See that picture above? That’s my jam stash. The various jams, jelly, preserves, sauces, and fruit butter I made over the summer. More than 15 jars. It’s crazy. I hardly ever buy jam. But something about the kind I MADE myself — I got a little obsessed.  **shrugs**  I have been stirring my stuff into cottage cheese and yogurt. The occasional peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Even more rarely scones and biscuits. I’m thinking there will be more biscuits now that the weather’s turned cool. I stumbled on a website that uses jams in cocktails — so I might play around with that a bit too.

I got a bit of a sweet tooth the other night, and got to thinking about making something with one of these jars of loveliness. I considered thumbprint cookies or linzer cookies — but those were hours away, between softening butter, refrigerating dough, and the sheer labor involved in rolling dozens of balls or rolling out and cutting dough. I thought about layered bars. I haven’t made too many of them in the past — the whole crust production followed by filling(s) followed by toppings — just seemed like a lot of work and dirty dishes. And some of those crusts are just dry and tasteless. And the fillings overly sweet. And the toppings overly complicated. I knew I could do better.

So here was my goal — come up with a single concoction that would serve as BOTH crust and topping. I wanted something that was a cross between shortbread and cookie. As for the filling — oh my word — my own blackberry preserves! Not nearly as sweet as a commercial jam, and a bit looser — so it could firm up as it cooked. Because my blackberry jam was made with cinnamon and star anise, I thought a little anise seed in the dough might be nice. The food processor made short work of this dough — it all came together lickety-split. And the CGP thoroughly approved.

Blackberry Jam Layer Bars
Makes 16 tiny squares

1/3 cup white sugar
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons anise seed (optional)
6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
1 egg, separated
1/2 pint loose jam or preserves

Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare an 8″ by 8″ baking pan with overlapping foil pieces to make a sling — spray well with baking spray.

Put the sugar, flour, baking powder, salt, and anise seed into a food processor and pulse a few times until combined. Drop in the cubed butter and egg yolk. Pulse a few times until it looks like fine damp sand. Add the egg white. Pulse a few times until it looks like coarse wet sand.

Loosely scoop out about one cup of these crumbs and set aside. Press the remainder into the bottom of your prepared pan, pressing into the corners and making it as smooth as possible. Bake this about 10 to 12 minutes just until set.

Spread the jam or preserves over the bottom crust (try to remember that the pan is hot and not burn yourself). Loosely sow the remaining cup of crumbs across the top.

Bake 20 to 25 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through, until the preserves are all bubbly at the edges and the top is light golden brown. Here’s the tough part — you gotta let them cool to room temp before you can lift them out and cut them into little squares!

So if you are flipping through the channels at 10p at night, not really sleepy enough to walk back to the bedroom, but not really awake enough to do anything productive, and it’s between so-called “seasons” so it’s all reruns anyway, what show are you most likely to watch? For me, it’s the Big Bang Theory or Law and Order. I think I’ve seen nearly all episodes of each, but watching one is like putting on a favorite pair of pajamas, comfortable and familiar. I’ve got some blogs I follow the same way:

Heather Christo, Sharing the love of food with friends and family: Her recipe for Lemon Summer Squash Bread is one of the Best Things I’ve Ever Made. I think it’s how I found her blog. She’s recently had a wide and unusual (to me) number of food allergies identified for herself and her kids, so this is a good resource for xxxx-free recipes! And her photos really do qualify as food porn.

The Pioneer Woman, Plowing through life in the country … one calf nut at a time: I think I probably saw her on TV before I realized there was an accompanying blog. Her recipes feel down-to-earth and rely on normal grocery store stuff. She lives out in the country so c’mon, she can’t run over to Wegman’s if she needs some fancy unique ingredient! She has ALOT of good giveways (I’m a sucker for a giveaway). And she’s funny.

Food In Jars: You can blame Marisa for my on-going obsession with canning. I had NO IDEA how easy and fun it was to make my own shelf-stable small-batch jams. She’s very very good at explaining how you can’t kill anyone as long as you stick with high-acid fruits. She’s amazingly good at responding to specific questions in replies to her posts.

Smitten Kitchen: This one is just fun to visit. Deb has been blogging an impressively LOOOONG time. I’ll admit, she uses puff pastry a little more than me (which is like, never). But many of her baked goodies are very approachable. She provided the inspiration for my Strawberry Rhubarb Muffins.

One Week Closer, Steadily gaining on retirement seven days at a time: This one is written by my friend Beverly. She’s blogged Every Single Week this summer about what she’s doing with her CSA share. Broadly, her blog is about moving toward retirement, but the summer series has been great. I try to chime in if I’ve got something to contribute.

What are some of the blogs you find yourself returning to time and time again?

I’m not the biggest fan of buffalo wings. Too much vinegar … one note spiciness. Just not my thing. If we’re out and someone orders a plate, I’ll have one, but I don’t order them for myself. They are also incredibly greasy and messy — I get the stuff all over face and up my arms. Or maybe I’m just a slob.

But throw some wings on our Big Green Egg– well — that’s a different story altogether. First of all, a slow moderate roast in the BGE renders off all the fat, leaving the meat moist but not flabby. Secondly, I can toss the hot wings in my own sauce — whether that’s a sweet and spicy tomato-based barbecue sauce (like Sweet Baby Ray’s!), or a mustard-based barbecue sauce, or even a Thai sweet chili sauce! And I don’t have to drown them — a little goes a long way (and keeps my arms clean, right?).

Smoked Chicken Wings
Serves a crowd

Enough “party wings” to cover your grill grate without crowding [*]
Barbecue rub [**]
Barbecue sauce

Lay your wings out on a cookie sheet or two. Pat them dry if they are super wet. Liberally dust both sides with barbecue rub of your choice. Let them set out for the 30 to 45 minutes it will take to set up your grill and get the fire going. This rest period is important for seasoning — the salt will draw moisture out of the meat and then the salt gets drawn back INTO the meat.

Set up your grill for indirect grilling — on the BGE, we set up for indirect grilling with a plate setter. Aim for about 350F.

Once the grill has reached temp, lay out the wings out on the grate. Shut the lid and let it go about 45 minutes. No peeking!

At the 45 minute mark, flip the wings, rearranging if you are seeing hot spots. Shut the lid and let it go another 30 to 45 minutes. You may peek at the 30 minute mark to see if they are done. They should be evenly browned/charred and pulling away from the bone a bit. Poke one with your finger — should be fairly firm.

Pull them from the grill and immediately put in a large bowl and pour your favorite sauce over them. Toss gently, adding more sauce sparingly. It’s important to do it the moment they come off the grill — so the oh-so-crisp skin will soak up the sauce. But not drown in it!

Eat immediately!

[*]  “Party wings” means the first two joints of the wing, separated, and the wing tip discarded. Feel free to buy full wings and separate yourself. For me, it was more efficient to buy them ready to go. Our BGE holds about 40 pieces — I think that was 5 or 6 pounds worth.

[**]  We usually make our own rub. Salt, fresh ground black pepper, smoked paprika, ground cumin, garlic powder, onion powder, ground coriander, ground chipotle, I’d skip the brown sugar for these wings. But a purchased barbecue rub will work just fine.

So the following post is edited (slightly) from a comment I made on my friend Beverly’s blog, OneWeekCloser. Bev has been posting weekly about what she’s doing with her CSA box. Unlike wimpy me, Bev subscribes to a full-share in a more traditional CSA — The Lancaster Farm Fresh Cooperative. So she has a bounty of vegetables to deal with every week — whether eating, freezing, or giving away. I’m quite impressed with her industriousness! I’m reposting here because after I read the whole thing, I realized I had gotten carried away and it was standalone post on its own!

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Growing up in a Southern home (not always physically located in the South, but always there from a culinary perspective), fried okra was my absolute favorite vegetable. Ever. I still love it. When I visit my folks in the Ozarks of Mo, I try to get my fill and request Mom to cook hers and if we’re eating out, I noodge us towards restaurants that might serve it. No Shame.

I can find fresh okra occasionally in the grocer’s produce bin, but the quality can be a bit iffy (oversized and tough or dried out). I can find it reliably in the frozen section – which is fine for gumbo … not so good for the fried stuff of my childhood. So Bev’s offer of some fresh organic red okra got me drooling.

So what did I do with it? My own crazy delicious riff on bhindi masala, which is India’s take on fried okra. It had the texture of my childhood okra — some crisp some tender some slippery — but the flavors were Indian.  Here’s what I did:

• Wash the okra. Watch out for the hairs that can be rather prickly!
• Trim and discard the stem. Slice thru vertically from the pointy end, leaving the stem end attached. Kinda like a V shape. If you cut a couple all the way thru — no worries — just cook ‘em anyway.
• Heat a wide skillet (mine is 10″) over medium heat and add a glug or two (2 – 3 tablespoons?) of oil. I used a blended vegetable oil.
• Add the okra. Let it cook down, stirring occasionally. You will NOT get super crisp okra with this method (you have to deep fry it), but you will have some crispiness. When it is cooked to your desired tenderness, remove it to a heatproof plate or bowl.

• Finely slice a large shallot into rounds. Add it to the remaining oil in the skillet — you may need to add a teaspoon or two more oil. Fry it until it starts to brown a bit.
• Add a pinch of salt, some freshly ground black pepper, ground chipotle powder (or other chile-only powder) to taste, and a couple tablespoons of your favorite curry. I used a madras curry powder that had cumin, coriander, garlic, turmeric, cinnamon, cloves, and about 10 other things. Use a curry blend that you like! Cook the onions a couple more minutes with spices — they need the oil and the heat to fully bloom.

• Put the okra and any accumulated oil back in the skillet. Turn off the heat and stir everything together gently — just until the okra is warmed back up. Serve as a side to just about anything!

*****

As it was date night, I served it with a panko-crusted plaice (skinny white fish labelled origin SE Asia) and some prosecco. And Top Chef. I also bought more okra the next day so I can make it again RSN!

So even though the blog was on hiatus for over a month (a month ?!?), I was still hobbling around the kitchen. Sourcing ingredients (shopping) is still a challenge — I just don’t have it in me to walk up and down every aisle in the store, or to visit multiple stores in a day (I have to pace myself). The CGP has done most of the marketing, but I’ve been trying to keep it pretty basic for his sake. But there was ONE thing that kept me from regularly ordering take-out or subsisting on Pop-Tarts: Fresh produce every Wednesday from Backyard Produce. I talked about this several months ago in a previous post, and it really did come in handy. It’s all familiar produce — things like kale and summer squash that are always welcome in our house. Knowing a few days ahead of time what was coming helped me plan upcoming meals and direct the CGP’s unsupervised trips to the grocer.

It also let him help out in a major way by cooking entire meals on the grill. Yes, grilling the meat is a no-brainer. But we made an effort to cook ALL the sides on there as well. I would do the prep work inside and just hand it all over to him for execution. We put diced new potatoes with a little olive oil, salt, pepper, and rosemary in a foil packet and cooked it alongside the meat. We did something similar with beets (no rosemary). Try eggplant, thinly sliced length-wise (I use a mandoline at 1/4″ or 5/16″) and brushed with olive oil. Corn in the husk. Baby tapas peppers on a rosemary skewer. Zucchini sliced length-wise into quarters (less likely to fall into the fire!).

So, a friend-of-a-friend is an established chef and cookbook author (as well as a member of Les Dames d’Escoffier). I had the honor of testing five recipes for her upcoming cookbook. So there were a couple of weekends in there that I was working on those. This cookbook will be geared to a specific dietary/health concern, so my testing was very analytical. I had to weigh my vegetables beforehand (just how much DOES a medium zucchini weigh?) as well as measure volumes (cups/tablespoons) of the finished product, so they can do nutritional analyses and describe serving/portion sizes. It was a blast and a very different style of cooking for me, because I had to follow the recipes to a “T”. I’ll keep you posted when the cookbook comes out — for now — I have to keep it all Top Secret :).

I also managed to put up a couple more small batches of jam. The blueberries and blackberries are really awesome this year. Shout-out to Twin Springs Fruit Farm and Westmoreland Berry Farm for my berries!