Jam Session 1: Yes, We Have No Bananas

A word about the principles I adopted and challenges I set myself during my first-ever preserving project:

1. I decided to make only seasonal jam, insofar as summer fruits are most definitely not to be had at their best right now. Of course, bananas aren't ripening on the tree in my corner of the world at the moment but they must be growing somewhere, mustn't they? Anyway, I do not believe their quality varies greatly with the time of year. Since home preservers typically work with citrus over the winter months, all my recipes made free use of this fine fruit family.
2. I shunned recipes requiring commercial pectin, reasoning that the employment of Sure-Jell and the like takes all the challenge out of the proceedings. Where's the fun without a tingling uncertainly and the constant lurking threat of total ruination?
3. I was determined to vacuum seal every jar I made, just to see if I could do it.
4. To heighten the suspense and investigate their properties, I employed three different brands of jar, each with its own peculiar lid configuration.

Since banana jam was the raison d'etre for this whole canning catastrophe, I decided to start with a recipe from one of my iCookbooks that included raisins, limes, and ginger. Having foraged for and found all the necessary ingredients at my friendly local supermarket, I promptly threw my best-laid plans out the window when I received a last-minute e-mail from dear Toad, preserver nonpareil. She herself had just received a new jam book (via UPS, I assume, since it is definitely not Kindle-able: I checked), the English translation of Christine Ferber's magnum opus, Mes Confitures. Toad kindly forwarded to me one of Ferber's (many!) recipes for banana jam, which I decided I had to taste without delay. I made alternative marmalade plans for the limes, re-arranged my other priorities and ingredients, and set to work with a will.

My first batch of Jam de Banane was fabricated using a recipe more or less identical to the one in Mes Confitures. It took almost 24 hours total and was utter heaven when it was done. I used a variety of citrus fruits for their flavor and pectin content and chose for the final storage vehicle Ball jars from the good old US of A, with their cunningly separate seals and rings.

Here's how I did it.

I peeled ripe (but not mushy!) organic bananas until I had 1.5 pounds' worth in their nude state. I lost count, but I think there were about nine total. I sliced them into 0.5 inch rounds and arranged them in my big pot with 4 cups of sugar, citrus juice squeezed from 1 lemon, 2 tangerines, and 3 navel oranges, orange zest, and a scraped vanilla bean draped artfully o'er all.

I slowly, slowly heated up the mixture, stirring more or less constantly while the sugar melted. This took some time, so I entertained myself by humming all the while Ja, Wir Haben Keine Bananen, as sung by the geriatric East German cafe orchestra that serenaded Jimmy Cagney in One Two Three. Images of Horst Buchholz with his 'Yankee Go Home' balloons and Uncle Sam cuckoo clock danced through my head. This always happens when I think of bananas.

Back to business! I was awakened from my reverie to find my jam mixture had come to a simmer. I decanted it into a big glass bowl, covered the surface with parchment paper, covered the whole thing with plastic wrap, and let it sit quietly until the following day. 

It looked quite pretty in the morning sun!

At this point, the recipe became a little vague. The big question for this preserve concerned texture and appearance: the jam of my memories was smooth like a fruit butter, but these slices of banana were so attractive against the glass of the bowl that I considered leaving them the way they were, perhaps even including slices of the vanilla bean pressed against the outsides of the jars for extra fanciness. Sanity returned when I recalled that my organic vanilla bean had cost more than three dollars, necessitating that - in order to get my money's worth - I use and reuse it until the day I die.

Into the food processor for whizzing with the big metal blade! When the mixture was fairly smooth (with some pleasing banana bits for texture) I returned it to the pan and brought it to a boil. I cooked it, stirring frequently, until it reached 221 deg F on my candy thermometer, by which time it was also thick and syrupy.

Meanwhile, I had heated up all the canning accoutrements in various pots scattered about the kitchen, in readiness for my hot jam. There was a certain kerfuffle as I retrieved my jars from their hot water bath and tried to figure out the best place to work (I got into the groove during my second batch, and figured out an effective system for keeping lids, jars, and rings organized). I ladled the jam into my quilted jars, left the requisite 'head space' of 0.5 inches, wiped their sticky rims, popped on the seals, and screwed the rings finger tight. Back into the bath!

When the water reached boilage, I set my timer for ten minutes and cleaned all the spilled and sprayed banana jam off the floor, walls, and ceiling.

I retrieved my jars after their processing and put them on a wire rack to cool. I was cheered by their merry pinging as they settled into their vacuumed state.

When they were done popping about half an hour later, every single one sported a pronounced dimple, the proud badge of the successful American home canner.

I'm reluctant to open any of the jars, yet, having vacuumed every single one shut (astonishingly, given that Ferber is silent on the vital subject of yields, I cooked precisely the amount required for the 3 eight-ounce jars and 5 four-ounce jars I had prepared). I can tell you, though, that we licked the cooking pan utterly clean.

The jam was just as wonderful as I remembered.

Next up: I use some of my remaining bananas for an awesome chutney and discover the perfidiousness of Italian canning jars.

Decompression

Having submerged myself deep in my preserving pan all weekend, I am just now coming up for air. I have learned a great deal and produced eleven pints of quite excellent jams and conserves, if I say so myself. I had no real disasters and several notable successes.

And it was fun, too!

The final tally:

• Banana jam with vanilla and three citruses: 2.75 pints
• Banana, date, and ginger chutney: 2.50 pints
• Clove-scented pear jam with pineapple: 1.50 pints
• Pineapple and pear preserves with Cointreau: 1.50 pints
• Very bitter lime and Meyer lemon marmalade:  2.75

I used four different varieties of jar and am now able to hold forth enthusiastically on the advantages and deficits of each: Ball quilted 8 oz; Ball quilted 4 oz; Leifheit 0.25 litres (which is really 8 oz, I now know); and Bormioli Rocco e Filio Quattro Stagione Vaso 70 mm diam (which also holds 8 oz or 0.25 litres or, in fact, 250 mLs). A pint's a pound the world around!

More details to come  - but first, I must readjust to life at sea level.

The fruits of my labors

There's Moleskine, again!

Sadly, he's in a bit of a dudgeon

and not speaking to me at the moment,

having this weekend been temporily forsaken

for a new black-covered Volant large-ruled 'jam' book.

I didn't want to risk getting Moleskine's

precious pages sticky, did I?

A Deep Breath Before the Plunge

Well, nobody ever accused me of doing things by halves.

On Monday all I wanted was some banana jam. It is now Friday and, after five full days of planning, plotting, studying, and advice-seeking, my entire weekend will be given over to an orgy of chopping, stirring, sterilizing, and conserving to which the Kid Squid insists on referring as 'Jam Camp'. I shall be canning my little heart out for two solid days.

I have in the house quite a bit of fruit, since I had trouble choosing just one recipe from my two superlative new books. In addition, I have received a number of recipes from generous readers who know a thing or two about these matters. I have jars, lids, and organic vanilla beans (easily the most expensive part of this entire enterprise) standing by.

This is Fractured Amy signing off. I shall resurface in a couple of days, I trust, with tales to tell and jam to prove them.

Wish me luck.



Raw materials for Jam Camp.

Moleskine, warming to his new role in the limelight,

snuck into the frame when I wasn't looking.

Top Chef All-Stars, Episode 11: Don't Mess with the Moleskine

Fractured Amy is currently too preoccupied with jam-making fantasies 

to think about the adventures of Bravo's crazy Top Chefs.

Today's special report comes via our special correspondent, Moleskine II.

Wheeeee!

This is Moleskine, gang, and I am SO excited to be here! First I want to say thanks to Fractured Amy for giving me this awesome opportunity and second I want to say thanks to all my fans for their awesome support! THANKS guys, you are all GREAT and I love you TONS!

I LOVE Top Chef too! It's my favorite show! Blais is my favorite CHEF! He's great! He has two Moleskine notebooks that he uses to jot down all his awesome IDEAS and pictures of the plates that he wants to make as soon as Padma Lakshmi gives him the chance! Don't you LOVE Padma Lakshmi? I sure do! I think her clothes are GREAT. I love Tom Colicchio too - he once saved somebody's LIFE when they were choking and I think that's AWESOME! That lady might have DIED if Chef Tom didn't know the HEIMLICH Maneuver but he did and so he SAVED her!

But let's talk about Blais' NOTEBOOKS! I think it's awesome that he uses Moleskine notebooks, even if they are REPORTER style. I am a COOL 5.25" x 8.25" soft-covered squared notebook and we're the BEST, but reporter notebooks are OK too if you don't mind WASTING the backs of all the pages! At least he wasn't using a PEANUTS notebook or a PASSION journal, which are both stupid and for GIRLS. We don't talk to THEM because they are not awesome AT ALL. Reporter notebooks are somewhere between STUPID notebooks like them and a COOL notebook like me so they are awesome but NOT as awesome as I am!

But then that bad chef Mike Isabella TOOK one of Blais' notebooks and read it and STOLE one of Blais' awesome ideas and tried to pretend like it was his own when Paula Deen was the quickfire judge. And that wasn't FAIR because Paula LOVED the dish that was a chicken's oysters on a real oyster shell (which was a GREAT idea) and then Mike won $5000 that should have gone to Blais and I wanted Mike to DIE. I don't really mean that but I was so MAD! It is very very bad to touch another person's Moleskine notebook and it was not at all AWESOME for Mike to do that. Carla and Antonia (who are both GREAT, I think!) said Mike broke the chef's law but it is more important to me that he broke Moleskine rules, which are there for a very good reason and are only ever broken by very bad people like Mike Isabella who I would like to call a very bad name. Plus I wish he would DIE. I don't really mean that except I do. He makes me so MAD! He is UGLY, too, and I don't like the way he laughs. I think he's STUPID.

All the chefs had to cook lots of Southern food to help the fishes and animals and environment in the Gulf after the big OIL SPILL and that was AWESOME because they made lots of money for a good cause. But Carla, who I LOVE and is one of the best chefs EVER, didn't do very well and I was afraid she would go home so I stopped being mad and started being sad. But Dale did way worse so he went home, which was also sad because Dale has been nice ever since he met the Muppets. I LOVE the Muppets, especially Gonzo because he is so AWESOME. And then Richard won the challenge, which was GREAT because he beat that big bad ugly Mike Isabella and gets to go on a trip to Barbados, which is not a place I have ever been to even though it sounds GREAT but maybe it isn't because it is so muggy there that my pages would get damp and curly. That would make me so SAD. But I was HAPPY that BLAIS won and I know he won because of his Moleskine notebooks because they are GREAT and AWESOME and very very HELPFUL.

I think everybody should have a Moleskine notebook except mean horrible MIKE ISABELLA who doesn't deserve one because he is a BAD MAN. And he made me ANGRY and so I wouldn't want to be his notebook not even if they gave me a million zillion dollars and said I could go to BARBADOS. Maybe he could have a PAC-MAN notebook because they are STUPID and for GIRLS. But I hope that he goes home next week and I never ever ever have to see his big ugly stupid FACE again. And since he doesn't have his own Moleskine notebook I think he will LOSE.

And then Blais will win and I will be so happy AGAIN because I LOVE Blais because he is so AWESOME!

And I love being a MOLESKINE notebook! It is GREAT!

Fractured Amy apologizes for this unavoidable suspension of normal services

and promises to return to her duties as soon as humanly possible.

Saints Preserve Us

Having decided to make banana jam and secured a recipe from a trustworthy source, the time has come to admit outright an embarrassing personal secret, heretofore implied but not explicitly stated in my scribblings about fridge-a-lade and carrot jam.

I have never in my life vacuum-preserved a fruit or vegetable of any kind.

You heard me right -  difficult as it might be to believe, my existence so far has been utterly free of gingham aprons, cling peaches, jam pans, and all the other accoutrements of classic canning praxis. Of steam juicers, sterilization, wax seals, and Ball jars I know next to nothing.

In my current spirit of innovation, experimentation, and lifelong learning, however, I have decided to give it a whirl. My two new jamming books are chock full of detailed instructions for the novice putter-upper, enabling me to forestall the intimidating threats of bacterial invasion and botulistical outbreak. Having been pouring over theories and procedures for the last few days, I have decided that I have stumbled upon another one of those occult areas where practitioners propagate a certain mystique for their own complacent purposes.

Small-batch preserving doesn't appear to be all that difficult, frankly. In fact, it doesn't even seem to require much specialist equipment. I can use my biggest spaghetti pot to sterilize the jars; my round-bottomed stainless steel saucier to cook the mixture itself; a plastic chopstick for air bubble releasage (Japanese o-hashi are pointy, you know); and my best pair of rubber gloves for jar insertion into and retrieval from their infection-preventing sauna (I made a name for myself long ago with my remarkable asbestos fingers).

The trickiest part is the jars. You don't want to be taking shortcuts with those. I had been assured by Internet Experts that proper canning jars with rings and seals would be impossible to find at this time of year, but once again I was deceived. On a tip from The Diva, who knows all about such things, I presented myself at my local supermarket and was gratified to discover that they have canning supplies all the year round. I was directed to a little-visited corner of the produce section (little-visited by me, anyway) to find a veritable cornucopia of Ball jars in a variety of sizes and configurations. Of course, that didn't stop me from ordering online some extra-special and gorgeous European jars with olde worlde style for gift-giving and the like. A girl requires a certain amount of fanciness, after all - in her confiture if not her couture, if you get my meaning.

So far, the most recondite piece of information to which I have been made newly privvy is that jams, jellies, preserves, and conserves (words that I tend to use interchangeably to avoid those writers' bains, repetition and redundancy) are all quite different things. Who knew? Below, I offer a definition of each as a public service to readers who are curious about such arcana:

• jam - crushed or chopped fruit cooked with sugar until it sets, often made from a single fruit
• jelly - gelled mixture of sugar and juice, clear or opaque (OK, I knew that one)
• preserves - whole or sliced fruits in syrup or soft jelly. UK English for conserves.
• conserves - jam made from several ingredients, which may include two or more fruits and other ingredients such as nuts

Call the contents what you will, everybody I know will soon be flooded with home-made jars of seasonal scrumptiousness - organic where possible, utterly natural, chemical and preservative-free. Should the canning bug really take hold, I may be handing out JJP&Cs on street corners soon, inundated as I no doubt will be with marmalades, chutneys, ketchups, fruits-in-syrup, and confits of every description.

Keep an eye out - I'll be the crazy gal carrying a cardboard carton full of Bormioli Rocco jars and wearing a gingham apron.

The Full Color Treatment

My yearning for banana jam has become so strong that, unless some appears in my kitchen soon, my life - and, I regret to say, the lives of those around me - will not be worth living. You know how it is: when something like that gets in your head, there's no shaking it until the hunger has been assuaged. And pity the poor soul who gets caught in the erstwhile maelstrom of discontent and high dudgeon.

For all our sakes, I am taking drastic action.

I related previously how, unlike my effortless research for carrot jam, I had a wee bit of bother finding authoritative internet guidance on preserving bananas. A search through my cookbooks had previously yielded nothing. Fortunately, I had one further means of data-trawling at my disposal - Amazon's wonderful 'Look Inside' feature, one of my favorite electronic conveniences of all time. In the time it takes to say Gigabyte! I was able to locate two promising-looking preserving books by sensible-sounding women who no doubt have the editors, test kitchens, and other paraphernalia required for Recipes that Work. Each of these books claimed to have at least one prescription for banana preserves.

Pay dirt!

It was the work of a nanosecond to have the works delivered wirelessly to my iPad, my preferred medium for electronic culinary references. My Kindle, although totally awesome in just about every conceivable way (I plan to be buried with it), doesn't do photographs or diagrams all that well. For example, Harold McGee is disastrously difficult to follow in his Kindled form, a state of affairs that just won't do when one requires the the scientific names of edible seaweeds, chemically-accurate representations of starch molecules, or the family tree of classic French sauces tout de suite. Cooking for Geeks, with its myriad text boxes and inserts, is similarly incomprehensible in the Amazon reader's configuration.

Resultingly, I felt that my new jamming books, including as they do photographs of setups and vital equipment - not to mention risque and libidinous depictions of luscious, quivering compotes and confitures - would be better suited to the whole glorious technicolor shebang, especially for a canning novice such as myself.

Now, although I have been berated for my slavish Kindle devotion by some of my nearest and dearest (not Sir, thankfully, who shares my passion as a loyal spouse should), more enlightened pals think it is just about forgivable to read eBooks, especially when travelling. On the other hand, nobody - but nobody! - can understand how I am able to abide my iPad in the kitchen. But really, it makes total sense. I don't have to worry about propping it open (and thus ruining the spine); if I splash goo all over the screen it's a simple matter to wipe it off (my dead tree copy of Delia Smith is positively crusty with residue, and while this might be seen by some as a suitable memento of cooking adventures past, I think it's gross); and the ability to download a chapter or two helps avoid the later-regretted purchase of a less-than-perfect cookbook.

And that is how, in less time than it took me to boil the kettle, I came to have in my possession trustworthy recipes for banana jam (with rum and raisins, no less - another use for my treasured Hunza beauties) and banana and date chutney. Not to mention gingered pear jam, red pepper orange jelly, sweet cherries in almond syrup, cantaloupe preserves with cinnamon, chestnut cream, and five-fruit ketchup - all courtesy of Mary Anne Dragan (the title of her book, Well Preserved, would have been too good to pass up under any circumstances) and Linda Zeidrich, putter-upper and preserver par excellence.

Thanks to this praiseworthy pair of pickling personages, Amazon, and my iPad, I should have banana jam in the pantry by Monday. And for that, the rest of the family can be truly thankful.

Web of Deceit

A number of readers have expressed their surprise that I should have been hoodwinked by Mark Hix, Clarence Court, and the unbaked creme brulee bamboozle. I would like to point out that, although I was fully cognizant of the custards' customary cookery procedure, I thought perhaps I was missing some trickstery shortcut that would make heating up my oven unnecessary. In my daydreams, after successfully producing six perfect desserts without resorting to water baths and hotboxes, I entered the pantheon of Those In The Know and became filled with the self-satisfaction that comes from recognizing truths that other mere mortals do not.

As I discovered to my chagrin, common wisdom was not - in this rare case - an oxymoron.

I blame the internet.

It's let me down a lot these days.

First, there was the small matter of trying to discover the gluten content of various prepared condiments and sauces so I could more effectively engage in the Great Refrigerator Purge. Gluten-free and allergy-related boards and fora are chock full of misleading, contradictory, and downright wacky information. Take one small example, Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing. Does it have gluten in it or doesn't it? Whatever you do, don't try to find out online: literally thousands of people have contributed to the debate, none of whom seem to have any real knowledge or understanding of what they are talking about. It's kind of insane - and does nothing for one's equilibrium during an already fraught enterprise. 

Then, there was the trivial-seeming issue of the pectin content in carrots. Easy, right? Three different internet authorities will give you three very different answers, I assure you, for what should (in my opinion at least) be a straightforward item of data.

And let's not forget the soy sauce debacle, which I have documented elsewhere.

I won't even begin to enumerate the other topics about which I have been forced to bang my head against the keyboard: lactose, broccoli, folic acid, magnesium - the list is neverending, a characteristic it shares with the copious amounts of wrongheaded information; well-intentioned (but hopelessly spurious and in some cases possibly dangerous) advice offered by Enthusiasts of All Descriptions; and sinister deceptions perpetrated by the Dread Agents of Agribusiness and Processed Foods and equally fearsome Promoters of Suspicious Supplements and Other Substances, with which the information superhighway is strewn. 

[deep breath] Now I have a whole new line of inquiry, to which the internet is adding nothing but confusion and woe.

Banana jam.

I want to make some and store it in pretty glass containers and eat it for breakfast. I have a dim memory from the distant past of straight-sided jars full of sweet and subtle tropical goodness that I used to slather on scones (this was prior to my gluten freedom-fighting career, of course). More than that I cannot remember. The preserve probably came out of the estimable boo-teek kitchens of Fauchon or Hediard, but further details are maddeningly elusive.

How hard could it be to produce such a conserve on my own stove? As with carrots, I thought I could do a quick trawl to establish general principles and then wing it. Unfortunately, given bananas' low pectin content, the issue is not straightforward. How much sugar is required? Do I need a gelling agent or do I not? What about the peel? These seemed like simple questions. Sadly, the only recipes I could find (quickly, it must be admitted, but I am an exceedingly efficient web researcher) varied wildly in their method and underlying theory.

Why is this?

Because the recipes are all written by bloggers. Bloggers, I tell you!

I never trust them.

In a Jam

Now that I am boycotting manufactured condiments until such time as everybody can get their allergen-labelling acts together, there aren't a whole lot of jars and bottles in the fridge. Most of those remaining after last weekend's purge belong to Others in the Family: a quick inventory reveals ketchup, three different kinds of mustard, Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing, Hershey's chocolate syrup, and some organic cherry spread that is so clearly labelled gluten-free I felt I could make an exception to my otherwise draconian restrictions. Also, cherries are delicious and the jar was 3/4 full. Waste not want not!

But that leaves a sucking void on the shelves where my jam traditionally resides. Since nature abhors a vacuum, I spent the week considering what to do - particularly since my fridge-a-lade was running out and some sort of alternative preserve was urgently required to gussy up my breakfast yogurt with chia seeds.

I had a very busy day yesterday and didn't have time to get to the shops - but the situation was desperate. I rummaged through the pantry and found six big organic carrots left over from ragu-making earlier in the week.

Carrot jam!

I'd never made it before but knew it was possible: carrots are sweetly delicious and I had some vague ideas about carrot pudding, carrot chutney, and gajar halwa. A quick internet trawl for some basic info on carrots' sugar and pectin content (web sources disagree wildly, of course: estimates range from 0.8% to 2.0% pectin by weight, but there is basic consensus that the super-root falls somewhere between oranges and apples - the most common sources of manufactured pectin).

A quick calculation (gotta' get those proportions right!) and I was away.

I thought about the sorts of flavours that complement carrots and considered additions throughout fabrication. I settled on cloves and ginger as my main seasonings, with a pinch of cayenne for welcome heat and a splash of vanilla for the finish. Cumin would have been good if I'd been going a more savory route and ground black pepper was also a possibility. I considered, too, grapefuit-scented white balsamic - maybe next time.

At any rate, the result was peerless, if I do say so myself: thick, delicious, and sophisticated-tasting with hints of spice and citrus. I ate some this morning and decided it was just about my favorite breakfast accompaniment of all time. It will be delightful on cornbread, as a relish for grilled pork (so assisting during tomorrow's dinner, in fact), and as a garnish for panna cotta. The fact that, having eaten of my titian condiment, I will be capable of owl-like night vision is an added bonus.

Now that jam-making has opened up a whole new line of gluten-free enquiry, I'll be filling up those shelves in no time.

Carrot Jam

• Some volume of carrots, peeled and chopped reasonably small (I had six carrots, which gave me three cups' worth)
• sugar to equal 2/3 carrot volume (I used one cup of white sugar and one cup of turbinado sugar)

For my three cups of carrots I also used the following (adjust to taste for different amounts of veg):

• the juice and grated zest of one lemon
• the juice and grated zest of one orange
• 2 cloves
• 1 teaspoon of ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla
• a pinch of cayenne

Combine the carrots and the sugar in a large saucepan. Add the citrus juice and zest, cloves, and most of the ginger (save a bit for a final dash at the end of cooking). Slowly bring the mixture to a simmer, stirring frequently until the sugar has melted.

Bring to a slow boil and continue cooking over medium/high heat for about 40 minutes, or until the carrots are cooked and the mixture is syrupy. Stir often and reduce the heat if there is any sign of scorching at the edges.

At the end of cooking, turn off the heat and remove the cloves. Stir in the remaining ginger, vanilla, and cayenne. You could also add a little booze at this stage - brandy would be good - but that might be perceived as excessive by the temperance-promoters among us, especially if the preserve is to be served at breakfast time.

Transfer the jam to a food processor fitted with a steel blade and whizz it around until it is pretty smooth. You could also leave it chunky (which would be awesome) for a more chutney-like texture. Decant the result into your prettiest glass compotiers (my six carrots yielded two jars) and refrigerate. It should keep for weeks and weeks (if necessary, which is unlikely) as long as it's cold.

Burnt Offering

The spheres aligned in such a way that I made Creme Brulee for the first time ever this week. It took several hours over two days and by the time I was finished I'd almost forgotten why I started. As I recall, the train of thought that led to my caramelized custard caper went something like this:

1. Hmmm. I have many, many egg yolks left over after baking the gluten-free Cake for a Very Special Occasion. Whatever shall I do with them?
2. I know. I will check the recipes at Clarence Court's elegant website. If they can't tell me what to do with my yolks, nobody can.
3. Why - here's one! Creme brulee! What better way to christen my brand new chef's torch, residing as yet untried in the string drawer in the kitchen?
4. As an added bonus, I will supplement my repertoire with another gluten-free dessert.

And so on. When I finally settled down and examined the recipe, I was somewhat taken aback. Although I have never fabricated creme brulee in my life, I am not unfamiliar with the procedure. What could be easier? You make a thick vanilla custard, sprinkle some sugar on top, zap it with some fire, and everybody wins.

Sigh.

My first concern was that the Clarence Court recipe, unlike every other for creme brulee I have seen, does not call for the custard to be baked. I was suspicious because the recipe itself is weirdly repetitive and contradictory once you get to the key bit about cooking the custard.

I checked the recipe's pedigree, to see if there was anything strikingly bizarre about its origin. Although the blurb mentioned an English version called Trinity Burnt Cream (characterized by a lack of vanilla and less general sweetness), the recipe on the CC website claimed to be for the actual genuine Froggy article. The author, Mark Hix, is a prolific English cookbook writer and celebrity chef, so I guess you could say his credentials are in order, apart from the French part. According to Wikipedia, Hix served Keith Floyd his last meal before the latter expired of a heart attack a few hours later, although foul play was not suspected (the subsequent offering on his restaurant menu of Keith Floyd's Last Lunch struck some as ghoulish, or at least in very poor taste - but it's the sort of thing I would do if I had a restaurant of my own. Make of that what you will - particularly if you are planning to come to my house for dinner.)

Anyway, it looked as though Hix knew what he was doing brulee-wise, so I decided to give the recipe a whirl. The proof of the custard is in the jiggle, I always say!

I followed the recipe to the letter, whipping up a batch of vanilla-scented creamy goodness and heating it in my round-bottomed saucier until the mixture was very thick and hot. I chilled it quickly by whisking it in a bowl set inside another bowl of ice (a trick garnered from Julia); poured the eggy elixir into ramekins, which I popped into the newly spacious fridge to spend the night.

The next morning, when I tipped one of the dishes expectantly to see whether it had set during the wee hours, several tablespoons of sweet deliciousness slopped out all over my slippers. Nope - definitely not the correct texture.

As I drove to work I pondered my misfortune. Perhaps the creme would miraculously stiffen up when I attacked it with my blowtorch? Not wanting to be prejudiced too quickly against what I shall call The English Method and ever eager for new experimental challenges, I decided to engage in some R&D when I got home. I would bake some of the custards in a water bath before setting them alight and brulee the rest as they were, thus establishing empirically which method produced the more glorious (or at least, more successful) dessert.

Later that afternoon I resumed the trial. Two of the ramekins I left alone. I popped the remaining victims into a roasting pan filled halfway up with boiling water and baked them at 325 deg F for half an hour (as per destructions in the big yellow Gourmet cookbook). When the cremes were firmer (but still wobbly when set upon with tongs) I removed them from the hotbox and stored them in the garage so they could cool quickly.

Then, the moment I had been waiting for! I sprinkled each of the custards with organic turbinado sugar left over from my fridge-a-lade project and - with a gleam in my eye and arson in my heart - I barbecued them with my fabulous new toy. It took a little practice, but was terribly terribly extremely fun to do.

When they were all bubbly and brown and the kitchen smelled like a cotton candy booth I popped the ramekins back in the fridge until dinner time.

They looked awesome, if I say so myself.

After dinner, we addressed our desserts in the proper spirit of inquiry and constructive criticism. In all cases, the burnt sugar crust shattered in precisely the required manner when tapped with a spoon. The baked custards were creamy and soft, but held their own under their caramelized topping. My only niggling complaint was the vanilla flavor - not having any vanilla beans on hand I used extract (albeit very good extract), which just isn't the same. Lesson: always use vanilla beans in creme brulee.

The unbaked custards, prepared according Mark Hix's instructions, were all wrong. They were more sabayon than custard, and the texture was not sufficiently robust to withstand the challenges of the brulee. We scraped all the crispy bits off the tops and munched them happily while declaring his recipe's English Method a failure.

The moral of my story is Always Bake Your Creme Brulee.

 And beware of Englishmen bearing French recipes.

Top Chef All-Stars, Episode 10: Everything's A-OK

This morning, Moleskine II and I thought we had entered an alternate universe where Just Desserts was still taking up valuable space on our DVR's hard drive. A cookie quickfire challenge? Really? We were annoyed that we had roused ourselves out of bed a whole hour early merely to watch the cheftestants work with gluten, gluten, and more gluten for a full twenty minutes. We had just begun to consider retreating upstairs with a cup of coffee and a good book when the guest judges appeared and we became enthralled.

First, a proviso. The Kid Squid, having been raised in Other Places, was never a Sesame Street fan, having emigrated Stateside at too advanced an age to appreciate the educational programming provided by the good people at the Children's Television Workshop. This is not to say he was not a huge fan of the Muppets - we all were, chez Fractured Amy, and remain so to this day, still sitting down from time to time to enjoy their rousingly masterful rendition of Treasure Island (I would like to declare for the record that Tim Curry makes the best singing and dancing Long John Silver in the history of the world). What I am trying to say is that the Squid never went through an Elmo phase, and for that I have always been truly thankful. I have always imagined that Elmo is excessively cutesy, annoying, shrill, and not a little self-satisfied with his role as the Conscience of America's Toddlers.

Well, all that changed this morning when I saw him metaphorically bitch slap Pads down a peg or two and tell the cookie creators just what he thought of their efforts. In fact, all three Muppet quickfire judges (let's not forget Cookie Monster and Telly) were just about the most awesome ever to have graced the Top Chef kitchen. Moleskine and I returned to our favorite chair to watch the fun.

Of course, most of the cheftestants claimed to be too highly trained (see Douglas Adams for reference) to have ever baked in their entire lives anything so banal as a cookie. I knew we were in for a ride when Cookie Monster, surveying the subsequent dessert devastation, observed that 'they are just throwing stuff into bowls and hoping for the best!' Oh, dear sweet Cookie Monster, truer words were never spoken by a Top Chef Judge.

The Furry Ones continued their trenchant commentary throughout prep and wreaked not a little mischief on the sweet-making scrappers: Richard took Elmo's advice by attempting to make a treat out of zucchini that Cookie Monster dryly pointed out 'was not technically a cookie' (way to go, CM, with the middle school vocabulary!) while all three heckled Dale mercilessly for the use of potato chips in his batter. Telly, it transpired, has a keen palate for texture while Elmo seemed to be more interested in visual appeal: we rewound and rewatched the Little Red Rogue's description of Antonia's 'cow chips' about thirty-two times. Oh, Elmo, no you didn't!

But the very best part was their response to Pads' attempt at educating the troops on the origin of spices and other culinary trivia. I am aware that she's a new mother and all, and therefore probably has pedagogy on the brain. I know she's always wanted to come across to viewers an an intellekshooal. Nonetheless, her cringe-making attempts to catechize the Tickly Trio soul-satisfyingly backfired like Leo the Mailman's delivery truck. The Marvelous Monsters just weren't having it: when Elmo dismissed her with a 'TMI'  and a disdainful wave of his skinny little arm, turning his back on her erudition, Moleskine and I wept with joy. It was beyond priceless.

The Cuddly Critics seemed to have a beneficial effect on at least one competitor: Dale, miffed at their disapproval of his cookie ingredients, bit his tongue and refrained from talking back in his usual profanity-laden way. The judges rewarded him with the win (potato chips and all) and the Tuff One TH'd, with a tear in his eye, that the quickfire had been one of his top three experiences ever.' You and me both, Dale - I am now a bona fide Elmo groupie.

The Tar-zhay elimination challenge that followed was notable only for the fact that the superstore's appliances (and bottled spice blends, apparently) were so crappy that all most of the chefs could manage was soup. Dale's earlier reincarnation as a benevolent sufferer-in-silence provided sufficiently good karma for him to win the day - the most competitive, belligerant, and hard-to-get-along-with culinary contender converted to sweetness and light by the Muppets.

Oh, the power of Sesame Street.

New Toy

Whenever I watch Iron Chef, Top Chef, or any of those other foodie fisticuffs with which Bravo and the Food Network are forever clogging the cable infrastructure - and to which I admit an insurmountable addiction - I am always fascinated by the culinary paraphernalia on display. Anti-griddles! Thermal immersion circulators! Salamanders!  Robot Coupes! Perhaps it's the not-so-latent engineer in me, but I dearly love it when competitors dig deep and go for the gadget gusto.

More often than not, of course, disaster follows. What is it about the industrial ice cream machines on Iron Chef? They never, ever, ever seem to produce the desired result. You can always hear the excitement in Alton Brown's voice as he anticipates another misadventure with calves' liver gelato or sorbet of romanesco. I find these fiascos satisfying because, admiring as I am of toys in the kitchen, I have very few myself, which deficit would breed envy and dissatisfaction if I thought such gizmos might actually be useful. So when the vacuum sealer goes phoom and a snarky cheftestant finds his salmon ruined, I chortle complacently and tell myself it served him right for trying to be too tricky.

There is one device, however, for which I have always hankered but never got around to purchasing - despite its ubiquitousness in the domestic kitchen and prominence in every chef's catalogue that comes to my door.

A blow torch.

Now before you get up in arms and say, 'What on earth do you need a blowtorch for, you have a perfectly good broiler in your oven?' let me defend my position. First of all, I think of my broiler as an upside-down grill. Would you grill a meringue? Would you grill pulled sugar in order to achieve pliability and workableness? Of course not - your project would fall through the holes in the grate and disappear forever.

In addition, the broiler in the larger of my Wolf ovens isn't really up to the job of caramelizing delicate sweets. Although my beautiful cooker is perfection incarnate in many important respects, its broiler (being gas) has hot spots and warm spots and cold spots, which means forever moving things around and switching racks from top to bottom. It's a pain for anything other than general browning and (yes) grilling - which it does admirably.

As a result of all these shortcomings in my kitchen, there has been a dearth in my repertoire of intentionally-burnt desserts. It so happened, however, that right before the last big storm I dropped by our local restaurant supply emporium for cans of butane for our portable stove. When the electricity goes out (as often happens on our hill when the wind gets up), it's good to know we have some way to scramble eggs and heat up cans of Heinz baked beans - not to mention boil water for tea, without which we would surely expire. 

On the well-stocked shelves next to the butane what did I spy but  ...




What fun!

On impulse, I bought one. How could I resist? It was huge, flaming, and cost less than $25. And there aren't a lot of things you can say that about.

I don't know how I've lived without one for so long.

Next up: I tackle creme brulee, the easiest dessert in the world, and discover a profusion of pitfalls.

Glass with Class

This past weekend, DMR - one of my most loyal readers - presented me with an elegant glass compotier. Perfect for fridge-a-lade, lemon curd, or any other home-made confiture or conserve you might care to name, it is far more aesthetically pleasing than the stockpiling solution I had been using previously, a plastic take-out curry container with the Sharpied® designation beef stock indelibly etched into its lid.

What DMR could not have known was the uncommon degree to which her cadeau was both timely and appropriate. Having just cleaned out the refrigerator of commercially-produced and gluten-polluted jars and bottles, there are now two entirely empty compartments in the right-hand door of the cold chest, waiting to be adorned with heavenly home-made preserves and condiments, free of the arcane labeling adopted by so many of our alimentary producers these days.

Given this blank slate with which to work, I am now seriously considering limiting all future storage to containers that, in the spirit of William Morris, are necessary, useful, and sublime.

For if beauty is truth, who needs the FDA?

It's a Mystery

Over the course of my gluten freedom-fighting career, I have engaged in a number of pantry-cleansing episodes that have left me shaken and demoralized: the removal of pasta, baking products, and fondue pots from my shelves have each been episodes of note in my catastrophic saga so far.

One lair of the Evil Ingredient still remained to be purged, however, and this weekend - needing to make some space for the Cake for a Very Special Occasion - I addressed my new extirpation with a zeal that soon turned to confusion and despair.

The refrigerator. What a mess.

We are great collectors of jars chez Fractured Amy. Compotes, sauces, dressings, jams, and condiments of all kinds are generally to be found on the upper shelves and in various secret compartments hidden away in the cold chest. I wish I could report that all these culinary accoutrements were the products of hours spent laboring over canning equipment and vacuum sterilizers, but the truth is that manufactured labor-savers are a boon to the busy home cook.

Or at least, that's my excuse for allowing four different varieties of fudge sauce (all essentially the same) and three opened jars of pickled beets to lurk in the fridge's depths. Before my Smartyphone app came along and changed my life forever, duplication was the rule rather than the exception. Additionally, the uppermost shelf of the fridge is at a height that makes small jars at the back very difficult to see without the assistance of a step stool. 

Resultingly, things have tended to collect over time.

I removed something like thirty-seven jars, bottles, and plastic containers from their appointed places and dumped them in the sink with a ceremonial clatter that caused the cat to flee to the basement. The first bottle I addressed was HP Brown Sauce, the Kid Squid's condiment of choice for bacon, sausages, and other breakfast fare. I checked the sell-by date and was reassured that it presented no immediate threat to life or limb. Then I checked the ingredients label (purely as an academic exercise, since I myself do not partake). No allergens listed. I examined the ingredients label: there, clear as day, I saw rye flour and fructose syrup [from wheat] quite near the top. 'Well, gosh,' I thought to myself, 'What's up with that?'

The next jar to which I turned my attention was filled with Wegmans' own zesty seafood sauce, redolent with horseradish and eye-watering spices. It was clearly labelled as being lactose-free and vegan but not gluten-free, although none of the ingredients was obviously evil. Why not say gluten-free, then? What were they trying to hide? Consternation began to rear its ugly head as I pawed through the remaining jars.

Wegmans smooth Dijon mustard was declared GLUTEN FREE in bold caps on its label.

Wegmans wholegrain Dijon mustard listed only soy under its allergens, and included maltodextrin under its constituents. Maltodextrin can be derived from wheat or corn. Which was it? Wheat wasn't listed as a potentially harmful ingredient, but neither was the jar labelled GLUTEN FREE like its creamy counterpart. Consternation developed into full-blown concern.

A jar of red raspberry jelly had a big orange circle with a G in it, declaring itself gluten free for all the world to see, even if the world didn't happen to have its reading glasses on.

Hellmann's jar of tartar sauce declared itself proudly GLUTEN FREE at the end of its ingredients list but did not sport the big orange circle.

A jar of hoisin sauce did not list any allergens, but wheat appeared about 100 different ways on the label.

A Caesar salad dressing label listed no allergens of any kind, but the product contained loads of vinegar, if its prominent positioning on the roster of shame was to be believed. Since there was clearly dairy in the product (not listed under allergens) then who's to say the vinegar didn't contain malt and the dressing, therefore, gluten?

Having scrutinized just eight jars, I had in as many minutes discovered eight different lexical protocols.

I removed some apples from their brown paper bag and breathed into it for a while before making myself a soothing cup of organic Earl Grey with lavender and addressing myself to some research on allergen labeling regulations.

Concern evolved to hysteria.

From what I can gather, there are hardly any compulsory labeling regulations in this country. FALCPA (the FDA's Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act, 2004 or 2006, take your pick) requires the disclosure of eight food allergens to consumers. Wheat is, in fact, among the eight, but gluten is not - so that's not terribly helpful, is it? In addition, it seems that manufacturers are pretty much allowed to determine how and to what degree they will comply. This caused so much confusion among consumers (and FDA inspectors, too, one presumes, if there are any left at this point) that in September 2008 the administration held a public hearing 'to help determine how manufacturers use advisory labelling for food allergens ... as a first step in closing the existing knowledge gap in developing our long-term strategy.'

The FDA's ever-so-up-to-date website says no more on the subject - or at least, nothing I was able to find in the time it took me to drink a twelve-ounce cup of tea. At any rate, when I read the words 'manufacturer,' 'voluntarily,' and 'knowledge gap' in the same sentence I tend to start twitching, after which rational thought becomes a challenge, if not an outright impossibility.

Reason returned as I contemplated possible solutions to this problem, since I find list-making such a soothing exercise:

1. Write to every maker of condiments in one's pantry to find out its position regarding gluten alerts (a number of gluten-free commandos have been doing just this, with the unfortunate outcome that contradictory and unreliable information is currently flying about the internet like so many labels torn in frustration from jars of stir-fry sauce).
2. Petition the FDA to Do the Right Thing (a worthwhile goal, to be sure, but when I proposed this idea to the Kid Squid, he ironically quipped that I must be an evil communist plotting the introduction to our food supply of Stalinesque state control, which will surely lead to our being obliged, in the near future, to eat nothing but straw and coffee made from acorns and gardening compost).
3. Take one's life in one's hands and hope for the best, being as careful as possible to avoid such problematic substances as modified food starch, hydrolyzed protein, and edible film. This sounds like a good idea no matter what one's personal view of gluten and other toxic substances.
4. Eschew bottled preparations and make one's own.

I think I will choose the last two options: at the very least, I will be able to free up a lot of room in the fridge.

Going Nuts

After my brush with temptation last week, I had a serious hankering for a luscious sweet gateau overbrimming with silky buttercream (that's what being faced with boxes upon boxes of doughnuts will do to a girl, even one as resolute as I). Since this was a banner weekend chez Fractured Amy, requiring a Cake for a Very Special Occasion, I decided to pull out all the stops and make a Dacquoise, one of my patisserie favorites long before the days of gluten-freedom obliged me to eschew the joys of wheat flour.

Here's how I did it.

I roasted two cups of hazelnuts in the oven at 250 deg F until they were brown and toasty and the kitchen smelled delightful. I dumped them in my food processor with one and one-half cups of sugar.

I whizzed them around until they were suitably powdery - but I stopped before my mixture got oily.

With my loyal electric handmixer, I whipped up six egg whites until they were foamy; added three tablespoons of sugar; and continued beating the living daylights out of them until I had lovely glossy peaks (much like the Alps before global warming caused them all to melt). I stirred in a tablespoon of vanilla.

I folded in the nuts and piped the resulting mixture into three long rectangles, each about sixteen inches by four. I suppose that strictly speaking, given its shape, the final product may have been a Marjolaine.

I baked them for an hour at 250 deg F until they came easily off the silicon parchment.

While that was happening, I whipped up three cups of Julia Child's French buttercream (that's the one made with sugar boiled to 240 deg F, not the one made with custard). I divided the buttercream into three lots. To one I added melted semisweet chocolate; to another I added melted white chocolate; and the third I flavored with a hefty dose of Amarula liqueur, purchased in Johannesburg at Tambo International Airport's duty free and our current tipple of choice.

I layered the buttercream between and around my hazelnut meringue layers and refrigerated the whole thing overnight. I served the slices on my prettiest plates.

And there was much rejoicing.

Particularly by me.

Don't Squash my Enthusiasm

A butternut squash is a funny thing.

Prior to last weekend's purchase for my Down-with-the-Tyrant melange with chickpeas, I don't suppose I had ever examined a butternut squash up close, preferring to buy each one already peeled and diced by Wegmans' master food prep artistes. However, in my new gluten-free spirit of economy and thrift I bravely entered 'Butternut Squash: one [1] each' on my Smartyphone app and waited expectantly for Sir to return from his scrounging expedition to the shops.

Twenty minutes after leaving the house, he phoned from the produce department, asking me to clarify how much of the vegetable I needed for my recipe. This rather defeated the intended purpose of our cloud-residing electronic list of convenience, but I tried to be helpful. Truthfully, I told my personal shopper that I needed about two pounds. There was incredulous silence on the other end of the line, followed by a wounded sigh.

I waited on tenterhooks to see what might I find in my recycled grocery bag after Sir had completed his rounds.

The answer was a five-pound behemoth that looked like an orange apatosaurus. It was shocking, quite frankly - the Kid Squid made an extremely rude observation before fleeing back up the stairs to his room, cackling delightedly at his own wit.  Sir explained (rather defensively, I thought) that he'd bought the smallest specimen he could find and it wasn't his fault they were all the size of wombats, if wombats had long necks like apatosaurs, which they don't.

I made him a soothing cup of tea and addressed the monster.

Not only did it look like an apatosaurus, it had the skin of an apatosaurus. Even with my sturdiest, sharpest knife I had difficulty making headway. I didn't peel the thing so much as excise its entire outer and inner epidermis. Its flesh was so tough I had to hack at it with some energy in order to cleave its midsection (cutting my left thumb rather dramatically in the process) - but after it was divided into manageable one-pound hunks, slicing and chopping became easier.

When I was finished, I had a mountain of butternut squash cubes eighteen inches high.

I roasted the pieces as per the recipe's destructions (tripling the number of garlic cloves), and half an hour after they went into the oven they emerged soft, caramelized and delicious. Sir and I could not believe how good the aroma was and how complex the flavor of the squash had become.

But I only had enough chickpeas to adorn about one-third of my savory Toubkal, so I was left to ponder what to do with the remaining veg.

I made Butternut Squash and Sage Advice Risotto. I ate some of it all by myself, since Sir was out entertaining The Swedes and the Kid Squid has decided winter squashes are not amongst those ingredients he counts as his favorites. In the course of my studies, therefore, I discovered that the dish has the potential to be served over several meals, keeping in the fridge and microwaving beautifully.

Here follows my method. I filled my largest saucepan with about 20 fl oz of vegetable stock (chicken stock would be good too, I bet, but I used all my chicken carcasses to make rich brown stock in January) and brought it to a simmer. Meanwhile, I chopped up several shallots and sauteed them in butter (using my favorite round-bottomed copper pan, of course) until they were soft. I plucked out some of the roasted garlic cloves from the squash pan and squeezed them onto the shallots. I added 5 ounces of arborio rice and sauteed it for a while, then hit the whole thing was a big splash of dry white vermouth. I let it bubble away contentedly for a bit, then started adding the stock in ladlefuls until the risotto was almost ready, about half an hour later (for those of you who are wondering about this week's stirring companion, I can reveal that I am currently re-reading Anathem by Neal Stephenson). Mindful of The Heimlich Maneuver's stern stipulation that risotto should wave rather than pile, I made sure my rice was nice and soupy.

At the end, I added roasted squash cubes until I judged my mixture to be sufficiently rich, toothsome, and ochreous. I threw in a small handful of chopped dried sage from the garden, added a blob of butter together with a quick squirt of freshly-squeezed Meyer lemon, then clapped the lid on the pan so that the rice could become desirably mantecato.

I checked for the dish for seasoning, then doled it out and hit it with some coarsely-grated parmesan and a drizzle of pompelmo-infused balsamico bianco for brightness. The result was sheer bliss.

I still have one final container of roasted (but otherwise unmodified) squash left in the fridge and believe me - nobody's laughing now.