Making Meyer Lemon Marmalade

Meyer lemons from the Lemon Ladies

It’s citrus season! I love all the delicious citrus fruit that shows up this time of year, and one of my favorites is Meyer lemons.

Back in November, I got my yearly email from the Lemon Ladies, announcing the start of their harvest. Lemon Ladies are a group of women who tend and manage a Meyer Lemon orchard in Emerald Hills, CA, a small community near San Mateo in the greater SF Bay Area (map). Their groves are 100% dedicated to Meyer lemons, and I have been extremely happy with the quality of the fruit I’ve received from them. This year’s lemons were fantastic—gorgeous sunny yellow oblong orbs that smell amazing. And they taste wonderful!

I’ve done a variety of things with Meyer lemons over the years—they are perfect for preserved lemons, make amazing lemon curd, and I’ve even dried them (dried Meyer lemons are really good added to a glass of water). But what I really wanted to do with them this year was to make marmalade. I almost made it a couple of years ago, but got scared off, thinking the process was too difficult. I couldn’t have been more wrong—at least with the recipe I used this year, it was a breeze! It just took a little planning.  Continue reading “Making Meyer Lemon Marmalade”

Plum Shrub Update

plum shrub september 2011

I thought I’d update you a on my plum shrub syrup. It certainly has changed over the past couple of months. It’s gotten sweeter and less vinegary – that tang is still there, though, but it’s certainly mellower.

I really like how it’s changed – I think it’s much more balanced and actually more syrupy. It goes great in sparkling water; I haven’t tried it with alcohol. When I use it in sparkling water, I find that these days I want to use  more syrup than I did at the beginning of its life. When it was younger, a little went quite a long way.

I would say to those who experiment with the shrub and find it way strong for their taste, just wait longer and the syrup will mellow out. And become more delicious, of course.

I’ll definitely be making shrubs again for many summers to come.

Nourishing Nectarine Crisp

nectarine crisp

I love fruit crisps. They are a perfect alternative to the more complicated fruit pie – there’s still warm sweet fruit and spices involved, just with a delicious sweet topping instead of a more neutral pastry underneath.

I’ve been making fruit crisps for a long time. Usually I rely on the fruit crisp recipe from my favorite cookbook, Fields of Greens, by Annie Somerville. Somerville opened one of my favorite restaurants in San Francisco, Greens. I first ate there when I was a practicing vegetarian – the food is amazing and the views are spectacular, looking out the big windows toward the Golden Gate Bridge.

Even meat-eating friends at that time loved Greens. No one felt like anything was missing.

Continue reading “Nourishing Nectarine Crisp”

My Preserving Adventures

This season I’ve been preserving often, and that makes me very happy. The processes are fun, and I love the idea of having food on the shelves/in the fridge that I can enjoy when the food in its natural state would be past its prime. I plan to continue preserving food throughout the summer – my next big project will be canning tomatoes in August or September.

Earlier this year, I was taken by this DIY handbook published by the NY Times. I ended up making Vin d’Orange and Maple Vinegar. I’ve been enjoying the Vin d’Orange all summer, and it really just screams “warm weather” to me. I drink it mixed with sparkling water and it’s very refreshing.

vin d'orange brewing
Vin d'Orange brewing

I also made the maple vinegar, which is pretty good. It’s made of raw cider vinegar, maple syrup, and rum. It still has a bit of an alcohol kick to it, which is a bit odd. Still, it’s fantastic as part of a vinaigrette on salad. That’s my favorite way to use it.

As far as this DIY handbook, I still have plans to make the tomato chili jam and the kimchi. I’ve used up most of my preserved lemons, so I’ll need to make some of those again soon.

Apart from that, I’ve made apricot jam from the apricots off the backyard tree. I used a very basic jam recipe, and added some organic orange zest to it. I love that addition. I think in a lot of jams and preserves, the addition of orange is a wonderful flavor contribution.

apricot jam
Apricot jam

As I wrote before, strawberry lemon preserves were made at my home, as part of an event put together by my CSA. I was fortunate to be the recipient of a jar of these preserves by AJ.

The spicy cherry preserves I made are simply amazing. I love the combination of sweet-tart-spicy, and these cherries really deliver on this. I liked the half pint I made so much that I bought more sour cherries at the greenmarket and made another pints’s worth of sour cherry preserves! The cherries with some syrup mixed with sparkling water make for a nice, barely sweet soda.

I also used some of the sour cherries for a liqueur, which is coming along quite well.

I’ve started experimenting with simple syrups and made a very tasty mint simple syrup with the mint on my back deck.

With the last of the first yellow plums of the season, I made plum shrub syrup, which turned out beautifully. I like it in sparkling water, though it could be added to a wheat beer with pleasant results, especially if you like sour beers (I do).

If it’s not evident in this post, I’ll just say it – I love vinegar. So, I’ve made some vinegar pickles out of snap peas. They are very good, but I think next time I’ll make them spicier.

snap pea pickles
Snap pea pickles

I even did some short term preservation with the peaches and nectarines that were really ripe – sorbet! I sweetened it with sucanat and used a bit of the maturing sour cherry liqueur, and it turned out just so well. Sucanat – an unrefined sweetener – turns things a bit dark, but I’ll sacrifice a little bit of aesthetic beauty for something sweet that doesn’t mess so intensely with my blood sugar.

Lacto-fermented dilly beans are on the schedule for this week, which I’m really looking forward to making.

So, that’s a run down of my preserving activities!  What have you been preserving this season?

This post is participating in Fight Back Friday, hosted by Food Renegade.

How To Make a Shrub Syrup

bottled shrub

Lately, I’ve been on a preservation kick. So far, I’ve made jam/preserves, simple syrup, vinegar pickles, and now… shrubs. Actually, just one at this point.

Yes, shrubs. It sounds like a plant, but it’s a fruit syrup that basically consists of fruit, sugar, and vinegar in a 1:1:1 ratio. It’s another way to preserve seasonal fruit, hooray! And it’s easy to make.

My main reference in learning how to do this is this great article on Serious Eats, Cocktail 101: How to Make Shrub Syrups. Apparently the shrub was popular in Colonial America. They’d mix the shrub syrup with water, making for a refreshing summer drink. It pretty much got forgotten after refrigeration and products of the industrial food system became more and more popular in this country.

The shrub has been sort of  “rediscovered” here in the 21st century – I actually first heard about the shrub at The Queens Kickshaw after our food swap. Ben, one of the owners, was experimenting with them. I tasted a few he had put together and they sure were vinegary and tasty, but I like the tang of vinegar, so it was all good with me. It wasn’t until I was poking around online that I came across the Serious Eats article that talked about making shrubs in more depth.

So, we got a lot of plums in last week’s CSA share, and by the beginning of this week, they were really starting to ripen. I wanted to do something with them to extend their life – I didn’t have enough for jam really, so the shrub was a perfect solution. I had a cup of raw apple cider vinegar in the fridge, too, and some organic sugar on the shelf. Everything I needed!

I decided to make my shrub with the cold-process method. This way, the raw vinegar would get to stay raw. There is a way to make a shrub by cooking the fruit, too, which is preferred by some people. With the cold-process method, the brightness of the fruit will shine through and be a strong match for the vinegar.

quartered yellow plums
Yellow plums, washed, depitted, and quartered

I started by washing, pitting, and quartering enough yellow plums to make a cup of fruit. I then combined that with a cup of organic sugar. I stirred it together, put it in a glass bowl, covered it in foil, and set it in the refrigerator.

plums with organic sugar
Plums mixed with organic sugar

I let the fruit macerate for 24 hours. At the end of the 24 hours, I was looking for fruit sitting in syrup created by its juices and the sugar, which is what I found.

plums after 24 hours of macerating
Plums after 24 hours of macerating

Really ripe fruit would probably take less time to exude its juices and make a syrup, but even then you can leave the fruit in the fridge for a day. Even two or three days, it will be ok.

I then drained the fruit over a large stainless steel bowl, pressing the plums a little to get the last bits of juice out.

plum shrub - draining fruit
Draining the fruit

There was a bunch of sugar sitting on the bottom of the glass bowl, so I scraped that out and into the syrup.

plum syrup
Plum syrup

I then added a cup of raw cider vinegar to that, whisked it, then poured it into a bottle and capped it. Finally, I vigorously shook the bottle, attempting to dissolve some of the remaining sugar.

plum syrup with raw vinegar added
Plum syrup with raw vinegar added

I’ll likely have to shake the bottle more times to get the sugar to dissolve. The acids in the juice and vinegar will dissolve it all eventually.

I tasted it – it was tangy! And fruity. Reminded me of kombucha when it’s got a big tang. The shrub will mellow, though, and I’ll likely notice a substantial change in that direction after a week.

All in all, this is very exciting. I can see myself making shrubs all summer long. I expect the syrup would be great mixed with sparkling water, or make into this suggested cocktail from Serious Eats:

Pair a small amount of shrub (about half an ounce) with 2 ounces of vermouth or sherry. Top that with some seltzer or club soda.

It also might be good in wheat beer (just a splash) or with some gin.

Shrubs should last quite a while – at least a year in the fridge. Some believe you can keep it on the shelf instead, but I like my syruped drinks cold, so I’m just going to store mine in the refrigerator.

As far as the science behind the drink goes, here’s a great explanation from mixologist Neyah White:

When a shrub ages, it is like an ecosystem. The ambient yeast (yeast on the fruit itself and yeast from the air) turns the sugar into alcohol, and the acetobacter (the bacteria in unpasteurized vinegar) turns the alcohol into more vinegar. Eventually this will stabilize and not turn the whole shrub into fruit vinegar since the bacteria-induced pH change will stall out the yeast’s fermentation process (and thus the bacteria’s acetic acid-producing pathway).

Very cool. I like it when people talk about ecosystems in food.

So there you have it – shrubs!

This post is participating in Real Food Wednesday, hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop.

CSA Bounty – Weeks Twelve and Thirteen

I neglected to post about last week’s CSA share, so I’m including it here.  Last week was a bust, in part to being sick on and off and feeling great fatigue.  I am feeling better, though, after sleeping a lot.  Sometimes the body just wants to rest more than at other times.  These 90 degrees + weather doesn’t help, either.  Anyway, the shares!

Week Twelve:

Week 12 collage

Pictured, left to right, top to bottom: green beans, plums, cubanelle peppers, cucumbers, yellow paste tomatoes, nectarines, basil, summer squash, green bell peppers, apples, tomatoes.

So many yummy things.  The tomatoes were fantastic, I must say – nothing beats an August tomato. I made a tomato mozzarella salad with them.

We got an interesting pepper, the cubanelle, which is sweet.  The basil was fabulous.  Cucumbers and summer squash, all very good.  I made zucchini fritters which turned out great; however I didn’t take a picture.  Next time.

The fruit is almost all gone, except for the plums, of which we got a lot.   I think it was 2 pounds of little baby plums!  So cute, and so many.

Week Thirteen:

Week 13 collage

Pictured, left to right, top to bottom: prunes, nectarines, peppers, leeks, yellow wax beans, cherry tomatoes, apples, summer squash, eggplant.

Last night I used the peppers, leeks, zucchini, and tomatoes in a farro salad (recipe to come).  It was marvelous!  Some of the tomatoes were a little overripe, but it didn’t matter with the salad.  Didn’t matter when I popped them on their own in my mouth, either!  So sweet and delicious.

I’ll roast the eggplant this week, and probably parboil and freeze the beans.  I don’t know what I’ll do with all the prunes I received – 2.5 pounds, which is plenty.  Must search for a recipe.  The apples got rave reviews at my home, and I expect we’ll finish those and the nectarines by next week.

These summer fruits and vegetables are so amazing, I almost can’t stand it!  I am so very, very fortunate to have access to such excellent local produce.

CSA Bounty – Week Eleven

Well, almost the entire week has gone by without a post, which is in part because of a number of tasty dinners with friends that happened this week that has occupied my time, happily.  I’ve been able to eat my CSA veggies and fruit, though, and everything has been amazing.  My favorite so far has been the cantaloupe, followed by the excellent cherry tomatoes.  This week’s collage:

Week 11 collage

From top to bottom, left to right:

Apples, peaches, cantaloupes, nectarines, cucumbers, eggplant, summer squash, tomatoes.  Not shown: green beans.

Everything is gorgeous and bursting with flavor.   This really is my favorite time of the year for produce.  I wish it could continue for months!