Confit de Banyuls

martyn94 · Post by **martyn94** » Tue 01 Jul 2014 21:51

You will see this around the place in tiny pots at 5€ a pop: it's a kind of wine jelly (ie a sort of jam) made with Banyuls wine, sugar and pectin. It's excellent with eg Roquefort or hard sheep cheeses, foie gras if you are not squeamish, on toast or sucked off the spoon.

You can make it at about a third the price by buying a litre of out-of-the-barrel Banyuls at your local bottle shop (eg here

http://www.cavistes-catalans.com/fr/les ... illon.html)

adding a kilo of sugar and 1.5 packets of Vitpris (ie pectin: it's the only sort I've found in French supermarkets). Ordinary French pectinated sugar (eg confisuc) is not strong enough without more pectin: you are basically asking water to set.

Bring to the boil, boil for about 5 minutes (in a big pan), and stick in pots. About 6 "bonne maman" size pots for €8-9. I don't know whether it needs added acid, but I stick in the juice of a lemon for luck.

Because there are no solids at all, it can set a bit unevenly: shake the jars from time to time as it cools, if you can be bothered. Stick a little paper mob-cap on it and give it away, or just eat.

martyn94 · Post by **martyn94** » Mon 31 Aug 2015 12:22

martyn94 wrote:You will see this around the place in tiny pots at 5€ a pop: it's a kind of wine jelly (ie a sort of jam) made with Banyuls wine, sugar and pectin. It's excellent with eg Roquefort or hard sheep cheeses, foie gras if you are not squeamish, on toast or sucked off the spoon.

You can make it at about a third the price by buying a litre of out-of-the-barrel Banyuls at your local bottle shop (eg here

http://www.cavistes-catalans.com/fr/les ... illon.html)

adding a kilo of sugar and 1.5 packets of Vitpris (ie pectin: it's the only sort I've found in French supermarkets). Ordinary French pectinated sugar (eg confisuc) is not strong enough without more pectin: you are basically asking water to set.

Bring to the boil, boil for about 5 minutes (in a big pan), and stick in pots. About 6 "bonne maman" size pots for €8-9. I don't know whether it needs added acid, but I stick in the juice of a lemon for luck.

Because there are no solids at all, it can set a bit unevenly: shake the jars from time to time as it cools, if you can be bothered. Stick a little paper mob-cap on it and give it away, or just eat.

By way of update, I made my last batch with a kilo of "jam sugar" ( Super U's own brand) plus a sachet of "vitpris" and a bit of lemon juice). A bit simpler (and cheaper) than my previous method. It really is very good, and walks away if you have visitors. Which is why I had to make a new batch.

Incidentally, you don't need anything like a preserving pan. You are not cooking it, though it probably helps to stew off much of the alcohol: a big pan does fine.

Post by **Kate** » Mon 31 Aug 2015 17:55

Can i put this in recipes on the main site Martyn please? Sounds really good.

martyn94 · Post by **martyn94** » Thu 22 Oct 2015 20:35

Kate wrote:Can i put this in recipes on the main site Martyn please? Sounds really good.

A very belated response. Yes, of course you can, if you will take it as is.

Post by **Kate** » Fri 23 Oct 2015 09:51

Perfect as it is. Thank you.

martyn94 · Post by **martyn94** » Fri 23 Oct 2015 14:45

By way of afterthought, it is also very useful if you want a bit of sweetness and wine flavour, very easily, in a sauce, eg for magret de canard: tonight's dinner, as it chances. Or just hot enough to melt on some vanilla ice cream.

Santiago · Post by **Santiago** » Tue 27 Oct 2015 14:41

It's not just Banyuls either. There are lots of these gels around at the moment. Strawberry, quince, etc.

You could make them with any of the local sweet wines - Rivesaltes, Maury, Banyuls and Muscat.

There was a guy making these Banyuls reductions a couple of years ago. He added ginger, garlic chili, balsamic vinegar and figs to them. I reckon you could do the same with Martyn's recipe.

martyn94 · Post by **martyn94** » Tue 27 Oct 2015 15:25

Santiago wrote:It's not just Banyuls either. There are lots of these gels around at the moment. Strawberry, quince, etc.

You could make them with any of the local sweet wines - Rivesaltes, Maury, Banyuls and Muscat.

There was a guy making these Banyuls reductions a couple of years ago. He added ginger, garlic chili, balsamic vinegar and figs to them. I reckon you could do the same with Martyn's recipe.

Yes of course. I got onto this because confit de Banyuls is what they sell round here, and Banyuls is my local vin doux. I have made fruit jellies (quince, blackberry etc) for years "up north", but they involve quite a lot of faff (picking, preparing, cooking, sticking it through a jelly bag, cooking it again). The great merit of wine jelly is that you just stick it all in a pan and heat it up.

On a point of detail, my method isn't a reduction, except to the minimal extent needed to boil off some of the alcohol. When I first googled "wine jelly" I found recipes that were substantially reduced, and I tried it that way first time. I found it unnecessarily cloying and sticky. If you use a kilo of sugar to a litre of Banyuls, the residual sugar in the wine should be enough to give you a set with almost no reduction at all (conversely, if you do want to reduce it, you need to add less sugar).

I find that the end result, my way, is pleasantly light and "winey": basically just spoonable wine. Which is what I want with, eg, a nice bit of Roquefort or tomme de brébis: you don't need to club it to the ground. Similarly for other things you might add: if God had wanted ginger in wine jelly, he would have made it grow on vines. Though of course I can see that there is scope for delicious things, in a slightly different vein.

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