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The Joys of Small-Batch Preserving
BY MICHELE CHANDLER
As summer begins to fade and the days get shorter and the nights cooler, farmers’ market offerings become more and more abundant. There is nothing better for us locavores than seeing the market tables of our regional providers literally buckling under the bushel weights of tomatoes, carrots and potatoes.
And like a good party you wish would never end, you try to create and hold on to great lifetime memories of the event. Such is the nature of preserving – trying to stop time, savour the moment, and hold onto it for as long as you can.
Living in Montreal while working in my first post-undergraduate job, I had no money and was always looking for fun on the cheap. A hot and sunny St-Jean-Baptiste Day was spent picking strawberries on the South Shore, where anything you gathered was less than half the price of what was available in the city, so more was definitely better; until I realized that more is only better if you can make the harvest last before it spoils. Suddenly I was in the strawberry jam game. Luckily I had a copy of The Good Cook Time-Life Series’ “Preserving” volume, complete with colour pictures and a step-by-step guide for the task at hand. A quick run to the hardware store for jars and pectin, and the games began.
At the end of the day, I think I was wearing as much jam as I preserved, but the bottom line is it was FUN! And so began my 20-plus-year fascination with canning.
Now the thought constantly running through my head when I visit any market or local supplier is, “It looks so good, can I make it last if we don’t finish it?” Or I’ll look at ingredients I don’t normally buy and say, “Wow, those are interesting. What can I do with them?” I’ve learned a lot in my preserving years. Some of the most fun experiments (and almost every preserving event really is an experiment, because you can’t guarantee the same ripeness, flavour or even supplier from year to year) have been with unexpected ingredients or those that arrived unannounced.
In those cases, there are dozens of terrific books on canning and preserving available at local bookstores, but I say thank goodness for the Internet, where all that is required is simply the ingredient name and the key words “recipe” or “preserving” in a search, resulting in a litany of obscure ideas. Such was the case when I got greedy with the abundance (and inexpensive price) of black and white currants at a market last year. As this crop is both very seasonal and quite scarce, my curiosity and hoarding instincts took over, and I was home with a flat of both.
The next couple of days were spent making Cassis with the black ones, and an obscure Alsatian preserve called Bar-le-Duc (or Lorraine jelly) – a favourite indulgence of both Marie Antoinette and Alfred Hitchcock – with the white. A further note about Bar-le-Duc should you want to try this at home – no, I did not use an embroidery needle to remove the seeds from every currant, but it was scrumptious nonetheless.
Not all spontaneous preserving events work out, though, and you have to be prepared to suffer some losses. One year a well-meaning fisherman brought me three pounds of salmon roe from an afternoon expedition on Lake Ontario. With a little research I did manage to find a recipe for poor-man’s caviar. Unfortunately, the saltiness was so intense that the only beneficiary was a neighbourhood cat.
Neophytes to this game will need to start by reading up on the dos and don’ts of preserving. You will save yourself a lot of heartache and expense if you anticipate some of the challenges you’ll face putting things in jars and bottles. Disasters can be averted with some basic knowledge about food safety. The next step is to start small and not be greedy. I know that it’s hard to turn away from the most luscious-looking fruits of the season, but until you have confidence and a few successes under your belt, keep your batches to the amount specified in the recipes. Preserving is exact in its ingredient ratios, and a slight deviation can result in a sticky mess.
Lastly, have fun. As you feel more confident in your skills, buy something that’s not on your regular grocery list or is seasonally unusual, take it home, and then figure out what to do with it. A few dollars invested in ingredients and time can make for great memories in January when your larder looks a lot more interesting than anything for sale in the produce section of your local supermarket.
Michele Chandler is a graduate of Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration and has worked for many international hotel chains and destination-dining restaurants. While working for Hilton Canada in Montreal, she had her most fun cruising the Atwater and Jean-Talon markets on the weekends and learning what real bagels are. Michele now freelances in qualitative and quantitative research, written communications, and selling advertising for Edible Toronto.
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