The start of fall is my family's favorite time of year to preserve fresh food we've grown in our backyard garden. We've been canning food for several years, but have never tried or even thought much about pickling. Last year, we received a jar of mouthwatering, homemade pickles as a gift. The brine and ingredients…
I did an episode of Iron Chef two summers ago with a very talented chef named Joe Isidori. I got to eat approximately 15 courses of steak prepared by him and Bobby Flay. It was pure heaven. I just wish I could have distributed those meals out over a longer period of time... they had…
These are the peppers from my garden this year. You can call me Peter Piper. Thank you.
Pickled Peppers:
The truth is, that they were planted by my brother's mischievous friend Francesco. But Francesco dropped off the radar screen sometime in mid-summer when the weeds became unruly and it was time to separate the men from…
On a scale of 1-5, how ambitious were you with your garden this year?
I started out extremely ambitious. Like, I'm-the-best-farmer-in-the-world-ambitious.
Then I had my ego handed to me on a platter made of corn stalk nubs, meticulously gnawed down by the chipmunks.
Pickled Swiss Chard:
But there were a few successes. In fact, there were many in…
I'm pickling a lot these days. That seems to be the way it goes with summer gardening. You hoe and weed and till and sow and water and worry and then it all comes pouring in at once, faster than you can eat it.
When I have this problem, I pickle.
Folks, get ready for a lot…
When I was a child growing up in the Hudson Valley, I used to sit on a rock by the side of our creek, push a fat worm onto a hook, and catch my trout. Then I would fry it in a skillet and eat it for breakfast. It was a normal pattern in my…
I like all things pickled. Pickled peppers, pickled ramps, pickled... things.
Sorry. I'm not feeling very eloquent today. I just read a lot of legal jargon and it fried my brain and my eyes are blurry. I can barely see this screen. I'm waiting for things to return to normal... which isn't necessarily eloquent either, but…
I can't really tell you where they came from. All I'll say is that I may or may not have smuggled them from Provence. I may or may not have loved them so much in the restaurant garden that I worked in, that I may or may not have dried the seeds on the windowsil of…
On my recent Adventure Getaway, I was gifted a whole bunch of wild meat, not to mention that we harvested some lovely wild hogs. So I have been cooking up a storm, and one delicious recipe I made here recently was Sika Stew with Spring Vegetables. Of course you could use any kind of venison,…