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Thai Basil Pepper Jelly

So canning season has pretty much rapidly drawn to an end for me. Sad, I know. But I wanted to make one last thing before all the homegrown peppers and such are gone from both the curb market and my fledgling pepper plants.

In my travels along the information superhighway, I found this great recipe for Thai Basil Pepper Jelly. I really wanted to try it since I've got this huge thai basil plant that I don't use all that often.

This is a simple recipe, it just takes a little planning ahead. The majority of the planning ahead comes in the form of making your own Thai basil vinegar.

Gather up the following: 2 cups of fresh Thai basil, cleaned and roughly chopped, a quart of white vinegar and a jar to store it all in. Once you've got the basil and the vinegar in a jar together, give it a good shake and store in a cool, shady place. I made sure to shake it up again every few days over the next TWO WEEKS. Yes, you read that right... it needs to sit for two weeks to properly infuse.

 And thru the magic of the interwebz, here is what it will look like after two weeks.

Strain the vinegar/basil mixture and toss the leaves.  You'll end up with this:

Roughly chop and measure out two cups of green peppers, one cup hot peppers (use any kind you like) and one cup red onion.  Add them to the food processor.  

Pulse until not quite pureed.  You still want a little texture, but not much.  It should look like this:

Transfer to a large pot, add dried basil, thai basil infused vinegar and sugar.  Mix well.

Bring mixture to a full boil and then add 3 pouches of liquid pectin. (If you want the jelly to have a less natural color to it, this is the time to add your green food coloring or food gel.)  Return to a hard boil and stir constantly for 1 full minute.  

After a minute is up, turn the heat to low while you fill your prepared canning jars.

Place jars back into hot water canner (like the one below) and process for 10 minutes.

On a side note, I found this monster canner at an estate sale for $4.00!  It's a little rusty and nothing super fancy, but it does the job very well!  Before you run out an buy a canner, check out estate, garage and yard sales or even a flea market.  They can also be a great place to find jars too!  

Once processed, remove the jars from hot water and place on a dish towel at least 6 inches apart from one another and allow them to cool.  If you've sealed them properly, you will hear several loud metallic pops coming from the kitchen over the next hour or so as the jars cool and the seals suck themselves in.

I had a little leftover that didn't fit into a jar and let me tell you... it is amazing!  It's got the familiar look of pepper jelly but when you taste it, it's got this depth from the thai basil and then this creeping heat.  Oh man, this is a definite keeper!

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Thai Basil Pepper Jelly

Thai Basil Vinegar

2 cups freshThai basil, cleaned, roughly chopped

1 qt. white vinegar

glass jar for storage

Jelly

2 cups green pepper, roughly chopped

1 cup fresh hot pepper, roughly chopped

1 cup red onion, roughly chopped

1/2 tsp dried basil

1 1/2 cups thai basil vinegar

6 cups sugar

3 (3 oz.) packets liquid pectin

Instructions for Thai basil vinegar

Put fresh Thai Basil and white vinegar in a jar. Place lid on jar, give it a good shake and let vinegar mixture sit at room temperature (in a cool, shaded spot) for 2 weeks. Shake the infusion up a little every couple of days.  After two weeks, strain vinegar and discard basil.

Instructions for Jelly

Put vegetables in food processor and pulse until minced well.  

Pour into a large pot and add dried basil, 1 1/2 cup of thai basil vinegar and sugar in a large saucepan. 

Bring to a rolling boil and then add the pectin. 

Return to a rolling boil and stir constantly for 1 full minute. 

Turn heat to low and ladle hot jelly into prepared canning jars and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Jalapeno and Bacon Poppers

As usual, its been awhile since I've posted.  Yeah yeah...I know.  I think i'm just going to stop apologizing for the huge gaps in between my posts b/c it seems to be how I've started every one lately.

That being said, here is a quick little recipe that will serve you well for any football tailgates/parties or holiday entertaining you might be doing over the next few weeks or couple of months.  (I DO plan on doing at least one holiday cooking post though!)

These jalapeno bacon poppers are AWESOME and so easy to make, by the way.

Go ahead and pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees.

Now let's get started guttin' those jalapenos. Medium to large sized ones will work best.  Next, I would put on some gloves.  I used to not wear them but after the pickling incident, I always wear gloves when working with peppers.

Slice them in half and using your thumb scrap out the membrane and seeds.

Once you've gotten them all cleaned out, take a small spoon and scoop out a good sized portion of cream cheese.  (You can use either the tub or a block of it.  It doesn't matter.  I just had a block on hand.)

Drag the spoon along the edge of the jalapeno so the cream cheese fills it in.  (This process is not the neatest one in the world and a lot of times I end up helping smoosh the cream cheese into the cavity with my fingers.  But not to worry, soon it will all be covered up with a tasty bacon wrapping and no one will care.)

Speaking of bacon...next, you'll want to slice your bacon strips in half.

Before we wrap these little guys up in their bacon-y blankets, Place a cooling rack on a baking sheet.  This is where they are gonna hang out while in the oven.

Now we wrap!  Now the jalapenos I used were kind of on the large size and needed two halves of a slice of bacon.  Feel free to adjust the bacon coverage for your tastes and jalapeno sizes.

I start with one end in the middle of the filling and the other end normally goes perfectly around it.  If this isn't the case for you, use toothpicks to secure the bacon to the jalapenos.  I would probably do that either way b/c I made them yesterday sans toothpicks and the bacon tended to curl up and or off of the jalapenos.

Once they are all wrapped up, pop them into the oven for 22-27 minutes depending on how crispy you want the bacon and how roasted you want the jalapenos.  I think I did 27 minutes for these guys.  Next time, I might even try it a little longer b/c I am a crispy bacon fanatic!

Let them cool for a few minutes after removing them from the oven.  They will be EXTREMELY HOT!  The roof of my mouth can vouch for that!  They are equally as good hot as they are room temperature!

Here are a few tweak I thought of as I ate the leftovers for lunch today:

- blue cheese crumbles as a filling

- serve with ranch or blue cheese as a dipping sauce

-  some sort of sweet dipping sauce would be good too, but I'd need to think on that one a little more.

Enjoy!

Jalapeno-Bacon Poppers

Ingredients:

jalapenos

cream cheese

bacon

Directions:

Preheat over to 375 degrees.

Slice jalapenos in half, length-wise. 

Using your thumb or a spoon remove the seeds and membranes from inside the jalapenos. 

Smoosh softened cream cheese into each of the jalapeno halves. 

Wrap jalapeno with bacon slices. (Use a toothpick to secure the bacon, if necessary).

Place on a cooling rack on a baking sheet and bake for 22-27 minutes.  If the bacon isn't crispy enough increase the time a little or turn on the broiler.  If you decide to use the broiler at the end, watch them closely.  The broiler will do its job fast!

Serve hot, or  at room temperature.

Canning is Awesome. That’s All There is to It.

I need to preface this with the fact that I'm being lazy and using the post I created for this month's MidtownMontomeryLiving.com, which I'm now a contributing author for their gardening and DIY section.

Now that i've remembered how to log into my blogger account (which yes, I know needs to be self-hosted and use wordpress.org), hopefully I'll be posting more.  I have several recipes that I've taken photos of that I need to blog about.

With that being said, here's "Canning is Awesome. That’s All There is to It."

Last summer, I tried my hand at canning for the first time and I was really quite pleased with the results.  I had 6 jars of homemade watermelon rind pickle, which I gave to my dad for Father’s Day.

So with a successful canning attempt under my belt, I thought I would expand my repertoire this year.  I made peach preserves using fresh Chilton County peaches and a recipe from a 1928 cookbook (10 lbs. of peaches, 10 lbs. of sugar) and the other weekend, I canned peppers.

I had been collecting jalapenos, Serranos, chilies and cowhorns from my garden for a few weeks and they were starting to pile up.  I didn’t want them to go to waste and I love pickled jalapeno slices on lots of stuff, so I decided to make my own!

The container on the left has my home-growns in it.  A few were contributed by my neighbor, as well.

Now, while I had a fair amount of various peppers (my neighbor even contributed a few), I didn’t think I had enough to warrant all the “work” of canning.  So I headed to the Montgomery Curb Market on Madison Ave.

If you’ve never been down to the Curb Market…well, shame on you!  It’s so awesome.  They have all sorts of fabulous veggies, fruits, herbs, and berries (among other things).  Some vendors are strictly organic and others aren’t, but unlike out at the State Farmer’s Market – the vast majority of the produce is local and sold by local folks.  It’s open Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday 5:00am – 12 Noon.  And while the vendors all seem to provide bags, I always like to bust out one of my “green bags” I use at the grocery store and make myself as much of a dirty hippie as possible.  Yay environment!  Moving on…I left the Curb Market with some wonderfully huge organic jalapenos and normal banana peppers (I like those on my sandwiches!).

Upon returning home, I did a little” canning peppers” research on Google, found a recipe I could live with and started the process.

First:  We need to have a little talk.  So all the recipes are saying things like “Make sure to wear gloves when handling peppers” and blah blah blah.  I’m thinking to myself “Amateurs.  Gloves?  I don’t need no stinking gloves…”



Normally, this is true.  But when you are cleaning, handling, slicing, scooping, and stuffing about 7 lbs of peppers, YOU SHOULD WEAR GLOVES.  I know what you’re thinking “I hate wearing gloves when I cook.  I have no dexterity.”   This is one instance where compromised dexterity is not an excuse.  If you don’t want to sit on your couch for the rest of the night with your hands SCREAMING at you and you can’t do anything but wash them with Murphy’s Oil Soap (which works by the way) and pray you don’t forget and rub your eye (or if you’re a man use the facilities with no “buffer”…think about it) – use the gloves.

Now to the pickling:  It’s really very easy compared to other canning I have done.  Wash and slice all your peppers into rings.  Why rings?  Well, if you do them in rings and not as whole peppers, you don’t have to skin them and to be honest, that just looked like more work than I was up for.  Plus rings are easier to use, I think.

While you’re slicing, depending on what recipe you are using, bring the vinegar-salt brine to a boil.  This is our pickling agent.  NOTE: Don’t stand over it.  Few things are more painful than getting a big lung full of evaporating vinegar.


Here's a pretty standard recipe (7-8 pints):
1 clove of garlic per jar
6 cups of vinegar
2 cups of water
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon pickling/canning salt

Start packing the rings and garlic into the hot, sterilized jars.  You will want to smoosh the peppers in good, but make sure a lid goes on flat.  I found a hand juicer works well to push them down.  A pestle would be perfect!

Once packed, fill each jar with the slightly boiling vinegar brine, leaving ¼ inch of headspace. Then use a chopstick or small spatula to remove any air pockets from the jar.

Place the hot lid on top and screw on the band.  Process in a boiling water canner for 10-15 minutes.

Once they are done, remove the jars and allow them to cool for about 24 hours before storing.  DO NOT TIGHTEN THE BANDS!  Re-tighten the bands can screw up your seal. They will need to sit for a minimum of 3 weeks before sampling.

The best part is standing back and admiring all of your pretty jars of homegrown and/or locally grown peppers!  Plus you can have a taste of summer during those bleak winter months.

Momma Goldberg's Nutritional Information

Just a quick FYI.  Here's a PDF of Momma Goldberg's nutritional info in case you ever need it! Just click the logo.