Marisa McClellan's Blog, page 129

Links: Crabapples, Salsa, and Winners

Scott and I are back home after a lovely week away. We started our trip in Brooklyn (where I was teaching a trio of classes), and then spent the rest of our time road tripping around Pennsylvania (Lancaster! Jim Thorpe! Milford!). It was a really good break from regular life and I’m feeling entirely refreshed and ready to dive back into work. But first, links!

For the last couple weeks, Camille at Wayward Spark has been documenting her 2013 canning and preserving. It’s a fabulous series and you should check it out. So far, she’s featured fruit leather, cherry plum sauce, fridge pickles, and corn relish. Also, if you’re swimming in beets, make sure to cook up a batch of her honey pickled beets.
While I’m not entirely ready for autumn fruit, these juicy pears in maple syrup are speaking to me.
A much-tested recipe for homemade ketchup.
A technique for water bath canned grape leaves.
Glorious white peach and vanilla jam.
Take care of all your winter-time enchilada cravings with homemade salsa verde.
Dolgo crabapples. I’d never heard of them before reading this post, but now I want some desperately.
The guys at The Bitten Word have done their annual tomato canning and the pictures are really fun.
Hate watery salsa? Then this might be the recipe for you. And while you’re over at 6512 and Growing, read this too.

Time for winners! I just loved reading all your stories of your lunch boxes, packed lunches, and the many of you who had notes from your parents tucked in next to your sandwiches. We had ten winners and so here they are:

#15 – Linn
#42 – Angela Walters
#315 – Karen
#350 – Jamie
#379 – Sue
#423 – Lynne
#448 – Meagan
#576 – Kiki
#711 – Robyn
#720 - Sara

Stay tuned, because I’ll have another great giveaway up tomorrow afternoon!

Related Posts:

Links: Kimchi, Cherries, and Winners
Links: Strawberries, Rhubarb, and a Cooking With Flowers Winner
Links: Rhubarb, Fiddleheads, and Aladdin Tumbler Winners

Savory Jams, Fruit-based Ketchups, and a Podcast

I’ve been on vacation for the last few days and it has been ridiculously nice. We’ve slept late, wandered around small towns, and even discovered a store devoted to homemade jams and pickles. Still, I didn’t want to leave this space unloved for too long and so am dropping in to tell you about a few of my recipes that have recently appeared elsewhere and a podcast on which I recently appeared.

The first is a story I did for Table Matters about savory jams. It contains a spicy yellow tomato jam, a sweet onion and roasted red pepper butter (this one isn’t safe for canning), and an apricot chutney with shallots and sage (this could also be made with peaches if apricots are done where you are). They are all the kinds of things that are great for serving with cheeses, slathering on homemade pizza dough, and spreading into sandwiches.

The second is a piece on fruit ketchups for Saveur’s website that’s been many months in the making. I wrote a short piece on the history of ketchup (did you know that the earliest ketchups were made with mushrooms and fermented oysters?) and then developed an array of homemade ketchup recipes. The four that made the final cut were blueberry chipotle, tomatillo and roasted green chile, sweet cherry, and beet. I love them all, but am particularly obsessed with the tomatillo version. I need to make a second batch before their season is over.

The last thing is that I was recently a guest on a podcast called The New Disruptors. I had such a good time chatting with host Glenn Fleishman and I’m delighted by how well the whole thing turned out.

Related Posts:

Links: Milk Jam, Savory Granola, and Coconut Butter
Homemade Gifts on Saveur + Easton Winter Mart
Upcoming Classes, Events and a Few Favorite Links

Giveaway: BNTO from Cuppow

Back in July, the folks who make the Cuppow launched a new product. Called BNTO, it’s a 6 ounce plastic cup that fits snugly into a wide mouth mason jar, making it possible for you to pack a whole meal into a single jar.

It’s a handy item if you’re the type who is mildly jar obsessed (no shame in that) and likes to tote your meals to and fro while creating as little waste as possible. We use it a lot around my household for the packing of carrot sticks and hummus (one of my husband’s favorite mid-day snacks), but it’s also particularly good for yogurt and granola.

Because we’re now smack dab in the middle of the start-of-school, pack-a-lunch season, the Cuppow team and I thought it would be fun to give away a whole bunch of BNTOs. Ten, in fact. Pretty nice of them, huh? Here’s how to enter to be one of the ten winners.

Leave a comment on this post and share a favorite packed lunch memory. Did you have a favorite lunch box as a kid? Or did you leave your milk in your thermos over the weekend, only to have it explode when your mom opened it on Sunday night? (Not that I’d know anything about that!)
Comments will close at 11:59 pm east coast time on Friday, August 30, 2013. Winners will be chosen at random (using random.org) and will be posted to the blog on Sunday, September 1, 2013.
Giveaway is open to US and Canadian residents.
One comment per person, please. Entries must be left on the blog, I cannot accept submissions via email.

Disclosure: Cuppow is a sponsor of this website and has provided the ten BNTOs for this giveaway. They also sent me a few to use earlier in the year at no cost to me. However, my opinions remain my own. 
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Introducing BNTO! New Product From the Makers of Cuppow
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Giveaway: New Cuppow Colors

Links: Jam, Ketchup, and a Sur La Table Winner

Friends, I’m writing this dispatch from a hotel room in Brooklyn. Scott and I dashed up here yesterday so that I could teach a trio of classes over Saturday, Sunday and Monday at The Brooklyn Kitchen. On Tuesday, we head back to Pennsylvania for a little end of August road trip. I have a few posts that will be going up over the week while I’m away, but I’m not going to be as ever-present in the comments and over email as I often am. Please do cut me some slack and know that I’ll do my best to catch up and answer questions when I get back after Labor Day.

Got more canning jar rings than you know what to do with? Tie them up with string!
Need a little help with your tomato sauce making? This tutorial from The Kitchn is here to help!
Isn’t this peach and cornmeal cake pretty?
Wild plum jam! I do with there was a little more feral fruit in my life.
Peach ketchup. A condiment worth making.
Oh, black currant jam. I long for it.
Ginger peach preserves. Another take on Canbassador fruit.
Kate, the original Hip Girl, goes for a super small batch of jam.
Wouldn’t it be fun to spread these overnight oatcakes with a nice layer of jam?
A useful tip about how to pack your freezer for food safety.

Thanks so much to everyone to entered the Sur La Table giveaway last week. The winner is #750/Leigh. Thanks again to Sur La Table for the goodies!

Make sure to check back in tomorrow, as I’ll have another fun giveaway up for you all.

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The Sur La Table Preserving Box + Giveaway
Links: BPA-free Lids, Lilac Honey, and a Dry Herb Jar Winner
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Cookbooks: Crackers & Dips

This is a book that I’ve been meaning to tell you guys about since it came out last May. Called Crackers & Dips, it’s written Portland-based food writer Ivy Manning and is a fabulous resource for anyone with an itch to bake up their own crisps, flatbreads, and crunchy crackers.

Ivy is a friend of mine and we make a point of getting together to talk food writing shop and catch up whenever I’m back in Portland. I’ve had the opportunity to taste a variety of the crackers this book contains over the last few years and I can tell you with certainty that they universally fantastic (and are often just the thing to pair up with a dollop of jam).

This book is divided into six sections. You start with the classic cracker canon and then proceed onto recipes for crackers from around the world, whole grain and wheat-free crackers, crackers that are quick to make and bake, sweet crackers, and finally, a section featuring an array of dips and spreads. Ivy has truly left no cracker or dip stone unturned.

As someone who dearly loves the addition of rosemary to sweet things, these graham crackers are high on my list of things I plan to make from this book. I do believe they’d pair up nicely with a jar of pear and chocolate jam and they’d make a very nice addition to a gift bag of preserves and cheeses.

 

I’m also bookmarking this recipe for warm olive tapenade. I am ALWAYS looking for ways to use my stash of preserved lemon and this spread uses a full tablespoon, which is helpful in depleting that jar.

Bottom line? If you’re looking for interesting recipes for both gift giving and entertaining, this book should be on your shelf.

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Small Batch Honey-Sweetened White Peach Jam

Friends, this is not exactly the recipe I promised for today. I do have a batch of peach vanilla jam in the hopper, but I missed my photography window (I spent most of the day in the kitchen clearing out all my pending canning projects) and so it will hold for another moment.

Still, there’s another recipe I’ve been meaning to share. It’s a batch of honey-sweetened white peach jam with strips of lemon zest that I made for Food52. It’s a really light, lovely preserve. The white peaches melt into the honey (choose a mellow one) and the ribbons of zest give you little bursts of tang and texture. Make sure that you don’t skimp on the lemon juice, as it helps keep this preserve safe for canning.

You can read the entirety of the blog post here and this link will take you straight to the recipe.

Related Posts:

Honey-Sweetened Peach Chutney
Lazy Peach Preserves
Autographed Copies of Food in Jars Available Through Provisions

Honey-Sweetened Peach Chutney

Every summer and fall, I try to make at least two or three batches of chutney. It’s a handy thing to have to tuck into gift bags (it helps to break up the monotony of all the jams) and it makes for a very easy potluck contribution (one log of goat cheese + a jar of chutney + baguette rounds = happy diners). Last year, I did versions with black plums and apricots. So far this year, I’ve made cherry chutney and this batch of honey-sweetened peach chutney with some of the Canbassador fruit.

Chutney is not one of the condiments I ate during my formative years, but it has grown on me in my adulthood. These days, it’s one of my refrigerator staples and on days when the leftover pickings are slim, I pull out some cheese, make a piece of toast, and grab some chutney. Works every time. Right now, I’m eating the very end of the black plum from last summer, as well as the dregs of the persimmon chutney from this project.

Before you start making this chutney, you should know that when it comes to removing the skin from relatively small amounts of peaches (and tomatoes, too), I’ve changed my strategy. I am no longer a fan of the blanch and chill. Instead, I cut the peaches into quarters and pull out the pits and heap them in a heatproof bowl. While I work, I bring a kettle of water to a boil.

Once all the peaches are sliced, I pour the boiling water over the fruit. Let it sit for a few minutes, until you see the skins starting to wrinkle. Drain the fruit, rinse with cold tap water, and peel. It works really well and feels easier and more streamlined.

The only thing I can’t stress enough is the importance of using a the heatproof bowl. One very distracted evening, I used a glass bowl that I thought was Pyrex. It was not and it shattered from the hot water. I was able to salvage some of the fruit, but it made a mess and was generally unfortunate.

Cooking times can vary a great deal with chutney. I always plan a secondary kitchen project when I have a batch going, so that I can stay close to the pot and give it a good stir every few minutes. It has a tendency to stick on the bottom as the cooking time nears its end, so try stay focused in those last moments of simmering.

The only other useful tip I have to share when it comes to chutney is that it’s best to open a sealed jar an hour or so before you plan on serving it. When you first open chutney, all you can taste is the vinegar. However, if you let it breathe a little, the vinegar dissipates a little and the flavors of the fruit and spices are more prominent.

How do you like to eat chutney?

Print

Honey-Sweetened Peach Chutney

Yield: 4 pints, or 8 half pints

Ingredients

4 pounds yellow peaches (about 8-9 cups once peeled and chopped)
1 medium yellow onion, minced (about 1 cup)
2 cups golden raisins
1 3/4 red wine vinegar
1 1/2 cups honey
1 tablespoon mustard seeds (any color is fine)
1 tablespoon grated ginger
1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt
1/2 teaspoon red chili flakes
zest and juice of 1 lemon

Instructions

Cut peaches into quarters and remove pits. Pile peaches into a large, heat-proof bowl.
Bring a kettle of water to a boil. Once it boils, pour the water over the peach quarters. Let them sit for 2-3 minutes, until the skins wrinkle and pull away from the fruit.
Peel the skins away and chop the peaches.
In a large, non-reactive pot, combine the peaches, onion, raisins, vinegar, honey, mustard seeds, ginger, salt, red chili flakes, and lemon zest and juice.
Bring to a boil over high heat and then reduce the heat to medium-high. Cook, stirring regularly, at a brisk simmer for 45 minutes to an hour, until the chutney thickens, darkens, and the flavors start to marry.
While the chutney cooks, prepare a boiling water bath canner and enough jars to hold 4 pints of chutney (I like to use half pint jars for a product like this one).
When the chutney is finished cooking, funnel it into prepared jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Wipe rims, apply lids and rings, and process in a boiling water bath canner for 15 minutes.
When time is up, remove jars from canner and place them on a folded kitchen towel to cool.
Once jars are cool enough to handle, remove rings and test seals. Sealed jars can be stored on the pantry shelf for up to a year. Unsealed jars should be refrigerated and used promptly. Schema/Recipe SEO Data Markup by ZipList Recipe Plugin2.2http://foodinjars.com/2013/08/honey-sweetened-peach-chutney/


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Lazy Peach Preserves
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Honey-Sweetened Chestnut Butter

Lazy Peach Preserves

When I teach classes, I’m often asked about peeling fruit. I typically tell people that I always peel peaches and apples, but leave the skins on nearly everything else. However, it looks like I might have to revise that statement, because the preserve I’m about to tell you about includes unpeeled peaches. Shocking, I know.

This particular recipe came about when I became the proud owner of both 10 pounds of cherries and a half bushel of rapidly ripening, very sweet, yellow peaches about ten minutes before I was leaving town for 2 1/2 days.

Both boxes of fruit were courtesy of the Washington State Fruit Commission, the folks behind the most fabulous website Sweet Preservation. When I signed on to be a Canbassador again this year, I didn’t realize that it was going to converge with the cherry challenge. Still, I am not one to shirk a canning challenge and so, when I got back to town, I went to work.

I made eight half pints of peach chutney (more on that tomorrow). I cooked up a smallish batch of honey-sweetened peach vanilla jam (look for it on Thursday). And I made these unpeeled, but very delicious, peach preserves. I also ate a whole bunch of these peaches just plain and raw (good lord, were they amazing).

I washed four pounds of peaches well, doing my best to rub away most of the exterior fuzzy. Then, I cut them into wedges, covered the fruit with 1 1/2 cups of honey, added some thin ribbons of lemon zest, and stirred it all together. It sat for an hour or so, until everything was juicy. Then I scraped it into a pan, brought it to a boil, funneled the peaches into prepared pint jars and processed them for 20 minutes (I used the processing time recommended by the NCHFP for pints of peach halves and slices).

It’s hard to tell from the picture of the jar up at the top of the post, but the peach slices are still quite distinct. My vision for these jars is that I’ll eat them with yogurt and granola or with oatmeal for breakfast later in the year. I often eat those same things with fresh, unpeeled peaches during the summer months and never mind the peels, so my guess is that I won’t mind them with the peels when they’re coming out of a jar. Here’s hoping that will prove to be true!

Though it seems kind of hard to believe, this is the fourth year that I’ve been one of the Washington State Fruit Commission’s Canbassador. Last year, I made Oven-Roasted Nectarine Butter and Luisa Weiss’s Spiced Plum Butter. The year before, it was Italian Plum Jam with Star Anise and Honey-Sweetened Apricot Lavender Butter. And if you go all the way back to that first year, I made Apricot-Blackberry Jam and Pickled Sweet Cherries. These boxes of fruit have led to some very good eating over the last few years.

Print

Lazy Peach Preserves

Ingredients

4 pounds peaches
1 1/4 cups honey
zest of 1 lemon, thinly sliced

Instructions

Wash peaches well to remove fuzz. Slice the peaches into 12 to 16 slices per peach. Place in a bowl.
Pour honey over peach slices. Add lemon zest and stir to combine. Cover the bowl with a plate or some plastic wrap (to keep any bugs out) and let the fruit sit for about an hour until the juices start to run.
When you're ready to cook, prepare a boiling water bath canner and 4 pint jars. Place lids in a small saucepan and bring to a bare simmer.
Scrape the fruit into a large, non-reactive pan and bring to a boil, stirring regularly.
Funnel fruit into the prepared jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Use a chopstick to remove any air bubbles.
Wipe rims, apply lids and rings, and process in a boiling water bath canner for 20 minutes.
When time is up, remove jars from canner and let them cool on a folded kitchen towel.
Once jars are cool enough to handle, remove rings and test seals. Sealed jars can be stored on the pantry shelf for up to one year. Unsealed jars should be refrigerated and and used promptly. Schema/Recipe SEO Data Markup by ZipList Recipe Plugin2.2http://foodinjars.com/2013/08/lazy-peach-preserves/

 

Related Posts:

Honey Sweetened Apricot Thyme Jam at Simple Bites
Honey-Sweetened Chestnut Butter
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The Sur La Table Preserving Box + Giveaway

It should come as no surprise to any of you that I take a certain amount of pride in being on top of all things canning. I like to know about the preserving cookbooks that are in the pipeline. I do my darnedest to be aware of any tools that are being marketed with canning mind. And I want to have canned in every jar out there, so as to be able to answer questions with some level of knowledge and understanding.

So, when the folks at Sur La Table got in touch to ask if they could send me a box filled with some of the canning gear they sell in their store, of course I said yes (after all, I had to see if there was anything out there that I didn’t know about!).

The package arrived a little more than a week ago and contained an assortment of the Quattro Stagioni jars (the three sizes I got were .5 L, .25 L, and .15 L) a pair of these Le Parfait jars (these were new to me and I adore them! They’re the same style as used by Bonne Maman), and the box of canning essentials made by Progressive International (I wrote about these tools here).

The other thing that Sur La Table sent me along with this box full of goodies was a PDF fact sheet full of current statistics about local food, farmers market shopping, and canning and preserving. There was one particularly hunk of data that I found particularly interesting (that’s the image you see above).

I’ve always noted that when I teach a jam class, I mostly get women participating. The percentage of men goes way up in my pickling classes. It’s neat to see the numerical breakdown of something I’ve long observed.

Because it’s Monday and that’s giveaway ’round these parts, I’m going to share some of this goodie box with one lucky reader. I’m giving away the Progressive canning tools that they sent me (the lid lifter is the best one I’ve found) as well as the set of four .15L Quattro Stagioni jars they sent. Here’s how to enter:

Leave a comment on this post. Tell me about your favorite jar, about something you’ve canned this summer, or your most beloved canning tool (we’re taking the grab bag approach this week).
Comments will close at 11:59 pm east coast time on Friday, August 23, 2013. Winners will be chosen at random (using random.org) and will be posted to the blog on Sunday, August 25, 2013.
Giveaway is open to US and Canadian residents.
One comment per person, please. Entries must be left on the blog, I cannot accept submissions via email.

Disclosure: Sur La Table sent me this box of canning goodies for free. I’m choosing to share out some of its contents with one of my readers. I did not receive monetary compensation for this post and all opinions expresses are entirely mine. 
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Progressive Canning Tools Giveaway Winner
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Upcoming Classes: Philly! Brooklyn! Maryland!

Though the summer is starting to wind down, there are still lots of opportunities to take a class or catch a demo. Here’s what’s coming up over the next couple months!

August 20 – Spicy Tomato Chutney at Greensgrow in Philadelphia. Class is from 12 – 2 pm and costs $35. Click here to sign up!

August 24 through 26 – Then, I’m spending this coming weekend teaching the last three classes in my preserving series at The Brooklyn Kitchen in Brooklyn, New York (though there is talk of adding a few more fall classes). These classes are two-hour, hands on sessions. You’ll go home with a juicy packet of canning info and a jar or two of preserves. Prices vary depending on the topic.

August 24, 2 – 4 pm (tomatoes)

August 25, 2 – 4 pm (jam)

August 26, 6:30 – 8:30 pm (tomatoes)

September 7 & 8 – I’m doing a pair of free canning demos at the Central Farm Markets in the Maryland. On Saturday, I’ll be at the Pike Central Market from 10 am to 12 noon, demonstrating my small batch canning technique (I’ll also have books to sell and sign). On Sunday, I’ll be at the Bethesda Central Market from 10 am to 12 noon, doing the very same thing. Hope some of you can come.

September 14 – Tomato Jam at Indy Hall! In this class, we’ll make a batch of tomato jam and talk about all the ins and outs of canning tomatoes. Both boiling water bath and pressure canning will be discussed. Class is 11 am – 1 pm and costs $50. Leave a comment or email me to sign up.

September 19 – Tomato canning basics at Cooking Spotlight in Phoenixville, PA. Class runs 6:30 – 9 pm and costs $60. Click here to sign up.

October 12 – Spiced Apple Pie Filling at Indy Hall! This class will give students an opportunity to help peel, chop and process 10 pounds of apples down into a batch of fragrant, spicy apple pie filling. Class is 11 am – 1 pm and costs $50. Leave a comment or email me to sign up.

October 19 – Canning at the US Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C. The morning class will be a jam making session, featuring a batch of pear vanilla jam. The afternoon class will be a make your own pickle party, starring water bath processed pickled carrots. Times, fees and registration links coming soon.

October 26 – Canning demo and book signing at the Williams-Sonoma at the Bellevue in Center City Philadelphia. Demo starts at 1 pm and I’ll be available to sell and sign books until 5 pm.

October 29 – Chutney making class with the Fair Food Farmstand at Reading Terminal Market. We’ll make a batch of apple pear chutney (using all local fruit) from 6-8 pm in the Rick Nichols Room. Click here to sign up.

 

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