Asparagus, Round 3 goes to Chris!

Well, it's been a while since my last entry. Not because I've lost the canning spirit, but rather because, besides asparagus and rhubarb, there's nothing else to can at this time of year! It has been a warm spring and the strawberries are here early, but yesterday was the first time they were at the market, and they were $6/quart, which is too steep for my canning requirements. I'm hoping to pick my own in the next couple of weeks.

After the asparagus canning fiasco, I've been freezing it because the results are entirely predictable. But I was moving jars onto a different shelf in my basement and was irritated to see the two measly pint jars that I had pickled. Asparagus is still cheap at the market and the stalks are gorgeous, so I decided to give it one final try.

I cut up five pounds just like last time, but this time, while preparing the brine, I was shocked to see that in the recipe I'm suppose to dilute the vinegar solution by 50% by adding the same amount of water. How did I miss this last time? Suddenly my wizened asparagus are starting to make more sense. I had no idea how much vinegar went into pickles and assumed you just used pure vinegar? Hmm, in hindsight I couldn't even breathe when I was filling the jars, the smell was so strong, I suppose that should have been a warning that I was doing something wrong.

THIS time, I used the right brine, the right sized asparagus, and I packed them as directed. The result? The proper amount of pickled asparagus (3 quarts instead of 2) that look much more similar to the photo in the book!

Maybe I can feed the over-vinegared jars to the dog or something...

YIELD: win!

Rhubarb overload

For some reason the rhubarb I buy in the spring at the farmers' market is always smaller than what I remember eating as a kid. But then, I don't think I really liked rhubarb as a kid: I just liked dipping the stalks in sugar.

And honestly, I'm not convinced I like rhubarb as an adult. The only times I've really used it is in making a strawberry-rhubarb sour cream streusel coffee cake, and as you can imagine, there are a bunch of other flavours competing with it. So I decided to see if I can make something that the adult me will enjoy, and I chose rhubarb conserve.

So what's a conserve? In theory made from a fruit steeped in sugar where the fruit still maintains some semblance of structure. By that description, the mango jam I made earlier is really a conserve.

This conserve called for a number of other ingredients, most notably whole oranges and lemons (peel too -- just seeds removed). I was a bit suspicious about the theoretical yield: supposedly 7 half pints, because it seemed like I had a LOT of product. Nonetheless, what do I know? I just sterilized 7 half pint jars and cooked up the conserve.

Well of course, when it came time to actually fill the jars, I realized early on that I was going to have waaaay to much. I guessed at least another 4 half pints, so I frantically found more jars and got them boiling in the water bath. I put the lids on the 7 jars I had ready and waited for the others. I kept the conserve warm on the stove until I could fill them all, then put all 11 in the water bath.

The output? Pretty attractive jars that are highlighted by specks of lemon and orange. The recipe called for a 1/4" headspace, but most of the jars had a bit of stickiness in the threads of the rings when I cleaned the jars, so be warned: if I hadn't taken off the rings and washed them and cleaned the jars, I would be having a hard time removing the lids in six months.

YIELD VERDICT: semi-WIN! (pain in the ass boiling more jars, but more conserve, yay!)

CANNING VERDICT: WIN!

Canning sunshine - mango jam!

More mangoes! This week's attempt is mango jam. I've never actually tasted mango jam before, but the concept appealed to me so I decided to give it a try. I used Amendt's Blue Ribbon Preserves for the recipe.

I'm starting to discover that mango canning recipes use a lot fewer mangoes than I thought they would. Today's jam recipe called for 4 1/2 cups of chopped mango -- which worked out to seven mangoes. Which means I'm sitting on 28 more trying to figure out what to do!

The second discovery is that jam requires a LOT of sugar -- in this case 7 cups! When I put the mango and sugar together in a pot, I thought there was no way there would be enough liquid in the mango to dissolve the sugar. How wrong I was. And what an incredibly bright mix!

Preparation was pretty much a snap: macerate the mango in sugar for a few hours, then cook it down, add pectin, and can. The vibrant colour was a bit more subdued after cooking, but after emerging from the water bath it still looked gorgeous.

YIELD VERDICT: WIN!

CANNING VERDICT: WIN!

BROKEN GLASS: NONE!

All in all, a great canning!

Asparagus, my bitter enemy.

Oh, asparagus, why do you task me so?

Another weekend at the market, another chance to pick up cheap asparagus. I was gratified this week to find the price had dropped to $1 per small bunch, and the quality was amazing, so I bought 20 bunches, about 7 pounds.

In previous years, I've always just blanched and frozen it. After last week's low-yield pickling experiment, this week I thought I would try pressure canning. I bought this ridiculously large 22 quart pressure canner a few months ago only to discover that 99% of the things I was interested in canning didn't require it. Time to finally put it to use.

First step is cutting the asparagus spears to the right length, about 5 3/4 inches to fit into a quart jar. Lots of asparagus ends to go into the soup pot, which was fine with me. Then quick blanching of the spears and ice-bath cooling. Then packing into jar and into the pressure canner for 40 minutes. What could be simpler?

Actually it WAS simple! My 7 pounds of asparagus yielded 4 quarts canned, which was more than the recipe said I could expect. Of course, the asparagus gods couldn't let me off the hook that easily -- when I opened the canner and lifted out the first jar: DISASTER! The jar came out just fine, the problem was that the contents remained in the pot -- the bottom of the jar had sheared right off. Grrr. With trepidation I removed the other three -- all fine, thank god.

The other weird thing is how much liquid escaped from the cans. I left a 1 inch headspace but as you can see I lost almost another entire inch of liquid. I think that the canner took too long to get to full pressure, so the cans were boiling for overly long. We'll see if I die when I finally open the jar and eat the asparagus. I don't even want to think about the cost per quart: about $7 plus an hour of my time.

YIELD VERDICT: hmmm, kind of a push

CANNING VERDICT: FAIL? that airspace scares me

Mango Chutney: seasonal, yes; cheap, yes; local, no.

Okay, two out of three isn't bad. I live in the area of Toronto called Little India. I adore it here because there's such an incredible diversity of cultures here, and it's all reflected in the food and produce.

I'm always ecstatic when it's mango season. I don't actually know why there are seasons for mangoes since they are imported up from the tropics, but for whatever reason, the best ones always seem to be available in the spring. And my favourite is the small, unassuming yellow ataulfo mango. I was taking a taxi home from a meeting in the evening and as we drove down through Little India I noted the tell-tale sign of stacks of yellow cardboard crates outside my favourite grocer. I yelled "STOP!" to the taxi driver, which resulted in me almost being flung through the windshield, and when I explained that I screamed because I wanted mangoes he just stared at me in disgust.

I bought three cases of mangoes, each with 14 mangoes tucked away within, and carried them home (yes, the taxi ditched me). Though my arms were screaming from the weight when I finally walked in the door, I felt triumphant. There is simply nothing better than the taste of a ripe mango, I've sat and cut up five in a sitting and eaten them all one after another (PSA: you WILL feel sick after this). I was really excited to think that, the following winter, I could be making mango lassis using my perfectly preserved fruit.

Since most of the mangoes weren't ripe, I decided that my first attempt would be Mango Chutney. The recipe came from the Bernardin Complete Book of Home Preserving, and quite frankly, had more ingredients than I would have thought possible. It included:

• 4 cups mango, chopped
• 1 cup onions, chopped
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup cider vinegar
• 3/4 cup golden raisins
• 1/2 cup limes, chopped and seeded
• 1/2 cup oranges, chopped and seeded
• 1/4 cup lemon, chopped and seeded
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1/2 cup ginger, chopped
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 2 tbsp cilantro, chopped
• 1 tbsp mustard seed
• 1 tsp hot pepper flakes
• 1 tsp cinnamon, ground
• 1/4 tsp cloves, ground
• 1/4 tsp allspice, ground

I had bought all of these ingredients in anticipation of this happy day, so I was ready to go!

The recipe was surprisingly simple: basically dump it all together and cook it, then ladle into hot jars and process in a water bath for 10 minutes. Before canning it, the mango chunks were bright and lively, but after canning, the chutney took on a much more sophisticated colour, dark and brooding and powerful.

The yield was precisely what was advertised in the book: 6 half-pint jars from 4 cups of chopped mango. There was a tiny bit extra that I tasted, and it packed a kick! The seals on all the jars stuck and I'm now the proud owner of six bundles of mango joy, ready to brighten up some simple steamed fish dish that I'll make. I'll be sure to report on how it tastes.

CANNING VERDICT: WIN!

The cost per can is something like $1 per half-pint. Once the rest of these mangoes have ripened up, it's time to make jam and chunks in syrup and maybe, if I'm really daring, mango curd (what's daring about it? how about the fact that making 3 half-pints calls for ELEVEN eggs!).

Desperately seeking botox for my asparagus

Last year I went a bit asparagus-crazy and I froze 20 large ziplock bags of asparagus. We just finished the last bag a couple of weeks ago, and while it was delicious, they really softened up in the freezer and this year I wanted to do something about the texture.

I found a fantastic recipe for pickled asparagus in Eugenia Bone's Well-Preserved. The picture in the book showed amazingly plump spears that just begged to be snapped in half. I was sold. So when I found the first spring crop of asparagus at the farmers' market, I went a bit nuts and bought 10 bunches for $15, a STEAL, and went home clucking with contentment.

Of course, things went less smoothly from that point. The first step in the recipe was to cut the asparagus so that the pieces didn't extend past the threads of the pint jars. Hmmm. Well, I had bought long bunches of thin spears, and my 2.5 lbs of asparagus quickly became 1 lb of asparagus. No problem, I would just use the discarded ends for soup.

My next problem: no dill seed. I have approximately 3,000 different vials of spices in my house, yet somehow none of them were dill. So back to the grocery store to buy dill seed, but this brief foray improbably ended with me purchasing a $500 air conditioning unit at Canadian Tire. Go figure.

So it's two hours later and I'm ready to continue with the recipe. As directed, I lightly blanch the asparagus and then chill it, while I work on the hot vinegar pickling mix. I must confess the pickling mix smelled divine, very simple but somehow sophisticated, with coriander and cumin seeds vying with the dill.

I then pack my pint jars with the asparagus and cover with vinegar. Into the hot water bath for 10 minutes of hard boiling, and then out to cool. The book told me to leave the jars undisturbed for 5 hours.

When I returned to the jars, THIS is what I found: what had previously been asparagus now looked like asparagus jerky, the moisture pulled completely out of the stalks and now wizened with more creases than Larry King's forehead. And it looks like Hurricane Katrina went through the jar.

Oh, and I didn't mention the yield: TWO PINTS. An hour of work for two pints of asparagus. So not including my time, the cost per jar worked out to something like $10. Not exactly meeting my bargain requirement.

And if you include the goddamn air conditioner, it's more like $260 per jar. For mummified asparagus. Let's hope it tastes better than it looks.

YIELD VERDICT: FAIL
APPEARANCE VERDICT: NASTY

As an aside, the soup I made with the cast off bits was AMAZING!

A man, a plan, a can.

Okay, so I'm not sure whether I'm writing this out of romanticized (and plagiarized) notions after watching Julie and Julia or not, but welcome to my canning blog! Here I hope to share, publicly, my random successes and, more likely, my epic failures as I attempt to master the basics of home canning.

Why can? Well, I think the idea crystallized in my head one day this past winter when I was standing in a grocery store, staring ruefully into a bin of rather pathetic-looking red peppers from Chile with the astronomical price tag of $4.99/lb. Flash back to four months earlier when I was standing outside a vegetable stall at the amazing St. Lawrence Farmers' Market in Toronto. On this fine summer day, there were half-bushel baskets of glorious red peppers for $10.00. $10.00 for 15 pounds of peppers, versus $5.00 for 1 pound. But August-Chris was a narcissist who didn't care about December-Chris's plight. He just looked at the half-bushel for a moment, shrugged and walked away thinking, "What on earth am I going to do with that many peppers?" Now December-Chris found himself consigned to a tasteless, watery, EXPENSIVE fate.

No more! I vowed to myself that, starting the next spring, every time I found seasonal cheap local produce, I would buy it and somehow preserve it. I'd never canned before, so I bought myself all the necessary equipment, a bunch of books, and I waited.

Well, it's May now, and spring has sprung, and the first crops of the new season are out, so it's time to begin the experiment!