Glut

I've just read over this post and I must apologise to those who might find it a bit long.  But bare with me, I'm sharing some excellent preserving recipes here and I didn't want to leave out any information. If you are an experienced preserver, you have my full permission to skip.  If you haven't done much preserving in the past, I hope that you find this useful.  There are a few ranty passages about the hygiene police.  I've tried very hard to get to the bottom of some preserving myths. I'd welcome your views.

 

The trouble with vegplotting and, I suspect, the trouble with farming on any scale, is the problem of gluts.  Don't do as I did last year and try to incorporate the glut-crop into every meal you serve.  Mike my husband, normally a very tolerant type, put his foot down.   I think he took particular exception to my bringing the runner beans on holiday with us! And when I tried to serve him the hundredth portion, this time disguised as a salad... (They do make an appetising adjunct to a cold collation, mixed with an oily vinaigrette and garlic.) But, he had a good point,  I was getting pretty bored with runner beans myself. 

For those dwindling few who were brought up on bible stories, the correct response to a glut should be second nature.  Just as the Pharaoh was perplexed by dreaming of seven fat cows being consumed by seven thin cows. Today we often respond to a surfeit by trying vainly to consume it all straight away. But Joseph told us what to do, when he interpreted the Pharaoh's dream.  In good years a glut should be salted away for times of famine. 

I'm aware that famine is not likely in our sophisticated world, thank goodness, but if I'd bottled some of those runner beans, think how lovely they would have tasted, later in the year.  

Why not freeze them? I hear you ask.  I have no objection to freezing.  It's just that I don't own a freezer.  (It's always seemed an unnecessary item in our minuscule kitchen.) Freezers take up electricity all year.  Bottling cooks and preserves all in one go, so it is a far more energy consious way to preserve. This has forced me to be a little more inventive with my surpluses.  I have quite literally to salt them away, or pickle them, bottle them, or stew them into a jam.  

 

The hygiene police?

A few days ago, faced with the unexpected gift of a couple of kilos of fresh strawberries, I found that I had misplaced my usual recipe for strawberry jam.  So I went cruising through the Internet trying to find the best recipe.  

There are hundreds of strawberry jam recipes, some simple, some complicated.  People variously recommend mixing the strawberries with pectin, grated Bramley apples, vanilla pods, butter and lemon juice!  Which of these, I wondered is essential and which is optional?  Some chefs recommended the use of preserving sugar while in other recipes that was expressly forbidden.  And h

ow could it be that some recipes require an equal quantity of fruit to sugar, while others call for twice as much sugar?

Some American cooks instruct the poor hapless preserver to seal and submerge the newly made jam into boiling water and 'can' it for twenty minutes.  I'm not preserving the jam for a trip to Mars, nor am I  planning to keep it until the next Century, or kayak it down the Amazon.   What are these over cautious recipe writers thinking about?

There is no need to go through the bottling or canning process of heat sterilisation when you are using large quantities of sugar, salt or vinegar in your preserving.  If you have just boiled the produce for more than two minutes, it will already be sterile.  A paper jam lid and a screw top jar or cellophane lid secured with a rubber band, will be adequate.  I've never had closed jars of jam go mouldy, though they will harden over time.  Jam should be eaten in the six months after you make it. If your jam isn't eaten that quickly, you are using the wrong recipe!

There seems to be a fear amongst our American cousins of the danger that might lurk in the bottom of a jam jar.  Hence the over-copious quantities of sugar recommended in some preserves. I tend to err on the side of in-caution! If it's been done like that for centuries, what's changed?   So beware.  If you recoil at a bit of mould on your toast, or throw things away several days before the eat-by date - read no further.  You would be too shocked. In my view eat-by dates are invented by supermarkets to make you throw away totally good food.  Inbuilt obsolescence!  Beware! 

These recipes are old-fashioned.  They don't over cook or over flavour the produce with preservatives.  That means they will taste delicious, but they will not keep indefinitely. Jars, once opened, should be kept in a cool larder or the fridge.  

 

Jam making

Jam is a preserve, a convenient way of eating fruit when you haven't got much around. Originally, with old fashioned growing techniques and varieties, strawberries would only be around for a month or two in the summer.  So jam is not meant to last years, it is a way of extending the season.  Strawberry jam is an autumn delicacy.   

Despite the Yankee perfidity I had encountered on the Internet,  it was two American recipes that caught my eye.  The first was Martha Stewart's no nonsense ingredients.  She suggests 4lbs Strawberries and 2 1/4lbs of granulated sugar -  nothing else.  http://www.marthastewart.com/313650/strawberry-jam

However Martha spoils a simple list of ingredients with an over-complicated method.   

I have always left the strawberries and sugar mixture to steep.  I was perturbed to see that this little exercise seems to have gone out of fashion. Was it really necessary? Is it just a bit of old wives' lor? Perhaps it is simply done to allow that heavenly strawberry aroma to linger in the kitchen for a little longer than needed? But after scraping the bottom of the Internet barrel, I finally found a reference to the steeping method in the Washington Post.   According to Cathy Barrow 

http://m.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/canning-class-strawberry-jam-that-works/2014/06/09/c1965b18-e9d8-11e3-93d2-edd4be1f5d9e_story.html

by steeping the fruit with lemon juice and sugar the natural pectin is released, causing the jelling to commence before the pot is even put on the hob. 

The aroma of strawberries steeping in organic cane sugar is the smell of summer.

Barrow also tells us that because strawberries are one of the low pectin fruits, we should be content if our resulting jam is a little runny.  Just pour it over ice cream she advises.  

This, I realise, is why quantities of sugar differ so much between recipes.  In the old days the cook would know her strawberries and would put in sugar according to their ripeness.  (Ripe fruit has less pectin in it.) 

Obviously the lower the sugar content of the jam, the softer the set and the shorter the keeping qualities.  Martha Steward recommends keeping the whole batch in the fridge! (But unless you live south of the Mason-Dixon line, I don't think this is necessary)

Carol Barrow advises poor benighted Washingtonians to place the finished jam in preserving jars and subject them to a boiled canning process afterwards! Bah! Humbug!  So much cooking will kill the flavour and is quite unnecessary.  Unless, that is, you want your jam to turn into solid little nuts. For that is what over-cooking will do, it will set the jam as hard as ... humbugs.

But Barrow does recommend steeping the jam, and explains why it is a good idea.  It is Barrows method that intrigued me. She suggests boiling up the syrup first and then adding the solid fruit later.  I've never heard of this, but thought it might work quite well. I figured that if I wanted to use less sugar than she suggested and not include pectin or apple juice, I would have to boil the mixture rather longer to reduce the water content.  The longer you boil, the more fruit flavour is lost.  I hoped that the flavour would remain in the fruit solids and that the liquor would boil down more quickly if the solids and the juice were boiled separately.  

 

Wendy's delicious jam recipe

So here is my delicious quick cook, low sugar, high flavour jam.  Its an amalgam of several recipes. There are no added extras, no Jamie Oliver vanilla pods, no Caren Barrow grated apple, no preserving sugar and no added pectin.  Preserving sugar is actually sugar mixed with pectin.  I don't want to dilute my delicious fresh organic fruit with cheap imported apple concentrate.  And I don't want to mask the fruit flavour with too much sugar.  So this recipe uses the minimum of sugar.  It definitely doesn't need canning or refrigerating!

 

Low sugar, no fuss, strawberry jam

 

Ingredients

2kg fresh strawberries

1kg bag unrefined cane sugar

Juice of 1 lemon  

Five or six jam jars

 

This jam takes two days to make, but requires very little time on the first day and not too much cooking time on the second day.  

 

Day 1

Wash the strawberries under the cold tap in a colander.  Core and halve them.  If they are very big they can be cut into thirds or quarters.  Small fruit can be left whole.  Rotten fruits should be discarded, but a few softly overripe fruit can be used.  A few unripe fruit don't matter either. You should end up with about 1.9kg of prepared fruit.  

Mix the fruit with the sugar, pour on the lemon juice and leave it to steep in a bowl overnight.  Cover with a well fitting lid, or if you must, cover with cling-film and DON'T put it in the fridge!  

 

Day 2

The next day place a saucer or a few teaspoons in the freezer. I use the ice-maker at the top of my fridge. These will be used to test the set of the jam.  Wash jam jars in warm soapy water, rinse in hot water and place them to sterilise in the oven at 110•C, for about ten minutes, while you make the jam.  Once the time is up, turn off the oven, but leave the jars inside.

Tip the strawberry mix into a colander and allow the fruit syrup to strain out.  You will find that some of the sugar will have sunk to the bottom of the pan and will not yet be dissolved. No problem! Tip this into the pan along with the syrup. Press lightly onto the strawberries to extract more juice.  

I found that once de-juiced, the whole fruit looked pallid and unappetising.  The juice, on the other hand, was a deep red colour.  Don't worry if this happens to you.  The strawberries will regain their redness when reunited with the syrup.  

Set the strawberry solids to one side and cover.  Then vigorously boil up the juice in a good quality stainless steel pan. Use the largest pan that you possess. The juice will expand two or three times, as it comes up to a full rolling boil. Stir a few times to ensure that the mixture is not sticking, but do not try to stir out the bubbles.  In a good pan you can watch the alchemy take place quite volcanically without having to stir at all.  Jam only really sticks in cheap, thin pans.  After about 15 minutes, the mixture will become more viscous.

Test for a set by placing a cold spoon into the syrup.  If a meniscus forms and the top of the syrup crinkles, then the setting point had been reached.  This is called the soft ball stage.  But don't be fooled.  If it forms a ball shape, you have gone too far.

Recipe books faff about with jam thermometers, but in my experience they do not always give an accurate reading.  It is an important lesson of life to learn what setting jam looks and feels like.  Use your eyes and fingers to push a globule of jam around on an iced spoon or saucer.  Don't rely on a number read off a thermometer scale.  If you see wrinkles after a minute or two, it's done.  

Once you are content with the set of the syrup, tip the whole fruit into the syrup and boil it up again.  This time you will find the mixture creates a veritable witches cauldron of boiling bubbles and froth.  

Again, about fifteen minutes rolling boil is required to re-set the new mixture.  Test every so often, by letting the liquid tip off the spoon, or push a spoonful up the side of the pan. You will notice the viscosity increase.  The jam will start to drip from the spoon, rather than pour from it. If the jam continues to foam you can add a knob or two of unsalted butter into the mix, just before the setting point is reached.  Keep boiling.  Suddenly the jam will clear and start to look different.  This is your moment.  Test with the iced spoon.  If the jam crinkles, it is done.  

Remember that the hot mixture will not look set, like cold jam does.  It has to cool to set and, in fact, it may take several hours to achieve a jelly-like consistency.  That is why you have to make many batches of jam to get used to this magic process.  Rest assured, however gloopy it is - or isn't - your jam will taste delicious.  

Leave the preserve, uncovered, to cool and set slightly, (about twenty minutes).  Stir the jam before filling the jars. The strawberries will become evenly distributed as the jam cools and won't float to the top of the jars, when you fill them.  

Pour the jam into the warm jam jars. Place a waxed paper disc on top of each filled jar and seal with a cellophane cover and rubber band.  Once the jars have cooled, label them. You may refit the factory lids at this point too, in order to ensure an extra tight seal.  But on no account bother about canning processes or putting the sealed jars in the fridge.  Store in a cool place and eat within six months.   Low sugar jam cannot be kept for too long, once the jars are opened.  Anyway, you'll find it is far too delicious to leave it long on the larder shelf. 


Tomatoes
Ive tried various methods of preserving tomatoes and have scoured the internet and recipe books for a simple recipe.  I dried all my surplus tomatoes last year and found I had to leave them for ages before they were ready.  After drying, the books recommended steeping them in olive oil, which just makes them more expensive and fattening.  

So this year I have gone back to a stunningly simple Elizabeth Davis recipe.  As she might say, only a mugwump would do anything different!

 

Conserva di Pomidoro

Preserving tomatoes for sauces is child's play

Ingredients

Ripe tomatoes, including split or damaged one

Rock salt
Sugar

Hand-full of red basil

 

Equipment

Preserving jars:  
I use small 250ml Kilner jars, that will provide enough tomato for a pasta sauce for two. These jars have a re-usable ring and a seal that is recommended that you use once.  (I shall probably see if I can use them again!)  Sterilise the Kilner jars in a hot oven at 110•C for 10 minutes.  Place the seals into a pan of hot but not boiling water.  The rings don't need sterilising as they won't get anywhere near the food.  Suppliers are John Lewis, Divertimenti and Lakeland.

Kilner tongs:  
This isn't an essential, but it sure makes it easier getting the jars out of the pan.  They cost £4.00 at John Lewis 

 

 

Method

The great thing about this recipe is that all your over-ripe or damaged tomatoes can go into it. Rinse the freshly picked tomatoes under the cold tap, strain in a colander and then cut them into halves or quarters, depending on size. Discard any damaged bits.  Push them gently into into the warm preserving jars, making sure that the juices flow and there are no air pockets.  Some recipes suggest peeling the tomatoes, but I can buy peeled and tinned tomatoes anywhere. Why would I want to make the self same thing myself? And why discard good roughage?  Other recipes suggest squeezing out the juice and preserving only the flesh.  Tomatoes are said to have wonderful curative properties precisely because of their high water content.  I prefer to bottle the whole tomato, juice and all.

Before you put the seal in place, sprinkle the top with salt and sugar (just as you would for a sauce) and drop a few sprigs of red basil on top.

Take the seal out of the hot water and place it on the jars.  Fix the circular ring in place. Secure it well, but not too tightly.  

Place a clean dishcloth into the base of the pan and put the jars inside.  Cover with cold water, at least up to the shoulder of the jar.  Large jars may be placed on their sides.   Bring to the boil and let them cook for 20 minutes.

The screw mechanism is there mealy to stop juice coming out during cooking.  If you are not sure if the seals have formed, you can unscrew the ring and check the seal.  If the seal is correct it won't come off to a GENTLE pull.  If something has gone wrong and the seal pops off, check that there is no food or tomato pips obstructing it, replace the lid and boil it up again, for about 5 minutes.

 

To use these jars for sauce, simply tip the contents into a saucepan, heat gently for a minute or two and serve with fresh pasta, a blob of butter, salt and pepper.  

 

Peperoni all'aceto

This is another fantastically simple recipe that I've adapted from Elizabeth David to deal with the glut of chillies or red peppers.  

I was finding that I wasn't using chillies in the summer.  I tend to use them to pep up a winter casserole.  So they were languishing on the bushes.  And because they don't ripen all at once, I never had enough to make a full jar of preserved chillies.  Neither have I found that drying them works for me.  This recipe allows you to top up the jar, as the chillies ripen.

 

Ingredients

Chillies or ripe red peppers
500ml preserving jar

500ml light white wine vinegar

A little olive oil

 

Method

First harvest

Once you have a good supply of chillies or red pepers, wash them and cut into halves or quarters.  Discard the pips and stalk.  (Careful, this can not be done without getting chilli juice onto your hands.  I don't, but you might like to wear disposable gloves for this stage. In all eventualities do not touch your eyes or mouth while you are preparing them.)

Place the prepared flesh into a small pan of boiling water and leave to scald for two to three minutes. 

Drain the chillies, arrange in the preserving jar and top up with white wine vinegar. Never use balsamic or pickling vinegar, it is far too strong a flavour.  Replace the lid.

There is no need to plunge the filled jars into boiling water as we did for the tomatoes.  The vinegar does the preserving job here.  

Second and subsequent harvests

When you have more chillies to add to the jar, simply prepare and scald as before and pop them into the jar, spooning out a little vinegar if necessary.  Replace the seal and screw top.

 

At the end of the season
Once all the chillies are harvested, and placed inside the jar, you can fill the jar with a couple of centimetres or more of olive oil, which should float on the top.  To use remove one at a time, and wash before adding to a salad or casserole.  Unwashed chillies can go straight into a curry, as oil and vinegar are always an ingredient.