Emergency Jammin'

o, the Sloe Gin mentioned in passing recently was, obviously, somewhat out of season. Dan and I picked 3kg of sloes when we went to visit my Dad last Autumn. Enough for 6 liters of gin if we wanted it! We dumped them in the freezer to try and get the best out of them with the plan of getting gin in the duty free. Sadly, at the point I passed through O'Hare International on the way home I was broke - I bought a bottle of gin, but it had more immediate requirements in the house and a slow maturing sloe gin was out of the question...

ell, we got the sloe gin on finally, after a bit of recovery in the monetary department. We only used 1.5kg of sloes though. Then, when the freezer broke we had 1.5kg of sloes thawing as well as another 1kg of miscellaneous summer fruit. When life hands you lemons/broken freezers, the only option is to make jam. And lots of it.

estimated reduced pectin because of the extended freeze, so made a pectin stock with the peels and cores of cooking apples and put the chopped up flesh in in the jam. So the recipe as it is...

800g cooking apples
150g blackcurrants
300g redcurrants
200g blackberries
1.5kg sloes
1.5 pts of water
2.5kg of sugar

  eel and core apples, and boil the peels and cores in 1 pint of water for 45 minutes. Save the water. Chop the flesh up finely. Cook the fruit and apple flesh with the peel/core water and an extra half pint, add the sugar. Skim the sloe stones off the top as they float to the surface after the sugars added. Bring to setting point and jar.

looks quite a lot like special effects from Shaun of the Dead...

ood news: I estimated the amount of pectin required pretty well and got a really nice set. Bad news: sloes are tart and I was prevented from adding more sugar (it needs at least another 0.5kg if not a kg). My friend Laura was like this when we made the damson jam too, fortunately I won that battle at the time. Sloes also have stones, lots of 'em, and the're small. Dan and I succeeded in fishing out about 90% at which point we decided we could live with spotting them as we spread. A hedgerow jam with faults then, but still edible - might be quite nice in brie sandwiches.

more jam

I was so pleased with the co-ordination of the Jam picture with my banner that I had to immediately go into the kitchen and take another shot of the damson jam to highlight it's Wallace and Gromit nature, whilst spread on some home made brown bread (okay, I'm just showing off now...). A side affect of this was that I did unfortunately then have to eat the bread and jam so it didn't go to waste...

Wallace and Gromit Jam

Jam-tastic

So, critical work mass meant I stopped writing blog, because I didn't have time or energy. Finally the work poop was over (wahoo!! resubmission dance) almost a week ago exactly and then I was too busy having fun. Now I'm supposed to be working again, so procrastination ahoy!

First up jam. Having read the preserves handbook Dan and I ventured into the world of jam with a straight up blackberry jam using the glut of fruit from the garden. I'm trying to keep these first jams simple, a single kind of fruit and sugar, while I get my bearings on what the hell actually happens during this process.

Dan and Ali's 1st Blackberry Jam, September 2009

Turned out pretty well. Very firm set, I think because all the sugar I used was the Silver Spoon Jam Sugar with pectin in. Next time I would substitute some of it for regular sugar, or use cooking apples for pectin as I've seen recommended. Recipe (if you can call it that!):

• 800g blackberries


• 1kg Silver Spoon Jam Sugar (with pectin - not the preserving sugar, which doesn't have pectin in, but IS apparently the optimal grain size for dissolving)


• knob of butter


• about 5 clean sterile jars

Following the success of blackberry jam, we moved on to damson jam. Our friend Laura very kindly brought back a heap (1.5kg to be precise) of damsons from her family home in the english country side. Apparently she was as excited about the jam making as I was, so we set to work enthusiastically on Saturday afternoon for batch number two. Several more lessons were learnt with batch 2 (quite glad I opted for simple jams to start with!). Firstly, my current afore mentioned bible of jam making said damsons were high in pectin and acid and so I decided to go for regular sugar rather than the pectin added stuff. However, due to afore mentioned work poop I was forced to freeze the fruit because I didn't have time to deal with them on the hour of their arrival and Laura thought they might be on the turn. I can't remember where I read this (probably in the Preserves handbook), but apparently freezing damages the pectin levels in the fruit and I didn't compensate for this. To cut a long story short the damson jam is very runny. Delicious, but runny. It looks a bit like the jam in Wallace and Gromit. Anyway, recipe:

• 1.5kg of damsons


• 1.25kg granulated sugar


• 400ml of water


• knob of butter


• about 8 clean sterile jars

This was based roughly on the plum recipe in that same book on the grounds that it was stone fruit. Conscious that we needed to soften the skins we cooked over a lowish heat while we stirred and tried to pick out the stones floating to the top. Error! This took forever, and then once we'd decided they were cooked enough and started stirring vigorously as we added sugar all the ones we'd missed came up. Next time - cook, add sugar, stir like a maniac, then the stones float neatly to the top without any fiddle. Dan came in to help with the pouring into jars (because he can actually lift a pan of jam and doesn't possess my unique talents for knocking things over). I agree with The Cottage Smallholder on this point too - the jam funnel with the kit is a must!

Jam delayed

Jam kit is here, but free time isn't

It's very shiny. I think it's *technically* too big for our small London flat, in that it's about the same size as our kitchen. I suggested to Dan that we should leave it out as a 'centrepiece', but I don't think he was too impressed with that idea.

Jam!

A few weeks ago now I entered the Fennel and Fern competition to win a jam making kit from Wiggly Wigglers and I was majorly excited to be told I'd won! The jam making extravaganza will be here (as soon as that kit arrives). I shall be reading the Preserves Handbook for preparation in the mean time...