Make Something. Share It.
Dandelion wine is something I meant to make for a long time; unfortunately good intentions often got swallowed by the many tasks of spring. Because we’ll age most of this wine for 2-3 years, I wish, more than ever, we would have started making it years ago when i first fell in love with the idea.
Alas, I suppose it’s better late than never!
If you haven’t made wine jelly before (or, for that matter, haven’t preserved at all), it’s a great starting point. You can use any wine at all; I quite enjoyed using a Rose (Malivoire’s Ladybug in this case) because of the colour (it’s light red) and it’s lighter flavor.
Wine jelly is great with cheese, added to salad dressing (it will dissolve), used as a glaze for meat or served on a cracker (add pate for a killer combination)!
We’ve got a few bottle of honey wine (T’ej) to bottle tonight.
Dana had bought me a vintage beer capper a few years back. Although I considered using it (it’s fully functional), I found this great contraption for $15 which works with regular or synthetic corks in any wine bottle:
For those who have been following along, you’ll know Rumtopf is essentially fruit that has been macerated in sugar and then preserved in booze (we use rum) for an extended period of time (most of my batch is more than 6 months old). I’ll put some links on the process of making it at the bottom – today’s post is for those who are preparing to crack theirs open (it’s a Holiday tradition around here).
Rumtopf is essentially a very sweet, very boozy concoction. It’s not meant for kids and there’s only so many things you can do with something with so much booze (most of them essentially amounting to ‘drink’) so I hope you’ll forgive some redundancy on this list.
Here’s a variety of ways to consume it:
Some other posts on Rumtopf:
A special thanks to Ellen K on our FaceBook Group for the question which spurred this post!
How do you use yours?
Yesterday we discussed the differences and similarities between honey wine and mead – today we`ll share the process of making a simple honey wine in based loosely on the style of Ethiopian T`ej. Ours is currently in process so I can`t comment on the final flavor yet but am pleased with how the flavor changed in the initial days. We`ll be dipping into our stock before the New Year – and if you act fast, you can too!
These instructions are based on the recipe presented in Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz. Sandor (also known as `Sandorkraut`) is an amazing ambassador of fermentation and his book, website and forums are amazing resources any that those interested in fermenting would appreciate. The recipe is based on a bunch of further reading on T`ej and Mead that produced yesterdays article.
I meant to measure our Rumtopf container last year and again this year. I imagine it`s somewhere between 1-2 gallons:
Today`s recipe is one-part rumtopf and one-part preserved cherries. It`s also one-part maple and another part kick-butt.
And there`s not many simpler preserves…
I filled a jar with pitted cherries and weighed them – 1 pound, 6 ounces. I then added half-a-pound of sugar and 3 ounces of maple syrup (50% sugar).
I know there are berries in this province of mine. I know they are close. I know that, soon, they will be mine. And I feel like a mad scientist…
We launched a poll in November and asked you how long you keep your preserves and we shared how long we keep ours for there as well. The very unscientific poll showed that the wild majority keeps their preserves longer than a year and often longer than two.
I tend to preserve for 2 years at a time (there are a few exceptions such as tomato sauce – I’ll simply eat as much sauce as we make, regardless of quantity). This means I don’t make the same thing year after year, allows me a bit more of a chance to experiment but allows us to create a lot of variety on the Great Wall of Preserves. There are over 100 different flavors in our collection now and the bi-annual batches of preserving allow us a greater variety of options.
And I do love my options…
But just because I have strawberry jam for another year doesn’t mean I won’t be preserving strawberries – it just means I won’t be making as much jam (though I may make a variety such as Kaela’s Strawberry Chipotle Preserves or Tigress’ Smokin’ Strawberries). I just have to make something different.
My goal for the year is to make about 12 quarts of cordials – such as Kaela’s Homemade Berry Cordial (which is adapted on one by Leda Merideth – isn’t it fantastic how a community can share and learn from itself)?
I plan to make a few ‘special’ jars that I plan to age for a prolonged time (I am thinking about 3 years). While it’s a heck of a time committment, my hope is that the product will be worth the wait. I also plan to put special jars aside each year so that 3 years from now I will have aged cordial each and every year by rotating to my oldest bottles.
A cordial is simply a fermented preserve. It does produce alcohol and will require some learning. We’ve been researching and experimenting for some time and look forward to sharing the process (but I may hoard the results). We’ll be trying to keep up to our own self-imposed expectations of safe experimentation and modification of what we’ve seen and learned from others as well. A recent discovery of new supplies will be shared as part of these posts – I am so excited about it that I can barely hold it in (I’ll share it tomorrow after we take some photos).
Homemade cordials appear to be far more prevalent and popular in Europe (and especially prevalent in the UK). I love reading about different types of preserving and food traditions from around the world and it was the UK (especially the lovely River Cottage Preserves Handbook) that really opened my eyes to the exciting possibilities of making such a beverage at home.
Of course we’ll also be pressure canning and making some water-bath canning (and the dehydrator and crock pots will be going to). Look forward to some exciting new preserving posts soon!
In the meantime, has anyone out there been making cordials or been meaning to try?
I really do feel like a mad scientist when it comes to our Rumtopf. We have added our final ingredient (2 different types of plums) to our vat.
I’m not sure the scale of our Rumtopf can be seen in these photos. TO give you an idea of just how large this thing is, the picture below is today’s addition – 3 pounds (1.5 kilograms) of plums and sugar:
The next 10 days will feature posts relating to the preserving ideas presented in our article in Edible Toronto. We`ll be sharing ideas on cherries, peaches, tomatoes, elderflowers, peas, hot peppers, raspberries, currants and berries. We`ll touch on infusing, dehydrating, freezing, canning and pressure canning.
The most difficult part of putting the article together was dealing with the sheer quantity of choices from the summer harvest (easy for me to say as Dana is the designer who just makes it look so easy to me). It`s tough to believe we go from the first strawberries to the last tomatoes in about 3 months. Summer is an intense preserving time in our house and an essential time for us to keep busy in order to have locally produced food year-round.
