Svartvinbärsylt! (utan socker)

[kareina]

Today was the first opportunity I had in a couple of weeks to head down to the bottom part of our property and pick berries. The raspberries, which didn't have a good berry year to begin with, are now pretty much all gone--just a few dried brown things (which were dry and brown last time I looked, too. However, the svartvinbär (black currant) are still doing well. When we picked them to make saft (juice/syrup) three weeks ago they were mostly ripe, but there were still a number of small red berries. This time all of them were black, and some of them are starting to split open. The splitting might have something to do with the summer being so dry when the berries were growing, but plenty of rain in the last couple of weeks while they were ripening, so the plant is now shoving in more liquid than the shells can contain? Or it might just be normal over-ripe behaviour for these berries.

I picked a small bag full of berries, and once I separated out stems, leaves, and split berries I had a double handful more than a liter of berries. lord_kjar has thought of trying to make a liquor out of them, but neither of us have ever tried making any sort of liquor and have no idea of the best approach. I know it is possible to simply mash the berries and soak in a mild tasting alcohol, but we don't have any in the house, and he didn't have any idea what sort would be good to buy for such a project, so I decided to try cooking them into sylt (jam) instead, since he puts either lingonsylt or hallonsylt (lingonberry or raspberry jam) on most of the things he eats. (Really: Oatmeal or breakfast cereal? Put jam on it. Meat? Put jam on it. Lasagna? Put jam on it.)

I rarely use jam on anything, I find it way too sweet. It is ok as a filling in a bread roll, or in the middle of a layer cake (but even better to mash frozen strawberries, mix with whipped cream (no sugar!), and use that instead. Therefore I thought I would try to see what would happen if I did a jam without added sugar--we have plenty more berries down there, so all I would be out if it didn't work would be the time the experiment took.

So I put the berries in a pot, added just enough water to cover, chopped a green (Granny Smith) apple, added it to the pot, and put it on the stove. I let it simmer for about an hour (while slicing potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes to layer with spinach, cheese, and left over vegetarian spaghetti sauce (with tomato, walnuts, chickpeas, and broccoli) for dinner to share with a friend who can't eat gluten who was expected this evening).

After the dinner had been assembled and set aside in the fridge to wait till a more appropriate time to bake it I strained the solid bits of the berries from the juice, mashed them up a bit (after first fishing out the apple core and strings of apple peel, that I had left in while cooking), and stirred it back into the juice. I then tried putting it into a 1 liter glass jar, determined that I had at least a cup more of berries and juice than would fit in the jar, so I put it into a smaller pot and put it back on the stove for a bit longer, till it had reduced enough to fit into that jar.

The result is nice and tart, a little sweet, but not too much. lord_kjar, of course, put some on the not-lasagna I baked for dinner, but this time all three of the rest of us tried it to. Yum! For the first time in my life I understand why one would want to add cooked fruit jam to a savory dish, but it took making one without any refined sugar to make it tasty enough for me to want to eat it!

I guess I should pick more berries...

Comments

[stitchwhich.livejournal.com]

I'd never thought of trying to cook down fruit without adding some sort of sweetener. Now I must try it.

[corvideye.livejournal.com]

Some fruits have enough pectin on their own to jell. There's also low-sugar pectin, if you want to do a reduced sugar version of a jam or jelly.

[kareina.livejournal.com]

Let me know how it comes out when you do. The others tried it on store bought vanilla ice cream last night and liked it there too, since it cut down the too sweet aspect of the ice cream.

alcoholic fruits are fun!

[corvideye.livejournal.com]

For steeping in alcohol, any strong inexpensive alcohol will do. Vodka is the most flavor neutral (or a local equivalent? avkavit?). Though it's cheap, I don't recommend everclear, that's pretty rough on the palate! If you want to impart flavor from the alcohol too, you can use brandy, rum, whisky, whatever... dried apricots in brandy, for instance! Yum! Also raisins or other dried fruit; once I did dried asian pears in amaretto, which was delicious. I got some cranberry-infused liquor for Xmas. We did a jar with all the ginger root peels from making pickled ginger; it was great, and we were able to keep topping off with vodka for quite a while before the peels ran out of flavor.