Teaching An Old Dog New Bread Tricks

I've been making bread for 40 years, but it wasn't until this month that I dared to venture into sourdough territory.

Wow! Am I ever glad I did.

Here is a photo of a couple of ficelles I made this morning:

A ficelle is a skinny baguette. These are about 2 inches across. It's my favourite format for sandwiches. Ham and swiss cheese with sweet butter and dijon mustard. Or prosciutto or serrano ham with or without swiss cheese, and sweet butter, hold the mustard. Salami, when I can find a good one.

The Recipe?

Last week, I made a sourdough starter using this recipe:

Then I made a couple of loaves of "Norwich Sourdough Bread" using this recipe from the Wild Yeast Blog.

I halved the recipe, but otherwise I followed it to the letter and - what a surprise! - this was the best bread I have ever made! I should say "the best non-multigrain bread", because as a daily bread I am extremely fond of the multigrain sandwich loaves that I have been making for several years now. Once a month, I bake four of them and freeze them. Each loaf lasts me one week.

This Norwich Sourdough Bread has all the qualities I was looking for: it's not so wet that you can't handle it, it bakes up light, with some nice holes,

Cross-section of ficelle I made today.

the crust is crunchy but not too thick, and the aroma… ah the aroma! And the flavour… just sour enough… divine!

Another advantage of this recipe is that if you have some sourdough starter ready to use, you can start the bread in the morning and eat it for lunch - about six hours later. I have found very few breads able to develop that kind of flavour and texture without a cold fermentation, but this one did.

Still, sometimes I want to start my bread in the evening, and so yesterday I did all the steps up to and including the two folds, then I slipped the bowl into a plastic bag and put it in the fridge.

This morning, the dough had risen somewhat, and in fact it looked just like it did last week at the same stage.

I left it on the kitchen counter for an hour, and then I proceeded with the recipe.

Success! the resulting flavour and texture were the same as last week.

So if you've been putting off trying sourdough, don't wait 40 years! Try these recipes today.

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P.S. If you have been subscribing to this blog, this may be the last post you ever receive! Google has been reminding me that I have to renew the domain on November 26, but the instructions they are sending me for doing so are not working. I am hoping that they will rectify the situation, but if not, I want to thank you for your interest. I have registered a new domain: www.cookscornerblog.com (very similar, but without all the hyphens) and may start posting at that URL if necessary.

A Sweet Cheese To Make At Home: Ricotta

When I lived on my ranchito in Mexico, if I had to go to town (Dolores Hidalgo) I would try to get there early enough to find the ricotta man on his corner, selling his fresh ricotta of the day. It was so delicious, and so cheap! Considering that traditional Italian ricotta (which means "twice cooked") is made from the whey leftover from making other cheeses I can't believe how expensive it is at the supermarket. And the stuff they sell in this village is quite disgusting.

This old man's ricotta tasted just like the stuff I used to buy in Montreal, which has a large Italian community.

Many Mexicans make their own queso fresco -- the fresh white cheese they crumble over many dishes, and a few people make their own Oaxaca cheese too -- a stringy mozzarella-like cheese that melts beautifully. But not everyone makes ricotta with the whey. Maybe my ricotta man had Italian blood!

I threw an ice cream party last week, and had a quart of whole milk leftover, plus about half a cup of rich soy milk that I had extracted for making silken tofu, and I happened to have some citric acid in the pantry, so I decided to make ricotta cheese using the recipe in Ricki Carroll's Home Cheesemaking. (Actually, the recipe she gives here is a better one, and I will follow it next time. And by the way that's what's wrong with the book: I think it was published before they had all the recipes tested thoroughly, and I keep finding totally revised versions of them on their website.)

Ricotta is a very pleasant, sweet, small-curd cheese, and the homemade kind is better than most brands you can find at the supermarket, though not as good as the bulk ricotta found at real Italian stores.

After heating the milk and watching the curds form, the latter are ladled into a double layer of butter cloth (or several layers of cheesecloth), and hung up to drain.

This is the same contraption that I use for making jelly, no need for special equipment, just a stick and a way of suspending the ball of curds.

Here is the finished cheese, with 3 cups of whey which I will freeze to use in my next batch of bread.

The yield from one quart of milk was exactly half a pound (227 grams), which brings the cost to about $6 a lb, cheaper and a heck of a lot healthier than the supposedly healthy gourmet PC Blue Menu "Ricotta Whey Cheese" whose list of ingredients is quite a bit longer.

If I can resist the temptation of eating it as dessert, I plan to put it in some lasagna or use it for stuffing ravioli, some time this week. 

On the other hand, it's so quick and easy to make -- less than one hour from start to finish -- I should start stocking whole milk just so I can make the occasional batch, as an additional menu option.

In addition to lasagna and ravioli, ricotta is the cheese of choice for all sorts of Italian specialties. I remember very fondly a ricotta pie that we used to serve in my first restaurant, way back when. It was topped with pine nuts. Here's a very similar recipe, from Lidia's Italy.

"Tourtière" -- The Meat Pie From Quebec

Where I come from, each family has its own tourtière recipe, but my mother never passed her recipe on so I've had to experiment to find the one that corresponded to both my memories and my grown-up tastes.

At one point, I tried the Galloping Gourmet's* recipe. He substituted mashed potatoes for the breadcrumbs. Sounded like a good idea but you had to pick really starchy potatoes or you'd get a watery pie.

Finally, I adapted Jehane Benoit's recipe from her little-known The Canadiana Cookbook. It was published in 1970 and I opened my first restaurant in London, Ontario -- Auberge du Petit Prince -- in June 1972 and tourtière was an instant success there.

Fifteen years later, I opened a French restaurant in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and my tourtière was a hit there too. I attribute this to the fact that Mexicans love pork and that my recipe includes cinnamon, which is a favourite spice in Mexico, though as far as I know they don't use it in savoury dishes. On the other hand, maybe they just like good food!

The Pork Filling

For each pie:
1 lb ground pork (I buy shoulder and grind it myself)
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 ribs celery, with leaves if possible, finely chopped
1 small garlic clove, minced
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp summer savoury
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/2 cup water
1/4 to 1/2 cup breadcrumbs
Egg wash (1 egg, beaten with a teaspoon of water or milk)

Place all ingredients except the breadcrumbs in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and cook, uncovered, for 20 minutes, over medium heat.
Remove from heat and add a few spoonfuls of breadcrumbs.
Let stand for 10 minutes. If the fat is sufficiently absorbed by the breadcrumbs, do not add more. If not, continue adding breadcrumbs.
Cool and pour into a pastry-lined pan. Cover with top crust that has vent holes to allow steam to escape. 
Brush with egg wash.
Bake at 400 F (200 C) until golden brown. Serve hot, with red or green tomato chow chow (recipe below).

Cooked tourtières can be frozen 4-5 months, and reheated without thawing.

The Special Dough

For the crust, I remember being fascinated by the Galloping Gourmet's hot water pie crust, and I found the recipe in The Canadiana Cookbook too.

How could this weird recipe work when we are constantly reminded to handle the dough as little as possible? The secret is the combination of baking powder, vinegar and egg, which creates the flakiest, tenderest pie crust imaginable. It uses pork lard as a fat, and that is essential.

That became my crust of choice for all savoury pies.

4-1/2 to 5 cups all-purpose flour (increase by 1/2 cup if using cake and pastry flour)
4 tsp baking powder
2 tsp salt
1 lb pure lard
1 cup hot water
4 tsp lemon juice or vinegar
1 egg, well beaten

Combine flour, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl.
Measure 1-1/3 cups of the lard and cut into the flour until mealy.
Dissolve the remaining lard completely in the hot water.
Add the lemon juice or vinegar and the egg.
Mix these liquids into the flour mixture until dough leaves the sides of the bowl.
Turn on lightly floured board and knead about 1 minute or until all the flour is blended. (Really, you need to do this!)
Divide into 4 to 6 balls, flatten them and wrap them in plastic film, then refrigerate at least one hour, and up to 12 hours.

You will find this dough incredibly easy to roll.

The Chow Chow

For a long time I used my mother's recipe for a quick fruit ketchup. It contained 1 can of peaches, 1 can of pears, and probably 1 can of tomatoes. To this you added onions, celery, vinegar, sugar and pickling spice. The advantage was you could make it all year, unlike our grandmothers who would preserve dozens of bottles of the stuff in season, to last all year.

Now I just buy it at the store and it's pretty good (look for the Habitant brand) but here is my recipe for the real thing, translated from Les Conserves, by Soeur Berthe (Editions de l'Homme, 1974):

TOMATO AND FRUIT CATSUP

18 ripe tomatoes

6 apples

5 peaches

5 pears

2 large onions

3 stalks celery

2 tsp coarse salt

2 TB pickling spice

1 cup white vinegar

1 1/2 cups sugar

Peel tomatoes and peaches by blanching them in hot water and cooling them quickly in cold water, then chop them - not too fine.

Peel apples and pears and cut into cubes.

Slice onions thinly.

Chop the celery.

Put all the above into a large, non-reactive pot.

Add vinegar, salt and spices (wrapped in cheesecloth).

Bring to the boil and simmer one hour.

Add the sugar and continue cooking until sugar is dissolved and right consistency has been reached.

Remove the spices and pour into sterilized jars, following your preferred canning method.

GREEN TOMATO CHOW CHOW

Here is the recipe that appears in The Canadiana Cookbook, in the chapter on New Brunswick. I have not tested it:

1/2 peck green tomatoes

6 large onions

6 medium cucumbers

1 head celery

4 sour apples

2 red peppers

3 lbs brown sugar

3 TB pickling spices tied in a bag

Cider vinegar

Cut tomatoes fine. 

Add 1/2 cup salt and leave overnight. 

Next morning, drain and add other ingredients. 

Nearly cover with vinegar (about one quart). 

Boil gently 1 to 1-1/2 hours. 

Pour in sterilized jars and seal.

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* Graham Kerr used that name for his TV cooking show in the 60s.

Vietnamese Spring Rolls

I've been making these spring rolls lately, and these are the best instructions I have found.

I add julienned carrots and some of my homemade mung bean sprouts, for extra flavour and crunch. Sometimes I use chicken or marinated tofu instead of the pork.  The peanut sauce is delicious, I'm sure, but it's too fattening for me, so instead I make this other vietnamese sauce:

SWEET, SOUR & SPICY FISH SAUCE

1/4 up fish sauce 1/4 cup hot wter 2 TB sugar 1 lime, juiced 1 tsp garlic, minced 1 tsp red chili paste (I use Chinese hot chili/black bean paste? 2 TB grated carrots (optional) 2 TB grated daikon radish (if available - I omit them) Combine all ingredients in a jar and shake. Keeps in the fridge for a long time.

Of Radishes And Sprouts

QUESTION: Is there anything more delicious than a handful of freshly picked radishes?

Like these:

ANSWER: Yes, if you grew them yourself.

Like this:

I love the way French* radishes peek out of the ground, as if to say "Eat me, I'm ready!"

Round radishes don't do that. You have to poke around to check on their size.

SPROUT NEWS**

The first experiment is over. This is what the mung bean sprouts looked like this morning (day 5):

Not quite what I had in mind: they're skinnier than I'd like, and the leaves are overly developed.

They taste fine, though, and I'm having chow mein for lunch.

Now the goal is to get them fatter and straighter. There's also a way to grow them without those long thready roots.

Back to square 1.

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* They may be French (this variety is "French Breakfast"), but the seeds are by McKenzie Seeds, from Manitoba.

** Radishes also make the best sprouts, but you have to buy special sprouting seeds. (Or let a few your own plants go to seed.)

DIY MUNG BEAN SPROUTS

The distributor of a popular sprouter started a rumour about mung bean sprouts requiring industrial tricks in order to get them to look like the ones you buy at the store, and that myth is being spread -- and believed -- all over the internet.

The myth goes like this:

Most commercial Mung Beans are grown with chemicals and gasses in huge 500 gallon machines.
You will likely never get your home grown sprouts to look like those [...]

After following his instructions for sprouting mung beans, I believed it too. My sprouts were puny.

Why Grow My Own Sprouts?

Lately, I have been making and eating Vietnamese spring rolls. They are perfect for this super-hot weather we've been having. Plus they're great for the waistline. On a good day, mine look like this:

Photo borrowed from http://blogs.kcrw.com/goodfood

I like them no matter what I put in them, but I like them best with bean sprouts as part of the filling. I even started growing mint, basil and cilantro in the garden, mostly for my spring rolls. I searched, and found, a Chinese grocer in town, who stocks all the other ingredients I can't get here.

The problem is neither of the supermarkets in this village sells bean sprouts. I have to drive to town -- an hour and a half away -- to get them, and I can't stock up because they keep very poorly.

What spurred me to dig for a way to make nice big sprouts was my last visit to the Chinese grocery store. They carry bean sprouts all right, but when I asked for them I was brought a big plastic bag full of them and given a small bag, and told to help myself. With my hands? I asked. Yes.

Wondering how many other folks had had their hands in there, I grabbed about half a pound. They ended up in the compost.

How To Grow Mung Bean Sprouts

That's when I went to YouTube, and, surprise! I found lots of videos, but one particular one from Asia somewhere (Thailand?). It was a long, unedited video, showing a semi-industrial way of making sprouts, from beginning to end. No 500-gallon machine, no gas, just a stack of Rubbermaid storage containers like you'd find anywhere, some cotton squares, beans and water. Lots of explanations, but in a foreign language. No translation. However, it seemed awfully clear to me that there is nothing mysterious about getting sprouts to grow to a nice size and length. Nothing beyond the following:

• Darkness
• Moisture
• Warmth (or rather, lack of cold)
• Time

I'm trying to reproduce those conditions by using a stainless steel pasta pot with a perforated insert, and it's looking very promising! 

First I washed the beans, then I soaked them overnight. Then I placed them on top of a piece of cotton cloth and covered them with another cloth. I covered the pot with the lid, and left it on the kitchen counter.

I water my sprouts twice a day, just like any other kind. I change the water in the bottom pot once a day.

Today is Day 4 and this is what my sprouts look like:

Day 4

They are nice and fat and crunchy. According to another video I saw, it can take up to seven days to get the size I want, but for most purposes they are ready to eat now.

I started another, very small batch, in an insulated coffee goblet, following another video. They are looking just as good.

I'll keep you posted.

Thanksgiving Turkey For One

Christmas and Thanksgiving are hard on us single people, but since Costco opened a store just an hour away, I have been able to eat turkey more often because they sell those rolled up roasts made up of just one side of a turkey breast.

I used to make a similar roast myself by boning the turkey and joining the two breasts with string. But then I had all the rest of the turkey to eat, and it was hard (but not impossible) not to waste any.

What's nice about those roasts, too, is that you can have one or two in the freezer, ready for any turkey craving that may show up at other times of the year.

This is Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada, and I wanted to try doing different things with my Costco turkey. As you can see from the picture, I was quite successful!

Eleven meals out of one turkey breast!

First, I removed the netting and scrutinized my roast. Indeed, it was made up of a whole half breast, and nothing else. The little filet had been partially detached, so I cut that off and set it aside.

I created the centre roast by cutting off the wide and narrow ends. I rolled up my little roast and tied it with string after seasoning the inside.

I discarded the skin and fatty bits from the leftover pieces and cut them (minus the filet) into chunks, which I ground with my meat grinder.

 

1. THE ROAST

I adapted a recipe for Glazed Turkey Roast with Apples and Balsamic Vinegar that I had seen on TV this week, on the Ricardo show on CBC.

The recipe calls for a whole 2.5-lb roast, so I adjusted the quantities.

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F (180 C)
2. Salt the roast all over, then brown it on all sides in a bit of olive oil in a frying pan
3. Deglaze the pan with 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar*, add 1.5 tablespoons of honey and a chopped French shallot (or half a small onion)
4. Roll the roast around in the sauce to coat it all over
5. Add one cup of chicken stock to the pan and roast for approximately one hour and ten minutes, or until 180 F (82 C) internal temperature. Keep checking every 20 minutes, and add small quantities of stock as necessary
6. In a separate frying pan, brown a Cortland apple which has been peeled, cored and sliced, in a spoonful of butter
7. When the roast is done, remove it and cover it loosely with foil for about 15 minutes, while you finish the sauce
8. Reduce the sauce if necessary (or add a bit of water or stock if it's too thick but it should be more of a glaze than a sauce), roll the roast around to glaze it all over, add the apples and mix well. Season to taste.

Absolutely delicious!

 

2. THE MEAT BALLS

I ended up with exactly one pound (450 g) of ground turkey. Today I made them as follows, but of course you can use your own favourite recipe for turkey or chicken meat balls:

1. The ground turkey;
2. A panade of good white bread soaked in milk (two slices plus 2/3 cup milk) ;
3. 1 egg;
4. 1 small onion, grated;
5. 2 tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese;
6. Salt, pepper and poultry seasoning;
7. 1 teaspoon of powdered gelatin**

Mix thoroughly with the hands and form balls with wet hands. Deposit them on a sheet of parchment paper.

Drop the turkey balls into simmering chicken stock to cover, and simmer gently for 30 to 40 minutes, until the centre is fully cooked.

I plan to use some of the balls in a tomato sauce for pasta that I will make later on in the week. I could also freeze all or some of them.

 

3. THE ESCALOPE

This is the little filet that I detached at the beginning, and flattened with the side of a cleaver. (I really must get one of those meat pounders!)

Since it has already been frozen, I will cook my escalope tomorrow, probably as veal piccata or maybe a saltimbocca since I have some prosciutto in the fridge and some fresh sage in the garden. The Epicurious recipe calls for the sage on the outside, but I always put it between the prosciutto and the meat, because that's the way they prepare it in my favourite restaurant in Rome. Oh, and by the way do not use dried sage for this!

Instead, you could cut the escalope into fingers, bread them and fry them, and serve them to the kids.

 

YIELD

• 1, 1.2-lb (500 g) roast (4 portions)
• 3 dozen ping-pong ball-sized meat balls (5 or 6 portions)
• 1, 4-oz ((113 g) escalope (1 portion or two portions of fingers)
• Bonus: 2 cups strong turkey stock which will make an excellent soup or sauce base

 

TIME

The nice thing is I was able to prepare all those things at the same time. I mixed the meat balls while the roast was cooking. It took about two hours altogether.

 

COST

$19.49 for the turkey (3 lbs/1.5 kilos). This breaks down to about $2 per meal. Right inside my budget!

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*Instead of -- or in addition to -- the balsamic vinegar, I could have used some of the Pinot Griggio wine that I had with it for lunch, which turned out to be a very fine "marriage".

If you're in the habit of brining your turkey, by all means brine this roast. I didn't, and it was moist enough.

** I copied this trick from my restaurants, where we used to add a few spoonfuls of gelatin to the pâté recipe. The gelatin would turn the extra juice into a tasty jelly.

In this instance, the combination of milk/bread/gelatin plays the role of fat in a dish that is nearly 100% fat-free, so what you get is a juicy result where you might expect something rather dry.

What I Hate About TV Chefs

I would be a lot more relaxed watching cooking shows if only the chefs would smarten up and think of projecting a responsible image in addition to a competent one.

These are some of the things that I hate about TV chefs:

1. No Apron

Can you imagine Julia Child making boeuf bourguignon in her finest silk dress? How about Jacques Pépin making béarnaise sauce in his tuxedo?

Then why the h*** do all these new TV chefs cook in designer clothes?

Take a look at this picture: Rachael Ray is wearing a suit jacket! She often wears this type of jacket in the kitchen. What? Her guest is wearing an apron. Smart guy.

Come on, ladies, a cooking show is not the place to show off your wardrobe, or your waistline, or your bouncy boobs. It's a dirty workplace and your clothes deserve to be protected. Wear an apron!

The other thing that bothers me about this lack of respect for clothes is that so many of the viewers have to get theirs at the thrift shop in these difficult times.

2. No Scraper

I absolutely hate the way they don't scrape the bowl with a rubber spatula. They were taught to do it in cooking school, so when did they decide that wasting food was okay?

Well, it's not okay to waste food, and it's not okay to be so sloppy about cooking.

3. No Compost Bucket

Imagine this: Rachael Ray (or Nigella Lawson, or your favourite TV chef) is preparing a salad. On the counter, off to one side, there is a pretty pottery bucket. The bucket is labelled "Compost". 

At one point, Rachael squeezes a lemon over the salad, then drops the lemon into the bucket. Not in the garbage, in the compost bucket.

She doesn't have to say a word. Everyone knows what compost is. Now they know that Rachael makes compost. Cool!

TV chefs need to remember that they are role models for their audience, and that it's their duty to give the right kind of example.

**********

Photo copyright Rachael Ray Digital LLC

In Search of the Perfect Microwave Egg

An Experiment in Coddled Egg Microwave Cookery 

Egg Coddler

I stopped having coddled eggs for breakfast when the ring on my Royal Worcester porcelain egg coddler broke off.*

Then I moved and now I can't find it, but it looked exactly like this one.

(What is a coddled egg? Imagine if you could inject some butter and other seasonings inside the shell of your egg, then soft-boil it to your exact taste... well, the egg coddler is just a replacement shell, and so to coddle an egg, you place it and your chosen seasonings inside the porcelain coddler, close it tightly, then submerge it in simmering water until it's just the way you like it.  A little miracle! [The ring is so you can grab it.])

I've cooked hard-boiled eggs in the microwave, but, I thought, why not coddled eggs? This morning, I decided to try.

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Day 1

Chinese tea bowls make perfect little individual egg coddlers. I added a ruler so you can see how tiny they are -- they hold 1/2 cup when full. (If I were making two eggs, I would use one of my small glass custard cups.)

Put a tiny dab of butter in the bottom of the cup;

Microwave for 10-15 seconds to melt the butter;

Rotate the cup to coat the bottom and sides of the cup with butter (this is important both for the flavour and to keep the egg from sticking to the bowl);

Add the egg and pierce the yolk with the tip of a knife or a fork;

NOTE: this is essential -- otherwise the yolk will explode!

Add seasonings -- any or all of the following:

• Salt and pepper;
• Chopped chives or green onion tops;
• Finely chopped cooked mushrooms, crumbled bacon or finely chopped ham;
• Anything you would normally add to your eggs.

Add another dab of butter on top -- please don't skip this! It's amazing what this minuscule amount of butter does to the flavour of the egg!

Wrap the bowl in a paper towel (NOT plastic wrap);

Microwave on High-- I tried 45 seconds today;

Eat out of the bowl with a coffee spoon;

OR

Flip over toast.











This is how I did it today, but as you may know, after you take something out of the microwave oven it continues to cook. That's why, in these last two photos, you can see that the yolk is beginning to solidify.

I like my yolks completely liquid, so tomorrow, I will try 40 seconds and a 10-second rest, and see what happens.

NOTE: if you decide to try this, you will have to experiment too, because as you know all microwaves are different, and of course you may like your eggs more or less cooked.

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Conclusion

After several tries, I did settle on 40 seconds, and that time seems to work best in the smaller of the two cups, the one on the right. The walls are thicker, which may contribute to the whites setting better.

That's what works best for my taste and my equipment.

You're on your own: do your own tests; just remember that, oddly enough, if you get some water in the bottom of the cup, it's not from under-cooking, but from over-cooking. It's a chemical reaction, apparently.

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 * Without some sort of "handle", it's impossible to get the coddler out quickly when the timer goes off (and believe me, I've tried).

Making Seedless Raspberry Jam In Winter

Photo Credit: See Footnote

Raspberry jam is my absolute favourite, but I don't like the way those little seeds get between the teeth, so I've been straining them out.

During the raspberry season, I use the wild raspberries that grow in my back yard, but in winter, I use frozen raspberries, and this is the recipe that I use.

This jam is as pure as it gets.* I never use pectin – it's expensive and superfluous and jams made with it do not have the same rich fruit taste and texture.

EQUIPMENT REQUIRED

• A stainless steel pot or saucepan
• A kitchen scale (This recipe shows the weights, both in ounces and in grams -- next time I make it I will measure the raspberries by volume and I will come back and fill in the square.)
• A candy thermometer (See other technique, below.)
• A potato or bean masher
• A fine strainer and a glass or stainless steel bowl over which it sits well (and safely, jam is hot!)
• A jam funnel (optional)
• A small jar

INGREDIENTS	Quantity Metric Weight	Quantity US Weight	Quantity Volume
Frozen raspberries	285 grams	10 ounces	?
White sugar	240 grams	8.5 ounces	1 cup (rounded)

PREPARATION

1. Mash the raspberries if they're thawed; if not, combine them directly with the sugar
2. Set aside, stirring from time to time, until all the sugar is dissolved
3. Transfer to stainless steel pot
4. Place over medium heat and continue to mash the raspberries until there are no whole ones left
5. Insert the candy thermometer
6. Boil, stirring from time to time at the beginning, then let the mixture simmer until the thermometer reaches 104 degrees C or 220 F (this is called the Jelly stage and if you don't have a thermometer [highly recommended if you're going to be making your own jams and jellies], follow my friend Goldie's technique: she would keep a small saucer in the freezer, take it out and pour a spoonful of jam on it, then run her finger through the jam. If it wrinkled, the jam was ready.)
7. Remove from heat, stir well and pour carefully into the strainer, using a silicone spatula to get every bit. This must be done while the jam is still hot, so do be careful.
8. Now comes the fun! Stir the jam around with a spoon; press on the seeds and keep scraping the bottom of the strainer until nothing will come through any more. (But don't throw those seeds away yet!**)
9. Transfer quickly to a jar, using a jam funnel if you have one
10. Cool, put the lid on and refrigerate

YIELD:  1 cup (250 ml)  -- just enough to fill one of those cute Mason-type jelly jars.

NOTE: I prefer to make a small quantity like this, rather than having to worry about sterilizing the jar etc. I buy the frozen raspberries in a big bag, and just take out what I need as I need it. But of course you can double the recipe.

* I found the following ingredients listed on a jar of premium "Pure Seedless Raspberry Jam" at the supermarket:

• Raspberries
• Sugar
• Glucose
• Pectin
• Citric Acid

** There's still a lot of raspberry pulp (and sugar) attached to the seeds, and it makes great tea, either by itself or with some tea leaves. If you have a teapot that comes with a strainer basket, that's best; otherwise, use a tea strainer over your cup.  Try it!

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 Image: zole4 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net