Excerpt from the Market Newsletter originally published on DATE. View the full newsletter for all the photos and links.
Cooking, and reading about cooking
I was browsing along in my little stack of canning and preserving books -- mine and the library's, anyway -- when it occurred to me that most of the recipes I was looking at made some pretty broad assumptions about the reader's level of expertise. I can't really include all the basic information a beginner needs here in the newsletter (well, I could, but I'd run out of little photos to fill up the sidebar), so I found you a website instead. The National Center for Home Food Preservation has a pretty comprehensive overview -- I'm sending you to the canning section, but there's a little list at the lower left with links to freezing, pickling, fermenting, all kinds of fun stuff (the fermenting section includes how to make your own yogurt, for instance).
We now continue with your regularly scheduled recipes...
Sweet and sour pepper jam
12 large red peppers, stemmed. seeded, and finely chopped
1 Tbsp. salt
1.5 lb. sugar
2 c vinegar
Sprinkle pepers with salt and let stand 3-4 hours; rinse in cold water. Bring peppers, sugar, and vinegar to a boil and simmer until thick, stirring frequently. Pour into jars and seal.
Spiced peach jam
2 lb. peaches, peeled and with pits removed
1-inch piece of fresh ginger root
1/2 tsp allspice
1 tsp crushed cinnamon bark
1 tsp whole cloves
1/2 c peach juice or water
1 lb. sugar
Crush peaches, cook until soft, and press through a fine sieve or food mill. Tie spices into a cheesecloth bag and add to peaches, juice, and sugar. Boil until thick, or until it registers 222F on a candy thermometer. Remove spice bag. Fill jars and seal.
Both from: The home canning and preserving book / by Ann Seranne. Barnes & Noble, 1975.
