Perfectly Practiced Preservation Part III, Scrumptious Spiced Vanilla Peach Jam

It is getting to be my favorite time of year, peach season. Peach season reminds me of the warm ripe days of summer, lightning bugs, lakes, and my birthday, mmmm. I tell you later about my absolute favorite way to eat peaches, when the are really really ripe. For now I'm talking about jam. Again I know, but it's my blog and I love homemade jam. What can I say?

So what makes soupy fruit soup become gel like jam? There isn't any cornstarch or gelatin, but there is something else, pectin. Pectin is a naturally occurring heteropolysaccharide found in the cell walls of non-woody dry land plants (as opposed to water plants). It's a long word, so I'll break it down. Saccharide = sugar. Sugars a usually chains (like beads on a string) but sometimes they become rings instead. Poly = many. When a lot of these rings get together they make a chain of rings called a polysaccharide. Hetero = different. So a heteropolysaccharide is a long chain of different sugar rings. Citrus fruits, like lemons have lots of pectin.

When the a jam mixture starts to cool down the water and the sugar get together leaving the pectin all alone. The pectin the groups together and bonds to itself creating our favorite colloid, the gel. Word to the wise, do not reduce sugar in any jam recipes or you will end up with soup instead of jam.

This jam recipe combines my new love for homemade jams, my old love of vanilla, and my summer love of peaches. It's a lot of love, and this jam is so totally worth it.

Spicy Vanilla-Peach Jam

Ingredients

5 cups peeled, pitted, and coarsely chopped fresh peaches

1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

9 cups sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

2 vanilla beans

1 pouch (3 oz) liquid fruit pectin

Process the peaches in a blender until finely chopped. In a large heavy stockpot, combine peaches and lemon juice. Stir in sugar and cinnamon until well blended. Split vanilla beans and scrap seeds into peach mixture Add vanilla beans. Stirring constantly, cook over low heat 4 minutes. Increase heat to high and bring mixture to a rolling boil. Stir in liquid pectin. Stirring constantly, bring to a rolling boil again and boil 1 minute. Remove from heat; skim off foam. Remove vanilla beans. Can using the jar directions (~10 half pints). After cans are sealed place in a pot with enough water to cover the lids about 1/4 inch. Boil for 10 minutes. Remove and let cool.

Perfectly Practiced Preservation Part II, aka Radical Raspberry Jam

So far this summer I have been hanging out with some very awesome Young-at-Heart Americans and they are starting to rub off on me. Not only am I making my own dress, wearing cat-eye glasses, and helping out in the church office, today I made my own jam.

Jams are a great way to naturally preserve fruit past its prime. Microorganisms (mold, bacteria, etc.), once again, are the reason that fruit spoil. They eat away at the fruit and cause rotting and mold, yuck. I talked earlier about freezing and refrigeration as one way to slow down the organisms. You can also just kill them off. When you make jam you boil the fruit and the high temperatures make all the microorganisms croak. Vacuum sealing the jars keep new ones from getting in and the jam stays fresh.

Because you want goo, natural breakdown because of fats and enzymes is not a problem. But, you do have to worry about oxidation. When you cut a piece of fruit the cells along the cut line break open, releasing an enzyme (tyrosinase) that reacts with oxygen in the atmosphere and the ferrous phenols in the fruit to create a new brown chemical that is a cousin to the very famous iron oxide (aka rust). Rust is created the same way, when iron reacts with oxygen. To prevent the browning of fruit you use vacuum sealing to remove the oxygen.

So, how do you vacuum seal? Pressure is a measure of how often molecules hit a surface. When everything is open the pressure will equalize throughout a gas. Most gases follow the ideal gas law which states that pressure*volume = the number of molecules*the gas constant*temperature (PV=nRT). When you heat a jar and the gas inside of it without a lid on the pressure is the same as the air around, but the temperature is higher. When you put an airtight lid on the volume and the number of molecules can't change. So, as the jar, the jam, and the air inside cool down the pressure decreases and the air outside starts pushing really hard to try and get in. Eventually the outside pressure is so much greater that the little pop dot on the jar gets pushed in and the jar is "vacuum sealed". If you've ever wondered why the pop dot is there, that one reason. The other really important reason is, if there are still organisms in the jar they will start eating the jam and will give of gases as waste (like yeast) which eventually will pop the dot back up, indicating that the jam is spoiled. So, never use a jam with a popped up dot.

While the science behind jam can be confusing and complicated, the act of making jam is surprisingly easy. There are rarely more than 3 or 4 ingredients and the steps are fairly straight forward. One major hint, use really good fresh ripe fruit. My mom and I went an bought fresh raspberries at the farmers market and it was perfect. This jam is a little sweet, a little tart, and very very good. Good luck and enjoy.*

Raspberry Jam

Ingredients

4 pints fresh raspberries

5 cups sugar

2 Tablespoons lemon juice

5 half pint Ball or Kerr jars with lids and rims

Wash and lightly dry the raspberries. Place in a large stock pot or dutch oven and crush (I used a potato masher). Mix in the sugar and lemon juice and quickly bring to a boil. Boil, stirring frequently for 25 minutes. Remove from heat and skim off foam. Ladle hot jam into hot jars leave about a 1/4 inch between the lid and the jam. Seal using the jar's instructions (they will go something like this, boil jar and rims, place jar rims and lids in hot water, pour in jam, wipe rim clean with a damp cloth, center lid, add rim and tighten). Let cool and enjoy.

*Good news, the uploader thingy is working again. Better news I have an awesome new digital manual camera to take my pictures with, yay!

Perfectly Practiced Preservation, aka Homemade Hamburger Helper

So, I had a friend of mine ask a question about phyllo dough, why does it have to be frozen? And I started looking around for the answer. For those of you who don't know what phyllo dough is it is a dough of turkish origin, made of flour, water, oil, and either raki or white vinegar which is then rolled out until it is paper thin. It's name means leaf in greek. It is layered to make a whole slew of foods from baklava to spanakopita and is often filled with nuts, cheese or vegetables to make appetizers. It is extremely difficult to make (there are stories about whole dinning room tables full of rolled out dough), but you can buy it frozen at some supermarkets. There are a couple of reasons why it is frozen, first is to make sure that the super thin layers can withstand shipping. When a liquid dips below a certain temperature (freezing point) the molecules slow down and start sticking together to make a solid. Solids are less likely to move around in shipping, so the layers are less likely to tear. The more important reason for freezing phyllo dough is to keep it from spoiling.

Freezing and refrigeration are two natural forms of food preservation (others include drying, heat, salting, and vacuum). How freezing and refrigeration work is that all organisms, including bacteria and mold (which cause spoiling by eating the food), tend to work best at warmer temperatures. Think of a bacterium like you. When it's a nice warm spring day you are really really ready to move. You walk, skip, jump, work in the yard, whatever. But when it starts to get cold, like a Minnesota morning in ... well, October - March, you are pretty much just going to sit inside and stay warm. Bacteria and mold are the same way. If you get them cold enough they start eating slower and slower, making your food last longer. Hence freezing food to keep it fresh.

Sometimes, however, freezing isn't enough. This is where humans stepped in and invented these chemicals called ... dum, dum, dum... artificial preservatives. These chemicals work in one of three ways. 1) they create a really bad environment for bacteria to grow in. 2) The slow the oxidation of fats and lipids (aka they keep fat from breaking down into goo) or 3) They stop enzymes (natural proteins that speed up stuff like the break down of cells) from working as quickly. It all seems great, but in a large enough quantity they are really bad for the body because they disrupt the body's natural balance and can kill cells that are important for regulating the body. They can also cause tumors and cancer. Yuck.

So, in honor of avoiding these nasty little chemicals, and for nostalgia, I made Hamburger Helper not from the box (actually I was going to make an asparagus phyllo dough appetizer, but apparently phyllo dough hasn't made it to Minnesota yet, and as adventurous a baker as I am, I'm not about to attempt making this one on my own). I am happy to say it was as good as the original, not much harder, and even passed the test of a kid who's favorite food is none other than Hamburger Helper out of the box. The original recipe is from John Mastro (http://www.johnmastro.net/2009/09/cheeseburger-macaroni/), I made a couple of small tweaks, and it's better for you than the box, so eat up!

Homemade Hamburger Helper

Ingredients

1 lb lean ground beef

1 teaspoon black pepper

1 teaspoon onion powder

1/2 cup ketchup

2 3/4 cup water

1/2 lb any shaped pasta (I used penne)

2 1/2 - 3 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese

In a large skillet with a lid, brown the hamburger and drain. Stir in the black pepper and the onion powder. Add the ketchup. Pour in the water and pasta. Bring to a boil, stirring everything together. Reduce heat to medium and cover. Simmer until the water is absorbed and the pasta is tender (~15 min if you are using penne pasta). Remove from the heat, stir in the cheese until it is all melted and even through out. Enjoy!!

(I hope to get pictures into this post eventually, but the uploader thingy is acting up, so soon)