Blackberry 3-Pepper Jam

I've been meaning to make some spicy fruit jam to serve as an appetizer on cheeses. In a fit of inspiration, I got some mystery peppers at the Co-op, and some frozen blackberries. Here's what I ended up with:

Roughly 3 cups of crushed blackberries

Roughly 1 cup crushed strawberries

1/4 cup lemon juice

1.75 oz powdered pectin

About 3/4 cup (8 smallish) minced hot peppers, half seeded

About 1 tsp crushed red pepper (from pizza delivery)

About 1/2 tsp ground white pepper

6 cups organic sugar.

(I'm not going to include processing info- refer to the Ball or Better Homes and Gardens Canning Books or foodinjars.com for processing info.)

Thaw and crush berries. Add peppers, lemon juice, pectin and bring to a boil. Add sugar, bring to a boil again, stirring constantly. Cook for a few minutes ( I may have overdone it- again- I did about 4 minutes), stirring constantly.

I got 4 half-pints and 6 quarter-pints. Taste-testing of what remained in the pan indicates a sweet, complex jam with a nice, slight burn on the back of the taste. I'll see how it develops.

Recipe adapted from multiple sources, primarily this one.

Sweet potatoes everywhere

I've never been one for sweet potatoes. Even the gooey, marshmallow-covered ones that scream traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Maybe those are what turned me off of these gorgeous orange tubers.
Enter these lovely fries, care of one of my new favorite blogs: My New Roots. Besides the nice, soft hands I got by way of coconut oil-and-cornmeal scrub, I finally acknowledged that I may, even without benefit of deep-fryer, be willing, nay, eager to eat sweet potatoes.

So for dinner tonight, Green Curry with carrot, broccoli, and sweet potato. It was lovely.

CC seed-cake

     I have carrots. What with the biweekly veggie box, and the weekly fruit box, I seem to always have produce rotting all around me. This semester is killing me, and I'm cooking much less than I'd like. Carrots have mostly just been peeled, sliced, and cooked along with ramen for the last month. Which is a shame, because these are very pretty, Nantes carrots care of Farm Fresh to You, fresh and fragrant, with some mud still on 'em. Lovely. But I've been craving sweet, and wanting to make a traditional Seed-cake for some time. Needing to, almost. Between taking Brit Lit 2 (We're in the Victorians now) and feeling a need for slightly more healthy but reassuring foods to eat with tea while studying, I googled "Carrot tea cake" to find something a bit simpler than the big, cream cheese-frosted American-type carrot cake, and something a bit more like banana bread, or the apple cake I made a few weeks ago.

      So we're not reading Jane Eyre (pity), but rather Charlotte Brontë's hysterical sister Emily's opus Wuthering Heights. Best guess, everyone, which I prefer. Nonetheless, I have relistened to Jane Eyre, courtesy of Librivox, read by the incomparable Elizabeth Klett. I feel both stimulated and reassured by a heroine as passionate, yet outwardly calm, as the titular Jane, and elements of the novel have shown up in bits and pieces of my recent creative life, including an NPC named Helen Burns and a craving for Caraway seed cake.

 

 Jane and Helen feasting with Miss Temple. Illustration by John Huehnergarth 1954

 (brazenly stolen from another blogger making seed-cake)

      At any rate, I found a recipe on Cooks.com, and added about 3/4 tsp caraway seeds (for the classic English seed-cake flavor, probably limited somewhat by the sweetness of the grated carrot), and 1/2 tsp of chia seeds, splashed with a bit of water, since chia sucks up moisture to make that . . . gel stuff they do.

      The name? Not terribly clever - Carrot-chia seed cake. The caraway is insinuated by the fact that I'm a purist (when it suits me), and the Brontës would definitely assume caraway seeds. Shortened to 'cc' to evoke a desperately needed injection of something (2 ccs of tea cake! Stat!)

       Pictures to come. Phonecam is busted to death, and I'm not used to Hex's camera and pic-sharing stuff yet.

Pesach in L.A.

It's become a yearly trek down to southern California for the Seder. This will be my fourth year, and it's amazing how quickly something becomes . . .impossible to imagine missing. I love the leisurely breakfasts (matzah brei), reading in the sun, hearing the stories about New York and LA and how things have changed.

No pictures, because I have no idea how to do them on my Nexus. I'll learn, and soon be back to (very) intermittent posting. Next post: canning adventures and pictures.

Chag sameach.