Concord Grapes - One of Autumn's Sweetest Gifts

Last week, in my post on foraging, I promised to write more about making Concord grape jam with grapes that are ready to be harvested this time of year. Concord grape jam has such intense flavor and fragrance - there is nothing else like it! While we are picking the grapes, the aromas wafting from the vines and even down the road are strikingly vivid.

 Looking up under the wild vines, you see the grapes hanging down, plump and fragrant.

 The baskets we use for picking the grapes happen to be made out of grapevines, themselves, which somehow adds to the fun of it!

Grapes don't have much pectin in them, but (as with all fruits) the less ripe ones have more pectin than ripe ones. So I always try to combine some under-ripe berries with the riper ones. I also happen to like that they make the jam just a bit tart - not overly sweet.






The first step in making jam is to pick through the grapes, discarding any that are past their prime. They can be very ripe, but you don't want anything that is brown or moldy or smells "off". Then I rinse them in a strainer, under cold water. (Technically, if you are using organic produce you picked yourself, washing shouldn't be necessary, but I always do anyway.) Only wash the grapes right before you use them. You don't want them to become waterlogged.

Making any jam is all about proportions and cooking time. For Concord grape jam, the proportions are easy: 5 lbs. (2 1/3 kg) grapes to 5 cups (1 1/4 liters) of sugar. I measure my grapes on a digital scale, after I've picked through them and removed the stems, but before rinsing them.

This year, I made two different batches of grape jam, one incorporating the pulverized skins and one with the skins discarded after they had cooked. The batch with the skins produced a thicker jam, but no difference in flavor. The following pictures are of the former process:

If you do incorporate the skins, you must first separate the skin from the meat of each grape. This is surprisingly easy, as these grapes are of the slip-skin variety. Just a squeeze and the grape pops open...the inner grape will actually shoot across the kitchen if you're not careful where you aim! (Don't let your kids catch onto this fun little fact!) This part does take a while, which is why some people prefer to skip the skin separating stage.

 You end up with little Pac-Man shaped skins!
(You can always spot someone who likes to prowl around in the woods, by the scratches on their arms!)

Then, before cooking the grapes, pulverize the skins in a food processor, with a small portion of the sugar, before adding them to the pan with the grape meats and the rest of the sugar. I also add a generous splash of lemon juice. This helps activate the natural pectin in the grape skins. As happens so often, once I got into making the jam, I completely forgot to take pictures. However (luckily) Jessie, the author of one of my favorite food blogs, The Hungry Mouse, posted a superb description of this process, including her own great photos. Also included is this video submitted by one of Jessie's readers:

One thing I do a little differently, is to add some additional liquid fruit pectin to the pot, if needed (and I find it usually is). I add it sparingly, as I don't like my jams to be stiff. As I said above, cooking time is an essential part of making any jam. If you don't want to use pectin (although there is no reason not to, as it is completely natural) then you need to simmer your jam for longer, to reduce the amount of liquid in it, thereby thickening it. The main reason I add pectin is that I find the grape flavor is fresher when not cooked so long. I hate to smell so much of the flavor goodness going up in steam!

If you decide to go the easier route and just use the grapes whole in the jam pot, then you want to crush them with a potato masher. In either case, I strain the jam through a finer sieve than shown in the video, because, while the seeds may seem huge in your mouth, they are still small enough to pass through the holes of many colanders. They are quite bitter, if bitten into, so I like to keep them out of my finished product.

The finished jam has an incredible perfume to it, evoking for me, a combination of sweet red wine and jasmine flowers in full bloom - very heady.

I always end up making a lot of jam (and many different kinds), so I do process my filled jars in a boiling water bath, just to insure that the airtight seals will last a long time. Here's what we still have, after giving away quite a few jars:

Just divine!

Okay, so now I'm dating myself, but who remembers begging their mom to buy Welch's grape jelly in the Flintstone glasses? I always find it shocking when I discover something from my youth available at antique sales! LOL

Bon appetit!

Joie de Vivre in Autumn - Foraging!

I don't know about you, but I am one who always gets a little bit depressed over the end of summer. It goes back to my childhood, when every Labor Day meant the end of our glorious summer vacation on Cape Cod, and a return to school (even though I liked school) and Minnesota (even though I liked those winters, too). Then after I had kids of my own, the fall always meant the end of my time with them over the summer months. Yes, I was one of those moms who mourned the start of school and cried when my kids went back each September. (Although believe me, I got used to my "freedom" pretty quickly, too!)

So it goes...plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. I am still the same, wishing that summer could last a month longer, that the pool water would stay close to 80F for a few more weeks, and that the vegetable garden would continue producing at its prodigious summer rate.

But then, after a few weeks of autumn, I always mellow into appreciating it for all its glories.  

Autumn is a time of different bounties, just waiting to be discovered and appreciated.

The cooler weather and shorter days herald a season of foraging in the wild for foods that you can't get the rest of the year, such as divine, earthy mushrooms, and tangy, sweet Concord grapes, to name just two we have been getting this week. Foraging is one of the French joies de vivre that I adore, and one which most Americans don't often think of. There is much more available in the wild than most people think, and it's not difficult to find what used to be secret locations, since you can generally find what you're looking for (or even simply what to look for) on the internet.

I have posted before about Chez Panisse and other restaurants who are taking advantage of the "eat local and in season" mantra by incorporating foraged local foodstuffs into their menus. Nothing tastes better than freshly picked produce, and part of the joy is in picking it oneself, immersing oneself in the environment in which the food grows. Another great thing about foraging for food in the wild is that you are getting organic. Away from main roads and public ways, there is little chance of pesticides and herbicides reaching your quarry.

Jack and I began last week by picking Concord grapes on Monday, right down the road from our house. We got a huge haul, and I've already made jam, which I will write about in a separate post, including the recipe.

Then on Tuesday, we were heading up to Provincetown to visit some of the galleries there (playing hooky at our own gallery), when we passed an older man and woman walking along the roadside with full baskets. As we looked at them, we both turned to each other and exclaimed in unison, "MUSHROOMS!" Jack did an about face and another U-turn, so that we could come up alongside the couple, and offered them a ride, since they looked tired and it was beginning to drizzle.

As it turned out, they were the nicest couple, who had emigrated here from Russia a few years ago, and had gotten a love of foraging for mushrooms instilled in them as children in the USSR. They drive to the Cape every fall to get several varieties of mushrooms - as do numerous other emigres of Russian, Polish and other Eastern European roots. This couple was lost and tired and so grateful for a ride in our car. By the time we got to where their car was parked, and met up with their two friends (also Russian) we were on our way to becoming great buddies. We told them that we loved fresh mushrooms, and that we would like to find some of our own. This surprised them, as they generally think Americans are uninterested in such outings, but they kindly led us into the woods to search for mushrooms, and even gave us some of their own prize finds, to help us identify which ones are edible. By the time we said goodbye, we were all laughing and hugging, having exchanged email addresses. Hopefully we will see them again in Autumns to come!

Jack and I ended up going back to those and other woods a couple more times last week, and coming home with some real beauties, which we cooked and have had for dinner every night since. I will say, we did our research looking up pictures of edible mushrooms online, before actually cooking them. 

Autumn is also such a great season for picnics!

...And I love the different colors of mosses and lichens that have grown over the summer:

...And the low-lying shadows of the fall months.

 After the first day, we brought knives and baskets with us.

Some of our takings: we found four different kinds of edible mushrooms, including the absolutely delicious boletus edulis and its cousin, boletus bicolor. 

The boletus is known in French as cepe and in Italian as porcini. Both names can be found in American grocery stores and some farmers markets. Here is an interesting story about the cepe de Bordeaux.

We were hoping that the grey coral-like thing in this photo would be edible, but could not find any pictures of it online, so we tossed it (in the trash - NOT the compost heap where it could have spread poison to all of our gardens!) I will do another post on preparing these wild mushrooms, including recipes.

I can think of few things more satisfying than picking our own foods in the wild, coming home and preparing them to be eaten and enjoyed within hours of the hunt. As we sit down to dinner, the memory of those glorious woodsy, musky odors from walking around in the cool, damp under forest are still as fresh as the feast we are about to enjoy!

WARNING - If you do get your own mushrooms, always check to make sure that the variety you pick is indeed edible.

Some mushrooms are not just poisonous, they are deadly!!

I found this great picture online:

The caption says "All mushrooms are edible, some of them, only one time."

A good mushroom hunter's mantra: When in doubt, throw it out!