Plum jam with rosemary

This post is for my friend Annette Stenbäck in Sweden who has a bumper crop of plums and needs to come up with some yummy things to do with it. I wish she could send me some plums, but I suspect that customs might have a problem with that. 

This jam turned out beautifully: Deep rich color and tangy, sweet, and deep flavor.

I used a combination of prune plums and red plums (about half each), but you can probably use any combination of plums that you have available. The rosemary is entirely optional, but makes a nice flavor addition.

  
Now, making this jam takes two days. The work is minimal on the first day, but you should know and plan accordingly.

This is the base recipe. You can make up to three times as much (which I did by accident), but note that cooking time will be longer for bigger batches. Just multiply the following recipe by two or three, and you are good to go. Three kilos of cleaned plums yielded 11 eight-ounce jars of jam.

Here's what you will need:

• 1 kilo of quartered plums with the stones removed (in other words, you need a little more than a kilo of plums)
• 700 ml of white granulated sugar (I prefer to use organic, which has just the slightest scent of raw cane--mm, lovely)
• juice from one lemon, strained (if you don't have lemons, I suspect that about 100 ml of balsamic vinegar would yield an utterly amazing jam)
• 2-3 sprigs of fresh rosemary
• clean jars (sterilized if you are not planning to eat this right away, but more on that later)

Day 1

Prepare your plums. Cut them into quarters and remove the pits. You don't have to peel them; the peel is where the jam will get its pectin from. 

I love this color combination. 

When you have about 1 kilo of cut fruit, add the sugar in layers. Start and end with a layer of sugar so that the fruit is completely surrounded with the sugar. Also add the lemon juice. 

Then put your fruit-sugar-lemon juice combination into the refrigerator for one day. The reason for this is to draw the juice out of the plums and start to break down the cell walls. (You can let this sit for up to two days without any problems. Longer than that and your jam may start to get a little raisin-like.)  

Day 2

Today you will do most of the work. Start with washing your jars and lids and sterilizing them. You can do this in a water bath, but I like the oven technique that I learned from Rachel Saunders's book The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook, although I upped the heat a bit. 

To do this, place your washed jars and lids on a cookie sheet and place them in the oven. Turn on the oven (I prefer to place the jars into a cold oven so I don't risk cracking them with a big shock of heat) and let the temperature come up to 275 degrees Fahrenheit (that's 135 degrees Celsius for my international friends). When the oven is hot, the jars should remain in the oven for at least 30 minutes. Leave the jars in the oven until you need them. 

Next, put a plate with five metal spoons in the freezer. Now, pirouette and sing Oye Como Va. Ha ha! I just wanted to see if you were still paying attention. You don't have to sing and dance, but do put the spoons in the freezer, you will use them to test the doneness of your jam. 

When you made your preparations, you can start heating up your fruit mixture, which should be a lot more watery than it was when you first put it in the refrigerator. Start with medium-low heat and bring the temperature up slowly.

Once the mixture has started to simmer a bit, raise the heat to medium-high. Get a good boil going (the point is to let most of the water steam off and candy the sugar). Stir frequently (wear something to protect your hands; the jam will sputter a lot and it can burn you). When the mixture foams, skim off as much of the foam as possible. (Use a skimmer for this job; it really makes a difference. Also, keep your skimmer in a bowl of cold water, which will help the foam adhere to the skimmer.) You will skim very frequently for the first 5 to 10 minutes. 

Let it boil for about 20 minutes before you do your first doneness test (add about 10 minutes if you do a bigger batch). To do the test, remove a small representative sample from the pot (in other words, get both solids and liquid) and transfer it to one of the frozen spoons. Place the spoon back in the freezer for 3-4 minutes. Feel the bottom of the spoon, if it doesn't feel cold or hot, you can inspect the jam. The liquid part of the jam should move a little, but it should not run. If it runs, the jam is not ready yet. Keep cooking the jam for about 5-10 minutes and test again.

When the jam is done, take it off the heat and add your sprigs of rosemary (if you don't want to use rosemary, skip this step). Let them steep for about 5 minutes and then remove them. (You don't want slimy rosemary sprigs in your final product.)

Take your cookie sheet with jars out of the oven and fill the jars. Using a jam funnel is helpful for keeping things somewhat clean. Be very careful, the jam will be extremely hot.  

Don't completely fill the jars. Leave at least one quarter inch at the top. Clean the rims of the jars with a clean wet cloth (or paper towels, as long they aren't prone to tearing). Then place the lids on the jars and loosely screw on the rings. Put the jars back in the oven for 20 minutes. 

When you remove the jars from the oven, put them somewhere you will not disturb them for about a day. That will give the jam time to set and create the vacuum seal. Next day, check the seals. The bubble in the middle of the lid should be depressed. If it makes a popping sound when you press it with your finger, you didn't get a vacuum seal, which means you should use that jar right away. Just put it in the refrigerator and eat it within two weeks. The rest of the jars can go into a cool, dark place for enjoyment later in the winter. Yum!

If you want to learn more about jams and other preservation techniques, check out the National Center for Home Food Preservation.  

   

My garden has run amuck

I am exhausted today after staying up late last night writing something that was perhaps overly emotional and embarrassing, but, hey, there it is, I did it, let it stand. I can't undo what I've done.

So I am moving on. Being in a wildly dreamy, exhausted state of mind, I have been catching up with lots of reading, especially some of the blogs I follow. I have enjoyed beautiful pics, friendly cooking advice, interesting facts and tidbits about the state of the food industry. (I especially like the link to "endangered foods" that I found at Civil Eats.) (Most of the blogs I follow are in the blog roll; I definitely recommend checking them out.)

As I was reading them, one reason I like them so much came to me. The photos--beautiful, composed, and professional though they may be--don't feel like catalog photos. They don't make you long for things you don't have. Or, to be more precise, they don't make you long for things to buy. They often make me long for things I can create, but that's an altogether different kind of longing. And I like that.

Another thing I like is that they show glimpses of real lives, of real pockets of beauty nestled within the everyday. In an everyday I can find if I only try and look for it.

In the spirit of finding my own pockets of beauty, I took my camera out back to the garden I have woefully neglected for the last month. Sadly I let lots of tomatoes die on the vine, but there's still a little beauty left back there. At least I think so.

Here is the lemon I thought a rascal of a squirrel had stolen when I couldn't find it the other day. But here it is, still attached to my little lemon tree.

Signs of new life on the lemon tree. I am thankful. Especially because it lost most of its leaves over the winter.

False indigo floating in a puddle left after Irene.

Winslow, my fat grumpy cat. He thinks he's a tiger. I hate to break it to him...

The basil still looks good. Soon, I will harvest it and make a batch of pesto to freeze for later.

An out-of-control stalk of grass, almost ready to reseed itself.

A cluster of cherry tomatoes left from a wilderness of vines that reached more than seven feet high at one point, which are now a brown and ugly mess. I'll leave these in the hope that I can make something of them.

A sprig of ivy, taking over the fence.

The bird feeder Mike's uncle Melvin made for us, chewed by squirrels.

A lovely fern, growing by the compost box.

Some of our harvest bounty--still not sure what to do with it all...

I also decided to start some plum jam. I bought a whole mess of plums at the farmer's market on Saturday morning, before the rain from Irene began to roll in. Most of them are prune plums, but I am afraid I can't remember what the bigger ones are. I like the red etchings on some of them. Looks like a galaxy of stars trapped within a thin skin.

I love the contrast of the purple skin with blue bloom against the strange green of the flesh. I wonder what color the jam will be? Of course, I won't know until tomorrow, because I ran out of sugar. No matter, I will let the plums macerate with the sugar I have and then we will see. It may be beautiful. It may be weird. That's part of the fun.

Sublime strawberries: Two ways to preserve some of that goodness and beauty

I am a little out of practice with writing regularly. You work for years in a regular nine-to-five day job and fully plan to use your evenings wisely with creative pursuits like drawing, painting, and writing. But at the end of the day, you feel drained, barely able to get food on the table, dishes in the dishwasher, and the little guy to bed. Creativity is so far out of your grasp that you plunk down on the couch, throw on the tube, and stew in guilt: "I should be using my time better! If I was really committed, I would find the energy and the willpower." As time passes, your creative muscle starts to deteriorate a bit. To get it back into shape takes persistence and work, just like getting fit after years of mooing on the couch.

So, I haven't written for several days, which I feel guilty about. I have been cooking a lot, but I didn't get any pictures, and the stuff was small, and didn't I already write something about that...? The excuses and the fears pile up, effectively grinding momentum to a halt.

But I must force myself forward, get some writing down, take some photos, break out the charcoal and paper and draw. So, here are some thoughts about strawberries, which have dominated my kitchen for the last two weeks. The ubiquity of the strawberry can make you take it for granted. It shows up as an artificial flavor variety in neon-pink, crazy-quilt plastic packages at the convenience store. It's the little pop of color on top of that decadent chocolate dessert you really shouldn't have fallen for last night. They are available grossly oversized in every season at the grocery store. (That size? Not normal. Can you say octoploid?) So they somehow lose hold over your imagination. You don't get that excited about them.

Or do you? What a shame to let something so sweet and lovely slip into bland ubiquity. Especially when they can perfume a room or draw your eye on a cool spring morning, gleaming ruby red. When I was a kid, my mother never bought strawberries at the grocery store. One time, we were driving in Finland, on our way to visit my grandmother in Kokkola, my mother came to a screaming halt at the side of the road where a couple of people were selling strawberries out of the back of their car. She was so excited. To her this was a gift, a special moment in time. Perhaps the scarcity she lived with as a child (she was born during World War II, and food was hard to come by in Finland) had taught her the value of those sweet red jewels, early gifts of spring. In any case, we had to eat them at once, or they would lose their flavor she said. And so we did. Happily, we selected berry after berry from the box until they were gone. And then they were no more than a memory, but what a sweet and precious one.

It seems important to me to remember the value she placed on those berries every time I visit the farmer's market. Because eating in season is ephemeral; it changes from week to week. This week you are swamped with berries and asparagus, but next week they could be gone. So you grab everything you can, try and set by as much as you can because you don't know what you will find next week. This is both the joy and sometimes the sorrow of the farmer's market. I have many times come back to find the blueberries done for the season and kicking myself for having missed them.

So I have been trying my hardest to make the most of the strawberries by making saft (a Scandinavian fruit syrup you mix with water to make a refreshing drink) and jam. But I haven't made enough yet. My family already drank the saft, and I only got four jars of jam. So I hope there are still berries left at the market tomorrow. Both of the following recipes were adapted from Bonniers Stora Kokbok, which was my second cookbook--a gift from my mother that is completely beaten up. The spine is cracked to pieces, the book is falling apart, but I wouldn't give it up for the world. Part of the reason it is such a mess is because it was soaked through in a rainstorm during a motorcycle trip from Virginia to Colorado. But that may be a story for another day...

Strawberry Saft

Bring 3 deciliters of water to a boil in a big, nonreactive pot. Add 2 quarts of hulled, well-rinsed strawberries to the water (I am especially fond of the berries and fruits from Reid's Orchards. Their grapes look like little glass balls full of sunshine and taste as amazing. Absolutely gorgeous fruit.) Let the mass boil for about 10-15 minutes.

Line a colander with cheesecloth and raise it over a bowl. (I placed two chairs next to each other so that the colander hung down between them about half a foot over the bowl. You can find stands that will enable you to do the same, but the chairs work well.)

Pour the cooked strawberries into the colander and let the juice drip into the bowl for about an hour.

Measure the juice in the bowl. For every quart of juice, measure 6 deciliters of sugar. Bring the juice to boil and add the sugar. Let the sugar dissolve and the mixture cook for about 5 minutes. Skim the liquid. Then add the juice of one lemon (juice of limes will do in a pinch).

Then you can add it to clean, warm bottles and seal it to save for the winter. (We never get that far though; we end up devouring it in about a week.)

To serve, use 1 part saft to 4-5 parts water or seltzer.

Strawberry Jam Scented With Rosemary

2 quarts hulled, well-rinsed strawberries (let them run off for a few minutes on paper towels)
6 deciliters sugar
1 Tbsp dried rosemary
8 black peppercorns

Wrap the rosemary and the peppercorns into a tight little package with cheesecloth (the rosemary and the peppercorns should not be able to escape during cooking).

In a heavy pot, layer sugar and strawberries. Start and end with a layer of sugar. Let the mixture sit for at least an hour, you can go up to 24 hours.

Bring the mass in the pot very slowly to a boil. Let it simmer for an hour, skimming regularly. (Tips for skimming: (1) Get a skimmer, it makes a big difference and doesn't have to cost a lot. (2) Keep a container of cold water next to the pot. Dip the skimmer into the cold water before and after skimming. Replace water as desired.)

Take out the spice bag and discard it. Spoon the jam into warm, clean canning jars and process in a hot water bath for about 15 minutes. (If you've never done any canning before, I would definitely do a little research to learn some more tips and tricks. Because I am still a novice, I don't want to give you the wrong information.)

If, for some reason, your jam doesn't jell, don't despair. It will still make a delicious topping for pancakes (thanks to my friend Walter for the suggestion), or it will be amazing on ice cream. Now go enjoy those strawberries before they are gone!

Update: To make sure your jams and jellies are safe to eat, check the National Center for Home Food Preservation.