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- FOR A NEW'GENERATION
PRKSEITII6 A BIT TBABITIOI
» orn in Montana, previous resident of
Phoenix, northern Virginia and New
York, Liana Krissoff recently moved
to Athens from the wilds of Carlton,
6A, and is the author of the brand-new book
Canning for a New Generation: Bold, Fresh
Flavors for the Modern Pantry. Krissoff s enthu
siasm for food of all cuisines and levels of
sophistication is obviojs; her face lights up
when she talks about beef with sour green
beans or how her parents gave her a love of
food.
A spell in the kitchen of an Italian res
taurant in Lovettsville, VA brought out her
tinkering tendencies, which can be seen in
full force on her blog. Pie and Beer. She says,
Td spend every morning before work reading
about Italian food and cooking with my mom
trying to figure out how to do more and more
interesting things—stuff they'd never do at the
restaurant Td make up whole imaginary restau
rant menus that couldn't possibly ever work in
the real world. The desserts at the restaurant
were pretty much afterthoughts, and I'd spend
days off making panna cottas and hazelnut
this and that calculating per-serving costs and
writing notes about storage times and last-min
ute prep and what-not And it wasn't long after
I presented one of these brilliant dessert ideas
to the guys at the restaurant that there was the
inevitable fatting out and I never went back."
So she wrote to Carole Lalli, the editor of
some of the cookbooks she’d been working her
way through, and asked for a job, which she
got She says, “[Lalli] taught me just about
everything I know about writing and editing
recipes, the important things like what people
need to know to make a dish and what they
don't want to hear about in a headnote, but
also little stuff like never say 'about 10 to 15
minutes,' which is redundant." Eventually, she
decided to freelance full-time, doing copyedit
ing, proofreading, recipe testing and more.
A few years of freelancing led to a request
from Stewart, Tabori & Chang, a publisher spe
cializing in cookbooks, to write what became
Secrets of Slow Cooking and Hot Drinks for Cold
Nights. She says she wrote both in the space
of six weeks, “in a tiny little Manhattan apart
ment with four or five slow cookers constantly
bubbling away on every available surface."
Having learned about canning as a kid, from
her parents, Krissoff thought the time was
ripe for a new, accessible, intelligent book on
the subject, and after figuring no one else
was going to write one, she decided to do it
herself.
Most books made "the process seem
shrouded in mystery," retying on recipes more
than tools for creating your own preserves, so
*
she focused first on learning how preserves
worked. She "looked at academic papers about
pickling processes, internalized the whole
pH thing, and spent a lot of sleepless nights
thinking about things like water activity and
vegetable density, the evaporation rate of
acetic acid—and, sure, botulism." That test-
kitchen mindset led to a lot of useful discover
ies, says Krissoff, such as “the realization that
you don't absolutely have to use an insane
amount of sugar in fruit preserves. Contrary
to what a lot of sources will tell you, sugar is
not what preserves a jam or a marmalade or a
jelly. My mom and I spent a couple days with
a couple dozen pounds of strawberries testing
out every jam-making technique I'd ever heard
or read about, and what we came up with for
low-pectin fruits like that is an easy, elegant
and effective method for making lower-sugar,
tart-sweet, intensely fruity preserves."
Living in an old house in Carlton, Krissoff
canned something almost every day for nearly
a year. She says, r our gas bUl was unspeak
able, even in summer. It completely took over
my life and my family's. But every once in a
while I'd figure out how to do something or
come up with some neat technique or come
to a better understanding of something, and
I'd get re-inspired. I think it's probably like
that with most people who are trying to write:
it's hard, you hate it, and then you cross over
some line and love it again. Then you get
fatigued again, and so on."
When asked if the book is particularly timely,
due to the surge in crafty pastimes, she demurs
and says, Tm happy that it meshes well with
that DIY, eat-local impulse. But that's not the
only reason to pickle things and make preserves.
The main reason I do it is because pickles taste
good. Tart fruity jams taste good.’
That delight in simplicity comes through in
Rinne Allen's photography for the book, too:
“Her photographs give the book a really solid
sense of place, which is something I tried to
convey in the little bits of wordiness through
out the book but is much more effectively pre
sented visually. This is truly a Georgia book,
and while obviously it'll be just as useful to
someone in Canada or California as to some
one in Madison County, it couldn't have been
made anywhere else in quite the same way."
Hillary Brown
Liana Krissoff and photographer Rinne Allen,
who contributed greatly to the look of the book,
will be doing a signing/reception/wine and
preserves tasting Thursday, July 15 at 6:30 p.m.
at Gosford Wine on Baxter Street Copies of the
book will be available, as will sample dishes.
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