Archive for May, 2010
There are a few common misconceptions about jam-making that I don’t quite get. And I’d like to clear them up now, if possible.
1) you must make an enormous batch, requiring pounds of fruit, an enormous pot and every square inch of counter space available.
2) you must use proper canning equipment, buy jars with sealable lids, and process your jam at so many pounds per inch for a precise length of time, lest you give someone botulism.
3) you must buy packaged pectin, be exact with your measurements and then feel some degree of panic over the possibility that your jam might not set.
4) it will take you all day, or at least most of the afternoon.
Really guys, it’s just not that big a deal. Jam is just fruit cooked down with sugar and acid (ie. lemon juice). So why can’t you just mash up a pot and simmer it while you do other things? What’s wrong with making a cup or two at a time, enough to last the next week or so, instead of needing to fill a dozen jars and stock your pantry shelves for winter? (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)
I had a big bowl of strawberries left over from the display of a foodstyling job on Wednesday, and even the boys barely made a dent in them. I have zero freezer space left – I doubt I’d find room for even a single strawberry – so jam seemed a good solution. The seed was planted when I got an email offering a copy of 250 Home Preserving Favorites for Free Stuff Friday! I adore preserving books.
I planned on making the recipe for Strawberry Fig Jam with Balsamic Vinegar that came in the email, but didn’t have fresh figs, and they aren’t in season. At 4:30 I spotted the rapidly deteriorating bowl of berries, hulled them while talking on the phone, mashed them with a potato masher and threw them in my cast-iron skillet.
The advantage of using a skillet: more surface area, so the fruit cooks far more quickly. I added a half cup of sugar (you could add more, but I like jam not overly sweet, and for the flavour to come through) and squeezed in the juice of half a lemon, and it came to a simmer quickly. It cooked for ten minutes; I stirred it now and then – more often as it got thicker, breaking up the berries a bit more with my spoon – and when it was thick enough that it a) looked like jam, and b) left a trail when I dragged the spoon through it, it was done. It was 4:45.
I had intended to do a quick skillet jam with balsamic, but after a rough day I was in the mood for something more friendly and comforting – like vanilla. I stirred a bit of the good stuff in as I took the jam off the heat. (If you want a balsamic version, add about a tablespoon along with the lemon juice.) Now I have no choice but to make scones in the morning.
Skillet Strawberry Jam
1 L strawberries (4 cups), hulled
1/2 cup sugar
juice of half a lemon (about 1 Tbsp.)
1/4 tsp. pure vanilla extract (optional)
In a bowl, roughly mash your strawberries with a potato masher (you may need to lean into it at first, to get them going) or squeeze them with your fingers. Put them into a large skillet (cast iron is perfect!) with the sugar and lemon juice and cook over medium-high heat, stirring often and breaking up large chunks of berry with your spoon, until it thickens and your spoon leaves a trail across the bottom of the pan. (It should take about 10 minutes.) If you like, stir in the vanilla. Cool. Makes about 1 1/2 cups.
And since I mentioned it – here’s Yvonne’s recipe for Fig Strawberry Jam with Balsamic Vinegar. Yum.
Fig Strawberry Jam with Balsamic Vinegar
from 250 Home Preserving Favorites by Yvonne Tremblay
3 cups crushed strawberries
2 cups finely chopped fresh dark figs
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar, or to taste
1 tbsp lemon juice
5 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1. In a large, deep, heavy-bottomed pot, combine strawberries, figs, vinegar and lemon juice. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring constantly.
2. Add sugar in a steady stream, stirring constantly. Bring to a full boil, stirring constantly to dissolve sugar. Reduce heat to medium and boil gently, stirring often and reducing heat further as mixture thickens, for 18 to 22 minutes or until thickened. Use a potato masher to further break down figs. Test for setting point.
3. Remove from heat and skim off any foam.
4. Ladle into sterilized jars to within 1?4 inch (0.5 cm) of rim; wipe rims. Apply prepared lids and rings; tighten rings just until fingertip-tight.
5. Process jars in a boiling water canner for 10 minutes. Transfer jars to a towel-lined surface and let rest at room temperature until set. Check seals; refrigerate any unsealed jars for up to 3 weeks.
Right, it’s time to give away a copy of 250 Home Preserving Favorites. Now, I haven’t seen it yet, so I can’t really report on it. But I can tell you it was written by Yvonne Tremblay, a four-time Grand Champion Jam and Jelly Maker at the Royal Winter Fair, so I imagine she knows her stuff. If I’m going to learn how to make jams and jellies from someone, the best authority I can think of is someone who wins preserve contests at country fairs. 250 recipes should take you through the summer just fine. Besides jams and jellies there are marmalades, chutneys and barbecue sauces. I’m all about the condiments.
So shall we share what dinner was last night? Or on the subject of preserves, do you have any favourites? Feel free to provide links!
At The Family Kitchen: Grilled Pizza with Mangos, Basil & Buffalo Mozzarella
May 15 2010 | preserves | 81 Comments »
It turned out to be a mighty fine dinner tonight, if I do say so. And a bit of a miracle that it even came to be. At 5 I had no dinner plan in mind. Rummaging through the fridge unearthed a nice little organic chicken I picked up at Bite yesterday for $7 (!) that needed to be cooked, and decided for some reason to finally try chicken under a brick. Or – chicken under a skillet. (Who has bricks?)
Why is it that I decided to learn to butterfly a chicken and attempt a brand new recipe when everyone was hungry and it was closing in on the 6 o’clock news? I think partly because I feel a bit displaced from the kitchen these days – constantly writing about food, yes, testing stuff but not cooking a proper dinner as often as I’d like to lately. My sister is back in the hospital, the boys were filthy, and I was dropping balls all over the place. I found enough space on my counter for my laptop and looked up instructions on butterflying a chicken (you cut out the spine and open it like a book – easier than the term “butterflying” may suggest) and did it in a couple minutes. Plopped the spineless bird into a big bowl and poured orange juice over it, then added a dribble of olive oil, a couple sprigs of rosemary and a few cloves of garlic while running back and forth out front, where the boys were playing (W: “ow!” Me: “what happened?” W: “I probably shouldn’t tell you”).
It really wasn’t that difficult. I don’t know why I haven’t tried it before. You open the chicken like a book and toss it on the grill. Throw the spine in the freezer for stock.
There are a few good recipes to be found out there, but it’s really the cooking technique that’s worth sharing – beyond that you could really do to the chicken itself anything you might do before roasting it in the oven. Marinate it or not. Brush it with oil and sprinkle with salt. If you use barbecue sauce, add it toward the end of the cooking time, so that it doesn’t burn.
Preheat your grill to medium and toss it on, skin side down.
If you have bricks, wrap them in foil and set them on top. If you don’t happen to have bricks around your kitchen, set a cast iron skillet on top of the chicken – it works perfectly. Close the lid. (Do remember to use an oven mitt when you open the lid and take the pan off. Ow.)
Ours was a smallish bird – flip it after about 10 minutes. Put the skillet back on and close the lid again for 15-20 minutes.
As soon as it’s done, take it of and let it rest for a few minutes. This should give you enough time to tear some butter lettuce into a bowl with small tomatoes and thickly sliced ripe avocado, and shake some canola oil, balsamic vinegar, grainy mustard and maple syrup in a jar to drizzle overtop.
May 13 2010 | chicken & turkey and on the grill | 13 Comments »
For Mothers’ Day, Ali taught Emily how to make baking powder biscuits. We ate them for dessert, split and filled with strawberries, after a roast ham, beans baked in the slow cooker, and new potatoes. Sadly, the corner store was out of whipping cream, and E came home with a tub of Cool Whip. It was like putting Cheese Whiz on freshly baked bread.
They were pretty delicious biscuits. Made with butter (not shortening, as the recipe below suggests), they weren’t as tall as some, but had a tender crumb, split beautifully and were quite perfect looking, like something you might see in a store.
Ali is a good cook, and tends to hang on to a recipe for dear life if she finds one she likes. This is the sole recipe taped to her fridge, torn from the Fannie Farmer Cookbook:
And, as promised, the recipe for scones from the Fairmont Banff Springs. It’s a large recipe – but who knows? Someone out there may have occasion to make ten dozen scones? If you have a kitchen scale (and I really think everyone should, it makes baking so much easier and more accurate) it would be easy to cut it down to a more manageable quantity. I’ll do that another time – I promised myself I’d be in bed by 11 tonight (CBC tomorrow morning) and it’s 11:02.
Scones for Afternoon Tea at the Banff Springs
thanks to Executive Pastry Chef Stephen Garton
2 kg Bread Flour
2 kg Pastry Flour
40 g Salt
1.2 kg Unsalted Butter
800 g Granulated Sugar
150 g Baking Powder
12 large Eggs
1.6 L Buttermilk
500 g raisins (optional)
Mix butter, sugar, salt, baking powder and flours into a crumble mixture. Mix in milk and eggs until just incorporated. Roll out dough to about 18-20 mm thick. Cut desired size.
Bake at 170C (about 340F) for about 15 minutes, or until golden. Note *Our ovens are convection. Regular ovens can take longer.
Makes about 120 scones.
May 10 2010 | bread | 18 Comments »
I know, this comes across as very Mothers’ Day-ish, doesn’t it? Mothers’ Day proper was bit of a bust around here, if you’re looking to hear how it went. Mike forgot, having stayed up late to watch Betty White on SNL (the MOTHER’S DAY SPECIAL), and when I told W it was Mothers’ Day his response was, “NOOO! I want it to be Daddy’s day!” (He’s in an I-don’t-love-you-I-only-love-Dad-because-he-plays-with-me-and-you-only-work-all-the-time phase, which DOESN’T HELP AT ALL.) It turns out I’m just not as gifted as Mike is at playing superheros/Star Wars/Scooby-doo. I try. I’m just not boy enough.
So yeah, no sleep-in, no coffee. Bah. I’m not a flowers and jewelry sort of mom, and I don’t even care about breakfast in bed. But I do look forward to not getting up at the break of W climbing all over my head, and then having someone go get me a coffee. When it finally kicked in he made a Tim Horton’s run, and Ben and Emily made me some pity pancakes.
But. We went for Afternoon Tea at the Banff Springs Hotel yesterday, so I can pretend that was orchestrated by Mike and W on my behalf, in honour of my most excellent motherness.
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May 09 2010 | eating out | 39 Comments »
OK, I got one for ya. But I’m throwing you this bone only because I haven’t cooked dinner at all this week. (Don’t tell the publisher that this is from our as-yet-unnamed bean book!) I managed to squeeze four recipe tests in yesterday before 10 am, and that’s about it for kitchen action.
T.G.I.F. – I understand it now.
Remember that big to-do list I filled y’all in on two days ago? Ask me how many items have been scratched off. Do you really want to know? Not one. I forgot to add take mother in law for 3 hour grocery shopping trip and spend ridiculous amount of time searching for a Tim Horton’s without a half-hour lineup. And damn, that minutiae.
And then of course some days life throws curveballs right at your head.
My sister, the one who lives across the street, who is probably reading this on her laptop, wrapped in her robe in her big red chair, quite possibly drinking a coffee that she just figured out how to make as good as Mike does (out of necessity when we were away for two weeks), who is most likely inwardly cringing as she realizes I’m talking about her and wonders exactly how many details I’m about to disclose, was brought to the hospital in an ambulance yesterday. Which is exactly the sort of thing you don’t expect to hear when you answer the phone on a regular Thursday afternoon.
She’s now home again, but it does suck quite a bit when someone you love gets hurt. (It will suck even more when she gets that ambulance bill.)
On the upside (silver lining!) it meant I got to take Ben to his dance performance at school, and thus got to witness an entire kindergarten and grade 1 class dressed and made up as zombies, re-enacting Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Just pause for a minute and visualize that. W asked me if I was laughing or crying and I didn’t know the answer.
Toward the end of the performance, after all the grades had done their thing, W did his best to subtly work his way through the crowd, across the stretch of wood gymnasium floor that came between the audience and performing students, and nonchalantly sit down among them for the finale. He watched the teacher and did exactly what the other kids did, then stood up when prompted and filed out with them after the show. I think he might be ready for kindergarten.
Luckily, earlier this week I was testing pancakes made with pureed white beans (and they worked! for real! you can’t even tell!) and so I had a stash on hand. When things started feeling like a Tilt-a-Whirl I tossed pancakes to the boys like Flippy Flyers when they got hungry. Which is not to say that these have the consistency of Frisbees – they don’t.
And the pureed legumes boost the fiber in these far more than whole wheat flour (a cup of beans contains about 12 g fiber, compared to 4 in a cup of whole wheat flour).
Pancakes with White Beans
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat, oat or rye flour
2 tsp. baking powder
a shake of cinnamon (optional)
pinch salt
1 cup or half a 19 oz. (540 mL) can white kidney or navy beans, rinsed and drained
2 cups milk
2 large eggs
2 Tbsp. canola, olive or flax oil
In a large bowl, stir together the flours, baking powder, cinnamon (if you’re using it) and salt. In the bowl of a food processor, pulse the beans with a splash of the milk – enough to help get it going – until smooth. Add the rest of the milk, the eggs and oil and pulse until well blended.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and whisk just until combined; don’t worry about getting all the lumps out.
When the skillet is hot (you can test it by flicking some drops of water on it – they should bounce) spray it with nonstick spray or drizzle in about a teaspoon of oil and swirl to coat the pan. Ladle the batter onto the skillet, making the pancakes any size you like. If you are using them, place berries or slices of banana directly onto the batter. Turn the heat down a little and cook for 2-4 minutes, until the bottom is golden and bubbles begin to appear on the surface. Use a thin, flat spatula to flip them over and cook for another minute on the other side, until golden.
Repeat with the remaining batter. If you want everyone to eat at the same time, keep finished pancakes uncovered in a 200ºF oven. Makes about 8 pancakes.
And seeing as it’s Friday, I have some free stuff for you! In honour of mamma’s day this weekend, I have something created by one of my favourite moms, one I aspire to be more like. She’s what you might call a creative type – a teacher and a musician, the kind who comes up with insanely creative birthday party themes, composes original music for them, cooks from scratch and invents contests and games – her kids’ parties are the social events of the season for the 4 year old set; if their lives didn’t revolve around princesses and those little plastic shoes I’m certain W would just move in. Also, she’s just awesome. Case in point: the time she went to the Palamino late at night after the kids were in bed and rocked out in her Crocs.
Wait, I think I had a point here.
She has a band called Magnolia Buckskin, and they just released their first CD. Last night, in between a visit to emergency and getting Ben ready for his concert, as I made the boys poached eggs on toast, she stopped by to drop off freshly-pressed (do they press CDs?) copies. Which is, of course, brilliant. I’m so proud of her.
The song Walk was inspired by her successful efforts to conquer postpartum depression. When a friend became wheelchair-bound at a young age due to MS, she decided to celebrate the fact that at least she could walk, and went out and walked for hours a day, which helped bring her back to life. Can you think of a better way to celebrate Mother’s Day?
By the way – Magnolia Buckskin’s CD release party is in two weeks – Friday, May 21 at the Ironwood in Inglewood – a great venue with great food just a few blocks from our house! What better excuse to invite you all out for a drink? Wouldn’t that be fun?
To enter the FSF draw this week, I’d love to know what you learned from your mom in the kitchen? Or if that doesn’t apply, what you’re teaching your kids?
May 07 2010 | beans and breakfast | 43 Comments »
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