Q. Can tangerine marmalade be made with Stevia and/or Splenda for people like me who have diabetes?—Deborah

A. You can absolutely make [...]]]> Ask the Goats is a semi-regular Monday feature in which we attempt to answer your questions about growing, making, eating, and preserving food. Got a question for the goats? Drop us a line at dorisandjilly@gmail.com.

Q. Can tangerine marmalade be made with Stevia and/or Splenda for people like me who have diabetes?—Deborah

A. You can absolutely make a fruit spread from Stevia, Splenda, or other sugar substitutes. You can also go sugar free. If you want a consistency that in any way resembles a traditional jam or marmalade, however, you’ll need to add some form of pectin. Sugar is essential to the gelling process, so when you reduce or eliminate it, you have to add some other means of structural support. Although I haven’t had much experience with it myself, many low-sugar canners swear by Pomona’s Pectin. Laura at Squirrel it Away! recently posted an extremely helpful piece about her experiences converting her high-sugar recipes to low-sugar jams with the help of Pomona’s Pectin. (Note, though, that hers still include 1/2 c. of honey, which may be too much for you.)

Depending on what sort of artificial sweetener you’d like to use, you’ll probably need to experiment to locate just the right amount. You should also be aware that some artificial sweeteners (I don’t have enough experience with them to know which ones) produce an off-flavor when heated, so you’ll probably want to add your sweetener at the last possible minute before transferring the marmalade to the jars. For ideas, a good place to start would be Norma McRae’s Canning and Preserving Without Sugar.

Finally, remember that sugar is a preservative. While it’s safe to can reduced-sugar or sugar-free fruit products, be aware that they won’t last as long as traditional jams once you open them. You should plan on eating the contents of your jars within a week or two. If you can’t finish them that quickly, you might want to consider smaller jars.

Good luck, and please report back on your results!

OK: Exquisite might be a bit much. [...]]]>
What ho! Is that a chocolate torte? Why, no! It’s a persimmon pudding, a rare and exquisite dessert rarely seen outside of West Virginia, Kentucky, Southern Indiana, and Southern Illinois. Native persimmons don’t travel well, so you’re unlikely to encounter a persimmon pudding far from where the fruit grows.

OK: Exquisite might be a bit much. But it is my absolute favorite holiday dessert—and if you’re from the Ohio Valley, chances are, it’s yours, too. My story is pretty much the same as everyone else’s. My grandmother made a killer persimmon pudding from trees on her and her neighbors’ property. When she died, I ended up with her persimmon pudding pan, but somehow my pudding never quite turned out right. For several years in a row, I dutifully mixed up persimmon pulp (courtesy of my mother and trees near my folks’ farm), eggs, sugar, and various canned milk products, but instead of persimmon pudding I got persimmon glop. And nasty glop at that.

Enough’s enough, I decided. You can be loyal to a taste memory without being loyal to the recipe. Which is how I ended up at PersimmonPudding.com, a wonderfully earnest site dedicated to—you guessed it—all things persimmon. Never before have I seen almost two dozen persimmon pudding recipes assembled in one place. Most of these are community-cookbook style recipes, heavy on the sugar and evaporated milk. Look carefully at the bottom of the list, though, and you’ll notice an oddity: a recipe from Deborah Madison. Yes, that Deborah Madison, she of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, right there alongside the Indiana Nut Growers’ Association and “relatives of Grandma Bertha.” Who knows what on earth she’s doing there, but it’s a fine recipe with just your basic ingredients: butter, persimmons, sugar, eggs, vanilla, milk, salt, flour, and baking soda (skip the cinnamon).

But just to make it interesting, I tried cooking this in the pressure cooker instead of either the oven, which was fully occupied with a Hanukkah turkey (don’t ask), or on the stove top (Madison’s recommendation, which I had never heard of). I had read somewhere that you could make steamed puddings and custards in the pressure cooker, and was anxious to give it a try. IT WAS BRILLIANT. Steaming a pudding in the pressure cooker solves many problems. Your pudding is guaranteed to cook evenly; you don’t have to worry about oven tetris; and it’s faster and uses less energy than stovetop cooking. I’m trying to convince my mom to try this this year for Christmas, though it will mean that we’ll have a bowl-shaped pudding instead of the round-pan version that’s traditional in our house. Whether she decides to take this route or not, I’m just thrilled that I have finally made a persimmon pudding worth sharing with my friends.

Deborah Madison’s Steamed Persimmon Pudding, adapted for the Pressure Cooker

1/2 cup butter
1 c. native persimmon puree (do not use Asian persimmons—see note)
1 c. sugar
1 egg
1 t. vanilla
1/2 c. milk
1/2 t. salt
1 c. flour
2 t. baking soda

1) First, confirm that you’re working with native persimmon pulp. Chances are, it will be frozen, but it will look something like this:

2) Melt the butter. Take some of it and very generously grease the insides of a pudding mold or bowl. I used a Bundt pan, but any heat-proof bowl that fits inside a pressure cooker will work:

3) Mix the wet ingredients in one bowl and the dry ingredients in another. Gently stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Pour the batter into the bowl or mold.

4) Place a steamer rack inside your pressure cooker, and pour in 2 c. of water. Tightly cover the mold or bowl with foil, and place it on top of the rack, like this:

5) Lock the pressure cooker lid, but don’t apply the pressure regulator. Turn up the heat and let steam escape through the steam vent for 15 minutes. CAREFULLY place the regulator on the vent. If you have an adjustable pressure regulator, use 10 pounds; if not, 15 pounds is fine. Bring to pressure and cook 35 minutes (for 10 pounds) or 15 minutes (15 pounds). When the pressure has dropped of its own accord, remove the lid and foil and test for doneness. A knife inserted in the pudding should come out clean.

6) Invert the pudding onto a serving dish and serve with generous dollops of whipped cream.

A note on ingredients: Don’t fret if you don’t have access to a native persimmon tree. The good folks at persimmonpudding.com have provided a list of markets that sell pulp, including some vendors who do mail order. Some of the recipes at persimmonpudding.com also include adaptations for using Asian persimmons, but I haven’t tried them. If you’ve successfully made one with Asian persimmons, can you please tell us how it turned out?

I usually use Joy of Cooking as a reference for [...]]]>
I have no idea why, but I’ve been on a total pie kick this summer. This is the second strawberry rhubarb pie I’ve made, plus a cherry pie for a picnic. Perhaps I’ll look back fondly on the summer of 2010 as the summer of pie?

I usually use Joy of Cooking as a reference for both flaky pie crust and sugar/filling ratios. I generally cut back a bit on the fat. If I know I’m cooking for omnivores, I’ll throw in maybe a tablespoon or so of rendered bacon fat…but I wouldn’t suggest that for potlucks and picnics, where vegetarian friends might get tricked into eating pork pie. You’ll notice that I have a bit of trouble maintaining the integrity of a pie crust, but my feeling is that one eats a piece of pie for its taste, not its looks. And finally, rest assured that you can make this from fresh or frozen fruit.

I’m curious: how do you store your pies? My family always left theirs out on the table until someone ate it. Usually this would take a couple of days. Presumably one should refrigerate it if you’re planning on having it hang around, but what’s the turning point?

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

For the crust:

2 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1 T sugar
1/3 c. unsalted butter
1/3 c. vegetable shortening OR 1/4 c. vegetable shortening + 1 1/2 T bacon fat
Pinch of salt (omit if using bacon fat)
About 1/3 c. ice-cold water

For the filling:

3 c. fresh strawberries, hulled and halved (see below for frozen)
2 to 3 c. rhubarb, cleaned and cut into 1″ pieces
1/2 to 1 c sugar, depending on your tartness preference
3 T cornstarch

1) Make the dough. Combine the flour, sugar, and salt. Cut in the fat, either using a pastry cutter, two knives, or a food processor. Add in just enough water to make the whole thing stick together. Squeeze it together, wrap it all up in plastic wrap, and refrigerator for at least half an hour. It needs to be good and cold to keep it from melting when you roll out the dough.

2) Preheat the oven to 425°F.

3) Divide the dough into two slightly uneven halves. Roll out the larger half into a circle slightly larger than a 10″ pie plan. Transfer the dough to the pan. Tip: Fold it in half, fold again, to make a little quarter. Put the point in the center of the pie pan and unfold.

4) Combine the filling ingredients and let sit no more than 10 minutes while you make the top crust.

5) Roll out the smaller portion of the dough into a circle large enough to top your pie.

6) Transfer your filling to the pie pan. Carefully cover with the dough for the top crust. If you have miraculously done this without ripping it, you’ll need to add some decorative vents. If you, like me, have created several little rips, use them creatively to begin a vent design. Trim the edges a hair beyond the end of the pan, and so that the bottom layer is slightly outside of the top. Fold over the bottom crust overhang over the top, then seal using your preferred method: crimping with a fork, your fingers, etc. Brush the crust with a little bit of milk and dust with sugar. Transfer the pie pan to a baking sheet (to catch drips) and put on a rack in the bottom third of the oven.

7) Bake for 30 minutes, then turn the heat down to 350°F and bake another 30 minutes. The crust should be golden brown, and delicious strawberry rhubarb goo should be spilling out of the pie.

To make with frozen berries: If using whole, individually quick frozen berries, just substitute them as if they were fresh. If using berries frozen in sugar, you’ll need an entire quart, and you’ll need to drain all but 1/4 c. of the liquid (Keep it! Strawberry syrup!). Add just a bit of sugar—say, 1/4 c.—and be sure to include the cornstarch.

Herewith begins my contribution to the Tigress Can Jam! If you’ve missed it, the canjam is a yearlong canning challenge. Each month, canjammers will be asked to create a water-bath friendly recipe based on a seasonal ingredient. Tigress started us off gently, with citrus. I assumed—rightly as it turns out!—that this would turn into a [...]]]>

Herewith begins my contribution to the Tigress Can Jam! If you’ve missed it, the canjam is a yearlong canning challenge. Each month, canjammers will be asked to create a water-bath friendly recipe based on a seasonal ingredient. Tigress started us off gently, with citrus. I assumed—rightly as it turns out!—that this would turn into a giant marmalade fest, so I was looking for something just a little bit off-center. I found my inspiration in the freezer: a bag of sugared strawberries I put away last May. Technically, I guess that means I’m in violation of the seasonality rule, but given that these were local berries that I picked and stored myself, I hope you’ll agree that it’s in the spirit of the game.

I *love* the way this turned out. I started with a recipe in the Ball Blue Book, but reduced the sugar (I wanted it tarter), added more lemons, kept the peels, and eliminated the pectin…which makes it not really a Blue Book recipe at all. It’s more in the spirit of the tangerine marmalade I made last month, but with lemons and strawberries instead. Now, if you do the Twitter Thing, you’ll know that sugar has recently been a subject of much controversy. I tell you, people: yes, you can reduce the sugar in a marmalade. The safety question in water-bath canning is about acid. Lemons and strawberries have plenty of acid. As both the National Center for Home Food Preservation and the Ball Corporation’s Fresh Preserving Guide make clear, it is not a safety issue to reduce the amount of sugar in fruit preserves. Now, this is not to say that sugar isn’t a preservative—it is, my friends, it is!—but preservation is fundamentally a different question than safety. Sugar preserves taste and helps you get to the gelling point faster. It also prevents mold, which is why jams and preserves that are high in sugar will last longer once you’ve opened them. Sometimes low-sugar preserves aren’t as pretty as high-sugar preserves, and they often have a softer set. Some people, such as the USDA, say that you need to process low-sugar foods longer than high-sugar foods. (But keep in mind that the French don’t process their canned jams at all, and they’re still here.) In this case, though, there’s so much pectin in the lemons that I achieved an excellent set, without pectin and with less sugar than the recipe called for. And since the product is mostly lemons, it’s plenty acidic.

Tweaking canning recipes is a topic that gets plenty of food educators exercised. Those who object are, quite rightly, concerned about your safety. There is a growing consensus among some in the “new” canning community, however, that some of these rules are a tad too rigid. The spirit of the canjam is to improvise within the limits of safety. Part of the challenge of this exercise is to figure out what you can change (spices, fruit combinations, sweeteners) and what you can’t. If you change the recipe, there is, in fact, a chance that something will go wrong. Maybe your jam won’t set. Maybe it will grow mold in 3 months. But you know what? If you see mold, throw it out. Live and learn. And if you’re worried about botulism, don’t, so long as you’re working in a high-acid (i.e., fruit-filled) environment. My personal opinion is that the USDA rules should be taken as a guideline, not as hard and fast rules. Keep in mind that the USDA also recommends that you not eat raw fish or raw eggs, and that meat should be cooked through. Nevertheless, for the record, when you change a recipe, you are doing so at your own risk.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get down to business!

Strawberry Lemon Marmalade

1 qt frozen strawberries, in sugar
4 medium lemons, chopped
3 c. sugar
about 3 c. water

1) Wash your lemons. Slice them as thinly as possible, then chop them into pieces. Put them into your jam pot, cover with water, bring to a boil, and simmer 5 minutes. Turn off the heat and let the pan cool. Put a lid on the pan and walk away. Meanwhile, take your berries out of the freezer.

2) The next day, mash the berries and their juices (I use a potato masher). Toss them into the pot along with the sugar. Bring to a boil. Boil it until you’re just at the gelling point. Be careful: there at the end, it gets quite thick rather quickly, and my last jar is a bit thicker than I might like. There’s *lots* of pectin in the pith.

3) Meanwhile, sterilize 4 or 5 half-pint jars and bring your water bath to a boil. Heat new lids. Transfer the hot jam to the hot jars and adjust the two-piece lids. Process in a boiling-water bath canner for 10 minutes.

My version made 4 half pints and 1 4-oz jar, which I’m giving away! Leave a comment by Monday at 8 AM and I’ll select a winner by random number generator. Happy canning!