Small-batch fig and peach jam is the perfect way to make the best of sub-optimal end-of-season fruit
Summer is coming to a close, thank everything that is sacred, and I have learned a poignant lesson: Peach season is over before farmer’s market vendors say it’s over.
Sure, you might get a juicy, sweet peach at the end of August, but you’re more likely to bite into a mouthful of mealy fruit than not.
BUT FRET NOT. Raid your neighbor’s fig tree (or come down in the morning to a bin full of them on the front step, delivered by the neighbor himself), and get ready to make the most delicious, small-batch fig and peach jam. It’s fast and easy and brings out the succulent peachy goodness that’s hiding behind that mealy texture.
Fig and Peach Jam This makes about four half-pints of jam, with a little leftover to eat immediately over ice cream or spread on toast with goat cheese.
Ingredients
2 cups of peaches, peeled, pitted, and chopped*
2 cups figs, chopped
2 cups sugar
2-4 tablespoons lemon juice
½ teaspoon salt
¼ to ½ teaspoon almond extract
Method
If you plan on water bath processing your jam, prepare your jars first. Wash jars and lids in warm, soapy water while you bring a stockpot of water to boil on the stove. Boil clean jars for two minutes, then move to a clean dish towel. Dip lids, ladles, and anything else you will use in the canning process into the boiling water and set aside.
Put a clean plate in the freezer to test the fig and peach jam for doneness. This will become clear soon.
Place figs, peaches, sugar, lemon juice, and salt in a large (at least 4-quart) pot. Leave lots of headspace for the jam to foam. Bring to a boil.
Play something nice on the radio or load up a podcast. Lower the heat to medium-low, and stir as the jam boils/simmers. Stir the foam down as it rises.
Boil for 15 minutes, then get out a masher or an immersion blender. Use either tool to mash some of the fruit or all of it if you like. I prefer some texture in my jam. Return the jam to a boil.
To see if your jam is ready, remove the frozen plate from the freezer and spoon some jam onto it. Let cool for a few minutes, then drag a finger through the jam. If it makes a path that does not get filled immediately by liquid-y jam, it’s ready. If the path fills in quickly, keep boiling and stirring. Wash the plate, dry it completely, and put it back in the freezer. Test after another ten minutes until the path your finger makes stays clear.
When it’s ready, remove the jam from the heat and stir in almond extract. You could skip this, but I would not recommend it. The almond adds a depth of flavor that really comes through in the final jam.
Ladle fig and peach jam into prepared jars, leaving ¼” headspace. If you are not planning on water bath processing, set aside and let cool at room temperature without moving overnight, then move to the ‘fridge or freezer.
To water bath can, heat a large stockpot of water to boiling. Carefully lower the jars of jam into the boiling water (make sure the water is at least an inch above the jars). Boil for five minutes, then remove to cool on the counter overnight. Listen for the lid to “pop,” indicating a seal. This might take a full 24 hours. If the lids don’t pop, you could either remove the lid, add a new one, and reprocess, or you can place it in the freezer or ‘fridge.
Unprocessed fig and peach jam is good in the fridge for a few weeks; canned jam with a proper seal lasts for years.
*Note: I used slightly more than two cups of peaches, and nearly exactly two cups of figs, as that is the fruit I had. You could change the ratio and add more figs than peaches if you like.
If I could put time in a bottle…it would look like this.
My Superfriend, Bonnie, previously mentioned in a post that featured her incredible Toasted Cashew Hummus, has been making fun of me lately.
I hadn’t seen her in awhile, the result mostly of her traveling to two different countries in the space of two weeks (and staying there, and knocking heads together when necessary, and co-authoring a paper on a new method for treating – curing? diagnosing? I can’t remember – tuberculosis) while still organizing childcare for two of her three children and dealing with a broken water heater from another continent.
In the midst of all of this, she had (rather foolishly and perhaps to her deep regret) committed to cooking me my Second Annual Birthday Dinner, just one week after she returned to the States. When I stopped by the Sunday before the dinner and she asked me how I was, I spoke the truth.
“I’m tired, ” I said.
She looked at me in a way that could only be described as askance. And can you blame her, really?
I am a freelance writer who teaches yoga and cooks for people. The actual hours I work every week vary greatly, but they don’t come close to the 40 that many others routinely put in. I am also living a child-free existence until June 10th, which means that “homemaking” consists of making sure the dog hair doesn’t get any higher than the bottom of the couch and the toilets are cleaner than a truck stop’s.
But I have been exhausted these past three weeks, drained and sleeping poorly and feeling anxious and sweating pretty much every little thing that my brain can make up to sweat.
This is where a caveat about how I know how much harder everyone else has it, and I shouldn’t complain usually comes in. And make no mistake: this is not a complaint.
I feel incredibly lucky that this morning I got to walk to a coffee shop in Baltimore’s beautiful spring blossoming. And after that I got to sit on the floor of a bookstore and leaf through cookbooks for an hour. And after THAT I got to walk through a sunshower of cherry blossoms raining on the sidewalk on my way home to meet Khristian, where we ate breakfast together and I made bread.
So there is no complaint here.
But there is something important here.
Even if I don’t have a full-time job, I am still allowed to be tired. I am still allowed to feel, as has happened in the past three weeks with multiple projects, overscheduled and understaffed. I know what it’s like to work 80-hour weeks and be a parent, and certainly my fatigue now does not have the same feel to it as that.
Sometimes, though, I just get tired. Tired of meetings every day. Tired of being “on,” and tired of a schedule. People sometimes dismiss themselves and their feelings because other people have it so much worse than they do, and while I think that in the big picture that is the best way to operate, that can be taxing day-to-day. It’s okay to own your struggle, your fatigue, your frustration, your anxiety – even if others have more cause to feel those things.
And again, I have to put in a plug for not only Superfriend Bonnie but also the other people I know, parents or not, partnered parents or not, who are killing it everyday and are SO. FREAKING. TIRED. also. I don’t know how you do it.
Still.
I just want to be at home, puttering, and today is a day for that. Today was the first day in awhile that has been unscheduled and unclaimed from the moment that stupid bird woke me up with the sun at 6:04 a.m. until I lay my head back down on the pillow and my millennial neighbors pick up their ill-tuned guitars and start wailing.
The best way I know to stop time when this happens is to put something up, and preserved lemons seem like the way to go.
It’s a simple process that nevertheless takes 30 days to bear fruit (ha). And every day you visit your lemons and give them a little shake.
For the next 30 days, even if I am busy or tired or have too much to do or have to be less of my normal introverted self and more of the extrovert that some of my jobs require, I can look at my little pint jar of sunshine-y time and remember that day I sat on the back deck for just as long as I felt like.
What helps you stop time? What reminds you to slow down?
It may seem silly, but I miss David Foster Wallace nearly every day since he killed himself on September 12, 2008.
I “met” him first through his novel Infinite Jest, a 1,100 page tome with 150 pages of endnotes (give or take, depending on the edition you have).
I read this book three times.
The first time it took me three weeks, as I was taking notes, writing down vocabulary lists (for real, and I am an English major), and looking up definitions. I also referred when necessary to the endnotes DFW created, including the complete movie catalogue of one of the characters (with plot synopsis and everything).
It’s the kind of brain-based focus that has not really occurred in my life for the past several years.
The next two times I read Infinite Jest, it was for the simple pleasure of winding myself up in his beautiful prose. His complex characters, modeled on real life people, perhaps, or mostly on autobiographical bits of himself, are deep and complicated and sometimes downright unlikeable.
The plot unfolds at a snail’s pace, which explains the book’s length, but every word feels necessary and in service to the larger purpose. I read it as a marathoner might pop out and jog a quick ten miles – to keep my intellectual muscles strong and engaged and with a type of joy that comes from already knowing what happens. In this way I could gather the little pebbles I missed along the way (which happens quite a bit, as I may already be a little senile, the most burnt out non-potsmoker one might meet).
Few books have called to me in the same way before or after. I don’t know what it is about the reward you get when you need to spend more effort on something to truly understand it. Infinite Jest was not an easy read any of the times that I read it. I read it at times when I was most preoccupied in my life (grad school, with a newborn, and when I started my school), almost as if the action of reading such a book pulled me out of the foggiest parts of my brain and made me sharpen my gaze, like honing a blade.
Sometimes, though, this steel-sharp focus is counterintuitive. Sometimes simplicity is what we really need.
Simplicity does not equal stupidity, although one could be lead to believe otherwise by the current state of everything in the U.S.
Simplicity can easily be achieved by allowing whatever is to be whatever it is without wallowing in it or reveling in it or otherwise complicating it with interpretation and reaction. Seems easy enough, right?
In another part of my life, I am a 500-hour certified yoga teacher, and one of the texts we studied during my training was The Splendor of Recognition. This is a study of 21 Tantric sutras (which, disappointingly, DON’T MENTION SEX EVEN ONCE).
Side note: One of my main issues with spirituality in general is that language is inadequate for its discussion, so I will keep it to a minimum here.
The Splendor of Recognition posits that not only are we in the universe, but the universe is also in us. All we need to become as limitless and boundless as the universe is to recognize that truth.
The best part is that once that recognition happens, it’s always there. There is no backsliding. So you can still do the things you love (like drink and have sex and whatever else it is that you love) without thinking that your soul is in jeopardy. The universe springs forth from the heart, and you can dive into it whenever you want.
This is, of course, deceptively simple. It’s not so easy to truly believe that you are in the universe and the universe is in you. And we are all of us human beings (I think), and human beings like to react and interpret and make it ALL ABOUT OURSELVES. That’s the rub.
Putting up summer produce, however, is about as simple as it gets, and it’s also meditative as hell for those of you that wish to skip sitting down and thinking about nothing (HA. Good luck with that.) for 30 minutes a day.
In just three hours, I canned 13 pints of tomatoes, three 1/2 pints of cowboy candy, and an experimental quart jar of sauerkraut.
Some things that made this so simple:
I didn’t make more work than there had to be. The standard way to skin tomatoes is to boil a huge vat of water, plunge the tomatoes in there, and then plunge them in an ice bath to easily remove the skins. This is 100% effective. You know what else is 100% effective? Using a box grater. I turned 16 pounds of tomatoes into pureed tomatoes in less than 20 minutes by cutting off the stems, cutting the tomatoes in half, and rubbing them on a box grater until all I had in my hand was a little wisp of skin. Simple, and no messy boiling water or skinless-tomato chopping.
I used what I had. I had six cups of jalapeños, some sugar, and some vinegar. This is perfection for cowboy candy (recipe below).
I just thought about what was happening in front of me. For three hours, all I did was cook and can. I didn’t worry about the fact that I have not yet found mercenary writing work to replace the writing job that ended two weeks ago (I am for hire – FYI.), or about the dog who may or may not (but probably does) have an ear infection, or the kid many thousands of miles away, studying in France until June 2017 (2017, people. TEN MONTHS.).
I just grated tomatoes, chopped jalapeños, sterilized jars, and massaged cabbage.
You, too, can live simply.
Cowboy Candy (a.k.a, Candied Jalapeños)
Note: This makes three half pints but can easily be doubled. You can also mess with the ratio (1:2 vinegar to sugar) just a bit and make an even two full pints. #YouAreTheUniverse
Ingredients
1 cup apple cider vinegar
2 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon celery seed
2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
4 cups jalapeños, sliced about 1/4″ thick (more or less)
Method
Before beginning, make sure you have your canning jars are ready to go. “Ready to go” means washed in hot soapy water and sterilized. You could kill many birds with one stone by washing them in the dishwasher right before you begin. Then they are clean AND sterilized. Otherwise, clean by washing by hand and then sterilize by submerging jars in boiling water for five minutes.
Remove with tongs, and for fuck’s sake be careful. That water is boiling.
If you are planning to be legit and can these to last for a year, use new canning lids and dip them in the boiling water for a minute. Set all of this aside.
In a large pot, combine vinegar, sugar, celery seed, and jalapeños. Stir to dissolve sugar over medium heat, then bring to a boil. Boil gently (not a rolling, vigorous boil) for five minutes.
Add jalapeños to the pot and simmer for five minutes. Try not to inhale the steam coming off the pot. You will be very, very sorry if you get a lungful of that, and you may cough until you puke. I did not, but this is also not my first rodeo.
Use a slotted spoon (or a fork or whatever is handy) to remove jalapeños from the syrup and pack into jars. Don’t push too hard, but make sure each nook and cranny is filled.
Return the syrup to a boil, and boil for six minutes.
Ladle HOT SYRUP into the canning jars, leaving space at the top (about 1/4″ or maybe a little more if you are making pints.).
Wipe the rims of the jars and place lids on top, screwing the metal band of the canning lid until it is just a little tight (not all the way – canning books sometimes call this “fingertip tight,” which I think is super odd, but whatever makes you happy).
At this point, you could let these cool on the counter before placing them in the ‘fridge and then waiting at least three days to start eating. This way, they will last about two weeks.
If you want to get old school, bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil (the same pot you sterilized the jars in) and place your jars in that pot of boiling water for 15 minutes (with at least an inch of water covering the top of the jars) before removing them to a counter. Let them sit, untouched, until completely cool. If you hear a little “pop,” your jars have sealed and will be good on the shelf for a year.
If you don’t hear the pop, and the little button in the center of the lid still moves up and down, they have not sealed properly and should be placed in the ‘fridge. You could try to re-process, but that’s a pain in the ass and completely unnecessary since you will be eating all of these pretty much ummediately anyway.
Recipe notes:
Botulism is NO JOKE, but canning is not actually rocket science. I was trying to find a solid guide to link to, but honestly, lots of them are either trying to sell you something or to not get sued (that’s the USDA canning guide). A can lifter is helpful, as is a wide-mouth canning funnel (but strictly speaking neither are necessary). You do not need a special pot or anything fancy. The Serious Eats guide to canning is pretty good for method, and it links to the sites trying to sell you something or not get sued so you can make up your own mind.
Slicing jalapeños is also no joke. Wear gloves if you are very sensitive (which I am) or cheat (as I did) and just hold on to the stem while you slice them. If you touch the juice of the jalapeño, wash your hands immediately. Do not touch your face or, heaven forbid, go to the bathroom. #YouWillBeSorry
You can submerge a towel or a wire rack in the bottom of your pot of boiling water before you place your jars in the pot. This will keep the jars from dancing around and potentially cracking.
I cook when I need to be the universe. If you require some simplicity, what do you do?
