Still Loving Pomegranates and Other Rare Fruit - Part II

Nothing is ever simple. In particular, making that pomegranate jelly I talked about in my last post. You might remember (if you don’t, reread Part I) that I was planning to make jelly with my MFP friend the following week. In preparation, I decided to experiment with the pom juice I bought from Strutz Ranch and froze. I found a recipe for Pomegranate-Cranberry Marmalade. Right up my alley because I spent all of October preparing for a public class on marmalades. Not only did this recipe put my pom to good use, but it promised to be the perfect holiday gift with its beautiful color and seasonal fruits. However, the recipe called for one ingredient that was missing from my well-stocked jam tote – apple pectin.

This deserves its own paragraph (page). I know what my ‘fam’ is thinking…don’t get her started on the subject of pectin. You see, since beginning my involvement with the Master Food Preserver program in early 2014, I’ve been on a mission to make artisan jams and jellies and have discovered that the key to understanding the magic of jams and jellies is pectin (and the sugar and acid that activate it). I have read and researched; purchased and used over a dozen different kinds/brands of pectin from high to low sugar pectin (or, if I’m going to get technical here, from high methoxyl to low methoxyl to amidated pectins); and, made my own pectin from crab apples. Still having questions on the subject, I’ve read articles written by food scientists who get into the nitty-gritty of the pectin molecule chain and how it changes when ingredients and conditions are right. Here I go again…I can sense your eyes glazing over. I’ll get to the point.

In the United States, commercial pectin available to the home canner is made from citrus, not apples. However, apple pectin is available throughout Europe. I shared this information during a continuing education lecture I gave the Sacramento MFPs a few weeks ago. One of the members raised her hand and told me that she buys apple pectin from the Sacramento Natural Food Co-op. I excitedly told Verne after the meeting and we drove directly to the Co-op and bought several ounces (it was sold bulk) of their Apple Fiber Pectin. I have to say, the fact the pectin was sold in bulk as well as the word ‘fiber’ caused me some concern. I should have listened to my gut! Several hours of work, $18 of pomegranate juice and the apple pectin, which I’ve read should yield a gel more delicate than citrus pectin, and the texture of our jam was anything but ‘delicate’. It had the texture of fine-grit sandpaper or, in this case, the apple fiber pectin we’d purchased, which apparently is intended to be used as a dietary (fiber) supplement, not a thickening agent for jam. Big Mistake! If I have learned one thing in life (and jamming), it is that you learn much more from mistakes than successes. For now I’m going to stick to the familiar citrus pectin readily available at any well-stocked grocery or hardware store, but I am determined to find a source for apple pectin and begin experimenting with it. 

Back to making the Pom-Cranberry Marmalade…I decided to cut the recipe in half (I wasn’t about to waste another 1-1/2 quarts of pomegranate juice) and use a classic citrus pectin. This turned out to be a very challenging recipe as it mostly relied on the natural pectin in the cranberries and pomegranate juice for gelling, and not the small amount of added commercial pectin. The jam was prepared using the traditional long boil method, which requires testing the gel using one of three methods. I’m challenged here….how much to say before you are bored to tears? Maybe I’ve already crossed that line? I think I’ll stop here and sum it up: the jam has a wonderful taste and color, but is still not perfect. It’s a little “sticky”, which was caused by cooking it to a temperature beyond the gel point and closer to the candy stage. OOPS! I still have more juice in the freezer and will just have to try again.

Besides having fun with pomegranates, I’ve been experimenting with a few other exotic or rare fruits, including quince (a green fruit that looks like a cross between a pear and an apple) that I’ve used to make quince paste, which is served with cheese as an appetizer; Buddha’s Hand (a yellow fruit that looks like nothing I’ve ever seen before, but smells and tastes like lemon and is part of the same family), that to date I’ve only used to zest and add to marmalades, but have bigger plans for it in the future; and, kumquats (a popular Asian citrus fruit that may be added to marmalades, made as a jelly, or cooked in a sweet syrup and candied). I’ll save the results of my experiments for a later post…Other Rare Fruits – Part III.

In Love with Pomegranates - Part I

My first memory of pomegranates goes back to my childhood and my mother’s friend, Ruth Templeton, whose home included a hedge of pomegranate bushes. I vaguely remember a conversation amongst the adults about the fruit being “more trouble than it’s worth.” Apparently, they'd never enjoyed a tall glass of freshly squeezed pomegranate juice… my new fave!

I’ve always thought pomegranates, or “poms” as I now call them, were especially appealing because of their color, both the outer peel and the fleshy seed on the inside. Actually, the fleshy part is called the ariel and the little hard part inside of the ariel is the seed, but I’ll just refer to them as ‘seeds’. The work involved to harvest the seeds has limited my involvement with poms to at most one each year during the fall when they are in season. Sometimes that single pom sits in a bowl with other seasonal fruit until it has shriveled to the point of being unrecognizable; however, occasionally, I’ll go to the trouble of harvesting the seeds to use in a salad, the entire time remembering (and agreeing with) that conversation 50+ years ago.

What’s changed my thinking? Last year my friend Sally told me about making pomegranate jelly years ago. She had a friend with a source of fresh poms, who would pick up the fruit, juice it, and deliver the fresh juice to Sally that same day. Sally would in turn make the jelly and share with her friend. Well, I decided to surprise Sally with pomegranate jelly last year. I purchased a couple of quarts of the juice from Safeway and went home and made a dozen jars of jelly, which I gave to her on our next visit to Santa Barbara. My friend Sally doesn’t hold back…she tasted it and said that it wasn’t as she remembered it. In fact, it really wasn’t very good.

I wasn’t planning to give it a second try, but then poms came into season this past month and one of my MFP friends who has a pomegranate tree in her yard asked me if I’d help her juice the fruit (this was her first harvest from the tree and she’d never juiced a pom – nor had I, for that matter, but I didn’t tell her) and make jelly. When it comes to jams and jellies, it’s rare for me to say no. And I didn’t. We are set to make jelly together next week. Making jelly is the easy part; juicing the fruit had me worried. I searched the internet and kept coming up with the same process: basically, peel the fruit, break apart the large sections with the seeds, place the sections under water and separate the seeds from the membrane. Supposedly, the seeds float and the membranes sink to the bottom. The seeds are then accumulated and pressed to extract the juice. “Pressing” ranged from placing them in a baggy and literally smashing them with a rolling pin to processing them with a food mill (although, people warned that the seeds tend to clog the mill requiring it to be disassembled and cleaned before continuing). Ugh!!! This sounded time consuming and tedious! Fine for harvesting a few seeds for a salad, but not extracting a quart or two of juice.

Before I continue my story, we need to back up a bit. You know how Verne and I love to attend farmers’ markets. A couple of times this past summer we had a new vendor at our market in Pine Grove. Verne knew immediately who he was from his banner, which showed a picture of a pick-up with a sign on it, Strutz Ranch. For several years now we’ve seen the pick-up pictured on the banner parked on Highway 16 advertising produce. It’s no more than a mile from the Davis Ranch, which we patronize almost weekly during the summer and is our favorite of all produce stands. Passing the Strutz sign, we often wondered how anyone could compete with Davis Ranch, but we were never curious enough to follow the sign until a few weeks ago when the “pomegranate” sign went up…

We made the turn off of Highway 16 and within minutes were chatting with Chris Strutz, the owner, and enjoying a sample of his fresh pomegranate juice, which he sells for $12 a quart – what a bargain!!! He showed me the process of extracting the juice using a juicer identical to one we happen to own. We bought several quarts of juice (to use for jelly) and a dozen poms and were on our way home with the ‘key’ to juicing a pomegranate. Wasting no time, we got out our juicer, dusted it off, and pressed our dozen poms (paid $1 each), which yielded a quart of juice. We can now say we’ve done it, but based on the math, I may let Chris juice our poms in the future. I still can’t say I’ve made jelly from fresh pomegranate juice, because we ended up drinking it all before any jelly was made! 

To be continued after I make jelly next week…