It has been a couple days since I have been able to post. I appologize for that. I cannot believe how incredibly busy I am just trying to keep the produce from the garden taken care of each day. I have a couple of recipes today from this processing adventure. I have to say upfront that prior to this season I have not made jelly or jam. The farm I live on has fruit trees all over the place; two of which are the golden delicious type of apples. I don't know about the rest of the country but where we live our winter was pretty much spring and our spring jumped strait to summer. So everything is maturing faster than usual. I am trying to leave as many of these apples on the tree as possible so that they can mature as much as possible and be the juicy apples they should be. We of course are having winds like i have never seen before and this is shaking the apples out of the tree and laying the corn over. The corn seems to right itself in a day or so but the apples do not put themselves back on the tree. I am now finding myself on daily apple patrol to find any apples that can be saved from rotting on the ground. One side of our tree seems to have some sort of blight. I do not know what this means, but I am given this info by the farmer in my life and since this farm has been in his family for a couple generations I guess he would know. I have been slicing the apples around the blight spots into slices about the appropriate size to bake an apple pie and putting them in a pint bag with one half cup of granulated sugar and 1 tsp of cinnamon then i sort of mix them together in the bag, squeeze out as much air as possible and put them in the freezer. I think it will take about two pints per pie once the weather turns cooler. My mouth is almost watering thinking about the Apple Crumb Pies I will bake for Christmas and Thanksgiving Dinners. So here are the recipes for the apple jelly I made yesterday. I cobbed 2 recipes together because neither of them made sense to me. That is the cool thing about being a chef. You can picture how the ingredients work in a recipe and know if they are going to work together and if there is something extra needed. I am sure either of the 2 recipes work out fine, but I found them confusing so I just used them as templates and used the principles i know to be true. The result is a delicious clear yellow apple jelly that I am proud of. I don't normally like apple jelly, but my boyfriend wanted some so I made this for him. I will eat this jelly. It is that good.
The second jelly recipe is for jalapeno jelly. I had never heard of this until a few weeks ago when i picked up a canning magazine at the local walmart. I thought "what kind of crazy person makes jalapeno jelly?" I mentioned to a co-worker about all my jalapenos growing in the garden and she asked if I make jalapeno jelly. I remembered the recipe and tried it. It is the best jelly I have ever eaten. I think I was trying to picture it on toast. Once my co-worker explained to me that you should put the jalapeno jelly over cream cheese and dip crackers into it I was all in. This is an amazing jelly. You won't be disappointed if you try it.
APPLE JELLY
Apples (I had 7 lbs. I know this because I used my boyfriends postal scale to weigh them.)
The cool thing about this recipe is I didn't have time to core and peel all those apples. I simply washed them and quartered them and threw them into a pot of water with some lemon juice added to it. I just pour in a bit of the juice (probably about a tablespoon or so to 7 cups of water.) I know there was 7 cups of water because one of the recipes said to cover the apples with 7 cups of water or 1 cup of water per pound. I found that this did not even come close to covering the apples. Once I had all the apples quartered in the pot I added enough water to cover the apples and put the pot on the stove to boil. When it came to a boil, I put a lid on it and simmered it for 15 minutes. It seemed like there was a bit too much water so I took out a couple cups of the boiling water then my boyfriend used a potato masher to mash the apples in the water in the pot still on the stove (heat turned off). I then put the heat on under the apples and brought it back to a simmer for an additional 15 to 20 mins.
To make apple jelly you need to strain the juice from the apple pulp mess you have made in the giant pot. Normally one would use cheese cloth, but I have been trying to aquire cheese cloth for awhile now and have been unable to find it. I found one of my boyfriends older t-shirts that is a bit thin near the bottom. He wanted to continue wearing the shirt so I did not cut it up like I had planned. I lined a regular colandar that normally use to drain pasta with the shirt (one layer and hung the rest of the shirt over the side of the larger bowl that placed the colander in). Just to make it more clear in cse it isn't: colandar lined with t-shirt. Lined colandar placed in larger bowl, t-shirt hanging over side of larger bowl, pour apple pulp mess into colandar being careful not to drip any into the outside bowl as this will make your jelly cloudy. I got a bit in the bowl and just lifted it out with my finger. I think the jelly is fine. I let the fruit drain for a few hours while we ran some errands. Carefully lift the t-shirt with fruit out of the colandar being careful not to squeeze as according to the recipe, you will get more juice, but your jelly will be cloudy. I am not sure myself that it makes much difference if my jelly is cloudy or not but i was careful not to squeeze the bundle just in case. I put the fruit pulp into a trash bag and threw it out.
This is the part where the recipes didn't make sense and I had to start working between the two. the first one did not call for any fruit pectin to be added. Now I know apples have their own pectin and you can make your own pectin using apples. I do not know this process at this time and I wanted to make sure my jelly was a success so I looked for another recipe that had dried fruit pectin added to the jelly. I used low sugar or no sugar needed pectin. Since I had 7 lbs of apples I used 3 1/2 tbs. My recipe called for 3 tbs for 4 lbs of apples. I figured out that is 3/4 of a tbs per pound of apples so I multiplied that by 7 which should be (I see today as I am dividing it out) should be 5.25 tbs. Huh... well i used 3 1/2 tbs and the jelly turned out perfect. I used a wire whisk and blended the pectin into the juice, then brought the juice to a boil. This recipe didn't require sweetner, but I cannot imagine jelly that does not have some sugar so I turned to the original recipe which calls for 1 cup of sugar per pound of apples, so we put in 7 cups of sugar. I say we because at the point I started boiling the juice and adding pectin my boyfriend decided he wanted to help so I started doing dishes and supervising. This first recipe says skim foam if necessary, but we never got any foam. The second recipe said to boil for one minute and if it started to thicken before one minute take it off the heat and it was done. Ours took a bit longer and I finally took it off the heat thinking maybe as it cooled it would thicken. This seemed to be the truth. We had been simmering our pint jars and lids to prepare them while we made our jelly and we were now ready to ladel the jelly into the jars. This was a 2 person operation for us. Honestly one person can do it, probably quicker and with less frustration, but I am blessed to have a man who wants to help me and I very much enjoyed the time spent with him over our tiny counter space with him ladeling jelly into jars. I stired it to remove the air bubbles and put on the lids and put them back in the boiling water while he filled others. Once the jars (we got 9 pints from our 7 lbs of apples) were in their boiling water bath ( always make sure there is atleast 2 inches of water covering the tops) we brought it to a boil ( I have discovered if I put the lid to my pressure canner over the top of the pot and not tighten it down the water boils faster and more consistently). Once the water is boiling rapidly and consistently set the timer for 10 minutes. When the timer goes off removes the jars and the lids started popping (sealing) for us almost immediately. If you are going to eat some, refrigerate for a few hours before opening. Otherwise, label and store. I am told up to a year, but we all know our grandmothers stored jelly for years and years and it was still good.
I know i promised you the recipe for Jalapeno jelly, but I am way out of time for today, so I will get it on in my next post I promise. Til then I hope you enjoy cooking and that your culinary endeavors will be as frustration free as possible.
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