Sweet Dill Mix

Max, one of the first things you taught me how to preserve was your Sweet Pepper Relish and I have been making it for decades. It is always a hit when I serve it. I have even put out some corn chips and a bowl of Sweet Pepper Relish and called it an appetizer. Then guests want to know where they can buy it.

I’m sure that some time or another I have sent you Jane Hill’s recipe for Sweet Dill Mix. This is gourmet level preserving. And gourmet eating too. I always have some of these out on the table at Thanksgiving and Christmas. You will not find anything like this pickle in even the fancy foods section of the grocery.

Yes it does take some time, but not much effort. The cauliflower is out of this world. I once made it with nothing but cauliflower and onions. Yummy. I always put the turmeric in to give it a yellow color.

Sweet Dill Mix:

This recipe was originally printed in the “Louisville Courier-Journal” according to the woman who gave it to me thirty years ago. Her mother had been making it for at least 30 years before that.

Prepare about 5 pounds of vegetables. Include small cucumbers, head of cauliflower, 2 cups tiny onions or onion slices, a few long cuts of celery, and thin slices of carrots. A few red and green peppers add color.

½ cup canning salt
2 teaspoons powdered alum
6 cups white sugar
5 cups white vinegar

Put all vegetables into a glass bowl or earthenware crock. Dissolve the salt in 3 quarts of boiling water and pour over the vegetables. Let stand 6 to 8 hours. Taste and drain. This may need several rinses to get rid of the salt taste.

Dissolve alum in 3 ½ quarts of hot water. Allow to cool to room temperature and pour over the pickles. Leave overnight. Alum makes things crisp and is seldom used today.

Drain and rinse well. Mix 2 cups of the sugar and 3 cups of the vinegar; boil until the sugar dissolves. Cool and then pour over the pickles. Let stand overnight. After it has stood several hours, stir the vegetables so all are well coated.

Next day, add a boiled syrup of the remaining 3 cups of sugar and 2 cups of white vinegar, cooled to room temperature to the original mixture. The old recipe says adding the sugar in installments will keep it from shriveling.. Again let stand overnight.

Following day drain all the syrup into a large kettle and add the last cup of sugar.

Divide all the vegetables into 6 or 7 hot, sterilized pint jars, making sure that some of each vegetable are in each jar. For each pint jar add 1 head of fresh dill or ¾ tablespoon dill seed, 1 teaspoon mustard seed, and 1 tiny hot red cayenne pepper.

Bring the syrup to a boil and pour over the pickle. You can add some turmeric at this point if you want a yellow cast to the pickle.

Can process 5 minutes in Boiling Water Bath, but this is not called for in the original recipe, and I never have.

Sweet Pepper Relish

So I “shamed” you into to learn to preserve?

Come on, Erma, you know it all has to do with that German great grandmother of yours. I’ll bet she never wasted as much as a crumb.

You are right. That was my Tomato Ketchup recipe.

Did you really make that much ketchup in the oven and not have to stand over the stove constantly stirring the mess?

My family is like yours. They LOVE home made ketchup, and it is such a mess to make. Not to mention standing in the steam of a boiling kettle of tomato pulp for hours.

All the recipes coyly say, “cook down until halved,” or “Cook for an hour until thick as you want.” Yeah, right. One hour’s boiling and you don’t even have spaghetti sauce, let along ketchup.

I must try this. And it doesn’t stick or scorch? THIS I must try.

What a pair we are, Erma. You were making ketchup, and I was making Sweet Pepper Relish. And yes, it was over a hundred in the kitchen. With high humidity which was not improved by boiling pots of water to sterilize jars and stirring up the relish itself.

Sweet Pepper Relish must be one of the earliest relishes that women made. Could any recipe be simpler? Just red peppers, green peppers, and onions. Some of my oldest cookbooks call this Christmas Relish, I suppose due to the red and green color?

This is the original recipe my grandmothers used. Naturally I have “improved” upon it over the years.

First off, one making of this is hardly worth getting out all the pots, so I make larger amounts. About all the difference is that you cook it a little longer, like maybe 30 minutes instead of 15.

The batch I made yesterday was 15 Chocolate Peppers (no, they don’t taste like chocolate, they are chocolate colored), 14 green bell peppers, 30 plus yellow sweet banana peppers (some of which were turning red), 18 green paprika peppers, and 12 red bell peppers, and 8 huge onions. This made 12 pints of relish, and it was a lovely mahogany color.

This relish mixed with mayonnaise and a bit of other seasonings, makes a decent Thousand Island Dressing. A couple of teaspoons of this mixed with sour cream and mayonnaise really dresses up coleslaw. Gives it a sweet and sour taste and a bit of red color.

Probably the hardest thing about this relish is getting the ripe, red peppers. You have to keep people from eating them raw!! You know, I wonder how many people realize that we eat peppers unripe? Green peppers are not ripe. They are ripe when they are red. It is surprising how many people have never eaten a ripe red pepper.

Sweet Pepper Relish:

12 green peppers
8 red peppers
8 medium sliced onions

Grind the peppers and onions in a food mill on a medium blade. You do not want a mush, but distinct pieces if you use a food processor.

Place in large bowl and cover with 2 ½ tablespoons canning salt. Let stand 3 minutes. Pour boiling water to cover and let stand 3 more minutes. Rinse and drain well. There should be almost no liquid left with the peppers.

Place the peppers in a large kettle. For a sweet relish use 2 ½ cups white sugar, however I use 2 cups as we like it a little tarter than most people. Add enough white vinegar to barely cover the peppers, and that is after you have stirred in the sugar which makes a lot of liquid. Bring to a boil and boil for 15 minutes or until thickened. Pour at once in hot, sterilized pint and half pint jars.

This amount makes about 4 to 5 half pints.

Oven Baked Tomato Ketchup

Max, you poor dear. Freezing all that corn and then standing over a kettle of pickling spices to make Corn Relish. But as that old tune from James Bond’s The Spy Who Loved Me says “Nobody does it better… Nobody is half as good as you.” That describes your Corn Relish.

I had never canned anything, or pickled, or dried, or even frozen anything until I met you, and you sort of shamed me into trying to preserve the summer. You made me feel a sort of moral obligation to be the good housewife. As you pointed out it is nearly a crime to let good, fresh produce go to waste. Actually your appeal to the less than frugal side of my personality wasn’t what made me start trying to can. It was the taste. And the knowledge that I knew what was in the jars I put up. When I read the labels on some of the grocery store products, I shutter. If I can’t pronounce it, it mustn’t be good for us.

One thing I learned from you was to make home made tomato ketchup. My family loves it, and you know what a chore it is to make. A few weeks ago my son sadly announced that he was bringing up the LAST bottle of ketchup. Ergo, I had better plan on making a big batch this summer.

So, yesterday, with the kitchen gods happy because it was 99 degrees outside, I made ketchup. Only this year I cheated. I read last winter that you can make ketchup in the oven. The recipe was pretty bland, but the idea stuck in my head.

Now this won’t work with the huge amounts of ketchup you make, but it worked like a charm for me. I just used my old faithful ketchup recipe and instead of standing for hours (that optimist recipe says for an hour or so, but 3 or 4 hours is more like it), I let the oven do all the work. No stirring. No worrying that with all the sugar and spices it might stick. Have you ever had ketchup to scorch? You, probably not. But me? Yep, and you talk about a stinking mess!! I must have scrubbed on the kettle for hours!! Not ot mention having to throw out all that hard work.

I used my largest blue enameled turkey roaster–the one that barely fits in the oven. I filled that sucker to the very brim. Eight hours later (no stirring, no dropping, red faced Erma) it was reduced to half and was beautiful. Best of all, I slept through the whole thing. True, the house did smell a bit of tomatoes and spice, but it always does when you make ketchup.

You can do the math, but that giant turkey roaster full of juice and spices made 16 pints of ketchup. In other words, I about tripled the original recipe. Did I mention that I had seeds, skins, onion skins and sugar all over the kitchen?

Oven Baked Tomato Ketchup:

1 peck ripe tomatoes (8 quarts, or about 50 medium tomatoes)
2 cups finely chopped onions (about 3 large)
1 cup chopped sweet red peppers (about 2 large)
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 tablespoon canning salt
1 tablespoon celery seed
1 tablespoon whole allspice
1 tablespoon whole cloves
1 tablespoon peppercorns
2 teaspoons mustard seed
1 bay leaf
¾ cup brown sugar
2 cups cider vinegar

Wash the tomatoes, but do not bother to peel; cut them into small pieces and save all the juice. In a heavy kettle combine the tomatoes, onions, peppers, garlic and salt. Simmer until the mixture is soft about 30 minutes. Press through a sieve or food mill to remove the seeds and skins. You want as much pulp as possible, so all you want left is dry skins and seeds. An Italisn Victoria food mill is great for this.

Tie up the spices and the bay leaf in cheesecloth. (*See below for the old recipe.) Place everything in a large enameled roaster, like a giant turkey roaster. Place in the oven, uncovered at 300 degrees and bake for about 10 hours or until the ketchup has reduced to half and is nice and thick. This long, slow baking produces a very dark ketchup. Using white sugar would make it not quite so dark, but reduces the flavor somewhat.

Have ready 6 pint jars that have been sterilized and boiled for at least 20 minutes. Pour in the ketchup and instantly seal.

*Originally the recipe said to add the spice bag to the tomato juice and sugar in a large kettle. Bring to a medium boil, stirring frequently, until the mixture is reduced to half of its original volume which can be up to 2 hours or more depending on how meaty the tomatoes were. Remove the spice bag and add the vinegar. Simmer for 15 minutes more until the mixture thickens again.

Process in a Boiling-Water Bath for 10 minutes.

Makes 6 pints.

You know, Max, you probably gave me this recipe in the first place. I know that you wouldn’t Boiling Water Bath it, and neither do I. Between the acidity of the tomatoes, the sugar, and the long cooking and sterilized jars, no germ or bacteria is going to survive to grow in the jars.

Iowa Style Corn Relish

Well, Erma, the heat goes on. I am beginning to get a little tired of it. As always, the kitchen gods have decreed that it MUST be at least 90 degrees when one is putting up food. 95 or 100 degrees is even better.

So based on that opening statement, guess what I have been doing the last few days? Of course, freezing corn. Iowa Corn. That symbol of our state. Huge kettles of boiling water to blanch the corn and then cutting off the steaming hot cobs. But it is sooooo good in the winter.

Remember that I sent you a quick Corn Relish, well, really as we agreed a salad? Here is the one I always make in several batches.

Iowa Style Corn Relish:

4 cups corn kernels (about 9 to 10 ears worth)
1 cup diced sweet green peppers
1 cup diced sweet red peppers
1 cup finely chopped celery
½ cup minced onion
1 ½ cups vinegar (white)
¾ cup sugar
2 teaspoons canning salt
1 ½ teaspoons dry mustard
1 teaspoon celery seed
¼ teaspoon Tabasco sauce
½ teaspoon turmeric for color
2 tablespoon flour, optional, for thickening

Cook the corn in boiling water in a large pot for 5 minutes. Cool and cut from the cob, but do not scrape. In an enameled kettle combine the peppers, celery, onion, vinegar, sugar, salt, celery seed and Tabasco sauce. Boil for 5 minutes and thank your lucky stars that you have a food processor that eliminates all the hand chopping our mothers and grandmothers had to do to make this relish. Use a long handled wooden spoon and stir occasionally.

Dip out ½ cup of the hot liquid and mix it with the dry mustard and turmeric; then return to the large kettle. Add the corn. If you want the relish slightly thickened, blend the flour with ¼ cup of cold water and add to the kettle when you put in the corn.

Boil for 5 minutes, stirring extra well if the relish has been thickened, so that it won’t stick or scorch. Immediately fill clean, sterilized, hot pint or half pint jars to within ½ inch of the top and seal with jar lids.

Today all the experts recommend 15 minutes in a Boiling-Water Bath. Originally the recipe did not require this step.

This makes 3 pints.

Slow Roasted Tomato Sauce

Max, I can just see you standing over a stock pot of boiling tomato sauce–with the temperature in the kitchen over 100. Your face was probably the same color as those tomatoes.

Now I don’t put up near the amount that you do, but I have found an easier way to make a tomato sauce. The recipe doesn’t call for peppers, onions and spices like your does, but they can be added. The oven roasting removes the long stirring of the stock pot.

This wouldn’t be a good recipe for you probably as you are wanting to can dozens of jars of sauce, but it is great for people like me who have only a few excess tomatoes and want to preserve them.

Actually, it you have a large freezer there is even an easier way to preserve excess tomatoes. You simply wash them and drop them whole in a large freezer bag. When you need them later on in the winter, you pull out as many as your recipe calls for and start from there. This is a tip from an old friend. The only problem is that when they thaw, they turn to mush, but after all you are going to cook them, so who cares?

Slow Roasted Tomato Sauce:

This makes about 3 cups. Can be doubled tripled, or quadrupled.

12 plum tomatoes, cores removed
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
1 cup chopped fresh basil

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Place tomatoes in a big roasting pan in a single layer. Drizzle them with the oil and shake the pan so the tomatoes are coated all over. Sprinkle on the salt, pepper and basil.

Place the lid on the roaster, or cover tightly with foil

Roast for one hour until the tomatoes have completely collapsed. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool.

When you can pick up the tomatoes, pick up each one and squeeze it to break each up coarsely. At this point the skins slip off easily. Or drop a few at a time into the food processor.

Place all the chopped tomatoes and the liquid in a heavy sauce pan. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 10 to 20 minutes. Taste for seasoning. Add salt, pepper or a little garlic.

Use at once, or freeze in plastic freezer containers for later use.

Big Batch Tomato Sauce

Erma, my basil is not doing so well this year, but the tomatoes are coming out my ears. I have made about 30 quarts of tomato juice, and some catsup, and still they keeping piling up in the kitchen. So, I made up a Big Batch of Tomato Sauce one lovely, hot afternoon. Nothing like standing over a stock pot of tomato sauce for a couple of hours on a humid afternoon to put one in a great mood.

Now, this winter when I can run down to the cellar and grab a jar and have instant spaghetti or tomato sauce, I will have forgotten what it took to make the stuff.

If we counted our time, the electricity and gas to cook the stuff, and the cost of growing tomatoes, we would have to admit that we are eating liquid gold. Ah, but the taste. Nothing that you can buy in a jar or can at the store can begin to compare in flavor. Not to mention that we know our home canned stuff is free of all preservatives and heaven knows how many chemicals.

Big Batch Tomato Sauce:

3 onions
3 large carrots
2 green peppers
2 cloves garlic, minced
¼ cup oil
12 pounds peeled and chopped tomatoes
1 12 oz. Can tomato paste
¼ cup packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons oregano
1 ½ teaspoons basil
1 tablespoons salt
½ teaspoon pepper

Roughly chop the onions, carrots, and peppers in food processor. Mince the garlic with mincer.

In large stock pot bring several quarts of water to a boil. When water is at a full boil, drop in a dozen or so of the tomatoes for just a minute. Use a skimmer to lift them out and instantly drop the tomatoes into a large pan of very cold water. Repeat until all tomatoes are used. As soon as they are cool enough to handle, the peels can be slipped off. Cut out the cores.With either a potato masher, your hands, or the food processor, mash to a pulp.

Dry the stock pot. Heat the oil in the stock pot and saute the onions, carrots, green peppers, and garlic until tender. Add the remaining ingredients; bring to a boil; reduce the heat and simmer, loosely covered for 2 hours. Stir occasionally.

Pour into hot sterilized 1 pint jars, leaving ½ inch headroom. Seal with 2 piece lids and process in boiling water bath for 15 minutes.

Yield 9 pints

Serve over spaghetti pasta, or use with Swiss steak or pizza.

This recipe calls for dried oregano and basil, but fresh is better.

Pesto Sauce

Max, have you ever thought about how many cookies and cupcakes we have made through the years? It must have been a house full at least.

Just last week, I had to make up dozens of sugar cookies so my husband would have plenty to share with friends at the Fair. His requirements were simple: something that would travel well in the heat, not be messy on the fingers, and plain enough that everyone would like them. Isn’t that easy to fill?

I was wrong about only having peppers and tomatoes in the garden. The basil is doing well too. I must have a quart jar of dried basil left over from last year, when it also did very well, so there isn’t much need to dry the excess. I have been using chopped basil leaves on corn, on salads, over burgers, even in cornbread, and still I haven’t made a dent in the production.

We’re not real big on Italian food, but this Pesto Sauce is a nice change from the tomato based Italian sauces. This makes about three times what we can eat at one meal, so I freeze the rest. Hey, it uses up 5 cups of fresh basil leaves!

Pesto Sauce:

About 5 cups fresh basil leaves
¾ cup fresh parsley
½ to ¾ cup Parmesan/Romano Cheese
6 to 8 cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon salt
½ to ¾ cup olive oil
2 oz. Pine nuts or walnuts

In food processor, process everything except the olive oil and cheeses until thick and deep green. Quickly process in cheese. Finally add the oil and process until very thick.

At this point you can serve fresh on pasta, or use as a spread on break.

Any extra can be placed in a cupcake papers and frozen for later use. Place all papers in a large, zip lock freezer bag to use later in the winter.