Sometimes you literally stumble on something. Like the abundant grape crop impeding my husband from cutting the grass. Or the verjus I was offered to flavor my water at a recent outing in a farm-to-table and locavore restaurant. Because local means no lemon or lime. Verjus? Turns out, this is a thing. Its an old as time recipe, made from not quite ripe grapes, apples or crabapples, that reduces them to a tart juice to be used in recipes, water, to make jam. Compared to a lemon, but more like tamarind, its a flavour enhancer. Called verjus in France, verjuice in England, and sour grapes in Persian cooking. The longest part of processing is the labour intensive removal of grapes to stem. Then I parboiled, blendered, filtered to remove skins and bits, boiled down to make jam or used in recipes. The jam is downright delicious, and although the sugar content (2 cups white sugar to 5 cups of verjus) was low Im still planning on making another recipe sugar free with some of those blackber...
There's nothing like the first ride in the snow.
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