Canning

I have been in the kitchen experimenting since I was old enough to sit upright on the kitchen table, but only now I've begun to document. My first attempt began last autumn when I felt compelled to photograph the beautiful bounty I was about to can. Only now am I breaking the first seals, so I thought it relevant to make an entry. This experience was also my first in canning. It was a frenzied experience canning so many things at once, each with their own cooking times and requirements for balancing ph. Most people who can, do so because they are harvesting more tomatoes than they can eat, for example. I on the other hand, was working on a set for theater and decided that the kitchen necessitated some home-canned goods. To try to simulate a cupboard's collection in one day is totally nuts. Improper canning can cause the development unfriendly bacteria's, so I did my best to follow recipes accurately. This was quite a balancing act preparing all ingredients to be ready at just the right time for their entry into can and into boiling water. Each recipe of course required different times in the water ranging from 10-25 minutes. This proved beneficial as I could create the less cooked items as the longer ones processed, but 5 minutes before the next round was not always enough time to finish a series of recipes. The tricky part is that the recipes cannot be entirely finished in advance and left aside to cool as they must be hot upon entry into the jar and I did not want my vegetables to go soggy in reheating. Next time I'll just undercook everything and bring it up to heat at the last minute. That might help to avoid the rather uncomfortable burns I got all over my arms. Miraculously despite the pandemonium I gained confidence and began to riff on recipes, finally producing my own inventions. Today I opened a cross between a pickle and conserva- delicata squash with sage leaves, garlic, apple cider vinegar, honey and olive oil. The other day I opened my long slender deep purple beets, which are still firm and absolutely delicious. Their own sweet, earthy flavor and the brine they absorbed make them a perfect addition to a gin martini. The color slowly seeps out over time. I also pickled crownes specifically for cocktails. My batch was inspired by two incredible martinis. 1) a fennel/fennel pollen martini at the Hayword Gallery in London and 2) New York City's Blue Hill Restaurant dirty martini, which used crownes in lieu of olives due to their seasonal availability. I had never seen these maggot looking little roots before but low and behold the following week they were available at the farmers market. I paired them with whole cilantro root and shaved fennel bulb in a tincture of salts, sugars, spices and white vinegar.

I also found the most beautiful slightly purple tomatillos at the market and so I made a tangy salsa, though I would have been just as happy to let the fruits in their delicate papery husks sit on my kitchen table as eye-candy. Im also a huge fan of physalis, commonly known as ground cherries; these artfully packaged gems have a tart pineapple/tomato flavor. My canned cognac pears are worth mentioning as well because they involved little effort and are so decadent. Their reduced syrup make an excellent addition to rye and whisky cocktails. Less successful was a green olive pickle for muffelata sandwiches. The neon green romenesco was a fractal masterpiece, and the multicolored carrots and sweet peppers were just as marvelous. Unfortunately the colors were lost in the processing and I felt the vegetables were a bit too soft so next time i'll only blanch them briefly and add more peperoncini to amp up the capsium quality.