Candied Dill Strips

Like most country kids, I was in a 4-H club.  Ours was called the Busy Beavers, and we met at Mrs. Carlson’s, about a ten minute bike ride from my home.  I became the club secretary and dutifully submitted a short news item to The Sawyer County Record after every meeting.

The meetings did not offer many opportunities for dramatic reporting, but I did my best.  I remember that one time a chicken got loose in the kitchen where we were having our meeting, but Mom didn’t let me put that news into my report.  Dull or not, I was still excited to see my name in print, and Mom sent clippings to aunts and uncles who lived far away.

I suppose that I might have had a chicken project myself, but my heart was set on raising watermelons.  Thus I registered a kitchen garden project, and Dad let me have a sizable part of our garden plot which I staked off, manured and planted with the different seeds listed in the project guidelines.  Besides carrots, radishes, peas, beans and lettuce, there were cucumbers and the whole reason for the project–watermelons.

The watermelon seed packet showed round dark green melons developed for shorter growing seasons.  Dad suggested that I plant the seeds in mid May rather than waiting until the recommended dates for northern Wisconsin and be careful to cover the hills after the plants came up until the frost danger was past.  That would give my plants a few extra days before the first killing frost and if I were lucky I might get some melons.

Alas it was not to be.  It was a hot dry summer, so I hauled buckets of water in my wagon.  I weeded, hoed and talked nice to my plants, as Mom suggested.  Everything looked pretty good, and I was proud of my radishes and peas.  There were lots of little cucumbers, and my watermelon vines had a respectable number of melons getting bigger every day under the hot August sun.  Some already looked like big smooth green muskmelons when a hard frost killed even my covered plants.

I did get a white ribbon for my cucumbers.

Most of my cucumbers ended up as pickles.  One kind I really like are sweet or candied dill pickles. I don’t have Mom’s recipe, and candied dill strips are hard to find in the stores nowadays, but here is a version I adapted from one I found years ago on the web.  Since you start with commercial dill pickles, it takes just a few minutes to make them.

INGREDIENTS:

2 quart jars of non-kosher dill pickles
3 cups white sugar
2 cups cider vinegar
1 cup pickle brine
1.5 T pickling spices
1/2 tsp. dill weed
1/2 tsp. dill seed
1” piece of cinnamon stick, broken in half
Fresh dill (optional)

PROCEDURE:

Empty the two jars of pickles into a colander over a bowl.  Reserve one cup of the brine and rinse the pickles under cold tap water.

Put the vinegar, brine and sugar into a stainless steel or enameled pan.  Tie the pickling spices, dill weed and dill seed into a piece of cheesecloth and put the bundle into the liquid.  Bring it to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes.  Let cool about 15 minutes.

While the liquid is boiling, cut the pickles into strips.  I cut small ones into quarters and larger ones into sixths.  Put the strips back into the jars.  Top with a half inch stick of cinnamon and a sprig of fresh dill in each jar and fill them with the warm liquid.

Seal the jars and store them in the refrigerator, turning them over every other day for a week or so to make sure that all strips are immersed in the  liquid. Store the pickles at least one month before eating.

NOTES:  Buy the least expensive dill pickles you can find, but use real apple cider vinegar.

Boneless Pork Roast

When I fetched a pork roast from the wooden chest in the red shed on those cold winter mornings, I knew that Mom would be making pork pot roast for supper that night.  I don’t remember her ever roasting pork (with the exception of hams) or beef in the oven.  She browned the roasts, then simmered them slowly with vegetables until they were fork tender.  I loved her pot roasts then and still do my best to imitate her recipes.

Mom was an avid experimenter, but mainly with salads and casseroles.  Show her a new way to use Jell-O or Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup and she would try it.  Her main dishes tended to be more conventional.  Then too, we had a big garden every summer, so potatoes, carrots and onions were always available and virtually free.  These were one-pot meals with plenty of food for everyone.  Conventional but delicious, especially with homemade bread and dessert.  

My dietary horizon expanded when I went to the University of Wisconsin at Madison. As I look back at those years in residence halls, I realize today that I had lucked into a golden age of cafeteria food.  Van Hise Hall had a chef who had cooked, we were told, at a four star hotel. After some misunderstandings between students and chef were rectified, we began dining in ways that today’s college students would envy.

I learned that hams, turkeys and chickens were not the only meats that could be roasted in the oven. We had prime rib, Baron of Beef, roast pork and what was described as leg of lamb.  My guess is that the “lamb” was really “ram” that had been stored in old army blankets before being shipped to Madison.  I think that this was the only roast almost universally rejected by dorm residents.  We had it once.

The chef did not share his recipes but I think that this one comes close to capturing the magic of a perfect pork roast.  The herbs and spices create an aromatic taste treat and the flour worked into the outside of the meat produces a wonderful crisp crust.

INGREDIENTS:

One boneless pork butt roast, 3 to 4 lbs.

3 medium or 2 large cloves fresh garlic

3 T flour

1/3 to 1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 to 1/3 tsp. dried crushed rosemary

1/4 to 1/3 tsp. basil

1/4 to 1/3 tsp. paprika

Dash of cayenne

1/8 tsp. fresh ground black pepper

1 tsp. olive oil

PROCEDURE:

Preheat the oven to 450º.  Peel and slice the garlic cloves into thin spears.  With a thin knife tip, poke holes in the roast and insert a spear of garlic in each hole.  You should have twelve to fifteen spears in the roast spaced evenly over the surface.  Rub the teaspoon of olive oil over the meat.  
Crush the rosemary in a mortar and pestle or with a cup and spoon.  Mix the flour, herbs and spices together on a sheet of waxed paper.  Roll the roast in this mixture and press the mixture into the surface until nearly all of the flour is stuck to the meat.  

With an ice pick or nail, make a hole in the roast and insert a meat thermometer into the center.  Place fat side up on a roasting rack in a pan in the hot oven.  Turn heat down to 350º, and roast until the thermometer registers 160º (about thirty minutes per pound).  Remove the roast from the oven and let it sit for four or five minutes before removing any netting that might be around the roast. 

NOTES:

Serve with cranberry or apple sauce, parsley potatoes or boiled potatoes, gravy and a green or yellow vegetable accompanied by fresh bread.  The USDA revised pork cooking guidelines say you can serve pork roasts with an internal temperature of 145º.  I prefer the older standard, but you will get a juicier roast at the lower temperature.