We're jammin'

As promised, some notes about plum jam.

I've been relying on two sources this summer as my inspiration for jam-making. The first is "Mes confitures", a wondrous little paperback written by Master Pastry Chef and Jam Maker Christine Ferber. Part of the Maison Ferber family in Alsace, Mme. Ferber's jam's are a wondrous thing -- we still have a small pot of cherry jam in the cellar, saved for a Very Special Jam Occasion.

I've just discovered that the book is available in English. So those of you who find my notes a bit hard to follow might want to investigate getting the book instead.

Two of the main problems I have with Ferber's recipes is that they are very artisanal -- in the sense that they require mastery of time-honoured techniques; and that they rely on seasonal ingredients, some of which aren't available where I live.

The former is a problem because I'm not a very skilled jam-maker, and my first attempts to work from her book were less than successful, entirely due to the fact that I have not mastered the art of jam-making. I think that to make these jams, you have to make a lot of jam, and mess a lot of it up as you learn how to tell when things are properly set, because I found that relying on a thermometor was a very uneven bit of business. Either my jams ended up not set properly, or, bluntly, burnt.

The latter is a problem because it means that many of the recipes are unmakeable, including some that I would very much like to make. But no matter how much I might want mirabelles, they just aren't going to show up in my market, so there we are.

But I very much wanted to make Ferber's recipe for "Quetsches d'Alsace et mirabelles 'a la cannelle".

Quetsches are a lovely dark purple plum. Mirabelles are a wondrous little yellow one.

Neither are available where I am.

So I substituted. A purple skinned, yellow-fleshed plum and a little green plum. Of course I don't know the varieties, it's a bane of my existence here that you have to drag varietal names out of the producers.

Ferber called for 500g net (so starting with approx. 600 g) of each of these plums, and that's the amount I used. Also 800g of sugar, lemon juice, two cinnamon sticks and some liquid pectin.

No, Ferber didn't call for the pectin, because she is a jam-maker extra-ordinaire and can turn out perfect artisanal jam without it.

After three failed attempts, I knew that I really couldn't face a fourth, so I fudged with the pectin.

I made a slice in the side of the plums to remove the pit. They were then mixed in a casserole with the sugar, lemon juice and cinammon sticks, and left to macerate for an hour -- this starts the juices coming out of the fruit.

Then I put it in a pot, brought it up to the boil, and then put it back in the casserole. I covered it with baker's (sulpherized) paper, which prevents discolouration. I left it in the fridge overnight.

The following day, I put it back in the pot,brought it up to the boil, boiled it for five minutes, skimming all the time, and then I turned off the heat and put in the liquid pectin. Then into my prepared jars, into the pot for processing, and voila! Plum jam.

I will be honest, I think there's too much sugar in it, but I think that's necessary if you're doing it Ferber's way. I'll make this jam again, probably with the liquid pectin, but I'm going to take out a little bit of the sugar.

Cherry cake.

"I loved baking -- pitting cherries in the sunlight against the log wall of the house where Mam had planted rhubarb and morning glories, then rolling out the dough and laying it on the brim of the stone oven to rise, and still later rushing back from the hoeing to roll out the dough again, inhaling the baking odors as I pressed in the cherries. When the cake was done, I had something to show. I would carry it from the oven to the table high up so everyone could see and admire. Though mostly Mam and Aunt Annie admired; Pap and Abiel would just tuck in, which, Mam said, was thanks enough."

from The Life and Times of Captain N., by Douglas Glover.
(page 38)

Well. So *they* say...

You know which wines go best with which foods, and
you can make New York City's finest sommalier
feel like a kid at a keg party. You wanna take
that Emeril guy and beat him with a stick, but
really - you've got more class than that.
What people love: You know the best restaurants and
what their specialties are.
What people hate: Every waiter in town wants to
mangle your pretentious ass.


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I don't *think* I'm pretentious...

And (whispers) it's sommelier, not sommalier.

Hmm. Maybe I am pretentious after all.

Did I mention that Emeril drives me nuts? Oh, yeah, baby.

Recipe: Apricot Crisp

Apricot Crisp

Serves four.

Ingredients:

Fruit Layer:

3 cups apricots
1/4 cup dried cherries
1 tbsp kirsch (optional)
1/4 cup sugar (or to taste)
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 tsps corn starch

Crumble Layer:

1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/8 cup granulated sugar
Pinch salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup butter, cut into cubes and softened
1/2 cup oatmeal
1 tbsp chopped pistachios

To prepare the fruit layer:

Add the kirsch (if using) to the dried cherries and set aside for 10 to 15 minutes.

Cut apricots into slices and place in a bowl; add the 1/4 cup sugar.

In a small bowl, dissolve the corn starch in the lemon juice. Pour over the apricot mixture.

Add the cherries.

Pour the mixture into the baking dish (I use a glass casserole dish)

To prepare the crumble layer:

Mix together the flour, brown sugar, granulated sugar, oatmeal, cinnamon, salt and chopped pistachios. Add the butter, rubbing the mixture between your fingers until it crumbles coarsely.

Sprinkle half the topping over the fruit layer and bake for 15 minutes in a 375 F oven. Sprinkle on the rest of the topping and bake a further 15 minutes.

Serve warm with vanilla ice cream -- note, if you are not serving with ice cream, you might wish to increase the amount of sugar in the fruit layer, as the apricot mixture is quite tart.

i scream

"Later that evening, GertrudeStein reported your actions to Miss Toklas over a dish of my best Singapore ice cream. They both could taste the vanilla and the crystallized ginger, but only Miss Toklas could detect that there was something deeper, something that emerged as a lingering lace of a feeling on the tongue.

"Peppercorns, Miss Toklas. Steep the milk from morning till night with ten coarsely crushed peppercorns. Strain and proceed as usual. The "bite" that the peppercorns leave behind will make the eater take notice, examine this dish of sweet anew. Think of it as an unexpected hint of irony in a familiar lover's voice."

from The Book of Salt by Monique Truong (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003, page 186.)

we all scream

"We took strolls in the musty-smelling bazaars of the Shar-e-Nau section of Kabul, or the new city, west of the Wazir Akbar Khan district. We talked about whatever film we had just seen and walked amid the bustling crowds of bazarris. We snaked our way among the merchants and the beggars, wandered through narrow alleys crampedwith rows of tiny, tightly packed stalls. Baba gave us each a weekly allowance of ten Afghanis and we spent it on warm Coca-Cola and rosewater ice cream topped with crushed pistachios."

from The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (New York: Riverhead Books, 2003, page 23.)

But if I didn't own a pressure cooker...

...I'd take the exact same ingredients, put them into a heavy pot, put the lid on, and simmer the whole shebang for a couple of hours.

A plucky tale.

"Ruby had already torn the meat off the bones of one bird and had its carcass boiling in the big pot over the fire to make broth for Stobrod. So Ada sat Inman down by the hearth and handed him a plate of the pulled turkey to start nibbling on. Ruby knelt and tended the pot with great concentration. She skimmed the grey foam off the water with a spurtle she had whittled that afternoon out of a poplar limb for the lack of the dogwood she needed to do the job right. She flung the foam in the fire, where it hissed away"

from Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 1997, page 414).

"Inman ate without talking. Before he was finished, Ruby judged that the turkey carcass had given the creek water about all it had to give in the way of sustenance. She dipped out enough to half fill the smaller pot. The broth had the life of the wild bird in it and was rich and cloudy, the color of nutmeats toasted in a dry pan."

from Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 1997, page 414).

In these times, when it's just as easy to pluck chicken broth from a tin or a tetrapak, it seems like rather a bit of effort to make it at home. But even though a recent taste test I saw on a consumer programme over on the Radio-Canada network had Broth in a Box rated as tasting the most chickeny, and even though said Broth has a home on my pantry shelf, I can't help longing for homemade.

My early broth experiences were not unlike that of Ruby, described above -- taking the carcass from a chicken already eaten, and trying to boil anything good left out of it. But my broth was decidedly NOT like Ruby's -- it had little flavour, it was not rich, and was weak in colour. I eventually abandoned it, and constantly wondered how people DID manage to turn out decent broth at home.

Fast forward a few years. I move to France, where by some miracle there is a convergence of events that lead to my making a chicken broth that is the best I've ever mustered.

So what did it take?

First: our kitchen was equipped with gas, and we bought a gas cooktop. Normal in France, not normal for me, who had never, ever cooked with gas before. I was a bit nervous about the whole thing, but was quickly converted (so much so that I insisted that a gas line be installed in my kitchen when we moved into our house recently). Soon I was cooking with gas, and I've never looked back.

Second: I discovered the joy of working with a pressure cooker. I'd never had one, because of the horror stories that I'd heard about the things exploding. But lo and behold, the pressure cooker is a staple in French households, so much so that the things are actually advertised on television. I bought one (I now own three of the things), I began to learn how to use it.

Three: French chickens are great, even from the supermarket. Free-range, grain-fed, lovely yellowy things, not too large (not having been pumped full of things to make them grow), and full of flavour. I havne't tasted good chicken since I moved back to Canada.

So how do these three things connect to make chicken broth? Although you can very well use a pressure cooker on electric elements, they work best on gas. And if you have a really nice chicken, you can easily make broth in the pressure cooker.

You take your pressure cooker. You put a whole chicken in it. You add an onion, a couple of bay leaves, a carrot, some celery leaves. You cover it with water (in my pressure cooker, I just filled it to the maximum line). You bring the pressure cooker up to high pressure, then lower the heat just enough to keep it at pressure for 25 minutes. Then you turn off the heat.

When the pressure comes down naturally, you can carefully open the pressure cooker and voilà! Absolutely perfect chicken broth.

At this point, I strain everything out, set aside any chicken meat to put in a soup or casserole (it's not tasty enough for sandwiches), then I put the broth into containers into the fridge. When it cools, the fat separates out and soldifies on top, at which point I take it off. A French cook would probably set it aside to cook with, but my cholesterol levels stop me doing that.

Then, I can put it into containers and freeze it for later use, or set it aside to make soup. I generally made broth every one to two weeks, because I use it in lots of things, soups and stirfries and suchlike.

I put no salt or pepper or spices in it, as some recipes can call for, because I preferred to add that in later.

Mind you, I've not made broth since we moved back to Canada. I now have two of my ingredients, the gas cooker and the pressure cooker. But I've yet to find a chicken that seems appetizing enough to put in the pot. Preferably grain-fed, free-range, and drug-free.

When I do, though, I'll be happily making chicken broth, and confident of its flavour.

Sweet Tagines

According to Claudia Roden (in The New Book of Middle Eastern Cuisine), sweet tagines -- that is, tagines of meat made with fruit --are "celebratory dishes cooked for happy occasions."

I didn't read this before I started making Mishmishiya (a tagine of lamb with dried apricots), and I must say that I'm not feeling terribly celebratory these days.

But perhaps the tagine will put me in a better frame of mind.

Recipe for disaster

Now that the weather has cooled down, I feel more inspired to cook. The Other still eats in the cantine at lunch, but I feel the urge to make homemade soup.

Today I needed something relatively easy, and preferably mostly vegetarian (I know, that's like saying "a little bit pregnant", but if we're not complete veggetarians, we do limit our meat intake. However, I always find soup tastes a little better if made with chicken broth than with Just Plain Water.)

And reasonably healthy.

After four years in France, I still find myself caught occasionally in the void between what's currently in season and available, and what I have an actual recipe for. I usually err on the side of seasonal, if I've learned nothing else here, it's that.

But today I found a recipe for "Tuscan White Bean Soup with Rosemary and Kale".

Okay, I can already tell you that the fresh rosemary and kale is a problem, because even if this were the right season for them, I've rarely seen fresh rosemary, and never seen fresh kale (nor have I ever seen broccoli rabe, though it was abundent the late September day I visited a market in Turin a couple of years back. The power of culture in cuisine...)

And though I have dried white beans, they need to soak overnight, so that's not an option. I have tinned white beans, though.

The recipe suggests fresh spinach as a substitute for the kale. I put that on my grocery list, but I know that at the end of August, it's not likely I'm going to find it at my local grocery store, and it's too late in the day for a market.

So, I already have three substitutes:

tinned white beans for dried
dried rosemary for fresh
frozen chopped spinach for fresh spinach for fresh kale.

One thing I do know by now is that this might be a good time to reconsider, but my spirit of adventure takes over. Off to the grocery store, where I do manage to find some Roma tomatoes, some garlic (and it's local! instead of imported!) oh, and the bay leaves I'd run out of.

The recipe calls for one to put the pre-soaked beans in a pot with 10 cups of water, part of the rosemary, the bay leaves, and then simmer until the beans are tender.

I used chicken broth, and started it, the rosemary, bayleaves, and salt (added at the end) simmering, and then when it smelled some good (as they say back home), I put in the beans.

Aside from that, I made very few changes. I did add a tin of tomatoes when I didn't think there were enough. I threw in some tiny little round pasta things.

It was some good.

For the record, the original recipe is found in a fabulous cookbook called rebar: modern food cookbook by Audrey Alsterberg and Wanda Urbanowicz, published by bigideaspublishing inc.

It was recommended to me by my sister, and it won the Cuisine Canada Cookbook Award (English).

This cookbook, and the whole idea of rebar *really* make me want to move to Victoria.