D.I.Y. Delicious: Recipes and Ideas for Simple Food From Scratch

Recipes and Ideas for
Simple Food from Scratch

by

Vanessa Barrington

Photographs by

Sara Remington

This book is dedicated to every eater
and cook who has ever asked the question,
“Why can’t I make this myself?”

Introduction

Chapter One:
Condiments, Jams, Sauces, and Spreads

Chapter Two:
Salads, Dressings, Basic Appetizers, and Meals

Chapter Three:
Dairy Products

Chapter Four:
Breads, cereals, and Grains

Chapter Five:
Pickles and Ferments

Chapter Six:
Beverages

Sources and Further Reading

Acknowledgments

Index

Table of Equivalents

The Resourceful Kitchen

Special Processes and Techniques

Special Equipment

Ingredients

A Quick and Easy Guide to Homemade Foods

D.I.Y. Baby Food

D.I.Y. Pet Food

A few years ago, while attending a family reunion, I visited the house my mother grew up in during the 1930s. The low-slung, brown, brick house sits on a large lot on the outskirts of a small town near Salt Lake City. The house was surrounded by a farm until a portion of the property was sold to the high school next door. My mother’s siblings, Aunt Amelia (Aunt Mil) and Uncle Don, still live there. They still grow a few rows of this and that, and the crabapple tree still bears fruit. The pantry off the kitchen was the thing that struck me most powerfully. The shelves were lined with pickles, preserves, jams, jellies, and canned tomatoes and other vegetables from the garden. It looked strangely foreign to me, like a museum in some other country.

My mom never canned or preserved a thing. She relied on packaged, convenience products to put dinner on the table seven days a week while working a nine-to-five job. Cooking was work. The only time she seemed to enjoy cooking was on special occasions when she’d make some of our traditional Serbian family dishes: sarma (stuffed cabbage rolls) or the yeasted, barely sweet walnut-date bread called
orevnitza
that’s only served at Christmastime, or Aunt Mil’s jam-filled sugar cookies. Today, I’m thankful that Aunt Mil stayed in that house all these years, preserving the harvest right along with our family food traditions.

When I first saw all those jars neatly lined up, their contents barely discernible in the dim light, the hand-written labels indecipherable, I felt both happy and a little wistful. Happy they were there, but wistful because something that should have been part of me wasn’t. I’d missed out on a culinary tradition. That was when the memories of eating at my grandmother’s house came back—dim ones to be sure. I was only four when we moved away to California. But I do remember platters of homemade food full of richness, love,
and skill. I remember women working in the kitchen. I remember playing outside between the rows of plants. I remember the first time I learned what a honeysuckle tasted like.

By the time of that family reunion, I was already a professional cook with a natural curiosity about how things work in the kitchen. Still, I wasn’t as connected to my food as I wanted to be. After seeing my mom’s family home, I went back to my home inspired because I knew that those Depressionera characteristics were in my genes—resourcefulness and an inability to waste food.

BEYOND THE PACKAGE

My personal journey into making more of my own basic foods started as a way to revive the lost kitchen arts that I had seen my aunt upholding. I questioned why I was purchasing everyday staples that are so easy to make—things like granola, bread, butter, tortillas, and pickles. I started dabbling a little here and there, noticing how much better most anything I made from scratch tasted than any food from a package—however special or gourmet it purported to be. I began looking at labels more closely, noticing the ingredients that are added to almost all foods to preserve their shelf life, color, and texture. I knew that even the highest-quality products weren’t necessarily made with the freshest, tastiest, seasonal produce, because they’re made year-round, not just when the ingredients are at their best. Packaged foods have to be consistent and cost effective. Seasonality isn’t a consideration. I wanted to get beyond the packaging altogether and create a completely homemade kitchen.

That was about the time I realized I was drowning in plastic quart containers from my daily yogurt habit. It made me a little sick just to think about all that plastic—not just what I was buying, but what others discarded as well. I wondered if it was really necessary. I considered buying a yogurt maker but visions of abandoned appliances left on urban sidewalks stopped me: Those sad, yellowed yogurt makers, Crock-Pots, and bread machines left over after yard sales with hastily scrawled signs saying “FREE” taped onto them. I
thought, “Do I really need another appliance?” Surely people made yogurt successfully before there were yogurt makers. So I did some research and figured out that all you really need is a way to keep the milk warm while it cultures. I looked at many suggestions and rigged up a method that worked for me.

Another thing happened that pushed me even farther away from packaged foods. One summer Sunday, I noticed that a family member’s backyard plum tree was literally dripping with gorgeous, plump, purple plums. After gorging ourselves on several, we realized that the bulk of the remainder needed to be harvested that day or they would end up falling to the ground and rotting. Yet, I could easily imagine any of us in a grocery store buying jam within the next few weeks. It seemed criminal. We got out the ladder and worked together filling countless paper grocery bags. We gave away all we could to friends, neighbors, and a local foraging group called Forage Oakland; ate more than we should; froze all that would fit in the freezer; and still there were more. The next day I made jam for the first time. The family got their plums back in jars. They were delighted. I brought some to friends. We ate it all winter on toast and stirred into yogurt. Many people told me it was the best jam they’d ever had. I thought so, too. I came to a realization: If I can make the best jam ever on the first try, in just a couple of hours, why buy it? If you truly care how your food tastes and about knowing exactly what’s in it, why buy anything when you can make it yourself?

Around this time, a lot was happening outside of my kitchen. Just as the Slow Food movement was starting to penetrate beyond its early adherents, and more people were becoming aware of the pleasures of eating locally and simply, people started waking up to the problems in our industrialized, globalized food system. It was becoming clear that our food is making us sick—sometimes very slowly, through unhealthful additives and the wrong kinds of calories. And sometimes more quickly, through food contamination and adulteration. Then the economy started to shake and food prices climbed suddenly. Feelings of vulnerability sparked a nationwide resurgence
in self-reliance activities not seen since World War II—activities like urban farming, suburban homesteading, keeping chickens, foraging, canning, preserving, and planting backyard gardens. It seemed that just as people were finding that they wanted to reconnect with their food, they were learning that they might just have to.

The truth is, we’re not very handy in the kitchen anymore. We’re accustomed to convenience and being able to buy whatever we need whenever we need it. For many people who do cook, spending time in the kitchen has become a recreational weekend activity, not an everyday way of feeding ourselves. Even those of us who cook every day sometimes struggle with putting dinner on the table night after night, and a lot of us resort to take-out more than we’d like.

I like knowing that I have the skills to make something I could easily buy. It’s important to me to have food on hand that I’ve made myself because then I always have the makings of a meal. When there are pickles, sauerkraut, bread (either fresh or in the freezer), salad dressing, cheese, eggs, and a few vegetables in my larder, I’m in control of what I’m eating that day. I don’t have to be at the mercy of the grocery store deli when I’m tired. Or go out when I’d rather be home. Or spend money I’d rather save. Or eat something that’s neither healthful nor tasty. Instead of feeling frustrated, stressed, and out of control, I feel resourceful and ready for anything. I feel like I’m taking good care of myself and my loved ones. Just as the victory gardens planted during the World Wars made people more self-reliant, my well-stocked kitchen and new way of eating is like a personal victory over the chaos of life.

That’s what I want to share with you—more than just a collection of recipes, but a way of eating that is uncomplicated, sensible, and at the same time, deeply satisfying. I didn’t invent many of the techniques in this book. Yogurt, sauerkraut, sourdough bread, and fresh cheese existed long before me, but I’ve put my own twist on them and put them together into one book. I hope the foods in this book will serve as building blocks for your own new way of eating. You’ll also find recipes that utilize one or more of the basic food items
as a way to demonstrate how you can use the building blocks. There are special sections with ideas for easy meal preparation that I hope will help you eat better and inspire your own ideas. And, of course, you don’t have to make everything yourself. Start with a few items that inspire you and you’ll begin to see how you can combine homemade items with store-bought ones, as well as fresh meats and produce, and you’ll likely find yourself building a repertoire of homemade foods over time.

I hope this book will help you integrate the preparation of food into your daily experience, slow down, and enjoy cooking and mealtimes more. I hope it will inspire you to reconnect with both your food and the people with whom you eat. I hope you feel proud of the things you make with your own hands and that you enjoy them deeply.

This book includes a variety of different types of recipes, with varying levels of complexity. At its most simple, there’s a repertoire of basic salad dressings to serve as a reminder that salad dressings don’t have to come in bottles. You’ll find two salsa recipes that are easier, yet much tastier, than anything you’ll find in a store. Slightly more complex, but easier than you probably think, are items like homemade crackers, jam, tortillas, and mustard.

There are a few techniques that may be new to you. They were once new to me, too, and I was apprehensive. Don’t worry; we’re in this together! I consulted experts for several areas of this book in which I wasn’t an expert, and I encourage you to do the same in your communities and families. Skill sharing is a great way to build community and self-reliance.

As you learn new skills, you’ll find that an understanding of how things work in the kitchen not only increases your self-reliance, but it also bolsters your connection to the natural and scientific worlds. All human cultures once knew that salt and wild bacterial organisms that live in our environment could be used to preserve vegetables, resulting in healthful, delicious foods like sauerkraut and kimchi. Scalding milk and then inoculating it with the proper bacteria to make yogurt is an easy process but seems magical the first time you do it. Teaching yourself and your children the science of the kitchen can not only be fun, but it can provide a great sense of satisfaction.

FERMENTATION

Fermentation is one of the special techniques here that may be new to you. The surprising list of fermented foods we eat every day is exhaustive. Some of my favorite foods, such as salami, wine, cheese, and chocolate, are all products of fermentation. In this book, you’ll learn how to make your own
sourdough starter from scratch, using just the wild organisms in the air; red wine vinegar and kombucha from a special culture; sauerkraut, kimchi, and Wild Salvadoran Curtido by adding salt to inhibit harmful bacteria; and naturally carbonated soft drinks.