analog me

Just finished--Thanksgiving Cranberry ChutneyRelish

It's that time of year again. I make grocery lists, buy hundreds of dollars of groceries, go home start cooking, realize I am missing some ingredients, make a new list, go shopping, start cooking, miss something, go shopping, cook some more, etc. etc. until all the grocery stores close or Thanksgiving dinner is actually on the table and being eaten. As the big meal gets closer, the cycle speeds up. (Now I've gone from 12 to 6 hours.) I started the cycle a few days ago, and expect to be back at the coop grocery every few hours for another day.

Meanwhile, I made this and it is so good I almost cried.

You should make it too.  My cooking is pretty messy--I don't actually measure, so you don't have to either--but these are some guidelines.

Cranberry Chutney Relish

Start by heating in a pot:

• 4 Apples peeled and diced
• 2 1/2 Cups cranberries
• 1 stick cinnamon
• juice of 1-2 lemons
• 1/3 Cup vinegar

As this heats up add:

• 2/3 Cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• Juice of 1/2 Pomegranate (break in chunks and squeeze juice out with a potato ricer)
• Sections and juice from 1/2 grapefruit 
• 1-2" (2.5-5 cm) ginger root peeled and grated (or 2T ginger jam)
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

When this gets a nice, thick, jammy look (5 min. or so) add:

• 2 cloves garlic pressed

Adding garlic always feels weird, but I make myself do it because it gives the chutney a little zing that makes it that much more delicious.

Now turn off the heat and taste it. It should be zesty, spicy, piquant, and fruity. Add more sugar, acid or spice to taste, and put it in a glass bowl.

You may wonder how I can write this up if I don't measure. I do something like forensic recipe reconstruction by carefully observing the evidence at the scene of the crime.

It's an ugly job, but I do it for you, dear readers.

Any other special recipes out there I should know about before my next shopping trip???

Cranberry-Pomegranate-Grapefruit Jam/Marmalade Close-up

I have been having one of those weeks when things just don't work. Finally I decided damn it, I will just drop everything that is difficult  and recreate that cranberry-pomegranate jam I ate in Vermont. Of course, it's a little hard to recreate the actual taste, so I decided to just go for the general idea using whatever I had on hand. Did you know that one pomegranate yields very little juice? About 2 tablespoons. Scarcity being the mother of improvisation, I turned to grapefruit, which are very juicy and pulpy. Grapefruit pulp seemed to beg for a little orange peel and thus my jam turned into:

 Cranberry-Pomegranate-Grapefruit Jam/Marmalade Improvisation

(yeild: much less than you would expect, about three of those little jam jars) 

• 1 pint cranberries
• 1 pomegranate juiced ( a few tablespoons)
• Pulp of 2 large Rio Star grapefruits-approx. 1 cup
• peel of one organic orange
• 2 Cups sugar
• 1 Tablespoon honey (If you have some nearby)

Juice the pomegranate by whirring the seeds in a blender and then straining the juice. (Or just buy some juice.) Scoop the grape fruit sections out into a measuring cup. Use a vegetable peeler to remove orange part of the peel and then chop finely. Put all the ingredients into a heavy, wide pan with the two cups of sugar and slowly bring to a boil. (A dutch oven is ideal.)  

Clean off your counter and find some jars and lids. You won't need to process this jam because you will be eating or giving it all away within one short week. I swear! Start another pot of water to boil with the jars submerged. Put a cutting board next to the jam pan, and get out a ladle.

The jam will transform from this: 
 to this:

 When it starts to look like jam, use a thermometer to check the temperature. It should get to 218 to 220 degrees Farenheit. If it doesn't get that hot even after boiling for awhile, add some sugar: about 2 Tablespoons at a time. Science Tip: This creates a denser solution that can hold more heat/energy. If you don't feel like being scientific or live at a higher altitude, use the wrinkle test. There is a lot of pectin in these ingredients so, it should jell pretty easily. Once the jam is ready, sterilize your ladle and lids by putting them in the boiling water, remove the jars and fill them with the jam. Done!

 If you ever read books on canning, they always stress the importance of cleanliness. A lot. This is partly because of germs, but also because once you are in the process of lifting jars out from boiling water, ladling scalding hot liquids, and applying sterilized lids, you don't want to be searching under old toast for your lid lifter.  I thought I had done a pretty good job, but this is what my counter looked like. (I'm not sure why I needed butter or olive oil) I do find that an an old glove finger stretcher ( on cutting board) is the best tool for holding a thermometer over boiling water, but you may need to substitute.
For years, I have been reading craft and cooking blogs and wonder how those amazing women managed to be so creative, raise healthy children, have perfect looking homes, and have time to blog about it. Now, I have unlocked the secret: macro-photography and photo-cropping. Instead of including shots like that directly above, you zoom in very close, past the mess, to the creation.

    It may be deceiving but my cooking now does look much better since I know to zoom in past the dog bed with son's shoes, past the tattered place mat and right into that jar of jam. 

I am currently trying to apply this method to my outlook of the house in general. 

Analog Pickles

For years I've been yakking about making pickles. Then I tasted the pickles at Shish Cafe in St. Paul and knew I had found my inspiration. These are not the limp, vinegary things slopped aside the average sandwich. Crunchy, salty, and garlicky with just the right sourness, they are the most addictive pickles I have ever tasted. The waitress informed me that I couldn't buy them because they were only made at the restaurant during sunny weather. The owner of Shish, Leo, is originally from Jerusalem and the food is Middle Eastern--not a cuisine I or my cookbooks usually associate with pickles. So finally I decided I would just ask him how he makes them. I was pretty shocked when he said sure he would give me his recipe, because where I come from this kind of information is only passed on to one worthy heir. With a few probing questions, I got it.

"boil X 3," is shorthand for "boil it, boil it, boil it." Of course, Leo is a smart man and he made me happy, but only little the wiser as to the actual formula, so I spent several months stewing over this puzzle and reading pickle recipes. During my research, I learned that a lot of things can go wrong. Pickles can be discolored, soft, corky, shriveled, bloated, slimy, pale. I became a sort of pickle hypochondriac, imagining that if I couldn't create a good scientific formula I would create abominable pickles. 

The book Pickled by Lucy Norris finally calmed me down a little. For ages, people all over the world have been fearlessly preserving food in brines without USDA recommendations to make them dizzy with anxiety. Unlike jam making, there seemed to be a lot of latitude in brine solutions. Actually it's pretty analog. There is not some delicate pickle/no pickle balance that must be found. Instead, there is a huge gradiation of pickleness that is determined by taste and technique. Finally, I just combined Leo's ingredients with a sun pickle recipe from the internet and put it all in the sun for 4 days.

 The result was good, very good with crunch, salt, garlic and a lot of lemon-- but nothing like his. 

Some things went "wrong" too. The tops of the pickles are a little pale and the solution is cloudy because I used the sea salt on hand and not pickling salt. They are still damn fine pickles. Too bad I forgot to write down MY recipe.

Analog Jam?

analog: Adjective (thanks to WIkipedia)

1. (of a device or system) in which the value of a data item (such as time) is represented by a continuously variable physical quantity that can be measured (such as the shadow of a sundial)
2. As opposed to a digital or discrete signal. 

 

I've always been more of a dial gal than a button type. I hate presets, and digital beeping. I used to love driving with one hand on the radio dial, sliding from the fuzz of the fading big bang to clear jangles of the top 40.  I paid extra for a dial-only oven ( a bit extra). Although I've lived with my microwave oven for 16 years, I still don't understand it's logic. I've stood in front of Mr. Microwave and cried because I couldn't make it understand that I needed my morning tea warmed up. As my husband says, it works, but the human machine-interface doesn't.

Beyond my mechanical preferences, I love sauteing, mucking around in dirt, cutting fabric, stitching-- anything where I get to be physically transforming stuff. I think I like making jam so much because I never get tired of finding a new route to the jell point. 

My personal way of operation is never the same- I hate doing anything the same way twice. I suck at repetitive jobs. I'm having a bit of trouble with this blogging thing. 

But, the jam is always good.

It all gets eaten. Even when I drop it on the lawn

The Dangers of Canning

I was raised to fear canning.  

After an exploding pressure cooker engraved circular grooves on my aunt's kitchen ceiling, the women spoke in hushed tones about What Could Have Happened. I wasn't supposed to be listening, but I knew what they were saying; Canning could be Dangerous to  your Health. Whenever I visit, I still look at the faint circles on her ceiling feel a little fear.

My grandmother, who lived just down the road, came of canning age before the pressure cooker. The boiling water bath was good enough her and she canned prodigious quantities of fruits for wintertime desserts.  This was probably safe as the fruit had a lot of bacteria-resisting acid and sugar. Yet, on the dusty shelves of her basement pantry, there lurked a stockpile of deadly jars. You see, before I was even born, in the summer of 1961, her garden had produced a bumper crop of green beans that she had put  up in the old-fashioned way. The product was, according to my mom, a botulism time-bomb.

We children were frequently warned not to ever eat any canned beans at my grandmother's house. In fact, we were not supposed to even touch them. Every once in a while we were supposed to check and see if they were still there. My brothers and I would creep into the canning room, wipe the dust off the labels that said, "green beans, 1961," and suck in our breath with dread.

So, once I decided to can, I opted to skip everything associated with pressure cooling or low-acid foods. I can't read all those USDA guidelines because they make me loose sleep at night.  I just make a lot of jam. 

Half of it sits on the counter in jelly-jars and is consumed within days.  I process the remaining jars in a hot water bath. There have been no injuries thus far.