Jammin' Through the Sieve.

See what I did there?

I put jam through a sieve today.

(terrible pun.)

Because our berry plants don't have any berries this year (perhaps due to the fact that we neglect them), I couldn't complete my yearly berry-jam-making ritual. Okay, not ritual, but tradition. It's only been a two-year tradition, though. Since there are no berries, I decided to make grape jam. Actually, to be more specific and gourmet-sounding, I made organic garden-fresh-but-from-the-wild-part-of-the-garden spherical green grape jam with a hint of mint and lime.

The problem with grape jam is that it looks a bit like pickle juice and I lack the machinery to separate the seeds from the jam/pulp. Therefore, I now have four jars of chunky, perfect textured jam-with-seeds and one jar of thin sifted-jam-without-seeds.

I also realised that I ought to measure everything using metric units because it just makes so much more sense. I did grow up with metric, but I only started cooking a lot when I moved to the U.S., so cooking measurements for me have been the whole cups-tbps-tsp thing instead of grams. Grams are better though, especially since I do have a food scale.

Ingredients for about 1.5 L of jam (5 jars)

12 cups/1560 g green grapes that are spherical and extremely sour (from the grape plant outside)

3 cups/540 g granulated sugar (or more. This one was on the sour side because I like sour jam)

7 mint candies

A few shakes of mint flakes

A spoonful of maltose (just because my mum happened to have some from cooking something; completely optional)

Some lime zest (pectin, optional)

Ingredients for a 300 ml jar of jam

310 g green grapes

110 g granulated sugar, or more, to taste

2 mint candies

Some mint flakes

Some lime zest

Method

1. The night before, stick everything in a pot. I didn't do this, but the osmosis should help reduce cooking time the next day.

2. Turn heat on high and stir. Don't be afraid of scorching any grapes.

3. 20 minutes later, there should be liquid at the bottom of the pot and the grapes should still be sort of hard, but some will be mushy. Keep stirring and wait for the water to boil. The grapes will turn from bright green to... olive-coloured.

4. Turn heat onto medium-low and let it simmer for about 2 hours, stirring every 10 minutes or so. All the grapes should be mushy now! The jam will look ugly. You can check the gooeyness of the jam by dropping some jam onto a plate, letting it cool, and seeing if it is the consistency you want. You can also adjust the sweetness at any point in the 2 hours.

5. If you really want to, sift jam into jar. I tried to do this for the first jar, but it didn't work because I don't have a sieve that everything except the seeds flow through. I also wanted the grape skins (basically, everything except for the seeds). I suppose this is the negative side of making grape jam with non-GMO grapes.

6. Wait for jar of jam to cool, then stick it in the fridge. I know you're supposed to do stuff with the jars with the water bath in order to sterilise the jars, but since we're sticking the jam in a fridge and consuming the jams (yeah... all 5 jars...) within a few months, I don't think that this is necessary. In addition, there is a lot of acid in this specific batch of jam. The grapes were really sour.

So now I know why you don't see green grape jam at the grocery store. It doesn't look that appetising. Seriously, though, this jam is way better than the store-bought flavourless and textureless jam!!

Dolmades

We have a grape plant in the backyard near the garage, and there are a lot of leaves on it during the summer, obviously. I happened to be browsing recipes online (yet again), and I came across the idea of dolmades - stuffed grape leaves. Food trucks around Philadelphia seem to serve these a lot, too. I figured I should make some dolma/dolmades because I have free grape leaves!!! None of those preserved leaves in a jar! These are fresh, smell grapey, and taste a bit sour/fibrous/grapey. I wonder why I never thought about making these before, or making zong[4]zi[3] (粽子) with grape leaves...

Since there are many variations of dolma (the Egyptian one interests me more just because I like Egypt, I guess), and I don't have any relatives who make dolmades from some family heirloom recipe, I know this isn't "authentic". Plus, I've never eaten stuffed grape leaves before, so I don't really know what I'm supposed to be comparing my version to. According to Wikipedia, possible ingredients include rice, pine nuts, cow, eggplant, raisins, and parsley/dill/mint. I sort of just used what we had at home. I also wasn't sure what online recipe would be good, but I ended up loosely following this one. By "loosely", I mean the way the rice stay in the grape leaves - quite loosely. Hah.

Ingredients for about... 38 dolmades (There are fewer than 38 pictured above because the rice either leaked out of the grape leaves for the bottom-of-the-stack dolmades)

Most ingredients are optional. Add what you want.

A. Flavouring

4 sprigs of fresh dill

A few leaves of fresh basil

Parsley flakes

Mint flakes

Liberal amount of coriander powder

Pinches of salt and pepper

75% of a lemon's juice

B. ~4 cups of Stuffing

2.5 cups white rice

0.5 cups Arborio rice (actually, whatever rice you want; 3 cups rice total)

0.75 cups pine nuts (boiled pine nuts are delicious!!!!)

A few tbsp chopped dried fruit

30% of a medium-sized onion

1.25 cups of ground turkey (for the rest of the family.)

1 cup of artichokes in oil

C. Misc

40+ grape leaves, and some to line the saucepan

25% of a lemon (possibly unnecessary)

0.25 cups of oil (possibly unnecessary)

A lot of water

Method

1. Mix all ingredients except turkey in Group A and B together in a big bowl. If you like turkey, you can put it in now, but if you're cooking for a vegetarian (a.k.a. me), you should add the turkey after using half the stuffing.

2. Put one tablespoon of stuffing onto a grape leaf.

3. Roll

4. Put into saucepan along circumference.

5. Stick in 25% of the lemon (possibly unnecessary) and however much oil you want, and also pour in a lot of water until all dolmades are covered.

6. Put a ceramic plate on top of the dolmades to weigh them down, cover pan, and boil water on high heat.

7. Simmer on LOW for about an hour.

Whoo!!!

Note: Unfortunately, the bottom layer of dolmades ended up quite overcooked, while the top two/three layers ended up perfectly chewy and gooey. To avoid having the grape leaves break and the rice and pine nuts floating around (well, the rice sinks, but the pine nuts float in the water/oil mixture since they're less dense due to the high fat content), I will use a smaller saucepan next time and just make two batches of two-layers instead of one batch of four-layers. This will:

1. Use less than half the amount of oil/water I used today

2. Require less heat energy because I will be reusing the water/oil, which would already be about 97 degrees C instead of 25 degrees C

3. Cook all the dolmades evenly.

4. Possibly require less than 1 hr of simmering.

Yummy!!

This Is Unfair.

College life is taking over so I don't actually have time to blog or enjoy food anymore. I don't actually spend more than half an hour eating food. In other words, I don't actually eat slow anymore. Now... it's just PRESSED FOR TIME. I don't even think I finished blogging about NSO. I guess I'll do that now...

So, there was a toga party at the History Museum on the 6th. I didn't like it. The food was nice though, especially the crispbread thingy with bean dip. After the toga party, at which I walked around gloomily, I met some people from my dorm house and we went to two frat houses... it was such a experience. I'm not sure whether I like it, so the only way I'd describe it is as an "experience". This blog post is so dry. Like the cookie I ate today. I idiotically fell for the cookie trap [again! 4th time, I think!!] and tried the chocolate fudge cookie, that I have posted about, many times before, as being too dry and hard.

Mind lapse, I guess.

Plating. I see through plating. Those are just grapes. I don't actually think that I like plating.

A mound of whipped cream and a few strawberry slices with cakey crumbs.

Really oily vegetables. Eh.

I actually have a dilemma. Do I want to write for PennAppetit? Is that overkill, since I already have a blog? Maybe they should include my blog on their website. However, joining them means I get told what to do. Which isn't that cool since puns are probably not going to be accepted. I'm also in other clubs too...

It's on the table, like the orange and pear and apple in my room. :)

Maybe I'll take photos for them.