QUICK TREATMENTS: Assorted Fruit
ASSORTED FRUIT
Trifles from stale croissants, under-ripe fruit and over-ripe berries
“I make a simple syrup* with sugar and water and add spices -maybe a cinnamon stick and anise, and poach that rock hard peach for 15 minutes until it’s soft, sweet and juicy. If I don’t eat it straight away, I use it in a trifle.
*Simple Syrup recipe: 2 parts granulated sugar to 1 part water. Bring water to a boil, add sugar and stir so that the sugar is completely dissolved with no sugar crystals visible, then remove from heat and let cool.
To make the trifle, I take old stale croissants that I’ve bought the previous morning and tear them up, put the pieces in the bottom of a wine glass, and pour the simple syrup over the croissant until it turns into a soft sweet sponge. Then I take the rock hard fruit I’ve cooked in simple syrup (which is now sweet and soft) and spoon that on top. The next layer might be a coulis I’ve made out of over-ripe raspberries or some other fruit that’s just begun to go off. Then I’ll top it all off with a little crème fraiche.” (Chef Richard Fox, Love Food Hate Waste Roadshow)
Fruit reductions into savory/sweet sauces or jams
“True, if the skin of a fruit looks bad or has turned brown you can only compost it. But when you see fruit just beginning to go bad – berries or bananas, for example – you can cook the fruit down with sugar at a simmer, making them into sauces and jams. You can also make fruit chips or fruit leather. (Chef Jacquy Pfeiffer, French Pastry School, Chicago)
Once your Maraschino Cherries are finished, get a bonus recipe out of it: Maraschino Cherry Jelly. (S B Canning on Facebook)
Fruit butter and jams from bland or mealy fruit
“Fruit butter is how I first fell in love with canning as a child. It was so satisfying, cooking something for a really long time. The alchemy that turns soft fruit into apple or pear butter is almost magical to me. I grew up in Wenatchee, Washington, which bills itself as the “Apple Capital of the World”. We’d have boxes of apples piled up around the barn for our horses, and I’d pick through the boxes to find the ones with the fewest bruises. I found out I could make some pretty tasty apple butter with them!
I guess making fruit butters, using sugar and water and apples or pears, was one of my first preserving projects; a very successful experiment. Today instead of water I’ll use apple juice or apple cider if I want more intense apple flavor, or apple cider vinegar if I want it tangier, which is sort of an old-fashioned style of Apple Butter like our grandmas used to make. Apple butter just gets better as you cook it — just be careful not to let it burn.
“Pineapples are one of my favorite fruits to make jams out of. As delicious as they are when they’re fresh, they’re even better when cooked. When they have some brown spots, I cut those out. The pineapple’s natural sugars just intensify so beautifully when cooked. I’m not afraid to use them.” (Brook Hurst Stephens of Learn To Preserve, Washington State)
Cranberry syrup and cranberry relish from dented cranberries
"Cranberries are another one of my other favorite things to cook. As cranberries lose moisture they start to soften a bit and get that dented look. I just put the moisture right back in by adding water and sugar and cooking them. This is how I created a lovelyCranberry Simple Syrup. After straining the syrup I use the remaining cranberry solids to make cranberry relish. In other words, you get double duty out of past peak cranberries!" (Brook Hurst Stephens of Learn To Preserve, Washington State)
Rhubarb pickled and preserved
"I’m always trying to see how many things I can make with rhubarb. You might say I'm a bit obsessed with rhubarb right now. Anyone who attended my recent Rhubarb Love Potluck will probably agree with that statement. Rhubarb is such a gorgeous color. I’ve realized after taking a lot of rhubarb photos that it is also extremely photogenic; it just doesn’t have a bad side! But rhubarb is only available for a short time: mid May through June (4th of July is the cut-off). It’s only about six weeks long on the west coast, so not a long growing season at all.
You want to eat the first stalks of the season – they’re wider than the ones that grow in August, which are not as flavorful. Rhubarb is good for 2-3 weeks, kept in a plastic bag in a crisper. If you’re nearing the end of that third week, use them up in some savory rhubarb dishes. I've mostly made jelly, jam, pickles and bitters out of rhubarb. The star of my recent potluck was my Roasted Rhubarb Ketchup, although I thought everyone's potluck contribution were outstanding. My favorite new jam is Rhubarb-Grapefruit Preserves from Alice Water’s cookbook, Chez Panisse Fruit.” (Brook Hurst Stephens of Learn To Preserve, Washington State)
Drinking vinegars for fruits that need a home
“Whatever fruits you have – whether they are old cranberries or pineapples, mushy apples, mealy pears – you can turn them intodrinking vinegars. My favorite vinegar is Dr. Bragg Apple Cider Vinegar, but distilled white vinegar works fine too and is much more economical. I don’t think there’s an exact science, but basically this is the recipe for making drinking vinegar from fruit:
- Fill a quart jar half full of chopped fruit. Cover with vinegar.
- Place a napkin on top, secure with a rubber band and let ferment on the counter for a week or two. After infusing for a few days, strain out the fruit. What’s left is vinegar with an intense fruit essence.
- Boil the vinegar mixture (about 2-3 cups worth) with 1 cup sugar for a few minutes to make syrup. (It will resemble a kind of old fashioned Victorian shrub: very strong and very sweet.)
Serving suggestion: Use only a couple tablespoons of drinking vinegar over club soda because it’s a concentrate and quite tart!" (Brook Hurst Stephens of Learn To Preserve, Washington State)
Infuse vodka with unlovable fruit
"Another thing I like to do when fruit is becoming unlovable is to use it to infuse vodka. Apricots are particularly wonderful for infused vodka." (Brook Hurst Stephens of Learn To Preserve, Washington State)
Fruit chips and fruit leather from puréed fruit
In a 150-degree oven: You can make fruit leather from pear slices, by completely drying them. Kids love it because the fruit is very chewy. Purée the fruit in a blender, spreading the mixture out on silicon mats on a cookie tray and dry the fruit out slowly in a 150 degree oven for a few days or just 8-10 hours. We are talking about drying, not baking the fruit. If you go too hot, you lose the acidity of the fruit and it becomes a burnt, jammy fruit chip. To test if it’s ready, take one slice out, put it on your counter top, let it completely cool and then see if it snaps. If it snaps, you evaporated too much of the water. If it’s still pliable and chewy, then you’ve made fruit leather!
In a dehydrator: Slice the fruit very thinly with a mandolin and put them in a dehydrator overnight. The next day you will have fruit chips – the same you’d buy in Whole Foods (in mango or strawberry) and the same that show up in cereal! The dehydrator dries out the water in the fruit very slowly. Fruit skins contain a lot of pectin which is healthy for you, so when we make jam here we use the skin – especially for, say, quince." (Chef Jacquy Pfeiffer, French Pastry School, Chicago)
APPLES & PEARS
Fruit compote and fruit butters from softening fruits
“For apples and pears getting soft, I will chunk them up – skin on - and put them in my hot muesli. I also make a pear butter or apple butter that I cook down so that the flavors intensify and it becomes thick enough to spread with a knife. Cook your fruit a shorter time and you have apple sauce! “(Bobbi Marstellar, recipe developer, Chicago)
