New Year's Eve Experiments

Suzanne remarked that one does not generally use guests as guinea pigs when testing a new recipe.  I'm not sure whether it is fearlessness, foolishness, insensitivity, or malevolence, but I had no problem trying out 4 new recipes on Shawn and Suzanne on New Year's Eve.

The risk was reduced because we went with all appetizer recipes, and two of the four recipes came from my foodie friend Jim.  We started with a recipe from Jim which I later to be popular on the web, and a quickie, grape jelly-chili meatballs.  You whip together 2 12 ounce bottles chili sauce with a 32 ounce jar grape jelly, and dump it in the crockpot over 2 bags meatballs, frozen.  We split between two pots, one for veggie meatballs for Allie.

Next up two new recipes we found. Tiny Tomato Tarts use a pie crust filled with tomato-basil mixture and finished with a three cheese and mayo topping, baked in the oven.

Next Grapefruit-Squash-Goat Cheese flatbreads, adapted from here.  We tweaked by swapping the butternut squash for roasted beets.  This recipe was just OK, there wasn't enough sweet and salt to balance the acid in the grapefruit.  But not bad.

We finished with another favorite of Jim, Russian Cream Parfaits.  2 cups sour cream, 3/4 cup sugar, and a little vanilla whipped together and layered with fresh fruit.  I used blackberries and raspberries and topped with some grapefruit zest.

Delicious.  Happy New Year and Go Blue!

Preserving a little bit of Arkansas

On Highway 65 heading south toward Conway, just past the Serenity Farm Bakery, there appears a sign every fall for Arkansas Black apples.  We've stopped many times at the bakery, but never for the apples, and we are running out of time.  But a patient last year generously gave us a large bag of Arkansas Blacks.  He said they will keep for weeks, if not months, if just left in a cool garage.

We left them out for about a month, but I became fearful of them rotting, so I threw them all in the freezer where they have sat for about a year.

But now I have a new toy.  Blame the blackberries.  The straight fruit blackberry came up short of 3 gallons, partially because of the fluffy lees from the bentonite, but mostly because I basically only had the free run, I couldn't press the fruit. That will not be an issue going forward.

For the apples, this press worked like a charm.  A 5 gal paint strainer bag fits perfectly in the basket and it is disposable.  This wine will be straight-fruit apple.  I came up just a little shy of 1 gallon in terms of volume, so I added 1 can apple juice concentrate and 12 ounces of water.  The OG was 1.060 and pH 3.51.  9oz sugar brought the OG to 1.085, which seems right for this wine.  Here is the recipe:

2 3gal bags Arkansas Black apples (sorry, didn't get the weight)
1 can apple juice concentrate with 12 oz water (for volume)
9oz sugar
1 Campden tab
1t yeast nutrient, divided
1/4tsp tannin
2t pectic enzyme
2g bentonite
2g Optiwhite
71B yeast

Press the frozen/thawed apples and add the juice to the primary.  Add the concentrate, water, sugar, Kmeta.  Wait 12 hours, add the pectic, tannin, Optiwhite.  Wait another 12 hours, add 1/2 of the nutrient and pitch the yeast.  Day 3 add the bentonite.  When 1/2 sugar is depleted, add the second 1/2t nutrient.  To secondary around 1.010 and usual care thereafter.

We made a tasty flatbread appetizer on Friday, with caramelized onion, fig, walnuts, and balsamic truffle glaze.