Sanguini (Blood Orange) Marmalade with Orange Blossom Water.

It's easy to get used to nice things, and so hard to do without them once you have. Homemade jam is such a thing. I remember I used to buy jam in the store, and I even remember it being pretty good. But when you start having your own, there's no going back. It's not as great of a commitment as it sounds. Small batch urban canning is spontaneous, fun, simple, and gives out a huge payoff of seeming virtuous- that's the sanguine part. Actually, it's just cooking up some fruit and some sugar, one of the simpler lifestyle upgrades. The scent fills your home.

Stone fruits and berries follow one simple ratio that works for them all. Oranges, on the other hand, need a lot of water and a little finesse. This is only logical- they are complicated fruits with zest, pith, membrane, flesh, pits. They also have a complicated personality- sweet, tangy, and- what makes them so special for jam- bitter.

Blood oranges- sanguini in many languages- have plenty of zing and make for very beautiful rosy marmalade. To round out the bitter-tangy-sweet, we added some floral- a spoonful of orange blossom water at the end. Ethereal, with some depth.

We will need:

500 g / 1 lb small blood oranges (4 or 5 )

800 ml/ 3 generous C water

600 g/3 C sugar

a little lemon juice

1 spoonful of orange blossom water

Scrub the oranges well. Cut them in half, place the cut side down on a board, cut lengthwise in half again, then, holding the two halves together, slice crosswise into thin, quarter-round slices. A serrated bread knife works well for this. 

Your cutting board will get a pinkish stain by the time you are done.

Cover the slices with water, put a plate on the bowl, and keep overnight. This will let the peel soften. Put three small white plates in the freezer so you don;t forget the next day- these are for testing to see when the jam is done.

The next day, pour the orange slices with their now very flavorful water into a large tall pot, bring to a boil, and add the sugar.In the meantime, have ready a couple of sterilized jars and lids ready. this will make enough for 2 or 3 300 - 400 g jars.  Keep boiling the fruit, stirring most of the time. after abut 15 minutes, there will be less froth, the bubbles will be larger, and you will hear the jam stickingtothe bottom of the pan. Turn it down if you are worried, and stir constantly. It seems to take forever, but once is starts to thicken, it thickens very quickly. as soon as it looks syrupy, put a small amount on one o the frozen plates. Let it cool a moment, and run your finger through it. If the trail of your finger remains for the mos part. it is done. We are not looking for a clean trail that does not close at all- that will be too dense once it sets. 

The splotch in the middle is perfect.
By the time I added the lemon juice and stirred to taste,
I had the splotch on the left- too clean.
It is delicious none the less, but try not to over do it.

When it is nearly done, add a squeeze of lemon juice if it seems too sweet. Then add as much orange blossom water as you like- I used a full teaspoon, and might have used more. 

Ladle it carefully into the jars. It is a lot less stressful to just let it cool and keep it refrigerated, but if you would like to keep it longer, or if  you have doubled the recipe and have simply too much, follow the simple instructions for canning included here.

Greece's Sparkling Gems of Winter.

Urban Canning, Chet Baker, and Nectarine Jam.

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Creme Patisserie- Makes Everything Fabulous

This is worth learning- not difficult, the most rewarding building block of the pastry world, and delicious on its own.. It is simply a pudding, enriched with egg yolks and finished with butter. If quality had a flavor, this would be it- you can taste everything- creamy, rich, subtle. You will be unable to use packaged substitutes after trying this; it is so simple you will not need to.

We will need:

450 ml/ 2 C whole fresh milk

4 egg yolks

50 g/ 4 T corn starch

130 g/ 2/3 C sugar

pinch salt

vanilla, or better still a plumped bean to steep in the milk

50 g/ 4 tablespoons butter

Heat the milk to simmering in a heavy-bottomed pan, with the vanilla bean if you are using one. Beat the yolks, add the sugar slowly and carefully as you beat, and then the cornstarch and salt. Very slowly spoon warm milk into the yolk mixture, whisking as you do, to bring it slowly up totemperature. When you have added half of the milk ad the mixture is quite hot, you can add it all back into  the pan with the warm (not boiling) milk. Continue to whisk over medium heat- making sure the whisk makes contact with the bottom of the pan all over, until it thickens, which will happen all at once at the end. Keep whisking and let it nearly boil another minute. Remove from the heat, and genty whisk in the butter in small pieces, one at a time. Squeeze the seeds from the vanilla bean into the cream if you are using one, or add a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Pour through a fine-mesh strainer into a bowl (even with the most careful whisking) into a dish and cover with a round of non-stick parchment. Cool, then chill, then use as you like for instance in a creme chibouste to fill a meringue.

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Visions of Sugarplums- Easy Last Minute Extras for a Little Holiday Shimmer.

Once you're cutting things up and candying them and tossing them in a shimmer of sugar, it's hard to stop. It couldn't be easier (or less expensive). Sweet translucent frost-kissed anything is festive. And ridiculously impressive - get used to hearing a little gasp and "you made those?" 

Here are some things we have lying around we decided to candy:

Very little work and a half hour of gentle and fragrant simmering, and they are ready to decorate desserts, trays, or just have a bite of of something sweet and flavorful with a coffee or tea.

(Although perhaps it is as cocktail garnishes that they shine the very brightest.)

What we need:

Anything that might hold its shape in a slow boil in sugar water, such as- ginger matchsticks, thick slices of sweet potato, slices of citrus like lemon, lime, orange, or pommelo. 

sugar

water

For citrus:

That white pith is intruigingly bitter- so much so that even three blanchings will not get all of it out. Cover the slices with cold water, bring to a boil, drain, and repeat another two times.There will still be plenty of flavor and character left.

For ginger:

Peel the roots, slice thin, stack slices, and cut into matchsticks. If  the ginger is very tender, you can slice it into coins instead.

For sweet potatoes-

Just peel and slice thickly. But they need something to pick up their flavor- cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, hole peppercorn, some ginger- any or all  of these things, plus some salt.

1. Make a generous bath of 1 part sugar to 1 part water by volume. Try this- pour the sugar into the middle of a saucepan, and the water around it- so that no sugar crystals are touching the sides of the pan.

2. Let it come to the boil and add your citrus, ginger, or potato (with the aromatics and a good pinch of salt).

3. Boil slowly until tender, and the syrup- now rich with flavor- has cooked down and thickened to a sheen.

4. Strain in a fine mesh strainer, letting the syrup drain back into the pot.

5. Put on a rack to dry out a little.

6. Toss in sugar- or not. The first have sparkle, and the second a beautiful sheen. Citrus slices will not loose all their stickiness, but the sweet potatoes will take on a matte frost over time. They are a lovely surprise- meaty and sweet and kind of like chestnuts.

7. Save the syrups to play with cocktails- the citrus in particular has a sophisticated bitter edge, and the ginger is full of heat.

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Nothing Plain About Vanilla When You Make Your Own

Homemade vanilla extract is better than anything you can buy. It looks beautiful in its jar. You have liquor for essence, and seeds from the pods when you want a little black sparkle, and then the pods themselves to perfume your sugar. You will reach for it more often and your desserts will all be the finer for it- as a single note it is exotic and rich- nothing plain about it. With fruits, it brings out the floral perfume of their birth (it is itself a flower- the seed pod of an orchid).

This cherry tart is brightened with rich 
specks of vanilla.

More romance still- it marries the other flavors, buffing their rougher edges, and giving them a strong (discrete) velvety background to play on, especially chocolate:

How to make it? Just find a source of good fresh vanilla beans- a wholesale spice purveyor, not the ones sold in pairs in a glass tube- too expensive, and you can't smell them. At the store, when they open the container, it should knock you out. Heads should turn. Buy as many as you can afford, at least ten, more if you can- they won't spoil.

Now get a bottle of hard liquor- something respectable you would drink on its own, but not necessarily top shelf. I used whiskey here, but rum is also tasty. You could do vodka but I like to start out with something already golden. Put  the vanilla beans upright into a tall narrow jar, and fill it to the top with liquor. It will need a couple of  weeks to develop. use the liquid as you would any commercial vanilla extract. When you can see it- with fruits, with anything white (ice cream, panna cotta, cake frostings, pavlovas)- snip off the tip of a fat liquor soaked pod and drizzle in some syrupy paste filled with exotic-looking black specks.

Keep the pod in the liquor. Every now and then top up the liquor or add some fresh vanilla beans, or both.

It is an investment at the outset, but ultimately much more economical. 

Don't think of it as an ingredient so much as a lasting upgrade in the way you cook. The subtle perfume will delight everything it touches.

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Halloween Candy - Fear, Sugar, and Salt.

We have the most fabulous holiday in the United States. On the eve of the Day of the Dead (All Saints' Day), children (well, mainly) dress in costumes either scary (it is a scary holiday) or sometimes just fanciful, and they go around the neighborhood showing off their costumes and scaring people and collecting candy (and change for Unicef too, at least we used to). Neighbors make terrifying displays on their porches. It is a strangely empowering holiday, really about mastering fear through confrontation. It is also about candy. Halloween is sort of a combination of the Greek holidays Tsiknopempti (Mardi Gras, except Thursday not Tuesday) and the Callanda (singing Christmas and New Year's Eve Carols for change). The candy is central to the holiday. It must be commercially sealed (safety!). There is a hierarchy- hard candies being the least interesting, chalky pastel things (Smarties, Necco Wafters) next up, chewy things after that (caramels, bit-o-honeys, abba-zabbas), and at the top miniature candy bars with chocolate. Snickers are far and away the favorite of these. I liked butterfingers, a  crisp peanut-butter bar dipped in chocolate that has no European parallel. Armed with hunger and a candy thermometer, they came together quickly.

Candy thermometers intimidate some, but there's really nothing to it- they remove all the guesswork, and you get it right guaranteed the first time (not like testing syrup consistencies in glasses of ice water like I taught myself when my parents were out of the house).

Note- this is a children's holiday, but making these is not a children's activity. The sugar gets very hot!

We will need:

500 g roasted salted peanuts - like you get with a cocktail, deep golden and really salty

200 g/ 1 C sugar

100 g/ 1/2 C golden syrup or corn syrup

1/2 tsp. baking soda

We're starting with peanuts instead of peanut butter to make something grittier and saltier than we can buy in a jar- the sandy texture makes the candy lighter, and the salt gives it balance. Grind the peanuts in the food processor until they are starting to get creamy but still have plenty of texture.

Mix the baking soda into the peanut butter and have it ready. Line a baking sheet with non - stick paper and oil it gently. Put the sugar, corn syrup, and water on to boil. Fill a cup with boiling water and put the candy thermometer in it to give it a head start so it gets a quick reading and doesn't shatter. Keep an eye on the syrup - it takes a while to get to the soft ball stage but from there it can climb to the hard ball stage quickly. As soon as the syrup reaches 144 - 149 C/290 - 300 F, take it off the heat and stir in the peanut butter. Spread it onto the baking sheet as best you can,and when you can just barely touch it, stretch it out a little and fold it in thirds- we are stretching the strands of cooked sugar and trying to get some air into it.

Stretch it out as best you can and score it into pieces:

You could mimic the original and dip them in chocolate but they are fabulous just like this. The extra saltiness is beguiling. 

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Squash, The Glamorous Doyenne of Fall.

Squash - neither dainty nor fragile, nor costly nor small - is still a precious thing. Like little Boteros, they add a voluptuous raw sculptural element to the terrace for weeks until we use them. Noble and patient, they wouldn't dream of spoiling. Once cut, they lend their rich creamy texture and their sweetness to savory dishes and desserts with a flexibility unmatched. They have a huge personality- pastas and soups glow deep saffron yellow, tarts and cakes luscious gold - but they mingle graciously with everyone. They can afford to let the sage sparkle, the nutmeg charm; it is the rich fullness of the squash that effortlessly drives the character of the dish. Everything else is icing on her proverbial cake. Not diva, Queen.

A good squash is not just firm but rather rock-hard, and if it is not too hot out, it will stay that way for as long as you'd like. They are much nicer to look at than baskets of potatoes. I have settled for the moment on this stone blue variety. The subtle outside hides bright orange flesh, darker than most, and cooks up denser than any others. It is much harder than a Halloween carving pumpkin. In fact, the most difficult part of cooking anything with it is getting it open in the first place. Your sharpest and heaviest cleaver will sink into it and then just stay there until you pry it out. We need only to somehow separate it into rough halves though. Scoop out the seeds, and set them aside for roasting if you like (not with this particular variety - the seeds are large and tough). Then just place the halves cut side up on a baking sheet and roast them in a medium oven (170 C/ 350 F) until they yield easily to a knife. This takes abut 45 minutes, but check them often - a squash baked too long loses its lively taste. Once cool. we just scoop the flesh out with a spoon, scraping down to the skin. Use a potato masher or a stick blender or a hand mixer to even out the texture if you like, and portion it out into usable quantities, some to use at once, and some in plastic bags for the freezer. 500 g/ 2 C is a good amount for many recipes.

The dark caramelized surface is delicious. Take it off and eat it right away.
The flesh underneath will be uniformly silky.

This will usually leave you with a portion of uneven measure. With ours, I will make gnocchi for two, with this elegant two-ingredient recipe. 

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Fig and Date Bars with Orange Blossom Water- Nice to Share.

These rich bars with just five ingredients can be made easily in any quantity you need. They are perfect for sharing with as many people as possible, and in this case hopefully for leaving a sweet taste of Greece in the mouths of those coming through here under very difficult circumstances. One of the five ingredients is packaged cookies (!) it saved a lot of time. We want quantity, and our petite Euro-sized oven would hold us back. 

We were hoping to make something that feels like a treat but provides more than purely aesthetic sustenance. These are nothing but dried figs and dates and some sesame seeds, bound with the beautiful perfume of orange blossom water, and held together by a layer of crushed cookies on the top and bottom to make them tidy to eat, and a dusting of powdered sugar so they look more like a confection than a hunk of dried fruits and seeds. Pretty on the outside, healthy on the inside.

This is a recipe that can be incorporated into a weekly schedule and our weekly budget, and that can be doubled or quadrupled, to keep giving throughout the season. It also makes a nice project for small children, combining two of their favorite things- being kind to others, and getting their hands dirty. In our case I have my daughter Mei Mei and her friends to wrap them during study breaks (the are all in high school) and deliver to organizations that can pass them along to the border. 

For each large pan (42 X 28 cm), we will need:

1 package of plain square cookies- we used the double ones
1 K/ 7 C dried figs, cut up
500 g/ 4 C dates, pitted
120 g/ 1 C sesame seeds
2 tsp. orange blossom water
some powdered sugar for dusting

1. Crush the cookies. Line a large pan with non-stick paper and oil it very lightly, and spread half of the cookie crumbs evenly on it:

2. Pit the dates- this is very easy. Oil a pair of kitchen scissors and use them to cut the dates into rough pieces, removing the tough nub of stem at the top:

3. If the dates and figs seem too dry to be pulsed into a rough paste in the food processor, you can steam them very lightly- put just a spoonful or two of water into a pot, add the figs, and turn it on to high, covered. As soon as it boils (almost instantly) turn off the heat and let them steam for just a moment.

4. Put half of the dates and half of the figs and half of the sesame seeds into the food processor together with a teaspoon of orange blossom water and pulse until a coarse paste forms. Put into a bowl and pulse the other half and more orange blossom water, then mix the two halves gently so the texture is uniform.

5. The dense paste is not very spreadable, particularly on the crumbs sliding around loose on the non-stick paper. What we will do is take handfuls of the paste, pat them into slabs between our palms, and lay them over the crumbs, working toward the middle and filling in gaps like a puzzle. It is not at all difficult:

6. Coat the top with the rest of the crumbled cookies, pressing them into the fruit mixture. Set it somewhere to dry out a little:

7. Cut into bars large enough to be satisfying, roll in powdered sugar, and wrap them or put them into individual bags to stay clean and fresh.

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Urban Canning: Nectarines, Chet Baker, and a Very Simple Recipe for Fabulously Perfect Jam.

You know how Chet Baker said "You have to be a pretty good drummer to be better than no drummer at all."? Jam is like that. A tartine of just sweet butter and flaky salt is splendor. To earn its place, jam has to be better than good bread and fresh butter, combined. It's unlikely that such a thing can be bought. 

But it can be made, more easily than you might think. Given the intimidatingly large sacks of nectarines I have been bringing home from the weekly market, it must be made (the 4 cakes we baked last week did not make use of them all.) Bounty is not just privilege but obligation- in Greece our season of generosity is full, nothing to take lightly. How to extend the pleasure?- Urban Canning. Classically the province of the homestead or farm, preserving scales down beautifully to a sleeker, more compact urban activity. Small batch (henceforth "Boutique Batch") canning gives excellent results. The lower volume's shorter cooking time makes for a fresher, brighter taste- its chief recommendation. Also, it is an approachable project. The quantities involved in serious traditional preserving are overwhelming for our urban scale- architecturally and above all psychologically. Boutique batch canning, on the other hand, is truly a delight, not as ambitious as it sounds, easily integrated into the urban kitchen. 

The low commitment batch size encourages risk-taking. Were I making 20 jars of jam, I might not be so casual in adding some orange flower water. Making just two or three jars, you can afford to play. I added some when I took it off the boil. I tasted it, and then I added some more. The ethereal perfume of spring in the fullness of harvest captured every nuance of the life of the fruit. It was transcendent- a very big word for jam.

We liked it so much I added orange flower water to the next two batches also. To apricot jam I add the noix- the almond-like fruit in the center of the pit that is a principal ingredient in amaretto. To some peaches I will add ginger and cloves, to watermelon rind, some cardamon and zest of lime.

No special ingredients are needed for assured success- no pectin, no special sugar.

We'll need:
a jar lifter

a wide-mouthed funnel 

a mesh strainer (for dipping the lids into the sterilizing boiling water)

jars short enough to be covered by water in your tallest kettle

freshly purchased lids

a cup to measure with

2 or 3 small white plates

2 tall pots- one in which to cook the jam, the other in which to boil the jars.

And for the jam:

fruit- nectarines

sugar

a lemon

some orange flower water

Begin with barely ripe (almost not ready to eat yet), vividly tangy fruits. You might think that in starting out with ripe fruits rich in natural sweetness, you could reduce the sugar. Alas no- reducing the sugar increases the time it needs to cook down into jam. The extra time on the stove boils the verve out of the fruit, in flavor and color both. Tangy fruits make lively jam.

The proportions could not be simpler, so simple in fact that we do not need a scale, just some kind of cup.
For firm fruits that are cut into small pieces:
1 C sugar : 2 C fruit.

For fruits that are chopped and mashed, such as apricots or berries (no air in the measuring cup):
3 C sugar : 4 C fruit

This is not at all difficult or complicated if we use the following steps:

1. Start by placing 2 or 3 small white plates in the freezer- an easy way to test when the jam is ready. 

2. Fill a large pot 3/4 full of water and put it on to boil- this is for sterilizing our jars before hand and processing them afterward. 

3. Cut up as much fruit as you plan to use. I ended up with 8 C/ 2 liters. 

4. Measure out the appropriate amount of sugar and set it aside- in this case, 4 C.

5. Put the fruit, without the sugar, on to cook until it begins to release some juices, rich with pectin in barely ripe fruits (for a quicker jell).

6. When the fruit starts to cook down, add the sugar. The pot will suddenly seem to be full of liquid, with some fruit floating on op. Do not be concerned.

7. Stir the jam with a wooden spatula- something to make as much contact with the surface as possible.

8. The water should be boiling now. Put the clean jars into it for a few minutes and then set them out on a towel next to the jam. Keep stirring the jam all the while.

9. After perhaps 15 minutes at a full boil, the jam will begin to thicken a bit. Hot jam is always a liquid. To see how close we are to the right thickness, take a plate from the freezer and put a spoonful of jam on it. Let it cool a moment and drag a finger through it.

If there is a clean path, like this, that does not close up, the jam is ready. Taste the jam from the plate. If it is too sweet, which is very likely, add a squeeze of lemon and taste again. Keep adding a few drops until you have a good balance- sweet yes, but lively. Add some orange flower water and taste. I started with one teaspoon, tasted, and added another teaspoon.

10. Ladle the jam into the sterilized jars, leaving a little space at the top.

11. Dip the clean new lids into the boiling water to sterilize for a half minute ad screw them onto the jars, not too tightly, making sure the rims of the jars are completely clean and dry and free of jam (if necessary clean with a folded paper towel dipped in the boiling water).

12. Put the filled and closed jars into the boiling water, making sure they are completely covered by a centimeter or so and adding more water if necessary. Let them boil for 10 minutes.

Remove them from the water with the jar lifter and place them on a kitchen towel. Every now and then you will hear a satisfying "ping!"- this is the sound of the lid sealing- it will go from being almost imperceptibly convex to clearly concave- the center of the lid has no give when you press on it, the sign of a good seal.

I will not say this is fast- you could easily listen to a whole album of Chet Baker for instance- but it is very simple and gives enormous satisfaction. Besides making bread from scratch, there are few things you can do in the kitchen that give you such a clear sense of self-reliance, a connection to the season, and a connection to the agrarian heritage most all of us share. When you see those jars glittering on your shelves, you may find it hard to stop. No matter- sharing is the sweetest of the kitchen's pleasures.

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Salt Cod, Palm Sunday, and Dining like Vikings

Everything about this Ur-food brought an elemental satisfaction- the stinging, glittering crust of salt, the heft, the splayed, finned triangle of it. Salt cod come in fillets, and even in manageable hunks- but where's the fun in that? It's satisfying to handle- at first.... Rummaging through the cardboard box of whole bone-in split open coarse-salted dried cod to get the prettiest one, my hands started to sting- the salt was eating away at them. The produce manager came to help me with his gloved hands and I reached for a paper towel. He gave my fish a shake and slapped it on the scale- 2.75 K. I've had babies that weighed less at birth.

That nearly vintage copy of Gourmet is there for scale.

So long out of its icy waters but still formidable, the fish need plenty of finessing and a firm hand. There's salt everywhere. The only vessel large enough to soak it whole is the bathtub. Cutting it into portions makes it more manageable, and increases the surface area for the water to draw out the salt. Using a large serrated knife, remove the various fins.

Then divide the quite tough flesh into pieces, using a sawing motion that takes us right through the backbone, and the leathery skin. Our bone-in whole cod (considered the tastier choice- and the boneless fillets also are in fact often not) made a lucky 13 portions, which then were divided into two large bowls to give them room for soaking.

This was a very large cod- some of the pieces were quite thick, and it would need time to soak. Most recipe instructions recommend 24 to 48 hours to soak the bulk of the salt out of the fish. I had 36 hours until I would be needing it. A more effective soak can be achieved changing the water every six hours (as opposed to once or twice during the whole of the time), and before changing the water, I gave each piece a gentle massage to work the water through the meat. As the fish has been salt-cured I had no qualms trying it "raw" to test for saltiness. After 36 hours, the thick pieces were still quite salty. I chose the thinnest pieces for frying. I floured them, and dipped them in a batter of 250 g. 2 C flour, some salt, 20 ml/4 tsp. baking powder, and most of a bottle of beer. They need a long, slow fry. Given how thrillingly salty they still were, we needed a lot more beer than was in the batter.

I left the thicker pieces in fresh water overnight, then wrapped in individual portions for the freezer- there is enough for a least two more generous meals- in the oven with potatoes and tomatoes and garlic perhaps. It also makes a nice addition to a fish soup, where variety richens the broth. This fish hasn't been fresh for a long, long time anyway- the freezer does it no harm. In fact, de-salted cod is sold frozen for those who, like me, who have failed to allow enough time to get their salt-cod fry ready. Well, it's ready now- just in time for the sunny season of chilled rose and garlicy brandade.

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