hoarding heirloom tomatoes for winter

suddenly in the past two weeks it's turned into winter in the bay area. i really wasn't prepared for this since i was just walking around barefoot at the park a couple weeks ago, but as the chill sets in and now the rain has started i'm kicking into squirrel mode - hoarding and saving all the fruits of summer/fall for the long hard winter ahead (ahem, forgive me friends who live in places that actually have winter - i think i'm funny).

 

much as i was doing at about this time last year, i decided to start by canning our precious heirloom tomatoes while we're still getting them in our farm box and they're still gracing the farmers markets. last year i was a little grumbly at the price of preserving heirlooms, since they shrink down so much that the cost to cans produced ratio shocked me. but come the middle of the winter when the only tomatoes in sight are those hot house water sponges in the grocery store i was so grateful to be able to crack open a jar full of the flavors of fall. so i vowed to make them again this year, and here i am.

                                                 

i supplemented our usual farm box tomato stash with a run to the farmers market, only to realize when i went to pay for my bounty that i didn't have enough cash. thankfully the guy at the stand knows me (he's one of my two favorite vendors at the farmers market) and graciously told me i could pay him next time. i mention this because it's happened to me a couple of times in the past month - once at a coffee shop i'd never been to before in the financial district of san francisco - and i love the recognition that even in a seemingly big, anonymous urban place people look out for and trust each other.

 

i had to call to consult with aryn, since i was tomato canning solo this time, about temperatures and process. it goes something like this: wash your tomatoes. oil a baking pan (or two in this case) generously with olive oil. aryn made the "generous with olive oil" point to say that the tomatoes seem to do nothing in the oven for a while, and then reach a point where they burn easily if you don't have enough oil on the pan. i experienced this; she's right.

 

i also tossed in a few whole cloves of garlic with the tomatoes this time, figuring everything is made better with roasted garlic. stick your pans in the oven at about 400 degrees for somewhere between 20-40 mins. i hear you can slow roast tomatoes, but i'm not really one for slow processes.

if you're canning heirlooms, you're likely to have a variety of sizes of tomatoes - from very small to very large, thus the range of cooking time. watch them carefully and once they slump into a little puddle it's time to take them out - i opened the oven every few minutes to take them out in ascending order of size so the little ones wouldn't burn.

 

while your tomatoes are in the oven you can get started on the water bath. bring a giant pot of water to boil, and steralize your jars and lids by boiling them for about 5 mins.

 

when all your tomatoes have successfully roasted you can layer them in the jars with basil, garlic, and lemon juice. the lemon juice here is crucial - about 2 tablespoons per jar - to discourage botulism. i like to layer them in alternating colors, with a basil in between, and then top it off with a little of the tomato juice/olive oil mixture left in the pan from roasting. it also helps to run a spatula around the edge of the jar to encourage the air bubbles to come out, and i recommend doing this before you top off the jar at a 1/4 inch from the rim - otherwise it can get messy. i speak from experience. make sure you wipe the edges of the jar so you can get a clean seal and screw on your lids to they're on but not too tight.

 

process the jars in the boiling water bath for 40 mins (or longer if you're using larger jars).  take them out and let them cool for a day somewhere where they won't be disturbed. make sure your seal was created properly (the lid shouldn't be able to pop up and down when you press on it). and admire your work. good luck waiting until winter to crack them open; i've been salivating over mine all week.

 

strawberry season is here

last weekend, the farm that delivers us a box of fresh, local vegetables every week opened up their fields for u-pick strawberries. sele, aryn, and i took a field trip (literally) up there to gorge ourselves on strawberries and bring home a few boxes for frozen and canned delight. it turns out aryn, having grown up on a strawberry and asparagas farm, is a pro at strawberry picking and we loaded up our 3 flats ($10 a piece!) in no time.


the strawberries were beautiful and picked at the peak of perfection, which means they don't keep long in the fridge, so we got right to work processing them. my freezer is now stocked with little ziplocks full of strawberries, and i was inspired last year when my friend rachel told me her mom was making strawberry cardamom jam. i haven't stopped thinking about it since then, so i figured now was the perfect time to try it out.


as much as i raved about pomona's pectin, the problem with not using sugar in the jam is that once you open the jar it only lasts about 3 weeks before starting to get moldy. so aryn and i decided to revert back to using regular pectin; however, i neglected to buy enough of the regular pectin to accommodate the strawberries we were canning, so we ended up having to do an awkward split midway through the process and using some of the pomonas as well.
so the process went something like this:


we washed the berries, and squished them between our fingers - resulting in strawberry splatters all over the kitchen blinds - which i left as inspiration to myself to get around to making some curtains. then we boiled them down with some hand-ground cardamom, grape juice and honey (just juice for the kerr brand pectin, honey for the pomonas pectin).
i won't detail the canning process here, but if you're interested check out previous posts on jamming.


the pectin snafu resulted in half of the batch becoming jam and the other half becoming something more like strawberry sauce. Still tasty, we had some on waffles this morning.


we also made some fresh daiquiries in the process.

prickly pears: paid the cost to make the sauce

prickly pears are a new discovery in my life. we recently smuggled a couple of these cactus fruits through airport security on the way home from arizona, and then during marty's staff retreat he heroically harvested a bagful to bring home for my canning pursuits.


these little suckers are, indeed, prickly. as marty discovered while picking, and i rediscovered processing them. it's not the obvious spikes that get you - those are easy to avoid, but the nearly microscopic stickers that cover the flesh of the fruit and hide out around your house to be picked up weeks later in your fingertips. it's an infuriating sharp little pain when your hand brushes against something but you can't actually see them to pick them out. this culinary project is a labor of love.


marty caught my attention with the idea of prickly pear lemonade, so that was my first objective with the fruit. i consulted a few places online and they said you could just peel the prickly pears and blend up the raw flesh to add in equal parts to lemonade, so that's what i did. alternately, i think you can boil the whole fruits until they break down and strain them into the lemonade, but i wasn't convinced that the stickers wouldn't still be present and potentially lodge in my throat, making the whole lemonade experience regrettable, so i preferred to take the peeling precaution.


as instructed by garrett mccord of vanilla garlic, i cut both ends off the prickly pears, made a vertical slice down the side and peeled the skin and pricklies away. even my attempts at holding the fruit with tongs and paper towels failed at preventing me from getting stickers all over my fingers, so i took another approach and decided to burn the little buggers off on the stove prior to peeling the skin off.


i got this idea from somewhere online, too, though i can't recall where now. this worked pretty well, though i can't say whether the process was entirely pain-free from there on out just because i had a number of them already present in my hands.
i kept this tupperware container of prickly pear puree in the refrigerator and stirred it into several batches of lemonade. i think it would also make a lovely sorbet.


what i learned about prickly pears - other than that they are incredibly well-armed against domestic onslaught - is that they are quite tenacious and lasted a remarkably long time in the refrigerator waiting around for me to find the time to make jam. i left the bag of fruits in the fridge for a good couple weeks before this peeling process, and then i satisfied my prickly pear curiosity with some batches of prickly pear lemonade and left the rest of the skinned fruits in the fridge for another week or more before finally making them into jelly today. they ripened nicely in the fridge, and seemed none-the-worse for wear.


the process was a pretty simple one, now that the thorns have mostly faded out of my life. i put the insides of the prickly pears into the cuisinart and whirred them around a bit to loosen the flesh from the little black seeds. then i heated them up on the stove a bit to further that process, and added a touch of water. i strained the seeds from the juice using the splatter screen i normally put on top of pans when i'm frying - which is not the ideal implement for straining, but it's the only thing i had that resembled a strainer with holes small enough to keep the seeds out. it worked fine, though it would have been easier if it had a concave surface.


i then put the strained juice back on the stove and whipped up a small batch of jelly using my favorite pomona's pectin. i ended up with three very pretty jars of jelly - which win the best-jam-yet prize from marty, who says, "this is all i want on my toast from here on out."

turn of the season: medicinal pears

i had this idea while picking the pears at mom's house in mt shasta, and they have since ripened and been sitting in the refrigerator while i considered what it would take to actually get it done. i knew that i couldn't conceivably eat a box full of pears before they spoiled, and that i should probably can them, but i don't really like the taste of canned pears so i had myself a dilemma about what to do with them. the only real association i have with canned pears is that the woman i worked as a waitress for in high school used to feed her son canned pears when the seasons changed to prevent him from getting sick. i have no idea if her practice was based in any kind of medicinal tradition, but it made me think that maybe i should can the pears and make a kind of keep-you-healthy-as-the-weather-turns tonic with them. my recent experience with being sick last week cemented the idea. i figure, if biotech companies can genetically insert pharmaceuticals into our foods, why shouldn't i try my hand at it?
my approach is a little different. only because i don't have the tools for gene-splicing in my kitchen, yet. i called up my herbalist friend jonah and asked him about other plants that are traditionally used for the same sort of purpose: immune system boosting during weather shifts. he suggested elderberries and some warming things like cloves and ginger. i acquired some dried elderberries and stewed up a pot of them with water, ginger, cloves, cinnamon and a little honey - what could be bad? usually pears are canned in a sugar syrup, but that seemed both gross and unhealthy to me, so i hope my medicinal tea will work just as well. they say you can also just can pears in water, so i figure it'll be fine on the safety front if not the taste front.
i chopped up the pears into chunks that fit better into the randomly sized jars i have left over from other canning projects, and boiled them for a minute in the medicinal tea while steralizing the jars. according to the internet, canned pears need to process in their water bath for at least 20 mins, which seemed to work just fine - all the jars sealed tightly and are now ready for consumption when the weather turns nasty here in oakland. haha.
if you're one of my cold-climate-inhabiting friends who doesn't find that joke funny let me know and i'll mail you a pear care package. you'll have to do it before the weather turns, though, this is preventative medicine.

jamming with the pluots: a how-to guide

the pluots got processed into jam this week with the help of laura and marty. i finally settled on adding ginger to the jam to ratchet up the flavor of the pluots, because as i mentioned in an earlier post, i don't actually like the taste of pluots that much, although i think they're so pretty. i couldn't resist adding some pink peppercorns - because, well, they're pink and they're pepper, and i think pepper should go in everything.
every time i talk about canning someone says to me "oh, really? i've been wanting to learn to do that," and after doing it with aryn's help i realize it's really not hard at all. so this is my first attempt at a blogging tutorial. i am by no means an expert on canning, everything i know i learned from the recipe in the pectin box and from my mom and aryn, so if any of you readers have something to add please do.
first off, laura's time was limited due to our extended lunch - and while she wanted to see the process through, it was a damn good lunch (the panini press is my favorite recently acquired kitchen tool - it's made sandwiches suddenly exciting). so laura and i washed, seeded and chopped the pluots into medium sized chunks. we put the pluots on the stove (with no added water - they boiled down with plenty of liquid on their own) on low heat.
and then laura had to leave and i got caught up in socializing and not watching the pot, which boiled over. oops. try to avoid that.
at the same time, i put a large covered pot of water on to boil. i think you can put the lids of the jars right in the water at this point because you want them to boil for a while and let that gummy stuff get soft.
ideally you would have read the recipe in the pectin box prior to starting this process, which i didn't. so my ingredients didn't go in quite in the right order, but now you're learning from my mistakes. as i mentioned, i'm thrilled with Pomona's Universal Pectin, but depending on what type of pectin you use, your process and ingredients will be different. just follow the recipe on the box.
so for the ginger-pink peppercorn-pluot jam i used Pomona's recipe for "sweet plum," which calls for 1/4 cup of lemon juice and somewhere between 3/4 - 2 cups of sugar for every 4 cups of mashed fruit. i didn't actually measure the fruit before putting it on the stove, but instead based my recipe on laura's assessment that it looked like "more than 4 cups." therefore i put in a little more than 1/4 cup of lemon juice and one cup of sugar. as you can see, this was not a precise process. and it turned out fine.
the reason pomona's pectin requires so much less sugar than your average pectin is that it uses calcium for the jelling process (i don't really understand how that works, but i'm explaining it here like i do). and there was a question about if pomona's pectin is vegetarian, and yes - it is, my understanding is that all pectin is vegetarian, it's gelatin that is not, but i know for sure this one comes from fruit peels.so part of your canning process then is to mix up the calcium with some water (1/2 teaspoon calcium powder to 1/2 cup water). and this is the only complaint i have so far for pomona's: the box comes with two packets in it which look identical except that one has less powder in it, and one is the pectin and one is the calcium powder and neither are labeled. sure, the instructions tell you that the pectin is a darker color powder and there's less of the calcium powder, but for your average frantic canner who's never dealt with calcium powder before and has several things on the stove boiling over i think they could just label those suckers. maybe i'll call their jamline to give them this feedback.with pomona's you stir together the pectin and the sugar first and then mix that into the fruit. what the recipe actually says is that you put the calcium water and the pectin-sugar mix into the fruit and then bring it to a boil. i did it the other way around, letting the fruit boil for a while before adding the calcium and pectin, but i think that worked out ok because the largish chunks of fruit needed time to cook down. i still put the calcium water in first and then added the pectin, just in case that's important. what IS important is to constantly stir while pouring the pectin-sugar mixture into the fruit on the stove, otherwise you're liable to end up with gelatinous chunks. thus the awkwardness of me trying to pose the above photo while using both hands. thanks to marty for his photo documentation of this process.at this point your water should be at a nice rolling boil and you can add the jars for sterilization. i always give my jars a quick soapy wash first just because who knows what they were exposed to in the factory and they always smell kinda chemically. here the pomona's package said you should bring the lids and rings to a boil but then turn off the heat and let the jars sit in the hot water. i think this is to reduce your chances of breaking the glass, but i called to consult aryn about this and we agreed that i'd rather reduce my chances of getting botulism so i boiled the jars too for about 3 minutes. then i turned off the heat and let them sit in the hot water for a while, just to be sure.
a note about water: it's a delicate balance to determine the right amount of water to boil - you want it to completely cover your jars (about an inch above their tops) but remember the displacement factor - once the jars go in your water level will rise. maybe a good idea is to test the jars in the water before it starts boiling to make sure they fit right. another tip if you're not thinking ahead is to add already boiling water if you've guessed too little on the water - that way your water keeps boiling and you don't bring down the temperature. meanwhile, i'm stirring my jam - vigorously - for 1-2 minutes until the pectin dissolves and it returns to a boil. then i take it off the heat. don't worry if it seems too liquidy to be jam at this point - as long as you've added the right amount of pectin. it will thicken as it cools and it will set up completely in the jars. i worried that mine looked to thin, even once i put them into jars - but after several hours it set up nicely. here is a great website resource for jamming - much more thorough and knowledgeable than what you're reading right now. in it she suggests a way to test for jellyness: keep a metal spoon in a glass of ice water, grab a spoonful of your jam and let it cool to room temperature on the spoon. if you need to add more pectin to make it thicker you can, just follow the instructions in the pectin box.now you're going to want to take your jars and lids out of the hot water and put them on a clean dish towel to dry off a bit. i considered buying the actual jar grabbing tool that they sell specifically for this purpose, but decided that i could make do with my metal tongs. after several scalding and near-dropping experiences i really recommend not being cheap like me and getting that jar grabber.
remember to turn your water back on to boil (i keep it covered) for the final water bath.once your jars have cooled a bit - or grabbing them with a towel if you're impatient like me - you're going to fill them to 1/4 inch below the rim with jam. do your best to get the jam into the jar and not on the outsides of it because that will make your next step easier. that being said, it's harder than it looks, so don't worry if it's a messy process. we decided to put in sprinkles of pink peppercorns in layers as i filled up the jars because we were worried they would all sink to the bottom. they actually float rather than sink, so a lot of the peppercorns ended up at the top of the jar. i think if i were to do this again i would stir them into the pot of jam just before jarring and hope it was thick enough that they mixed in well. i tried to place them close to the edge of the jar in hopes of maximizing their visibility from the outside, but they had a mind of their own.the next step is wiping the rim of your jar. i did this with a half-wet, half-dry paper towel. the point of this step is to get all the gunk off so you get a tight seal and no botulism. once you've got the rim clean you can set your lid on top and twist the ring on - it doesn't need to be twisted on super tight at this point, i'm not sure why that is, but i give it a quarter turn back from super tight - i don't know why - maybe because of my training with air tanks for scuba diving. who knows.

once you've got all the lids on the jars you're going to process them in the water bath. gently put them all upright in the boiling water (again, the water should completely cover the jars). the recipe in the pectin box says you only need to boil the jars for 5 minutes - plus an additional minute for every 1,000 feet you are above sea level, i won't even pretend to know what that's about. i didn't really believe that and left them boiling longer while i checked the internet for a second opinion. it's confirmed, in fact, that they only need to boil for 5 minutes, so go ahead and believe your box. as i said, i left mine boiling longer and they turned out fine.
the other thing the box says that i don't believe is that the jam "lasts about 3 weeks once opened." that can't be true, right? doesn't jam last basically forever in the fridge? i'll let you know, because i had not enough jam left over to fill a whole jar, so i kept my leftovers in the fridge - i'll keep you updated on their decay if it lasts more than 3 weeks. once your jars have boiled for 5 mins you can take them out and leave them to cool - ideally in a "draft free area where they won't get bumped." but if you happen to leave them in front of the fan to cool and your boyfriend comes along to shake them up and down trying to find the peppercorns - that'll be ok too.
the way you test for a secure seal (and no threat of botulism) is the fun little popping button on the top of the lid. don't worry if it still pops up and down when you take the jars out of the water bath (i love that term, by the way, it's like my jam is getting a spa treatment). give them a couple hours and they should seal as the jam cools. if one or two jars don't seal and the button still pops up and down - don't worry, just keep that one in the fridge and eat it first.
and that's it. enjoy that jam.

market score of the day: pluots

Sele and I headed to the Lake Merritt Farmers Market this morning with the expressed purpose of finding more things to can. We settled on pluots simply because they were so beautiful. I like the idea of pluots: plums and apricots put together, what's not to love? But I'm always disappointed with their taste. So I was scheming on what to add to pluot preserves to make them more appealing: Sele thought basil. I'm skeptical about this, but was willing to do purple sweet basil, just for aesthetic wonder. We sniffed the purple basil and decided against that idea. I'm still considering star anise - not really because I think the tastes would go together, but again solely for aesthetic reasons. I can picture the pink translucent flesh of the pluot along with the sharp angles of the star anise in the jar and it's so appealing. The spiced jam idea is inspired by my friend Rachel's mom, Mindy's recent batch of strawberry-cardamom jam, which got my wheels whirring. I couldn't quite bring myself to pay for strawberries and then not eat them fresh, so I'm working on a less expensive alternative with the pluots. We'll see what comes of it.
In other market-related news: heirloom tomatoes are still out in force and so fabulous. Here's Sele with some particularly great selections.

canning continues

before my housemate, aryn, moves back east to pursue her graduate degree, i've been garnering all i can of her knowledge of canning. a couple weeks ago we went to pick peaches and plums in brentwood, ca - which turns out to be a disorienting gated-community-type suburb with random orchards hidden in the middle of it. we made peach and plum jam with this pectin i found at whole foods - and while i normally despise having to shop at "whole paycheck" as aryn calls it, this time they provided some pectin that changed my whole experience of jam. this stuff, pomona's universal pectin, uses calcium instead of sugar to activate its jelling power - meaning you can use a fraction of the amount of sugar that normal pectin requires (often one to one fruit to sugar, eew). now i can't justify using any other type of pectin. not to mention they have a "jamline" - really, that's what they call their phone question line.
following the success of our peach and plum jamming experience, aryn and i jarred up some heirloom tomatoes - taking advantage of that season and anticipating the long hard winter aryn has ahead of her in worcester, ma. we roasted the tomatoes in the oven until they melted into little puddles and then scooped them into sterilized jars, layering with lemon juice (to prevent botchalism, nobody wants that), olive oil and basil leaves. then put the jars back into the water bath for about 45 mins. all the jars sealed up tight (though i didn't do a good job of getting all the air bubbles out of my tomatoes, i hope that won't be a problem) and they look pretty and tasty.