Beer Me!

So, I've discovered that you can make jelly out of just about anything - wine, beer, fruit juice, coconut milk, whatever you want - if you have pectin or a pectin source (green apples) and sugar.  This savory, gelatinous spread to the left here is made out of beer.  Yes, BEER.  Adapted from a recipe in the charming tome on jams and jellies, Christine Ferber's Mes Confitures, I made this with Deschutes Brewery Black Butte Porter, cinammon, and cardamom.

Black Butte Porter has chocolate and nutty undertones, which is exactly why I chose it.  I cored, chopped, and cooked 2 pounds of Granny Smith Apples to create a juice for pectin; ran the apples through a sieve to get rid of the skin, then poured the juice/paste over a cheesecloth.  I'm getting much better at this!  Combine apple juice, beer, sugar, cinammon sticks, cardamom, and a little extra pectin for gel insurance, and brew-infused wafts of sweet steam filled my apartment.  The resulting jelly is a nutty, thinly-sweet & spicy mixture that tastes great with peanut butter.  I'm going to try roasting cubes of squash with the Porter Jelly as a sort of marinade, and I do believe this would be great with pork - either on pork chops, pulled pork BBQ, or ribs.  Beer jellies are on my list to keep trying and creating my own recipes.  It's simply delicious!  xo, AB

Mes Confitures Gewurtztraminer Wine Jelly

Heaven on Earth.  Once it is done, and you have exorcised your jam and jelly demons, that is.  For my birthday last month, my beautiful friend Midget gave me a lovely book called Mes Confitures by the renowned pastry chef, Christine Ferber, who is equally well-known for her exquisite jams and jellies.

Stunning

It is a good thing that this jelly turned out stunningly beautiful and absolutely the most interesting and tasty jelly I have ever placed on my tongue because if it hadn't...I may have cried.  But it did and it was.  This recipe popped out to me (and I will be using more of the elegant recipes from Mes Confitures to experiment and learn) because it sounded fresh, crisp, and delicious, just like the apples and white wine required to make it, and because...who can go wrong with some good wine as an ingredient?

The recipe called for 1-3/4 pounds of Granny Smith apples, wine, water, sugar, orange zest, and juice from one lemon.  Sounded easy enough, but after cooking 1-3/4 cups of apples and sifting them through a sieve laced in cheesecloth, I had exactly 1/2 cup of juice and the recipe goes on to say you need 2 cups + 1 ounce of juice to complete the recipe.  I went back to the store twice to get enough apples to create that much juice...3 days later, I make my mixture. 

Apples cooking

Next day, it hadn't set.  In fact, it looked like liquid.  Argh!  I worked too hard to make another syrup, so I popped off the lids, threw them away, re-boiled the mixture with pectin, re-sealed the jars...and voila!  8 perfect half-pints of paradise...okay, second time around it only filled seven 8-oz. jars + one 4-oz jar and I ate the remaining 2 ounces with a spoon like it was Jell-O.  Mmmm....

You know you want some.

In re-hashing my experience with Grandma Irma, she informed me that if I had just left the poor little jars alone that the jelly would likely have set and I wouldn't have wasted my time or my lids or pectin (Granny Smith apples have a very high pectin content).  I chalked it up to a learning experience.  I am no Christine Ferber, and I am surely no Grandma Irma. 

My only suggestions if you undergo this recipe are these:  1)  Buy at least 10-15 Granny Smith Apples.  If you have more than enough, bake a pie with the remaining or eat with hot caramel; and  2)  Buy 2 bottles of wine, not 1, and drink one while you work.  This will keep you calm when things don't go as planned.  xo, A.

One for me, One for you.