Canning Pressure

The funk that seems to have settled over my gardening activities has similarly affected my canning this year. I had been imagining jar upon jar of home grown produce, lining the shelves of our rarely used pantry. Move over old Costco snacks, I would think. Here come the jars.

But this year has been an absolute downer for the garden. Tomato planting was postponed while a second garden terrace was built, so we have only had a handful ripen on the vine this late in September. Last year's garden terrace was planted with beans, broccoli and cabbage, but I soon found it was home to an aggressive ant colony, determined to keep me from weeding at all costs.

And the animals. My beans, kale and broccoli were all chomped off at the stem. This was particularly disheartening, as we terraced the south side of the house specifically to plant veggies there. The backyard was deemed too much of an "animal zone," but I felt the side of the house had shown little evidence of furry friends. Surprise: you plant veggies, and the animals will move. New animal scat appeared daily, deterring me from spending time out in the garden with my newly mobile daughter.

So while I wait for my tomatoes to finish ripening, I have been buying 10 pound baskets at the market, and canning small batches. I have tried fermentation, a new and somewhat frightening experiment for me (is it done? is it safe?) I want to buy the bushels. I feel like I should be able to handle the bushels. But this year, I just can't. The babe rarely allows me ten minutes alone in the kitchen, never mind the time it would take to can a whole bushel of tomatoes. So even though those large ripe baskets of farm fresh produce are beckoning me, I'm holding firm to my resolution to can when I can, and forgive myself if I have to buy a jar or two.

Canning for a New Generation - Review

Although it doesn't seem very timely to be reviewing a book published in 2010, fresh produce is nearly upon us! I have started to pull my canning titles off the shelves after their winter hibernation, and Liana Krissoff's Canning for a New Generation was the best place to start. Having used this for two seasons already, I have found this book a pleasure to read and cook from.

For me to purchase a cookbook, I need to know that it contains more than a handful of recipes I will use; furthermore, it should teach me something new about working with food. This book falls strongly into the latter category, though I have tried several recipes from it each year with great results.

Krissoff's approach to preserving is actually very traditional. She avoids commercial pectins by straining and boiling down her product, working with with the pectin content naturally available in the fruit and amending it as necessary. This makes for lovely, flavourful preserves, even if they are a bit time consuming. For the total newbie, she thoroughly goes over the various aspects of canning, providing some rarely seen detail about your pectin options. For the more experienced cook, her recipes are at once classic and innovative, each jar presented in tantalizing photography. She has something for everyone, including the "new generation." Will your friends stare blankly at a jar of strawberry preserves? Maybe these friends might be more impressed with one of the book's more ethnic options, such as Persian Tarragon Pickles or Japanese Fermented Bran Pickles. Ooooo. Food cart-y.

Inter-dispersed among the recipes for canned goods are recipes in which you can use them, which I typically don't like to see. Let canning books be about canning, I would say. For this book, however, these are sometimes quite necessary. I might make Do Chua (Vietnamese Carrot and Daikon), but how will I use it? Krissoff tells me, and clinches the deal: her "Asia Tacos" look delicious. I planted daikon this year. Furthermore, the narration in this book is so engaging I was surprised to find how much I liked the personal voice and anecdotes she carried through the recipes. She won my trust, and for that, I will try her scones (or rather, Reagan's scones).

Krissoff's pantry (Canning for a New Generation Facebook page)

The book's Facebook page is well maintained. Krissoff carries on excellent dialogue with her followers, and displays some mouth-watering shots of her preserves.

On my "must make list" this year? I am hoping to start her Pickled Young Spring Garlic recipe by the end of the week, to help my desperately overgrown garlic patch. Last year's batch of apple butter is nearly exhausted, and from the looks of things at the market so is last year's apple harvest, meaning that I suspect we will be picking up cheap butter-grade apples again soon. And I will absolutely be making one of her strawberry jams or preserves, and something with rhubarb. For a start.

Macarons at last

At Christmastime my husband appealed to me to stop making macarons. Or rather, to stop trying to make macarons. I was not successful, batch after batch, and he was tired of seeing both the kitchen and my nerves in a perpetual state of disarray. I started Googling "macaron fail" to make myself feel better.

But finally, I have succeeded.

Vanilla-mango macarons. Success.

There are a hundred different ways you can mess up macarons. In December, I suspect my main mess up was trying to "cheat" by using egg whites from a carton. For a real baker this mistake might have been obvious. I am not really a real baker. Of course, the problem isn't just the macarons. I always have problems making meringue, the first step in macaron-ing. I'm using an old hand beater, rather than a fancy stand mixer. It takes at least 10 minutes longer for the whites to form "stiff peaks" than any recipe I've ever used calls for. Some say ageing the egg whites is critical. They also need to be room temperature, which in Canada this time of year can still be rather cold - so I put them on the counter for hours. 

But the meringue isn't the only finicky part. Watch what kind of colouring you add to the batter, as some claim that liquid food dyes change its consistency. I've seen a video stating that you need to blend the dry ingredients in very vigorously, so as to remove the bubbles. A magazine article notes that the batter should flow "like lava" (like I have seen lava to compare!). And if you make it through all those steps without error, you can't forget to leave the macarons out for at least 30 minutes before baking, so that they form a skin and the signature "feet" appear on the bottom of the cookie.

So now I've annotated my recipe with all of the above reminders. For the filling, I used mango jam that I canned in July using Pomona's Universal Pectin (an amazing product that isn't sugar activated). They were tasty cookies, if very sweet. I might have had too many to celebrate.