Archive for the 'preserves' Category
I’ve been running a pretty tight ship, refrigerator-wise. I’m digging right through to the back, taking inventory. On one such spelunking mission I came up with a bag containing 6 overripe pears. Pale yellow and dented, they were far too delicate to travel any distance in a lunch bag. There were too many to grate into muffins or pancakes. My freezer, which unloads the same container of pesto and a few disks of pastry dough every time I open the door, had no room. So while W sat at the table and did his home reading out loud, I chopped them into a pot with some water, sugar and ginger and made a compote. Or jam. Or something that looks great in a jar and is delicious on toast.
It’s not as sweet as most jam, which is why I felt the need to call it a compote. I dumped in a handful of cranberries from the freezer as an afterthought, which made it irresistibly sweet-tart and blushed. It might have been raspberries, or rhubarb. Whatever’s falling out of your freezer.
I admit I winged this. If you cook fruit and sugar it’s inevitable that at some point you’ll wind up with something jam-like. But this is roughly how it was done. (And no, you don’t need to peel your pears. Too much work, and those ripe skins are so thin you don’t even notice them. Plus they have fibre, which is a good thing.) By the way, those are Weck jars, from Crate & Barrel Southcentre!
Cranberry-Pear Ginger Preserves
5-6 ripe pears, cored and roughly chopped
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup water or apple juice
1 Tbsp. grated fresh ginger
1-2 cups fresh or frozen cranberries
Put everything into a pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, occasionally mashing with a large spoon or potato masher, until the mixture thickens, looks more uniform and jam-like. (Remember it will thicken as it cools.) Transfer to clean jars and refrigerate.
Makes 3-4 cups.
January 25 2012 | breakfast and preserves | 7 Comments »
It’s a good day when you get to spend most of it in your PJ pants – until you have to upgrade to yoga pants to go pick up the kid from school, anyway – and in the middle of it someone drops by with a few pastries and a couple loaves of still-warm bread.
I didn’t have any butter. But – tragedy averted: I had about a cup of cream. Making butter really isn’t a biggie, and yet although it’s been on my radar since we took turns shaking up that little container of whipping cream in elementary school, passing it from kid to kid until it transformed into butter (that really could be an analogy for a lot of things, couldn’t it?) I rarely do it myself. If I’m out of butter, I run to the corner store, or send Mike, or put it on the shopping list. I don’t think to make it, but it couldn’t be easier. Or better. (Then again, I rarely have heavy cream in the fridge either. Maybe I’ll start to? Heavy cream meaning 35% whipping cream, the heaviest commonly available.)
It would be worth getting into the habit of making butter for my own use (apart from baking, I mean – I’ll share it with the boys) – after all, if I’m going to eat butter, it may as well be the good stuff. Think homemade chocolate chip cookies vs the bagged kind.
Have you seen the cost of high-end butter? To buy a pint of cream and make your own is a steal.
As I was saying, it’s no biggie – I was working in the kitchen anyway, and so poured the cream into the bowl of the stand mixer, covered the top with plastic wrap (it gets splattery) and turned it on. That’s about it. It’ll churn away, first turning into whipped cream, then something stiffer than whipped cream, and then suddenly you’ll hear it get wet and splashy as it separates into butter and thin buttermilk. (This is why I like using plastic wrap rather than a tea towel – not only can you seal the edges, you can see through it to see how the cream is changing, and hear when the butter separates from the buttermilk and splashes on the plastic film.) That’s it.
You’ll wind up with pure butter that looks like a wad of moulding clay – simply pull it out and put it in a crock, or dish, or jar. It will be a perfect spreading texture. Yes, that’s glittery purple nail polish.
You could add salt to it of course, before or after. Or try spreading your bread with sweet butter and sprinkling it with a pinch of coarse salt. Heaven. Especially when it’s -11 outside and you’re still in your PJ pants.
January 11 2012 | preserves | 29 Comments »
I love when you have a friend who goes grape picking in the Okanagan and brings you back a box of tight bunches of Coronation grapes, some with twisty vines still attached. If this hasn’t recently happened to you, sorry.
Or… perhaps we should arrange a field trip to the Okanagan?
So I have this box of Coronation grapes – the seedless version of Concords, those dusty indigo blue grapes that pop out of their skins and have far more flavour than the lacklustre green and pale purple ones you see year-round at the grocery store. They’re great for eating, but they also make delicious other things, like cakes and focaccia and chutney and jelly, which is actually a snap to make.
And it tastes surprisingly like the grape jelly of my childhood – not a whole lot more sophisticated.
To make Grape Jelly: simmer 1 1/2 lb Concord or Coronation grapes with 3 Tbsp. lemon juice for about 10 minutes, until the grapes pop; strain through a sieve and return the grape juice to the pan with 1 cup sugar. Bring the mixture to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes, until the jam reaches 220?F on a candy thermometer. Cool and refrigerate for up to a month.
That’s it. It’s thicker than jelly, but I’m not sure I’d call it jam, as all the solids have been strained out. Preserves, perhaps? I love the purpleness of it, especially when spreading on toast or filling little tartlet cups lined with white cheddar pastry. Seemed like a good idea.
Concord Grape Jelly Tarts or Hand Pies
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 cup butter, chilled and cut into pieces
1/4 cup shortening, chilled and cut into pieces
1/2-1 cup grated old white cheddar or 1/4 cup ground hazelnuts or pecans
2-4 Tbsp. ice-cold water
Grape jelly/preserves, for filling
Make the pastry: in a large bowl or the bowl of a food processor, stir together the flour, sugar and salt. Add the butter, shortening and cheese or hazelnuts and use a fork, pastry blender, wire whisk or the “pulse” motion of the food processor to blend the mixture until it resembles coarse meal, with lumps of fat no bigger than a pea.
Drizzle the minimum amount of water over the mixture and stir until the dough comes together, adding a little more a bit at a time if you need it. Gather the dough into a ball, flatten it into a disc, wrap it in plastic and chill for at least half an hour, or freeze for up to 6 months if you want a head start on things.
To fill, roll the pastry out on a lightly floured surface about 1/4-inch thick; cut into rounds with a cookie cutter or glass rim. Fit into mini muffin tins, pressing up the sides, and fill with a spoonful of jam, filling it only about halfway. If you like, cut the scraps into little shapes to place on top of the jam.
Alternatively, make little hand pies (aka turnovers) by putting a spoonful of jam in the middle of each round, brushing the edge with a little beaten egg or milk, and folding it over, turnover-style. Press the edge closed with a fork to seal, and poke the top with a fork. Transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet.
Either way, bake in a preheated 400F oven for 20-25 minutes, until golden. Remove from the pan while still warm. Makes lots.
September 27 2011 | dessert and preserves | 19 Comments »
This one’s for you, Suchalab (from yesterday’s comments). Everyone should know how to make a ‘fridge pickle. (Also? They’re not just for cucumbers anymore. Think onions! Think carrots! Think beets! Think beans! Think fennel!)
These are the pickles I brought to David on the show on Tuesday. I made them quickly, slicing up a lone cuke that arrived in my CSA box, and covering it with a quick brine of rice vinegar, sugar, salt and pickling spices – something I picked up in the bulk spice section, but looks like mustard seed, coriander and bay leaves? With other bits in it?
As I wrote in Swerve a couple weeks ago, there are a few factors that keep would-be pickle enthusiasts from pursuing this particular craft: the time commitment of putting up dozens of enormous jars of baby cukes, and then those dozens of jars, filled with dill pickles or the like, occupying a good chunk of valuable real estate in the pantry. As with jam, there’s no reason a batch of pickles should require bushels of veggies, dozens of canning jars, proper processing equipment plus an entire afternoon spent in their service. Quick pickles come together quickly and in small batches – a single jar in the fridge is all you need, right? When you think of a refrigerator pickle as simply brined or marinated veggies, they don’t seem quite so intimidating.
Quick Refrigerator Pickles
Measurements here are pretty lax – really just go for enough brine to cover whatever it is you want to pickle. Add more sugar for sweeter pickles.
1 cup rice or apple cider vinegar
2 Tbsp. sugar (or more, if you like sweeter pickles)
1 Tbsp. coarse salt
1 garlic clove, smashed (optional)
2 tsp. pickling spice or mustard seed (or a sprig of fresh dill)
2 small cucumbers (or 4 mini ones), sliced on a slight diagonal
In a small saucepan, bring the vinegar, sugar, salt, garlic and pickling spice to a simmer. Pour over the cucumber slices in a small bowl or jar. Cool, then refrigerate. Let them hang out for at least a day or two before you eat them.
September 14 2011 | preserves | 8 Comments »
It’s a good weekend when I get to putter, and make jam, and pick up a loaf of crusty sourdough to toast and eat with sauteed chard and over easy eggs. And then toast some more to eat with jam.
We had been berry picking last week, and had a bagful in the fridge. The boys wanted to make jam. Straight-up Saskatoon berry jam can be a little hardcore – they’re a little hardier than blueberries – and so I picked up some strawberries and let them squish them directly into the pot with their hands. We made strawberry-Saskatoon jam, and as far as combos go, it’s just about perfect.
The berries get cooked down anyway – normally you chop or mash them first or in the pot – and they got a great kick out of demonstrating their respective superhuman strengths by squeezing the guts out of strawberries with their bare hands. Hopefully now they won’t grow up to be those guys who smash beer cans against their foreheads.
The mixture is thick at first, before the fruit has had a chance to release its juices. The boys pushed stools up to the stove and attempted to stir without flicking sugared fruit all over the kitchen.
You think at first that the fruit might singe, being so dry in the pot. But then once it gives up its juice, you think it’s far too liquidy. But it’s not.
Just keep cooking it. It will foam up all big and pink but not (quite) overflow if you’ve chosen your pot correctly. Eventually the foam will subside and the jam will thicken – keep in mind though that it will still be runnier than it will be cool. This is why you need to put a small spoonful on a small dish that you’ve stashed in the freezer at some point during the last few steps.
Once it cools, it should wrinkle when you push it with your finger.
Ladle it into hot jars, or the containers of your choice. If you’re nervous about canning, cool the jam completely and store it in heavy duty freezer bags or other containers in the freezer. That works too.
If you don’t have access to them where you are, blueberries are a perfect substitute for Saskatoons.
Strawberry-Saskatoon Jam
8 cups fruit (about half Saskatoon berries or blueberries, half chopped or crushed strawberries)
1 pouch liquid pectin
5-6 cups sugar
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
In a large pot (it will bubble up as it cooks) stir together the fruit, pectin, sugar and lemon juice. Bring to a full boil and cook, stirring often, for about 20 minutes, or until a small spoonful set on a small dish you’ve stashed in the fridge or freezer gels enough that your finger leaves a trail when you run it through the puddle of jam.
Ladle into clean, hot jars, wipe rims and seal according to the jar manufacturer’s directions (I use the snap lid jars). Set aside to cool. Refrigerate any that don’t seal properly. Our batch made almost ten 250 mL jars.
August 20 2011 | preserves | 14 Comments »
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