Day o' cooking

[nonelvis]

One of my to-do items before I leave for England is to make sure all the fruit we picked last weekend is preserved. Today I dealt with the pears by making gingered pear preserves.

The recipe called for crystallized ginger, but I had none in the house. Still, I'd just bought a giant knob of ginger, so I figured I'd try candying it myself. This was as easy as I expected, and also left me with about a cup of now hard-as-a-rock ginger syrup. I haven't figured what to do with that yet, though I suppose I can always melt it back down and put it in cocktails.

I modified the recipe somewhat in that I used about twice as much crystallized ginger called for and no fresh ginger; also, I lowered the sugar content a bit to compensate for cooking the preserves in the same pan in which I'd been cooking the ginger syrup. The preserves now smack you in the face with gingerness, which is fine with me.

There's also brown rice going on the stove for veggie fried rice later tonight. If I had more energy, I'd make applesauce, too, but I think I'm going to save that for next weekend.

Comments

[miz-hatbox.livejournal.com]

Oooh! I love ginger anything that smacks you in the face with its gingerness.

[nonelvis]

In that case, I definitely recommend making candied ginger. I ended up taking it out a little early – I could tell the sugar was crystallizing properly, and I was getting impatient – but the candy is incredibly sharp and spicy, very fresh-tasting.

[mmancuso.livejournal.com]

Insert canned response, here.

(Sounds really lovely! I know you enjoy doing the whole shebang. Also, any face smack by ginger has got to be good.)

[nonelvis]

It's gingerlicious!

(And now, back to your studio, young man.)

[kalleah.livejournal.com]

I adore ginger. I bet that crystallized ginger will be amazing in cookies.

[nonelvis]

I don't have enough left to put in cookies, but that could easily happen another time.

The leftover ginger sugar is probably bound for this recipe.

[kalleah.livejournal.com]

YUM.

[peebles.livejournal.com]

Ginger vodka martinis? Sugar the rim of your glass and put a piece of crystallized ginger on a stirrer. Ooh, with maybe a splash of plum wine instead of vermouth.

[nonelvis]

oooOOOOOoooo. YUM.