Marisa McClellan's Blog, page 118

Winners of the New Ball Colored Canning Lids

I didn’t manage to collect enough links for a round-up this week and so I’m skipping them and just posting winners tonight (they’ll be back next week, I promise).

Last week, I featured the new Ball blue and green lids and rings in my weekly giveaway slot. I had five sets to share and here are the lucky people who will be finding them in their mail boxes sometime soon.

#296/Lynell
#392/Becky
#418/Eliz
#496/Nelle
#572/Jason

Stay tuned, I’ll have another fun giveaway soon!

Related Posts:

Links: More Kumquats, Pickled Cabbage, and a Winner
Links: Meyer Lemons, Pour Spouts, and Winners
Links: Jar Jewelry, Links, and a Winner

Cookbooks: Baking Sourdough Bread

I acquired my sourdough starter just over two years ago. I was moved to get myself a bit of natural yeast thanks a cooking challenge laid down by Tara Austen Weaver on her blog, Tea and Cookies. I’d always been interested in learning more about how bread baking worked the old fashioned way and it seemed like just the opportunity to give it a shot.

A friend gave me a bit of her starter and I began to feed it and bake with it. Thing was, I never quite got the hang of sourdough. I baked a couple successful loaves and made some good waffles, but had more clunkers than successes. I obsessively read blog posts and recipes from other bakers and it still never entirely clicked for me.

I had a vague inkling that my desire to add as much whole grain flours as possible caused some of my issues and that success would come with more practice. Sadly instead of persevering, I tucked some of the starter away in the fridge and just pull it out occasionally for a quick feeding to ensure it doesn’t die.

Happily, a new book landed in my mailbox recently that has given me hope that I am not destined to be a sourdough loser for all time. Baking Sourdough Bread has a number of recipes for breads, buns, and crackers that are clear and prescribed. This is not a book that waxes poetic about the beauty of sourdough. It spells out a simple recipe and tells you to get to work. It also includes a number of recipes that utilize sweets, treats, and whole grains, which pleases me.

If you’ve been similarly perplexed by sourdough baking and need something a little more basic than Tartine Bread, this book is refreshingly straight forward. I am happy to add it to my bookshelf.

Related Posts:

Cookbooks: Whole Grain Mornings
Cookbooks for Canners, Picklers, and Preservers
Cookbooks: Who Wants Seconds?

Blood Orange Curd

A couple weeks ago, I was walking through Reading Terminal Market when I spotted a bin of blood oranges. They were relatively small, but the sign said they were just 4 for $1 and so I picked up eight. I had no plan for them beyond making something delicious. I buy produce like this far too often.

I considered making marmalade, but I still have one jar left from last year (and I’ve been working on a few varieties with Meyer lemons and Cara Cara oranges). As I thought over my other options, it occurred to me that it’s been far too long since I had a jar of curd in the fridge. And so the decision was made.

The nice thing about making blood orange curd is that it only needed half of my oranges (so I may just make myself a batch of blood orange shrub). I added the juice of one lemon to the mix to up the pucker a little and had a very generous 1/2 cup, which is exactly what I needed.

Whenever I make a curd, I always make sure to search out the very best eggs, because they contribute both color and flavor to the finished product. The only problem with that in this particular curd is that the yolks were so vividly orange that they muddied the ruby color of the blood orange juice. Happily, the resulting salmon color doesn’t impact the flavor, it just looks a little funky.

Let’s talk briefly about canning and curds. In my first book, I included three curd recipes. Because of differing acid contents, two are deemed safe for canning and one is not (I take my cues from the National Center for Home Food Preservation).

These days, I don’t can my curds at all, even when working with those that are higher in acid (which this one is not). That’s because I find that the texture often firms up unpleasantly in the boiling water bath canner. Curds will keep a couple weeks in the fridge and up to six months in the freezer.

Let’s talk a little about what you can do once you have a batch of curd in the fridge. You can use it to fill a layer cake. You can smooth it into a tart shell. You can dip berries into it. You can dollop it on scones or biscuits. Or, you can do my favorite thing in the whole world and stir it into a bowl of Greek yogurt. The combination is sweet, creamy, and just a bit tart. Truly, it’s the best thing ever.

Print

Blood Orange Curd

Yield: makes approximately 1 pint

Ingredients

3-4 blood oranges
6 egg yolks
3/4 cup granulated sugar
4 ounces unsalted butter, cut into cubes

Instructions

Remove the zest from the oranges with a Microplane and set it aside. Juice the oranges and measure out a generous 1/2 cup of the juice. Taste it and add a splash of lemon juice if you feel it needs a little extra pucker.
Pour an inch of water into a medium saucepan and bring it to a simmer over medium-high heat.
Whisk together the juice, zest, egg yolks, and sugar in a heatproof bowl that will sit comfortably over the simmering saucepan.
Place the bowl over the saucepan. Switch to a spoon or silicone spatula and start stirring. Keep stirring until the curd thickens, coats the back of the spoon, and starts to cling to the sides of the pan between stirring. If the eggs look like they're starting to scramble instead of thicken, pull the bowl off the saucepan and turn the heat down.
When the curd has thickened sufficiently, remove it from the heat and stir in the butter.
Position a fine mesh sieve over a bowl and push the curd through. This removes the zest and any bits of scrambled egg (no matter how careful you are, you always end up with a few).
Scrape the finished curd into a jar and let it cool. Once it's down to room temperature, put a lid on the jar and pop it in the fridge.

Notes

This curd keeps for 10-14 days in the fridge. If you want to keep it longer, divide it into smaller jars and freeze them.

Schema/Recipe SEO Data Markup by ZipList Recipe Plugin2.2http://foodinjars.com/2014/02/blood-orange-curd/


Related Posts:

Giveaway: New Blue and Green Lids From Ball

Several years back, I had a small stash of red and white checked lids and rings that I’d picked up at a close-out sale. I rationed them carefully, using them on preserves I planned on giving as gifts or featuring her on the blog. Every time I posted a picture, someone would comment to ask where I’d gotten then. I hated always having to disappoint people by telling them that they weren’t available anymore.

Happily, Ball recently released a new option for those canners who are itching to dress their jars up with something other than a basic silver lid. Called the Design Series, these new lids come in either metallic blue or green and are sold with matching rings. They come in boxes of six and currently retail for $5.95. Just like their silver siblings, they are BPA-free and are good for a single trip through the canner.

I realize that these lids and rings are a bit pricier than the regular ones. If you can many hundreds of jars a year, they might not be the ones you reach for. What they are is a fun option for people who focus on small batches, are canning for an event (a wedding, perhaps?), or just want to give a few select jars a little extra sparkle. They also match up really nicely with the limited edition blue and green jars.

Thanks to the nice folks at Ball, I have five sets of these lids to give away. Each winner will get one of the green ones and one of the blue (each box holds six lids and rings, so each winner will receive a dozen lids and rings in total). Here’s how to enter:

Leave a comment on this post and tell me one thing you’re looking forward to canning this season.
Comments will close at 12 noon on Sunday, March 2, 2014. Winners will be chosen at random and will be posted to the blog later that day.
Giveaway open to US and Canadian residents.
One comment per person, please. Entries must be left via the comment form on the blog at the bottom of this post.

Disclosure: Ball gave me a set of these lids for photography purposes and are providing the giveaway units as well. No money has changed hands and my opinions are, as always, my own. 

Related Posts:

Giveaway: New Ball Heritage Collection Green Jars
Ball Canning Books Giveaway
Giveaway: Food-Themed Note Cards from League Street Press

One Month Until Preserving by the Pint

Exactly one month from today, Preserving by the Pint will be released. I am thrilled (and only just a little bit terrified) to share this new collection of recipes with you all. There will be a number of blogger giveaways to celebrate the book when it is available (including one here), but if you don’t want to take your chances with lady luck, you can always pre-order a copy from Amazon, Powell’s, Barnes and Noble, Indigo, or your local, independent bookseller.

I’m also going to be traveling a ton this spring and summer to share the new book in person. I’m updating the Classes and Events page on a near-daily basis, so please do make sure to check it often for news.

Related Posts:

Physical Copies of Preserving by the Pint
Upcoming Classes: Temple University! The Brooklyn Kitchen! And More!

Links: Citrus Salt, Winter Squash, and a Winner

The past few days have been glorious. For the first time in weeks, the weather has been well above freezing and the sun was shining to boot. The cold is coming back, but this temporary  reprieve has left me bolstered and feeling like I’m better prepared to handle whatever the meteorological gods plan on throwing our way (including, from what I hear, more snow later this week). Now, links!

Easy citrus salt for lazy cooks (of which I am one).
Wake up your taste buds with giardiniera.
Hazelnut butter.
Spiced pickled pears (thanks Lyn!).
Lacto-fermented butternut squash. Amazing!
Speaking of winter squash, try this jam on for size.
Pasta bake made on a sheet pan for maximum crispness.
Oat and sunflower seed thumbprints. Healthy enough to eat for breakfast!
Homemade energy bars for seriously busy days.
Pressure canned blood orange curd.
Raspberry jam crostata. I would like a slice right now please.

Many thanks to everyone who shared their note writing memories in the League Street Press giveaway last week. The winner is #106/Terry.

Related Posts:

Sponsored Post: Complete Knife Skills with Craftsy

Friends! Welcome to my first-ever sponsored post. I’ve teamed up with Craftsy for a year-long series. See more about our partnership at the end of the post! Enjoy!

I am a self-taught home cook. I’ve never been to culinary school and I haven’t taken a cooking class since I was seven years old and my mom enrolled me in a “Kids in the Kitchen” series at our local community center. When I was young, I learned by watching my mom, my grandma Bunny, and my great-aunt Doris.

During college, I picked up a few tricks from my roommates and discovered a lot through trial and error. And when I was in my early twenties, the Food Network was my guide (people may knock Rachael Ray, but I learned a lot from her in 2002).

I’ve done pretty darn well in this vein, but there’s always been one area where I knew I could do better. Knife skills. For years, I meant to take a class on the subject, but first the budget was too tight and then in later years, I couldn’t find the time.

So, when Craftsy asked me to try out their free Complete Knife Skills course, I was a very willing pupil. Taught by Chef Brendan McDermott, the course consists of four components and takes just over an hour and 45 minutes to complete.

Chef McDermott starts out with an introduction to the necessary knives, moves into the four basic cuts, offers an array of tricks and short cuts, and finally gives you the details necessary to maintain your knives.

You’ll also learn fun tidbits, like how to sharpen a knife using the bottom of a ceramic mug, how to quickly open a bottle of beer with a chef knife (!), and even how to split a handful of grape tomatoes with a single knife stroke.

I was particularly impressed by how easy he made it look to cut a carrot into gorgeous julienned strips. I’ve long struggled to create uniform matchsticks and so always opt to use a mandoline slicer when prepping a cut like that. However, inspired by his example, I decided to make thin-cut carrots and red peppers for a refrigerator pickle, sliced up with nothing more than my mighty chef knife.

Here’s how to do it. First, prepare the brine. Mix one cup apple cider vinegar with one cup fresh water, 3 tablespoons granulated sugar, and 1 tablespoon kosher salt. Heat until the salt and sugar dissolves.

Grab two hefty carrots that weight about a pound in combination. Trim the ends and cut the carrots in equal lengths. Trim away the sides of the carrots so that you end up with a neat orange rectangle. Carefully cut the carrots into slim planks. Stack two or three of the planks and cut them into matchsticks.

Set the carrots aside and prep one red pepper by slicing off the ends. Cut the pepper into two equal halves and trim away the interior pith and seeds (Chef McDermott demonstrations this beautifully in Short Cuts component). Thinly slice the red pepper so that they roughly match the size and shape of the carrots.

Take a small lime and trim off both ends. Using a sharp paring knife, carefully slice away three or four strips of zest. Switch back to a chef knife and mince those strips into confetti.

Using a clean, wide mouth quart jar, begin to build your pickles. Place 1/2 teaspoon each black peppercorn and crushed red chili flakes in the bottom of the jar. Add two garlic cloves (crushed or sliced, depending on your preference) and the lime zest confetti. Add a layer of fresh cilantro leaves and stems (about half a cup packed).

Then, gather up a handful of your carrot and red pepper matchsticks and place them in the jar. I like seeing them upright, but you can pack them in any way you’d like.

Once all the carrots and peppers are in the jar, carefully pour the warm brine over the vegetables. It should be enough liquid to fully cover the veg, but since this is a refrigerator pickle, it will be okay if there’s a bit uncovered. The carrots and peppers will act like straws and sip up the brine even if they’re not entirely covered.

Place a lid on the jar and refrigerate it for at least 24 hours before eating.

Note: For a spicier pickle, consider adding some fresh jalapeño pepper rings. I actually intended to do this, but managed to leave my jalapeño at the grocery store (truly, I know I put one in my basket, but it just didn’t make it home with me).

Sign up for Craftsy’s free Complete Knife Skills class to learn how to make these great cuts for your own batch of refrigerator pickles.

Sponsored content like this is virgin territory for me. I’ve not done anything like this up until now because I’ve never felt like the opportunities presented were the right fit. However, I’m working with Craftsy because I feel like their mission aligns with the things I try to do here. Over the next year, I’m going to be working with Craftsy on a series of sponsored content pieces and I’m excited to see where this partnership goes. I hope you enjoy the ride along with me!

Official disclosure statement: This is sponsored post from Craftsy. I was compensated for this post. However, all opinions remain my own.

Print

Carrot and Red Pepper Refrigerator Pickles

Yield: 1 quart

Ingredients

1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup water
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 pound carrots
1 large red bell pepper
1 lime
2 garlic cloves, sliced
1/2 teaspoon crushed red chile flakes
1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns
1/2 cup packed cilantro leaves and stems

Instructions

Combine the vinegar, water, sugar, and salt in a small saucepan. Place over medium heat and warm until the sugar and salt dissolve.
Trim the ends and cut the carrots in equal lengths. Trim away the sides of the carrots so that you end up with a neat orange rectangle. Carefully cut the carrots into slim planks. Stack two or three of the planks and cut them into matchsticks. Repeat until all your carrots are reduced to matchsticks.
Set the carrots aside and prep one red pepper by slicing off the ends. Cut the pepper into two equal halves and trim away the interior pith and seeds. Thinly slice the red pepper so that they roughly match the size and shape of the carrots.
Take a small lime and trim off both ends. Using a sharp paring knife, carefully slice away three or four strips of zest. Switch back to a chef knife and mince those strips into confetti.
Take a clean, wide mouth pint jar and place 1/2 teaspoon each black peppercorn and crushed red chili flakes in the bottom. Add two garlic cloves and the lime zest confetti. Add the cilantro leaves and stems.
Pack the carrot and red pepper matchsticks into the jar.
Once all the carrots and peppers are in the jar, pour the warm brine over the vegetables.
Place a lid on the jar and refrigerate it for at least 24 hours before eating. Schema/Recipe SEO Data Markup by ZipList Recipe Plugin2.2http://foodinjars.com/2014/02/sponsored-post-complete-knife-skills-craftsy/


Related Posts:

Cookbooks: Homemade Liqueurs and Infused Spirits

Despite the fact that I don’t drink a whole lot, I love making little batches of infused booze. They make really great gifts and are always hugely popular at food swaps. My repertoire is fairly narrow, most years featuring just cherry bounce, rhubarb liqueur, and honey sweetened limoncello.

This season, it’s going to be different. Thanks to Homemade Liqueurs and Infused Spirits by Andrew Schloss, I plan on significantly upping my game. The book includes both a vast amount of interesting flavored concoctions as well a goodly number of recipes to help you use them up.

The book breaks down into three main sections. The first is all the information you need to get started. Next comes the recipes, which are divided into fruits, vegetables, herbs & spices, nuts & seeds, florals, beverages & chocolate, creamy sippers, caramel & butterscotch, and finally infused syrups. Truly, there’s something here for every possible boozy situation.

The thing that I find most useful in this book is that if a recipe is designed to mimic the flavor of a commercial liqueur, that detail is indicated prominently under the recipe name. That way, if you long to make your own Frangelico, just turn to page 138 and start a batch of Toasted Hazelnut. It’s a good way to start playing around if you make liqueurs that can replace what you typically keep in your liquor cabinet.

Related Posts:

Honey Sweetened Meyer Lemon Jam

Meyer lemons are a large part of what make the winter months bearable for me. Smooth-skinned, mildly tart, and with a fresh, slightly floral fragrance, they bring a welcome brightness to February (particularly this month. Every time the weather report predicts more snow, I feel ready to weep).

Over the years, I think I’ve done nearly everything that one can do with a Meyer lemon. I’ve preserved them in salt, turned them into curd, chopped and sliced into marmalade, dehydrated them, made jelly with their juice, and packed the zest into both salt and sugar.

I think this whole fruit jam might be my final meyer lemon frontier. I’d been thinking along these lines for a while and then Shae over at Hitchhiking to Heaven posted a similar whole fruit jam using grapefruit and it cemented the deal for me.

Because I find that honey sweetened preserves are best done in small batches, I started with just one and a half pounds of lemons. I put them in a saucepan where they’d fit in a single layer and added some water (you need two cups of water to make the jam, so I started with a bit more than that to account for evaporation).

I simmered the lemons for about 25 minutes, until the were tender but not falling apart and then I left them in the pot for a day because life got busy. Had my fridge not been packed to the gills, I would have poured them into a container and popped them in there, but there just wasn’t room.

When I was ready to cook, I put the lemons in the blender with two cups of the cooking water and pulsed until they were broken into relatively small pieces but not uniformly pureed (I wanted some texture). The puree went into a low, wide pan with two cups of honey (approximately one half of the meyer lemon mixture by weight). Cooked over high heat, it was setting up nicely in just 15 minutes.

I’m really pleased with the way this jam turned out. It shows off all the charms of the meyer lemon, is pleasingly bracing, and manages to avoid being over-sweet. I also love the fact that it skips all the work of a traditional batch of marmalade. I still have a few meyer lemons left and am planning to make a second batch.

Updated to add: I’ve gotten some questions about the seeds. Meyer lemons are a hybrid fruit, so they typically don’t have many seeds. I used a small slotted spoon to skim them out of the jam during cooking. If your lemons are seedier than mine, cut them in half and remove the seeds before pureeing.

Print

Honey Sweetened Meyer Lemon Jam

Yield: 3 to 4 half pints, plus a little for your morning yogurt

Ingredients

1 1/2 pounds meyer lemons
2 1/2 cups water
2 cups honey

Instructions

Wash the lemons and place them in a saucepan that can hold them in a single layer. Cover them with the water and bring to a boil.
Once the water is bubbling, reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer the lemons for 25 minutes, until the skins are tender but still hold together.
Remove the pot from the heat and let the lemons cool completely.
Place the lemons in a blender carafe and add two cups of the cooking water.
Blend at low speed to break up the lemons. Take care not to puree them entirely smooth.
Pour the lemon mix into a low, wide pan and add two cups of honey (choose something mild in flavor so that it doesn't overpower the lemons).
Bring to a boil over high heat and reduce to medium-high.
Cook, stirring regularly, until the jam thickens and sheets off the back of your spoon or spatula. You can tell it's nearly completion when it hisses and spits when you stir. My batch took all of 15 minutes of vigorous boiling to achieve set, but times will vary.
When jam is finished cooking, remove pot from heat.
Funnel jam into prepared jars. Wipe rims, apply lids and rings, and process in a boiling water bath canner for ten minutes.
When time is up, remove jars from canner and let them cool on a folded kitchen towel.
Schema/Recipe SEO Data Markup by ZipList Recipe Plugin2.2http://foodinjars.com/2014/02/honey-sweetened-meyer-lemon-jam/


Related Posts:

Classic Tomato Jam Sweetened With Honey
My Berlin Kitchen in Paperback + Oven Roasted Apricot Butter
Honey-Sweetened Peach Vanilla Jam

Canning 101: How to Use a Thermometer to Achieve Set

We are currently smack dab in the middle of marmalade season. Though citrus is available all year round, it is both at its peak and most affordable during January, February, and March. Because of this, I’ve been getting a number of questions about marmalade making, in particular, the art of using a thermometer to determine when a batch of marmalade has reached its set point.

The reason this comes up more during marmalade season than other times of the year is that citrus is naturally high in pectin and so many marmalades can be made without the addition of any commercial pectin. The trick then becomes cooking the fruit and sugar combination to around 220 or 221 degrees F, which is known as sugar’s gel point.

When the sugar reaches that gel point, it undergoes a physical transformation and thickens. That increased thickness gives it the ability to bond with the natural pectin in the citrus and create a thick, spreadable marmalade.

The issue that people are having is that they are finding a mismatch between the temperature that their thermometer is displaying and the consistency of the cooking marmalade. Typically, the marmalade appears far more cooked than the temperature on the thermometer read-out would indicate. The result is a burnt, overset preserve that is deeply frustrating, given how much work is involved in prepping a batch of marm.

There are two reasons that this can occur. One is that the thermometer is giving a faulty reading. The way you can test to determine whether your thermometer is reading accurately is to bring a saucepan of water to a boil. Once it starts rolling, insert the thermometer into the water. If you’re at sea level, it should read 212 degrees F. If you’re at higher elevations, that rolling boil will be achieved at lower temperatures. If the reading is wildly different from that which your elevation would indicate, get yourself a new thermometer.

The other reason that your thermometer might not be reading accurately is that is may not be be sufficiently covered with the cooking preserve. Every thermometer has a mark indicating how much the probe must be submerged in order to give a true reading. As you can see in the picture above, the three thermometers in my kitchen all need to be submerged to different depths in order to perform accurately.

If you’re making a small batch of marmalade, you sometimes run into a situation where there’s just not enough volume in the pot to fully submerge a traditional candy or deep frying thermometer (I often run into that problem with the left and center thermometers). In my case, I deal with that situation by using the Thermapen on the right or by using other methods to check my set.

Try the plate/saucer test or if it’s a truly small batch, use your eyes and ears. As it reaches the set point, marmalade will simmer more vigorously. As you stir, watch to see if it is leaving an open space for a moment after you pull your spoon through. That’s a sign of thickening as well.

Related Posts:

Canning 101: Tips For Making Good Marmalade
An Update on the Canning 101/New to Canning Plan
Canning 101: Understanding Acid and pH in Boiling Water Bath Canning