Beverly Alfeld, is known in the Chicagoland farmers' markets as The Jamlady. As frequent market-goers will attest, the Jamlady makes wonderful jams, jellies, fruit butters, and preserves. Sharing her secrets and her recipes, she now offers us The Jamlady Cookbook, a wealth of recipes and instructions to guide the home cook to spectacular results.
The predominantly sweet recipes use every conceivable fruit. Recipes for elderberries and old-fashioned rowanberries stand side by side with recipes for pears and apples. For easy to find fruits, the repertoire is vast. As an example, there are recipes for strawberries made as butter or jam, as conserves, gelatin, puree, ice-cream sauce, or marmalade. When tired of strawberries preserved alone, try Ms. Alfeld's recipes for strawberry combined with fig or guava, kiwi, mango, mint, peach, raspberry or rhubarb. The fruits are spiced and flavored with ginger or mint, cinnamon or allspice, with sweet-flavored liqueurs.
All is not sugar in Jamlady territory, and there are recipes for wine jellies, savory tomato preserves, herbal jellies. There is guide to using spirits and liqueurs to accompany recipes for wine jellies. There are marmalades, relishes, and chutneys. Leaving no stone unturned, there are recipes using cactus even brambles and other unusual plants. The Jamlady Cookbook is a treasury of ideas.
The Jamlady knows her stuff, and by 'her stuff' we mean not just the art, but also the science of putting food by. Eager to encourage people to make their own preserves, Alfeld includes a few pages on the science of preserves, extending even to a pH chart at the back of the book. The chapters are so well organized and so enthusiastically written that the scientific aspects are easily absorbed.
Alfeld organizes this section into easily referenced topics, such as 'Filling the Jar,' 'Reactive Metals,' 'How Regular Pectin Works.' The section entitled 'Avoiding Problems,' is primarily a list of handy tips that ensure success. In this chapter Alfeld explains 'rolling water bath' and 'jar, seal or close, and refrigerate'. For the convenience of the cook, she abbreviates these techniques as RWB and JSR throughout the book. There are explanations of acid in preserves, of the use of pectin and other ingredients - nothing has been overlooked.
And then, there are the recipes. There are sugar-free recipes, such as Peachy Cinnamon Sugar-Free Jam and Sour Cherry Jam. There are vegetable recipes such as Tomato-Basil Jelly, Tomato Preserves Spiced with Cinnamon; recipes such as Gingered Marrow Jam that combines zucchini with pineapple and ginger root. There are apple butters, plain or with mint and ginger. There is pear butter and grape butter as well as tomato butter.
Not content with this lavish number of recipes, Alfeld includes a chapter on baking with preserves offering recipes for tarts, breads, cakes, jam bars, and lots of cookies. The book is Alfeld's gift to us, and makes a wonderful book for us to give, as well.
The Jamlady Cookbook is illustrated with color photography by Jim Smith. It includes a shopping guide.
About the author: Ms. Alfeld has a B. A. and M.F.A. in art and an M. A. in theoretical design. Raised in a commercial nursery/greenhouse family, she has completed the school of instruction in food processing prescribed by the Food and Drug Administration and has completed advanced coursework in the fields of education, administration, and school law. Ms. Alfeld is an academic performance specialist with twenty-three years experience in K-12, university, and junior-college classrooms; a member of the DAR; and the founder of the Donald L. Schoonmaker Scholarship Fund. She also works as an advocate for special-needs children.
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