It was quite an exhausting weekend
as our family spent most of it on our feet working on preserving fresh summer
produce. At least we didn't have to begin by picking the fruit ourselves
as they did in the old days and thankfully, we
have plenty of delicious creations to show for our hard work!
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| Fresh Currants |
After his early morning
half-marathon run on Saturday, hubby and I drove to Fairfax to gather up the
currants waiting for us at the Farmers’ Market. Kuhn Orchards (operated out of
PA) is one of the only available sources for currants in the metro DC distribution area. We picked up 6 pints of black currants and 6 pints of mixed
currants – red, white, and pink. White and pink are merely pigmentation
variations of the red while black currants are quite different (larger and
tarter). We also stopped by the Manassas Farmers’ Market to pick up 30 pounds
of ripe fresh peaches for preserving (on sale for less than a dollar a pound!).
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| Fresh Peaches |
Our first task was to sort and stem
the currants. A
portion of the red currants was aside for a red currant and peach
crisp, another portion of red currants was mixed with pink currants and
set aside for Jonathan's mixed berry shortcake, a 3rd portion of red
currants was set aside with a large portion of the black currants for
black and red currant French macarons and the remainder of the black,
pink, and white currents were reserved for jam. I put on some bluegrass music to pass the time away and we finished
our task in just under 45 minutes.
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| Sorted Currants Ready for Preserving |
Immediately following I blanched and peeled
nine pounds of the peaches. I spent the next six hours in the kitchen prepping
various jams, preserves, and fruit in syrup. The French preserves cookbook I'm
using is quite time consuming in its steps
(some tasks designated for Saturday, some for Sunday after the fruit prep rests
overnight) but well worth the effort.
While I worked the preserves, hubby
baked an elaborate shortcake to serve as the base for a red currant, strawberry,
and raspberry shortcake for Sunday night’s dinner. We also prepped and froze a
portion of the currants for future recipes like blackcurrant macarons. After all that work, there was another hour in
the kitchen starting at seven p.m. to make empadas (the Brazilian cousin to
empanadas). Jon made and rolled out the dough and I made the filling and
stuffed the pies. They were pretty tasty.
We picked up our work first
thing Sunday morning and by nine a.m. hubby and I had finished preparing and
canning 6 half-pints of black currant jam, 2 half-pints of white currant jam
and 1 half-pint of red currant jam. We
also put away 2 half-pints of black currant jam and one quarter-pint of red
currant jam in the freezer so that later in the year we can experience the
taste differences between canned and freezer preserved jam. One interesting aspect of canning currants preserves: the white and pink currants maintained their beautiful jewel tones even after boiling them down to a thick jam and went into the pressure canner white and pink but came out of it almost as dark as the black currant preserves. I was able to find an article online that explained this is the normal outcome for white and pink currant jams post processing and the only way to avoid it is to freeze the jam instead of processing it in a boiling water bath or pressure canner. Now we know for next year.
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| Jon's Red Berry Shortcake |
After an adventurous outing with
our dogs (I’ll be writing about that in another post), we came back to canning
in the late afternoon on Sunday. I
pitted a pound and a half of fresh cherries and prepped them for preserving
before turning my attention back to the peach preserves I had started working
on the day before. For the next couple of hours hubby and I worked together on
the canning. Our finished products
included 5 half-pints of peach vanilla jam, 5
half-pints of peach lavender honey jam and 4 half-pints of cherry jam.
Additionally we put up 4 half-pints of plain peach jam for some of our friends
who had requested it.And of course hubby's red berry shortcake.
Difficulty: I still have more than
12 pounds (half a file box) of peaches left. We are going to slice and freeze a
few pounds (for fresh raw peach flavor to add to smoothies, granola, etc.), slice
and can a few pounds in light syrup, and eat the rest fresh this week.
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