Mes Confitures: The Jams and Jellies of Christine Ferber |  | Author: Christine Ferber
Publisher: Michigan State Univ Pr
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $18.78
as of 7/31/2010 04:52 CDT details
You Save: $11.17 (37%)
New (17) Used (17) from $17.89
Seller: supermoviedeals
Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 11461
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 305
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 8.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 0870136291
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.852
EAN: 9780870136290
ASIN: 0870136291
Publication Date: September 1, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Features:
| • | ISBN13: 9780870136290 | | • | Condition: USED - Very Good | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
We invited pastry chef and jam maker Christine Ferber to our Connecticut television studio...were introduced to her first book on the subject, Mes Confitures, and have enjoyed many of her recipes ever since. - MARTHA STEWART.
Chefs throughout the world have long prized the rare and delicious creations of France s Christine Ferber an internationally known master patissière who has worked with culinary luminaries Alain Ducasse, the Troisgros family, and Antoine Westermann. For the first time, English-language audiences have access to her artistry with the publication of the French bestseller, Mes Confitures: The Jams and Jellies of Christine Ferber. Written in a clear, accessible style, Mes Confitures brings hand-made jams to life for home cooks and professional chefs alike.
In Mes Confitures, Ferber opens her personal recipe book, sharing such treasures as Black Cherry with Pinot Noir, Apricot and Spiced Apple, and Rosehip and Vanilla. Organized seasonally, uncommon recipes like Rhubarb with Acacia Honey and Rosemary, or Banana, Orange, and Chocolate jams raise the craft of confiture to a new level. Ferber also divulges her secrets, identifying the proper tools and equipment for foolproof, exciting, and unusual creations.
Ferber's use of locally grown, extraordinary ingredients, most of which are accessible in farmers markets, gourmet foodshops, or by mail-order, makes for exquisite jams that are far more interesting than the everyday. Ferber's jams are artisanal in their reliance on seasonal fruits, traditional techniques, and their emphasis on simplicity and freshness.
|
| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 19
 Master Class in Fruit Confits. Artisinal Jams!! January 31, 2005
B. Marold (Bethlehem, PA United States)
67 out of 71 found this review helpful
`Mes Confitures', subtitled `The Jams and Jellies of Christine Ferber' is written by Ms. Ferber herself, in French, translated by Virginia Phillips, and introduced with a foreword by Alain Ducasse. In case these circumstances are not enough to clue you in to what is afoot here, let me tell you that this book is not about your grandmother's strawberry jam. It is also not about your mother's Smuckers and certainly not about your Polaner jelly. This book is about artisinal products as carefully done as French wines and cheeses. In fact, the similarity between wines and these preserves are a lot closer than almost any other comparison, as the raw material of both is very similar.
Before going much further, I must give a word or warning that I do not consider this book a complete manual on how to make and preserve jams and jellies. In fact, it is telling that the title and subtitle DO NOT include the word `preserves'. While I am not an expert on preserves and canning, I have enough knowledge, acquired from a typically excellent episode of Alton Brown's `Good Eats' to know that successfully packing a confit in a sterile container is not the same as prepping a PRESERVE which can safely sit on an unrefrigerated shelf for up to a year. So, if you are serious about making confits and preserves, get a very good introductory book on canning, as Ms. Ferber's book is much more of a master class on the subject, which assumes you know a lot about the mechanics of canning and preserving. The book is primarily a collection of primo recipes for producing jams and jellies worthy of smearing on your artisinal breads or filling your handmade Linzer cookies.
The book's recipes are divided by season, and there is an extreme attitude about selecting the very freshest fruits at the very best time of the season and the day. I am rarely swayed about goings on about using fresh ingredients. I will only state that there is probably a much bigger connection between the quality of your starting ingredients and your final product in the making of fruit comfits than there is in the making of a soup or braise or any other cooking method using most meats from hoofed or winged beasts and using most vegetables, even the seasonally persnickety tomato. The one condition which tempers this fact is that unlike most pedestrian recipes for fruit confits, Ms. Ferber's recipes often contain several spices and other seasonings which may buffer the impact of a less than perfect crop of apples or peaches.
While Ms. Ferber lives and works in the fabled Alsace district of France, her seasons are not too different from temperate North America, so there should be few incongruities on the part of geography. There may be several difficulties in the fact that Ms. Ferber uses several cultivars that may simply not be available in a timely manner to us Nordamerikaners. But, we carry on with the best substitutions we can do.
Spring recipes open with a big surprise with two recipes for comfitted carrots. Otherwise, the stars of the show in spring are cherries, strawberries, raspberries, apples, and rhubarb. Here we first encounter green apple jelly, which is the `veal stock' of the fruit confit world. Just as veal is one of the richest sources of thickening gelatin, green apples are one of the best sources of pectin for gelling the confit, while the apple taste is tame enough to stand in the background, behind stronger tasting fruits. One puzzle Ms. Ferber does not elucidate is how one gets a supply of green apple jelly, a product whose season comes in the fall, when you wish to use this ingredient in the spring.
The stars of the summer recipes are Bergeron apricot, generic apricot, wild and generic (farm grown) blueberries, nectarines, currants, celery, zucchini, raspberry, melon, and apples. Some of the more important costars seem to shine in the summer recipes. These are vanilla, black pepper, chili peppers, anise, pinot noir, almonds, chocolate, essences of edible flowers and flower petals, and eau-de-vie. Citrus juices and zests, especially those from lemon contribute to a large number of recipes in all seasons.
The stars of the autumn recipes are dried fruits, nuts, pears, quinces, rose hips, figs, grapes, vineyard peach, honey, ginger, cinnamon, apple, tomato, and Gewurztraminer (wine). Winter is devoted to tropical fruits such as citrus (marmalade, marmalade, marmalade), pineapple, banana, mango, and passion fruit. It is the one season where there are recipes for a particular event (Christmas). It is also no surprise to find tea as an ingredient here, as bitter orange is, itself, an ingredient in Earl Gray tea.
The recipes are very well detailed. You should be able to do everything in every recipe if you have the tools listed at the beginning of the book. As canning is an old American rural custom, none of the equipment should be much farther than a good hardware store or good mail order or Internet source. The book gives an excellent list of American sources, although there is no guarantee you will be able to get some of the cultivars found in the Alsace.
My mind's virtual taste buds tell me that this is one excellent collection of recipes for fruit confits, and, a fair amount of improvisation is certainly allowed. Which is even more of a reason to exercise your canning skills on a few simpler recipes before tackling the 20 plus ingredient Christmas jam.
Every food subject has its quality leader or artisinal high end. This is the high end for jams and jellies!
truly unusual jams & jellies July 16, 2003
Sarah Lally Brown (Woodinville, WA United States)
19 out of 19 found this review helpful
I love jams made with unusual ingredients and combinations, but I don't love making five batches to fine tune the taste. Christine Ferber has already done it for me in this book, and her inventions are *fantastic.* She has a true european appreciation for the concept of savory. Not every jam needs to be cloyingly sweet. Many of her recipes call for overnight fruit/sugar macerations to slowly combine the ingredients. She does have a habit of seeming to forget that most of us don't live next to farmers and friends who can stroll about and collect fresh ingredients for us. Her recipes often call for specific varieties of fruit. Luckily the translator has written brief footnotes for most specific listings like that, and you can figure out a good substitution. If nothing else, head to a farmers market and tell them the flavor/consistency of fruit you want and they can help you find a native variety that matches. Hopefully none of my family members will read this book, because if they do they're going to know what jellies they're getting for christmas this year.
Wonderful, exotic jams November 3, 2006
Becky Campbell (San Diego, CA USA)
14 out of 14 found this review helpful
This book is one of the most exciting cookbooks that I have used recently. Besides containing standard flavors such as strawberries and peach, it also has the more interesting combinations of Pear with a Balsalmic Vinegar and Spices, Carrot with Cardamom, Strawberry and Balck Pepper, and so forth. Every combination I have tried has been incredibly good, especially the Raspberry with Star Anise. Most of the recipes seem to make about 5-6 half-pint jars, but as it's not stated anywhere in the book, make sure to sterilize a few extra. These jams always come out fresh-tasting and with a slightly soft set, the benefit of using natural pectin in fruit and not adding one. However, since some of the low pectin fruits still require pectin, there is a recipe for green apple pectin stock to provide the needed pectin, great if you have access to underripe apples.
This is a great book, especially for those wanting to take preserve making one step further and try interesting combinations. In fact, trying those interesting combinations certainly got my creative juices flowing and inspired me to make some fun mixes of my own.
However, this is not a book that goes over the particulars involved in preserving foods and canning, and the necessary sanitation and precautions it entails, so any first-time canners need to pick up another book or do some research online for these techniques.
All in all, I would definetly buy this book again if it was ever lost or stolen by the many admiring friends who have borrowed it so far.
Unbelievable goodness! October 25, 2008
Loves to Read (Seattle, WA United States)
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
While on a recent trip to France, my first, I became infatuated with the jams and preserves they served for breakfast. I am a fairly experienced canner but had stopped doing any preserving except for freezer jam. Everything else seemed ordinary and things I could buy. I came home from the trip, immediately started searching for a really good book on jams, and found this one. This might have been a mistake. Since my book arrived I have made about 15 different kinds and I'm not finished yet. I have begun asking friends for sources for quince, elderberries, green tomatoes. I have raided the wine cellar in search of zinfandel and pinot noir. My pantry shelves have been taken over by little jars of the most delicious concoctions ever. I spend my days searching for jars at the thrift stores and labels at kitchen stores. At night I dream of combinations. It has become a sickness. The good thing is that people love to see me coming with my little jars. Toast is a delicious treat now, and I have forgotten about freezer jam.
This book, as others have written, is not for beginners. That being said, there is no reason why your first jam should not be from this book. First, read about how to make jam from a more basic book. Jam making is very simple, it is the recipes that turn it from supermarket to sublime. Try one of the basics like Blueberry with Lemon or Raspberry with Lemon. She does not use pectin so the flavor is more pure and the jams use less sugar. I'm so glad to have found this lovely little book.
A must-have June 6, 2004
Wendy Wolfe (WA United States)
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
I just finished licking the last of the 'Rhubarb with Acacia Honey and Rosemary' jam from my fingers. I'm in heaven. It is that good. In fact, all the jams I have made from Mes Confitures have been fantastic. And I have made quite a few.I've been inspired by the contents of this book: the jellies can be used as bases for meat glazes, toppings for ice cream, dessert flavorings, or would be the perfect finish over sourdough waffles. Amazing possibilities.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 19
|
|
|
