This year, my boyfriend and I were lucky enough to secure a plot at our local community garden, where we imagined growing oodles of tomatoes with the ultimate goal of making and canning our own salsa and sauce. Three months and nine tomato plants later, we’re up to our eyeballs in tomatoes and canning has become more of a necessity than an option.

Fortunately, transforming a pile of raw tomatoes into a flavorful, jar-worthy salsa is not as daunting a task as you may think. There are lots of good resources out there and if you’re like me, you cook a lot, so most of the steps should be pretty basic.

Ball’s Web site, www.freshpreserving.com, is one of the best and most user-friendly information resources out there. Their convenient, step-by-step how-to guide (click “How To Can” and choose high-acid foods for anything tomato-based) gives a great overview of everything you’ll need to do.

canning implements, morecoffeeplease, flickr

Jars- I used pint-size jars, which I think are fairly typical for salsas. You may want quart-size jars for pasta sauces, but it’s up to you.

Lids and Bands- Lids are important- you need new, clean ones, both the flat lid and the metal band which holds it in place.

Tongs- jar tongs are best, but regular kitchen tongs will suffice.

Funnel

Shallow metal baking pan- 9×9 is good. This is what you’ll use to sterilize the jars,  lids and bands before filling them with salsa. It diverges a bit from the Ball tutorial, but it’s easier. Trust me, more on this later.

Canning pot- a wide, deep pan- be it dutch oven, pasta pot or canner intended for this purpose- basically what you want is a nice, sturdy pot that’s deep enough to cover your jars with about 2 inches of boiling water.
***You need a rack that will fit inside the pot so the jars don’t come in direct contact with the bottom of the vessel. I used one of those strainer inserts typically used in pasta pots. I was able to fit four pint-sized jars in there, though I did have boil-over. It’s a good idea to test your insert to make sure you can cover the jars with an adequate amount of water. Other things to use: circular metal trivet or they actually do make metal basket thingies for just this purpose.

Salsa to fill the jars- duh.

First:

• Wash all your jars, lids and bands in hot, soapy water and let dry.

• Fill your canning pot with water, drop the insert in and set it on to boil- go ahead and do this while you’re preparing the salsa as it’s going to take a while to come to a good, rolling boil.

Then, Make the Salsa
It’s a good idea to check out a recipe specifically for canning so you can get the acid proportion right. I consulted the “Traditional Salsa” recipe on freshpreserving.com but took liberties here and there with some of my ingredients. Check it out here!

After You’ve Got Salsa:

• Put all your delicious salsa into another big pot. You’re going to heat it up and let it simmer away for about 10 min or so.

***The goal is to have hot jars, hot lids and hot salsa all come together at once. Everything needs to be HOT.***

• While your salsa is heating, fill the metal baking dish with a few inches of water and set it across one of your stovetop burners. Let the water boil, then put your jars, upside down, into the boiling water. Toss the lids and bands in there, too. The steam will rise up into the jar, sterilizing it- though the most important part is to make sure the lip of the jars, lids and bands are boiled good and sterile.

• Sort of “burp” the jars every once in a while so they don’t star to bubble from beneath and tip over. Don’t worry, the jars are not going to explode in your face- just be careful.

• Once your jars have boiled for a good 5 min or so lift them out of the pan with the tongs and fill with salsa, leaving about ½ of space at the top. Work quickly—you want everything to stay as hot as possible.

• Be sure to wipe the rim of the jars with a paper towel so they’re free of salsa before setting the lids on, otherwise they won’t seal properly. Grab a band and hand-tighten the lid—yes, it will be hot, so use oven mits.

• Repeat until all your jars are full.

Final Steps:

• Since  your canning pot, complete with insert, is already boiling away and ready to go, as soon as the hot jars are filled with hot salsa and lidded, slip them into the hot canning bath where they will boil for 15 minutes.

• Remember to be sure water is covering the tops of the jars by about 2 inches.

• After the 15 minutes is up, carefully remove the jars with your tongs and set them aside on a tea towel to cool. Really soon after they leave the water bath you’ll begin to hear the “ping!” sound of the lids sealing. This is, of course, a sign that you have done things correctly. Congratulations!

• Repeat process until you’re out of salsa.

Your jars will be really damn hot for a while, so just leave them alone. Poke the tops- if there’s no movement, the seal has taken and your salsa is as good as gold for at least one year in the pantry.

From the recipe we used, we got seven pint jars of salsa, but we did reserve a good amount while it was still fresh, to enjoy in the meantime.

Tips from Mom:

• Have everything ready and at your fingertips BEFORE beginning the canning process. Once you get going, you’re not going to have time to stop and hunt around for your lids or tongs or whatever.

• Invest in what are known as “jar tongs” or “jar lifters”—wide metal tongs that easily grip jars, as opposed to your basic kitchen tongs, which tend to slip around.

• Use a canning funnel, which is just a wide-mouth funnel to make pouring the salsa into the hot jar a bit less messy.

Pros:
• There are few things in this world that are better than popping a jar of homemade salsa in the middle of January. Canning is one of the best ways to enjoy those fresh, homegrown ingredients straight from the garden to your kitchen anytime during the year.

• Makes great gifts, and when you explain how you grew everything in there people will be REALLY impressed.

• Satisfaction of a job well done!

• It’s really green- I mean, you grew it, you cooked it, you canned it. This salsa’s carbon footprint is really small, man.

Cons:
• It’s time consuming- set aside a whole Saturday for this- I mean it.

• It’s messy- your kitchen will almost certainly look like a horror-show took place there with tomato seeds and guts and skins everywhere, but it’s worth it.

As you can see, in my opinion, the pros far outweigh the cons when considering home canning. Sure, you could’ve spent that time watching some tube or getting drunk again, but why do that, when you can get drunk AND make salsa? Multi-tasking is the way of this new millennium, so embrace it already.

Enjoy!

Right about now my boyfriend and I are up to our ears in tomatoes, thanks to a very fruitful community garden plot. We recently decided to take our bounty, plus some peppers and onions we managed to grow, and whip up a big batch of homemade salsa for canning. It’s super simple, super tasty and definitely worth the effort—here’s how we did it! Ingredients:
• Pile o’ tomatoes, big ones for blanching and cherries for later
• Chiles- jalapenos, habanero, long reds, whatever you like and as much or as little as  you like
• Onion
• Garlic
• Cilantro
• Lime juice
• Salt
• Pepper
• Plain old white vinegar—***many canning recipes call for the addition of vinegar- this is to help boost the canned substance’s acidity, so it doesn’t go off on you too early. With things like salsa, especially, you can really achieve the level of acidity you need between the tomatoes and lime juice. For the big batch we made, we used maybe ¼ to ½ cup of lime juice and maybe 2-3 Tablespoons of vinegar. Use your best judgement.
Then:
• Blanch your tomatoes- core ‘em, score ‘em,

and throw ‘em in boiling water for 30 seconds to a couple minutes depending on what size they are.
When the skin starts coming away, pull them out and toss ‘em in an ice water bath.
When they’re cool, the skin should slide right off. This is messy, there is no way around it.
• Chop, blend, food process or otherwise incorporate your other salsific ingredients.
We threw the onions, garlic, peppers, herbs, seasoning, lime juice, vinegar and just a bit of olive oil in a blender and buzzed it until it was still a little chunky, but well combined.

• Gradually add the blanched, peeled tomatoes to the onion mix and buzz up a bit to combine. Don’t blend it too much, or you’re going to come out with nothing but a reddish puree.
• For texture, we left the cherry tomatoes raw and just sliced them in half and added them to the rest of the salsa after all the peeled tomatoes and onion mix was thoroughly integrated.

• Stir to combine the fresh cherry tomatoes with the rest of the tomato mixture.

If You Plan to Can:

• Put your salsa in a big pot, set it on the stove and heat until simmering. Then follow these steps to preserve your homemade salsa!

If You Want it Fresh:
• Simply store in a bowl covered with saran wrap or another air-tight container. Should keep for about a week.

I married a man who can cook, to the point where he subscribes to Bon Appetit. (Major score.)

He decided to surprise me recently by trying out some recipes from the latest edition, including zucchini fritters with green goddess dressing and shrimp, mango and avocado salad with sweet chili ginger vinaigrette.

I highly suggest you hightail it to Bon Appetit’s website and try these recipes for yourself.  What tasted like a four-star restaurant type of meal was cooked in well under an hour in the comfort of our kitchen.

The chili ginger vinaigrette on the salad was a little spicy for my taste, but very good, and I loved the combination of the shrimp, mango and avocado.

And the zucchini fritters, which basically entailed mixing zucchini and goat cheese lightly frying them in olive oil on the stove, were delish. And did I mention they were beer battered?

We dipped the fritters in green goddess dressing, which includes some light mayonnaise, anchovy paste, dill and sour cream. It apparently was very popular before ranch dressing was invented, and allegedly originated at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco in the 1920s.  It is, without a doubt, tasty.

This is a meal we’d (he’d?) definitely make again.

You may have heard the term “food porn”? For this concoction we need a new term. Maybe “food/beer porn”? It’s so luscious we aren’t sure it would fit anywhere else.

We saw the idea for an ice cream Lambic Float on theKitchn and it looked delicious, but we thought we would take this a step further and go all-out with decadent sweetness.

Lambic’s are available in raspberry, peach, cherry and black currant.

The combination was sweet and sour and delicious and we will be making this sweet treat again soon.

Ingredients:

Cherry Lambic beer
Vanilla bean ice cream
Cherries
Hershey’s shell topping

Chill the glass  (use a wide-mouth glass for better scooping) in the freezer, and scoop in one or two scoops of ice cream. Pour in about 1/2 cup of the Lambic. Put in a few cherries and then pour the shell topping on top. Get a spoon and enjoy!

You may have noticed, if you live anywhere in the continental United States, recently it’s been quite hot—unnaturally so here in the Mid-Atlantic. It’s the kind of weather that doesn’t just discourage cooking in your apartment kitchen, it practically forbids it.

Still, when you’re strolling through your neighborhood grocery and you spot some gorgeous, deep red-pink fillets of wild-caught Sockeye Salmon, you think “I could rationalize turning on my broiler for that.”

Add a cold bottle of Willowcroft Winery’s fine Albariño, and 45 minutes sweating over the stove seems a small price to pay for such a fine meal.

Albariño

The  2009 vintage comes from Loudoun County, VA’s, oldest functioning winery, and is one of the most exciting white wine releases I’ve tried in recent memory. It’s named for the grape used to grow it, commonly found in northwest Spain and Portugal—maybe why it’s such good pals with fish and shellfish. Albariño is aged in stainless steel and then transferred to oak barrels toward the end of its maturation.

The oak lends an interesting depth of flavor—it’s reminiscent of light summertime fruits—peach, nectarine, pear—but it’s also capable of standing up to pairings with strong flavors. It’s a bit slippery on the palate like a chardonnay, but with a sharp, tart kick.

Believe me, this wine is tasty enough to brave a 100-degree kitchen for. When you find the right food pairing for a certain wine, all sorts of wonderfully tasty things happen. The combination of the silky-sweet flesh of the salmon with the tart and mineral-y Albariño is a match made in heaven.

On the side we served spinach and cheese ravioli tossed with fresh tomatoes from our garden (and also a great friend to salmon), olives, feta cheese, fresh basil, salt and pepper.

Here’s a description of how the salmon was prepared, along with the rough recipe for the citrus/honey glaze we used.

-          Clean your salmon fillets (we made two good-sized ones), rinsing with water and patting dry with a paper towel. Make sure to feel carefully for leftover pin bones and remove any that are found.

-          Season with salt, black pepper and a little olive oil and stash in your fridge until about half an hour before you’re ready to cook.

-          Make the glaze- combine in a small food processor:
1-2 Tbsp. fresh lemon zest
1-2 cloves garlic
fresh thyme
3 or more Tbsp honey- we used raw Virginia honey and some thyme-infused honey our friends brought us from Greece. Regular honey will do fine, though.
salt and pepper

-          Buzz all this around until thoroughly combined. Stash in the fridge or let rest at room temperature until ready to use!

-          When you’re about half an hour out from broiling the fish, remove it from the fridge and brush the glaze equally and thoroughly on each fillet. Cover with plastic and set aside to let the fish come up to room temperature.

-          After the glaze has penetrated the fish, stick it under your broiler for 7-10 minutes. You’re shooting for an internal temperature of 130 degrees.

Meanwhile, you’ve put your pasta water on to boil, prepared a fresh sauce of chopped tomatoes, assorted olives, fresh herbs (basil, sage, thyme—whatever you like) and onions. Sautee the onions separately if you like a milder flavor, which I do, then combine that with the tomato mixture and cooked pasta and set aside until ready to serve. It doesn’t need to be piping hot, just sort of warm and wilted, maybe with a little crumbled feta cheese on top.

By now your salmon has rested, and viola! Place a pile of your pasta next to the salmon fillet, serve with crusty bread and, of course the Albariño.

You’ll find the wine is a fine companion both to the hot, starchy pasta and to the sweet salmon. It was refreshing without overwhelming the palate, yet cleansing enough that between sips the salmon tasted fresh all over again, and you were able to detect the many layers of flavors in the glaze—the sweet honey, tart lemon and herbaceous thyme.

Albariño runs $20 direct from the winery, maybe a little more expensive online or at the grocer.

We like buffalo anything quite a bit at our house, and we love us some pizza. So when I found this recipe a while back, I knew it was one that would be in our weekly meal rotation quite often, with some slight modifications. If you like buffalo-style chicken and you like pizza, you won’t be disappointed in this dish.

Here’s how we make our own version of buffalo chicken pizza. You need:

One pre-made pizza crust–we prefer a wheat crust, or a Boboli crust

One chicken breast cut into small pieces

1 tbsp olive oil

1/2 cup buffalo sauce

1/2 cup low-fat Kraft Three-Cheese Ranch dressing

1 1/2 cups shredded reduced-fat mozzarella cheese

Preheat the oven to the temperature your crust instructions dictate  (usually 425 degrees).

Put the buffalo sauce and the olive oil in a frying pan. Add chicken and heat until chicken is cooked.

Spread ranch dressing over the crust, then top with half of the mozzarella.  Then add the chicken pieces, and spoon some of the sauce from the chicken on to the pizza. Then top with the rest of the cheese.

Cook in the oven for about 15 minutes, then finish by putting the pizza under the broiler for a couple minutes.

Bonus: IPAs go great with this pizza. I like pairing it with Dogfish Head”s 60-Minute IPA.

I was with my parents recently shopping at Williams Sonoma and they were eying a pizza stone that’s specifically made for a grill. I immediately said, “don’t waste your money.” I’m sure it’s a very good product, but why not just cook the pizza directly on the grill? That’s what we do, learning only by trial and error, but no expensive cookware needed.

So, here is step-by-step, how to cook pizza on the grill:
Since we were making two pizza’s we added flour and split 8 oz of dough into 4 oz. balls:

Next using flour, roll out the dough to desired thickness:

After dough is rolled out, spray or brush both sides of dough with olive oil (we use Extra-Virgin).
Heat grill to 350 degrees.

Lay out dough evenly directly on grill for four minutes or until the top  bubbles up and bottom begins to brown.

Remove the crust from the grill, lightly browning only one side.

Add toppings.

Place the pizza back on the grill for about 10 minutes

Cook for 10 more minutes, keeping grill at 350 degrees

Click here to see the recipes we made and the Clipper City beers we paired with these pizza’s & get our recipe.

I should preface this post by saying that I know virtually nothing about beer and food pairing.

Last time we made grilled pizza (see  how-to grill pizza), we decided to try something new. Landon (my husband) picked out two beers and I chose pizza toppings we thought would complement those brews. We recently went to Clipper City Brewing so we so we decided to use a couple of the beers we picked up.

The pairing

Combo 1: Clipper City Hop3 IPA
I read that IPA goes well goat cheese, so I built the following recipe around that:

Veggie, goat cheese & prosciutto pizza
goat cheese
red sauce
sauteed baby bella mushrooms
spinach
red onion
balsamic glaze
prosciutto
mozzarella


Combo 2: Clipper City Red Sky Saison Ale
I read that Saison goes well with Old Bay, so I decided to come up with a Cajun inspired pie:

Cajun Pizza
red sauce
mozzarella
Andouille sausage
garlic
green pepper
red onion
crawfish tails
Old Bay

The results

Combo 1: The goat cheese pizza was divine and combined with the Hop3 the flavors became a divine experience. The flavors of the goat cheese, sauce, balsamic and vegetables seemed like it was tripled. The prosciutto got a lost a little bit though. It was nice for a varied texture, but I didn’t really notice the flavor at all. Which is very surprising since prosciutto is so salty.

Combo 2: First of all, the crawfish tails were a bad bad idea. We picked up frozen and they added a fishy taste that was not pleasant. I removed them all from pizza and while the fishy taste was mostly gone, I still noticed it a little. Other than that it was really good. The sausage was really flavorful and the beer seemed richer combined with the spicy ingredients. The Old Bay was a nice touch and I would like to make this pizza again without the crawfish.

Gabriel VB, Flickr

$15 for $30 worth of wine, cheese, charcuterie, & more at Veritas Wine Bar in Dupont Circle (Groupon DC)

What kind of wine will be served at Chelsea Clinton’s wedding? More details emerge (New York Times)

South Dakota wineries emerging (examiner.com)

Red wine ice cream (Mele Cotte)

– Cheers

Swamibu, Flickr

Everybody’s got to have cupcakes. We don’t know what it is, but cupcake specialty shops are popping up everywhere, and the Discovery Channel just debuted the television show DC Cupcakes on TLC.  (Ups to our friend Brian for his role in producing it!)

What can we say, they’re tasty.

If you find yourself craving one of these treats, here are some of the best places in the D.C.-area you can find them (Carvel even sells ice cream cupcakes!).

Hello, Cupcake: Located on Connecticut Avenue near Dupont Circle. In addition to regular cupcakes, they have a vegan and gluten-free selection. Try the de lime & de coconut flavor.

Cakelove: Seven locations in the D.C. area, including National Harbor, Silver Spring and U Street. So, it’s not specifically cupcakes and they tell you your tasty treat must sit for 20 minutes at room temperature before you can eat it. Get 5% off all your online orders. If you like chocolate, you’ll love the chocolate dainties.

Red Velvet Cupcakery: Locations in Penn Quarter and Dupont Circle. All we have to say is, yum. These are a treat and Red Velvet boasts top-notch ingredients like valrhona chocolate and European butter. Try the Devil’s food cupcake.

Georgetown Cupcake: Located in Georgetown and Bethesda. We’re sad to say we haven’t actually been here yet, but the shop has gotten so much hype – and we’ve heard so many good things from friends – that we have to believe it’s good. How can you go wrong with flavors like toffee crunch, salted caramel, lava fudge and ginger peach?

What are your favorite Washington, D.C.-area cupcake spots?