photo by Mr. Erickson from the CAA Flickr pool
“Want to can something before I leave on vacation?” Kim asked.
“Sure, what’s available for canning? Anything?” I replied.
This was in the first couple of weeks of June and it was still cold and and rainy here in Seattle. The past few years, June in Seattle had been so cold that folks had taken to calling it “Juneuary.” This year, folks were calling it “Junetober.” Our group usually likes to can things that we get from a farmer’s market but early in June, the pickings were slim.
“Asparagus?” I asked. I had not pickled asparagus and was intersted in trying it.
“No, I’m kind of hankering to do a jam,” Kim replied.
We chatted for awhile about where we could find good, fairly local, maybe organic strawberries. My neighborhood farmer’s market was the next day and there were rumors that strawberries would finally make an appearance. We agreed to chat the next day after I checked for strawberries. As it turned out, strawberries were there! In fact, many booths had strawberries, but they were all somewhat unripe-looking. I decided to go ahead and get some. I decided to try berries from a new-to-me farm, Hayton Farms from Mt. Vernon. They are an organic berry farm and had just started growing ‘transitional to organic” strawberries.
The variety of strawberry offered by Hayton Farms is the Albion strawberry. Here in Seattle, we have many strawberry connoisseurs. I have observed many heated conversations between strawberry lovers who insist that X or Y variety is The Best. Personally, I just like strawberries that are nicely sweet and juicy. Many varieties can be said to have those two characteristics when ripe, so I’m usually happy with what I get. That said, the Albion has a great reputation and, as it turns out, it does not disappoint. I brought the strawberries home and tasted a few. The were tasty but extremely tart. Not quite ripe. This meant that they would have much more pectin than fully ripe strawberries (underripe fruit has the most pectin), which would make them gel faster but, they would require more sugar to taste appropriately sweet for jam. The farmer’s market was on a Wednesday. I put the berries on my kitchen counter, hoping they would ripen some more before canning day. Luckily for us by Friday the berries had ripened to perfect-for-jam sweetness.
We met at Kim’s house on the beach (really, what is better than canning at a beach house?). We have canned together so many times that we comfortable with each other and there is a nice rhythm to our canning time. We chose a new-to-us recipe from the Goddess of Bakedom, Sarabeth Levine–the owner of Sarabeth’s Kitchen in New York City and the author of Sarabeth’s Bakery. Sarabeth is not only a baker, she is a canner and makes and sells jams at her restaurant.
Since we only had a few pints of strawberries, we decided to halve the recipe. But, we kept the same amount of lemon juice called for in the original recipe. As it turned out, this made a dynamite jam! Sweet enough, but not too sweet, with a lovely tartness that adds brightness to the flavor. We were able to get 5 half pints out of our half flat of strawberries.
Kim left on vacation soon after we made our jam, so I’m guessing she hasn’t opened her jars yet. I haven’t either, but I am dying to. Somehow, it feels like I should wait a few months at least, until strawberries are out of season, don’t you think? What? No? Hm. Maybe we will have strawberry jam on our toast tomorrow morning…
CAA Founding Member Jeanne Sauvage has been canning for twenty years, even though she can’t believe she is of an age to be able to say things like that. She blogs at Art of Gluten-Free Baking and her first book, Gluten-Free Holiday Baking, is due out from Chronicle Books in Fall 2012.
