Chronicles of the Long Shot Farm

Recipe

Mixed Berry Bread-Pudding

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Here is another great use for mixed berries fresh out of the garden: bread pudding!

Ingredients:

  • Butter for the casserole dish
  • 3 large eggs
  • 1.5 – 2 cups of sugar (depending on the tartness of the berries used)
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 cup heavy cream
  • 2 cups mixed berries (for this batch I used red and black raspberries and blueberries in season)
  • 8 cups dense bread cubes (I used left over home made dinner rolls from last night)
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees and butter a casserole or 9×13 baking dish.  Whisk the eggs, sugar, cinnamon and vanilla in a large mixing bowl until smooth.  Blend in the milk and cream and then carefully mix in the berries.  Add the bread cubes and let them soak for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Then our the mixture into the prepared pan and bake 55 to 60 minutes, until a knife inserted comes out clean.  Serve warm with vanilla ice cream for a perfect  midsummer eve.

Mixed Berry Jam

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Raspberries and blueberries are ripening right now and this morning’s picking was perfect for a batch of mixed berry jam.  I use the Sure.Jell low sugar recipe, following basic directions for blackberry jam, only I modified the ingredients to match the fruit I had on hand:

Nearly Seedless Mixed Berry Jam Recipe:

  • 3 cups prepared seedless black raspberry puree  (i.e. heat the cleaned blackberries and run them through a food mill with a berry screen)
  • 1 cup smashed red raspberries (these will have seeds)
  • 2 cups smashed (not pureed) blueberries
  • 4 cups of sugar
  • 1 box of low sugar Sure.Jell

Wash jelly jars, heat lids and have the matching rings ready.

Follow directions for making cooked jam:  measure the sugar and use 1/4 cup of this to mix in with the Sure.Jell powder.  Place all the measured fruit into a large pot, add the sugar/Sure.Jell mix to the fruit and bring it to a full boil (one that cannot be stirred down).  Make sure that the sugar mixture is blended in and that there are no clumps.  When the fruit reaches a full boil, add the remaining sugar and return to a full boil.  Once the full boiling point is reached, boil for exactly 1 minute.

Pour hot jam into prepared jelly jars, wipe rims, adjust lids and place filled jars in a water bath, bring to boil and boil for 10 minutes.  Remove jars and let cool overnight before removing rings.

Yields about 7 half pints of rather thick, amazingly good jam.

A New Take On Potato Bread: Sweet Potato Maple Loaf

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Here is another favorite recipe – for a dense, slightly sweet, wonderful breakfast bread.  I mix my dough in a bread machine, but always use the “dough” setting, and then form the loaf, let is rise again, and bake in a conventional oven.

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup mashed sweet potato (about one medium sized yam or sweet potato, peel, cut into cubes and boil in water until soft, then mash with a fork and let it cool down a bit)
  • 1/2 cup of lukewarm water
  • 3 tablespoons sour cream
  • 1/3 cup of (real!) maple syrup
  • 4 and 1/4 cup of bread flour
  • 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1 and 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 2 teaspoons bread machine yeast

Place ingredient in order given into bread machine, use dough cycle.  When finished, remove the dough, knead to get air bubbles out, and place in a greased bread pan.  Let rise for 45 min to an hour. Then bake in a pre-heated 375 degree oven for 30 minutes (or until the loaf sounds hollow when tapped)  Let cool in the pan for about 10 minutes on a wire rack, then remove from pan and let the bread cool completely.  I usually brush the hot loaf with butter to make a softer crust.

Ultimate Pea Soup

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Our peas are ripe – and we have been picking them for a few days now.  We ended up with over 60 quarts of canned peas, and we gave a lot away to friends. 

This is of course the perfect time to make fresh pea soup (which is distinctly different from canned or dried pea soup).  The soup is surprisingly tasty and rather filling.


Here is our favorite recipe for fresh pea soup:

· 1 tablespoon olive oil
· 1/2 cup finely sliced spring onions (or Vidalia onion)
· 1 clove garlic, chopped fine (not crushed)
· 1 tablespoon chicken bouillon (or use chicken broth instead of water for cooking)
· 1 pound shelled peas
· 1/2 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon
· 1/2 teaspoon salt (to taste: depends on the chicken stock)
· 1/8 – 1/4 teaspoon of pepper (to taste)
· 1/4 cup half and half 

In a large pot, heat the olive oil and add the onions and garlic.  Sauté over medium heat, until onions are glossy, then add 3 1/2 cups of water and the chicken bouillon (or chicken broth).  Bring to boil, then let simmer for about 30 minutes. (this is about how long it takes to shell one pound of peas)

Add peas, tarragon, salt and pepper and bring back to boil. Turn down heat and simmer until peas are tender (this will depend on how ripe your peas are, anywhere from 10 – 20+ minutes). 

Remove from heat and let cool a bit – then purée with an immersion blender, or put it into a  conventional blender in small batches.  You want this soup to be very, very smooth. 


Stir in half and half , salt and pepper to taste.  We like to eat it hot, but you can also serve it chilled!

Some Jam Experiments

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It was time to clean out the freezer and use up last year’s berries!  We still had several containers of frozen strawberries, and a whole lot of bags of frozen blackberries.  Luckily the strawberries were ready to be used for jam, since we froze them as puree. The blackberries needed to be thawed, heated and run through the food mill to remove seeds before we could use them.

We set all the berries out to thaw on Friday, and Saturday morning at least the strawberries were ready to use. While the blackberries were slowly heating on the stove (in a 22 quart pot), we decided to experiment a bit with rhubarb-strawberry jam.  Roughly we used twice as many strawberries as rhubarb, plus lemon juice – the trick was to know how much total fruit to use in order to get a nicely set jam.  After the initial runny batch, which had the consistency of apple butter, we reduced the amount of fruit by a cup, and ended up with a soft jam, slightly tart, but nicely balanced with the sweetness of strawberries.

Here is our recipe for strawberry-rhubarb jam:

  • 1 and 3/4 cups of cooked rhubarb (chopped cleaned rhubarb is heated with very little water and cooked until soft)
  • 3 and 1/2 cup of mashed strawberries (can use fresh, we used frozen “chunky” puree) 
  • 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
  • 4 cups of sugar
  • 1 packet of low-sugar SureJell  
We followed the SureJell instructions for cooked jam.  This sized batch made 4 pint sized jars of jam.
The blackberries yielded enough puree for 5 + batches of jam.  We kept the extra out for smoothies 🙂