jam – will garden for cake

sour cherry jam with brandy

Published on August 26, 2016August 25, 2016 by alisahuntsman2 Comments

Remember those cherries I posted about a few weeks ago? When I made the drunken cherries, I took two baskets of the four that I had purchased and turned them into jam. My mother in law sent me the cutest little book on jam making, Seasons of Jam by Jeannette Habit and I decided to try the recipe for cherry jam.

To make the jam, rinse, dry and pit 3 pounds of red tart cherries. Combine the cherries with 2 cups of sugar and the juice of 1 lemon in a bowl and let it sit for 30 minutes. Pour the mixture into a stainless steel or enamel pot and simmer for 30 minutes. Be sure to stir it frequently and skim off any foam that forms. Pour into a heat proof bowl, cover with parchment and chill overnight.

The next day, return the jam to the cleaned pot and boil on high heat for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently and again, removing the foam as necessary. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes. It will get darker and the liquid will look more like a syrup. Add 1/4 cup of Kirsch, Brandy or your favorite liqueur and simmer for another 10 minutes. Cook until it reaches 210F, the jam should set properly. Ladle into prepared canning jars, and you can process them as you wish. For mine, I used the water bath method. It will make 5-6 half pint jars.

gratitude and tomatillo jam

Published on December 5, 2015December 5, 2015 by alisahuntsman2 Comments

Every year at Thanksgiving, as we gathered around the table-our family and my cousin’s family together, we would ask each other to share what we were grateful for that year. Kids being kids meant that some of the answers were comical, but in the end, we were grateful for each other and the time together. This year, Darry and I found ourselves on our own, one of the downfalls of relocating. We didn’t let that stop us from having a lovely dinner and yes, it included the traditional trashcan turkey. We also had the pleasure of cooking some vegetables that we grew ourselves.

The weather was unseasonably warm this year and we spent much of the day working in the garden. We pulled out the frost damaged plants, mulched leaves with the lawn mower and layered the beds with straw, coffee grinds, compost and the leaves we had gathered. When we sat down to dinner, we were grateful to have sweet potatoes and greens from our garden on the table. It was also pleasing to know that cabbage, cauliflower, kale and broccoli as well as brussel sprouts and collards are growing in the beds and will be on our dinner table soon as well.

One of the plants we pulled out of the bales and cut up for composting was a cluster of tomatillos; one purple and two yellow. Tomatillos are one of those things that you either love or wonder why anyone would want the stupid things. They are sticky when you peel the husks off and unless you are making salsa or green sauce, they aren’t very appealing. Even so, each year as I plant my garden, I almost always sow a few tomatillo seeds.

A member of the nightshade family, tomatillos are related to tomatoes but at the same time, they are so different that you will wonder if they really are relatives. While tomatoes do not need a companion plant to pollinate them, tomatillos do so if you plant them in your garden, be sure to plant more than one. Tomatillo vines will sprawl so be sure to give them a sturdy structure to lean on. They will also produce over a long season and right up to the first heavy frost which means you can have them throughout the summer and into early fall.

As we gathered all of the fruits, we realized we had enough to make a batch of something and I chose turn them into a sweet jam rather than the typical salsa. My triple batch of jam cooked up quickly and is now sealed in jars ready to be shared with friends and family, a token of our gratitude.

Tomatillo Jam

Makes 1 pint and the recipe can easily be doubled or tripled

1 pound tomatillos, washed with the husks removed

1/4 teaspoon chili flakes or 1 small fresh chili, finely diced

juice and zest of one lemon

1 1/4 cup sugar

Cut the tomatillos into quarters and place them in a heavy bottomed sauce pot with the remaining ingredients. Bring the mixture to a simmer over medium heat, stirring to prevent sticking. Allow the jam to simmer until the tomatillos soften. Using a hand held masher, press the tomatillos to break them up. Continue to cook until the mixture reaches 210 degrees. Pour the jam into sterilized jars and seal in a water bath or place it into a storage container and keep in the refrigerator.

This post is one of a series that Melissa of Corbin in the Dell and I are publishing simultaneously. To read her post, visit her blog.

three fruit marmalade, like sunshine in a jar

Published on January 9, 2015 by alisahuntsman4 Comments

Winter has definitely arrived. Frigid temperatures and dreary days are quite the norm and I am not thrilled. Tasked with selling a house and packing to move 700 miles, I feel like I completely missed summer. We arrived in our new home on the first official day of fall and I have been in a bit of a funk ever since. Hard to believe but I truly missed the long days spent working out in the garden, shooing away insects, wiping the sweat off my face and nibbling on thick slices of freshly baked cake with friends…

Nothing has felt the same since we moved. The stores are different and finding the ingredients I need is challenging and I often visit 3-4 stores just to buy most of what I seek. Although, I can buy a bottle of pinot at 9am on a Sunday if I want because every grocery store in town sells wine. But back at home, it sinks in, there is no garden full of cake nibbling friends here. And then, before I even had a chance to blink, the holidays arrived and our girls came to visit. Off to the stores I went in search of groceries to make it seem a little more like home for them as well as for us.

What most people do not realize is that citrus fruits come into peak season beginning in November. Just walk into an Asian produce market and you will start to see the different varieties of fruits increase as the Chinese New Year approaches. While this may seem like such a random thought to share, both of our girls were born in San Francisco and the city is home to the largest Chinese New Year Celebration in the world held outside of China each year. Half a million people line the streets to watch the parade and it is an exciting experience. The different fruits all have different meanings but the most important part, the stem with its leaves still attached which is a symbol of longevity and they are highly sought after for New Year Celebrations.

Years later, living in Tennessee, we missed this tradition and the ability to find a lot of the different fruits. But over time, that slowly changed. One thing that remained constant, our girls still love citrus fruits and a holiday season just isn’t right without a box of clementines on the counter. While we do not have an Asian market close to our new home, clementines are so easy to find that I purchased a box on one of my trips to the store. As always, there are a few that end up living on the counter for a while and this year was no exception. The girls are not the only ones crazy for citrus fruits as my husband has a love for blood oranges. On my last trip through Trader Joe’s I picked up a bag for him to snack on thus adding to the collection of fruit in the kitchen. So that nothing would go to waste, I decided to try my hand at a batch of marmalade.

Since there were a dozen or so blood oranges in the bag, I decided to sacrifice a few and combine them with the clementines and a container of kumquats that was lurking in the fridge. Yes, kumquats; a story for another day… Then I began looking for a recipe. Have you ever looked at marmalade recipes? They are time-consuming and somewhat labor intensive. Peel, dice the rind, simmer, drain and so on. For a few minutes, I thought maybe not this time. My desire to make just a few jars of marmalade was waning; I did not want to waste the entire day on this. Then I picked up a small book from my shelf; Well Preserved, a jam-making hymnal by Joan Hassol.

Suddenly, the intimidating process of making marmalade seemed so simple, so easy, so hard not to make! The recipe has basically four steps; chop the fruit in a food processor, mix all the ingredients in a pot and simmer for 15 minutes, let it rest overnight and then simmer it again for 15 minutes. Done. Finished. Finito. No peeling, no slicing, no fuss. Works for me! Quickly, I cut 4 clementine and 4 blood oranges in half, removed the pits and cut them into chunks. Then I cut the kumquats in half and pulled out the pits if they were large; this took about 10 minutes. The food processor came out of the closet and I pulsed the fruit into a pulpy mess pretty quickly. Sure, there were some large chunks but I didn’t give it a second thought. Into the pot the fruit went a total of 4 cups of chopped fruit/juice with 3 1/2 cups of water, 8 cups of sugar and a box of pectin. Once it had a gentle boil, I let it go for 15 minutes, turned it off and let it sit uncovered until it cooled. Once it was cool, I covered it to keep it from collecting strays overnight.

The next afternoon, I brought it back to a gentle boil, let it go another 15 minutes and then put it into whatever jars I could find in the closet. It was that simple, and honestly, I think I spent more time cleaning up than I did doing anything else.

Of course, homemade marmalade demands good bread and this is some we picked up from the Smithfield Bakery Cafe in Smithfield, VA, home to genuine Smithfield hams…yadda yadda. No ham was consumed on our visit, just some really good sandwiches and salads and a loaf of the Honey Almond Bread. A quaint little place, Smithfield was well worth the ferry ride across the river.

For the first time in a few days, the sunlight was streaming in through the kitchen windows and it made the bright orange marmalade glow. Honestly, I expected more of a pink tint from the blood oranges but even so, I love the bright color.

Definitely sweet but so full of bright citrus flavor it really was like a little bit of sunshine to brighten my morning.

My favorite thing about the recipe was the use of a food processor and the whole fruit. The irregular sizes of the rind make it look more homemade. Now that I have finally found what I consider to be a foolproof method, I plan to make marmalade again. The original recipe calls for the use of pineapple, lemons, limes, oranges and grapefruit but allows for the pineapple to be left out. It is all based on the amount of chopped fruit; for every 4 cups of chopped fruit, add 8-10 cups of sugar and 3-4 cups of water along with 1 box of pectin. The amount of sugar depends on the sweetness of the fruit and the water depends on how thick you want it. My fruits were a bit sweet so I used 8 cups of sugar and 3 1/2 cups of water.

The book is available on sites like amazon however, it is also available on googlebooks and I was able to view the complete recipe without having to purchase it. Before you chastise me for that, my copy of the actual book is sitting right here next to me as I type, I merely did a search to see if it was online and it is. As a published author, I respectfully ask that you consider purchasing the book ($12.80 on amazon, $14.99 from the publisher) or borrowing it from a library.