Moonlight Canning
Twenty one half pints in one day is not too shabby
Lisa is removing the last batch just as all the children begin to fall apart
philip inspects the canning facility with a flashlight to ensure top quality
Because my new canning pot is so big, it doesn't fit on my stove. So the canning operation was moved to the grill. Canning can be a little more dangerous by moonlight. Lisa, all the kids, and I went to a top secret blackberry picking site yesterday that yielded the most abundant, juiciest, and tasty berries. I found out about it through an aquaintence of mine who has lived here in McMinnville her whole life. This site is located at a place she used to work at. It looks pretty unpreposessing at first because the blackberries are growing to the side of a huge metal building in which some manufacturing occurs during the week. The parking lot and the ground along the side yard is littered with bits of foam, rusty metal stakes, and other mysterious debris. My aquaintence had told me it was alright for us to pick there, she even said she'd call the owner and let him know we wanted to pick and see if it was alright. That was a couple of weeks ago. I admit that when we first spilled out of the van and had a look around I was a tiny bit spooked, I half suspected a pack of wild dogs might come around the corner and maul us. Or to not hear the squad car coming towards us in its usual Sunday blackberry stealing sting operation.
None of this happened obviously. Since I know what is being manufactured in the buildings I can also promise that the berries have not grown to such lushness through injudicious spilling of toxic waste on the site. The next time we pick there I may take photos...but only if I can be sure you won't know where it is, these sources must be protected.
I'm going to record the results of our three batches here on the blog so that we can find the information easily next year. We definitely made jam this time. As my cousin Carrie mentioned to me on the phone last week, it takes several times making a recipe to tweak it to perfection. She was speaking the gospel truth! We used the Ball Blue Book berry jam recipe. Here's exactly what we did:
Batch #1: Washed berries. Measured nine cups of blackberries. Milled them. Put them in a pot with six cups of sugar, and then brought them to a boil. We proceeded to boil the shit out of that batch because I am so rusty at this recipe I was waiting for the jam to visibly thicken in the pot. I neglected to do the gel test in the fridge. So it probably boiled for forty five minutes. By the time we processed them, and the jam cooled, it was as stiff as cheese. It also has a more cooked flavor. It's missing the ephemeral magical wild berry taste that less cooking captures.
Batch #2: Washed berries. Measured nine cups of berries. Milled them. Put them in the pot with the six cups of sugar, and then brought them to a boil. We timed the cooking time to exactly half an hour after it came to boiling point. We put some aside to see how it did. We processed them. The results: ever so slightly less stiff, still lost that fresh berry flavor we love. Good jam, but not the best we could do.
Batch #3: Did not wash the berries (to reduce the water content).* Measured nine cups of berries. Milled them. Put them in the pot with the six cups of sugar. Brought to a boil and cooked for exactly twenty minutes. Lisa performed multiple gelling point tests. (At this point we are becoming lab technicians in the kitchen which is always fun). This batch, once processed, was not particularly stiff. In fact, this morning you can tip the jars and the jam will slide around. So it's stiffer than sauce and thinner than jam. It's possible that twenty five minutes is the perfect cooking time. The flavor? Oh yeah, this one gets it. This one preserves that fleeting delicate wild taste of summer that I have always associated with blackberries.
There are still other things to try. I would like to get it perfect with a cup less sugar. I would like to try mixing the berries and suar and leaving overnight to macerate as my friend Chelsea has done and had success with.
*It is essential to wash the berries if ants are present. Unless you enjoy the peppery Je-ne-sais-quoi that they bring to all recipes.
None of this happened obviously. Since I know what is being manufactured in the buildings I can also promise that the berries have not grown to such lushness through injudicious spilling of toxic waste on the site. The next time we pick there I may take photos...but only if I can be sure you won't know where it is, these sources must be protected.
I'm going to record the results of our three batches here on the blog so that we can find the information easily next year. We definitely made jam this time. As my cousin Carrie mentioned to me on the phone last week, it takes several times making a recipe to tweak it to perfection. She was speaking the gospel truth! We used the Ball Blue Book berry jam recipe. Here's exactly what we did:
Batch #1: Washed berries. Measured nine cups of blackberries. Milled them. Put them in a pot with six cups of sugar, and then brought them to a boil. We proceeded to boil the shit out of that batch because I am so rusty at this recipe I was waiting for the jam to visibly thicken in the pot. I neglected to do the gel test in the fridge. So it probably boiled for forty five minutes. By the time we processed them, and the jam cooled, it was as stiff as cheese. It also has a more cooked flavor. It's missing the ephemeral magical wild berry taste that less cooking captures.
Batch #2: Washed berries. Measured nine cups of berries. Milled them. Put them in the pot with the six cups of sugar, and then brought them to a boil. We timed the cooking time to exactly half an hour after it came to boiling point. We put some aside to see how it did. We processed them. The results: ever so slightly less stiff, still lost that fresh berry flavor we love. Good jam, but not the best we could do.
Batch #3: Did not wash the berries (to reduce the water content).* Measured nine cups of berries. Milled them. Put them in the pot with the six cups of sugar. Brought to a boil and cooked for exactly twenty minutes. Lisa performed multiple gelling point tests. (At this point we are becoming lab technicians in the kitchen which is always fun). This batch, once processed, was not particularly stiff. In fact, this morning you can tip the jars and the jam will slide around. So it's stiffer than sauce and thinner than jam. It's possible that twenty five minutes is the perfect cooking time. The flavor? Oh yeah, this one gets it. This one preserves that fleeting delicate wild taste of summer that I have always associated with blackberries.
There are still other things to try. I would like to get it perfect with a cup less sugar. I would like to try mixing the berries and suar and leaving overnight to macerate as my friend Chelsea has done and had success with.
*It is essential to wash the berries if ants are present. Unless you enjoy the peppery Je-ne-sais-quoi that they bring to all recipes.