I’ve been too busy canning to write about it, but I need to take a break to tell you about my best experiment so far this season. These ginger carrots are strongly flavored and raw by themselves, but blend magnificently with grilled meats and stir fry. I like them so much that I am planning to make more this weekend while carrots are still in season.

The following ingredient list is from Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon.
Ginger carrots
For every quart:
4 cups grated carrots, tightly packed
1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger
1 tablespoon sea salt
4 tablespoons whey (if not available, use an additional 1 tablespoon salt)
Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and pound with a fist or wooden pounder to release juices. Pack into a wide-mouth quart size jar and press down until juices cover the carrots. Fallon’s directions say to cover tightly and leave them at room temperature for three days, but my carrots bubbled fiercely, and I had to let off the pressure several times per day to prevent the jars from exploding. I will leave more than a 1-inch space between the carrots and lid next time.
Lactobacillus, bacteria that produces the natural preservative lactic acid, are present on the surface of all living things. It is especially prevalent in whey, which can be obtained from yogurt with live cultures. The salt is added to inhibit unwanted organisms just until enough lactic acid has formed to preserve the vegetables. This is why less salt can be used if the fermentation process is jump-started with whey.

Last night, in celebration of Tim’s birthday, we feasted on firehouse chili at the Hamtramck Labor Day Festival. Running late on glazing this cake, I missed the birthday kielbasa, but I think the end result was worth it. This recipe was adapted from Sweet Maria’s Italian Desserts, substituting the cake recipe with one from Cook’s Illustrated, and substituting the frosting with chocolate sauce.
Cake
2 sticks unsalted butter, kept at room temperature for 20 minutes
3 large eggs plus 3 large egg yolks
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 3/4 cups cake flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 c. sugar
Filling
1 cup ricotta
1/4 cup sugar
grated rind of 1/2 an orange
Glaze
8 oz semi-sweet chocolate
1 oz unsweetened chocolate
1 c. cream
1 tblsp Grand Marnier
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour a 8×4 in. loaf pan. Beat eggs and vanilla together and leave on counter until they are needed. In an electric mixer, beat butter and salt until creamy, two to three minutes. add sugar gradually. Beat until fluffy, 5 to 8 minutes. Gradually add eggs. Beat three to four minutes. Sift four over the top in three additions, folding it in with a rubber spatula. Pour into prepared pan and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 70 to 80 minutes.
While the cake is cooling, mix together the filling ingredients and refrigerate. Heat chocolate and cream together in a double-boiler until smooth. Blend in the liquor and refrigerate.
When the cake is cooled completely, slice it horizontally into three layers. Place the bottom of the cake on wax paper, cut side up. Spread half the ricotta mixture on top. Repeat with the second layer. Top with the last piece. Wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate two to three hours or overnight.
Spread the chocolate over the top and sides and garnish with candied orange peel or orange slices. Transfer from wax paper to a serving plate. Refrigerate until serving.

Stew might seem like an unlikely dinner on a hot summer night, but most of the humidity can be avoided by using a pressure cooker. Pressure cookers have come a long way since “Grandma put a turkey on the ceiling”, though vintage cookers often work just fine with a replacement gasket.
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I use the following recipe as a rough guide, according to whatever I have on hand. I used red onions and Psenkova cherry mead that we had leftover from other meals. Steve prefers rosemary, but I happened to know where to find fresh dill growing in the alley. And I prefer a fattier cut of beef, but Al Haramain grinds all the desirable, marbled cuts into burger. The roast they did have was fine for 8:45 p.m. on the 4th of July.
The raw vegetables shown are completely prepped. The onions, celery, and diced carrots disintegrate entirely. I serve the potatoes whole because they lose their shape very easily once broken.
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Since our recent herd share purchase, I’ve been on an odyssey of sorts, rediscovering the wonders of fermentation and classic American cooking. Back when people made butter on the farm, it was customary to collect cream for several days, letting it sit in the pail in a cool place until there was enough to churn. During this resting period, bacteria present in raw milk converts some of the lactose to lactic acid. Churning this slightly soured cream yields butter, and a byproduct, buttermilk.
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I gave this process a try with the cream from our first gallon of milk, skimming the cream from the top into a quart jar with a turkey baster. Days later, I used the baster a second time to dispense the milk from the bottom of the jar into my morning cereal. Then, I shook the jar for a few minutes. After rinsing the resulting butter grains, and working the residual buttermilk out with a fork, this yellow spread emerged.

Clabbered milk, also known as loppered milk in some areas of Europe, is a fancy way of saying that milk has gone sour. On telling co-author, Barb, about this delicacy, she remembered a traditional Polish drink her grandparents made: zsiadłe mleko. Indeed, people from all over the world drink and cook with fermented milk, and have for more than 10,000 years.
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I intentionally left the raw milk leftover from butter-making on the table for three days to clabber. The result was this almost cheesy, thickened buttermilk. I used most of it to make modernized corn dodgers, a corn bread popular with Civil War soldiers. What was left, I added to the buttermilk from my second attempt at churning butter, and it clabbered even faster, within 24 hours.
Not only am I now able to reproduce Great great Grandma Avery’s 1898 sugar cookie recipe, I can make my own creme fraiche, saving myself a trip to Canada. It is amazing how many milk products can be simply made with a gallon of milk.

Given the local produce offerings at Eastern Market in winter, I decided to try this recipe from my family archives. Ruby Dean was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1893, and lived most of her adult life in Wayland, Michigan. She won $2 for this recipe from the Grand Rapids Press.
Grandma Dean’s Turnip Pie
2 cups mashed, boiled turnips
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 cups milk
3 beaten eggs
1 tablespoon melted butter
2 tablespoons molasses
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch of salt
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Combine all the ingredients and blend until smooth. Pour into a pastry shell and bake for 30 to 45 minutes.
That was the extent of the instructions. I used a food mill to process the cooked turnips, and replaced one cup of milk with heavy cream. My favorite crust is this vodka pie dough. America’s Test Kitchen found that baking custard pies at the traditional 425 degrees causes them to curdle. They suggest baking at 400 degrees for 10 minutes, and then lowering the temperature to 300 degrees until the edges are set, 35 minutes longer, which is what I did.
The result is, well, something like a pumpkin pie, except the first bite tastes just like turnips. It should be cooled completely before serving, and the flavor improved in the refrigerator overnight. If I’m ever lucky enough to receive a pound of turnips as a gift, I’ll make this pie again.