D.I.Y. Delicious: Recipes and Ideas for Simple Food From Scratch (6 page)

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Cut the butter into the dry ingredients with a pastry blender or two knives until the mixture resembles cornmeal.

In a small bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, eggs, and vanilla. Add to the bowl with the dry ingredients and mix with a wooden spoon until smooth.

Gather up the dough into two equal portions. It will be very sticky. Wrap each portion well and flatten into 2-inch-thick disks. Refrigerate for several hours or overnight.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

Working with one portion of dough at a time, roll out the dough to
inch thick. The dough will be sticky, so you’ll need to use plenty of flour to roll it out, but try to use no more than you absolutely need or you may end up with tough cookies. It’s a delicate balancing act. It’s important to work quickly and keep the dough as cold as possible.

Using a 2-inch round cookie or biscuit cutter, cut the dough into circles. Dollop about 1 teaspoon of jam in the center of half of the circles and top with the remaining dough circles. Using your fingers, press down gently around the edges of each cookie to seal, working quickly. If you have special cookie cutters with patterned cutout shapes, you can use these for the top layer of cookie. They produce a pretty little “window” of jam. You can reroll and cut the scraps from your first batch one time, but you should refrigerate the scraps for 10 to 15 minutes first if it’s an especially warm day.

Bake the cookies on an ungreased baking sheet until firm, fragrant, and lightly browned on the bottom, rotating the sheet halfway through for even browning, 8 to 10 minutes.

Transfer the cookies to a cooling rack. Store uneaten cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 1 week. These cookies age well. I think they always taste better 1 to 5 days after I’ve baked them.

Rosemary might sound unusual for jam, but it adds an interesting complexity that goes well with musky figs and citrus. The jam is subtle enough to taste good with toast or crumpets, but adds a twist to savory preparations like
Pulled Pork Canapés
. This is a small batch because figs are so precious. If you have a windfall, this recipe can easily be doubled without adjustments. If you want to make more than double this amount though, it should be made in batches
.

TIME REQUIRED:
45 minutes active; about 1 hour passive

YIELD:
about 24 ounces

1½ pounds fresh Black Mission figs

1 cup sugar

½ teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary

¼ teaspoon finely grated lemon zest (Meyer, if available)

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice (Meyer, if available)

Salt

EQUIPMENT NEEDED

Six 4-ounce jars or three 8-ounce jars with rings and lids

A set of canning tongs (see
Tip
)

A large stockpot with a tea towel or water-bath canner with a rack

Tea sack or cheesecloth

Put a small plate or saucer in the freezer to chill. You will use this to test the jam for the proper consistency.

Stem the figs and cut into eighths and put them in a medium, heavy saucepan. Add the sugar and ¼ cup water. Set aside while you prepare the jars and lids.

Put the jars and canning tongs in a large stockpot. Add water to cover. Slowly bring the water to a boil while you cook the jam. Once it boils, turn off the heat and let the jars sit in the hot water until you are ready to fill them. This step is necessary for sterilizing the jars. Do not touch the jars with your hands once you have sterilized them, but use sterilized tongs.

Put the lids in a small bowl and pour boiling water over them. Let them sit until you are ready to use them.

Put the saucepan with the figs and sugar on the stove. Bring the figs to a simmer over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the sugar dissolves and the figs begin to release their juices. Lower the heat to a very slow simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until the mixture begins to thicken, about 20 minutes. Put the rosemary in a tea sack or in a square of cheesecloth tied into a bundle and add it to the figs. Continue to cook until the jam becomes darker in color and begins to thicken noticeably, 10 to 20 minutes more. To test for the proper thickness (gel point), drop a small spoonful of jam onto the chilled plate. Check it after 30 seconds; it should move slightly when you tilt the plate, but not run. If it runs, you need to cook the jam longer. If it doesn’t budge, your jam might be over-firm. This won’t hurt the jam, but as it ages, it becomes drier and you may need to heat it before using.

Once the jam is cooked, stir in the lemon zest and juice and add a pinch of salt.

With the tongs, remove the hot jars from the water bath, saving the water for processing, and place them, right-side up, on a tea towel. Ladle the hot jam into the hot jars, discarding the rosemary. Leave ¼ inch of headspace. If you see air pockets on the sides of the jars, dip a knife in the boiling water to sterilize and run it along the insides of the jars to eliminate.

Carefully wipe the rims of the jars with a clean damp cloth or paper towel. Place the lids on top and fasten the rings. Now you must process the jam. If you’re using a canner, simply bring the water you used to sterilize the jars to a boil. Place the jars in the rack that comes with the canner and lower them into the boiling water. Process for 5 minutes. If you don’t own a canner, use the large stockpot you used to sterilize the jars. Place a folded tea towel on the bottom of the pot to cover it and bring the water back to a boil. Using tongs, carefully place the jars on top of the tea towel, right-side up so none of the jars touch the bottom of the pot. Process for 5 minutes. Depending on the size of your jars and stockpot, you may have to process in batches.

Remove the jars from the boiling water bath and place them on a clean towel to cool on the counter. After several hours, push down gently on the tops of the lids. The lids shouldn’t move, bounce, or make a popping sound. If they do, they aren’t sealed adequately to prevent spoilage. Refrigerate any jars that failed to seal and consume them first. Properly sealed jars will keep at room temperature for up to 1 year as long as there is no mold or obvious signs of spoilage. You can remove the rings after the jars are sealed and reuse them. Never reuse the lids.

You may have noticed that many older preserving books don’t call for processing jam in a water bath, but just for filling the hot jars with hot jam and then cooling until the jars seal. To be honest, I don’t always process my jams, and have never had any trouble. Since the USDA now recommends it as an extra measure of sterilization, I give processing instructions in the jam recipes here. Please note that I would never take this risk with anything but jam, due to its high sugar and acid content. I always refrigerate any jars that fail to seal, whether they were processed or not, and I always refrigerate after opening.

Here’s an elegant way to repurpose your leftover Mustard and Bourbon-Glazed Pork Roast and it is a fun thing to try with your Fig-Rosemary Jam. Of course, you can use any leftover pork or any other jam you have on hand to make this rather impressive and inexpensive cocktail hors d’oeuvre
.

TIME REQUIRED:
10 to 15 minutes active (excluding bread, pork, and jam preparation)

YIELD:
18 to 20 pieces

About
baguette, or 5 or 6 slices
Half-Wheat Sourdough Bread
or
Sourdough Cornmeal-Pumpkin Seed Bread

About ¼ cup olive oil

1 cup shredded leftover
Mustard and Bourbon-Glazed Pork Roast

About 3 ounces soft, creamy blue cheese, such as Maytag or a locally produced version, at room temperature

4 ounces
Fig-Rosemary Jam
or jam of your choice

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Cut the baguette into ¼-inch slices or cut each slice of homemade bread with a 1-inch biscuit cutter, to make perfect rounds. Arrange the bread slices on a baking sheet in a single layer. Brush with oil. Bake until browned and slightly crisp, about 7 minutes. Let cool slightly.

Put the pork in a small skillet over medium heat. Add a little bit of leftover Mustard and Bourbon Glaze, if available. If not, add a little oil. Toss the pork around in the hot skillet to heat and crisp it slightly. Set aside.

Spread each toasted bread piece with blue cheese. Top with a few shreds of hot, crispy pork, distributing it evenly. Top each canapé with about ¾ teaspoon of jam. Serve immediately.

I like to serve this spiced butter on wheat or rye toast topped with thin slices of Gruyère. Fuyu persimmons are more widely available than the bitter-until-squishy-ripe Hachiyas. This recipe makes a great gift, so you may want to increase the recipe and process it to make it shelf stable. (Follow the chart in a recently published canning book [see
Sources
])
.

TIME REQUIRED:
about 2 hours active

YIELD:
about 1¾ cups

2½ pounds Fuyu persimmons, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks

½ vanilla bean

cup sugar

2 tablespoons maple syrup

Seeds from 1 green cardamom pod, crushed or ground finely

One 2- to 3-inch-long cinnamon stick

2 tablespoons white rum

Zest of 1 lime (about ½ teaspoon)

In a food processor, puree the persimmons until smooth. You will have about 3 cups of pulp. For a smoother texture, put the pulp through a potato ricer or food mill. If you don’t own one of these implements, don’t worry, as the pulp will break down as it cooks.

Put the persimmon pulp in a large, wide, heavy-bottomed pot. Enameled cast iron works well. The wider the pot, the shorter the cooking time. Also, the taller the better, as the pulp will splatter.

Slice the vanilla bean up one side lengthwise, open it up, and scrape the tiny seeds into the pot with the pulp. Add the vanilla bean hull to the pot. Add the sugar, maple syrup, cardamom, and cinnamon. Set the pot over medium-low heat and bring to a simmer, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Adjust the heat so the pulp is just barely bubbling and cook, stirring occasionally and checking often to avoid burning and sticking until the pulp thickens and begins to turn dark, about 1 hour.