Bog Roll :: stuff/food

I've been busy making plum jams this month. A few weeks ago I jammed up wild plum and green gages, yesterday it was Normandy Mirabelles and green gages (plus a few ripe ones from our tree).

As usual it's the normal Miot method: 700 g sugar + 200 ml water + half the juice of a frozen and defrosted lemon heated until it boils, into which you tip 1 kg of your fruit and return to the boil. It produces a slightly softer jam than is typical in the UK, but the fruit doesn't get over cooked and the flavour is excellent.

We now have six jars of Mirabelle and eight jars of green gage jam to add to the wild plum jams and jellies. Slightly better yields than last year: Mirabelle Jam and Gage Jam and we still have only collected a few of our own gages.

posted 14:20 :: /stuff/food/jam :: permalink :: ^

We noticed some wild plum trees on our way home this were loaded with fruit. We collected what we could reach and took them home. As usual I use the Miot method, heat the sugar water and lemon juice first to the boiling point, then add the fruit and boil for a further 20 minutes.

Yesterday I processed the smaller red plums. They tasted good but had very little flesh relative to the stone. So I mashed them up and filtered them to produce a coarse juice which I used to make a rustic jelly. It's got a good strong flavour, is very sharp but is actually much clearer than I expected. A success I think.

Today I processed just over kilo of the larger yellow plums. They were just large enough to de-stone, so we de-stoned them and then I made a traditional jam with them. Again compared to commercial cultivars the fruit was less sweet and small, but the flavour was good and they made good sharp jam.

If all goes to plan, tonight I'll jam up the green gages/reine-claudes we collected from the school playing field. These are a standard cultivar and while they are nice and large, like a French grown green gage they are not as sweet as our Cambridge gage in the garden or a French grown (i.e. more sun) green gage. Without doubt green gage jam is my favourite, sweet and full of fruity flavour!

posted 13:17 :: /stuff/food/jam :: permalink :: ^

At the weekend we went to our usual PYO farm and picked red and white currants and strawberries. Not the best crop, the red currants were already very heavily picked (pigeons I'm told) so we didn't get as many as planned, and though the strawberries were large and plentiful they weren't that tasty.

As in previous years I mashed up the red and white currants (about 50:50 this year) and filtered the juice out. That takes more than 24 hours so I left it all trickling though in the fridge over night.

This evening after dinner I filtered the juice again (it was a bit cloudy) and got 1.3 kg of juice. To that I added 1.3 kg of fair trade sugar and the juice of a frozen and defrosted lemon. Put the lot in a jam pan and bring up to the boil, skimming off any scum that forms on the top. Once it's boiling, it should take about 5 minutes to reach the setting point. This year it made 5x370 g jars, a better yield than last year but still not as good as the best years.

Interestingly, this year we have had a cold winter and an early and very warm spring and the fruit came to full ripeness about 1 month earlier than in previous years.

posted 22:09 :: /stuff/food/jam :: permalink :: ^

This weekend a neighbour gave us a load of baking apples so I cooked some, cooked some and froze them and with some more I made an Eve's Pudding. I've done this before but this time I used the BBC/Waitrose method which uses more eggs that I would have otherwise.

It makes far more than the BBC/Waitrose say, serves 8 not 4 as they say. I also think that it helps if you substitute a little cider for water...!

posted 19:56 :: /stuff/food :: permalink :: ^

When we bought our house this spring it came with a fruit tree. We are still not 100% sure what it is but it is a variety of gage, probably a Cambridge Gage (they are currently popular in the UK).

Our tree is quite young and still small and not in a very good location in the garden, so the fruit are not as sweet as green gages we bought while on holiday. Yesterday we picked about 4-5 kg of fruit off the tree and I jammed up 2 kg of the fruit with the rest for jamming tonight.

The method is as for the mirabell jam that I made just before going on holiday. For 1 kg of cleaned and de-stoned fruit you need 700 g of sugar, 200 ml of water and the juice of half a lemon. You put the sugar, water and lemon juice in the jam pan and bring up to the boil, then add the cleaned fruit and return to the boil (121°C), continue boiling for 20 minutes then pot. The yield was 7x370 g pots and three 25 g taster pots.

Very different from the damson jams I made a number of years ago. When we chop the Eucalyptus tree in the garden down we'll have to plant a damson plum of some sorts, more fruit trees is the way to go in the garden.

posted 09:42 :: /stuff/food/jam :: permalink :: ^

My in-laws have been visiting, they dropped of a few kilos of their Normandy mirabelle plumps. I frantically turned them into mirabelle jam before our holiday. Rather nice I think and very unusual in the UK.

posted 21:51 :: /stuff/food/jam :: permalink :: ^

I've just finished this year's batch of redcurrant jelly. We got the redcurrants from the PYO farm on Saturday, yesterday I processed them down to juice and today I cooked them to jelly. We started from about 1.5 kg of juice to which I added the juice of a lemon and 1.5 kg of granulated sugar. Yield from this was 6x370 g jars and one slightly larger jar, so not huge.

We did redcurrant and strawberry last year, so it's been two years since our last batch of redcurrant jelly, and my better half has been missing it as it's her favourite!

posted 21:53 :: /stuff/food/jam :: permalink :: ^

A bit later than intended, but today I've made my first batch of jam in our new house and for 2010. I made rhubarb and ginger jam using the Mr Miot Method. I started with 1 Kg of frozen and defrosted rhubarb, a frozen and defrosted lemon, 800 g of granulated sugar, 250 g crystallised ginger (finely chopped). However, the rhubarb didn't release much juice when defrosted so I added 200 ml of water to stop the sugar from burning. It made two large pots to keep and two medium and two tiny to give away.

It's the second time I've use Mr Miot jamming method and it is very easy to work with - well worth copying. Buy his book if you want to know how to make really good jam: Maison Francis Miot.

Today was also the first time using our new John Lewis (Smeg) cooker in anger. It performed very well and I'm glad we bought it.

posted 21:57 :: /stuff/food/jam :: permalink :: ^

One of my favourite eating apple varieties is the English Egremont Russet. It's different from the bland modern apples that are nothing more than bags of wet sugar. While on holiday in France this New Year, I came across a relative, the Reinette grise du Canada, a popular French variety of russet that came from England via Canada. It's a older variety and slightly larger in size, but very similar in texture and flavour - well worth finding.

posted 19:10 :: /stuff/food :: permalink :: ^

Yesterday I made a batch of jam using Mr Miot's method. It's based on his standard method which is different from the method I've used myself previously.

• 1 Kg Rhubarb (frozen then defrosted)
• 0.8 Kg Sugar
• ½ a lemon (frozen then defrosted)
• 200 ml rhubarb juice (from the defrosted 1 Kg)
• 250 g crystallised ginger (my addition, not in the French original)

First you freeze the lemon and the chopped and cleaned rhubarb. Freezing and defrosting the lemon should ease the extraction of pectin for setting the jam. Freezing and defrosting the rhubarb should extract water juices from it, keep just 200 ml.

Heat the sugar, juice from the lemon and the lemon along with the rhubarb juice up to boiling point (121°C). Once it's rolling along add the chopped rhubarb and return to the boiling point. Boil hard for a further 15 minutes (give or take) and then add the ginger. After removing any scum and a a few more minutes it should be ready to pot.

I jammed 2.2 Kg of rhubarb with 1.76 Kg sugar, two small lemons and 0.5 Kg of chopped crystalised ginger. Tasted okay on the night, but rhubarb and ginger takes a few days to reach full flavour.

• Mr Miot's jam method
• my previous rhubarb jams

posted 22:46 :: /stuff/food/jam :: permalink :: ^

Yesterday we went to a local PYO farm to collect fruit for jamming. As much as we love redcurrant jelly we decided to skip it for this year and try something new - so I spent £15 on mostly strawberries.

Strawberries are terrible to jam, they are low in pectin, high in water and (in the shops in the UK) low in flavour. If it were not for the national obsession with them, no one in their right mind would bother with them...

I decided to use the recipe of Francis Miot, who is some top French jam maker:

• 700 g strawberries (fraises)
• 350 g redcurrants (groseilles) - you are supposed to remove the pips with a goose quill but we skipped this...
• 200 g water (d'eau) - it seemed an awful lot but it did turn out okay
• 1/2 lemon (citron décongelé) - ideally frozen and defrosted
• 800 g sugar (sucre blanc) - does not need added pectin
• 30 ml red wine (vin rouge) - we skipped this as we don't drink wine

The method is his standard method. First heat the sugar, water and lemon (squeezed juice and whole fruit) up to a full boil (121°C), then you add your topped and halved strawberries and (deseeded) redcurrants and bring back to a full boil. You then boil on full heat for 20 minutes before potting into hot cleaned jars as normal.

For best flavour do not add butter, remove the scum with a slotted jam spoon instead. Don't soak your fruit overnight in sugar as it draws out too much water - or so Mr Miot says.

We started with 2.1 Kg strawberries and 1.05 Kg redcurrants and yielded 13 (full) 370 g Bonne Maman jars. This morning we opened a jar to test - VERY GOOD!

posted 22:56 :: /stuff/food/jam :: permalink :: ^

I've done three batches of jam this spring. So far I've done a batch of champagne rhubarb, rhubarb and ginger and today a batch of rhubarb and orange marmalade. Recipes as previous years, though I did cut the sugar levels down this year as previous years have been very sweet and if you can increase the fruit levels it's worth it.

• Rhubarb and Ginger Jam (III)
• 14 kg of Rhubarb Marmalade!
• Late Rhubarb Jam
• Rhubarb and Ginger Jam (II)
• Rhubarb and Orange Marmalade (II)
• Rhubarb and Orange Marmalade
• Rhubarb and Ginger Jam

posted 18:29 :: /stuff/food/jam :: permalink :: ^

It's pumpkin season again. As is usually the case, virtually no-one buys them in the UK and even fewer people cook with them. As with 2007 and 2006 I've made another pumpkin pie.

As with 2006 we were working in Little Meadow except the pie was made after the work, so my colleagues didn't get to share in this year's first pie. Instead my father is visiting this weekend, so he got a share!

posted 14:51 :: /stuff/food :: permalink :: ^

Today I made three batches of jam. I am now full of enough sugar to power a Tour de France bike rider up an Aple. I started with 2 Kg or redcurrant juice to which I added 2 kg of sugar to make 9 jars of jelly. Next it was a kilo of rhubarb, 500 g of crystallised ginger and a kilo of sugar to make 6 jars of jam. Finally 2 Kg of rhubarb, a kilo of oranges and 2.2 Kg of sugar make 12 jars of marmalade. Should keep the household running another year.

It's taken so much of my day up that I've still not had time to get NFSv4 working with Kerberos 5. I've just had enough time to join together kinit, telnet.krb5 and ksshaskpass.

posted 20:00 :: /stuff/food/jam :: permalink :: ^

Today I went to a friend's garden to pick his surplus rhubarb (Rheum rhabarbarum or Rheum x hybridum.). I collected over 4 Kg, of which 3 Kg is now soaking in sugar and lemon juice in the fridge.

After lunch we went to the nearby PYO farm on the hunt for redcurrants (Ribes rubrum) and strawberries (Fragaria spp.). They were out of strawberries, which is a bit odd as there should still be plenty and last year at this time they were over run with them. The redcurrants had also been picked hard (and very poorly), which made picking them a pain but we were easily able to collect over 3.5 Kg of red and white currants. Except a few kept for eating the currants are simply mashed up and filtered to make jelly.

Tomorrow I plan to make one batch of redcurrants jelly, one batch of rhubarb and ginger jam and one batch of rhubarb and orange marmalade.

posted 18:14 :: /stuff/food/jam :: permalink :: ^