Blueberry Mint Jam

I got a great cookbook for Christmas last year, called The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook, by Rachel Saunders.  I have learned so much about jam from this book! Saunders doesn't use any pectin, just fruit, lemon juice and sugar, and somewhat longer cooking times in some cases. I learned a great way to judge the set of jam--whether it's done or not--from her book:  you put four or five spoons on a plate in the freezer.  When you think the jam is about done, you put some of it in one of the spoons, freeze it for four minutes, take it out, and look at it.  If it's the consistency you want, not too runny and not too stiff, the jam is done. My jam is a lot better now as a result of learning this test.

The other thing I've learned from this book is that it's ok to flavor jam with "unusual" flavorings. For example, she suggests steeping a few mint sprigs in your blueberry jam after it is done, before putting it in the jars. I did this with my last batch of blueberry jam, and I think it made the jam more interesting.

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There are a lot of interesting marmalade recipes in the book, and a great lemon-peach marmalade that I made earlier in the summer. Saunders has access to lots of varieties of gourmet fruit on the West Coast that we can't always get here in the Southeast, but if I ever find any Seville oranges, for example, I sure will make her Seville orange marmalade.

Saunders processes her jam in the oven, but the Ball Blue Book says not to do that, so I process them in boiling water as per usual with canning, for about ten minutes.

Here's the recipe for blueberry jam with mint:

3 (8 inch) sprigs mint
2 lbs 10 oz blueberries
1 lb 10 oz sugar
6 oz strained freshly squeezed lemon juice

Put the five spoons on a plate in the freezer.

Combine the blueberries, sugar and lemon juice in a wide kettle. Place over medium-high heat and cook, stirring, until the juice begins to run. Then increase the heat to high. Continue to cook, stirring frequently, until the mixture boils. Cook it for 10-15 minutes, stirring frequently, decreasing the heat slightly if it starts to stick. Begin testing after 10 minutes (with the frozen spoons).

Turn off the heat and skim the foam off the surface of the jam. {This is the stuff I used to make the ice cream the other day.}  Steep the mint in the jam for two minutes off the heat. Taste the jam and see if it's minty enough.  When it is, take out the mint with tongs and discard. Pour the jam into sterilized jars and process.

We Can More Food

A veritable flurry of canning.

First the bread and butter pickles. But not from cucumbers: from summer squash. A neighbor thought this was weird, but I did it because an old Gourmet magazine told me to. And, it turned out very pretty, with yellow squash, green zucchini, red peppers, and purple onions. Pretty is important in canning, where the jars are clear glass.

The basic modus operandi was to slice the squashes and onions, sprinkle the slices with salt, add some crushed ice (weird, I know, but I think the purpose was to keep the slices crisp), and put all that in a crock with a plate and weight on it for four hours. This made a kind of brine that rose up and covered the vegetables. After four hours, you drain the vegetables and pack them in sterile jars. Then you were to make a vinegar and maple syrup brine with various pickling spices in it, boil that down a bit, and pour it over the vegetables. Then the jars go in the boiling water bath for twenty minutes.




Another project was pickled beans. At first I thought my beans weren't pretty enough to be seen through the clear jars and then eaten. They had brown spots on them. But those disappeared when I blanched them. At that point they looked incredibly beautiful. I packed them in my very cutest jars and poured another brine over them--about half vinegar and half water--and added sliced garlic and basil to the jars. Then I processed them for fifteen minutes. Alas, the beans didn't stay that beautiful bright green color. But they still look pretty good and I'm sure they'll be tasty, after the requisite four weeks of waiting have passed before they can be sampled.






Finally, the piece de resistance was the blueberry marmalade I'd been dreaming about, ever since I got my zeroxed copy of Preserving the Taste. The blueberries came from Hidden Springs Nursery via the farmer's market in Cookeville. I got a lot of them. The recipe had you make a kind of sugarless marmalade at first with lemon peel and orange peel (I used tangerines, just to be contrary) and juices and pulp from both the lemons and tangerines. Then you add the blueberries, sugar, and a tiny bit of cinnamon! Boil that down till it's kind of thick when you test it in the freezer (a move that's always fraught with anxiety for me: I couldn't tell if the blob of jam on the plate "wrinkled" exactly the way the book demanded it to wrinkle). Put it in jars and process a mere five minutes. The color is wonderful. The taste is sprightly. And it's thick enough!

On to corn relish. I know a patch of corn in the 'hood that I was told I could take some ears from, before the raccoons get them...