Thing Fifty-Four: Dornish Snake (tastes like chicken)

OK, OK, I didn't REALLY cook snake. Granted, I could have done. This is the Boston area, after all. We have Savenor's, where they will either stock or acquire any kind of meat you could want (and some you might NOT want). I didn't really want to pay for it or go to the hassle of trekking to Savenor's to get it, though. Instead, when I was eyeing the Dornish Snake with Fiery Sauce recipe from A Feast of Ice and Fire, I decided to go with something a little more mundane as the base: chicken thighs.

Now, if you've read George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series at all, you know that Dorne is a hot place, desert-like, and that the food they eat there is in many ways similar to that of our world's Middle East. They are even keener on hot peppers in Dorne than they are in that part of our world, though, and any recipe including the word "Dornish" is likely to be quite spicy.

The recipe for the "Fiery Sauce" in this cookbook is no exception. It contains whole-grain mustard, red wine, peppers, turmeric, honey, lemon juice, and olive oil. For the peppers, the cookbook authors recommend ancho. I ended up using half ancho and half Aleppo. Also, I was lacking whole-grain mustard, so I used about 2/3 dijon mustard with 1/3 whole mustard seeds.

The combination of the ingredients was one that intrigued me, with half of them adding up to something fairly French (wine, mustard, olive oil) and the other half adding up to something Middle Eastern (hot peppers, honey, lemon, turmeric). When I cooked the sauce ingredients down as instructed, a delicious alchemy seemed to take place, melding everything into a combination that was rich, complex, and warming. This sauce was super, super good. The balance of sweet, hot, tart, and savory was just right. It transformed my simply baked chicken thighs into something exotic and delicious. Accompanied by homemade tabbouleh (herbs and tomatoes from my garden!) and some roasted eggplant, I could imagine myself transported to Dorne, eating my dinner by under a pomegranate tree by the water gardens with the Martells. This will DEFINITELY be a "make again" recipe.

Thing Fifty-Five: JAM!

I've done some canning before. Not much. I canned some pickled jalapeños in an effort to preserve some of my garden's produce. That, I did on my own. I also made some amazingly delicious apple butter with one of my bridesmaids, canning that in little jars as favors for my wedding this past fall. She and I worked together on that all day, and finished pretty late at night. I still have some of that apple butter, and it has been a delight to eat on my toast.

That same friend and former bridesmaid is on vacation this week, and asked me to check in on her cats every few days. My "bonus" for doing so was that I could pick as many blackberries from her backyard blackberry bush as I wanted, since the ripe ones wouldn't be good anymore by the time she and her family returned. On Monday, I went to check on the cats, and ended up picking an entire QUART of blackberries. I just couldn't bear to leave any of the ripe ones that I could reach there to rot. Now, I'd also just been to the farmers' market, and had bought a fairly big box of bluberries. This made for a grand total of one metric buttload of berries. It was definitely more than I could eat before they went bad. There was only one possible solution: cook the blackberries up into something that would last longer than they would fresh.

Now, my husband is a big fan of blackberry jam, but prefers it WITH seeds. These days, it can be hard to find any that isn't seedless in the stores. What could be a better use of my bounty than to make a supply of seedy blackberry jam? I ran to the Interwebz and sought advice from my go-to resource on canning, the National Center for Home Food Preservation. It had a little chart that gave simple ratios for making fruit jams, with or without pectin. Since I didn't have any pectin, I opted for the latter. For any kind of berry, it said, use four cups of crushed berry pulp to four cups of sugar, and that would make 3-4 half-pint jars.

When I washed and crushed my berries, I was left with about two cups of pulp. Hey, easy ratios are easy! I dumped the pulp and two cups of sugar into a non-reactive pot, and started cooking it down while I sterilized a couple of half-pint jars. When it started looking thicker, I checked it by putting a spoonful on a chilled plate in the freezer for a couple of minutes. Yes, it had gelled nicely! I filled my two jars, and heard the lids pop satisfyingly. But what was this? I had a decent bit of jam still left in the pot! I grabbed one of the little jars I'd used for the apple butter, gave it a wash, and popped it into the pot to sterilize. I filled it and put on the lid, and to my relief (it was a little one-piece screw-on lid with no button), it went concave on me very quickly. Success! I still had more jam in the pot, but it was too late for me to consider sterilizing another jar, so I just washed one, spooned in the jam, and stuck it in the fridge.

I feel like this was a super-successful venture for several reasons:
1) I avoided waste of good produce by preserving it!
2) I got in some practice canning!
3) I learned a simple ratio that will mean I'll never need a pectin-free jam recipe again!
4) I made something yummy that my husband will like!

All in all, a win.