Port Potager

A couple weekends ago we had brunch with a good friend in Boston. This friend is an excellent cook and hostess, so it is sometimes hard to know what to bring to the table. The solution? Our kit for home-grown Bloody Marys: Turns out that this is the time of year that the ingredients for Bloody Marys are perfectly in season. Well, vodka is always in season, but tomatoes, celery, and horseradish are ready for harvest at the end of summer and into the fall. To make our kit, we used a box from a set of Mason jars, which still had its handy dividers intact. I suppose a more market-minded farmer would make nice wooden divided boxes, but we were mostly concerned with portability. Anyway, the compartments are stuffed with a bottle of vodka, four quarts of fresh tomato juice (made by running newly-picked tomatoes through the food mill ), a whole bunch of celery, some lemons, a bottle of Worcestershire sauce (from the store, but I have designs on making our own some day), a sm...

During the winter (thanks to our No Buying Veggies Challenge ), the variety of available food is way  down. We are out of onions and sweet potatoes, and our greens are buried under several feet of snow. We still have a bunch of fresh pumpkins and butternut, potatoes, and leeks, plus frozen green beans, okra, and sundried tomatoes. That's just about it, except for various herbs and some dried peppers to spice things up.  So ... what to do? You can only eat roasted vegetables so many times before you get a little tired of them, not matter how tasty they are. Luckily for us. Kirk came up with some creative dishes this week to breathe some new life into our winter staples. Spicy Pumpkin Bisque 1 small pumpkin (the baking kind)  1 head of garlic, broken into cloves  1 Tbs. olive oil 1 cup heavy cream 2 Tbs. Peanut butter 1 small leek Salt, pepper, cayenne, and ground chipotle to taste 1. Cut the pumpkin in half, scoop out the seeds, and s...

When I wrote about ways to preserve the pepper harvest , I didn't mention the third option I had brewing away on the counter: homemade hot sauce! October's brief but terrifying sriracha shortage scare  has come and gone , but the hubbub reminded me that we, of course, could make our own. And probably make it better. And definitely spicier. (Our jalapeños are off-the-charts hot this year).  So I checked the Ball Blue Book for hot sauce recipes and looked around online for ideas  about what makes up the magic stuff in the rooster bottle before hitting the kitchen to give it a go. I decided on fermented hot sauce instead of one with vinegar in it. Here's how you do it: 1. Gather up 4 pounds of (red) hot peppers: Most of mine are jalapeños, but you can see that I also tossed in a few ripe cayenne peppers (for variety) as well as several red bell peppers (to keep the heat in check). In the photo are actually 3 pounds of peppers, but later I added anoth...