Strawberry & Lime Jam

a bittersweet kind of strawberry jam.

Strawberry jam to me has always been a bit insipid and uninspiring. The goodytooshoes of jams:the safe side of jams: the no risk option: the middle of the jam road. Time to stray over the tracks for this is the darker side of jam. A bitter twist from those whole limes.

So where were we with me and strawberry jam. Added to its oh so dull nature the sheer pernicketyness given its low pectin levels annoys me so there have been years when I just didn’t bother making it. But then I’ve been making strawberry & lime pannacottas …strawberry & lime smoothies…strawberry & lime cheesecakes and I didn’t get tired of this magical combination (which for one with a low boredom threshold is something). And so a marriage between a high pectin easy setting lime marmalade and classic strawberry jam seemed like a good idea. It was time to give strawberry time a second chance. And so here it is.

The method involves using boiled limes (to soften and extract pectin) as if making marmalade and this stage can be done in advance and you can even boil your citrus fruits up and freeze them ready for when the jam making bug seizes you. For it can strike at any inopportune moment.

Ingredients

225g limes
625 ml water
sugar to weigh 2/3 what the lime water mix is after boiling. allow for approx 500g sugar
1.5 kg strawberries topped and tailed (approx before)
1.5kg sugar

please read:

How to

Prepare everything in advance (see rules). Clean jars ready and heating up in the oven you are ready to roll…

Part I The first part can be done in advance. Here you want the limes nicely softened down and all that pectin released. It depends what mood I am in…I made one batch where I roughly chopped them up and I made one where I had the patience to chop them into delicate slivers. Boil up the limes with the water. The rind should be really nice and soft – let them simmer gently for roughly an hour. Then weigh what you have and whatever you have, you want 2/3 of the weight as sugar. The limes do turn a bit greyish and lose a bit of their bright green look.

Part II The Strawberries.

Firstly, do use local strawberries not frou frou flown in strawberries. I like to buy big bags of them and I kind of like the slightly dirty squidgy sordid nature of the fermenting strawberry at the bottom of the bag experience you find down the piata here. So once the fruit has been purchased I chop my strawberries into pieces. It may seem a bit tedious but I want a jam not strawberry conserve. Then when you have the fruit weigh it as some will have been lost in hulling them discarding the rotten ones and of course eating a few. Now add an equal quantity of sugar.

Let the sugar dissolve. Its quite a good idea to leave it overnight. Like I said its all about the preparation.

Combine parts one and two in one big heavy bottomed pot

Now if you have not dissolved your sugar, place on a low heat until the sugar warms through and dissolves. Then put it on the max and let it boil and when I mean boil I mean boil.

Now follow the rules

This jam needed approx 30 minutes to reach setting point and it indeed set at 107C. However as I wanted to preserve colour and I am not obsessed about a rigid set more about bright colour and great taste its a soft set.

I like this jam with yoghurt in the morning and just a sprinkle of granola or drizzled over cheesecake….its definitely one for dairy products.

JAM RULES!

Rules is rules when it comes to jam:

Prepare everything in advance. Jam making happens fast and good jam is all in the preparation.
Use your best heavy bottomed pan if you do not have a jam pan. You must allow for evaporation and foaming up. Do not crowd the pan. The jam ingredients should only half fill the pan
Make jam in small quantities. Its what my Nana taught me and she was right. (there is in fact a scientific reason for this to do with boiling and surface area and evapouraton prior to setting)
Bacteria love jam. You must be scrupulously clean and sterilise stuff. Wash all jars and equipment for stirring/skimming/jarring in a solution of bicarbonate of soda
Set jams are traditional in the UK and France where there is much angst over it! Setting is a chemical reaction between sugar and pectin which results in jellification and occurs at 105C. Fruits vary in pectin levels. Ripeness affects pectin too. Residual water content also affects the soft or hard set. In Turkey, Romania and other Balkan countries jam is boiled just until the water is driven out – resulting in fresher tasting “soft set” jams.
I test for setting by placing jam on a saucer placed in the freezer. when it doesn’t run when vertical or “wrinkles” when pushed it is set. This is the one time in life when wrinkles are a good thing. If I am in doubt I use a sugar thermometer. To be sure I take my jam to between 106-108C. When I don’t have any equipment I use my eyes and ears: the bubbles change size, the noise of the jam boiling changes and the appearance becomes “glassy”.
I increase pectin levels by making apple juice and apple puree from under ripe apples and adding this to jams. That way I dont need to add any extra pectin except when making no added sugar jam.
Pour jam into clean jars heated to 100C – I do use a proper stainless steel jam filler but a ladle is fine if you have good hand to eye co-ordination (I don’t). If you have a super-duper dishwasher and are well timed you can set it at its hottest setting and wizz your too hot to handle jars out of the dishwasher straight to be filled.
Fill to the shoulders of the jar, screw the cap on fast, invert and let the 100C- plus jam sterilise that air gap and kill off any bacteria. North Americans and central Europeans like water bathing jams; I do too for low sugar and/or low acidity jams. Put them in a big pan of water with a folded tea towel inside the pan and boil gently up for 20 minutes or use a water bath.

Tomato Gazpacho

Summer in a glass….

For me Gazpacho is one of “the” dishes of summer and when the Romanian tomatoes are at their ripest and sweetest what better thing to do with them. I can drink gallons of this nectar! Its a “liquid salad” of ingredients at their best and full of flavor. It’s far more important to use fresh bursting with flavor vegetables than follow an exact recipe. For example in Romania “parsley root” is abundant and this adds a wonderful celery note to the soup. Sweet cucumbers can be added too as can fresh season onions.

Continue reading “Tomato Gazpacho”