Pork and pretzels.

Lewisburg.

Sharon's out of town, but here's proof for her that I'm still eating well:



Pork chop, low-temped in apple cider at 60°C, and seared for a good crust. A lovely pink inside, as a good pork chop should be. Pumpkin spätzle with sage. Mustard greens and chard with garlic and chilli. Butter-fried apples. A nice schwartzbier to accompany.

Meanwhile, I prepped an education example for tomorrow's baking class:



Pretzels and pretzel-shaped objects. The same batch, split in half. Those on the left enjoyed a bath in a sodium carbonate solution. On the right, a dip in plain water.

I'll bet you can guess which side smells of pretzel, and which of fresh bread.

Pumpkin cavatelli.

Lewisburg. Pumpkin season is here, and in full force. Given that repeated, heavy rains have done in much of the garden, I'm lucky that I have any at all, but eleven cheese pumpkins is still plenty. It would have been more, but only a few were harvestable after Irene, and anything still ripening by the time Lee arrived were on the way to rot.

Yes, we've already had pumpkin pie. I think some sort of soup is a strong contender for tonight. And last night, before I had to run off to teach class, we had pumpkin cavatelli:



Just pumpkin puree and flour, run through the cavatelli maker. The texture ended up a bit springy, not unlike udon, so I'll try them next with durum semolina. Sizable quantities of pumpkin gnocchi are also in our future, since they freeze - and cook from frozen - so well.

The pumpkin flavor and color were hard to miss; once boiled, their orange hue intensified. We tossed them with oyster mushrooms, garlic, and fresh sage, and I'm already looking forward to more.

Short ribs.

Lewisburg.

Sometimes, a new kitchen toy isn't cheap, so it had better be worth it. That Polyscience 7306c immersion circulator? 100% worth it. For example, the otherwise-impossible medium short rib:



Forty-eight hours - two days - at 60°C, with pre- and post-searing, for flavor, color, and bacteria-killing before the circulator bath. The end result is tender, juicy, and nothing like the (admittedly still pretty lovely) results of braising. Makes for a damn fine sandwich.

The same technique has been a real boon for other cuts, too. Juiciest pork chops and veal chops imaginable. Tender, moist chicken that makes the finest chicken salad I've ever had. (Yup, I'm not above using high-tech lab equipment for a better chicken salad.) Sausages, especially in large quantities, are juicy because they're properly poached, not just because of the pork fat.

Making twenty pounds of sausage for my brother's Oktoberfest suddenly required far less focus and split-second timing.

Also: amazingly precise eggs; confit without the need for pounds of lard and/or duck fat; fun tricks for gelatinizing and retrograding starch in rice, potatoes, etc. One of these days I'll see what kind if fun I can get into with malted barley and alpha- and beta-amylase at different temperatures. Probably carefully curdling milk into cheese, since I've really got to start making my own fresh mozzarella. There are more options than time, for now.

And, unrelated to circulator fun: bacon. It's been a while since I put up photos of the smoker, but since I forgot a finished bacon picture, here it is:



Four hours of hickory smoke, plus a gentle oven heating to give the proper hot-smoke effect. Lovely. Weeks upon weeks of flood-inducing rains have really limited smoking opportunities, so it's been nothing more than a garage obstacle since bacon time. Oh, well.

Mid-July harvest.

Lewisburg.

Prime harvest season is under way. We're enjoying the start of tomato season - which means mostly just devouring cherry tomatoes fresh - and a good variety of vegetables are ready to bring in, or nearly so. The first jalapeno peppers have been a treat, and a fiery one at that from all the dry heat, and in the past week or so we've seen snap beans, fresh basil, summer squash, and the window for digging garlic.

Lots of garlic. We'd pulled some for green garlic throughout the spring, but simply buying a few extra heads from the market last fall has resulted in a real bounty. Behold:



It's one of those "Take the photo, quick!" moments, as those eighty-ish plants, bundled and held at arm's length, get heavy. Quickly. Half a dozen heads came in for fresh garlic, and the rest are hanging in the garage to cure for four to six weeks. The very best - and there are some large and lovely heads - will hold until this October's planting. The rest are fair game for the kitchen. Due to shifting the garden, we had no garlic harvest last year. Now, I'll be making up for lost time with plenty of roasted garlic.

Also in the "unexpected bounty" category: napa cabbage. Now, this may look big, with all of its outer leaves still attached:



And it is. Very much so. With three more just like it.

I had no idea it would grow this large, but even after trimming, the main head weighs just over five pounds. Plus, there were three small side heads worth keeping. Add in the rest, and I think I might have enough kimchi to last me quite a while. It's been some time since I polished off the last batch, and it seems that another two, maybe three, are justified.

The new smoker.

Lewisburg.

It took long enough, but I finally have a serious smoker. No more of those cardboard box shenanigans!¹

It still looks like a half-assed high school steampunk disaster, though:


Never mind that. It works, and works reliably, and if it didn't weigh a ton, it'd be perfect. A firebox, made from food-grade aluminum², holds a two-burner propane camp stove, each of which has its own cast-iron smoker box to hold the necessary wood chips and sawdust. The heat draws in plenty of oxygen from the apertures at the base, exiting out the duct at the top.

Then it's into the food box:


Even split into three separate pieces, this sucker's still heavy. Solid. Imposing to move in and out of the basement.

The base is where the smoke enters, and I can rig this up to include trays of ice for colder smoking, if necessary. Today, after three hours of smoking, it was a mere 150°F inside, which suggests to me that I've got good flexibility in temperature control. Come autumn, cooler temperatures will be much easier to achieve.

The central piece holds the racks for smoked items, as well as rods to hang sausages from. The whole front panel is a door that swings open, with a small window near the top to peek in. Atop that is a two-panel roof that can be opened as much as necessary to get good airflow.



Today's test run included some honey-cured bacon and a block of tofu. Really, once you've got it going, you might as well toss in what's at hand. If I'd had my act together, I'm sure I could have packed it full. Kamozawa and Talbot's Ideas in Food is full of suggestions to get things started. I'm already looking forward to smoked tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, apples, and pears, in addition to cured meats and sausages. And, undoubtedly, plenty more.

* * * * *

¹Actually, the cardboard box setup was pretty sweet, especially for a tiny apartment. If it weren't so finicky, and prone to waterproofing / wind resistance / flammability concerns, it might still be around.

²Read: Inexpensive sheet pans from a restaurant supply store. Trimmed, riveted together, and sealed with fireplace mortar.

Mid-June harvest.

Lewisburg.

From a spring both cold and unfailingly wet, the weather has surged into the heat of high summer. Mostly dry, too, though the past few days have brought more than two inches of rain, primarily from thunderstorms. Some of the plants are thrilled, including the hops that have overwhelmed their supports, knotting into a fury of bines, leaves, and budding little cones:


The radishes have been less enthused, racing to bolt before we could pull more than a handful to eat. Still, the seedpods ought to be good for a stir-fry or two:


The rest of the deck planters are humming along nicely, providing a handy little salad bar just a few steps from the kitchen:


With sweet salad turnips, too:


These Hakurei turnips are tough to beat. Sweet, tender, and quick-growing, they've got delicious roots and leaves. The only bits we don't use are the tip of the root and the short section between trimming the root top and the base of the leaves.

We've also harvested a bunch of broccoli raab, which has grown enormously in the past week:


Also lettuces that are threatening to bolt any minute:


Kohlrabi with pristine leaves, thanks to plenty of rowcover:


And we've also started into our peas for this season:


The wet spring delayed planting, and this hotter-than-average weather means they'll likely be a brief treat this year. But at least we get some. The small local farms have, for the most part, skipped peas this year, since they couldn't get them in the ground in time.

On the upside, we've got plenty of purslane - it's having a banner year - which, as far as garden weeds go, is tough to get upset about. And the garlic scapes were too good to resist this morning, so they'll be a treat for as long as they last. Add some fresh strawberries to that, and it's becoming unclear how all of this is possibly going to fit into the refrigerator.