The Devil Made Me Do It Again

fig. a: free-range plums

Let’s just say you’ve managed to find yourself some lovely early fall plums. It’s not difficult these days—there are still a lot of Italian prune plums around.

And let’s say you’re a fan of chutney.

If you’ve never had it before, plum chutney is truly one of the world’s great preserves, and an absolute joy as part of a cheese platter, especially when served with a sharp cheddar. And if you’ve never made it before, it’s very easy to prepare, and incredibly satisfying.

For my latest batch, I started off by using the basic method from “Micro-batch Jellies & Jams.” I bought 3 litres of plums at the farmers’ market. I halved them and pitted them. I weighed them and then added 40% of their weight in sugar, mixed everything thoroughly and allowed them to macerate in the refrigerator.

The next day, after they’d released their juices, I turned to Nigel Slater’s Hot, Sweet Plum Chutney recipe. You can find it in Ripe. You can also find it on the Serious Eats website. Though I made a few fairly significant changes, I used Slater’s recipe as my blueprint.

The thing is, though Slater’s recipe has a bit of spice to it, I wanted my batch to be even kickier. I wanted it to have some of the fire & brimstone of Devil’s Chutney. So I bumped up the chilies and added a habañero to the mix. I also added some ginger. The results were XXXactly what I was looking for.

XXXtra Spicy Plum Chutney

3 litres of plums

1 tbsp neutral cooking oil, such as canola

1/2 vidalia onion

l nub ginger, peeled and minced

1 sweet red pepper, finely chopped

1 habañero pepper, minced

1 clove garlic, minced

1-2 dried red chilies (preferably arbol, or something similar)

3/4 cup golden raisins

2 tsp yellow mustard seeds

2/3 cup apple cider vinegar

2/3 cup red wine vinegar

black pepper

salt

Heat oil over medium in a large-ish flat-bottomed saucepan and sauté the onion for a few minutes until beginning to turn transparent. Add ginger, chopped sweet and hot peppers, and garlic. Sauté for another minute or two. Add dried chilies (I used 2), raisins, mustard seeds, vinegars, and a healthy dose of freshly ground black pepper.

Bring to a boil, turn down to low and simmer gently for an hour. Adjust the seasoning with salt and sugar (if necessary).

Sterilize your jars and lids.

Continue to simmer gently for another 30 - 60 minutes. Check to see if the chutney has achieved a proper set. You can do so by running a rubber spatula across the bottom of the saucepan with a swift motion. If the chutney parts momentarily allowing you to see a swath of stainless steel, your chutney is ready to can.

Think of yourself as Moses parting the Red Sea. If that sounds preposterous, possibly even sacrilegious, think of yourself as Charlton Heston pretending to be Moses parting a Red Sea of chutney.

When you’ve achieved a proper set, taste your chutney one last time, and adjust the seasoning as needed.

When your chutney is à point, spoon the chutney into your sterilized jars and seal.

My batch made nearly 5 x 250-ml jars.

Within hours, i’d already busted into one of my jars for my first cheese & chutney platter of the season.

fig. b: cheese, chutney, crackers 1

fig. b: cheese, chutney, crackers 2

XXXtra Spicy Plum Chutney is delicious with cheese and crackers. It’s also fantastic with curries of all kinds. And if all that wasn’t enough, it’s lovely with a wide variety of meat & game, including turkey and pork chops.

This chutney is absolutely, perfectly to my liking. Sweet, savoury, piquant. If you want it even more fiery—devilishly so—make your own adjustments. Add some more dried red chilies and/or another habañero chili or two. Or cut to the chase and add a 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne.

aj

Peaches! Ginger! Peaches & Ginger!

And ginger!

It started with peaches, of course. I picked up the best Niagara peaches I could find in Montreal at Chez Nino. Then I had them expertly checked out by our Official Peach Inspector.

fig. a: paw of approval

But on that very same trip to Jean-Talon Market, I scored the most beautiful local ginger from Ferme des Quatre Temps. It was particularly juicy, particularly spicy.

fig. b: now that’s what I call ginger!

Suddenly I had an idea.

I went back home and used the same basic method outlined in “Micro-batch Jellies & Jams.” I peeled and cut my peaches into chunks. I weighed my peaches. I added 40% of their weight in sugar and allowed them to macerate. When it came time to prepare my jam I added a generous amount of grated ginger and its juice.

The resultant jam was magical. The peach flavour was wonderful, but the ginger added additional liveliness and unexpected spice. What a treat!

fig. c: dynamic duo

Even Michelle was impressed. And that’s saying something.

aj

Days of Fruit & Jelly

Though it’s easy to get the impression these days that virtually everyone has gone back to embracing the joys of canning and preserving, in truth the reality is that very few North Americans ever purchase produce of any kind, let alone go through the trouble of canning.  There are those that are tempted, though.  They’ve read the articles, seen the television programs, listened to the podcasts, bought the cookbooks, and are very much inclined to can and preserve.  One of the things that can hold a lot of potential canners back, however, has to do with quantity.  Most recipes for canning and preserving are high-quantity.  They’re geared toward stocking a pantry for a long winter, or for the apocalypse—whichever comes first.

Small-batch preserve recipes are what most novice canners need, though.  They want to give it a shot, but they’re looking for something that’s not a huge undertaking. Something that doesn’t require a large capital investment. Something that pays dividends.

We discovered the pleasures of small-batch canning years ago, back around the time that we first started experimenting with touristic preserving, or small-batch canning as DIY souvenirs. We didn’t rely on a single set of instructions at the time. We just based our experiments on what we already knew about canning. After all, Michelle was already a pretty expert canner, and had been for some time.  But we’ve always been struck by how little encouragement there is to can in small batches.

Recently, though, we discovered a particularly sublime small-batch jelly recipe, in Nigel Slater’s Tender, vol. 2. This shouldn’t have been a surprise. Slater is exactly the kind of food writer who you’d expect to have written such a treatise, given his devotion to fruits and vegetables and his fine-tuned attention to seasonality and to the pleasures of the garden.  He’s also someone who never expected to become a serious canner, which may partially explain his openness to all different approaches to preserving.  “I find it slightly amusing that I am now the sort of person who makes jellies and jams,” he writes.  “The process is relaxing and somehow good for my wellbeing.  Twenty years ago I would have laughed at the idea of ever pouring cottage garden fruit through a jelly bag, let alone labelling my own jars of jam.  Getting older isn’t all bad.”*

fig. a: high summer berries

Michelle had picked a beautiful mix of berries from our garden—redcurrants, raspberries, and blueberries—and was looking for inspiration.  When she came across Slater’s recipe it struck her as especially well-suited for her needs, even if it was rather unconventional: he recommended virtually no liquid, and his cooking time was very, very short. But most importantly, Slater brought his berry mixture to gel stage before passing it through his jelly bag.  She had her doubts, but she decided to follow the instructions closely, and Slater’s recipe ended up putting her apprehensions to shame. The results were truly exceptional:  the finest, loveliest jelly she’d made in quite a while, and one that required a minimum of effort.

fig. b: still life with quivering jelly

It did require a tiny bit of equipment, however:  a nice, deep stainless steel pan to cook the fruit in, a jelly bag, and some jars.

fig. c: Nigel’s jelly bag

But with its simple method, the small amount of fruit it requires, and its easily adaptable equal-parts-fruit-and-sugar formula, this is a recipe that makes preserving high summer berries as easy and as satisfying as possible.  See a beautiful bunch of berries at the farmers’ market?  Pick them up.  Have some in your garden?   Gather a few handfuls.   Know some friends who happen to have a bumper crop? Unburden them.

Here are the essentials of Slater’s recipe, including its wonderful, somewhat poetic, but very appropriate title:

A Quivering Jelly

450 g redcurrants

A small handful of blackcurrants

450 g white sugar

Put the berries, still clinging to their stalks, into your nice, deep stainless steel pan.  Pour in the tiniest amount of water, barely enough to cover the bottom of the pot, then add the sugar.  Place on the stove over medium to medium-high heat, depending on the strength of your flame/element. Gently bring to a boil, stirring from time to time, and boil for eight minutes, and eight minutes only—“no longer or the flavour will spoil,” according to Slater. Pour the mixture through a jelly bag set over a wide jug or bowl.  Let it be until all the juice has dripped through.  Resist the urge to press the fruit in order to produce more juice.  Doing so “will cloud the jelly,” Slater points out, spoiling its breathtaking translucency.

Pour into clean jars you have sterilized with boiling water from the kettle and dried, preferably in the oven.  Can using sterilized lids, or follow Slater’s instructions by cutting discs of greaseproof paper to fit over the preserve, then covering tightly with a screw-top lid, before storing the jars “in a cool, dry place.”

Of course one of the major advantages of small-batch preserving is that you don’t really have to go through the trouble of canning at all.  Put it in any kind of clean container you like.  Keep it the fridge.  Eat it now.  Enjoy it in the moment. 

This jelly is so utterly perfect, it won’t last long.

aj

*Ain’t that the truth?

From Apple Jam to Crabapple Jelly

We've been listening to George Harrison's All Things Must Pass a lot recently, including its largely improvisatory Apple Jam sides ("Out of the Blue"!).

fig. a:  apple jam

But, when it comes to making tasty jams (or jellies, as the case may be) of our own, we've been focused on crabapples.

 fig. b:  crabapples

In part, that's because there's nothing quite like crabapple jelly:  that colour, that tartness, that natural set.  Most other jellies are either notoriously finicky, or they're just not as gorgeous.

But, mainly, it's because we've had access to a particularly fruitful crabapple tree--when the wild turkeys haven't been shaking it down, we've been free to harvest this tree to our hearts' delight.

 fig. c:  crabapple tree

 fig. d:  freshly picked crabapples

At work, Michelle makes large quantities of crabapple jelly to serve with terrines, mousses, and pâtés.  With these crabapples, she makes small batches of jelly to spread on our toast.  Either way, the method is essentially the same.

Crabapple Jelly à la Michelle

Stem, clean and sort through the crabapples, removing any that are rotten.

Place in a medium/large pot, depending on how many apples you have.

Just barely cover with water.  You should be able to press down on them, getting the water to cover them when you do.

Cook for 20-25 minutes at a simmer until your crabapples are falling apart and fragrant.

Pour through a chinois and let drip.*

For every 10 parts juice, add 6-7 parts sugar, depending on the tartness of your crabapples.

Place the juice and sugar in an appropiately sized pot, bring to a simmer, and cook at a simmer until you reach the gel stage.

A drop of liquid should come off the spoon in a sheet rather than a droplet.

Place in sterilized jars and seal according to proper canning procedures. Or simply pour into any clean glass container and let set, then store in the fridge.   

Voilà!

* You can also use a jelly bag for this step, but Michelle prefers to use a chinois because it speeds up the process.

And, either way, the results are beautiful--to the eye, and to the palate.

fig. e:  crabapple jelly for breakfast 1

fig. f:  crabapple jelly for breakfast 2

Of course, it pays to have homemade bread on hand to enjoy your jelly with,

fig. g:  pain de campagne

but that's another story.

Act fast:  crabapple season is already in full swing.

aj