Jams & Preserves | Gourmandistan

Damson plums make some damn fine plum pie

September 12, 2014 by Steve

Except during our brief jaunt to Michigan, Gourmandistan has not seen many plums this year. While both of us remember plums picked from Kentucky trees in our youths, we don’t see them often in the markets—and we’ve been too lazy to ask the farmers why. (Though should any of you be reading this, we’d be happy to hear about it.) But we spotted a basket labeled “damson plums” at last week’s market and decided to ask about them. Our question turned into […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Jams & Preserves, Old cookbooks, Pies & Tarts, Plums, Recipes

Peach curd takes precedence over citrus

September 5, 2013 by Steve

Gourmandistan has seen the last of summer for this year, unless some lovely reader wishes to spirit us away to the Southern Hemisphere. (We will be available for away-spiriting after mid-October.) Which means peach season has sadly passed us by, but not before we discovered a delicious new way to use them. After Michelle once again pointed out the many, many jars of jam in our freezer, Steve grudgingly admitted making peach jam wasn’t quite the necessity he believed it […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Fruit Desserts, Jams & Preserves, Peaches/Nectarines, Pies & Tarts, Recipes, Vegetarian

Nectarine peach chutney mostarda tautology redundancy

August 12, 2013 by Steve

Call this sweet, sassy, make-meat-more-savory sauce peach mostarda or nectarine chutney. Call it nectarine mostarda or peach chutney. Either way, you’ll quite possibly enjoy it as much as we have. Nectarines are to peaches as Channing Tatum is to Steve: basically the same thing, just without all the fuzz. (Steve acknowledges there may be additional differences between Channing Tatum and himself.) Indians and Italians may disagree, but some of their own authorities seem to think chutneys and mostardas are basically […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Jams & Preserves, Peaches/Nectarines, Recipes, Vegetarian

Bee suits, bittersweet, brambles and blackberry jam

July 27, 2013 by Steve

We are having a wonderful year for wild blackberries. Steve, determined to make the most of it, has been tramping out to a patch every morning for a couple of weeks. It’s a lovely spot, surrounded by sugar maple, tulip poplar and sassafras trees, and Steve doesn’t mind the hike through our (and, to be honest, our absentee neighbors’) overgrown old farm fields to get to them. He doesn’t mind spending an hour or so shuffling around a tangle of […]

Categories: Blackberries, Cooking, Food, Jams & Preserves, Recipes, Vegetarian

Cherishing the chore of (sour) cherry jam

June 4, 2013 by Steve

There are some who shirk hard labor, thinking it never leads to any reward. Some embrace whatever physical challenge is placed before them, knowing their efforts will lead to what is best in life. While Crom knows Gourmandistanis are not opposed to labor-saving devices, we also recognize that sometimes you have to put in the work. That is why Saturday saw Steve sitting at the kitchen table for three straight hours, pitting cherry after cherry after cherry until his hands […]

Categories: Cherries, Cooking, Food, Fruit, Jams & Preserves, Recipes, Vegetarian

Some ’80s jams (mostly the strawberry kind) still rock.

May 27, 2013 by Steve

Being of a certain age means we Gourmandistanis often have to suffer what many in our cohort still call “Modern Rock,” as if the era which created Kajagoogoo ended hard-edged rockers forever. (Despite the nauseatingly endless careers of the Stones and Aerosmith, there are those who argued that it did.) We are also too often in close proximity to people who still believe crappy California surfer-style shorts look good on them. Some of these happen to be the same people. We feel especially […]

Categories: Cooking, Food, Fruit, Jams & Preserves, Old cookbooks, Recipes, Strawberries, Vegetarian

Plagiarizing the Pistachio out of The Purple Pig’s Lemon Panna Cotta

April 12, 2013 by Steve

Providing Bon Appétit Magazine with a recipe for Lemon Panna Cotta with Lemon Marmalade was very nice of Jimmy Bannos, Jr. It may make us seem ungrateful to wish he had included in his published version the sugared pistachios that grace the dessert at The Purple Pig. We’ve enjoyed multiple meals at The Purple Pig, a seemingly always-packed place nestled at the southern tip of Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. We’re usually torn between too many choices—from Turkey Leg Confit with Crispy Lentils to Pig’s […]

Categories: Cooking, Custards & Puddings, Food, Fruit Desserts, Jams & Preserves, Lemon, Nuts, Recipes, Restaurants

Bunny Bundt: Early Spring Marmalade Carrot Cake

February 13, 2013 by Steve

Not satisfied with making enough jam to slake Steve’s appetite for fruit-laced yogurt, last winter Michelle decided to also make Seville orange marmalade. After peeling, juicing, slicing and boiling, she’d produced several batches—exactly none of which met her stringent standards. Some seemed too thick with slabs of peel, others too runny and light. Steve thought they were all fine, especially the “blended” jars that Goldilocks-edly straddled the thick-thin divide. Unfortunately, Steve does not eat that much marmalade. He finds its […]

Categories: Cake, Carrots, Cooking, Food, Fruit Desserts, Jams & Preserves, Old cookbooks, Recipes, Vegetarian

Blueberry jam with lemon verbena, British jubilee with venom verbiage

June 3, 2012 by Steve

Steve was very happy when Susan of the delightful Susan eats London gave a bloggy boost to his pressure on Michelle for more blueberry jam. Michelle had been avoiding making more for fear it would once again cook out too thick. But when Steve bought a few “extra” quarts at this Saturday’s market, she made another batch, and some sweet cream biscuits to boot. The chopped fresh lemon verbena in this version adds just a touch of herby tartness that […]

Categories: Blueberries, Cooking, Food, Jams & Preserves, Recipes, Vegetarian