living in the woods and making stuff

A few weeks ago Emily, Clint and I went to Clint’s pear tree (planted back in 1987 or so) south of town and harvested a bucket of then “slightly” unripe pears. We made some yummy pies, and the rest of the pears sat in my kitchen in the bucket, with me nibbling occasionally.

When I was talking with Heli about visiting her, I asked if she wanted me to bring the pears up for us to can. She did, so I tossed the whole collection in the back seat of the car (along with the chestnuts, and a whole bunch of last minute herbs from the garden). Today we collected the supplies for pear preserves with ginger and lemon, from The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and other Sweet Preserves, by Linda Zeidrich.

The recipe includes a generous amount of lemon zest and minced ginger, and sits out on the counter for quite a few hours. The kitchen smells lovely! A delicate mixture of pears, ginger and lemon.

I can’t remember where I learned this, but it is a nifty trick for peeling ginger. When you are peeling fresh ginger, use the back side of a butter knife (I think that there might be a tool for this as well) to scrape the peel off. This is the easiest way to peel ginger without taking off too much of the root.

For mincing the ginger, Heli, trained in the Deli, had a little tip. Chop the ginger (or anything that you might be chopping) with your hand over the middle part of the knife finger tips up. This protects them as you chop quickly (as she is demonstrating!)

As we peeled the pears we layered them with the sugar, ginger, and lemon (as per recipe). We had fun here, with the pot in the kitchen between us, chopping and layering. Heli had a clear plan that we needed to layer 4 sliced pears and then add the sugar, etc. I accidently started adding the spices early and was clearly instructed that we hadn’t added enough pears yet…love to be back with the sister!!!

Later…

After sitting overnight, the sugar dissolved, and the pears were ready to slowly cook for several hours. We were in the kitchen, stirring the pears every so often, while we made Monte Bianco. As the pears cooked, they turned a beautiful burnt orange color. I am a little concerned though as we ended up with a lot of liquid, and not too many pears floating in it… I think that if I were to do it again I would maybe change the sugar to fruit ratio, which seemed high on the sugar side. The recipe did suggest using the pears over ice cream, which I think would be good! Or maybe with fresh cream!!

Finished pears, cooling on the window sill. Soon to be whisked off to a cool, dark cupboard for better storage.

It seems to be the end of the raspberry season. I went to pick last night, and the berries were smaller, fewer, and farther between. And they definitely had a different taste. A little old maybe. Trying to make the most of the last bits of warmth and sunlight.

The yellow jackets were out too, practically burying themselves in the riper berries.This is the raspberry patch. All the berries are planted in raised beds, with grass planted between them. This makes for slightly easier weeding and care. and easy picking too! You don’t have to bend down as much to pick the berries.

It is the end of the season, and I am getting a little tired from all the cooking, stirring, etc. So with this batch of berries I decided on something a little easier. Raspberries in red wine vinegar, raspberries in apple cider vinegar, and raspberries in brandy.

The berries are put in sterilized jars and mixed with the vinegar or brandy.

The brandy berries have to wait at least 40 days. Vinegar berries wait at least a month.

Recipes for raspberries in brandy (and a million other interesting ways of preserving foods) are from Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning: Traditional Techniques Using Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, Vinegar, Drying, Cold Storage, and Lactic Fermentation. A very interesting book compiling many traditional recipes from the French countryside. With a forward by Deborah Madison.

For recipes for raspberries in vinegar look in The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and other Sweet Preserves, by Linda Ziedrich. Another wonderful source for recipes, and lots of interesting information!

I processed another batch of quince this weekend. I think this was my favorite so far. I think that this is for two reasons. Firstly, the quinces have been ripening in my kitchen. Every time I walk into my house there is a delicate, sweet smell of quince. As they ripen, the color of the fruits turns a deep yellow, and the fur on the skin becomes easier to remove. Secondly, I made quince paste (from one of my favorite preserving books, “The Joy of Jams, Jellies, and other Sweet Preserves” by Linda Ziedrich). Quince paste is like the essence of quince. The tang, the sweetness, and the gritty and firm texture (at least in mine) are what remind me of quince.

The general idea behind quince paste is that the quince fruit is cooked, pureed, added to sugar, and cooked some more. The result is a fruit gel of sorts that I am thoroughly addicted to. All the pectin in quince (particularly in the peels, seeds, and cores) helps to gel the fruit, creating almost a cake. I am trying not to eat it every time I get near the kitchen…which is pretty much all the time that I am in my house.

Witherspoon Quince Family Trivia

After talking with my dad, I learned that my great grandmother had a huge quince tree, and that my dad and a friend used to own 20% of the quince fruit tree crop in California! This turns out to have been 12 trees, and because there was so little demand for the fruits, they ended up giving them away!

So, I finished the quince jelly, which turned into lightly quince flavored vanilla syrup…

I ran out of sugar, and my mom had a pretty jar of vanilla sugar. So… I decided to use the vanilla sugar for the quince and I ended up not cooking the mixture long enough (I think) and the result was that the jelly didn’t gel as much as it is supposed to.

When I had my mom sample it she was trying really hard to tell me that it tasted like quince, but since she wasn’t particularly familiar with quince, she had a hard time detecting it. So now I have three jars of quince vanilla syrup that I am planning to use to sweeten poached pears in the winter… the jars look pretty anyway, the vanilla seeds are suspended in the mixture.

Vanilla Sugar

My mom had some really fresh organic vanilla beans from a family farm in Costa Rica. She puts several beans in for 3 or 4 cups (or more) of sugar. You can leave the bean whole, or scrape out the seeds, which mix nicely with the sugar.

This sugar works really well for lots of things! To flavor hot milk, jams, pies, spiced fruits, etc!!

I am kind of obsessed with canning things. I get giddy when I find a new source for fruits or vegetables. Excited and can’t stop talking about it. Yesterday was a grape day. Today is a quince day.

Quinces are hard to find around here. Their skins and cores are full of pectin (a substance that helps “gel” jams and jellies), and make a lovely jelly. The fruit is wonderful when made into paste, jam, and sauce. My friend Jeanne from Oskaloosa has a quince tree and she is going to let me stop by and pick a bucket of quinces.

Later… Jeanne and I went out and collected some quinces. They are a smaller variety, which I think are called flowering quince. I have a recipe for flowering quince jelly which i have started.

The quinces are washed (to remove the fur on the skin) and then quartered. Their seeds are tightly clustered in the center of the fruit and are surrounded by a gel like substance (pectin?). The fruit is very hard and needs to be cooked before eating.

My jelly recipe uses about 3 lbs quince. I simmered the quince in my cauldron for about 1 hr until soft. They smell lovely when cooking-sweet, almost like honey. When the fruit was soft, I put them in a piece of linen cheesecloth and tied it to my cabinet. The pectin rich juice is draining into a bowl on my counter for the next 12 hrs or so..

Once all the juice is collected, it will be added to lots and lots of sugar and transformed into jelly for the fall and winter!