The September 2010 Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by John of Eat4Fun. John chose to challenge The Daring Cooks to learn about food preservation, mainly in the form of canning and freezing. He challenged everyone to make a recipe and preserve it. John’s source for food preservation information was from The National Center for Home Food Preservation.
I have to admit to being a newbie when it comes to food preservation. I’ve never done any canning because it seemed like a big investment to buy the necessary equipment to get started. But recently Ball started selling cute little freezer cups with screw on lids and for some reason, for me, that made it seem like less work and less of an investment and a few months ago, I made my first strawberry freezer jam.
When I saw all of the fabulous peaches at the Farmer’s Market, it seemed like an obvious choice to make peach freezer jam for this challenge. So when I returned home with my big, juicy, delicious peaches, I did a search for a great peach jam recipe and found a reduced sugar Old Fashioned Peach Jam recipe on Megan’s wonderful blog, A Sweet Spoonful. This recipe really lets the peach flavor shine through and I’m so happy to have preserved a taste of summer for a cold winter’s day.
This year in my garden I planted Spicy Globe Basil. I fell in love with this little plant when I saw it at the nursery. Because of the little tiny leaves you don’t need to chop it before you use it. I’ve enjoyed it in recipes all summer, but when Bonnie, City Home / Country Home, recently blogged about her favorite pesto recipe, Foster’s Market Pesto, I decided to harvest most of it and make her perfect pesto for the challenge. And I’m so glad I did, because it really is a perfect, classic pesto.
Stop by City Home/ Country Home and check out more of Bonnie’s perfect recipes, including recipes and tips on food preservation, and high altitude baking.
I used Bonnie’s tip and froze the pesto in an ice cube tray and then after it was frozen transferred it to a Ziploc bag. I had enough basil to make one and half times the given recipe, which yielded one ice cube tray full and enough to make Pesto Cheese Ravioli for dinner.
Perfect Pesto for Daring Cooks
Ingredients
- 2 C. firmly packed basil leaves washed and dried
- 6 garlic cloves
- ¾ C. extra-virgin olive oil
- ¼ C. roasted pine nuts
- 1 C. 4 oz. freshly grated Parmesan cheese
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
- *optional: 1 vitamin C tablet keeps the pesto from going brown
Instructions
- Place the basil in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Add the garlic and pulse several times to make a rough chop.
- Add the olive oil in a slow steady stream down the feed tube, with the motor running. Stop and scrape down the sides of the bowl several times.
- Add the pine nuts, Parmesan, salt, and pepper and puree about 1 minute longer until the mixture is well blended and smooth. *(Note: If adding a vitamin C tablet, add it along with the pine nuts).
- Refrigerate in an airtight container until ready to use or up to 2 weeks. You can also freeze pesto in ice cube trays. After it is frozen, remove from the trays and store in freezer bags for up to 6 months. Take out only as many cubes as you need.
Cheese Ravioli with Pesto:
- Cook ravioli (16 oz. ) according to package directions. Drain, reserving ¼ cup pasta water. Combined ¼ cup pesto with ¼ cup hot pasta water.
- Pour over ravioli and gently toss.
Some great tips from the Daring Cooks’ challenge on Freezing:
Freezing refers to storing foods in airtight containers at 0ºF (-17.8ºC) or lower. Freezing does not kill bad bugs. The cold temperature causes the microorganisms to go into hibernation/suspended animation.
Freezing is the easiest food preservation method, especially with modern freezers. The main pointers for freezing:
1) Freeze foods quickly. Quickly freezing creates smaller ice crystals. Water is a funny substance where water expands when frozen. This means larger ice crystals can puncture cell walls (such as whole berries) so when defrosted you end up with a mushy mass.
2) Try not to freeze too much at once. Typical advice 2 to 3 lbs (1 kg) per cubic foot (28 Liters) of freezer space.
3) Containers should be airtight and leak proof.
4) Minimize air and gaps in the packaging. This reduces the chance for freezer burn – drying.
5) Label and date the package. Frozen foods tend to look the same over time, especially when a layer of ice has formed.
6) Vegetables can be blanched to deactivate enzymes. Blanching is quick cooking in boiling water for a few minutes and cooled rapidly in ice water.
7) For initial freezing using pliable freezer bags, freeze on a smooth, flat surface to prevent the bag from molding itself to the rack.
Visit the Daring Kitchen Recipe Achieve for all the challenge recipes, tips and other food preservation ideas. Thanks John for such great information and a perfectly timed challenge.
More recipes you might like:
Pesto Sun Dried Tomato Chicken Rolls from Barbara Bakes
Peach Butter from Food Finery
Baked Pesto Chicken from Kalyn’s Kitchen
Freezer Jam rocks from This Week for Dinner
Grace
Pesto and ravioli, sounds delicious. And I love the idea of preserving this wonderful jam, but I think I would’ve eaten all of the giant peaches before I got around to making it 🙂
Cajun Chef Ryan
Certainly timely to be putting up stock now with fall season in the air. We have put up some tomatoes, tomato sauce, and cucumbers this year.
Bon appetit!
=:~)
Donna
Our local peaches are delicious – wise choice for the freezer jam! As always, your post is wonderful. Happy Fall to you!
Kitty
Those little jars are so cute! And I love peach jam – I need to drive me down to Payson and buy a barrel from my favorite farm down there!
Joy
That looks great!
Natashya
Lovely! I love peach anything, and what a great way to preserve pesto.
I like the jars, I haven’t tried freezer jam yet.
I had already been canning the week or so before, and when I went back to get more tomatoes for the bruschetta recipe – gone! Shouldn’t have left it to the last minute I guess. 😉
Lisa
Love the frozen pesto! Such a good idea!
Megan Gordon
Yay, Barbara! So happy that you liked the jam! I can’t believe I haven’t made any all summer long!
Asha@FSK
You know I have never tried freezing pesto, mostly coz it doesn’t last long enuf for the need.. but I like the idea of freezing in an ice cube tray!! great work on the challenge Barbara.. I am going to be posting late this time.. haven’t yet photographed.. hehe
Anna
I too just made a huge batch of pesto to store in the freezer and my recipe is almost the same as yours. I wish I knew about the vitamin C tablet though, that’s genius!
Sue
Well, as a newbie you just jumped right in with both feet and achieved stellar results! It’s so nice that when you want some in the future, it’s all ready! Looks delicious!
Eliana
I LOVE making big batches of pesto and freezing it. Makes dinner time so easy. This recipe looks great and I will def be giving it a try soon.
Joanne
Pesto is one of my favorite condiments/sauces to freeze! I always try to stock up before the summer is over. Your globe basil plant sounds super cute! I’ll have to look out for that next summer.
Shelley
Yum – your peach freezer jam looks delicious. I love peaches, so that sounds right up my alley. And that pesto looks fantastic!! Great idea to freeze it in ice cube trays, too – makes portioning it out later so much easier! Awesome job.
Cathy at Wives with Knives
Thanks for the excellent freezing tips, Barbara. When I have pesto in the freezer I can whip up a great meal on short notice. And peach jam in the winter is a real treat. Guess I better get busy.
Lauren
Oh having frozen pesto ready for anytime you need it would be perfect, can’t wait till I have enough freezer space to make someone like that. The oust ravioli looks amazing!
I also chose to go down the freezing rather than canning route, and it seemed to work well. I have mince pie meat in my freezer ready for the holidays!
Mags
Love the plastic jam jars! And I also love the idea of freezing the pesto in ice cube trays. It’s time to cut my basil back and I’m gearing up to make a huge batch of pesto to freeze for the winter.
Mardi@eatlivetravelwrite
Ah Barbara you are the canning/ preserving queen! Love this jam and pesto. Mine were a little bit, ahem, improvised…. this month! One day I *will*make peach jam like yours!
PerfectingPru
I’ve never made pesto, but yours looks so good I might give it a try this weekend. It looks like a fun challenge that will see you through autumn for a while.
Marisa
Love that you went the freezing route for your jam! I tried my hand at canning, but think I would’ve felt a lot more at ease with freezing.