Gooseberry Season

Day 269: Cherries weren't the only thing on my picking agenda day before yesterday. The gooseberries are ripening! Now let me tell you: picking gooseberries is a dangerous endeavour. The bushes are very thorny, especially on the older canes. I'd pruned out a lot of the old canes last year which made it a little easier, but it also meant I'd probably only get enough gooseberries for one batch of jam. Indeed, that's what has occurred, but the trade-off for one year is worth it to save some of my skin. Gooseberries are also a bit of a pain to process for turning into jam. Each berry has to be topped (the stem end cut off) and tailed (the blossom end removed). I prefer to cut each one in half before putting them in a container to freeze. That way, they're ready to go when cooler weather arrives and I feel like making jam. Oh, I could make jelly from them as well,, thereby saving the work of topping and tailing, but I love having bits of gooseberry in my toast spread. Why go to all this work when I could make some other kind of jam? Because gooseberry jam is my absolute most favourite! A little tart, a little sweet...perfect on homemade sourdough bread.

Topping And Tailing

Day 287: We're going to take a left turn from botany today to explain the process of "topping and tailing," a task which will be familiar to anyone who has cultivated gooseberries for use in jam. Or perhaps we should back up even further to explain the gooseberry itself. I'm willing to bet that a sizeable portion of the younger generation would say, "Gooseberries? What are those?" Hardly anyone grows them these days because their thorny defense system makes them hard to pick, and the aforementioned "topping and tailing" is time-consuming and rather tedious when one has any quantity to process. An underripe gooseberry will pucker your mouth in a way lemons can only dream of achieving. A ripe gooseberry is still tart, but at the same time, it holds a certain sweetness which suggests the possibility of culinary use. Some varieties make green berries, others red or brown, but most cultivars produce a fruit from half an inch to an inch in diameter, and do so in abundance. Did I mention thorns? Even when those luscious berries are dangling in easy sight, the gooseberry bush doesn't want you removing them. The thorns are longer than the berries, and cover the older canes as thick as the proverbial hair on a dog. Puncture-proof elbow-length gloves are strongly advised for neophyte gooseberry pickers. Those of us who have grown up with gooseberries have sufficient experience with their collecting to know to move slowly and carefully, but are nevertheless resigned to getting spiked. Let's say you've survived the harvesting experience more or less intact. Now you need to process the fruit to turn into one of the most delicious jams I know. Each berry, however large or small, will require that the stem end (top) and blossom end (tail) will need removing. This is done with the sharpest knife in your kitchen because the skins resist cutting, although they'll soften when cooked. Once I've topped and tailed my harvest, I like to cut each berry in half before freezing. The fruit keeps well in the freezer without the addition of sugar, so you can accumulate gooseberries as they ripen and then make jam when cooler days arrive in late autumn. I may actually have enough this year to make two batches!

Figs For Winter

Day 298: My first attempt at fig jam was, if not exactly a total failure, definitely not what I had intended. I had studied a variety of recipes and, being lazy, opted to go with one which used commercial pectin. Even though I measured the amounts of figs and sugar carefully, I wound up with a product only slightly thicker than syrup as a result of the proportions not being correct for the ripeness of the figs. This is a fairly common occurrence when using pectin to set jams made with apricots, peaches, figs or other low-acid fruit. After giving the jam 48 hours to set, I decided to remake it using the old-fashioned reduction method, i.e., boiling it down. However, I had at least another gallon of ripe, fresh figs in the refrigerator which needed immediate processing, so I decided to dehydrate them. I blanched them first to soften the skins, then cut them in half. They filled all eight trays of my 50-year old Harvest Maid dehydrator to capacity! At 135 degrees (the recommended temperature), they took a little over 50 hours to dry to a chewy state. Because they still contain some moisture, I've packed them in containers to be frozen for enjoying this coming winter. Meanwhile, I turned a third of the failed jam into a delicious thick and spreadable fig butter, supplemented with frozen figs from last year's harvest.

A Currant Of A Different Colour

Day 286: While I am not especially fond of the fruits of Red-Flowering Currant straight off the vine, they make a passin' fair substitute for blueberries in muffins. However, this year's crop has a different destiny. I have had an astonishingly good crop of Gooseberries (four cups!) and a reasonable yield from the Red Lake Currants (another cup). Combined with these native fruits, I should have enough for a full-sized batch of mixed Ribes jam (Ribes sanguineum above, plus R. uva-crispa and R. rubrum). The currants will need to be cooked and strained to remove blossom ends and stems as if I was making clear jelly, but the gooseberries will be left "chunky" (cut in halves or quarters in some cases). Sanguineum is just starting to produce. I picked a half-cup this morning, and there are loads of unripe ones. The jam should provide a delicious combination of tastes which I'm betting most people wouldn't be able to identify.

Blue Elderberries

Day 334: "It seemed like a good idea at the time." Those words always chime in my head when I see blue elderberries.

When I was growing up, the red-fruited Elderberry was the only one you'd see in the cooler, damper climate of Snohomish County. It wasn't until I moved to southwest Washington that I saw blue Elderberry in abundance. My mother had always told me that the fruits of red Elderberry were poisonous, and while that is not exactly true (they must be cooked before eating), it kept me from nibbling on the ones in our neighbourhood. She also said (correctly) that black or blue Elderberries could be used for pie and jam. As a young housewife, I was tempted by the abundance of dusty blue berries within a short walk of our prairie property, and one afternoon set out with my husband to collect a five-gallon bucketful. Our mission was soon accomplished and we returned to the house for the next phase. That's when it all went south.

Y'see, for all of the fact that they grow in heavy clusters, each one of these berries is only about 5 mm. and consists largely of skin wrapped around hundreds of crunchy little seeds. After crushing the full five gallons and pressing (I might say "squeezing the hell out of") the mash through a jelly bag, the juice extracted would not have filled a quart jar. Perhaps this was the wrong way to approach the project; maybe I should have put them in a pot with some water and boiled them, but I was new to jam and jelly production then, and was following a "live off the land" recipe which I suspect had been written by someone who'd never actually tried to do it themselves. In the end, I chose the only reasonable option. I threw mash and juice onto the compost heap and put the cookbook in the darkest corner of my library.

Older and wiser now, I choose to leave blue Elderberries on the bush for the birdies. "Once bitten, twice shy" is another phrase which comes to mind.

Jam Session

Day 313: I have my work cut out for me. I'll be juicin' tonight and jammin' tomorrow.

Himalayan Blackberries may be a nuisance plant in the Pacific Northwest, but no one wants to see them entirely eliminated because they make very tasty jams and jellies. I put the berries through a food press which substantially reduces the number of seeds in the final product, but not to the extent that you could refer to it as "jelly." That's just more work than it's worth, and when the jam is spread on a toasted slice of hearty homemade bread, the additional crackle of crunchy seeds is a textural bonus.

Okay, you lot. Listen up. Those of you who didn't return your empty jars won't get jam for Christmas this year. You know who you are! You've still got time to redeem yourselves if you want more of this delicious Pacific Northwest specialty.