I was going to make separate posts about each type of jam and preserve I made this summer, but then realized that would be ridiculous. I made a ton of jam and pickles, from raspberry-blackcurrant-rosemary to gooseberry to mango-chili sauce, tomatillo salsa, pickled heirloom carrots, dill pickles, eggplant caponata, applesauce, Asian plum sauce, tomato sauce and arrabbiata tomato sauce. So I figure it’s best to do one giant post about them all, and let the memories come back all at once, e.g. dyeing my fingers purple while pitting plums and trying not to end up with my hands in a bowl of yogurt all night (again) after making salsa. (Note: do not slice and de-seed 2 kilos of chili peppers without wearing gloves.)
What did I forget? Oh! The spicy harrief red pepper sauce that’s a bit like a harissa, with cumin, coriander, garlic and fiery red peppers.
If I count up the total number of hours that went into picking or buying the fruit, make the actual preserves and now finally writing about it, it’s a bit overwhelming. But I have tomato sauce for a year and more plum sauce than I could ever dunk deep-fried, organic, gluten free chicken nuggets into.
I’ll have no problem getting through the pickles, though. I rarely do.
Not every preserving effort this summer was a success. There was a sad month where I was trying to sanitize my German fermenting crock. Mold had gotten under the seal and was rotting all my gorgeous gherkins. I gave up after the second effort and a wasted 2 kg of beautiful mini cucumbers.
And my okra might as well be trees in pickle brine. I bought them too mature and they’d gone woody, which I only realized after preserving them. They might flavour soup this winter, but nothing else.
And my fridge is packed with glass jars of blueberries, raspberries and black currants submerged in various forms of alcohol. They’re just infusing away. Later, I’ll either add sugar or simple syrup to them or just eat the fruit and then use the beautifully colours alcohols for cocktails or baking.
I’m no Betty Homemaker, though. I got lazy around August/September and started freezing fruit. My poor freezer is packed with sliced purple and yellow plums and tons of mango. I’ll munch of those throughout the fall and winter, inevitably buying more mango fresh since I like the act of chopping them up – the juices pouring down my hands and forearms as I scrape the last bits of juicy yellow pulp from the skins with my teeth, no mango left behind – almost as much as I like eating them.
Where did my recipes come from? Mostly from Food in Jars, The Preservation Kitchen, an out-of-print Preservation book (for the Harrief and plum sauce) and the Fagor pressure cooker instruction manual (for the tomato sauces).
A lot of the staples of my cupboard already have recipes on my blog, so you can also use the search bar on the right-hand-side to look for recipes of pickles and jams, but I always recommend a cookbook for the recipe and my blog post and images for reference.
And now my canning cupboard looks like this:
…which makes me incredibly happy.
It’s not too late to get canning! the end-of-season tomatoes are still at the market, which means sauces, ketchups, simple canned tomatoes and hot sauces. Peppers are in, meaning more sauces, pickled peppers and salsas. And apples are everywhere, so apple sauce, apple butter, apple jelly and apple salsa. It’s also fermenting season now that the weather is a bit cooler and the cabbages and root vegetables are in. Time to make a batch of sauerkraut or kimchi or lacto-fermented anything, from carrots to daikon to half-sour dills.
Happy preserving!
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