Little known beyond coastal New England and the mid-Atlantic states, beachplum jelly is highly prized by those who have tasted it. It has just the right balance of tartness to balance the sweetness of the sugar. Occasionally locals sell beachplum jelly. Unfortunately it is often a watered-down version. The best place on the Jersey Cape to pick beachplums is Higbee Beach from mid-August to early September. And we're not sure if it's even legal anymore. Besides there's the parking problem since Higbee became a popular nudist beach.
| 6 pounds of beachplums to yield | 5 pounds sugar |
| 6 cups of juice | 4 pouches Certo |
| 3 cups water | ½ tablespoon butter |
Clean sand and leaves from berries and rinse. Discard any that are unripe or overripe. Crush berries, a handful at a time, into pot. Add water and bring to boil. Simmer 30 minutes; place berries and juice in cheesecloth laid over a colander. When cool, squeeze gently to extract remaining juice.
Put 6 cups of juice into pot with 5 pounds of sugar and bring to rolling boil that cannot be stirred down. Add 4 pouches of Certo and cook at rolling boil for 3 minutes while constantly stirring, or until jelly point. Remove and pour into hot jelly glasses that have been boiled for 10 minutes. When cool, cover with melted wax and poke holes in surface air bubbles on the wax with toothpick. Return to Welsh rabbit.
Note: If boiled berries and water do not yield 6 cups, add more water. Leftover juice can be frozen. The jelly point can be determined by pouring a few drops of the jelly on a plate, then placed in freezer for a few minutes.
We adopted this Italian tradition about 15-years ago. At the time the Chief Operating Officer's mother, uncle and aunt were alive. So was my mother and father. We hosted the Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. All the above-mentioned senior statesmen and women had their quirks: a trip to the facilities just as the dinner bell rang, the plate stops here when passing food, the plate doesn't move if someone doesn't like what's on it. Then there was the burping and flatulating. Our family is personally responsible for an acre-size hole in the ozone layer.
Add to the equation 5 kids age 8 through 18. They were required to be on their best behavior and exhibit table manners that the seniors seemed to have forgotten. They employed great restraint to keep from laughing when a senior statesman or woman attacked the ozone layer. We decided they needed both encouragement and a reward.
While they all looked forward to the turkey and corn bread stuffing from the 30-pound bird we bought in those days, there was one meal they liked better: deep-fried seafood. Their reward came on Christmas Eve with a seafood dinner. We don't remember exactly what we served for the first one, but it was probably fried flounder, shrimp and scallops with steak fries and cole slaw. There was one inviolate rule: no senior statesmen or women were welcome. This was the kids' night.
Then a few years ago we learned of the Italian tradition: Feast of the Seven Fishes. It sounded like a good idea so we expanded our menu. What follows is what we served for Christmas Eve 1998. We hope it gives you some ideas. If you don't like deep-fried food, bake or broil the seafood.
The above was accompanied by steak fries and cole slaw. We were going to make seafood bisqué, but copped out. Although we usually serve key lime meringue pie, in 1998 we bought a super-market cherry pie. No one touched it and we think they wouldn't have touched homemadekey lime pie, either. They had pigged out too much on seafood.
Other seafood you may want to use follows: deep-fried oysters, caviar, fried haddock dipped in beer batter, Roadkill,
| ½ cup onion finely diced | ¼ cup celery finely diced |
| ¼ cup carrot finely diced | 3 tablespoons butter |
Sauté the diced onion, carrot and celery in the butter until the onion becomes translucent. Remove from heat and add to water or soup as needed. The above is a vegetable mirepoix, the most common. To make a meat mirepoix, add ½ cup of raw ham cut into strips to the above vegetables.
HOW TO BREAD FOOD FOR DEEP FRYING
Growing up, the only time I ate fried seafood was in restaurants, and that was alwaysflounder because it was cheap. None the less, I liked it a lot. No one in my family deep fried anything that I can remember. As a teenager I became acquainted with fried oysters at church suppers and deep-fried crab cakes at a family friend's home. I liked both. After I was married—the first time—we went to a North Wildwood restaurant that closed several years ago: Zaberer's. I mightily liked two of their dishes: fried seafood combination and baked stuffed potatoes with cheddar. Then there was the Zaberized martini. Before Zaberer'sI had never eaten scallops or shrimp or baked stuffed potatoes enhanced with cheddar cheese.
I knew I had to learn how to prepare the deep-fried seafood that I liked so much at home. I'm glad I did. What comes out of our kitchen is not only cheaper, it is also usually fresher. More important, I control the kind of bread crumbs that are used and how brown the food is cooked. The below technique was taught to me by an executive chef over 25-years ago. Both of my sons, who like fried seafood as much, if not more, as I, also know the technique. When food is breaded and fried or deep fried it is known à l' Anglaise in French culinary cuisine.
| Flour for dredging | Salt and pepper to taste |
| Eggs | Newspaper with picture of Martha Stewart |
| Milk | Cookie sheet and aluminum foil |
| Fine bread crumbs, Acme or Stromans |
For this example we will use flounder because it is one of the easiest foods to bread. Prep the food i.e. form into croquettes, devein and butterfly shrimp, remove hard muscle from scallops, etc. Put some flour on the left side of the newspaper. Dredge the filet lightly in flour and reserve. Keep the floured filets separate; don't stack them on top of each other. Whisk the eggs and milk in a ration of 1 tablespoon of milk per egg. Whisk in salt and pepper to taste. Put the bowl in the center of the newspaper. If you're making deviled crab, you may want to season with a few drops of Tabasco. Spread bread crumbs evenly on the right side of the newspaper.
With your left hand put a filet in the egg and milk mixture, coat thoroughly, then lift and allow the excess to drain back into the bowl. With the filet still in your left hand, lay it on the bread crumbs and pat it down with your fingers. Turn it over with your left hand, then pat it with your right hand. Turn it with your right hand to make sure the filet is breaded evenly. Put the filet on a cookie sheet and repeat the process for the next filet. When finished, place immediately in the refrigerator. Any that are not used may be frozen overnight on the cookie sheet, then transferred to baggies the next day.
If the cookie sheet is full of breaded food, cover the food with aluminum foil before adding more. Don't stack breaded food upon breaded food. You'll end up with a real mess. Before frying, rub the filet with your fingers to remove any excess bread crumbs. Most deep-fried foods are cooked at 375º. This quickly seals the food and prevents it from becoming greasy. Do yourself a favor and buy a thermometer. Check the temperature after each batch is finished so the oil comes back to the desired temperature.
Note: for a fry basket, look for a wire one; the oil circulates much more freely than in the kind that are simply holes punched out that you see in most mail-order catalogs. After you find a fry basket, measure it and find an inexpensive pot that the basket will fit into snugly.
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