fruit

Olive oil orange cookies.

~ wellfedemily ~ 6 Comments

Cookie porn.One of the annoying things about being broke is running out of butter, especially when you want cookies. The day before payday is always incredibly bad for that. I ran out of milk too.

Good thing we never run out of the really important stuff, like wine.

So not only did I need a cookie. I needed a cookie that would go with my wine, and my, oh my, I think we’ve got one.

This recipe is a hybrid of sorts, a little of this and a little of that from Mario and Mark, and a bit of me as well. You should definitely give these a try – not too sweet, with a pronounced POP! of orange, and a nutty olive oil undercurrent. Perfect with wine, or even just on their own. Crunchy outside, chewy inside, and certainly not your everyday cookie. These are immodest, show-off cookies. Don’t be put off by the oil. It may not replace butter in your life, but it will be a nice little change.

Olive oil orange cookies

(Makes about three dozen cookies.)

  • 3 cups flour
  • 1 tbsp. orange zest
  • 1/2 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • 1/4 cup fresh-squeezed orange juice (1 navel orange should do you for the recipe, zest and juice)
  • 1/2 cup dry white wine
  • 1 tsp. brandy (optional)

Preheat your oven to 375°F.

Whisk together your dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together your wet ingredients. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredient mix, and stir to form a sticky, very shiny dough. Again, don’t be put off – it looks greasy. But the cookies, for some reason, won’t be.

Shiny dough.Roll the dough into balls about an inch in diameter, and plonk onto a cookie sheet. Bake about an inch apart, on the middle rack, for 12 to 15 minutes, or until lightly browned, slightly golden. Inhale deeply as these bake, and behold the fragrant wonders. This stuff smells AMAZING.

Cool on racks, but feel free to eat piping hot. Once cool, store in an airtight container. If they last that long. I ate, like ten cookies. I’m not even embarrassed, because olive oil is apparently good for you.

Okay, I’m kind of embarrassed, because it’s nearly midnight and I have to work tomorrow but instead of going to bed even though I’m tired, I’m drinking wine and eating cookies. For the win? I guess we’ll see tomorrow?

Maximum noms.

Rustic pear tart: A thing you can make without a pie plate.

~ wellfedemily ~ 4 Comments

We’re doing our best to save money, and one of our great ideas was that we would make our own wine. Rather fortuitously, at the same time we had the idea, my parents’ friends, John and Loretta, were cleaning out their basement and purging all the stuff they call Crap. Awesome score for us, and now we have almost 30 bottles of “wine.” I put it in quotations because it’s not good.

But it’s not bad.

Nick and his little helper prep the bottles.
Nick and his little helper wash the bottles.
The dress code for bottling night was brown shirts and hats.
The dress code for bottling night was brown shirts and hats.

We went to Nick’s sister’s and brother-in-law’s place last night to bottle our wine – they live in a house with a basement, so we made our wine there – and I brought pie. You know what’s weird? I don’t own a pie plate. I can’t really explain the oversight, but in the interest of saving money, which we have to do, I’m not going to buy one. You can make pie without a pie plate, and it looks rustic and homey, like you’re better than pie plates, like you’re crazy and clever and do what you want. And I think that comes out in the end result, as the pie is tasty and badass.

Rustic pear tart

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 1/2 cup cold butter, cubed
  • 5 tbsp. ice water
  • 1 lb. firm-fleshed pears, whatever you’ve got (four or five large)
  • 4 cups water
  • 1 cup dark brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup brandy
  • 1/2 vanilla bean, split

Make your dough. Combine flour and salt, and drop each cube of butter in, squishing them between your fingers. The end result before you add the water should be a crumby mixture with larger chunks, some as large as kidney beans or peas. Stir in water, a bit at a time, to form the dough – you may not need all of the water … you want the dough to be just moist enough to hold together. Press into a disk and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate until pears are done.

In a large pot, dissolve sugar in water and brandy. Drop in vanilla bean, and bring to a light boil. This is inspired by David Lebowitz’s recipe for poached pears, and is, in fact, very similar.

Stir in the pears, and bring back to a boil, boiling gently for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and cool in the pot, 30 minutes.

Pears!Roll out dough on a floured surface until about 1/4-inch thick. Roll the flat dough around the rolling pin, and then unroll onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet.

Lay the pear slices in a circle in the middle of the dough stacking up to two inches high, leaving about an inch and a half border – you’ll want to be able to fold the dough over the pears all rustic-like.

SDC12123Fold the dough over the pears. Optionally, you can paint the edges of the crust with a little egg and water – that’ll make it golden and lovely. But I’m lazy and forgot. Bake in a 375°F oven for 40 minutes.

Serve warm with whipped cream or ice cream.

Pie!

Pie, sliced.

Coronation grape granita: How to say “I love you, Me.”

~ wellfedemily ~ 1 Comment

I was going to make this for other people. And I did – I shared. It was dessert, and it was lovely. But the next time I make this, I am taking the phone off the hook and not going online and sending Nick away and eating the entire batch myself, because this is what love tastes like. It’s robust and rich, and reminds me of something you might eat to cool off in Napa, where the air smells like fruit must and sea salt and redwoods and everywhere you go you hear the rustle of leaves and the pop of red wine corks pulling free. It’s like that: winy, concentrated purple bliss, with hints of caramel and just the right amount of puckery bittersweetness. Make it, the grapes are ripe now. It’s time, and I’d hate for you to regret not having this.

Coronation grape granita

(Serves six to eight.)

  • 1 1/2 lbs. Coronation grapes
  • Juice of 1 lemon (about 2 tbsp.)
  • 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup white granulated sugar
  • 1 1/2 cups water

Pluck 1 1/2 pounds of coronation grapes from their stems, and plop them into a pot on the stove. Add sugar, lemon, and water, and simmer over medium-high heat until the grapes are soft and the liquid is purple and dark.

Grapes!

Remove from heat, and mash with a potato masher. Squeeze through a fine-mesh sieve into a 9″x13″ glass baking sheet, and put into the freezer.You're hot ...

Every hour for the first three hours after that, pull the juice out of the freezer and scrape with a fork to move the ice crystals around, which keeps them from becoming a solid mass. After that, just pop in every once in awhile to be sure that all is well, scraping as needed.

... then you're cold.

Remove from the freezer about ten minutes before serving, and scrape with a spoon into serving dishes. Serve as is, or with whipped cream. Swoon.

Delicious.

Did I just tell you about dessert first? I guess I did. Come back soon – I have lots to tell you, all about baked beans and ribs and cornbread with blackberries and wonderful things like that.

Preview.

*Note: I originally called the grapes “concord” because until this morning when I read the package, I thought that’s what they were called. No. They’re coronation grapes, and they’re marvellous. But you can make this with concord grapes if that’s what you’ve got. Cheers.

Strawberries. Vanilla beans. Burning. And I am not allowed to can anymore.

~ wellfedemily ~ 9 Comments

So, this week I was going to tell you all about bountiful harvests and glorious home-cooking, but everything kind of went to hell and I’m going to be out of town for a few days and I decided that there was no point in cooking and The Three Lions Café on Broadway at Ontario makes a fantastic order of bangers and mash and Kayla, the waitress there, is pretty much my favourite server ever and since everything I was doing at home this week made me tired or marred me, I decided to quit and let someone else do the cooking. And the pouring, of course, which is why I feel infinitely better. That, and Kayla’s impression of a dying giraffe. Awesome.

But, anyway.

Remember a couple of days ago when I was all, “DIY revolution!” and “Canning is cool and fun!” and it seemed like I was finally getting into a Gen. Y-groove, with all the frugality and doing-it-myselfness? Well, fuck that shit, if I may put it delicately. Last night I burned my face off. And it sucked. And I cried a little on the kitchen floor, face to the cool laminate, and then realized that I burned myself for what amounted to three cups of strawberry vanilla bean preserves. Beyond fantastic (the preserves), for the record, but it’s hard to look past the fact that my right eye is basically a giant scab. A face scab. SUPER sexy. I’m sure in two weeks when I’m less deformed I’ll call this a battle scar, but for now, I hate everything. Except my strawberries. I’m not mad at them … just … disappointed. I was really hoping they would amount to more.

This is the burn, fresh. I wanted to show you it fresh because it's kind of gross now, all brown and scabby, like a crusty birth mark.
This is the burn, fresh. I wanted to show you it fresh because it's kind of gross now, all brown and scabby, like a crusty birth mark, but puckered and shiny.

At this point, I can’t help but think that I sure sound like a whiner. Time to switch gears, perhaps, and tell you all about the strawberries and the vanilla beans?

Sure thing.

And here you go.

About a month and a half ago, I stumbled across  I Have a Knife and a recipe for Homemade Strawberry Vanilla Bean Preserves. Good stuff, this, and I was saddened to have only seconds before completed a batch of my own strawberries, sans vanilla bean. Well. There’s a market in Surrey near my parents’ house that sells exceptionally fresh produce, and they just so happened to have a few local strawberries left. I bought some, intending to make something out of them, and then forgot about them. Until last night. I’m going away this weekend and didn’t want to see them die – I needed to do something with them. And I have vanilla beans.

I halved Knife’s recipe, as I only had about four cups of berries, but I’ll give you the full thing. The full recipe should make about six cups of jam. I’ve tweaked this some, so I’m including those adjustments here.

Strawberry Vanilla Bean Preserves

  • 8 cups strawberries, hulled, rinsed, and sliced
  • 4 cups white sugar
  • 1 vanilla bean, halved lengthwise
  • 2 tbsp. balsamic vinegar

I keep linking to Epicurious’ Procedure for Shorter Time Processing, but that’s because I like it and it works. Prepare the jars in this way.

In a large non-reactive or stainless steel pot, mix together strawberries, sugar, vanilla bean, and vinegar. Mash with a potato masher, and cook over high heat. You’re going to want to bring these to a boil, and keep them boiling aggressively until they reach 220°F on a candy thermometer, which is the temperature at which the jam will gel. It should take between twenty and forty minutes depending on the size of your pot and the depth of the berries in the pot.

Remove the beans, and pour the mixture into your prepared jars. Do not allow a large dollop of boiling water to assault your face as you remove the jars from their own aggressive pot of water, or you will feel a tremendous amount of pain, and you will say the kind of swears that even truckers will hesitate over, lest they seem uncouth. And then you will sob on your floor for a few minutes, and your version of Nick will be all, “You’re not allowed to can anymore.” Because he doesn’t care a whack about revolution, DIY or otherwise.

Process as per Epicurious’ instructions.

And you know how I know they’re awesome? When I stumbled home this evening, I found myself a tad ravenous, as one gets, and the only thing that could fill the void was dessert. And it’s too late to make pudding, so I am, as I write, spooning fresh strawberry vanilla bean jam into my mouth from the jar, and it is divine. I imagine that it will age well, given a few weeks or months, and then I will like it even more. Too bad I only have two jars.

Dark red.Also, don’t be wary about the vinegar. I promise you, you’ll like it. Vanilla can add a cloying sort of taste when added to stuff that’s already on the sweet side, and the vinegar is a nice counterbalance to that. You’re not actually going to taste vinegar, or even sour. The vinegar will add a bit of depth, umami, if you will, and will do little more than linger in the background, preventing the sweetness from taking off and/or seeming fluffy and excessive. It grounds it. It’s almost smokey, but it’s so subtle that anyone who doesn’t know it’s an ingredient will never know it’s there. I’ve never lied to you before.

And don’t give up on canning. I won’t. I’m just going to buy a much smaller pot and tongs that don’t slip and drop hot glass bombs that injure my face with their fallout. In the meantime, America? I’m coming back. And Trader Joe’s? Please have your shelves stocked. Back in a few days!

In which it takes me a very long time to get to the point, the point being soufflé.

~ wellfedemily ~ 2 Comments

This was going to be a post about blackberries, because we’re right smack in the middle of a DIY revolution and I’m calling myself a revolutionary because I’ve never been cool and I thought this – this – might be my chance. I was going to pick the berries, and then preserve them elegantly with plums and other berries and Christmas spices, which is a thing I discovered in England (at the Queen’s grocer, no less) and give them to everyone at the holidays, which I believe is the pinnacle of DIY … that is, inflicting crap you made on people at Christmas under the guise of caring even though they know you’re actually just cheap.

Pickers.Anyway. This was going to be a post about blackberries, but it isn’t.

And let me show you why:

Sharp.Prickles. No, thorns. I was expecting a magical time where fat little blackberries would pop right off the plant into my palm, all juicy and lovely, just begging me to turn them into blackberry sorbet and Christmas jam. Instead, the berries were mostly red, and the black ones were almost all hidden behind skin-shredding barbs, almost all of them out of my reach. I think we gave it a solid 40 minutes before Grace was all, “Can we go home now?”

Stupid little jerks.And so we piled into James’ car and headed back home, a little disgruntled. Revolution isn’t supposed to be so prickly, I thought. I didn’t pick enough to do much with, so I turned them begrudgingly into clean-out-the-crisper jam. Which might be my best jam of the season, as it turns out, but I didn’t write it down so I can’t tell you about it until I reconstruct the recipe. Next year.

The surprise of the morning, the thing I’ve been dawdling at telling you about, was the soufflé. One can’t participate in any sort of revolution without a rich breakfast.

I am not sure how one finds himself in his third decade without so much as a taste of soufflé, but neither Grace nor James had ever made or consumed soufflé ever before, not even once. Le shock! Which leads me to believe that there are others. And I hope to correct that.

Soufflé is a kind of fluffy egg cloud filled with cheese, held up by butter and cream, and flavoured with any of many spices, the combination of which makes your kitchen smell like France. Not the sewery smells that unhappy tourists report, of course, but the France of my, and perhaps your imagination. Eggs and cheese. Melting. Fluffy. Clouds. That’s all the introduction I needed.

This recipe was adapted by Molly Wizenberg from Julia Child, and I’ve since adapted it a bit further. Recipes are not things to just read and obey – they are suggestions, and if you have no gruyere but you have gouda, don’t go out and buy a different sort of cheese. And if you feel like cumin seeds? Add those too. Hate nutmeg? Omit it then. This is a dish you can make entirely out of things you already have on hand. And breakfast should never be any more complicated than that.

Classic Cheese Soufflé

(Serves four to six as a main course.)

  • 2 tbsp. finely grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1 cup whole milk
  • 2 1/2 tbsp. butter
  • 3 tbsp. unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 tsp. paprika
  • 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
  • 4 large egg yolks
  • 5 large egg whites
  • 1 cup (packed) coarsely grated gouda cheese

Preheat oven to 400°F.

Butter a six-cup (1 1/2-quart) soufflé dish. I used my Corningware dish that looks like a giant ramekin. I think that’s what’s meant by a soufflé dish. Round. It should be round. Add Parmesan cheese, coating the bottom and sides. Don’t worry if it doesn’t get everywhere.

Warm milk in small heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium-low heat until steaming.

At the same time, melt the butter in larger saucepan over medium heat. Add flour and whisk for about 3 minutes, until it is golden and doughy. Do not let it brown. Remove from heat and let stand for one minute. Pour in warm milk, whisking until smooth. Return to heat and cook, whisking constantly until very thick, another three minutes. Remove from heat and whisk in paprika, cumin, salt, and nutmeg. Add egg yolks one at a time, whisking to blend after each addition. Scrape soufflé base into large bowl. Cool to lukewarm. I made this part ahead, and then went fussed about with the music for a little while, and bothered Nick.

Beat egg whites in another large bowl until stiff but not dry. Fold 1/4 of whites into soufflé base, so that the mixture begins to look airy, and the colour is lighter. Fold in 1/2 the remaining whites while gradually adding cheese, then fold the remaining whites into the batter. Do not stir. If you stir it, you’ll break it.

Pour batter into your buttered dish.

Place dish in oven and immediately reduce oven temperature to 375°F. Bake until soufflé is puffed and golden brown on top and center moves only slightly when dish is shaken gently, about 25 minutes (do not open oven door during first 20 minutes). Serve immediately. People will be excited that you’ve placed this in front of them.

CHEESE CLOUD!Serve with a vegetable. I grilled some fresh pattypan squash (toss halved squash in olive oil, 1 tsp. kosher salt, and 1 tsp. black pepper, grill six to eight minutes per side) instead of frying up hash browns because it’s summer squash season.

Cute.

Breakfasty.A little bread and jam is nice too, and bacon makes everything better, so don’t forget that. All in all, an excellent start to the day, even if the day made us bleed. Note to self: Just buy blackberries. And definitely, DEFINITELY make soufflé.

Sponge cake slathered in melted jam, and topped with ice cream. And this is not a blog about eating for your health.

~ wellfedemily ~ 4 Comments

I live with a zombie-blasting puke machine. He’s 27. He wore the same sweatpants for days, and they weren’t even clean when he put them on. And we ate soup.

And then Tuesday came and we finally got to eat the pulled-pork and beans leftovers I brought home from my mom’s on Sunday night. And we went to see Julie & Julia, which was good except that I can’t handle the sounds of eating noises or movie kissing and there it all was in surround sound, and then it became the day before the day before payday, and I plunged deep into the kind of financial despair that usually hits whenever I open my mail, and it seemed like the time to do something responsible. That responsible thing? Using up what’s in the fridge. Fortunately, when Nick was sick, he cleaned the whole apartment, so now I have clean surfaces to work on. So Tuesday night, I roasted some sweet potatoes and tossed them in the fridge for gnocchi, took inventory of crap in the fridge, and decided to make a cake with blueberries.

Is there such a thing as a run-on paragraph? I think there is, because I think I just invented it.

Anyway.

And when I was taking leftovers, I also swiped my mom’s tattered old copy of The New James Beard, which is not new any longer as it’s two years older than I am. But there’s a recipe in it for sponge cake with apricot glaze. A soft, light sponge cake that nearly floats, suspended by the froth of stiff-peak egg whites, sticky with a melted jam glaze that Beard, on page 520, says “makes it rather special.”

Recipe.I added blueberries, and melted some of my peach jam, which became more of a sauce than a glaze, and served the cake with ice cream and fresh berries.

The great thing about this cake, aside from the fact that it’s delightful, to quote Jenna, my Wednesday dinner guest, is that it uses stuff you have on hand. You don’t have to buy anything fancy to make this – just use up what you’ve got.

Sponge Cake, adapted from The New James Beard

  • 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 1/2 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 cup egg yolks (which should mean the yolks from about six large eggs)
  • 1/4 cup cold orange juice
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • 1 tbsp. orange zest
  • 1/2 cup egg whites (annoyingly, this means about four … save the two whites left over and make yourself an omelet for breakfast or something)
  • 1/4 tsp. cream of tartar (if you don’t have this, don’t panic. The recipe will still work without it)

Preheat your oven to 350°F.

Mix the flour, one cup of the sugar, the salt, and the baking powder. Add the egg yolks, orange juice, zest, and vanilla, but do not stir or mix or combine any further than putting everything in the same bowl. Let it be.

In a large bowl, beat the egg whites until fluffy. Add the cream of tartar, continuing to beat, and then gradually add in the remaining half cup of sugar. Beat this until stiff peaks have formed.

Now you can mix the stuff in the other bowl. James Beard never says why you have to wait, but we’re following a recipe here, and even though I didn’t actually do what I was told (I beat it up from the beginning), I feel like I should still relay the process that he’s put forth in this fine volume. Beat until well blended, about one minute.

Using a spatula or other soft utensil, gently fold this mixture, about 1/4 at a time, into the egg whites. Folding is very simple, not at all intimidating. You will literally fold the egg whites over the batter until the batter and the egg whites are one light, fluffy super batter. Don’t stir. The bubbles in the egg froth are what keep this cake so light.

I added about one cup of fresh blueberries at the folding stage. Good call on that one.

When the batter is smooth, turn into an ungreased 10-inch tube pan. I didn’t know what a tube pan was, so I used a loaf pan. It worked just fine. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes, until the cake has started to shrink away from the sides of the pan. The cake should spring back slightly when you press lightly on the top-centre.

Once you’ve removed the cake from the oven, immediately invert it, allowing it to cool before removing it from the pan. Glaze with 1 cup melted jam, possibly spiked with 1/4 cup cognac or whathaveyou – James also suggests kirsch or applejack. I think a dry white wine would be pleasant. I have no idea what applejack is.

I skipped glazing and used the melted jam as a sauce, and it was perfectly lovely, both in taste and appearance.

Pretty.

This should serve eight people, or four if you cut it very thick. Top with ice cream, or whipped cream, and fresh fruit, whatever’s in season or in your fridge.

Eating this made me feel responsible, like I was being sustainable and fiscally prudent and all that good crap. Like I could even begin to start thinking about addressing what’s in all those scary envelopes. Just like that. Stay tuned for tears and Nick’s sweatpants and comfort food come Friday/payday.

Cobbling together a cobbler while baking in the heat.

~ wellfedemily ~ 4 Comments

ApricotsApricots.

Nick called a moratorium on the jam-making, much as I was enjoying it – something to do with me being disgusting and messy and now the fruit flies have taken over, and he keeps stepping in sticky stuff, and my cries of “but I’m creative” are officially falling on deaf ears, despite the fact that our fridge was full-to-bursting with my week’s fruit purchases. It’s too hot to be making jam anyway.

And speaking of hot, hot pot. Steve and Sooin invited us over to eat the hot delicious food of Sooin’s magical making, and we were beyond excited. And also very poor, because life is expensive, so I thought that bringing dessert would make up for not bringing wine.

I thought I was inventing this myself, but it turns out I’m not really. Apricot cobbler is not new, nor are brandied apricots. I’d like to think that both of these things together is a grand invention I can take credit for, but that’s probably not the case. Stupid Internet, always getting to everything first.

Brandied Apricot Cobbler with Ginger

  • 6 cups apricots, quartered (or eighthed, depending on the size)
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1 tsp. finely grated fresh ginger
  • 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
  • 1 tbsp. lemon juice
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 1/4 cup brandy

Crust:

  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • Zest of one lemon
  • 2 tbsp. brown sugar
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 2 tsp. baking powder
  • 4 tbsp. cold butter
  • 1 tsp. vanilla extract
  • 1/2 cup cold heavy cream

Put your apricots in a pan that’s 8″ x 8″ or so (mine is 8″ x 10″). Mix together the sugar, ginger, nutmeg, lemon juice, salt, and brandy, pour over the apricots, and toss to coat. Cover and let sit, one hour.

Apricots again.Preheat your oven to 425°F.

Mix together your flour, lemon zest, sugar, salt, and baking powder. Squish the cold butter into the mix, squeezing butter and flour between your fingers until the mixture forms crumbs, with some larger hunks of butter. The smallest should be crumb-like, the largest the size of kidney beans. Stir in the vanilla and cream until a soft dough is formed.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, and knead for about 30 seconds, or about 10 times. You want to be sure that everything in the dough is integrated evenly. Roll out, then cover the apricots, tucking the edges in around the fruit. The dough will be no thicker than 1/2 an inch. That is what you want.

All tucked in.Optionally, you can paint the top with butter and sprinkle a little sugar over the thing. I used turbinado sugar for sparkle and crunch.

Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until the top is golden and the fruit is bubbly along the sides.

Baked.Serve warm, with ice cream or whipped cream.

Peaches that taste like candy.

~ wellfedemily ~ 1 Comment
Dramatic peach.
Dramatic peach.

I only eat peaches in July and August. Those rock-hard tiny little yellow bullets of no flavour you get in stores the whole rest of the year? Those aren’t peaches. Peaches come from the Okanagan, and they are bigger than my two fists pressed together, and did you know that your brain is about the size of your two fists pressed together? I like my peaches as big as my brain, sopping and sloppy and juicy and sticky all over the place. And they taste like candy.

Smaller than is ideal but still fabulous.
Smaller than is ideal but still fabulous.

Peaches are my favourite fruit.

I was an infant in the Okanagan, and my mom told me that my first taste of solid food was a peach picked fresh from the backyard mushed up and thrust upon my tongue. And every time I bite into a peach, the taste surprises me, as if it is the first time I’ve ever tasted one, because I always kind of forget that peaches are peaches and not that strange fruit that comes in cans or those terrible little abominations available at Safeway in December.

Okanagan peaches have arrived, and this week I bought too many. Apricots too, but that’s another post. So we were elbows deep in sticky, and it was great, but a few of them had turned on me, started to get a bit smishy, and some of them were just not soft enough for me to get ravenous with. I salvaged a couple toward the end, sliced them and drizzled them with cream.

On their way into my mouth.

Peach feast.As for the rest, I turned them into jam.

Because it’s not as hard to do as you think, and because canning lets you enjoy peaches beyond August. And also, it’s trendy.

Peach Jam!

(six one-cup-size jars)

  • 4 cups chopped peaches
  • Juice of 1 lemon (about 1/4 cup)
  • 1 package original, plain, regular old pectin
  • 5 cups granulated sugar

You’re supposed to finely chop your peaches. I finely chopped most of the peaches, leaving a few larger bits in the mix, because I like it when there’s the odd chunk I can chew in jam. Once again, I followed the Procedure for Shorter Time Processing when it came to prepping the jars, because it worked and I don’t think there’s any reason to screw with a system that works.

Put your peaches, lemon, and pectin in a large pot over high heat, stirring frequently until it comes to a rolling boil.

A jam is born.Dump in the sugar, stirring to dissolve. Bring it back up to a boil, and then, when it’s boiling so aggressively you can’t quell it with a bit of stirring, set the timer for one minute, and stir constantly. Remove from heat and fill your jars. Process as usual.

Jars in the mist.Then, wait. The most satisfying sound in the world is the “pop” of the jar lids as they seal themselves shut. I had seven jars, because mine were slightly smaller than 250mL/1 cup, so once I’d heard seven little pops, all was right with the world. And then I napped. And it was good.

Seven cute little jars with fruity lids and I smile and smile and smile.
Seven cute little jars with fruity lids and I smile and smile and smile.

Let ’em sit for 24 hours undisturbed. It may take up to two weeks for jam to set, did you know that? If it sets right away, then feel free to eat it tomorrow, on a warm, buttered piece of fresh bread. Marvellous.

I’ll bet you take to the Internet to start looking at condos in Kelowna almost immediately after you’re done.

Canning: The Third Act. And it turns out that 10 years later, math can still get the better of you. Or, “Strawberry red currant jam.”

~ wellfedemily ~ 1 Comment

Pretty.So, a bijillion things happened this week and it was impossible to get to the currants any earlier than today, so you can imagine how much I had built it all up in my mind. Glorious red jelly, I’d imagined, spread all over the tops of little rounds of brie that I would bake in puff pastry – and then we got busy, and Nick’s sister Jess had a baby, and I ran out of jars and payday hadn’t quite happened and then I found myself in a copy-editing frenzy for my friends’ fantastic magazine on my day off and then there were shirtless French men on my deck painting and getting all aggro and asking me questions and my head was going to explode and then, AND THEN, when I finally squished all the juice out of the red currants, I measured and found myself with two cups. TWO. I did not anticipate this, and I calculated and estimated and everything. And I needed like seven cups to make jelly, so I defrosted all my strawberries from a month ago and made strawberry jam with red currants and was a little disappointed but holy crap. And then I burned my hand.

Curranty.

The whole thing ended in a twist? I know, I’m annoyed too. Luckily, the jam is delicious. And I’d had four beers for breakfast so I was in a good mood despite all the failing and French people yelling and the injuries so I totally didn’t even cry. Success? We don’t measure it with a very high bar around here.

Strawberry Jam with Red Currants

(Makes 8 to 10 jars.)

  • 5 cups crushed strawberries
  • 2 cups red currant juice
  • Juice of 1 lemon
  • 7 cups sugar
  • 1 packet of Bernardin Original Pectin

Prepare your jars.

Combine strawberries and red currant juice in a large pan. Squish in your lemon juice. Add pectin and stir until dissolved. Bring to an aggressive, bubbly boil, and add sugar, stirring until dissolved. Bring back up to a rolling boil, and then set the timer for one minute, and stir your aggressive pot of molten strawberries while they boil furiously. Ladle into your prepared jars, and process as usual.

If, when pulling the jars out of the boiling water so you can put your jam into them, one splashes you, COOKING YOUR GODDAMN HAND, then feel free to shout swears as loud as you want, regardless of how many French men there are on your deck. They probably can’t hear you anyway, and if they can, whatever. THEY SPEAK FRENCH.

Oh – remember how I wasn’t sure if the raspberry jam was going to set? It did. Loosely, but it totally worked, so I am triumphant. So, I guess this concludes my series on canning. I made some scones though, and I’d like to tell you all about them – they’re the Starbucks vanilla bean scones, but better. They go great with either jam. You’ll love them, I promise. Here’s a sneak preview:

Vanilla scones with jam.

The Second Act: A raspberry jam success story. (I think.)

~ wellfedemily ~ 2 Comments
Before.
Before.

Every couple minutes, the lid on another jar pops and seals and my heart fills with joy. Now the only concern is whether or not the jam will set, because I got too excited and misread the recipe, and then when I went back and reread it I was all, “that can’t be right,” and even though I didn’t really know what I was doing I scoffed and decided I could do better … but the leftovers are firming up nicely so hopefully that’s a good sign. I now have eight jars of raspberry jam, and there aren’t enough exclamation points in the world to convey how excited – no – how ebullient I now am. Ebullient means enthusiastic or BUBBLING OVER WITH JOY, all caps. I know you probably know that, but I had to look it up to double check and it’s my job to know words like that, so, you know. Anyway. It’s like when you figure out how to do something you used to think was impossible, like merging onto the highway, only it turns out you can totally do it and then you’re just so full of pep that you can’t stop beaming or asking for high-fives. Except better, because I still don’t really know how to merge onto the highway without braking.

Like I said, I’ve never really done this before. I’ve hovered close by while my mom canned things or pickled stuff or turned fruit into jam, and I watched my grandmother from the stool I’d perch on across the counter top on the other side of the kitchen, but I never really got all that helpful over it. I think that’s because the last time I saw either of them can anything I was much smaller and far more likely to drop hot things all over myself and everyone. I think it’s also quite a pain in the ass, this canning business, and so after a certain point I suspect it became more trouble than it’s worth. And the mess gets everywhere, and it’s sticky.

The recipe I used comes from The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving via Epicurious, but I didn’t really read it all that closely and it turns out my way was way better, because if you follow this recipe, I think you’d end up with not very many jars of cloying red plonk. I’ll give you the recipe I thought I was using, but you may want to follow Epicurious’ Procedure for Shorter Time Processing because I am not very helpful as far as the technical stuff. There’s molten raspberry goo running down the side of my fridge.

Raspberry Jam

  • 4 litres/1 gallon/16 cups of fresh raspberries
  • Juice from 1 lemon
  • 4 cups granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 250°F. Place sugar in a pan in the oven, and bake for 15 minutes. Apparently sugar dissolves much quicker in the raspberry mixture when it is warm. This is true. The sugar disappeared in no time. Literally, seconds.

Put raspberries and lemon juice into a large stainless steel pot. Bring to a full boil over high heat, mashing berries with a potato masher as they heat. Boil for one minute, stirring constantly. Once the sugar is good and warmed, add it to the pot. It will stop boiling for a minute or two, but let it come back up to a boil. The recipe said that it should only take five minutes to form a gel, but I think that’s based on not nearly as many berries and way more sugar (by volume) than I used, so I boiled the berries in the pot for closer to ten minutes. To test whether the jam was thickening, and it’s hard to tell when it’s at a full-rolling boil, I took a small spoonful of jam and stuck it in the fridge for two to three minutes. If it was thick enough when it was cool, then that was good enough for me.

When satisfied that it’s thick enough, spoon the jam into your prepared jars – I used eight small jars of varying sizes, which held between one and two cups each. The recipe should make 10 one-cup jars.

The result was a jam that tasted like raspberries, not too sweet. There was just a tiny bit left over, and I ate it all with a spoon, and it was as bright and cheery as the fresh berries were, which is pleasing because it means that we’ll get to taste summer all year long. The best thing about this recipe is that it doesn’t make way too many jars that you’ll eventually throw out, and it’s manageable enough that you can make it on a tiny apartment stove (mine has only one large burner – the other three are the little kind, which makes it just slightly larger than the stove you get in those awesome plastic Fisher Price kitchens).

Raspberries, pre-jam.

Progress.

Steamy.

Rolling boil.

Filling the jars.

Sealing.

Mess.

By now, all eight lids have made their happy little popping noise, so barring a disaster or something, they should all be sealed. Now we wait – apparently I am to test these in 24 hours to be sure that they’ve sealed tightly. So think happy thoughts for my eight little jars. Tomorrow, or possibly the next day because I’m now out of jars and lids and everything, the challenge will be red currant jelly, which will be a different kind of experiment and though I haven’t decided if it’s going to be spicy habañero red currant jelly, plain-old regular red currant jelly, or something else, I think it’s going to be fun – I’ll tell you all about it very soon. It’s kind of like being an Iron Chef in your own kitchen, which is better because you always win and if you’re lucky you can still get someone else to clean up.

After!
After!