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Santa Claus brought me a French copper preserving pot for Christmas this year. Confession or admission? I'm afraid I'm becoming a jam person - like a cat lady or a jazz fanatic. One should have a healthy distrust of such narrow obsessions and secret societies. But since I own a cat and listen to jazz I'm beginning to see a disturbing trend.
Jam making, while relatively simple, is fraught with subtle and nuanced potential disasters that are rarely, if ever, addressed or articulated in preserving cookbooks. They're pretty consistent in this regard. I'm not sure if it's a lack of thoroughness on the authors' parts or a smug presumption that you already know the arcane tricks of the trade–as if to say, "If you have to ask then you're obviously not one of us."
But fear not! I have found my guru and her name is Rachel Saunders. The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook is my bible (my wife has started referring to her as my "jam girlfriend" as compared to my eldest daughter who is simply my "girlfriend" or my youngest daughter who is my "new girlfriend.")
Although I'm determined that this blog won't review books or restaurants, I'm going to make an exception in this case. For anyone interested in making preserves or who, like me, just likes collecting beautiful cookbooks–stop what you're doing right now and run as fast as you can to your local book purveyor and get a copy. Every aspect of jam-making is explained in clear, thorough and beautiful detail, from process and equipment to the stages of cooking and the dreaded "setting point." There are neat tricks for sterilizing, seasonal recipes and a whole back section that just talks about fruits. In fact the whole book has a quality I find irresistible in a cookbook–it's a great read. (Note: when you start taking cookbooks to bed for your evening reading you can rest assured you have a problem.)
I am now armed and dangerous and heading to the kitchen to make Orange Campari Marmalade.
At some point in my early adulthood I decided there were several things that I needed to start gathering from my grandparents' generation before it was too late – in no particular order, the negatives of old family pictures, tea cups and Sicilian cookie recipes. The negatives turned out to be easy - both grandmothers and a couple of aunts had surprising stashes and were happy to let me take them. The tea cups I'll leave for another time. It's the cookies that interest us here.
For me, no childhood memory of family holidays is complete without homemade Sicilian cookies – sesame cookies (good for dunking in coffee), spiced chocolate balls, the strange and mysterious anise-flavored "bones of the dead," and the glorious and glorified Cuccidatti (think fig newton for grownups.) When I started making these cookies myself, it was usually during the Christmas holiday season when I had the time and the inclination. Over the years I have come to associate all of these Sicilian cookies with the holidays but in reality only the Cuccidatti are traditionally served during Christmas.
Nothing sums up the history of Sicily quite like a Cuccidatti. The mash-up of figs and raisins and chocolate and citrus represent all the occupiers, conquerors and rapists who have spent any appreciable time on the island – the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the Spanish. They're all there, wrapped snugly in cookie dough and sweetly drizzled with icing.
Cuccidatti
modified and adapted from Gourmet magazine
These cookies can be quite heavy (and in Sicily quite sweet) so over the years I've tried to lighten them up a bit. I'll use white figs (Calimyrna) in equal proportion to black figs (Mission) or substitute dried apricots for some of the black figs. I've seen recipes that won't say to chill either the filling or the dough but I think both are a good idea - the filling should have time to come together and the butter-dough should chill and set. Make them in the evening and then let it all sit overnight in the fridge.
Filling
4 oz almonds - toasted
3 oz pine nuts - toasted
4 oz Calimyra figs (or dried apricots)
4 oz Mission figs
4 oz golden raisins
zest of half a lemon
zest of half an orange
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
2 oz dark chocolate3/4 cup honey
1/4 cup brandy (or grappa)
Put everything in a food processor and pulse until it's broken up and more or less uniform but not whizzed into a paste - you should be able to make out bits of nuts and chocolate etc. Refrigerate overnight or at least 8 hours covered in plastic wrap.
Dough4 cups flour
1 cup + 1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter - cubed
2 large eggs
1/2 cup whole milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanillazest of half a lemon
zest of half an orangePut all the dry ingredients in a food processor and pulse to mix. Add the cubed butter and pulse again until the butter is roughly pea-sized. Empty into a large mixing bowl. Combine the liquid ingredients into the food processor and mix. Add the liquid mix to the dry ingredients and stir with a fork until everything starts to come together. Switch to your hands and quickly knead it all together. Cut in half and form each half into a thick, rough, rectangle shape. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate overnight, or at least 8 hours.Making the cookiesPreheat the oven to 350˚Measure 1/3 cup of the filling at a time and roll into logs about an inch wide and 10 inches long. The filling is quite sticky and a little hard to work with, so a tiny bit of flour on your hands can help. I've taken to using plastic wrap and my sushi roller and just squeezing the 1/3 cup of filling to the width of the bamboo roller.Working with one piece of dough at a time (leaving the other in the refrigerator) roll into a 15"x14" rectangle, an 1/8" thick. With a ruler or straight-edge trim to 13"x10", then cut into 4 (10"x 3 1/4") strips. Lay a log of filling in the middle of each strip and then bring up the dough on each side and pinch the seam together. Roll the log over, seam side down, and press gently, flattening it slightly. Cut the log into 1 1/2 - 2 inch cookies with a sharp, floured knife and then arrange on a large baking sheet lined with parchment or a Silpat mat.Bake in the middle of the oven for 15-20 minutes, until lightly golden around the edges. Transfer to cooling racks for at least 10 minutes before icing.Repeat with the remaining dough and filling.Icing1 cup confectioners sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 - 2 tablespoons lemon + orange juice (you didn't throw them away after zesting, did you?) sprinkles (more or less depending on the degree of your inner child)
Whisk together the sugar and vanilla with enough citrus juice to make a thick, pourable icing. Drip the icing onto the warm cookies and shake those sprinkles. Let cool and store in an airtight container. Alternatively you could pour yourself a mug of coffee and consume the entire batch standing at the counter.
It's been funny to watch the child learn how to use a camera phone. Taking pictures, for her, will be second nature - like eating or breathing. She's on her second decommissioned iPhone and has no problem turning it on and going to the camera app. I'll hear the click of the "mirror" and the whine of the "motor drive" and then she'll announce the subject of the picture: "Papa" or "Sadie's foot!" She's currently working on a couple of "series" – the ceiling fan in her room (whilst having her diaper changed) and an abstract, Rothko-esque series of black and orange (her finger over the lens.) I think to myself that if she sticks with it over the next 15 or 20 years she'll turn out to be a much more accomplished photographer than her father, who waited into his thirties before taking up a camera with any real seriousness.
But I also realize how different taking a picture is now compared to when I was teaching myself photography. There is an immediacy to taking snaps with a phone that is at once literal and at the same time virtual - looking at a tiny screen to frame the shot. It is akin to all the other screens we stare at every day of our lives (computers, televisions, DVD players) – life-like but not completely real. And disposable. The image itself (if you can actually call it that) is what? Is where? Bits of electronic information? A series of ones and zeroes? Even as a professional photographer, you simply trust that digital images are there... somewhere.
Shooting film was an altogether more precious affair. It wasn't just the care and precautions you took in handling such light sensitive material but the care and caution you took to make sure each frame was exposed properly – or at the very least, adequately. You had to know or be reasonably sure because there was no little picture on the back of the camera. And for anyone who processed and printed their own black and white film, taking a picture became an exercise in thinking in negative. "Expose for the shadows - develop for the highlights" was the mantra you lived by. Holding up a freshly developed roll of film to the light, you knew if you had succeeded or failed. Were the highlights so dense and black that you'd never be able to see any detail in them? Was there absolutely nothing in the shadow areas? Would making a decent print prove to be impossible? And every image was precious because of the time or effort or expense involved. But at the end of the day it was something you held in your hand or hung on the wall.
Perhaps I'll set up the darkroom some day and stand in the strange, warm orange light and watch my daughter's wonder as images appear from nothing in the developing tray, as if by magic.
Sorry about that. It's been a wild several weeks here. For starters we had our second child. I say "we" in the loosest sense of the word. As the father-to-be you try to act important and useful but of course you have no medical training and all the real work is going to be done by your wife. If I learned anything from the birth of my first daughter, it was to do my best to not pass out during labor – it drains resources and manpower better spent on the mother. But all went well and the newest member of the family is home and happy.
Of course it's been a steady stream of friends and family and in the midst of it all our first daughter had her second birthday which has meant a steady stream of gifts and presents that puts your average Christmas to shame. And I say "had" although it seems to still be going strong a good week after the actual day. My wife and I could easily have gotten her nothing and she wouldn't have missed it. But we're not part of the solution – we're definitely part of the problem.
The wife had had it in her head for some time that we were getting her a toy kitchen. We had been around and around about what to get and driven the length and breadth of greater Boston to look at the various options. The choices seem to fall into one of two categories: shoddy and cheap, or nice and expensive. And for me there's an added aesthetic dimension: garishly bright or pink versus stylish and natural. And all the while you're asking yourself (and your spouse), "how much do we really want to spend on a toy stove?"
As I'm loathe to bring more cheap Chinese crap into the house, we had decided upon an Ikea stove (the only discernible difference between cheap Chinese crap and cheap Swedish crap is that at least the cheap Swedish crap has style.) But I had begun to notice the stuff they have at day care – clean, natural, varnished, furniture-grade plywood. Sturdy, well-built and with a minimum of fussy (and breakable) parts. So I finally looked to see who the manufacturer was –Community Playthings.
Now I don't want to get to up on my political horse and ride all over the blogosphere, but this little company in upstate New York is what America and it's economy should look like. The quality maple they use is grown within a small radius of their woodshops – their woodshops, as in, made-in-America. Local, sustainable and friendly as hell. When we realized we had ordered a stove too big and called to get a different model, they cheerfully shipped the new one and return-shipped the first stove, all at no charge. Every time my wife got off the phone with the customer service woman she was warm and fuzzy for at least several hours.
So we paid more for the beautiful and well-built toy stove. I know that when my daughters are finished with it that someday my grandchildren (and perhaps their grandchildren) will get just as much enjoyment out of it as they did. I feel so good about it that I'm not the least bit resentful that they have a better stove than I do ... I think.
So I was going to start out with a meditation on the end of the gardener's year and the melancholy for a surplus of tomatoes that won't ripen and my noble and bucolic attempts to use all the fruits of my garden.
Yeah. Let's just state right off that making jam is a tricky flippin' business. This is perhaps my second or third full-blown attempt at making preserves, and although the end product tastes great, the journey to get there is a bit more like something out of Don Quixote. I don't know if every novice makes the same mistakes that I keep making, over and over again, but here's a short list of what I think goes wrong:
1. I wasn't using a wide and somewhat shallow pot.
2. Boiling at too low a temperature.
3. Not stirring enough toward the end.
As anyone who has been reading this blog from the start will already know– I've got too many damn cherry tomatoes. The colors range from green to light red, but everything is unripe and hard. What to do? I had pickles in mind (and even made an unsuccessful batch) but I bumped into Ana Sortun one afternoon and she advised making green tomato jam. I didn't take very good mental notes of everything she told me, so I cobbled this together from a few things online. I wound up boiling this for so long (and too long) that in the end it's closer to a marmalade than a jam. It's tasty as hell though, and it looks pretty.
Rainbow Cherry Tomato Marmalade
3 lbs unripe cherry tomatoes, halved
5 1/2 cups sugar
2 large lemons, juice and zest
2 inch piece of ginger, microplaned
handful of basil
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
2 cinnamon sticks
Combine the halved tomatoes and sugar in a large non-reactive bowl. Cover and refrigerate for 3 hours or overnight to allow the tomatoes to macerate.
Pour the tomatoes, liquid and undissolved sugar into your cooking pan. Add the lemon juice, zest and cinnamon sticks. Wrap the basil leaves and coriander seeds in cheesecloth or a tea sachet and add to the pot.
Bring to a boil and cook for 45 minutes to an hour, depending on how quickly the water evaporates. Once the bubbles begin to slow and the jam begins to thicken and get glossy, periodically check small portions of jam on a chilled plate or spoon (I keep several in the freezer). Once a cooled test begins to thicken and set after a minute in the freezer, put the jam into sterilized jars and seal.
I'm a professional photographer. I have two digital cameras, two computers and innumerable portable hard-drives. I have an iPhone. Bluetooth. MobileMe on a cloud. I'm digital. I'm connected, right? I just don't tweet. In fact, my inner Luddite is already troubled by all the time I spend emailing, surfing, online shopping and photoshopping (it hasn't spoken to me since I started this blog.) Do I show my age by admitting that I find most social media a little bewildering? Having always been a somewhat private person, I don't understand the compulsion to have everyone in the world know my every thought, or see pictures of me half-naked and drunk at a keg party.
So, needless to say, Twitter hasn't held out much interest for me. If most people's thoughts are relatively uninteresting, then abbreviated or mundane thoughts would be ... well, mundane. And I'm not very curious about up-to-the-moment activities of celebrities and entertainers. I'm just not sure how much more spare time I have for tweeting and re-tweeting (my inner Luddite isn't too sure either.) I should be in the garden weeding.
But the other day, I had one of those momentous epiphanies, like Caravaggio's Conversion of St. Paul on the road to Damascus. I didn't exactly fall off my horse and there wasn't a strong beam of godly light, but an interesting application for Twitter did became clear to me.
I was doing some photography at a fabulous butcher shop (Concord Prime & Fish) for an upcoming story in Edible Boston. In the course of a conversation with the owner, Mike Dulock, I discovered he tweets when he has some interesting or limited offering—a whole lamb that he just got in, or the first bay scallops of the season, for example. Rather than trying to keep track of which customers like lamb sausage, and calling or emailing them all individually, he just tweets. And since I'm nuts for homemade sausage, veal bones, pork fatback and all other manner of interesting butcher bits—I get this. Literally and figuratively.
Although, for the time being, I think I'll just listen. Like the great 20th century English novelist, Evelyn Waugh, who in his later and eccentrically pugnacious years would scream at his kids through an ear trumpet (even then a charmingly outdated piece of Victoriana) but refused to actually listen through the device—I imagine myself a social media contrarian. I won't tweet that I'm weeding in the garden, just know that I am.
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