Hobbits In Rivendell

Looking fairly disgusting, to the left is the beginning stages of MinceMeat. In the pot is an unfortunately small amount of our green tomatoes, mixed with some pears, apples, orange peels, lemon peels, raisins, dried cherries, orange juice, lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, port wine, sherry, Pomona’s Universal Pectin, sugar, and spices. This is the first of what looks to be around 100 quarts of mincemeat (with maybe some of that 100 turning into chutney).

To give you some perspective upon the size of what turned out to be 10 quarts, please note our poor stove straining beneath the massive cooking vessel. It performed admirably, I must say, but wrestling that pot into a position from which to move lava-like liquid into jars? Terrifying.

I had intended this batch to be a full twelve quarts – ’cause that’s how many quart jars I’d dragged up from the garage/basement – but in this pot it’s difficult to measure 1 quart. It turns out that a quart is about 1/2 an inch as measured against the side of the pot … and that’s difficult to figure when you’ve got lumps in your liquid. So, 10 quarts it is.

Shown in jars it’s not so exciting – yes, that’s an excuse for having not taken any pictures of them yet – but here’s the final shot before being jarred up. We’ve got some nice caramelization, and the green tomatoes? Can’t even tell what they are when you taste it, which is as it should be. They really do suck up whatever flavor you throw at them, and aside from being nutritious and a great filler, that’s all you could ask for.

Note that this, as most everything we make, is vegan. No meat involved, I’m sorry, but the idea of mixing Suet (beef fat) into this lot? Utterly disgusting, and never crossed my mind until I was writing this post and realizing that the name “MinceMeat” had to come from somewhere. Bleh.

Each 1-quart jar will fill a couple of pies: just add corn starch and bake in a blind-baked shell for about 1/2 an hour and you’re there.

Just for Sarah, here’s some idea of the recipe we used. It originated with the Ball Blue Book of Preserving. It’s sort of a variation / combination of Tomato-Apple Chutney (page 50) and Brandied Mincemeat (page 84), but with our own twist to it.

• 10 Quarts chopped, de-seeded tomatoes
• 2 Quarts diced apples (Fuji, Granny Smith, or something which holds up to cooking)
• 3 Pounds raisins
• 2 Cups candied ginger, diced
• 2 Cups dried apricots, chopped
• 2 Cups dried cherries
• 1 Cup dried mango*, chopped
• 1 Cup dried papaya*, chopped
• 8 Orange peels (use a vegetable peeler, to just get the skin), matchsticked
• 8 Oranges’ juice
• 4 Lemon peels (same technique)
• 4 Lemons’ juice
• 4 Cups brown sugar
• 4 Cups white sugar
• 1 Liter Port Wine (we used Christian Brothers brand; it really should be just the cheapest you can find)
• 1 Liter Sherry (again, whatever’s cheap)
• Freshly-Ground spices: 6″ cinnamon stick, 20 allspice berries, 10 whole cloves, 2 Tbsp dried ginger.

1. Combine everything.
2. Boil it until it doesn’t taste of raw liquor any longer (maybe an hour, maybe 2)
3. Jar, leaving 1/2-inch headspace.
4. Process 30 minutes in boiling-water canner**.

*note: vary these fruits as you see fit. We did one version that was a “tropical” version, another version that had pears instead of apples, one pretty much just tried to make them each unique. They all turned out marvelously, so … go crazy with the dried fruit!
**note: we processed ours 30 minutes in a pressure canner. We did this because 1) we had such a thing, and 2) we’re paranoid, since we varied the recipe by not adding apple cider as it calls for in the blue book. Yes, the brandy & sherry should have been acidic enough … but we weren’t going to risk it.

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FoodI know I’ve already gone on about how much I loathe squash, but I found another contender — possibly even better than Acorn, The Perfect Food, for the best winter vegetable: Delicata. A warning to all the hapless victims of our garden largess, THIS is what I’m growing next year, by the bushel. This tasty sweet squash is, per 3/4 c. serving, 30 calories, 1 g protein, and just 7 g carbohydrate. It lends itself to eating plain baked, mashed with a little salt and pepper, or added to risotto. This was its debut at our house:

Delicata Roasted Veg Bread Pudding

• 2 medium sized skinned, gutted and cubed Delicata – if you choose them very small, the skins are tender enough to eat without skinning them. Three cheers for laziness!
• 3 small chopped onions – or fewer, or even add garlic if you like
• 2 cup seasoned bread crumbs – I had some bread guts from Mac’s herbed bread in the freezer from when we hollowed out small boules for chili – both handy and tasty,
• 1 cup fresh, chopped, greens – I used arugula, and their pungency was a perfect counterpoint to the sweet Delicata, and they’re just too strong to use in salad in that amount,
• 1 c. ground “meat” of your choice
• 1 c. shredded mozzarella, or some other tasty cheese you like
• 1 c. of white wine and a splash (1/2 cup-ish) of milk
• ground pepper and salt to taste; I forgot about that, but salting per serving works just as well in this household of both hyper and hypotension.

Gather your ingredients, and go through the tedious process of gutting the seeds out of your squash. As a reward, those you can save and roast, just like pumpkin seeds. Yum. I just tossed my ingredients into a lightly spritzed casserole dish, in layers, as if I was doing lasagne. I started with the breadcrumbs on bottom, and build up. If you don’t have herbed bread in crumbs, use it in a solid layer of slices. And if your bread isn’t herbed, bodge in some chopped rosemary and a sage and garlic powder, will you? I also added an optional 1 tbsp. of smoked torula yeast (which we found in tiny amounts in a store, got sick of that noise, and then ordered wholesale).

When I was finished with this, our house smelled like winter… filled with the smells of those good, filling, post-Thanksgiving dinners that make you happy when the whole wet/cold/rampant flooding/mold is starting to get grim and you’re a bit sick of rain. And the dish is colorful and really low in calories… next time I make it, I may add another squash for contrast, and skip the bread bit altogether.

You may wonder why I’m angsting over the caloric content of a vegetable dish? Weeell, it’s because my sister has suggested that she can borrow some of my clothes for maternity things later on this year. And while she didn’t mean it unkindly (because I really do have wider shoulders, am a little bigger frame)? Er, she wasn’t kidding. Time to lose a few pounds but seriously! And if I can have this great veg casserole with a big salad for dinner every week, it will it be really easy! (Note: I’ll miss the bread, with great aching pain. It’s been fun… but I want to make sure people can tell which one of us sisters is the one breeding. Already I am stiffening my spine for the comments of the clueless who will do the math, see it’s been twelve years, and start suggesting that ‘shouldn’t you be expecting too?’ Siiiiiiigh. It’s all in the details, you see…)

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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.