food : peaches

This year I am canning peaches for the first time. I’ve never been drawn to canned fruits, although I know people who can pears and peaches every year in massive batches. I couldn’t resist the recipe for brandied peaches that reran in the New York Times recently, and decided that I could make a few pints. Since I was only able to scrounge up four wide-mouthed pint jars in the house, four was what I settled on. Which is good, because six pounds of peaches is heckuva lot. At every step—weighing, peeling, slicing, boiling—the bowls and pots I have were at capacity.

The peaches themselves were not the best I’ve ever had. They were ripe, with a couple of exceptions, but the texture was a bit mealy (which I discovered when I went to have one for breakfast earlier in the week). They came from the farmers’ market, from Harris Orchard which generally has excellent fruit. I think the weather this year just didn’t agree with stone fruit, even more than is typically true in this area.I hope they won’t fall apart with cooking; it’s my belief that sugar syrup and brandy will go a long way toward making the texture of the peaches not of paramount importance, but maybe that’s the wrong end of the stick.

After cooking them in sugar syrup until just soft, I packed them into the jars. I’m pretty sure I cooked them too long, and I’m not clear on what I could have done to have the jar not be filled with liquid that seeped out of the peaches. Maybe drain them in a colander first? That seems to defeat the purpose of having them hot. At any rate, I drained them a bit in order to have room in the jars for more sugar syrup, but in the end only had room for the brandy. So, I had an enormous pot of sugar syrup left over. It seems inconceivable that peaches cooked in sugar syrup could end up not being sweet enough, so I’m going to assume that they’ll be fine. In the unlikely event that they’re not, I suppose we can sprinkle sugar on them.

In the future, if I do this again, I think I’ll keep the peaches in halves and definitely not cook them nearly as long. I’ll let you know around Christmas how this batch turned out.

food : peaches

food : first attempts at canning cherry jam

The first attempt at making cherry jam did not go well, at least if you wanted the outcome to be cherry jam and not very sweet cherry sauce in a jar. There were a few things I did the first time that I did differently the second time that led to the second attempt being recognizable as jam (whether it’s still runny jam remains to be seen). One, I used frozen cherries and didn’t let them thaw first. Two, I didn’t cook the cherries long enough before adding the sugar. Three, I misoverestimated the volume of cherries I had and correspondingly added way too much sugar. As a result, I got cherry sauce, more cherry sauce than I have any idea what to do with as we regularly eat neither pancakes nor ice cream.

The second time around, I did all of those things differently. I used fresh cherries, cooked them until they were all coming apart, and then added a proportionate amount of sugar. Thus far what’s in the jars looks like jam and it’s already less runny than the cherry sauce; yes, I keep tipping the jars to the side even though you’re not supposed to touch them while they gel up for 24 hours. As I was boiling and stirring the second batch for what seemed like a really long time, I did some math in my head and concluded I could use four of the jars of cherry sauce and a quart of fresh cherries as the base for the cherry-walnut conserves that I’m planning to make tomorrow, and have just about the correct amount of fruit and sugar. That will leave me with only four jars of cherry sauce—a number that seems manageable and like an amount we could work into desserts over the course of a year—and with two quarts of fresh cherries to make another batch of jam.

The very last canning-related thing that happened today was that one of my pickle jars exploded when I put it in the hot water. Which was really frustrating because (1) pickles are supposed to be easier than jam and (2) I never know whether to boil the jars in sticky water or try to skim out the stuff and add fresh water or what. This happened with one of the jars of apple chutney in the fall, suddenly the pot was full of floating raisins and bits of onion, and I went with the skimming and dilution with fresh water approach. This time around I just boiled them in sticky water and wiped down the jars when they came out.

So, tomorrow we will redo today. I will prep the cukes first, so that the four hour soak happens early in the day, for which I will also prepare by refilling the ice cube trays before I go to bed. I will then one quart of cherries and make the cherry-walnut conserves, pit two more quarts of cherries and make another batch of jam, and then do another round of bread and butter pickles. I will then be done with all of the fresh cherries I have remaining and the cherry season will be behind us; I passed on the last few quarts were at the farmers’ market yesterday due to the many I already have. My shoulder will certainly be glad to move on to a tool besides the cherry pitter, that’s for sure.

food : first attempts at canning cherry jam

food : cherries, cherries, cherries


Cherries on the porch.

This is the time of year I’ve been waiting for: sour cherry season! I like sweet cherries fine, but you can’t bake with them, and it’s the sour cherry baked goods that I love. Pie, mainly, but also strudel and turnovers and muffins and croissants and danishes. When they’re well done, that is; there’s nothing I like less than a chemical-tasting dyed imitation of any of these fine products. Which is why I was so excited to discover a local source of sour cherries—besides the backyard of a woman I know, whose sour cherries are already spoken for—so that I can make all these things myself.

My first cherry pickup was ten quarts. That seems like a lot when you’re pitting and storing them, but really isn’t that much when you think about all the stuff you want to make with them. Including a recipe that I found online for something in between chocolate cake and brownies filled with cherries, which was absolutely mouthwateringly moist and delicious (I think all the naysayers must have just used sweet cherries, which we all know are for eating not baking). And jam. How could I forget jam? I didn’t forget jam, I just neglected plan for jam in the first round. Which meant that this week I picked up even more sour cherries at the market and continued the pitting through the week. Jam-making will be today (and possibly also tomorrow, depending on how many more cherries are available at today’s market). I plan to use David Lebovitz’s no-recipe recipe. While I’m making jam this week, I may as well also try the Cherry Walnut Conserve in the all-purpose Ball canning book, right? I mean, she gives me a discount if I buy in bulk, so it’s better to get more quarts than fewer. Having cherry jam in the dead of winter will make all the pitting worthwhile!

food : cherries, cherries, cherries

food : mojito pickle

One of my goals this summer is to use the produce I get from our CSA and the farmers’ markets in a greater variety of ways. In the past we’ve frozen baba ghanoush, cooked squash, diced rhubarb, blueberries, persimmon pulp, and sour cherries. We’ve canned applesauce, apple pie filling, apple jelly, apple chutney, and quince jelly. This year, I’m planning to branch out into pickles—using the mandoline slicer I acquired last year—and new types of jams, conserves, and chutneys.


Pickles ready to go in the freezer.

It was my intention to start the pickling with bread and butter pickles, using a lower-sugar recipe from The Joy of Pickling (of which there’s a new edition with fifty more recipes, which would explain why the one I have was in the bargain bin). Then my neighbor showed up at the door with armfuls of mint that she was ‘thinning’ from her garden, so I went with what we’re calling the mojito pickle instead. This is a freezer pickle, and uses lime zest and fresh mint as flavors (in addition to the traditional red bell pepper, onion, and garlic). As far as I could tell by sampling it as I packed it into quart tubs this morning, it’s pretty great. I’m still going to do bread and butters, and if I find other cucumber-based pickles that sound appealing I’ll pick up more at the farmers’ market on Thursday.

Equipment-wise, the mandoline turned out to be much less complicated and dangerous than I’d feared, and was a breeze to use for the cucumbers. We do need to sharpen our knives before veggie slicing season really heats up, but I couldn’t get 1/8 inch slices with a knife if my life depended on it. For the bread and butters, I might even use the ripple cut option.

food : mojito pickle

food : all things quince


Quinces from our backyard.

One of the best surprises we’ve had as we’ve gotten to know our house and yard was the discovery of quince trees in the rear corner of our neighbor’s yard, along the border between our two properties. Because we are the neighbor to the south, and there are other trees to the north in our neighbor’s yard, the trees grow toward the sun, overhanging our rear sidewalk and garage. During the first year we were here, we saw one or two yellow things on the ground by the back fence, and commented to each other that an animal must have dragged an apple or something into the yard and left it there. That was the sum total of the interest we paid in the situation and the energy we expended in addressing it: very little. We were busy with other parts of the yard, and a bit overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work it would take to clean up the property; the last thing we wanted to do was investigate mysterious happenings out by the garage.

The second year we were here, we spent more time in the yard during the autumn clearing the ivy, pruning the trees, and covering the weed-laden garden beds with a thick leaf mulch. During all that time in close proximity to the rear yard, we noticed that the yellow fruits were actually growing on the trees, and were littering our rear sidewalk by early November. This piqued our curiosity, and we consulted one of my partner’s colleagues who grows quite a lot of his own fruits and vegetables on a lovely piece of land that used to be part of a dairy farm. He told us we had quinces, a fruit of which I had only heard vague and mysterious references to before that point. Nonetheless, I gathered them up and set them on the back steps to cure while I figured out what to do with them.


Quince jelly.


Quince paste.

There are, it appears, two things to do with quinces. You can make jelly or you can make membrillo, a thick paste that is a favorite dessert in Spain that’s served with manchego cheese. You can also bake and poach them, mixing them in with apple desserts for additional flavor, which we tried as well. With two dozen enormous yellow fruits having literally dropped from the sky into our yard and folks all over the internet raving about the glory of the flavor of the quince, I decided there was nothing for it but to make jelly…and membrillo, since it would be a shame to have all the pulp just go to waste. This was my first foray into canning, and I had to improvise somewhat. I used a stockpot for the boiling water bath (which, by the way, I don’t recommend) and set to work chopping and boiling and draining and boiling and skimming and stirring and pouring, ending up with about a dozen half-pints of jelly and about 20 pieces of membrillo. Happily, everybody I know seems to love membrillo, a delicacy I had never heard of before embarking on this new culinary path. We were able to give away the membrillo, in addition to serving it to guests at every opportunity, and enjoyed the jelly for much of the year. I also learned that canning is actually not that hard — although quince jelly is arguably the easiest product to start with, containing just the right amount of natural pectin to gel on its own and turning a lovely deep rose color to let you know when it’s done.

Following this roaring success, we made a concerted effort to help the trees this year. We cut back the ivy that surrounds them and pruned all the not-inconsiderable deadwood. Once we knew what to look for, the trees became incredibly easy to identify, and we were pleased to discover two small saplings at the sides of the main grove, no doubt sprung up from fruits left to lie under the thick ivy ground cover. Later in the spring we were rewarded first by flowers and then by little green fruits. Little green fruits which soon littered the ground when the gale-force winds of the early summer storms blew through. This autumn, there was not a single yellow fruit on any of the trees, much to our disappointment. We are hopeful that quinces are like some varieties of pears, with large and small production years, and that next year will be a banner year. In the meantime, I have been combing the internet for a mail-order source of quince fruits, to no avail, having learned the hard way that their floral flavor is truly as addictive as quince fans claimed!


Tarte tatin, with a layer of quince slices — magnifique!

food : all things quince