Fresh bread, gorgonzola and quince paste

Fall is by far my favorite season and, since the trees here refuse to play dress-up in their crimson, persimmon and gold-colored October wardrobe like a stubborn child refusing to have fun, it’s the one I have to work the most to capture. Autumn comes in from the edges in Southern California. It’s most obvious in the morning—when the light is a little more slanted, illuminating the palm trees and mountains to the east with a pumpkin-tinge—and in the evening, when Orion rises in the sky, the stars on his belt sparkling like Paris Hilton’s bling. It creeps in at the farmers’ markets too, with apples and winter squashes peppering the farmers’ tables along with grapes and figs and dates.

But this year the weather here tells a different story. The summer-like blistering heat marches on like an oppressive regime. So I’m trying to bring the season in from the edges through cooking. Last week I made braised short ribs and slow-cooked chicken. I made sfratti (walnut cookies for the Jewish New Year) and bought a tiny kabocha squash all with the hope that if I ate the foods of fall, somehow I could make it feel more like fall. Mostly it just made my apartment even hotter than it was outside.

Then I found some quince—the yellow-green, lumpy fruit in the apple family with leathery skin like a pomegranate, the astringency of a persimmon when raw and an ethereal, sweet citrus-like flavor when cooked. The fruit has been around for more than 4,000 years in the Mediterranean and Asia, but is just starting to gain popularity here. Only a few farmers grow it, including Mud Creek Ranch in Santa Paula (California), and it’s season is short (late September/early October through December). It tastes delicious poached in vanilla syrup, red wine or honey, or stuffed with spinach—all great symbols of the fall. And because it’s naturally high in pectin, it also lends itself well to jams, jellies and, my favorite, quince paste.

Called membrillo in Spanish, quince paste is customarily served with Manchego cheese, though it contrasts nicely with other salty cheeses like parmigiano or pecorino. Try slathering a pat on fresh bread with gorgonzola, too. Because it keeps well, up to three months in your fridge, it’s easy to make and have ready for unexpected guests, or to serve as a no-fuss appetizer during the rapidly approaching holiday season.

Until I can feel the fall, I’ll be eating quince paste on everything—even if I’m wearing a sundress and the air-conditioning is on all the while.

Quince Paste
adapted from Epicurious

Ingredients
4 medium quinces (about 2 pounds), fully ripe
¼ to ½ cup water
2-3 cups sugar
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice

Directions
Heat oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease a 1-quart terrine.
Clean and dry quinces. Place in a small roasting pan and cover with foil, then bake in the center of the oven until tender. Transfer pan to a rack to cool.

When quinces are cooled enough to handle, peel and core them using a sharp knife.

In a food processor puree quinces with ¼ cup of water until smooth (if mixture is too thick, add a little water at a time, up to another ¼ cup, as needed). Push quince puree through a fine sieve into a liquid cup measure. Note the amount of puree. Transfer to a 3-quart heavy saucepan and add the equivalent amount of sugar and lemon juice.

Cook puree over moderate heat until thickened and begins to pull away from side of pan. If you do not cook the puree long enough it won’t set (though it will still taste good). Pour into terrine and smooth the top with an offset spatula. When paste has reached room temperature, cover with plastic and chill in the refrigerator until set, about 4 hours.

Run knife along sides of terrine and invert onto a platter. Slice and serve. Wrap unused paste in wax paper and then plastic wrap. It should store, refrigerated, up to three months.

Strawberry Preserves with Black Pepper and Balsamic Vinegar

I can’t find my first sentence. Do you know where it went? I had it wrapped around my brain when I rolled out of bed this morning, but staring at the computer now, I can’t remember what it was. I had been dreaming about Top Chef again and Gordon Ramsey was the judge and Nancy Silverton had replaced Padma. We were getting ready to start the Quick Fire Challenge when G-Ram said…what?! Argh!

If you’ve seen enough episodes of Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares you’d know that Gordon tells all his flailing restaurateurs the same thing every time–that the key to success is simple, fresh ingredients prepared well. It’s easy to get seduced by the idea that a complicated dish is the superior one, but like writing, getting rid of the fat usually makes the meat taste better.

To me, Nancy Silverton exemplifies what Gordon Ramsey rails on about. Her entire career has been about elevating the simple: bread, cheese, grilled cheese. Having trouble writing last night, I decided to go visit Nancy and have something to eat over at Osteria Mozza. I only ordered two small dishes, but it was the first that inspired me to come home and write about simplicity. The dish was based on five ingredients: sheep’s milk ricotta, roasted garlic, roasted hazelnuts, fleur de sel and lemon zest. The garlic appeared three ways, as sweet whole cloves mingling with the roasted hazelnuts on the plate, whipped until it was the consistency of creamed honey and spooned onto the dish beneath the ricotta and blended with hazelnuts to create an aillade then spread onto crostini. Its smoky, earthy sweetness was the anchor on the plate, grounding the ethereal texture of the slightly tangy sheep’s milk ricotta. The hazelnuts and crostini were the perfect textural counterpoint adding depth of flavor in addition to crunch. The salt and the lemon zest elevated the whole dish. Nothing was masked, nothing was overwhelmed. Instead, it was like every ingredient had the volume turned up all the way–their dissonance coming together in harmony.

It was an expensive and roundabout way to get me to the simplicity of strawberry preserves, but sometimes you have to stretch the rubberband, you know?

Though it’s only the beginning of April, the strawberries at the farmers market have already been tempting me, beckoning with their ruby clad fingers of perfume. Amazingly, I bought a flat a couple of weeks ago and promptly forgot about them for a week. When I finally remembered, the strawberries were a little soft, but still super-sweet and vibrant. Since their texture was the main thing that suffered, I decided to make strawberry preserves with balsamic and black pepper. Tangy, spicy and sweet, this simple jam is the perfect foil for fresh bread, robiola or braised short ribs. The recipe is the epitome of simple–just five ingredients–and absolutely transcendent.

Strawberry Preserves with Black Pepper and Balsamic Vinegar
from Gourmet, June 1997

2 cups strawberries (about 1 pint), trimmed and quartered
1 ½ cups sugar
3 tbps balsamic vinegar (I like an aceto from Modena)
3 tbsp water
1 tsp cracked black pepper

Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, occasionally skimming the foam off the top. Cook until thickened and translucent. Remove from pan and cool completely. Preserves keep, covered and chilled for one month.

It’s taken me a couple of times to figure out “thickened” means slightly syrupy, which usually takes about 30-40 minutes. Remember that the preserves will thicken when they cool, too. If you want to make a larger batch, I recommend heating some canning jars and processing them for 15 minutes in boiling water after you remove the preserves from the stove. To read more about canning, read my End of Summer post.

Fresh Spiced Fig Jam on Buttermilk Biscuits

It’s easy to get a little detached from the seasons when you live in Los Angeles. Here, we slip, almost seamlessly from warm and sunny summer days into equally warm and sunny autumn days. The only difference tends to be the light, appearing through the window more slanted at first then fading earlier each evening. The farmer’s market overflows with end-of-season strawberries and melons and figs. Lots and lots of figs.

While this ancient fruit is generally available from June through October, it’s the plump, late-season figs, sweet and earthy, that I love best. There are hundreds of varieties of figs like the pale green-skinned Adriatic figs, with their snowy white flesh, the green Turkish Smyrna figs or the harder-to-find Magnolia’s with their tawny skin and pink flesh. Most common, though, here in Los Angeles are the Black Mission figs, brought to California by the Franciscan missionaries (who happened to bring the first winegrapes with them as well). Purply-black skins beautifully contrast bright pink flesh that becomes pale lemon yellow at the edges.

Long the darlings of chefs, figs work equally well in sweet and savory dishes. I love them poached in Port or sliced onto a tart (Mozza’s Fig Crostata reminds me of an adult-styled Fig Newton), roasted with fall spices or as a counterpoint to aged blue cheese and baby greens. They bruise easily and don’t last long, so if you can still find them at your local farmer’s market, rinse and dry them (so they don’t mold) and use them quickly.

Since my boyfriend and I both love figs, I decided to try and extend the season a little longer this year, by making homemade fig jam. Perfect on toast or a fresh, fluffy biscuit, I also thought it would make a great winter glaze for short ribs with black pepper and coriander. I’d never canned anything before and didn’t have a magnetic lid lifter or the special jar tongs like the one’s mentioned on all the canning websites (why are do-it-yourself websites so kitchy, by the way?), in fact, I almost gave up on making jam, since none of the stores in my neighborhood carry small jars. Apparently people in Los Angeles don’t can things. I finally found some sleek, modern Ball jars online with platinum-colored lids. Shipping glass is expensive though, and these jars cost as much to ship as they did to buy. I later found these gorgeous, angular German jars at Sur La Table (apparently they were out-of-stock the day I looked).

It’s important to temper your jars before you start, which also sterilizes them in the process. If you have a dishwasher, run a cycle and leave the jars and lids inside on “dry” until you’re ready to use them. I don’t have a dishwasher, so I submerged the jars in a large lidded roasting pan in hot, but not boiling water until I was ready to fill them.

With jars in-hand I was ready to go. The rest was simple:

Spiced Fig Jam

8 cups fresh figs; stemmed and chopped
6 cups sugar
1 cup water
2 tsp coriander
¾ cup fresh lemon juice

Add the first four ingredients to a large, heavy pot and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally, until the sugar melts. Cook the jam at a gentle boil until very thick, about 45 minutes. Stir often to prevent sticking. You may also want to use a wet pastry brush to wipe down the sides of the pan. When thick, stir in lemon juice another minute. Using a ladle, fill readied jars with jam, wipe down and screw lids on. Place filled, closed jars in a pot of boiling water for 15 minutes, this is also called processing. Remove jars and place on a kitchen towel to cool. Refrigerate when cooled.

Yields about 8, ¼-pint jars.

The jam was delicious. The color of dark, Baltic amber, the white seeds reflecting light. The spicy-orange notes of the coriander added depth to the earthy-sweetness of the figs. I made fresh biscuits the following morning, the perfect Spiced Fig Jam delivery system.