Some of you may remember my trip to Turkey last summer. I fell in love with the country, its people and their way of eating. Feta is a very common type of cheese in that part of the world, eaten in many ways.

Upon arriving home from Turkey last summer, I set out to learn how to make it. We’ve been eating it regularly ever since. Although it’s slightly more involved than say, homemade yogurt, it’s not all that difficult. And as with anything homemade, once you get the hang of it, you can tweak it until you get exactly what your taste buds are looking for.

I cannot begin any discussion about home cheese making without first paying homage to Madame Fromage – Ricki Carroll, whom I was lucky enough to take a cheese making workshop with about 3 years ago. Her book is to cheese making what Linda Ziedrich’s book is to pickling: indispensable. And even better, her mail-order biz New England Cheesemaking Supply co. is a one stop shop for everything needed for home cheese making, all artfully packaged in non-threatening home dairy making sizes. And the stuff gets to your door quick!

Feta is a salty cheese traditionally made with sheep or goat’s milk. Store-bought pasteurized goat’s milk is what is needed for this feta recipe, and it should be fairly easy to find.

Directions: 

I just saw rhubarb for $4.99 a pound at my local co-op. Can someone remind me to have a rhubarb harvesting party next year? ‘Cause I’m sittin’ on a goldmine …er, greenmine? Grant it, it was the ‘prettier’ red kind, but I can’t complain. This patch was here when I got here and I have a feeling it will be here long after I am.

It’s the first to wake each year and promptly unfurl it’s lushness over an otherwise barren landscape. (Over a month into its return and you can just start to see flecks of green on both the gooseberries and blueberries to the left). It’s arrival signals the start of the new preserving season in earnest and it always offers me this challenge: what am I gonna do with 50 kabillion tons of rhubarb?

Rhubarb Ketchup

Blueberries must like rain, and cool weather cause I have four bushes that look like Christmas trees right now. All lit up with a ton of dark blue orbs. Well as I said… It’s been rainy. And I’ve been drinking a lot of tea this summer (forget the coolers, folks). I’ve been thinking about the months I spent in London some years ago. And all the wonderful sweet preserves and baked goods that are the tradition in that part of the world, served at nigh around 4 o’clock daily.

Sweet fruit curds people! That’s what I’m talkin about!

Blueberry Curd

Adapted from Fruits of the Earth by Gloria Nicol

1 1/2 pints blueberries
zest and juice of two lemons
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cubed
1 3/4 cup fine granulated sugar (I use raw)
3 large eggs, preferable organic, beaten
double boiler, or heat proof bowl to place in pan

Yield: this makes approximately 3 cups so have 3 small jars or containers ready. One to go directly into fridge and two for the freezer.

Directions: 

1. Place whole blueberries, lemon zest & juice in pan and cook on low until berries are very tender – about 10 minutes.

2. Place a sieve over the bowl you are using as the double boiler and mash berries through, so that the juice flows to the bowl and the berry skins and lemon zest stay in sieve. If you have a very fine sieve you can use that and all of the tiny blueberry seeds will also stay in the sieve. Mine isn’t fine but I don’t mind the little berry seeds in the curd.

3. Set the bowl over simmering water and add the sugar. Mix until sugar is dissolved. Add butter cubes.

4. Pour the beaten eggs through a sieve into the bowl and stir the curd. Make sure everything is blended.

5. Continue to cook and stir until the curd becomes thick enough to coat the spoon. This will take about 20 minutes.

6. Fill the three small containers.

Note: in the olden days, home canners used to hot water bath can curd in order to store it at room temperature. This is not considered safe anymore because of the egg and butter content.

But it’s the egg and butter content that makes it, oh so good! Curd stays fresh in the fridge for 2 weeks and you can preserve it in the freezer for up to 6 months.

Or you can be like me:

And eat the whole first container on the day you make it before it ever gets to see the light of fridge.

Just a suggestion… spread a bit atop a lovely scone, or perhaps a dollop in a tiny pastry cup.

It’s no secret I’m a hothead. I love me my chiles and those of you in more hot & dry climates may not know it, but this year the Berkshires had a damn good chile year. That’s not particularly easy to come by in the short – and usually wet – season we call summer.  These juicy little hotties were the prize from my garden’s chile patch. Red hot cherries! Perfect for homemade sriracha. This is how I do it:

This is so simply a play on the ubiquitous preserved lemons. Those same preserved lemons that I rinse, chop, and throw on everything with either a grain, green or bean all winter. Yes, the ones that everyone does with just salt, but my favorite version has a bit more oomph than that. Of course.

Feeling a bit oomph deprived lately, and having just gotten my paws on 10 lbs. of the most wonderful kumquats I think I’ve ever tasted, I’ve come up with this:

Remember that heatwave we were having a couple of weeks ago? 95 degrees in New England. Of course my early cabbage decided to sing in unison “we’re done, come & get us, now!”

I didn’t grow a kabillion-kazillian pounds of cabbage to eat coleslaw all summer. This cabbage is supposed to get us through that long locavorian boat-ride called winter. Sweltering heat or no, these heads were gettin’ pickled!

(In a passionate preserver’s logic – I quickly surmised that since it gets very hot in Istanbul, and they have pickle carts everywhere, they must know something about warm-weather fermenting). Right?

Turkish Fermented Cabbage

adapted from The Joy of Pickling by Linda Ziedrich

Directions:

4. In the art of fermenting you want to allow the gasses to escape but prevent a lot of air from getting in. If you are using a two piece screw cap – simply screw it on lightly. If you are using the European wire bail jar you can actually take the wire bail apart and just rest the glass lid on top – (as I did in the photo below). Don’t worry, you can easily re-assemble the wire bail.

5. The jar should be kept out of sunlight throughout the fermenting process. A cotton kitchen towel & elastic work nicely.

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6. Once a day for 10 to 14 days, take the top off and give it a good stir with a very clean spoon. If you do this daily, you don’t have to bother with the weighting down as in the traditional sauerkraut method. Try and get some of the bottom on top and the top on the bottom with your stirring – nothing to be exact about though.

Ideally the temperature should be between 65 and 72 degrees. As I said, I did this in the middle of the heat wave. There were days over 90 so I had to bring it down to the cellar – where the temp was around 76 and rising. I would say that there were a few days where it was in 80 degree temperatures.

But have no fear because on about the 2nd or 3rd day, gassy bubblies will happen. There will be a lot o’ action in those jars. You may even need to switch out the towel due to a bit of leakage, depending on how bubbly things get in there. On about the 6th day the raw veggie smell is all but forgotten, and the most delicious aroma replaces it. You will know it’s done when things settle down and the bubbles have subsided.

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The warmer the weather, the faster the fermentation happens. My batch was full-on done at the 10 day mark. Don’t be afraid to taste! If you like it more sour, then leave it another day or two.

7. Once you’ve determined it’s doneness, you can place the jars directly in the fridge as is, or re- dispense to different size jars. I like to do the fermenting in 1 jar if possible, and then transfer to quarts and pints. Plastic caps are nice here for storing the jars in the fridge. This will last well for 6 months or more in the fridge. Do remember to label your jars with date & contents.

I love this fermented cabbage, it is quite the cross between sauerkraut & kimchi and goes well with everything. We’ve been serving it cold alongside all manner of Turkish & Middle Eastern meze – with a side of feta, and hummus, etc.

Raspberry Rose Jam

2 & 3/4 pounds raspberries (organic if you can)
3 & 3/4 cups sugar
juice of one medium lemon
1 & 1/2 ounces rose water
1/2 pint or smaller canning jars

yield: approximately 3 pints

Directions:

1. Prepare your jars for hot water bath canning. No need to sterilize them as processing time is 10 minutes. Place 3 small plates in the freezer for testing the set.

2. It is really best not to wash the raspberries. If yours are organic, put them directly into your canning pot. Add sugar and lemon juice and heat on medium until sugar dissolves.

3. Once sugar has completely dissolved, turn up the heat and bring to a boil. Boil for 10 minutes stirring occasionally. At 10 minutes take off heat, skim off any foam that has surfaced, and stir the rosewater in. Bring back to a boil for one minute.

4. Check the set by placing a teaspoonful on a frozen plate. Place plate back in the freezer for one minute. Run your finger through the jam. If it wrinkles even slightly under your finger the jam is set. If your finger makes a clean break, boil for one minute more. You may need to do this a couple of times.

It’s springing around here! The coyotes are howling at night.

The garlic is popping; the rhubarb…forgettaboutit! The blueberry frame’s shoulder is broken. The wicked winter brought it down. The onions are planted; the squash bed is ready. The grass is a cow’s green dream!

And possibility is positively tangible! But this, this is what I have been dreaming about. The stone fruit orchard is here! There’s a history to this little wanna-be orchard that goes, in brief, like this:

The Santa Rosa (I think?) plums in the back were here when we got here. We didn’t even know they were there that first year, or what a plum tree even looked like – yikes! Until one day we looked up and there we see a sea of blushing beauties bobbing in the breeze – 1000 plums or more! Then they were gone and never came back.

Three years ago, we ordered eight little sticks promising all kinds of fruit. We planted them and they grew a little. The deer loved them all, completely, until those little budding sticks were no more. So after lamenting the loss of our lovelies last year, we decided to bring in the professionals.

They pruned the hell out of those old plums and told us there is a good chance they’ll fruit again! They planted, moving forward from the plums, a Regina cherry, a Rynbrandt cherry, a Goldcot apricot, a Blenheim apricot, a Reliance peach and a Redhaven peach! And lo, they also saved one other of those sticks we planted three years ago that actually grew.

I have a soaring hope that someday we’ll be chillin’ on this little stone bench overlooking our stone fruit orchard, the sky heavy with fruit. The air intoxicating.

And hope is the essence of spring, no?

I have a confession to make. Even though I grow a lotta cucurbits, I don’t grow these:

I used to grow them. But to be perfectly frank, they stress me out. I don’t love them to begin with. But enough is enough when each & every day I finely comb through all the big green leaves and bright yellow-orange flowers in the garden – usually only one or two plants mind you – and lug the 5 dailies back in to my kitchen wondering where in my fridge they’ll fit. Considering, of course, that there are ten already snuggled up in there claiming valuable real estate. Only to come back out to the garden the next morning to trip head first over a fruit the size of my leg that I missed, apparently.

So this year, I stopped the madness: no more zucchini! Why then, am I coming to you with this recipe? Well for one, my cukes and melons are not quite here yet and I will be dealing with a lot of those when the time is right. Since I had to head down to one of my favorite farmer‘s stand at my local farmer’s market I figured I could safely buy a few of them to put to jar. (Secretly hoping of course that they wouldn’t multiply in my fridge).

They don’t, do they? Secondly, I thought if I can come up with a really great canned goodie that deliciously utilizes these babies, I may actually be doing a PSP (public service post) for those of you still brave enough to grow them. I mean… I like zucchini bread as well as the next gardener.

But, there’s gotta be a better way!

Lemon Squash Jam

Adapted from Gourmet Preserves by Madelaine Bullwinkel

Directions:

Omg I love this jam! You know, I definitely had my doubts. While I was making it I thought, this is another one of those hide the zucchini recipes, I know the deal… but it’s surprising! It’s actually quite a lovely color, golden with deep green flecks of zucchini throughout. The flavor has that bitter sweetness that I love in a good marmalade, but it’s brighter somehow. The lemon basil adds a deeper layer that – get this – was enough to make M exclaim that it was my best jam yet! (I know). Here’s what I really love about it: the texture. Because it’s marmalade-esque, but the squash adds a fruit-like fiber that makes it a true jam.