Fresh Asparagus Tips

Fresh asparagus is in season and at its lowest cost for the year. I like both white and green asparagus. The difference is that the white has been covered with soil and not exposed to light, so it doesn’t turn green. White asparagus is a bit milder in flavor and sometimes requires peeling. For recipes, I use both interchangeably depending on what seems to be the freshest and best value at the farmers market. Note: when choosing asparagus at the market, look at the bases to ensure they aren’t dried out. When storing asparagus, keep the base ends in water.

Fresh Asparagus Soup – for two.

Use one bunch for two people. Prep time - 2 minutes.

1. Cut the asparagus into 1/4 inch lengths and set the tips aside.
2. Bring the cut pieces to a simmer in 4 cups of chicken stock (or water with two chicken bullion cubes) and simmer for 15 minutes.
3. Add the tips and simmer an additional five minutes.
4. Salt and pepper may be desirable for taste, but the seasoning in the stock or bullion should suffice.
5. Add 1/4 cup condensed milk, or sour cream or crème fraîche. To avoid lumps with the latter two, it’s easiest to remove a bit of the stock from the soup into a coffee cup when the tips are added, let it cool while the tips are simmering, beat in the sour cream or crème fraîche, and then add it back to the soup at the end of the cooking time.

Blanched Asparagus

Blanched green asparagus make a super appetizer or starter served with a horseradish sauce. It can also be served as a salad drizzled with a salad dressing of 1 part Dijon mustard, 1 part red wine vinegar, 1 part diced shallots, a dash of sugar and a little fresh sage, or roasted red bell pepper sauce.White asparagus can be served with red wine vinaigrette with finely diced shallots.

1. Bring salted water to a rolling boil and add trimmed whole asparagus. If you have a blanching basket, use it.
2. Once the water returns to a rolling boil, let the asparagus simmer exactly 3 minutes for fine, 4 minutes for medium or 5 minutes for thick asparagus.
3. Plunge the asparagus into the coldest water possible and let it remain until it is fully cooled.
4. Remove it from the water and pat dry with a lint-free towel. You may refrigerate it until serving.
   

See the following additional recipes at CanningUSA.com

Roasted Asparagus

Roasted Asparagus Quiche

Roasted Asparagus Risotto

Asparagus Omelet - follow the method for a basic mushroom omelet, substituting asparagus for the mushrooms covering the asparagus during simmering for about 20 minutes.

Exploding Pressure Canner

I had a friend who told me her old weighted gauge pressure cooker nearly exploded the other day. She went into the kitchen and noted that there wasn't any steam venting either from the steam valve or the safety valve (there was no safety fuse). She turned the pressure cooker off and gently opened the pressure cooker and had a burst of steam, which burned her. She had been cooking green beans (I don’t know where she got fresh green beans in early April), overfilled the pressure canner and there were pieces of green beans blocking both of the vents.

So, what could we do to avoid this?

1. Review often and strictly adhere to the manufacturer’s recommendations. I review them every year at the beginning of the canning season. If the manufacturer has a website, then visit it and make sure you have any updated information. If the manufacturer’s instructions aren’t available, then consider getting a new pressure cooker or pressure canner.
2. Don’t overfill a pressure cooker and following the manufacturer’s recommendations.
   
3. Stay close to a pressure cooker or pressure canner and monitor it often. I set my kitchen timer and check mine every five minutes during the first half hour and then every ten minutes thereafter. If you have a weighted gauge canner, this can be done by ensuring a mild and constant flow of steam is leaving the pressure canner. A dial gauge canner is a bit easier as it tells you the exact pressure within the canner. If the pressure increases beyond the desired pressure, reduce the stovetop heat setting. In the case of my friend Christine with a blocked gauge, the pressure reading would have dropped to zero; although the internal pressure was quite high, or I guess we should say explosively high. This should be remembered because a faulty or blocked gauge will give a false reading and not indicate the actual pressure.
4. NEVER open a hot pressure canner or pressure cooker. Let them cool down completely before opening. When canning, I normally just let it sit overnight and then open it the next morning - what's the hurry?
5. Only use a pressure canner or pressure cooker that is listed by Underwriters Laboratories (UL). UL develops rigorous and voluntary safety standards using their expertise and representatives from the industry for each product for which they publish safety standards. The manufacturers then send their products to testing laboratories to ensure they comply with the applicable standard. Once the product is approved, the manufacturer is permitted to apply the UL label. UL visits the factories, usually on a quarterly basis, to verify the products manufactured and labeled are identical to those that were tested.

Cherries

Today is the day to can cherries. I think they're at their peak where I live and the prices have dropped. I went to the farmers market on Saturday and asked the farmer to bring me two flats today and she negotiated the price due to the quantity.

I'm going to can cherry jam, three types of infused cherries in Armagnac, Grand Marnier and Cognac plus cherry pie filling.

Next week I want to can some cantaloupe jam. I need to dig up my recipe for it.

Basque Chicken

I'm making Basque Chicken this evening. A friend gave me a farm raised chicken yesterday and I gardened most of the day, so it was an easy solution that I can cook while I'm writing this blog.

I can Sauce Basquaise about every other year, so I'm due to can it again this summer. When you don't have it canned, there is dinner a recipe at the Basque Chicken webpage.

I got the recipe from a Basque chef from San Sebastian. A lot of the home cooks in the Basque region of France add sugar, but I prefer it without. It can also be served on the side with a baked chicken or with a grilled or poached fish.

Canning Cherries and Apricots

This is a reminder that it's time to start thinking about canning cherries! Cherries are in season and the prices get attractive when they are most abundant at the height of the season. I usually can them at the end of May or the beginning of June.

A week or two after canning cherries, you might think about canning apricots. They typically follow cherries by a couple of weeks.

Recipes for canning cherries and apricots can be found at the fruits menu of CanningUSA.com

Problems with Stove tops and Waterbath Canners.

A user e-mailed me with the following question today:

I would like to purchase your bathwater canner but it says that it is not recommended for the kind of stove I have. Any suggestions as to what I can do besides buying a new stove?

Some flat surfaced cook-tops don't conduct heat evenly or aren't perfectly flat. This can make the temperature in the waterbath canner fluctuate.

To resolve this, I recommended she try one of the coiled single electric burners that are at this link, or a propane burner or cook stand. One of those large pots and burners that were used for deep frying turkeys will work well too, but they need a canning rack or fine pebbles at the bottom.

I have one of the propane burners for my waterbath canner that I only use outside for security purposes. Propane burns a lot hotter than natural gas, so the water heats up a lot faster. If you are canning a large batch, you might set up a couple of them.

Canning Asparagus

Late April and May is the time to can green or white asparagus. See Canning Green or White Asparagus. It is very nice served with grilled or broiled salmon and a hollandaise or Bearnaise sauce.

We eat a ton of asparagus when it is in season. Canned asparagus can be served as a starter with a red wine and shallot vinaigrette. Fresh asparagus is nice roasted and served with a horseradish dip as an hors d’oeuvre – see roasted asparagus. You may also serve roasted asparagus as a starter with a mustard vinaigrette topping it with roasted red bell peppers and/or caramelized onions or shallots.

To make asparagus soup with fresh asparagus, sauté asparagus cut into 1/2 inch pieces in olive oil until tender, add chicken stock, salt and pepper to taste, and then simmer for 30 minutes. To augment the color of the soup, you may add 1/4 – 1/2 cup of cream for each quart of soup before serving. If using canned asparagus do not sauté and add the canning liquid to the chicken stock.

An asparagus quiche may be made using canned asparagus by cutting the asparagus into 1/2 inch pieces and then substituting the canned asparagus for the roasted in our asparagus quiche recipe. You may do the same for an basic omelet.