Kitchen Jam

Image via Wikipedia

Do you ever think about tastes in your head, combine foods in your imagination, just know that different foods will mix perfectly into a wonderful unique taste?

That’s what happened to me when I was researching recipes for this month’s CanJam, part of the Tigress’s year-round canning challenge. March’s Iron Jam ingredient is alliums – and while even the ramps and green onions and chives aren’t quite in season here in central New York, the onions and garlic from last fall have wintered over nicely. This morning’s farmer’s market was filled with tables full of onions and garlic mixed in among the root vegetables. Read the rest of this entry »

Image via Wikipedia

They are the last pears of the season – Boscs, juicy and sweet. Their perfume called to me from the far end of the farm stand. They were unblemised, slightly yielding to a gentle squeeze but not yet bruised, still firm enough to eat out-of-hand and not yet ready to be stewed into pear butter.

Just perfect for these pears is the simplest of pear jams: pear honey, made with brown sugar and my current favorite jamming acidifier, white balsamic vinegar.

It’s smooth, not-too-sweet, with a hint of the grated ginger. Unfortunately, my finished jam shots are a little too dark, but I’ll upload the color-corrected picture later today. Meanwhile, I’m enjoing this last taste of summer!

Pear Balsamic Honey

3 lbs Bosc pears (peeled, cored)
2 cups brown sugar
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 teaspoons fresh ginger root, grated

• Run the peeled and cored pears through a food mill on a coarse grind (or chop very fine.)
• Measure the fruit puree. Add the balsamic vinegar, and add water if needed so that the fruit puree measures 4 cups.
• Stir the brown sugar and ginger root into the pear puree. Bring the mixture to a boil,
• When the boiling puree can’t be stirred down, reduce the heat to medium and maintain the steady boil, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens and sheets from the spoon. Time will vary but this takes between 25-35 minutes.
• Remove from the heat, skim off any foam that rises, and ladle into hot jars you’ve prepared for water bath canning. Leave 1/2 inch headspace.
• Process in hot jars according to USDA directions for hot-water bath canning (10 min. for 8 oz. jars.)

Makes about 5 jars of pear honey.

It’s finally MUSTARD! After two patient days (patience isn’t always my strong suit), it was finally time to take the great mustard experiment to the next level.

I’d been soaking a combination of dark and white mustard seeds in red wine (a chardonnay and merlot blend), red wine & balsamic vinegars for two days. With the soaking done, I improvised the next steps on a mustard recipe which came originally from Martha Stewart.

Stewart’s recipe uses all red wine vinegar and 1 tablespoon of ground marjoram. Since I’d just brought in my herb harvest, I substituted 2 tablespoons of chopped fresh thyme leaves. Stewart’s mustard is designed to be refrigerator mustard, but since this recipe is high in vinegar, I used a cold-pack canning method on two of my jars. First tastes were very sharp; I’m looking forward to tasting daily to see how it mellows.

RED-WINE MUSTARD

• 1/4 cup yellow mustard seeds
• 1/2 cup brown mustard seeds
• 1/2 cup dry red wine
• 3/4 cup red-wine vinegar
• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves

Image via Wikipedia

To enter the cooking competitions at the NY State Fair, contestants need to pick categories in early July, a good seven weeks before the fair judging at the end of August. Sometimes, I see a category and know right away what I’ll make. This year I knew as soon as I saw Vegan Dessert that my mom’s Chocolate Wacky Cake would be perfect for that category.

Freezer Jam was more difficult; I made five test batches and recipes before I decided to enter Apricot Chipotle (freezer) Jam. My experiments were the perfect opportunity to try out several new pectins Ball(R). I really liked the results and ease of use in Ball’s new low-sugar, practically-no-effort ‘Simple Creations’ no-cook granulated pectin for freezer jam.

‘Simple Creations’ (SC) is a dextrose-pectin combination which adds about 0.5g carbohydrate to recipes. The relatively small amount of destrose in the pectin mixture means that even the no-cook recipes using SC require far less sugar to fruit — only 1 1/2 cups sugar to each 4 cups of crushed fruit and juice. SC works with most types of fruit, although Ball(R) provides a special recipe for peaches.

This summer, in addition to the Apricot Chiptole Jam I made for the fair, I also used SC pectin to made Strawberry Balsamic Jam, Lime-Vanilla Jam and Peach Balsamic Jam.

I used the peach jam variation on the package as a guide for my Apricot Chipotle and Peach Balsamic jam improvs. For both, I did take the package’s suggestion that boiling the fruit for one minute would produce thicker jam. I boiled the chopped fruits for about 1 minute prior to mixing in the sugar, acids and pectin. That extra effort produced jam with wonderful consistency and didn’t steal too much of the fresh-fruit flavor. Use a big saucepot, and it will still be a quick, one-pot jam recipe.

For Peach Balsamic jam, I replaced the lemon juice called for on the SC package recipe with lime juice and white balsamic vinegar and added lime zest. The batch filled 5 Ball(R) one-cup plastic freezer jars. Hope you enjoy my riff on Ball’s Simple Creations Peach Freezer Jam recipe!

Peach Balsamic Jam

4 cups crushed ripe peaches and their juice

1 1/2 cups sugar*

1/4 cup white balsamic vinegar*

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

1/2 teaspoon lime zest, finely grated

1 pkg. Ball Simple Creations no-cook freezer jam fruit pectin.

5 one-cup freezer containers

• Peel, stone and chop the peaches.
• If the peaches are under-ripe, or ripening before you can jam them, you can ‘hold’ the fruit by macerating the chopped fruit in 1 tablespoon sugar and 2 tablespoons white balsamic vinegar the day before. Reduce the amount of sugar and vinegar used in the recipe by the amounts used to macerate the fruit.
• When you have time to jam, measure the macerated peaches and juice into a saucepan and bring to a boil; boil for one minute. Remove from heat.
• Stir into the hot peaches the lime juice and zest, the rest of the balsamic vinegar, and the sugar. Stir until dissolved, and let stand for 10 minutes..
• Stir into the fruit mixture the package of Simple Creations powdered pectin.
• Let stand 30 minutes to confirm set. Refrigerate and use within three weeks, or freeze the containers.

We didn’t get many early-season peaches in Central NY this summer. The ones in the local markets never met my buy-me criteria: they never seduced me with their peachy aroma as soon as I entered the stand or market. Yes, I know I could have used nectarines — but they didn’t convince me, either. Now some small harvests of aromatic peaches are finally showing up in the market. While their aroma is calling me to gather enough peaches to make jam, it also makes me crave some sharp, spicy peach salsa.

In 1994, just outside Hilton Head, South Carolina, I picked up my first jar of homemade peach salsa. Since that summer vacation, I’ve improvised on many recipes, attempting to duplicate the sweet-hot spicy goodness I’d found in that farm stand jar of salsa. Here are some internet sources for both fresh and canned peach salsa recipes I’ve tried along the way:

From The Seasonal Chef (www.seasonalchef.com), these five variations of Peach Salsa include a recipe with honey, another with tomatoes, one with mint, and two which use increasingly hot varieties of peppers.

Here are fresh peach (and other fruit) salsa recipes from Great-Salsa.com

You can also find several peach salsa recipes at That’s my Home

Christis’s Corner has a fresh peach salsa that only needs 3 or 4 fresh peaches for those times when you can only get a few peaches at a time. You can also make it with frozen peaches.

My peach salsa recipe combines peaches, sweet and hot peppers, basil, red onions and garlic, along with lime juice and white balsamic vinegar. It’s a bit of work to can from a small harvest, but the taste is such a strong reminder of my summer vacation in Hilton Head that I make it as often as I can.

Peach Salsa

4 cups peaches – peeled and chopped
1 cup red onion – chopped
1 jalapeno pepper – chopped fine (about 1/4 cup)
1 red pepper – chopped (about 3/4 cup)
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil – loosely packed*
1/2 cup white balsamic vinegar*
1/4 cup fresh lime juice

1 teaspoon lime zest
2 tablespoons honey
2 cloves garlic – finely chopped (about 2 tablespoons)
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon cayenne (or to taste)

• The peaches should be chopped in a coarse 1/2 inch dice. The peppers should be in smaller dice. It’s okay to use slightly under-ripe peaches, and to leave under-ripe peaches unpeeled for a bit of contrast.
• * If you prefer, you can use cilantro or Italian flat-leaf parsley instead of the chopped basil. If you can’t get white balsamic vinegar, white wine or white distilled vinegar will be fine.
• Simmer all of the ingredients for 5 minutes. Pack into hot jars, cover with caps and bands and tighten according to direction. Process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes (0-1000 ft.), 15 minutes (1001-6000 ft.), and 20 minutes (above 6000 ft.).