Hilaire Walden’s Perfect Preserves has the best pictures. Even the zucchini chutney, which could so easily have looked like leftovers gone wrong, looks elegant and ready for food. Not that I know what zucchini chutney goes on, but my knowledge of chutney right now extends so far as to include that stuff at Indian restaurants with the crispy bread and, as far as cooking goes, vinegar, veggies, fruit and sugar. Hilaire has enlightened me by noting that the above is correct, and spices are also typical. I’m still not sure what they’re good on, entirely, but I could easily make some now.
The book is split in two; the first half is methods of preservation, like jams, pickles, and potting. Potting? Yes, potting. As in potted meats. Which I’m pretty sure is more popular in England, where the book was published. That was really the only section that made me wince. But she even made lining a pan with bacon and stuffing it full of other fatty meats look sexy. Her pate, she assures the reader, balances the need for fat with the modern preference to pretend we don’t like so much fat. Only she uses words like succulence to make is sound good.
The second bit of the book has recipes for each method along with a few actual recipes for meals, like zucchini chutney and cheese loaf. Ahh, there we see what chutney should be used for. Bread. Okay, that’s in keeping with my ideas of chutney so far.
Chutney aside, I really only picked up this book for the pickles and the jam. I find the idea of jelly lame (why strain out all the tasty fruit bits?) and same with marmalades (which are basically jellies with some orange peel thrown in after the tasty fruit bits come out) and wasn’t terribly interesting in salting or candying fruit. The jams and pickles, though, live up to their promise. Not that I’ve made the recipes yet, but I plan on trying out the bread and butter pickles very soon (my garden has four very eager pickling cucumber plants). I’m hoping also to make pickled beets (my Babci would be so proud!). As for the jam, I’m sort of a purist. I like plain ol’ blueberry jam or strawberry-rhubarb if you want to get fancy. I just might, however, have to give in to both my disdain for jellies and my strict jam desires and try the honey-spiced apple jelly she attributes to her grandmother.
So she delivers when it comes to what I wanted: jams, pickles, and prettypretty pictures. I could have done without the bits on potted meat and pates and her mentions of drying and freezing where so brief that she could have done away with them without any great loss. But her methods are thorough and well explained, without any flowery language about enjoying the aroma of this or the bejeweled look of that. My only real complaint is that out of her four tomato-based recipes, I don’t like any of them. And with the way my tomato plants have been flowering lately, I’m going to need a good canned tomato recipe.
Recipes to write down:
- honey spiced apple jelly, p.62
- pickled beets, p.107
- bread and butter pickles, p.116
Recipes worth reading:
- Moroccan preserved lemons, p.74
- orange rice gateau, p.82
- pickled walnuts, p.148
Recipes to pass on by:
- steamed pink grapefruit curd pudding, p.73 (curd pudding? curd in general? no thanks)
- raspberry, peach, and amaretto sundaes, p.98 (a little too obvious to be necessary)
- chunky mushroom “ketchup”, p.123 (the name and the unnecessary quotes say enough)
Perfect Preserves, Hilaire Walden. Wiley Publishing, 2002.
