GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Category: Cooking TV

Garlic Mustard Plant Identification & Foraging : GF Video

Garlic Mustard is an edible wild plant food. Here is video on how to cook garlic mustard, we made a great pesto recipe. You can forage for the leaves, but you can also eat the flowers and the seeds.

Other names for Garlic Mustard are Jack-by-the-hedge, Poor Man’s Mustard, Garlic Root, Hedge Garlic, Jack-in-the-bush, Penny Hedge, Sauce-alone.

This wild mustard is a non-native invasive plant, its just plain bad to have it growing in North America. It takes over the growing areas of trilliums, bloodroot, and other slow growing woodland and hedgerow plants, taking up sunlight, nutrients, water. Deer do not eat Garlic Mustard, btw. When you harvest it, be sure to remove the entire plant, including the roots. I bring along a garden trowel or forked digging tool to remove the whole plant and roots.

The plant is a biennial, it grows over 2 years, the first year the plant is a low to the ground rosette, the second year the plant grows up and flowers. The leaves are spade shaped with ridges and about 2″ across. After the plant flowers, the seed heads are upright, they look like small string bean pods, about 2″ high and green. You want to remove the plants before they go to seed, as spreading the seed is a bad thing.

So until we eradicate this mustard green from North America, lets enjoy as what I call ‘free food’. In other words, yet another plant we call a weed yet is actually a nutritious plant that should land on our table. According to Wikipedia, mustard plants in general are a rich source of vitamins A, C, & K. I didn’t really think about the vitamin value, I just think its always good to have more greens in your diet. Maybe we can add this to some sort of power smoothie? What do you think? Let me know below.

May 4, 2012
Tap Maple Trees to Make Maple Syrup How To – GF Video

Tapping maple trees to make maple syrup in this DIY video. We tap our Sugar Maple trees to collect sap in preparation for making maple syrup. This is a DIY low tech low volume method of tapping some trees in your yard or perhaps a neighbor’s field. Several of my neighbor’s have sugar shacks complete with large evaporators and huge piles of firewood, some use traditional sap buckets to collect sap, others use plastic lines and taps.

For my yard, I went with plastic taps and lines, they are not expensive, and I used the food grade plastic buckets from my homebrew beer kit to collect the sap. After we collected the sap, we boiled it down, and we’ll post a video about that soon.

The general rule of how many taps to put in a tree, according to the Conn. DEP is 1 tap for a 12″ diameter tree ( 38″ in circumference ), 2 taps for 18″ diameter or larger tree ( 56″ in circumference )

The holes you drill for the taps should be 1.5″ deep with a 5/16″ bit. If you are tapping trees that were tapped previously, pay attention to the previous tap holes. New taps should be 6″ left or right of an old tap hole, and 12″ above or below the old tap hole.

Sugar Maple sap needs to be stored at 38F degrees or cooler, ideally you will boil the sap the day you collect it. If the sap has turned milky and foamy, it has gone bad.

Do you tap sugar maple trees? What are some tips you can share with us below? Thanks for watching!

Here is the tree identification book we like to use:

Buy From An Indie Bookstore Here
Buy From Amazon Here

April 16, 2012
5 Minute Chocolate Cake In A Mug Recipe : GF video

5 Min chocolate cake mug cake is a simple easy recipe to make quick chocolate cake in your microwave. mix the chocolate cake recipe, microwave for 2 minutes, and in 2 minutes you have chocolate cake.

Here is the 5 minute chocolate cake recipe:

3 TBSP of vegetable oil

1 egg

3 TBSP milk, or water – milk is better

2 TBSP sugar

3 TBSP flour

2 TBSP cocoa

2-3 TBSP chocolate chips

Pinch of salt

Dash of vanilla

In a pyrex 2 cup container or microwave proof mug, mix the wet ingredients together, then add the dry ingredients to the wet batter. Mix together, but don’t whip it, just mix it.

Place in a microwave on High for 2 minutes. Turn the cake out onto a plate, or if its in a mug, you can dust with powdered sugar. Let it cool a bit before eating, its hot.

Do you have a 5 minute microwave cake recipe? let us know below:

April 5, 2012
How To Poach Eggs GF.TV

Learn here how to poach eggs with Eric’s simple poached egg recipe. Poaching eggs is a healthy way to cook eggs with no oil, you cook the eggs in water, hence the name, poached eggs.

A properly cooked poached egg has a runny yolk, i think, but not too runny. You have to experiment with the timing to get the perfect poached egg. There are all sorts of methods to poach an egg, but I think the method we show you in our poached egg video works best. Its not a lot of work, you don’t have to have a fancy egg poacher pan, and it works.

Poached eggs are great on toast, but people also poached eggs for fancy dished like Eggs Benedict, and the Middle Eastern dish Shakshouka, in which eggs are poached in a tomato sauce. I’ve seen a few different versions of this, and its on the to do list in the GardenFork kitchen.

Eggs in general are just plain healthy for you. They are a great source of protein, they keep for a long time in your fridge, and they cook up easy. Eggs contain all the amino acids you need, and are a good brain food. Pasture or free range eggs, with the chickens being the free-er the better, are the best eggs to get, i think.

How do you poach eggs? let us know below:

March 25, 2012
How to make homemade pasta GF TV Video

Home made pasta, aka fresh pasta, we show you how to make a home made pasta recipe in the GF cooking video. Pasta from scratch is not hard, there’s just a few steps to get it right. Homemade pasta tastes different from store bought pasta, and when you make it yourself, there are infinite variations possible. neat.

There’s a good chance you have a pasta machine in the basement, an xmas gift from a while back that you never got to, so you’ve got the equipment. If you don’t have a pasta machine, check out these pasta machines
or the links at the bottom of this article.

My technique for making home made pasta is based on a method Jamie Oliver shows us in his book, Cook with Jamie: My Guide to Making You a Better Cook
– a book I really like, BTW.

Home Made Pasta Recipe ©2012 Eric Rochow

100 Grams all purpose or Italian “OO” flour

1 egg

For homemade pasta, you can use either all purpose flour or an italian flour labeled “OO”, i believe its a finer grind flour, but if you can’t find it, all purpose flour works fine.

The ratio that I’ve found works best is 100 grams of flour to 1 egg. If you are making fresh pasta for 4 people, I’ve found 300 grams of flour and 3 eggs works well.

Put the flour and eggs in a food processor, and pulse until the flour comes together and looks like small pebbles.

Dump the pasta dough mixture onto a floured board, and collect the flour into a ball.

Now knead the dough by stretching the dough out and folding it over on itself. Its best to watch our how to video to see this. Knead for 5-8 minutes

The dough is kneaded when you press your finger lightly into the dough and the dough fills out the dimple you’ve made again, the dough bounces back.

Shape the dough into a rectangle, wrap in plastic wrap, and put in the fridge for at least 30 minutes, longer is better.

Take the dough out of the fridge and cut into square pieces about 3″ x 3″, 3/4″ thick. how many pieces you will have depends on how much flour and eggs you mixed together.

Take one of the dough squares and run it through your pasta machine at its widest width. Fold the dough back over on itself in thirds, like folding a letter into an envelope.

You will now run the dough through each width setting on the machine, holding the dough so the folds are on the sides. You may need to flour the dough when rolling it through the machine to keep it from sticking.

After you have run the dough through the machine at its smallest width, take the dough and fold it back on itself until it is about 4″ wide or so, you want a width that is small enough so you can run the dough through the machine again.

Run the dough the machine again, starting at the widest width and progressing through to the narrowest setting. Note: some machines have a real narrow final width, you may not want to get the dough that thin, it depends on what kind of pasta you want to make, and how thick you want it to be.

You can cut the dough in half if it gets too difficult to work with. And you can flour the dough as needed.

You are now ready to run the pasta dough through the die cutters to make various kinds of pasta, or you can hand cut it on a board, or you can make ravioli with the dough. I’ve found it works best to let the pasta dough rest under a towel for 10 minutes or longer before running it through the pasta cutters, you may need to flour the dough again, you want it quite dry.

The flour you use for dusting can be whole wheat or semolina or just regular flour. I’ve used whole wheat thinking it gives a bit of a nutty taste to the pasta, but maybe i’m just fooling myself.

Once you cut your pasta, you can drop it into boiling water or let it dry on a dowel or broomstick set between two chairs. Fresh pasta can take 3 minutes to cook, or 8 minutes, it all depends, you’ll have to keep an eye on it.

February 10, 2012
How to Cook Steak Perfect : GF video

Learn how to cook the perfect steak in this steak cooking video we made. Simple steak recipe that uses a frozen steak, so you don’t have to wait to defrost it. Neat. If you are looking for the answer to how to cook the perfect steak, watch this GardenFork video, you will be amazed at this easy steak recipe.

This steak recipe video was inspired by Melissa Clark of the NY Times and Nathan Myhrvold, author of the 5 volume Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking. They made a video on the NY Times site showing this method, and I wanted to share it with you all and put the GardenFork spin on how to cook steak.
For this steak cooking method, I suggest a propane torch from the hardware store, don’t buy one of those little butane torches at the cooking supply store, buy the real thing. Its also great for making Creme Brule, see our how to make Creme Brule video here.

We have also made a video about cooking steak sous vide, which is also a great way to cook steak and is part of the modernist cuisine movement. Our version of sous vide cooking uses a beer cooler, low tech but it works, much like a propane tech is low tech but it works.
I have a copy of the Modernist Cuisine At Home and really like it. If you want the full set, you can get that below as well.
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Tell us your steak recipes, hacks and hints below, love to hear from you all, eric.

January 25, 2012
Homemade Brick Pizza Oven Video

Build this homemade brick pizza oven in your backyard with recycled used clay bricks and a recycled metal mattress frame. And the pizza oven is portable! You can assemble this in 20 minutes, make homemade pizzas, then take it apart and store it. Most backyard pizza ovens are big and permanent, this homemade brick oven is great because its easy to break down again until your next pizza baking party.Here are the pizza oven plans shown in photos, our oven uses used clay brick and 24″ angle iron we cut from a old bed frame. You have to heat up the oven for an hour to get it up to temperature. The brick pizza oven has to be on sturdy sawhorses or cement blocks. We used cement tile board to insulate the plywood table from the heat of the brick oven. Stuart, author of the Bread Oven book, emailed us, cautioning that he felt the 2 layers of cement tile board was not enough insulation to keep the plywood from scorching, he suggests a base of cement, as shown on his blog here.

Clean the bricks that will be used for the floor of the oven, that’s where your pizza dough will be sitting. We didn’t have a thermometer, but I’m told the floor of the brick oven can reach 700F. We also found its good to keep some of the coals in the front part of the oven, so the heat is more even. We had to turn the pizza once during baking to have it cook evenly.

I have a few ideas for more modifications, which we will post later on. Keep children and animals away from this and all fires, this is for adults.

base of pizza oven

building walls of pizza oven

pizza oven roof using angle iron

Backyard Brick Pizza Oven

More Pizza Oven Plan Photos Here

Watch all of our pizza oven and pizza dough recipes here

Our backyard pizza oven is based on one in the book Bread , Earth, & Fire by Stuart Silverstein. Stuart’s book has a bunch of plans and info on building backyard ovens, go buy it here. it is available as an ebook or paperback. Read Stuart’s blog here.

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January 15, 2012
Christmas Sugar Cookie Recipe Video GF.TV

Sugar cookies are an easy christmas cookie recipe, even I can make these holiday cookies, maybe. Watch here and learn how to make sugar cookies for Christmas and the holidays.

Universal Sugar Cookie Recipe

This sugar cookie recipe is based on one Chris Kimball wrote about, saying its the universal recipe used by almost every baker.

1/2 cup white sugar

1 stick butter ( 1/2 cup ) slightly softened, but not mushy.

1 egg

1 1/2 cups flour

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon coarse salt

dash of vanilla

optionals:

chopped walnut, espresso powder, cocoa powder, almonds, etc.

Preheat oven to 375F

Put the stick of butter and the sugar in your food processor. You can also use an electric mixer, but I don’t have one right now, so the food processor works well for me.

Turn the food processor on to medium speed to mix the sugar and butter together, then add the 1 egg and vanilla, mix it in. The mixture should be lumpy, not super smooth.

Mix together all the dry ingredients – flour, baking soda, salt, – and then add these to the food processor butter mixture.

Run the food processor until the mixture starts to form into a ball.

Turn our the dough onto a floured board and divide the dough into two equal pieces.

Roll each piece of dough into a log shape about 1 1/2 inches in diameter.

Wrap these dough logs in plastic wrap and put in the fridge for one hour.

Using knife or pastry blade, slice off 1/4″ thick circles from the dough logs, place on cookies sheets with parchment paper.

Bake at 375F for about 8 minutes. you want the edges to be starting to brown, but not dark.

Cool on a wire rack and eat as soon as possible. They taste great when warm.

What is your sugar cookie recipe, your favorite addition to sugar cookies? Let us know below

December 21, 2011
Eggnog Recipe How To Video GF.TV

This eggnog recipe is for classic eggnog, which is a bit different than the eggnog one buys at the store. Eggnog, is traditionally a milk drink that has egg, spices, and a bit of alcohol in it. Commercial eggnog has thickeners in it.

The recipe for Eggnog is pretty simple, the variations come in what spices one puts in the recipe, and what kind of alcohol is added to the drink. I find most people put too much alcohol in the eggnog, most times I drink eggnog without any alcohol in it, but if there is liquor in the drink, i like just a bit to give it a warmth.

Here is the GardenFork.TV recipe ©2011 all rights reserved

4 egg yolks from the freshest eggs possible

2 tablespoons powdered sugar ( regular sugar is ok )

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

4 cloves, crushed with a mortar/pestle

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

3 cups of milk

1 cup of heavy cream

Small amount of Rum, Brandy, Bourbon, Whiskey

Separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs, reserve the egg whites.

Mix the egg yolks with the spices, be sure to crush the cloves as best you can.

Pour the milk and cream into the egg/spice mixture.

Whip the egg whites until the can stand up a bit, you want a lot of air in the egg whites.

Pour the egg whites into the milk mixture.

Add alcohol sparingly, a few teaspoons at at time until the flavor works for you.

Put in the fridge for at least an hour to allow the flavors to meld.

Serve in small glasses – mugs with some cinnamon sprinkled on top.

©2011 Eric Rochow all rights reserved.

December 11, 2011
How to make Sauerkraut Kinda Sorta – GF TV

We made a sauerkraut how-to video today. Fermenting green or red cabbage into sauerkraut is an easy recipe to make, and the possibilities are endless. Fermentation and fermented foods are on the rise, with their probiotic organisms and all around healthy food reputation. Making sauerkraut should be on the to do list of all urban homesteaders, and i imagine most homesteaders already make sauerkraut.

Inspired by Daniel Gastieger, author of Yes You Can! And Freeze and Dry It, Too, we make a simple sauerkraut recipe that is the basis for all sorts of combinations. Daniel was on GardenFork Radio, you can hear his interview here.

If your idea of sauerkraut is that greyish stuff you see in the store, try making sauerkraut yourself. Take red or green cabbage, or a mix, add salt and go from there.

Basic Sauerkraut Recipe

this is based on Daniel’s Yes You Can! And Freeze and Dry It, Too book.

1 head of green or red cabbage

pickling or kosher salt

Glass, plastic, or ceramic fermentation container

Remove the outer leaves from your cabbage, just the dinged up ones.

Chop up your cabbage, you can do this by hand or use the food processor to coarsely grate the cabbage.

Put the cabbage into a clean large bowl. Add a teaspoon of salt for each pound of cabbage.

Use your hands to mix the salt into the cabbage, you want to crush and crinkle the cabbage.

Put the cabbage into a fermentation container, mash the cabbage down and put a clean plate or something similar on top of the cabbage to keep the cabbage down in the container.

Cover the top of the container with a plastic grocery bag and put the container in a dark cool area.

Check the sauerkraut after 24 hours, there should be enough brine to cover the top of the cabbage. If there is not, boil a quart of water, add to it 1.5 tablespoons of salt. let the salt water cool, the top off the sauerkraut so the cabbage is covered.

Ferment the sauerkraut for at least 5 days, you can go a month if you want to. any mold that forms should be skimmed off.

When you are happy with the fermentation, put the sauerkraut in a clean closed container in the fridge. ©2011 all rights reserved

December 4, 2011
How to cook a roast turkey or chicken GF TV

Baking a roast turkey or cooking a roast chicken is not hard. Our recipe for baking a turkey is a classic with an Eric spin on it. Mayonnaise.

GardenFork.TV Roast Turkey Recipe How-To

Buy the best turkey you can afford. The uber-organic ones are pretty pricey, I found a mid-range fresh turkey at the local chain store.

Remove the neck and giblets from the turkey, and rinse the turkey inside and out. Place on a platter in the fridge for a day. This dries out the bird, which I think is a good thing .

A few hours before roasting, turn the bird upside down in a roasting rack, and slide an ice pack under each breast. Keep the bird in the fridge until ready.

When ready to roast the turkey, preheat your oven to 425F.

Use a medium sized jar of grocery store mayonaise, 1/2 cup mustard, and a large handful of herbs all mixed together. The herbs can be thyme, parsley, rosemary, oregano, marjoram, etc.

Spread the mayonnaise-mustard-herb mixture over the skin of the bird, also coat the interior of the bird. If you like, you can also lift up the skin of the breast and slid the mix under the skin. A rubber spatula works well for this.

Put a thermometer in the thigh of the bird, and place it on a rack in the oven.

Roast at 425F for 30-45 minutes, until the skin is nicely browned, then turn down the oven temp to 325, roast for another 45-50 minutes. The USDA temp for cooked turkey is 165F. I usually pull the turkey out when it is 160F, as the temp will continue to rise.

When the bird is done, pull it out, cover it with foil and let it rest for 2o minutes, then carve. yum.

Tell us your secret to great baked turkey or chicken below:

November 21, 2011
Toad In A Hole Recipe in a Outdoor Cast Iron Dutch Oven – GF Video
A Toad In A Hole recipe cooked outdoors, how cool is that? Watch the video and read on for the recipe and thoughts.

Here’s an Toad In A Hole recipe from the UK that we cook in our cast iron dutch oven outdoors. You can cook this in your kitchen, but its more fun to use this using fireplace cooking, outdoor cooking, or campfire cooking. Perfect for those urban homesteaders who want to take their cast iron outside, build a fire, and cook comfort food. We were introduced to this dish by our friends Barbara and Chris ( who are English ) and visited us at our CT house. Chris made this for us one day. Toad in a Hole is supposed to be for dinner, but I think its great for breakfast, especially after a night out imbiding.

I changed this up a bit from the standard by adding cheddar cheese, which seemed perfectly acceptable seeing that Cheddar Cheese is from England, and cheese tastes good with eggs already, so why not mix them into the recipe?

I make this recipe in a dutch oven, and its super fun to bake the Toad In A Hole outdoors. In the cooking video, we used charcoal to heat the cast iron dutch oven, but you can make this in a fireplace or in a campfire as well.

Want to bake Banana Bread the same way? Watch our video here.

Buy a Dutch Oven here, and an chimney charcoal starter. This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but I earn a commission from. Thx!
Toad In A Hole Recipe in a Outdoor Cast Iron Dutch Oven – GF Video

Recipe Type: Dinner

Cuisine: English

Author: Eric Rochow

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 30 mins

Total time: 45 mins

Serves: [url:1][img:1]

Making Toad In A Hole in a Dutch Oven outdoors is really fun. Go make this and let me know how it came out.
Ingredients

4 sausages sliced in two and then halved. I used sweet italian sausage from our local butcher, but most any sausage you like will work.

1 cup of flour – all purpose works fine, but use what you’ve got.

1 tablespoon coarse salt

Herbs of your choice, rosemary, chives, oregano, tarragon, whatever you have and like, chopped coarsely

1 cup milk

3 eggs – i’m a big fan of local eggs, so try to get some, help out your local farmers.

2 – 3 tablespoons of good mustard, brown, spicy, deli – whatever you like.

1 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese
Instructions

Fire: This recipe takes about a chimney starter full of charcoal. we used about 10 charcoal briquettes on the bottom of the cast iron to start the cooking. if you are cooking this in a fireplace or campfire, be careful not to get the dutch oven too hot.

Take the sausages that have been cut in half and then sliced open lengthways and put them in the dutch oven to brown.

While the sausaged are browning, take the other charcoal or wood coals and pile some on the lid of the dutch oven to preheat it.

Beat the 3 eggs together, then to it the flour and salt and milk and herbs.

When the sausages are browned on both sides, pour the egg batter mixture into the dutch oven and cover.

Place more coals on top of the dutch oven and bake for 30 minutes. If it smells like it is burning, open the cover and check. you may have to move the dutch oven to a cooler part of the fire, or remove some briquettes.

The dish is done when the batter is yellow with brown patches, you will know when its done. It will smell great.
Notes

Use a chimney starter to start the charcoal briquettes. You can also use chunk charcoal, but the square ones are easier.

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October 3, 2011
Dutch Oven Banana Bread Recipe – Campfire Cooking – GF Video
Dutch oven banana bread recipe baked in a campfire or using charcoal, nice right?. Either way it tastes like the instant comfort food that it is. Watch the video and then read the recipe below.

Head up: I now have 4 dutch ovens, and all are well seasoned at this point. You can see our how to season cast iron video here. But I’ve never used a dutch oven for what they were probably originally designed for, cooking over a campfire. So today we use the cast iron dutch oven for what it is for, cooking outdoors. Watch and learn how to bake with fire.

How to make the dutch oven banana bread recipe

Whether for campfire cooking or backyard cooking, the dutch oven comes thru as a great pot for baking. Today we are going to learn how to use the dutch oven you have to bake or cook food outdoors, using charcoal or firewood. There are a couple of tricks here we learned from Gary of Cooking-Outdoors.com, like how to stack coals on the lid of a dutch oven, and how to use a dutch oven to bake breads and cakes.

Update: Reading some of the great comments, I’ve learned that when fully fired up, each charcoal briquette puts out about 40-50F of heat. I will use this info as I experiment more with dutch oven cooking with charcoal and campfires. What fun.

If you don’t already have them here are links to buy a cast iron dutch oven, a charcoal chimney, and heat resistant oven mitts.

Some takeaways from this video and recipe, which was really fun to do.
- Its not perfect. Is baking outdoors ever perfect
- Use good pot holders and silicon oven gloves.
- Charcoal is hot!
- You will love baking outdoors.
[tasty-recipe id=”13323″]

Check out our Toad In The Hole Recipe, also made outdoors in a dutch oven.
August 19, 2011
New No Knead Bread – Artisan Bread Recipe – GF Video

I’ve been making the No Knead Bread recipe, by Jim Lahey, made famous by The New York Times and Mark Bittman for a while now. I have also been making the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day recipe, watch our original artisan bread recipe video here. In this video I show you an improved way to make the No Knead Bread and the Artisan Bread Recipes. Flipping the dough has always been a problem for me, and now I’m using parchment paper. You can watch our original video ‘How to bake bread with the No Knead Bread Recipe” here. Watch the video and let me know your suggestions and thoughts below, thanks!

Learn how to make pizza dough using the artisan method by watching our video here. Pizza dough is not hard, and this method is an easy pizza dough recipe.

Our orginal Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes A Day video:

July 18, 2011
How to make Pesto, Parsley Pesto : GardenFork.TV Video

Looking for a pesto recipe? or how to make pesto? Watch our Pesto Recipe with a new twist, we’ll use parsley instead of basil. This same recipe works great for basil pesto BTW. Parsley is super healthy and easily found in the store or your backyard garden.

Eric’s Parsley Pesto Recipe

1 bunch of flat leaf parsley

2 cups grated Romano cheese

1 cup walnuts, whole or chopped

1 clove garlic, crushed

quality extra virgin olive oil

Grab your bunch of parsley and swish it around in a large bowl of water or you salad spinner filled up with water.

Cut off about 2 inches of the stem end off the parsley bunch. Then cut the parsley bunch into thirds, drop into a salad spinner and spin away. You want to remove as much of the water as possible. If you don’t have a salad spinner, you can roll up the parsley leaves in a dish towel to dry them out.

Add the parsley to your food processor, and pour in about 1/4 cup of the olive oil. About 6 glugs, I think.

Turn on the food processor and get the parsley cut up and mixed in with the oil.

Take the walnuts and toss them into a pan and toast them lightly. Don’t forget them on the stove, as they burn easily. I know this from experience.

Take the grated cheese and walnuts and crushed garlic and add to the food processor.

Top off with more olive oil, 6 glugs or so, and turn on the processor. If the machine sounds like it is bogging down, add more oil. Process to the consistency you like. I like it not over-processed.

You can now add this to pasta or spread on bread or garnish soups with. Its real good.

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What do you think? Do you have a pesto recipe or suggestion or idea? Let us know below:

May 27, 2011
How to grow rhubarb & a rhubarb crisp recipe : GardenFork.TV

Growing and Cooking Rhubarb was one of the first how to videos GardenFork made, and as our rhubarb plants are just now popping out of the cold soil, I thought it a good time to pull one of our shows from the archive and repost it for those who may not have watched it.

Eric’s Rhubarb Crisp Recipe

1 quart of rhubarb chopped into roughly 1/2″ pieces

1/4 cup sugar ( you can add more if you like, but i think this works best )

Zest from 1/2 of a large lemon or all of it from a small lemon ( you can also use orange zest of a mix of lemon and orange ) and some juice from the lemon or orange.

3/4 of a stick of butter, cold ( leave in fridge until you need it )

1/2 cup flour

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup walnuts

1/2 cup oatmeal – old fashioned style, rolled oats is best

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon – Penzy’s Spice has real good cinnamon

mix together the rhubarb, regular sugar, lemon/orange zest, and lemon/orange juice in a bowl and let it sit while you make the crisp, ( the part that goes on top of the rhubarb )

Get out your food processor and put in the cold butter, which you’ve chopped into cubes, add the flour and brown sugar with the cinnamon pulse this until the flour coats the butter and breaks it up a bit. It should still look chunky, not like sand.

Then add the walnuts and oats into the flour butter mix in the food processor , and pulse a few more times to mix them in and chop up the walnuts a bit. Over pulsing is bad here. Err on the side of less mixing.

Grease a 8″ baking dish. The glass ones are best for this, I think. Pour in the rhubarb mix and then cover the rhubarb with the flour oat butter mixture. Don’t over think this, the flour oat mix doesn’t have to be a super even layer over the rhubarb.

Put this in a preheated 375 degree oven for about 45 minutes. As always, your oven temp and baking time will vary from mine. I think those new convection ovens bake faster than mine. But then my oven was pulled out of a junked camper trailer.

The rhubarb crisp is done when the edges of the pan are starting to get burnt and the crisp is browning and the rhubarb bubbles a bit.

This goes real well with our ginger ice cream recipe, watch our how to make ice cream video here and get the recipe as well.

May 8, 2011
Easy donut recipe using Pillsbury biscuit dough – GF Video

Looking for an easy donut recipe? here it is: The Super Simple Doughnut Recipe. This is Eric’s version of the Pillsbury Biscuit Doughnut method of making donuts without the time and yeast. We will make donuts the traditional way soon, but I had to try out this cheater doughnut recipe which uses biscuit dough you buy at the grocery store. Next up will be yeast doughnuts and cake donuts, but we have to do the donut hack here first.

This easy donut recipe works best when the dough is cold, so keep the tube of Pillsbury dough in the fridge until ready. It is harder than it seems sometimes to open up the tube. Be Careful!

Kids like to play with dough, and while you have to teach them a healthy respect for hot oil, they could be involved with this easy donut recipe

My favorite donuts are the ones you buy at the gas station on the highway exit ramp. Those chocolate donuts in that little package, six donuts all covered with that fake chocolate. But you know it’s fake but you want to eat them anyway. Recently I bought some of those, it was late at night we were driving up the house and they were really good. But these cheater donuts are really good as well, and they might even be healthier for you than the chocolate covered gas station on the highway off ramp donuts. So let me know what you think below do you make these donuts are you making of the kind of donut would be good to hear from you

Do you have a great donut or doughnut recipe? And what about this spelling issue between donut and doughnut? Let us know below

April 27, 2011
How To Make Maple Syrup at a Sugar Shack: GF Video

Ever wondered how to make maple syrup? I have a number of friends who have sugar shacks and boil down sugar maple sap to make maple syrup. Last weekend I visited one of my friends and made this video about how to make maple syrup.

You can also use simpler methods than the one shown here with the 2 stage evaporator, I plan on tapping my sugar maples next year and making maple syrup in with a simple propane burner and stainless steel steam table tray that will be my evaporator.

Do you make your own maple syrup? How do you make it? and any tips and tricks you can offer us here? Let us know below

March 18, 2011