Ah yes, the baby brain – still very much in effect. Me naming a post “Back from the baby abyss” a few months ago was like George Bush unfurling that “Mission Accomplished” banner in Iraq in 2003 – premature, to be sure. Delusional, no doubt. Hence this blog has been cloaked in a gradually thickening layer of digi-dust of late (last post: Oct. 20 – eek!).

Alas, four and a half months in and I wonder every day when I shall fully emerge from the baby abyss. And what’s this? A cherry post in late November? Here’s how I defend it: they’re coming into cherry season in Australia! And the recipe’s inspired by this one from the Australian food site taste.com.au. And I lived in Sydney for three years. So this is for all my Aussie canners (you know who you are). It makes a great holiday gift. I’d love to say more about it, but I’ve got some spit-up to change and diapers to wipe out of my hair.

Cherries in spiced port

2.5 lbs cherries, pitted

2 cups water

1.5 cups sugar

1 3/4 cups port

4 strips orange rind

2 star anise

1 vanilla bean, split open

First, tie your spices like a sweet little bouquet guarnie with twine and cheesecloth. Then, add the sugar and spice bag to the water and warm over medium-low heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar before bringing to a boil. Add the cherries then reduce to a simmer and cook for another five minutes or so.

With a slotted spoon, remove spices and set aside, then remove cherries and transfer to your hot, clean jars. Put the spices back in, add the port and bring syrup back to a boil. Cook for another five to seven minutes or more, to reduce and thicken. Then pour your syrup over your cherries,  screw the tops on and process in a boiling water bath for 20 minutes.

So, one more boozy fruit post to come (cherries!) but I thought I would interrupt the series with a couple of luscious tomatoes. Because, why not? It’s fall and the fruit recipes won’t likely be used by anybody til next summer. Again: this is all due to my maternity leave getting in the way of keeping on top of seasonality! Still, since my little man was born three months ago, I’ve managed to make pickles, one batch of jam, to can peaches, cherries, figs and tomatoes – a heck of a lot less than last year, but not so shabby after all.

But I digress.

Where were we? Oh yes: the fruit that is forever mistaken for a veggie.

The bright red thing so often smashed and simmered into sauce, then paired with pasta. And such an easy thing to can. Two weeks ago I went with my friend N. to her parents’ lovely farmhouse in Prince Edward County, a bucolic agricultural and wine region halfway between Toronto and Montreal (a little closer to TO). We brought two bushels of Roma tomatoes with us and got busy with a giant pot and her mom’s big, hand-cranked food mill.

We did simple canned whole tomatoes and a bunch of tomato sauce. It was interesting to see our two canning styles come out over the weekend. N. comes from a big family (she’s one of six siblings) and they all seem to can and cook with passion and by following word-of-mouth family recipes and loose instructions handed down by her mum. I, one the other hand, am a bit of a recipe nerd and I follow all the latest, paranoid canning instructions from the latest canning books (i.e., I add lemon juice to my canned tomatoes, I process my jams in a boiling water bath, never re-use lids etc. – all things old school canners don’t seem to bother with).

So we made the sauce the way N.’s family’s being doing it for ages (no lemon juice) and the canned tomatoes my way (with about a tbsp bottled lemon juice in each jar) because supposedly tomatoes may not be acidic enough for water bath canning. And the reason why it’s bottled and not fresh is that that’s the only way to get the right amount of acidity as it varies from lemon to lemon. On which side of the debate do you stand? Lemon juice or no lemon juice? Does no lemon juice seem like reckless endangerment to you? Or does lemon juice seem like modern paranoia?

Anyway, here goes with the recipes, in pretty huge quantities (feel free to halve or quarter):

Canned whole tomatoes

48-50 lbs ripe Roma tomatoes (1 bushel)

About 1.5 cups bottled lemon juice (maybe more, maybe less), or 1 tbsp per jar

OK, use your biggest pot to bring some water to a boil. In batches, boil your tomatoes for about a minute, then plunge them into ice water, strain them and peel and remove that chunky white stem bit with a pairing knife. Spoon them into hot, clean jars (running them through the dishwasher is easy) and pour enough of the boiling water you briefly cooked them in to come to about a 1/2 inch head space. Add about 1tbsp of bottled lemon juice to each jar (if you are so inclined), and perhaps a basil leaf. Process in a boiling water bath for 40 minutes. We got 25 liters of these (15 one-liter and 20 500-ml jars.

N.’s tomato sauce

48-50 lbs tomatoes

1 head of garlic, minced

1 large bunch of basil, chopped

About 1 cup of bottled lemon juice, or 1 tbsp per jar

Salt to taste

Halve and boil your tomatoes for about two minutes to loosen skins. Drain them, put them through a food mill to remove skins and seeds, then pour the tomato pulp into a very, very large pot (we used two) along with minced garlic and chopped basil. Cook for about 45 minutes, stirring continuously to reduce. Keep adding salt until you get the taste you like, then pour your sauce into hot clean jars, leaving 1/2 inch head space. Process in a boiling water bath for 40 minutes. We got 16 liters of sauce (8 one-liter and 16 500-ml jars).

Here we go again: more alcoholic fruit. Although, to be honest, this is pretty G-rated stuff as far as the booze content goes. This recipe uses a small amount to begin with and then it cooks for so long that whatever alcohol remains dips down to a homeopathic amount (OK, not that small, but really only a taste). It’s adapted from one by Nigella Lawson, the O.G. of domestic goddesses,  found in her book, How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking, an intelligent and cheerfully gluttonous celebration of sugar and fat.

I’m not a big rum drinker myself, but the combination sounded intriguing – sort of Mediterranean via the Caribbean. To make it my own, I added a vanilla pod and didn’t cook the figs as long as I didn’t want then to turn to mush. I also processed my jars in the paranoid North-American style (boiled ‘em for 20 mins).

But really, folks, this is not so complicated. All these recipes follow the same formula: cook fruit in a little simple syrup, add your favourite spirit and voila! You have a tasty ice cream topper, gift or multi-purpose dessert ingredient.

So, here goes:

Vanilla figs in rum

2 1/4 lbs black mission figs

2 1/5 cups sugar

2 cups water

1 vanilla pod, split open

1/3 cup rum (plus 2 tbsp extra, if you like)

Wash your figs and set aside. For the syrup, combine water,  sugar and vanilla, dissolve sugar over medium-low heat then bring to a low boil and continue to cook for about 15 minutes so it reduces a little. Then add the rum and the figs, turn the heat down and simmer for about 40 minutes, stirring gently from time to time so the fruit gets evenly cooked.

Carefully transfer the figs to your hot, clean jars with a large slotted spoon, bring the liquid back to a boil and reduce further for another 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Take it off the heat, remove vanilla and add the extra rum if you want to, then pour over your figs. Process in a boiling water bath for 20 minutes. Done.

OK, this isn’t exactly new. And, yes, peach season is long over. But my maternity leave has meant that my next few posts are after-the-fact as far as seasonality goes. But, hey, there’s always next year!

Alas.

I talked about this one last year, in my Teaches of canned peaches post. That’s when I did peaches in honey-lavender syrup and also the brandied peaches recipe from the NY Times dating back to 1951 with new canning instructions by food writer and canning queen Eugenia Bone.

As mentioned in my last post, I noticed last year that the brandied peaches really went the distance, maintaining their shape and flavour longer than their syrupy counterparts. And so, I used the recipe again this year, changing a few things (smaller slices, less syrup). I like smaller peach slices just because, and I use less liquid cuz the last two times I made this, I had about a cup and a half leftover syrup. Also, less syrup means more brandy flavour.

So here’s my version:

3 pounds peaches

2 cups sugar

2 cups water

1/2 cup brandy

Boil a big pot of water. Use a sharp knife to to make a shallow ‘x’ cut at the base of each peach then lower them gingerly into the water, leaving them in for one minute (don’t over-cook!). Scoop the peaches out (I use a wire mesh colander with a handle) and plunge into ice water, then slip the skins off. You can do this in small batches.

Peel, pit and slice the fruit into quarters or smaller slices (but not too small). Set aside. Bring water and sugar to boil in large pot, then add the peach segments and simmer for a few minutes (3-5). Remove the peaches with a slotted spoon, packing them into your hot, clean jars.

Boil the syrup for another 10 minutes or so to reduce it a little, then spoon it over your fruit. Dole out the brandy equally among your jars (you should have two 500ml or pint jars), leaving about 1cm or 1/4 inch head space. Process your jars for 20 minutes in a boiling water bath.

Hi virtual buddies.

Boozy fruit is coming…

In the meantime, check out my piece for the New York Times’ T magazine fall travel special about Quebec’s foraged food king, Francois Brouillard, and his excellent chef girlfriend Nancy Hinton, who pens the blog Soup Nancy. Together they run the restaurant A La Table des Jardins Sauvages in the Lanaudiere, about a 45-minute east of Montreal.

A feast for foraged food nerds!

Hiya can fans!

Woah. What a summer. It went by in a blur. Actually, time is still whipping by in a haze of sleepless nights, feedings, crying, burping, cooing, gurgling, diaper changing, rattle shaking and on and on. It’s been equal parts beautiful, magical and exhausting. And it’s meant canning time has diminished markedly as compared to last year, when I was footloose and child-free. No big surprise there. Strangely I haven’t hosted any of my formerly rather frequent rambling, wine-fueled dinner parties either. Funny that.

However: Hurrah! Hurrah! I have managed to claw my way back to my jars and canning pot and have eeked out a few yummy things just as harvest time begins to wane. So my next couple of posts will be about my new obsession: boozy fruit. I learned last year, when I did peaches in syrup (honey-lavender syrup to be exact) and brandied peaches, that a bit of booze goes a long way in preserving fruit. The brandy-less peaches went mushy and lost their colour much faster than their boozy counterparts.

The other upside to preserving fruits in slightly alcoholic syrup? It takes less time than making jam does. And for a new mommy like moi, this works out just peachily (sorry). Anyway, coming up at the Pantry: figs, peaches and cherries get sauced. Stay tuned…

(Alright, before getting into the rhube, time to come clean: I’m ’bout to have a bébé over here. Any day now. Hence the slowing down of the blogging, right down to a trickle. Renovations and some frantic nesting have left me very little time to consider the pantry with. And just in time for canning season! All this to say that this blog is easing its way into a bit of a maternity leave. We’ll see what happens over the summer. I hope to still can and blog, but the whole thing may be rather more sporadic… Anyway, happy summer canning, jamming, pickling and preserving to one and all!) And now back to your regular scheduled programming:

Rhubarb heralds summer’s sweet beginnings. Makes me think of  Slip ‘n’ Slide, Orange Crush, above-ground pools, hamburgers with buns as moist and sweet as cake. Its tangy, slightly fibrous mushiness makes it one of summer’s comfort foods.

I came across a recipe for rhubarb-ginger jam in my copy of The Complete Book of Preserving from 1976 and I’ve adapted it slightly here, cutting the sugar a little since the crystallized ginger adds a lot of sweetness.

Here goes:

Rhubarb-ginger jam

2.5 lbs rhubarb cut into 1-in. pieces

3 cups sugar

1/2 cup water

juice of 1/2 lemon

2 tbsp crystallized ginger, finely chopped

2-inch piece of ginger

Bring your rhubarb, water, lemon juice and sugar to a boil, stirring often. Take your nub of ginger and beat it up a little with a meat hammer or some other implement that will help release its juices and add it to your bubbling fruit mix along with the crystallized stuff.

Cook until your reach the desired jammy consistency (I went for about 30 minutes), remove ginger bit and process as usual in hot, clean jars (I boil them for 10 minutes).

The Quebec asparagus season runs from about Mother’s Day until Saint-Jean Baptiste (that’s our “national” holiday, June 24). So: welcome, oh tall, skinny friend, oh gentle perfumer of urine. Yes, besides sprouts and lettuces, asparagus is about the only thing from Quebec at the market at the moment. Though I did spot a bit of mangy, early-bird rhubarb.

Anyway, it was thrilling to bust out the canning pot and get to work on these locally harvested green spears. This recipe is extremely similar to my cucumber pickle recipe. Here’s looking forward to cracking a jar in a few weeks, maybe pairing some with creamy scrambled eggs and grated parm…

Pickled asparagus

4 lbs asparagus

2 1/2 cups water

1 1/4 cups vinegar

1 1/4 cups white wine vinegar

2 tsp kosher or pickling salt

5 cloves of garlic, halved or slivered

5 good-sized sprigs of fresh dill (or more)

1 tsp each peppercorns, coriander seeds and red pepper flakes

Rinse asparagus under cold water and drain. Slice off tough, brownish bottoms, then cut asparagus in two (if you’re using half-pint/250ml jars, make sure you cut them to fit). Bring a pot of water to a low boil, blanch bottom halves for about 90 seconds, blanch the top halves for a minute, plunging both into ice water and swirling them around immediately after blanching. Set aside to drain.

Combine vinegars, water and salt in a pot and bring to a boil. Reduce to low heat and prepare your jars. This recipe makes about 10 half-pint (250ml) jars or 5 pint (500ml) jars. Distribute garlic, dill and spices evenly across your hot, clean jars (I wash then boil mine in the canning pot). Stuff as many asparagus halves as possible into each jar without crushing or bruising them (tightness is key as you don’t want any bobbing up and out of the pickling solution), then pour your water and vinegar over top, leaving about a 1/2 inch of head space.

Now you have the choice of boiling the jars for 10 minutes or using the slow pasteurization method, which I prefer for pickles: process your jars at a simmer, somewhere between 180-185F (82-85C) for 30 minutes. This really helps them stay crisper.

Alright, so this has blossomed into a sometimes semi-monthly round-up. So be it. I like to think of this blog as a slow blog, you know, like slow food. I take my sweet time doing the mise-en-place, put a post on the burner and simmer it, bake ideas for a week or more at low temperatures. And I promised myself when I started blogging that I would never apologize for not blogging “enough.” What is it with blogger’s guilt? How many times have you read a riffs on the “Sorry I haven’t been posting, I’ve been so busy with work/my baby/getting drunk, I promise I’ll try harder…” missive? Bloggers: blog or don’t blog but never apologize. Isn’t this online nerding out just for fun anyway? Say it loud: “I’m slow and I’m proud!” Wait. That didn’t come out right.

And now, a few newsy jar tidbits:

* Spring quickie pickles

Here’s a snappy selection of quick pickling recipes from Carolyn Maynard-Parisi who contributes to the NY Times‘ The Local New Jersey-related blog. For first-time canners and instant-gratification types, Maynard-Parisi offers up three vinegar-soaked quickies: quick-pickled red onions (adapted from a recipe by Molly Wizenberg of Orangette) quick-pickled asparagus (adapted from Sunset magazine) and pickled ramps (adapted from One Spice, Two Spice by Floyd Cardoz).

* Amish chic

Their motto says it all: “At Lehman’s, being old-fashioned is always in fashion.” Sweet. Anyone near Kidron, Ohio today can scurry down to this giant Amish general store to catch the tail-end of their 55th anniversary celebrations. Seems they’ve got 32,00 sq. ft of space, including a HUGE selection of canning and preserving gear (much of it you can order on-line), plenty of home butchering supplies, a home dairy section stocking butter- and cheese-making gear and a pantry that stocks such tempting treats as Amish popcorn kits, hickory hams and plenty of jams and fruit butters.

* Jars of light

Another Orangette reference – purely coincidental: Kitch’n posted about these pretty pendant lamps made from Weck canning jars a few days ago. They were custom made for Ms. Wizenberg’s Seattle pizza joint and now you can order them on-line here. They’re a little steep at $185 a pop, but any repurposing jars is always fun (I like using them as glasses, vases, candle holders). Another recent Kitch’n post involving those fetching Wecks, for esthetically discerning pantry keepers: the lovely look of Weck jars marked up in white pen.