seasonal & summer fruit Archives - Page 3 of 6

July 25, 2012 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Calming Edible Lavender

This is my favorite time of year, the month of July. The days are long and hot under intense blue skies and brilliant, scorching sun. The peaches, plums, apricots and pears are ripening and we’ll have a bumper crop of blackberries in a few weeks. Most of the flowers of spring like poppies, peonies and roses have given way to the flowers of summer: fields of yellow sunflowers, hedges of butterfly bush and banks of purple lavender.

Lavender is widely used as a border in gardens and, being a perennial, gets bigger and fuller every year. No garden or yard is complete without a lavender hedge, buzzing with bees and butterflies while it’s flowering and perfuming the garden all summer. In Tuscany, beekeepers will move their hives next to lavender hedges so the bees will make the most delicious lavender scented honey. It’s hard to find and worth every penny you’ll spend if you do.

Lavender is an edible flower and its perfume has a calming effect on both the mind and body. It’s widely used in aroma therapy, bath and body treatments, and sleep aids. I like to pick some of the flowers, tie them in a small cloth and toss them in the bath.

Lavender also goes well with summer fruits, giving a deeper complexity to the simplicity of peaches, apricots and berries. Toss a flower or two into a marinade of peaches with white wine; mix them with simple syrup while it’s still hot and use that to make an interesting sorbet of blackberries or raspberries. Its high concentration of oil goes well in creamy desserts and you need just one of two flowers to flavor a dish. To make lavender ice cream, start with a basic ice cream base of cream, eggs and sugar and toss a flower or two into the milk or cream while it’s heating.

The most elegant dessert though is lavender pannacotta with diced peaches. Light, rich and beautiful, the lavender oil delicately scents the cooked cream and the fresh peaches lightly seasoned with sugar and lemon juice, bring the summer garden onto your plate.

Buon Appetito! Gina

Lavender Pannacotta w/ Peaches

1 quart heavy cream

1 cup sugar

3 gelatin sheets (available at specialty food shops)

2 lavender flowers (two stems)

3 peaches, peeled and diced

1 teas fresh lemon juice

1 tbsp sugar

If you can find ripe white peaches, they’re the best. Their delicate rose scent goes beautifully with the lavender.

Soak gelatin sheets in tap water until soft. Combine cream with sugar and lavender; bring to a boil in a medium sauce pan. As soon as cream begins to boil, remove from the heat, take the gelatin out of water and whisk into cream. Pour into a large bowl and cool over an ice bath, stirring until it’s room temperature or cooler. Strain out the flowers. Ladle into cups or bowls and refrigerate until cold and firm. Mix the peaches with the lemon juice and sugar and let macerate an hour. Turn the pannacotta out onto individual plates, serve the peaches on top and around the pannacotta.

July 19, 2012 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Apricot Redux

I thought I was finished with apricots but the season just won’t quit. In the midwest they call it a “bumper crop.” I didn’t even know there WAS an apricot tree right outside my bedroom window, and I’ve lived in this house for 10 years. It’s never had so much fruit on it before, but this year it beams bright orange from the moment I open my eyes in the morning. It makes me nervous to see so much free fruit I can’t reach. So I found a way into the garden…

After two disappointing attempts at apricot jam, one of which burned and the other which rendered a deep orange apricot sauce, that I’m sure will be lovely on vanilla ice cream, I started talking to the natives and I finally learned the secret to preserving this fruit.

Not as easy and straight forward as other fruits, the apricot when cooked and stirred will dissolve into a texture-less puree that burns extremely easily. As I mentioned in a previous blog, after burning several pounds of apricots, I began to talk to the women in my village and ask how they made their “marmelata di albicocche” (jellies and jams are all lumped under the term “marmelata”, which we translate as marmalade.)

The secret is never to stir the apricots. Never. You put them in a heavy pot on a low to medium fire, put the sugar and pectin on top and you let them cook. You must never put spoon to mixture. Eventually the sugar melts into the syrup. As the syrup boils and bubbles, you test it every now and then by putting a small amount on a plate and when it cools to a jelly-like consistency, you put it in jars.

What I find so hysterical is that everyone in this village knows you don’t stir apricots! From the cashier at the grocery store to the bank teller to the guy who pumps gas, it’s common knowledge! I would casually mention how I had a humongous sack of apricots and didn’t want to attempt jam again because I’d burned it and they all said “E’ perche l’hai girato!” It’s because you stirred it!

Apparently when they raise kids here they teach them: Don’t talk to strangers, Look both ways before crossing the street, and Don’t stir the apricot jam.

So I got the big pot out again and nervously tried it, resisting the urge to stir or push the apricots down, and they were right: not stirring the apricots renders them whole and plump, swimming in a lovely clear apricot flavored gel. I scooped the jam into jars, eagerly anticipating the bottom of the pan and to my surprise, it was perfectly clean! I’m going to try the same thing with plums next month.

I wonder what else these Tuscans know that they’re not telling me….

July 9, 2012 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Apricot Jam and my long day’s journey into night

I passed the tree loaded with bright orange apricots for two weeks before I rang the bell to inquire. When I saw that the fruit was starting to drop to the ground, I could hold back no longer. In the wide open on a main street, just at the end of my road, I wasn’t going to be able to steal them, I was going to have to ask.

The young man who rents the house had no interest in the apricots and was more than happy to allow me to pick them. I promised him a jar of jam in exchange for the tons of apricots I was planning to take away. The fruit this year has been exceptional and this particular tree had more apricots than leaves.

I borrowed a ladder and picked until my sack broke. Then I went home and got a sturdier sack. And a basket. By the end of an hour I had more than I could carry home. I was going to need more jars. In anticipation of all the beautiful orange jam I was going to give as gifts, I loaded up on jars and lids, sugar and lemons, got out the big jam pot and started halving the fruit.

Actually making that jam turned out to be more difficult than I imagined. With fruit jam I normally just weigh the fruit and mix it with half that amount of sugar, then add the juice of a lemon. Most fruit has at least a small amount of pectin, which helps it to gel, but usually I’ll add strips of lemon and wild apple peel, both of which are loaded with pectin.

I don’t like using industrial pectin that you buy in the store, I like the fruit to cook until the natural pectin in the fruit and sugar causes it to set up and the water in the fruit cooks off. This often entails cooking the jam for 30-60 minutes until the juices are thick enough to set.

But apricots have no natural pectin of their own and the lemon peel I added had no effect. Then the apricots stuck to the bottom of the pot and burned; the whole batch tasted scorched and had to be thrown out. I scrubbed the pot and started over, stirring the second batch more frequently. It seemed that no matter how long it cooked, it was still too watery to be called jam. The constant stirring seemed to keep the temperature down, which wasn’t good, but if I stopped stirring even for a minute it started to stick. It tasted good so I eventually put it in jars and labeled it “apricot sauce”.

It was late when I finished, but I wasn’t satisfied and wanted to know what I’d done wrong. I got online and saw that other people had the same problem with scorching. I read Harold McGee’s Food and Cooking book to better understand the science of pectin. Then I turned to my Tuscan friends to get the real scoop on the best way to make jam from apricots. What I learned was astounding.

The secret is never to stir the mixture.

In the evening, clean and half the apricots. Weigh them, put them in a large pot with half their weight in sugar poured on top, cover them and put them aside. No stirring. The next morning put the pot on the stove on a medium heat, uncover them and let them cook until the juice gels when cool. You must walk away from it and allow it to do its thing, adding a little lemon juice towards the end. And never stir it.

That tree is still half covered with apricots. I think I see another duel with the jam pot, but this time I’m ready.

June 10, 2012 by Gina Stipo Leave a Comment

Cherry Jam

I just love the way the word “jam” sounds. Jam. Sam. I’m on the lam. We had a discussion this past week in my culinary tour group on the difference between preserves, jams and jellies. According to an expert in our group, preserves are made with whole fruit, jams are cut up fruit, and jellies are just the juice. I cook a lot of fruit in season, combining the whole or halved fruit with sugar and lemon and cooking it until it’s thick. Some might call what I do “preserves, but I like to call it jam.

In Tuscany the middle of June means cherries and it is a season all to short for me. We have several different varieties, some are almost black when ripe and all of them are plump and juicy. They’re the perfect snack, a slight crunch as your teeth break the skin, then a burst of sweet tart juice that explodes in your mouth. I love cherries too.

Since today was my first day off in a month and tomorrow begins another week before I’ll be able to call any time my own, I thought it would be a good idea to make cherry jam. My sister Mary, who is in Italy working with me this month, looked at me like I was nuts and said “Are you sure you have time to do that?” I replied, “If not now, when?” I can’t imagine cherry season ending before I’m able to capture the deliciousness of them into jars. We can enjoy them months later on vanilla ice cream and I’m sure my culinary group this week will appreciate them on toast for breakfast!

So here’s how you make cherry jam: Pit your cherries, weigh them and use half that amount of sugar. I had a kilo of cherries so I used half a kilo of sugar. Put the fruit and sugar in a large pot with a heavy bottom. Peel half a lemon into strips and put the peel in the fruit, then squeeze the juice of a whole lemon over all. Stir and place on a low fire. As it heats, the fruit gives up juice and it becomes very liquidy. Bring to a slow boil and allow it to cook until the liquid becomes thicker. Be careful not to burn it or allow it to boil over, that’s a mess to clean up.

You know it’s done when a small amount of the juice on a plate is thick and sticky after you’ve blown on it to cool it off. Then just spoon it into jelly jars that have lids with good seals on the inside. You don’t need to process the jars, the sugar and acidity of the fruit preserve it. Put the lid on tight and as the jam cools it forms a vacuum seal and you’re good to go.

Our season for fruit is underway. The strawberries finished in May, making way for cherries and mulberries in June followed quickly by apricots. We look forward to lots of peaches and plums all summer long, finishing with figs in September. Rest assured. I’ll be making my whole-fruit jam for a while.