Fruity drinks at the farmette

While at the Sonoma farmette yesterday, I pulled out the frozen watermelon and plum juices yesterday to whip up a batch of drinks. The watermelon was light and frothy - especially with the addition of some lime juice and mint, freshly picked from the garden. For the plum, a dark rich purple jammy juice, I added a bit of basil that I'd gathered, and it really highlighted the sweet-sour of the juice. (Next time I might add a bit of seltzer or more ice to lighten the plum as some found it a bit too thick.)

We also had occasion to pick some more cucumbers as well as some green beens (tiny haricots verts ready to eat raw!) as well as eggplant and zucchini which the doctor grilled up to accompany the sausages and brats the marketeer had sourced from her North Beach butcher. The marketeer also brought along a few of her creations for the doctor and the gamer to try: cherries in wine and the apricot conserves. Being the marketeer, her preserves were beautifully labeled, unlike my scrawls using any indelible marker on hand. :) Time to up my game!

We had some fabulous wine and great conversation, enjoying the visiting sailor's tales of the South Pacific, especially his trip from Easter Island to Pitcairn. (I briefly wondered what food preserving might be like on that incredibly remote and isolated island!)

The marketeer and market goods

I had the great good fortune of spending some time yesterday with my friend the marketeer who has been on a canning roll in the last week: white peaches, apricots, strawberries, and (as of last night) cherries. Inspiration for some of this comes from the Eugenia Bone book, Well-Preserved, as well as Mes Confitures, by Christine Ferber. (Both of which were featured in the recent NY Times article; thanks to my incredibly generous friend, I now have copies of my own!) I love the focus on savory in the Bone book, and as the marketeer noted, the Ferber book has more of a preserved whole fruit approach which resembles that of my own preserving bible, the Oded Schwartz book, Preserving. I wonder if this is a more European approach to preserving?

We prepared cherries in wine last night, and while they'll have to sit for a little bit before we use them, I'm looking forward to sharing the bounty with the doctor once she returns from the wilds of Wisconsin.

In the meantime, I'm on the search for good fruit in alcohol recipes, so if anyone has ideas for recipes or sources for purchasing copious amounts of eau de vie (we will have a LOT of pears!), please post them here!

Has preserving gone "mainstream"?

From the NY Times today: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/dining/27cann.html

Preserving Time in a Bottle (or a Jar)

By JULIA MOSKIN

Published: May 27, 2009

The recent revival of canning fits neatly into the modern renaissance of handcrafted food, heirloom agriculture, and using food in its season.

Recipe request

As I've received a few requests for recipes, I'll post the lemon curd recipe below. This is a modified version of the recipe found in my preserving "bible," Preserving by Oded Schwartz.

Ingredients

• grated rind and juice of 6 lemons
• 1 1/2 cups (375 g) granulated sugar (while this is what the recipe calls for, I usually cut the sugar by almost half)
  
• 3/4 cup (150 g) butter, softened
• 5 eggs, beaten
• (I add about a teaspoon of cardamom)

1. Place the lemon rind and juice in a small pan with the sugar. Heat gently, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Add the butter and stir until melted.
2. Transfer the mixture to a double boiler or a bowl placed over a pan of simmering water. Strain in the eggs and cook over barely simmering water, stirring often, for 25-40 minutes, until it is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. If you're going to add cardamom, do so toward the end of the cooking period, about 5 minutes before the mixture is ready. Do not let the mixture boil or it will curdle. (More importantly, be really careful with the eggs as you don't want them to cook too soon.)
3. Pour the curd into warm, sterilized jars, and seal. (Finish them off with a hot water bath or if you're going to eat/use the curd within a week, you can place the jars in the fridge.)

If you want a completely smooth curd with no zest, you may also want to strain the mixture before you put it into the double boiler.

Citrus on my mind

Ah, lemon curd! The Meyer lemons have been begging to be used, and so the doctor and I decided to do dueling recipes: I from my preserving bible, and she from a home recipe. We both cut the sugar considerably, and created lovely (and very different) curds - mine was eggier and more lemony, and hers was lighter and more delicate. Needless to add, both batches were gone within the week, and I now have "orders" to produce more for various friends and family.

I'd like to try adding a bit of cardamom the next time for a more complex curd. But first, I have orange marmalade (with a touch of coriander!) on the brain, and will be tackling both this Sunday, when the kitchen will transform into the church of curd and citrus....

The first annual urban canning dinner

As we gathered on a late winter's evening in Sonoma, each bearing a recipe that would include one or more of the preserved goods from the garage larder, the kitchen quickly filled with requests for various pots, bowls, implements, and glasses of champagne. The doctor fired up the grill for the tenderloin, and the assembly line in the kitchen got underway, with the lawyer, the marketeer, the real German and his Serbo-Croatian wife, the doctor and I all chopping, sitrring, and cooking our various recipes, while the gamer and the boys chatted, and the dogs happily cleaned up anything which dropped on the floor. My pot o'greens was relegated to the burner on the outside grill as the stove was a beehive of meatballs and pots a'stewing. (That gave the doctor the brilliant idea to use the outdoor burner for the hot water bath once the preserving season starts - during the heat of last summer we found ourselves preserving in bathing suits in the kitchen, so this should help minimize the heat.)



We had a wildly successful dinner, one which seemed effortless even with all the cooks in the kitchen and some confusion about the proper way to form meatballs (luckily the real German came to the rescue!). It was planned and yet spontaneous, and full of deliciously surprising combinations. Here's what we indulged in:

• A lovely ripened Camembert accompanied by homemade fig chutney
• An antipasto of Melanzane and mozzarella: little, lightly fried balls of eggplant with a "surprise" middle of mozzarella (straight from Marcella Hazan)
• Rao's famous meatballs (beef, pork, and veal) accompanied by homemade marinara
• Spinach, orange, almond & onion salad with home-grown oranges and a light vinaigrette
• The afore-mentioned tenderloin (there must *always* be a grilled item on the doctor's menu)
• Wilted spicy Indian greens (chard and curry) with sides of homemade green tomato chutney
• Bread fresh from the Ferry Plaza farmers' market in San Francisco
• Clafoutis with homemade strawberry and pear preserves and vanilla ice cream
• Homemade Poire William with a twist: we'd used Aquavit instead of eau de vie and put in a vanilla stick - the liqueur was sweet, incredibly smooth and will be delicious over ice cream or over poached fruit
• Lots of Sonoma-local wine

And so with cries of "we must have another!" we ended our evening with resolve to indulge again. And indulge we must, as we still have *boatloads* of preserves to get through.

The elusive quince and the Judy bird

All fall, I've been eagerly anticipating finding quinces in my local markets. One of my favorite party snacks is manchego (a Spanish sheep's milk cheese) with membrillo, and I've been wanting to make that quince paste for the holiday season. The doctor and I thought we'd found a quince tree in Sonoma (much to our amusement it was later identified by our friend Paul as a buckeye tree), which made me realize I'd never actually seen a quince in person even though I'd eaten the cooked fruit and enjoyed it greatly. (Ironic given my family connections to Latin America and Iran.) I felt like I was on some kind of treasure hunt as I looked in every major supermarket and a couple of farmers' markets for the yellow-skinned fruit, until I finally found a boatload of organic quinces at the lovely Bi-Rite Market (where the checkout guy laconically informed me, "yeah, we've got 'em every fall").

I cooked up 4 lbs of the fruit and promptly packed a care package for our jaunt to Florida for Thanksgiving. The membrillo accompanied a bag full of other preserves, gifts for my relatives, who are still bemused (and sometimes stunned) when they receive various preserves and chutneys. The membrillo turned out well, although next year I'll be experimenting with lowering the sugar. Strangely, the quince turned out to be anti-climactic compared to cooking a Thanksgiving turkey for 10 people, which was my job this year (keep in mind this is for my relatives, who are a discerning - read picky! - bunch of mostly Southerners, and they know their turkey!). I chose to do a brined turkey, but at the last minute found a new recipe for a dry brined turkey, the Judy Bird (named after its originator, Judy Rodgers of the Zuni Cafe, one of my favorite restaurants in SF). Luckily for me, it came out well (although we did have a back-up ham in place), and was delicious! I'll be cooking that one again.

Happy Thanksgiving one and all!