A Love Affair With Southern Cooking_ Recipes and Recollections - Jean Anderson [241]
2½ medium Rhode Island Greening apples (about ¾ pound), washed and thinly sliced but not peeled or cored
1 cup water
10 cups (2½ quarts) firm-ripe wild blackberries, washed and drained
3 cups sugar (about)
1. Place the apples along with their stems, cores, and seeds in a medium-size, heavy nonreactive kettle. Add the water and bring to a boil over moderately high heat. Adjust the heat so the mixture bubbles gently, cover, and cook for 15 minutes.
2. Add the blackberries and crush well with a potato masher; cover and boil 5 minutes more.
3. Suspend two damp jelly bags over two large heatproof bowls (or line each of two large footed colanders with four thicknesses of cheesecloth and stand in the bowls). Pour half the berry mixture into each jelly bag and let the juice drip through undisturbed. The juice extraction may take an hour or longer, so have patience. If you try to rush things by squeezing the bags, your jelly will be cloudy.
4. Meanwhile, wash and rinse 4 half-pint preserving jars and their closures and submerge in a large kettle of boiling water.
5. Measure the extracted juice carefully; you should have 4 cups. Pour the juice back into the kettle, now rinsed and dried, and for every cup of juice, add ¾ cup of sugar. Insert a candy thermometer.
6. Set over moderately low heat and bring to a boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Adjust the heat so the mixture bubbles gently, then cook uncovered, stirring occasionally, for about 15 minutes or until the mixture reaches the jelling point (218° to 220° F.).
7. When the jelly is done, skim off the froth, then ladle the boiling jelly into the hot jars, filling each to within ¼ inch of the top. Tip: To avoid spills, use a wide-mouth canning funnel. Wipe the jar rims with a damp cloth and screw on the closures.
8. Process the jars for 5 minutes in a boiling water bath (212° F.). Lift from the water bath; complete the seals, if necessary, by tightening the lids, then cool to room temperature.
9. Date and label each jar of jelly, then store on a cool, dark shelf for about a month before serving.
MAYHAW JELLY
MAKES ABOUT 4 HALF-PINTS
My Mississippi friend Jean Todd Freeman and I both worked at The Ladies’ Home Journal in New York and both lived in the West Village. Jean loved to throw dinner parties and it was at one of these that I first encountered mayhaw jelly, a quivery hillock the color of a Pink Perfection camellia. North Carolina, where I grew up, is too cold for mayhaws to flourish—a variety of hawthorne that thrives in swamps farther south, loses a flurry of white blossoms in early spring, then bears tart red “berries” in late April and early May (botanically, mayhaws are closer to apples than to berries). After Jean returned to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, she always brought a jar of mayhaw jelly whenever she flew up to New York to visit. Southern women, she told me, have been making it since Civil War days. This recipe is adapted from one offered by the Georgia Cooperative Extension Service. How do you serve mayhaw jelly? With butter on straight-from-the-oven biscuits or corn bread.
1½ pounds fully ripe mayhaws
½ pound barely ripe mayhaws (these are needed for pectin, which is what makes jelly gel)
4 cups (1 quart) cold water
Sugar (¾ cup for each cup of mayhaw juice)
1. Place all of the mayhaws and the water in a large nonreactive saucepan, set over moderate heat, and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Reduce the heat so the mixture barely bubbles and simmer uncovered, stirring often, for 10 to 15 minutes or until the mayhaws are mushy. Do not boil or overcook the mayhaws because you’ll destroy some of their natural pectin.
2. Mash the mayhaws with a potato masher, then pour them and all of their liquid