a little zaftig » Preserves

Pink Grapefruit Curd with Honey

Laura — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 00:32:52 +0000

This pink grapefruit curd is buttery and silky and pleasantly piquant with a strong note of honey. Eat it smeared on toast, biscuits, or scones; stirred into plain yogurt or oatmeal or porridge; rolled up in a jellyroll or between cake layers; or piped into plain cookies.

Pink Grapefruit Curd with Honey
Yield: 1 ¼ cup

Ingredients:
1 c. freshly squeezed grapefruit juice (from about 2 grapefruits), strained through a fine mesh strainer
1 egg
5 egg yolks
½ c. honey
6 T. unsalted butter
a little pinch of salt

Grapefruit Curd Tips

I am a no-net kind of cook, but if you’re wary of curdling, you may do one of two things: cook the curd over a double boiler set-up over barely simmering water, or fill a sink with ice water and plunge your pan into it and whisk madly until your curd recovers.

The points at which you are most vulnerable to the dreaded curdle are when you add the grapefruit juice and as the cooking process reaches its peak. Be sure not to add the hot grapefruit juice until the butter is fully melted and the mixture is quite hot to the touch. Heating eggs gently in this manner is quite fine, but if you shock them with the hot juice you will be tossing out a pan of scrambled eggs. As you near the end of the cooking time, just stir vigorously.

I do not use a whisk, as I feel it adds too much air to the curd.

Focus your stirring towards the center of the pan, working to the outside occasionally. This will help to prevent curdling and burning.

If you have just a bit or two of solid egg protein, fear not, it will be strained out in the last step.

Method:

In a small pan over medium heat, bring the grapefruit juice to a simmer and reduce it by half.

In a large saucepan over low heat, stir the whole egg, egg yolks, honey, and butter together until the butter has melted.

Slowly add the grapefruit juice, stirring vigorously.

Continue to stir the curd until it thickens and a finger run across your spatula or wooden spoon creates a separation that does not close, about five minutes. The curd will continue to thicken as it cools.

Press the curd through a strainer into a medium bowl. At this point you may divide it into a jar or jars with tight-fitting lids and store it in the refrigerator for a month.

Eat it smeared on toast, biscuits, or scones; stirred into plain yogurt or oatmeal or porridge; rolled up into a jelly roll or bewteen cake layers; or piped into plain cookies.

Five-minute Cranberry Schmutz

Laura — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 15:38:22 +0000

Alongside a Thanksgiving or Christmas turkey or smeared on sandwiches, this five-minute, four-ingredient cranberry schmutz is a little tart, a little sweet, and exactly perfect. I’m putting a little on a pumpkin muffin for breakfast, too. If there were ever a reason to stop sliding that factory cranberry sludge out of a can, this is it.

Five-minute Cranberry Schmutz
Yield: 1 cup

Ingredients:
2 pints fresh cranberries
½ c. sugar
juice of 2 tangerines
1 large cinnamon stick, broken

Method:

In a large pan over medium low heat, stir together the ingredients. Allow them to cook until the cranberries have burst and the sugar has caramelized, about five minutes.

Fish out the cinnamon stick and serve hot, room temperature, or cold.

Lemon Balm Syrup

Laura — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 13:04:37 +0000

It’s my birthday today, so I’ll be brief. I’ve got celebrating to do! I made this lemon balm syrup the other day with a summer tipple in mind (recipe soon), but I think it would nice in iced tea or brushed onto cake layers, too. Lemon balm is a member of the mint family and is known as a calming herb. It has a heady lemon scent much stronger than lemon verbena. The syrup is softly sweet, softly lemony, and ready in minutes.

Lemon Balm Syrup
Yield: one pint

Ingredients:
1 c. water
1 c. sugar
1/3 c. fresh lemon juice
½ c. loosely packed lemon balm leaves, bruised and chopped

Method:

Place all of the ingredients in a small saucepan over high heat.

Bring the liquid to a simmer, stirring until the sugar is dissolved.

Remove the syrup from the heat and, using a funnel, ladle it into a clean quart jar.

Allow it to come to room temperature and then store it in the refrigerator.

Strawberry Lemon Verbena Refrigerator Jam with Candied Lemon Slices

Laura — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 15:23:31 +0000

Yesterday morning I went out to the hen house in my pajamas at six o’clock in the morning to open the door to the coop. Instead of the usual parade, Beatrice emerged first. She needs a minute or two, thank you very much, to sort out this whole business. When you’re second to last to come down the ladder, well, you can take your time. Florence who comes last is happy to have company a little longer before she has to face the whole teeter, crouch, falter, fall, and recover. But when you have Edna, Clementine, and Edith waiting, well, you had better get yourself moving. There was a hubbub in the coop as they waited and then, one by one, four heads popped out around Beatrice, the center of a parti-colored chicken flower. “Go!” they peeped and clucked and nudged, until Beatrice had no choice but to wobble forward. Of course, once Edna and Clementine got out they overtook her, knocking her sideways off the ladder; patience is not one of their strong suits. Edith came behind, sweetly happy to wait for this slow driver. And Florence waited at the top to watch it all unfold, and then a bit longer; no need to rush these things. Morning with the chickens is one of my favorite parts of the day now, a few quiet minutes just watching them and talking to them. Little Annie, our terrier, curls up in the grass under a chair and waits for me until it’s time to head back into the house to start the day properly, to make oatmeal and a pot of coffee for my Dear Husband. Of course, I planned the placement of the hen house so that its entrance is the shortest path possible from the house when it is 30 degrees below zero with a howling wind that’s even colder. That seems a long way off now, though.

Yesterday it was a beastly hot day here, but somehow I couldn’t resist making jam. We cranked up the air conditioning for a couple of hours and made a big batch. In truth, it’s one of the few days it has really felt like summer here this year, so making jam felt like a long overdue ritual. We skipped the hot canning process and just made a refrigerator jam. It will keep for a couple of weeks, but it will be long gone by then at our house. The best part of this recipe is the candied lemon slices. I love candied fruit and make it quite often, but I was quite surprised by it in this jam: not a trace of bittersweetness, just summer sweetness and light. I think it’s cooking with the strawberries and all that sugar. It’s brilliant, really.

Strawberry Lemon Verbena Refrigerator Jam with Candied Lemon Slices
Yield: 2 quarts

Ingredients:
3 lemons, sliced as thinly as possible (lop off and discard the ends)
1 c. sugar
½ c. water
¼ c. fresh lemon juice

3 pounds strawberries, washed, hulled, and sliced
1 c. loosely packed lemon verbena leaves tied with string into a cheesecloth bundle
3 c. sugar

Method:

In a small saucepan, stir together the lemon slices, 1 c. sugar, water, and lemon juice.

Bring it to a simmer over high heat. Then lower the heat and simmer gently until the lemon slices are soft and translucent, about 10 minutes.

Place the strawberries, lemon verbena, 3 c. sugar, the candied lemon slices and all of their cooking liquid in a large pan.

Bring it to a simmer over high heat. Lower the heat and simmer gently, giving the lemon verbena pouch a good bashing with a wooden spoon, and skimming the foam from the top and discarding it.

Cook the jam until the fruit is soft, the liquid syrupy, and a small amount placed a cool saucer gels nicely, about 30 minutes.

Fish out and discard the pouch of lemon verbena. Using a funnel, ladle the jam into clean quart jars and top them tightly with lids.

Allow the jam to come to room temperature. Then store it in the refrigerator. It will keep for a couple of weeks.

One-pot Rhubarb Cordial, Sauce, & Compote

Laura — Tue, 24 May 2011 13:05:44 +0000

I really should have posted this as the three-in-one it is in the first place. So here it is, in all its glorious simplicity. You start with a three and a half pound bouquet of rhubarb. Once you have it diced, 15 minutes of cooking yields three cups cordial, three cups compote, and two cups sauce. Your refrigerator will be stocked for just about any rhubarb dessert you might fancy in the next couple of weeks. And you will find yourself reaching over and over again for these three condiments, bright yet soft, sweet and softly tart.

One-pot Rhubarb Cordial, Sauce, & Compote
Yield: 3 cups cordial, 2 cups sauce, 3 cups compote

Ingredients:
3 ½ pounds rhubarb, diced into ½“ cubes to yield 9 c.
4 ½ c. water
3 c. sugar

Method:

Place the diced rhubarb, water, and sugar in a large pan and bring it to a simmer over high heat, stirring briefly until the sugar is dissolved.

Reduce the heat to low and simmer until the fruit is breaking down and any remaining pieces are very soft, about 15 minutes.

Allow the rhubarb to cool in the pan.

Reserving two cups, strain it over a large bowl or pan. Be gentle here and allow the rhubarb to drain naturally. If you smash or try to rush it, you will end with rhubarb pulp rather than rhubarb compote. Stop the draining process when the rhubarb remaining in the strainer is still appealingly juicy. This is your rhubarb compote. The liquid that has drained is your rhubarb cordial. If you would like an especially clear cordial, strain it again through a jelly bag.

Using an immersion or conventional blender, puree the two cups of rhubarb that you reserved before draining. This is your rhubarb sauce.

Using a funnel, pour the cordial into clean bottles or jars with tight-fitting corks or lids. Spoon the sauce and compote into clean jars with tight-fitting lids. The cordial, sauce, and compote will keep in the refrigerator for about two weeks.

Rhubarb Cordial

Laura — Thu, 19 May 2011 14:16:42 +0000

Definitions for cordials seem rather contradictory. Dictionary dot com defines one as “a strong, sweetened, aromatic alcoholic liquor or liqueur;” others describe a sweet, nonalcoholic fruit concentrate. My favorite definition comes from Merriam Webster: “tending to revive, cheer or invigorate,” and is associated with cordial waters. It seems the most fitting for this rhubarb cordial. It is brightly flavored, sweet but not overly so, softly tart, and silky. I had a glut of rhubarb this morning, so my cooking from this single pot actually yielded two cups of rhubarb sauce, three cups of rhubarb compote, and three cups of rhubarb cordial. I’ll be posting sister recipes in the coming days. In the meantime, sip on some rhubarb cordial. It’s made a rhubarb lover of even the most skeptical in our house. In fact, we’ll be celebrating our Honey Girl’s homecoming after a year away at college with a rhubarb champagne tipple tonight. It’s almost as pretty as this spring day. You may pour a dram of the cordial into a glass of Prosecco and serve it with brunch or as an aperitif. Stir it into some homemade plain yogurt for breakfast. Stir some into a pitcher of homemade lemonade for a spring picnic. Or mix it with water, still or sparkling, for a refreshing springtime cooler.

Rhubarb Cordial
Yield:

Ingredients:
3 ½ pounds rhubarb, diced into ½“ cubes to yield 9 c.
4 ½ c. water
3 c. sugar

Method:

Place the diced rhubarb, water, and sugar in a large pan and bring it to a simmer over high heat, stirring briefly until the sugar is dissolved.

Reduce the heat to low and simmer until the fruit is breaking down and any remaining pieces are very soft, about 15 minutes.

Allow the rhubarb to cool in the pan. Reserving two cups to later make into rhubarb sauce, strain it over a large bowl or pan. Be gentle here and allow the rhubarb to drain naturally. If you smash or try to rush it, you will end with rhubarb pulp rather than rhubarb compote. Stop the draining process when the rhubarb remaining in the strainer is still appealingly juicy. If you would like an especially clear cordial, strain the liquid a second time through a jelly bag.

Using a funnel, pour the cordial into clean bottles or jars with tight-fitting corks or lids. It will keep in the refrigerator for about two weeks.

Serving Suggestions
With brunch or as an aperitif, pour a dram into a glass of Prosecco.
For breakfast, stir some into homemade plain yogurt.
For a spring picnic, stir some into a pitcher of homemade lemonade.
Or mix it with water, still or sparkling, for a refreshing spring drink.

Ten-minute Rhubarb Vanilla Conserve

Laura — Thu, 12 May 2011 17:33:03 +0000

Thirteen years ago, during the first spring in our house, I discovered that you could make a simple rhubarb conserve in less than ten minutes. We’ve come to call it a refrigerator preserve, since there isn’t a high heat canning process involved, and the springtime jars vanish from our refrigerator so quickly it would be pointless to undertake one. It’s small batch preserving at its best, just a bouquet of rhubarb, a vanilla bean, and a handful of sugar, deceptively simple and almost too easy and good to be true. I’ve seen similar recipes since (and recently), but mine calls for far less sugar and a shorter cooking time. It will be done and waiting, soft and rosy, in a jar in less than half the time it takes a batch of scones t0 emerge from the oven, and a third of the time it takes to cook a pot of old fashioned oatmeal. Stir some into custard or yogurt, smear it on toast, on biscuits sweet or savory, on scones, between cake layers, or dollop it over ice cream—and then walk to the rhubarb patch (or your market) and make some more. It’s a wonderful spring staple.

Rhubarb Vanilla Conserve
Yield: 3 cups; at our house I fill 2 13-ounce jam jars, and have a little extra to use immediately

Ingredients:
6 c. diced rhubarb
½ c. sugar*
1 vanilla bean

Method:

Toss the rhubarb and the sugar together in a large pan.

Split the vanilla bean lengthwise, scrape out its seeds with the dull side of a knife, and put the pod and the seeds into the pan.

Cook the rhubarb over the lowest possible heat, stirring periodically, for about five minutes. If your rhubarb appears to be burning, make sure your stove is on the lowest possible setting, or add a tablespoon of liquid, such as water or liqueur.

Stir the rhubarb constantly from this point on. It is ready when it has yielded into a soft, jammy consistency and all of the remaining pieces of rhubarb are soft. It takes about eight minutes’ cooking time, start to finish.

Spoon the conserve into clean glass jars and top them with tight-fitting lids. Store it in the refrigerator for up to one week.

*This is a rather tart jam which highlights rhubarb’s nature. If you prefer a sweet jam, increase the sugar by half.

Pearl Muffins & Winter Citrus Jelly

Laura — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 23:35:36 +0000

I picked up my Honey Girl this morning from an early flight from Boston. She is my pearl, my sunshine, my joy. So it seemed fitting to make these pearl muffins and some shiny-wiggly, glowy-jiggly winter citrus jelly for her welcome-home breakfast. I took the syrup I boiled down yesterday from the candied winter citrus I made the day before and cooked it a bit longer. The pectin from all that pretty citrus brought it together into a honeyed jelly. I’m not usually a jelly lover. Give me jams and confitures, preserves and conserves, something that’s thick with fruit. But this sweet little jelly has such pure flavor it may have just converted me. You can taste the grapefruit and the cara cara and blood oranges, the tangerines, the meyer lemon and the kumquats, not individually so much, but as soft and bittersweet impressions. I love this kind of cooking, finding ways to use up everything that comes out of the kitchen. I’m going to smear the last of it between mini layers of brown butter almond cake in a day or two. The pearl muffins are a true muffin, none of this muffin as hunk-o-cake business. They are simple, too, not overly sweet, with a delicate crumb and the slightest tug. I baked them in a little pool of melted butter and with an extra sprinkling of raw sugar. My Honey Girl and I enjoyed some larded with the jelly. They were so good, but not as delicious as having her in the kitchen with me and home again. Life is sweeter when she is near.

Pearl Muffins
Adapted from Edna Lewis’ The Taste of Country Cooking
Yield: 8 small muffins

Ingredients:
2 T. unsalted butter
2 T. sugar
2 eggs, separated
½ c. whole milk
½ t. vanilla
2 t. baking powder
1 c. flour
1 T. unsalted butter, melted
a couple of tablespoons of additional sugar

Method:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

Separate the eggs, the yolks into a small bowl and the whites into a medium bowl suitable for using with an electric beater or mixer.

In a medium bowl or the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together the butter and sugar.

Add the egg yolks and vanilla and beat well.

Sift in the baking powder, salt, and flour and beat only until combined. If you overmix your muffins will become tough.

Wash your electric beater or mixer and beat the egg whites until soft peaks form.

Fold the egg whites into the batter.

Pour about ½ t. of melted butter into the bottom of eight muffin cups in a muffin tin.

Sprinkle them with sugar and divide the batter into them.

Sprinkle with a little more sugar, just a pinch.

Bake for seven minutes and then rotate the pan 180 degrees.

Bake an additional eight minutes, or until they spring back when pressed gently.

Winter Citrus Jelly
Yield: about ½ c. jelly

Ingredients:
1 batch winter citrus syrup (recipe here)

Method:

In a small saucepan bring the syrup to a simmer over medium heat.

Cook until it begins to thicken, stirring frequently.

Transfer the jelly to a clean jar. It should keep for about a week in the refrigerator.

Quince Paste

Laura — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 15:48:16 +0000

I went to a fancy grocery store this week in search of liquid pectin and kumquats thinking, They have everything, right? I struck out, but I certainly had fun. This kind of shopping is my own personal kid-in-a-candy-store experience: every kind of European butter, clotted cream, an olive bar the size of a swimming pool, gleaming produce of seemingly endless variety all arranged artfully as if no one has ever touched the displays, a whole section of foods from Britain…(Hello, digestive biscuits, my old friend!) It’s also something akin to walking into a Miro painting for me. Tony, well-heeled shoppers place seven dollar half gallons of milk into their carts alongside pristine strawberries in the dead of winter. I could spend hours just walking the aisles, and I did bimble through them rather googly-eyed until I saw quinces. I haven’t seen one since I lived in England eighteen years ago. The good people at my usual market seem all too prepared to get giddy with me over things like this. At the fancy schmancy grocery, however, the produce man standing near me when I found them told me he had never seen anyone so excited about fruit. I wasn’t even bouncing up and down!

Quinces are bright green yellow, a pome fruit related to both the pear and the apple. They are too astringent and hard to eat uncooked, but they transform with sugar and heat into something quite bewitching—from chartreuse to ochre to apricot—and their perfume is incomparable. When I saw them I knew exactly what I was going to do with them. I have a beautiful wedge of Shepherd’s Way Farms’ Big Woods Blue cheese in my refrigerator, and with quince paste and a little raw honey, I suspect it will be quite a delicious grilled cheese sandwich.

Quince paste, called dulce de membrillo in Spain, is a sweetmeat. Firmer than a fruit butter, it is sliceable and frequently accompanies manchego or goat cheeses. I like to eat with a broader range of assertive cheeses like the Big Woods Blue, with crumpets or toast, or cubed into a fool. (More on those later!) You’ll find lots of things to tuck or smear quince paste into, elevating otherwise yummy things to even yummier.

Quince Paste Tips
Put the quinces on your kitchen counter for a day or two before you make the paste. Your whole house will smell lovely. I think it’s a shame not to enjoy them this way before using them.

The process of pureeing the quinces takes quite a while in a food processor, so be patient. You want a totally smooth paste without distinct pieces of skin.

Use a stockpot or the pan with the highest sides you have. When you cook down the quince pulp and sugar, it sputters and hisses and throws off spatters of molten sugar. Ouch! Use the longest wooden spoon you have, and put a glove-style hot pad on your hand.

The timing for this recipe will vary a bit, so settle in with a task or a good book and check on the process now and then. For example, if you have quite a deep sheet of quince paste in your pan, it will take longer to dry in the oven. Just be patient and pop in on it now and then during the last hour. Lift a corner of the parchment to check its firmness.

You can spread this recipe over three days. Bake the quinces the first night. Cook down the puree the second. And bake the paste the third. It’s a long-ish process, but not one that you have to attend to actively.

Quince Paste

Ingredients:
4 quinces
a little neutral oil for the baking dish, such as canola
2 c. of sugar per pound of cooked quince pulp, or about 5 ½ c.
½ c. Celtic Crossing liqueur or water
a dab of butter for the sheet pan

Method:

Preheat your oven to 225 degrees.

Wash and dry the quinces and place them in a glass or earthenware dish that you have lightly oiled with a neutral flavored oil. I used canola oil.

Place a lid on the dish or cover it tightly with aluminum foil.

Bake the quinces until they are tender when pierced with a fork, about three to four hours.

When they are cool enough to handle, quarter and core the quinces, and puree them in a food processor or food mill along with the liqueur or water.

Weigh the pulp and add 2 c. of sugar per pound of quince pulp, or about 5 ½ c., and stir it together.

Cook the mixture in a stockpot or tall pan over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the quince paste parts like the red sea when you run a wooden spoon down the middle. This takes about one hour.

Smear a half sheet pan or jelly roll pan with a bit of butter and line it with parchment paper.

Spread the quince paste into the pan and chill it in the refrigerator until it is cold.

Preheat your oven to 225 degrees.

Bake the paste until it is firm, about three to four hours.

Allow the paste to cool to room temperature. Then wrap it in cellophane or waxed paper and store it in the refrigerator. It will keep for a few months.

Recipe for Grilled Shepherd’s Way Farms’ Big Woods Blue Cheese Sandwich with Quince Paste and Raw Honey here.

Pickled and Candied Brown Turkey Figs

Laura — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 15:54:04 +0000

This summer I was treated to a storybook week in Santa Fe: beautiful meals, four delicious operas, and charming company. It was my first time in the city, and I was overwhelmed by the quality of the light, the vastness of the sky, and the lavender mountains at sunset. It was an unexpectedly beautiful place, and I fell in love with the desert. I also fell for pickled figs while there. At a pre-opera party one night, amongst a spread of albondigas with saffron sauce, marcona almonds, Iberico ham, and Drunken Goat cheese, the pickled mission figs were a standout. This week, when brown turkey figs reappeared in my market, I decided to play. We are enjoying Indian summer, meteorological technicalities aside, and the loveliest and warmest October in memory, so I decided that, despite the fact that this is my busiest season, and perhaps especially because it is, it was time to lift my head from work for an afternoon for a little cooking project and a little relaxation. I wondered if I could create a pickled fig that also had a candied quality. I think this worked! The skin of the figs has a candied, slightly toothsome chew, which gives way to the sweetness of the figs with a prick of vinegar and spice.

Brown turkey figs are pale green and ruby with a pink to light red interior. With the warmth of aromatic spices and the rosy hue they take on as they bob in balsamic syrup, they are a lovely summer sunset in a pan, and marry end-of-summer sweetness with impending fall. Enjoy some now, and pull out a jar when summer is a memory.

Serving Suggestions
Any of the three versions below would be yummy with a wedge of manchego, a Spanish sheep’s milk cheese, or with a nice and creamy goat cheese; I’m especially partial to Cana de Cabera in the Bucheron style from Spain. A glass of lightly chilled Sauternes or a glass of oloroso sherry would be a happy pairing; my favorite is Lustau East India Solera. These figs would be nice slivered into an apple pie in the fall. And in the winter, they would be delicious warmed and spooned over crème fraiche or buttermilk ice cream—but I guess I’m the kind of person who eats ice cream in the wintertime!

Pickled and Candied Brown Turkey Figs
Yield: four small jars

Ingredients:
32 ounces ripe but firm brown turkey figs
2 c. water, divided
2/3 c. white vinegar, divided
2/3 c. cider vinegar, divided
2/3 c. balsamic vinegar, divided
6 c. sugar, divided
cheesecloth or a coffee filter
string
2 cinnamon sticks
1 T whole cloves
2 T allspice berries
2 star anise
1 T pink peppercorns

Equipment:
Four small canning jars with screw bands and new lids
Jar lifter or tongs
Wide mouth canning funnel
Ladle
Water bath canner or a large soup pot with lid
Clean towels

Method:

In a large pan, stir together 3 c. sugar, 1/3 c. vinegar, 1/3 c. cider vinegar, 1/3 c. balsamic vinegar, and 1 c. water. Bring to a simmer.

Put all of the spices into a piece of cheesecloth or a coffee filter, and tie securely into a bundle with string. Add to pan.

Add clean figs to the pan and simmer gently for 30 minutes, or until the spiced balsamic syrup is reduced and thickened.

Cover and rest 24 hours in the refrigerator.

Remove from the refrigerator.

In a medium pan, stir together 3 c. sugar, 1/3 c. vinegar, 1/3 c. cider vinegar, 1/3 c. balsamic vinegar, and 1 c. water. Bring to a simmer.

Pour over figs and warm slowly to a simmer. Simmer 10 minutes.

Wash all canning equipment in hot, soapy water.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil and submerge the jars and the funnel, and rest the jar lifter or tongs and a ladle in the water for ten minutes.

Bring a small pot of water to a boil and submerge the screw bands for ten minutes.

Remove the jars, funnel, jar lifter or tongs, ladle, and screw bands to a clean towel.

Rest the funnel on the top of a jar and ladle figs and enough liquid to fill the jar. Leave ½ “ headroom. Continue to fill the jars in this manner.

Wipe the rim of each jar clean if there are any splashes.

Place a lid on each jar and tighten on a screw band.

Bring a water bath canner or large pot of water to a boil. Make sure you have enough water to completely cover the jars by two inches.

Lower the jars into the canner or pot gently using the jar lifter or tongs.

Boil for 45 minutes.

Remove the jars to a towel and allow to cool.

I used processing times based on recommendations for figs in Canning and Preserving for Dummies by Amelia Jeanroy and Karen Ward. Please also refer to the following site: National Center for Home Food Preservation, http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/publications_usda.html

You don’t need to officially can these figs. If you wish, you may simply ladle them into clean jars or other containers and eat them immediately. They will keep in the refrigerator for a week.

Candied Brown Turkey Figs

Follow the method above, substituting water for the vinegars.

Reduce the syrup a bit longer on the second cook before canning.

This version yields sweet, treacly figs with a glossy syrup.

Pickled Brown Turkey Figs

Follow the method above, but mix all of the syrup ingredients without dividing into two batches.

This version yields softer figs that are slightly less sweet.