preserves and pickles

Homemade Umeshu (plum wine) and Ume Hachimitsu Sour (ume honey-vinegar drink)

maki — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:53:59 +0200

Since so many people liked my mom’s umeboshi recipe, here are two more recipes using ume plums from her. She doesn’t have photos for these, so I’ve taken a picture of her notes, with a little illustration she did of how to layer the ume and sugar for the umeshu (plum wine).

How To Make Umeshu (plum wine)

Although it’s called plum ‘wine’, this beverage is actually a cordial or a liqueur. It’s much easier to make than umeboshi, since the alcohol prevents any mold from forming.

Ingredients and supplies

To make umeshu, you need three ingredients: unripe green ume plums, rock sugar (called kouri zatou (氷砂糖) or ‘ice sugar’ in Japan) and shochu or shouchuu or another flavorless distilled alcoholic beverage, such as vodka. Rock sugar is preferred because it melts slowly, but you could also use granulated sugar. (You can buy rock sugar at General Asian/Chinese grocery stores - maki)

For equipment, you need a large, wide mouth glass jar with an airtight lid. I use a very large canning jar with a snap-on lid with a rubber gasket. You could also use a screwtop lid. The jar should be large enough so that when you put the ume plums, sugar and shochu in, it should only come to about half of the height.

You’ll also need a sharp tool such as a toothpick or skewer to take out the stem ends, and a scale to weigh the ingredients.

Amounts

Weigh your ume plums, then weigh out about half of that weight in rock sugar. If you want it sweeter, increase to 60%. If you want to less sweet, use less sugar, though I would not go under 40% since unripe ume plums are very sour.

I like to keep it simple, and use 500 grams of sugar for every kilo of ume plums.

I never weigh the shochu, but there should be enough so that it completely covers the ume plums in the jar. For a kilo of ume plums I use about 2 liters of shochu.

Incidentally, I usually make about 5 kilo (11 lbs) worth of ume plums in one session, and I make it every year! So, that’s 5 kg of ume plums, 2.5 kg of rock sugar, and about 10 liters of shochu.

Method

Wash your jar or jars and lid well, and sterilize them in boiling water, in a hot dishwasher, in a warm oven, or with some of the alcohol you are using (shochu or vodka), just as you would when making jam or pickles.

Wash and dry the unripe green ume plums, and take off the stem end bits in the same way as in the umeboshi recipe with a toothpick or other pointy tool. You don’t need to soak them in water to get rid of the bitterness as you do with umeboshi, though you can if you want a very smooth tasting umeshu.

Weigh your ume plums after washing and de-stemming them, to get the amount of sugar you need.

Put a layer of ume plums in the jar, then a layer of rock sugar. Repeat until all the sugar and plums are used up, and press down with a clean spatula to compact it all in the jar. Pour the shochu or vodka into the jar until it just covers the topmost layer of plums. The jar should only be about half full, since a lot of liquid will come out of the plums. If you fill the jar too much to start with, the liquid may overflow and burst the lid off!

Put the lid on securely, and leave the jar in a cool, dark place. You may want to shake the jar occasionally to help things along. After about 3 months, the plums will have exuded a lot of juice and will come floating up to the surface - remove the ume plums (you can store them separately if you like; since they are completely saturated with sugar and alcohol, they won’t go bad). After about 5 months, the umeshu is ready to drink, but I like to leave it for at least a year to let it mature. Umeshu really at its best after 2 years, and just mellows and improves with age.

Mellow umeshu has a beautiful light green color, like light olive oil.

Some people like to eat the ume plums that have been used to make the umeshu; it’s believed to have medicinal qualities. People say that an ume a day keeps your insides healthy. You can also float a single ume plum in your umeshu drink as decoration.

How to drink umeshu

You can drink umeshu straight, or on the rocks (over ice cubes) like any liqueur. I like to mix it with water, at about a 1:1 ratio, with lots of ice cubes.

Fruit ‘wine’ with other fruit

If you can’t get ume plums, you can use the same method with other fruit. Strawberry wine, or ichigoshu, is very popular in Japan: for 1 kilo of good, ripe strawberries, use maybe 100 grams of sugar, depending on how sweet the fruit is. After 2 to 3 months, the strawberries will become completely white! Take them out (I wouldn’t eat these), and let the strawberry ‘wine’ mature. You can try apricots, quince, regular Western plums, and so on.

How To Make Honey Sour with ume plums

While umeshu is delicious, it is very alcoholic. So for non-drinkers and my grandchildren, I make a non-alcoholic version with honey and vinegar, called Honey Sour (蜂蜜サワー).

Honey Sour is easier to make than umeshu. Just take equal amounts in weight of unripe green ume plums, honey and vinegar. The vinegar can be rice vinegar, white wine vinegar, or apple cider vinegar - any light flavored and colored vinegar will work. Combine it all in a sterilized large jar. After a while (3 to 4 weeks), take out the plums that will have come floating up to the surface; these can be eaten too, like the umeshu plums. You can rebottle the honey sour in sterilized bottles at this point if you prefer, which can be kept at room temperature.

Use Honey Sour in the same way as you would use umeshu - on the rocks, mixed with water, and so on. It’s also nice as a syrup on shaved ice (kakigouri). I like to bring a small bottle of it on hikes, where we mix it with clear, cold water from mountain streams. So refreshing!

You could try other fruit too. Quince (called karin in Japanese) are really good as a Honey Sour base.

Footnote from Maki: My mother’s drawings

I love the little drawing my mom did for her umeshu instructions. I think her drawings are great, and keep telling her so, but she doesnt seem convinced! Here’s one she did of breakfast a couple of years back, with a wedge of melon and a bowl of muesli. I’m trying to convince her to let me show more of her drawings!

Homemade Umeboshi (Japanese salty pickled plums)

maki — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:14:35 +0200

My mother came for a visit this week, bringing along a pot of her homemade umeboshi. I asked her to tell me how she makes them; not only did she write it down for me, she even had pictures she’d taken of her attempts in the past couple of years! So, here is my mom’s version of how to make homemade umeboshi. I’ve freely translated her Japanese explanation to English.

My mother [my grandmother - maki] used to make umeboshi every year. When I lived in New York, I was too busy working to do much cooking, let alone umeboshi! But now that I am retired, I’m trying to remember how to do things the old way. Homemade umeboshi is so much more delicious than store bought, so they are worth the effort.

Ingredients and equipment

You only need 4 ingredients to make umeboshi: Ume plums, coarse sea salt, red shiso leaves and shochu or shouchuu, a type of distilled alcohol beverage that is available all over Japan and is quite inexpensive. If you can’t get shochu, you can use vodka or another kind of flavorless distilled beverage.

You also need some bowls, flat baskets, a large, wide-mouth, a deep container made of ceramic or glass or non-reactive plastic (never metal), a weight or a sturdy plastic bag, and large jars to store your umeboshi.

Preparing the ume plums

In Japan, umeboshi are always made in mid to late June, because that’s when the ume plums are ready. Ume plums are picked when they are hard and very sour. The kind I use are from the Kishuu region, which is in Wakayama prefecture. Kishuu ume are widely regarded to make the best umeboshi.

I understand that ume plums are now available in the United States. When you buy them, make sure you choose ones that are firm, plump and unblemished. Even small blemishes or cuts on the plums could lead to mold, which is the biggest reason umeboshi can fail.

Once you have the ume plums, carefully remove any remaining stems. The best way to do this is with a cocktail stick. Try not to pierce the ume plum when you’re doing this - again, this can lead to mold.

Once the stems are removed, wash the plums in several changes of water, and then fill a large bowl with cold water and leave the ume plums to soak overnight. This gets rid of some of the bitterness in the plums.

After soaking overnight, drain and dry the plums. Made ready a bowl of shochu or vodka, and dunk the ume plums completely in the alcohol. This is to kill any kind of mold spores on the surface.

Preparing the red shiso leaves

Red shiso or perilla leaves give color and flavor to the umeboshi. Use about 10% of the ume plus in weight of shiso leaves - so for 1 kilo of ume plums, use 100g of shiso leaves. Wash them, take off any tough stemps, sprinkle with a little sat and massage the leaves until they are limp.

Salt to ume ratio

Use a non-iodized, coarse salt. I use a coarse sea salt. You can use kosher salt instead.

The amount of salt, or the ratio of salt to ume plums, determines how salty your umeboshi will end up. My mother used to make very salty umeboshi with about 20% salt! I prefer mine to be quite low in salt, so I use only 8%. The lower the salt content, the more prone to mold the ume become, so beginners may want to start with 12% or 10% salt. You can also de-salt the umeboshi a little before you eat them, by soaking them in a weak salt water solution (though this does dilute the flavor too).

Here’s the amount of salt vs. ume plums at different percentages:

8%: For every 1 kilo of ume plums, use 80 grams of salt
10%: For every 1 kilo of ume plums, use 100 grams of salt
12%: For every 1 kilo of ume plums, use 120 grams of salt

Make the pickling container ready

Use a large, wide-mouth jar or other fairly deep container. Wash it inside and out thorougly, then disinfect the inside. Some people do this by putting the container in boiling water, but the most common way is to spray it with some shochu or vodka.

Fill the pickling container

Start with a layer of coarse salt. Cover with a layer of ume plums, then a bit of the shiso. Repeat the salt-ume-shiso layers, until the ume are used up. Now, cover the whole thing with a plastic bag or sheet, then put on a weight that is at least half as heavy as the ume plums - in other words, 1 kilo of ume plums requires a 500g weight. While there are dedicated ceramic weights available, you can use anything you can find such as a bagful of water (as long as it doesn’t leak), a full water bottle, clean rocks in a plastic bag, and so on.

Once the container is full and weighted down, cover the top with a clean, porous cloth like a cheesecloth or openweave kitchen towel; secure this with a rubber band or string. Leave in a cool, dark area of your house, until the ume plums become soft and completely immersed in a reddish liquid. This liquid is extracted from the ume plums by the salt. This part of the process will take about a week or more.

Once the liquid is about 2 cm (an inch) above the top of the ume plums, reduce the weight by about half, and leave the ume plums in the jar in the liquid until it’s time to dry them in the sun.

Drying the plums

The hoshi/boshi part of umeboshi means ‘to dry’, and the following drying step is very important!

In Japan, we time the umeboshi process so that the ume plums reach the end of the salting stage around Doyou no ushi no hi （土用の丑の日), which falls on a different day every year, but is always around mid July. This date is always marked on Japanese calendars, along with other holidays and special days, just like Christian holy days are marked on European calendars. The significance of this day for umeboshi making is that it occurs after the rainy season is over, when the weather becomes hot and relatively dry (this period is called doyou no hi （土用の日), the doyou period). If you are not in Japan, just look at the weather forecast and aim for a period of a few days when it’s supposed to be nice and hot and sunny.

Once the ume plums are immersed in the reddish liquid, take the plums and the shiso leaves out of the jar. Reserve the liquid - this is umesu, or ume vinegar, and is delicious! (See instant radish pickle recipe that uses ume vinegar - maki)

Put the ume plums in a single layer on flat baskets, and the shiso leaves in spread-put clumps separately. Here you see that I have lined up the baskets on newspapers out on my apartment balcony. The newspapers protect the top of the table underneath!

Leave the plums like this in a fairly sunny place with good ventilation, for about 3 days. If it rains, take them inside. Turn them over at least once a day.

At the end of the drying process, they look like this. The drying tenderizes the plums, giving them a better texture.

The umeboshi are now done. You can store them as-is, in a jar, layering plums with the shiso leaves. Or you can pour back in some of the ume vinegar, to give them a softer texture. This is what I did with this batch.

Here’s another batch (from last year). I stored some wet in disinfected glass jars, and some dry in a ceramic jar.

Umeboshi improves with age for a few years. I usually start eating them 3 years after making them, though you can eat them the same year. At around 5 years I think they are at their best. After about 10 years or so they start to disintegrate and become mushy if kept wet, and rather shriveled like an old lady if kept dry - but they are still edible!

An alternate type of umeboshi: White umeboshi

You can make umeboshi without the red shiso leaves. This results in light brown umeboshi and an almost clear ume vinegar.

I hope you have enjoyed this how-to of a very traditional Japanese preserved food!

Roasted spicy-sweet red pepper jam

maki — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 20:09:06 +0200

Being a sucker for anything On Sale, a couple of weeks ago I was lured by a big AKTION sign at the supermarket into buying a 3 kilo (about 6.6 lb) bag of sweet red peppers. As much as I love peppers, it was going to be impossible to consume all of it in regular ways. Making a jam or jelly out of them was an obvious answer.

I wanted a jam that could be used as condiment or sauce as well as in regular jam-like ways, e.g. spread on bread. I set about trying to find a good, easy to make and not too sugary red pepper jelly or jam recipe on the internets, but nothing I read really stood out on its own to me. So I set about taking this from that and that from the other recipe, and after ruining about a kilo of the peppers in the first attempt, came up with something that is not bad at all.

Recipe: Roasted spicy-sweet red pepper jam

This makes about 7 cups of jam.

2 kg (about 4 1/2 lbs) sweet red bell peppers; Hungarian peppers will give you the richest red color, and is what I used to produce the blood-red jam in the photo, but regular bell peppers will do too
1 kg (about 2.2 lb) sour apples such as Granny Smith, Bramley, Boskop
4 to 6 hot Thai chili peppers, or 1 to 2 habenero (Scotch Bonnet) peppers; or 2 Tbs. dried red chili pepper flakes
300g (1 1/2 cups) sugar
1 Tbs. salt
220ml (1 cup) red wine vinegar
1 packet powdered pectin (optional, see Notes)

Preheat the oven to 220°C / 430°F.

Cup the peppers in half, take off the stem end and take out the seeds. Line then skin side up a baking sheet. Bake in the oven until the skins are black and blistered - the time differs depending on how thick your peppers are, but start looking after 5 minutes. Don’t let them get charred and tough all the way through!

Take the peppers out and put them in a bowl and cover with a plate or plastic wrap. This steams them a bit in residual heat, making them easier to peel.

In the meantime, peel, core and chop up the apples.

Peel the peppers - most of the charred skin should come off easily. If any bits of unburnt skin remain, it’s no big deal.

Chop up the hot chili peppers. The amount really depends on how hot you want your jam to be. The hottest would be with the two habaneros, but for general use 5-6 Thai chili peppers (the small red kind) should be quite enough without making the jam a tearful experience. You may want to start by adding less than you think you need - you can always add more heat, but taking it out is a bit of a problem.

Put all of the ingredients into a large, heavy, non-reactive pan, with just enough water to cover the peppers and apples. Heat up until it’s boiling, then lower the heat way down so it’s just simmering. Simmer gently for about an hour, stirring up from the bottom occasionally. The moisture will boil way down. (If the bottom gets burned, just tip the jam gently into another pan without stirring up the burned parts.)

The peppers and apple bits should be pretty broken up, but to accelerate the process you can whiz the whole thing with a hand-held stick blender or in a standalone blender or food processor. I used my Bamix blender for this.

Taste, and add more heat or sugar if you think it needs it and simmer gently for a few more minutes.

This jam may not keep that well in preserving jars at room temperature, since there isn’t that much sugar in it. I did not can mine; I just divided it into 1-cup portions and froze it. However, the 3 cups worth or so that I had in the refrigerator are already gone.

Notes

Because the apples are full of pectin, you probably won’t need the extra pectin. You may want to add it if you want a very thick jam without adding extra sugar.

Uses

So far we’ve used this jam:

With cream cheese on savory scones (aka biscuits in the American sense)
As a dipping sauce for spring rolls
As a sauce for fajitas
Someone has also been eating it neat with a spoon

Preserving shiso, basil, lemon verbena, and other herbs

maki — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 07:42:40 +0200

Around here it’s already cool enough to declare that summer is over and fall is here. (Actually we had a very cold, wet summer anyway, but nevertheless.) So the summer vegetable plants in my garden are dying off, and I’m in the process of salvaging the tomatoes and eggplants, picking the last zucchini, and eyeing the winter squash to see when they will be ready.

Tender herbs like basil are on their last legs, so I’m picking and preserving those flavors of summer so that they can brighten the dark winter months. Last year I took the lazy option and froze everything, packing the picked leaves in plastic bags and throwing them in our big locker-type freezer. Freezing is okay if you’re too busy to do anything else with your herbs, but not really the optimal way all the time to keep tender herbs in the long run. So this year I’m thinking things through a bit more and considering how I want to use each herb, and preserving them accordingly. Each method is quite easy and really doesn’t take that much time.

Basil

In the summer I like to throw basil leaves into everything from soups to sauces to salads. For that though you do need fresh leaves. Frozen leaves darken and don’t really look nice in a salad. (You can keep a basil plant or two going under growlights in pots for garnishing if you’re determined to have it fresh year round.)

I rarely if ever have basil in anything but savory dishes, so a savory preserving method was the logical choice. After trying various methods I have settled on making a basil puree. This is essentially a pesto without the cheese, garlic and pine nuts.

Basil puree

For every 2 cups of fresh basil leaves (lightly packed into the measuring cup), use 1/2 cup of light olive oil (I prefer a light, relatively flavorless olive oil so that the basil flavor really shines through, but you can use an extra virgin if you prefer.) Be sure to pick the leaves only from the stems. Wash the leaves then pat them dry with kitchen towels.

If you are a purist you will mash the leaves with a mortar and pestle, but I use the food processor. Whiz up the leaves until chopped, and add the oil to make a puree. Add a few drops of lemon juice, and a little salt (1/4 tsp. or so per 2 cups of basil).

I freeze this spread thinly in plastic zip bags. To use, just break or cut off as much as you need. You can turn this into pesto by adding freshly grated Parmesan, crushed or grated garlic, and ground pine nuts. (The easy way of course is to whiz everything together in the food processor.)

For what it’s worth, I had about 16 cups of basil leaves, which turned into about 4 cups of basil puree. The puree keeps the bright flavor of basil very well.

(Basil thoughts: This year I grew a variety of basils, but next year I am going to grow mostly the classic Genovese basil or ‘sweet’ basil, and perhaps just one plant each of the small leaved basil, Thai basil, and lemon basil. The Genovese basil really is the most useful, and also makes the nicest pesto or puree.)

Lemon Verbena

I use lemon verbena mostly in drinks and desserts, so it makes sense to preserve (or conserve…I’m never sure which term is correct for what method) it with sugar. This recipe is from a wonderful book called The Herbfarm Cookbook, but I’ve adjusted it just a bit by reducing the sugar.

For every 2 cups of fresh lemon verbena leaves (lightly packed in the measuring cup), use 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup (or 1 cup as is suggested in the book) sugar. I use natural brown cane sugar, but white sugar is fine of course. Puree in the food processor until it forms a paste. Freeze in the same way as the basil puree. This stuff is wonderful sprinkled onto fruit - especially if you broil the fruit, or used as flavoring in all kinds of dishes. You can also stir in a couple of spoonfuls into boiling water for an instant lemon verbena tea. (Strain out the bits with a tea strainer.)

You can also try drying lemon verbena, but to me drying takes away much of the soul of this wonderful herb.

This method also works pretty well with mint leaves. Jamie Oliver had a recipe for pineapple slices sprinkled with mint sugar in one of his books. It should also work with lemon balm, though I haven’t tried it.

Shiso

Shiso, which I consider to be one of the most essential Japanese herbs, is used mainly in savory dishes. Red shiso leaves are used to make umeboshi (they color the plums and give them a distinct flavor). I don’t make umeboshi since I don’t have access to the plums, but shiso on its own can be enjoyed preserved. This year, I just had one red shiso plant and several green shiso plants, which I used almost every day - as garnish, tempura, in salads and more. (Shiso is a nutrition powerhouse with loads of vitamins, calcium, fiber and so on.)

The traditional way to keep either red or green shiso leaves is to preserve them in salt.

Salted shiso leaves

First, select large, unblemished leaves only. (The alternate name for green shiso leaves is ohba, which literally means ‘large leaves’.) Just wash and dry the leaves carefully, and pack down in a non-reactive container (glass, ceramic, plastic or enamel - not anything metal) sprinkled with salt between each leaf. Leave, well covered, in the refrigerator for at least a few days. The leaves will exude moisture and become a rather dark green (or darker red if you’re using the red leaves).

Don’t mix red and green leaves by the way - the red leaves will discolor the green leaves, turning them into an unattractive muddy brown. Besides, the red leaves have more bitterness and need to be rested a bit more after salting.

The salted leaves can be rinsed off a bit or used as-is. Salted shiso leaves are great onigiri wrappers - use instead of nori, and don’t salt your hands or mold when forming the balls. You can also wrap the leaves around ground pork, chicken or beef patties, or even veggie patties, and pan-fry them to make a crispy, fragrant surface. You can do this with fresh shiso leaves too (actually it’s better with fresh leaves). The leaves can also be shredded and tossed with hot pasta. Since the leaves are salty, adjust the amount of salt overall in the dish.

If you have some shiso seed heads (hojiso) they can also be salted in this manner.

Yukari is a furikake-type powder made from dried salted red shiso leaves.

Another way to preserve shiso is to marinate them in soy sauce with some garlic cloves. I first saw this method on the wonderful Japanese cooking community site Cookpad.

Shiso leaves in garlic soy sauce

Simply cut up some garlic cloves, and place with several shiso leaves in soy sauce. Leave for at least a day; store in the refrigerator.

The leaves don’t last that long in the soy sauce (about a month), though you can make them last a bit longer by quickly blanching the leaves in boiling water beforehand. The soy sauce becomes pleasantly flavored with the shiso and garlic, which makes it great to use in cooking, salad dressings and so on.

Finally, I do pack some of the small leaves in plastic bags and store them in the freezer, to use as garnish for noodles, soups and such. Still, shiso is one of the flavors of summer for me, so I can’t wait to sow some seeds next spring for fresh, green leaves in the warm months.

You can also try sprouting shiso seeds indoors and clipping the seedlings (called mejiso) - this is a rather trendy garnish at the moment. Shiso seeds do take some time to germinate though.

Other herbs: drying, freezing and flavored oils

Parsley, coriander and chives are pretty cheap to buy and much better fresh, so I don’t really bother to preserve them. If you want to though, I think the best way is to chop them all up and store pressed out thinly in plastic bags, which go in the freezer. They stay reasonably green and fragrant this way. Just break off what you need. You can also try freezing them with a little water in ice cube trays, but I find this to be too fiddly - and I never have enough ice cube trays.

Small, tough-leaved herbs such as rosemary, thyme and oregano do a lot better in their dried form than tender-leaved herbs do. I dry some sprigs by putting them in a paper bag with handles and hanging the bag on a door handle. The bag allows air circulation and catches any dropping leaves. When the leaves are completely dry, strip them off the stems and store in airtight containers. But if you live in a mild climate, these tough herbs may survive the winter for you. (Here rosemary does stay sort of green, but the other herbs die down to the ground.) If you have enough light, a pots of these tough perennial herbs may survive the winter on a sunny windowsill or under grow lights.

I’ve often seen decorative dried little bundles of thyme and bay leaves in Provence, tied up with string. If you have the patience this may be worthwhile.

You can make flavored oils with these herbs too, though they seem to fare better when you add garlic to the mix. Just fill a bottle or jar with olive oil, and pack it as full as you can with the herb of your choice plus a few cloves of garlic. Leave for at least a week, preferably longer. Strain, then optionally re-package with a decorative sprig of the same herb in the oil. This makes a very decorative present.

Also see

A dozen Japanese herbs and vegetables to grow

Coming up next week: a week of sokuseki zuke (quick Japanese pickles)

maki — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 21:01:17 +0100

I am going to take the weekend off from the computer because I have a Mountain Of Things to Do away from it. Next week, I’ll have a series of posts about quick Japanese pickles, or sokuseki zuke. Sokuseki zuke pickles are the busy cook’s alternative to ‘real’ pickles like nukazuke (rice brain pickles), of the kind that require nursing a pickling bed, long resting periods, and such complicated procedures. The word sokuseki means instant, and these pickles are usually ready to eat in a short period, anywhere from overnight to about an hour. They can be eaten like small salads, and they are great make-ahead additions to a bento box. Most are low- or no-fat and vegan too.

So, I hope everyone has a great weekend and Beannachtai na Feile Padraig to you if you are Irish!

Slightly bitter apple preserves

maki — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 18:07:12 +0200

Whether you are picking them from your own trees or at orchards, getting bushels of them in CSA boxes, or just buying them at your local market, you may possibly be swamped by apples at this time of year. Who can resist those cheeky little things after all? I live in an area with a lot of apple orchards, and seeing the little red or greenish-red fruit bobbling on branches just does something to me, and I end up buying bags and bags of it. A lot of them just get eaten out of hand, but cooked apples are also great, of course.

I love to make all kinds of jams and chutneys and preserves, but I think these apple preserves are my favorite, and they are a great way of dealing with a glut of the fruit. These preserves have a slightly bitter taste to them under the sweet-tartness, which comes from the whole lemons that are thrown in as well as the fact that it's cooked for a long time until it starts to caramelize a bit. I like this marmelade-like bitterness, but if marmelade is not your thing don't chuck in the whole lemons, but just use the peel.

I prefer to use eating apples rather than very sour cooking apples for this, since they disintegrate faster and you need a bit less sugar. It can also be interesting to use a mixture of different kinds of apples.

This goes very well with plain yogurt, as well as on hot buttered bread. If you put it up in smallish jars, they make great gifts to take along when you are invited somewhere.

Since jam-making does take its time, this is designated as a Weekend Project. Incidentally, the smell that will fill your kitchen during the cooking of this is heavenly.

Slightly bitter apple preserves

The amount of sugar and other ingredients depends on how much cut-up fruit you have. It's best to use a scale for this, since cup-measurements are inaccurate (not everyone cuts their apples up the same size after all).

You don't need pectin, since the apples themselves and the lemon peel have a lot of it, and you do cook this for a few hours to allow it to caramelize.

I usually make about 2 kg (4-5 lb or so) of apple at a time, but scale up or down according to what you feel comfortable with. If you do scale it up, you may need a bit more sugar, and if you make just a bit, you may need a bit less.

For every 1 lb /450g of peeled, cut up apple -
11-13oz / about 320g-370g sugar - more if you have sour apples, less if you have sweet
1 whole lemon, organic/unwaxed

Equipment needed: a large, heavy-bottomed, non-reactive (stainless steel or enameled cast iron work great) pot.

Peel and cut up the apple first, removing any bruised/brown bits. A vegetable peeler is the best for peeling a ton of apples, unless you have one of those apple-peeler gadgets or are a wizard with your paring knife. Weigh the apples at this point.

Cut the lemon(s) in half and juice them. Keep the squeezed halves.

Put the apple chunks, sugar and lemon juice in the pot and mix. Leave it for about 30 minutes until the apples exude their juice and the sugar starts to melt. Turn on the heat, and bring up to a boil while mixing.

Once it is bubbling, toss in the lemon peel halves. (If you don't like the bitterish marmelade taste, don't put in the lemon halves but just peel off some of the outer peel, leaving behind the white pith, and put that in.)

Turn the heat down to low and simmer for at least 4 hours, if not more. I have a ceramic-top electric/halogen type stove, so I feel safe in leaving this to simmer overnight on low heat, but if you have gas and feel uncomfortable with that you can try putting it in a lowish (280°F/140°C) oven too. The objective is a amber-colored, jammy, slightly caramelized mixture.

In the meantime, prepare your canning jars following the instructions here.

Once you have cooked the preserves to your satisfaction, take out the lemon halves and put the jam in the canning jars. If you've made just 1 lb. worth or less, you can just store it covered in the refrigerator, and use it up within a couple of weeks.

Variations

Cook for less time, without the lemon peel, for a fresher-tasting apple jam. In this case you want to cut up the apples very small.
Add a cinnamon stick or two in while cooking.
Add two de-seeded and chopped up habanero peppers for an interesting spicy jam.

Other things to do with your apples

Knittykat's busy day apple pie, via Amber
Erin's apple butter
Elise's baked apples - I love baked apples!
Also from Elise: Apple Chicken Quesadillas
If you like savory dishes with apples, these Cinnamon Apple Pork Tenderloin is a bit sweet but very nice (maybe a good side dish might be Mookie Wilson's candy yams)

Produce: Plums, plus plum jam

maki — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 00:21:33 +0200

To me, plums are like the last gasp of summer before fall settles in. They are related to other summer stone fruit, like peaches and apricots, but they have a much more elusive flavor.

The kind of plums you are likely to find really depends on where you live. The photo shows a few kinds we can get here. The yellow ones are called Reine-Claude here; in England they're called greengages. I've never seen them in the U.S. They are delicately sweet and very fragrant. They can be made into jam, but to me they are too delicious to have other than just fresh out of hand.

The black ones are called Zwetschge here, and are called damsons I believe elsewhere. When I think of plums, these are the ones that come to mind first. These have a very tart skin, though the flesh below that is sweet. They are the plums most suited for cooking in my opinion. I often make preserves out of them, following the method for apricot preserves. They're also an important ingredient in a dark, strong chutney that I make every other year or so.

I'm not sure of the name of the pinky-red ones, but they are adorable, with a pointy shape that makes them look like little hearts when cut open.

Finally, there are mirabelles. Mirabelles are miniature plums, each one the size of a large grape. They are incredibly sweet and smell like heaven.

The AA battery is just there for size comparison (it was the the only thing I could find to take a picture with the mirabelles, before someone ate them all up.)

As soon as plums are gone from the market stalls and supermarket aisles, the weather starts to cool down.

Summer berry and lemon verbena jelly

maki — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 16:59:04 +0200

The tall, willowy plant with the long, narrow leaves waved around in the breeze, behind the rows of neat balls of mini-basil. Wondering what it was, I stretched out a hand and rubbed a leaf.

Immediately, my senses were filled with a lemony, refined aroma. It was like a lemon scented geranium, but not quite. It was like lemon balm, but not as minty. The sunburned, kindly faced owner of the market stall said that it was verveine. He went into a long explanation, of which I understood perhaps half, about how to care for the plant. I nodded ernestly and took notes.

The vendor almost hidden by the verveine plant.

I wasn't sure what verveine was, but I knew I had to have this plant. It was so tall that we had to stick the branches out of the rear window of the car lest we broke them. We carried it home like that, all the way from Provence to Zürich.

Once I got home I looked up verveine. It was lemon verbena. I'd read about lemon verbena but never encountered it before. Lemon balm, called zitronenmelisse, grows wild in our unkempt garden, but this lemon verbena had a much more intense, citrusy, sunny aroma. (As it turns out, lemon verbena is also called verveine here in the German speaking part of Switzerland.) I planted it in a sheltered corner of one of the flower beds right next to the house, together with a couple of other herb plants purchased at the Velleron market. It was my little corner of Provence.

In July, the night before we were due to leave for a working trip to New York, there was a tremendous thunderstorm - the kind we get a couple of times a summer here, reminding us that we are after all surrounded by mountain ranges. In the morning all was calm again. As we hauled our bags from the front door to the taxi, I stopped in dismay in front of my precious lemon verbena. The strong wind had completely stripped all the leaves from the plant. All that were left were some forlorn looking light brown stems.

"I have to get a replacement", I muttered over and over in the taxi. "As soon as we get back from New York..."

Two weeks later we arrived back home. After hauling the now much heavier bags to the front door, I went to inspect my little herb patch. Those slender stems that had looked dead when I left, were now sprouting tiny little new leaves again! I could have hugged that plant. Its ancestors had survived many seasons of the Mistral, so why wouldn't this sturdy little plant survive a thunderstorm?

Now in late August, the verbena has enough leaves on it that I can clip some off to use in cooking. I thought of adding the marvelous aroma to this summer berry jelly. This kind of jelly, called gelée or schlée, is a very popular way to process the berries of summer here. It's made from a mixture of summer berries, whatever is available - I used raspberries, red currants, and a few blackberries, which give it a beautiful dark claret-red color. Fresh berries are better of course, but you can even use frozen berries. The addition of the verbena adds a very intriguing, lemony-zesty, "what is that?" quality to the jelly. Making preserves from summer fruit is like capturing a bit of the soul of summer, and this certainly qualifies in that respect.

I have given an amount that is enough to fill a couple of jars, so you don't necessarily have to go through the whole canning/sterilization process - you can keep it covered in the refrigerator. You can of course double or triple the amount if you would like to have a neat row of dark red jelly jars. It's wonderful on bread or crackers or scones, alone or with butter or cream cheese, and is perfect on plain yogurt or vanilla ice cream.

(This is my entry for Sugar High Friday: Preserves hosted by delicious.days! It's also designated as this week's Weekend Project.)

[Edit:] I forgot to add a couple of things asked for by Nicky. Firstly, my favorite preserving books are: Mes Confitures, by master preserve maker Christine Ferber. I also have a book called Jams, Preserves and Edible Gifts, published by the National Trust in the U.K. I believe that the British make wonderful jams and preserves, so this book, filled with historical and traditional recipes as well as modern ones like raspberry vinegar, is one I turn to a lot.

For packaging - I usually don't do much to jars I give away, but this is a quick and easy special touch to add. Just make a tiny photograph of the contents of the jar, with text above or below it indicating the contents. Print this onto a nice, fairly sturdy paper on your inkjet printer, and cut it so that it falls on the right side of a rectangle. Fold it in half to make a tiny gift card. Poke a hole in the left upper corner, and thread through some hairband elastic. Cover the top of the jar with a piece of fabric cut with pinking shears, or any scissors if fraying doesn't bother you. Secure the elastic over the lid. You can write a personal message inside the gift card.

The fabric used is an inexpensive sacking cloth. The font is Apple Chancery.

Summer berry and lemon verbena jelly

500g / 1 lb plus about 2 oz. berries - any or all of the following: raspberries, tayberries, blackberries, red currants. I used a mixture of about 70% raspberries, 25% red currants, and 5% blackberries, harvested from the garden.
450g / 1 lb white sugar
1 tsp pectin (see Notes)
1 large handful, or a couple of sprigs, of lemon verbena leaves

Equipment needed:

a large, heavy bottomed, non-reactive pan (stainless steel, ceramic, enameled cast iron are ideal)
Canning equipment, if you will be canning this
a wooden spoon
A ladle or large spoon
a plate
A sieve, strainer, or chinois

Wash and sort the berries. If you are using red currants, carefully pick off all the stems.

Put the berries and sugar into the pan. Mix and let it macerate for about half an hour.

In the meantime, put the plate into the refrigerator to make it very cold.

Mix in the pectin. Turn on the heat, and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to low, and cook for at least 45 minutes, stirring up the bottom periodically to keep from burning. Scoop off the scum that forms on the top.

For the last 10 minutes of cooking, drop in the lemon verbena.

Drop a bit of the jammy liquid onto the cold plate. If it forms a skin almost immediately, it's done.

Fish out the lemon verbena. Pass the jammy mixture a ladleful at a time through a time through a sieve or strainer, taking out all the seeds.

Can using your favorite canning method. If you will be using the method I described in my recipe for apricot preserves, heat up the strained jelly to boiling point again before proceeding.

Notes:

In this recipe I have used pectin, which is a natural jellifiant. Berries in general don't have much pectin, and it's needed in this case to make it 'jell' enough. You may also be able to find something called sugar for jam making, which has pectin already mixed in. My version (with 1 teaspoon per 500g fruit) results in a fairly runny jelly, which is great for using on yogurt and ice cream, but if you prefer a firmer jelly you will need more pectin. Follow the package directions.
If you don't mind the seeds, especially if you don't use red currants which have rather large seeds, you can skip the straining step. In that case you will have a jam rather than a jelly.

[Update:] The jam and jelly roundup is now up on delicious.days. Lots of delicious sounding recipes to try!

Weekend Project: Garlic, garlic, garlic!

maki — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 17:56:40 +0200

Weekend Project is an ongoing series of slightly more involved recipes or food projects that are best tackled on the weekends.

I love garlic. It's hard for me to even conceive of the notion that someone can actually not like garlic. But indeed, there are a few lost souls who don't like garlic that much.

The thing that non-garlic people most object to about garlic seems to be the little, sometimes raw bits that get caught in their teeth if they are eating a salad or something. I guess I can reluctantly concede that point. (Although one of my favorite pizza toppings is thinly sliced raw garlic...)

Here are two ways of making garlic that even non-garlic people can love. One is a method that's popular in Japan, though it probably originated in Korea, to 'pickle' them in soy sauce. This not only makes tender, flavorful garlic that can be nibbled on as-is or chopped up and added to stir-fries and so on, but an intensely garlic-perfumed soy sauce that's great on meat, fish, or anything you like.

The other is a Provençal staple called garlic confit. Garlic cloves are poached gently until tender, then mashed into a paste. This paste is wonderful just spread on bread, or used to flavor pasta sauces, soups, and so on.

Peeling massive quantities of garlic easily

Each recipe calls for six whole garlic bulbs. That's bulbs, not cloves! The easiest way to peel a couple of cloves of garlic is to simply bash them with the side of a knife - the skin comes right off. But when you want to peel a big amount of garlic like this, what do you do? Especially when you want the cloves whole as for the garlic pickled in soy sauce?

Right now, I'm starting to see fresh garlic bulbs at the markets. Fresh garlic has a softer skin than the garlic that has been allowed to dry out on the outside. I find fresh garlic to be a bit milder than the dried-out kind and prefer it over the regular dried-off kind when it's available. However, it can be even harder to peel.

The answer is to nuke the garlic bulbs. By microwaving them for a couple of minutes, the moisture in the bulbs evaporates a little bit and creates a space in between the skin and the bulb. The skin then comes off quite easily. Also, this avoids the problem of the skin on your hands getting irritated from raw garlic juice. I picked up this Helpful Hint from one of the "urawaza" videos that I've mentioned before. The garlic video is here (Japanese). The skin doesn't come off as easily as in the video in my experience, but it still comes off a lot faster than trying to peel unprocessed bulbs.

So - to peel six whole garlic bulbs, cut off the bottom of the bulbs, place on a plate cut side down, and microwave on High for 3 minutes. Let cool completely, then peel. Easy! Be sure to get off the thin inner skin too.

Garlic pickled in soy sauce

A jar of garlic cloves in soy sauce makes a great gift for anyone who loves garlic and Asian food.

6 large garlic bulbs (bulbs, not cloves), peeled following the instructions above
1 1/2 cups soy sauce

Equipment needed: a small pan, a bottling jar and lid

Sterilize the jar and lid following the instructions on this page.

Heat the soy sauce in the pan over medium heat until it's hot but not boiling. Lower the heat to low and put in all the garlic. Simmer for 5 minutes. Put the hot liquid into the sterilized jar, and close the lid tightly.

Put in a cool, dark place for at least 2 weeks. The garlic is ready to eat after that. Store in the refrigerator after opening. The soy sauce can be used for meat, fish, fried rice, etc, but make sure the garlic cloves stay completely immersed in the soy sauce in the jar.

Garlic confit

Garlic confit on whole wheat bread, with olives

6 large garlic bulbs (bulbs, not cloves), peeled following the instructions above
1 cup cream
2 cups milk
1/2 tsp. salt (optional) Equipment needed: a small pan

Heat the milk and cream together in the small pan until it's hot but not boiling over. Lower the heat to low, and put in all the garlic. Simmer for 20 minutes, until the garlic is soft and can be mashed easily. Drain the garlic.

Mash the garlic finely (a fork works great for this) or purée it in a blender or food processor to a paste. Mix in the optional salt. (I prefer not to put salt in mine, and to salt as needed when using it.)

Store in a covered container in the refrigerator for up to a week, or freeze one- or two-tablespoonfuls at a time, wrapped well in plastic. Defrost each tablespoonful at room temperature or by dropping into your sauce or soup.

Important: This cannot be put in a jar and stored at room temperature, unlike the garlic in soy sauce.

Note: You should not store the drained cream and milk that the garlic was cooked in. It can be used the same day however, for an amazing garlic-perfumed pasta sauce. Simply reheat with a knob of butter and a tablespoonful of the confit, mix in some shredded smoked salmon, chopped parsley, and a shot of vodka, season with salt and pepper, and serve on fresh pasta such as fettucine. Delicious! And bad for you!

Weekend Project: Apricot Preserves, Capturing Summer in a Jar

maki — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 21:22:18 +0200

I'm going to try to bring a little order to this 2 and a half year old site by posting certain themed articles on certain days. On Fridays, I plan to post slightly more involved recipes or food projects that are best tackled on the weekends. The first one is this really rather simple recipe for apricot preserves. It's easy to make but the preparation and cooking do take some time - a perfect project for a day off.

Making jam and preserves may seem like an out of date thing to do. The idea of having a pot of boiling sugar and fruit simmering away in the kitchen on a swelteringly hot summer day may seem to be a rather masochistic and unnecessary ritual. If we need to preserve the bounties of a garden, there's always the cooler option of freezing. Besides, nowadays we can just buy delicious jams and preserves from a variety of sources.

Still, I love to make sweet or savory little pots of preserves, pickles and liquors from fresh fruit and vegetables. It goes back to memories of my late oba-chan, my grandmother, making pickled umeboshi plums every summer (which I wrote about a few years ago); or my mother when we used to live in England making gooseberry preserves for the first time. Above all, each pot of jam or preserves seems to capture a little bit of the warm summer months in them, something that impersonal frozen bits of fruit and vegetable can't do.

Last week on on our next to last day in Provence, we went to the amazing Marché Agricole (farmer's market) in Velleron, a small town near Carpentras. One of the purchases we loaded into our car for the trip back home was a 5 kilo (about 11 pounds) crate of "Class II" apricots.

Now I must confess - I am not a big fan of fresh apricots. While they smell like heaven, to me their texture is inferior to that of their cousins, peaches and nectarines. Cooked apricots are another matter though. Once they are heated, the fruit turns golden, fruity and luscious.

As soon as I spotted those large flats of smallish apricots, I was determined to turn them into preserves. Another advantage of making your own preserves is that you can control the amount of sugar in them to some extent, and that's what I did. These preserves are just a bit less sweet than commercial varieties, and are also a bit chunky in texture. I love it on plain yogurt or vanilla ice cream, though it's also terrific on a thick slice of fresh buttered bread.

The great thing about this recipe is that the apricots don't have to be perfect. They can be a little bruised, or even just a bit hard. The cooking will soften them and bring out their flavor. (But please make them when apricots are in season in your area. They will be cheaper then too!)

I've scaled down the recipe to a manageable quantity - just scale it up for larger amounts. If you don't want to go through the bother of properly sterilizing the jars and lids, you can store this in an airtight container in the refrigerator for a month or so, or in the freezer for longer.

Apricot Preserves

1 kg, or 2 lbs plus a few more apricots, of fresh apricots
1 1/3 cups of granulated sugar (see notes below)
1/4 cup water
2 Tbs freshly squeezed lemon juice

Equipment:

a heavy bottomed non-reactive pan (an enameled cast-iron pan is ideal, or a heavy stainless steel pan. Don't use aluminum or uncoated cast-iron.)
canning jars with rubber-seal jar lids.

Melt the sugar and water in the pan. Bring to a boil, then simmer until clear and slightly syrupy. (Watch the pot at this stage or you might end up with a potful of hard crystallized sugar!)

Carefully sort and wash the apricots. Halve them and discard the pits, making sure to get rid of the stem end. (To halve them I just rip them apart with my fingers - far easier than cutting them with a knife.)

Optionally, crack open a few of the pits ([edit:] just a few, no more than a small handful! see the comments) with a nutcracker or hammer (wrap them in a cloth and smash!), wrap them in some cheesecloth and put in the pot. This imparts an intriguing almond flavor to the preserves.

Put about half of the apricots in the sugar syrup and simmer until the fruit is almost falling apart. Put in the rest of the apricots and continue simmering until they are almost falling apart, but not quite. The whole procedure will take about an hour or more, depending on how soft your apricots were to start with.

Add the lemon juice and stir. Simmer an additional 5 minutes, then take off the heat. Take out the cheesecloth with the pits if you put them in.

(If the jam gets burned on the bottom at any point, just pour out the unburned jam into a fresh pot and continue cooking. Don't scrape the burned bits into the new pot!)

Preparing the jars and lids

I always use canning jars with replaceable lids with the rubber seal built into the jar. They are very easy to handle. I re-use the jars, and replace the lids for each fresh batch of jam, preserves or chutney.

While you are simmering the preserves, sterilize the jars and lids. There are a couple of ways of doing this. If your dishwasher can sterilize baby bottles, you can use that setting for the jars and lids. Otherwise use one of the following methods:

The traditional boiling pot of water: Bring a big pot of water to a boil, and lower the jars into it, immersing them completely. Follow up with the lids. Boil for a few minutes to sterilize. Take them out with clean tongs.
The low oven method: Put the washed jars and lids into an oven heated to about 110°C/230°F. "Bake" the jars for about 20 minutes, or until the water on them is totally dried out. Take them out carefully using tongs and/or a clean oven mitt. This is the method I use.

Filling the jars

When you are handling the sterilized jars and lids, at no point should you touch the jars inside or on the rims, or inside the lids. Your hands are not sterile even if you wash them well, unless you scrubbed up like a surgeon.

To fill the jars, fill them up to the very rim with the boiling hot preserves, then immediately screw on a lid. Don't worry if some of the liquid spills - and whatever you do, don't try to wipe the exposed rim. Now, leave the jars until you hear and see the lids "popping" - they should be indented now. That's the indication that they are vacuum-sealed. (This happens because the hot air inside the jar contracted.)

Once the jars are cool, wipe off any dribbles outside the jar with a damp cloth, and store in a cool, dark place. Remember that an opened jar must be stored in the refrigerator.

This will make about 2 small jars of preserves. (My 5 kilos yielded 7 1-pint/ half-litre jars, plus a bowlful left over for immediate consumption.)

Regular sugar?

If you want the preserved to have that jellified state that commercial jams have, use either sugar for preserves or add pectin powder. I don't bother with this for these preserves. If they are a little runny don't worry, they will still taste terrific.