Rose Hip Jelly (With a Brief Description of the Chemistry of Jellies)

When rose flowers wither and fall from the plant, they leave behind a little green ball called a rose hip.  In late summer those hips swell and turn red, and start to look like berries.

They are not berries, as you will discover if you open one up.  Rosehips are full of seeds and what looks like white hair.  If eaten raw those hairs will irritate your mouth and throat.  Don't eat those hairs raw.  The fleshy part around the seeds and hair can be eaten raw.  It has an interesting flavour; depending on the plant and the time of year it can taste like fresh cut grass, or a tomato, or possibly a plum.

Though rose hips can be eaten fresh, they are most commonly made into jelly. They contain little pectin, so the jelly usually contains another fruit, like apple.

Two hours have passed between when I wrote that last sentence and when I wrote this one.  It crossed my mind that I don't really know what pectin is, so I read a large section of On Food and Cooking to find out.  If you like, I can tell you what I found.


The Chemistry of Jellies

Unlike animals, plants get all their nutrients and energy from soil and air and sunshine.  They therefore stay in one place, and require a rigid framework on which to grow.  Like animal cells, plant cells are made of fluid enclosed in little sacks of a semi-permeable membrane.  Unlike animal cells, they also have a firm wall surrounding their cell membranes for additional structural support.

These cell walls are analogous to reinforced concrete.  Fibers of cellulose act as the iron rods, and hemicellulose and pectin act as the cement that cross-links the iron rods.  Hemicellulose is made of glucose and xylose sugars, while pectin is in fact "long chains of sugar-like subunits,"^[1] whatever the hell that means.

Here are some things that happen when we cut and cook fruit:

• the thermal and physical disturbance breaks the pectin chains in the cell walls apart,
• cell membranes rupture, spilling cell fuild everywhere, and
• the loosed pectin dissolves in that cell fluid (and any other liquid you have added to the mix).

The pectin does not re-form into its characteristic chains because it has been diluted, and the sub-units can't reach eachother.  To aggravate the matter, the pectin sub-units accumulate a negative electrical charge, and so are actually repelled by eachother!

As sympathic cooks we can help pectin chains re-form by doing the following:

• adding sugar - Sugar is hygroscopic and attracts water.  With water molecules flocking towards the sugar, the pectin molecules have an easier time finding eachother.
• boiling off excess water - This also reduces the distance between pectin molecules
• adding acid - Acidic solutions are full of hydrogen ions (H⁺) that neutralize the pectin molecules' negative charge.  After contact with a hydrogen ion, the pectin molecules no longer repel one another.

The three steps above that help reform pectin chains also happen to preserve the fruit!

With the pectin chains re-formed, there is now a network that traps water and gives the jelly its characteristic firm-but-wiggly texture.

Don't you feel empowered by all this information?  Put it to good use:


Rosehip and Apple Jelly
adapted from River Cottage Handbook No. 2 - Preserves

Ingredients

• 325 g rosehips
• 775 g apples, peeled and quartered (I used windfall apples from my questionable backyard apple tree, removing any severely damaged sections)
• roughly 550 g sugar

Procedure

Place the quartered apples in a straight-sided pan.  Cover with water.  Bring to a boil, then simmer until the apples soften and turn to pulp.

In the mean time, chop the rosehips in a food processor.

Add the rosehips to the pan and simmer for 10 minutes.

Remove the pan from the heat and let stand for 10 minutes.  Pour the mixture into a scalded jelly bag suspended over a bowl. Drain for several hours.  After 24 hours I ended up with about 800 mL liquid.

Measure the juice and put it into a pot. Bring to a boil, then add 400 g of sugar for each 600 mL of juice. (My 800 mL of liquid required 533 g sugar.) Stir until completely dissolved, then boil to setting point, 220F.

After boiling I had roughly 500 mL jelly. Pour into hot sterilized jars.

1.  McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking. ©2004 Scribner, New York. Page 296.  This is the only direct citation I used, but really all of the scientific info is from this invaluable reference.

Rose Water

Today I tried a nifty trick I saw on Alton Brown's masterpiece show, Good Eats: making rose water at home.

The idea of eating my provincial flower excites me.  Unfortunately, our true wild roses have already lost their petals and developed hips.  There are, however, several late-blooming domestic varieties still flowering.

Wherever you get your roses from, make sure that they haven't been treated with any chemicals.

Rose Water
adapted from Good Eats

Ingredients

• 1 L rose petals, chemical free
• 2 L water

The set-up is simple.  Start with a very large pot.  I used my canning pot.  Put a clean brick or heavy ceramic dish in the middle of the bottom.  Scatter the rose petals around the brick.  Add the water.  There should be enough that the flowers are more or less submerged.  Next put a stainless steel bowl that is slightly narrower than the canning pot onto the brick.  (The brick simply keeps the bowl above the boiling water and prevents it from floating around.)

Now invert the lid of the canning pot and cover the pot.  Put about 2 L of ice in the hollow of the lid.

Place the pot on medium heat and simmer for an hour.  The aroma and flavour of the rose petals is captured in the steam.  The steam rises to the top of the can, where it meets the cold lid and condenses back into water.  Because of the roughly conical shape of the inverted lid, the condensate rolls to the centre, where it drops into the expectant stainless steel bowl.

A diagram:

After an hour I had about two cups of rose water.  Be careful not to spill any of the melted ice into the stainless steel bowl when removing the inverted lid.

At this point I have no specific plans for the rose water, though I suspect it will make its way into some whipped cream shortly.

Raspberry Leaf Tea

This is a quick one.  I just learned that raspberry leaves make good tea.

Pick the leaves, dry them in a low oven, and store in an airtight jar.

To serve, steep in hot water for 4 minutes, as you would any other tea, and strain.

I'm not good at describing the subtlties and complexities of something like tea.  To me, raspberry leaf tea tastes a bit like green tea...

It's good.

Squash Blossoms

If any food can be described as ephemeral, it's squash blossoms.  They're only around for a short while, and once picked they deteriorate rapidly, which is why you usually can't get them at grocery stores, only farmers' markets and neighbourhood gardens.

Squash plants actually produce two different types of flowers: male and female.  The male flowers grow on the end of long, slender stems.  The female flowers grow on thicker stems that buldge where they meet the flower.  This bulge is what will eventually become a squash.

Generally there are more male flowers than female.  The male flowers can be picked without affecting the production of fruit, so long as a few are left behind to pollinate the females.  Some sources say to remove the stamens from the interior of the male flowers before eating.  I don't.  I hope it's not a safety thing.  Picking the female flowers will prevent fruit from developing on that stem.  Even so, it's worth picking a few females, especially once the buldge on the stem has grown into a tiny, malformed squash.

The flowers of both summer and winter squash are edible.  (Summer squash are varieties that are picked young, and therefore have tender, edible seeds and skin, like zucchinis and pattypans.  Winter squash are varieties that are mature when picked, and therefore have tough, inedible seeds and skin, like butternut squash and pumpkins.)

While they can be eaten raw, squash blossoms are usually lightly battered and fried.  They can also be stuffed.

Below are two blossoms from a pattypan plant.  The flower at the back is female, as you can see from the small, green pattypan attached to the base.  The front flower is male, with the characteristic long, slender stem.

The blossoms are filled with a homemade ricotta (something my ancestors would have called "clabbered milk") mixed with lemon zest, lemon juice, an egg, and basil.  I used a piping bag to stuff the flowers.

The batter is just skim milk thickened with a bit of flour.  Tempura-style batter is also popular.  The flowers are lightly coated with the batter, then fried in canola oil at 350F.  You can shallow fry in a straight-sided pan (just add enough oil to come about half way up the side of the flowers) or deep fry in a pot.  Once the batter is crisp and the interior hot, maybe one minute, remove the flowers to a bowl lined with paper towel.  Season and consume immediately.

August on a plate:

Rhubarb Onion Jam

I've had recipes for rhubarb relish passed to me from both my family and Lisa's.  Though one is from Ontario and the other from Alberta, they are uncannily similar: one part chopped rhubarb and one part chopped onion, stewed together with cinnamon, clove, and other "pumpkin pie" spices.

This has been my default rhubarb sauce to accompany meat and hearty bread for the past couple years, but I have to admit it's not a show-stopper.  I've been trying to elevate this recipe, and a friend of mine recently found the way.  His discovery of rhubarb onion jam was one of those rare times when something in the kitchen goes horribly wrong, but the food turns out better than if all had gone according to plan.  I think many of our favourite foods were probably discovered this way: grape juice was left out, and mysteriously started to ferment; dry leaves fell into a pot of boiling water; or a marshmallow was accidently impaled on a stick and left too close to a campfire.  Rhubarb onion jam resulted from a similarly serendipitous mistake.

The mistake was that a pot of simmering rhubarb relish was left unattended for an hour.  By divine providence the pot was covered, and enough moisture trapped within that the relish didn't really burn, but rather stuck to the bottom in a thick mat of caramelized "jam."  With a little water and scraping, that jam was retrieved and found to be delicious.

This happy accident can be reproduced in a controlled manner through an intensive cycle of developing and capturing fond.  Remember that word, "fond"?  The one with the nasal "on" and the silent "d"?  We discussed it briefly here.

To create good fond, you need a stainless steel pan.  To capture it, you need a wooden spoon, and possibly some liquid.

Start with the abovementioned ratio of rhubarb and onions.  Cook them in a bit of hot oil.  When the rhubarb and onions have broken down to a paste, spread them evenly across the surface of the pan.  Once a layer of caramel-coloured fond has developed on the bottom, use the wooden spoon to scrape the fond into the paste. Redistribute the mixture and repeat.  If the fond is difficult to remove, add a few tablespoons of water; they should help lift the sticky residue off the pan.

The mixture will slowly darken and thicken.  Continue the process until a jam-like consistency is achieved.  I finished the mixture with honey, to balance the concentrated tartness of the rhubarb.

The rhubarb and onions shrink dramatically in the process.  Starting with 300 g onions and 300 g rhubarb (about four cups of ingredients all told), I finish with less than one cup of jam.

Rhubarb onion jam gets along famously with cornbread and pork.

Austrian Sausage Stands

Würstlstände are sausage stands.  They punctuate the sidewalks of every city in Austria.  People from all walks of life crowd around these kiosks for, say, a quick lunch, or a post-bar snack: a sausage, fried or steamed, served with some manner of bread, mustard, and beer or pop.

While certain types of sausage appear on almost every würstlstand menu, it can be frustrating trying to pin down their characteristics, as a huge variety of sausages can go by the same name.  Bratwurst, for instance, is sometimes based on pork, sometimes on veal, sometimes stuffed into slender lamb casings, sometimes into wider hogs...

Here are some very general descriptions of the most common würste:

• Burenwurst - Apparently a corruption of "boerwurst," a hearty South African sausage distinguished by its coarse texture.
• Debreziner - Debrec is a city in Hungary.  The only characteristic that seems to unite all debreziners is the liberal use of paprika.
• Waldviertler - The Waldviertel (literally "forest quarter,") is a region in Lower Austria, famous for rustic cuisine.  This sausage is lightly smoked and made of pork.
• Frankfurter - A very long, slender, boiled sausage, with an extremely fine interior similar to most North American hot dogs.  In Frankfurt these sausages are called Wieners.  Go figure.

• Sacherwurst - In my experience, these are indistinguishable from frankfurters.
• Bratwurst - The familiar "brat," a frying sausage.
• Bernerwurst - More common in cafeterias and restaurants than sausages stands, this is a sausage stuffed with cheese and wrapped with bacon.
• Weisswurst - One of the few sausages that always takes a very specific form.  Literally "white sausage," though it is usually more grey than white.  Made from veal and pork fat which are very finely ground and emulsified.  A delicate sausage, it is boiled and taken out of its skin before being served.  It is very much a Bavarian sausage.  Within Austria it is only commonly found in Salzburg, which is right by the Bavarian border. Traditionally eaten before noon, with a brezel (pretzel), sweet mustard, and white beer.

In North America the term "hot dog" refers to both the dish (ie. a wiener in a bun), and the style of wiener itself (ie. an emulsified link flavoured with garlic and smoke).  In Austria a "hot dog" is a sausage shoved into a long, crusty roll.  You can therefore have, for instance, a bratwurst hot dog, or a burenwurst hot dog.  If you don't specify "hot dog," your sausage will probably be served with a round crusty bun on the side, as below.  Note the ceramic plate.

Käsekrainer

While outsiders recognize wiener schnitzel as the national dish of Austria, I think most Austrians acknowledge a special sausage called käsekrainer ("KAY-zeh KREYE-ner") as their greatest culinary achievement.

"Käse" means cheese.  I have no idea what "krainer" means, and neither do any Austrians.   Käsekrainer is a sausage with a finely ground interior that is riddled with cubes of cheese that melt when the sausage is cooked.  It is the crown jewel of Austrian streetfood.

Within twenty four hours of returning to Canada I had procured the ingredients for a käsekrainer test batch.

Käsekrainer: A First Attempt

Ingredients

• 1000 g pork shoulder
• 200 g Sylvan Star Gruyère, rind removed, diced into 3/16" cubes
• 16 g kosher salt
• 1/2 tbsp light corn syrup
• 1 pinch sodium nitrite
• 2 cloves garlic (the Austrians call them "toes," which I thought was cute...), minced
• 1 bay leaf, ground
• 1/4 tsp smoked paprika
• 1/4 tsp mustard powder
• 1/4 tsp freshly ground, toasted coriander
• 1 pinch cayenne
• fresh ground black pepper
• 5' hog casings, soaked and rinsed

Procedure

I chose to experiment with Gruyère because of its famous melting properties (it is the go-to cheese for fondue and raclette).  To my surprise, Sylvan Star has their own version of the alpine cheese:

Cut the pork into 1" cubes.  Spread on a tray lined with wax paper and keep in the freezer until "crunchy" but not frozen solid.  Grind the meat through a 1/4" plate.  Add the salt and spices to the ground meat.

Spread the ground meat onto a tray lined with wax paper and return to the freezer for about 15 minutes.  Regrind the mixture using a 3/16" plate.

Using the paddle attachment of a stand mixer, slowly mix the forcemeat while adding the corn syrup.  When the force binds and becomes tacky, fold in the cubed cheese.

Fry a small piece of the mixture and taste.  Adjust the seasoning as necessary.

Stuff the mixture into the hog casings and twist into 6" links.  Hang on a wooden dowel to dry for an hour.

On Cooking Käsekrainer

On the streets of Vienna there are actually two types of käsekrainer.  They result not from different methods of manufacture, but from different methods of cooking.

The first, when passed through the würstlstand window, looks like any other sausage; it is only upon biting into the link that you discover the cheese.  The second has a crunchy crust of cheese fried onto the exterior of the sausage.  I don't think I need to spend much time explaining why the latter is superior (the nutty-tangy taste of browned cheese, the accentuation of the textural contrast between sausage skin and interior...)

Having only cooked a couple of käsekrainer links myself, I am still working on my crust development.

Inevitably (and especially in homemade links) some cheese will leak out the ends during cooking.  My working theory on crust development is that the sausage must be rolled through this cheese while it is still gooey, so that the cheese adheres to the skin.  Otherwise the cheese will brown and stick to the pan, instead of the sausage.  As a rule of thumb, move the käsekrainer frequently while cooking.

The sausage must be eaten very hot, or the cheese will re-congeal.

This recipe and cooking process result in an acceptable approximation of an Austrian käsekrainer.  I think that most of the versions I had there were lightly smoked.  While the smoked paprika in my recipe goes some distance to capturing that flavour, I think the next test batch will have to be cold-smoked before frying.

Austrian Charcuterie

For starters let me say that Austrians don't use the word "charcuterie."  To some of you that may seem obvious, as Austrians speak German.  Yet for some reason most of the English-speaking world uses the French term "charcuterie."

While French words do weasel their way onto fine dining menus in Austria, they are nowhere to be found in descriptions of butchery or cured meat.  For these, Austrians have their own, precise way of speaking, belying the strength and individuality of their traditions.

In contrast, the charcuterie renaissance in North America uses of grab-bag-blend of terms from across Europe.  Bresaola (northern Italian), is mentioned in the same breath as saucisson sec (French), and jerky (Plains Indian).

Despite all this, I still use the term "Austrian charcuterie," in the hope that North Americans curious about Austrian cured meat will be more likely to stumble across this page.

Anyways.

Charcuterie has a very special place in the Austrian diet.  Breakfast, for instance, invariably consists of bread, cheese, coffee, and some form of cured meat or pâté.  The larger cities are dotted with würstlstände (sausage stands, which will be discussed in a future post).  To my mind, the greatest place to sample Austrian charcuterie is at certain taverns called heurigen.

Heurigen ("HOY-ree-gen," singular heuriger)

Austria produces a lot of wine.  Most of this wine is consumed within the country while it is relatively young, (which is why Austrian wines are very rare in this part of the world).  The word heuriger literally means young wine, but the term usually refers to a special kind of tavern.  Winemakers will open up shop for a couple of weeks so that guests can come to drink the young wine, which is served with plates of cold food such as cheese, spreads, bread, and charcuterie.  The word for these savoury accompaniments is brettljause ("BRET-tel YOW-ze").  Brett means board, as the food is usually spread out on a wooden board.  Brettl, I think, is some kind of dimunitive form, though I'm not entirely sure. Jause means snack.

While heuriger usually implies wine, there are also most heurigen.  Most is a type of cider, usually made from apples, though sometimes pears are used.  Most is quite different from the commercial ciders we know.  It has a pronounced sourness, and in my brief experience it is usually not heavily carbonated.  Sometimes it's straight up flat.

Since heurigen are open irregularly for short periods throughout the year, the owners will hang an evergreen bough (busch "BOOSH") over their door or signpost so that passersby will know when they are open.  For this reason, in the province of Styria, heurigen are called buschenschänken (singular buschenschank).  Schank means bar, as in the place where the bartender stands.  The implication is that the wine, intended to be drank young, is stored in barrels and poured from the bar, instead of being bottled for long storage.

I suppose the star of the heuriger show is supposed to be the wine or most, but for me the main attraction was always the charcuterie.  So, without further warbling I would like to introduce you to the main players of Austrian charcuterie, as they are served in traditional heurigen.

Blunz'n ("BLOON-tsin") - Blood Sausage

This is the infamous blood sausage, which we have toyed around with a couple times here on Button Soup.  In Germany it is called blutwurst.  In Austria it is called blunz'n.  Austrian blunz'n is a very different creature to English black pudding or French boudin noir.

I attribute the success of my last attempt at blood sausage to the inclusion of a panada, a mixture of milk and bread.  Austrian blunz'n is very heavy on the bread content.  In fact, the first piece I ever had was riddled with white cubes that I assumed were pork fat, but turned out to be bread.  While English black pudding has a pronounced blood taste, and a pastey texture, blunz'n is subtle and light, somtimes more like a dumpling than a sausage.



My favourite blunz'n so far had a pleasant acidity to it.  I'm not sure whether this was from added vinegar, or if maybe rye sourdough was used in the panada.

Besides being sliced for cold platters, blunz'n is surprisingly common in the kitchen.  There is a traditional dish called blunz'n gröstl, which is a blood sausage hash.  We also had blunz'n baked into an eggy bread:

Grammel ("GRAM-mel", plural grammeln) - no translation

This is a weird one, as you may have guessed by the fact that there is no satisfactory English translation.

The first time I had grammel was in a dish called grammelschmaltzbrot.  It appeared to be rendered pork fat spread on rye bread, with tiny, crunchy flakes that resembled bacon bits, only much smaller, maybe the size of kosher salt crystals.  I asked a handy Austrian what exactly I was eating.  She said, approximately, that when pork fat is rendered and then "pressed" (strained?) you are left with grammel.  I wondered aloud. Bits of skin?  Bits of meat?  She wasn't sure.

When searching the internet, I came across this explanation, which is well-written, but I think entirely inaccurate.  The author says that grammeln are mineral deposits in the fat of Mangalitzas, an Austro-Hungarian heritage pork breed renouned for its eating quality.  I don't buy this, simply because I ate plenty of grammel that was not from Mangalitzas.

By Occam's razor I'm more inclined to believe the sources that say grammel is a form of connective tissue in the fat that cooks out in the rendering process.  Whatever it is, it's crisp, golden brown, and sinfully savoury.  Its existence is all the more surprising to me because I have rendered a lot of pork fat in the last couple years, but hadn't thought to skim through the residue to look for something as small and delicous as grammel.

Grammel is also used in the kitchen.  When there is a bit of residual lard on the grammel, it binds to form a paste, which can then be rolled into a knödel (roughly, "KNUH-del," a dumpling).

Hauswürstel - ("HOWS-voors-tel", literally "house sausage," in fact just dried sausage)

Similar to French saucisson sec, this is an essential component to any heuriger spread.  The most interesting version I had contained the delicious green pumpkin seeds common in Styria.

Preßwurst - ("PRESS-voorst," headcheese)

Austrian preßwurst is very similar to our headcheese, though I would say the meat is packed much more densely (ie. there is less jelly between the pieces of meat).  Even so, it holds together extremely well, and can be sliced very thin.  It's usually doused in vinegar, then called "saure preßwurst."

Kümmelbraten (roughly "KOOM-mel-BRAT-en," literally, "caraway roast," roast pork belly)

This was a pleasant surprise: pork belly, usually lightly cured, roasted with caraway seeds, and served with the skin on.  A fantastic crunch from the crackling, which splinters into little nuggets during the slicing.

Schweinsbraten - ("SHVINES-brat-en," roasted pork shoulder)

A simple roast, sliced and served cold, is a very common brettljause.  Sometimes the meat is cured, sometimes not.  Somehow the only picture I got of a cold pork roast was this haggard slice below, which I had already prodded with my fork.

Bratlfettnbrot - ("BRAT-tel FET-en-brot," approximately "roast drippings, with bread")

One of the fantastic byproducts of roasting meat is the drippings.  They are comprised of two parts.  First is the highly gelatinous meat juices.  Second is the fat rendered from the meat.  There was a time not so long ago when every housewife would pour the hot pan drippings from a roast into a jar and keep them for later use.  The fat can been scraped off and used to sear meat.  The juices, which solidify when refrigerated, can be used to fortify pan sauces.

In Austria the whole mix, that is, the partially solidified meat juices and the rendered fat, are served as a spread.  It is called bratlfettnbrot, which is possibly the most amusing word in the Austrian language.  Or any language.

In the picture below you can see the bratlfettnbrot in the plastic jar on the right, with the spoon sticking out.  The picture is not from a heuriger, but rather at Dominik's house.  Dominik was the student Lisa and I hosted last summer.  You may remember him from the fantastic Austrian dinner he and his friends cooked for us while staying in Edmonton.

Some photos.

Heuriger meals are finished with mehlspeisen ("MAYL-shpeye-zen," literally "flour food," baked desserts) and schnapps.  Austrian baking and distilling will be covered in future posts.