As I mentioned Friday, I planned to make Jewish cookies known as hamantaschen over the weekend. Hamantaschen are triangle-shaped cookies traditionally filled with thick poppyseed or prune spread, or other fruit preserves. They are traditionally made during Purim — a Jewish holiday festival similar to Mardi Gras — but can be found year-round in Jewish bakeries if you’re fortunate enough to have one nearby. We are not, so the past couple years I’ve simply picked up hamantaschen from Whole Foods, which were fine but nothing to get excited about.

Fortunately, Ruth of Once Upon A Feast came to my rescue with not one but two hamantaschen recipes; I went with Marcy Goldman’s recipe. With all due respect to Marcy’s Bubbie, I swapped butter for the oil (I prefer not to bake with oil), and omitted the orange zest in deference to the husband’s zest-dislike. Next time I’ll try it with the zest for a little more flavor.

The dough was simple and resulted in a soft, sweet cookie. The husband doesn’t like the traditional fillings, so I took advantage of our extensive jam collection and we made an assortment of flavors: strawberry-rhubarb (courtesy of my sister-in-law), apricot, raspberry (both from local farms), and some Ficoco — a fantastic fig and chocolate spread, think a fruity twist on Nutella.

I’m pretty certain we’ll stick with homemade from now on, these were fun and delicious!

Since only one cookie unfolded into a pancake while baking, I consider myself fully qualified to offer the following expert suggestions:

• Don’t go overboard with the filling, but don’t be too stingy either — the ones my son plopped a larger spoonful of jelly on turned out best. I think the weight of the jam helped keep the center from puffing up as much when they baked. And, they have the perfect jam-to-cookie ratio.
• Don’t be afraid to fold the edges up over most of the jam — and pinch tightly. The ones folded up more tightly also held their shape better while baking.
• I brushed the outside of the cookies with egg wash — in reading other posts, it seems this may help them stay together while baking.

Our Potomac Vegetable Farms CSA bag was full of ripe summer tomatoes last week, after a slow and soggy start to tomato season here in Virginia. Unfortunately, we were leaving town the day after our pick-up. Of course, that was also the day we got the notice that the boxes of surplus canning tomatoes were available, and I was feeling panicked at the thought of not putting up tomatoes this year and faced with a pile of tomatoes we certainly wouldn’t be able to finish before leaving. I had recently seen a recipe for tomato jam and decided that was the perfect project for the night as it mainly involves simmering on the stove for a couple hours, giving me time to pack. A huge thunderstorm kept the boy awake so I put him to work slicing up the excess cherry tomatoes we also needed to use up. (Using a kid-safe knife, of course.)

I made slight alterations, using turbinado sugar and a touch of honey and a splash of Virginia’s North Gate Petit Verdot that was also in need of using up. (Not that I couldn’t have used a glass or two, but it would’ve made it even less likely that I would get all our luggage packed that night.)

For the recipe, see: Tomato Onion Jam by Jennifer Perillo/Tasty Kitchen. My alterations: 1 1/2 cup raw (turbinado sugar) and 1/4 cup raw honey, omit the brown sugar. Add 2 tablespoons red wine in lieu of lemon juice.

This weekend was the Canvolution kick-off — a nationwide effort to restore the art of preserving food, launched by former Washington Post blogger Kim O’Donnel and a host of other food writers and bloggers. Visit the Canning Across America website for a host of canning resources and advice, particularly this great article on canning with kids.

The highlight of my first mother-son canning experiment was seeing the pride in my son’s eyes as he handed his aunt and grandma their jar of jam, declaring, “I made this myself!”

What have you canned lately?

FoodieTots @ the Farmers Market Week continues with a field trip to the Vienna/Oakton Farmers Market to sample The Copper Pot by Chef Stefano Frigerio.

It’s opening week at the Fairfax County Farmers Markets, and perhaps the most publicized new vendor in local market history was the Copper Pot Food Company by Chef Stefano Frigerio. An Italian-born chef-turned-stay-at-home-dad, Chef Frigerio turned to home preserving to stay connected to the kitchen and the local farmers he developed relationships with during his days cooking at DC’s Maestro and Mio restaurants. We really enjoyed Chef Frigerio’s cooking at Mio, so I was eager to check out the new product line of jams, pastas and sauces. One of the nice things about markets further out in the ‘burbs is the more leisurely pace and ability to actually converse with the farmers and vendors. Chef Frigerio explained that he started making jams out of concern for his kids’ love of sweets. “I can’t feed my kids high fructose corn syrup every day,” he said, describing his son’s ability to slurp down an entire jar of jam at once (if allowed). Jam flavors include orchard fresh apple, white fig & balsamic, peach & prosecco “bellini,” and strawberry & vanilla bean. Now despite my foray into jam making last summer, I actually don’t eat a lot of it as I find so many jams are too sticky sweet for my taste. The strawberry & vanilla, in contrast, tasted just like strawberries at peak ripeness and was not at all cloying.

Chef Frigerio also offers fresh, handmade pastas and tomato sauces. When asked how the reception was at his first market this weekend (14th & U in the District), he expressed surprise at how quickly he sold out of his braised rabbit ravioli – something he claimed people rarely ordered at the restaurant. I picked up some of the rabbit ravioli and a jar of the roasted shallot Barolo tomato sauce for a quick dinner. Sure, at $10 for 8 ravioli it was a little pricey, but having an Italian chef in your pantry is a nice treat for a busy weeknight! The tomato sauce was richly flavored and will definitely make a repeat appearance on our table.

Other vendors at the market included Long Meadow Ecological Farm (”no spray” asparagus, radishes, watercress and other greens from VA’s Shenandoah Valley), Kuhn Orchards (IPM fruits, rhubarb and asparagus from near Gettysburg, PA), Garner’s Produce (more VA strawberries, asparagus and plants), Lois’s Produce (Northern Neck VA, strawberries, asparagus, spring onions, flowers – and their website promises artichokes in late summer!), Cenan’s Bakery (Vienna, bread and pastries), Bees ‘n Blossoms (VA honey and soaps), Emine’s sweet and savory baklavas (also available at Old Town Alexandria), Fields of Grace farmstead cheese (and curds, from Remington, VA), and Valentine’s Country Meats with hormone-free, grass-fed/free-range Angus beef, pork, lamb, rabbit, incredible pastel eggs (pictured below), pies and sweets.

As if the first rhubarb sighting of the season wasn’t exciting enough, Kuhn was giving away free sample of asparagus with every purchase. As with most Fairfax County-managed markets, local gardeners were on hand to offer free gardening advice.

This is a great market and I appreciated the detailed signage at most vendors explaining their growing practices; when markets get busy, it gets difficult to ask farmers about their methods so signage is a great way to provide more transparency for market shoppers. (Of course, you should always feel free to ask for more information!) And Fairfax County requires that all vendors be within a 125-mile radius of the county, so you can be assured that the products are truly local.

The Vienna/Oakton Farmers Market is located at the Oak Marr RECenter, 3200 Jermantown Road, and open Wednesdays from 8am-noon, May through November 18. Find Chef Frigerio and the Copper Pot Food Co. at Fairfax (Tues.), Vienna/Oakton (Weds.) and Herndon (Thurs.) markets in Virginia and Georgetown (Weds.), 14th and U (Sat.) and Bloomingdale (Sun.) markets in the District.

After conquering my fear of canning, the next item on my kitchen project list was making jam. I had recently stumbled across this lovely Green Gage Plum & Vanilla Jam recipe at Chez Pim which sounded simple enough. I had some green Shiro plums and Italian prune plums to work with. I really wanted to use honey, but I’ve read that you can only substitute honey for half of the sugar in a recipe, and didn’t want to stray too far from the original recipe since this was my first jam-making experience. I also had fewer plums than originally purchased, thanks to a toddler who was downing up to 6 a day…

So, my recipe quantities were: 1 lb plums, scant 1 c sugar, 1 T lemon juice, 1 T honey, 1 vanilla bean. I followed the original instructions and got a nice, thick jam, but I wasn’t sure what to do about the peels. I suspect that Pim’s green gage plum skins were thinner and perhaps dissolved? The prune plum skins had not, and were tough when I tried one. I strained the cooked jam then to remove the peels, which thinned my jam a bit so I was pleased to see when I opened a jar that it was a nice, jelly-like consistency. It is quite tasty, sweet and the vanilla adds such a lovely fragrance.

Now, Pim’s recipe is for a small batch to begin with, so guess what happens when you halve that? A meager two mini jam pots…

It probably wasn’t worth processing them since one went straight into the fridge to be eaten soon, but oh well. It was part of the learning experience. I will definitely keep practicing – and reading up on jam techniques over the winter. In the meantime, head over to Lelo in Nopo and check out the yummy jams she’s been making!

Oh, and the little bit left over? Excellent topping for peach ice cream!