What's French for 'I Surrender'?

Readers waiting breathlessly for my recap of Thursday's Top Chef: Texas will, I'm afraid, be suffering disappointment this week. Despite four days' passing and the temptations provided by a hot-pepper Quickfire and chili cook-off elimination challenge, I have so far been unable to sit down with my DVR to enjoy the spectacle.

Thanksgiving, of course, intervened. Once again, I am forced to question the judgement of Bravo's producers: how can fans such as myself, with Turkey-Day cooking commitments of our own, possibly be expected to spend a whole hour watching TV? It's not possible.

I had planned to get caught up on the cheftestants' latest adventures on Friday but fate once again intervened. It intervened on Saturday, too. And today. In fact, I'm not sure I'm going be able to see TC:T at all before the DVR - full to bursting with Sir's and the Kid Squid's crime procedurals and sci-fi sagas - wipes my favorite show from its memory forever.

And who, you might wonder, is the fell transgressor in this saga? What sinister individual has unforgivably come between me, Pads, and the HM?

Can you guess?

That's right, Campers. Madame has struck again.

* * *

It started as a very simple plan, really. Several weeks ago I purchased two boxes of lovely little tulip-shaped Weck jars for the particular purpose of filling them with Christine Ferber's chestnut jam and giving them away as holiday gifts to sundry special folks. I adore candied chestnuts (marrons glaces and the Japanese dessert monburan are two of my favorite things in the whole wide world) and have been intrigued by the jam recipe ever since I first purchased Mes Confitures last Spring.

As a public service to readers I offer the recipe below, together some additional details garnered through the hard experience of Yours Truly.

Are you sitting comfortably? We shall begin.

Ahem.

Make a deep cut in each chestnut with the point of a knife.

Did I mention the recipe called for three pounds of whole uncooked chestnuts? That's a lot. Also, the shells are extremely durable. Using my priceless Japanese paring knife with the watered steel blade I was able, at the cost of severe blistering to my right thumb and index finger, to make deep gouges on the nuts' flat sides. Reasoning that one always cuts a cross into roasted chestnuts to facilitate peeling, I had at it with these bad boys as well. Fearing the worst (a premonition, perhaps), I made a big X on each of their curvy sides, too. It took forever and was extremely dangerous, what with an exceedingly sharp tachi, increasingly slippery cutting board, and customary Ferber-induced anxiety.

Put the chestnuts in boiling water. After three minutes you will be able to remove the outer shell and the inner skin. Chestnuts can be easily peeled if they don't cool off.

I looked at the daunting pile and realized there was no way I could cook them all at once if they were to stay warm for peeling. I decided, therefore, to cook them in batches of five. After the stipulated three minutes, I pulled the first lot out of the water. Although the tough outer shell came off, the brown-paper inner skin stuck stubbornly to the flesh beneath, causing angst and vexation on my part. I threw the nuts back into the pot for additional boilage and was eventually able to peel them with some success. After experimenting with several hundred specimens, I concluded ten minutes was the minimum processing time required for straightforward shell removal.

Sir, alarmed by my cursing and impatient slamming of pan lids, came into the kitchen, bless him, to see if he could help. I called his bluff and set him to work peeling. After some initial whining about the effects of the red-hot chestnut epidermi on his delicate fingers, he settled down and performed admirably. An hour into our task, I asked him if he wouldn't rather be outside raking leaves. He responded that there was nothing in the world he would rather do than provide jam-making assistance and redoubled his efforts.

Psychologists, take note.

Roughly two hours after I first brought my water to the boil, we had two pounds of warm peeled chestnuts. They looked like small tan-colored brains ...

... and I was already sick of the sight of them. 'Never mind,' I thought. 'From this point forward the recipe seems like child's play!'

In a preserving pan, combine the chestnuts with four and two-thirds cups sugar, one and three-quarters cups water, and a vanilla bean. Bring to a boil and cook for fifteen minutes, stirring gently. The chestnuts will be soft.

Soft my eye! After fifteen minutes of cooking my chestnuts were still the texture of driftwood. Thinking that perhaps I was supposed to have chopped them into pieces before introducing them to their bath (no, Madame never said I had to, but one has to be a bit of a mind-reader where Mes Confitures is concerned), I removed them from the molten sugar lava and gave them a rough chop on my cutting board.

Back into my maslin pan! I cooked them for a further ten minutes. Then ten minutes more. Finally, forty minutes had elapsed and my chestnuts were kind of soft, sort of. Not cooked exactly, but not the consistency of an antique oaken chair leg, either. More importantly, the syrup had by this time reached 220 deg F, betokening imminent crystallization should I not get the contents off the heat ASAP.

Pour the mixture into a ceramic bowl. Cover with a sheet of parchment paper and refrigerate overnight.

Oh, for crying out loud. I used a Pyrex bowl like a normal American and covered it with plastic wrap. I couldn't put it in the fridge because it was already nine o'clock at night and the contents of the bowl were still mad hot. I could have returned to the kitchen later that night, I suppose, but the adjoining family room was disturbingly full of huge pizza-eating teenage boys. Under such circumstances, I try to keep my distance from that end of the house.

Next day, bring the preparation to a boil, stirring constantly. Remove the vanilla bean. Crush the large pieces of chestnut with a wooden spoon.

Is anybody keeping track? At this point I was 24 hours into my consternating confiture contretemps. Of course, that is no more than an academic point because I never got to this stage of the recipe. In the cold light of day I realized my chestnuts were still tooth-challengingly hard. I couldn't return them to the stove for extra cooking whilst they were in their syrup (and yes, a few accusatory crystals were already forming about the edges of the bowl) so I rinsed them well and returned them to a pan full of boiling water.

After another half hour of cooking, they became soft. Also tasteless. The long boiling had leeched every ounce of flavour from the precious $15 supply over which Sir and I had labored so long. After consigning the glop to my garbage disposal I considered my options and decided that Madame had left the recipe unfinished.

I've taken the liberty of completing her work.

You don't want to peel three more pounds of chestnuts, do you? That's why god invented vacuum packs. Get into your silver Element and drive to the supermarket. Present yourself in the produce section and buy the last two packs of pre-cooked and pre-peeled organic Italian chestnuts ($4.99 for 6 ounces!) and one jar of French beauties from the baking aisle ($9.99 for seven ounces!). Decide that you cannot possibly afford to make the full recipe and conclude that half will be sufficient for your purposes. How many people do you know that really deserve homemade chestnut jam, anyway?

Take your chestnuts home and taste the Italian ones. Realize that they are stupefyingly disgusting and cannot possibly be used as anything but garden mulch. Ponder your jar of French marrons sadly but with resolve. Do some quick mental math and realize that you can produce  roughly one-quarter of Madame's recipe with minimum fuss. Pop the nuts (already soft and scrummy-tasting, praise be) into your maslin pan with one and one-sixth cup of sugar and seven-sixteenths cup of water. Don't forget to retrieve the vanilla bean from your failed batch of jam! Bring the water to a boil and continue to cook until the syrup reaches 220 deg F. Pour the mixture into a very small Pyrex bowl and cover with plastic wrap.

Since it's now after dark on the second day, you should probably have a stiff drink and maybe go to a movie. Not necessarily in that order.

The next morning (Day 3!), whizz up the mixture in your food processor using the big metal blade that looks like the sort of fearsome implement you might find in a defunct sawmill. Scrape the jam into a very small saucepan and bring to a boil. Put a little bit of the vanilla bean into each jar and pour the jam over. Madame never reveals the yields for her recipes, but I will: one-quarter of her original ingredients produces eleven ounces of chestnut jam - less than two little Weck tulip jars.

Sigh deeply and survey all the empty jars arrayed upon the table before you. Whip up some pineapple conserves with some fruit you bought on special offer a few days ago and the leftover vanilla beans.

Vow never ever to be tempted by one of Madame's recipes again. Not even in a million years.

Or until next time. Whichever comes first.

Coming soon: whilst enjoying my annual gala lunch with DMR at Le Bernardin this Thursday, I also manage to miss the next episode of Top Chef Texas.

Berries Blue

I have learned this summer that when one sees awesome fruit going for a song, one buys as much as will fit into one's recycled grocery bag and worries later about what to do with it.

Such was the case with the eight pounds of soft fruit I bought at a super-low discounted rate at my local market's 'Blueberry Festival' on Saturday. 

The tonnage piled up into a veritable blueberry butte when I heaved it onto my kitchen counter not long afterwards. However, with something like six hundred Weck, Ball, and Bormioli preserving jars at my disposal, I was confident that my mountain would be become a molehill in no time.

And, somehow, in between simmering eggs the modernist way, spinning more ice cream, attending to laboratory duties, seeing Harry Potter, and engaging in the usual weekend frivolities that punctuate our lives here a chez Fractured Amy, that's just what happened.

I took as my inspiration the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, which is a fantastic resource for American jammers suddenly confronted with a glut of summer produce. I like to think that Ball's test kitchens (no doubt decorated with embroidered samplers and gaily-colored hex signs) are staffed by sweet little old ladies whose sole purpose in life is to pass on the wisdom of ages to suburban putter-uppers like me.

On this occasion, like so many others, the ginghamed grandmas proved their worth, exhorting me to prepare my bounty in such a way as to fabricate two completely different products from the same batch of fruit. Their idea was to make syrup and jam, but I had another idea - rather like the time I was able to coax home-made pectin and thick rich apple sauce from the same bag of Sir's rejected Granny Smiths.

Here's how you make silky sweet Blueberry Jelly and thick rich Blueberry Butter from a single assemblage of fruit.

First, get yourself twelve cups of fresh blueberries. I used about six pounds of fruit to make up the volume, leaving two left over. After all, one still needs some for eating out of hand and fresh fruit salad, doesn't one? You need to put all the blueberries into a huge non-reactive pan (I used my gorgeous maslin pan, which - to its great chagrin - hardly gets any rest these days) with three cups of water. Bring the berries to a boil, smashing and smushing them all the while with a potato masher. Bubble them until they've released a fair amount of juice and the skins start to break down - about five minutes more.

Then, decant the lot into a large colander lined with a triple layer of cheesecloth. Do not press on the berries or agitate the bowl lest your jelly become cloudy and sad. Leave the apparatus undisturbed overnight.

Next morning, you will find you have lots of juice, a pile of blueberry pulp, and an irretrievably blue piece of cheesecloth. Never mind, it's all in a good cause!

Now it's time to make the jelly. Measure out four cups of the juice and dump the rest back into the pulp. Combine the four cups of juice with one-quarter cup of fresh lemon juice and seven and one-half cups of sugar (I know, I know - but believe me, you'll be glad you did!) in your preserving pan (the pan needs to be huge, as this stuff quadruples in volume when it gets to a rolling boil). Slowly heat the mixture, stirring occasionally, until the sugar has melted. Then turn the heat to high until you get boilage. Dramatic boilage. The kind that, no matter how hard you stir with your favorite wooden spoon (soon to be stained purple forever and for always) refuses to be assuaged. When that happens, stir in all at once two 3-oz packets of liquid pectin.

You heard me. Liquid pectin. From the store. It's amazing stuff. It gels things in no time, so you don't have to boil mixtures for all eternity, waiting them to get syrupy and thick. This means that your beautiful fresh fruit doesn't have to cook for a long time and thus retains its essential flavor. Some people would disagree (yes, Madame, I'm looking at you) but sometimes it pays to do what grandma says. Since the surrogates at Ball told me to use liquid pectin with my blueberries, that's what I did. Besides, I've indulged Madame's idiosyncrasies quite enough for one month.

Once you've added the pectin (stirring madly while you've done so), get the mixture to a full boil as quickly as possible (this is the stage where it bubbles up alarmingly, threatening the top of your beautiful Wolf cooker with molten blueberry goo). Boil hard, stirring, for exactly one minute.

When you've done that, remove the pan from the heat and skim the pink foam off the surface. Pour the jelly into your prettiest jars and process them for ten minutes. When they are utterly cool, you will be rewarded with something really special. We spread the jelly on some soft cheese and were in raptures.

But you are only half done! Now it's time to address your pulp and make your butter.

Dump the blueberries into your food processor - the one fitted with the blade that looks like it's out of the Pit and the Pendulum - and whizz it around until it's utterly smooth.

Return the puree to your preserving pan with the juice and zest of one lemon, three cups of sugar, and whatever spices take your fancy. I used several generous grates of nutmeg and made up a spice bag with a stick of cinnamon, several whole allspice berries, and some cloves. Heat the mixture up slowly until the sugar dissolves then boil it for half an hour or so until it is pretty thick and mounds on a spoon. Interestingly, in my case it took exactly the same amount of time as it took to simmer my thirty-five minute eggs. How's that for multi-tasking?

When think you have butter, fill up your jars and process them for ten minutes. Since I no longer employ spread on toast or scones, I shall eat mine on top of yogurt, spooned over ice cream, and as an accompaniment to cheese and salmon. I will also be giving some away to folks who still lead gluten-rich lives. They are, of course, free to do with it as they will.

The yield from six pounds of blueberries is something like three and three-quarters pints of jelly plus three pints of butter.

We'll get through it in no time.

Allons Enfants!

Aux armes, citoyens!

Le jour de gloire est arrive!

I like to think that Bastille Day commemorates the occasion when the sans culottes decided once and for all to ignore Marie Antoinette's advice and go gluten-free. And what better way to honor their heroism than with some fine fruit conserve courtesy of Madame Ferber, fiere guerriere of the grande armee of anti commercial-pectin bataillons?

Ironically, Madame is a true member of the Ancien Regime when it comes to her preserving methods. Quel outrage! Quels transports il doit exciter! ... when she beholds boxes of Sure-Jell (or the French equivalent) at a supermarche Marseillais.

Although I suppose one could conclude that, as a true enfant de la Patrie she views Ball Fruit Jell Pectin as a blasphemous symbol of American imperialism: des cohortes etrangeres feraient la loi dans nos foyers!

Grand Dieu!

Whatever her motivations might be, in honor the great patriotic holiday de la France I have decided to indulge Madame's idiosyncrasies and present one of her recipes with no editorializing, complaining, or whining.

Marchons, marchons! On a day such as today, we must all cast off our ignobles entraves and be les maitres de nos destinees.

At least where pectin is concerned.

Christine Ferber's Apricot and Raspberry with Citrus Zest

1 lb 2 oz quartered apricots, stones removed
1 lb 2 oz raspberries
2 cups sugar plus 2 cups
juice of one small lemon
finely grated zest of 1/4 lemon
finely grated zest of 1/4 orange

In a bowl, combine the apricots, 2 cups of sugar, the lemon juice, and the citrus zest. In another bowl, combine the raspberries and 2 cups of sugar. Cover each bowl with a sheet of parchment paper and let the fruit macerate for one hour.

Pour each preparation into a separate preserving pan and bring to a simmer. Pour back into the bowls and cover each mixture with a sheet of parchment paper. Refrigerate overnight.

Next day, bring each mixture to a boil separately in preserving pans and continue cooking over high heat about 5 minutes, stirring gently. Combine the two mixtures in one preserving pan. Return to a boil, skimming again, if need be. Check the set and put the jam into jars and seal.  Yield a chez Fractured Amy: five 0.2 litre jars. 

 Ah, Madame - Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire!

Merci, Madame

It is well-known that my relationship with Christine Ferber, doyenne of the boo-teek preserving set and famous boycotter of commercial pectin products is - how shall I put this? - complicated.

On the one hand, the recipes in her magnum opus, Mes Confitures, are maddening to the point of, well, madness. Her instructions are so terse they are positively Delphic. She gives few clues about what the final product is supposed to be. Is something called Rhubarb and Apple a spreadable jam, a spoonable conserve, or sliceable fruit in syrup? Who knows? Her ingredients are arcane, if not downright unobtainable (where am I supposed to find vineyard peaches or wild apples, for crying out loud?).

Most damningly of all, she offers no yields for her recipes, so her unfortunate disciples are left with either too many prepared jars and seals or, far worse, too few - necessitating a spur-of-the-moment sprint to the upstairs closet for additional supplies. This generally causes one's precariously-leaning ironing board to fall over with a resounding crash and the cat to sneak into an area of the house that, under normal circumstances, is Off Limits. The resulting kerfuffle prompts the hapless fabricante de confitures to curse a blue streak and vow that she will confine herself henceforward to the sensible procedures found in Well Preserved and Ball's Complete Book of Home Preserving, both of which are written for normal Americans who just want to get on with life.

On the other hand, I am drawn to Madame's livre like leafhoppers and aphids to a blueberry bush. The recipes and combinations are evocative of a stay in one of France's better chambres d'hotes and the photographs alone are worth the price of admission. Who can resist recipes that speak of gariguettes, mirabelles (only the ones from Nancy will do, apparently), and Bourjasotte figs? Not me! As I slave away in my suburban galley with hothouse strawberries, purple plums (provenance unknown), and dried Black Missions from a bag I can fantasize that I am in an Alsacienne summer kitchen with all the time in the world to pick over endless baskets of peaches (only pristine specimens should go into the jam pot!) or seek that perfect punnet of Napoleon cherries. A girl can dream and I suspect that is really what the English translation of Mes Confitures is all about.

Well, to call Madame's bluff, I've been trying out her recipes with ingredients I can find locally and some educated guesswork. Two batches in particular, banana jam and praline milk jam, were among the most notable of any I have made (from any source) so far - although I hasten to add they were notable for very different reasons. The banana jam has proved to be an intriguing crowd-pleaser: I have made several batches in recent months and the requests are still coming in from fans who've already tried it and curiosity-seekers who can't get their heads around the idea of spreadable bananas in a jar (to them I say 'No, banana jam is nothing like baby food').

Praline milk jam, on the other hand, has baffled everyone who's been tempted to sample it or - failing that - upon whom a jar has been forced. Nobody seems to know what to do with it or whether, in fact, s/he even likes it much (I count myself as a member of this group - I'm still not convinced the final product is what Madame intended, although I will never know for sure). 

Setting such inconsistencies aside, I had been determined to give Mes Confitures renewed consideration as soon as the summer fruit started to come in, since that is where the recipes (in my humble opinion, anyway) start to become really unusual. So this weekend, with three whole days off work and thirty beautiful new Weck jars at my disposal, I decided to tackle some apricot recipes. Apricots are dirt cheap at the moment, and the ones in the produce department on Friday looked excellent, even if they were not the exact variety preferred by Madame.

I bought over five pounds' worth and set to work.

The first recipe I tried was for something called Nougabricot. It included among its ingredients the aforementioned Bergeron apricots (oh well), chestnut honey (I made do with orange blossom); and a variety of slivered and chopped nuts. Reading between the lines, I concluded that the final product was probably going to be something like apricot halves in thick syrup - a preparation for which wide-mouthed jars are essential. I selected my 0.20 litre mold jars, read up on their usage, and got to it.

Approximately thirty-six hours later (yes, you heard me - preserving with Madame is not for the faint-hearted or those short of time) I had over five jars of just about the most beautiful preserves I have ever seen - the sort people pay good money for in gourmet shops or go gaga over when served for breakfast in tonier B&Bs. And the taste? Think honey, and citrus, and fresh fresh apricots - with the added exotic Middle Eastern promise of almonds and pistachios. Heaven on yogurt or good ice cream, spooned over frangipane, or served atop goats' cheese panna cotta.

The jars themselves are fantastic - although the glass lid, rubber-ring, and metal clip arrangement tested my famous asbestos fingers to the limits of their endurance. Every one of the seals ultimately formed a perfect vacuum and the glasses' generous proportions are perfect for large pieces of stone fruit or chunky preserves. Their gift-giving qualities are undeniable. Although too fancy and special for home use (except when serving brunch or dessert to company, I suppose) I am now determined to have some on hand at all times, ready to go when the mood strikes.

At time like these, I feel that Madame and I can be friends, after all.

Christine Ferber's Apricot Halves and Nuts in Honey Syrup

• two and one-quarters pounds firm but ripe apricots, halved and pitted (I'm sure any apricots you are able to find in the shops will be serviceable)
• two and three-quarters cups granulated sugar
• seven ounces of honey (see note on apricots, above)
• juice of one lemon
• juice and grated zest of one large orange
• two ounces slivered almonds (Madame calls for three and one-half ounces, which to me looked like far too many)
• two ounces of unsalted, shelled, and chopped pistachies (see note on almonds, above)

Mix the apricots, sugar, honey, lemon juice, and orange juice/zest together in a big bowl. Cover the surface with a piece of parchment paper and let macerate for an hour. The parchment paper is very important, actually. I missed the corner of one apricot and by hour's end it had turned brown and unsightly.

Pour the mixture into a preserving pan and bring to a simmer. Cover the surface with parchment paper, again, and refrigerate overnight.

The next day, pour the contents through a sieve (Madame insists you remove the peel from the apricots at this point, but I didn't bother), reserving the syrup in a pan. Bring the syrup to a boil and cook to 221 deg F. You will need to skim more or less constantly.

When the syrup is hot enough, add the appricot halves and the nuts. Return to the boil and cook over high heat for five minutes, stirring gently. Skim again, if required (it will be). Decant into jars and process them as appropriate.

I obtained five and one-half 0.20 l jars. I don't care that each of these is supposed to be the equivalent of 6.7628 American fluid ounces. I have carried out extensive tests and can assert with some confidence that the Weck jars have precisely the same capacity as my standard 8-ounce Ball jars. I am therefore calling the yield forty-four ounces and nobody can stop me.

I trust Madame will forgive my Yankee impertinence.

After all, that's what friends do.

Pectin-palooza

It is my belief that the decision not to use commercial pectin in jam-making is a political choice.

That is the only possible explanation for Christine Ferber's steadfast refusal to include the boxed product in any of her recipes, preferring instead to put us to the trouble of fabricating home-made gelling agent from green apples. Apparently, in La France, it is a simple matter to acquire unripe fruit for such purposes. Indeed, near her home in Alsace I bet the same places that sell green apples also offer happy home-making badges with a depiction of a proudly-flapping tricolore and the motto, Yankee Pectin: Just say 'Non!' 

There are no such pectin compunctions on this side of the ocean. For one thing it is not so easy to get hold of green fruit, unless one fancies sneaking into orchards in the early summer and stealing it off trees. Additionally, the pectin distributed by such estimable folks as the friendly people at Ball is the same stuff that's been used for about a zillion years, which means it's traditional. Since it's made from apples anyway and is fairly pure, I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. Sure, it's nice not have to use it for setting preserves - but it's not something upon which I ever felt the need to stake my reputation (such as it is).

Except that over the weekend, Sir bought a bag of organic Granny Smiths by mistake. Well, not by mistake, exactly, but he got home and decided they were too tartly challenging for his delicate tastebuds' enjoyment. He bestowed them upon me with a shrug and the sort of heartwarming confidence I have come to expect: 'I'm sure you can do something with these,' he said, before returning to the supermarket for a bag of his preferred Galas.

What else could I do except try my hand at some home-made pectin?

Here's how I did it:

I quartered and stemmed 3.5 pounds of Granny Smith apples. It felt strange to be leaving the cores and seeds in, but I always make apple sauce without peeling the apples (Julia's method, of course), so this was only one or two steps beyond that. The bits we usually throw away are where the pectin is, after all!

I plopped the chunks in my pan, then added seven cups of water so they were just covered. I brought it all to a boil and simmered the mixture, with the lid on, for about 40 minutes.

I lined my favorite colander with my trustiest piece of cheesecloth (folded over four times), set the apparatus atop my steep-sided stainless steel bowl, dumped in the cooked apples, and allowed the lot to drain overnight. I was careful not to press on the apples or agitate the bowl in any way, as prevention against subsequent cloudiness.

The next day, I strained it all once more, then decanted four cups of the juice back into my pan. I added the juice of one lemon and four and two-thirds cups of sugar. I melted the sugar over low heat, then boiled the jelly briskly until it was set (I used both my thermometer and a freezer test, just to be sure). 

I poured the result into my jars and processed them for ten minutes.

When all was said and done, I could hardly believe my eyes. What I had was clear clear jelly through which daylight pleasingly streamed. It was kind of amazing.

There were some issues arising, naturally.

In true Ferber fashion, no yield had been offered for my original apple quantity. Since she always calls for seven ounces of apple jelly (by weight) in her pectin-requiring recipes, I had assumed that's what I would end up with. The fact that this seemed like a ridiculous amount of work for one batch of future preserves didn't really strike me at the time: Madame is French, after all (see above).

But after I had panicked sufficiently with my too-few prepared jars, at the end of the day I stood in possession of forty-eight ounces of crystal-clear goodness, ready and able to serve as a gelling agent for raspberry and lychee preserves with rosewater; strawberry with passionfruit; pear with caramel and spices; spiced beer jelly (oops - that one's not gluten-free); or any number of Madame's other recipes - up to nine in all (by which I mean seven).

I must confess, the urge to eschew the commercial product has become very strong.

Home-made pectin Americaine? Just say 'Oui!'

Exasper-jam

Those of you who know about the strong feelings I have for my precious Kindle will appreciate that it was a momentous occasion when I broke down and bought my first dead tree book in ages and ages. Yes, Campers, I am now the proud owner of a shiny new copy of Christine Ferber's Mes Confitures, full of famously imaginative (and dare I say it? terribly French) recipes and food porn of the very highest caliber. Hankering after some Strawberry with Pinot Noir; Fig and Gewurtztraminer with Pine Nuts; or White Peaches with Saffron? This is the book for you. It's definitely not your grandmother's jam, unless your grandmother was a boo-teek preserver of unusual refinement and sensibility.

Mes Confitures is also the most maddening cookbook I have ever used and only its great expense has kept me from flinging it against the wall in frustration (which is French for 'frustration').

Take Praline Milk Jam, a kitchen escapade from two weekends ago, before lactose was so rudely taken off the menu. Seven hours of my life were devoted to this crazy project and I still have no idea whether or not it was successful. Oh sure, I have delectable, creamy, hazelnut-scented confiture that reminds me heart-tuggingly of chilly afternoons in Montmartre, where on the pavements they sell candied nuts from giant copper kettles. But is the ambrosia filling my jars what Madame intended? C'est un mystere, vraiment.

Everything about this recipe was problematic, starting with the ingredients list.

Four and half cups of whole milk? Check. 

Six cups of sugar? Shocking, but check.

Nine ounces of ground almonds? Check.

Nine ounces of praline powder? Excuse me!?

A helpful footnote suggests that I might get some at my local bakery. Well, since I do not live in La France, local bakeries are not only rather thin on the ground, but I would bet my last euro not one of these hypothetical establishments would offer praline powder for sale, or even know what it was for that matter.

When I came to think about it, I realized I didn't even know what it was.

So I improvised. I roasted 2 cups of hazelnuts at 350 deg until they were toasty and delicious.

I whipped up a quick caramel by dissolving one and one-half cups of sugar in a few tablespoons of water and then cooking it until it was brown and bubbly.

I dumped in the hazelnuts and spread them out on an oiled baking sheet to cool.

I weighed out nine ounces of the praline lumps and whizzed them in my food processor until they were crushed to smithereens. Was praline powder the result? You be the judge - but it seemed likely.

Praline powder, check.

Madame then told me to put my milk and sugar into a double boiler.

I was instructed to cook it slowly over 'moderate heat' (in a double boiler, is there any other kind?), stirring occasionally. I was assured that after just four hours (!) the milk jam would develop the texture of thick honey and take on a lovely caramel blond color. Well, it wasn't thick as honey, but in my opinion the requisite hue had been achieved.

Check. Ish.

I added the praline powder to the jam and cooked it for another hour. At this point, I was sure I had gone wrong and didn't bother to take a picture of the resulting gloop, which consisted of a layer of hazelnuts stubbornly floating on top of the caramelized milk. It refused to emulsify no matter how energetically I stirred it. I feared that my entire Saturday had been spent in vain, but pressed on uwilling, as always, to admit defeat.

After the hour was up, I added the ground almonds (actually, almond flour I found in the freezer, no doubt a remnant of previous macaron and frangipane fabrication).

Miraculously, the mixture came together into thick delightfulness. I poured it into my favorite round-bottomed saucier and brought it to a boil.

At this point, I was told to decant the jam into jars. How many? Who knows? When one is being Ferberized, one is left in the dark about these crucial details. I estimated that it would be about four 8 oz. jars' worth, got it wrong, and had to prepare two more at the last second.

Check. But it was painful.

The final product tasted utterly delicious: nutty, not to sweet, and exceedingly complex. I discovered that if it's kept in the fridge, it gets a bit stiff (should it be kept in the fridge? who can tell!) but zapped in the microwave for 10 seconds, stirred, and zapped again, it turns creamy and spreadable - like a very adult, extremely sophisticated chocolate-free Nutella with bits in. Madame offers no description or photo of the final result, so I am providing one below:

Check.

But is it Praline Milk Jam? I guess we'll never know.

Addendum. Since I had more than the nine ounces of hazelnut praline lumps required for powderization, we snacked on handfuls of the unCuisinarted leftovers during movie night whilst enjoying Eric Bana chew the scenery as an evil Romulan. Both the praline and the scenery were way, way better than popcorn.