Local Archives - I THINK THEREFORE I JAM

Caponata

a mozaic mezze with aubergine pulling everything together

With its sweet and sour “agrodolce” sauce cloaking a medley of olive-oil-fried aubergine, assorted veg and piquant olives and capers, Caponata is a halfway house between English chutney and Turkish “Zeytinyağlı Sebze”; olive oil poached vegetable mezzes.

I like to use it as a vehicle for late Autumn scavengings of markets and lucky gifts from friends with gardens and no two batches are ever the same! I like to think Sicily, its homeland, approves of this opportunistic make-do approach.

Fig, pear, walnut, pine nut, sesame preserve with mastic and aniseed

Inspired by the Lebanese, “M’rabbah al teen” dried fig jam, Aegean ingredients and leanings this is what I think my Nana would have called a “sweetmeat”; something so delectably fine it deserved to be eaten just by itself (Although I have eaten it with creamy thick sheep’s “Suzme” yoghurt and salty crystalline “Tulum” goat cheese).

It melds the tahini-like taste of sesame seeds, the crunch of nuts, the stickiness of the figs, the indescribable taste of mastic (sakız) and the zing of the aniseed, into a stellar confection.

Wild Blackberry & Apple Jam

Sometimes things just gel and so it is with this fruit-forward jam. The wild blackberries are more intense than their farmed cousins and they marry pleasingly with the tart under-ripe windfall apples. The shiny black jars tho’ make the scratches and the brushes with stinging nettles all worthwhile!