Chokecherry Success?

A friend of mine mentioned to me a while back that she had a cone-shaped strainer and pestle.  She has graciously allowed me to borrow it to try my hand at it with my chokecherries.  She also harvested a bunch of chokecherries this summer/fall but she didn't try the strainer with hers as she was just making jelly.  I, on the other hand, would like to make fruit leather, which takes pulp not just the juice.

Yet again optimistic, I threw a spoonful of chokecherries into the cone and went to work.  The result?

Pulp into the bowl and whole pits and skins left in the cone!  I wouldn't mind putting the skins in, too, if I can figure out how to best do that, but for now I call this a success.  

The Chokecherry Saga Continues

Last week, after quite a bit of research on a good, mechanical way to remove the pits from the pulp, skin, and juice of chokecherries, we thawed out a few bags of chokecherries to attempt to make some chokecherry leather, which we've heard is very good and highly nutritious.  I was optimistic as I read that several people simply remove the spring from their Victorio food strainer and it works the chokecherries through just fine.  Well, we don't have a Victorio but I thought maybe it would still work to just remove the spring from our Kitchen Aid Fruit and Vegetable Strainer for my stand mixer.

I put a spoon of chokecherries in the hopper and turned it onto the slowest setting.  It was going okay but didn't even get any of the juice/pulp to drop into the bowl before I started hearing the pits breaking.  Defeated, I turned it off to avoid any permanent damage to my machine and cleaned it all up.

For the next several days, I tried to come up with something else that might work.  I have, through that research, discovered that the plains indians just crushed the pits up and dried it with the leather.  Apparently, the process of drying (cooking, essentially) removes the potential for cyanide to be present, so then the pits are safe to eat.  I still haven't tried this yet as I have another method I'm going to attempt first.

In the process of this research, I found a Crow Indian recipe for chokecherry cake that I decided to try.  It calls for just one cup of crushed, pitted chokecherries.  I decided to do that by hand, which took about an hour.  (Definitely not going to be doing this by hand for all of the gallons upon gallons of chokecherries we have in our freezer!)

Once that was done, it was a quick cake to put together, though I did cook it in a 9 x 13 pan instead of the angel food cake pan it says to use.

I wasn't quite sure how good it would be but I was serving it to some friends of ours anyway!  I worried a little about not having any kind of frosting over top, but what I would have done was a mix of Cool Whip and chokecherry syrup only we didn't have any Cool Whip.  It went over really well, though, and we had only about 1/3 of the cake left at the end of the night!  My husband said I could definitely make it again.  Next time I plan to try it with the frosting.

.....And We're Back!

Wow.  We got our household goods in September.  Soon after, we had a small flurry of visitors.  Then came the holidays and travel to see family in the lower 48.  It's amazing how quickly the time flies.  There are a lot of things to post about and I plan to make the time here in the next few weeks.

For now, I have to go get the kids up so we can get ready to go play in the Kids' Ice Park and watch some of the sculpting at the World Ice Art Championships.  We attended the 2011 championships and had a blast, so we're really looking forward to it again.  And today is a beautiful 32° out there.

Winemaking 101: Chapter 4

After letting the wine sit and ferment for a month and a half, all the sediment is down at the bottom and the wine is transparent and ready to bottle, though not quite ready to drink.

Look at the beautiful colors!  First we moved it over to our primary fermenting bucket, leaving ALL the sediment behind so that we could bottle it upstairs and not have to worry about bottling any of the sediment.

After a few spills/dribbles trying to figure out who to have where and how to switch bottles, we finally got a good rhythm going.  We wound up with 12 bottles, 8 of them 1.5 liters because that's what we were able to get easiest free, one 64 oz beer growler (because we ran out of bottles!), and a glass and a half of wine.

We have classy labels, too!

Now it is supposed to age for at least 6 months before drinking.  So we had to find a cool, dark location.  Unfortunately, we are still in the process of unpacking and finishing our basement, so we actually used a padded case that is currently not in use.  It'll be easier to move around as necessary, too.

Of course, having a glass and a half that couldn't be bottled, we had to try some.  Since, before bottling, we added Campden tablets again, which my husband says is for pasteurization and stopping the yeast from continuing to ferment, it really did not taste very good the night we bottled, though we could taste the wine behind it.  We've been keeping it in the refrigerator in the open glass and taste it every day.  It just keeps tasting better, so that's a good sign.  We're excited about cracking into a bottle in about April.  

The Sourdough Pancake Part X

I have good news!!  There are two answers to the question I asked previously about chemistry.  Answer one.  You can artificially increase the acidity and thus the sour flavor of the pancake.  Answer two, you can get a really sour pancake without doing this.

Over the last couple of weeks I've worked my starter on the counter to get it really hot and bothered.  I feed it regularly but only when it needs it.  I've been watching it's stages as it starts by rising, then it becomes sponge like and then it builds up the "water" which is the sourdough alcohol and byproducts.  I can tell you that until you have a good amount of "water" you won't have really sour pancakes.

You might also hear that you should pour off the water before making the pancakes or even bread.  This is dead wrong.  That water is where the flavor is at.  It's your sign of having a hot active sourdough.  If it takes too long to get to that stage then you likely don't have a very strong starter yet.  Don't worry about that, just give it a few feedings and some sugar (for hyperdrive) and let it rock and roll.

I have now mastered the sour part of the pancake but haven't really gotten to the fluffy.  No matter what they aren't going to be as fluffy as buttermilk pancakes but you can get them a lot more fluffy than mine.  Today's iteration seemed to be a result of my batter being too thin.  I also tried making waffles which was a fail as I used an old iron which wasn't seasoned well and it stuck.

The "secret" ingredient to making cheater sourdough is:  Lemon juice

I haven't tried ascorbic acid (pure vitamin C) yet but I'm guessing that would work as well.

This week I may titrate some lemon juice with baking soda to see what will yield a neutral pH.  Then I can mix those parts in with an already sour sourdough and that should yield fluffy but still sour pancakes.  Hope this works.

The Pancake Saga Part IX

This has been a busy pancake week.  My sister came to visit and we had pancakes at least three times while she's been here.  The first time was the most sourdoughy I've made and my wife was a fan.  What I tried that made the difference.  This time instead of using 1 teaspoon of soda I used 1/4 and I made enough for another adult so the batch size was bigger.

The problem.  Less soda=less fluffy.  So I'm getting more sour but the fluff is going down.  I've also started getting up, adding all of the ingredients, egg and sugar and then placing in a warm spot while I take a shower.  This is similar to the concept when making sourdough bread when you add the flour and let it sit for an hour before making the dough and letting it leaven.  My thought is that the 30-45 min from adding sugar (high energy) until I cook the cakes should energize the yeast.  I'm not sure if it's worked as I haven't repeated the process.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to take my sister to Sam's Sourdough Cafe and I tried to eek their secret out of the waitress with the resulting comment of "it's complicated".  Perhaps if I eat enough pancakes there, they will have sympathy.  Then again I think I may have stumbled on the solution but I won't mention it until I've tried it.

Until next time.

The Pancake Saga Part VIII

This morning I made pancakes.  Yes, I know it's the middle of the week but I had some extra time this morning so I did.  I used the counter top starter which was smelling quite sourdoughy and I mixed all the ingredients and placed them in the already warm oven (my wife was drying lingonberries) while I took a shower.

After I got ready for the day, I started the skillet warming and put the first bit of batter in.  Oops, I forgot the soda.  So I made that pancake and then mixed in the salt and soda to the rest.  Lo and behold the first pancake was very sourdoughy and, according to my wife, it was perhaps too sour.  The remaining pancakes had barely any sour flavor.

Here's the question and my current presumption: The "sour" in sourdough is an acid which comes from the yeast.  The baking soda is a base, which neutralizes the acid.  Thus, if you add the right amount of soda it will completely neutralize the sour flavor.  If you add too much, the pancakes become basic and chalky.  By extension, I think I have learned that I need to do a long term chemical titration of sorts based on the sourness of the starter so I can develop an idea of exactly how much, if any, soda to add.

The challenge lies in the soda's necessity to make the pancakes fluffy.  I need to minimize soda and maximize fluff.  I may also try using baking powder instead of straight soda next time.

I think we've really made progress on this one.