Belfiero and Mrs Preserves

There are some days when 'doing your own thing' are harder than others. Last week I had about 7 of those days. Each day I wondered why I don't just take a job in marketing. I have done it for 18 years, make a decent living and know that I am good at it. Exploring this whole preserving thing is a different story altogether. I think I am good at it. I doubt I will make a decent living and I don't really know what I am doing. Each day I discover another barrier and wonder how I will ever get past it.

Well thanks to 2 people last week, I made it through some significant barriers. Let's start with Barb who is also known as Mrs. Preserves. I was introduced virtually through a friend of a friend who said Barb was willing to take some time and speak with me. In our call she was open and not at all unwilling to share information that some might have been less than willing to share with someone. She told me where to get pectin in bulk, what she has noticed flies off her shelves at the farmers market, where she gets great produce, how many jars of preserves she sold last year. We spoke about liability insurance, commercial kitchens and some of the things she has learned over her years of selling at farmers markets. I got off that call feeling a little more positive about my preserving addiction and once again thought chasing this little dream might be worthwhile and that I shouldn't cave for the golden handcuffs of my career in marketing just yet.

Then there is Dennis at Belfiero. My husband and I were so excited when this restaurant opened it's doors last summer. We love where we live but have often called it the wasteland for good restaurants. The thought of a place that made it's own pasta, served delicious veal and was locally owned and managed excited us. Just before Christmas I approached Dennis with the idea of me using his kitchen during his off hours and in January we met again to firm up the details. Tomorrow is my first day in his commercial kitchen making preserves to sell at the farmer's markets this summer and I am so excited. I plan on making Grapefruit marmalade again as well as Meyer Lemon Marmalade. In exchange for the use of his kitchen, I get to put my social media skills to use and help him evaluate his marketing plan. I think it is a wonderful exchange and I am excited to get started on both fronts.

So thanks to Dennis and Barb for keeping me on track and reminding me that good things come from hard work and perseverance.

For the Love of Grapefruit

It feels like I have been waiting weeks for Seville Oranges to be in season so I can make marmalade. Anyone who knows me knows how much I detest the large grocery stores and grocery shopping in general, but my desire for marmalade has me stopping into Loblaws or the Metro on almost a daily basis.

Friday - I could take the waiting no longer and decided to make marmalade with perhaps the most refreshing citrus; grapefruit. I love the bitter sweet bite of ruby red grapefruit and wondered how it would translate into a marmalade. My official taste tester James tells me that it cleanses the palette and is refreshing. I could barely wait to toast up a crumpet to see how it fared on my morning toast.

The recipe itself is quite time consuming and the output was rather small. This is coming from someone who likes to preserve in 'bulk'. But the flavour is well worth the work. I can tell that this will become part of my regular preserve cupboard and that we won't do without grapefruit marmalade in the future.

I bought 9 large red grapefruits and ended up using the zest from all 9 of the grapefuit, but only the fruit from about 5 of them. The rest I chopped up to make a fruit salad.

1 cup grapefruit zest
1 cup water
1/2 cup fresh grapefruit juice
3/4 cup water
1/8 tsp baking powder
3 cups supremed and finely chopped grapefruit (never supremed a grapefruit before..check out this video)
5 cups sugar
1/2 tsp unsalted butter
1 3oz liquid pectin

Combine the zest and 1 cup water and let sit for 5-10 minutes and then drain.
Combine the peel with the grapefruit juice, 3/4 cup water and the baking soda. Over med/high heat bring to a full boil.

Reduce heat and cover and allow to simmer for 10 minutes. Stirring 2-3 times. Stir in the fruit, cover and simmer 10 mins more.

Stir in the sugar and butter. Stirring constantly until the sugar completely dissolves. This took about 10 minutes.

Increase the heat to med/high stirring constantly bring to a full rolling bowl. It is important to continually stir as it allows the ingredients to come to a rolling bowl slowly and for some of the liquid to evaporate.

Stir in the pectin and once again stir constantly and bring to a full rolling boil. I boiled for 3 minutes until the jam was at a consistency I liked and then I removed the pan from the heat. You may need to skim off any foam, I did not have any.

Let it sit for 5 minutes so that the fruit settles, give a quick stir and then ladle into your jars leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Wipe the rims and the threads with a damp cloth or paper towel and cover with your lids. Process 250ml jars for 10 minutes.

If you prefer a 'zestier' marmalade you could also finely slice the grapefruit peel and use it instead of just the zest.

Angry Pickled Garlic

Yield - 2 500ml jars

4 cups unpeeled garlic cloves
3 cups white wine vinegar (min 5% acid)
2 tsp kosher or pickling salt (I used pickling)
2 tsp chili flakes
2 tsp coriander seeds
2 tsp celery seeds
4 tsp ground black pepper

In a large pot, boil water and immerse the garlic. Blanch for 1 minute in the hot water. Remove and immerse in cold water immediately. This will help get the skins off the garlic easily and will help prevent the garlic from turning green during the pickling process. Pack the garlic into sterilized jars leaving 3/4 inch space.

In a wide pot, combine the vinegar and salt and bring to boil. Ensure the salt has completely dissolved.

Pour liquid into jars and leave 1/2 inch head space and release any trapped air bubbles.

Seal with warm lids and process for 10 minutes at 200F

This post could really have been titled 'Pissed off and Completely Disenchanted Pickled Garlic' or 'Who Can I Punch Pickled Garlic', but that would be me projecting my anger on some garlic that are probably going to be rather tasty at the end of all this. So I toned it down to 'Angry Pickled Garlic'. If you choose to make them you can tone it down even further and completely lose the 'Angry' part altogether. :)

I learned something about myself today...that pickling and preserving acts almost as a form of meditation for me. I have always loved the 'idea' of meditation but when you get right down to it, I can't sit still for that long. So cross meditation off the list and replace with preserving.

You see, I am currently unemployed. After 18 years working in Marketing and Social Media, recent circumstances had me packaged out of my position of Vice President, Client Services. It's ok...it truly was for the best and it has nothing to do with my recent burst of anger.

I had a job interview today. Not sure it was a job I was particularly right for or even interested in, but I am all about networking, meeting new people and to be honest it seems like a great company. I personally like their product and have one myself, so I figured no harm done and I would go for the interview.

I spent a couple of hours researching the organization last night, looked into their competition, took a look at what they are currently doing online, etc. I like to be prepared. Then again this morning, a little more of the same. Got up nice and early, got ready, drove into the city (which took 50 minutes) and arrived a few minutes early only to be told that the person I was meeting was "out with some 'important' people and not expected back any time soon". Just like that, eh? No phone call, no text message, no email, not even a word from the receptionist to tell me this person I was meeting had left a message that she was sorry she had to run out.

Complete waste of my time and left me seething with anger. So by the time I paid the $12 in parking, drove the 50 minutes back and realized I had wasted the better part of my day on someone who so very obviously feels her time is that much more important than mine that I don't even deserve a heads up I had worked myself up into a right state.

What to do...what to do. How do I get rid of this anger. I immediately felt myself walking towards the kitchen where I had a gigantic pile of fresh garlic and started smashing the bulbs on the counter top and tearing the bulbs apart. Then I plunged the poor suckers into boiling water and after a minute of tapping my toes impatiently pulled them out and plunged them into cold water.

After 15 minutes of angrily pulling their skins off I felt remarkably calmer and was ready to boil the vinegar and salt. By the time I had put the garlic in their jars, got the spices ready and poured the boiling vinegar over them my heartbeat was almost back to normal.

10 minutes later, I have pulled them out of their hot water bath and damn they look good. Angry Pickled Garlic you are great therapy and I can't wait til I sink my teeth into you 6 weeks from now.

Jalapeno Jelly

Two things about making Jalapeno jello that I wasn't prepared for:

- how beautiful the jelly would look once in the jars
- how several days after making it the tips of my fingers are still tingling

The tingling part is my own stupidity or perhaps if I were to be gentler on myself I would say it was because of my own 'throw caution to the wind' mentality. You decide. You see, even though I know these beautiful little green suckers are spicy and I have read in countless recipes that when dealing with them in this quantity that wearing gloves is always a great idea...what did I do? Yep, you guessed it - I chopped them all bare handed. I had the music going, the ingredients all lined up and I was in my own little world. Not at all thinking about my fingertips and what the spicy juices were doing to them. Cruel and heartless is what I am.

I saw the recipe in 'Blue Ribbon Preserves' by Linda J Amendt. I have mentioned this book in the past and have made several things from it and they have all been delicious. I won't post the recipe here (because I don't think she would appreciate it all that much), just the results and some key things to keep in mind should you decide to go out and buy her book and try making this yourself. She says this jelly earned her the Best of Show at the Montana Fair...so it must be worth making.

I was in the canning frame of mind and was undecided about what to make. Should I go tried and true and make spicy green beans or break out and try something new. Something new won out and before you know it I was at the grocery store buying up almost all of their jalapenos. :)

The recipe calls for 1 2/3 cups seeded, stemmed and finely chopped Jalapeno peppers and she approximates this to be 35 of them. Well taking her at her word, I bought 35 and found that I had enough peppers to more than double the recipe with a few left over in case I want to make salsa. Perhaps my jalapenos were larger than what grows in her neck of the woods...who knows. Just something for you to keep in mind.

Take her at her word when she says if you want a nice clear jelly to strain it through 2-3 coffee filters. It takes a little time but the final result is a crystal clear looking jelly. Food colouring was listed as optional and I went for it. Green - as you can see from the photos. Without it I think the colour would have been flat and not nearly as lovely to look at.

This morning, I cracked open one of the jars and spread it on a cracker with a little white cheddar. The end result is delicious. Not spicy in the least, but it has a soft subtle flavour that is not too sweet. She recommends serving it with cream cheese and I can only imagine how quickly it would be gobbled up served like that.

Finally - my cauliflower search is complete

I wouldn't even give cauliflower a second glance until about 1996 when I was travelling in Portugal and stopped in at this lovely little restaurant in Lisbon that my guide book raved about. I wish I could remember the name, but it escapes me.

My meal came with a side of pickled carrots and cauliflower. At first I pushed them both to the side of my plate and chose to ignore them, but then the waiter mentioned to me that their 'bite' would compliment the other food on my plate. Not one to let down my good looking Portuguese waiter I acquiesced and decided to give them a try. He was right! The carrots were sweet and spicy at the same time and the cauliflower was spicy, tart and crisp.

Since then, I have searched for the perfect pickled cauliflower. Several of the family recipes I tried the cauliflower ended up too soft at the end of the pickling process and none of them had the spice I was looking for. I bought it in stores and at farmer's markets and all of it just didn't stand up to the pickles of Lisbon. I began to think that perhaps the pickles had never really even tasted that great and that it was the fresh Lisbon air, the handsome waiter and the freedom of travel that had made my taste buds so hard to please now. But then I stumbled across this recipe online and with one or two changes my taste buds began to dance happily around in my mouth :). They had the perfect crunch, the right bite and just enough spice to transport me back to that little restaurant in Lisbon.

The small changes that I made to the above recipe are as follows:
- with the amount of water and vinegar used, I found that there was more than enough to do 2 heads of cauliflower if you packed them tightly into your 500ml jars
- instead of 4 dried chili's, I used 1 tbsp red pepper flakes per jar and toasted them with the other spices
- and because I used 500ml jars I boiled for 8 minutes and then turned off the heat and then let them sit in the water for another 5 minutes before removing
- I let them sit for at least 3 weeks before trying to let as much of the spice and flavour absorb into the cauliflower.

Pickled Shallots in Tarragon

When I was a kid I remember my mom, my nona and my aunt sitting on the steps at my nona's house in the late summer with a giant bucket of silverskin onions that had been soaking in a salt brine for days. They would spent hours sitting on those steps telling stories, laughing, peeling onions and somehow still managing to discipline us kids when we stepped out of line. At the time I couldn't understand why you would want to sit and peel onions for 4-5 hours at a time. It seemed so labour intensive and I truly wondered at the rewards. Pickled onions weren't my favourite to start and when I saw the amount of work that went into them I was well and truly turned off the idea altogether.

But now that I am ever so quickly approaching my 40's, I understand the joy in preserving and pickling. I enjoy walking into my crawl space under the stairs and seeing the walls lined with jars filled with different goodies.

I am envious of that 'community' that my mom had when it came to preserving. Whether it was going to pick the fruits or vegetables with her friends or my aunts, chopping or preparing the ingredients as a group or sitting on the steps and peeling onions while you laugh, share stories and perhaps a drink.

Yesterday after letting my shallots sit in their salt brine for 3 days it was finally time to rinse them, rinse them again and rinse them one final time and prepare them for the jars. The final result is almost too beautiful to put in the dark under my stairs. I want to place them on my kitchen shelves for everyone to see. I can't wait for 8 weeks from now when I will have a nice roast beef in the oven, perhaps a glass of red wine in the decanter and will 'pop' the lid off and bite into my pickled shallot. I didn't have friends over to help me prepare them, but I will certainly have a few over to help me enjoy them.

Perhaps I need to host a 'preserve' party and create a little of my own sense of community?

Thinking Outside of the Box

It's simple really. I love preserving - every step in the process is enjoyable to me. Especially the sharing it with friends, but most of all the eating it! If there was a way I could put my career in marketing and social media behind me and do it full time I would. In fact I have explored the possibility.

I found a couple of farmer's markets that were interested in me joining them and selling my preserves there. It sounded like fun and a great way to connect with my community. But did you know that in order to sell your preserves in the Greater Toronto Area you had to have prepared them in a commercial kitchen. It was news to me. Did you know that renting a commercial kitchen is not cheap. I have been crunching the numbers and you would have to sell a LOT of jam to cover the costs of the kitchen rental, the supplies (from ingredients to jars) and your time at the different markets.

So I was pleased to read an article recently that spoke about a few places that are giving preserves the culinary attention they deserve. I love the idea of a Jam Tasting Room where preserves are served on hour glass shaped spoons and the jams are prepared by a 'jamprentice'. Republic of Jam is thinking outside of the box and bringing some 'sexy' to preserving. Way to go!

Perhaps my dream is not a dead end after all?