Page 32 - Valley Table - Winter 2023/2024

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30 TheValleyTable | December2023-February2024
e’re lucky to live in an area that produces wonderful fruits and veggies. But it feels like just
as soon as the edible rainbow appears—everything from rosy
peaches to crimson beets and hunter- green cucumbers—it fades. By late
fall, offerings at farmers markets have dwindled, home gardens have given way to
brown stalks and withered leaves, and fruit trees are bare.
Don’t worry: There’s a loophole— canning and preserving. Sure, it sounds
like something only the pioneers did, yet pioneering chefs are also embracing this genius food hack. It’s a great way to avoid
a long winter with a crisper full of meh- tasting supermarket stuff. Expert canners are happy to explain why the old-school techniques are catching on, and how to ride that syrupy, jammy, and briny wave.
Preservation Nation
If there’s any doubt about canning
and preserving’s growing popularity, Rock Tavern-based chef Nicholas
Leiss can set the record straight. He
runs Farm2ChefsTable, an enterprise
that includes dining events focused on Hudson Valley ingredients, and a website that shines a spotlight on local farmers and producers. Recently, he attended
a fermentation festival at Twin Star Orchards in New Paltz. “I was talking to the owner and said I didn’t realize that fermentation and canning were such a big thing. Thousands of people showed up,” he says. In his view, a major reason for the resurgence is because “people are starting to reconnect with their roots. We want
to know what’s going on with our food— what’s going into the ingredients and how much salt was added,” he explains.
Becky Polmateer, program director for the Cornell Cooperative Extension for Columbia and Greene Counties, teaches canning classes. “It’s very popular right now,” she says, adding that the number of students a session attracts depends on the food being preserved. Jams and jellies generate more interest than pickles, she observes. “Some people don’t realize they’re just learning
a technique,” she adds. “I try to make it
so that when somebody leaves my class, they’re probably not coming back. They feel confident in doing it on their own.”
For Starters
Not all preserved food has to be cooked inside a jar. Some are cooked and then jarred, like the chutney Leiss shares on the next page. The basic principle of canning— which is when foods are indeed cooked in jars made airtight during the process—is pretty straightforward. “It’s the technique to make a product shelf stable. It removes the air [from filled canning jars] to stop the spoilage process, and cook what’s inside, killing anything that would make you sick,” explains Polmateer. Although there
PHOTO BY SKYFIELD/ADOBE STOCK