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Homemade Gifts: Vinegars, Jellies and Liqueurs |
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Written by Leslie Allen
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Thursday, 12 November 2009 |
My favorite holiday gifts to give and receive are the homemade ones. When I was a little girl, my grandmother taught my brother and me how to make chocolate confections. We packaged our homemade goodies into the abalone shells from our diving trips. These family activities are my most fond holiday memories.
These days I rely on different local resources for holiday gifts. I take advantage of my garden and local seasonal bounties to put up large batches of glass jars filled with jewel-toned jams, marmalades, flavored vinegars, and zippy liqueurs.
Making these gifts requires a little bit of planning. Throughout the farmers’ market season, I buy produce in bulk when it’s at the height of freshness. This year, Fallon farmers had such a bumper crop of organic tomatoes they were selling them by the lug for $1 a pound. One lug is 20 pounds, and I bought several. I froze the tomatoes so I can use them to make tomato-ginger marmalade when citrus is in season (see sidebar for recipe). Citrus is a cool-season fruit available in Auburn and other western Sierra communities.
Mandarins, pummelos, Meyer lemons, blood oranges, tangerines, and kiwi fruit are celebrated during November at the annual Mountain Mandarin festival in Newcastle, Calif. Taking a fall trip to this quaint town will set you up for your entire holiday gift-making operation. Take advantage of the harvest festivals in the Gold Country to load up on produce and browse the antique stores for interesting bottles for homemade treats.
Liqueurs and cordials are strong, sweet, and highly aromatic alcoholic drinks. They do not require any special techniques or kitchen equipment and are usually made with vodka, or a combination of vodka and brandy.
The basic technique is to cut up the fruit and steep it in vodka in glass jars for several weeks in a cool, dark place. Once you’re satisfied with the strength, strain the mixture through a colander. (You can use the fruit for another purpose, such as making gelato.) Now add simple syrup, which is easily made by dissolving sugar in water over medium heat on your stove. Let it cool before you add it to the cordial. If you want a thicker product, add a little glycerin.
My favorite cordial is lemoncello, an Italian aperitif best made at the height of citrus season. Meyer lemons make a refreshing and naturally sweet lemoncello. This year I experimented with making meloncello using Hearts O’ Gold cantaloupes from Fallon.
Flavored vinegars are also made by steeping fruit or herbs in vinegar until it tastes good. Some popular fruit vinegars are raspberry and fig. Herb-infused vinegars are wonderful gifts. You can use your home-grown sage, rosemary, thyme, oregano, and other highly aromatic herbs for infusing vinegars.
Herbs can also be infused into wine or fruit juice to make jellies. Jelly, jams, preserves, and marmalades require specialized equipment but are tasty additions to holiday meals. Your friends will remember you every time they open a jar.
Jellies, jams, preserves, conserves, and marmalades are essentially fruit and herbs cooked with sugar and sometimes pectin for thickening. Jelly is fruit juice or wine cooked with sugar. Jellies are usually clear and hold their firm shape in the jar. Jam is crushed fruit cooked with sugar. Jams are not as firm as jellies and have obvious pieces of fruit in them. Preserves are entire fruits or larger uniform pieces cooked with sugar into slightly gelled syrup. They are not as firm as jam. A conserve is a combination fruit and nuts, raisins, or coconut. Marmalades are soft fruit jellies with pieces of fruit peel suspended in them. They are most often made with citrus fruits.
All of these treats are easy to make but can’t be stored at room temperature unless processed in a water-bath canner. Otherwise, they require refrigeration.
Canning is relatively simple. You follow a recipe to cook your food, place the cooked food into hot sterilized jars, put the jars in boiling water and then, after a certain amount of time, remove the jars from the boiling water. The danger is not following the recipe and getting your ratio of sugar and acid off balance. Sugar and acid are required to prevent harmful bacteria, such as botulism, from growing.
Canning takes glass jars and lids specially made for canning, a canning kettle, jar tongs, and a canning funnel. A magnetic lid lifter, ladle and spatulas make the process much easier. If you are new to canning, the USDA Canning Guide is an excellent resource. It is available at foodsafety.psu.edu/canningguide.html, and provides recipes, tips, and techniques.
Once you have made all of your delectable homemade gifts, you can really express your creativity by making labels or gift baskets. My bottles and jars sport my own “Front Yard Farm” label.
Homemade cordials, vinegars, jellies, and jams are truly gifts from the heart. Giving gifts made with your own hands is intrinsically more valuable than giving the latest “must-have.” When the special people in your life open one of your glass jars or bottles, they will smile with delight from the taste and smile with delight from your care.
Leslie Allen is the commercial horticulture program coordinator for the western area of University of Nevada Cooperative Extension. She is also a locavore and a 2009 Nevada EcoNet Golden Pine Cone award recipient. Her passion for local food and growers and her tireless efforts to promote a local food lifestyle in northern Nevada have been instrumental in highlighting the benefits of eating local food to the community.
✣ Tomato-Ginger Marmalade
• 5 cups or 2 ½ lbs coarsely chopped, peeled tomatoes
• 2 large oranges
• 1 lemon
• 3 tbsp finely chopped, peeled ginger root
• 4 cups granulated sugar
1) Place tomatoes in a very large stainless steel or enamel saucepan. 2) Halve and seed oranges and lemon. 3) Finely chop fruit in food processor or blender and add to tomatoes. 4) Add ginger root to mixture. 5) Bring mixture to a full boil over high heat. 6) Slowly add sugar, stirring until completely dissolved. 7) Return to a boil and boil rapidly until mixture forms a gel, about 1 hour, stirring frequently. Remove from heat. 8) Ladle into hot half-pint jars and process in a water bath canner for 20 minutes.
Makes about 6 cups.
Recipe from The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving by Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard
✣ Lemoncello
• 10 lemons
• 1 (750-ml) bottle vodka
• 3 ½ cups water
• 2 ½ cups sugar
1) Using a vegetable peeler, remove the peel from the lemons in long strips (reserve the lemons for another use). 2) Using a small sharp knife, trim away the white pith from the lemon peels; discard the pith. 3) Place the lemon peels in a 2-quart pitcher. 4) Pour the vodka over the peels and cover with plastic wrap. 5) Steep the lemon peels in the vodka for 4 days at room temperature. 6) Stir the water and sugar in a large saucepan over medium heat until the sugar dissolves, about 5 minutes. 7) Cool completely. 8) Pour the sugar syrup over the vodka mixture. 9) Cover and let stand at room temperature overnight. 10) Strain the lemoncello through a mesh strainer. 11) Discard the peels. 12) Transfer the lemoncello to bottles. 13) Seal the bottles and refrigerate until cold, at least 4 hours and up to 1 month.
Recipe by Giada De Laurentiis of Food Network
✣ Herb-Infused Vinegar
• 2 cups vinegar (white wine, red wine, ice, white, or cider)
• ½ cup fresh herbs (rosemary, sage, tarragon, thyme, basil, parsley, chives, and chive blossoms, mint, dill, oregano) or 2 tbsp dried herbs
1) Bring vinegar to a boil. 2) Crush or bruise fresh herbs. 3) Place herbs in clean jar and pour in vinegar. 4) Cover and steep in a sunny location for 2 weeks or longer. 5) Taste vinegar occasionally and when flavor is satisfactory, strain vinegar and pour into a clean jar with a tight-fitting lid. 6) Add a fresh sprig of herb to the jar, if desired. Store in refrigerator.
Makes 2 cups.
Recipe from The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving by Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard
✣ Wine-Herb Jelly
White wine jellies are nice accompaniments to poultry and pork, red wine jellies pair well with red meats.
• 1 ¾ cups red or white wine
• ¼ cup white or red wine vinegar
• 3 tbsp fresh herb leaves or 1 tbsp dried
• 3 ½ cups granulated sugar
• 1 pouch liquid fruit pectin
1) Combine wine, vinegar, and herbs in a large stainless steel or enamel saucepan. 2) Bring mixture to boil; remove from heat. 3) Cover and allow to steep for 30 minutes. 4) Strain mixture through a lined sieve, discard herbs. 5) Return liquid to saucepan and stir in sugar. 6) Bring to a boil over high heat and boil rapidly for 1 minute, stirring constantly. 7) Remove from heat and stir in pectin. 8) Ladle into hot half-pint jars and process for 20 minutes in a water bath canner.
Makes 4 cups.
Recipe from The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving by Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard
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