion, rajas, pickled beets, pickled radishes.

Tater Tower

Shamelessly stolen from Jane Tunks article in the San Francisco Chronicle:

The landless gardener doesn't have to be limited to window boxes sprouting herbs or containers full of lettuce.

Even apartment dwellers with nothing more than a few square feet of cement can cultivate a small crop. Among the easiest garden projects for a small space is a potato tower, sheltered inside a plastic garbage can or chicken wire. Layering potatoes and soil takes advantage of vertical space, while maintaining a small footprint.

Or the lazy gardener with a weed-filled yard. And a surplus of chicken-wire remnants.

The easy-to-follow instructions are for a garbage-can tower or a chicken-wire tower. See?

Those bulk-bin bag ties cluttering my bottom drawer? Perfect for closing the chicken wire. And for attaching it to the chicken wire fence for support.

I raked up all the old straw laying around the yard for the dry mulch, grabbed some of the pea/vetch mix from the fallow raised beds for the green mulch, and used the old pile of potting soil growing weeds and cat poop for the dirt. Oh. I also had a box of very old, very sprouted potatoes sitting in the mud room. Sometimes it pays to be untidy.

The finished Tater Tower. (That's the duck pond to the left; I refill it with clean water once a week.) Oh, and please don't think I bought the Compost Tumbler in the background—heavens, no! A friend gave it to me; it was too small for his yard. (!)

It was so easy I built a second one before I got distracted. But I still have chicken wire (and straw and green mulch and poop-enriched dirt) so I think I'll build a few more.

Pickled Asparagus

8 c vinegar
8 c water
4 t sugar
2 t pepper
8 t salt
2 t dill
1-2 cloves garlic per quart
2 or more dried Japanese red peppers per quart

Wash asparagus in cool water. Cut into spears (6" for quarts, 4" for pints)

Combine vinegar, water, sugar, salt, pepper and dill. Heat to a boil.

Pack asparagus tightly into jars with tips down. Put 1-2 cloves of garlic and 2 or more red peppers into each jar (the more red peppers the hotter the asparagus). Cover with boiling brine to within 1/2 inch from top of jar. Clean the rim of each jar and seal with lid.

Process in boiling water for 10 minutes.

It's asparagus season! What are you waiting for? (Recipe courtesy of katewood, a commenter on sfgate.com)

Brined Snap Beans

Makes 1 gallon

Total time: 2 weeks

More subtle than vinegar-pickled green beans, this recipe is adapted from "Joy of Pickling," by Linda Ziedrich (Harvard Common Press, 1998), who says to use the freshest green beans you can find. Alicia Preston likes to make this recipe with trimmed asparagus as well.

• 2 pounds tender young snap beans, trimmed
• 6 small dried chile peppers
• 6 garlic cloves, chopped
• 12 black peppercorns, crushed
• 6 dill sprigs
• 1/2 cup pickling salt or 3/4 cup kosher salt
• 3 quarts water

Instructions: Layer beans, chile peppers, garlic, peppercorns and dill in a 1-gallon jar. Dissolve salt in the water and pour enough brine over the beans to cover them. Push a freezer bag into the mouth of the jar and pour the remaining brine into the bag. Seal the bag. Store at room temperature with the top of the container loosely covered.

Within 3 days you should see tiny bubbles rising. If scum forms on top of the brine, skim it off daily and rinse off the brine bag.

Pickles should be ready in about 2 weeks, when the bubbling has stopped and the beans taste sour. Remove brine bag, skim off any scum, and cap the jar. Refrigerate.

(sfgate.com just keeps spreading the love.)