Sugar-free Blues

These blueberries could get by without any sugar, I thought to myself as I dumped two cups of the stuff into my jam pot.

And as I stirred, I thought about the people I know who love blueberries but don’t love—or can’t tolerate—sugar. What about them? Don’t they deserve jam too?

And why didn’t I buy more blueberries at the farmer’s market that Saturday morning? They were so sweet and delicious! Was I nuts? I suddenly understood that by leaving pints and pints of them behind in the market, I had done the wrong thing

So on Sunday morning, when I went to a different market and saw the same farmer with his blueberries, I bought another pint. “They’re so good,” I said. “What did you do, go out and sing to them every single day?”

“ Well,” he replied as he handed me my purchase, “somebody did something right.”

Sugar-free Blueberry Jam with Balsamico
2½ c blueberries (a heaping pint)
⅓ c water
3 T balsamic vinegar
4 t powdered pectin (find here or here)

Pick through the blueberries to remove any stems or junk. Wash them, drain, and put in a pot. Smush them up a little with a potato masher or two wooden spoons. Add the water and balsamic, then sprinkle the pectin over the berries.

Cook them over high heat, stirring constantly, until they boil hard. Boil a minute or two, then pour into two sterilized half-pint jars and seal with two-piece caps in a boiling water bath. Ten minutes ought to do it.

Easy, fun, and oh so right!

Lemon Teacake

“Thank you for letting me invite myself over for cake,” said Jennifer.

“Oh, I thought I had invited you,” I replied, “when we ran into each other on the street the other day.”

She corrected, “Remember, earlier, when I missed Beth’s birthday, I said we’d have to get together for cake very soon.”

“I thought you meant you would invite us to eat a cake that you would bake sometime in the future.”

Jennifer smiled. “No,” she said.

When you have friends this smooth, you need to bake a very delicate and fine-textured cake. Or maybe they need you to bake it. I’m not sure anymore.

Lemon Teacake
It has always bugged me that this “lemon teacake” is made with lime. Sometimes I get mad and substitute another lemon for the lime. That’ll show ‘em.

1⅔ c flour
1 t baking powder
½ t salt
1 stick butter, softened
1 c sugar
2 eggs
½ c milk
1 lime, zested and juiced
1 c sifted powdered sugar
1 lemon, juiced

Heat the oven to 325° and generously grease an 8½ x 4½ loaf pan.

Stir together the dry ingredients.

Cream the butter and sugar, then mix in the eggs one at a time. Stir in the dry ingredients and the milk alternately, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the lime zest and lime juice (strain it!), then mix the batter thoroughly.

Spread the batter into the pan and bake 55 minutes to an hour, until a cake tester comes out clean.

Cool the cake in its pan on a rack for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, whisk the lemon juice (strain it!) with the powdered sugar.

At the 10-minute mark, pour the glaze all over the cake in the pan, letting it run down the sides. Try to get glaze over the entire surface of the cake crust. Cool another 15 minutes. (The cake should sponge up all the glaze as it cools.)

Cover the pan with a plate and invert it. Remove the pan, cover the cake with a serving plate, and invert again. So pretty! Serve it with blueberries and vanilla ice cream, maybe.

Beer/Pie Pairings with Amy and Joe

Did you know Curran’s Restaurant has Pie Happy Hour? I kid you not. From 2pm to 5pm and from 7pm to close, you can waltz in there and have a slice of pie for a dollar.

This is the kind of friendly customer-centric, get-‘em-in-the-door promotion I’d expect from Curran’s. They have been a neighborhood standard for more than sixty years. Think of a homegrown Perkin’s or Country Kitchen with career waitstaff. The clientele is a mix of families, elders, and high school couples on weeknight dates. So it is a little bit of a surprise to learn that Curran’s also has a long list of foreign, domestic, and craft beers in bottles.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

My friend Joe and I headed over for a flight of beer and pie. We ordered two beers and two slices of pie each. We split each beer and managed to eke out eight bites from each slice, eight sips from each half-beer. Our tasting notes are transcribed below. We were, in spite of ourselves, surprised by what we learned.

The worst beer overall, to my chagrin, was my own longtime favorite: Summit EPA. It performed poorly with every pie we tried, although it was tolerable with apple. Apple, we found, was the all-around good beer companion. While it did not excel with any beer we tasted, it made an acceptable sidekick to all of them. “The Will Smith of the pies,” remarked Joe.

The worst pie was blueberry. Curran’s blueberry pie is nothing to write home about in the first place; it’s an uninspired assembly of canned blueberry filling and pale crust. But had it been a better pie, it would only have been a bigger shame to eat it with beer. Time after time, flavors clashed like a pair of second-rate drag queens angling for the same spot on the dance floor. The Summit EPA and blueberry pairing was a complete loser.

The overall best match was Blue Moon and pumpkin. Curran’s tremblingly tender custard tastes strongly of fresh pumpkin and nutmeg. When that flavor combines with smooth, clean Blue Moon, it’s a magical moment.

So what’s next for beer/pie pairings? Curran’s has other beers to try, other pies to probe. Maybe a beer/pie potluck, where everyone brings either a six-pack or a pastry?

Beer and Pie Tasting Notes
Click to enlarge!