Made a batch of panch phoran today. What exactly is panch phoran you might ask? This spice blend is a Bengali mixture consisting of equal parts fennel seed, cumin seed, black or brown mustard seed, fenugreek seed, and kalonji. The first three ingredients are easy enough to find, the last two can be found if you know where to look. Indian grocery stores are where you will find the fenugreek seed. Ask for kalonji at any other store and you’ll get an odd look. Even at Indian groceries, it is not uncommon to find the wrong seed packaged as kalonji. This exotic spice is also known as charnushka, nigella, black caraway, and of course kalonji can easily be purchased through Penzeys Spices online.

If you would like to know more about the flavors and find a few recipes using this aromatic blend, step on over to Barbara Fisher’s excellent food blog Tigers & Strawberries for some truly inspired words regarding panch phoran.

Told you that I was at the farm, well it was from that farm that tonight’s dinner came from – most of it anyway. The previous weekend we bought a bunch of kaleidoscope carrots, beets, potatoes, mazuna, onions, spinach, broccoli, and turnips. We still had some of those leftovers this weekend and so into the pot they went. Dinner was steamed carrots, steamed broccoli greens, steamed beets, and southern style collard greens over brown rice and barley. This was our first time ever eating broccoli greens; I never even knew they existed. You will probably never find them in your grocery store, and for good reason, their smell is not a nice one. But once cooked, wow, they are terrific. As for the collard greens, they went into the crockpot with garlic, chipotle, plenty of onion, and some stock – yummers.

Five weeks ago twenty-two pounds of cabbage was shredded, mixed with salt, juniper berries, apple, and placed in a large earthenware crock to ferment and turn into sauerkraut. Today it finally emerged in all its sour glory to be stored in quart jars and placed in the fridge. A gallon and a half of healthy kraut will make for good eatin’ over the next months. In January we will start another batch as during the hot months here in Arizona the temperatures are too high to be able to make sauerkraut.

After two months it was finally time to remove the lemon peel from the stewing alcohol lemon mix. At this point, the alcohol is being strained of sediments through a coffee filter producing a beautiful golden liquid. With this put to the side, we wait for the syrup we made beforehand to cool to room temperature before we add it to the bottle and wait yet a couple more weeks before this will really be limoncello.