Saturday, September 27, 2008

Preserves, Day Two

The preserve of the day: pear port compote. I believe it went pretty well. There isn't actually all that much port in them though. Only a quarter cup compared to about eight cups of other ingredients. Supposedly the compote gets better with age and will be really delicious around next Thanksgiving (not this upcoming Thanksgiving) I will have plenty of other preserves to try in the mean time.

For example the pear ginger marmalade/tar I made yesterday. One of the jars didn't seal which was okay by me because I wanted to try some anyway. What's more I'd just eaten the last of the store bought marmalade I had. Yeah, my marmalade's tar-like in viscosity. This makes me want to try again and see if I can do it properly next time. It does taste good but you really have to pry it out of the jar and your bready vehicle has to be pretty strong to take the force of the spreading. You might not want to have this marmalade on something so delicate as a scone.

I'm developing an x-ray sense with pears now. I've handled and cut open so many I can pretty much tell if they're going to be brown in the middle or not. Here's the simple secret: pears should be firm when they're ripe. If they're a little bit soft throughout they've probably gone too far. I haven't had tons of pear experience in the past. I didn't know.

Tomorrow it's ginger lime pear preserves. I'm going to make all the recipes I've marked in the book then go around again for the ones I want to make over.

I also made it over to my studio today. I went there first in case I got another migraine. No migraine today. If I'm lucky tomorrow I'll have some photos of my new series of plates. It might be more like Monday though.

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