Were you to just set out your jam in a cool place, it would grow bacteria. 

This is where the sugar comes in. You wonder if people didn’t have much back in the 1800s.  In general, sugar had become readily available to the middle class people living in urban areas of Europe and the U.S, thanks to European plantations in the Caribbean and slave labor.  (But that--and the whole big magilla of sugar history--is best for another day.)

In any case, sugar was not optional in making jam--it was essential.  Remember that “fruit preserves” were invented as precisely this--a method of preserving fruit for winter before refrigeration came along.  Sugar acted not only as a sweetener but as a preserving agent.  Cooking breaks down the fruit so it can absorb the sugar.  In some historic recipes, you also find the addition of vinegar for the same reason. 

The only way I’ve ever seen fruit preserves made without sugar is when it’s been cooked and pounded into sheets then then sun/air dried and rolled up for the winter.  This is called “fruit leather” in the old cookbooks.  But also, I’ve read of Indians of the Northwest who used to preserve fruit this way.  So cool.  I’m sure you’ve also seen kids eating these under the guise of “fruit roll ups.” These of course have LOTS of sugar--a la corn syrup.

So in sum, my vote is that unsugared uncooked jam is a modern invention, though please if there’s someone out there who knows otherwise, correct me.  I also think it’s probably more delicious--full of fruit flavor--and perhaps one way that modern recipes are sometimes better than old!

see also: Quince

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Oh she liked the tile okay. It was the objects that concerned her. I explained to her why I love painting food, how I think of food as symbol and metaphor as much as sustenance, how I love the association with domesticity and work that is repetitive and a ritual of daily life. How I want to say something about how food connects us to our past and brings people together. “Why don’t you pour something onto the tile?” she suggested, “Like soda.” “Olive oil?” I asked. “Fine,” she replied. So oil it was.


As a painter, it was interesting to think of the tile in a more conceptual way but as a cook, it wasn’t.


Finally, I chose a cooking image to sketch in oils instead. I also brought my little potted herb garden with me and plucked some herbs to chop for my lunch. This one is not on the tile but more are coming with the tile included. On the day of my first critique, my professor told me that I had a productive week and told me to revisit the work of a favorite artist of mine. In the pages of an enormous book about this artist from the university library I found clues to what I am after if only I can master it. Stay tuned!

Progress!  We can’t believe we did it. 

Here are our beets, coming up. 

And here is our first heirloom tomato (black prince), coming from flower to fruit. 

We put in a tee-pee for climbing beans. 

These are baccicia beans just pushing out of their shells toward the sun.  These seeds were sent to me by a reader of “Lost Ravioli” from Napa.  More than a hundred years ago, Italians brought these beans to California. 

We’ve also got carrots, corn, broccoli, spinach, chard, and many kinds of peppers and herbs growing, amongst flowers.  This is borage… a very “not to be forgotten” vegetable with many many uses.  Both leaf and flower are edible.  And the bright blue flowers are beautiful.  Now each day when I open my front door, I see theater and drama.  Things are happening.  It is a fascination and a joy.

see also: Vegetables in the Front Yard

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Cooking with fire makes you think about just how recent it is in human history that we have had stoves. 

Usually the fire is too hot. Or it’s too cold.  It needs a lot of attention if you’re not used to it. 

You get smoke in your eyes, and your clothes smell.  Also, the warmth of the fire, I can assure you, doesn’t reach terrible far. 

Still, there was a certain triumph to finally getting the eggs to boil.  I felt as hough I’d really accomplished something. 

There were really some beautiful moments on our trip.

And of course this:

And this:

And then the rain came.

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A little research and I became sure that the winepress belonged to an Italian family.  Not too surprising.

Italian laborers immigrated to this town more than a hundred years ago, hired to dig the original water and sewer lines and lay railroad track.  They were housed in tents and barracks in open lots, and some local church documents describe them making huge bonfires at night and singing in their camps.  Most wanted to make money and go back home to Italy.  But eventually many stayed and saved enough money to buy houses.  The winepress probably comes from the time period--somewhere between 1900 and World War II.  But of course, winemaking itself goes back in the Mediterranean to the dawn of recorded history there.

And so that winepress got me to thinking about migrations—perhaps the most fascinating aspect of all human history for me.  What we take with us and what we leave behind.  And how the migrations never end.

Four million Italians came to American between 1880 and 1920.  (The entire population of Italy was only around 15 million).  Then seven million African Americans came up from the American South to the North, as part of the Great Migration—between 1910 to 1970.  And before this, the huge forced migration from Africa that began in the early 1600s.

Many Italians fled their neighborhoods when African Americans moved in.  They did so out of racism and out of fear.  The irony is, however, that once Italians left their immigrant neighborhoods and moved to the suburbs, they dispersed into the vast American culture and usually began to lose their ethnic identity, having children who would not grow up in the neighborhood enclaves hearing dialect, listening to the old people tell stories, and making wine in the basement.

And now the African American neighborhoods too are changing--becoming less connected--as children grow and move away and newcomers move in. Lina tells me it is mostly young professionals now interested in this house, which is located close to the train to New York.

Do I sound nostalgic?  Not really.  Life constantly moves forward.  But that winepress got to me—a big immovable hunk of concrete shaped into the very foundation of a home.
Too big to move.  It had to be left behind. 

Oh yes.  One last thing.  Those looking for a house in Montclair with a quick commute and wine-making facilities in the basement should contact Lina Panza.

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“The second reason is that they’re extremely funny.  Whenever you’re in a bad mood, just come out here and watch them. They’re very silly--and not very smart.  Our family has lots of chicken jokes.’

The third reason is my passion for sustainable living.  They eat all my vegetable scraps--they eat pasta and bread and salad--everything.  I make hardly any garbage.  Their manure gets aged for compost and makes beautiful flowers and vegetables.  We can all live peaceably in the world.  You don’t need fourteen chickens to do it.  We can all find a way to slow down and be mindful.  The chickens do this for me.”

Grace makes it look so easy and wonderful that before I know it, I’m asking her about where I can get a chicken coop and some Blue Araucanas of my own.  Oh those fresh eggs are so appealing.  But wait...what about the gross parts?  I had a lot of questions for Grace. Here’s my Q& A--gathered while sons number 1 and 2 (ages 7 and 12) stared enraptured at the clucking girls and begged for a flock of their own.

LS:  “Do you get rats?”
GG: “Yes, of course.  Rats have been on the earth longer than we have.  When I have to, I use poison.  That’s one nonorganic thing I do.  But we also have hawks come by and help. 

LS:  Did you grow up doing this? 
GG:  It’s familiar to me.  I began my life in Malaysian where lots of people have chickens. 

LS:  Is this legal?  Do your neighbors mind?
GG:  In our town, we’re allowed to keep up to 25.  I’m well under the limit.  As to the neighbors, we asked them first.

LS How did you get started? 
GG:  There was a guy I knew who had chickens and I admired them, so I started with three.  Then I made a big leap and ordered 15 through the mail. 

LS:  How much does it cost to feed them?
GG:  Probably about $50 bucks of chicken feed a month.

LS:  Do you have predators?
GG:  Racoons are my number-one predator.  I’ve got a pesky one right now who’s determined to reduce my flock.  At night, I get the girls into the coop and lock them in where they’re safe.  But sometimes, when they’re still out, a raccoon will get a bird. You come out and find some feathers and maybe a few bones.”

LS:  Is it gross to clean out the chicken coop?
GG:  ....

LS:  Are other families doing this in our town?
GG:  I’d guess about ten. 

LS:  What does your husband think of this?
GG:  He kind of lets me be.  He grew up on a farm, so he sees this all differently.  They’re not pets. 

By the way, Grace’s commitment to sustainable living is bigger than chickens.  You can often find her at her shop Terra Tea Salon and Fair Trade Eco Market “>Terra Tea Salon and Fair Trade Eco Market on Church Street in Montclair, NJ.

We had also done a photo shoot in Laura’s kitchen previously that yielded this image. I painted it from the photo. We both agreed that we liked the image, but it wasn’t exactly what we wanted for Jellypress. For me, the immediacy of working from life was missing. The camera decides so much for you. I wanted to experience the image I would paint without the camera lens distancing me from it.

In the same painting, over to the right, I painted a bowl of cooked strawberries. There was also a photo with the same feeling. Despite myself, the loss was coloring everything I did. Laura and I joked that we would name the image “The Strawberries of Doom.” Even though we were kidding, we knew there was some truth in it too. Life is not always pretty or fair and we are both nourished and starved as we live and learn. In the beauty of ripe strawberries, there always exists the mud they come from, the garbage of the compost that fed them, the rot that will overtake them in time as they in turn become nourishment for new growth. I wanted all that in the painting.

Finally, alone in my kitchen, I painted this image from life. I worked without over-thinking it. Just a simple image, I thought. Fruit, cutting board, the knife left for a moment by the unseen cook. It was only later, when people mentioned the knife’s edge, so prominent in the foreground, that I realized how much of us comes out in our art without our conscious control. It’s all there. 

I miss the smell of her cake in the oven, especially now that strawberries are abundant and stacked impossibly high in their supermarket plastic container towers. Back then, we got our strawberries from a “grocer” that Mom nicknamed “Gaw-jus” because he bragged about his picture-perfect produce in a heavy Bronx accent.

“I went to Gaw-jus,” she’d say, presenting me with the bags full of perfumed berries to wash and slice. “One for the cake, one for me,” I’d say as I cut them and we would giggle together over this weakness we shared, our inability to resist sneaking a little piece before the guests arrived. In my mind’s eye, I see her unguarded, pretty face nearly free of makeup. She prefers simple things. Her wedding ring is often the only piece of jewelry she wears. I remember her fingernails shining with a thin stroke of clear polish on the edge of her spatula as she stirred the egg whites into the cake batter.

“It needed trimming,” she’d say, giving me thin slices off the bottom of the warm sponge cake straight out of the pan that we ate with our fingers, taking them carefully from the knife edge.

It is always 1975 in these memories of my mother baking with me in a New Jersey kitchen wallpapered with outdated yellow and brown pop-art flowers. After all, it’s where the woman who bore me is baking — not just then, but always and forever somewhere in my center, that essential place lost to me so much of the time. And everything she tried to teach me — devotion, patience, the importance of ritual, humility — is there in that simple act of making cake from scratch.

Our sponge cake recipe is an old family recipe from Helen, my Uncle Richy’s mother. A matriarch. In our family, that means strong, compassionate, capable. And so much more. The cake is also much more than its label — usually sponge cake elicits groans in the same way that fruit cake does. None of them are considered any good. This one always gets the raves. I made it for a party recently and it was, as always, a revelation.

Grandma Helen’s Sponge Cake

9 extra large eggs, separated
1 and 1/4 cup sugar (scant cup)
grated rind and juice of medium to large lemon
scant cup all purpose unbleached white flour (Passover cake meal may be substituted)

1. Preheat oven to 340 degrees (convection) or 350 degrees for still oven.

2. Beat egg yolks on an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment for 10 minutes adding the sugar 1/4 cup at a time after 5 minutes. Add the rind and juice of the lemon and beat until well blended.

3.. Beat egg whites until stiff but not dry. Sift cake meal over yolks and add beaten egg whites to yolk mixture using a rubber spatula and a folding motion.

4. Place batter in an ungreased tube pan with a removable bottom and tube section or in a spring form. Bake for 1 hour. Check cake after 40 minutes as baking times and oven temperatures vary. Remove from oven and invert pan to let cake cool. Using a sharp thin bladed knife release cake from the sides of the pan before removing and placing on serving plate.

5. With a whisk by hand, or on an electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, whip heavy cream to soft peak, adding vanilla extract and confectioner’s sugar to taste after the cream has thickened slightly. Do not overbeat. Slice strawberries thinly and sprinkle them with sugar to taste, then let them sit in the refrigerator until they form their own syrup. Slice cake and serve each slice with a generous helping of strawberries in syrup and freshly whipped cream.

We lived in New York City then and took the train, speeding down my homelands of urban New Jersey and past Philadelphia’s vista of crumbling row houses.  Then into the “mainline” of suburban towns with their grand homes and gentile neighborhoods.  I’d seen such things before of course.

It was the third hour of the journey, that I looked out the train window and was awed with surprise. We were rushing across fields greener than anything I’d ever seen.  Here was the emerald world of Lancaster County. Farmlands of the Pennsylvania Dutch.  Ordered and productive.  Lush and glimmering with blessed soil.  Onward we went to his small town of Hummelstown.

It was an exotic place to me.  They did things differently there. 

My husband and his dad got up at dawn to fish in the creek down the road.  They ate weird foods like scrapple and shoefly pie—and everyone distinguished whether theirs were the wet bottom or dry bottom crusts.  Oh that was just the beginning of it.

It was Memorial Day, and his family had a big picnic around the pool.  Everyone came by and checked out Herbie’s new girl. The hamburgers and hotdogs were on some very yellow potato bread from the grocery with a German name.  The salads were mayonaisey.  The people were friendly but reserved.  One guy had such a heavy south Central Pennsylvania accent I had trouble understanding him as he raved over the Lebanon bologna. 

But to me, oddest of all were the red beet eggs.  It was a custom these Germanish people had of putting peeled hard boiled eggs—whole-- in a sweet-sour sauce with red beets.  After a while, the eggs became fuschia colored. Very shocking.

This Not To Be Forgotten recipe from 1774 Lancaster is a winner—a classic pickled beet recipe from the Germans.  It was intended for winter pickling but makes a wonderful summertime salad.  Try this in your modern life on greens with ricotta salata or blue cheese crumbled on top.  Maybe some walnuts and red onions, too.

For me of course, this recipe can’t help but remind me of the moment I entered a foreign family.  It was that very same weekend 21 years ago, that father told son I was the best woman he’d ever brought home. He gave his blessing—for me ever associated with the sight of red beets in that strange emerald green world.

Modern interpretation

6 red beets
pinch of salt
¾ cup red wine vinegar
7 to 8 tablespoons of honey or sugar (according to taste)
salt, pepper, and chopped fresh dill weed to taste

1.  Scrub beets, leaving skin on and removing stems.  Put in big pot full of water, add pinch of salt, and bring to boil.  Cook on medium heat 1 hour or until beets are cooked.  You may need to add boiling water if water level goes below beets.

2.  Let cool and peel off skins.  Cut each in half, then slice.

3.  In nonstick pan, heat vinegar on medium high heat and add sugar or honey, stirring until melted.  Turn down heat to medium and let bubble until it reduces by fifty percent, to a syrup.  Pour over beets and add salt, pepper, and chopped herbs. 

Keeps well, covered in refrigerator, up to a week. 

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But times have changed--and home cooks no longer strain their sauces through mesh too often—at least not here in New Jersey, where we tend to be in a quite a rush and cut our vegetables rather large.  So you feel free to skip this straining step if you wish. 

Begin, of course, with a fish that’s impeccably fresh.  Of course, there are many potential variations—you can use squid and shell fish in combination and add them in succession according to size—the smallest and quickest cooking, last.  I like to use a cup of very dry white wine instead of the vinegar water.  And you could add capers or herbs you might like.  In winter I used canned tomatoes or cherry tomatoes, cut in half.  I suggest you do as I do and use a sautee pan.  After I add the fish, I spoon some of the tomatoes on top and cover with a tight fitting lid, then cook a few minutes on low heat. 

This cacciucco comes to you from a star in the Italian culinary canon, Pellegrino Artusi It was published in 1891—a mere 30 years after the unification of Italy—and it was intended to be the tome of Italy’s culinary unification.  Between two covers, Artusi gathers 800 recipes from all over the peninsula.  No easy task.  Anyone who’s done a little culinary research on Italy knows how common it is to find a word for a dish that means one thing in a particular region, and something else in another. But why don’t I let Artusi speak to you directly on this matter: 

“Cacciucco!  Let me say just make a little comment about this word, which is understood perhaps only in Tuscany and on the shores of the Mediterranean, since the shores of the Adriatic it is called “brodetto.” In Florence, “brodetto” means a soup with bread and broth, bound with beaten eggs and lemon juice.  In Italy, the confusion between these and other names from province to province is such that it is almost a second Tower of Babel.

After the unification of Ialy, it seemed logical to me that we should think about unifying the spoken language, and yet few can be bothered with such an undertaking and many are outright hostile to it, perhaps because of false pride and the ingrained habit that Italians have of speaking their own regional dialect.

To return to cacciucco, let me say that naturally enough this is a dish prepared in seaside towns more than anywhere else, because it is a there that you can find fresh fish of the kind needed to make it.  Any fishmonger can tell you the varieties of fish that are best suited to a good cacciucco.  Good as it may be, however, it is still quite a heavy dish, so one needs to be careful not to gorge oneself on it.”

In fact, this dish is far more complicated, than he lets on and turns up all over Italy and the Mediterranean in endless variation with endless dialect names.

But Science in the Kitchen is a “modern” cookbook.  And by modern, I mean, many things.  First of all, it seeks to codify and standardized.  It was written not for the cooks of noblemen, but for the home cook who wanted to learn.  Second of all, we see a fair amount of exact measurements and precise directions—and the idea of rationality—which modern people love. 

Finally, this really seems like a modern cookbook to because it’s full of personality and sometimes Artusi feels like a performance artist doing a shtick on stage.  He gives amusing jabs to the French and English.  He attacks the stupidity of the publishing industry (as authors are known to do), and he offers bizarre observations: for example, he’s got a sauce for you that’s “like a woman whose face isn’t so pretty on first glance but gets better with time.” Or, say, a strudel that may “look like a giant leach—but don’t worry:  it tastes good anyway.”

With such personality, no wonder Science in the Kitchen quickly became a bestseller.  Artusi would have taken to blogging like white on rice.  His book, by the way, came at around the same time the Fannie Farmer published her scientific cookbooks in America.  Needless to say, I’d take Artusi any day.

All Italian Americans (and others interested in Italian cooking) should get themselves a copy of Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well, which is beautifully translated by Murtha Baca and Stephen Sartarelli.  Click here.

Want to see the original Italian?  Of course you do:
www.homolaicus.com

Want to see the model for this beautiful painting? 
http://www.jellypress.com/about/#about

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Next I tried a different canister in pastel, but I knew right away that the freshness of the pastel medium was not right for the old feeling of these dinged-up cans.

I did another pastel with more going on in the composition than just the cans. I liked the quality of the light, but I still felt that pastel was not right for this image.

In the end this painting with the more subtle qualities of oil paint captured the canisters best. 

Hi Amy, thanks for your question. My Jewish grandmas didn’t bake hamantaschen, though they were major cookie mavens. Here’s a recipe that has a cookie crust texture like the one you seek. I culled this during the time I was a pastry chef. I love it and hope this tastes like the favorite one you miss from childhood. It’s got the poppyseed filling too. The orange is optional. Enjoy.
—Nancy

Orange Hamantaschen
Dough:
2 2/3 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 t. baking powder
1/4 t. salt
1 1/2 sticks cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
2/3 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg white
Very finely grated zest of half a medium orange

Filling:
2 cups poppyseeds
1 cup water or milk
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup sugar
1/8 t. salt
2 eggs (optional)

1. Combine poppyseeds, liquid, honey, sugar and salt in a saucepan. Cook over medium heat until thick, stirring to prevent scorching. Let cool.

2. Add eggs, beating in thoroughly. If egg thins out filling too much, return to heat and stir while cooking 1 – 2 minutes

3. Combine flour, baking powder and salt in the bowl of a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Add butter and mix briefly. Or, if you are not using a stand-up mixer, add the butter by rubbing it into the flour, using your hands or a pastry cutter. In either case, you should mix until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

4. In a small bowl, beat together sugar, egg, egg white, and orange zest. Add egg mixture to the dough, and use a wooden spoon or beat using stand-up mixer on low speed only until the eggs are incorporated and the mixture begins to mass around the paddle, be careful not to overwork the dough. Press the dough into a ball, divide in half. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate about 30 minutes or until cold but not hard and stiff.

5. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease or cover several baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.

6. Working with one piece of dough at a time, roll out to about 1/4 inch thick between pieces of waxed paper, being careful not to let creases form in the bottom sheet of paper. Turn dough over, peel off bottom sheet of waxed paper and replace it loosely. Turn dough right side up and peel off and discard top sheet of paper. Cut dough into rounds using a 3 inch round cutter. Place a large teaspoonful of filling in the center of each round. Form each round into a pocket by folding over about a third of the edge over the filling. Fold another edge and pinch to form a point, then do the same with the last edge. Repeat until all hats are formed, spacing the cookies about 2 inches apart on the baking sheets. If rounds become too soft to handle, fridge the dough until it is workable again. Gather dough scraps and fridge until firm enough to reroll.

7. Bake for 12 – 14 minutes, or until cookies are just tinged with brown. Keeps up to one week in an airtight container. Yields 30 cookies.
Variations: For prune filling: Combine 2 cups prunes, 1 1/3 cups orange juice, 2/3 cup honey, 1/8 t. cinnamon and the grated zest of half a medium orange in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Boil. Lower the heat slightly and simmer, stirring occasionally for 12 – 15 minutes, or until mixture is soft and most of the liquid is absorbed. Cool.

For apricot filling: Substitute apricots in the above recipe for prune filling.

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Now that we're here a while in this new place, we are thinking about the garden and land around us. The backyard is quite shady but the front yard gets full sun. My dear neighbor and friend suggested we dig up the front lawn and plant a vegetable garden. We're ready. Maybe even offend the rest of the block with raggedy tomato plants right in full display a few feet from the sidewalk.

I pledge, today, on the first day of spring, to do this. And I'm thinking about the gardens I saw all over Liguria where fruit, vegetables, herbs and flowers all mingled quite beautifully in the front yard.  I will plant borage for my ravioli, and true tender Genoese basil for pesto.  To give myself inspiration, I watched this video about edible estates, an organization that says it's attacking the American front lawn.  Count me in.

--Laura

http:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7JgenD4fdw

--LS