Spiced Plum Jam

One of the great things about making your own jam (and this also holds true if you make your own wine too) is that once you tell people about your hobby, you will never be short of the raw materials.  Anyone who has a fruit tree in their garden will soon be presenting you with carrier bags and boxes full of apples, pears, plums and anything else you can comfortably grow in your back yard.

This free food is amazing, and the generosity of friends is very much appreciated, but it does beg the question of why the purveyors of fruit aren't turning them into jams, wines, pies, crumbles and assorted other goodies instead of passing them on to me.  I for one am not complaining (and never having owned a fruit tree, perhaps the quantities produced are enough to satisfy anyone's fruit-lust and still have some to spare)

So here we go with another jam recipe, this time a spiced plum jam.  I love plums, can't get enough of them - they are perhaps my favourite fruit.  I have a habit of liking them very un-ripe and sour, and as a consequence, I get told off for eating them before anyone else has a chance to.  The plums we were given were a lot more ripe than that, which is better for making jam with (and also stopped me from eating too many when they were being pitted, which is probably for the best).

 This jam is a wonderfully spicy, fruity taste that made the whole kitchen smell like Christmas, even though it's only September.  Blimey, less than 100 days, need to start planning some Christmas posts...


This recipe only makes 3 jars - I only had a limited amount of plums and wanted to do a few different things with them.  Feel free to increase the amounts should you have bushels of plums (can you measure plums in bushels?)


Ingredients
650g Plums (pitted)
650g Sugar
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 Cup Water
1 Cinnamon Stick
5 Cloves
8 Cardamom Pods
1/2 tsp Ground Allspice
1/4 tsp Nutmeg

Method
Pit and chop the plums, then wash them.  Place them in a large pan with just enough water to cover them.  Add the sugar, lemon juice and spices, heat the mixture to dissolve the sugar and then simmer for 10 minutes.  The plums will start to break up as they cook. At this point, you can fish out the plum skins if you don't like them in the jam - it's easier than trying to peel the fruit beforehand.

Also, remember to put your jam jars in the oven to sterilize (120ºc for about 20 minutes should do it)

 
(A good tip is to remember how many cardamom pods and cloves you put in, so you can check they all come out again at the end!)

After 10 minutes, bring the mixture to the boil. Boil hard for another 10 minutes and then test to see if the jam has reached setting point.

As usual, you can check this by putting a saucer in the fridge to chill.  Drop a teaspoonful of jam onto the saucer.  Let it cool.  If you can push a jellied trail through it with you fingernail, it’s ready.

Remember to fish out the cinnamon, cardamom and cloves, then transfer the jam to the sterilized jars and store in a cool dry place.

Crab Apple and Chilli Jelly

This recipe is one of my girlfriend's favourites.  I never really 'got' blue cheeses until just recently - I blame it on a saturday job when I was a teenager working at the deli counter of a super market and selling many varieties of blue cheese, all of which seemed to smell horrible and upset my delicate constitution.  On reflection, my constitution was probably delicate due to the copious amounts of beer I used to drink on a Friday evening before starting work first thing on a Saturday morning.

Anyway, once I discovered my love of blue cheese (current favorites - Yorkshire Blue and Smelly Apeth) I couldn't get enough of them.  I used them in cooking, but the best and most simple way of eating them is with crackers and Crab Apple and Chilli Jelly.  Oh, and some decent red wine and possibly a bowl of olives.

It just so happened that when we moved into our new flat, there was a Crab Apple tree growing in the car park, which was quickly stripped of its fruit, and then found their way into the jam pan to be made into this sweet golden jelly, with just a hint of chili heat.

Crab Apples can be found growing wild all over the place - they look like little apples and have a bitter taste.  As always, check before you eat!

Ingredients
2kg Crab Apples
1.5l Water
Sugar (Depends on the amount of juice, but about 1.5kg)
6 Chillies

Method
Wash the Crab Apples and then chop roughly, then put in a large pan with the water and bring to the boil and simmer until the apples are cooked to a pulp.

Once this is done, transfer the pulp to a muslin bag and strain.  This is best done by suspending the bag from a cupboard handle or chair, with a bowl underneath.

Don't squeeze the bag! This makes the jelly cloudy because it lets starch from apples squeeze out, and you don't want it to spoil the clear finshed jelly.

When most of the liquid should has collected in the bowl (ours was left hanging overnight), you will be left with a rather nice rose pink liquid.  Put this into a measuring jug to check the quantity and then return it to your pan.  Now add the same amount of sugar as you have liquid - our apples produced 1.4l of liquid, so we added 1.4kg of sugar - and put the pan back on the heat.

At this point, add the chillies - finely chopped - to the pan and bring the mixture to a rolling boil, stirring constantly, until it starts to set. You will also want to skim the foam off the top of the jelly when it's cooking, or it will set into an unpleasant skin once the jelly is in the jars.  You might need to do this a few times during the cooking.

As usual, you can check this by putting a saucer in the fridge to chill.  Drop a teaspoonful of jelly onto the saucer.  Let it cool.  If you can push a jellied trail through it with you fingernail, it’s ready.  Transfer the jelly to sterilized jars and store in a cool dry place.

The jelly goes great with cooked meats or cheese and crackers!

Bilberry and Apple Jam

Following on from our foraging adventures, we decided to make some bilberry and apple jam.  Sadly the apples weren't home grown or picked wild, but hey, you can't have everything, can you?

500g of bilberries took two people about an hour to pick, and gave us a very pleasant afternoon out in the countryside.  Also, for those of you not familiar with these berries, there is a nice article about them here