How on earth is it the end of August? Labor Day is just around the corner, but I still have so much summer to get in! We haven’t gone to the beach, or made s’mores, or even gone to the Hollywood Bowl. And I need to get in several more hours being lazy in the hammock. I feel like I’m turning into one of those old people who is constantly exclaiming about how fast time passes, but it does. This summer has passed in the blink of an eye.

When I was a child, the summers stretched into infinity. I don’t know if it was that each summer was a greater proportion of my life, or if it was just that I had more time to slow down, visit the library, stretch out on the grass with a book, and let time stop.

The Nuni is in that childhood stretch of time passing slowly, and she so badly wants it to charge on, full speed ahead. In the past few weeks, the Nuni (who will turn four in less than a month) has adopted a new persona, and has told anyone who will listen that her name is Polish (as in making silver shine, not as in Pope John Paul II), and she is seven. Those two things are intertwined. Of course, it is moments like this that make me want to stop time, to preserve forever the moment when my daughter is on the cusp of childhood, and nothing sounds better than being seven.

I can’t stop time, but I can preserve the summer just a little, and capture some of my childhood summers at the same time. When I was a little girl, I would spend some of those infinite summers with my great grandmother, eating berries out of her garden, getting into her cookie jar (I can still remember where it was kept), and eating her homemade tomato jam. Not a chutney, or another version of ketchup, the way so many tomato preserves recipes are, but a tomato jam, brightened with lemon, with that musky tomato flavor and the pure sweetness of preserved summer. Perfect on toast, for that lazy summer breakfast, this really is summer in a jar.

Recipe
Sweet Tomato Jam
4.5 lbs ripe red tomatoes
4.5 lbs granulated sugar
2 lemons

Using a sharp knife, score the bottoms of each tomato in a cross, then plunge the tomato into boiling water for about 20 seconds. Remove and let cool, and when cool enough to handle, peel and roughly chop the tomatoes over a large pot, to catch the juices. (This is not a neat process. You might want to wear an apron.) Discard the skins, and place the tomato chunks into the pot.

Add the lemon juice to the pot, and add the lemon halves to the pot with the tomatoes. Heat the tomatoes over medium heat. Add the sugar, 1 cup at a time, stirring after each addition, and waiting about 10 minutes in between each addition. Lightly crush the tomatoes, or use a hand blender to puree slightly, and let cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the jam begins to jell and the entire mixture is bubbling like a swamp, being careful not to let it burn. Remove the lemon halves.

Ladle into hot canning jars with new lids, and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Makes approximately 2 pints.

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2011. | Permalink |
Post tags: canning, jam, seasonal, Summer, Tomatoes

1. Strawberries are grown in every state in the US, but 88% of the strawberries sold in the United States are grown in California.
2. The best strawberries come from Harry’s Berries, in Oxnard. Don’t believe me? My cousin works for Thomas Keller, and she told me that Chef Keller orders Harry’s Berries for his New York restaurant.
3. Strawberries carry a heavy pesticide load, so look for organic berries, or pesticide free (Harry’s aren’t organic, but they do grow without pesticides)
4. The best way to eat strawberries is straight out of the basket and slightly sun warmed until your fingers are stained pink from the juice.
5. The second best way to eat strawberries is dipped in creme fraiche and turbinado sugar. Strawberry shortcake and pavlova tie for third.
6. If you have some supermarket strawberries that are less than perfectly red and sweet, slice them up and toss them with a little balsamic vinegar and brown sugar. This enhances the color and the flavor.
7. The best way to store strawberries is in a sealed glass jar. They’ll last at room temperature for a couple of extra days, and in your refrigerator for over a week. However, though they maintain their texture and don’t spoil, the flavor does dissipate.
8. The fragrance and flavor of strawberries depends on a balance of acid and sweetness. When you cook strawberries, they yield a lot of juice, lose some color, and lose a lot of that acid which makes the flavor so balanced. Always add some acid in the form of lemon juice or vinegar when you’re cooking strawberries, but most of the best strawberry dishes use raw strawberries.
9. If your strawberries have mushy spots and you don’t really want to eat them, slice them up and throw them in a jar with some sugar and top with rum, vodka or brandy. The alcohol and sugar will preserve the berries in the refrigerator almost indefinitely, and the resulting concoction is fabulous over ice cream, yogurt, or eaten straight out of the jar with a spoon.
10. Homemade strawberry jam is absolutely divine. I like to add some balsamic vinegar to balance the sweetness (wrinkle your nose, but the flavors are so complementary you won’t even know it’s there) and a little black pepper for some floral warmth (the Italians eat strawberries with balsamic and black pepper. Try it!). You also get that June Cleaver Americana satisfaction of putting up your own jam. I promise that you’ll never go back to Smucker’s again.

Recipe: Strawberry Jam with Balsamic and Pepper

Ingredients

Makes 1 pint
1. 3 lbs whole strawberries, hulled (if you like a smoother texture, you can chop or slice the berries. I happen to like big sweet slugs of strawberry in my jammy syrup.)
2. 3/4 lb granulated sugar
3. 4 T balsamic vinegar
4. 1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
5. 2 packets commercial liquid pectin

Instructions

1. Combine sugar and berries in a large pot and heat over a medium high flame, stirring frequently.
2. Add pectin according to the package instructions.
3. Skim off foam as it rises to the top.
4. Test for set (after about 15-20 minutes) by dropping a spoonful on a cold dish and seeing if it holds together to your satisfaction — I like a soft set, but others like a firmer set. If you like a very firm jam, you might want to use 2 packets of pectin. If it’s not set, keep cooking and stirring, and test periodically until it is.
5. When the jam has set, ladle into hot, sterilized jars. Leave 1/4 inch space between the top of the jar and the lid.
6. Close lids tightly, and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes. (Make sure the jars are completely submerged in the boiling water). Let cool, and remove rings for storage (if you remove the rings, you’ll know if a jar has lost its seal and needs to be eaten immediately or thrown away. ) Jam is a pretty low-risk canning operation, due to all the sugar and the acid, both of which act as preservatives.

Notes

I didn’t use the pectin in the pictured jam, so my jam is a bit runnier than I’d ordinarily make. It tastes divine though, and is perfectly acceptable on toast with a little ricotta, on yogurt, on a spoon …

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2011. | Permalink |
Post tags: berries, canning, fruit, jam, strawberries

When I was a little girl, my favorite restaurant was a steakhouse in my hometown called the Sawmill. The interior was one of those 1980′s restaurants with no windows, an open kitchen, dim lighting, a terrarium, rough-hewn wood beams and leather club chairs, but to very small me it was heaven. I always ordered a steak sandwich and a Shirley Temple (in a short glass, with extra cherries), but what really made the restaurant my favorite was the old fashioned salad bar. Young children don’t usually have that much control over what they eat, but at a salad bar I was master of my destiny. After much trial and error (what is the POINT of baby corn?) I settled on the winning combination of romaine lettuce, spinach (this was before the era of ubiquitous mixed greens), chick peas, scallions, croutons, bacon bits, blue cheese dressing and beets. This was a particular treat because we NEVER had beets at home — to this day my father claims to be allergic based on a rash he got in 1948 (and to this day, I remain skeptical about the existence of such an allergy), and I loved their earthy sweetness.

Fast forward to 2006, and when enjoying a lovely (outdoor) dinner at a local Greek restaurant in Los Angeles, I discovered Patzaria — a Greek spread made from yogurt and beets. Spread on toasted pita bread, the sweetness of the beets tempered by the tang of the yogurt, this spread was my favorite beet dish I had had since those childhood salads. So I decided to reconcile the two experiences, and come up with my own patzaria that replicates the flavors of my childhood nostalgia with a modern Greek spin.
(...)
Read the rest of The Three B’s — Beets, Blue Cheese and Bacon Dip (338 words)

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2010. | Permalink |
Post tags: Bacon, Beets, Dip

In the rush of planning and eating a Thanksgiving Meal, the cranberry sauce is kind of an afterthought. We carefully plot out our turkey roasting techniques, strategize our side dishes, and lovingly craft pies from scratch, but cranberry sauce usually involves the can opener. Diners, too, look askance at cranberry sauce — they politely take a spoonful because it looks pretty on the plate and may add a little zing to a bland and dry turkey, but there is invariably nearly a bowlful of leftover cranberry sauce which becomes the subject of a polite-off after dinner conversation:

“I’ve packed you a big bowl of cranberry sauce to take home!”
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly — I know how you love cranberries! But I’ll take more stuffing.”
“It’s no problem! I’ll just put it in this bag here!”
“Well, I was saving that spot for more pumpkin pie …”
“We ate all the pumpkin pie. Just take the cranberries, OK?”

I, too was cranberry unenlightened. I had it on the table out of deference to tradition, took a polite spoonful, and scooped the remainder into the trash at the end of the night. But then I got married, and my father in law (who really isn’t a gourmet cook, but occasionally hits it out of the park) introduced me to this cranberry sauce (OK, I tarted up his recipe just a tad, but I can’t help it!) It’s INCREDIBLY easy to make (I honestly don’t know why anyone bothers buying cranberry sauce — it takes about 30 seconds of active cooking), is a perfect complement to turkey, and actually tastes good on its own. I made some last week and I found my husband sneaking into the fridge to eat the leftovers out of the jar.
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Read the rest of Afterthought no more — Spiced Cranberry Sauce with Oranges and Pecans (245 words)

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2009. | Permalink |
Post tags: holiday, Thanksgiving, Vegetarian

I understand jam making to be the latest trend among “hipsters” (google “hipster” and “canning” and you’ll see what I mean.) I never really thought of myself as a hipster, I mean, I’m certainly not a hippie because I don’t like hiking or Phish, and I can’t be a yuppie because it’s not 1987, so I turned to Urbandictionary.com to determine if I am, in fact, a hipster. A quick skim of the 138 definitions of hipster yields a person in their 20′s or 30′s (yes) who lives in Brooklyn (no), values “creativity, intelligence and witty banter” (yes), drinks a lot of Pabst Blue Ribbon (no), sports “high cultural tolerance and a slight tendency towards intellectual arrogance” (yes), is too ironic for their own good (maybe), and is cooler than cool (heck no).

I am still confused.

What I am not confused about is this: making jam is a) fun b) easy and c) cool (which may be the hipster connection. I’m certainly not putting PBR into my jam). There’s something special about those little jars of homemade preserves, all lined up, ready to be eaten, or given away as gifts, or, if you have a packrat nature (like nobody I know, nosirree) to be stored in the pantry and gazed at lovingly. My husband makes fun of me, pointing out that I have an Ivy League education, am admitted to the Bar in two states, have a successful career and yet I am proud of making jam, something his great-grandmother did on a regular basis without much fuss. So sue me. I’m proud of my jam. I love my jam. I bid thee to go forth and make your own jam. You won’t be sorry.
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Read the rest of Jammin’ — Plum Jam (676 words)

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2009. | Permalink |
Post tags: canning, fruit, jam, pantry, plums