Harvest Festival recipes revealed

It was great to see more than 400 of our friends and neighbors at the Harvest Festival! The weather was perfect, and our guests had a great time exploring our farm, carving pumpkins and learning some interesting facts about things that grown on our farm.  Everyone seemed to enjoy learning that it is, in fact, the female honey bees that do ALL the work in the hive!

We alharvest festival 13 020so received many, many compliments on the food, and more than one request to post some of our recipes! Below you’ll find a few to get you started.

Did you know that all of the food served was grown on the farm and prepared by APC residents, staff and volunteers? Great job, everyone, and thanks!  As you can see from the photo of our awesome Haas School of Business volunteers, helping out in the kitchen at APC can actually be a pretty good time.

Passion Fruit Punch

Ingredients

 

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

1/4-1/2 cup Passion Fruit juice (more or less to taste)

Preparation

For passion fruit juice: Cut 10 passion fruits in half and squeeze pulp into a sieve set over a bowl. Allow juice to drain. To get even more juice, add pulp to a food processor and pulse several times and return to sieve.  Set juice aside.

Add sugar and water to a sauce pan and warm over medium/high heat, stirring frequently until sugar has dissolved and the liquid is clear.  Add passion fruit juice, stir until combined.

The syrup can be store in a glass container in the refrigerator for several weeks.  When ready to serve, mix with cold water to taste.

Apple Pie Honey Caramel Sauce

This is the thicker of the two sauces that we served, and the hands-down crowd favorite!

Ingredients

1/2 cup honey

1 stick butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 can (14 oz.) sweetened condensed milk

dash of cinnamon

dash of salt

Preparation

Mix together honey, butter and sugar in saucepan. Turn on medium-high heat while stirring constantly. Bring the mixture to a rolling bubbling boil for 2 minutes while continuing to stir constantly. Add condensed milk, cinnamon and salt and mix well, keeping the stirring and heat constant until completely mixed through.

The sauce with thicken as it cools, but a few seconds in the microwave will soften it up perfectly.

APC’s Kitchen Sink Tomato Sauce

The recipe below is the official version, but we took many liberties with the batch that we made for the Harvest Festival. We used a variety of tomatoes (Juliet, Roma, heirloom) that were picked at the peak of ripeness, oven-roasted and then frozen.  When we were ready to make our sauce, we chopped onions, a LOT of onions, and a few cloves of garlic and sauteed them in olive oil before adding our defrosted tomatoes.  The recipe calls for shallots, but onion works just fine, too. We then added fresh thyme and oregano, kosher salt and white wine vinegar.  In one batch we even added a little brown sugar. For a nice consistency, we ran our sauce through the blender before storing it.

Play around and make it your own!

Ingredients

20 Roma tomatoes, halved and seeded

1/4 cup olive oil

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon pepper

1 cup finely diced onion

2 teaspoons minced garlic

1 tablespoon finely chopped oregano leaves

1 tablespoon finely chopped thyme leaves

dash of white wine vinegar

Preparation

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

In 2 (13 by 9-inch) pans place tomato halves cut side up. Sprinkle with oil, salt and pepper, onion, garlic, and herbs. Bake tomatoes for 2 hours. Check the tomatoes after 1 hour and turn down the heat if they seem to be cooking too quickly. Then turn the oven to 400 degrees and bake another 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and process tomatoes through a food mill on medium dye setting over a small saucepan. Discard skins. Add white wine, bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and cook for 5 minutes.

Note: If you don’t have a food mill, a blender or a food processor works just fine, too!

Green Beans with Shallot-y Dressing

Ingredients

2 tablespoons finely chopped shallot (from 1/2 of a small shallot)

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

1 medium garlic clove, minced (about 1 teaspoon)

1 pound haricots verts (haricot verts are awesome, but whatever variety of green bean available works just fine)

1 tablespoon Whole-Grain Dijon Mustard

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more as needed

1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more as needed

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons capers, drained and finely chopped

1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh Italian parsley leaves

Preparation

1. Combine the shallot, vinegar, and garlic in a large, nonreactive bowl and let sit for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, bring a large saucepan of heavily salted water to a boil over high heat. Also, prepare the beans by cutting the stem end off of each, leaving the wispy tail on.

2. When the shallot mixture is ready, add the mustard and measured salt and pepper and whisk until combined. Whisking constantly, add the oil in a slow, steady stream. Stir in the capers. Taste and season with additional salt and pepper as needed; set aside.

3. When the water has reached a boil, add the trimmed beans and cook until crisp-tender, about 3 to 4 minutes. Drain well in a colander and immediately add to the dressing. Using tongs, toss until well coated, then transfer to a flat serving dish. Spoon the remaining dressing over top and sprinkle the beans with the parsley. Serve warm or at room temperature.

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