Meatless Monday: Deborah Madison's Chickpea and Spinach Soup

Yesterday, I went running on the bike path for the first time since December, when the first huge storm arrived, followed by many, many others. The path was 98% clear, with just a few snowy patches, easily navigated.

Today, it is all covered up again, the snow falling lightly but steadily. Welcome to spring.

The only way I ever get through March is by pretending that it's spring, and occasionally, that works, and most of the time, it doesn't. We were all fooled, this past week, with those temps in the 60s and that especially fat full moon sitting so low in the sky. But this week's forecast is for snow and rain and "unseasonable" chill. There is a fire in my wood stove as I write this and wool socks on my feet.

The upside--it's still soup season. That, at least, is something to be grateful for. As I have mentioned before, I think Deborah Madison is a soup genius, and this soup is an old favorite of mine, temporarily forgotten. I remembered it again because I just bought my very first pressure cooker, and I put it together over the weekend. I've always been scared of pressure cookers--that blowing the house up thing--but I came back from India determined to learn how to make good dal, and everyone I know who makes good dal in India uses a pressure cooker. Deborah Madison herself talks about the excellent texture of the beans she cooks for certain soups, not to mention their speedy cooking.

So, I bought a pressure cooker, and the first (and only, so far) thing I cooked was a pound of chickpeas. My pressure cooker report is this. On the one hand, the soaked beans cooked in 10 minutes, which is amazing. On the other, the knob on top that's supposed to jiggle didn't jiggle, so I was nervous the whole time they were cooking. I think it will take a bit of practice before I can use the pressure cooker without hovering (at a small distance), but I can see its good qualities already.

So, I had a pound of cooked chickpeas, and I saw this recipe for Chickpea Soup with Crisp Croutons up at The Wednesday Chef, and while it looked tempting, it also had meat in it, and rather than take the meat out, I remembered that I had a similar already vegetarian recipe in hand, one I'd enjoyed in the past. Plus, there was the spinach to break up the bland beigeness of pureed garbanzos, and it just so happened that I made it to the Saturday farmer's market with an hour to spare, and the nice young woman who sells fresh spinach (grown in Hadley, even in deep winter!) had some left and I bought a bag.

This soup is very simple--chickpeas, onions, garlic, thyme and oregano, spinach. You use the cooking and/or soaking water as stock, and you puree it partially, leaving some chickpeas whole, for texture. I decided to add some smoked paprika this time and did not regret it. I added it toward the end, but next time, I'll probably saute it with the onions and garlic.

I don't usually recommend monochromatic meals--except for the one entirely pink dinner I made some years ago. (Really--salmon, applesauce and mashed potatoes made from red-red potatoes that turn a lovely shade of pink when cooked and mashed. An odd combination, perhaps, but even if it hadn't tasted good (which it did), it would have been worth it for the fact of an entirely pink meal alone.) And it is true that our dinner last night did end up being a bit on the beige side. Still, when the beige food consists of chickpea soup, 8 grain bread from the Hungry Ghost and butterscotch pudding from a David Lebovitz recipe, it's hard to begrudge the color too much.

Deborah Madison strongly recommends NOT using canned chickpeas for this, and I second that. Even if you don't have a pressure cooker, it just means a bit of advance planning for soaking and cooking the chickpeas. Once they're soft, the rest of the soup comes together pretty quickly. Also, definitely hang on to the extra soaking/cooking liquid. This soup tends to get thick, and it's nice to have something on hand to thin it out with.

So, spring is here and not here. This is our challenge for the rest of March. At least there is soup to warm us as we await what is not here yet but must be soon. Enjoy.

Chickpea and Spinach Soup with Bread Crumbs
Adapted from Vegetarian Soups from Deborah Madison's Kitchen

The Chickpeas:
2 cups dried chickpeas, soaked
1 carrot, peeled
1 head of garlic, sliced crosswise in half
2 bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
Handful of parsley sprigs, tied together with string (You can skip the string, but then you will have to pick limp pieces of soggy parsley out of the stock individually.)

The Soup:
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
4-5 Tablespoons fruity olive oil
2 onions, finely diced
2 teaspoon dried oregano, not Mexican
Good pinch of dried thyme or 1 fresh thyme sprig
3 garlic cloves, minced

1 tsp. smoked paprika (optional)
Big bunch of spinach, stems removed and leaves washed

Juice of 1 lemon, or to taste
1 cup coarse bread crumbs, moistened with 1 tablespoon olive oil (optional)
Good fruity olive oil for garnish

1. Drain and rinse the chickpeas and put them in a pot with the rest of the ingredients and 3 quarts water. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat, cover, and simmer until the chickpeas are tender but hold their shape. They shouldn't get as soft as canned chickpeas. (This can be done a day or two ahead of time.) Season with a teaspoon of salt and set aside. If you're inclined to, pinch the skins off the chickpeas and discard them.

2. Heat the oil in a second soup pot. Add the onions, oregano, thyme, smoked paprika (if using) and a few pinches of salt. Cook over medium-low heat until softened, about 15 minutes, occasionally giving them a stir. Add the garlic toward the end.

3. Using a strainer, lift the cooked chickpeas into the pot with the onions and discard the rest of the aromatics. Strain the liquid and add 6 cups, setting the rest aside for the moment. Add another teaspoon of salt, then cover and simmer for 25 minutes. Puree 2 cups of the chickpeas and return them to the pot. If the soup seems too thick, thin it with any remaining liquid. Taste for salt and season with pepper.

4. Wilt the spinach in a skillet in the water clinging to its leaves, then chop and add to the chickpeas. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, then taste again and add lemon juice to bring up the flavor. Crisp the bread crumbs in the skillet. Ladle the soup into soup plates, scatter bread crumbs over each serving, drizzle with a little additional oil and serve.

Makes about 2 quarts.

Happy Birthday, Elizabeth Bishop!

Today, February 8, 2011, is Elizabeth Bishop's 100th birthday.

I've written before about my love and admiration of Elizabeth Bishop. (Yes, it is true that I once had a crush on her too.) I wrote about her in an essay here and in blog posts here and here.

I'm not sure what the reticent Miss Bishop would have thought of it, but I'm delighted that her birthday is being celebrated with fanfare. In Nova Scotia, her childhood home, there's even a year's worth of centenary events: EB100, the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary. It's been fun to poke around online and find friends and strangers alike celebrating her. You can see Lisa Peet's take at Like Fire (she has good taste in Elizabeth Bishop photos) along with Lloyd Schwartz's up at The Readers Almanac. Dana Gioia, a former student of Bishop's, wrote a long piece in the Wall Street Journal about the two new volumes of her poetry and prose just published by the Library of America in honor of her 100th birthday.

I couldn't decide which poem to post today. I thought about her gorgeous villanelle, "One Art," which I recently saw referred to as the best poem of the 20th century. I thought about her "Sestina," which inspired me to write the very few poems (sestinas, of course) that I've written in my adult life. I thought about "Insomnia," one of the few poems I know by heart (and one hated, apparently, by Marianne Moore who called it a "cheap love poem.") I thought about "Visit to St. Elizabeths", about Ezra Pound, with its rhymes and expanding form.

In the end, I decided on an old favorite, "Arrival at Santos," the first poem in Bishop's book Questions of Travel. I love her descriptions, I love Miss Breen, and I love the fact that she moved an "s" to the beginning of the next stanza to make the rhyme work. Enjoy!

Arrival At Santos

Here is a coast; here is a harbor;
here, after a meager diet of horizon, is some scenery:
impractically shaped and--who knows?--self-pitying mountains,
sad and harsh beneath their frivolous greenery,

with a little church on top of one. And warehouses,
some of them painted a feeble pink, or blue,
and some tall, uncertain palms. Oh, tourist,
is this how this country is going to answer you

and your immodest demands for a different world,
and a better life, and complete comprehension
of both at last, and immediately,
after eighteen days of suspension?

Finish your breakfast. The tender is coming,
a strange and ancient craft, flying a strange and brilliant rag.
So that's the flag. I never saw it before.
I somehow never thought of there being a flag,

but of course there was, all along. And coins, I presume,
and paper money; they remain to be seen.
And gingerly now we climb down the ladder backward,
myself and a fellow passenger named Miss Breen,

descending into the midst of twenty-six freighters
waiting to be loaded with green coffee beans.
Please, boy, do be more careful with that boat hook!
Watch out! Oh! It has caught Miss Breen's

skirt! There! Miss Breen is about seventy,
a retired police lieutenant, six feet tall,
with beautiful bright blue eyes and a kind expression.
Her home, when she is at home, is in Glens Fall

s, New York. There. We are settled.
The customs officials will speak English, we hope,
and leave us our bourbon and cigarettes.
Ports are necessities, like postage stamps, or soap,

but they seldom seem to care what impression they make,
or, like this, only attempt, since it does not matter,
the unassertive colors of soap, or postage stamps--
wasting away like the former, slipping the way the latter

do when we mail the letters we wrote on the boat,
either because the glue here is very inferior
or because of the heat. We leave Santos at once;
we are driving to the interior.

January, 1952

My Parallel Life

I have been in India for more than 3 weeks now, and what I like to say is that for these brief weeks here, I am living my parallel life. It’s as if my life is proceeding along two parallel tracks, like those people movers at the airport, each moving along at the same speed, simultaneously and 10,000 miles apart from each other. Most of the time, I’m in the US, with house and cats and job, with Alex and gardens and friends. But every year or two, when I can, I travel the 10,000 miles to India and it’s as if I’ve stepped sideways onto the other people mover, stepped into my parallel life.

This is true in Delhi, where the streets are familiar to me in some kind of fundamental way. When I lived in Delhi on my Fulbright, I carried a map around with me for months. The day I realized that I’d forgotten my map—and that I didn’t really need it anymore—was a joyful one. That knowledge has stayed with me, mostly. If I were plunked somewhere in north or east Delhi, I might have a problem, but in south and central Delhi, I know my way. I can give directions with confidence. I don't hesitate. Sunil actually called me in Benares to ask me about how to get somewhere on the metro. I told him, of course, but only after a certain amount of gloating.

I stayed for a few nights in Sunil's friend’s apartment in Green Park. The friend was an academic, off to Toronto to teach for a semester. Her apartment was small but comfortable, and the rent was reasonable. “I could live someplace like this,” I found myself thinking. Not that I have any plan to move back to Delhi anytime soon. But it was comforting to know that there might be possibilities, that even though the price of Delhi real estate now trends toward the astronomical (the rent on the much nicer apartment I visited was more than five times that of the first), there are still places in Delhi where I could see myself living, see myself happy.

This sense of a parallel life is even more striking in Benares. It’s been more than 8 years since I lived in Benares, and still I have a social life here. This is, in part, because of the people who live here, who I have known all these years—the family whose house I lived in, Rakesh at Harmony Books and Govindababa the western sadhu, Ramuji. All I need to do, it seems, is show up, and I am sitting in Harmony, drinking chai and chatting, eating lunches and dinners out and in, falling into a fluid group of people, some who come and go and some who stay. I've made new friends this week, and I've reconnected with old ones. This happens whenever I come here, without exception.

I've been having breakfast every morning at the Aum cafe, partly to take advantage of the wireless and partly because they make nice porridge. Because it is a cafe run by a spiritually-oriented American named Shivani, it attracts many people here on some kind of spiritual quest. I've met a number of people who are in India for the first time. When I tell them that I've been coming for 20 years, that I've lived in Varanasi and Delhi and Jaipur, several of them have paused and then said, "Sweet." And, of course, it is sweet. I am so happy not to be in India for the first time. But there is no question that I earned my contentment here. I put the time in, I stuck with it, and this is my reward.

I've also discovered that I'm not actually envious of westerners who have lived here longer than me, or those who basically live here permanently. I'm happy for them, that they've been able to do it, but it's not actually what I want.

Which brings me back to my parallel life, which is a blessing and a curse at the same time. The blessings are obvious. My life is infinitely richer because part of it has been lived in India, because my life here continues. I can't imagine my adult life without it. But the problem with a parallel life is that you can't be on both sides at the same time. Wherever you are, there is always something missing, and there is nothing, really, that you can do to change that.

A Walk along the River

Please note: I'm skipping right over the fact that I haven't posted in months, and I'm just going to jump right back in. So here goes.

Whenever I’m in Varanasi, I walk along the river, from Assi Ghat, where I stay, up to Dassaswamedh Ghat, the Main Ghat near Godolia. When I realized that I’d been in Varanasi for a week and basically hadn’t ventured further than Shivala (maybe halfway to Godolia), I decided that the time had come for my walk.

I’m going to use today’s walk to illustrate what I often tell people at home when they ask what it is that brings me back to India over and over again. Sometimes, if I’m trying to be brief, I say that it is because it’s always interesting, because I never know what I’m going to see. (And, in fact, I wrote an essay about this very thing a few years back.)

That remains true in other places in India, but it is especially true for me in Varanasi. Here are a few of the things I saw in the maybe 4 hours that I was out.

First, there was the man having his picture painted. A small crowd had gathered by the time I got there and remained after I left.

Then, when I got to the main ghat, I heard singing, and it turned out to be coming from this boat. Notice the men with drums and the man with the horn in the back. I’d never actually seen a singing boat like this before. They stayed by the main ghat for quite awhile and then set off into the river.

There was a lot of activity on the main ghat getting ready for the evening’s grand aarti. Platforms (for the priests) were set up, and people were preparing flowers and other offerings for the stands. Right near the ghat, many of the shops sell items related to devotion and puja.

Slightly farther away, though, the wares turn to more worldly goods. I’m contemplating a larger series entitled “Unattractive Underwear Displays.”

I had a late lunch and wandered through Viswanath Gully, which is always part of my routine. No pictures from there, alas.

The walk back down was especially lovely, almost as lovely as the other night’s stroll down the nearly empty ghats after 11 p.m. under the full moon. (If anyone is wondering if this was safe, the answer is, I’m not entirely sure. But I had Rakesh from Harmony Books serving as my gent escort, so I wasn’t worried. Our only threat came from some extremely loud and not-happy-to-see-us dogs who barked at us until we left the road and walked onto the ghat.)

Partway down, I stopped for a cup of chai. It was still and quiet, and I watched the lights on the river. In what was perhaps a first, I turned out to be sitting next to a vendor (of beads and malas) who didn’t ask me if I wanted to buy something. He called me "didi" (sister), which I prefer to “madam,” which I get called most of the time, and said I looked like I was enjoying the shanti (peace). I said I was. He said he would leave me to it, and I said thank you.

I saw these dogs sitting attentively next to the chai wallah. I wondered if they’d developed a taste for tea, but it turned out that when the chai-wallah cleaned out his milk pan, he gave them what was left and that was what they were waiting for. As it happened, I had a packet of biscuits in my bag and while, generally, I don’t approve of giving dogs people biscuits, I figured that with most likely hungry street (well, ghat) dogs, it probably didn’t matter. Where there had originally been 3 dogs—mom, pop and pup—lined up for biscuits, word spread quickly, and soon I had an extended family, including 3 or 4 very earnest puppies, surrounding me. Once the biscuits were gone, they returned to the chai-wallah in the hope that they could have more milk to wash down their cookies.

One thing that didn’t surprise me: I was asked 10 or 12 times on the way up the river, and almost as many on the way down, whether I wanted a boat. One man announced, proudly, “I have boat.” To which I replied, in Hindi, “Well, that is a very good thing for you, but right now, I don’t need a boat.” I think one of his buddies laughed, but I’m not sure he did.

I will be very sad to leave tomorrow.

Bread and Jam, Part II: Not Just for the New Year Round Challah

I've been baking challah for years and years. It may have even been the first bread I learned to bake, but I can't really remember since it's been so long. It's a great first bread to bake, in any case, because the eggs and the oil make the dough easy to work with, and the braided loaf always looks very impressive. Even though these days I'm more likely to make no-knead bread or buy a loaf from the excellent Hungry Ghost bakery in Northampton, I still like to make challah every once in awhile.

Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, is often such a time. Though I am completely and utterly unobservant in terms of any kind of formal religion, I do find myself occasionally partaking in Jewish food traditions (including being incredibly picky about bagels). It also so happened that this year Rosh Hashana was early and just a few days before my birthday. So, it seemed like baking a loaf of round challah to welcome the Jewish new year and my new year both was the right thing to do.

I didn't even have to ponder recipe possibilities--I returned to my standby of many, many years, Racheli's Deluxe Challah from Mollie Katzen's Still Life with Menu. It's not that I haven't tried other challah recipes, but I always find myself returning to Racheli's challah. This time, however, I fiddled a bit. One of the recipes I'd tried a few years ago was the challah from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice, which is a fabulous book. Several of my favorite breads are in here, but I have to admit, I was underwhelmed by the challah. It was richer than Racheli's challah but not any better. Where Peter Reinhart is helpful, though, is that he writes his recipes for instant yeast, which is the kind of yeast that you can mix right in with the flour without proofing. I've been a convert to this method for some years and wanted to use it for the challah.

The other thing about the Katzen recipe is that it makes two "substantial" loaves. And when Mollie Katzen says substantial, she's not kidding. Once, in the year or two after college, I got a letter from my friend Ann, who'd been my cooking partner when we lived in a coop our senior year at Amherst. I'd taught her to bake challah, and this may have been the first time she'd made it on her own. In any case, she sent a note to say that she'd made a challah "as big as a skateboard." I laughed, but I wasn't, actually, surprised.

So, I decided to use Racheli's challah as my base recipe, but reduce the recipe to make one big loaf rather than two and adjust it for instant yeast. All easily done. What was less easily done was figuring out how to make a round and braided loaf of challah, as opposed to just a round or braided one. I'd turned a regular braid into a round one, and I'd made a round one without braids, but I'd never done round and braided at the same time. For instructions, I turned to this website, which has detailed instructions and clear photos. (Given my above-mentioned state of non-religiosity, I do appreciate the irony of using the Chabad website, which I would have absolutely no reason to look at otherwise, for instructions. Still, it does the trick, in this case, and that's what matters.) Even with the clear pictures, though, I'll admit I had to unbraid it approximately 17 times before I had the AHA moment and figured out what to do. Still, what I ended up with was gorgeous. I documented my efforts, but I'd advise looking at the other website's photos for actual instructions.

Somehow, though, the one substantial loaf I made vanished mysteriously after just a few days, and I wondered if I should have stuck to the original recipe in the first place. In any case, whatever shape you make it, this is delicious challah. Delicious dipped in honey for the new year or slathered with peanut butter and homemade peach jam (which I just happened to have a supply of) with a cup of tea in the morning or with cheese on top and dipped into tomato soup at lunchtime. It's also delicious stale, as French toast. All in all, a challah for all seasons. And a belated happy new year to all.

p.s. It disappeared so quickly that by the time I realized that I wanted to take a bread and jam photo, given the title of this post, it was all gone.

p.p.s. I realize the two middle photos look similar. But after you follow the instructions (17 times until they make sense, or just once) and finally have your round braided loaf and it looks like the loaf on the left, you have to flip it over, and then it looks more properly braided, as in the one on the right.

Racheli's Deluxe Challah
Adapted from Mollie Katzen's Still Life with Menu, with help from Peter Reinhart

4- 4 1/2 cups all-purpose or bread flour (Challah traditionally uses all white flour, but I slipped in a cup of white whole wheat instead of 1 cup of all-purpose flour.)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast
2 tablespoons sugar
2 eggs (keep one aside for the egg wash at the end)
2 tbsp. vegetable oil
approx. 1 1/4 cup water
1 cup raisins (optional)
poppy and/or sesame seeds for sprinkling on top

In large bowl (or bowl of standing mixer), combine 4 cups flour, yeast, salt and sugar. In separate bowl, lightly whisk together eggs, vegetable oil and water. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients.

If you have a standing mixer, you can start with the paddle and move to the dough hook once the liquids have been incorporated. Knead with dough hook for 5-8 minutes, adding small amounts of flour if the dough is still sticky. If you're making it without a mixer, stir in the bowl until the dough is too stiff and then turn out onto a floured board and knead for 5-10 minutes until dough is smooth and not sticky.

Oil a clean bowl and the top of the dough. Place the dough in the bowl, cover with clean tea towel and place in a warm and draft free place to rise until doubled , 1.5-2 hours.

Punch down the dough, return to the floured surface and divide into four sections. Let rest for 5 minutes. Knead each quarter for several minutes and then roll into a long rope, about 1.5 inches in diameter. Make the ropes as long as you can manage, at least 12 inches each.

Follow the instructions on this page for turning those 4 ropes of dough into a gorgeous round braided loaf. I did the braiding on a piece of parchment paper, which makes the transfer to a baking sheet easy.

Place the loaf, on its piece of parchment paper (or a Silpat) on a baking sheet. Cover with the tea towel, return to a warm spot and allow it to rise for about 45 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350. When the dough is ready to go into the oven, beat the second egg and brush it over your loaves. Sprinkle with poppy and/or sesame seeds, and bake for 35-45 minutes. The bread will give off a hollow sound when thumped the bottom, when it is done and look gorgeously brown. Remove from the baking sheet and cool on a rack. Enjoy.

The Return of Corduroy Mansions!

Just a quickie here to report that the third installment of Alexander McCall Smith's Corduroy Mansions series--this one titled "A Conspiracy of Friends"--started THIS WEEK! The past two years, I didn't hear about it until it was well underway. This year, though, my plan is to listen to it as a true serial novel, 1 episode a day, 5 days a week until mid-December.

Of course, four episodes have been broadcast already and I haven't listened to any of them yet, but still. At least I only have 4 episodes to catch up on rather than 40.

On the main Corduroy Mansions page on the Telegraph website you can find links to the audio downloads as well as the page links, if you want to read rather than listen. (You can also download the episodes as podcasts on iTunes.) There's also an interview with Alexander McCall Smith and other Corduroy Mansions-related links.

I have to admit, I don't like Corduroy Mansions quite as much as I like the 44 Scotland Street series, if only because there's not a character quite as endearing as Bertie, the bedraggled 6 year old prodigy, nor as odious as Irene, Bertie's overbearing mother (though Oedipus Snark, the awful MP, comes close). Still, I love the idea of a serial novel and I love the idea of little snippets of a story to take me through the fall. And so Corduroy Mansions, book three, here I come.

p.s. I wrote about Corduroy Mansions, book one, in November 2008 and Corduroy Mansions, book two, in November 2009. I have to admit that it is only because I "liked" Corduroy Mansions on Facebook that I am writing about part three in September rather than in November. Facebook does have its uses, I'll admit. (I wouldn't have gotten so many happy birthday messages without it, for one!)

p.p.s. The book version of the first Corduroy Mansions book came out in the U.S. this summer and was reviewed in, among other places, The Washington Post, and on NPR.

Bread and Jam, Part I: Peach Freezer Jam

I should be a person who cans.

It makes sense. I knit, I garden, I bake. I even live in an old farmhouse with a canning cupboard in the basement, out of which I extracted many glass Ball jars (empty, thankfully) when I moved in. Canning should be the obvious next step.

It's not the labor I'm opposed to, or the special equipment. In an ideal world, I can totally envision myself putting up jars and jars of tomato sauce and peaches and jam. The problem, in this less-than-ideal world, is space. As in, I have no space to keep those jars and jars that I might wish to can. My kitchen is somewhat lacking in shelf space as it is. I've tried to make up for this with a set of Ikea shelves, although these now list rather alarmingly to one side, so full of cookbooks and pantry items they are. And that canning cupboard in the basement - - it's blocked by empty boxes and miscellaneous junk. Alas. Someday, in my ideal world--or even maybe in the real one--I will move the junk, toss the boxes and clear out the cupboard. Then, I will buy myself an enormous pot in which to sterilize jars and whatever else I need, and I will learn how to can.

For now, there's the freezer.

Not long ago, I read a blog post titled something like "Five Reasons Why I Don't Have a Second Freezer." And I thought instantly, that I could write a blog post singing the praises of my basement freezer. I'll spare you that. Suffice it to say that buying an upright freezer for my basement was something I was looking forward to well before I moved into this house. And for someone who schleps bagels home from New York and grows multitudes of tomatoes but doesn't like them raw and likes to make ice cream with a rather bulky Kitchen Aid Mixer attachment that needs to stay frozen, a second freezer is a no-brainer. It is also the answer to the canning dilemma.

Each year, in the late summer and early fall, I make vats of tomato sauce to freeze and eat throughout the winter. I freeze ratatouille and soup. A quart of last night's Caldo Verde, made with the bounty of kale from a colleague's garden, is already in the freezer for later. I take the freezer into account with most of my cooking projects. I would not want to do without it.

Still, the one thing that still tempts me about canning is jam. I love the image of those lovely colored jars on the shelves, the jammy goodness restorative in the middle of a New England winter. Somehow, jam in the freezer doesn't have the same appeal. Or, it didn't used to, at least.

I tried my first batch of freezer jam a year ago. That one called for pectin, and I may have over cooked it, as it ended up slightly firmer than I would have liked. I was thinking about giving it another go when I looked in Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, in which I found a recipe for low-sugar jam, meant for either immediate eating or the freezer. Bittman's recipe didn't require pectin--just fruit, sugar and lemon juice. I was intrigued.


I started with peach seconds from the farmers' market. I figured that since I was just going to be mushing them up anyway, they didn't need to be pristine. They wouldn't win any beauty contests, but they didn't have to. Once they'd been blanched and chopped up, they just looked peachy rather than mushy.



I mashed them up with the potato masher, added the sugar and lemon juice and let it bubble and boil, while I puttered around the kitchen doing other things. (You need to be in the vicinity to give the jam a stir every few minutes so it doesn't burn.) Bittman says the jam should take 30 minutes to cook down. Mine took more like an hour, but still. It was an easy hour, and by then, the jam looked jam-like rather than sauce-like. I tried it plain and on toast, with butter and peanut butter, and except for lacking the decorative feel of canned jam, it's serving the purpose admirably.

I've since made a second batch, and while the canning cupboard remains empty, the freezer is filling up. There could be worse ways to begin the fall.

Peach Freezer Jam
Adapted from Mark Bittman, How to Cook Everything

6 cups peaches, blanched and roughly chopped
1 1/2 - 2 cups sugar, more or less
2 tsp. lemon juice

1. Place the fruit in a large saucepan and crush lightly with a fork or potato masher. Add 1 1/2 cups sugar and the lemon juice. Turn heat to medium high.
2. Cook, stirring almost constantly, until the sugar dissolves and the mixture liquefies. Taste, and add more sugar, if necessary. You may want 2 cups or more, total.
3. Turn the heat to low and cook, stirring occasionally, until the fruit has broken down and the mixture is thick, 15 - 30 minutes. Taste and add more sugar or lemon juice if necessary, then cool and refrigerate or freeze.

A few things: I used between 4-5 cups of peaches and scaled the sugar down accordingly. 1 cup of sugar for 4 cups of peaches was more than enough. I didn't want it any sweeter.

Bittman says that 6 cups of peaches makes 3 pints of jam. Even though I used fewer peaches, I didn't have anything close to 3 pints.

Still, even in its limited quantities, the jam is lovely and worth making. I look forward to eating it on my toast in February.