Preserved Fruits & Relish

These fruits preserved in wine syrups are a new kind of condiment to enjoy with main course meats, with a plate of fine cheeses, or on ice cream. Each provides an ambrosial culinary experience with over 20 ingredients that straddle the realms of savory and sweet: fruit vinegars, aromatic herbs & spices, my own flavored syrups, even fine teas.

Serve on the plate like a pickle or chutney, or in a little bowl on the side with a spoon to enjoy the syrup – which is every bit as good as the fruit! Note: fruit fills the jars when raw but shrinks in processing, adding juice to the syrup. With meat, deglaze the pan with some of the syrup and stock for a delicious sauce. Or just spoon a few over good vanilla ice cream - ambrosia!

Read a review at “The Nibble” TheNibble.com

New! Spiced Crab Apples
$15.00
For many generations Spiced Crab Apples were a staple in American homes, especially with holiday fare. Considering their ubiquity 50 years ago, it is stunning how completely they have disappeared. Their mortality is probably a joint result of the death of the family farm with its single fruitful crab apple tree, and subsequent commercial replacements that added a hideous red coloring but had no flavor. They became a joke, then forgotten. But I remembered the good ones my Grandmother made from her tree at the farm, a Whitney crab in the orchard my grandfather planted in 1900.

My farm visits are now mostly in August, with hardly a chance for apple anything. Occasionally I am there late enough and the Duchess of Alba early enough that we can eke out an apple pie or two, one of my mother’s specialties. There are also those tree limbs loaded with crab apples. A few years back I couldn’t bear to see them go to waste and decided I’d pickle them. Out came grandma’s recipe, but I knew I’d have to make them better somehow to withstand the impossible perfection of memory. I did something I often do, took out the water and added fruit juice. I used the finest Italian cider vinegar, then added some favorite spices. They came out so well my mom’s re-made them many times since.

I did some sample cases for the Framer’s Market last year and was surprised at the gratitude of my customers, the ones who remembered. One man tasted them and was reduced to tears; “I haven’t had this since my grandmother died 50 years ago!” One young man was eager to try them—“My dad always told me about these, but I’ve never seen one!” Here is your chance to renew old memories or make new ones. Enjoy year round with cheese or main course meats, pork, ham, turkey. For the novice: you will place them on the side of your plate and pick them up to eat them off the core as you would any apple.

Ingredients: crab apples, apple juice, sugar, cider vinegar, spices. 16 oz., 1 pt.

New! Apple Cranberry Chutney
$12.00
For those of you who mourn the loss of my Cranberry Raspberry Relish, which was ridiculously time consuming and expensive to make, I have a new entry. This product began as a cranberry quince chutney devised by my friends the quince growers. I wanted to visit them when the trees were in bloom and in return for their hospitality offered to help them with a recipe they’d made up using their fruit. It came out so well they insisted I keep it.

When I got home I replaced the quince with apple, since quince season was many months off. I then pondered a secret ingredient that could bring all the flavors together and transport the chutney to another realm. What I decided to use was a candied citrus peel in syrup I’d saved for several years. The Celebes papeda, a native to the Celebes islands of Indonesia, is an odd fruit grown by a collector friend. It can be up to a foot across but has a peel so thick the fruit inside is nearly nonexistent. Although it held little promise for either my syrup or marmalade lines, I couldn’t help but try to preserve it. The scent of that thick skin is heavenly, redolent of jasmine, magnolia and lilac. It was the final piece of the puzzle, and ready for you to enjoy.

Ingredients: apples, cranberries, apple juice, sugar, Meyer lemon juice, candied Celebes papeda, spices. 8 oz.