What We Made Yesterday

I've been in a regular canning frenzy lately, trying recipes to justify spending $9.99 on this "special interest publication," a recent impulse buy at the market.

Day before yesterday I made two batches of the Lemon-Honey Jelly, which turned out to be delicious  and lovely to look at. Like my grandmother, I like to set up jars in the window and enjoy the way the light, even on an overcast day, comes through them, as through a stained glass window.

You can see thin strips of lemon zest floating in the jars; the recipe said to strain them out but I like the way it looks - and tastes. I made 2 batches, 10 jars. Here's the recipe:

Lemon-Honey Jelly (makes 5 half-pints)
2 to 3 medium lemons
1 1/2 cups water
3 1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cup honey
1/2 of a 6-ounce package (1 foil pouch) liquid fruit pectin

1. Using a vegetable peeler, remove the colored part of the peel from one of the lemons. (Avoid removing the bitter white portion.) Cut the peel into thin strips; set aside. Cut the remaining lemons in half; squeeze lemons for juice. Measure 1/2 cup lemon juice. (Reserve any remaining juice for another use.)
2. In a 5- to 6-quart heavy pot, combine the lemon peel strips, the 1/2 cup lemon juice, water, and sugar. Cook and stir over medium heat until the sugar dissolves. Stir in honey. Bring to a full rolling boil, stirring constantly. Quickly stir in the pectin. Return to a full rolling boil, stirring constantly. Boil hard for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Quickly skim off the foam with a metal spoon. Use spoon to remove lemon peel strips and discard peel strips.
3. Ladle hot jelly into hot, sterilized half-pint canning jars, leaving a 1/4 inch headspace. Wipe jar rims; adjust lids.
4. Process filled jars in a boiling-water bath canner for 5 minutes (start timing when water returns to boiling). Remove jars from canner; cool on wire racks.
Per Tablespoon: 44 cal., 12 g carb., 0 g anything else.
Note (i.e., what I did differently): You really don't need more than one lemon if you have good bottled lemon juice, like the organic Italian Volcano lemon juice they sell at Costco. I have a citrus zester that gives lovely thin shreds without messing with the vegetable peeler, but I think that if you're going to leave the peel strips in the jelly as I did, you could also grate it directly using the fine-shred side of a box grater, to save an extra step.

     Yesterday, however, was spent in a much more ambitious undertaking, the Roasted Garlic Pasta Sauce on page 32. Roma tomatoes were on sale for 3 pounds for 99¢ last week so I bought 18 pounds and spread them out on one end of the long dining room table to ripen. Well, they didn't, not really, not the way we hope tomatoes will ripen, gently and predictably, but by yesterday they were probably as good as they were going to get, and since it seems like tomatoes, Romas especially, can go from ripening to softening and rotting almost overnight (as Shakespeare says, ". . . from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, and then from hour to hour, we rot and rot; and thereby hangs a tale"), it was time to put up the sauce.
     If Joe hadn't helped me peel the @#$%^ things I might still be standing at the sink, sweating and swearing. Those skins just didn't want to come off, no matter how long we left them in the blanching kettle. The TV was on - it was Globe Trekker, visiting east Texas, and as we peeled we listened to Zai's interview with a former warden of the state prison at Hunstville, talking about the executions he'd overseen. It seemed somehow grimly appropriate, since standing there trying to peel those stubborn tomatoes was beginning to feel like a prison sentence.
     I love our food processor, which made quick work of chopping everything and finally getting it into the biggest kettle we own, which almost wasn't big enough, since I'd decided to make 1 and 1/2 times the recipe to make use of some 24-ounce canning jars that originally had Classico brand pasta sauce in them. They're marked "Mason" as well as Atlas brand. Don't try canning in jars that aren't clearly marked as canning jars. You won't want to clean up the mess that can ensue. I like the 24-ounce size, though if you're going to buy Ball or Kerr jars you won't find them. Standard jars come in 8, 16, and 32 ounce sizes. Each of these recycled 24 ounce jars holds enough for at least 2 meals for the two of us or one meal when we have a few guests. Here's what we wound up with:

Because Romas are meatier and less watery than other tomatoes, we lost less in the more-than-an-hour-long cooking process (the recipe said we'd only get 6 jars but we got 7) and had enough left over for dinner last night and something, maybe some bruschetta, today. Here's what it looked like on the dinner pasta,

and here's the original recipe:

Roasted Garlic Pasta Sauce (makes 6 pints)
6 bulbs garlic
3 T. olive oil
4 medium bell peppers, any color (I used a combination of red and green), halved and seeded
12 pounds ripe tomatoes, blanched and peeled
3 T. packed brown sugar
2 T. kosher salt or 4 tsp. regular (non-iodized) salt
1 T. balsamic vinegar
1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
2 cups lightly packed fresh basil leaves, snipped
1 cup lightly packed assorted fresh herbs (such as oregano, thyme, Italian flat-leaf parsley, and/or more basil), snipped
6 T. lemon juice

1. Preheat oven to 400. Peel away the dry outer layers of skin from garlic bulbs, leaving other skin and bulbs intact. Cut about 1/2" (or maybe less) off the pointed top portions, leaving bulbs intact but exposing the individual cloves. Place the garlic bulbs, cut sides up, in a 1- to 1 1/2 quart casserole. Drizzle with 1 T. of the oil. Cover casserole. Arrange peppers, cut sides down, on a foil-lined baking sheet; brush with remaining oil.
2. Roast garlic and peppers for 40 to 50 minutes or until pepper halves are charred and garlic cloves are soft. Cool garlic on a wire rack until cool enough to handle. Pull up sides of foil and pinch together to fully enclose peppers. Let peppers stand 15 to 20 minutes or until cool enough to handle; peel off skins and discard. Chop peppers; set aside.
3. Remove garlic cloves from paper skins by squeezing the bottoms of the bulbs. Place garlic cloves in a food processor. Cut tomatoes into chunks; add some of the chunks to the garlic in the food processor. Cover and process until chopped.
4. Transfer chopped garlic garlic and tomatoes to a 7- to 8-quart stainless steel, enamel, or nonstick heavy pot. Repeat chopping the remaining tomatoes, in batches, in the food processor. Add all the tomatoes to the pot.
5. Add brown sugar, salt, vinegar, and black pepper to the tomato mixture. Bring to boiling (stir often). Boil steadily, uncovered, for 50 minutes, stirring often. Add chopped peppers to tomato mixture. Boil 10 to 20 minutes more or until mixture is reduced to about 11 cups and reaches desired consistency, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and stir in basil and assorted herbs.
6. Spoon 1 T. lemon juice into each of six hot, sterilized pint canning jars. Ladle hot sauce into jars with lemon juice, leaving a 1/2 inch headspace. Wipe jar rims; adjust lids.
7. Process filled jars in a boiling-water canner for 35 minutes (start timing when water returns to boiling). Remove jars from canner; cool on wire racks.
Per 1/2 cup: 87 cal., 2 g. fat, 0 mg chol., 497 mg. sodium, 16 g carb., 3 g. fiber, 3 g. protein

We peeled the tomatoes over a couple of large kettles so we wouldn't lose any juices, and I saved that juice just in case I needed to add more liquid to the sauce as it cooked, but as it turns out, I didn't, so now I have this nice jar of juice to use as liquid in soup, or any number of other possible cooking projects.
     I'm a total believer in recycling and repurposing, for example, saving jars for storage, like these on the shelf above our kitchen window. I can tell at a glance if I have rice or raisins or lentils or oat bran, for example, and I like the way they look - I guess it appeals to my inner hippie and I know that looking up there makes me happy.

So there you have it, the fruits of our labors, which were (except maybe for peeling the tomatoes) also pleasure, and which will give pleasure in the weeks and months to come. I know I'll be making more recipes from "Canning," since everything I've tried so far has turned out very well.

Fruits of the Desert

As I mentioned in my last post, we've had relatives visiting. Early one morning Joe and I took the kids to a nearby wash (just across the road and down a little slope) to pick prickly pears. This is the perfect time, with most fruits at the ideal stage of deep, blood-red ripeness. Using tongs to avoid getting stabbed, we half-filled each of two paper grocery bags. That was enough to make about 3 dozen 8-ounce jars of jelly.
      When we got back to the kitchen, the first thing to do was wash the prickly pears well. We ran them through 3 changes of water, as they collect a lot of dust out there in the desert. They can also have a sort of waxy coating that may not all come off, even with the most vigorous rinsing, but it's nothing to worry about.

Next, I like to cut them in half so the juices will release more quickly. Hold them with tongs while you do this, to protect your fingers; those little stickers are annoying.

Here's what they look like cut and ready for the kettle. You can carefully scoop out the delicious fresh pulp from the center to eat, but it's pretty seedy, so there's a lot to spit out.

 Add a little water - just a cup or two for a large kettle like this one - to get them started cooking down (some recipes say water to cover, but the fruits are really quite juicy and I don't want to dilute the flavor any more than necessary), bring to a boil, and let simmer till the fruits are very soft and have released much of their juice.

 Using a big slotted spoon, lift the cooked fruits into a colander set over a large bowl and mash the heck out of them to get out as much juice as possible.

Then strain what's in the bowl through a finer mesh strainer - look at all those little black seeds! You don't want them in your jelly.

 So here's what you'll have at this stage. I did say blood-red, remember?

In the picture below, the jelly on the left was made from less-ripe fruit. It tastes good but doesn't have quite the richness of flavor of the spoonful on the right, made from perfectly ripe fruit.

I strain the juice one more time through a few layers of cheesecloth to get the clearest possible juice before beginning the actual jelly-making.

Here's the recipe I've used for years, from the Pima County Agricultural Extension office. The ingredients, as with most jams and jellies, are quite simple. The jar with the green lid is a new variety of pectin (at least new to me) from the Ball company, which works quite well. You just measure out the amount you need for the recipe; 6 Tablespoons are equal to one box of regular powdered pectin. Unfortunately, this jar didn't contain multiples of 6 T., but rather 16 T., enough for 2 2/3 batches of jelly. I wasn't happy about that and so I hunted down old-fashioned boxes of Sure-Jell for subsequent batches.

IMPORTANT: Do not double this recipe; it won't set up properly.

Prickly Pear Jelly - makes about 5 cups
2 1/2 cups prickly pear juice
1 package powdered pectin (they say it sets more successfully than liquid)
3 1/2 cups sugar
3 Tablespoons lemon or lime juice

Combine pectin and juice in a medium saucepan. I like to whisk them together to ensure the pectin dissolves quickly and evenly.

Stirring constantly, bring to a fast boil and add the lemon or lime juice and sugar.  Bring to a hard boil and boil for exactly 3 minutes. Timing is important for getting a good jell. Remove from heat; stir and skim off any foam (I always collect that in a little cup; my grandma used to let me have the foam skimmings from her jelly-making on bread and butter). Pour at once into sterilized jelly jars and wipe the edges of the jars with a clean, damp cloth. Seal immediately with 2-part metal lids, screwing the metal bands on firmly. Let cool on a rack and store in a cool, dry place.

Note: you can process the jars in a boiling water bath for 5 minutes if you wish.

 If for some reason the jelly doesn't all set up, don't worry. You'll have a few jars of Prickly Pear Syrup, which is a lovely ingredient to have on hand, to use on pancakes, French toast, or over ice cream. I usually put up a few jars of syrup on purpose, leaving out the pectin and using equal parts sugar and juice. It's great in Prickly Pear Margaritas, which I make by throwing everything in the blender with about a cup of ice per person (or you can mix all the liquid ingredients and serve on the rocks). Here's what you need to serve 4:

Prickly Pear Margaritas
6 ounces good quality gold tequila
4 ounces triple sec
4 ounces lime juice
2 ounces prickly pear syrup
1 ounce orange juice

If you're in a place where you have access to these fruits of the desert, please consider taking advantage of them. If you don't have time to make jelly right away (and this applies to any fruit, not just prickly pears), you can freeze the juice to use later, when you do have time. Plastic water bottles work well for that; just remember not to overfill them as liquids expand when they freeze.

Rhubarb and Chutney

I had a very nice day in the kitchen yesterday. It started with rhubarb which, fortunately, Joe loves as much as I do. Unfortunately, it's difficult to impossible to grow in southern Arizona. I know. We've tried. But every spring it appears in the market, and brings back memories of my grandparents' rhubarb that grew more or less untended out beside their garage.

When I was a kid my friends and I actually pulled up stalks and ate them raw - and we liked them, sour and puckery as they are (my friend Angie and I also went through a phase of eating mustard on our toast - go figure). We only ate the stalks; the leaves are poisonous. And we incorporated the plants around us into our play, too. I remember that one day a few of us put my biggest doll in my wagon, surrounded her with Grandma's flowers (Grandma wasn't real happy about that), and paraded slowly and solemnly down the road in a funeral procession, waving rhubarb leaves over her like the big fans wielded by slaves in an old black and white movie about ancient Egypt. (We did stop short of burying my doll.)

     I found some tasty-looking rhubarb recipes at the Land 'o Lakes website: http://www.landolakes.com/recipes/. Just search "rhubarb." My other Grandma made an amazing Rhubarb Crunch; the recipe involves a Jiffy cake mix and strawberry Jell-o, and since Jiffy mixes can be hard to find these days, I'm going to try to come up with my own version and will post it when I'm successful (notice I say "when," not "if"). But I had another, more pressing kitchen project yesterday, so I chopped up and froze most of the rhubarb in zip-lock bags.

I did make some simple rhubarb sauce with: 

     2 cups chopped rhubarb, 

     1/3 cup sugar, and 

     1/4 cup water. 

Just put it all in a saucepan, bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and let it simmer about 5 minutes or until the rhubarb gets nice and mushy. Don't worry that you won't have enough water; the rhubarb releases a lot of liquid. 

     The resulting sauce, delicious over a custard pudding or in yogurt or just by itself, is a lovely pink (the redder the rhubarb, the prettier the color) and a nice blend of sweet and tart. Add more sugar if  you think it needs it, but start with just the 1/3 cup - if you get too much, you can't take it out.

     The bigger project, one I'd been looking forward to for some time, was making tomato chutney. Most of the recipes I'd seen were for green tomato chutney, and they really meant green! Supermarket tomatoes were fine for this as they are rarely perfectly ripe and more often quite unripe. I found these Romas at a nearby market, many more green than they look in this picture, and at a ridiculously low price - so I bought 5 pounds. 

The recipe I decided to use comes from Nigel Slater, who writes for The Guardian. It's at http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/oct/04/nigel-slater-green-tomato-recipes/print. He uses a mix of green and ripe tomatoes, but since mine were neither one nor the other, I just threw them all in together and figured the end result would be about the same. I also multiplied the recipe by 2.5, since Nigel's is based on using just 2 pounds of tomatoes. But I was laying in a supply for the winter (even though it's only May - we love curry and go through quite a bit of chutney, not just with curry but in other applications, like cheese sandwiches - chutney on Cheddar? Divine!). 

     The Guardian is a British paper, so some of the amounts in Nigel's recipe are metric, but you can find a handy conversion calculator at http://www.worldwidemetric.com/measurements.html. You might want to bookmark this calculator; it's easier to use than any I've seen. Here are the ingredients and amounts I used, multiplied and adapted from Nigel's:

Tomato Chutney

5 pounds unripe but not terribly green tomatoes

2 pounds onions, chopped

9 ounces raisins

1 pound 5 ounces muscovado or dark brown sugar

3 medium sized hot red chiles (I used a scant 2 T. dried red chile flakes)

1 T. kosher salt (don't use iodized salt when pickling or canning)

5 tsp. yellow mustard seeds

3 1/8 c. cider vinegar

Nigel says to just halve the tomatoes and rough chop the onions but I prefer both chopped a little finer - not fine, just not quite such big chunks. If you're using truly green tomatoes, do as Nigel did and put them in a big (very big, if you're making as much as I did) pot with all the other ingredients except the red tomatoes and bring to a boil, then simmer 1 hour, add red tomatoes and simmer another 25 minutes. 

     I just threw everything in together, as you see here,

 and let it simmer about an hour and 20 minutes. Here's how it looked after about 30 minutes.

 Stir fairly often so it doesn't stick (a nonstick pan helps with that). Then ladle it into sterilized canning jars and process in a water bath for 10 minutes. Aren't the little pink-checked lids cute?

I got 8 jars; most of them were 12-ounce jam jars but there were a couple of pints. The canning kettle only holds 7 jars so one got designated for immediate consumption. Joe didn't mind that at all. He'd probably eat almost anything if it had chutney on it, and I might too.  

     If you've never canned anything, it's far less intimidating than many people think. There's a pretty good video on YouTube (probably more than one, actually) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1jpyXPdCRE and instructions/tutorials at a number of websites, including http://www.frugalupstate.com/crafts-diy/tutorial-hot-water-bath-canning/. Of course there are also any number of excellent cookbooks that focus on food preservation.

     Go ahead! Make some chutney or rhubarb sauce (you can also can rhubarb sauce) or something else that, when you open it up in the dead of winter, will remind you of spring! I'm pretty sure you'll be happy you did.