Then, last year, I went raspberry picking with a friend of mine and the farm also had black currants, so we laboured for over an hour to get two baskets of the tiny berries. I brought them home and made black currant jam… and decided currants are my new favourite fruit. So I called my mom and asked her to set aside some of her red currants for me. Those precious berries sat in my freezer until I pulled them out to make this month’s Can Jam recipe. I won’t make the mistake of leaving them unused for that long again!

After my great black currant jam experience, I thought I’d love to add a currant bush or two to my fruit collection, but figured they’d have to go in the ground and I’m pretty much out of room, so I didn’t obsess about it too much. Then one day, while Googling my way around the internet, I learned that currants will grow just fine in containers. So I started keeping my eye out for a black currant bush. I ended up with a “Ben Conan” black currant that is happily growing on my deck in a big plastic container.

Then, yesterday, I went to Humber Nurseries with my mom, and somehow ended up with this little guy in my cart:

It’s a “White Pearl” currant. You can see Ben Conan in the background. From the tag:
Ribes sativum “White Pearl”
Height: 125cm
Spread: 100cm
Zone: 3
Growth/Yr: 30-60cm
Clusters of medium-large sweet green-white fruit. Currants grow on 1 and 2 year old wood. Three year old wood should be removed. Ripens late July. Plant in moist well drained soil. Full sun.

So hopefully in July I’ll be canning up a whole rainbow of red, black, and white currant jams and sauces.

Now if I could just figure out how to keep the aphids away…

This month’s ingredient was herbs. Not any specific herb, just… “herbs”. It’s been a beautiful, warm spring here in Toronto, but we certainly don’t have much for herbs growing around here right now. So I went into my basement and pulled this off my grow-op:

It’s a rosemary from the release party for Grow Great Grub by Gayla Trail. Which means this is the first month I’ve managed to actually use local produce as the featured ingredient – you can’t get much more local than what’s grown right in my own house!

Then I went into my deep freeze and pulled out some cranberries and red currants. The red currants were grown by my mom in Bruce County. She always has way more currants than she can use and gave me a bag of berries that’s been in the freezer since last summer. The cranberries were picked up at a farm stand off highway 400 in the Orillia area and were grown not far north of there. That’s two more local ingredients!

So maybe I can be forgiven for the non-local orange?

This recipe is loosely based on a Raspberry & Red Currant sauce in The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving by Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard. I went on a few tangents from there. There were a few little things I’d change for next time. For one, I’d cook and strain the currants on their own and then make the sauce from there with whole cranberries (they should be cooked just until they burst, like you would with cranberry sauce). I’d also add a bit more rosemary, although the rosemary may shine through more after the sauce has had a few more weeks to blend.

Herbed Cranberry & Red Currant Sauce
Yield: 3 1/2 cups
Level: Intermediate

4 cups red currants (fresh or frozen)
4 cups cranberries (fresh or frozen)
1 cup water
1 1/2 cups sugar
juice of one orange (about 1/2 cup)
zest of one orange
2 1/2 tbsp fresh rosemary

1. Combine red currants, cranberries, and water in a medium stainless steel or enamel saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce heat and boil gently, covered, for 20 minutes. Strain mixture through a fine sieve or cloth (you may need to let it sit for a few hours to drip); discard pulp.

2. Return sauce to pan, add orange juice, and return to a boil. Slowly add sugar, stirring constantly until sugar is dissolved. Stir in orange zest and rosemary; boil gently for 5 minutes.

3. Remove hot jars from canner and ladle sauce into jars to within 1/2 inch (1 cm) of rim. Process 15 minutes for half-pint (250mL) jars. [Don't know how to do this step? Check out the Tigress' great Canning 101 post for a great primer.]

(the half-filled jar went straight into the fridge after this photo!)

One final thing: this sauce is delicious… but I have no idea what to use it on. It’s both sweet and tart, with a nice hint of citrus. The rosemary seems to complement the fruit very nicely. It’s quite runny but, judging from how it looked when I canned it up, it may thicken slightly as it cools. So… any ideas?

I hate onions.

Ok, so I don’t hate them. I don’t like them much. I certainly don’t like them enough to choose them as the primary ingredient in a canning project. So when Alliums (onion, garlic, etc.) were chosen as the ingredient for this month’s Can Jam, I considered just leaving them as a background ingredient in something like a salsa. But I decided that was cheating. So I went through my two favourite canning books and found a recipe that uses another ingredient that is interesting, but still not my favourite: fennel.

Add in some sweet red pepper:

Mix it all up with some salt and let it sit for 4 hours, then rinse and drain:

Do some basic picking steps (see the recipe below) and can ‘er up with bay leaves and peppercorns:

And voila!, something that I might eat, but likely will just give to my husband, who will love every bite:

Sweet Onion & Fennel Relish

Although it’s also possible I’ll like it. I won’t know for another two to three weeks because, like all pickles and relish, this will have to sit at least that long before it can be eaten so all the flavours can blend. When I opened last month’s dilled carrots, I was surprised that I actually liked them, despite my intense dislike for cooked carrots. Let’s cross our fingers that this will be the same! And if not, maybe I’ll have better luck with next month’s Can Jam and end up with an ingredient I love!

Sweet Onion & Fennel Relish
From The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving by Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard
Yield: 4 cups (mine made 6 cups)
Level: Beginner to Intermediate (I find hot-pack to be slightly more intimidating than cold-pack, so I’d say it’s slightly harder than last month’s carrots)

1 large sweet onion, such as Spanish or Vidalia (about 8oz/250g)
1 fennel bulb (about 10oz/275g)
1 sweet red pepper, sliced into thin strips
2 1/2 tsp pickling salt, divided
1 1/2 cups white wine vinegar
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 bay leaves (I used 6 very small leaves in 6 jars)
8 black peppercorns (I used 2 per jar for 12 total)

1. Slice onion in half lengthwise, then in very thin slices crosswise to form half circles (I used my mandolin, which is right up there with my apple corer and jar lifter for favourite canning tool ever). Cut fennel bulb in half lengthwise and remove core; thinly slice crosswise to form half circles. Place onion, fennel, and pepper in a non-reactive bowl and sprinkle with 2 tsp (10mL) salt. Toss and let stand for 4 hours. Rinse twice and drain thoroughly.

2. Combine vinegar, water, sugar, and 1/2 tsp (2mL) salt in a large stainless steel or enamel saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat. Add vegetables and return just to a boil, stirring constantly. Remove from heat.

3. Remove vegetables from liquid with a slotted spoon and pack into hot jars. Pour liquid over vegetables to within 1/2 inch (1cm) of rim (headspace). Add bay leaves and peppercorns.

4. Process 10 minutes for half-pint (250mL) jars and 15 minutes for pint (500mL) jars. [Don't know how to do this step? Check out the Tigress' great Canning 101 post for a great primer.]

The great thing about living in The Beaches (or, if you prefer, The Beach) in Toronto is the easy access to walk along the waterfront. I especially enjoy spending time there with my brother, his wife, and their two dogs.

I considered many different options for this month’s Can Jam, but most of them were sweet and I have too much jam in my basement, so I settled on a really basic pickle recipe from the Bernardin Complete Book of Home Preserving. The dilled beans I made in the summer were incredibly popular, so I decided to try out the dilled carrots too. I don’t generally like cooked carrots, but I’m hoping these will be an exception!

I had some carrots in the fridge, but I knew I didn’t have enough, so I stopped by Meat on the Beach, a fantastic independent grocer a few blocks from my house, and found these babies:

I don’t know if they’re local or organic, but they’re fantastic colours, so I grabbed a bunch of them.

The only purple carrot variety I’m familiar with is Dragon, which is purple skinned, but has orange flesh, so I was over-the-moon when I started peeling the purple carrots and discovered this – purple flesh!:

If anyone can give me a heads-up about what variety this might be and where to find the seeds, that’d be fantastic!!!

Chop, chop, chop. Aren’t these beautiful?

These pickles use the cold-pack method, so the jars needed to be prepped immediately. I tend to be a bit lazy and prep my jars as the food I’m canning is cooking, but for a pickle like this, you’ve gotta get those jars clean and warmed up right away.

The spices here are simple. Garlic, dill (I used seeds because that’s all that was available to me, but in the summer I would use fresh dill flower heads), and hot pepper flakes:

I only added hot peppers to half the batch. This was for two reasons – first, I wanted some that weren’t hot, and second, my sister is allergic to nuts and my hot pepper flakes have a nut warning on them. I would love to give her a jar of these, so I made half of them sister-safe!

Add the liquid:

While the non-spicy batch processed in the water bath, I prepped the spicy jars:

For these ones, I must admit that I cheated.

I had a bag and a half (about 3lbs) of baby carrots in my fridge, so I used those. This was the half-bag. The full bag was organic, so maybe that makes up for my laziness, at least a little bit?

Then came the magical moment when I pulled the first batch of (non-spicy) jars out of the water bath. Check out the gorgeousness!

As you can probably see, I only put the purple carrots in 4 of the 5 jars, and the purple in the carrots bled out into the pickling liquid. I’m very happy I did that. I love the colour difference between the jars!

I can’t wait to try these pickles, but they’re going to have to sit for a few weeks so the flavours can blend. If they’re even half as good as the dilled beans, I bet they won’t last long!

See you all next month!

Dilled Heirloom Carrots
From Bernardin Complete Book of Home Preserving
Yield: 7 pint jars (I ended up with 10)
Level: Beginner (an easy one, as far as pickles go!)

6 cups white vinegar
2 cups water
1/2 cup pickling or canning salt
4 cloves garlic, halved
14 heads of dill (or 1/2 tsp dill seeds per jar, if fresh isn’t available)
3 1/2 tsp hot pepper flakes (optional)
5 lbs carrots (25-30 medium), ends removed, peeled and cut into sticks (1 inch/2.5 cm long and 3/4 inch/2 cm wide) – or you can cheat like I did and go with 5 lbs of baby carrots!

1. Prepare canner, jars and lids.

2. In a large stainless steel saucepan, combine vinegar, water and salt. Stir well and bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring to dissolve salt.

3. Place 1/2 clove garlic, 1 head of dill (or 1/2 tsp seeds) and 1/2 tsp of hot pepper flakes, if using, in each hot jar. Pack carrot sticks into hot jars to within a generous 1/2 inch (1 cm) of top of jar. Top with second head of dill. ladle hot pickling liquid into jar to cover carrots, leaving 1/2 inch (1 cm) headspace. [I had to make more canning liquid to manage all my carrots - if you have to do that, make sure your vinegar/water/salt ratio is the same as the original batch!] Remove air bubbls and adjust headspace, if necessary, by adding hot pickling liquid. Wipe rim. Centre lid on jar. Screw band down until resistance is met, then increase to finger-tight.

4. Place jars in canner, ensuring they are completely covered with water. Bring to a boil and process for 10 minutes. Remove canner lid. Wait 5 minutes, then remove jars, cool and store. [Don't know how to do this step? Check out the Tigress' great Canning 101 post for a great primer.]