#dandeegeen

Some of you know that Gregg has been spending a lot of time away from home for work. This means I need to find things to fill my free time. One day I got it in my head that I was going to make turshu (pickled veggies). I bought mason jars. I consulted with my mother and a cookbook, and I got to work.

I've since made four batches of pickles. And now I have my recipe down (but making larger batches gets tricky). The tricky part is figuring out how much brine to make for the jars. Each jar gets filled a little differently so the amount of water that will fit changes. When Gregg was helping me do math he would estimate that the water needs to be half of the total ounces of jar space. (I remembered that when I did my third batch I had some extra brine, so for the fourth batch I removed two cups of water. I was left with enough brine to make one extra 64 oz jar!).

I've been using various jars that range between 24-64 ounces. My first two batches I did 4 - 24 oz. jars. My third batch was 7 jars ranging in sizes. My fourth batch was 11 jars (plus one extra that wasn't originally planned) ranging in sizes. For the fourth batch I had help from Oriort Claudia and Oriort Heghine.

Turshu Brine (4 - 24 oz jars) - this seemed to be a fine amount of brine. I think using uniform sized jars might help.

6 cups of water

1.5 cups of lemon juice

5 tablespoons of salt

5 dried chickpeas

2 large garlic cloves sliced in half

Jalapenos for spice in each jar (optional, but highly recommended)

Decide on veggies to pickle. Prep them to your liking. 

Sterilize jars! 

This can be done in an Instant Pot if you have one and your jars fit. Fill the pot with one cup of water and the handheld trivet. Place the jars and lids in making sure they don't touch the water. Close the lid and put it on sterilize mode for 5 minutes. Remove the jars carefully (they will be hot) and place them on a clean towel to dry.

I also recently did this in the oven because my jars were too big for the Instant Pot. Wash the jars with warm soapy water. Place the jars on a tray (not touching) and turn the oven to 275 degrees. I left them in for 20 minutes. I sterilized the lids in the Instant Pot. You can also put water in a pot and once it's boiling place the lids in for 10 minutes.

Juice lemons. 

Combine lemon juice, water and salt in a pot. Heat the mixture on medium heat until salt dissolves. 

NOW the fun part! Add 5 dried chickpeas and the garlic (jalapenos if you want) to each jar. Fill each jar with veggies.  Pour the brine mixture into each jar until it covers the veggies (make sure to stir it in the pot to make sure it's evenly mixed before you fill each jar). Seal the jar. 

Store the jars in a cool and dark place (covered with a towel) for 2 weeks before enjoying. Once you open the jar refrigerate the pickles (if you even have any leftovers)!

You can save brine in the fridge and continue to add veggies. I recommend not eating the garlic or chickpeas if you decide to do this. 

I like making my own turshu because I don’t like vinegar. It’s also a fun gift! I made turshu as gifts to co-workers, they were all thrilled and asking for more. 

So being most dairy intolerant is not fun. I miss mac and cheese the most. A friend made some mac and "cheese” with a butternut squash cashew sauce and it looked amazing. I searched around and found a recipe online which I’ve adapted. I don’t like vegan cheeses because I don’t like the nutritional yeast flavor. 

To prepare the squash:

4 cups cubed butternut squash

5 cloves garlic, peeled

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

couple pinches fine sea salt

couple pinches freshly ground black pepper

For the pasta:

16 ounces macaroni

To make the cheese sauce:

1 batch (4 cups) roasted & seasoned butternut squash cubes

one 15-ounce can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed

1½ cups plain homemade cashew milk or other non-dairy milk

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

fine grain sea salt & freshly ground black pepper to taste

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Add the chopped squash, garlic, extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper to the baking sheet and toss to coat. Roast the squash for about 40 minutes, or until tender.

Once the squash has been in the oven for about 25-30 minutes, begin cooking your pasta according to the package directions.

Once the squash is tender, add it to a blender along with the cannellini beans, cashew milk (or other non-dairy milk), cayenne, and lemon juice. Blend until smooth. Taste the sauce and add salt and pepper, then blend until fully mixed.

By this point, the macaroni pasta should be cooked. Drain it well and return it to the pot.

Add the sauce to the pasta and toss it gently to combine and heat through. Serve it hot, sprinkled with the parsley. Leftovers can be kept in the refrigerator in a tightly covered container for up to 5 days.

Of course, like a good Armenian, I did other things while I cooked. We had some stale bread, so I made croutons. 

Overall, it was good, a little sweet, but with more black pepper the flavors balanced well. 

After a long hard week of sickness and family drama, I woke up early on a Sunday to make Yalanchi with my fellow dandeegeens Malvina and Vicky. We all are participating in lent this year and decided it would be fun to cook something together. Yalanchi, dolma, dolamedes, sarma, whatever you want to call it, it's delicious.

The recipe we used is my mother's which I am going to guess was her mother's and so on. 

1 jar of grape leaves (preferably Orlando, Yergat seems to not be available anymore.

10 onions

1 coffee mug of rice (about 1 and a 1/2 or 2 cups) [our mug of choice was once a Shushi Dance Ensemble mug]

1 coffee mug of olive oil

1 bunch of dill chopped

1 bunch of parsley chopped

A few springs of mint chopped

Salt and pepper

The first task is to get the leaves ready. Rinse each leaf of brine and dry them. Cut the stems off.  Save the big leaves aside to line the pot.  As I washed the leaves, Malvina dried them and cut the stems. We thought we had a lot of leaves, but ended up buying another small jar.

While we did that Vicky cut the onions. The recipe calls for 10 but some of them were small so we used 12. We cried and laughed, and most importantly listened to iTunes Radio 90's Pop Gold.  The onions need to be small, so if you're not using a food processor you have to cook the onions for a bit to mersunel them (kill them, but really soften them). 

Mix the onions, rice, olive oil, dill, parsley, salt and pepper in a bowl, now your filling is done. Next you have to stuff the leaves.  You need to make sure the leave is vein side up. Place some filling in the bottom of the leaf wrap the bottom up and the fold over the sides, then you have to roll it up and keep tucking in the sides.  The olive oil acts as a glue, but when you place it in the pot, put it open side down. Our first few were a disaster, but with time we got better. 

After you've finished the filling or the leaves you're ready to cook! Add half a mug of water and place a china plate on top.  The plate helps to steam the dolma. The dolma should cook on medium high until it starts boiling at a high rate.  Then lower it medium low.  The total cook time should be about an hour and a half. Ours didn't work out as well, our rice was cooked, but our onions were a little crunchy.  I called a reinforcement (my mother) who said just to let it cook more, the onions this time of year aren't great, also we might not have let it get hot enough before.  She called again later to check our progress. 

The best part was eating the dolmas hot out of the pot to check if they were cooked. So yummy. Even the ones on the bottom that burned.

All our families enjoyed the dolma. Our common criticism was the leaves were too thick.  But we got the flavoring right.  My dad gave me an 8 out of 10, 10 being dolma by my aunt Arpi.

Choreg is typically made during Easter as a braided loaf.  I've made the loaf style in the past, but never made the bzdig (small) choregs before. We used to order them from a woman at church who I've nicknamed The Choreg Lady, but she stopped making it. So, it became my turn to make it.

My day started at 6am. I took out the milk and eggs, so they wouldn't be cold.  I had taken out the butter the night before. I prepared the yeast and while it was proofing gathered everything I needed. The wet items all went into the bowl with the sugar. I felt the bowl get very cold so I took a towel and placed it underneath the bowl to keep it warm.  After the yeast proofed I started by adding three-quarters of the flour needed.  I mixed well and the dough was too sticky, so I knew I could add more flour. I kept adding 1/2 a cup for flour until the dough was smooth and not sticky. I rolled the dough into a ball and covered the bowl with plastic wrap. The dough needs to rise in a draft free place and it needs to stay warm. I put two dishtowels on top and kept the towel under the bowl. The dough then went into the oven to rise.

2 hours later my dough was ready.

I cut the dough into pieces and made little balls of dough.  Then I rolled out each ball into thin 8 to 12 inch strips and shaped the strips into pinwheels (or snails). The dough needs to rise a second time once it's in this shape. Most Armenian Khmoreghen (things made from dough) rise twice. I've come to the conclusion this is to allow for time to clean dishes, cook other things and take care of the children. 

The choregs then get an egg wash, sesame seeds and caraway seeds.  They bake at 350 degrees for about 25  minutes, or until they are a little darker than golden brown.

  The first batch of choregs came out very big and poofy. I was upset because The Choreg Lady's did not look like that. I tried to fix the other choregs and they all came out poofy. They smelled delicious and tasted delicious so my Mom and neighbor decided that this will be my shape.

I've decided to actually use this blog. I've become some what of a dandeegeen in training. Dandeegeen in Armenian literally translates to House Madame, basically Housewife, Woman of the House. 

I will post about the different Armenian food I'm making. Or food that I make which my family puts an Armenian twist on. Or just fun Armenian related stories.