Farm Fridays: Strawberry Rhubarb Jam

First canning project of the year! I must say that canning is pretty easy once you've got the hang of it. At the beginning of my third canning season I have no problem throwing down a batch of jam in the middle of the afternoon, working alone while also working on some bread dough. (Obviously, since I was making jam, I needed to bake some bread to slather it on. Isn't that how everyone does it?)

I learned that baking bread and canning jam actually go pretty well together. The heat and humidity produced by my boiling water canner created a wonderful environment near the top of my fridge for my dough to rise in. I've been having a lot of trouble lately with dead yeast, but this time either I got a really live batch or the conditions were ideal, because my dough rose like crazy! It's so big that it doesn't fit in any of my tupperwares (usually I have to squish the top of the loaf a little, but even squished, these loaves don't come close to fitting). I finally found a container to fit one loaf after Jeff suggested cutting large slices off to leave out for French toast tomorrow morning. (Did I mention that my husband is a genius?) But I digress . . .

Jam had to be made because I am now officially on a rhubarb kick. I'd never had it before last week - I'd been wondering what all the hype was about, so I decided to make a strawberry rhubarb crumble I found on smitten kitchen. It was glorious - the sour tartness of the rhubarb was a lovely complement to the sweetness of the strawberries. And the filling turned out rather jam-like, planting the seed of an idea in my brain. I found myself, late at night, combing the internet for a great strawberry rhubarb jam recipe to try. Lo and behold, I found one by one of my favorite bloggers, Marisa from Food in Jars, posted on Food52. The recipe was really simple - just strawberries, rhubarb and sugar - and straightforward. The jam cooked down exactly as she said it would, into a bubbly, rich red mass. I got so excited by my success that I failed to take any pictures of the jam before getting it into the jars. No matter how many times I do this, I can't get over how easy it can be. If I can do it beautifully in the middle of the afternoon, with no help, only half paying attention, I think there will be a lot of small-batch jam making this summer!

Strawberry Rhubarb Jam
Recipe by Marisa from Food in Jars, posting on Food52.

1 lb strawberries, cleaned, hulled and diced
1 lb rhubarb stems, cleaned and sliced into 1/2" pieces
1 1/2 c sugar

Add the strawberries and rhubarb to a glass or ceramic bowl and cover with sugar. Stir it around a few times so that all the fruit is coated. Let sit for at least an hour, until the sugar draws the juices out of the fruit.

Pour the contents of the bowl into a stainless steel saucepan. Bring to a rapid boil, then cook about 8-12 minutes (on my powerful burners in a wide skillet, I think it was done even before 8 minutes). Marisa says " It is done when it is quite thick; you can tell that it's ready when you draw your spoon or spatula through the jam and it doesn't immediately rush in to fill that space. It will also make a vigorous sizzling noise when stirred." (I knew I was done when that sizzling noise became more pronounced.)

(I wish I had pictures of the jam cooking to share, but as I said above, I got excited and filled my jars too quickly!)

Spoon the jam through a funnel into half-pint canning jars. Depending on how much moisture you got to evaporate, you may get three half-pints (I got just shy of three - you want 1/4" of headspace for jam, so that third jar was too low for me to try to seal). Process in a boiling water canner for 10 minutes.

Happy canning!

Farm Fridays: Strawberry and Arugula Salad with Gruyere Fricos

The CSA season has officially begun! I'm really psyched. In fact, I've been so excited to get back to the farm that when I finished gathering my share, I stood around lamely in the farm stand for a minute or so, looking for a reason to linger.

Because we've had this strange spring - alternating unseasonable cold with spurts of summer heat - there wasn't much available yet. I took home four heads of lettuce, some arugula, some herbs, and a quart of strawberries. The strawberries look great this year - in the preceding two years of my membership, the Pennington strawberry fields have had issues with fungus, resulting in very low production. Last year the existing fields were torn up and a new strawberry patch was planted. I think it's a huge improvement - the plants are small yet, but they are producing well and look very healthy. I'm looking forward to a great strawberry season! My own strawberries also look very promising - we picked the first two red ones today and they were delicious.

Since the ripening of the strawberries marks the beginning of Honey Brook's CSA season, I thought it fitting to inaugurate this season's Farm Fridays with a strawberry recipe. My last Better Homes and Gardens (which they persist in sending me even though I let my subscription run out in December) had a recipe for a strawberry-arugula salad with cheese crisps. We had it for dinner tonight (served with a balsamic, Dijon and garlic grilled chicken breast and some grilled asparagus), swapping out the recipe's Manchego for the Gruyere in our fridge, and it was every bit as good as it sounded. This salad is all about strong flavors: sweet, juicy strawberries, peppery arugula, crispy, salty Gruyere crisps and a rich balsamic dressing. The recipe is simple, but the flavors were complex. It's the sort of dish that celebrates spring (even when it's 50 degrees and drizzling outside).

Strawberry and Arugula Salad with Gruyere Fricos
Adapted from Better Homes and Gardens June 2013.

3 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
4 c arugula
1 1/2-2 c strawberries, halved or quartered (depending on their size)
3 oz shredded Gruyere

Combine the oil, vinegar, salt and pepper in a small bowl and whisk to combine. Toss the arugula and strawberries together in a large bowl.

To make the fricos, heat a small nonstick skillet over medium heat. Quickly sprinkle 1/3 of the cheese evenly onto the pan.

Cook 2-3 minutes, until the edges are golden.

Remove the skillet from the heat for about 30 seconds, then carefully lift the frico out with a spatula. Remove to a wire rack to cool. Repeat with the remaining cheese. (Yes, each of these pictures is from a different frico - I had difficulty working quickly and taking pictures!)

Toss the salad with the dressing. Break the fricos into chunks to garnish. Enjoy!

Preserving: Strawberry Jam

In the previous post, I mentioned getting two quarts of strawberries from the farm this weekend. One quart would have meant gorging ourselves on delicious berries, but two quarts meant it was finally jam time! (Don't worry - there were still some to spare for gorging.)

Strawberry season is short and precious. I spend months looking forward to it, hoarding recipes that I will make when I am flooded with delicious berries. Yet, once those berries arrive, I find myself loathe to do anything but eat them straight up. I want to preserve the flavor, but I don't want to deprive myself of any berry-eating in the process. So while I've purchased and picked a number of pints and quarts so far, it took until this weekend, with its two days in a row of berry-picking, for me to be willing to sacrifice some berries for my future enjoyment.

I've only made jam once before and was surprised at how easy the process was. Of course, since the jam I made was chili-tomato, the process wasn't much fun. I seem to recall wearing sunglasses as I stirred the mixture, to keep the noxious pepper fumes from singeing my eyeballs. It was hard to breathe in that kitchen. And poor Jeff, who chopped all those peppers, had tingly fingers for days. Strawberry jam is not at all like that. Hulling berries is simple, mashing them up is fun, and the jam gels up lickety-split. I just wish I got more out of the batch (somehow, the recipes I make from this book yield half as much as they should - this time I got two and a half cups, rather than four. I have no idea why).

Now that I have delicious jam, I need to bake a batch of fresh bread to enjoy it on!

Quick Strawberry Jam
From Put 'Em Up!, my go-to canning book.

1 c sugar
1 tsp Pomona's Universal Pectin
4 c strawberries, washed and hulled
1 tsp calcium water (comes with the pectin)
1/4 c bottled lemon juice (the acidity of fresh lemons can vary widely, so bottled juice is safer)

Whisk together sugar and pectin in a small bowl and set aside. Measure out the lemon juice and calcium water and keep them ready.

In a nonreactive saucepan, mash the berries with a potato masher (the fun part!) until they reach a fairly even consistency.

 

Slowly bring to a boil, stirring constantly to prevent scorching. Stir in the calcium water and lemon juice, then slowly add the sugar and pectin, stirring to dissolve. Bring back to a boil, still stirring. When the mixture reaches a boil, remove from the heat.

Let rest five minutes, stirring occasionally to release any air bubbles. Skim off the foam. (I neglected this step - all the stirring dissipated my foam so much that I couldn't corral it with a spoon. I'm not sure what difference it makes.)

Ladle into clean half-pint (or 4 oz jam) jars. Process in a boiling-water canner for 10 minutes, then rest 5 minutes more before removing.

Chocolate-Covered Strawberries

Sometimes I think I'm the most brilliant person I know. I guess that's because I get to experience all of my own brilliant ideas, and only some of other people's.

I was sitting around this afternoon, watching the Giants crush the Redskins. It was too early to start dinner, but I wanted some kitchen action. I thought about the half-box of strawberries in the fridge. I thought about the chocolate in the cabinet. And then I put them together.

Y. U. M. As we were throwing this baby together, Jeff asked, "Why don't other people do this? All the time?" I was thinking the exact same thing (although I did not join him in some of his other thoughts, like "We should cover our chicken in chocolate!" and "Ghirardelli is my favorite deli"). Melting chocolate is not hard. Dipping strawberries in it is not hard. Who needs a special occasion for something you can throw together in 20 minutes on a Sunday afternoon?

My guess is that people are thrown off by scary terms like "double boiler." I believe they sell double boilers, but it seems like a waste of money to me. All you need is a bowl that fits over your pot. You boil water in the pot, turn off the heat, and put the bowl of whatever you're trying to melt over it. Stir it as it melts. Done. This is not rocket science. The hardest part is waiting for the water to boil while you contemplate the deliciousness you are about to create.

In case you doubt how easy this actually is, let me point out that this was my first time doing it. (Ok, so it's not my first time using a double boiler. I've made recipes involving melted chocolate before. I've just never coated anything in it.) And it was Jeff's first time using a double boiler and he did just fine. In fact, he melted the white chocolate himself while I was dipping strawberries.

The only hiccup in the whole process was that we used a little too much chocolate. After we'd finished dipping and drizzling the strawberries, we started scrambling around for other things to dip. I tried a chocolate peanut butter cookie, but it was a bit too crumbly to put up with that sort of handling. Pretzels, graham crackers or shortbread cookies would work nicely, but we didn't have any of those. We ended up tossing in some clementine wedges . . . and our fingers . . . to finish it off. Which wasn't a bad option either.

So do this. Soon. You owe it to yourself.

Chocolate-Covered Strawberries

Guided by Food Network.

3 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped roughly into small chunks

1 1/2 oz white chocolate, chopped roughly into small chunks

half a box of strawberries (about 9 oz), washed and dried well

Find two small pots and two heatproof (as in, won't melt or be otherwise damaged by the heat) bowls that fit over the tops without falling in. Now you have two double-boilers. (Alternatively, you could use one pot and two bowls, but this will take longer.)

Add a few inches of water to each pot and bring them to a simmer. Put the chocolates into separate heatproof bowls. When the water is simmering, turn off the heat. Place a bowl over the top and stir the chocolate until it melts. Repeat with the other bowl (I staggered them a bit so I didn't have to stir two bowls at once). Bring your melted chocolate over to the counter.

Holding the leaves of the strawberries (or stems - mine had no stems, though), twirl them gently in the bittersweet chocolate (or whichever chocolate you wish - this recipe is designed to cover them in dark chocolate with a white chocolate drizzle, but any combination works) until covered. Then place each one on a parchment-lined baking sheet to dry.

When all the strawberries are coated, use a fork to drizzle white chocolate over them as decoration (hopefully you can do a prettier job than we did - but ugly drizzle won't affect the deliciousness of the final product!). Set the tray aside to harden for about 30 minutes. Enjoy!