Crazy for Currants

Of all the currant varieties—red, white, and black—I love the red the best. And I love that the fruit lady sells them for $1.50 an overflowing half-pint.  Since most people don’t want them (thankfully, most people are fools), she practically gives them away. They are always waiting patiently for someone to, please, take them home.  They are like little orphans who are left behind while all the other kids (the raspberries, in this case) get adopted.

The someone who finally takes them is, of course, me, and my charges are eager to please:  bright, shiny, glistening, and bobbing on their slender stems. When I have enough to make a currant pie, a rare old-fashioned treat, that is what I usually do. This time, however, I had only two generous containers—a healthy pint. I still have some pickled currants from last year, but I was clean out of currant jelly. Currant jelly is a necessity. It is ideal for glazing tarts, for adding fruity richness to sauces, and for spreading on an English muffin. Because of the scarcity of the fruit, it is hard to find it commercially anymore, and when you do, it is pricey and never as fresh-tasting as you would like. So it’s a special product to make at home, and to give as a gift to a fellow baker or heirloom fruit aficionado.

Those of you who have been with me for a long time know that when it comes to preserving, I have strong opinions. I do not use pectin. Currants have natural pectin, lots of it, and when your fruit is perfect, you really don’t need it to obtain a gel.  I happen to like my jams and jellies soft, somewhat fluid. Another reason to eschew pectin, especially for things like strawberry jam where you want the berries suspended in a nice gelatinous pool.  I also use less sugar that is conventional, which allows for a more fruit-forward product as well as contributes to the softer texture. And in this particular case, I use a lazy-woman’s method of my own that is a hybrid of the traditional jam and jelly methods. It works.

Spicy Currant Jelly

For a change of pace, I decided to spice it up with cinnamon and my adored Aleppo pepper (really, I need to do an entire post on the stuff); the jelly has a nice hot edge to it.  The directions are general. Makes about 1 pint.

1 generous pint currants, stems removed

1 ¾ c sugar

Wedge (1/4) lemon

3” fresh cinnamon stick

¼ tea Aleppo pepper

In a 2 qt saucepan, mix the currants, sugar, and pepper. Squeeze the lemon wedge and stir in the juice; drop in the squeezed lemon rind and the cinnamon stick. Bring to a boil and cook, stirring occasionally, until the currants have broken down into a mush and the liquid coats a spoon, about 5-10 minutes. Place a double thickness of cheesecloth in a strainer and set it over a bowl. Pour the mixture through the strainer; the liquid will collect in the bowl. Press gently on the currants but do not mash or your jelly will be cloudy. Discard the currants. Pour the liquid, which should be setting nicely, into jars and seal. If you want a little stronger gel, return it to the saucepan and boil until it sheets from a spoon. Do not overcook.

You do not need pectin to get a perfect gel!

Rhode Island Red Fruit: Currants and Raspberries

I stopped by the fruit lady’s this weekend, timing my visit from long experience with the hope of catching, not just the fruit before it was gone, but the farmer herself and her husband. It was nearly the 4^th, which means: time to negotiate the delicate dance of acquiring a share of the sour cherries. Over the years I have come to realize that one reason that this is so tricky is that they want some too. The nerve.
Fortuitously, the fruit lady was driving out in her golf cart from the field just as I got out of my car; when I pulled up, there was no fruit on the stand, and no one in sight, and I had determined to risk offense by venturing out behind the house. This is not always prudent, as, of course, neither am I. So I was glad to see her coming toward me.
We (her husband soon buzzed up on his little tractor) had the first of several conversations (negotiations) about the cherries that would culminate a week or so later in my securing, with great difficulty, two quarts of fruit, about which more next week. For now, there were the currants and the first raspberries, and I thought how early July truly is the time of red fruits in Rhode Island. Hence, the little in-joke of Rhode Island Red Fruits, and Rhode Island Red muffins. Couldn’t resist.
As you know from prior rants, I truly cannot stand the common bakery muffin—cake-like, sugary, huge. The one I offer below is an old-fashioned muffin of the non-mutant, non-cake type. It has a nice balance of crisp outside and tender, crumbly inside—as it should.
Rhode Island Red Muffins
No, not muffins made of chickens, or muffins for chickens—just a little play on words. These are all currants, but you could use half currants and half raspberries; I just happened to eat all of mine. Makes 12-15, depending on your pan.
Topping 1 c bread flour
½ c lt brown sugar, packed
5 T unsalted butter, melted
½ tea cinnamon
Big pinch (about 1/8 tea) baking powder
Small pinch salt
Muffin batter 2 c a-p flour
½ cup RI jonnycake or other white stoneground cornmeal 
4 tea baking powder
½ c sugar
½ tea salt
6 T unsalted butter, melted
¾ c half and half
2 T pure maple syrup
1 lg egg
1 cup, generous, currants or half currants and half raspberries

Preheat oven to 375F. Generously butter a standard muffin tin.
To make the topping

Blend the flour with the cinnamon, baking powder, and salt. Dump in the packed sugar, pour the butter over, and use a fork in a chopping motion to combine the sugar with the flour until the flour the mixture is moistened and crumbly. Set aside.
To make the batter
Stem and pick over the currants and put them in a small bowl.
Mix all dry ingredients in a 2-qt bowl. Remove a large handful of the mixture and add it to the currants, tossing gently with your hand to coat.
Pour the milk into a measuring cup; add the maple syrup and the egg. Beat with a fork til blended. Add to the dry mixture, stirring just long enough to combine, with a wooden spoon. Pour the currants and any excess flour mixture into the batter; fold it in using your hand.
Drop the batter into buttered muffin tin, filling about ¾ full. Sprinkle each muffin with some of the crumb mixture to reach the top. Bake about 18-22 minutes, rotating the pan once, until the tops of the muffins (a little will show through the crumbs) begin to turn golden and the fruit starts to ooze a little; the currants, though, will mostly hold their shape. Remove to a rack; let cool for 5 minutes; then turn out on the rack to cool ‘til warm enough to handle. Break with your hands and serve with butter. If you freeze the extras, be sure to re-warm either in the toaster oven of, if in the microwave, at low power as briefly as possible.

        

Currently Featuring: Currants

    

Nature is full of surprises. Just when you think that all is lost, and there are signs and stories everywhere of devastation and doom, you spot something red as you’re driving up Main Road. Your heart skips a beat. It’s sour cherry time . . . could it be? Trying to be pragmatic and not set yourself up for disappointment, you hypothesize, as you make a U-turn, that it’s raspberries. No; not cherries but not raspberries either. Something better and wholly unexpected: currants. Red ones, white ones—and black ones too. And only $1.50 a pint (that paradox of the generous and stingy, the fruit lady).

Sitting outside thinking about the vagaries of survival, how tough old things like potatoes can be so vulnerable, snuffed out even while in hiding underground, and delicate little transparent jewels like currants can power forth into glory, I saw another little miracle of survival. Out in the field, four wild turkeys, foraging for food. I am not a hunting sort of girl, but I couldn’t help but wonder how they would be to eat. You know, with a little currant sauce. And then I saw some other movement in the grass alongside them, poking out from time to time: little turkeys-to-be. There were two litters (broods? hatchlings?). One, associated with the three turkey hens (don’t ask me why three, but they traveled together), of six little turkettes, the size of baby ducks. I saw them ( I think they are really called poults) first. Then much later, I saw with the turkey that stood apart—and that was lighter in color, probably a turkey version of an ugly duckling—several tiny, tiny chicks, like the ones that they used to sell, rather irresponsibly I now realize, in the 5&10 at Easter when I was a little girl. They could not have been more than a few days old. Born in a downpour, no doubt, yet waddling around quite nicely.

It is reassuring to see life among the ruins, and to see very old-fashioned, near-disappeared fruits like currants outperforming their more modern counterparts. Is it something about these untouched things? My fruit lady’s currant bushes are old—most likely minimally bred for commercially appealing features and mass production. Could that be their secret? Could it be that what is closest to nature is what is best suited to respond to nature’s vicissitudes? I wonder, and the currants make me hopeful. I’ll be watching for the cherries.

This is what you might serve if you shot a wild turkey. Of course, you can always serve this with pork or poultry, or use your currants for a pie or a buckle, or for some nice jelly.

Spiced Pickled Currants

You can use this as is or stir it into another sauce base. It’s also good with cheese. Makes about 3 ½ 8-oz jars.

4 cups currants (I used red and white mixed)
½ cup vinegar
1 cup sugar
1 tea mixed spices to taste: cinnamon, clove, cardamom (of course)
2” piece stick cinnamon (optional)

Stem and rinse the currants. Combine the sugar, vinegar, and spice in a stainless steel or enameled pan; cook at a good boil for a few minutes (3-5) until it reaches a very light gel stage. Take off the heat, add the currants, and toss. Put back on a medium fire. The mixture will thin with the currant juices, and foam up a little like a jam; do not skim. Cook another 3-5 minutes, until it is clear and syrupy. Put into jars and seal.

 

      

Fat’s Chance: If Not Now, When?

There are those of us who never left. Loyal and devoted, we continued to eat our butter and bacon, and to bake with our lard, while others, let’s face it, not only denied themselves but probably harmed themselves by eating hydrogenated oils in the form of cheap margarine. I was fortunate to grow up with a father who refused to have the stuff in the house. He was an engineer who loved new technologies, except when it came to his food: that was taking science too far. So we had two forms of butter on the table, hard salted and soft unsalted, to satisfy our varied preferences when it came to the best way to eat a fresh Kaiser roll or bagel.

Like butter, pork fat has been out of favor for decades except in pockets of New England and the South. I’ve known people to react with disgust when I say that my pie crust or biscuits are made with lard, or that I fry my chicken or chiles rellenos in lard. A friend even once refused a freshly made glazed doughnut because it had been fried in lard. Insane, I know. Needless to say, I generally remain silent on the matter of using goose or duck fat to oven-brown my potatoes.

The tides are turning back, however. We now know (as my father always knew) that margarine is suspect. Butter is better for you than the margarine you grew up on. We know that pure lard is better than Crisco, and better yet than butter. We know that “fat-free” as a way of life may actually be life-threatening. People are talking about fat in a good way again, and we are even starting to celebrate its inimitable fatness. Last year the truly beautiful book, Pork & Sons, exalted all things pig; recently, another attractive paean has been published, called, simply, Fat. It’s subtitle, An Appreciation of A Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes, aims to change the misguided mind on the subject.

This all makes us happy in New England, where salt pork remains a fat of choice for traditional cooking, and lard retains the blue ribbon for the flakiest crust (see photo above left…). There’s nothing like the holidays to get people to digress from their habits—some of them, such as wholesale denial of the pleasures of good eating, irrational if not downright self-destructive. Christmas is fat’s chance; take advantage of it.

LCM Pork Cake

Pork cake is a very old New England favorite. It may look a bit like fruitcake, but it is considerably different and, I think, much better. The recipe lends itself to adjustment according to personal taste or on-hand convenience. You can use glacé fruit in this cake, especially citron or citrus peels, dates or apricots (very good), raisins (traditional), and other kinds of nuts (or none). Some more “modern” recipes contain eggs; mine, like most of the old ones, does not. Adjust spices too, to taste, as long as they are very fresh. Makes one loaf or 3 mini loafs.

½ cup currants
½ cup best-quality dried cherries (not from the supermarket)
2 T muscatel (or sherry or port)

1 lb fat-only salt pork, to obtain 1 cup (see Note)
1 cup boiling water or coffee

½ cup molasses
½ cup dark brown sugar
1 cup sugar

3 cups flour
½ tea baking soda
1 tea ground cinnamon, preferably Vietnamese
½ tea freshly grated nutmeg
½ tea ground cardamom
¼ tea ground allspice
¼ tea ground cloves

Preheat oven to 300 F.

Put the currants and cherries into a small bowl with the muscatel and set aside.

Working carefully with a sharp, thin knife such as a slicer, and holding the salt pork horizontally on a board, remove the skin and discard. For safety, wash your hands and the knife frequently. If the fat is coated with salt, rinse it well and pat dry with paper towels. Put the pork fat into a food processor with the metal blade and process until it is well-ground and beginning to look creamy. Pack well into a 1-cup measure; use some of the leftover to grease a full-size bread pan or 3 mini bread pans, and freeze the rest.

Put the cup of fat into a large bowl and pour the boiling water over it; stir. When it is cool, stir in the molasses and the brown and white sugars. Sift 1 cup of the flour with the spices over the fruit and mix well. Sift the remaining flour and the baking soda into the fat-sugar mixture, then fold in the floured/seasoned fruit. Let it stand for an hour or so if you have the time.

Fill the pan(s) about ¾ full (do not overfill) and bake in the low oven, about 1 hour 15 minutes for the small pans, or 1 ½ hours for the large, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool in the pans on a rack before turning out.

This is delicious as is, but can be iced with a simple butter glaze or buttercream if you like. It keeps, wrapped, very well.

Note: If you cannot find all-fat salt pork, buy a larger amount of regular salt pork and cut off the lean, reserving for another use. You may also be able to find salted fat back, now being made as a kind of substitute for all-fat salt pork, which is disappearing rapidly (traditionally, fatback is unsalted).

                                                               

Currants are Current

The brief season of currants, one of summer’s sparkling gems, is here. Hurry! Like summer, they always come to a seemingly premature end.
Indeed, currants vie with sour cherries for summer’s most ephemeral (and beautiful) fruit. It’s something about  July, it seems, the most poignant of summer months. The best weather, the best food, sun and tastes so intense that, as with all perfect moments, their enjoyment is accompanied by a vague sense of mortal dread: this cannot last. Never am I so keenly aware of life’s brief stroke across the universe than when I am eating July-only fruit outside on a blindingly bright July day. We are enjoying the precious gift of a run of these quintessential summer days as I write, so I am particularly happy, and therefore particularly wistful, right now.
But lest you think I am waxing morbid: To borrow and modify a turn of phrase, eating well is the best revenge. When you eat currants, or sour cherries, or peak corn or tomatoes, you engage directly with the endless mysteries of nature and human experience. Our world, concentrated in a transparent red berry—the wisdom of real food.
And if you are skeptical about the abstract Eastern notion of wisdom as joy, consider the concrete reality of finding them dirt cheap—a bargain found produces its own kind of exhaltation. The fruit lady here sells them for an astonishing $3.00 a pint. She seems not to know, or to care (perhaps she is enlightened?), that ¼ pint, roughly a handful, can run you $6.50 in the supermarket—if you can find them. And she sells not only red but also black and sometimes pinky-white currants. All are wonderful, but I prefer the red. I like their glistening color and their classic currant flavor and balanced sweet-tartness. The slightly less-acid whites are my second choice, and the black last—they do make a fine jelly or sauce, but they don’t have the same clarity and brightness. But of course, if that’s what you can find, buy them.
In last last year’s post on currants and sour cherries I mentioned that currants are high in pectin. This is one of several reasons why it makes superior jelly, but also why it thickens nicely without a lot of added starch. In the following recipe for a member of that venerable genre, the breakfast cake, a single tablespoon of flour combines with butter and the fruit to create just the right texture to go with the cakey topping.
Currant and Cardamom Buckle
Delicious for breakfast or a homey dessert, this combination of buttery cake with tart saucy fruit goes together quickly. Plan to eat this the day you make it—preferably while it is still warm. Serves 6.
1 pint red currants
¼ lb (stick) unsalted butter
1 1/3 plus 1 T flour
2/3 cup plus 1 T sugar
1/3 cup light brown sugar, packed
3 tea baking powder
¼ tea cardamom, or a little more to taste
Big pinch salt
1 cup 2% milk
Preheat the oven to 375 F. While it is preheating, put the butter into an 8” square pan and put it into the oven to melt. Slosh it around every minute or so, and don’t forget about it or it will brown.
Toss the currants with the tablespoon of flour. When the butter has melted, dump the currants into the pan.
Combine all the dry ingredients and then whisk in the milk just until well-combined. The batter will be thick and will foam up a bit. Pour it over the currants; it should cover the currants easily, but you can help it a little with a spatula if needed. Sprinkle the tablespoon of sugar over the top.
Bake for about 35 minutes, until golden and a toothpick in the center comes out clean—plunge it straight down in the middle to make sure. Cool 10 minutes on a rack. Serve in bowls with a little heavy cream poured over.