Apricot Blueberry Jam

At some point, maybe it's the end of June, summer just hits you like a ton of bricks. Nothing is happening, and the crickets are chirping, and then it happens: fruit starts piling up in your fridge and then you get invited to everything in the world. I am not complaining here, actually, praise be for summer! With its ten pounds of blueberries, and six more weeks in the season. And its 25 pound boxes of apricots from around the corner. Its long drives past corn fields that start to scent the air with a sweet tea smell of new corn. And its cocktails, laughter, kids plastered with sand and ice pop residue.

Who doesn't want to spend a few hours at a blueberry farm?

It's not without it's normal downsides, the inevitable complexities of living. There's the car that died, and the one that's close behind it. There's the cell phone that died. There's a chicken that's not roosting, making you constantly wonder what could be wrong. And there's a meat grinder you bought that is a piece of junk (more on that later). And if you're a gardener, there are the myriad questions that pop up every day: is that leaf roll? Is that blight? Why are her cucumbers ready and mine are only a centimeter?? Endless inequities pile up, as usual, but something about summertime renders them less painful than during the winter. The blue skies stretched with cottony clouds are a palliative for mostly anything that life can throw my way. (I stress the mostly, as I knock on wood.)

Squashed berries happen.

And then there's jam. My routine lately is to make jam at night after my son had gone to sleep, and it's become a nice quiet meditative exercise that prepares me for bed almost as well as yoga. The other day, the confluence of apricots and blueberries in my house encouraged this jam to be. It's truly tart and sweet at the same time, and turned a gorgeous purple magenta color. 

3 pounds of apricots

1 pound of blueberries

2 pounds of sugar

Mix fruit and sugar and let macerate overnight in a glass bowl, or for however long you can stand waiting.

Put the mixture into your jam pot. Add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice. I put in a sack of the apricot pits, for the almond flavor they impart. I don't crack them to release the kernel, like many folks do. I put them in whole because I am lazy. This step is up to you!

Bring everything to a boil and watch for it to foam furiously. Because of the pectin content of the blueberries, this came to the gel stage rather quickly, about fifteen minutes of bubbling ferocity. When it was done, I turned off the heat to let the bubbles subside and added a quarter cup of almond liqueur. You don't have to add anything, and you could use something else that you have on hand. Or pop in some fresh herbs from the garden. I almost put in a dessert wine but went with the almond riff. It's barely detectable, but I do think it smoothed out the tartness. Remove the bag of pits, if you included them.

Ladle into hot jars, seal, and process for ten minutes in a boiling water bath.

 

Guanciale Jam

There's been a lot of posts on charcuterie alternated with fruity preserve-y stuff, and so I figured I'd combine the two!

No, not really, but this is a meat "jam." I had some guanciale sitting around and had this idea for a spreadable meat, like 'nduja. Or, probably closer in style to bacon marmalade. Last year bacon marmalade was everywhere--do a search and a bunch of things come up. I sort of used those recipes as a guideline, and I wish I hadn't because the flavoring for guanciale should have been more subtle than for bacon. If I ever do it again, I would use white wine vinegar and fresh herbs, maybe honey.

I diced my small stash of cured jowl and sauteed it until brown and crispy. Poured off the excess fat to use later. Placed the meat to the side. Put one chopped onion in the hot pan that was still lightly greased, and cooked until soft and browned. I added some brown sugar and cider vinegar. I cooked it all down for a while, added water when it got dry. When it looked right to me, which was about twenty minutes, I took it off the heat and let it cool. When cool, into the processor it went to be whizzed down into a smooth-ish paste.

This little jar of gold has been coming in handy with the huge amount of kales and chard I have. A spoonful in a hot cast iron pan is the perfect accompaniment to hearty greens. I also had some Charcutepalooza Canadian bacon on hand, a small chunk, and chopped that into the pan as well. Add a little whey, if you have it, to simmer it all down....

It's also good on biscuits. These were made with lard (that I got from the generous Lisa Mack of Mack Hill Farms) with buttermilk and sourdough starter. It was slightly decadent to say the least! That was a really fine breakfast.

Cherry Pit Liqueur

I was complaining for a whole week about how there would be no local cherries this year due to weather conditions. But then I stopped in at the Lawrence Farms Orchard in Newburgh expecting nothing more than a fun day with my son, and got rewarded with my favorite cherry: sours. I think sour cherries taste more like cherries than sweet ones do. Does that make sense? Last year, also a bad cherry crop, I made one sacred jar of sour cherry vanilla jam. It was so good that I cried a little inside every time I had a spoonful.

Montmorency hanging on a tree.

I bought about ten pounds of cherries, and they were on sale for $3.99 a pound, which to me is still pretty expensive. But once I started picking, I couldn't stop. There were two kinds, the very sour and bright red Montmorency, which has yellow flesh, and the other one was sweeter and darker, with red flesh, and I can't remember what the owner called it, but it was sweet enough to eat right off the tree. I made Montmorency jam with white balsamic vinegar, and the other cherries became a jam with homemade black cherry brandy. Right now, I'm busy with starting a jam company, that posting jam recipes will probably not happen. But why not take a look at Nomnivorous's beautiful balsamic cherry preserves? And I know there's some sour cherry love over at Food in Jars. Sour cherry anything is SO worthwhile.

Montmorency in a big bucket.

To return to my story: I had four pounds of each kind. That's not a huge amount of cherries, but to be honest, cherries are kind of a pain to pit. Everybody has their favorite choice of pitter. I know OXO has one that is a favorite among jammers, like Hitchhiking to Heaven and Snowflake Kitchen. You might also want to check out Punk Domestics' Cherry Pitter Guide. There was some conversation recently among some canners about this topic, and I brought up how I used to pit them as a child: my mother handed me a bobby pin, stretched open, and you used the closed end to scoop out the pit. Miserable, some people commented. There is also the handy paper clip for scooping your pits. Or the ever handy no pitter style: use your hands and rip them open. I did this for the Montmorency cherries. Really they just slip out. But for the darker sour cherries, I used my trusty ancient pitter/press. It works pretty darn well for an old gal. 

The old gal done good.

 What to do with all those glistening red pits? I don't know about you, but they look way too pretty to put on the compost heap. I'm a sucker for using the "garbage" end of a project. I just can't throw something out unless I'm sure there's no other use for it. Last year I made Noyaux, with apricot pits. I threw some cherry pits in, as well. Cherry pits are actually often used to make almond extract, so this may be what my liqueur will end up being. With all these pits, I decided to cover them in brandy and wait a few weeks for cherry pit liqueur. That name is almost as appetizing as corn cob jelly, I know, but as they say, it is what it is.

No need for fancy stuff. I did four pounds in a half hour.

Please note that there is some debate on whether cherry pits, and other stone fruit pits, most notably apricot and peach, contain enough cyanide to hurt a person. I have researched it a bit and found that it's negligible enough for me. In some cases, there is support to the opposite, that apricot kernals in particular have cancer fighting potential. In any case, the way to avoid all this is to bake or boil your pits for a short while before you use them to flavor your jam or liqueur. You can go to my post on noyaux liqueur to get a few more details on this.

It's a "pitty" I have to wait so long to drink it!

Red Wine Syrup

I will freely admit that I am a box wine drinker. There. I said it. It's not just all Almaden, my friends. You know that, right? I'm talking decent boxed wine. It's not stunning, but I just pretend I'm at an art opening. I like to have it around when I want just one glass of wine. I like that it lasts for a while. And it's always there when I need to cook. As they say, you should always cook with wine you would drink. By the end of the winter, though, I had a box left that had been sitting around a tad too long. I couldn't bear the thought of drinking it any longer (the down side of a box that holds five bottles of wine!). So I had a plan. First off I froze some in my teeny tiny ice mold. Aren't they cute?

There's nothing for scale, but they are like the size of a boullion cube.

Then I had a fabulous idea, or so I thought. Red wine syrup. Oh, goody! It was simple, just took lots of boiling down. And let me tell you, this stuff is incredible. Puckery and tannic still, but full and rich and ripe as a grape. I'm seeing this in a salad with some salty charcuterie on the side, drizzled over cheese, or on a steak. Or how about something that's so versatile that it can also sit on top of some buttermilk ice cream? Wow. Or, of course, added to a pan sauce or a dressing or a jam. I'm just getting started here...

Red Wine Syrup

8 cups of decent wine (mine was a medium-bodied Italian blend, not too fruity)

Put the wine in a good stock pot and boil it down in half. Then add:

2 cups of sugar

Return the wine and sugar to a boil. Keep it at a fast and furious boil until it looks syrupy and good to you. For me, this was 222 degrees on a candy thermometer. It was glossy and coated the spoon. See picture below.

Pour your syrup into jars. Yield is three half-pints. I didn't process this, but sealed the jars and put it in a dark, cool place: my basement cupboard. As it's just wine and sugar, I felt okay about this. But if you don't, just put it in the fridge. I'm sure it'll last up to a year in there.

You can drag your finger through it and the trail stays put.

Quick Fruit-Filled Coffee Cake

Blueberry coffee cake? Who turns that down?

I think I mentioned my stem to blossom-end philosophy last year during Tigress' Can Jam. I love using up everything I can, and that means that when I make juice or jelly or do something that leaves me with fruit pulp I invariably find a way to use it. This cake was born of that compulsion. It's incredibly quick and easy, and not too sweet; a great every day cake. One that you can leave out for a few days--it stays moist and if heated up for just a few minutes and you have a tasty treat.

I used rhubarb pulp from making rhubarb juice for the cake pictured below. It's color is a tad dull, but tasted great. The blueberry was leftover from syrup making. I really couldn't leave that goodness to waste. Spread over a thick batter and covered up with crunchy crumbles, and no one's the wiser. Saved from the compost!

Combine:

1 1/2 c. AP flour
1/2 cup of sugar
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1/4 teaspoon of salt

Mix in a separate bowl:

1 cup of buttermilk
2 large eggs

Add the dry to the wet until just smooth. Don't over mix. Pour into a greased 10-inch spring form pan, and smooth the top. Spread about two cups (give or take) of fruit pulp over the batter. Cover with streusel topping. Bake at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes.

Streusel topping:

4 tablespoons of butter (oil works too)
1/4 cup of slivered almonds
1/2 cup of whole rolled oats
1/2 cup of sugar

Note: I do not sweeten the fruit, but you may want to depending on your tastes or the tartness of your fruit. The blueberries didn't need any extra sweetener, but for the rhubarb I sprinkled sugar on the layer of fruit before adding the streusel.

I love that this recipe only uses a few ingredients. If you don't have buttermilk, go ahead and use yogurt!

If you want to step it up and get fancy, head on over to these two amazing takes on a recipe for Rhubarb Kuchen:

Cakewalk: Rhubarb Kuchen
Tigress in a Jam: Rhubarb Krack

Dull, but tasty, rhubarb.