Well sure it TASTES good...

It's a duck! Nah, it's just my camera being old and stupid.

I made a batch of improvised kumquat/whateverquat/meyer lemon vanilla bean marmalade last night. While it tastes spectacular, it was a pretty dumb move. 

 

2 pints of kumquats
2 pints whateverquats
4 Meyer lemons, 2 juiced
2 vanilla beans
2 Tbsp vanilla extract
4 1/2 cups sugar

I roasted the citrus like I did with the Fig/Lemon Marmalade, in my (covered) dutch oven at 275 degrees with just enough enough water to float the lemons for about an hour until the kumquats deflated like sad little balloons. 

Just before tucking into the oven

This was a silly step in the long run, while it does render the peels lovely and perfectly soft, it totally tanked the fun of using kumquats which it their cute shape! It would have behooved me for appearances sake to just roast the lemons and simply slice the Quats into thin little wheels. 

Hindsight.


I squeezed all the guts into a thin tea towel and squeezed all the juice out of the guts into the remaining roasting water. I split the vanilla beans and added them, then, with the bag of guts in the pot (to get a pectin boost), boiled the liquid for a few minutes while I chopped the peels. Once the peels were chopped into as neat of strips as I could manage (they were swiftly falling apart), I removed the vanilla beans and the bag of guts, realizing I burnt the bottom of the towel.

...Whoops

I added the peels, sugar, and the lemon juice and brought it back up to a boil and the jelling stage. Took it off the heat and let it cool for three minutes then stirred in the vanilla extract. Spooned into 1/2 pints and processed for 10 minutes.

Made a little over 6 1/2 pint jars

Lovely little vanilla speckles

Really yummy,  but not particularly spectacular looking.
This was supposed to be posted shortly after the last one of course...sorry about that.
I've been quite busy with projects so throughout this week, I should have a few more posts up.

Mandarins, Jams, and 'zines!

I'm starting to think my vague half hearted instructions on ingredients in my most recent canning projects aren't ok. I should be more specific and actually try to guide a little better than "add some sugar and then some more water if it tastes too sugary" I admit I've never typed out those words until now per se, but I should be a little clearer in my instructions.  So let's get to the project I did back in February!

Gingered mandarins

Now that I said I will be more specific...I wasn't with this. The only redeeming factor about that is people have different tastes when it comes to what they want out of their sugar syrup. I like mine to be a medium syrup, especially if I add another factor like I did with the ginger.
So I peeled ten pounds of mandarins.

There were about 3 lbs that wouldn't fit in the bowl.

Then I prepped the syrup. Now I normally use mexican cane sugar (for the life of me I can't think of the brand and I don't want to make a whole trip just to find out) that is fairly unrefined and I'm a little superstitious about ALWAYS using it, but this time I wanted to use up some turbinado sugar that's been sitting around looking forlorn. This was a pretty bad idea. Because it turned out looking like this:

Not pretty.

This syrup was probably 1 cup sugar to 3 cups water with a healthy knuckle of fresh ginger grated into the whole pot. I am interested in processing them one time using tangerine or orange juice, but that'll have to wait til next year.  I put up thirteen pints in total, the last four I plopped a cube of candied ginger on the bottom of the jar before packing in the mandarins.

I'm a little concerned what they'll look like in a few months...

Not much to them, they are one of the simplest things to can, and I love them cold over a blob of cottage cheese.

This is what happens when I try to write this post over a span of three days! No transitions!

Earlier this month I decided to participate in Minot's 4th annual 'zine marathon. Now I have tried to participate in this in the past, even pulling a couple pages together, but I inevitably failed to complete my 'zine. But this year I have a goal! I will make a quick intro to canning! I will hand write it (mostly due to the lack of a printer or a decent word processing program) and try to fit as much off the wall info I find interesting into it while still getting the basics down. I have pored over it for the last two weeks and have all my information ready to go, so I just have to write it all out nice and pretty with a few semi-pretty pictures to go with it. One of my cats is super helpful while I work.

Thanks Eva. Thanks.

Along with that, I wanted to include a couple easy to access recipes. By easy access I am referring to the fact that North Dakota (where this will be primarily circulated) is not known for it's variety in produce and I want someone reading the 'zine to be able to pop by the grocery store and easily find all the ingredients I list. Easy to find and still interesting I should add. So I tackled a recipe involving lemons, figs and lavender and while beautiful and yummy, it was not the kind of recipe to introduce to a newbie.
I used a recipe from the blog Laundry Etc.
http://www.laundryetc.co.uk/2010/01/22/lost-in-translation/
The blog is a lovely one, from over in Britain.
Side note, Brits call canning "bottling." Funny how both are useless terms as we both use "jars" not "cans" or "bottles."
Anyway! The recipe involved soaking chopped dried figs and roasting lemons (I used Meyers)

Soaking figs

Roasting lemons

The recipe also calls for 1 oz. of lavender, but I find lavender to be pretty strong in jam recipes, so I cut that amount in half. It's flavorful and sticky, I was in a hurry so I didn't chop the peel as nicely as I would have liked, but that's small potatoes.

The second recipe worked out much better, but I'm going to hide that recipe until my 'zine's out. I will post it later though.

Arg! I will post again soon, once the 'zine is complete.