Wintertime Jam

I've had this all ready to post for days, minus any witty content. January is a rough month for me, traditionally, and twenty-ten was sort of one of those years that knocked me around a bit. That may be a bit depressing to read on a blog, but this jam is very very good and might cheer you up. If you need cheering up. If not, you might want to make this jam anyways, and think of it as your morning sunshine, and hum a happy little morning song. You could leave out the spices, but I like using these spices in the winter, and they certainly do not belong in the summer. This is your chance.


Wintertime Jam

adapted from Food in Jar's Apple Cranberry Jam

4 cups peeled and diced soft apples
4 cups peeled and diced pears
4 cups cranberries
1 cup water
5 cups white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
zest and juice of 2 lemons
zest and juice of 1 orange
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

Prepare the jars in the canning pot, along with the rings. Put the lids in a bowl of hot water to soften the seals.

In a seperate large pot, combine the apples, pears, cranberries, water, and sugars. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam that comes up to the surface. I just use a wide flat spoon for this. Skimming off foam helps the jam to be clearer once it's cooked. Cook for about 15 minutes, until the cranberries begin to pop and the apples and pears begin to soften. You may want to use a big wooden spoon to smush up the apples on the side of the pot, especially if you diced them too big (not that I did that…).

Add the citrus zests and juices and cook over medium-high heat until the mixture reaches 220˚/104˚ (but see this for info on high-altitude gel points: http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/icooks/01-06-03.html). Right before the gel point is reaches, stir in the cinnamon and ground cloves.

Remove the jam from the heat and ladle into your prepared jars. Wipe the rims, place on the lids and screw on the rings. Process in the boiling-water canning pot for 10 minutes (remember: don't start the timer until the pot has come back to a boil).

Remove from the water, let cool completely, remove the rings and wipe down the jars, and check the seals. Label and date and eat!

Makes 5 pints (I did 3 pints and 4 half-pints, same processing time for both)

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

Ta-da!

White Wine Pears

So, I know it's November, and probably the pears are done for you. I do feel guilty putting this up so late, but I just made it last week! Maybe it's not too late!

I bought two boxes of apples and a box of pears recently. The pears ripened in about a day and a half, which I'm never prepared for (My thoughts upon purchase: They're rock hard and green as a leprechaun! I have forever to come up with a kick-butt pear recipe! It had better be more awesome than the previous pears!*) And then like two seconds later someone told me they were ripe. I peeled them all! I sliced and diced! (Well, just sliced. And cored. But that doesn't rhyme.) And I did what I do a lot: I looked at some recipes online, poked around in the pantry, and improvised from there. Here's my version of

White Wine Pears

1 & 1/2 bottles white wine

equal amount of water

2 cups white sugar

about 17 & 1/2 pounds pears, peeled, sliced, and cored

1 t fennel seeds

1 t dried lavender

Prepare your jars in a boiling-water bath, along with the rings. Simmer the lids in a small pot of water.

Pour the wine and water into a large pot and stir in the sugar until dissolved. Put the spices in a tea ball or small cheesecloth pouch and add to the pot. Bring to a boil and then let simmer. 

Add the pear slices and simmer until the pears are soft but not falling apart, about 3 to 5 minutes. (If the pears are not all submerged in the liquid, put a lid on the pot.) Remove the spice bag.

Use a slotted spoon to distribute the pears equally among the jars. Pour the liquid over, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Use a chopstick or small spatula to remove air bubbles. If you would like a stronger taste of the herbs, add a pinch of either to the top of each jar.

Wipe the rims, put on the lids and rings, and put back in the hot water. Bring it back to a boil and boil for twenty-five minutes. Remove from the hot water, let cool, check the seals, remove rings and wipe down jars, and date and label!

Makes 7 quarts

Two notes: 

My winning costume -- Unicorn Princess.

1. I used 1/4 bottle of Reisling, a bottle of German  sparkling wine (which I won at a Halloween party), and 1/4 bottle of mead. Any white wine works, or even red, I suppose. I liked the effervescence the sparkling wine gave it.

2. When I put my jars back in the hot-water bath, I stick the probe of my instant-read thermometer in the water and set the alarm for the boiling temp. Then I have a few minutes to walk away, check my email, read a great blog, do the crossword.  This thing is handy in so many ways, and more than worth the money.

Eat these straight, or over ice cream or pound cake. The flavors are not very strong, but nice and pear-y.

As for those apples, I've been making applesauce and apple butter. I normally just cook up the apples in a little liquid until they're soft, then run them through the food mill and add whatever I want -- spices, vanilla bean, sugar, apple cider, fruit puree. I even saved all the pear peels and cores from this recipe and simmered them up with some of the apples.

I'll talk more in a day or two about the MAGIC of applesauce, how even if you're not a canner you can still make it very easily, and a few ways to use it. Check back then!

*Now I know why cold-pack pears are not recommended. My jars look like a grit storm.

Scraps

There's a right way and a wrong way to deal with random bits of food. The wrong way is the way of... someone close to me. Someone whom I love so so much. Someone who rhymes with "scmother". This way involves putting a large Tupperware container in the freezer, using it to create a stratum of progressive leftovers. When the container is full, defrost, dump in a pot, cover with water, salt to taste, and call it soup.

The ensuing rebellion at this gruel ensured that 'leftover soup' did not happen again.

(I should take a brief parental detour here and let you know that we children did not run the household. However, having simple majority, sometimes our outcries counted as a democratic decision. If the vote was split, but mom liked the controversial dish, a repeat was likely. We still have yells about something known as King Ranch Chicken. I am in the "like it" camp; Homesick Texan has a yummy sounding recipe on her site.)

(Another parent/food/geocultural bunny trail: One time we were gifted with a casserole that, apparently, was called Fish Saute. Being children of Seattle, we always thought it was called Fish Latte. Even typing this out, that's where my fingers went. 

Fish Latte. It'll be the Flavor of the Day at some drive-thru coffee stand in Monroe soon. If I'm right about that, you all owe me twenty bucks.)

Okay, back from... wherever that went. Oy vey. I spent my Saturday night* examining different ways to use fruit (specifically pear) scraps. One is straightforward pear butter. The other way spawned two recipes, one for canned cinnamon pears and one for pear-scrap apple jelly. Unless you like canning (I find it soothing) or you're bored out of your gourd and want to spend three hours with pears, I recommend splitting these methods up. It's a lot of pear time.

*If the idea of me at home experimenting with pears on a Saturday night makes you sad for me, please know that earlier in the day I had a date. Part of the date unexpectedly involved watching police with assault weapons lock down parts of the city and search for an armed suspect. We also strolled through an open-air flea market and had coffee. So, my day wasn't so very spinstery. 


Recipes ahead!

Reduced-sugar jams and a GIVEAWAY!

 As a thank-you for reading, I'm giving away a jar of this delicious jam, plus a surprise baked good to spread it on! To enter, leave a comment telling me about your best improvised recipe, and check back on Friday for the winner!

If you like to can your own jams and preserves, you may, like me, be aghast at the amount of sugar you quickly go through in putting up your spreads. Most pectin requires a certain amount of sugar to gel, and some recipes don't even use pectin, but have you boil the fruit until it reaches the gelling point (220˚ at sea level). 

There is another way. Pomona's Universal Pectin uses calcium to cause the pectin to gel. If I were more of a sciencey person, I would explain to you how this works, but I use words like "sciencey" so obviously I'm not. What I know is that this calcium magic allows you, the consumer, to use lower amounts of sugar or even other sweeteners in your recipes. The informative guide sheet included in each box of pectin also gives clear instructions on how to develop your own preserves recipes. I recently put on my big girl pants and did just that. I was inspired by this article on "Bachelor Jam", which is simply fruit and sugar layered in a crock, covered with a high-proof alcohol, and let to sit. As tempting as that sounds, I wanted something with a lower ABV (alcohol by volume) percentage. Some kiwis were getting soft, the ancient triple sec in the fridge needed to be used up, and thus, Bachelorette Jam!

Bachelorette Jam 

You don't need to worry about peeling the fruits (except kiwi). After everything had simmered for a while and gotten soft, I ran it all through my Foley food mill, but if you don't have a food mill, you could just chop everything really small to begin with, or blend it after some simmering. I like the applesauce-like texture a food mill makes.  

1 pint blueberries

2 kiwis, peeled

1 1/2 apples

1/2 nectarine

1 pear

1 peach

zest and juice of 1 orange

lemon juice

1 c honey

Pomona's Universal pectin and prepared calcium water

1/2 c triple sec

Prepare your jars and bring the jars and rings to a boil. Let them simmer while you make the jam. Soak the lids in a bowl of very hot water.

Wash the fruit. Dice into approximate 1/2" pieces and measure. For each cup of fruit add 1 Tablespoon of lemon juice. (I had 6 cups of fruit.) Stir the lemon juice and all the fruit together in a deep and wide pot. Bring to a simmer and let simmer with a lid on until the fruits are soft. Put through a food mill, or blend in a blender or food processor. Return to the pot. (I dumped the stuff left in the food mill back in, as it was pretty broken down, but you can discard it if you wish.) Stir in 1 teaspoon of prepared calcium powder per cup of fruit.

Stir 3 teaspoons of pectin powder into the honey. Bring the fruit to a boil (212˚) and let boil while stirring in the pectin-honey. Stir vigorously and let cook for two minutes to dissolve the pectin. Return to a boil and remove from heat. Stir in the triple sec.

Pour the jam into the prepared jars to within 1/4" of top. Remove the air bubbles with a chopstick or small spatula, and adjust headspace as needed. Wipe the rims, apply the lids, and screw the ring on until hand-tight. Put the filled jars back into the water bath and return it to a boil. Once it starts boiling again, process for ten minutes. Lift the jars straight up out of the boiling water and let cool. Remove the rings, check the seal, wipe the jars, and store with the rings off. Don't forget to date and label your lids!

Makes 7 half-pint jars

Since this recipe has so many ingredients, I made pretty labels so I remember all the kinds of fruit. I found many great options here; for this recipe, I used Martha Stewart's fruit labels, customized in Pages.

Escabeche and Kiwi Lime Jam

I am a canning fool. My pantry is well-stocked already, and I can't stop dreaming of all the other goodies I want to make.  I really want to try a version of the Dark Days challenge throughout this winter, and my inner pioneer woman couldn't be more delighted.

Before you start canning for yourself, please take time to read up on proper canning techniques. There are certain hard and fast rules you want to follow to ensure that all your time and effort produces delicious food that is safe to eat. There are many excellent resources that discuss each step in detail. Two I recommend and often use myself are Marisa McClellan's blog Food in Jars and a book I borrow from my local library, "Joy of Cooking: All about canning and preserving" from the Joy of Cooking empire.

The last recipes I canned were a delicious Kiwi Lime Jam, and a mix of jalepenos and other veggies in a strong brine.