Green Olive Dressing #AbramsDinnerParty

Once again, I'm working with Abrams Books to tell you about their cookbooks. I had a blast doing this last year (and I collected a lot of cookbooks!) so I was more than happy to sign on again.

One of the first books I got was Matty Matheson, A Cookbook. The author, in case you hadn't guessed, was Matty Matheson.

The book follows his culinary life, with the first recipes being family favorites, moving on through culinary school, and then finally through his restaurant years.

I settled on one of the family recipes, and this one is from the section about his inlaws. As much as I love eating at restaurants, and I like making complicated recipes when I'm in that mood, I'm always curious about recipes that have been passed down through families, particularly when they're nothing like the things I remember from my own family.

I know, salad dressings seem pretty simple, but I'll bet this one is quite different from ones you've made before. And I'm a sucker for salad dressings. If I pick up a cookbook at it has a recipe for salad dressing that looks interesting, it's a pretty sure bet I'll give it a try.

This was tasty and well-balanced. While it's meant as a salad dressing, I think it would be lovely on top of fish, as well.

I made one little "oops" with this dressing. The instructions say that you shouldn't let it emulsify. It's supposed to be chunks of olives and stuff floating in a vinegar and oil dressing.

I don't know if the issue was me being heavy-handed with the blender, or if my blender was just too overpowered to not emulsify this, but it started emulsifying pretty quickly, and then I just said the heck with it and blended it until it was almost smooth.

I can see how chunky bits of olive would be appealing, but I thought it was fine as its smoother version, too. This made just about a pint of dressing, so it's plenty for a party and it ought to keep well in the refrigerator for at least a few days.

Green Olive Dressing
Adapted from Matty Matheson, A Cookbook

2 cup pitted Cerignola olives
1 clove garlic, peeled
1 green onion, chopped
Zest and juice of one lemon
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 shallot, diced
1 bunch parsley, leaves chopped
3 tablespoons white vinegar
1/2 cup canola oil
Salt and pepper
Salad greens, because if you're making dressing, you'd better make a dressing.

Put the olives, garlic, green onion, lemon zest and juice and olive oil into a blender. Pulse several times until it becomes frothy and lumpy, like a tapenade. Keep pulsing, but don't blend, since you don't want it to emulsify.

Pour this into a bowl and add the shallot, parsley, vinegar and canola oil. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Serve.

Just to make sure you know, I'll be getting all these books for free.

Canned Peaches #Canbassador

As a happy participant in the Canbassador program, the nice folks at Northwest Cherry Growers also sent me a box of peaches this year.

I looooove peaches.

I usually eat them plain. Sometimes I make pies or tarts. But I never thought about canning them, until now.

Just like cherries, peaches are crazy easy to can, requiring little more than a light or medium sugar syrup and a little time. Well, something to keep the peaches from browning helps, but I always keep Fruit Fresh in the pantry.

You can hot pack or cold pack the peaches, and the timing for canning depends on the size of your jars, and your altitude.

If you've never canned anything before, peaches are super-simple. If you have done a lot of canning, then maybe it's time to branch out to another recipe that has a few more ingredients. Like Drunken Peaches. This still isn't a super-complicated recipe, but it adds a little extra zip to the fruit you have stored.

While you might not want to use drunken peaches with your morning oatmeal, they're pretty danged good with ice cream!

Drunken Peaches
Adapted from Ball Canning Back to Basics
Makes 6 1-pint jars

1 lemon
5 pounds fresh, firm, ripe freestone peaches
3 cups water
2 1/2 cups sugar
3 vanilla beans, halved crosswise (if you don't have beans, vanilla extract should be just fine)
6 slices of orange, 1/4-inch thick. You'll need 2 small navel oranges.
3/4 cup bourbon

Rinse the lemon and peaches under cold running water and pat dry. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and fill a large bowl with ice water.

Cut the lemon in half and squeeze the juice into the ice water.

Working in batches, place the peaches in a wire basket and lower them into the boiling water. Let them blanch for 1 minute, then place immediately into the ice water. If you don't have a basket you can use, you can use a spider or slotted spoon to lower the peaches into the water, then retrieve them.

When the peaches are cook enough to handle, peel them and remove the pits. Cut each half into four wedges. Return the wedges to the lemon juice mixture.

Stir together 3 cups water and the sugar in a large stainless steel or enameled saucepan. Split the vanilla beans in half, lengthwise and scrape out the seeds. Add the beans and seeds to the sugar mixture and cook over medium-high, stirring until the sugar dissolved. Keep the mixture at a low simmer while you continue.

Place one orange slice and one vanilla bean half into a hot jar. Drain and tightly pack the peach wedges into the jar. Ladle the hot syrup into the jar, leaving 1 1/2 inches of headspace. Add 2 tablespoons of bourbon to each jar. Add more hot syrup to the jar, leaving 1/2 inch headspace.

Remove air bubbles from the jar, wipe the rims, and center the lids on the jars. Apply the band so it's fingertip-tight. Place the jar in the boiling water canner, and continue with the rest of the jars, until all the peaches are nestled in jars.

Process the jars for 25 minutes, adjusting for altitude, if necessary. Turn off the heat, remove the lid, and let the jars rest for 5 minutes before you remove them from the canner and let them cool.

I got the peaches at no cost; the book is one that I purchased.

Canned Whole Cherries #Canbassador

I love cherries. When I was a kid, they were undoubtedly my favorite fruit. Apples and bananas were okay, but cherries were awesome.

So, when the Northwest Cherries Canbassador Program asked me if I wanted some (a lot!) of cherries, of course I said yes.

What I didn't know about cherries was how easy they are to can. Apparently cherries sit up and the tree and they say, "Hey, being in a jar would be awesome. We should make sure that we're like the perfect acidity so we can go into jars and into a hot water bath and be pretty round things in jars forever."

Or something like that.

Because when I started looking up recipes for canning whole cherries, I found out that you can use pretty much anything for the canning liquid. You don't have to add a ridiculous amount of sugar. You don't have to add lemon juice or vinegar. You can put them in fruit juice, sugar syrup, or even plain old water. Just plain water. Let that sink in.

Oh, and that's not the end of it. You can hot-pack or raw-pack and just adjust the time in the canner.

I was ... totally surprised.

And pleased. Because it's hot as Hades here and thinking too hard makes me sweat. So I liked the idea that I couldn't mess this up, no matter what I did. And YOU can't mess this up no matter what you do.

Right?

So, pit the cherries. For each quart of cherries, you'll need about 1/2 cup of liquid. But you know what - if you're off by a little, you can just add some extra boiling water since we're not worrying about acid levels.

Then figure out how much liquid you'll need. (Math ensues.)

Figure out what liquid you're using. I used a light sugar syrup (1 part sugar to 4 parts water by volume), plus a vanilla bean pod for each quart jar.

Then decide if you want to hot-pack or raw-pack.

Read up on safe canning procedures. Make sure your jars and lids are clean and hot and have everything ready to go.

For hot pack, put the liquid in a saucepan along with the cherries and bring to a boil, then put the cherries and liquid in the jars.  For the raw pack, put the pitted cherries in the jar and heat the liquid separately, then pour the liquid over the cherries. Make sure there's no excess air in the jar and the liquid is to about 1/2 inch of the top.

Process according to this chart. Or seriously, check that page for way more information about canning cherries than you can imagine.

So ... what's this stuff good for? Yeah, pretty much anything you like. They're good over ice cream, French toast, or in cocktails. The liquid is flavorful, so don't leave that behind. They'd probably be good in smoothies, too. Since I went with a really light syrup, they'd be good in recipes, too, and wouldn't add a mad amount of sugar.

So good. So simple. The hardest part is pitting the cherries, but even that isn't hard.

Hint: if you only have a quart of cherries and you're going to use them right away, you could do this without the water bath and just refrigerate the jar. Heat to a boil, maybe a few seconds more, then throw them in a jar. When they've cooled a bit, toss them in the fridge.

I received cherries at no cost to me from the folks at Northwest Cherries. Otherwise I would have been buying them. Because ... cherries.