Keeping Food Fresh: Old World Techniques & Recipes

Too often, preserves are but a pale reflection of fresh foods. Luckily, this definitely is not the case with natural preserving techniques. Thanks to the nine main methods described in this book, we learn that almost any food can be preserved without nutrient loss. All of the recipes are effective, economical, and easy to do at home. Most of the methods (drying; lactic fermentation; and preserving in oil, salt, or vinegar, for example) issue from a long tradition that has been swept aside by a tidal wave of industrial canned and frozen foods. This tradition holds an immense but lately obscured wealth of gastronomic and nutritional value. Very often, these recipes go beyond merely preserving food: they transform it by enriching it with new flavors, and better than either freezing or sterilization usually can. We also discover that by using less sugar in jams and other sweet preserves, fruit retains its full flavor, without burdening us with additional calories. With 300 recipes describing how to preserve over one hundred kinds of food, this book restores our appetite for traditional preserves that truly are house specialties.