Lots of Everything

I’ll be reporting periodically from satellite locations (not to be confused with the LoE global HQ), but expect things to be slow around here for the next month or so. See ya’ll on the other side!

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been writing a lot about my sour cherry jam lately (and there’s more to come in an upcoming column). I’m not necessarily an expert in any one food-related subject (which is why I write and teach about so many topics), but I have limited knowledge of jam-making, and most of that is from personal experience. I didn’t grow up making jam at my mother’s side, we didn’t cover fruit preservation in culinary school, and I didn’t get the knowledge through something like 4H or a home economics class. Making jam isn’t necessarily that difficult, but the learning curve can be steep when it comes to avoiding problems.

So. I’ve made sour cherry jam twice before this summer. The first time, I made it the old-fashioned way, cooking the fruit down until it naturally thickened to a jam consistency. It was great, and we ate that jam for about 2 years. Then I tried a batch with pectin, thinking it might be a nice change to retain more fresh-fruit color and flavor in the finished product. The result was tasty, but it never fully set, and the fruit separated out and floated on top of the liquid. I knew I should remake the jam, but I never got around to it; we just ate the jam as it was, stirring the fruit into the gel before use.

Now I’ve made it with pectin again, and this time I doggedly followed directions. I think I may have been a little lackadaisical about the technique before, so I made absolutely certain to do everything exactly as printed on the insert that came with the pectin I bought.

You can imagine my disappointment when the first round of jars came out with fruit floating on top of liquid. WTF?? I wasn’t going to take this lying down, and I definitely didn’t want to commit the time and resources to remaking the jam, so I did some research.

My first stop was calling my friend Heather, who is in the process of launching a business that makes jams and pickles. (You can taste Heather’s pickles at Breadsoda in the Glover Park neighborhood of DC.) She had all sorts of thoughts as to how I might fix the problem, but she couldn’t offer a definitive solution. The best piece of advice she gave me was to try turning the jars upside down and see if the fruit redistributed. She also referenced the technique used in Christine Ferber’s book Mes Confitures (which has been on my Amazon wishlist for years…maybe I oughta just buy the damn book already), in which the fruit is strained out of the hot jam, the liquid boiled down, and then the fruit reintroduced before jarring and processing the finished product. An interesting idea I’ll have to try later this summer, if I have some time.

Next, I perused the Fresh Preserving website, figuring the folks who made the pectin and jars I was using might have something useful to say on the subject. (That would be Ball brand, owned by the fine folks at Jarden.) They said in a troubleshooting guide that this problem is caused by too much air in the jam, or by using immature fruit or too much sugar. I know my cherries were perfectly ripe, and I followed directions doggedly, so it wasn’t a sugar mismeasurement that caused my problem. Further investigation into their message boards brought up an additional suggestion: stir the jam for 3 minutes before jarring and processing. Hmmm.

I finished with this year’s sour cherry jam this afternoon, and I tried stirring the jam as described before jarring and processing, and it appears to have worked! Yay!

I did get through to the experts at Jarden on the phone today, and the home economist I spoke with suggested that air was the most likely culprit of my problem. She posited that stirring the jam for 3 minutes helped eliminate any tiny air bubbles that interfered with the jelling process, resulting in a more uniform product.

I did turn over those jars I made yesterday while they were still in a pretty liquid state, per Heather’s suggestion. That, too, seems to have worked; the distribution of fruit is much more even than it was before, and the jam did set up properly overnight. I turned them back upright this morning and the jam looks great. (Only problem is, the headspace is now at the bottom of the jar instead of the top, so they look a little funny. Hopefully the jam will slide back down to the bottom at some point…)

I learned a lot about jam through my attempts to troubleshoot this problem, and now hopefully you’ve learned something too. Plus, I have about 27 jars of jam cooling on my counter to show for my studies. Every lesson should turn out so well.

My annual jam sojourn began today. Right now, there are 16 pint-sized jars of sour cherry jam setting up on the counter. (I have enough sour cherries to make another 16, but I am considering cooking them down into a more old-fashioned type of pectin-free jam, which will probably result in less yield.)

I hope to make some blackberry jam in August when we’ll be able to go picking wild blackberries (we have a few patches to keep an eye on). And that may be it for jam-making for this year, depending.

There is something so refreshingly old-fashioned about making jam. It’s something your grandma might have done, something redolent of rubber gloves and aprons, homemade curtains and bustling efficiency. (My grandmas definitely did not make jam. I find it ironic that I have an interest in such an old-school art, when they were all about the convenience of buying a jar of jam off the shelf of a supermarket.) I think jam-making is about enjoying the process of making a great food as much as I enjoy eating the finished product.

In related news, I picked up some canning supplies for this batch at Wegman’s yesterday and was astonished to find Gulf Wax is still sold alongside products like jars and pectin. I thought everybody knew that using food-grade parrafin is unsafe for canning jam! I mean, yeah, your grandma might have used it, but that doesn’t mean it was the best idea. I also remember Southern home bakers from my childhood using Gulf Wax in their chocolate confections since they didn’t know how to temper chocolate. (Tempering chocolate can be a tricky skill, but I still don’t think that’s an excuse for cutting real chocolate with something as unpalatable as wax. Yuck.) Is there any other legitimate food-related use for Gulf Wax at this point? A quick google shows some recipes for using it as a component of surf wax, which is A-OK with me.

I posted a query here about a week ago, seeking sources for sour cherries. I did get one friend calling me about a place she’d seen them, and I found some more responses on this thread over on the Don Rockwell site, but none of these options particularly satisfied me. I have a lot going on for the next few days, and I wasn’t sure sour cherry jam was fitting into those plans unless the fruit happened to be wherever I already was going.

I did email my friend Danny at Rohrer’s Meats and ask him if he thought he’d have sour cherries at the Shepherdstown farmer’s market today. He said, “Sour cherries are not yet ready. I will have them later.” Bummer, I’ve bought Danny’s sour cherries before and they were excellent.

So you can imagine my surprise today when I saw a collection of little boxes of sour cherries lined up at Danny’s stand! I swooped down on them, bought 6 quarts, and carted the preciousness home. (Sorry if you got there after I did and wanted those cherries–I did leave one box for one lucky person, and I’m sure there will be more next week.) I’ve already pitted them and am about to Cuiz them in preparation for jamming.

Thanks, Danny! This means we’re gonna have sour cherry jam for the next year, plus extra jars for gift-giving. Sour cherries FTW!

Today was tacorrific here at the glass-enclosed LoE nerve center. We started our binge at Oyamel, one of the Jose Andres small-plates meccas in DC. We happened to be down near the National Mall around lunchtime and I suggested we check out Oyamel, which is known for its little Mexican snacks.

Oyamel has a delightful menu of tacos, all of which come in house-made corn tortillas presented on a metal rack for easy eating. I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen grasshopper tacos on any other menu, and for only a few bucks you can see what the mystery is about eating insects. (We passed on them, but it is worth noting that I have consumed Mexican worm salt before, and I liked it enough that I’d be glad to eat it again.) There are also duck confit tacos, which we sampled because I am a big duck confit addict and once I see it on a menu I stop reading because I know what I’m ordering. This one came with a wafer-thin shaving of pineapple and some crispy slivers of onion. Niiiice. We also shared the “Tinga Poblana,” which was an appropriately saucy chicken-chorizo-chipotle stew stuffed into a masa harina shell. And then there was the fish taco, which had chunks of seared fish and a spicy cilantro sauce studded with chunks of tomato. The 2-year-old approved of the fish best of all, but my loyalties were with the duck before I even tasted it.

After lunch, we came home and started discussing what we’d eat for dinner. My spouse put in a vote for Americanized tacos, the sort with ground meat and flour tortillas (even we are not pathetic enough to eat the pre-formed crunchy hard corn taco shells…well, usually anyway). So I made it, with ground turkey, a slew of spices from Penzeys and some tortillas toasted in a hot pan for my husband. I ate my turkey on a salad with some pan-fried corn and a salsa-and-sour-cream dressing.

I ribbed my husband about the inauthenticity of these tacos, which to me had a ring of 1950s Tamale Pie to them. “What, they’re eating duck confit tacos in Mexico?” he asked. Ok, ok, chefs are allowed some license to get creative, and likewise I’m allowed to mail it in as long as it’s decent food that we like every so often. Besides, doing so gave us a chance to experience both ends of the taco spectrum in a single day. (And no, we’re not indulging in the “fourth meal” at Taco Kvell later tonight, I think we’re done with tacos for now. And even I have my limits vis-a-vis taco authenticity.)

Food prices are squeezing my family pretty hard, and I’m sure I’m not alone. It seems my standard midweek grocery run, which used to average around $30, has bumped up closer to $50 in the last year or so. I use the same techniques as we all have heard to control costs: I stock up on sale, rotate food in and out of the freezer regularly, and use up every scrap of everything I possibly can. Even things like fish bones or celery tops get saved and turned into stock or something similar. Still, perhaps there’s some new techniques I hadn’t considered for eating well on a budget.

Apparently, I’m not the only one with this idea. There’s a fascinating article in the NY Times about ways your grocer can help you get most of the bang for your buck.

Some of the tips seem a little questionable to me. For example, I don’t buy that many pre-assembled meals because I’d rather not pay a grocer for labor I believe I can perform better myself, and I’d rather control the ingredients in my food closely. (I believe these types of convenience foods aren’t really designed for somebody who makes her living in the culinary industry, although there’s nothing wrong with using them.) I personally like the challenge of using all the food I buy, and don’t mind thinking of ways to use those leftover bits and pieces in something new. To be fair, I buy my share of bagged salad. I am salad-lazy and detest going through the whole process of washing and drying salad greens every time I’m trying to convince myself to eat something healthy. So I do see the logic in this sort of suggestion.

The idea of grocery store tours is interesting. Have you gone on one and what did you think? I do buy store-label products at the supermarkets where I perceive they deliver on both quality and value–places like Harris Teeter, Costco’s Kirkland line and of course Wegman’s. At other places, like Giant and Safeway, I shy away from such products. The question, “What did you buy this week for your own pantry” is a great one I’m going to try to remember to ask at the supermarket over the coming months.

What do you do to eat well and save some pennies at the same time?

Michael Ruhlman recently asked in his blog what your staple meals are.

Our staple meals shift periodically, but here’s what’s been on heavy rotation here at LoE World HQ for the last year or so:

Roasted chicken thighs, any number of ways. Sometimes with a maple-mustard glaze. Sometimes doused with BBQ sauce and served alongside a pile of slaw. Sometimes just plain, with nothing but crunchy salt on the skin. (That one’s a personal favorite.)

Stir-fry, usually with chicken thighs and broccoli as the main features, because we all love it so much. I often make fried rice to go alongside, or we might have some Trader Joe’s potstickers with it as a treat. Lately I’ve played around with a better version of sweet-and-sour pork, one that avoids deep-frying and sickly sweet red glaze and instead focuses on fresh pork tenderloin, pineapple chunks and a pineapple-juice-based cornstarch-thickened sauce.

Grilled skirt steak, or sometimes butterflied leg of lamb. I like to marinate the steak with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, some soy sauce and some chopped green garlic before cooking it. Pan-roasted potatoes alongside.

Steelhead trout, simply crusted with herbs and baked in a hot oven, or sometimes pan-seared just to mix things up. Especially good with broccolini or asparagus. Basmati rice underneath. I used to serve this sort of thing with a tomato beurre blanc, but I’ve become less interested in beurre blanc recently.

I roast some type of bird at least once every other month. I like to do a whole turkey and then use the leftover meat for gumbo, or brown-rice jambalaya. I do a capon early every year. And I usually do a whole chicken stuffed with herbs and lemon once a month or so. Roasting and carving a whole bird makes me feel competent in a chefly way.

Turkey burgers, flavored with brunoised onion and worcestershire, pan-fried in an iron skillet and served on toasted whole-wheat rolls with lots of iceberg lettuce and some pickles.

My husband really likes sausages–brats, kielbasa, Italian, whatever–chunked up and stirred into a melange of sauteed peppers and onions with a can of tomatoes stirred in. He eats it out of a bowl.

Kibbeh on a green salad with tzatziki and grilled pita.

Ordinary pasta.

The story on cherry pie that I mentioned earlier is now online.

You may now commence Warrant earworms. Thank you.

There’s a story on why I patronize farmer’s markets in today’s Frederick News-Post.

There’s also a wonderful story on cherry pie in today’s Martinsburg Journal, but it is not appearing online for some reason.

I visited DC today for lunch with a friend at Blacksalt, over in the Palisades area on Macarthur Blvd. (It’s usually pretty easy to get in and out of this neighborhood, and parking is a snap.) We really enjoyed the sparkling fresh fish. We shared a bunch of great stuff–fried clams with curry mayo, fried Rhode Island calamari with a spicy dip, a watercress salad with cumin vinaigrette, and a Provencal style stew packed with all kinds of great stuff.

This place reminded me of how satisfying simple food prepared well can be. The stew was a particularly good example: I loved the way they put fresh spinach leaves in the bowl and then wilted them by putting the hot broth on top of them. This meant they still had some texture, and they didn’t ooze green into the broth. I loved the grilled bread with aioli that came on top of my serving. And the mussels, shrimp, calamari and chunks of fish were inspiring in their perfection.

There’s also a fish market in the place, so I picked up some mussels and some shrimp to make dinner with for tonight. (It’s been a very seafoody day in the LoE universe.) I’d expound on the fish market, but you’re better off going and reading this post at the French Laundry at Home blog to get the 411.

I will say that this was the first time I ever bought mussels and got home to discover they were all still alive. Not a single open shell in the batch. AWESOME.