Rustic Pastry: Pear Ginger Crisp

On a crisp fall evening Chloe Nolan and Mary Ting of Clear Flour Bakery demonstrated how to make a Pear Ginger Crisp

Pear Ginger Crisp
Serves 8-10
Topping:

½ cup flour
½ cup dark brown sugar
½ tsp. cinnamon
¼ tsp. salt
½ cup (1 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into ½” cubes
1 cup rolled oats
½ cup walnut pieces
Fruit Filling:

½ cup sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
½ tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. salt
6 large or 7 med. pears (Bartlett work great here)
1 TBS grated fresh ginger

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
For the topping, whisk together first four ingredients in a medium bowl. Work butter into dry mixture until it resembles moist, coarse meal. Stir in nuts and oats. Chill while preparing filling. Peel and core the pears. Cut into roughly 1/2” cubes and place in a large bowl with ginger. Add dry ingredients and combine until fruit is evenly coated. Pour into 9 x 13 baking dish.

Scatter topping evenly across fruit and bake until top is golden and filling is bubbling –about 50 minutes. Enjoy warm with vanilla ice cream
It was a perfect evening to spend as the nights start to get chillier! We highly recommend that you check out Clear Flour, a local, hidden gem. Be prepared for a very long line on weekends, but I assure you, it is well worth the wait. You will be dreaming about their baked currant donuts, and chocolate pudding cakes for weeks afterward! Thank you Mary and Chloe for taking the time to show us a simple, rustic recipe!

Bread Makin' & Bakin' with the Urban Homesteaders' League

Last weekend Slow Food BU joined forces with the Urban Homesteaders' League for a Bread Making workshop at Myles Kitchen. The Urban Homesteaders' League's Lisa Gross showed us how to make whole-wheat no-knead bread.

Lisa mixing the no-knead dough.

Charlotte Dion of Northshore Permaculture walked us through the process of making our own sourdough as well as sourdough culture.

Charlotte showed us how to shape the sourdough...

...then everyone joined in the fun!

Everyone went home with their own loaf of sourdough and sourdough culture (did you know that every sourdough culture is named for where it originates?).

The final product. Lisa's bread was so

delicious it was gone before it was even cooled!

Lisa's No-Kneed Whole-Wheat Bread Recipe

Ingredients:

4 c. lukewarm water

1 1/2 tbsp. instant yeast

2 tbsp. kosher salt

5 1/2 c. whole wheat flour

2 c. unbleached all purpose flour

1/4 c. vital wheat gluten

cornmeal for the baking surface

Directions:

1. Warm the water to about 100 degrees (lukewarm).

2. Add all the dry ingredients to a bowl and mix.

3. Pour in the water.

4. Mix in the flour with a spoon. Do not knead.

5. Cover with a lid (not airtight). Allow the mixture to rise for 2-5 hours.

6. Refrigerate, or proceed onto the next section.

7. Dough can be refrigerated for up to 10 days.

On Baking Day:

1. Prepare a pizza wheel or cutting board with flour.

2. Sprinkle the surface with of the dough with flour.

3. Take half of the dough.

4. Gently stretch the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball a quarter turn as you go. The bottom of the loaf will appear to be a collection of bunched ends, but this will flatten out during resting and baking.

5. Gently mold the ball into an oval.

6. Fold one side of the dough in thirds like a letter--don't fold down too much.

7. Bring up the other side to meet it and pinch in closed (this is called a letter fold).

8. Place the loaf on the cornmeal covered pizza wheel or cutting board, let it rest, loosely covered with saran wrap for about 40 min, if fresh, 90 min if refrigerated.

9. 20 mins before baking preheat the oven to 450 degrees with a dutch oven or large cooking pot (WITHOUT plastic handles) on the middle rack.

10. Dust the top of the loaf with flour, make diagonal slash marks with serrated knife.

11. When the dough is ready, take the pot out of the oven, and place the loaf inside it. Cover the pot with the top.

12. Bake for 30 mins with the top on and 20 mins with the top off.

13. When done, allow the bread to cool completely on a wire cooling rack before cutting and eating.

Preserving the Harvest - Canning Workshop!

Last week, Sarah Garlington taught us the basics of water bath canning in Myles Kitchen. In water bath canning (which is not the same as fermentation), the contents need to be acidic- naturally or by the addition of vinegar. This method can be used to process fruits, pickles, relishes, and jams and jellies, preserving them for year(s)!
Slow Foodies participated in all steps of the process, including preparation of the food (produce to be canned should be firm), preparing the brine, and sterilizing the jars.


Our Recipe: Pickled Green Beans
Produces 6 half pints

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 pounds fresh green beans
• 2 1/2 cups distilled white vinegar
• 2 cups water
• 1/4 cup salt
• 1 clove garlic, peeled
• 1 bunch fresh dill weed (or dried)
• 3/4 teaspoon fresh peppers (or cayenne)

Directions:

1. Trim the green bean ends.
2. Chop the garlic, dill, and peppers.
3. Bring the vinegar, water, and salt to a boil.
4. Divide the spices up into each jar equally.
5. Fit as many green beans in each jar as you can.
6. Pour over the hot liquid.
7. Seal the jars.

Recipe courtesy of Sarah Garlington



Preparing the jars for the beans. "We're going to take a spoonful of the pepper garlic mix and then a spoonful of the dill and we're just going to spread it out throughout the jars."



Using the big boilers. Jars should be placed on a rack, steamer, or something similar in the pot, because of the high heat of the stove. "It's just a matter of the jars not touching the bottom of the pot and not touching each other. Um, so anything that you can figure out."

Several of the jars were processed at the demo, and individuals were each able to take a jar to take home to process on their own. Ready to start pickling? Read Sarah's post on the Persian pickle Torshi on the Boston Localvores' blog, and learn more about water bath canning from the Virginia Cooperative Extension.

Local Thanksgiving:

A soup-to-nuts plan for a home-grown holiday meal (click here).Recipes for dairyless fennel soup, maple-whipped sweet potatoes, and deep dish pumpkin pie from New York Magazine. You can swap in these Boston-area farms to make it hyper-local. 

Stillman Farm - New Braintree, MA
Atlas Farm- Deerfield, MA
Grateful Farm - Franklin, MA
Red Fire Farm - Granby, MA
Happy Valley Cooperative Farms - Hadley, MA