Feb 13 2012
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Jam Making

Experiment 10: Grapefruit Jam with Lavender and Honey

Mike and I both love grapefruit! For me, it’s a recent passion. When I was little, it always felt too bitter to me. However, a few weeks ago, I tasted a really sweet ruby red grapefruit,with just the right amount of bitterness to it. I’ve been hooked ever since.

I thought it would be interesting to experiment with the flavors of grapefruit, because it is such a strong and distinct flavor. After trying several combinations, I have arrived at one that I really like. Lavender works well with grapefruit. It is a fairly unusual flavor, because until recently it was never considered an ingredient for cooking. It goes very well with the taste of the grapefruit.

I cut four grapefruit, so that I only had the flesh of the fruit. The membrane, the pith and the pits, I set aside, for their pectin. I cooked down the grapefruit in two cups of water for about half an hour. I added two tablespoons of lavender to this.

I experimented with honey as a sweetener instead of sugar. I added a cup of honey to the jam about half an hour into the cooking process. It worked fairly well in this recipe, however, the jam didn’t achieve the thick, gel like consistency that I usually get with sugar. I don’t mind a watery jam, however, if you feel strongly about the texture of your jam, you can replace the honey with sugar.

After cooking the fruit down on medium heat for an hour and a half, I added two tablespoons of vanilla essence and another teaspoon of lavender. I continued cooking for another half hour before bottling.

This was a fairly small experiment. It yielded five four ounce jars.

All of the flavors come together beautifully. There is still some bitterness, but if you like the taste of grapefruit, you will enjoy this jam. It is fragrant and unusual and delicious.

Ingredients:

4 large ruby grapefruit

3 tablespoons of lavender

1 cup of honey

2 tablespoons of pure vanilla essence

Grapefruit Jam, with Lavender and Honey on Punk Domestics
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Feb 03 2012
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Blue Ridge Jams

Review 1: Blue Ridge Jams

Blue Ridge Jams is an artisanal jam company based in Henderson, a small town in North Carolina. They are known for using appealing combinations of flavors to produce beautiful jams. We are impressed by the gorgeous colors of the two jams we tasted.

We like the company’s aesthetic. All of the jams are hand made in very small batches, to ensure that the quality remains consistent. Their jams and jellies have a very delicate texture — these are not heavy, sugary jams. Their flavor profiles, as well, are very well balanced and not too assertive.

Jalapeño Strawberry Jelly

Sight: Held up to the light, has a translucent amber hue.

Smell: Opening the bottle, the initial scent is of strawberry, with a subtle tang of pepper.

Feel: This is a soft jelly, very spreadable.

Taste: The jelly is sweet, reminding you of a summery jam, but with a nice, warm aftertaste.

We think that they struck exactly the right balance with the jalapeño. This jam is a very exciting and versatile ingredient. The mixture of the sweet and savory would complement a range of foods (besides, of course, your toast). We immediately imagined it as a base for a dipping sauce that could be used in Asian or fusion starters, maybe alongside crispy wantons.

Smokey Mountain Special

Sight: This is still translucent, but with various shades of red.

Smell: Rich berry scent. You can actually smell the combination of raspberry and strawberry, in equal proportions.

Taste: We enjoy that the base of this jam contains a balanced flavor of the strawberry and raspberry, while each mouthful is slightly different, based on the type of fruit in that bite; there are bits of strawberry, raspberry, and cherry.

This is a very successful red fruit jam, which for its ingredients manages to provide several complimentary flavors. With the blended flavor of the combined fruit, you also get the distinct flavors of the individual fruit. For people who make their own ice cream, it would be great to add a spoonful of this a minute or two before taking it out of the mixer, giving your custard attractive stripes of color in addition to taste and textural contrasts. A little bit of this spread on top of some puff pastry, with some crème fraîche, could make a delicious, delicate tart.

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Jan 19 2012
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Cooking with Jam

Baguette

Although this blog is devoted to jams, we felt that it was important to include one post about the most common vehicle of jam – bread. Mike is an expert baguette maker, so here is his recipe:

People eat bread all the time, but very few ever spend time to make it themselves— and there’s nothing better than heaping homemade jam atop a slide of homemade bread.

Below we provide an extremely simple recipe for homemade baguettes adapted from The Professional Chef (the textbook used at the Culinary Institute of America).

Ingredients:

2.5 lbs bread flower

1/3 ounce of instant rise yeast

1 tablespoon of salt

800 ml of warm water

Maldon salt for finishing (optional)

NB: If you don’t own a digital scale, it’s really worth getting one. For recipes that require precise measurements (like measuring out 2.5 lbs of bread) it’s worth spending twenty-bucks and investing in a cheap scale; your recipes will improve, and your guests will thank you. You can get them for cheap on Amazon.

Preparation:

Measure the dry ingredients (flour, salt, and yeast) and whisk together in a large mixing bowl. Once evenly incorporated, move the dry ingredients to a kitchen aid stand mixer and add a small amount of the water. Set the mixer to its lowest setting and slowly add the rest of the water. Let the dough mix for about 2-3 minutes on the lowest setting, then increase the speed to medium and mix for 2-3 more minutes. The dough should be smooth and shiny and sticking to the sides of the bowl.

The next step is to let your dough rise. Flour the insides of a large mixing bowl, and then transfer the dough into the bowl with a spatula. Cover the bowl with a large kitchen towel and let rest in a warm part of your kitchen for 30 minutes. (If you have a gas range in your kitchen, a nice trick is to pre-heat your oven to about 250 degrees then place the bowl on top of an unlit burner.) After about 30 minutes, remove the dishtowel and deflate the dough by gently kneading the mixture for a few seconds.  (At this stage you may want to add a light layer of flour on top of the dough to help with the tempering.) Place the dishtowel back on top of the bowl, then let the dough rest for another 30 minutes.

Pre-heat your oven to 475 F, and place two racks near the center of your oven.

After the dough has risen for at least an hour, split the dough into 4 equal pieces. Gently dust the dough with flour, and roll each portion of dough into smooth, even cylinders; they should each be about a foot long and two inches in diameter. Place two of these loaves on one baking sheet and the remaining two on another.

If you want to add a design to your bread, you can make a nice diagonal pattern by scoring the surface of each loaf with a sharp knife.

Season each of the loves with a nice finishing salt (e.g., Maldon, fleur de sel).

Bake the loaves for 23–25 minutes.

Yields: 4 loaves (approximately 16 inches in length)

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Jan 14 2012
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Jam Making

Experiment 9: Kumquat-Cranberry Jam

Kumquats are an interesting fruit. They are part of the citrus family, but unlike oranges and lemons, they carry their sugar in the rinds. So the inside of the kumquat is a bit tart, while the outside is sweet. They look like tiny oranges.

I wanted to put the kumquats in a nice, wintry jam, so I chose cranberry as the alternative flavor. Citrus and cranberry goes together very well, and as an additional kick, I used cinnamon.

The first step was slicing the kumquats crosswise into very thin slivers. Remove the seeds and place them in a cloth spice bag. They are a valuable source of pectin that will help the jam to gel.

I cooked the three pounds of sliced kumquats and four pounds of cranberries together with three cups of water in a pot. I included four whole sticks of cinnamon and the spice bag filled with the kumquat seeds.

I cooked the cranberries down for about an hour. Then I added four cups of sugar into the mixture. After cooking it down for another 45 minutes, the jam thickened, producing a beautiful red consistency. This jam isn’t too sweet. While the taste of the cranberries is strong, the kumquat does come through nicely. The cinnamon is a nice undertone.

Ingredients:

  • 3 pounds kumquat
  • 4 pounds cranberry
  • 4 cinnamon sticks
  • 4 cups water
  • 4 cups sugar
  • a spice bag filled with kumquat seeds, for pectin
Cranberry Kumquat Jam on Punk Domestics
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Jan 08 2012
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Cooking with Jam, Jam Portrait

Jam Portrait

Orange marmalade and quince tart. It was divine.

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The tart was a simple combination of crème fraîche, sliced quince, marmalade and syrup on a filo pastry, baked for 20 minutes.

Went well with a Champagne cocktail:

  • Champagne
  • Pastis
  • Cointreau
  • Lemon peel
  • Sugar cube
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Jan 08 2012
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Jam Making

Experiment 8: Orange Marmalade

Not to be deterred by my first experience with marmalade, I decided to try a simpler recipe and work  up from there. Here, we boiled thinly sliced pieces of orange in six cups of water for an hour. We included the zest and the juice of one lemon into the mix.

After an hour of boiling it down, when the pulp and the pith of the oranges had separated from the rind, I put in three cups of sugar. I kept cooking at medium for another hour.

The end result was a thick, deep orange marmalade. We kept it simple – we didn’t add any other ingredients to the mixture. It tastes like a lovely, classic, British marmalade.

I am much happier with this marmalade than I was with the previous one. However, it is a simple marmalade. Next, we would like to try a more complex marmalade, which has a jelly like texture with bits of rind floating in it. This marmalade has a large quantity or pulp and pith in it. While it has a delicious, simple flavor, it’s texture is not as sophisticated as some versions of marmalade.

Also, since orange has a very large quantity of pectin in its pith and rind, we did not have to use any commercial pectin. This made for a much smoother consistency than the previous lemon marmalade.

Ingredients:

  • Six medium sized navel oranges
  • Zest and juice of one lemon
  • 6 cups of water
  • 3 cups of sugar

Jan 05 2012
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Jam Making

Experiment 7: Lemon Marmalade

After a brief break from jam-making to indulge in holiday festivities, I have decided to start the year with a challenge: marmalade! The process of making marmalade is complex and takes several days to perform correctly. Jam makers suggest a range of techniques. I have examined several cookbooks and come up with a composite method that is both thorough and also time-efficient.

Day One

The evening before cooking, I cut the lemons into small, bite sized portions. During the cutting process, I removed all the pits. I then put the lemon pieces in a stainless steel bowl, filled the bowl with water and covered the bowl, leaving the cut lemons to soak overnight.

Day 2

I let the lemon pieces soak through the night. I then put all the lemons in a large stainless steel pot together with the water they were soaking in. I cooked the lemons at medium heat for a long time, about an hour and a half. It is vital to stir constantly, even at medium heat. A couple of times, the bottom bits of lemon began to burn.

I then strained the cooked lemons, producing a thick liquid. In the strainer, I took some of the lemon rinds and sliced them up into thin, edible strips. I put the cooked lemon liquid and the lemon rinds into a different pot and added three cups of sugar to the mixture.

I used a teaspoon of commercial pectin to help the mixture to gel. After cooking down the sugar mixture for about half an hour, the result was this luminous amber colored lemon marmalade.

The texture of the marmalade was nice. A gel like consistency with bits of rind floating in it. However, I am not completely satisfied with my first marmalade. Of all the experiments I have done, this one could do with significant improvement.

  • The taste of the marmalade is a bit too bitter. I think this is because there was a little bit of burning in the first cooking stage.
  • I don’t want to use commercial pectin in a citrus marmalade recipe. It gives the marmalade a chunky quality and chalky flavor. Lemons have a large amount of pectin in the seeds and in the pulp. In the next experiment, I will try to extract the pectin from the pits.

On the whole, I was glad to try my hand at making this marmalade. But there is a lot of room for improvement! On to more experiments!

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Dec 26 2011
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Jam Portrait

Jam Portrait

The Pear-Elderflower Jam. So delicious!

Dec 24 2011
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Jam Making

Experiment 6: Cranberry-Orange Jam (with Cinnamon)

It’s Christmas Eve! After a relaxed morning here in Cambridge, I got in the mood to make some jam. After trying a range of non-traditional jam fruits, I decided to go back to the basics by trying a berry. Since cranberries are the only berries I could find this time of year, I decided to create a cranberry jam with a very different flavor profile from the one I created in Experiment 2 (the Cranberry Pomegranate Port Jam). I decided to go with oranges and cinnamon. A jam that tastes entirely of Christmas!

I began by grating the rind of seven large California oranges.

I then put three pounds of cranberries in a pot and covered the berries with water. When the berries started cooking down, I added the rind. I peeled the seven oranges, blended them and strained the juice. I poured the juice into the cooking cranberries.

I added two whole cinnamon sticks to the mixture. I put four cups of sugar and two tablespoons of pectin into a bowl and made sure they were well integrated. I then poured the sugar into the pot and mixed continually for about 20 minutes at high heat.

This is a lovely winter jam. It has a Christmasy red color. The texture is a very traditionally thick but spreadable jam texture. The cinnamon adds just a bit of complexity to the jam.

I’m about to put labels on these to give as gifts to friends. Merry Christmas everyone!

Ingredients:

  • 7 large california oranges, rind grated
  • 3 pounds of cranberries
  • 2 sticks of cinnamon
  • 4 cups of sugar
  • 2 tablespoons of powdered pectin
Yields eight half pint jars.

Cranberry Orange Jam (with Cinnamon) on Punk Domestics
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Dec 19 2011
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Jam Making

Experiment 5: Pear Jam (with Vanilla Bean and Elderflower Liquor)

Pears are probably my favorite fall fruit. I love ripe pears that are soft and juicy. We found a wonderful recipe in the Blue Chair Jam Cookbook. Rachel Saunders suggests introducing vanilla and elderflower liquor into the mixture. Mike and I really loved the sound of that. Both of us grew up in the tropics (Hawaii and Southeast Asia respective) and we both love elderflower because it reminds us of lychee, a fruit that we both loved as children.

We made a few small tweaks to the recipe. Instead of Bartlett pears, as Saunders suggests, we used Bosc. We also used a little less lemon juice than she suggests, because we found the acidity was overwhelming the other flavors. We also didn’t use any sugar at all. Apart from that, we kept pretty close to the recipe, which is out of character for us.

Saunders recommends using very ripe, soft pears. Unfortunately all the pears we had were not particularly soft yet, so we put them in the oven at low heat for an hour to soften them up.

We then peeled, cored and cut the pears. We put the pears in the pot and added a small amount of water.

We used two vanilla beans. Mike sliced the pod and removed the seeds. Then placed both the seeds and the pod into the pot.

We added a rather large quantity of the elderflower liquor (3/4 cup), in small amounts over the course of about an hour. Then we turned down the heat and let the pears simmer for another two hours, stirring occasionally. Note that we didn’t use any sugar. The pears and the liquor seemed to provide enough sweetness for us.

Cooking the jam slowly for over less heat seems to be the most effective approach. The flavor of the various ingredients and the fruit itself seems to get stronger with more time.

This jam is my favorite one yet! I say that every time, but this one is particularly wonderful. It is rich and really holds the flavor of the pear. Delicious!

Ingredients

  • 11 cored, peeled Bosc pears
  • Two vanilla pods (separate the seeds from the pod and put both in the pot)
  • 3/4 cup of elderflower liquor (we used St.Germain).
  • freshly squeezed lemon juice from 2 lemons
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