One of the many awesome things about the place I worked for the summer in Switzerland was the airport right next to my lab building. And one of the many awesome things about that airport is that on the road just after it, there are dozens of wild blackberry bushes that nobody touches. I had so many fresh, sun-ripened blackberries from those bushes this summer, and this is the first of three posts where I’ll explain just some of what I ended up doing with all of them!
This jam was delicious the way I first made it, which was exactly according to the instructions here, but it contained a bit more sugar than I usually like. Next time, I’ll replace a large portion of it with honey or some other natural sweetener, and skip the Splenda recommended in the no-sugar version. For a first attempt at jam, though, this stuff jelled beautifully with no trouble at all, thanks to the pectin we put in, and tasted absolutely marvelous. For any attempt at jam, it was delicious, but especially for a first attempt!
Wild Blackberry Jam
(Recipe from the much, much more thorough article at Pickyourown.org)
1.5 L blackberries, washed under cold water
4.25 cups granulated sugar, divided
1 packet fruit pectin (can be bought at supermarkets)
Clean the canning jars with very hot water or in a dishwasher; if you’ll be storing them on the shelf, use brand-new lids. Set the jars upside down on a rack over a pot of boiling water for about ten minutes to sterilize them.
Rinse your berries clean.
If you’ve got a Foley mill, use it to crush the berries, or if you haven’t, then use a potato masher, upside-down drinking glass, your child’s fists, whatever.
Mix the pectin with 1/4 c of the sugar, and stir that mixture into the berries. Heat over medium to high heat, stirring constantly, until the mix reaches a full, rolling boil.
If you’re planning to store the jam on the shelf, heat the lids right now, in a pan of hot-but-not-boiling water for a few minutes; this softens the gummed surface so it can seal to the jar.
Add the remaining four cups of sugar, bring the mix slowly back to a boil, and boil hard for one minute.
Remove from heat and test for doneness, using a cold metal tablespoon: take a half spoon of the hot mixture, let it cool on the spoon, and if it thickens to the consistency you like, move on to the next step; if not, add more pectin, bring it to a boil for one more minute, and test again. Repeat until the jam reaches the desired consistency.
Fill the jars to 1/4 in. (6 mm) with hot jam, put the lids (and rings?) on; if you’re keeping them in the refrigerator or freezer, you can be done with them right now. If you want to keep them on the shelf, then completely submerge the jars in boiling water for 5 minutes, or longer if you’re at higher altitude. I skipped the last step myself, and am keeping my jam in the fridge.
You’re done! Jam stores for about a year, but tastes weird after 5-6 months, I’ve heard. But I’ve never been able to keep mine around for that long, so, of course, I don’t know. . . enjoy!
Well, it’s getting about time to update this thing. To be completely honest, I was working myself sick and being ultra-productive before Misha got here so that I could spend some guilt-free time with him, and then after he came two weeks ago, we were so busy running around and having fun that I left all of my food photos and recipes to write commentary on and post, batch-style, after he left. He’s now back in Russia, which means that I get to share here some of the wonderful food we made in a small community kitchen in his hotel.
The first food (really, a drink) that sticks out in my mind was conjured up on a bicycle trip we took from Thun to Spiez, another small city on the Thunersee about 15 km from here. The trail went through the woods, and about five minutes after hitting gravel I heard a bicycle peeling out behind me and a happy exclamation of “Smotri! Kostyanika!” (“Look! Stone bramble berries!”) from Misha.
Now, I should tell you the thing about Russians: they go crazy about picking things out of the woods and eating them. Berries, mushrooms, stinging nettles (a recipe I really want to try), you name it. And to me, they all seem to be experts on what’s edible, and what just might contain lethal nerve toxins on certain days of its life cycle but not others.
And I agree with the philosophy: there’s probably nothing cooler than spending time in the woods, collecting things to bring home and then making delicious food out of them. It, like Linux (yeah, got that in there), is free, in both the senses of “free beer” and “free spirit”, and (unlike Linux) it’s a great opportunity to get out of your house and learn about the wonderful local wildlife around you. So I, of course, jumped all over these stone brambles when Misha mentioned them, despite the fact that I’d never seen one in my life, nor did I even know the English term for them (hello, Wikipedia). . . all I knew was that I trusted Misha’s judgment, they tasted okay off of the bush (and didn’t immediately kill me), and had huge pits in them.
When we got home with a liter of them in an inside-out plastic shopping bag (now I know why Russians always carry at least one), we started brainstorming, with the help of this website (in Russian).
Now, I’ll tell you the other thing about Russians: they love their kvas, and rightly so, in my opinion. It’s basically made by fermenting juice or rye bread with yeast for a few days and is served cold. It’s not boozy like beer, but it’s not sweet either. It’s genuinely refreshing when sold in the summer from big yellow barrels on street corners–but it’s doubly refreshing when you make it yourself out of berries you picked with your own hands, and drink it during a tough bike ride in the mountains on a hot summer day in Switzerland. Which, I can only assume, is why Misha immediately suggested making kvas out of our new stone bramble berries.
Here’s how it’s done.
Stone Bramble Berry Kvas
To make it vegan, use some other sweetener instead of the sugar (it’s mainly there for the yeast to eat, so choose something suitable).
4 cups stone bramble berries
1 cup granulated sugar
5-10 grams dry yeast
3 liters water
Take your berries, and crush them using either an inverted drinking glass:
or a Foley mill (why there was a Foley mill in our hotel’s community kitchen, yet not a decent spatula, I’ll never know):
Put the crushed berries and with their stones and pulp in a pan over medium heat, and boil them for five minutes.
Strain them using a cheesecloth (or a washcloth, either way)
in order to remove the seeds
Stir in the sugar, and then cool the mixture completely so it doesn’t kill the yeast. Stir in the yeast, pour into a bottle, and wait for two days. We kept ours on the bottom shelf of a closet, but I guess you could keep it anywhere warm but out of direct sunlight. Don’t close the lid entirely.
After those two days are up, you might see some sediment at the bottom. Pour the liquid into another bottle to avoid drinking the sediment–and then you’re done! Enjoy!
