The food thread

I’ve eaten more eggplant this year than in my entire life! Learning what likes to grow in our harsh coastal environment and it seems rather Mediterranean (which is ok by me) , things that did not grow well in the mountains. I usually slice the eggplant 1” thick and grill on a special perforated porcelain vegetable grilling plate for a good half hour……i might try how you do it nez that sounds good.
I always leave jalepenos on the plant until red and they start to shrivel, the flavors are much richer/deeper, and yes most all of my plantings are intentionally heirloom and i save the seeds from the best fruit.
Growing up on a farm gardening is in my blood and have had a garden (in some capacity) every year of my life since age 6 😎

Cal, its just now “tomorrow“ 7am let a feller get some coffee in him 🙂
i‘m still recovering from the $239 sticker shock on the 14 cup cuisinart food processor we bought yesterday…….hopefully its worthy, a test pepper run through it showed great promise……will report back.
 
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I had a nice surprise earlier this summer. I am in my apartment in Montreal, and there is a tiny garden space out back that no one was using, so I planted a few things and kind of late (like first week of July) went out to get some herb seedlings. I wanted some Italian parsley but they were fresh out, so I picked up some other things to plant. As I was cleaning the weeds out of the garden I realised some of the "weeds" looked familiar; they were Italian parsley, apparently planted by the old Italian lady next door, which had spread under the fence from her garden to mine! I have been using it extensively. I went back to Halifax for late July, August, and a bit of September and when I got back here was pleased to see everything I had planted was doing well; tomatoes, peppers, and herbs. My peppers are New Mexicans I grew from seeds I harvested from peppers I grew from seeds I got from dried peppers I bought... (if you follow me).
 
Try a mixture or successive sprinkling of red chili powder, coriander powder and a wee bit of salt on the sliced brinjal.
We shallow fry and drain it.

Look up the Gujarati dish 'ringan tameta bataka'....tender brinjal, boiled potatoes, tomatoes, in a cumin, chili, and mango powder spice mix.
Tasty...
 
Good find nez!

Naresh, i’m certainly looking for different ways to try the ‘brinjal’ …….I keep forgetting to try the bhartha you recommended awhile back. I will put a piece of tape on it in the fridge to remind me! 😆

Well Cal the new food processor is awesome! I forgot what a pita it is to de-seed hot peppers 😡

got it setting in the fridge salted to draw out the liquids and will be canning it after walking the dogs.
 

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Here we go, ended up with 12 half pints water bathed and 2 pints for the fridge……used the same recipe i do bread & butter pickles, came out quite tasty. 😎
 

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So I am now about 3 weeks into the fermenting of this year's sauce and while it is still going strong, it has calmed down a quite a bit and is developing a nice tang. Can't wait to have it almost stop and add the finishing salt. I am still wondering whether to keep the garlic in the mix or to remove it and enjoy it separately.
 

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Tonight I gave the Meater a real challenge. The grocery store had these New Zealand Spring Lamb shoulders on sale. Now the shoulder is about a 3Kg (6 pound) hunk of animal that consists of what you would probably think of as shoulder, and the top of the leg muscle, and some of the neck, and some ribs and the thin meat that covers them, etc. So of course I bought one, spiced it up a bit, and sparked up my tiny cheap charcoal BBQ. I tried to do a hot-end/cold-end thing but the lamb covers about 70% of the grate. Anyway I stuck the meater probe into what I perceived as the thickest part of the chunk of meat, and on the app selected Lamb->Other, then selected target doneness as medium-well. I was worried that might be too much, but I don't care for rare lamb except for certain cuts in certain circumstances (like lamb not from other side of world). Because of the coverage on the BBQ I knew I needed to turn and flip the meat constantly, which messes up the device's ability to sense the ambient temperature correctly. So I really tamped down the fire and turned the meat every 10-15 minutes. The meater handled that pretty well, though naturally it had to recalculate time-to-done frequently. There was a point toward the end when I could see (because Meater told me) that the ambient temperature was getting very low, meaning the charcoal was going out and not lighting the extra fuel I had put in to extend the burn. So then I had the lid off for quite a long time while I was moving charcoal around and blowing to get things burning again, so the meater app got really confused because the ambient temp had dropped to much lower than the internal temperature of the meat. However, once I got things stabilized again it started doing it's job and let me know when to remove the meat from the heat and how long to let it rest. The result was excellent (rarer than I expected, at least in places), and it helped me to time the vegetables.
 
Low yield this year. But it makes up with quality for quantity.

Orange is typical ornage hab, red is Bhut Jalokia, aka Ghost Pepper.

The fermenters are half gallon, not quart.
 

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I have a challenge this year. with the damp autumn fruit trees suddenly went into overdrive and my sister had a glut of quinces. I only took a few as no idea what to do with them other than knowing quince cheese is too much like hard work. Need to work that out in the next few weeks...
 
Looks good Gimp. How are you going to finish it? ie: sauce, pickle, chutney, salsa?

Isn't Quince cheese just a really thick kinda jelly with lotsa the pulp?
It all of the pulp. cooked forever. Some of the Quinces have gone to a posh restaurant who serve it as part of the cheese board.

last time we just cooked it and ate it, but wasn't entirely satifying. But I remember my granny's quince jelly which I liked.

I swerved on the medlars though.
 
Happy Turkey day!

This is what mountain men cook for thanksgiving when the women and children are 600 miles away.……slow roasting @ 180’ until 115’ then rest for 1 hour back into 550’ for 10 min. (Sure would be nice to have them wireless thermo….maybe santa will bring some?)

Sweet potato, Brussel sprouts, gravy and thats it……no fuss no muss 😎

Will post after pics
 

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