Peter Picked a Pickled Pepper, or Adventures in Making Hot Sauce

For reasons unbeknownst to ourselves, Olivia and I planted several habañero plants this past spring, and ended up with a bumper crop of habañeros. Olivia declared that she wanted nothing to do with the peppers, so I decided to try making a homemade hot sauce.

I wanted to make a brined hot sauce, so after chopping up the vegetables and adding them to the jars, I poured in a brine solution. Then I stored the jars out of sunlight in the pickling cellar (aka, the basement).

About two weeks later, the fermentation was complete and it was time to make the hot sauce.

Draining the brine sauce (but I kept it because it would be added to the mixture to thin it).

I ran the pickled peppers through the blender, adding a bit of brine to the mixture to thin it out.

Eventually I got it to the consistency that I was looking for.

 All that's left was to give it a taste test. The closest food at hand was a rice cake, and I'd say it was suitably hot! Has a good, bright habañero flavor, and is good on just about anything that needs a little kick!

Recent baking escapades

So....we've been baking and eating pretty tasty foods for the past several weeks.  It looks like the rest of you have, too.  Here are a few photos to pique your interest and maybe inspire you to try something new!

Two burger options....both had freshly (charcoal) grilled burgers, then topped with deliciousness!

Peanut butter bacon burger

Olive burger (with French style tabouli and fresh apples)

Another take on Chicago style deep dish pizza.  This recipe was much easier to make than the last one.  The final verdict was that the cheese version was better than the one with homemade Italian sausage.

We've also tried making some other bread products that we typically would buy at the store (we've not purchased tortillas since we made our first batch about a month ago...the kiddos love helping me make them).  Here we try out some sourdough English muffins for the first time (I made them without the parmesan and herbs).  Again...not going back to store bought.

Freshly baked English muffin with fried egg, mozzarella and tomato (Steve added jalapeno to his)

Here's our first batch of homemade bagels.  They were very tasty, but we'll be trying out another recipe next time.  And the English muffins were easier.....

And Elisabeth's carrot muffins from last week.  Again, another delicious morning muffin! (And somewhat healthy....it has veggies in it!)

Dream Pizza

Several weeks ago, I read about this cheesy pan pizza recipe from King Arthur Flour and knew immediately that I needed to make it. I had to wait till I had the right ingredients (which are quite simple, I just didn't have flour or cheese) but once I was able to make it, I found it was even better than I'd hoped. This is somewhere in between a greasy pan pizza (delicious, but can be a bit heavy) and a Chicago style stuffed pizza (also delicious, but can anyone survive eating that much cheese more than once every couple years?).

This pizza, or "dream pizza" as I like to call it, is like a bubbly pillow of warm bread with just the right amount of golden cheese on top, and a wonderfully crisped outer crust. We've made this several times now since that first day and have found it never disappoints. One of my favorite iterations was topped with mushrooms, rosemary and a garlic cream sauce, but we've found it's best to keep the toppings somewhat skimpy to allow the crust to rise to it's full glory. If you aren't yet convinced to try this pizza recipe, here are a few photos that will hopefully do the trick.

Inspired foods

All of the delicious food posts over the past few weeks had me and Olivia feeling excited to make some of them.

Here's our attempt at mini rhubarb-filled streusel muffins, inspired by Elisabeth's muffins from a few weeks back. I really like having a mini muffin with my morning coffee, and these were delicious. When I make them again, I'm going to try to pack even more rhubarb into them.

Do the Hancock Barnharts have a rhubarb patch that you harvested for Elisabeth's muffins? Or was that grocery-store rhubarb you were using?

And then we decided to try the dalgona coffee trend that Janell wrote about recently. I made them hot (instead of iced), and they were delicious! They look very pretty in the first picture, but it's almost like having a solid marshmallow layer on top of the milk, so I stirred it together for a delicious, rich sweet coffee (that's the second, less pretty picture). It reminded me a little of Vietnamese coffee, which is strong coffee mixed with sweetened, condensed milk, I believe.

This was pretty easy to make. A nice afternoon pick-me-up!

Thanks, everyone, for the inspiring recipes!

Baking Apprentices

     

So....baking (and cooking in general) are beginning to be the responsibility of the next generation of Barnharts here in Houghton.  Over the past several months, my goal has been to have each of the children make breakfast on "their day" (each child is assigned a day of the week...they get special privileges and responsibilities on that day, one of which is now to choose and prepare breakfast).  They've been pretty excited about this possibility because they get to do something in the kitchen, and also because then they're not having oatmeal on a very regular basis (I had gotten into a bit of a breakfast rut).  I'm excited about it because our breakfast menu has been greatly varied and I am not responsible every morning to get food on the table! (that's somewhat selfish - but they ARE learning to make food and have good kitchen skills)  Everyone has their favorite style of food (their go-to food) but they're venturing out into new areas.  And we've all been enjoying delicious morning food.

Here's a sampling of what they've made...

Elisabeth's day is Tuesday.  She pretty much always makes muffins.  Actually, I think that is all she's made.  But she has been trying out new recipes every week (I think she's made two of her varieties twice - and some of the other children have re-made one that they especially liked). Her favorite recipes are all from the King Arthur Flour website....and they've been very successful.

Fresh out of the oven.

Last week's variety was the Simply Sinful Cinnamon Muffins.

Frosting the muffins (there are also some cupcakes that Elisabeth and Andrew made in two of the 9x13 pans, and the leftovers from a batch of buttermilk granola muffins that I had made the day before)

Ready to eat

The cinnamon-filled center was amazingly delicious!

Two weeks ago, Elisabeth did a repeat of her first muffin recipe.  Lemon poppy seed.  Steve said they were the best lemon poppy seed muffins he had ever had.

Lemon poppy seed muffins with a lemon-y glaze on them.

Peter's day is Friday.  His favorite breakfast foods usually consist of eggs and meat.  Something hearty and substantial.  Muffins usually rank pretty low on his list.  But the Chocolate Breakfast Muffins that Elisabeth had made a while back he really enjoyed.  So....

A proud baker and his batch of breakfast muffins.

Chocolate Breakfast Muffins

Andrew's day is Monday.  He's chosen to make the widest range of foods for his day.  This week he chose to make biscuits and gravy (Peter's favorite morning meal).  I didn't have time to work with him on this one, so Peter stepped up and walked Andrew through the process.  My apprentice teaching the next one!

Andrew and Peter with their biscuits and gravy

Measuring ingredients

One evening, Elisabeth was a bit bored and we didn't have any sweets in the house, so she decided to make cookies and Philip wanted to help. They made my new favorite oatmeal raisin cookies. 

The finished product

(L to R) Regular whole wheat bread, trail mix bread (to turn into overnight French toast), and whole wheat sourdough tortillas

 
And even though I have lots of good kitchen help, I still do make some of our food myself.  This was one Saturday's worth of baking for me (I have found the top of our radiator to be the best place for my dough to rise, at least during the cooler months when the radiator is warm). Three separate doughs.  Lots of yumminess awaits. 

The sourdough tortilla stack

Adventures in Bread Baking

The beginning

I've been wanting to figure out how to make sourdough bread for some time now, and have actually started a couple of starters (and eventually failed to keep them alive). I've had very mixed results with sourdough breads in the past, but I'm intrigued by the possibility of using wild yeasts and bacteria (instead of store-bought yeast) to make bread. It's ancient and modern, delicious and nutritious. And in this new stay-at-home time, I figured this was a good time to finally figure it out.

Guided by Tartine Bread (which was recommended by a friend of mine), I built a sourdough starter a couple weeks ago, and was finally ready to put it to the test.

First bread

Here's the starter (a few weeks back). Nice and bubbly, slightly sour, but not too sour.

Mixing the starter into some warm water. One test of an active starter is that it floats on the water. This stuff is barely floating, so I'm not sure it's really ready.

Here's the bread dough a couple hours into its first rise. You can see some bubbles along the side, which is a good sign.

But then something went wrong. I think the problem might be that I forgot about the dough for several hours, then it got late so I put it in the refrigerator overnight. Here it is, the next morning, looking like a delicious pancake that didn't quite make it into the skillet.

I was pretty certain it wasn't going to turn into a beautiful loaf of bread, but I figured I'd bake it anyway. This frisbee was the result.

Dense, tough, and ready to chip a tooth. Almost as good as Grandma Barnhart's famous biscuits.

Second bread

This one turned out a little better. I was able to start it earlier in the day and give it more time to rise. I'm liking the look of it in this basket.

And the final loaf turned out pretty well, though not quite as tall as I hoped. I was thinking it would rise a little higher in the oven, but it was not to be. This loaf had a good, strong sour flavor, which wasn't quite what I was hoping for. So, on to...

Third bread!

I think I've finally arrived, and I'm ready to open a bakery. I think I let this one rise longer than the 2nd loaf, and then I refrigerated it overnight for the final, long rise. Or maybe the starter is finally ready to make good bread. I'm not really sure, and only time will tell if I'll be able to duplicate (or even improve on) this loaf.

The adventure continues...