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Postcards from the Underworld

I love pomegranates. More than life itself (probably). Don't make that face at me.

Look, all I'm saying is if the God of the Underworld came to me, in all his chill and gold-limned glory, and offered me his crown and his heart and his mind, and if, when I demanded the itemised bill for power and love and parity, Hades Lord of Shades told me I had only to eat six pomegranate seeds and step into his flame-wheeled carriage—reader, I would marry him with a whoop and a juice-stained mouth.

Hades hasn't bothered to show up yet, so I'm making my own taste of the underworld.

A close-up of a jelly jar with faceted diamonds on the surface, full of a glowing pink-red jelly.
Isn't it so pretty?
I can really only afford pomegranates plural at the height of their season here, and this year I went wild and got five at once.

A low-angle photo of a pile of pomegranate husks on a cutting board next to a black-handled chef's knife, with a tall, clear plastic container full of husks in the background.
Sadly I didn't photograph the wall, which was liberally spattered with juice.
Turns out, five pomegranates makes a hell of a mess, and if you've stashed them in the fridge to hide them from the fruit flies like I did, your fingers will be purple for two reasons once you're done peeling them, picking out the arils, and checking for missed bits of pulp and skin.

Also (and be glad this happened in the middle of the processing, or I might have taken a picture) a pomegranate on the verge of going bad will be...different. Instead of spurting clear bright juice, it will slime your hands with drooling, viscous ooze. The experience is not unlike trying to remove the intestines from an inadequately formaldehyded cat in high school anatomy class. (Yes, I know.)

A silver pot half-full of gleaming, translucent red pomegranate arils. A plate with paper towels and thick, pale-gold pancakes is just visible in the background.
Featuring oladi, my current culinary love, in the background. Inch-thick pancakes!
Everybody got piled in the pot with a little water, covered, and set to simmer while I puttered around doing other things and waiting for the arils to soften enough to release their juice.

A heaping pile of red, juicy pomegranate arils, slightly obscured by steam, cradled in a doubled layer of white cheescloth.
Too late, I realized this doesn't have anything for scale. That's a mass of steaming fruit about the size of a pig heart. Yes, we're keeping with the gory theme. Postcards from the Underworld.
So now I have a steaming pile of fruit wrapped in cheesecloth, which needs to be squeezed until it releases all its juice. But I have learned from my mistakes! I shall not squeeze it bare-handed! That way lies a lot of steam burns. Unfortunately, the only thick rubber gloves I have are my cleaning gloves, and I wouldn't trust them around food even if I rubbed them on a unicorn horn to purify them first.

A right hand in a black glove, with a clear plastic sandwich bag draped over it, making the two-fingered peace sign. On the counter in the background is a glass bowl with a pink-stained bundle of white cheesecloth, and a black frying pan with a wooden spatula in it is on the nearest burner of the stove.
#yolo
What I do have are thin winter gloves, which are insulative but not waterproof, and sandwich bags, which are waterproof but not insulative, and a near-total disregard for personal safety. Combine all three and you get...well, you get one slightly singed finger, because sandwich bags are slippery inside and out and when you're mostly focused on the steaming bag of goo you tend to lose track of unimportant things like "where are all my fingers?" which question is more than adequately answered when a gout of juice floods that finger of the glove. I swear I heard it sniggering when I set the bag down to swear for a moment.

Eventually I and my makeshift gloves triumphed, and I got exactly four cups of juice from my five pomegranates. There was likely another half-cup to be gotten, but without better pressing equipment than my hands and a much-abused metal bowl, I wasn't going to get it.

Piles of white sugar breaking through the surface of thick red liquid in a silver pot, with a purple silicone spatula dipped into the edge of the liquid at upper right.
I spent five minutes squashing sugar lumps after taking this photo.
I cleverly had the pectin, sugar, and lemon juice measured out already, so all I had to do was pour the juice back in the pot and add them, stirring all the while. Except for the moment when I took this photo. I paused for that, and that was a mistake. Note to self: if you want to document jelly-making, phone a friend. Someone should be stirring at all times.

The bowl of a silver ladle seen from above, resting in the bottom of a silver pot. Both are coated with a thin film of pink-red jelly, making the surfaces look like hammered metal.
Okay, this one's just aesthetic.
Past jellies have made me more cautious about overboiling—and I knew I wouldn't mind pomegranate syrup if it failed to set—so I probably slightly underboiled the jelly. The recipe I was using called for ten pomegranates and claimed to make seven cups of jelly; I'd halved it, but a cup of liquid is precisely eight ounces, so I prepped four little jelly jars for the canning. I may have skimped a little on the headspace (I know, but only a teeny bit) to make everything fit, but fit it did.

And yes, I remembered to wash the pot before the jelly residue hardened into a lovely garnet carapace.

A low-angle photo of four glass canning jars with faceted diamond patterns on their surfaces, full of gleaming garnet-red jelly, on a marbled grey-green counter.
The sum of Saturday morning's labor.
Sorry, Hades. Even a crown can be too long awaited. Even love. A girl with a cabinet full of pomegranate can be her own mistress.

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