This was my mantra Wednesday night and again on Thursday. After our fun yet exhausting weekend in Big Sur with J&N (still working on that blog post) and a board meeting at work lasting until after 8pm Tuesday night. Wednesday felt like my first real time at home in the month of September. If I was logical, responsible, prepared person I would have taken this time to start packing my things for this weekend’s move to our new apartment. But instead I decided it was high time I made that fig jam Will and I have been talking about before the figs go bad.
After doing a brief search online we decided on a recipe featured in the September 2009 issue of Bon Appetit. The recipe sounded a little strange to me what with the garlic and shallots and all , but Will was excited about it so we gave it awhirl. We tried to follow the recipe as closely as possible, but made the following changes based on what we had in our kitchen: shallots were replaced with leeks which we have an abundance of from our garden. The Agran oil was replaced with walnut oil. I couldn’t find the Moroccan oil at Whole Foods and did not feel like going on a city wide search for a market that might carry it at 8pm on Wednesday night. The process was very easy, although the 25 minutes the recipe quotes is a bit of an understatement. I cooked and stirred ours for at least an hour. This might be partially due to the fact that I doubled the recipe and had much more water to cook off. By the time it was done it was late and I had already brushed my teeth for bed so I did not even try it. Will had little taste though and said he liked it a lot. Though if he did it again he said he would leave out the regular sugar b/c it was pretty sweet and he is more into tart and sour things. I am looking forward to spreading this on some crusty bread and topping it with a little goat cheese and prosciutto, but until I do try it I am going to admire it in the jars because I think it is quite pretty.
While I was busy gathering ingredients and stirring jam Will made a yummy dinner with the recent harvest of leeks and tomatoes from Wattles. The ragu recipe from Fine Cooking magazine is unfortunately not available online, but I can tell you that it includes leeks, tomato, sausage, and spices. We included the Summer Savory Gina gave us from the garden. It adds a great zest when cooking Italian meals. I do not have a photo of the awesome plate of pasta Will whipped up because I was soooo eager to eat it that I forgot to photo graph it.
Thursday night was filled with more jam distractions instead of packing for the weekend move. I made my third bath of Rhubarb-Strawberry jam and kept with my round two ammendment of using only 5 cups of sugar instead of 6. Will chopped about half the rhubarb in our fridge (8 cups) and soaked it in 2 1/2 cups sugar. I then finished off the jam making process when I got home by crushing 4 cups of strawberries, adding the other half of the sugar and simmering for what felt like hours. We are out of canning jars, so it is just sitting in the giant pot I cooked it in until I pick some up after work tonight. A tough lesson was learned while I did the non-stop stirring – wear long sleeves. It is so hot with the stove on that I was in a tank top, but the bubbly jam pops and usually gets my floor sticky. Last night one of the bursts found its way onto my forearm and gave me a nasty little burn. So from now on, long sleeves it is. I don’t want any more jam related scars or injuries on my body.
Once again while I was doing up the jam, Will made another fine garden centric meal of sauted leeks, green beans and 3 kinds of peppers – Jimmy Nardello, Aconcagua, and Anaheim doused in a little hoisen sauce at the end, as well as our new found favorite way to eat tofu – sliced, cooked in a mix of sesame oil, rice vinegar, soy sauce, water, sugar, ginger & chili flakes. The simple meal has become a regular in our kitchen this summer with the overwhelming number of garden veggies and our attempts to keep it healthy with the tofu.
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