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.

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!'

Jam Session 3: Pineapple Heart

La primera pregunta es:

Que es mas macho, pineapple o knife?

~Laurie Anderson

Given the size of the knife required for pineapple-butchering,

I'd say it is an even call.

~Fractured Amy

The third batch of preserves I created during my weekend jam-boree was billed in the recipe as Pear and Pineapple Marmalade: it was during this project that I experienced my first Problems With Pectin. Although these difficulties were observable and avoidable, I was too naive and inexperienced to spot the obvious signs of trouble in time to forestall their effects.

The recipe, from Linda Zeidrich's The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and Other Sweet Preserves, was simplicity itself. Take 1.75 cups of chopped and peeled pears, 1.75 cups of chopped pineapple, and 2.75 cups of sugar. Heat it all in a pan until the sugar melts and boil it until it's done. Process for ten minutes as usual.

Perhaps I'd become overconfident by this time, having previously defeated my vacuum demons and successfully set my banana jam. I breezelessly chopped my fruit and adorned the morsels with some grated lime zest for added interest:

I added two cloves for increased zip and heated everything up in my big pot. About halfway through cooking, however, I realized my fruit was not going to break down significantly (I admit it in retrospect: the word 'marmalade' in the recipe title should probably have alerted me to this danger). Realizing that my pieces were neither sufficiently small, tidy, or uniform to be very useful in a conserve where they remained in tact, I hurriedly ran the mixture through my food processor to make a jam, returned the whole lot to my pan, cooked it to 221 deg F (whereupon it was nice and syrupy) and that was that. Into my Leifheit jars (easily my least favorite of the entire weekend: not only did they suffer from the dreaded one-piece lid arrangement, but the rather Lutheran plainness of the glass failed to compensate with anything like the Italian style of my Bormioli beauties), processed, and done. The whole thing took less than an hour. The final product was slightly soft and loose, but I was satisfied that it would be entirely serviceable in yogurt or over ice cream.

But at this point I wanted marmalade, and still had remaindered over half a pineapple.  I returned to my fruit and repeated the process, this time exercising my knife skills to their utmost:

Into the pan! The problem was, when I got the mixture up to the required temperature, the liquid still looked a little bit watery - not thick and syrupy with large slowly-exploding bubbles. Still, the thermometer doesn't lie and I assumed I was missing some sort of subtle sign of doneness more easily discernible to a master preserver. I decanted the marmalade into my jars and was shocked - bewildered, even! - to see all the fruit float immediately to the top, rather like expired goldfish. It was horrifying. Nonetheless, I reasoned that after processing, all might still be well.

Ten minutes' worth of boiling later, still afloat.

I decided to wait until the next day. Maybe this was one of those preserves that needed time to set up properly?

Next morning, floating still. When I turned the jar upside down, it was clearly oozy and liquidy, not jelly-like as it ought to have been.

Did I despair? I did not. I had been advised to have a box of commercial pectin on hand for just such an eventuality (I know one of my initial principles was to use the natural jelling properties of the fruit in my recipes only, but clearly my pineapples and pears weren't up to the task). Thinking of poor souls just like me, the thoughtful makers of Sure-Jell [For Less or No Sugar Needed Recipes] even include inserts with their product detailing a procedure for 'saving' unjelled preserves!

Ten minutes later, I had several jars of lovely nuggets of pear and pineapple suspended in sweet viscousness. The lesson learned? Do not rely on thermometers for judging when a preserve is finished cooking, but always carry out a chilled-dish test to confirm (this is where you put some dishes in the freezer and, when you think your jam is just about ready, you put a small spoonful in one of them. Pop it back in the freezer for two minutes, and if the mixture puckers into a little mound when prodded with your finger, it's good to go for sure). Having said that, subsequent investigation revealed that both pears and pineapples have very low pectin contents: it's doubtful that without a huge amount of sugar and citrus juice the marmalade would have set fully whatever the case.

Another lesson learned: it's always good to have a backup plan.

Interesting-textured preserves look better in plain jars and vice-versa.

My smooth jam in the big old plain Leifheit vessel is a snooze-fest

- and would look far more exciting behind Ball's quilted glass,
where the marmalade resides.

A third lesson learned!

Next up: I apply all my newly-garnered practical experience to produce peerless lime marmalade in no time flat