Brandied Pears

My aunt Deb picked and delivered a large box of pears from her farm.  We ate some fresh, but soon the pears begged to be preserved before they rotted. My thoughts turned to pear sauce and pear butter, but I have a large store of applesauce already in the pantry and I'm not sure I would enjoy pear butter.  Then I considered, what about brandied pears?  They contain alcohol, which puts them head and shoulders above most canned fruits in my book.

I searched my regular Internet sources and found plenty of recipes but they all required refrigeration.  My fridge is full, thanks.

The gold standard, the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving, has one recipe that sanely recommends pantry storage.  I modified it just a bit by adding a few spices and adjusted quantities for the 8 pounds of pears I had versus the 10 pounds in their recipe.

Peeling, coring and slicing the pears consumed about an hour of time.

Then the pieces bathed in a sugar syrup gently flavored by whole allspice and clove.

The syrup reduced while I filled sterilized jars with hot pears.

Off the heat, I added brandy to the syrup and poured the liquid over the pears.

Fifteen minutes in the water bath canner and the brandied pears are complete!  They are resting in the pantry until I pretty them up for holiday gifts.

Canned Brandied Pears

makes about six pints

adapted from Ball Blue Book of Canning

8 pounds pears (approximately 30 small ones) aged at room temperature until ripe and tasty

1-2 tablespoons lemon juice

4.5 cups sugar

3 cups water

6-10 whole spices like cloves, allspice berries or cinnamon stick, optional

2.5 cups brandy

1. Peel and core pears.  Slice.  Toss with lemon juice to prevent browning.

2. Heat sugar and water in a large stock pot until boiling.  Add spices if you wish.

3. Add pears to sugar syrup and cook at boiling for five minutes.

4. Ladle pears into hot sterilized jars.

5. Meanwhile, continue to boil sugar syrup.

6. Remove syrup from heat.  Discard spices.

7. Add brandy to syrup and stir well.

8. Ladle brandy syrup over pears in jars leaving 1/4 inch headspace.

9. Fit sterilized rings and lids onto jars and place in hot water bath.

10. Boil for 15 minutes.

11.  Remove jars from water bath and allow to cool completely.

12. Remove rings and wash any syrup leaks off rims.  Label the jars and store at room temperature for up to a year.

This post is part of Simple Lives Thursday and Fall Fest.

Brother's Drake Meadery

Mead, the honey wine fit for kings, is no longer a hard to find ancient drink.

Nay, Columbus is home to one of a very few Meadery's in the state, Brother's Drake Meadery. Operating since 2007 in Worthington, Brother's Drake makes a variety of traditional (honey, yeast, and water), melomel (honey, yeast, water + fruit), metheglin (honey, yeast, water + spice), and creative (honey, yeast, water + spice, fruit, or other flavoring agents) meads.

Mead has been made for centuries and is likely the first alcoholic beverage drunk by humans. As honey is a more refined and less available form of sugar, mead was once enjoyed by royalty alone.

The friendly mead makers at Brother's Drake invited a group of local bloggers to their meadery for a lesson in the ancient art of making mead and tasting of their modern interpretations. Amanda Anderson (co-mastermind of Feed Social Media and Wild Goose Creative board member) won a drawing to make a small batch of mead to take home. She demonstrated how simple mead making is: stir together water and honey in a sanitized pot, pour into sanitized carboy, pitch yeast, and attach an airlock.

Woody, chief mead maker, suggests that home mead brewers use EC1118 yeast and a ratio of 3 to 4 pounds honey per gallon of spring water. Let this mix ferment for two months, rack it into a second carboy and allow the secondary fermentation occur for an additional three to four months. Then, the mead is ready for bottling. Aging in the bottle improves flavor further.

After Mead 101, we gathered in the cozy tasting room to try Brother's Drake meads. Many mead ingredients, including all of the honey, is now sourced locally. The current line up of meads were offered alongside several plates of cheeses and crackers from Integration Acres. Rumor has it that Integration Acres and Brother's Drake make be working together again soon to produce an Ohio native pawpaw melomel.

Ever the purist, I enjoyed the tupelo honey traditional 2008 'Southern Belle' Reserve most of all. The oldest mead we tasted, the Southern Belle has a round full body with gentle wildflower flavors. I also liked the dry, fruity Testa Rossa, a raspberry melomel, and herbal Pillow Talk, metheglin.

Alex and I made mead (technically melomel, as we used lemons) nearly ten years ago when we were newly married and living in California. It was good, as I recall, and drunk long ago. We have mead yeast in the fridge and will be applying lessons from Brother's Drake to make another batch soon. In the meantime, we will indulge our royal tastes and sip on a bottle of the newest Brother's Drake variety, Bergamot Blue.

Drink a Drake yourself!

• Visit the meadery and taste samples during open hours listed on their website.
• The site also lists where to buy and taste Brother's Drake meads around Columbus.
• This Wednesday from 6 - 10 pm is the Brother's Drake Fall Release Party at Dirty Frank's Hot Dogs. There will be special mead cocktails on hand and pairings with Dirty Frank's artisanal dogs.

How To Make A Mint Julep

Kentucky Derby coming up...

Forest of mint growing already in the herb bed...

A long day filled with appointments...

Bottle of Eagle Rare bourbon in the cabinet...

This afternoon, all signs pointed to a Mint Julep.  Here's how I make them:

Fill a low ball glass with a quarter cup or more fresh cleaned mint leaves.

Add a teaspoon of turbinado sugar.

Muddle well, then fill the glass with crushed ice.

Top it off with 2 - 4 ounces of high quality bourbon.

Cheers!

Make it Yourself: Fruitcake

Two years ago, my aunt brought fruitcake to our holiday celebration.  I can't say I had ever tried fruitcake before, but this was delicious!  Juicy, rich, alcoholic, and sweetened by real fruit not sugar or fluorescent candied stuff -  what could be wrong?

Last year, I made fruitcake myself.  I split the batter between one large and two small loaf pans.  Because of my unpredictable oven, the smaller ones burned on the bottom.  I was disappointed but planned to enjoy the larger loaf even more.

Sometime in the brandy basting process, the dastardly Food Hound struck again.  That's right, Devie consumed the entire large loaf.  A pound or more of dry fruit, alcohol, butter, all of it.  AGHHH!!!!  I hoped she would die of overeating but it never seems to bother her.

This year I am determined to bake and eat the fruitcake.  This year's attempt is currently aging in an upper cabinet. (Don't you wish you had opposable thumbs now, Devie?!)

I use a slightly modified version of Alton Brown's Free Range Fruitcake recipe, below.    I dare you to make it yourself - no one re-gifts this cake!

Ingredients

• 4 cups dried fruit (Choose your favorites. This year, I used golden raisins, cranberries, apricots, and a berry mix from Trader Joe's.)
• Zest of one lemon, chopped coarsely
• Zest of one orange, chopped coarsely
• 1/4 cup candied ginger, chopped
• 1 cup bourbon (gold rum is traditional and called for in Alton's recipe but bourbon is my favorite)
• 1 cup sugar
• 5 ounces unsalted butter (1 1/4 sticks)
• 1 cup unfiltered apple juice
• 4 whole cloves, ground
• 6 allspice berries, ground (if you are local and want some of these I have plenty to share)
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup toasted walnuts, broken (Alton's recipe calls for pecans)
• Brandy for basting and/or spritzing

Directions

Combine dried fruits, candied ginger and both zests. Add bourbon and macerate overnight.

Place fruit and liquid in a non-reactive pot with the sugar, butter, apple juice and spices. Bring mixture to a boil stirring often, then reduce heat and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes. Remove from heat and cool for at least 15 minutes. (Batter can be completed up to this point, then covered and refrigerated for up to 2 days. Bring to room temperature before completing cake.)

Heat oven to 325 degrees.

Combine dry ingredients and sift into fruit mixture. Quickly bring batter together with a large wooden spoon, then stir in eggs one at a time until completely integrated, then fold in nuts. Spoon into a 10-inch stoneware loaf pan and bake for 50 minutes. Check for doneness by inserting toothpick into the middle of the cake. If it comes out clean, it's done. If not, bake another 10 minutes, and check again.

Remove cake from oven and place on cooling rack or trivet.  Baste or spritz top with brandy and allow to cool completely before turning out from pan.

When cake is completely cooled, seal in plastic wrap or a tight sealing, food safe container.  Store far away from evil dogs.

Every 2 to 3 days, feel the cake and if dry, baste with more brandy. The cake's flavor will enhance considerably over the next two weeks.

Camp Food

This weekend we went to our annual Labor Day Camp with family and friends.  Every year we have a theme night with costumes and related food.  This year our friend Leonard went all out on the theme, Hawaii. I could write about the tiki hut trike, our chant to counter the hellfire and brimstone preaching group across the way, the 25 mile bike tour including a confederate prisoner of war camp, or the bald eagles we saw fly over East Harbor State Park many times.  But since this is largely a gardening and eating blog, I will focus on the food.

We started our drive early Saturday morning.  With some extra pizza dough as inspiration on Friday night, I made a pear and mozzarella pie to take on the road.  I chilled the cooked pie overnight in the fridge.  It was filling, yummy, and easy to eat in the car.

The camp stove saw heavy use in the mornings at camp.  Breakfasts are my favorite because someone else (usually my dad or grandfather) always does the cooking!  Being that I have food and only food on my mind early in the morning, I took no pictures of our actual breakfasts.

It is harvest time here in Ohio, so the food table was laden with seasonal fruits and vegetables.  My grandmother brought some delicious yellow melon pictured below.

Camp lunches for us are simple sandwiches, fruits and veggies, and chips.

For the Hawaiian themed meal, Alex braised a pork shoulder with pineapple and cinnamon.

Other theme dishes included mai tais, beanie weanies with cocktail umbrellas, and a poi substitute: mashed potatoes with a beet adding color.

The next night we had grilled meats, salads, fork mashed guacamole and roasted corn.

Grandma brought her famous gingersnap cookies, my favorite of the snacks.

And there were s'mores, of course.

What do you eat when you are car camping?

Infusing the Harvest

The harvest this time of year is so perfect and precious, it's hard not to eat every morsel of herb, berry, and pepper.  If you can spare a bit of the garden raised, CSA, or farmer's market bounty, consider making some alcohol infusions. Herbs, berries, flowers, and veggies all release their flavors into alcohol.  Making homemade infusions couldn't be simpler and in the middle of winter you will appreciate tasting a little 'summer'.

Here's how I do it:

Pick your poison I prefer infusing into vodka because it has minimal flavor and is uncolored.  Any liquor will do, of course, so feel free to experiment or use what you have available. Top shelf isn't necessary, but swill will not be improved by flavor, so choose something in the middle.  I picked up some Tito's at Weiland's market for the summer infusions this year because then I can say they are 100% made in the USA.

Prepare the infusant (yeah, we made up that word) Wash and dry a handful of prime in-season herbs, fruits, and/or vegetables.  Remove stems and pithy parts.  Add them to a jar or bowl you will not need for a week.  Mascerate with a fork to release juices.

Add infusant to liquor This year I plan to make small batches of about 2 cups vodka to a handful of infusant, but use your best judgment.  So long as all the infusant is covered by liquor you won't risk spoilage.

Wait Close the jar and shake once a day or so.  Taste and add more infusant as needed. Heavy aromatics like peppers or hard herbs need only a few days.  Lighter flavors from berries and soft herbs can stay in the jar a week or more.

Strain Remove the fruit from the liquor.  (If you're a lush like me, turn the vodka soaked juicy fruit bits into a blended drink.)  For perfectly clear infused liquor, strain again through layers of cheese cloth.

Label Anyone who has been preserving for awhile has mystery jars sitting around.  Save yourself the trouble of tasting and guessing!  Label with the ingredient(s) and date.

Enjoy Flavored liquor is great as an aperitif, mixed into a cocktail, or made into a spiked sauce. Flavored vodka in pretty jars make good holiday gifts too.

A note about All American Alcohols

In late 2007 we decided to start a blog about All American Alcohols.  It was our resolution to drink only american made spirits for 2008. The resolution only lasted until April, and the blog petered our in May. You can read the old posts by clicking on the category 'all american alcohols' to the left.

Applicable posts from the old all american alcohols blog are also cross posted in the Spirits category.  You can find a few reviews, some recipes and general info about US made spirits there.  We'll add more as we can, hopefully including a homebrew series sometime in the spring.

Cheers!

Wines traveling by sail boat

The folks at 100 mile diet just posted a story about a new/old trend in Europe to ship wines by sail boat. This is how ancient wines were transported, of course. Some winemakers are reviving the trend to reduce their environmental impact (and shipping costs, presumably) by eliminating petroleum transportation fuel. We say, "Fantastic!" Columbus Ohio isn't likely to be reached by sailboat any time soon, but wind farms are being built here to generate consumer energy.