Preserved Foods › Canned

Canned Tomatoes

August 22, 2023

  This is a long post.  I know some people dislike reading long posts, but this one discusses how to safely can tomatoes. If you will never can a tomato in your lifetime, feel free to look at the photographs. If you want to can tomatoes but find my blow-by-blow…

Continue Reading »

Niloufer’s Tomato Chutney

September 1, 2022

Chutney was the result of feeling in a cooking rut and wanting to make something different. Granted, this isn’t (fill in complicated recipe here), but it’s new to me. Yes, they need replacing. The original recipe comes from Niloufer Ichaporia King’s My Bombay Kitchen, a book that’s accessible even to…

Continue Reading »

Pickled Onions

July 14, 2021

Once again your hostess would like to apologize for being such a laggardly poster. It’s not lack of interest in the blog, or in you, my readers. The truth is the same dull reason it’s always been: my health. More precisely, my back. Last week I had yet another cortisone…

Continue Reading »

  Disclaimer: I’ve recently partnered with The Greatest Tomatoes from Europe, working to publicize their canned tomato products. I am not being paid for my participation, aside from some wonderful canned tomato products from Europe–and some Italian pasta. Any views posted are strictly my own.  It’s 8:41 am. I am…

Continue Reading »

Occasionally you pick up a cookbook at random. You park it on your “to read” shelf with every intention of getting around to it. Meanwhile, various disasters transpire: dental work, feline illness, neighbor drama, spousal sickness, inept national leadership, world mayhem. Finally you open the cookbook. There, glimmering, is the…

Continue Reading »

So, if you’re American, on American soil, chances are good you’ve come through Thanksgiving. Congratulations. So, this migraine. There are migraines, and migraines. If you are a migraineur, you’re like, if she’s typing, it cannot be that bad. And you’re right: some migraines, it’s puke your way to the ER,…

Continue Reading »

Wait a minute! Weren’t we here already? Indeed we were, just about a year ago to the day. But the recipes are different–Lamb Tagine With Preserved Lemon hails from Claudia Roden’s marvelous Book Of Middle Eastern Food. Today’s tagine comes from another seminal cookbook, Paula Wolfert’s Couscous And Other Good Food From Morocco. Fifty…

Continue Reading »

Tomato Conserve

August 15, 2016

Why tomato conserve and not paste? Excellent question. This comes fromThe Art Of Simple Food II, where Alice Waters explains it is conserve because the result is more jammy than paste-like–at least, I think that’s what she means by “The tomatoes are concentrated into a paste that is more like…

Continue Reading »

“Your x-rays look fine,” the physician assistant said. “No arthritis.” Saying an x-ray of my knee looks good is akin to saying the surface of the ocean appears calm. Then National G or some other science show, narrated by a fellow with a plummy Oxford accent, sends a pile of…

Continue Reading »

Tell people you preserve food–specifically, can it–and get a mixed response. People never know how to react to this information. Are you an adherent of some strange religion? Do you belong to a cult awaiting the end of days? Does a trapdoor in your yard lead to a bunker stocked with glittering…

Continue Reading »