This is a blog about home canning—or "putting up" as one might say where I'm from—and it will cover jams and other fruit preserves, pickles and briny things, canned vegetables (above all tomatoes) and the complement of condiments that includes relishes, sauces, salsas and those related preparations that result when you chunk bits of seasonal produce and preserve them in a syrup either piquant or sweet.
Ok, maybe that's overstating it, but the copyedited manuscript I sent back to Knopf yesterday is starting to read like a book—a cookbook, that is. The manuscript was about 700 pages and weighed nine pounds on the FedEx scale. I'm not sure about the final recipe count. Somewhere under 200, but not by much. Also I just saw the cover design, and I love it. Stay tuned.
Go get a pencil, or take a note on your smartphone, because I'm about to give you the best tip of the year. Ready? Mike Cirone of See Canyon is back at the Santa Monica Farmers Market with his organic, dry-farmed Blenheim apricots, ABOVE. Mike says it's a bumper crop this year, and he's selling them for $40 dollars per 20-pound boxcase. There's not a better deal in the market. He'll be in Santa Monica Wednesdays and Saturdays for the next three weeks or so.
If you make one batch of jam this year, let it be Blenheim apricot jam. There's nothing to compare.
Here's a strawberry you don't see every day: Mara des Bois, BOTTOM, a remarkably fragrant hybrid of four European varieties. (See the full explanation by David Karp here.) They're available in very limited quantites at Harry's Berries for $6 a punnet, which works out to about $20 per pound. I'll use them for my slow-cook jam, an urban adaptation of old-fashioned sunshine jam.
Here's one for Slow Foodists: apricot jelly with no added pectin, adapted from a peach jelly recipe in the 1828 cookbook Seventy-Five Receipts, for Pastry, Cakes and Sweetmeats. The author, who gives her name as A Lady of Philadelphia, insists that using the pit kernels will "greatly improve the flavour." I agree. (I also added lemon verbena leaves—see the shadow in the lower left jar.)
The technique isn't hard but requires a couple of days. The secret is to use underripe fruit that's still showing some green because it has more pectin. I can't share the recipe yet, but it will be in my book. It works equally well for European plums, such as greengages, and peaches of course.
Today was the Festival of San Giovanni, the traditional day to harvest green walnuts for making nocino, a delicious walnut liqueur. To mark the occasion, the innovative Institute of Domestic Technology offered an all-day nocino workshop. It sold out fast, as always seems to be the case at the Institute, but, since I also teach there, I convinced the powers that be to let me attend in return for demonstrating a recipe from my book that includes nocino.
We convened this morning at the Eagle Rock estate of Institute director Joseph Shuldiner—Il Direttore, if you please, BELOW—to harvest his English walnut tree. The unripe nuts were smaller than eggs, ABOVE, smooth to the touch and crisp as apples because the shells had not yet hardened. The nut meats hadn't firmed up yet either—they were pure jelly. I worked barefoot as tradition demands.
After picking, we made our way to the Institute's Altadena headquarters at the Mariposa Creamery, where Istruttore Felicia Friesema took charge. As with most liqueurs, nocino is easy but requires patience. You slice the nuts and cover them with strong booze, sugar and spice, and allow the mixture to infuse for 40 days (some say 60) before decocting it into bottles. Then the real test of patience begins. Ten-year old nocino is said to be the best, and certainly you would never drink this summer's batch before cold weather sets in this fall. When ready, nocino is nearly black, with a complex flavor of nutmeg, allspice, coffee and caramel.
Instruttore Friesema brought several recent vintages to taste, and she used a 2011 to demonstrate nocino posset (thickened cream). Mariposa Creamery co-owner Steve Rudicel taught nocino ice cream, and I shared the recipe from my book for Black Walnuts in Maple Syrup with Nocino. At the end of the day we all toasted San Giovanni with a cocktail flavored with—you guessed it—nocino.
That last one was Il Direttore's recipe. He's kind of a boozer, if truth be told, which is why we get along so well.
Nocino
This recipe, still in development, is based on recipes from The Institute of Domestic Technology and Anna Tasca Lanza's valuable Sicilian cookbook The Garden of Endangered Fruit. The fundamental elements are green walnuts, 80-proof or higher grain spirits, and sugar. You can change the aromatics if you like, but always use small quantities because spices can become overpowering as they infuse.
In Los Angeles, you can purchase green walnuts from Peacock Farm at the Wednesday Santa Monica Farmers Market and the Sunday Hollywood Market.
2 pounds green English walnuts, 1 1/2 inch or less (about 30)
zest from 2 lemons
3 1/2 cups sugar
5 cloves
1 cinnamon stick
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
1 bottle (750 ml) 80-proof vodka or other neutral grain spirit
1 Quarter the walnuts and place them in a large glass jar (three quarts or larger). Add the remaining ingredients and mix. Seal the jar and place it in a sunny place for 40 days. The liquid will turn a sinister green before blackening. Once every ten days, agitate the jar by inverting it a time or two. You can taste the alcohol at any stage and add more aromatics if you like.
2 At the end of 40 days, strain out the solids and bottle the liquid. Seal the bottles and store in a cool, dark place for several months. Anna Tasca Lanza suggests opening the first bottle on All Saints Day. The liqueur will keep indefinitely without refrigeration.
Yields about one liter
I put up my first batches of Blenheim apricot jam last week, and even in the bad iphone photo, ABOVE, you can see how gorgeous it was. The Blenheim is an heirloom variety that sprouted from a pit planted at England's Blenheim Palace, home to the Dukes of Marlborough, some time before the 1830s. For a while it was named the Shipley, after the gardener's daughter who tended the seedling, but eventually the statlier name stuck. Either way, everyone agreed that it was one of best apricots grown. (Although in Mansfield Park, Jane Austen celebrates the Moor Park apricot, the offspring of another aristocratic estate.)
The Blenheim was extraordinary but not quite unique, being nearly identical to another apricot first grown in Paris and known as the Royal, a name the French gave to the very finest fruit reserved for the king's table. (See the post below about Duke cherries.) In the 20th century, both the Blenheim and Royal were widely cultivated in California, although the democratic citizens of our state lost track of the distinction between a Duke and a King so the catch-all name Royal Blenheim was applied to both types. Everyone still agreed that they were the tastiest apricots grown, but the Blenheim/Royal became scarce in recent decades because the fruit was highly perishable and growers ripped up the fine old trees to make way for newer varieties that produced fruit firm enough to ship to the East Coast. Taste was a secondary consideration, with results that you already know. Which is why, I'd guess, apricots are less esteemed today than they once were. In Shakespeare's Midsummer's Night Dream, Titiana fed her beloved Bottom mulberries, figs and apricots—a lover's banquet of the most erotically delicious fruit.
This Blenheim apricot jam would live up to Titiana's expectations. When I gave one of my few jars of precious boysenberry jam to someone the other day, I said teasingly, "This is basically a declaration of love." Then I gave the same person a jar of Blenheim jam. "And this," I said, "is a seduction."
The recipe below will work with any apricot variety.
Classic Apricot Jam
3 1/2 pound apricots
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
3 cups sugar
1 Pit and quarter the apricots. Put them in a non-reactive mixing bowl with the sugar and lemon juice. Stir well to combine, then set aside to macerate for 30 minutes.
2 Pour the fruit-sugar mixture into a wide preserving pan and bring to a boil over high heat. Stirring constantly, cook at a full boil until the jam thickens, about 15 to 20 minutes depending on the size of your pot and the strength of your stove's flame. (A very broad pot on a strong flame will reduce faster because the large surface area allows water to evaporate more quickly—cooking fruit into jam is simply a matter of boiling off excess water and concentrating sugars.) Test for doneness by spooning a bit of hot jam onto a chilled saucer. Place the saucer in the freezer for 1 minute. When it's cool, push your finger through the jam, which should cling to the plate with a luscious, thick consistency. Don't worry about trying to get a firm gel set. I think apricot jam is best when it mounds in a spoon but drips through the tines of a fork.
3 Ladle the hot jam into prepared half-pint jars, leaving 1/4" headspace. (Prepared means washed, dried and warmed in a 200 degree oven.) Seal the jars and process in a boiling-water bath for 10 minutes. (Start timing only after the water in the canner has returned to a full boil.) Allow the jars to cool on the counter overnight.
Yields about 3 pints
Tuesday, July 10, 2012