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…
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