Photo courtesy of www.lottieanddoof.com

As soon as I spotted these glistening, sweet jellies on the adorable food blog Lottie and Doof, I knew they had to be mine. And, with new crop apples appearing in our fruit stands and markets, what better time to whip these up than right now? I am drawn to the blush pink tone, the firm, thick essence of apple residing in each bite, the crunch of sugar crystals in the mouth. In fact, I cannot think of a better project for this afternoon. . . . .

Thank you, Lottie and Doof!

Apple Jellies

• 3 pounds of apples (about 8), washed, quartered and cored
• 1 cup water
• 1+1/2 cups sugar
• Juice of 1 lemon

Start by lightly rubbing an 8-by-8-inch square baking pan with a flavorless vegetable oil (canola or safflower). Line pan with parchment and lightly oil parchment.

In a large pot combine the apples and the water and cook over medium heat until soft, about 20 minutes.

Pass the mixture through a food mill or sieve. Return the puree to the pot and stir in the sugar and lemon juice.

Simmer over low heat, stirring often, for about 1 hour. As the mixture cooks and reduces, it starts to thicken and bubble. Scrape the bottom of the pan while stirring to make sure nothing is sticking and burning. The puree is done when it holds a mounded shape. To be sure, you can chill a small amount on a plate in the freezer. It should appear and feel jellied.

Spread the mixture evenly in the prepared pan. Cool for several hours or overnight. When cooled completely, invert onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Remove the top layer of parchment paper. Leave to dry, uncovered, overnight. The paste should be firm enough to cut. If for some reason it is not, put the paste in a 150° F oven for an hour or more until firm. Let cool completely before cutting. The paste can be stored whole, wrapped tightly in plastic. Or trim the edges and cut into 1-inch pieces before wrapping. Store at room temperature or refrigerated for up to a year. Before serving toss the pieces in granulated sugar.

If the first photo didn't convince you to try these, here is another one to tempt you. . . .

Photo courtesy of www.lottieanddoof.com

Do something special with the apple harvest this fall with our help:

Swiss chard is here, my garden teeming with it in rainbow hues. Given my quinoa-centric state of mind, what better pairing can I dream up than the two together? It works!! A gentle saute of sliced chard stalks, plus the chopped leaves and lots of garlic make for an ideal quinoa partner, the grain being a blank canvas to which one can riff in many ways. Swiss chard also speaks to me of raisins and pine nuts, so they make an appearance here too, a warm side dish, a cooled down salad, a leftover to bring to work for lunch.

Let's start by cooking the quinoa. You can boil it like pasta in salted water and drain it when it blooms and softens, a little tail, the germ, emerging from each grain. Place the drained quinoa back into the cooking pot, cover with a clean tea towel and let it sit for 5 minutes. Fluff and serve. Another method for cooking quinoa is to cook one part quinoa to two parts water, covered, for 12 - 15 minutes, until done. Fluff, cover, let sit for 5 minutes, and serve. Both methods work well, so prepare your quinoa according to your preference.

When cooked quinoa is destined for a salad, it is a good idea to dry it out so that the grains remain separate. Thanks to Bob's Red Mill Cookbook for this important pointer. Spread your cooked quinoa onto a baking sheet to cool and dry. You can store cooked quinoa in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 5 days.

Now for the fun, where inspiration, flavour and texture arrive on the scene. Take a large bunch of Swiss chard, rainbow coloured, if possible. Wash the stalks and leaves and pat them dry delicately. It is OK if some water clings to the chard. Snip off the leaves and chop them coarsely. Set aside. Slice the stalks thinly. In a large pan, warm two teaspoons of olive oil and saute the sliced stalks until beginning to soften, about 10 minutes. Add in the chopped chard leaves and 2 - 3 plump cloves of crushed garlic. Cook until softened, tender and fragrant. The Swiss chard will have wilted and cooked down to a mere skeleton of its former, bulky self. Season with salt and pepper and a few gratings of whole nutmeg. Let the chard cool and add it to the cooked quinoa along with a handful of golden raisins and another handful of toasted pine nuts. You may want to dress the salad lightly with a lemony vinaigrette, or just some fruity olive oil and a splash of fresh lemon juice. Finish the salad off with a flourish of fresh herbs, whatever is fresh and abundant in your garden or market. Mint is awfully nice here as is Italian parsley or chives. If you cannot decide on one herb, use a combination. There is no right or wrong here, just the desires of your palate to follow.

Enjoy this delightful creation as a light lunch with a bowl of soup, with some flatbreads and cheese, or as a side to some protein. It keeps very well in the fridge for few days and will nourish your mind and body with its healthful goodness.

Can't get enough of quinoa? Read on:

I think of this salsa as Mexico in a bowl, the profound culinary flavours of the country embodied here in bursts of sharp purple onion, sweet vine-ripened tomatoes, the tangy jolt of lime juice, spicy peppers with a big kick and the floral flourish of cilantro. It is the cohabitation of these elements that really speaks deeply of Mexican tastes, the flavours I crave when I think of sun-drenched, colourful foods from that sun-drenched, colourful country.

Some salsas are cooked, deep and dark, smooth and savoury. This is a fresh salsa, chunky and robust, with nothing gentle or delicate about it. It is best eaten soon after it is prepared, where the sparkle of ingredients remains bright and inviting. Think of this salsa as more of a salad, a condiment, than a sauce, though it is intensely wonderful liberally spooned over grilled chicken in a sauce-like manner. I enjoy this salsa as a juicy side to fried eggs or a simmering bowl of hot polenta. It is great with BBQ salmon, stuffed into corn tortillas, on nachos or slathered on a juicy steak. When your mouth needs a journey to somewhere tantalizingly spicy, take it to this tomato-laden condiment for a dose of Mexican fun. You will never want to eat grocery store salsa again after a fling with this flavourful, flirty dish.

Fresh Tomato Salsa

4 ripe tomatoes, diced; 1-2 jalapeno peppers, depending on how hot you like things, seeds and ribs removed, diced; 1/4 cup diced Spanish onion; 2 cloves garlic, crushed; 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro; juice of 1/2 a lime; pinch of powdered cumin, optional; salt and pepper to taste; pinch of sugar.

In a medium bowl, combine tomatoes, jalapenos and onion. Add in crushed garlic, lime juice, cumin, salt, pepper and sugar. Mix and taste. Adjust seasoning if needed. Best eaten immediately, as the tomatoes start to leech liquid if left too long. If this does happen, simply drain off the water, stir the salsa and serve. It will still taste great for a few hours.

Enjoy the harvest of summer with salsa and more market fresh foods:

This is what you start with, a vegetable Barbie would like, pretty in its flourescent pink jacket.

And, this is what you get after a good, long simmer in a bath of tomatoes and spices, tender, creamy comfort, stripped of its pink hue but hearty and charming in its own rustic way.

It is quite wonderful how plump and tender these fresh beans are, much different than dried beans, with a softness and sweetness that is deeply endearing. The season for these cranberry beans is short, so I buy them whenever and wherever I find them, adding them to soups, simmering them into fragrant Mediterranean themed stews scented with garlic and fresh thyme. I never tire of their endless charms. You could call me a cranberry bean freak, for the two weeks of the year they are available. I mourn their loss briefly and then quickly become enamoured with other market goods - bright, meaty tomatoes, crisp new crop apples, delicate purple Italian plums for kuchen and jam. That's the good part of falling in love at the produce stand - you can be fickle and change your allegiances every few weeks.

But this week was cranberry bean week and I enlisted my husband to sit at the table with me and shell my bag of beans. Soon enough, my large bag was reduced to the contents of the pods, a few cups of mottled fuscia beans ready for some heat. First task: boil about 3 cups of these babies with a bay leaf and a whole head of garlic. No salt, as it toughens uncooked beans. As the pot simmered, I went to the garden for some sage, foraging 8 large, velvety leaves for the next step in this process. I opened a large can of diced tomatoes and sliced lots more garlic, readying for the cooked beans and what they would do next. When the beans had morphed into gentle tenderness, I reserved a cup of their cooking liquid and drained them, reserving the garlic head, discarding the bay leaf. In a medium sized pot, I warmed up some olive oil and sauteed the sliced garlic, 5 healthy cloves of it, just until aromatic. I added in the cooked beans and their reserved liquid, as well as the tomatoes and their liquid, plus another bay leaf, my garden sage, chopped, and some salt and pepper. I took the whole head of garlic I just rescued from the cooking beans and squeezed out the soft paste inside each papery clove. Mashed it with a knife and added this highly flavoured goodness into the pot of stewing beans. The goal at this stage is to cook down the tomatoes and let them nestle into a soft blanket that surrounds the beans, a thick and savoury sauce. This takes about 25 minutes during which the beans take on loads of flavour. I like to finish off the dish with a long squirt of fresh lemon juice as well as the lemon's finely grated zest, a tart surprise that gets some attention from your tongue. A handful of tiny little fresh thyme leaves works wonder here too, complimenting every element you have included, the sunny lemon scent, the aromatic cooked tomatoes, the generous dose of garlic and the tender beans.

I serve this bean stew as an accompaniment to fried eggs and corn tortillas, next to grilled chicken breasts, on a plate with smoky ribs and crunchy cole slaw. For the brief time the beans are available, this dish is an everyday comfort food. Shelled beans freeze well as does the cooked stew, so make a pilgrimage to your local farmers' market and treat yourself to a seasonal specialty you will fall in love with every summer.

Who knew beans could be so wonderful?

My jar of raspberry jam

Ever read a slick blog where the photos have a casual, but charmingly messy feel to them? I was hoping to be that blogger, with gentle, homey photos like the one below, crumbs askew, some chic disarray on view.

Cannelle et Vanille blog photo

Instead, alas, I look more like a slob. So sorry. Sloppiness aside, my raspberry jam is slick! And it couldn't be any simpler. It is just raspberries and sugar mashed together and cooked over medium then low heat until thick and jammy. I do add a wee pinch of kosher salt to brighten the whole experience and that's it, folks. My formula is simple: equal parts mashed fruit to sugar. Cook. Cool. Eat or freeze. I don't even bother with the canning routine. Bought an extra freezer and in go all my jams, perfectly preserved for those dark winter mornings when toast and jam and hot coffee are the recipe for comfort.

Here is the way I make jam, albeit, messily. Take a few cups of fresh raspberries and place them in a heavy bottomed pot. Add a little pinch of kosher salt. Mash them with a potato masher. Measure the mash. Add equal amounts of sugar. Cook mixture, stirring gently, over medium heat and adjust temperature as needed to maintain a slow simmer. Boil until thick and jammy, stirring more as the mixture thickens so as to avoid scorching. You can use a candy thermometer to gage the exact moment of doneness at 220 F or drop a glop on an ice cube and see if it holds together in a jam-like fashion. I did neither, just used my eyes to decide that the right time had come, a thick sludge of ruby toned sweetness sitting in my pot. I lifted the spoon and the jam looked dense and heavy, falling off the spoon in large, slow blobs. All this is to say that you can measure with instruments and use temperature as a guide, but nothing replaces sensory input, where you look, feel and use some intuition as well in knowing when your jam has set.

You may be wondering about pectin and why I don't use it. I don't like it. It is bitter, so you need more sugar in your jam, diluting the intensity of the fruit. Raspbery jam always seems to set beautifully without it, so why use it when you don't need it? I love the pure simplicity of jam made with just fruit and sugar.

Once your fruity mass has become what you intend it be, ladle it carefully into clean jars and either process them for canning, freeze them or store them in the fridge for a few weeks. You will be happy with the pure jolt of fruity denseness each mouthful yields, a concentrated hit of raspberry essence much superior to commercial products. Use your jam liberally on warm whole wheat toast, on buttery scones, overtop vanilla bean ice cream, baked up into delicate rugelach cookies, or, my personal favourite, in Jammers, a special cookie project I will deconstruct for you on this blog very soon. Wait for it.

Get busy making jam while fresh fruit is upon us.