Jam made with Turkish Figs

I have been interested in figs for years (see previous post on fig jam from Lebanese figs), in their botany, in their geographic range --I see them everywhere, and in the diversity of the fruit. I was in southwestern Turkey at the end of July and discovered that Turkey is definitely a good place to go when it comes to figs.

These green figs were available everywhere: sold in stands along the highways, in the local village market, and hanging from the trees in gardens and fields.

I decided to make a small batch of jam from them and bought a kilo at the market.



This was my jam-cooking process.

Notes on the measurements

Description of fruit:

Medium large with green skin, pale red interior, not too many seeds for jam making.

I am a lazy cook, I like to call my food preparation 'rustic' but that really means that I don't like to take the time to work on refining the process for presentation. I'm more interested in the idea and the taste of the food. The results of my work would never win a ribbon in the county fair.

I made the jam from unpeeled figs. I DID cut off the thick stem end and removed the flower opening but beyond that, I just chopped the fruit into medium sized pieces.

I combined the fruit, sugar, lemon juice and lemon zest in the pan. After smelling and tasting, it seemed a little too lemony so I added a bit of sweet aniseed to counter it.

This mixture was brought to a boil and cooked for 20 minutes or so, long enough to kill organisms and stop enzyme activity, and make the jam thicken.

My current apartment isn't equipped with the usual canning tools so I improvised.

I re-used jars and sterilized them in the oven. If I had them, I would use canning jars, but they are not available here. The jars were laid on sides in oven to heat.

I set the oven temperature as low as possible to prevent the jars from breaking. 

These were some of the tools used for my kitchen jam project:

• Small pan for sterilizing jar tops
• Tongs for handling hot jars and jar tops
• Ladle and funnel to facilitate jar filling
• And clean cloth to wipe the rim of the jars.

The hot jam was ladled into hot jars, the jar rims wiped clean and jars closed.

This micro-batch made three and a half small jars.

Fig jam on fresh bread?

Fig jam and dark chocolate chunks on yoghurt?

Any other ideas? 

Micro-batching Fig Jam

I really like figs, I like them so much that I've planted two fig trees in my back garden in Olympia, Washington. The climate there is marginal when it comes to ripening the fruit and I am lucky to get two or three figs from the oldest tree before the neighborhood raccoons get the handful of others that might have ripened. I won the second fig tree at a Fruit Society Meeting two years ago, and it had not borne fruit before I left home for the UAE. This second one is a clone of one that seems to be well-adapted to one of the San Juan Islands (Washington State, USA) so I have high hopes that it will be a good one in relatively nearby Olympia as well.

The edible fig, Ficus carica L., originated in the Middle East. This is significant because the plant has a relationship with a tiny native wasp which crawls into the floral structure, crawls around pollinating the flowers, and thus, producing seedy fruit. The wasp is not found in the Pacific Northwest so the figs that we are able to produce in the my region in the U.S. are seedless, like seedless grapes. Until I moved here, I had not had a fresh fig with seeds, which brings me to my story, sort of. The seeds were a pleasant surprise since it started me thinking about wild fig plants.

Fig jam with za'atar and date jam with lemon
at Sands Restaurant, BanyanTree Al Wadi 

Recently I ate in a restaurant in Ras Al Khaimah (UAE) where I was served two home-made jams, a fig jam flavored with wild za'atar and a date jam with lemon peel. They were both delicious but I was especially interested in hearing about the fig with za'atar. Za'atar is the local name for either oregano, marjoram or thyme. Most people will say that it is thyme but it doesn't look like the thyme I'm familiar with, and it smells more like marjoram or oregano. But since these culinary herbs are indigenous to the Middle East, there will be a lot of variation in both plant type and flavor in this region. I decided that I wanted to make my own fig jam flavored with wild za'atar. I have made micro-batches of fresh fig jam in the past and like experimenting with different combinations of citrus peels and aromatic seeds so this project was not totally new to me. I have also made enough jam in tiny batches to know how to do it. But I do have some challenges living here: no canning jars or equipment.

My souq friends clowning around with watermelon and figs

I found small yellow figs imported from Lebanon at my neighborhood vegetable souq. I wasn't going to buy them, thought the little yellow fruits would be an under-ripe, flavorless waste, but my friends at the souq convinced me to try them. I took home a box of about two kilos of fruit and was happy to discover that they were delicious, sweet and jammy. It turns out that these are the type of fig that the wasp visits. Whether the presence of seeds affected the flavor or whether they were just a good variety at the peak of ripeness, they were exquisite. I ate one and left the rest for making the jam.

I was unable to find the za'atar soon enough for the making of the jam so fig and za'atar jam will have to wait until I can find both at the same time. I have to admit that the chef said they used the dried herb instead of fresh.

This batch is Aniseed-Lemon Peel-Fig Jam wonderful.

Micro-batch Fig Jam Recipe Using Small, Yellow, Seedy, Lebanese Figs

2 kilos(?) of figs (see the box of figs in photo above)
2 cups of sugar
1 tsp aniseed, slightly crushed to release flavor
peel of 1 lemon cut into slivers

Before making the jam, prepare the jars and utensils. I used clean but used jam jars. I have no real canning jars so I used thick glass jars I had saved for storing foods bought in bulk. I would recommend using canning jars if at all possible so that the jars can be properly sealed and are less likely to break from heating them. Place the clean jars on their sides (no tops) in the oven and turn the oven on to a low temperature. This is to sterilize the jars, you don't want to break them so try for about 180-200 degrees F. (not Celsius!).

Boil the jar tops in a small saucepan to kill any potential jam-spoiling organisms. I also sterilize the utensils in the same saucepan. I use a stainless steel stirring spoon, ladle, tongs and a canning funnel (here I used the top of a 5 liter plastic water bottle as my funnel).

Wash, then chop the fruit into pieces. Put in large pan with the rest of the ingredients and bring to a boil, stirring so that it doesn't burn on the bottom. Cook it down to a good jam consistency. When ready, ladle the hot jam into the hot jars. Use the funnel to keep the opening and outside of the jar jam-free. Use a napkin dipped in the boiling water to wipe off the rim of the jar before putting the top on.

Back to that seediness I mentioned... I was surprised to see many tiny yellow seeds floating around in the jam mixture as it cooked. Yes, these figs were seedy! I skimmed off some of them but after tasting the skimmings, realized that they did not add a bad flavor to the jam so I left the rest. It depends on your taste and digestive system whether to skim off some or just leave them as an added texture.

Finished jam

After the jam has cooled to room temperature, store in refrigerator or freezer. I made almost 3 jars of jam from the figs I bought. I brought the partially full jar into work for tasting, am still working on one jar and put the last jar in the freezer. So far, it hasn't spoiled.

About a month after making my jam, I read a post at Sugar Street Review about Bethany Kehdy from Dirty Kitchen Secrets, She conducts food trekking tours in Lebanon and is having a contest to win a food tour of Lebanon in 2013. It's more than perfect for me, don't you think? She even has a photo of women working with wild za'atar on her website.

I have visited Lebanon once so far and loved it. That first trip was a literary holiday, spending time with publishers, meeting an author at a street bookfair, and in book stores buying the literature of Lebanon. As I was leaving, I promised myself and new friends that I would return for the olive and grape harvests. I missed the harvest this year but I still intend to return. As I write this, I realize how much I want to delve into the wild origins of the food plants of this region. I don't want to return to my home country until I've finished this project.

Persimmon Bread with Raisins and Pistachios

Today would have been my father's 96th birthday. He died almost 6 years ago, about a month after his 90th birthday. I remember when I was a teenager that he teased me for baking healthy honey-oatmeal cakes, he'd called them 'horse-feed'. I guess this is my way of saying Happy Birthday, Dad, this cake's for you (healthy and delicious).

Last week I had 3 dead-ripe hachiya-type persimmons sitting on my counter. I am on a mission to stop wasting food. I've become sloppy about it lately, buying too much or eating out too often, and there is too much food going to waste in my kitchen. So I needed to do something with these persimmons before they fermented or became moldy. They were perfectly ripe, very soft, no astringency left when I used them.

I was sure there would be a good cake recipe online using persimmons so I searched and found one that I could adapt from  Epicurious, Persimmon Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting. I changed it quite a bit here (my version), maintaining the original recipe's basic structure.

Persimmon Bread Recipe

Preheat oven to 350 f. /175 c., coat a loaf pan with butter.

1 cup white flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup spelt flour
1 cup sugar (I used coarse crystals)
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cardamon powder
1/2 tsp ground cloves
Toss the dry ingredients together in a mixing bowl

1 stick butter (100 g), melted
Pulp of 3 persimmons
2 eggs
Mix these together and then add to dry ingredients above

1/2 cup golden raisins
1/2 cup roasted (un-dyed) pistachios (roast the nuts while pre-heating the oven), let cool
Add to batter.

Bake for 35-40 minutes.

I made a couple of mistakes with my first try. First, I used very coarse salt which I think overwhelmed the other flavors. Then, I thought it might be too much batter to put in one pan so I split it between two which made two loaves too flat. So I would just use one pan.

Kate makes Kushari

I work in a school that has a cafeteria unlike any you would find in the U.S. I've been told that the kitchen is used to cook for the employees of nearby hotels. Anyway, it's high quality, cooked from scratch, and the chefs come out to talk to us about food preferences. There are two cuisines cooked daily, an Indian one (very spicy!) and Middle Eastern. In addition, they have a salad bar, shawarma counter and pasta cooked to order while you wait. It's pretty amazing how good the food is and it is reasonably priced as well. My friends at work especially like an Egyptian dish called Kushari (spelled other ways as well). It is a mix of pasta, rice, lentils, and garbanzo beans (chickpeas) covered in a spicy tomato sauce and then covered with crispy fried onions. I've had it at the school and it is delicious, so I wanted to try cooking it at home. Of course, I could not follow the recipes exactly, impossible, so here's what I did:

Cooked brown rice and lentils separately and then mixed them together
Cooked brown garbanzo beans

Made tomato sauce to my taste and preference
Fried onions (in olive oil despite the instructions to NOT use olive oil)
Layered them as described

I didn't use pasta because I cannot begin to imagine pasta and rice in the same dish, it's redundant carbohydrates and I thought it would be unnecessary to the dish. Next time I might use it just to lighten up the dish.

I used brown rice instead of white because I prefer it.

The tomato sauce was of my own concoction and I can't even write down a recipe because it wasn't anything specific. It did include both fresh and sun dried tomatoes, cumin (everything here has plenty of cumin added and I love it!), some apple cider vinegar, and a bit of chili. Next time I want to make it spicier, more hot chili powder.

Traditionally, this is a layered dish with the pasta on the bottom, next a mixture of the rice and lentils, followed by a layer of cooked garbanzos, and then covered with the tomato sauce and those crispy fried onions. It's also a food with many variations and it seems to be perfectly fine to leave various ingredients out. I'll look for a recipe and post the url.

This one looks good:
http://www.missanthropistskitchen.com/2011/02/16/kushari-egyptian-meal/

And here's one from egyptianrecipes.net:
http://egyptianrecipes.net/koshari

For all you vegans, this is a good, naturally vegan food. Here's a photo of my finished dish.

Walking Along the Sweets Souk

I live on Muroor Street. I'm told that Muroor means traffic but it was not named for the amount of traffic or the traffic jams that occur regularly on this street. Apparently the Traffic Office was located somewhere on this street at some time and it was named for the office. I'm not sure if that's the Department of Transportation or what. I do have a bus station just down the street from me and there's a huge taxi stand next to it. Why my street is called 'traffic' is a small mystery but there are some interesting establishments along Muroor anyway, ones that have nothing to do with traffic.

When I walk in one direction I walk past a gold souk, then cross Electra -that's it's nickname- and, if I continued walking in that direction, I'll hit the Corniche, the park along the Gulf.

Tonight I walked in the opposite direction. Earlier in the week I had spotted the National Library from the bus on my way to work. When I got home from work today, I wanted to get out and get some exercise, so I decided to go for a walk in the direction of the library. Its less than a mile away but the heat and humidity at night can be suffocating (Right now it's a temperate 93 degrees F. with 67% humidity). so I wasn't going to push myself, just see how far I would get. As I got farther than I had walked previously in that direction, I came to a string of chocolate and sweet shops: my sweets souk. These stores are very upscale, new and large. The chocolate shops have lots of gold and silver platters heaped with foil-wrapped chocolates on display. These are big. I think that people here, the Emiratis have a lot of celebrations and parties and I was thinking that these shops might cater to those. Besides chocolate shops, there was one selling traditional sweets. As I was walking by, they opened the door and invited me in for samples. They gave me a taste of a date sweet. It appeared to be dates, mashed or cooked with a little rose water mixed in, with pistachio pieces sprinkled on top. It was quite delicious. I explained that I really was just out getting exercise and not looking to buy and so they sent me on but first gave me samples of another sweet, halwa. I looked it up on the internet (it sounds like it would be halvah but it isn't) and it's an Indian sweet so I guess this was a traditional Indian sweet shop. I'll have to go back and get some (I liked the date paste). Just down from that shop was a Bahraini shop selling foods, and a little bakery. No it wasn't really a sweets souk, I made that up. It just seemed like it could be. They are all grouped together. I haven't found any chocolate that I particularly like in the markets so I will also check out the chocolate shops for some good dark locally made chocolate (I hope).

I made it to the library! It's a beautiful new building. The library itself is tiny but there are different floors with a printer/publisher and other floors that may be information related. I will go back and take photos if they let me. I plan to spend more time there, exploring. I know that they have plans to open branches all over the city including putting a children's library in one of the malls. I'm so glad I found it and so, so glad it's close to my house.

I look forward to cooler weather and more discoveries. I'm very tired and blogger is not letting me preview so I'll post this complete with grammar errors. I'll add photos later if I can take them.

The next day... I've been set straight. The National Library I visited is a branch (but what a beautiful building for a branch) of the library and the main one is somewhat farther away, on the corner of Electra (see above) and Airport Road (I think). It's opposite the Etisalat office building. You have to understand, that is how you find your way around here, addresses are descriptive not specific.

Spelling and Grammar

I spelled the name of people from this country as "Emarati" in the last post because "Al-Emarati", the blog, spelled it that way so I thought it might be correct. I think that it should be "Emirati", at least in English. The name of the country, in English, is United Arab EMIRATES, so I'll go with that.

Also, I look back at the posts and they don't always make sense. My brain races, my fingers and brain get tangled in ideas, thoughts and nonsense! You all know me and how I am.

And unsure if I should refer to the literature of this area as Arab literature, Arabic literature, so I think I called it Middle Eastern. That term is more inclusive of the areas anyway, adding Persian and Northern African, Turkish, Syrian, and, yes, I want to read them all.

The English Language in the UAE

This will be short but I will add to it as I hear or see other interesting usages of the language. English is the second language for many living here as well as being the first language for expats from across the globe. I regularly interact with people speaking with Australian, Irish, English, Canadian, and American accents. And Emaratis, Indians, Pakistanis, and Filipinos speaking it as a second language. There are two important influences to the spoken language here, or so I believe. The British were here and many Emaratis were educated in England so British English has a strong presence here. Secondly, the largest group of expats here is Indian and they also influence the language.

I sometimes have to take a step back and try to figure out what something spoken or written in English means. The signs for Yield on American roads say Give Way on UAE roads. Makes absolute sense and I'm sure it comes from the UK's influence. Another usage that is different came up recently. I was talking to a young Emarati woman who asked me what my good name was. I had no idea what my good name or my bad name was. We talked about it, and decided that it might be from an Indian translation, that it means, first name (you know, first, best, good... ). I really didn't know what she was asking and what surprised me is that she said she was saying it because that was what she had heard was the correct way to ask. She said that they simply say, what is your name (no good or bad about it). We laughed, I told her that in the U.S. we would say it like she would.

Oh yeah, and Shisha, also known as Hubbly Bubbly, is prevalent everywhere. It's the smoking of flavored tobacco in hookah pipes. That Hubbly Bubbly, it sounds like an addition from the Indian expats. I don't know that, just think that it might be.

By the way, I just added the blog/discussion link called Al-Emarati to my links. It sounds like the voice, or perhaps the voice I filter through to interpreting life to be like here. I haven't read them all, and so don't know if what I just tried to say is true for me. Especially interesting was the posting called "Just because you hate your leaders". I recommend it. I think Americans tend to lump the whole of the Middle East together, politically, socially, economically. Once you live here, you see how things are and it is not that simple. I am reading (as I said in an earlier post) the book Rags to Riches, which gives the story of the birth of this country from one person's perspective. The first Sheikh of independent UAE, Sheik Zayed (apologies if I formed his name incorrectly), did what was right for this country. He invested the oil money in the citizens, building infrastructure, schools, medical facilities. Look at pictures of the life here in the 60s, even 70s, and contrast it to today. Last night, taking a taxi home from the store, I watched a man crossing the street and thought about what he would have been walking on if this was fifty years ago: sand, with a handful of vehicles driving on sand, and living with no air conditioning, no running water, few jobs. This place might not be perfect but I think that the heart is in the right place.

I'm adding to this post. I wrote it a couple weeks ago but today I was blessed with an email containing the phrase "Please do the needful". I love it.

Oh yeah, and the Aussies don't know the expressions kitty corner and katty whompers (spelling???). Imagine that!