Garlic Scape Pesto is quite a recipe. Watch how eric makes it in this video:
Category: Cooking TV
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Smoking Salmon with an Electric Smoker – GF Video
My neighbors gave me an electric smoker, so I thought I’d try to smoke salmon with the smoker.
You can buy an electric smoker like the one I use here
Before smoking salmon, I suggest you brine it with this recipe here, and follow the instructions on how to dry the salmon after the brining it.
Another thing I learned is these electric smokers use wood chips, not wood chunks, and you shouldn’t put the wood so it is touching the electric heater element of the electric smoker. I keep the side vents closed for the most part, and use a oven thermometer probe to check the internal temperature of the smoking salmon.
Too high an internal temperature and the salmon is toast, literally, as you see in our how to smoke salmon video above! Using a smoker in cold weather can be challenge, as the cold air surrounding the smoker tends to drop the internal temp of the smoker. Do not use this smoker indoors or in a garage or basement!
Line caught wild salmon is best, but farmed salmon works too, so use what you got. Check the salmon for bones, called pin bones, and remove them with a needle nose pliers.
Here is the smoker I use, it works well, not too fancy:
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Tap maple trees with tin sap buckets : GF Video
A number of our neighbors tap maple trees to make maple syrup, here is a video about using sap buckets and taps.
Learn how to identify Sugar Maples trees, make sure you are tapping the right kind of maple trees with this neat tree identification book, Bark. The great thing about this book is that its based on bark identification, not leaf identification, because when you think about tapping trees, there aren’t any leaves on the trees, you know..
Here is the tree identification book we like to use:
Buy From An Indie Bookstore Here
Buy From Amazon Here
Watch all our maple syrup videos here on the site! -
Sullivan Bread in Holland
Caroline from Holland sent me an email with questions about the Sullivan Bread recipe, and my sister Tracy had some suggestions. Caroline then sent me these great picts of bread success. Its very cool that people in Holland watch Gardenfork.
Due to spam, comments have been turned off, please visit The Greenhouse to share your thoughts.
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Cherry Tomato Pasta Recipe : GF Video
This is a great recipe for all those cherry tomatoes you have at the end of the season. This dish is sort of a cherry tomato salad over pasta. I don’t think this dish needs cheese, but if you do, go ahead.
Cherry Tomato Pasta Recipe
3 pints of cherry tomatoes ( about 4 good handfuls )
Red Wine Vinegar
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 handful of Fresh Garden Herbs: oregano, chives, thyme, rosemary
1 lb spaghetti or other pasta shape you like. I use the thin spaghetti
Put the water on the stove to boil, go out to the garden and pick tomatoes.
Add pasta to pot and cook to taste.
While pasta is cooking, slice all the tomatoes in half, place in a bowl.
Chop the fresh herbs, add to tomatoes.
Add about 3 tablespoons of olive oil to the bowl
Add about 1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar
with your hand, mix the dressing into the tomatoes, and squish some of the tomatoes at the same time, so their juices come out and mingle with the oil and vinegar. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Put colander into a serving bowl, place in sink. When pasta is cooked, pour pasta into colander. [ the hot water will warm the serving bowl as it drains ]
Remove colander and drain hot water from serving bowl. Put pasta in the serving bowl and pour tomatoes over pasta.
©2007 eric rochow all rights reserved
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No Knead Bread made famous by Mark Bittman – GF Video
I’ve been making the No Knead Bread, invented by Jim Lahey and made famous by Mark Bittman, and this time I used 1 cup of all purpose flour, 1 cup whole wheat flour, 1 cup bread flour. All King Arthur brand flours. Worked well. Not a lot of rise, but it was cold in the house this weekend.
Sullivan Bakery Bread, The No Knead Bread Recipe, the Gardenfork version
I’ve made this bread about 20 times now, and it comes out great every time. I’ve learned a few things doing this. It really helps that the dough be in a warm place during the long rise time. I let it sit overnight, so I bring it up to the bedroom, as the rest of the house cools down at night ( thanks to our programmed thermostats ).
A viewer emailed me to say that you can also put the dough in the oven and leave the oven light bulb turned on, this will keep it warm enough as well. You don’t have to turn on the oven itself, just the oven light.
3 cups all purpose flour. I use King Arthur brand flour.
1/4 teaspoon instant yeast
1 tablespoon salt
Cornmeal, preferably coarse ground.
Mix together flour, yeast, and salt in a large bowl. Add 1 1/2 cups of warm water ( about 100 degrees ).
Mix with a spatula. The dough will look like it needs more water. It doesn’t. Mark Bittman has the best word to describe it, the dough will look “shaggy”
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place in a warm spot for about 12 hours. You can let it rise longer if you want. The dough will have a good amount of bubbles in it.
Get out two large cutting boards.
Flour a large cutting board and turn the dough out onto the board with the spatula.
Put a clean towel on the other board and dust the towel with cornmeal.
Take the dough, dust it with a bit of flour and fold it over on itself front to back and side to side.
Then turn the ball of dough so the folds are on the bottom and place in the center of the towel dusted with cornmeal.
Fold the towel ends over the dough and let rise for about 2 hours. The dough should roughly double in size. The dough will not rise up a lot, but will grow outward on the board.
30 minutes before its time to bake the bread, put your dutch oven in the oven with the cover on, preheat the oven to 450 F.
When the dough has risen and the oven is preheated, remove the dutch oven, put it on a wire rack next to the dough on the towel which is on the cutting board.
Slide your hand under the towel and dough, lift up the dough and flip it over into the dutch oven. What you want is the folds of the dough, -what was on the bottom of the dough during the rise – to be on top when it sits in the dutch oven.
Be careful doing this as the dutch oven is very hot.
The dough never lands perfectly in the middle of the dutch oven. I use a wooden spatula to gently nudge it toward the center, pushing down any part of the dough that may be sticking to the side of the dutch oven.
Cover the dutch oven and place in oven for 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, remove cover, the dough should look like bread and be starting to brown. Remove the cover and bake for another 15 minutes.
The bread should now look like great bread. The crust should be golden brown. You can bake it longer if need be.
When done, remove bread from dutch oven and cool on a wire rack.
You can double this recipe, but be careful with the water, add not quite twice the amount of water, you can always add more.
NEW INFO
my house is quite cool in the winter, and i remember someone suggesting putting the dough in the oven with the oven turned off, but the oven light turned on. so first I had to finally fix the oven light in our 50’s era propane stove salvaged from a Vagabond camper trailer. I fixed the light, and left the dough in the oven overnight with the light on.
Being the gadget geek, I put in my temperature probe to see at what temperature the dough would maintain. It stays at about 78 F. Great.
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The Blueberry Yogurt Pancakes GF Cooks Video
I woke up and decided to make pancakes, so I woke up our guest, Charlie, to run the camera, and …
Here’s our version of simple home made pancakes:
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tbsp sugar
pinch salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup yogurt [ you can vary the ratio of yogurt to milk ]
1 cup milk
2 eggs
1 cup +/- blueberries [add more if you like more]
oil or butter for pan
Heat up the griddle
mix the sugar, flour, and baking soda in a bowl.
Put the yogurt and milk into another bowl, beat in 2 eggs.
[ you can vary the amount of milk and yogurt to your liking, you may need to add more milk if the batter is too thick]
Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, don’t overstir. add milk if the batter is too thick.
Add in blueberries, give a quick stir.
Grease the griddle and pour your pancakes. turn them then the pancakes bottoms are to your liking.
© 2007 eric rochow
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How to make Basil Pesto & Eric’s Pesto Recipe
My way of making pesto is by taste. I’ll give you the general outlines here, and you should experiment.
approx 2 cups of basil leaves, stems removed, washed and dried
approx 1/2 cup – 1 cup virgin olive oil
1/2 cup pine nuts or walnuts
1 cup + coarsely grated Parmesan or Roman cheese, the higher the quality, the better.
1-3 cloves of garlic
In a food processor, pour in enough oil to coat the bottom to 1/4 inch deep.
Add in some of the basil leaves and process until roughly chopped
add more leaves, and drizzle some oil on top, process.
repeat until all the leaves are chopped.
toast nuts on the stovetop until fragrant, not burnt
add nuts, cheese, and 1 garlic clove, ( minced or crushed ) and process to desired consistency. You may have to add more olive oil.
Taste and adjust. You may want to add salt.
Pesto will keep a few days in the fridge, its best if the top has a covering of olive oil to keep it fresh. It tastes great on bread, even on corn.
©2007 all rights reserved
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Eric’s Rhubarb Jam Recipe with Canning How-to GF Video
Here’s is my rhubarb jam recipe:
Part 2:
Wow. what fun it was to make and can our own rhubarb jam.Rhubarb Jam Recipe
5 cups of chopped rhubarb
2 cups of sugar
1 cup of water
2 to 4 packets of unflavored gelatin
optional:
1 carton of strawberries, chopped
1 20 oz can of crushed pineapple
zest of one orange, or whole orange slices
Place all ingredients except gelatin in a large pot, and cook for 15-20 minutes, until rhubarb has broken down to your liking . Turn off heat, and add gelatin. How much gelatin depends on how thich you like your jam. More gelatin means a thicker jam.
Can jam according to canning instructions that come with your canning jars.
recipe ©2007 eric rochow
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BBQ in Brattleboro, VT
Learn more about this and other fun stuff at our viewer forum, The Greenhouse. Comments have been turned off here, but you can post your thoughts, pictures and videos at The Greenhouse.
My friend Eric Skiff went to Top of the Hill Grill in Brattleboro, VT and shot a video in the Gardenfork BBQ series style. It’s great and flattering. Please check it out here.
I’ve been to Brattleboro, there is a coop restaurant there, The Common Ground, its good.
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How to make Carbonara Recipe
Carbonara is a really simple dish, the trick is to make sure the eggs do not become scrambled eggs.
6 ounces of thick cut or slab bacon
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups grated Parmesan cheese. do not buy pre-grated, it doesn’t tast great.
1 box ( 1 lb ) spaghetti ( i prefer thin spaghetti noodles )
Set of pasta pot of water to boil on the stove.
Cut the bacon into little squares about 1/2″ square. Cook the bacon until crisp. Drain off all the fat except about 1 tablespoon.
Beat the 2 eggs with the cheese in a small bowl. Alternative: you can add 1/4 cup of cream to the egg/cheese mixture if you like.
Put the serving bowl in the sink, and place the colander in it.
When pasta is done, pour into colander that is sitting in the serving bowl.
Remove colander and pour hot water out of serving bowl. Careful, use oven mitts.
Pour egg – cheese mixture into serving bowl and immediately add noodles, toss once and add the bacon with its 1 tblsp of fat.
Toss to coat, add pepper and salt to taste ( Traditionally, this is served with a lot of pepper )
Serve immediately.
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How to boil maple syrup GF Video
Despite a wonderful head cold, i spent a large part of the weekend with my friend Bill at his sugar house boiling maple sap. Making maple syrup is one of my favorite things to do in late winter, and in this video Bill shows us how to boil maple sap to make maple syrup
{ bill’s farm is also where we have some of our beehives, you can see them in the Beginning Beekeeping Videos }
T
Check out our other Maple Syrup Videos:
Click here to watch a video I made about our other friend’s sugar shack in the next town.
How to tap maple trees for sap Priscilla shows us how to tap sugar maple trees
One error I see people do is to tap maple trees that are not sugar maples, there is a difference. Consult a good tree identification book, like this one called Bark: A Field Guide to Trees of the Northeast
, which is handy when identifying trees in winter, it has lots of pictures of tree bark.Do you tap your trees? How do you boil your sap? I plan on doing it myself this winter, and am deciding between using tubing or buckets. What are your thoughts on buckets or tubing lines? Let us know below, thanks.
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Creme Brule the gardenfork.tv way
Creme Brule’ is easy, and tastes great. Plus its really fun to use new tools, readily available from your hardware store to make the burnt sugar crust. Yum.
Note: the first part of this show is shot in the dark on purpose. watch and learn.
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How to season cast iron pots / cookware – GF Video
A trip to the local farm store yields a box of cast iron cookware. Here’s how to season cast iron. Note, after watching this video, watch the newer one I made here about how to season cast iron, thx!
Seasoning cast iron is not rocket science, just watch our how to season cast iron video here and you’ll get the Eric way to season cast iron. One note: I now suggest using flax oil to season cast iron, its much better than vegetable shortening for the job. You can find flax seed oil in the refrigerated section of health food stores and places like Whole Foods.
For heavily rusted cast iron, aka how to clean rusty cast iron, watch this GF TV video on removing rust from cast iron.
Next you’ll want to know how to clean your cast iron. The basic rule is to avoid soap. If the cast iron is seasoned properly, just about everything will clean off with hot water and a clean sponge. i have a dish sponge just for cast iron, i took a sharpie and wrote ‘ cast iron’ on the sponge to get the point across to everyone about that.
You’ll be surprised at how easily stuff cleans off a seasoned cast iron pan. I do avoid cooking scrambled eggs in cast iron, for that I use a non-stick pan, works much better.
Let us know your cast iron seasoning suggestions below: -
Ginger Ice Cream, how to and recipe
Ginger Ice Cream Recipe
2 cups of milk
fresh ginger grated to taste
4 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup cream
ginger cookies
The night before put the insulated ice cream container in the freezer.
Heat the milk with the grated ginger in a saucepan to about 160F, to steep the ginger flavor into the milk.
Whisk together the egg yolks and sugar until light yellow
Add the warm milk to the egg/sugar mixture slowly.
Heat this mix to about 170F, stirring regularly. The mix should start to thicken slightly.
Take off the heat and add in the 1 cup cream. put in a metal bowl.
Wrap ginger cookies in plastic wrap and Crunch up with a rolling pin. Stir into ice cream mix.
Place in freezer or a bowl of ice to cool down to about 40F.
Pour into insulated ice cream container and process according to the maker’s directions. I turn mine on for 30 minutes. If you have an outdoor space and its winter, run the machine outdoors.
After it has been processed, put in the freezer to harden.
Homemade ice cream can be kept in the freezer in an airtight container. I’ve found it best to place plastic wrap right on the surface of the ice cream, then seal the container.
recipe ©2006 Eric Gunnar Rochow
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How to carve a turkey and how to make gravy
We had dinner at Chris and Cheryl’s house on Thanksgiving. Amazing food made by amazing people. All we had to do is show up. Nice.
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White bean soup with kale recipe
White beans, be they navy beans, yankee beans, great northern beans, are great in soup. This is my really simple fast recipe for white beans. This can be cooked with canned beans or dry beans. Dry beans take longer, but if you have time, great. I use a pressure cooker to cook my dry beans.
Being a strong proponent of the KISS [keep it simple stupid] theory of life, this soup is a charter member. Beans, onions, garlic, olive oil – cook and you are done.
The version we do here is dressed up a bit with cheese rinds and oregano, but again, it doesn’t need this to taste great on a fall evening.
White Bean Soup
Bag of White Beans or a large can of beans
1 onion, chopped
Chopped Garlic
Options:
Chicken or vegetable stock
Cheese rinds
Oregano, Marjoram, Rosemary, Sage
Pesto
If you have dry beans, cook them and save the cooking water.
Saute the onion until golden clear.
Add the beans, and bring to a simmer.
If desired, add seasonings and cheese rinds.
If you have the time, allow the beans to simmer so the flavorings work thru the soup.
If not, after 10 minutes, its done.
For a decadent flourish, add a splash of olive oil or pesto to each bowl just before serving.
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Broccoli and Anchovies over Pasta
OK, one here for the fork part of garden + fork. Another recipe from Jamie Oliver’s Happy Days with the Naked Chef. Real simple to make, and in the time it takes to bring the water to boil and cook the pasta, you are finished.
Anchovies have become a favorite in our house. I have to admit I had an aversion to them for years, but they are great, and healthy for you too. They cook down into little bits of nothing and give off a great flavor.
We are improving on the lighting in the kitchen, so you can at least see my face in most of this episode. More improvements coming.
A viewer suggested we ask you all what you’d like to see us cook. Send us an email by clicking on the link on the left side of the page, tell us what to cook.
