Recap: Bee My Honey Festival

I've been obsessed with honey lately, adding it to roasted veggies, tea, biscuits--just about anything I can. And I always love festivals at Vineyard Farmers Market. So of course i went to Saturday's Bee My Honey Festival.

Here's what we sampled:

• Dried fig and honey tamales from Casa de Tamales
• Bonbons filled with rosemary-infused honey and pumpkin seed praline (seriously) from Erna's Elderberry House
• Grilled pork stuffed with figs and apricots, with a sweet honey glaze from Best Butcher
• Pulled pork on a roasted corn pancake, with a honey bread and butter jalapeno from Trelio - recipe below

A few pics from the festival:

Trelio’s Honey Sweet Bread and Butter Pickled Jalapeños

Ingredients

• 2 lbs. jalapeños, sliced into quarter inch rounds
• 1 cup shallots, sliced thin
• 1/4 cup Kosher salt
• 1 cup distilled white vinegar
• 1 1/2 cups apple cider vinegar (Chef Mike uses Bragg’s Organic)
• 2 1/2 cups honey (ahem, Bee Bob’s local honey!)
• 1 tbsp. pickling spice
• 2 star anise pods
• 2 cardamom pods
• 1 cinnamon stick, whole
• 6 cloves, whole
• 1/2 tsp. turmeric

Instructions

Place the sliced peppers and shallots in a large mixing bowl with the kosher salt and mix to distribute the salt.  Cover the peppers with a clean towel, place a scoop (1 quart) of ice on top, and place the bowl in the refrigerator for 4 hours.  After four hours, remove the ice and towel, rinse the peppers and shallots and drain.

Combine the vinegar, honey, and spices to a boil in a four to six quart pot to dissolve the honey and bloom all of the flavors.  Add the peppers and shallots.  Cover with a lid and bring the contents of the pot to a boil again.  Turn off the heat and allow the peppers to steep with the cover on for thirty minutes.  With a slotted spoon, fill two clean and sanitized quart canning jars evenly with the peppers and shallots.  Fill the jars up to 1 inch from the top.  Then pour the vinegar syrup over the peppers until they’re covered.  Cover the jars and allow them to cool at room temperature before chilling in the refrigerator.

Thoroughly sterilize the lids and jars, process in a water bath for ten minutes, clean the outsides of the lids after packing and follow specific canning procedures if you plan to store the pickled jalapeños outside of refrigeration for an extended period of time.