“Urban Preservation I: Jam Session”

Who doesn’t love jelly?  Slather it on some bread and add a bit of peanut butter, and you’ve got a great snack for your little one.  Spoon some on your toast in the morning, and kick up your breakfast a notch.  And, truth be told, it makes a great topping on ice cream.  For most of us, though, we hand our jam making over to people like Smuckers or Welch’s, and in turn, they use things like high fructose corn syrup to cheapen the product as much as possible.  Oh, it still tastes good, but really, commercial jam isn’t that great for you.

They’ve got us over a barrel though.  They’re willing to bet that you’re not going to spend the time and effort in making your own jam.  Those little jars of HFCS and fruit bits?  They sing the siren’s song of the 21st century: “Convenience.”  Hand over three dollars, and that sugary suspension of fruit can be yours.  And, honestly, I can’t blame anyone.  Making jam is easy.  Preserving it is not.  There’s a lot of steps, but really, none of them are especially difficult.  This would be my first time making any sort of jam, so, like frying just a chapter before, I was a little apprehensive.  Still, nothing for it but to go through it, and so off I went getting ready to make some spiced blueberry jam.

The first step to preserving?  Sterilize all your equipment.  A dozen jars, rings and lids, a ladle, a set of tongs and a plastic funnel were all washed in hot soapy water, then everything but the lids were placed in a pot of water and set to a boil.  The water boiled for ten minutes to kill any microbes that happened to be in the water, and then the heat was turned off.  Five minutes later, the lids were added, since adding them ahead of this time would have melted the sealant.

While everything cooled, I set to making the jam.  Since I couldn’t buy less than a dozen eight ounce jars, I decided to double the recipe, so 48 ounces of frozen blueberries were added to another pot.  I sprinkled the pectin onto the berries, then added some freshly ground nutmeg and star anise, as well as some ground ginger I had in my cupboard.  Some lemon juice and cider vinegar added the necessary acid for the pectin to take hold, and I let the berries release some of their liquid.  I mashed them to further release juice, and then brought the whole mess to a boil.  At that point, I added nearly three pounds of sugar, and a cup of water.  I let the mixture come back to a boil, and then removed from the heat after a minute.

Congratulations, jam!  Now the other half – preservation.  I fished out the jars, tongs, rings ladle and funnel from the pot, and began to spoon the hot mixture into the jars.  I left a good bit of space in the jars, since I had to trap some air in there to create the vacuum later.  Once the jars were full, I fished out the lids, and tightened them with the rings.  I placed the jars back into a pot filled with water, and brought everything to a boil for five minutes.  They were then removed from the water.  Since I could only do half the batch this way, I repeated with the remaining jars.

As the second batch got up to temperature, I began hearing encouraging sounds from the first batch.  There’s some interesting physics going on with the jars, but I won’t bore you too much with them.  Basically, boiling the jars creates a bunch of steam inside the jars, and a lot of that escapes around the rings and sealant.  When you remove the jars from the water, though, they begin to cool down again, and the hot air inside the jar cools down and takes up less space.  Eventually, once it gets to room temperature, it creates a vacuum, making an airtight seal between the outside world and the jam.  Chalk one more up to science!

So I made a dozen cans of jam, but how was it?  I liked it a lot, as a matter of fact.  It has some wine notes to it, and I can barely taste the licorice flavor of the anise.  It’s there, to be sure, but it’s a background note.  You really only taste it in the finish.  I would have preferred the nutmeg and ginger to have a stronger presence, and I think a second batch would increase both in order to bring those flavors forwards.  Still, a very good recipe.  I’m not sure I’m willing to go to all this trouble just to have a supply of jam, but it’s a fun experiment and a good skill to have learned.

Next Time: I hit the sauce.

Recipes:

Spiced Blueberry Jammin’

“Fry Hard I”

I don’t eat a lot of fried foods any longer.  That’s what I tell my doctor, anyway.  A few years back, I decided to start eating healthier, and that meant cutting out a lot of fast food and fried stuff.  I almost don’t miss the stuff.

Almost.

These days, I figure if I’m going to eat fried food, it should be really tasty fried food, which leaves out most fast food french fries.  There was a time that I ordered fries from McDonalds, even though I hated them 95% of the time.  But, oh, that 5%!  When you actually got a good batch of freshly cooked fries, still hot from the oil, crunchy on the exterior and salty as the day is long…delicious.  The best fries I ever had were at Gates Barbeque, a landmark in Kansas City.  I rarely go there, but I happened to be in the neighborhood one day, and ordered a pork sandwich with a side of fries.  I’d gathered a cupful of ketchup to dip my fries in.  I used the condiment on exactly two fries before I realized that ketchup was getting in the way of the perfection I was eating.  It had a perfect golden brown exterior that gave a satisfying crunch when you bit into it, but the interior was smooth and silken, like whipped potatoes.  I savored them as the fleeting bit of fried heaven they were.   Later visits were good, but never quite as good.  I suppose it’s true in all things – you always chase after the feeling you get after you have your first of anything.

But this isn’t just a love letter about french fries.  This is about that most British of dishes, fish and chips.  And more broadly than that, it’s about a style of cooking that I rarely involve myself with, and that’s deep fat frying.  Besides the obvious health issues that come from deep fat frying, I avoid it for a few other reasons, namely cleaning and safety.  It’s a given that if you cook with several quarts of hot oil, you will have splatter, which means cleaning up is going to be a hassle.  Also, I rarely have the ability to set things on fire when I cook with a small amount of fat.  However, add several more quarts of oil, and the possibility of starting a small fire increases exponentially.  Still, I would not be deterred by small things like “cleanup” or “burning down my apartment building,” and I began looking into fixing this dish.

The first roadblock I had was the cooking medium itself.  Alton wanted me to use three quarts of safflower oil.  It took me awhile to source that, and when I did, I immediately discounted it.  A twelve ounce bottle of the stuff would have cost me around $6.  I wasn’t looking to spend that much on oil, so I purchased three quarts of canola oil for roughly the same price.  Everything I researched suggested that this would be a reasonable substitution, and one that would allow me to purchase the cod the recipe suggested.  Everything else was rather simple to find – flour, baking powder, kosher salt, cayenne pepper, Old Bay – but there was one final ingredient for the fish batter that I would need to source.

Beer.

I like beer.  I like it a lot.  I’ll get into my beer background when I get to the homebrewing chapter, but let’s just say I’m a fan for now.  Since I was making the quintessential British pub food, it stood to reason I should look for something like Newcastle or the like, a good British-style brown ale.  I ended up with a brewer out of Springfield, MO called Mother’s Brewing Company, and bought a six-pack of their Three Blind Mice brew.  Very tasty stuff, it had the taste of a brown ale with just enough hoppiness to avoid being overly bitter.

Now, the only issue was where to cook this.  I talked with a friend, and we decided to cook up the fish and fries there.  I headed over the night before, and cut up a pair of large russet potatoes into long fries.  We dumped them into some cold water and let them soak overnight to convert some of the starch into sugar and promote browning the next day.  We also worked on some cole slaw and tartar sauce, since those would be excellent additions to the fish.

The next day, after work was over, I picked up a pound and a half of cod and made for her place.  The dry ingredients above all got mixed together, and I slowly worked in a cup of the beer.  It quickly became a very sticky batter, and I placed that into the fridge to prepare.  A week before, I’d taken a look at the pot she suggested I use, and I poured the three quarts of oil into the pot.  It was a bit high, but I didn’t think too much of that at the time.  The potatoes were drained, and once the oil reached 320 degrees, I dumped in the first batch.  Immediately, the oil bubbled as the fries cooked at the relatively low heat.  The bubbles piled on top of each other, getting higher and higher, as they are wont to do.

Then it began to spill over.  That’s not supposed to happen.

Fortunately, my friend had silicone oven mitts, so I carefully picked up the pot and moved it to an unlit burner.  The oil had made a huge mess, but we cleaned up and reset, making sure to use less fries the second time around.  That worked.  So did the third batch.

The fourth batch, though, spilled over again.  And caught on fire.

Only a bit, though.  Again the pot was moved, and this time, we decided to use a deeper pot.  As soon as we moved to a taller pot, the splattering issues went away.  The stovetop was shimmering with oil, however – this was already a disaster, and I hadn’t even finished cooking the fries!

After the last of the fries were out, I boosted the heat and let it climb to 350 degrees.  As it heated, I dredged the fish in cornstarch and then coated them with the batter.  From there they went into the hot oil, and cooked for a few minutes.  It didn’t take long to finish the fish, and the finished fish sat in a warm oven while I boosted the heat yet again to 375 degrees.  The fries went back in, this time just to brown them.  Really good fries are actually fried twice; once to cook the interior, and once to brown the outside.  This step was just to get them nice and crunchy, and it didn’t take long at all.

So, at last, the fish and chips were finished.  A dollop of tartar sauce, a splash of malt vinegar, a spoonful of cole slaw, and a handful of fries.  It wasn’t the best fish and chips I’ve ever had – the Weston Brewing Company’s fish and chips is probably better – but it was still good.  Even one friend who didn’t like fish said it was pretty good.  He still didn’t eat much of it, but hey, that’s better than nothing.

So, I deep fat fried, and barely set the house on fire at all!  Hooray for me!

Next Time: Jammin’ on the one.

Recipes:

Chips and Fish