Canned Foods in French Restaurants?! What Would Escoffier Say? Let's See...

A law should stipulate

that in a restaurant

food that has been cooked

on site with fresh ingredients

is served to customers.

Didier Chenet

President of French restaurant union, Synhorcat

Yesterday in the online edition of the German magazine Spiegel, Stefan Simons wrote that French restaurateurs are rankling under an onslaught of prepared meals and ingredients in places that serve food. With shorter lunch breaks, a greater emphasis on healthy eating, and a tighter economy, fast food joints and kitchen shortcuts are becoming increasingly common in the land known for boeuf Bourguignon and cassoulet. A slice of pizza for lunch might not at first blush seem "healthy," but compared to the traditional options at the long, drawn-out lunches of old, it's quicker, cheaper, and may have fewer calories.

What specifically upsets restaurateurs, though, is the crush of canned, bagged, bottled, and otherwise preserved or pre-made dishes and ingredients in so-called restaurants. Many argue that places that serve such food ought not be called "restaurants" at all. Simons writes:

A recent poll of culinary professionals in France by restaurant union Synhorcat found that 31 percent of French eateries are now often looking to the can for their culinary inspiration. Increasingly, this means salads out of bags, industrially produced French fries and potato wedges, canned vegetables, flavor concentrates, vacuum-packed fish as well as sauces and dressings out of the bucket. One-quarter of meals are no longer cooked -- they are simply stirred together or warmed up with nary a mention on the menu that what the customer is getting isn't fresh. As a result, half of customers no longer trust the restaurants that serve them.

Horrible. Simply horrible. Sauces from buckets! Canned produce! Such degradation of French cuisine. Can you imagine what the sainted Auguste Escoffier — the king of chefs and the chef of kings — would say if he weren't so busy turning in his grave? What sputtered indignation could he offer us?

We don't have to imagine. Escoffier actually wrote about such things. From Auguste Escoffier: Memories of My Life:

Since I created Pêche Melba, which now enjoys world wide renown, demand for tender peaches, both fresh and preserved whole, has increased considerably. To ensure the high quality of such peaches, the fruit must not be too fragile. Montreuil peaches were excellent, but in recent years that quality of peach became difficult to find. I noticed that in the Rhone valley there grew a peach that was very similar to the Montreuil peach. I tested it and was very happy with the results. The next year, in 1911, 15,000 of these peaches were canned. The year after, 30,000 peaches were canned, and the third year the figure had reached 60,000. The producer was planning to can 100,000 of these peaches when the war broke out. This kind of incontestable success would never had [sic] existed without the creation of Pêche Melba.

Escoffier did not merely tolerate canned and bottled goods cooked off-site, he embraced them. He encouraged producers to bottle, can, and ship overseas produce and sauces. He even later owned a company to manufacture canned and bottled goods. Although the codifier of haute French cuisine developed an improved tomato purée around 1874 (when the custom among cooks was to pour the purée in Champagne bottles and sterilize them), he could not convince a manufacturer to can the product until about 1892, when he took the entire 2,000 can run for his kitchens at the Savoy. The year after that, the manufacturer canned 60,000 kilos of crushed tomatoes. Today, some of the best restaurants in the world use canned tomato products.

From truffles to tomatoes, Escoffier knew that seasonality and adverse local growing conditions could make certain foodstuffs occasionally unavailable. Granted, he maintained high standards, but there was — and remains — no reason that high-quality preserved foods shouldn't be in anyone's kitchen larder. Do you truly want to mill your own grains, make your own pasta, pickle your own capers, grown your own cotton, stitch every bit of your clothing, build your own bike, forge your own knives — and create by your own hands every single thing you want to eat, drink, wear, or use every single day? There comes a point when we must rely on others who do good work so that we can get on with doing our own good work.

So, yeah. Despite some pretty schlocky examples on the market, canned, bottled, and jarred products don't bother me in and of themselves. I know how to make whiskey and homemade butter couldn't be easier, but frankly, it's a lot more expedient to buy those things from others who know what they're doing.

I sympathize with their frustrations, but clinging to notions of authenticity centered on fresh ingredients cooked in-house is going to be a slippery prospect for France's restaurateurs.

Goes well with:

• Auguste Escoffier (1997) Auguste Escoffier: Memories of My Life. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York.
• Escoffier isn't the only French chef we like around here. Henri Charpentier — who worked with Escoffier at the Savoy — credibly claimed to have invented Crêpes Suzette...and Eggs, William S. Burroughs.
• Stefan Simons' Spiegel article, Foodies Fight to Protect the Term 'Restaurant'
• Speaking of food that's not prepared to order, here are a few recipes I like: House Pickles with Pimento Dram, Pickled Shrimp with Blood Orange, Watermelon Pickles, and the ever-popular Mexican Pickled Carrots.

Homemade Bacon Jam with Apple Cider

It’s pork and apple season around the Whiskey Forge. The mornings are cold again and I’m glad to have laid in supplies of cured meats along with various ciders and apple brandies to help take the chill off these brisk days and dark nights.

Frying the bacon; brown but not too crip

Of course, it’s never quite not pork season here and when the meat in question is bacon, seasons don’t play into the menu as much as they might with, say, a crown roast or garden tomatoes; we eat the stuff sparingly, but all through the year. When recipes for jam based on bacon started pinging on my radar last year, I decided to tweak them and give a go to my own version. Coffee seems an integral flavoring to many recipes, but it’s not a taste I wanted in my jam. Tinkering with cider, cider vinegar, and maple syrup instead helped give this sweet meaty jam a deep and complex flavor.

Spread it on toast? Yes, if you like. I mix mine into baked mac n cheese, fold it into cream of celeriac soup, streak it trough layers of a potato gratin, add it to cooked spinach with more garlic, and put dollops in folded-over puff pastry with a bit of cheese to bake cheaty little hand pies.

What would you do with it?

Bacon Jam 

2 pounds smoked, dry-cured bacon
3 large yellow onions
8-10 cloves of garlic
1/3 c/80ml grade B maple syrup
2/3 c/160ml cider vinegar
2/3 c/160ml light brown sugar
1 c/250ml apple cider
1 tsp black pepper 

Done cooking; ready for the processor

Cut bacon into lardoons or small strips. Place them in a Dutch oven or other large, heavy-bottomed pan, then cook on very low heat, stirring now and then, until the bacon is browned but not too crisp.

While the bacon is gently frying, peel, quarter, and slice the onions thinly. Peel and mince the garlic. Combine them in a bowl and set it aside.

When the bacon is cooked, remove it from the Dutch oven with slotted spoon and set it aside in a bowl. Pour off all but 3 tablespoons of the hot bacon fat, leaving in as much of the browed bits as possible that cling to the bottom of the pan.

At this point, throw away this fat if you want — but that would be foolish. Save it for making  cornbread, bacon fat mayonnaise, sautéing vegetables, flavoring succotash, etc.

Turn the prepared onions and garlic into the bacon fat in the pan and cook over a low flame until they start to brown. Deglaze the pan with a splash of water or cider if necessary. Add the remaining ingredients, including the cooked bacon, and bring to a boil. Boil about two minutes, then reduce the heat to low and cook, stirring now and then, until the entire mass is sticky, dark brown and the meaty bits of bacon look almost shellacked (about 2.5 hours).

Towards the end of the cooking, stir often; it likes to stick to the pan.

Cool this mixture off the heat for about five minutes, then pulse in a food processor 3-4 times to yield a rough puree.

Done. Put in it a jar, keep it in the fridge.

~ Makes about 3.5 cups

Goes well with:

• Zingerman's Guide to Better Bacon (and a hand-dandy bacon glossary)
• Maynard Davies' Manual of a Traditional Bacon Curer. Maynard has several bacon books. My review of his latest and most detailed is here, ideal for those who want to cure pork bellies.  Includes links to his other bacon books.
• A broad, steaming bowl of Speckklöße — bacon dumplings for a wicked hangover (or just a simple, homey dinner).

Gooseberries in Hops Syrup

An untried recipe for my brewing friends who have loads of hops lying around. Yeah, I know; January is the wrong time of the year for fresh hops, but come this Spring, there will be hop shoots to eat in the German style like asparagus and, after the vines blossom, plenty of hops syrup for those tempted by such things — either for preserving gooseberries as Helen S. Wright suggested in her 1912 The New England Cook Book or for adding bittersweet notes to cocktails.

To Preserve Gooseberries in Hops

Take large gooseberries, make a small hole in the end and remove the seeds; be careful not to break them. Take fine long thorns or thin skewers and fill the stick of thorn with gooseberries, place in a covered pan, with enough water to cover the fruit, scald, but do not let the water boil, until they are green. Drain them. Have ready a syrup made by boiling whole gooseberries until they break; drain off the water. To 1 pound of hops allow 1½ pounds of granulated sugar; to this add the water and let boil until the hops are clear green; then take them out and lay them on a platter.

Boil the syrup until it is thick. Place the hops in a deep jar, then put in the gooseberries that are on the sticks, cover with syrup, and seal.

Goes well with:

• Real Marshmallow Syrup, a look into a funky, bosky, and deeply odd syrup made from the roots of Althaea officinalis.
• Syrup of Violets, Three Ways — one recipe from 1844, one from 1814, and an even older example of Sirrop of Violetts from 1604.
• Opium syrup. Babies, it was said, cried for the stuff. More likely, the tiny little junkies cried when it was withheld...

Hot Damn, That’s My Jam

Hot pepper jellies and jams are household staples in huge swathes of the Southern and Southwestern United States. The ease with which these preserves are made accounts for some of their popularity, but the fact is that a whole lot of people find the piquant sweet-and-sour taste irresistible.

You can bet I'll be breaking some out this week for Thanksgiving.

Variations on the spicy agrodolce theme include thick raspberry and chipotle jam, jalapeno jam dyed green, quivering tequila-spiked jellies, peach preserves studded with habanero strips, and — inexplicably — jellies and jams no hotter than a bowl of celery sticks, but which their makers perversely refer to as “hot.” I’ve yet to sample an example made with the blistering ghost pepper, but it’s just a matter of time before some chilehead tempts death with infernal jelly on a cracker.

Of all these, my favorites are those that pack a noticeable capsaicin punch. In his 1987 cookbook, Southern Cooking, Craig Claiborne gives the recipe for an unfussy but suitably piquant jelly. He notes, rightly, that the peppers may be strained before the jelly sets in order to make clear jelly. Personally, I don’t see the point in that when most of this is going to be spread on top of soft white cheese for snacks. But, do as you will. Likewise, Claiborne calls for food coloring is an optional ingredient. I don’t find that my hot pepper jam needs it, but you do what your family likes.

Hot Pepper Jelly

1 cup cored and ground sweet red or green peppers, with the seeds
½ cup corn and ground long hot red or green peppers
6 ½ cups sugar
1 ½ cups white vinegar
¼ tsp salt, if desired
1 bottle (6 oz) fruit pectin
Red or green food coloring, optional

Combine the sweet peppers, hot peppers, sugar, vinegar, and salt in a saucepan. Simmer about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Strain or not, as desired, and return mixture to the saucepan. If strained, the solids are good as a relish. Pour in the pectin and bring to the boil. Stir in the food coloring. Pour into sterilized half-pint jars and seal with paraffin. Store in a cool place.

YIELD: 8 TO 10 cups

Craig Claiborne (1987)
Southern Cooking
364 pages (hardback)
The New York Times Company
ISBN: 0812915992
$19.95

Candied Buddha's Hand Citron

Drinking down the liquor cabinets continues. Frankly, our goal is not to drink away the hooch entirely, but to kill off the heels — those few ounces sloshing around nearly empty bottles — so that we don't schlep a lot of heavy glass to the new digs. You'd think, given the imperative to jettison dead weight, that I would refrain as well from canning, pickling, preserving, making ice cream, and like that.

You'd be right. Well, mostly. Old habits die hard.

When I stumbled across a stash of the bizarre Buddha's hand citron last week, though, I seized on the opportunity to crank out one last batch. Unlike citrus fruit with which we are most familiar, Buddha's hand citron is not even vaguely spherical. It has color you'd expect in a lemon, but the shape is more like a cuttlefish or squid. Those with a penchant for old horror stories might find it resembles the tentacled head of HP Lovecraft's monstrous Cthulhu rather than the hand of anyone, but there you go.

Known more properly as Citrus medica, the Buddha's hand or fingered citron, is striking not just for its bizarre appearance, but its strongly fragrant zest. Unlike the pith of lemons, grapefruit, or oranges which can add a distinct bitterness some dishes, this variety is edible pretty much as-is.

But it also takes to candying very well and, since plum pudding season approaches, I wanted a stash of candied citron so that if I catch a wild hare and decide to make plum puddings this year, I'll have the  most elusive ingredient. It will also undoubtedly find its way into breakfast scones and accompany the occasional afternoon tea.

I started with 2 pounds of fruit but the directions below are easily adaptable for whatever amount you may have. Don't be surprised if you don't find any pulp inside. In fact, there probably won't be any at all. If you do happen to find some, simply slice away for this recipe.

Candied Buddha's Hand Citron

One large or two small Buddha's hand citron (about 2lb/1k)
sugar (about 6.75 cups)
water (about 3 cups)

Wash the fruit well, trim any greenish or brown spots, and cut into half-inch cubes — including all of the pith and all of the zest. Place them in a large pot and cover with cold water. Bring the water to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cook about 30 to 45 minutes until the cubes become translucent. Drain the blanched fruit and return it to the pot.

Add 2 ¼ cups of sugar and 1 cup of water. Repeat until the cubes are completely submerged.* Bring the mixture to a boil over high heat, then reduce it to a low simmer. Cook, without stirring, about one hour. You're looking again for translucency. Turn off the heat and let the poached citron cubes remain in the syrup covered overnight until cool.

The next day, strain them from the syrup (don't throw out the syrup) and arrange on a cookie rack set over a lipped tray to catch any syrup that drains from the pieces. Allow to dry at room temperature for 2 to 3 days until the pieces are dry to the touch. Toss them with granulated sugar and seal in an airtight container.

Notes:

*For 2 pounds of diced fruit, I used 6 ¾ cup of sugar and 3 cups of water.

You can, if you want to speed the drying a bit, train a fan on the candied cubes. Do avoid drying them, however, in the oven since this may result in something more leathery than tender and supple.

I haven't yet decided what I want to do with it (except, obviously in, cocktails and perhaps desserts) but this recipe yields about 5 cups of fragrant citron syrup. Gingered citron lemonade is as good a place to start as any...

It’s All Going to Biscuits

Summer slurs into Autmn subtly in Southern California, but there's no denying that cooler weather is creeping upon us.

With the onset of light blanket nights, I’ve begun drinking more hot tea and resumed baking — pies mostly, but buttermilk biscuits as well. These are for me comfort foods and lately I’ve been craving a bit of comfort.

Biscuit, butter, and peach preserves

But hot buttermilk biscuits cry for some kind of...something, even if it’s just butter or honey. So, before Summer slipped way entirely, I scored one last flat of peaches and made a big jar of preserves for slathering on my steamy little indulgences.

There had been vague plans for using these peach preserves in a barbecue sauce, as a base to sweeten and flavor juleps, with roast pork, or maybe even to complement a batch of bitterballen, but at this rate, I think it’s all going to biscuits.

Peach Preserves

About 2.5 pounds ripe peaches
2.5 cups sugar
2-4 oz fresh lemon juice
one half teaspoon unsalted butter

Plunge the peaches in boiling water for about 1 minute to loosen the skins. Remove them with a skimmer to an ice bath and slip off the skins. Cut the skinned peaches in half, remove their pits, and cut each half into small, bite-sized pieces. Place the pieces in a large, heavy, nonreactive pan (I use a big old enameled Le Creuset Dutch oven). If you prefer an even more fine preserve, use a pastry knife to cut pieces into bits a little larger than grains of rice. Add the sugar and lemon juice. Let stand about ten minutes.

Turn the heat to high, add the butter (to help tamper down foaming) and cook about 10-14 minutes, until it holds its shape on a chilled saucer.

Ladle into jars and either process or keep in the fridge.

Makes about a quart of preserves.

Goes well with:

• Pies. Try ginger pie, lemon buttermilk (a half teaspoon of ground cardamom is a righteous addition to the filling), or a rum-spiked chocolate number.
• Homemade egg noodles: also one of my cool-weather cravings. Aw, dang. Now that I think of it, I know what I'm having for dinner.

Bookshelf: The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook

I am not a traditionalist 

when it comes to preserving, 

but I am a stickler for texture, balance, and appearance. 

The essential question is, 

does a preserve taste and look great? 

The answer to this question 

should always be yes.

~ Rachel Saunders

Ping. Ping. Pop. Ping.

Nature may abhor a vacuum, but that’s exactly what I’m after. I’m sitting at the kitchen table listening to jars of marmalade cool. Over on the butcher’s block, as each hot jar’s temperature drops, the air inside contracts and a little vacuum is born, drawing in — ping — the raised center of its lid. A seal is made. Across the room, the oven, its duty now done, adds is own deeper pops and dings as it heaves itself toward room temperature.

I’ve been making booze longer than I've been making preserves, but I've been doing both for more than two decades. In fact, just about any fruit or vegetable that crosses our threshold may well end up in jars with sugar, vinegar, or salt. In the kitchen, there’re preserves pans, cases of jars, strainers, jar tongs, and a battery of spices and herbs. Liquor, too — well, that’s a given. The preserves section of my library is bulging with cookbooks, textbooks, and agriculture bulletins spanning three centuries.

My latest find is Rachel Saunders’ The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook. That Saunders draws inspiration from California produce is unmistakable. The white guava-Meyer lemon marmalade, for instance, does not hail from Helsinki. Her aprium jam with green almonds calls for ingredients one rarely sees in Kansas and, while such trees can be found here in San Diego, Sorrento lemons bursting with oil are far from common. Think of these ingredients as the exotica of the book, inspiration for when you get your hands on something more than apples, figs, or oranges.

Saunders formed her jam company, Blue Chair Fruit, after of what sounds like an obsessive ten years learning the ins and outs jam-making working with the stellar produce available to Bay Area cooks. Clearly, she’s done a lot of thinking about the stuff and the book reflects that.

Divided into three broad sections, it covers techniques and gear; jams and jellies by season; and fruit-specific recipes. You won't find pickles, chutneys, compotes, or any of the other usual recipes one finds in other preserves books; just fruit-laden jams, clear jellies, and peel-flecked marmalades (and one candied orange peel recipe; it's a good fit). Ingredients range from commonplace fruits such as cherries, apples, rhubarb, and apricots to a few items that may take some tracking down: orange flowers, rosewater, and liqueurs of elderflower and ginger.

The thing about cookbooks — and this holds true especially for books discussing something as temperamental as preserves — is that recipes don’t always pan out. It’s no fault of the home cook; some recipes simply aren’t tested, are scaled down improperly from large-batch resstaurant recipes, or are written badly. A few weeks ago, I set out to make hot pepper jelly. For quick-cooked jelly like that, I normally research several recipes to get at the heart of proportions and compare techniques. Just reading the first recipe I pulled off the shelf, I realized its volumes and weights were off. Without even trying it, I knew that recipe would not work.

Not so with Saunders’ book. Every recipe I’ve tried works. The ping-ping marmalade on the butcher’s block? Saunders’ recipe. She calls for white grapefruit, so I raided a stash of them that our neighbor Carlo picked from his backyard. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s getting marmalade soon. But it’s not just that one recipe: every single recipe I’ve tried from The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook sets. Though yields are sometimes a bit off, I’m less concerned about that than I am of something tasting and looking great. Her stuff does.

If Saunders’ recipes sometimes seem long — well, they are. But they are not confusing. They are long because they go into precise detail while still leaving room for adjustments of ingredients, flavorings, or gear. Know who else had long recipes? Julia Child. Hers worked, too.

Next up? Peach jam. Perhaps with 100-proof Kentucky flavors. As usual, I’ll pull several recipes to cobble together my own, but the first place I’m headed is The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook.

Rachel Saunders (2010)
The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook
384 pages (hardback)
Andrews McMeel Publishing
ISBN: 9780740791437
$35.00

Goes well with:

• Lucy Norris’ book Pickled — on an array of pickle recipes collected in New York from dills to ducks tongues. 
• The River Cottage Preserves Book — a pocket-sized book on preserves more broadly. Originally published in the UK, but available in an American edition.

Meyer Lemon Curd

It’s a blustery, cold day in San Diego. We’re having what some call a mizzle: part mist, part drizzle, all wretched. Wet bamboo slaps against the tightly shut windows. With each opening of the door comes a gust of wind and little indignant protests arise to meet it. Our black cat has wedged herself between couch pillows, one arm thrown over her eyes: a musty-smelling shadow grunting the majority of the protests.

Back in the kitchen, I’m insulated from most of this, but a glance out the back door reveals heavy grey clouds. We’re grilling steaks tonight. Coldness cascades off the door’s glass panes. A roast may have been a wiser option. Before my tea grows cold, I’ve got a new pot brewing. It’s been going like that for hours. But tea alone is a thin fuel, so I’ve pressed toasted English muffins and Meyer lemon curd into service to hold me over until the steaks are ready.

As I huddle inside and catch up on work at the kitchen table, that little jar of bright yellow spread brings me more happiness than it probably should. It’s my talisman against the cold, a reminder of warmer weather past and yet to come.

Mixing in the egg yolks

I’ve been making curds — and jams, jellies, marmalades, syrups, and other preserves — for the better part of two decades. As much as personal experience guides my dives into the preserving pan, I read just about anything I can get my hands for insight and ideas. Ingredient ratios for curds in particular are all over the board. In general, curds are sort of loosely-set custards or very thick sauces made of citrus sweetened with sugar and thickened with eggs and butter. Some recipes call for salt or water; some eschew citrus entirely for other flavors such as passion fruit. But you get the general idea.

A consultation of a few dozen sources revealed that proportions for those main ingredients, however, are all over the board for lemon curd. Six of those are presented in the following chart; Jane Grigson, Helen Witty, Emily Luchetti, Marion Cunningham, Alton Brown, and Alice Waters.

Various lemon curd ingredient ratios

The last column is my own working ratios for lemon curd. No water, no salt (though the barest amount, a knifepoint, would work), no egg whites. It borrows a technique from 19th century bartending coming back into vogue: creating an oleo saccharum, a sort of “sweet oil” by grinding together citrus zest and sugar. This extracts more flavorful citrus oils than merely zesting the skin into the mix.

Meyer Lemon Curd

2 Tbl lightly packed Meyer lemon zest (from 1-2 fruits)
1 c sugar
5 egg yolks
3 oz Meyer lemon juice
4 oz butter, cut into several small pieces

Make a double boiler by adding 1-2” of water to a medium saucepan. Bring the water to a simmer over medium-high heat.

Meanwhile, in a metal bowl that rests in the top of the saucepan (but does not touch the surface of the water), combine the zest and sugar. Grind them together with a cocktail muddler or a wooden spoon so that the sugar is thoroughly impregnated with the color of the zest.

Add the egg yolks and whisk to combine. Add the juice and whisk again until smooth. Place the bowl on the saucepan. Whisk until thickened, 8-10 minutes, or until the mixture coats the back of a spoon. Remove the bowl from the heat and stir in the butter, one piece at a time. Allow each piece to melt and become fully incorporated before adding the next. Pour into a clean container refrigerate.

Firing up the Preserves Pot

Helping me move to college when I was 18, my father lifted one appliance, stopped, and put it on the floor. "Matthew Rowley," he sighed, "You are the only person I know who would move a vacuum cleaner full of dirt." 

The lesson stuck. I remain, to this day, one of the most streamlined travelers you're likely to meet. With very rare exceptions, if it doesn't fit on carry-on, it doesn't come with me.

When it seemed we were moving to Louisiana, I put my tendency to can, bottle, and preserve on hiatus. After all, moving suits and kitchen knives to another state is one thing. Moving heavy, fragile jars of marmalade, of young ginger in syrup, of BBQ sauce, and piquillo ketchup...that's just foolish.

Now that we're committed to San Diego and summer is on us, I've fallen back to my old ways. This week, I made syrups from strawberries, cantaloupe, and Thai tea.

I also finally got around to making what 17th century texts called "Capuchin capers" from nasturtium buds. San Diego is blanketed with nasturtium plants — their flame-colored flowers running up and down canyons and fencerows. In the Spring and Summer once the flowers wilt, the crawling vines are spotted with hundreds of bulging little pods. In French, nasturtiums are called capucines, presumably after capucins, the Capuchin friars who — I'm stretching here — may have grown them in monastic medicine gardens.

Suspect francophone etymology notwithstanding, it turns out that, like capers, nasturtium buds may be brined, pickled, and used just as imported Sicilian capers. In fact, they're freakishly similar. Same peppery bite and very nearly the same smell. I plan to use them in salads over the course of the Summer.

The biggest obstacle to a little wild harvesting? Rattlesnakes in our canyons. Something those austere Capuchin friars never had to worry about in Europe while gathering nasturtiums.

.

Bookshelf: The River Cottage Preserves Handbook

Ten Speed Press has released an American edition of Pam Corbin’s The River Cottage Preserves Handbook. For five days, it barely left my side.

I toted it in my briefcase and in my backpack. I brought it out at coffee shops and flipped through it before bed. A handbook in the truest sense, the small book fits in my (admittedly oversized) hands, but contains a wealth of information about pickling, candying, putting up, and otherwise preserving ephemeral produce. Although not a bartenders’ guide by any means, its sensibilities about capturing seasonality in glass speak volumes to modern cocktail enthusiasts.

Originally a British title, the current incarnation has a few odd moments with measurements — as do most European cookbooks adapted to the American market. Understand that "1.1 pounds" of an ingredient was originally "half a kilo" and the recipe flows more easily. Measuring that pesky 0.1 pound exactly then becomes slightly less imperative.

The Handbook contains the usual recipes one finds scattered throughout other books on preserves. It has, for instance, recipes for fruit butters, for chutneys, herbal vinegars, marmalades, jellies, jams, and pickles of various sorts. For those who just can’t keep booze out of the kitchen, there are syrups, sloe gin, elderflower cordial, sage elixir, and a rummy shrubb or two.

Clearly, Corbin knows her subject well and has brought together dozens that would otherwise take some research to unearth. Many show an experimental stamp on otherwise venerable recipes with plenty of riffs on basic ideas. With a solid discussion of what makes good preserves and how to stave off spoilage, it’s a book I’d recommend to beginners as well as advanced preservers. As Fearnley-Whittingstall puts it in the introduction, “…she will show you the ropes and then give you the reins.”

The book’s recipes evoke homey and comforting memories of foods that perhaps we’ve never even eaten, but wish we had, all infused with Corbin’s pragmatic take on making the most of one can — there’s even a Compost Heap Jelly recipe, using up apple scraps and citrus skins. Oh, hush; it’s little more than a strained marmalade. Like many River Cottage recipes, however, it does make one pause to think about untapped potential for eating well.

For the first time in years of living in Southern California’s nearly eternal Spring, I found myself wistfully musing over seasons, almost – but not quite – missing the changing of leaves, the onset of cooler nights, and Winters huddled inside, bundled up against the cold, with a pot of tea and jars of my own lemon curd and jams to remind me of the Summer that had past and which will yet come again.

Of course, my senses returned to me and I’m reminded that we do not “enjoy” distinct seasons as other parts of the world. I don’t have to draw close the shutters and light a fire to enjoy a pot of tea and my own lemon curd, nor is it necessary where we live to put up foods as talismans against a harsh, barren Winter. But I do it anyway. Making my own preserves, my own chutneys, marmalades, and jams somehow does allow me to feel as if I am laying in protection against hard times. Even if everything else goes South, I seem to think to myself, we will never go hungry. As God it is my witness and all that.

In a less reflective moment, I admit that I just like the taste of my own preserves. Inspired by the book, I have indeed made, among other things, new batches of lemon curd. Last week, four pounds of blueberries transformed into two sheets of fruit leathers. Following Corbin’s general instructions, it was simplicity itself.

The European beech (Fagus sylvatica) is a separate species from the North American F. grandifolia. Haven’t tried a drink made from either, but Corbin offers a take on an old French cordial I’ve written about before.

Beech Leaf Noyau

One loosely packed grocery bag full of soft young beech leads, sufficient to pack tightly into a 2 ½ to 3-cup jar
2 cups gin
1 ½ cups granulated sugar
Brandy


Pack beech leaves into an earthenware or glass jar until it’s about nine-tenths full. Pour the gin over the leaves, making sure they are well covered (they will oxidize and turn brown if exposed). Let steep for 7-10 days so the leaves can release their striking green pigment. Strain the infused June through cheesecloth or a jelly strainer bag.


Put the sugar and 1 cup of water into a saucepan and heat gently to dissolve the sugar. Allow to cool completely or adding to the infused gin. Add a couple of capfuls of brandy too.


Put a couple of fresh beech leaves into a sterilized screw-top or stoppered bottle, then add the noyau and seal.


Wait for a cold winter night, then partake of this potent liqueur. Use within years (it may darken in color over time).

Pam Corbin (2010 American edition)
Introduction by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
The River Cottage Preserves Handbook
216 pages, hardback
Ten Speed Press
ISBN: 9781580081726
$22.00

Goes well with: 

• Brandy, Smokes, and the Queen of Jam, a bit I wrote about, among other things, Mes Confitures, a French recipe book on preserves by Christine Ferber.  
• Lucy Norris' Pickled: Vegetables, Fruits, Roots, More — Preserving a World of Tastes and Tradition. 

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Rhubarb Chutney

Because rhubarb is such a harbinger of Spring, I’m happy we’re still getting the crunchy red stalks around here as the summer draws to a close. The nights have been just a hair cooler here recently, enough to put me in the mind of autumn and of places I used to live where that made a difference. Here? It means you think twice about wearing shorts out after the sun goes down.

So, taking inspiration from an afternoon I once spent in the heirloom gardens of culinary historian and seed-saving juggernaut William Woys Weaver, I loaded up on rhubarb. Weaver kept several varieties of the huge plant growing in his gardens and, as a parting gift, laid about ten pounds of the stuff on me. At his suggestion, I made a mess of chutney.

This time around, I consulted a few dozen books for recipes using “pie plant” (so-called because the stalks were so widely used as pie filling in years past—a use of which I heartily approve). In the end, I combined several chutney recipes to come up with this one that goes well with grilled chicken and pork.

As a belated thanks, Will, here's my nod to one of the most backward-looking gardening projects I've had the pleasure to know. And I mean that in the best possible way.

Rhubarb Chutney

The rhubarb will throw off a lot of liquid as it cooks.

1 lb rhubarb, cut into ½” pieces
zest of 1 large orange
2 small or 1 large onions (12-14 oz), chopped small
2 Tbl fresh ginger, finely minced
1 tsp crushed red pepper (e.g. Turkish Aleppo pepper)
1 tsp dry mustard
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup cider vinegar
½ cup dried cherries
1 tsp kosher salt

Put all the ingredients into a heavy-bottomed pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer, partially cover, and cook 10-15 minutes. Uncover and cook another 20-25 minutes, until the rhubarb has broken down into less distinct shreds and colored the whole mass ruddy.

Makes about two pints.