Apple Preserves with Calvados and Cardamom

Pink Pearl Apple Preserves with Calvados and Cardamom
Pink Pearl apples, Calvados, cardamom, sugar, lemon juice

I visited my friend Talea at Montgomery Place Farms in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY in Northern Dutchess County this weekend. Talea was my first jam teacher (besides my mother) when I was an innocent 21 year old. She grows mostly organic, heirloom fruit and sells her bounty at the Montgomery Place Farm Stand at the intersection of 9G and Route 199 near Redhook, NY. She also sells her jam and honey there, which might be as good as ours if not better. If you visit, give her a hug from the Anarchy girls.

Talea sold me some amazing heirloom Pink Pearl apples--tart, sweet and buttery with a marbled pink flesh. Maybe it's because they're pink, but they taste sweeter and zippier than their white-fleshed relatives. I instantly began to imagine the jam I would make with these beauties.

These apples were so special I had to preserve them with equally amazing companions. Calvados (apple brandy) and cardamom that I collected in the Cardamom Hills of southeast Kerala, India--where the air smells of pepper, tea and cardamom--balance beautifully with the apples. Tart, sweet and spicy! My father used to splash (and drink, of course) Calvados on pork and baked apples in the depths of winter, and the taste recalls the warmth of cooking with my family. Look for these preserves on Anarchy's autumn menu!

Recipe

2 1/4 pounds Pink Pearl apples (other tart varieties will work too), peeled, cored and cut into chunks
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon cardamom pods (wrapped in cheesecloth)
1 1/2 cups Calvados* (apple brandy)

In a preserving pan, combine the apples, sugar, and lemon juice. Bring to a simmer, and then pour into a bowl (ceramic is best). Cover the fruit with a sheet of parchment paper and refrigerate overnight.

Next day, separate apples from their juice. Add Calvados and cardamom to apple liquid and bring this preparation to a boil in a preserving pan, stirring gently. Skim. Continue cooking on high heat 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

Place a candy thermometer in the jam. It will be ready when it reaches the setting point 105°C\220°F.

Add apples and return to a boil. Check the set or that the temp is back to 105°C\220°F. Do not let jam scorch. Remove cardamom pods.

Finish by filling the jars to within a 1/4 in of top with the preserves and seal (for jar preparation, see this detailed recipe). Boil for 10 minutes in a water bath. Let rest 5 minutes, then remove.

Makes about 4 8oz jars.

*Go totally local and use New York made apply brandy! Warwick Valley Winery & Distillery in Warwick, NY makes a great one.

Thanks to the Veggie Voice blog for the great image. My pink pearl pics were shabby compared to yours.

Dark Kiss in a Jam

Our Dark Kiss Jam with black raspberries, white and yellow peaches, sugar and a little lemon juice failed to pack the kind of punch the name and our label demands in a jam. What to do?

It needed more acidity, and a deeper, more complex series of flavors. Sweet, tart, sour and then possibly a teeny hit of bitter zest. Also, the texture of the peaches was difficult. They turned to baby food and failed to give the peachy, juicy punch that happens when they're fresh and raw.

How to repair our Dark Kiss?

For the flavor I'm adding lime juice and pithless lime peel that has been simmered with sugar until it is translucent and soft. The texture is trickier, but I am working with mashing the fruit and adding all natural pectin. The combination of pectin and lime should make the jam firmer, and less like baby food.

I'll let you know when the jam is fixed. Until then, we be jammin.

Sugar Plum Fairy Preserves

Sugar Plum Fairy Preserves

Golden sugar plums, trockenbeerenauslese (ice dessert wine), and sugar

A tantalizing mix of sugar plums from upstate New York and an amazing bottle of trockenbeerenauslese ice wine. Trockenbeerenauslese is made from grapes left on the vine until nearly dry. Because these grapes, picked one by one at fullest maturity, are very concentrated in flavor and sugar, they produce extremely rich, nectarous wines often described as "liquid gold".

This is top shelf jam. Exquisite plum flavors, concentrated sweet fruit balanced beautifully by acidity to maintain a light and lively feel in the mouth and heady pleasure to all the senses. Close your eyes and eat this with a spoon.

2 1/4 pounds sugar plums (other small plums will work too), pitted and cut in half
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
Juice of 1 lemon
2 1/2 cups Trockenbeerenauslese*

In a preserving pan, combine the plum halves, sugar, and lemon juice. Bring to a simmer, and then pour into a bowl (ceramic is best). Cover the fruit with a sheet of parchment paper and refrigerate overnight.

Next day, separate plums from their juice. Add ice wine to plum liquid and bring this preparation to a boil in a preserving pan, stirring gently. Skim. Continue cooking on high heat 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

Place a candy thermometer in the jam. It will be ready when it reaches the setting point 105°C\220°F.

Add plums and return to a boil. Check the set or that the temp is back to 105°C\220°F. Do not let jam scorch.

Finish by filling the jars to within a 1/4 in of top with the preserves and seal (for jar preparation, see this detailed recipe). Boil for 10 minutes in a water bath. Let rest 5 minutes, then remove.

Makes about 4 8oz jars.

*Did you know New York is the 2nd largest wine producing state in the US? And some of them kick ass. Try one of New York's own ice wines in this recipe, a great alternative to the pricey Trockenbeerenauslese (you don't really need to spend $200 on this jam). Casa Larga Vineyards 2006 Fiori Delle Stella Vidal Ice Wine, Duck Walk Vineyards 2007 Vidal Blanc Ice Wine, and Standing Stone Vineyards 2008 Vidal Ice are all award winning wines.

note: too busy balancing wine and plums, I failed to photograph this gorgeous creation and everyone who bought jars claims to have eaten it already. But this flickr gal took an awesome pic!

Rise of the Jamarchy

We had another successful jam-boree jam tasting this past weekend, and cooked up some specialty, limited supply concoctions for the occasion. Thanks, Jamarchists, for a good time. We'll have another jam tasting in December.

Here's a sampling:

Sugar Plum Fairy Preserves

Golden sugar plums, trockenbeerenauslese (ice dessert wine), and sugar

A tantalizing mix of sugar plums from upstate New York and an amazing bottle of fancy trockenbeerenauslese ice wine. Trockenbeerenauslese is made from grapes left on the vine until nearly dry. Because these grapes, picked one by one at fullest maturity, are very concentrated in flavor and sugar, they produce extremely rich, nectarous wines often described as "liquid gold". This is top shelf jam. Exquisite plum flavors, concentrated sweet fruit balanced beautifully by acidity to maintain a light and lively feel in the mouth and heady pleasure to all the senses. Close your eyes and eat this with a spoon.

Fig-alicious Jam

black mission figs, sugar and lemon juice

Made black mission figs that were picked fresh and smuggled to us from California (thanks Jamarchist agents). Pure, perfect fig. A sweet, flavorful aphrodisiac.

Easy Like Sunday Morning Blueberry Jam

blueberries, maple syrup, sugar and lemon juice

Made from a mix of blueberries from Uncle Wolf's and Kelder's Farm in upstate New York. Sweet blueberry perfection with a rich maple syrup body. Loose, European style set.

Due to the success of Easy Like Sunday Morning, well be adding it to our permanent menu!

For more info on our jams, jellies, chutneys and preserves, see our tasting notes page.

Jammin on the Road

Jammin at Casa Blanco

The ladies of Anarchy have been on the road in New England and California the past few weeks, vacationing and collecting fruit to play with.

Liv traveled to Vermont and acquired some raspberries and blackberries from Uncle Wolf (a great painter and generous fruit gatherer) and to Southern California where she picked fresh, gorgeous black mission figs that we made into some stellar jam (Forbidden Fig Jam).

Laena went to Cape Cod where she foraged for rosehips (to be made into Really Rosy Rosehip Jelly) and Maine where she got blueberries (for Easy Like Sunday Morning Blueberry Preserves with maple syrup and Bitter Blue blueberry marmalade), some of which she made into a pie for Andy's infamous garden party at Casa Blanco.

Now we are back in Brooklyn preserving our adventures in a jar.

Black Like My Heart

We picked up some fabulous white and yellow peaches from Biarmere Farm on Long Island. Clark and his crew at Briarmere run a great fruit stand on the North Fork, and are world famous for their super delicious pies. There was a line out the door and down the street, and people leaving with armfuls of pies.

Upon our return to the other end of the Island, we started experimenting. The results?

A Real Peach Jam with white and yellow peaches
Rose White Jam with white and yellow peaches and rose water
Black Like My Heart Jam with yellow and white peaches and black raspberries

Each one is a divine peach explosion.

Jam on.

Gnomes and Red Currants

Today I picked red currents from Kelder's Farm in Accord, New York. Their fruit is not organic, but is low-spray and beautiful. They are some of the nicest people you will come across, and their farm is beautiful without being fancy or "fussy". This is not Martha Stewart's made-over version of a farm--you know you're on a farm, and I can't help but admire and love the wild flowers growing amidst the berry bushes accompanied by the frog pond symphony of ribbits as hawks soar overhead. Ah, the country. And they have goats, Walter the Donkey, some pot-bellied pigs, and a giant 80 foot gnome!

Red currants are a wonderful fruit, and make a terrific tart jelly that is great on toast, a tart glaze, or with meats. The famous Bar-le-duc jam (akin to caviar) from France goes for $40 a jar and was enjoyed by Mary Queen of Scots. They grow in grape-like clusters on bushes, hanging ruby red under a canopy of leaves. Native to Europe and related to the gooseberry, the fruit has become rare in the United States. Red currants are just starting to be cultivated again after being uprooted in the early 1900s when they were mistakenly thought to promote a tree disease.

Currants are extremely good for you (move over, hipster goji berries), and are high in vitamin C, B1, iron, fruit acids, and fiber. They have many medicinal properties as well, including fever-reducing, sweat-inducing, menstrual-flow inducing, mildly laxative, astringent, appetite increasing, diuretic and digestive properties. Wow.

Look for Anarchy's miracle-cure Red Currant Jelly coming soon.