Food is Food

As a Canbassador, I receive a couple shipments of fresh stone fruit from Washington State to preserve. Over the past few years I have made a lot of things with peaches including Peach Ketchup and Ginger Peach Preserves. While there are some good ideas on the SweetPreservation website, in the comments section of my Can-It-Forward giveaway post I received even more fantastic suggestions for canning peaches including peach preserves, peach butter, peach salsa, peach mostarda, brandied peaches, peach pie filling, and a jam from Piemonte with peaches, amaretti and cocoa powder. That should keep me inspired for years to come! 

This year I ended up canning some peaches in a light syrup, and I also made Peach Barbecue Sauce. My recipe was inspired by one I found online, Zesty Peach Barbecue Sauce, but I made some changes and am pleased with the results. Barbecue sauce is a very easy thing to make and easy to can. You can and should taste it before you can it and adjust the seasonings as you see fit. You can make it spicy, smoky, boozy--you are only limited by your own imagination. The color may throw you off, but try a taste with your eyes closed, it definitely has the tang of barbecue sauce. I'd recommend using it on pork, chicken or even ribs.

I am a big fan of small batch canning and this recipe made just a little bit over four half pint jars. That's enough for me and enough for me to share. The ability to share something you made from scratch is one of the best things about canning and preserving. 

Make 4 half pint jars (8 ounces)

Ingredients 

4 cups finely chopped pitted peeled peaches

1/4 cup finely chopped seeded red bell pepper

1/2 cup finely chopped onion 

2 pressed or finely chopped garlic cloves

1/2 cup honey

6 Tablespoons apple cider vinegar

1-2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger, start with one teaspoon and add more after tasting

1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika

2 teaspoons gojuchang or other thick chile sauce (not Tabasco)

1 teaspoon dry mustard

1 teaspoon salt

Instructions

Heat jars in simmering water in a hot water bath canner or large pot. Combine all ingredients in a large pot. Bring to a boil then reduce heat and simmer, stirring frequently, until mixture thickens about 20 minutes. Puree using a hand blender or in a blender. Taste for seasonings and add more ginger or other seasonings as you like, and continue cooking until the sauce is the desired consistency. 

Dip lids and bands in the water briefly. Carefully ladle the hot sauce into the prepared hot jars leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Wipe rims and center hot lid on jar. Apply band and adjust until fit is fingertip tight. Place the jars back in the boiling water making sure the water covers the jars by an inch and process  for 15 minutes (adjust for altitude if necessary). Remove jars and let cool. Check lids for seal after 24 hours.

Enjoy! 

More about cookies here and here.

Once again, I’m a Canbassador. That means I receive a couple shipments of stone fruit, more than enough to preserve, and I share my results and recipes with you. I already received a large box of dark red cherries and will be working on peaches next. Dark red cherries have an intense flavor, they hold up well with other strong flavors and with that in mind I made two different recipes--Bourbon Cherries and Cherry Vanilla Balsamic Shrub.

I’m afraid I didn’t pay as much attention to the recipe for Bourbon Cherries as I should have, and they will need four weeks to “settle" so I will not be trying them for bit longer. I also froze some cherries, which is very easy to do. I just washed and pitted them and put them in the zip top bag, and froze it as flat as I could. The cherries don’t seem to have stuck to together. And I dried a small batch of cherries in my toaster oven, but it took a very long time and I’m not sure I’d do it again.

By the way, if you have a large amount of cherries to pit, I highly recommend this pitter that cleanly and easily pits 6 cherries at a time! It's a bit pricey, but definitely worth it to avoid the mess and hassle when you have lots of cherries to pit. 

The other recipe I made was a shrub. As you may recall, shrubs are vinegar based drinks, often made with fruit. Making shrubs is a great way to use fruit that’s not perfect. The riper the fruit the better. Basically you combine fruit with sugar and water, then let it sit for a while then add vinegar. You can also add aromatics. This was my first experiment and it turned out rather well.  Once you make a shrub the easiest way to serve it is with bubbly water, but it’s good in cocktails and to flavor hard sparkling cider. 

The cherries leftover from making the shrub have a kind of pickled flavor since they were sitting in a vinegar solution for a full week. They are great as an accompaniment to cheese or in green salads. I recently made a salad with hot smoked salmon, red onions and avocado and the shrub cherries added just the right tangy note. 

Cherry Vanilla Balsamic Shrub 

Ingredients

2 cups sugar
1 cup water

2 cups vinegar--I used a pleasing combination of balsamic and Champagne vinegar

1-2 vanilla beans, sliced open, end to end

Years ago I wrote about Monet’s Palate, a charming film narrated by Meryl Streep. It delves into the life of Monet at his home in Giverny. Monet’s passions were painting and gardening, but he also clearly enjoyed the pleasures of the table—eating, drinking and entertaining guests. A new book, Monet’s Palate Cookbook is less about historical and sometimes antiquated and inaccurate recipes left behind by his cook, and more about his life in Giverny. It covers his approach to gardening, eating and entertaining with plenty of recipes of course. 

The book begins with his passion for good food, then moves seamlessly into his kitchen garden and many of the fruits and vegetables that were grown at the time, as well as the specific ones that were grown in his garden and details about how they were propagated. But the majority of the book is dedicated to recipes. The recipes are inspired by Monet’s kitchen garden at Giverny, but fresh and modern. Some of them refer to favorite dishes served to artists of the day—like bouillabaise for Renoir and others are from places he traveled to such as the Yorkshire Pudding from the Savoy Hotel in London. Finally there are recipes from famous chefs like Michel Richard and Anne Willan, inspired by his kitchen notebooks. 

All photos by Samantha Okazaki