Canning - saving the season

Meyer Lemon Curd

The Meyer lemon is a citrus fruit native to China thought to be a cross between a true lemon and a mandarin orange.  It was introduced to the United States in 1908 by Frank Meyer, an employee of the Department of Agriculture who collected a sample on a trip to China.  The fruit is yellower and rounder than a true lemon.  The skin is fragrant and thin, colored a deep yellow with a slight orange tint when ripe.  They are sweeter and less acidic than more common Eureka supermarket lemon varieties. 

I make a batch of this each year usually some time in January or February when the lemons are at peak season.  The curd comes out smooth and it's perfectly lemony without being bitter. Use this on scones, or as a layer in a cake. Of course it's perfectly good on toast or muffins or biscuits as well.  Every person who has tasted seems surprised by how good it. But once they have it they are hooked!  That's how I do it, I get them hooked and then I have a customer for life. 

Making Blackberry Jam A farmers market near my house has these great weekly specials and it is because of the specials that I end up making new things. Every couple of days I would go into this market and there would be piles of blackberries. Finally, after a few weeks of seeing them repeatedly, I figured out that this was the time to buy in bulk. Dah? I was using them in my morning smoothie but I wanted to make something more with them. One day I grabbed 8 packages and came home and made jam. I didn’t know if the berries would be sweet or a tad bitter so I took it slow on the sugar. I gotta say, this batch is one of the best batches of jam I have ever made. It rocks! And it is beautiful, the color alone makes me gaze at it in admiration.  

Garlic Confit. I am always looking for something new to make.  I get a thrill out of a new experience and most of the time the results are good so it’s worth it.  Recently I made garlic confit to give as Holiday gifts. It involves peeling a lot of garlic!  That is the only part that is somewhat tedious. Somewhat tedious?  But if you can get through that the rest is easy.  The garlic is slowly simmered, with a few other ingredients, in olive oil until they are cooked.  The confit can be used for a number of different dishes, anything that you would use garlic in you could use this, and the bitterness is gone, so it is sweet and luscious.  So sweet in fact that making some crostini and using the garlic as a topping is fantastic!

I also made tangerine marmalade. Sounds delicious doesn't it? Well it wasn't! This story is to let you know that even people like me who cook all the time have disasters. I found this recipe months ago and had been dying to try it. My Meyer lemon marmalade is quite popular so I thought this would be a nice little twist on the same concept. BUT NOOOOOOOO!!!!!! The recipe called for pectin which I usually do not use. The few times I have used it I do not like the final consistency of the product so I try to make jams without it. Well, this recipe called for it and my intuition told me not to use it but I decided not to mess with the recipe, but to make it as the recipe called. WRONG! I knew it. It was disgusting. 8 jars of tangerine jam out the window! That just makes me so darn mad when that happens. But it is all part of testing in an effort to get a final product that is really good. I normally trust my intuition, but this time I went against it and look what happened. 

Summer has arrived and with it comes the most delectable peaches. I have to say that peaches are probably my favorite fruit. I look forward to their arrival every year. I bought my first peaches of the season last week and tried them out. They were sweet and juicy. Since they were so good I went back and bought a large box full to make jam. I spent hours in the kitchen this past Sunday making a big batch of peach jam, just for you :)   I used as little sugar as possible, so you can taste the fruit, and a touch of cinnamon. It's wonderful on toast in the morning for breakfast, or stir into yogurt for a special treat.