Putting Food By - Janet Greene [200]
Mint Sauce
In ½-pint jars
Plan to make this in July or August, when mint is tender and before it’s gone to blossom. It’s the real thing, and worth doing plenty of. Proportions are the key: how much you make at a crack depends upon how much fresh, good mint you have. PFB’s favorite is apple mint, tender leaves well washed and dried off in a salad spinner:
2 parts fresh, washed, well-packed-down mint leaves
3 parts distilled white vinegar
1½ parts sugar
Pinch of salt
¼ teaspoon crystalline citric acid
Chop mint fine in a food processor with steel blade in place, or in a blender: use enough white vinegar to help the process, but do not purée (you want tiny bits of leaf); set aside. Bring to a boil in a stainless steel or enameled pot the sugar and vinegar—you should have about 2+ parts of vinegar remaining, to go with the 1½ parts of sugar. When the mixture has boiled hard for 3 minutes, add finely chopped mint, salt, and citric acid. Bring again to boil, pour immediately into clean, hot ½-pint jars, leaving ¼ inch of headroom; cap. Process gently at 190 F/88 C for 10 minutes. Remove jars; let cool upright and naturally.
Specialty Vinegars
When nasturtium and chive blossoms come in—somewhere between July and mid-August, depending on your area—take time to make these wonderful, bright-tasting vinegars. You may change the proportions and the ingredients as you go along. Use wide-mouth jars, or cadge 1-gallon wide-mouth jars from your friends at the neighborhood diner.
Nasturtium Vinegar: Use distilled white vinegar, and for every 2 quarts of vinegar, use 1 cup firmly packed nasturtium blossoms that have been swished in salted water to get rid of bugs. Rinse in fresh water and dry in a salad spinner, then pack blossoms down hard in a measuring cup. Add ½ teaspoon salt, perhaps 2 shallots (garlic and onion are too strong for the delicacy of the blossoms), and a 2-inch strip of orange zest. Shake all together, put plastic wrap over the mouth, and screw on the top, and forget it for at least one month.
Then strain out the blossoms, and to clarify the vinegar (mostly of pollen) pour vinegar piecemeal through a coffee filter. This makes a charmer of a present packaged in small bottles. The color of this finished vinegar is a lovely jewel-like red-orange.
Chive Vinegar: Follow the same direction for chive blossoms as for nasturtium blossoms. Omit shallots and any herbs; add more orange zest, or try lemon zest. This vinegar will be a lovely pinkish lavender with the faintest aroma of chive.
Finale
Finally PFB offers a Steamed Holiday Pudding—a put-by Christmas treat that is truly top-of-the-line, the pièce de résistance for children and elders, or as a hostess gift, or, most especially, as the grand finale for any holiday gathering.
Directions for Steaming the Pudding
In a pressure cooker or Pressure Canner put 1½ or 2½ quarts of water, respectively. Put in the covered mold, which need not be weighted or propped since it has so little water to float in; put on the lid of the pressure cooker/canner and tighten—but do not stop the vent with a deadweight gauge or other closure. Allow the canner to vent steam strongly for 20 minutes, then close the vent with the relevant weight, and process at 10 pounds for 50 minutes.
At a small dinner, use two 2-cup molds, well greased, filled no more than ⅔ full (or slightly less, to make equal puddings). Following general procedure above, vent for 15 minutes and process at 10 pounds for 25 minutes.
For individual puddings in a pressure cooker or canner this recipe yields 6 to 8 small molds or 3 to 4 larger ones that maybe halved and served cut-side down, with spirits flaming and toppings. For small molds, such as tapered ½-pint canning jars, with lids on firmly (or No. 1 cans, covered with heavy-duty foil held in place with wire twisted tight) and in a pressure cooker: vent 10 minutes, process at 10 pounds for 20 minutes. For slightly larger molds like a tapered peanut-butter jar or wide-mouth pint canning jar, in