Note: Hummus tastes best at room temperature or slightly warmer. Spoon a serving onto a dish an hour or so before eating or zap it in the microwave for 10 to 20 seconds to remove the chill.
RECOMMENDED PRESERVES:
You want preserved lemons for this recipe, either homemade or store-bought. If you don’t have access to either, try using the zest and juice from one lemon and an extra ½ teaspoon of salt.
BLANK SLATE WHITE BEAN SPREAD
MAKES ABOUT 2 CUPS/500 G SPREAD
Years ago, I wrote a story for an online magazine about white beans. The idea was to offer up a trio of recipes to help our readers use up a pound of beans cooked from scratch. I can’t for the life of me recall what the other two recipes were, but this one has stayed with me. I make a batch nearly every week and eat it spread on toast or as a dip for carrot sticks. It’s an easy answer to the question, “What’s for lunch?”
1 (15½-ounce/439 g) can navy or cannellini beans, drained, or 1¾ cups/290 g cooked beans
1 garlic clove, roughly chopped
Grated zest and juice from 1 lemon
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
¼ cup/60 ml extra-virgin olive oil
¼ cup/60 ml chutney, pesto, pepper paste, or chopped marinated peppers
1 to 2 tablespoons water (or bean cooking liquid, if you cooked the beans from dried), or as needed
Combine the beans, garlic, lemon zest and juice, salt, and black pepper in the work bowl of a food processor. Pulse the processor 7 or 8 times to begin to break up the beans and garlic. With the motor running, stream in the olive oil. Finally, pulse in chutney. If the spread appears quite thick, add water 1 tablespoon at a time to help loosen it up. Taste and adjust the salt, if necessary.
Note: Truly, think of this dip as your blank slate. I can imagine a version, built on the same bones, made with black beans, limes, and a few tablespoons of really thick homemade salsa. Another easy variation is to add a whole head of roasted garlic along with the marinated peppers. And if you ever find yourself with a surplus of homemade chimichurri sauce, use that in place of the pesto. Delicious!
RECOMMENDED PRESERVES:
I love this spread best with a few spoonfuls of pesto swirled in, but it is also great with chutney, marinated peppers, or the end of a can or jar of harissa. If your addition of choice is a bit watery, you won’t need the additional liquid at the end.
FROM-SCRATCH QUESO
MAKES 1½ CUPS/375 G QUESO
When I was in middle school, my dad had season tickets for the Portland State Vikings football games. I wasn’t particularly interested in college football, but I very much liked going with him for the snacks on offer at the concession stand. My favorite were the “nachos.” You got a paper tray with a heap of corn chips from under a heat lamp and a small plastic cup filled with warm, liquid processed cheese. This is my real-food homage to the stadium cheese sauce of my youth.
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
¾ cup/180 ml whole milk
1 cup/120 g grated yellow Cheddar cheese
¼ cup/60 ml drained chunky tomato salsa
½ teaspoon salt
In a small saucepan, melt the butter over medium-high heat. Add the flour and whisk to incorporate. Let the flour mixture cook, whisking regularly, until it has browned slightly and becomes slightly puffy after each round of stirring. Add a small amount of milk and whisk to combine. It will thicken rapidly. Continue to add the milk, whisking to combine, until all the milk is incorporated.
Add the grated cheese and stir until it is melted. Remove from the heat, add the salsa and salt, and stir until just combined. Serve with a bowl of chips or as part of a taco bar.
Note: For parties, I like to double this recipe and put the cheese sauce in a small slow cooker to keep it warm. Place on the buffet alongside a bowl of chips and invite your guests to dip.
RECOMMENDED PRESERVES:
Use a tomato-based, chunky salsa here. Avoid uncooked salsas, as they will weep too much liquid into the cheese and can potentially cause the sauce to break.
Compound Butters
Plain old butter is already one of the hardest-working ingredients in our collective kitchens. It’s a spread, a flavor element, and a cooking and baking fat, and it does all that without even breaking a sweat. Why on earth would we ask it to do more? Because it can! In this case, I speak of the delight that is a compound butter. You get all the creamy dreaminess of regular butter, but it’s made even more delicious thanks to the addition of jam, marmalade, fresh herbs, and other flavor elements.
Making compound butters with jams, chutneys, marmalades, pickles, and relishes is an easy way to boost the flavor of butter and get your pantry working for you. If you use a vinegar or brine-packed preserve, such as pickles or relish, make sure that you actually squeeze the juice out, as the butter will struggle to hold the liquid. It can also lead the butter to spoil faster.
I like to make compound butters in a stand mixer fitted with a flexible-edged paddle or blade, because that means you don’t have to stop and scrape down the walls of the bowl. A regular paddle attachment will also work, but you will want to stop the mixer and scrape the walls several times during mixing. If you don’t have a stand mixer, use a hand mixer or get a little upper-body workout and beat the preserve in with a silicone spatula.
BASIC COMPOUND BUTTER
MAKES 1¼ CUPS/300 G COMPOUND BUTTER
8 ounces/225 g unsalted butter, at room temperature
4 to 5 tablespoons jam, marmalade, chutney, relish, or finely diced pickle
½ teaspoon flaky finishing salt
Put the butter in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a flexible paddle attachment. Beat on medium speed until the butter is distributed throughout the bowl. Reduce the speed to low and add the preserve 1 tablespoon at a time as the motor runs. Add the salt and increase the speed to medium for a few final seconds.
When the butter and preserve are well integrated, turn off the mixer. Taste and make sure you’re happy with the flavor intensity. If not, add a bit more of the preserve. Just take care not to go beyond 6 tablespoons of preserve, because the butter will break if you ask it to hold too much additional product.
Spread a length of plastic wrap on your countertop and scrape the compound butter into the plastic. Form the butter into a log and wrap it tightly. It will keep well in the refrigerator for up to 5 days. For longer storage, place your plastic-wrapped butter in a resealable plastic bag and freeze for up to 6 months.
Below are some tasty variations on this theme.
MARMALADE COMPOUND BUTTER
Add 4 tablespoons of Seville orange or lemon marmalade and ½ teaspoon of flaky finishing salt. Serve with pancakes, biscuits, or scones.
RELISH OR PICKLE COMPOUND BUTTER
Add 4 to 5 tablespoons of well-drained pickle relish or finely chopped pickle and ½ teaspoon of flaky finishing salt. This butter is a really good addition to meat and fish. I occasionally tuck a pat into the middle of a burger when I’m feeling indulgent and I like to roast salmon fillets that are liberally dotted with this butter (using a dill-flavored pickle makes it an even better match for fish).
PRESERVED LEMON COMPOUND BUTTER
Add 3 to 4 tablespoons of diced preserved lemon. No need to add salt here, as preserved lemons are quite salty. This is another butter that is really great with fish, or as a finishing element when you’re pan roasting chicken or pork. It manages to be bright, salty, and rich all at once.
SAUCES AND CONDIMENTS
When I was growing up, chicken legs were a staple on my mom’s weekly grocery list. They were inexpensive, could be prepped entirely on autopilot, and no matter how much we might grumble at first, in the end we always wound up happily eating them.
She relied on two basic preparations. In the first, she’d stew the chicken legs with canned tomatoes, chopped onions, and whatever seasonal vegetables
were at hand (I remember a lot of green peppers and zucchini) and serve it over rice. More frequently, she’d line a baking dish with foil, arrange the legs in an interlocking pattern, and paint them with whatever jam she had open in the fridge. Some nights, the jam was mixed with mustard to make it more savory. Other times, the jam would be stirred together with a splash of soy sauce and spiked with garlic and ginger, for something teriyaki-like. And there were many mornings when she marinated the chicken legs in a slurry of Good Seasons Italian Dressing and runny plum jam, so that all she’d need to do when she got home from work was turn on the oven, slide in the pan, and steam some broccoli.
The beauty of this meal was that while it was essentially the same thing week to week, it didn’t feel like that to those of us gathered round the table. That rotating cast of glazes and marinades made those chicken legs seem interesting and fresh, meal after meal after meal.
The goal of this chapter is to help you see your own assortment of jams and condiments like my mom did, as tools to help you vary up your daily cooking while not having to reinvent the wheel every night. You’ll find jam transformed into barbecue sauce, simple dipping sauces built from relish or chopped pickle, a quick teriyaki, and my go-to formula for using sweet spreads to enhance a classic vinaigrette. May they become steadfast players in your kitchen, as they are in mine.
Herbed Marmalade Marinade
Jammy Mustard Marinade
Jammy Barbecue Sauce
Plum Teriyaki Sauce
Relish Aïoli
Russian Dressing
Yogurt Tartar Sauce
Hot Burger Sauce
Jam Vinaigrette
Peach Basil Vinaigrette
Mustardy Blueberry Vinaigrette
Tomato Jam Vinaigrette
HERBED MARMALADE MARINADE
MAKES 1¼ CUPS/300 ML MARINADE
This recipe is built on the bones of one that Maria and Raphael Baker (the dearest of family friends) once made by the gallon. They used it to dress salads, marinate the veggies, and spread on the sandwiches they sold at the small chain of restaurants they ran for most of the 1980s and ’90s. If you lived in Southern California or Portland during those years, you might remember Humphrey Yogurt. I use it mostly as a marinade for chicken thighs and zucchini that are destined for the grill, but it is also a favorite for dressing chopped salads.
⅔ cup/160 ml extra-virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 tablespoons lemon or orange marmalade
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon dried basil
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon dried thyme
2 teaspoons dry mustard
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
In a blender, combine the olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice, marmalade, garlic cloves, basil, oregano, thyme, mustard, salt, and pepper. Blend until just incorporated and pour into a mason jar for storage. It will keep in the refrigerator for up to 1 month.
RECOMMENDED PRESERVES:
Lemon or orange marmalades work best here, because they convey bitter, sweet, and tart. However, if your preserving habit has led you down the shrub-making path, a couple of tablespoons of this in place of the marmalade is also really good.
JAMMY MUSTARD MARINADE
MAKES 1 CUP/240 ML MARINADE, ENOUGH FOR 2 TO 3 PANS OF CHICKEN
When my mom made jam and mustard chicken, she didn’t do anything more complicated than stir together equal parts jam and brown mustard and spoon it onto the chicken. This one takes that basic idea and elevates it just a touch (though if you’re in a hurry to get dinner on the table, there’s nothing wrong with her approach).
¼ cup/60 ml jam
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 teaspoon garlic powder
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Stir the jam, mustard, olive oil, lemon juice, salt, garlic powder, and black pepper together in a small bowl until well combined.
Use on chicken, pork, or tofu.
Note: If you have a jar of jam or mustard that’s nearly empty, feel free to whisk or shake up this marinade right in the jar. It’s a good way to use every drop.
RECOMMENDED PRESERVES:
I like this best when made with any stone fruit, such as peach, nectarine, or apricot jam. If you have any herb or hot pepper–spiked jams, make sure to experiment with them here.
JAMMY BARBECUE SAUCE
MAKES 4 CUPS/960 ML SAUCE
While I often have a few bottles of homemade barbecue sauce in my pantry, I also like knowing that I can take a jar of jam and quickly transform it into something worthy of painting on burgers or grilled chicken. I’ve also used the sauce this recipe produces as a braising agent for pork roasts; it’s awfully good this way (for more on braising, see here).
2 cups/480 ml peach or cherry jam
1 cup/240 ml cider vinegar
1 small yellow onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves
¼ cup/60 ml molasses
1 tablespoon dry mustard
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
Combine the jam, vinegar, onion, garlic, molasses, mustard, smoked paprika, salt, and red pepper flakes in a 4-quart/3.8 L saucepan.
Bring to a simmer over medium heat. Cook, stirring regularly, until the onion and garlic are soft.
When you’re happy with the texture of the onion, remove the pan from the heat and use an immersion blender to purée the sauce into a smooth sauce. If the level of the ingredients is too low to purée well, carefully tip the saucepan so that you have enough depth to allow the immersion blender to do its work.
If the sauce seems too thin for your purposes, cook a bit longer. Remember it will thicken a little as it cools. The sauce is now ready to be used as needed. Any remaining sauce can be funneled into a jar and refrigerated for 2 to 3 weeks.
RECOMMENDED PRESERVES:
Choose something fruity and sweet for this sauce. I particularly like jams made from peaches or sweet cherries. Because you’re cooking it down a little, this is a good place to use jams that never quite reached their full set.
PLUM TERIYAKI SAUCE
MAKES 2 CUPS/480 ML TERIYAKI SAUCE
When I was young, we had a plum tree in our backyard that produced a ton of fruit every other year. My mom would cook these plums down with minimal sugar into a barely set jam that was best eaten over pancakes or used in this teriyaki sauce.
1 cup/240 ml runny plum jam
⅔ cup/180 ml soy sauce
2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
5 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger
In a blender, combine the jam, soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, and ginger and blend until smooth.
To use as a marinade, place the protein you’re planning on cooking in a resealable plastic bag. Add ½ cup/120 ml of marinade for every 2 pounds/905 g of protein. Squeeze the air out of the bag, seal, and refrigerate for up to 12 hours. If you’re marinating animal protein, discard any remaining marinade when you remove the protein from the bag to cook it. Marinades used for tofu and tempeh, however, can also be used as a sauce when the finished protein is served.
To use as a sauce or glaze, it will need to be thickened. Whisk together 1 tablespoon of cornstarch and 1 tablespoon of water. Pour 1 cup/240 ml of the teriyaki into a small saucepan and place over medium heat. Whisk in the cornstarch slurry while the sauce is still lukewarm. Bring to a simmer and cook until it begins to thicken. When it has reached the desired viscosity, remove the pan from the heat.
RECOMMENDED PRESERVES:
Obviously, I like this one best when made wi
th sloshy plum jam. However, it will work with any underset stone fruit jam. I’ve made it with soft-set nectarine, peach, and cherry as well.
RELISH AÏOLI
MAKES 1 CUP/240 ML AÏOLI
This is the sauce I call on when I make roasted potatoes or I’m serving steamed artichokes, a childhood favorite. It’s a quick thing that uses commercial mayonnaise as its base. I’m always happy when I take the time to stir up this hardworking and delicious combination.
¾ cup/180 ml mayonnaise
¼ cup/60 ml well-drained and finely diced relish or pickle
1 garlic clove
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
Fine sea salt
Place the mayonnaise and relish in a small bowl and stir to combine. Using a rasp-style zester, grate the garlic into the bowl. Add the lemon juice and stir. Taste and add more lemon juice and a pinch of salt, as necessary. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before serving to allow the garlic to mellow and fully infuse the aïoli.
The Food in Jars Kitchen Page 5
