Sunday, August 29, 2010 @ 7:20 PM

fun with my foodmill

I don't know why, but lately I've had an itch to make food from my backgrounds. It's almost as if each part of me (Irish, Italian, Hungarian, Polish and German) is battling for control of my tastebuds (and my kitchen). Last week it was Hungarian paprikash. Tonight it was potato gnocchi and sauce. It all started with yesterday's trip to Reading Terminal Market. I was strolling through the center of the market and happened upon a featured local farmstand selling baskets of beautiful bright red tomatoes. I've been longing for a garden since moving to my boxed-in high-rise apartment because I miss the taste of freshly grown tomatoes. Naturally, I bought a basket, intending on eating my heart's content of tomato sandwiches. I walked about 3 feet from the stand before I had the brilliant idea to make spaghetti sauce from scratch. Afterall I had just brought up my food mill from my mom's house (is it weird that I own one? maybe, but I did ask for a Ronco food dehydrator for Christmas when I was 9 and a George Foreman grill when I was 10). What better way to break it in and pay homage to my Italian roots than with a little marinara?

I decided to wait until this afternoon to make my sauce, but in the interim, the strangest thing happened. I was reading about Irish History for class and I started craving potatoes. Mind you I was in Ireland for the majority of the summer, eating potatoes to my heart's content, but I had never had such a spud hankering before. I thought to myself, "Why not make gnocchi? It's potato-ey and you can use your food mill!" Perfect.

I set out on my mission half-heartedly, as I figured that my bad luck with dough and past failed attempts at making pasta (my pasta roller was a Christmas gift when I was 12...) would result in a gluteny, chewy mess of potato and flour. I had tortellini in the freezer in the event that such a nightmarishly messy scenario became a self-fufilling prophecy. My Italian grandma must have been with me in the kitchen because no such thing happened. My bright red tomatoes boiled down to become a rich red-crimson sauce and my gnocchi were perfect pillows of potato. I credit my grammy with instilling in me my deep love of baking, but I'm pretty sure she passed down some Italian kitchen skills, too. If you're looking down on me, gram, I hope I made you proud!

Labels: food mill, gnocchi, italian, potatoes, sauce

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Friday, August 6, 2010 @ 4:58 PM

pump up the jam

Lately, my radar has been jam-packed with jam. Yesterday, I was catching up on my tweets and I came across this article. Then my friend Maddie and I went strolling through the Rittenhouse Square Barnes and Noble looking at books on preserves, pickling, jams and canning. And of course, if you've been following my blog, you'll see that I had four pounds of ripe, delicious, juicy blackberries just begging to be made into jam. Have no fear, my friends. My mother and I did just that.

My mom and I have been making jam since I was in high school. It started one summer when my dad brought home a huge bucket of wild elderberries.  When my teenage self first saw the small suckers, I was unconvinced that they could make anything worth eating. They were too tiny to get a real taste for their flavor, but my mom had confidence in them. We spent all afternoon plucking them off their stems and though it was time consuming, the end result was definitely worth all of our hard work. 

Though we've dabbled in chokecherries and made elderberry jam year after year, we've never actually made jam with any common berry.... that is, until I brought some home this week.  Here's our adventure in pictures.

Our beautiful berries (most packages of pectin will tell you the proper ratio of berries to sugar to jam yield. In our case, we were looking for 5 cups of juice).


Place in a large pot.



Smash.


(look at that beautiful purple juice)

Meanwhile, clean mason/Bell jars with hot soapy water and turn upside down on a paper towel to dry.


Fit a food mill on top of another clean pot.



Add canning lids to boiling hot water to sterilize them.


Cook until berries come to a roiling boil.


Once the blackberry mixture has come to a rolling boil, ladle into the food mill.

 


Turn handle of food mill to strain seeds/skins/stems/pits from berries. Continue until all the berries have been processed, the handle becomes harder to turn and you're left with a thick, seedy pulp.


You should be left with a thick juice (don't sweat it if there are a few seeds in the juice). At this point you can add a tiny bit of butter to discourage the juice from foaming. We did and it helped significantly.

 

Next, measure the juice (we needed 5 cups)


Slowly stir in pectin, being careful to watch for clumps (in our case, we used one package of pectin).


Allow mixture to come to a rolling boil.
 

Next, stir in sugar (our ratio called for 7 cups).


Cook until the mixture comes to a rolling boil. Continue to cook for one minute, then turn off heat and begin to ladle mixture into jars. It helps to use a canning kit so you don't burn your fingers.


Almost finished! Place the lids on the jars and screw the tops on tightly. From this point, you can either boil your jars in hot water using a waterbath method or you can flip the jars upside down for 5 minutes and then turn them over (We did the latter. As the jars seal, they make a popping noise as a vacuum is created. Once the jars are cool, if you press down on the lid, the lid should not make any popping noise).

 

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a jar back to PA with me, so I'll have to wait two weeks before I can have some on toast. One final note--I like to have a soundtrack to my culinary adventures. For jam making? Technotronic's "Pump Up the Jam."

For more information on jam making and canning, check out the National Center for Home Food Preservation's website.

Labels: blackberries, cooking with my mom, CT food, food mill, home canning, jam making

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