Currants, currants, and more currants!

Last week black currants were available at wholesale prices through our farm share. Figuring I should start out slowly, I ordered the 5lb minimum. I realized when I picked up my 5lbs that the regular share for the week was cherries and more currants. Home again, home again with 6lbs of black currants! (The picture shows the 1lb we got in our regular share for the week.)

I started out on Wednesday by washing and freezing about 1lb. On Thursday, I dried about 1lb in our food dehydrator. This was the first time I had used it and I was shocked that it took 24hrs to dry the currants! Nonetheless, now I have a few cups of dried currants to be used in scones, yummy.

I tackled the rest of the currants this weekend by making 3(!) batches of jelly and preserves.

The first batch I made was plain black currant jelly using the recipe in Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Fruit. I cooked 4C of black currants and then let the juice drain out leaving the skins and seeds behind. I was left with 2C of juice, which I cooked with 1 1/2C of sugar. From this I got 4 4-oz jars of currant jelly.

For the second batch, I started improvising! I wanted to use the black raspberries that I have been saving from our backyard, but my husband has dreams of a black raspberry pie. I had heard from the woman in charge of the fruit farm share that her favorite combination with black currants is blueberries. At the store I found local blueberries available for $3/quart. In the next batch I used about 3C black currants and 1qt. blueberries. This resulted in about 3C juice to which I added 2C sugar. This boiled away for a few minutes and was enough for 6 4-oz jars of black currant and blueberry jelly!

Remember those many many many pounds of strawberries that I picked a month or so ago? I took a 1qt. bag out of the freezer to thaw. I used the remaining currants, about 3C, and the strawberries to make what I think might be called preserves since I used jelly and jam making techniques. I cooked the currants first and let the mash sit with juice dripping through the strainer. Meanwhile, I cooked down the strawberries with 2C sugar and the juice of 1/2 a lemon. After the strawberries had cooked down, I added the currant juice. I let this boil for a few minutes and then filled 2 8-oz and 2 4-oz jars of currant strawberry preserves. Yum!!